Jackdaw (7 page)

“Jump!” Jonah yelled.

There were more shots. Cries from below. Ben braced himself against nothing and urged himself upwards. He found a hand clutching his, and Jonah somehow hauling and pushing him up.

“Run,” Jonah gasped, as Ben rolled himself over the gutter onto the tiles. “Come on. Stay away from the edges.”

There was nothing Ben wanted more than to stay away from the edges. There were men with guns down there, and probably practitioners, and his shoulder blades were prickling in anticipation of Miss Saint rising up in the sky like an avenging Cockney angel. Jonah kept twisting round as he ran, evidently with the same fear. They were on a long string of terraces now, though, house adjoining house, and out of sight of the people on the ground. Jonah sent Ben over a gap onto another, lower set of buildings, older ones, river-rotted with the damp of the nearby Thames, and they slipped and slid and stumbled together, with the great dome of St. Paul’s rising high in the cityscape that faced them.

They ran and jumped and windwalked, till the cathedral was well behind them, until finally Ben’s prison-bound legs, too long off the rugby pitch, were screaming their protests. Jonah gasped, “Breather.” He pulled Ben down with him, nestling into a space between a crazy coppice of chimney pots, and ducked his head between his knees as Ben tried to fill his lungs with the salty, grimy air.

At last Ben panted, “Did we lose them?”

“We lost Saint. Which I think means she hurt herself, because that woman is fast. And if we’re going to be blamed for that, we’re in a lot more trouble now. A
lot
.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” Ben managed to point out. There were black spots in front of his eyes.

“It’s always possible,” Jonah said. “She has terrifying friends. Oh, damn it. I hope she’s not dead.”

That thought had been very much in Ben’s mind too. “She’s a windwalker. Surely…”

“No, I can get hurt falling off things as much as the next man, if I don’t catch myself on the way down. But she’s a tough one, she might have made it. Oh Lord.” Jonah let his head flop back with a groan. “I do seem to make a mess of things. I had no idea the justiciary would be there.”

“I was bait. Day more or less told me so. They knew you’d come for me.”

“Did they?” said Jonah, and then, hesitantly, “Did you?”

Ben tried to steady his breathing, in and out. “Where are we going?” he asked, after a moment, and winced as he realised what he’d said. It came so naturally. “That is—should we split up?”

“No. We shouldn’t.” Jonah’s eyes were on Ben’s, intensely blue, and Ben gave a little nod, because the thought of running from retribution alone in this huge, unfriendly city held no appeal. That was, without doubt, the reason.

“Um…I don’t know,” Jonah said, going back to his question. “I think we should leave London as soon as possible, by which I mean when you have your breath back. Where… They might anticipate us going north, to Hertfordshire or Manchester. Doubling back east doesn’t appeal. South or west, nowhere you have any connections, what do you think?” He shrugged at Ben’s look. “If we don’t have a destination in mind, they won’t be able to guess it. Pick one.”

“Southwest.”

“Reading? Gloucester? Exeter, maybe? Why not. That’s a train from Paddington, then.”

“I don’t have a ha’penny to my name.” The realisation struck Ben with force. “My clothes, everything, it’s all back at the dosshouse—”

“So it’s gone. The police are going to be quite testy about this, you know, and the justiciary even worse. We can’t go back.”

“No—but—” Ticket fare. Something else to wear. Food.

“I’ll deal with the money,” Jonah said. “I have resources.”

“I don’t want your money.” The words were out without Ben’s conscious thought, a bursting of five months’ resentment.

Jonah’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t proposing— Oh, goodness, Ben, I got you into this, could you not please let me try to get you out?”

“You didn’t last time.” Ben’s voice rasped.

“No,” Jonah said. “I had reasons for that, but…later?”

Later wasn’t good enough. Ben wanted to know now, right now, why Jonah had abandoned him so utterly five months ago. Why there had been no attempt at contact in all that time. Why he had not been there, waiting at the prison gate for his release, as some tiny, contemptible part of Ben’s soul had believed he would be, and been crushed at the absence.

On the other hand, they were running from the law.

“Later,” he agreed. “But I need to know, Jonah. I need to understand.”

“Everything, I promise. Once we get on a train.”

Chapter Seven

They came down from the rooftops not long afterwards, to Ben’s intense relief, losing themselves in the London crowds. He forged ahead, consumed with the need to reach the station. Jonah seemed less urgent, and less forceful, buffeted by the crowds, constantly managing to get in the way of the people who sidestepped Ben.

It took a good ten minutes for Ben to realise what was happening, and when he did he seized Jonah’s arm with all the force of the avenging law he no longer represented.

“Are you picking pockets?” he hissed savagely.

“Ssh! Of course I am.”

“Jesus Christ.” Ben shook him. “You—”

“If we don’t get out of London in the next few hours, either the police or the justiciary or Miss Saint’s fiancé is going to catch up with us. And I didn’t have any money. Now I do. We’re on the run from the law, you can’t quibble about a bit of fingersmithing.”

“Yes, I can,” Ben snarled back, aware that the low-voiced argument was attracting too much attention. “Stop it.”

“How else are we going to get out of London?” Jonah demanded. “Beg for funds?” He held Ben’s eyes for an answer he didn’t have, shook off his grip and strode on.

It was a long walk. Long enough for Ben to start sweating every time a hurried footstep or a fast-moving hansom came up behind them, convinced that the Met or the justiciary must have caught up with them by now. Long enough for him to wonder what the devil he was doing, and why the devil he kept doing it.

He knew the answer. It was because of the devil who walked beside him.

He looked round, checking for pursuit, sweeping a quick glance over Jonah. He was silent, apparently thinking, features relaxed into their habitual expression of faint amusement. He smiled when he slept, Ben remembered, and the thought was a tiny adder-bite in his chest.

He knew how Jonah looked when he slept, and the sounds he made when he came, and the places to touch that made him writhe and beg. He knew that Jonah was ashamed that he could not read, shameless in his love of men. He knew that he liked his tea weak and his toast close to burned.

He didn’t know anything important. He didn’t know anything about Jonah’s powers or his past or his criminal nature. He didn’t know if Jonah had let other men have him in the last five months. He didn’t know why they were running together, except that it felt a matter of instinct to do so, and he didn’t know if that instinct was as self-destructive as every other instinct of his involving Jonah.

He knew about that torn, bloodstained pencil sketch that Jonah had protected at such appalling cost, and about Jonah perched on the rooftop of the police station, silhouetted against the sky…

“Did you organise that?” he asked. “At the station?”

“What, the costers? Yes.” Jonah grinned round at him. “I thought they were rather good, didn’t you? Particularly the fish.”

“They caused a public nuisance,” Ben said, and Jonah’s smile faded at the note of heavy, sober reproof. Which was right because it was one more grossly irresponsible act to Jonah’s discredit, but Ben found himself wishing he’d given in to the glimmer of a laugh he’d felt, the pale echo of the old lightheartedness. He stamped on a stupid urge to admit that it had, perhaps, been funny.

Instead, he asked, “How did you know I’d be there?”

“You won’t approve if I tell you.” Jonah sounded a touch sulky.

He probably wouldn’t. And if Jonah hadn’t done it, whatever it was, he’d be in a cell right now, and lucky if he was only being spat at.

“Thanks.” The word jerked out awkwardly. “For coming, for getting me out of that.”

“You warned me in the park,” Jonah pointed out. “I couldn’t just—” He stopped.

“Leave me to be arrested?”

Jonah pressed his lips together, staring at the pavement as they headed towards the station. “No. I couldn’t have left you to that again. Come on, we’re here. I’ll get tickets if you get us some food for the journey.” He produced a ten-shilling note. Ben glared at it. Jonah took his hand and shoved the note in. “Don’t be like that. It’s ours now, and starving won’t help. Ben, you need to eat.”

“I’d rather starve than thieve,” Ben said, low-voiced. “Understand that, Jonah.”

“Yes, well, understand
this
: if we get caught now, I’m not the only one who’ll end up with broken bones.” Jonah leaned in, hissing. “You’ve upset the Met and the justiciary, and when you lobbed a tile at that nuisance Saint, you made worse enemies than them both. If you care about tuppenny-ha’penny morals, there’s a police station round the corner where you can hand yourself in. Otherwise, we’re getting out of London with money that did not originally belong to me, but our need is greater than theirs, do you see?”

It was, in that moment, all too tempting to head for the police station. Ben clenched his fists. “No more of it. Once we’re out of London, no more stealing.”

“As you wish,” Jonah snapped, in anything but an accommodating tone. “Meanwhile, let’s get on a train, shall we?”

It wasn’t just all the things done, and the things yet to be said lying between them, Ben realised. It was fear. He was so tightly tensed it hurt to move his shoulders, and though Jonah affected his usual casual stance, Ben knew that terror was gripping him too. The white girders of Paddington Station’s roof arched over them in a metal spiderweb, and he had a sudden, appalling vision of the justiciar Saint perched above him, waiting to drop. He had to restrain himself from craning his neck to look up.

Instead he bought food with the stolen money, slabs of veal pie, buns and plum dough, and bottles of ale as well, and the serving girl did not hold up the note and cry him a thief. She grumbled about making change and found him a paper sack, and he met Jonah in the middle of the platform laden with spoils.

“There’s a train to Gloucester leaving in fourteen minutes,” Jonah announced. “So we’re going there.”

The train was not busy. To Ben’s surprise, Jonah waved him into a second-class carriage, and an empty, comfortable compartment.

“Why aren’t we travelling third?” he asked. “It’s a waste of money, and I don’t look—respectable.”

“Leave that to me,” Jonah assured him. “Really, it’ll be—oh, bother.” That was as the door opened and a fussy-looking man in a suit entered, putting his newspaper on the seat. Jonah smiled at him and leaned over to touch his hand as he said, clearly, “Now, listen, you don’t want to sit in here.” The man mumbled an awkward excuse and backed out, leaving the paper in his haste to get away.

“How did you do that?” Ben demanded. “Did you affect his thoughts?”

Jonah shrugged. “We need privacy.”

“Yes, but—”

“But we need privacy. He can sit somewhere else.”

“You can’t just shape the world to your own convenience like that,” Ben protested.

“What does it matter where he sits?—No, listen to me, you don’t want to come in,” Jonah added to a young man fumbling at the door. “Goodness, it’s like Piccadilly Circus.”

“It matters because…it’s wrong, that’s why.”

“Oh, well,
wrong
,” Jonah said dismissively.

“But—” Ben gave up, for the moment, and sat back in silence, until at last the train jolted away with a cloud of steam and a screech of metal. The ticket inspector came in a few moments later, and Jonah handed over the scraps of pasteboard.

“What’s this, now?” demanded the inspector. “These are third-class—”

“Second class.” Jonah’s hand snaked out to the inspector’s fingers. “Listen to me. Second class, and you don’t need to disturb us, for any reason.”

“Very good, sir.” The inspector touched his cap and departed.

Jonah pulled the door closed. “Now, don’t fuss. You were quite right about husbanding our money, especially if you’re going to make difficulties about replenishing the funds.”

“I’m happy to have third-class tickets and sit in third.”

“I’m not,” Jonah said. “It’s uncomfortable, and we wouldn’t get any quiet, and does it really matter?”

“It seems to me that it’s all of a piece. You’re not honest, Jonah.”

Jonah’s cheeks reddened, just a little, but he gave a careless shrug. “Perhaps not. Well, no. If you want to be provincial about it.”

“I am provincial,” Ben said grimly. “I’m a provincial copper, or I was, till a few months ago. And if you’ve got an explanation of why I’m not one any more, I’d like to hear it now. No excuses, no wandering off the point.” He knew Jonah’s flitting, butterfly mind all too well. “Just the truth.”

Jonah shut his eyes. “Yes. Right. Very well. Where to start… I don’t know if you remember, no reason you should, but back in October, before…everything, I turned down a job.”

Ben did remember. Jonah had come back from one of his two-day absences twitchy and frowning. He had said only that he had refused work, and the prospective employer had not been happy, but he had scowled at his plate as he ate, and his normally ravenous appetite had deserted him. Ben had wondered at the time.

“Let me guess. This job offer was from Lady Bruton?”

“Yes. A very bad woman, and very dangerous, and half-mad at least, and possessed of a raging grudge against Stephen Day, the justiciar, and his lover, Lord Crane.”

“His
what
?”

“Lover. Day’s lover.”

“Day?” Ben repeated, completely forgetting about sticking to the point. “His lover? Did you say a
lord
?”

“Oh, yes. The right noble earl of Crane. Landed gentry. Six foot three of money, mouth and cock. And an utter bastard.”

“Six— With Day?” Ben was having trouble visualising this. “Are you sure?”

“Unlikely, isn’t it? And, you’d think, physically unfeasible, but they are conducting an
affaire
of operatic intensity. No, really. I promise.” His eyes brimmed with amusement at Ben’s reaction.

“But… My
God
. I thought he was sympathetic.” Ben considered it for a second. He had a vague feeling that, under the circumstances, the man might have been more helpful. “Well, I wouldn’t have thought it.”

“Yes, well, think on this: the righteous Mr. Day is quite a lot less righteous in private. He likes
restraints
.”

“You aren’t serious,” Ben said, aghast. “Oh.”

“What?” Jonah was watching his face, and there was something in his expression, a touch of satisfied happiness that he had always worn when he made Ben laugh. The look that had made Ben feel like the centre of the world. “What is it?”

Ben didn’t give a damn for Day’s personal habits, but that look had made him feel…he didn’t know. Something he couldn’t think about. He answered mostly to distract himself from it. “Nothing. Just that you said restraints, and—well, I thought Day was good at ropes back at the justiciary…”

“No!” Jonah said with explosive glee. “Oh my God, Benedict Spenser. You let Stephen Day tie you up. You
tart
.”

“I didn’t
let
him, he arrested me,” Ben protested, which was the wrong thing to say. He should have slapped Jonah down. They weren’t on these terms any more. But they had been, and it felt so natural, so alive. “Anyway, I don’t believe a word of it.”

“God, well, nor did I. Who would? You’ve seen Day, whereas his lordship’s absolutely delectable, if you like that sort of thing—”

“Do you?” Ben found himself interrupting, with hostility.

Jonah’s eyes came swiftly to Ben’s, a distinct glow to them. “Well, if you ask me, he’s a bit Blackpool, you know. Nice for a holiday, but you wouldn’t want to live there.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Ben had to hold back the smile. He wanted to laugh, wanted so much to have Jonah spin his implausible gossip and make the world a lighter, easier place.

He didn’t want to stop this and talk about awful things, and for just a moment he thought,
Perhaps we could not
. Just forget. Just ignore. Just have a few minutes on the train where the past wasn’t with them, where he could inhale Jonah’s scent and maybe even sit by him instead of apart. Feel the warmth of his thigh against Ben’s, have Jonah’s fingers tangle in his own, perhaps even, when the train passed through a tunnel and all was dark, he could steal a kiss and things could be as they had been once more…

Insanity. Sheer bloody insanity.

Ben stamped down on the little bubble of happiness, and Jonah saw him do it. The smile stayed on his lips, but the light left his eyes, and he was already nodding as Ben said, heavily, “Come on.”

Jonah took a deep breath. “Yes. Right. Where was I?”

“Lady Bruton. The job.”

“Well. She told me that she wanted me to work for her. She needed me to steal, incriminate Miss Saint, and get a ring of some value from Day. It was all aimed at him, you understand. Another operatic sort of person, Lady Bruton. I said no. She said I’d do as I was told, or she’d make me.” He made a face. “She was frightening. Half-mad, horribly disfigured, consumed by revenge, far, far stronger than me, and she didn’t take no for an answer. That was why I did the Tring Museum job, you see. It fell into my lap—obviously it did, it was a trap—but at the time it seemed like a marvellous opportunity to make a lot of money very quickly. Because I thought we might have to run, you and me.”

“You never told me that.”

“‘Darling, I can walk on thin air and a warlock is trying to make me steal a magic ring,’” Jonah mimicked. “No. I didn’t say anything. I still hoped I could make it go away. It was stupid of me, but I didn’t want it to touch you. And then I did the job, and you were there.” He was staring out of the window as he spoke. “I didn’t mean that to happen.”

“How could it not?” Ben asked. “I’m—I was a policeman.”

“I don’t know. I don’t plan very well, Ben. I just…run, really. Keep on going and try to stay a bit ahead.” He took a deep breath. “But Lady Bruton was so far ahead of me. I never had a chance. I got away from the museum, that night, and I doubled back and went home—”

“
I
went home,” Ben said furiously. “You never came back.”

“Oh, I did. I came back long before you could have and found Lady Bruton in the sitting room, and… She made me come with her. Dragged me to some barn in the middle of a field, and there was this man there, Newhouse. The painter. He had a cat.” Jonah swung back to Ben, eyes blazing. “He’d done a picture. And she held me to a chair and made me watch while he changed it. He took off its legs, and he did things to its eyes and—oh Jesus, Ben, it took hours. Hours. He wouldn’t stop. That was why we were in a barn, so nobody heard the screaming. And halfway through, they, uh, they showed me… He’d sketched you. It was a good picture. I don’t know how he got it—”