The House Of Smoke (11 page)

I descended the grand main staircase and studied a wall filled with oils. They depicted generations of men bearing varying resemblances to Brogan Moriarty. Some were grandfatherly figures, standing behind chairs that bore women and babes in arms. Others were more heroic: men on horseback, in battlefields or hunts. All had the same piercing stare as the one I had first encountered back in Manchester.

I had some time before my lessons so I explored the corridors, more out of boredom than curiosity. Raised voices spilled through a door left slightly ajar at the foot of one landing. Sirius Gunn and Surrey Breed were in heated conversation. I pressed myself to a wall so I could hear but not be seen.

‘The Chinese are
not
a threat,’ insisted Gunn. ‘The old man is obsessed with them. Just because they want more profit from their opium and are interested in gambling, doesn’t mean they are becoming our enemies.’

‘Raising prices is not a friendly thing to do.’

‘Nor is it a sign of war. Moriarty should look more to the tinkers and the English gangs massing in London; they present far greater dangers than the Chinese.’

‘Do they? The professor says the Chans are more organised than the English and one day opium, cocaine and even laudanum will be illegal.’

‘Illegal? What poppycock! Surrey, you really should confine yourself to concocting poisons and trying to look more feminine. You are not informed enough to comment sensibly on these matters.’

‘I’ll confine myself to kicking your bollocks,’ she retorted. ‘If Moriarty sees the Chinese as a threat, then that’s good enough for me.’

‘Good Lord, woman, do you not know that we get more opium from India than we do from China? We should forge
closer
ties with Chan and his clan and not fear them. There are but a couple of hundred Chinese in London. We can muster as many men in an hour.’

I must have moved my weight a little because a floorboard creaked beneath my right foot.

‘What was that?’ asked Surrey.

‘What was what?’

‘There was a sound. Outside.’

I had been rumbled, and had no choice but to walk to the door and open it fully. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I am lost and looking for Lady Elizabeth.’

They glanced at each other and then at me.

‘Have you been listening in?’ asked Gunn.

‘I have just told you what I have been doing,’ I answered curtly. ‘Now can you please tell me where I might find Lady Elizabeth?’

‘I’ll show him,’ said Surrey. ‘Follow me, Simeon.’ She walked past me and into the corridor. For a second or two, Gunn and I glared at each other.

‘Don’t you have a
lesson
to go to?’ he said sarcastically.

‘I do. But I would gladly delay it to teach
you
a lesson.’

‘Simeon!
’ shouted Surrey.

I left to catch her up. ‘One day, I will swing for him,’ I said as I drew level with her.

‘He’s not your enemy. None of us is. You just have to get used to us.’ She gave me a friendly look. ‘We’re not so bad, given a chance.’

‘I believe that of you, but not him.’

‘Did you really forget where the drawing room was?’

My face owned up to the lie, even before I did. ‘I was bored, so walked around awhile before my lesson. I wasn’t listening in, honestly.’

‘
Honestly?
’ She laughed. ‘Be wary of anyone who says “honestly”, Simeon. It is always an attempt to conceal a lie.’

‘I’ll remember that. Why are you worried about the Chinese?’

‘Oh, so you
were
listening!’ She seemed pleased to have got it out of me.

‘I heard only a few words.’

‘Then you will hear the rest soon enough.’ We descended the main stairs, turned a corner and she gestured to a door. ‘And lo and behold, here we are, the elusive drawing room.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Entirely my pleasure.’ She knocked on a panel for me, smiled again and departed.

‘Come in!’ shouted Lady Elizabeth.

I felt a rush of excitement as I turned the knob and entered a room ablaze with sunlight. She looked up from the writing desk. An elegant black fountain pen paused above a buff-coloured document. ‘Simeon?’ She glanced at a gold clock ticking loudly on the mantelpiece. ‘You are a full five minutes early.’

‘Would you prefer I went away for a while?’

‘No, certainly not.’ She rose and shook out the ruffles of a gold and red day dress, then glided to the table where we normally sat. ‘It is good that you are eager to begin.’

‘What do you know about China and the Chinese?’ I asked as I held a chair for her.

‘The
Chinese
? My goodness. Let me see.’ She sat and smoothed the dress over her legs. ‘They are one of the most populous nations in the world and are a wonderful race of people. Quite brilliant. They invented gunpowder, paper money, silk, the abacus – all manner of things. Why do you ask?’

‘I overheard Surrey and Sirius speaking about them.’

‘Ah.’ Her tone became subdued.

‘Sirius said there were a couple of hundred or so in London but I never saw any when I lived there. Where are they all?’

‘There are communities in Pennyfields and Ming Street in Poplar.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Time for us to move on to other matters.’

‘Who are the Chans?’

‘
Please
, Simeon. We need to begin our work.’

‘The Chans?’ I persisted.

‘Very well. They are old business acquaintances of the professor and his family.’

‘And there is a dispute, some bad blood between them?’

She reached for a pile of books on the table. ‘I have said enough. More than enough on this matter.’ She opened a book. ‘I want to talk today about art and artists. What kind of art do you like?’

‘I like shades,’ I answered enthusiastically. ‘I like them very much.’

‘By
shades y
ou mean black and white portraits, silhouette art?’

‘Yes.’ I was pleased to have a subject I could talk about without feeling stupid. ‘I have some.’

‘You have some?’ She seemed surprised.

I dug into my pocket and handed over two printed portraits, both small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.

Elizabeth studied them like diamonds. ‘They are exquisite. Simple, but enchanting shades of a mother and child.’ She passed them back to me. ‘How did you come by them?’

‘I didn’t steal them, if that’s what you mean.’ I returned them to a fold of leather I kept in my pocket. ‘Someone special gave them to me. Please do not ask me more than that.’

‘As you wish. Do you know where the word
silhouette
comes from? How this type of art materialised?’

‘No.’

‘In France, there used to be a very austere finance minister called Etienne de Silhouette. He was known for making severe cuts to the country’s budget during an age of frugality. At the same time, there was a demand for portraiture, which was usually done in oil or by photography. For those who couldn’t afford such luxuries, portraits were made by sketching a facial outline on black card, cutting it out and sticking it onto white card. Because this had been done so cheaply, so
meanly
, it became known as a silhouette.’

‘I like that story. Like it very much.’

‘Yet you sound sad. Have I upset you, somehow?’

‘Showing you the shades awoke some old memories, that’s all. And mixed with how you make me—’ I stopped before I said anything embarrassing.

‘Make you what?’

My tongue was stilled.

‘Tell me.’

‘Feel.’

She laughed. ‘And how
exactly
do I make you feel?’

Now I was lost.

My foolishness had led me to a precipice that I was too inexperienced and afraid to cross.

‘
Simeon?
’ she pressed, saying my name in the softest of tones, ‘I asked you how I made you feel.’

I stayed silent. That fragile ground beneath my clumsy feet crumbled a little more.

‘Just speak!’ she snapped in frustration. ‘Don’t censor yourself, just speak.’

‘I feel like you raise a storm within me. You make me want to be close to you, to protect and care for you—’

‘Oh dear.’ She cut me off with a small sigh. ‘I hope you do not have a crush on me. That would be awfully sweet but exceptionally awkward.’

‘I am sorry. I take it all back. I’m stupid. Forget what I—’

‘There is no taking back things like that. The professor predicted you might develop some affection for me but I thought him silly. Now I see I am the foolish one.’

‘Should I leave?’

She nodded. ‘It is best you do.’

I rose and felt a terrible shame. It was as though I had broken some priceless vase that even if repaired would never be the same again.

‘Simeon.’

I turned. ‘Yes, my lady.’

She smiled gently. ‘Thank you.’

I was confused. ‘For what?’

‘For your courage. Many men go through their entire lives without saying what is in their heart. Many women never hear words as sweet as the ones you said to me today. So thank you.’

Panic filled me. I had no reply. No mature response. I rushed for the door. Rushed outside. Kept on rushing, until I was far across the lawns and deep in the orchard, where I could roar at the clouds and be alone with my bursting joy, my sweet sadness and my intoxicating uncertainty.

January the eighteenth. That infernal date with death was branded into my thoughts. No notion, no distraction, nor any precious memory could dislodge it; it was forever present and noisy in my troubled mind.

Hanging day.

I did not want to perish like that. Pinioned. Powerless. Impotent. Shitting my pants swinging from a rope. That wasn’t me. If I could not escape, then I wanted to go out fighting, grabbing at the throats and tearing at the eyes of my opponents.

Hanged by the neck until dead.

That’s what the old owl of a judge had hooted.

But how long would it take?

Ten, twenty seconds. Thirty? More? Was I destined to kick and spin for inglorious minute after minute? Or would my head pop clean off my body, as many wished it to?

And what of the pain? How bad would it be? Worse than the most terrible beating I had ever endured? Than the bullet shot through the bone of my arm in Paris? Than the knife stabbed in my back in Dublin?

I had broken someone’s neck once. Done it cleanly, quickly, just the way I had been taught. A perfect combination of speed and technique. ‘Twist and pull,’ I had been told. ‘Only hard and fast. Harder and faster than you’ve ever done in your life.’

It had been good advice. The man I killed was much bigger than me, and it would have been a bloody battle had I not been so well instructed. But that was a lifetime ago.

I looked at my hands and remembered all the flesh I had touched, both in anger and in passion. Fingers that gouged and choked had also stroked and soothed. Could these limbs have done better things? Could this brain have created rather than destroyed? I wished I had fashioned something of value. Nothing grand – perhaps just wood or bread. Good bread for good people. Fine furniture for fine families. Not for monsters like me, or those who made me this way.

Or had I made myself what I was? Was it I and I alone who had sought out their instruments of evil and used them to shape myself?

I picked up the long chain that was now permanently attached to the leg irons and manacles chafing my wrists. It stretched across the icy floor of the cell. Ran up through an iron ring sunk in the stone wall beneath the window, then back on itself into another ring set in the floor by the door. Its length enabled the turnkeys to pull me like a dog, to drag me back and forth across the cell whenever they wished to enter. It rendered me harmless. Or so they thought. I was confident I could pull it away from them, unless two of them held the chain when it went slack. Certain I could then, within seconds, loop it around one of my captors’ heads and strangle him long before any army of screws could stop me.

The musing was empowering. I was a caged lion. Disorientated by the strange and cramped habitat but still lethal. Respected for my explosive and unremitting violence.

Such imaginings – the worst of me – were all I had left to cling to.

A rattle of keys in the cell door turned my head. ‘Stand away, Lynch. Get to the back of your cell! Face the wall!’ The shouting came from Briggs, my gaoler for the day. He was as round as an ale barrel but weak. Even the strain of opening the door showed on his bloated face.

I stood obediently by the window. Felt the chain pull tight. He took an age to fasten it at the other end. ‘You have a visitor,’ he announced.

For a moment, I did not turn. I wanted to savour the expectation. Was it Holmes, returned to question me? Johncock, full of new ways to hurt and belittle me? Or the man I really wanted to see: Moriarty.

‘Mr Lynch.’

The voice was not one I could place from memory. I watched his shadow climb the wall I was facing. No hat. Tall. Clad in some long cape.

I turned and saw an old cleric. Wispy white hair fell over the dandruff-sprinkled shoulders of his long black cassock. A face red from either the wind outside or an early belt of rum greeted me. ‘I am Father Deagan.’ He stretched out his hand. ‘Father Francis Deagan.’

I raised my manacled wrists. ‘I’d shake your hand, Father, but as you see, that’s a little difficult.’

‘Slacken his chains, man,’ the priest demanded. ‘Give the poor creature some dignity.’

Briggs loosened and reset the chain, then banged the door shut in protest as he left.

Deagan immediately took my palm and clasped me tightly. ‘May God have mercy on you. The Prison Ordinary told me you were a Catholic and I hoped that I might be of comfort.’

‘I was, Father.
Was.
A very long time ago. And only as a child.’

‘He said he visited you on remand and found you praying.’

‘Complaining more than praying, Father. It did me no good.’

He smiled. ‘It is not too late to rediscover the path to the Lord.’

‘Oh, with the greatest of respect, I think it is. You know why I am here and what I have been convicted of.’