The Janus Affair: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel (21 page)

Release child just enough so her cries are not so muffled by the waistcoat.

Allow the crowd to simmer.

I say, creating a riot is much like whipping up a lovely beef stew,
Wellington thought.

The footman flinched at the quick
rap-rap
coming from the carriage. He took a step forward, but made sure his voice was heard clearly. “Piss off, ya’ toff. I didn’t push no one.”

Serena’s sob subsided, giving Wellington ample room for his voice to carry across the scene. “Are you insinuating my child is a liar?”

Tension, Wellington knew from meetings with the Director and the odd social engagement, was more than an emotional state. With the right amount of stillness, tension could become a tangible, palpable thing. At present, it was more than that. It now bore weight. Neither one of them moved, and with a good crowd now gathered, it seemed as if even the smallest of sounds were amplified, ringing in Wellington’s ears as would the brass-heavy finale of Tchaikovsky’s
1812 Overture
. Someone now had to make a decision of fight or flight.

However there was another option. It presented itself when the carriage door opened. Serena’s sobs immediately stopped. Wellington willed his feet to remain put.

Dorothy “Diamond Dottie” Bassnight towered over her coachman, Wellington, and most men present in the audience. Her extraordinary height accentuated her hardened face of high cheekbones, dark eyes, and light peppering of freckles across her nose, all this topped by a thick mane of golden hair. In his peripheral vision, Wellington noted that most everyone gathered around them took a few steps back. Her coachman froze immediately, the colour draining from his skin now providing sharp contrast to the black garments he wore. Quickly, he took his hat off and bowed his head, scuttling back as would a dog facing a harsh disciplining from their master. Her gaze of dark ice now fixed on Wellington. She looked at the Archivist as if he were a fish at market and she a skilled monger about to slice into him.

Then she smiled at him.

“Sir,” Dottie spoke gently, but Wellington could hear an undercurrent of menace. “Is there a problem?”

He had to keep her talking.

“Madam, this does not concern you,” Wellington snapped at the giant of a woman. “This is a matter between gentlemen.”

He managed to meet the coachman’s eyes on “gentlemen,” expecting the ruffian to snort or scoff in disdain. Instead, Wellington saw nothing but pity in his eyes.

“Really?” cooed Dottie. “Well, as you can see, my carriage isn’t moving. I am somewhere I do not wish to be, I am nowhere nearer to my destination, and you, sir, are wasting my morning. Therefore—” And she took a step closer to Wellington. Was it his imagination playing tricks, or did she just grow another inch or two? “Your argument with my coachman does concern me.”

“Then perhaps, madam, you should choose your staff more carefully. This gentleman,” Wellington said, motioning to the meek monster in black, his head still hung low, “not only struck my child down, but also called her a brat.”

“So I heard.” She looked at her footman. “I find myself at an impasse, Mr. . . . ?”

Dash it all. What is my alias?

“Smith,” he blurted. “John Smith.”

“John Smith? Really?” She tilted her head. “Well, Mr. Smith, you have me at a disadvantage. I have just met you and your . . .” Dottie paused, and her cold gaze fell on Serena. Wellington felt the girl’s grip tighten around his leg. “ . . . charming child here, so I know nothing of your background or intentions; but outwardly they appear to be quite honourable.

“My man here has been with me for quite a long time. If memory serves me right, Gregory has served and tended to my needs here for close on five years. So you see I have a history with him, and I know him to be a man of his word. So as—”

“And how much did you see from your carriage, madam?” Wellington raged, and his grip tightened on his walking stick.
Dammit
, he chided himself silently.
Let the woman finish. Make every moment count.
“You were not witness to my sweet angel being struck down.”

“Indeed. So I will have to simply rule this unfortunate accident as just that—an accident.” She turned away from him and ordered Gregory, “Pay the man.”

Wellington’s silver cane top touched her bicep. When she turned to look at him, her eyes were no longer attempting to be kind or even civil. He swallowed, pushing back that itch to run, and returned his own cold stare.

“Madam, do you find me so easily bought?”

He half expected the footman to step in, but he could see Gregory cowering back further.

Her eyes went from the cane—“If you would rather not have your offspring in an orphanage”—and then flicked back up to Wellington’s face—“then I think you should reconsider your morals.”

“For the sake of my child,” Wellington insisted, “I demand satisfaction.”

“And payment is not enough?”

“I demand an apology from your footman and from you,” Wellington insisted. “It’s the least Serena and I deserve.”

“Serena?” Dottie’s brow furrowed. “Who is Serena?”

Bugger
. Wellington craned his neck to one side, trying to catch a long, deep breath.

That was when he heard the tiny click at his feet. From the tin box Serena kept on her person came the cheerful children’s tune that he remembered as one of his most cherished of memories . . .

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle.

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop! goes the weasel . . .

“Wait a moment,” Dottie said, her eyes narrowing on the two of them, “You’re the bearer up, aren’t you?” Dottie looked around her for a moment, catching sight of the baker’s assistant watching intently from the window. “He’s the bludger, I take it.” The woman’s skilled eyes immediately pegged Jeremy across the street. “There’s your crow. That must make me—”

Every night when I get home

The monkey’s on the table . . .

“—the Mark.”

Take a stick and knock it off . . .

On the moment of “Pop!” Serena tossed the tin box to the closest back wheel of Dottie’s carriage. The clown figurine leapt up from its hiding place. Immediately after
“goes the weasel”
played, the box exploded, causing shrieks and screams from the onlookers to rise in the air and Dottie’s carriage—now one wheel short—to topple over.

Wellington rolled to one side, and Serena emerged from underneath him. Her angelic appearance was now a vision of dirt, horse shit, and street muck. She sent a piercing whistle of two quick chirps and third long note that cut through the crowd’s cries of panic. From across the street, Wellington could see Jeremy (or possibly Jonathan) begin to tear down the street.

The whistle above him ripped his attention from the lad to the Amazonian looming over them both. Dottie let out a piercing call of her own—two long, shrill bursts of sound—immediately followed by a quick pumping of her arm in Jeremy’s direction.

“That’s the crow!” she screamed at the gathering of onlookers across the street. “Get ’im!”

She shot Wellington a look that would have rooted him on the spot, had he not spent nearly a year under Eliza’s glare. Dottie attempted to set off, but his walking stick worked its way underneath the loose fabric of her dress, catching the point of connection between foot and ankle. With a jerk, Dottie toppled over.

“Time to go, Ser—”

The child leapt and pulled, and had it not been for Wellington’s training in the army, he would have wondered what game the child was having with him. Instead, the hard tug on his coat told him to roll towards the carriage, which is exactly what he did. Two shots rang in his ears, and he didn’t stop moving until his back hit the carriage.

Nowhere to go.

When he looked up, Gregory had a bead on him, and the hammer clicked back to a firing position.

The loaf of bread that knocked the gun off-target must have been several days old as it hit the weapon with such force that the bullet struck high on the carriage wreckage. Gregory was also visibly in pain, and by the time he recovered, Liam was in full stride, resembling those brave souls Wellington saw charging across the barren battlefields of Africa. Those men had fallen dead, but this soul—in a battlefield far different and closer to home—was smarter. He couldn’t take a full-sized man down except by diving for the man’s knees. Based on the scream erupting from Gregory’s mouth, it would be a miracle if he ever walked again.

Wellington and Serena drew themselves back up on their feet, but sadly at the same time as Diamond Dottie.

Perhaps the woman was one of the underworld’s most lethal and cunning minds, but she hardly dressed the part. His stern father would have approved of a woman wearing this particular outfit, but not in its present state. Her once delicate and delightful dresses of bows and finery were caked in mud and filth. She was looking at her dress and gloves, the initial shock manifesting itself in a wild anger.

Movement to his left. Wellington saw two ladies emerge from the crowd, wielding small clubs. Across the street, two other ladies of the same fashion and demeanour broke ranks. This pair of bludgers, Dottie might have called them, were coming for Liam.

“Girls,” she seethed, “make this messy, if you please.” And with a rustle of fabric, Diamond Dottie was on the run, as much as her current footwear allowed. Any poor sod who got in her way was cast aside.

The first woman stepped forward with a headshot. Wellington went to deflect, but the feint had worked brilliantly. Air rushed out of Wellington as her club hit his stomach instead. The blow was enough to send him backwards, but thankfully not high enough to connect with any ribs. He could just make out blurry forms closing on him. With a breath that sent an ache through his torso, the Archivist tucked tight into a ball. He heard one club miss his skull, but the second he felt across his back. He kept rolling forward, finally stopping and pulling himself up to his feet. He was able to take in a gasp of air, and that was all the time he truly had as a blur holding a darker object advanced. He was able to feign distress well enough—not that it was a complete challenge to do so—that he saw Dottie’s muscle drop her weapon a fraction lower. He had to wait for one more—

The club was rising as something akin to an uppercut, but Wellington spun away from what would have been a jaw-shattering blow. Following this spin, his arms brought the fine silver-topped cane around, its solid sphere impacting the back of her skull, sending her forward into the crowd. He planted his feet and glanced over at Liam. The two ruffians were trying to corner him, but the boy continued to evade them.

It was only an instant, but enough time to give the other woman a chance to get in a swing. His walking stick, of a much better and sturdier make than its predecessor, caught the blow, but now Wellington was open for fisticuffs, which is exactly what he felt against his chin and lips: a hard fist that sent him back a few steps. He managed to keep his balance, but just barely. She should have come in for a club-assisted backhand, but she didn’t. Why?

“Serena!” he heard someone scream.

Process of elimination: Liam. Serena was in danger.
Pull it together, man!

Wellington righted himself and caught sight of the woman trying to grab the small child now attached to her back and biting whatever she could. He took one step forward, and that was all Wellington managed before Dottie’s thug exploited a momentary advantage.

The woman’s hand found purchase in Serena’s long blonde hair and her fingers dug in deep. Wellington heard the girl’s growl as well as the woman’s scream, but Dottie’s woman still pulled. The child’s body peeled off the woman, and a small spray of red erupted from where the thug’s earlobe had been. It would have been a victory for the street urchin had she not landed facing her opponent. Dottie’s woman reeled back and then brought her club around. The force of the blow lifted the child off her feet. Wellington hoped Serena was unconscious as he watched the diminutive body land hard against the cold dirt.

The club came up again, but this time it was in reaction to Wellington closing on her. He said nothing, made no announcement to his opponent on who he was or whose honour he represented. Nor did he issue an apology. His manners and etiquette were now totally abandoned. His walking stick shot out like a cobra springing from his hand, and the woman’s head wobbled on the first strike. It snapped back on the second. She was fighting to keep her balance, but Wellington refused to wait. The third strike was with the head of his walking stick, the solid silver sphere smacking Dottie’s woman in her jaw, a jaw he knew would never work again without clockwork assistance.

His cane-blade rung clearly in his ears, and then he sliced his blade across her neck. However, this victory was followed by bad luck. One of the thugs grabbed Liam.

The last of Dottie’s ladies twisted her wrist and grasped the pistol that popped into her palm. She pulled the hammer back and placed the weapon’s muzzle against the lad’s temple.