The Pierced Heart: A Novel (26 page)

“Looks like you might be right,” says Sam, coming up to him and tucking their tickets into his top pocket. “There was only one ovver train this mornin’, and the inspector claims ’e didn’t see anyone resemblin’ this Baron of yours. So looks like ’e could well ’ave gone by road, like you said. Vine Street are wirin’ to the ’arbour office, asking ’em to detain anyone answerin’ ’is description. Wiv a bit o’ luck we’ll get there before ’e does.”

“I hope you’re right, Sam,” replies Charles grimly. “I hope you’re right.”

CHAPTER TEN
 

I
WAS TOO
weak to walk and so he carried me. Down the stairs and out into the air. The air! Even the dirty atmosphere of the city was scented nectar to me after all those days confined. But the gas-lamps by the door struck my weak eyes like suns and I had to cover my face and look away. The real sun was only barely lightening the sky, and yet the world had the freshness of early morning, so I adjudged it to be the glow of sunrise, not of twilight. The courtyard was empty of all but the carriage, and I saw at once it was the same one we had travelled in on our way here, the same hooded and silent driver, the same trunks piled by the horses. The man was lifting in small wooden chests that clinked as if containing glass, and when I lifted my gaze I saw that strapped to the roof was that long box I had seen delivered so many weeks before, but I knew now what it contained. I looked around wildly, hoping to see a servant, a tradesman, a passer-by, but all was deserted. He felt my body stiffen in his arms, and his grip tightened as he nodded to the coachman to open the carriage, and I heard him laugh as I struggled, putting out my hands to grip the door, but too feeble to do anything but vex him. He stowed me on the seat, wrapping blankets about me, but less for warmth than to
hamper my movements and render me immobile. Then he pulled down the blind and locked the door, and his footsteps retreated across the paving-stones. I strained my ears, thinking I discerned voices, but I cannot be sure if my hearing deceived me. A few moments later I felt the carriage dip and sway as the driver climbed up onto the box, and then the door opened once more and he entered, tapping the ceiling with his cane to signal for departure.

I sat with my face against the window, feeling the jarring of every cobblestone, listening for some sound that might tell me where we were, or where we might be going, but I heard little beyond the sounds of a city waking. The trundling of carts, the scrape of the crossing-sweepers’ brooms, and here and there the sound of voices. Common people, such as would be heading to work at such an early hour. And soon even those sounds faded and the carriage picked up speed. If it was London I had been sequestered in, we were leaving it now. All this while he had spoken not a word, and though I would not look at him I was aware, every moment, of his presence, and could not rid my nostrils of his smell. I think I must have slept then, lulled by the motion of the carriage, for I became suddenly conscious that the motion had ceased. I heard voices again outside and turned to see his eyes upon me, staring into mine, warning me against any movement, any sound. As my senses sharpened I could hear about us the noise of an inn yard—horses’ hooves, the shouts of ostlers, the roll of wheels. Then the carriage door opened and the coachman passed in a plate of food and a flask.
He
refused to partake of them, handing the provisions instead to me. I hesitated a moment, remembering how I had been convinced he was drugging me, but I could not see how he could have doctored this food, and I took up the bread and butter like a creature half-starved. As indeed I truly was—no food had ever tasted so flavoursome to me, no milk so sweet. He watched me as I ate, an expression of revulsion on his cold features, as a man might look who was compelled to watch others feasting on human flesh. I felt stronger at once, and so far emboldened that I asked if I might use the privy. His eyes narrowed, but after a moment he nodded. He got out of the carriage and I heard him
speaking to someone in the yard, and then he returned to the door and handed me a pair of spectacles such as I had never seen before. They were mounted on thin wire but the lenses within them were dark, almost to blackness, and a piece of glass extended round to the side of the eye, so that scarcely any light could enter. He told me to put them on, and let down my veil, and then he handed me down.

He kept my arm tight through his as we walked, and I thought every eye must be upon us, but though I glimpsed hazily through the glass three stable-lads in aprons, smoking by the water-pump, and two serving girls emptying slops, none of them seemed to remark our presence as he led me quickly to a lean-to behind the inn. He stood outside as I went in. I bled still, but less heavily, and I was able eventually to clean and neaten myself, though my hands and legs trembled. I must have taken longer than he wished, for soon he pounded upon the door, telling me we must depart. I rose to my feet, feeling at once a rushing in my ears and that strange taste of metal in my mouth that has always, before, been a herald of affliction. I stumbled to keep up with him as we returned to the carriage and he closed the door upon us once more. And now I slept indeed, pitching almost at once into a plunge of darkness. I saw my father weeping, only it was not the countenance I knew and loved but some terrifying aged visage, his features withered by grief. And then the picture shifted like one seen underwater and
he
it was I saw,
he
it was who stared back at me, unblinking, unmoving. And then the dream dissolved once more and I was swept, desperate and terrified, into the nightmare, ringed about by the glare of dancing lights, my face pawed by hands reaching down, and always the music, the music, the incessant repetitive music—

Do not leave me
—

“I have no intention of doing so. Of that you may be sure.”

I thought for an icy moment that I dreamed yet, for the music still remained, but when I opened my eyes I realized that it was
his
voice I had heard, and that I must have spoken aloud in my dream. But the music had not ceased, jangling tinnily on and on, and I looked around in panic, only to find him looking at me with a contemptuous disdain. “It is nothing but a barrel-organ. Rather incompetently played. Please try to control yourself.”

“Where are we?” I asked, struggling up in my seat. How long had we been travelling?

He chose not to answer me, but as the music passed by and faded I heard the squall of gulls and knew we were nearing the sea.

“Are we at Whitby?” I cried, with a surge of absurd joy. “Are you taking me home?”

But he did not reply, and then I sensed that the carriage was descending a slope and I heard the sound of a train’s whistle and the rattle of railway lines, and knew it could not be the place I longed to see. Suddenly the carriage gathered pace and we seemed to career along at a gallop until we came finally to a halt. The driver leapt down and opened the door. We were on a quayside, and I could see a steamer moored a few yards ahead, with black smoke issuing from its metal chimney. The horn blew and I saw men on the dockside shouting and running towards us.

“Your veil and glasses if you please,” he said quickly, making haste to step down. “There is no time to lose.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
 

B
RITAIN DOES NOT BOAST
a faster form of transport than the train Charles is now travelling on, but it is, all the same, not nearly fast enough. As the downs and fields and market towns roll away past the window, Sam watches as his friend checks his pocket-watch every fifteen minutes, willing the miles to pass.

“We’ll be there not long after two,” he offers once, “there’s no way ’e can get there quicker ’an that,” but Charles scarcely seems to hear, and they lapse into an uncomfortable, fretful silence that lasts until the train leaves the last junction and begins the short descent into Folkestone, over the viaduct and the swing bridge to the station hard by the sea wall. News of their arrival has gone before them, and an anxious official of the South-Eastern Railway Company is awaiting them on the platform, clutching the message telegraphed from Vine Street.

“Clarence Watkins, station manager, at your service,” he says, shaking their hands as the passengers push past them. He has an almost unpleasantly jovial manner, his face pulled into a rictus of grinning insincerity. “I am here to assist you, gentlemen. You may rely upon my diligence, and my discretion. I hope I may trust to the same.”

He shoots a glance around him at this, and Charles can understand
why. The station is thronged with people, waiting for trains, meeting trains, disembarking from trains. The last thing this man—or his employer—wants is any public unpleasantness.

Sam has clearly divined his apprehension. “We’re not out for makin’ a scene, Mr Watkins. Just doin’ our job. Jus’ like you.”

Watkins nods and leads them towards the harbourside. The sea glitters in the sun, and the gulls dip and lift, calling and circling; Charles can see families promenading farther along the beach, children running on the sand, and parasols a-flutter in the breeze off the water.

“The steamers depart from here,” Watkins tells them. “The next one is at three, the one thereafter at five o’ clock. If the man you seek travelled by road from London this morning he will be lucky to make the next crossing. You may wait in the office here, if you wish—it will ensure that he is not forewarned of your presence, and you run no risk of missing him thereby, as all passengers have to present their passports here before they are permitted to board.”

Moreover—as Watkins has quite clearly already concluded—such an expedient will also serve to keep them discreetly unseen by the steam-packet’s clientele.

“Very well,” says Sam. “And if one o’ your lads could rustle us up some lunch then we’d be most appreciative.”

Watkins opens the office door. “I will see what can be obtained,” he says, without any great enthusiasm, and then the two of them are left alone. A pimply young man arrives soon after with two pies and a pitcher of beer, swiftly followed by the Foreign Office agent, who raises the blind at the window with a snap and declares the office open for business. Sam wipes his mouth on his sleeve and takes up a position immediately behind the man’s chair, and Charles watches as the customers for the three o’clock passage begin to assemble.

And it is as fine a cross section of British society as you could hope to find—pompous
paterfamilias
, sailor-suited children dragged by small dogs, parties of pupils shepherded by schoolmasters, nervous new travellers clutching packets of dry biscuits to ward off
mal de mer
, a gaggle—or giggle—of chic young women bedecked for the boulevards, and an exotic creature dressed in bright moth-like silks who can
only be destined for the
Comédie-Française
. But of the Baron, there is no sign. They wait, all the same, and just as smoke begins to belch blackly from the chimney, one of the sailors on the quayside gives a cry and points up towards the bridge. A carriage appears on the viaduct, racing at full speed, and Charles throws open the office door, heedless now of being seen, concerned only to catch him—catch him and save her, if she yet lives. He races onto the quay, where sailors are calling to those in the coach, shouting that they have only a few moments to spare, and then a man in a tall hat is stepping quickly down from the carriage to the quay and Charles is running—hearing Sam’s voice behind him but taking no heed—running towards that carriage and throwing open the door—