Thirty-One

On the fourth evening, Julian Devane knocked at the door of Matthew’s windowless but otherwise spacious room. Devane informed him to dress for dinner, that he was not to dine in the room alone tonight but that Mother Deare wished him to attend the evening meal with her promptly at eight o’clock.

How could Matthew refuse such an invitation? Since emerging from the torture chamber, he’d been living a life of luxury. Mostly of the solitary variety, but luxury nonetheless. His room might have been copied from the royal bedchamber of a Persian prince with all the excesses of carved wood and eye-dazzling patterns of carpet and curtains. He was presented with three meals a day, none of them feasts but all of them delicious and quite filling. An occasional knock at the door summoned him to find a bowl of apples or pears offered by one of the black servants, who locked the door again when the offering was accepted.

Twice the knock had brought a wicker basket holding such items as philosophical pamphlets, folios of works by the Cavalier poets, and dramatic pieces by authors like Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, whose Love Lies A-Bleeding in particular caught Matthew’s interest. He was afforded a dark blue silk robe, and three new suits—two black and one gray and all of a very fine quality—appeared in his room the first afternoon, when they let him out for Dr. Noddy to gently apply cotton saturated with pain-killing and disinfectant medicine to the sockets where his molars had been.

He was given a silver pocketwatch to keep the time. On the back of it was the engraving To My Precious Phillip From Your Devoted Caroline. He had to wonder if precious Phillip had gone toothless to the grave and coughed this out of a pocket on the way.

Dinner at eight with Mother Deare? He hadn’t seen her since she’d ushered him from the cellar after shooting Rory in the head. The cup of tea that had been given to him by, again, one of the black servants must have been laced with something, because he’d passed out in the little tearoom next to the kitchen and awakened here, with precious and likely-departed Phillip’s pocketwatch on his pillow and the time reading eleven forty-two. Of the next morning, he’d found, because a knock at the door brought him a copy of the Gazette and not only a bowl of shredded wheat with sugar and cream but a little cup of chocolate pudding. It was only when he spooned to the bottom that he discovered the cherry.

As eight o’clock approached, Matthew used the washbasin to scrub himself. He dressed in one of the black suits—in mourning, he told himself—with a lightly-starched white shirt, a white cravat, a black waistcoat, white stockings and a new pair of black boots that fit him very well but would need considerable breaking-in. He was unable to shave, for here as in any other gaolhouse he’d recently occupied, no razor nor any implement with a sharp edge was allowed within the circumference of his eye. He had considered the possibility of using the glass in the pocketwatch and the little metal hands as weapons, for what they’d be worth, but to what end? No, better to keep track of time and withhold all thought of demanding payment in full for the cold-blooded murder of Rory Keen.

He combed his hair, brushed his teeth, and dabbed a bit of the medicine Noddy had left with him into the healing sockets. At precisely seven fifty-five the knock came at the door, and Matthew was ready.

He was taken by the vigorous Devane and the cadaverous-looking Harrison along a corridor and down a wide staircase to the lower level, which was decorated much like his own miniature Persian palace. He thought that for a bawd from Whitechapel, the old lady had done pretty well for herself.

But his attempt at keeping a light spirit was in fact a heavy burden. He knew there was no point in pretending he wasn’t facing his own grisly execution at the hand of Professor Fell. How that might come about he dreaded to think. As for Hudson and Berry in the grasp of the professor … what was to be done about that? Nothing he could engineer, and though he could worry himself sick and white-haired over it, he was currently powerless. He had to trust that both of them would still be alive when he reached them. Therefore he chose to live moment-by-moment, as long as the moments lasted, and if he was given a soft bed and fruit bowls, poems and plays and discourses on philosophy, new suits and shirts that still smelled fresh of the tailor’s art, a washbasin with a steady supply of clean water and a dead man’s timepiece, then by God he was going to embrace it all. It was a prison, yes, and the thirteen steps were waiting for him further down the road … but right now this was a far cry from Newgate.

He smelled the fragrantly-gamey aroma of roast venison.

“Matthew!” said Mother Deare with a peg-toothed smile in the glow of many candles. She was seated at the dining table in a room that was more comfortable and sensible than Matthew would have imagined. It did indeed resemble the dining room of an upperclass matron who kept her fortune in boxes in the closets and doled the money out to worthy charities, favorite nieces and nephews and occasionally the horse race betting parlor. There seemed to be enough dark oak in the room to build a fifty-gun warship. The polished table gleamed, as did the elaborate silver service, in the light afforded by two eight-taper candelabras. Beyond the table a door led to the kitchen. A pair of heavy dark purple curtains were drawn across a picture window that gave a view, Matthew presumed, upon the rear of the estate. As Matthew took the place next to Mother Deare that the woman indicated, Devane left the room but Harrison stood guard beside the doorway they’d just come through.

Mother Deare said, “You look very fit tonight. Catching up on your rest, I would think.”

“Absolutely, and thank you for your compliment.” Matthew was determined to be his charming best at this dinner, but he had to draw the line at returning the pleasantry. Mother Deare was done up in pale pancake makeup and blue eyeshadow that made her even more repulsive-looking than ever, though her recent injuries of bruised nose and darkened eyes had subsided. She was wearing a voluminous pink gown with a thicket of red ruffles around the collar and down the front, and on her manly hands were red lace gloves.

Matthew noted that Mother Deare’s place was set with silverware, including a very substantial blade for the meat, but he had not a baby-sized spoon.

“I’m glad you could join me,” she said. “Now let me ask you a question, and answer it truthfully. Do you need a guard standing in here during our dinner? I mean to ask, are you going to be inclined to want to cause a scene?”

“I need no guard.” He glanced quickly in Harrison’s direction. “I have no desire to want to escape or cause anyone harm. I want to see that Berry and Hudson are safe and well-treated.”

“Spoken like the gentleman I know you to be. Harrison, you may leave us.”

“Yes, mum,” he said, and he slinked away.

Mother Deare picked up a little silver bell on the table and rang it. Two black servants in spotless black suits, white shirts, white cravats and white gloves entered. One of the men was nearly the size of Hudson Greathouse and looked ill-at-ease in his formal getup. So Matthew realized he was going to be guarded after all, as this man would be stationed only steps away in the kitchen.

“Let’s begin,” she told them, and they retreated at her command.

The larger servant returned with a silver setting for Matthew. He put down the same knife that was set before Mother Deare. Did he linger just a few seconds, looming over Matthew like a threatening storm cloud? Perhaps. But then he left, Matthew put his napkin in his lap, another servant emerged to pour them glasses of red wine, and the first course of what Mother Deare announced was pigeon soup with a side saucer of pigeon blood to add flavor as one desired.

“I intend,” said Mother Deare as they drank the wine and ate the rather delicious soup, “to give you a lesson in economics. I feel I should explain why Rory is no longer with us.”

“A lead ball to the brain makes one permanently late for dinner,” Matthew said, and he studied the saucer of blood for a few seconds before he decided his soup was fine as it was.

“It’s plain and simple economics, Matthew. We’re leaving in the morning at first light for a ten-day trip. Rory had outlived his usefulness. Feeding him on the journey would have been a wasteful expense.”

“I see,” said Matthew. Her frugal attitude made him wonder if the pigeon meat in this soup didn’t come from the birds in the rafters at the Broodies’ warehouse. Something struggled up and screamed inside him at the idea of Rory dying because this wealthy criminal and possible madwoman did not wish to buy him a few crackers for his supper, but he swallowed the scream down with a drink of wine.

“I hope you do. We’re going to be in close quarters for the next ten days, so I would regret any action toward you if you decided you had an issue over Mr. Keen’s departure.”

Matthew nodded. His mind was elsewhere, on a pressing matter. “May I ask where Judge Archer is?”

“He is at another location, and has been receiving medical treatment to ready him for the ardors of our journey. He’ll be travelling in a separate coach.”

“He hasn’t lost any teeth, has he?”

Her smile was crooked and utterly hideous. “Certainly not. I want him healthy to present to the professor. By the way, that verse has been printed in the latest issue of the Pin. And Lord Puffery declares that Albion and the Monster of Plymouth continue to haunt the East End.”

“Well, that just goes to show you shouldn’t believe everything you read.” There was another matter on Matthew’s mind that called for careful phrasing. “I hope no one else was injured when Judge Archer was removed from the hospital?”

“The doctor who tried to intervene had to be turned away with a broken arm. I personally knocked the hell out of one of the nurses.”

What about the young man? Matthew wondered. Had it been Steven, or not? He feared fishing in dangerous waters, lest the woman’s sails be turned toward nabbing Archer’s son.

“And,” she went on, with a spoonful of blood-laced pigeon soup at her thick lips, “we did have to give a lesson in manners to a young man who interfered. We might have damaged him a little, but then again he was already in the hospital.”

“He was also a doctor?” Matthew dared venture.

“No, he was in the waiting area. Why do you ask?”

Matthew shrugged and took another drink of the wine. Did Mother Deare even know that Steven was Archer’s son, if indeed this had been the young man? Archer may have done a good job in keeping Steven’s identity a guarded secret, even from Mother Deare’s informants. “There’s been an awful lot of violence lately,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of innocent bystanders being harmed.”

“When an innocent bystander interferes in my business, he is no longer a bystander,” she replied. “We didn’t do serious harm to anyone, so calm yourself.”

The second course of pickled meats and smoked cod’s roe arrived, along with a platter of sliced black bread. Fresh glasses of wine were poured.

“I saw the carnage in that warehouse,” Matthew said. “Also the fact that the Velvet was taken. Do you know who was responsible?”

“A new individual on the scene.”

“Yes, and he signs his brutal work with a Devil’s Cross. Do you know his name?”

“I do not.”

“Really?” Matthew looked at her over the rim of his glass. “Has your network of information failed?”

“This new individual has so far defied identification,” she said. “But you can be sure we’ll find him, given time.”

“It seems he knows more about the professor’s operation than Fell knows about him. Could it be that the professor’s slipping? Losing control over the empire, so to speak?”

Mother Deare busied herself spreading cod roe on a slice of bread. “If the professor is in any way disengaged lately, you may be proud of yourself in causing such a temporary condition. The loss of his home on Pendulum Island struck him deeply, and the destruction of the goods there dealt him a setback in our agreement with the Spaniards.”

“Forgive me if I feel no empathy,” Matthew said. “So I assume that as soon as we reach him—wherever he is—he’s going to kill me?”

She added a piece of pickled meat to the concoction she was creating. “I wouldn’t know his intentions in that regard. I can say he’s extremely angry at you. How that anger will resolve itself, I have no idea.”

Matthew figured that Dr. Noddy’s treatment would seem a delight compared to what Fell could devise. He stared into the flames of the tapers on the candelabra nearest him and thought Moment-to-moment, and each in its own space.

“Which leads me,” said Mother Deare, who licked cod roe from her lips, “to a question I’d like to ask you. What do you know of the man the professor is seeking, by name Brazio Valeriani?”

Matthew put aside his own slice of bread. He recalled the eerie voice of Professor Fell emanating from the false mechanical figure in the dining hall at Pendulum Island: I am searching for a man. His name is Brazio Valeriani. He was last seen one year ago in Florence, and has since vanished. I seek this man. That for the present is all you need to know.

Matthew recalled also the price Fell was putting on finding his quarry: I shall pay five thousand pounds to the person who locates Brazio Valeriani. I shall pay ten thousand pounds to the person who brings him to me. Force may be necessary. You are my eyes and my hands. Seek and ye shall find.

Matthew said with an attitude of careful indifference, “I know he’s Italian.”

“Very intelligent of you.” The peg teeth flashed. “Of course you have no idea why the professor seeks this man, do you?”

“I’m not sure I really care.”

Mother Deare’s hideous smile widened and a sudden glint of wildness jumped into her bulbous eyes. “You should,” she said. “The entire world should care. Do you have any idea what the professor’s speciality of research was?”

“I recall he told me he was interested in … how did he put it … the specialized life form.”

“Biologics was his study,” she offered. “The study of life forms in all their intricacy and variety. He was—and is—particularly fascinated by marine life.”

“Yes, I remember him saying that too,” said Matthew. “As he put it, he had an interest in ‘the creature from another world’. That would explains the octopus with a taste for human heads.” For some reason he wished to stay away from the cod roe, and in general his appetite was dwindling.

“I’ll tell you, dearie, he’s a very smart man. He’s talked to me about these things before and I wound up with so bad a brain ache I had to stay abed for two days. His mind is far beyond me.”

“And far beyond mine, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion so readily. As a matter of fact, he informed me that he enjoyed your company … the short time there was of it, that is. He enjoyed your discussion.”

“He did the discussing. I just listened.” Matthew knew Mother Deare was referring to Fell’s recitation of the murder of his twelve-year-old son and his subsequent entry into the criminal world, beginning with a vow to execute not only the boys who had beaten Templeton to death but their entire families. The success of this venture and his newfound imagination for crime—and deep-seated yearning for power that had been repressed until this incident unleashed it, Matthew suspected—had attracted a fledgling gang of toughs and the professor’s kingdom had grown from there.

“So,” Matthew said, “exactly why does the professor want to find Brazio Valeriani? I’m assuming it has something to do with marine life? Does he possess a talking dolphin?”

She gave a quiet little laugh. “Valeriani possesses information the professor needs. It has not to do with marine life, but … in a way it does involve the deeps. Certainly it involves the professor’s interest in life forms.” She angled her head as if contemplating how much further to go. Then the froggish eyes blinked and Matthew knew she’d come to the end of that particular road. “No, I’d best let him tell you, if he chooses.”

“You say the world will be affected by this … whatever it is?”

“I would say the world will never be the same.”

“Charming,” said Matthew, for he had the feeling that in speaking of this thing the entire room had seemed to become more shadowed.

The main course was served. The venison was still sizzling on its huge brown platter. There was a plate of boiled and sliced potatoes and carrots and a bowl of steamed apples.

The servants carved the venison, prepared the plates, refilled the wine glasses and then left the room again.

In spite of his memory of Fell’s pet octopus taking Jonathan Gentry’s head for its morning meal, Matthew found his appetite regained by the sight of this feast and launched into his food.

Mother Deare watched him eat for a moment, her eyelids at half-mast, and then she said,

“You’ve heard the professor’s story. Would you care to hear mine?”

Matthew realized it was more of a declaration than a question. He dreaded anything this creature was bent on relating to him, but he wondered if there might be something in the tale to stave off Fell’s wrath. “Of course,” he replied, with a polite but quick smile.

She drank a bit from her refreshed glass. She peered into its depths, as if some recollection lay there.

“I was born to a bordello madam,” she said. “Over in Whitechapel, not three blocks from the Broodies’ warehouse. The house isn’t there anymore. It burned down quite a long time ago. When I turned six years old my mother set me to work … not with the bawds, but gathering up the sheets and helping the regular laundress. My mother—Dorothea—was a cunning and very able businesswoman, but she was not well-educated. She simply acted on her instincts. Dorothea Darling, she called herself, and that’s what the others called her. One of the ladies’ mothers had been a school teacher. She became my teacher. She taught me to read, taught me proper English, taught me … many things.”

She swirled the red wine around and around in her glass. “Heady times, Matthew,” she said, her eyes somewhat glazed by the mist of memory. “My mother believed in showing the customers a good evening … the place was dressed up for a party every night. Some nights we even had musicians in the parlor. Of course we were under the thumb of the local gang and my mother had to pay protection, but that was the game. Sometimes she was required to pay more than money … but that also was the game. I can see the house now, just as it was. Two floors … white curtains at the windows … rooms of different colors … strawberry red, midnight blue, deep green and sunny yellow. And she kept it clean, too. Well … I mean to say I kept it clean, sweepin’ and moppin’ and such after the washin’ was done. A place to be proud of, really. My mum didn’t use two-pence whores and none of ’em were under sixteen. If one of ’em got preggers, she didn’t get thrown out. Usually gave the baby up to the church, but none of ’em was ever strangled and buried in the backyard like they did at some of the houses. We had a higher standard.”

“Your father was also involved in this business?” Matthew asked.

“Oh, naw. My pap …” Mother Deare sipped her wine and gently set the glass aside. “My father,” she said, in her affected voice of a proper lady, “was unknown to me. My mother never mentioned him, when I was a little child … but … later …”

She sat for awhile without speaking. She stared into the candle flames.

“Later,” she continued, “when my mother began to lose her mind … she did tell me about my father.”

Matthew had felt himself tense up. He thought that now a line had been crossed and dangerous ground lay ahead, and it was best that he say no more and simply listen.

“It started in small ways,” said Mother Deare. “She became forgetful of details. Miscounted figures. Misspoke names. She developed a very noticeable and alarming facial tic, and her speech began to slur. Then the sores began to appear … first on her body, and then on her face. They would not heal. The ladies began to leave, and those who replaced them were of a poorer class. So too became the customers. My mother took to wearing a veil to hide the sores that only I was allowed to see … and I tell you, Matthew, I wish to this day I had not seen them. The flesh is so … corruptible, isn’t it?”

He gave no reply.

“Corruptible,” she repeated, and then she went on, quietly. “My mother became known as Dirty Dorothea, for the state of things. Beneath the veil … her face was being eaten away. In her skull, her brain also. Our house was falling to ruin. The gang wanted her out, said she was destroying the business. They said they’d give her one week to pack up and leave … but where were we to go? I was eleven years old, Matthew, and she was thirty-seven. Where were we to go? The poorhouse? The beggars’ row? The church? Well … there might have been a possibility, but …”

She left that hanging while she drank again. She looked out upon the dinner feast with eyes that told Matthew she was no longer really here at the table, but was a desperate eleven-year-old struggling to survive in a horrid world with an insane mother who may have contracted leprosy.

She said, “On the last night … the house was almost empty. Even the slatterns had deserted us. I think … I recall a couple of them … drunk and debased, lying in their beds. I recall … how the house looked. The curtains torn and dingy, the paint on the walls cracked and scabbed … falling to pieces. And my veiled mother pacing the floor like an animal, and raging against fate. She stopped very suddenly, was silent, and I knew she was looking at me through the veil, and she said, ‘You’. She lifted a thin arm, with gnarled fingers, and she pointed at me and said again, ‘You’. Then she asked me … if I would like to know who my father was. I did not speak, because I was terrified of her. But … she told me anyway.”

Mother Deare’s mouth was twisted. Her eyes found Matthew for only a few seconds before her gaze drifted off again.

“She said my father had come to her over three nights. On the first night he appeared as a black cat with silver claws. On the second night, as a toadfrog that sweated blood. On the third night … into the room with the midnight wind … he came as his true self, tall and lean, as handsome as sin, with long black hair and black eyes that held a center of scarlet. A fallen angel, he announced himself to be, and he said he was going to give her a child who would be her joy … and yet … some price must be paid for this, he said, and in his world joy must always lead to misery. My mother said … this demon promised her wealth and beauty with the birth of the child … promised music and light. But … at the whim of Hell this would be taken away, all of it smashed, all of it corrupted … because that was the way of his world. So he said … enjoy it, while you might, for payment must be made for services rendered.”

The twisted mouth became still more twisted. “She didn’t exactly say those words, Matthew. She didn’t speak very well. Couldn’t speak very well, with her lips as they were. But that’s what I understood her to mean. Then she said I had been born from a demon’s cock that shot fire, and to fire I must return. So she broke open a bottle of whale oil and rubbed the oil into my scalp … my beautiful red hair the ladies liked to brush when I was little. Rubbed it over my face and neck, let it run down my back and my front. She poured the rest of into a puddle on the floor, and then with a scream she smashed a lantern into the puddle and it burst into flame. I think … I must have been in shock. Would that be the term for it, Matthew? Shock? Or maybe … I was thinkin’ … my mum was gonna come out of it, any minute. She was gonna wake up, and rush to hug me … and I would let her hug me, even though by that time I couldn’t hardly bear to look at her.”

Matthew saw her shiver. It was just a quick thing, there and then gone.

“I said, ‘Don’t, Mum!’ ’Cause I saw she was fallin’ into a place she couldn’t get out of, and how was I to help her? ‘Don’t, Mum!’ I said, but she wasn’t listenin’ to me no more. Then … she hit me. She was a strong woman, even then. She hit me and I fell down. Next thing I knew … she was grabbin’ hold of my ankles, and she was liftin’ me up … and then she held me over that fire and she screamed for him to come and take me. She screamed so loud it like to bust my ears … then I kicked out of her hands and I scrabbled ’cross that room. I used the curtains to put out the fire in my hair … but there was so much oil. It was ever’where. The curtains caught, and the floor was on fire. I remember that heat, and how them flames grew so fast. And right there in the smoke and fire I saw my mum start dancin’, ’round and ’round in the room, like she was hearin’ the music that used to play downstairs. I knew … there wasn’t no savin’ her, and if I was to live I was gonna have to save myself. That was an awful minute, Matthew, when I saw her dancin’ in the flames and I knew I had to leave her there … and all of a sudden she tore her veil off and her face … it was ate up … no nose … ate up nearly to the bone. She reached down with both hands into the fire … and the oil on her hands caught … blue flames, I remember that … and she put the fire to her face like she was tryin’ to wash herself with it.”

Mother Deare stopped speaking. She stared into space, her mouth partly open. Matthew could hear her harsh breathing.

“Then what happened?” Matthew dared to ask.

A few seconds passed in which Mother Deare did not blink, nor speak, nor otherwise show that she had not herself left the realm of sanity.

At last she picked up her fork, speared a piece of venison and brought it to her mouth. She looked at it as it hung before her lips. “I got out of that room and out of that house,” she said.

“It burned down before anyone could think to start a bucket brigade, but by that time no one cared very much about Dirty Dorothea. They were glad to see the house burn to the ground. I was injured a bit. My hair burned away … my scalp … injured. Other burns that healed in time. I was taken to a hospital—not the one on Cable Street, it wasn’t there then—and I … well … I lived.” She offered Matthew a fleeting smile before she put the venison in her mouth. Her pegs worked at destroying the meat.

“Your mother died in the fire?”

She swallowed the food and took a sip of wine before she answered. “Certainly. I heard much later that a local tavern owner found her blackened skull in the ruins. A great story was circulated about her—oh, it would’ve put the Pin to shame!—that she appeared as a ghost to the owner of the Gray Dog Tavern not far from where the house stood, and her ghost said that whoever touched her skull would have good luck in love and money. So the owner of the Gray Dog promptly renamed his tavern the Lucky Skull and put it on display for his patrons to fondle. It was still there, thirty-nine years later, when I bought the Lucky Skull Tavern and renamed it the Gordian Knot, after a story I particularly enjoyed hearing. My first task as the new owner was to take a club, smash that skull to pieces and sweep it out with the trash.” She showed Matthew her teeth. “I was never very lucky at love, but extremely lucky with money … and, as I do so love money … all is well in the end.”

“An unfortunate childhood,” Matthew said.

She shrugged. “Most are, in one way or another. I was taken in by the woman who had worked at my mother’s house and taught me manners and the proper way of speaking. By that time she was well on her way to becoming a madam herself, which she did very successfully in later years. I grew up in the trade, but after I became involved with the professor—through a series of circumstances that were part coincidence, part hard work and part my willingness to do whatever was necessary to help him succeed—I was moved into another area of the professor’s interests, and the business of managing the houses he owned given to a young jayhawk named Nathan Spade. Oh!” She pressed a sausage of a finger against her lower lip. The froggish eyes widened. “You’re familiar with that name, aren’t you?”

Matthew allowed himself a faint smile. “Nathan Spade” had been his alias and disguise during that nearly-deadly adventure on Pendulum Island in March.

“Nathan Spade is dead,” said Mother Deare. She lifted a fork high. “Long live Matthew Corbett.” The fork came down with fierce strength and impaled her next choice of meat, her thrust making the entire table tremble.

Matthew had another drink of wine. Wherever they were going on this ten-day trip, it was not going to be an easy journey travelling with Mother Deare and her gang of toughs. And then … at the end of the ten days … the professor would be waiting.

Long live Matthew Corbett indeed, he thought grimly. Long live Berry Grigsby, long live Hudson Greathouse, and long live Judge William Atherton Archer, otherwise known as Albion.

They would be gathered together at this mysterious place, in ten days’ time, and then it would be seen how much longer they all had to live.

Moment-to-moment, Matthew thought. Each in its own space.

He had many things to think about, many mental burdens and fears for Judge Archer and the two who’d come such a long way to find him. Would he ever again hold Berry’s hand and stroll along the Broad Way in the cool of an autumn afternoon?

Right now, it wasn’t looking too good for that.

Matthew decided he was going to finish everything on his plate and have a second helping. He was going to eat slowly, bite-by-bite, and when the dessert was served he would have his fill of that too. After all, he was a guest in the house of the very lucky Mother Deare.

He held up his empty glass.

“Another bottle,” he said.