Beneath London (21 page)

SIXTEEN

B
eaumont’s quarters were in the garret – the most commodious quarters that he had ever enjoyed – with a view looking out over the Temple and with easy access to the roof through gable windows. The room was often lit with sunlight, and the wind blew through the open casements, chasing away the reek of physic and death and pain that filled the lower levels of the house. Beaumont had climbed out through the window and sat on the roof at present, smoking his pipe and watching a bank of clouds approach from the south. He was safely out of the wind because of a broad brick chimney with half a dozen chimney pots. Pigeons and house sparrows stood or hopped roundabout, regarding him carefully, waiting for him to share more crumbs from the half-eaten loaf thrust into his vest. A particularly fat sparrow hopped up onto his shoulder and pecked away at the top of the loaf. Beaumont sat very still so as not to frighten it. He was fond of a forthright sparrow.

When it hopped away, he tapped out his pipe, put it into his pocket, and then tore up the rest of the bread and cast it out over the slates, watching the birds scrambling happily after it, others winging down from the sky. He played a tune on his flute, a melody he had contrived himself, and noted with satisfaction that the birds seemed to enjoy it, especially the pigeons, who stopped their incessant eating and watched him play. He bowed to his audience after a time and put the flute away in his coat, removing a leathern bag from another pocket and shaking it, listening to the cheerful clink of sovereigns inside.

He had converted Mr. Klingheimer’s Bank of England notes to coins, having a liking for gold but very little for paper money, which rustled like insect wings and would burn to ashes if a fire were hungry for it. The sovereigns shared the bag with the Spanish doubloons and Narbondo’s ruby stick-pin. This last he had thrust down into a short length of India rubber tubing to keep it safe. He thought of his treasure hidden below ground – enough to set him up in his carriage some day. He didn’t mean to live alone, however. He was no hand with the ladies, alas – no kind of fisherman in that regard – and had suffered rebukes when he had been emboldened to speak to them. Some day, perhaps his luck would change there, too.

He put the thought aside and considered what Mr. Klingheimer would pay him for his services now that Narbondo was stowed away in his box. He had long ago decided to be beholden to no man, a rich man especially. His old father had told him to keep it in his mind that he was Beaumont the Dwarf, as was true of no other man on earth. Klingheimer had put him in charge of the toads and the heads, which was as good a situation as many he’d had over the years, although it meant working in the basement in the stinking dead air and in the midst of unhappiness. But how long would Klingheimer have need of him? A man like Klingheimer would take Beaumont’s head from his shoulders just as easy as kiss-my-hand if he had need of it, and that would be the end of poor Beaumont.

What would his old father say to him about Mr. Klingheimer? “Watch your poke,” like as not, just as the potato boy had uttered when Beaumont was down on his luck and at the mercy of the pawnbroker. That had been good advice – and even better advice when a man’s luck was in – especially in a house full of villains like the house of Klingheimer.

He stowed his bag of coins in his coat and took out his pocket watch, the very same watch that he had sold to the pawnbroker in Peach Alley: the silver watch with an F and a Z engraved upon the case. Its return had cost him three of the four crowns he’d been given for the watches in the first place. It was evidently a good-luck watch, however, and he would keep it as long as he kept Mr. Filby Zounds as his name.

Holding onto his hat, he climbed in at the window, shutting it and hearing that it had latched. Then he went out and down the dark and narrow garret stairway to the top floor landing, where there were proper stairs, with great fat newel posts and a broad banister and oil lamps lit night and day, which he liked better than the electricity. Oil was something that a man could reason with. He saw a moving shadow rising toward him, now, and he stepped back up the garret stairs until he was out of sight. He removed his hat and crouched as low as he could manage in order to see who it was and where they were going.

He was surprised to see that it was a girl who came into sight first – a blind girl, apparently, who wore dark spectacles. Her face was expressionless, and her eyes, being hidden, told him nothing, but he sensed a deep unhappiness in her and a portion of fear and confusion. She was followed by the villain Shadwell, a rum-looking, hooknosed man with an unending forehead and evil features.

They turned away down a hall, and Beaumont was emboldened to creep farther downward in order to see where they went – not far, as it turned out. The man stopped before a framed painting that hung on the wall, pushed the painting aside, and removed a key hidden behind it, with which he unlocked a door. He made no effort at secrecy – because the girl was blind, perhaps, or because she would have no way to unlock the door from the inside, having no key of her own. He ushered the girl into the room, said something to her that Beaumont couldn’t hear, and then laughed and shut the door and locked it again. Beaumont retreated quietly up the garret stairway, putting his hat on his head and preparing to descend once again as if he was just now coming down. When he returned to the landing, however, Shadwell was gone down himself, and the hallway was empty. Beaumont made his way to the painting on the wall and looked behind it – a simple recess in the plaster where the key lay safe as a baby.

* * *

C
lara sat on the side of the bed, her hands in her lap, her mind full of images moving in darkness, her ears full of sound. She had come from Dr. Peavy’s hospital that morning, and she was mortally tired. At the hospital she had met Mr. Klingheimer. He was old, was Mr. Klingheimer, very old, although he hid his age and his thoughts behind a mask. He had told her that he knew her quite well, although she did not know him. She would soon come to know him, he had said, and he had spoken of himself as her benevolent friend. He had taken her hand and pledged his troth to her in a brazen manner. It was quite the last thing that she expected when Shadwell had brought her to him. He had also told her that he would come to see her later in the evening when she was comfortably ensconced in his mansion. They had much to talk about, he had said.

The old house creaked and sighed. Doors opened and shut. There were footsteps on the floor above. There were many people on the floors below. She could sense them – a hive of evil, it seemed to her. She touched the crook of her arm, which was painful beneath the bandage where Dr. Peavy had put the heavy needle into her and had leaked Klingheimer’s blood into her own veins.

She stilled her mind now and listened within herself, hearing the rush of blood in her ears, hearing her heart beating, searching for some sign that Mr. Klingheimer’s blood had tainted her own, that his shadow lay within her. Impossibly, she felt her mother’s presence roundabout instead, her mother’s voice whispering to her, although the whispering was like the wind under the eaves, and she could not make out the meaning. Her mother was dead and gone, however. She could have no
presence
, no voice of any sort, not in this distant, closed-up place. And yet here it was, unmistakably.

Clara breathed deeply, smelling rain on the air creeping in through the window. The thought of rain brought her back to the present, and she contemplated the room that was her prison. There was the smell of apples on the air, and the closed-up, stale smell of dust and age. She stood up now and made her way around the room, starting at the door, which was locked. A small desk stood near the door, the surface marred with what must be years of use. Someone – a boy, she imagined – had cut his initials into the surface, a G and a B. She wondered what his name was, whether he was a prisoner, as she was, or perhaps a boy who used the desk under happier circumstances. She found her bag and set it on the desk.

There was a closet with a ring-pull to open it, the closet empty but for a blanket on a high shelf that smelled of damp wool and a chamber pot on the closet floor. Nearby stood a dresser with a heavy pitcher atop, full of water, and with a glass tumbler alongside the pitcher. She smelled the water before pouring some into the glass and drinking it. The apples, two of them, sat on a plate next to the pitcher. Should she eat one? It was doubtful that Mr. Klingheimer would bring her into London merely to poison her. Such a thing made no sense given Mr. Klingheimer’s solicitations. She bit into an apple, which was quite good, and she went on around the room, feeling the high wainscot, the bit of carpet on the floor, the counterpane on the bed – a duvet, stuffed with feathers, the cover finely woven, satin. She lay down upon it.

When she and Shadwell had crossed the bridge, leaving Aylesford for London, she had been sitting alone in the coach, grieving for Mother Laswell. A clear image of Finn Conrad had come into her head. He had been reading the book she had given him, happy with the book and happy with her, and her heart had lifted – a tide of hopefulness flowing into her. In her vision Finn was sitting by a clear stream in which fish swam in the late afternoon sunlight. It was the very stream where Shadwell had compelled her to find the horrible box beneath the sand.

She knew it was the same stream, for she had seen it often enough when she was a girl – when she could see the world roundabout her, not the ghost of the world that she saw through the crook of her elbow. And then they had passed a boy walking on the side of the road, holding a lantern and carrying a brace of rabbits. In the light that briefly illuminated him, she had seen him quite clearly, her heart leaping at the thought that it was Finn, and that he had come for her. But the boy was not Finn, and he had quickly passed out of sight.

Now Finn’s presence was in her mind once again, as was her mother’s. She wondered if their presence was merely a craving – her wishes taking shape and color. And as she wondered about this, a flute started up, playing prettily, strangely at odds with the atmosphere of the old house. The music came down to her from above, where she had heard the footsteps earlier. There was a crack of thunder, and then another, as if the flute had called it down from the sky, and she heard the rain against the windowpanes, the sound of it lulling her to sleep.

* * *

F
inn Conrad, pushing a cart of currant and meat puddings that he had bought entire from a costermonger on Fleet Street near the Old Bell Tavern, made his slow way along Whitefriars Street toward Lazarus Walk. He found number 12, giving it a glance through its broad, wrought-iron gate as he passed: a many-roomed mansion of four and five stories, with an abundance of ornate chimneys and gables. The vast front yard with its cobbled drive was empty of people from what he could see, and the door to a wide carriage house stood open. He made out an elegant Berlin carriage inside and a black brougham, complete with white squiggles on the footboard, as Mother Laswell had referred to the ornamentation.

He walked toward the end of the street now, past a paved path that ran up along the side of the house. Dozens of windows looked out from the high wall, some of them barred with decorative ironwork. He wondered what that meant – barred windows. Nothing good, to his thinking. He thought further, considering the foolishness of trying to gain entrance to a rich man’s house and the likelihood of being taken up as a common thief and hung, as opposed to the shame of doing nothing at all to rescue Clara when he had his chance. He would rather die than miss his chance.

The barred windows argued that there had been prisoners within the house in the past, which meant that there might be a prisoner now. He looped back down a narrow byway, past a milliners and a tobacco shop and a chemist, and then, out of sight of the house, along Middle Temple Lane, and around to Whitefriars Street and Lazarus Walk again. “Currant and meat puddings, tuppeny each!” he shouted now and then for good measure, and stopped to sell two of them.