Heaven's Bones (18 page)

“Is that English?” she asked Jory, who shook his head.

The woman spoke again, and this time in good clear Cornish anyone could hear.

“The mine,” she said. “Don't let the boys go down the mine tomorrow.”

Mistress Penhallow stared at her, then at Jory, then at her other sons who clustered at the door. Jory and her next two eldest, as well as her man who sat with his boots up in the kitchen, worked the Weald Hole as their fathers and grandfathers had before them. Tin was the life and money of Cornwall.

The gypsy woman sat up, blood soaking through the torn fabric of her dress.

“200 fathoms down,” she said. “The wall is weak, there where they're taking the ore, and they can't see it. Tomorrow the tunnel will go. Don't let them down!”

Mistress Penhallow took her by the shoulders, and eased her down, and dressed her wound, and forbade her sons the mine on the morrow, and sent word to every cot in St. Agnes that had a man at the tin.

The next day seven men died in the Weald Hole, but none from St. Agnes was among them.

What of the woman? Some say she married a Cornishman and had twenty children. Others say that she vanished into the Mists that were unusually persistent that year. Others say she was an emissary for the Prince of Wales, or King Charles as some would have it, and had been attacked by Roundhead spies.

I know that Jory Penhallow thought she was a fair enough wench, and Jory was not bad looking himself and had a gentle touch with a woman, and Jaelle knew she would never go home again.

What of the knife? His mother told Jory to throw it from the White Cliff into the sea.

I know that Jory thought the thing must be valuable, and as he was a thrifty man he wrapped it in a strip of Jaelle's skirt and stowed it in the bottom drawer of a Welsh dresser, and there it stayed for many years.

There was something familiar about the girl's profile, and Robarts watched her closely from his place between the pillars of the British Library.

His day's outing had proved a disappointment.
On the Nature of Angels
, one of the books in the library at Bryani House, referred to some obscure texts that his uncle had been unable to obtain, and he had come here in search of them. The docents were more than willing to let him browse the stacks, considering the importance of the documents he owned and that they hoped might be bequeathed to the Library someday. But he had found nothing.

It was dusk by the time he emerged, and the late spring air was nippy, so he paused to raise his collar against the chill. Absently, he watched the stream of people lap against the library steps: businessmen hurrying home from the 'Change, women with market baskets on their arms, laboring men looking forward to their dinners.

Perhaps it was the anonymous wash of the faces in the crowd, but he felt more at peace than he had in some time. The insistent, guiding voice that sounded in his head more and more was quiet this day, and although at first he felt lost and confused without it, he did feel the silence was refreshing.

Then he spotted the face, grave beneath its bonnet. He knew her, did he not? But from where?

He watched her all the way to the end of the block, and when
she crossed the street he trotted down the steps and followed her, keeping far enough back so that she wouldn't suspect she was being followed. It had rained earlier in the day, and she had to slow down to avoid the heaps of mud and manure that had been swept up in piles on the street, waiting for the nightsoil-man to take them away.

It was getting darker, and she turned her face to look at the sky, showing him her profile again, and he had it. Janet, Margaret's maid, who he last remembered holding his dead son, the tears crawling down her face.

He paused, confused. What was Janet doing here? Wasn't she at Bryani House, with the rest of the servants? With Simpson, and Meadows?

No—there were no servants. He had dismissed them all.

He couldn't remember why.

The streets were getting narrower now, the broad sidewalks giving way to cobblestones, and there were fewer people now. Fog was falling across the city, and somewhere in the distance there was the dim yellow glow of gaslight. Janet's wide skirts swished back and forth, threatening to vanish in the fog, and he had to quicken his steps so as not to lose her.

He put his hand in his pocket, rolling the warm metal of the medallion there between his fingers.

Margaret's maid. Surely she had loved Margaret. Surely she belonged back in Margaret's house.

She glanced back and saw him walking toward her, and he stopped in his tracks. She frowned, not recognizing him, and hurried on, lifting her skirts a trifle so she could go faster across the rough sidewalk.

She's seen you now
, he thought—or had the voice returned?
In a minute she'll remember you and then all hell will break loose
.

His chambers were not far from here. It would be a simple
matter to take her there. Perhaps she'd understand what he was trying to do.

Eventually they'd all understand what he was trying to do.

She'd quickened her pace now, the metal taps of her shoes clacking against the cobbles.

Robarts hurried after.

It was cold and damp enough that Davy McPhee was thinking about going home, although the foyer of a doss-house sounded more comfortable than the crowded, flea-hopping tenement room he shared sometimes with an assortment of siblings, an overworked mother, and an occasional stepfather who was just as likely to be in an ugly drunk than not.

The doss-house would be warmer, and he could earn his supper by cleaning shoes, but at home he could lie down instead of leaning against a wall to sleep, and his hip was hurting worse than ever. The pain in his bones started a year ago, and got worse every month, and now he was beginning to notice that his leg was twisting inwards when he tried to run.

From his vantage point in a boarded-up doorway he glanced up as a woman hurried by. Then a man hurried after, and Davy forgot the pain in his hip.

It was him; it had to be. If he got a good look at his face, and told that 'tec, he'd eat easy for a month.

Dragging his leg only a little behind him, he slipped into the fog easily as a cat and followed.

Artemis Donovan was passing by the noble pillars of the British Library when it hit him: the scarlet trace of danger, like a thread of blood in the water. He paused, to the annoyance of the woman burdened with packages behind him who had to dodge around to avoid crashing into him. He muttered a distracted apology and moved aside.

The people and buildings around him faded and grayed away, and he half-closed his eyes and sniffed the air as a bloodhound might.

He
had been
here
, not ten minutes before. The Gentleman. Artemis could feel him like a fish feels a warmer current in the sea.

More: The Gentleman was hunting. He could sense a smaller, slighter current—the memory the street held of a woman passing; a woman the Gentleman, for whatever reason, desired.

A woman who would disappear if Artemis did nothing.

Which way? His instincts told him, and he followed blindly, barely registering the pedestrians who flooded the sidewalks. At a corner he paused; which direction had they taken? Had a street-sweeper obliterated whatever mysterious trace he seemed able to follow?

No—there. He knew the place the Gentleman's foot had trod as sure as if he'd left a scarlet print. There, and there. He followed the trail across the dirty street and up the cobblestones and so down, down the narrows and the alleys, where the cobbles were cracked and slippery.

She was all but running now and the street was empty of all other people, although the fog was rolling in now in great misty coils. Robarts was able to match her pace with his longer stride, and now the anticipation, the predatory joy that sometimes he suspected came from
elsewhere
was rising to the surface.

Janet turned a pale face backward and lost her balance, stumbling and falling heavily on one knee and stifling an inarticulate cry as her
ankle twisted. She struggled to her feet and limped onward, glancing back now and then to watch his approach.

Poor Janet. He could take care of that ankle. He could take care of everything. He could fix her if she was broken—and she must be broken; they all were broken.

By now the street was one gray tunnel of mist. Janet staggered to the side of a building, supporting herself against a grimy brick wall.

“You back away, now,” she said, turning on him, her face white and sweating. “You leave me alone—I've got a knife, I have, and I know how to use it.”

He almost called out her name—
Janet!
—but the
voice
intervened, choking him off sure as a noose.

No—don't give them your voice. Give nothing of yourself
.

But surely she should know him! He took the medallion out of his pocket and held it out to her—surely if she recognized Margaret's charm she'd know him, and know he meant no harm, and come along quietly.

As he moved toward her she braced herself against the slimy wall and screamed.

Davy saw the flick of the man's—the
Gentleman'
s—greatcoat in the fog, and followed it like a beacon; the worn soles of his boots made no sound on the sidewalk. It must be him, and Davy'd be the one to catch him, and what would his ma say then, and his stepda who called him a useless limping brat? He grinned and trotted on.

This fog was a queer one, though, thick and yellow-tinged, like those summer vapors that sometimes smothered the life clear out of folk. And coils of it, solid as the burly arms of the dock-men, seemed to be reaching out over and around him, reaching for the top-hatted figure in from of him.

He paused, irresolute, and then he heard the woman scream—a thin, lost sound somewhere in the murk.