Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (4 page)

‘
Allez!
’ A small grey cat slipped between us and into the passage. For a moment it paused and stared back, affronted by the fact that we’d blocked its path, and then it pressed itself against the wall opposite and disappeared into the shadows.

‘
Qu’avons-nous ici?
’

The quavering voice came again. I looked up to see a spindly elderly man holding the door open. Beyond him I could just see a hallway lit by a single fat candle in a glass lamp box suspended from an arched ceiling. I nudged Lucca and we both straightened up. The man, who was wearing clothes at least fifty years behind the fashion, all frothy with dainty lace and twinkling buttons, wrinkled his nose. ‘
Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?
’

Lucca began to speak very rapidly. The old man seemed to find it hard to stop staring at his face, mesmerised he was, like one of the punters Swami Jonah takes up on stage for his mental act. The old boy even shifted to let more light spill out from the hall behind. I saw the way his lips twitched as he took in the scars.

If Lucca was insulted he didn’t let it stop him. He carried on jawing away and then he drew out the map and pointed at the place where rue des Carmélites should be. The place where, by my reckoning, we were standing right now.

‘
Nous recherchons rue des Carmélites.
’

The old man’s face took on a guarded expression.

I’d seen that look before at The Lamb when a stranger dropped by of an evening to ask if anyone knew where he might find his ‘good friend’ Dutch Max. Now, we all knew that meant he was after spirits siphoned off the docks to trade, but how could you tell if he was honest or a nark? A mistake like that could land you in trouble with the customs boys, and I could tell old spindleshanks was thinking something along those lines as Lucca finished up.

‘Joseph. Joseph Peck.
Est-il ici?
’

The name seemed to freeze the air.

‘
Non
.’

The old gent span around sharp and tried to close the door, but Lucca wedged it open with his foot.

‘
S’il vous plaît, monsieur. C’est sa sœur
.’ He pulled me into the light. I couldn’t follow the chat, but I recognised the words for ‘please’ and I saw the way the old man started.

‘
Mon Dieu!
’ He delved into a pocket and produced a ’kerchief fringed with more delicate lace. I caught the powerful waft of sweet cologne as he flapped it open and dabbed at his temples. His watery eyes flicked over my face and then moved on to take in the rest of me. I was reminded of the woman we’d met a few minutes back. When he’d satisfied his curiosity he raised an eyebrow to Lucca and held the half door open wider, motioning for us to come through.

‘
Suivez-moi. Je vais vous prendre à lui
.’

‘What did he just say?’

Lucca took my hand. We followed the old man down a short dingy hallway that kinked right and suddenly opened into a street flanked by a garden on one side and a single fine broad house on the other. I looked up behind us and saw that, just as I thought, rue du Colombier was screened off from rue des Carmélites by nothing more than a thick wall painted and tricked up on the outside to resemble the front of a house. I say ‘rue’, but it was more like a courtyard. Light from many windows pooled on the golden flagstones spread out before us and I could hear music and laughter coming from inside.

Lucca’s grip tightened. ‘“I will take you to him.” That’s what he just said, Fannella.’

There was a sort of triangle made of stone set over the wide double doors and some curling words I couldn’t make out carved into a roundel at the centre. I nudged Lucca.

‘What’s it mean up there? It’s Latin, right?’

He took off his hat, pushed his hair back from his left eye and looked up. His lips moved as he mouthed the script to himself. ‘It is Italian, not Latin. They are words from Dante, from
L’Inferno
– hell.’ He frowned, confused, but immediately I saw it for what it was – another of The Lady’s tricks.

I stared up at the fancy writing. There was a small dead bird lodged in the corner of the stonework, its tufted head lolled over the edge. Nanny Peck always said birds were messengers – it was another one of her superstitions. Depending on the type, they brought good news or bad news. Robins and song thrushes, they always had something pleasant to tell you, whereas birds with black feathers, they wasn’t so welcome.

She never mentioned dead birds.

I shivered and gathered up my skirts to climb the steps.

‘Well, that sounds about right. I get Paradise and my brother gets the other place.’

I meant it to come out light, but it sounded tart like I was sucking a lemon moon. Now I was here standing on his doorstep, it was real. Everything around me showed up unnaturally sharp. In the halls, when they get the limelight going, anyone watching from the slips sees the truth of it all – cracked white faces, sweat trickling between shoulder blades, shiny dolly pins keeping the hair pieces up top, holes in the costumes where moths have had a bellyful. Out front you don’t see any of that, just the general glow, but from the side the lights are cruel – taking your eyes direct to the smallest fault.

It was like that now. I could see the knots beneath the green paint in the wooden door and every scratch and blemish on the polished knocker – a woman’s head with a garland hanging from her ears. There was a dent in the tip of her brass nose.

Lucca held my arm. ‘No, they are words of hope, listen: “
Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift
.”’

I was about to ask what that meant when the skinny gent barked something over his shoulder. Lucca let go and followed me into a broad candlelit hallway.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. Despite the season, scores of drooping fat-headed roses, mostly dirty pink, sat in gaudy vases arranged on bow-fronted chests lined up in pairs along the hallway. Each vase was positioned in front of a mirror reflecting endless avenues of unravelling blooms. It should have been beautiful, but it was overwhelming. I felt my heart starting up under my bodice as I breathed in the sticky sweetness. The mirrors should have made the space seem bigger, but clouded with billows of flesh-coloured petals the effect was quite the opposite.

Once, when I was no more than five or six, me and Joey had paid a penny each to a showman who’d set up a spiegeltent in the yard of The Mermaid, off Cock Hill. It was a poor affair – you could still see daylight through the holes in the roof – but I remember most clearly that I didn’t like what the mirrors did to you, stretching out your limbs so that one minute your head was wavering up near the ceiling, your neck pulled out from your body like a sea captain’s telescope, and the next you’d be squat and ugly as a goblin from one of Nanny Peck’s stories.

The worst thing was Joey. When I looked up at my brother in the mirrors it wasn’t him any more. There was someone else looking back at me, someone with mole eyes, a gaping mouth as wide as the glass and hands the size of hams. I’d started to cry and Joey had to bundle me out of there before we’d done the round. And we didn’t get our pennies back.

Something of that feeling came back to me now.

The old man motioned for us to wait just inside the doorway and he went to a room on the right. As he opened the door, the sound of music we’d heard from outside – someone playing a piano – came more clearly. I could hear voices too, male and female. There was a regular little soirée going on behind the door. As we stood there, the rich scent of good tobacco wafted into the hallway, winding itself into the heavy rose.

A minute later the Monseigneur – I found out later that was what the scented skinny old gent was called – stepped out and led me and Lucca up a set of marble stairs. On the way we passed a woman coming down. She was dressed in a close-fitted red velvet evening dress, with a train caught up in a loop at the side. She hid half her face with a feathered fan, but even I could tell
she was hiding a chin like a butcher’s mallet.

‘
Attendez
ici
.’ The old boy pattered along the first landing, pushed open a door and ushered us into the room beyond. He nodded to Lucca and disappeared, leaving us staring at each other. A log that smelt of sweet apple wood spat in the hearth, a single gas lamp glowed on a cloth-covered side table and candles burned in a couple of wall sconces.

Lucca took my hand.

‘Fannella, I think you should know . . . this house . . .’

I squeezed his fingers. ‘I reckon I know what you’re about to say. Tell truth, I think I run a couple of these establishments back home. Telferman’s a bit chary on details, but there’s a place up Stepney way that does good business, according to the books. It’s called The Cloister.’ I paused as a thought struck. ‘Carmelites – they’re nuns too, aren’t they? And I reckon I’m the mother superior?’

Lucca shook his head and twisted the brim of his hat. His face was solemn. He had that look of an owl – well, half of one – that comes on him when he’s worried. ‘It’s been a long time. He will be surprised. He doesn’t expect you.’ He glanced around at the room. ‘And this . . . He will be . . .’

‘He will be my brother, Lucca. Nothing changes that.’ Even as I said it I found myself wondering. I was good at closing doors in my head, making sure that things I didn’t want to dwell on stayed locked away. Like I said, ever since I’d learned the truth about Joey I hadn’t liked to take it out and turn it in the light. There were things in his past I didn’t want to give a picture to in my head, not because I was ashamed of him, but because it felt like trespassing – like rummaging around somewhere I had no right to be.

I busied myself with the buttons on my travel coat and then I fiddled about with the pins securing my hat. It seemed to be caught so I left it.

The room was done up finer than any I’d seen before. It put me in mind of Fitzy’s dainty office at The Gaudy, only the person who lived here had better taste – and more money.

I went to the sofa, sat down – perched is more like it – and patted the seat next to me. It was a low couch affair with rolled gilt ends and so many embroidered bolsters I couldn’t get a purchase. There were paintings on the walls – some I didn’t care to look at too closely – a barrowload of scented flowers, lilies this time, arranged in porcelain basins set around the corners and patterned rugs of the Oriental type layered over each other so it was like walking on a mattress.

I peeled off my gloves. ‘He’ll be here in a moment – and I’ve no doubt that when he comes he’ll know who’s waiting for him. Dapper Dennis couldn’t wait to be off with the news, could he?’ As I rolled the gloves in my lap I noticed that my hands were trembling.

At first we tried to carry on talking while we waited like this was some everyday social call. Lucca did most of the chat – looking back I think he was trying to distract me. He told me how the smell of lilies always reminded him of his village back home. At Easter, he said, the men took turns to carry a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary out from the church and around to the three springs on the outskirts that supplied all their water. The statue was decorated with armfuls of lilies and the women and children followed behind with more flowers which they threw over the heads of the men and in front of the statue as it bumped along the pathways and up the hillsides. When I said it didn’t sound like something we’d do in Limehouse Lucca smiled sadly and agreed. He went quiet for a bit and then he started up again, talking about the wallpaper. Chinese hand-painted, he reckoned.

I didn’t have an opinion on where it came from, but I remarked that I didn’t much like the yellow.

I didn’t say anything else after that. I couldn’t. My mouth was suddenly dry as a sparrow’s dust bath. My fingers went to the Christopher and the ring at my neck. Every time I heard the boards creak beyond the door I tightened my grip. I tried to bring Joey’s face to mind. The handsome laughing brother who brought me ribbons and trinkets. The golden lad who held court at The Lamb. The boy who could winkle a smile out of Ma on the bleakest days.

But the pictures kept dissolving and breaking apart.

For two years I’d thought Joey was dead. And in a way he was – the brother I thought I knew was gone. I wasn’t sure who was coming through that door. Truly, until that moment, I hadn’t allowed myself to really think about what this meeting might bring.

There was a murmur of conversation outside and I felt my stomach fold upon itself as I recognised a voice.

‘
Je vais traiter plus tard, Monseigneur
.’ The old man opened the door and bowed as someone dressed in a long dark blue dressing gown stepped into the room.

‘Joey!’

I leapt up, scattering cushions to the floor, and ran to him.

He didn’t come to meet me. In fact, when I reached out to take him in my arms he stepped back. I felt something hard forming in my throat. I had to keep swallowing to keep myself breathing.

‘It’s me – Kitty. Don’t you recognise me?’

My brother didn’t answer, he just stared at me and then he looked across at Lucca, who was standing now, turning the brim of his hat around and around. Lucca tilted his head. ‘Joseph.’

I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes, as the smoke from the fire was irritating, and then, confused, I held out my hand in a sort of formal greeting. It was still shaking and I tried to steady it.

‘Joey?’

A part of me watched myself from somewhere high above and wondered what on earth I was thinking. Jesus! The brother I’d mourned until my eyelids were scalded by the salt of my tears was standing right there in front of me and I was offering him my hand like a simpering charity type. Then again, what was
he
thinking? When he didn’t take my hand I pulled it back and hid it behind me. I felt a wetness on my cheeks as the tears I didn’t expect brimmed over. I looked down quickly so he couldn’t see.

‘Your hand! The fingers – they’re all there?’ I blurted the words out before I could stop myself. It was a ridiculous thing to notice at such a time, but all the same, Lady Ginger had lied to me about that too. She hadn’t cut off his ring finger after all. It was there on the end of his hand.

If Joey wondered what I was on about he didn’t let on. Instead he walked past me into the room and stood in front of the fire with his back to us both.

‘I thought I made it clear to you.’ His voice was crisp.

‘That you were dead? Oh yes – that was very clear.’ I wiped the tears off my face and went to stand close behind him, so close I could smell the floral cologne on his skin. I was beginning to feel the flarings of something different now.

‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ Joey didn’t turn to look at me. ‘I was talking to Mr Fratelli, who should not have brought you here.’ That came out much more cultured than anything he’d said in Limehouse. My brother spoke like a toff.

I glanced at Lucca, who was still fiddling with the hat like an infant with a comfort rag.

‘I didn’t, Joseph. I didn’t even know where you were.’

‘Then what is this? Why are you here?’

Joey span about now. In the firelight his face looked old, much older than his twenty years. Lucca shook his head. The hat dropped to his feet as he spread his hands wide. ‘I should go. I should not be here now. This is not my story. Fannella – you must tell him. I will send word when I have found a room.’

‘No!’ Of a sudden I had a clarity. I was standing in a room in Paris with the two people who meant more to me than anyone else in the world, only one of them, my actual brother, was acting like we’d never met. I didn’t understand what was going on, but one thing I knew for certain was that I didn’t want Lucca to leave.

‘Stay, Lucca. I haven’t got any secrets to hide from you.’ I glared at Joey and I must admit I was quite gratified when his eyes slipped away first.

I took a deep breath.

‘He didn’t bring me here. I got this address from Lady Ginger. I think we need to talk family business, don’t you?’

Joey didn’t say much as I rattled on. He sat very still in a high-backed chair to the left of the fire and listened. Occasionally, he glanced at Lucca who was next to me on the sofa, leaning forward with his head bowed so that his hair covered his face. His hands were never still – all the time I talked I was aware of Lucca picking at his nails and worrying at scraps of skin.

I told Joey almost everything that evening. I told him about the cage and about the girls who’d gone missing from the halls. There were some things I left out – the kind of things a brother wouldn’t want to hear of his little sister, even when he barely seemed to know her – but I tried to tell him enough to make him understand what I’d done for him, right down to how I, Lucca that is, had dealt with the bastard who had corrupted those boys and murdered them – the man responsible for the fire. That made Joey sit up.

‘You killed him?’

Lucca nodded. ‘
Sì.
I did not work alone, but yes, the shot was mine.’

He raised his head now and stared directly at Joey.

‘It was an execution.’ Lucca’s voice was oddly flat.

Joey nodded curtly, just the once.

Now, there was a world of story in that little sentence of Lucca’s. Justice, I called it – and God forgive me, I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t delve too deeply into what Lucca called it. Whatever it was, we could sleep at night.

Of course, there was the final kick to my story, the one that had brought me to him. When I told him about Lady Ginger and about me and Paradise, his face went stiff like a mask. He turned away and stared into the fire. The room was completely silent except for the crackling of the logs. There was something I had to know.