The List Of Seven (39 page)

A morphine derivative? thought Doyle, judging from the drug's visible effects. Maybe cocaine? He gladly embraced his analyzing as a welcome refuge from the horror of what he was watching.

Sparks closed his eyes and weaved unsteadily, the intoxication swimming toward its heady peak. The moment of his rapture seemed hideously extended. When it passed, Sparks meticulously gathered up the contents of the packet and relaced them. Doyle saw three small vials of liquid set alongside the needle before the case disappeared into Sparks's coat. The cleanup completed, Sparks slumped down into a chair and moaned again, involuntarily. This time the pure expression of sensual ecstasy was tempered by a tone of invidious guilt and abject self-disgust.

Despite his recent suspicions, Doyle was nearly overcome by a Hippocratic impulse to compassionately rush to his aid, but common sense froze him in his tracks. A secret enslavement to narcotics hardly decreased the chance that Sparks was out of his mind; it made the possibility that much more likely. There was no denying Sparks's shame in the behavior; the man kept it from his closest confederates. As great a hazard as he might pose to anyone else, it was clear Jack Sparks provided just as real a danger to himself.

Sparks rose to his feet again and moved from sight. More sounds. Clasps being thrown. A pizzicato plucking of strings. Sparks stepped back into view, holding a violin to his neck. He tested the bow across the bridge, turning the pegs, checking for tune. Then he leaned against the back of a chair and began to play. A black dissonant thrumming issued from the instrument, but there was a cold and brutal sense to it, not melody precisely, it bore no evidence of song, this order of notes could never have been set to paper; it seemed rather the direct expression of a terrible wound, sharp, torn and ragged, flushed with pain. Doyle knew this was the sound of Sparks's secret heart, and the burden it placed on the listener's mind was nearly as harsh as the one it sprang from and so eloquently described. Before long it reached an unresolvable impasse. There was no crescendo, no climax; it simply had to stop. Sparks lowered his head, slumped down onto the arm of the chair, and his arms hung limply at his sides. Doyle's breath sfiuddered in his chest; a sob wanted to escape.

Sparks slowly raised the violin again and began to play a second piece. This one possessed both coherent rhythm and harmony: a low, sweet threnody, laced with grief, a trickle from a dammed-up sea of unshed tears. It sent into the air a vibration of almost unbearable emotional resonance. Doyle could not see Sparks's face in the shadows, only the graceful belly of the instrument and the shape of the man's arm drawing the bow. He was grateful for the relative discretion of the sight. He knew that, however they had met their end and at

whosoever's hand, he was listening to Sparks mourn for his dead.

The piece ended. Sparks did not move for many minutes; then, with considerable effort, he roused himself from the somnolent embrace of the narcotic, returned the instrument to its case, and walked slowly toward the back. His step was faltering and uncertain; thrown off balance by the movement of the car, he was more than once forced to support himself against the walls. He stopped in front of the berths. Doyle drew back from the curtain, but through the gap he could see Sparks's thighs swaying. Sparks lifted a foot onto Doyle's berth and hoisted himself, hesitating halfway up, trying to re-center his balance; Doyle could see the buckles shining dully on his boots. With a guttural grunt, Sparks pulled himself the remainder of the way and landed heavily on the thin ticking of the upper bunk. His body shifted once and did not move again. He was lying on his back. Doyle listened to the rhythm of Sparks's breathing as it flattened, growing shallow and strained.

Doyle lifted the pistol, his heart beating wildly. I could fire now, he thought. Put the gun to the mattress, empty the chambers, and kill him. He placed the barrel gently against the bed above and cocked the hammer. He worried about the sound, but there was no audible change in the respiration above; Sparks was, in every sense of the phrase, lost to the world. Doyle lost track of how long he lay there, pistol in hand, on the thin edge of that fateful decision. Something in him prevented his pulling the trigger. He couldn't name the reason. He knew it had to do with the music he'd heard, but he fell into sleep while trying to discover why.

The gun was still in Doyle's hand when he woke, but the hammer had been eased to rest. Dirty gray light seeped through the curtains on the outer window. He reached over to part them and looked outside.

The train was still clipping along at a considerable pace. They had driven into the leading edge of a storm during the night. The sky was deeply overcast. A fresh mantle of snow frosted the flat, featureless land; more of the stuff gently fell in puffy clusters the size of dandelions.

Doyle rubbed the film from his eyes. He was hungry, sore, drained by the emotional exertions of the long night before. He looked at his watch: seven-thirty. He could smell shag tobacco and strong, brewing black tea, but it took the unexpected sound of laughter to rouse him from his bunk to the front of the car.

"Gin!" he heard Larry say.

"Blast you for a sod!" said Sparks.

More laughter. Larry and Sparks were playing cards at the table, a tea service laid out beside them. Sparks was smoking a long-stemmed pipe.

"How-do-you-do and look at this fine news," said Larry, picking over the cards as Sparks laid down his hand. "These stray members of the royal family you've clutched to your bosom will cost you a queen's ransom."

"Don't torment me, you devil—ah, Doyle!" said Sparks cheerfully. "We were just debating about whether to wake you; got a fresh pot here, care for a cuppa souchong?"

"Please," said Doyle, requiring no further invitation to join them and help himself immediately to the offered plate of biscuits and hard-boiled eggs.

Sparks poured the tea as Larry totaled up his cards and added the resulting figure to a long, snaking column on a well-traveled pad of paper.

"That's the game then, guv. More's the pity," said Larry. "My stars and stripes, you're in a pretty fix now, I can tell you, break out the violins."

"What's our running total then?"

"Roundin' off the figure—and I can gladly do you that small favor, can't I?—you look to owe me ... five thousand, six thousand forty quid."

Doyle nearly choked on his tea. "Lord ..."

"We've been at the same game for five years," explained Sparks. "The man's simply unbeatable."

"Tide's bound to turn your way eventual, guv," said Larry, reshuffling the cards with alarming adroitness. "Every dog has his day."

"That's what he'd like me to believe."

"Wot else is it but 'ope of eventual good fortune wot keeps bringing you back to the table? Man's gotta have 'ope to live."

"I'm convinced he cheats, Doyle," said Sparks. "I just haven't discovered his methods."

"I keep tellin' him there's no substitute for the favor of old Dame Luck," said Larry, with a theatrical wink at Doyle.

"They haven't found an adequate one for money yet, either," said Sparks good-naturedly, rising from the table.

"A man's got a right to lay somethin' aside for his idle retirin' years, don't he? He wants a bit of leisure and layin' about when the stems and pies give out, as we all knows they must in the end." Larry offered the deck for Doyle to cut and smiled cheesily. "Care for a game, guv?"

"Doyle, I'll not say a word regarding the decision you're about to make other than this: It's a good deal easier to resist the first step on the road to ruin than any of the thousand that inevitably follow."

"I'll decline, thanks all the same, Larry," said Doyle.

"Cheers, Doc," said Larry happily, fanning out a handful of aces before pocketing the cards. "It's plain to see you learned something in that fancy college besides where to find a man's ticker."

"I'm a firm believer that if one must entertain a vice, better not to take on more than one at a time," said Doyle, with a casual look at Sparks.

"And what might your one solitary vice be, Doyle?" asked Sparks jauntily, leaning against the galley, arms folded, puffing on his pipe.

"Belief in a man's innate goodness."

"Ho-ho!" said Larry. "That's not a vice so much as a guaranteed noose round yer neck."

"Naivete, then," said Sparks.

"So might a more cynical mind call it," said Doyle evenly.

"And you might call it ..."

"Faith."

Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. Doyle saw a tightening around the corners of Sparks's eyes. Had he shamed some vulnerable place in him, or was it simply a reflex of remorse? Whatever the case, Sparks retreated from the openness of their exchange, the jocularity of the mood he'd built with Larry forfeiting its bright sheen.

"Long may it serve you well," said Sparks.

" 'In God We Trust,' " said Larry. "That's what they stamp on the money in America. There's the proper place for faith, you ask me."

Sparks started for the door to the engine, "I've squandered enough of my dwindling fortune in your direction for one sitting, Larry; time to earn your keep and shovel some coal—"

"Right with you, sir."

"You're more than welcome to join us, Doyle."

"A bit of exercise in the fresh air would do me well," said Doyle.

Doyle followed them out the door, traversed the agitated coupling, and climbed onto the tender. Sparks gave a wave to Barry, hand on the throttle, bundled up ahead of them in the engine cab. Each man grabbed a shovel and went to work pouring fuel into the scuttle. The cold and whipping wind sent up motes of coal that bit into their skin; driven snow-flakes exploded on contact with their clothes, crystals melting in the wooden threads, dissolving into the black of the scattering dust.

"Where are we?" shouted Doyle.

"An hour from York," Sparks yelled back. "Three hours to Whitby, if the weather holds."

The cold inspired them to great exertions, the quicker to remove themselves from its glare. Soon the fire in the engine burned hotter than a sinner's conscience.

Whitby began as a sixth-century fishing village, grown over the years to a minor port, a seaside resort in the short summer of Northumbria, but in the depths of winter a forbidding destination to any but those required to seek it out by either trade or custom. The river Esk had carved a deep rift between two summits as it made its way to the sea where it formed a natural, deep harbor, and in that narrow valley the village first found life. Over the years, the community sprawled to incorporate both hillsides. Some combination of mood and the harsh landscape had down the centuries created a fertile haven for stern religious feeling, ofttimes fervor. The crumbling Celtic abbey of St. Hilda dominated the high headland south of the village proper, as it had on that site since before England had known kings. The ruins of the ancient abbey cast a long shadow over its less austere successor, Goresthorpe Abbey, which shared the southern hill, halfway

between its forerunner and the town. Its spire was the first landmark Doyle noticed as the train pulled into the station. The hour was not quite noon, but few people were about; those that were moved in halting submission to the bitter cold of the deepening storm and lowering sky. The town seemed mired in a gray and fog-bound hibernation. Barry saw to the disposition of the train, while Larry took charge of their bags, settling them at a nearby inn recommended by the station-master. Sparks immediately recruited Doyle for a visit to Bishop Pillphrock's abbey.

No carriages were available at the station, every shop and service battening down in anticipation of the storm's worsening, so they crossed the bridge and walked a mile to the southern slope. A dense sea fog rolled in from the harbor and together with the falling snow reduced visibility to zero. Bent against the wind, they ascended the steep and winding stairway up the hill, mufflers protecting their faces from the growing gale, which howled more fiercely the farther up they climbed.

Arriving at Goresthorpe Abbey, the more contemporary parish church, they found snow accumulating in blowing drifts and the doors to both church and rectory secured tight. No lights burned in the windows; no signs of life inside. Sparks raised the thick iron ring on the rectory's massive wooden door and slammed it three times against its plate, the sound quickly smothered by the rising blanket of snow. Sparks knocked again. Doyle, his mind benumbed by the cold, tried in vain to remember which day of the week this was: a day of rest for the clergy? Where else would they be?

'There's no one here," said a deep and resonant voice behind them.

They turned; a giant of a man stood before them, six-and-a-half feet tall if he was an inch, cloaked against the cold as they were, but he wore no hat; a leonine shock of red hair crowned his massive head, and his face was framed by a thick red beard encrusted with icicles.

"We're looking for the Bishop Pillphrock," said Sparks.

"You won't find him here, friends. The diocese is deserted," the stranger said, advancing. The musical lilt of Erin ianced in his voice. His face was broad and welcoming; his great size suggested power but no menace. "They've all gone, at least three days now."

"Would they be at the other abbey then?" asked Doyle.

"You mean in the ruins?" said the man, turning in the direction of the ancient abbey and pointing with a silver-tipped walking stick of black zebra wood. 'There's been no shelter within those walls for near to five hundred years."

"This is Bishop Pillphrock's diocese?" asked Sparks.

"That is my understanding. I don't know the man. I'm a stranger to Whitby myself, a condition I assume you share, or do I assume too much?"

"Not at all. But I must say you look familiar to me, sir," said Sparks. "Do we know one another?"

"Are you gentlemen up from London?"

"We are."

"Have you a passing familiarity with the theatrical scene there?"

"More than passing," said Sparks.

"Perhaps that explains it," said the man, extending his hand. "Abraham Stoker, manager to Henry Irving and his theatrical production company. Bram to my friends."