“I had another of the dreams last night, Bill,” Mother Laswell said, “and it put me off my feed.” She watched the landscape of the Cliffe Marshes pass by the train window – grasslands and scrub and pond water, with here and there a copse of small trees or a line of forest in the distance. Sheep in plenty wandered the marsh along random trails and across meadows. This branch of the South Eastern Line was new, with debris left lying in heaps, already up in weeds and rust.
“The same dream, was it?” Kraken asked her.
“The same and different. The door was there, and the fire within, but it opened in the air above a city street. Full of brimstone and smoke. Things flew out, bats, worse things – the spawn of Hell.”
“The black goat?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was a vision of what we fear, a-coming to pass.”
“Perhaps it was,” Mother Laswell said. “It’s what I’ve come to fear, in any event, and maybe I put it into the minds of others who have troubles enough as it is. I’m wondering, Bill, was it me who put it in my own mind to fear it – to dream the dream? Or was it a true vision? A prophecy? That’s the rub, isn’t it? We all of us carry a portmanteau full of fears and hopes with us, lying loose on either side, and we open the satchel ourselves, Pandora-like, not knowing what will fly free, although it’s soon enough that we find out.”
Kraken apparently had no answer to this except to look unhappy, and it occurred to Mother Laswell that she was being both morbid and philosophical, when Bill was neither of these things.
“Just listen to me,” she said. “I sound like a perfect little whiner. You know I don’t half mean it, Bill.” She patted Kraken on the knee and winked at him to show that she saw through her own nonsense, but it did little to cheer him. They passed a cement works, followed close on by a chalk quarry, both of them hideous blights on the countryside. Although the relentless ruination of the God-given beauty of the world did not make her long for death by any means, certainly it made death more palatable. Hereafter Farm was a biscuit-toss to the south – twelve miles in all from Cliffe Village. She could walk the distance and be home before dark. Home before dark – the phrase had a compelling but fearful ring to it. She missed the youngsters and Ned Ludd something terrible, and the peace of the farm as well.
“It’s a gift you’ve got, Mother,” Kraken told her in a voice that was moderately stern.
“I’d as soon return it sometimes, Bill. Little happiness it’s brought me. Many a mountain I’ve made out of a molehill.”
“You oughtn’t to be so low, is what I’m a-saying. Keep your spirits up. That’s your only man to ward off the humdudgeon. Clap on to the recollection that you gave them reptiles a thunderous great dose yesterday, and by God we’ll do for them again today, maybe for good and all.”
“You’re right, of course. But I’ll tell you plainly that I don’t like staying behind. There’s nought for me to do in Cliffe, but to stand and wait. It makes a body feeble to contemplate it.”
“With them corns a-flaring up, Mother, you mayn’t come along. You’ll be a cripple before we’re halfway there. I don’t mean to take the easy route, neither. It’ll be hard going – in and out, and me back with the boy before sundown, and all of it quick and quiet as a weasel. Then we can find the Professor and take stock of the dreams.”
“Tossing the corns in my face doesn’t mollify me, Bill. The long and short of it is that I’m to darn stockings while you’re putting things right.”
The thought of waiting uselessly made her think of the Professor’s poor wife. She searched her mind for the name – Alice, Bill had said. She didn’t know the woman, had never seen her that she was aware of, but, again according to Bill, she was a great beauty inside and out. The black door had opened before Alice, too, and had swallowed her only son. If it were in her power, Mother Laswell decided, she would get a message out to Alice St. Ives, bearing some small scrap of hopeful news. She could perhaps do nothing about the waiting, but she might about the wondering.
“I’m at loose ends, Bill, that’s the gist of it. You’re certain, then, about the marsh? I’ll stay behind, but I must know your thinking. You came into London in my time of need, without asking my leave to do it, and I tell you plainly that I mean to do the same for you if my second mind tells me I must.”
“I’m main certain of the marsh, as certain as a man can be without calling down fate for a braggart. I knew where they’d taken the boy as soon as Mabel Morningstar mentioned the place of shadows when she was a-feeling of the tooth. Shade House, they call it. I been there myself, when I was down and out and living hard, tending the flocks for Mr. Spode, and I didn’t like it none at all. It’s always been a place for low types – cutthroats, people who don’t mean to be found. Last I heard it was abandoned, but like as not the Doctor has laid claim to it. I aim to get in and out quick-like, through the tunnels.”
“Tunnels, Bill?” Mother Laswell asked. “In a marsh?”
“Smugglers’ tunnels is what they are, cut through the chalk and the water drained off. They’re still in use – and so they aren’t safe. There’s an entrance below the old rectory, hid in the scrub growing up in the limekilns. It’ll lead you to the back edge of Egypt Bay if you follow it, always taking the right-hand fork. Ships would come up the river, and run up onto the mud, accidental-on-purpose, and toss the cargo overside into the boats that come out of the channels along the bank. If they was twigged, they’d claim to be lightening the load to float her off. Smugglers would haul the goods across the bay and into the tunnels; then out they’d come in a dozen places, and no one the wiser. That’s how they did it in the old days, and I can tell you that the old days ain’t gone away. Mind what I say, Mother. I know the marsh, and I know the turning that leads in beneath Shade House itself afore you fetch up to the bay. With luck it’ll be empty, the tunnel will, and I’ll bring the boy back with me. You don’t need to come a-looking. If it’s in me to do it, I’ll bring home your Edward’s skull along of the rest.”
She looked at him for a moment, having come to a decision some distance back, when they were leaving London behind them. “My Edward is gone,” she said. “I’ve accepted that now, Bill. He was gone these many years ago. It was me that kept him alive. The thing that my husband made, that’s not Edward, nor ever has been. When we buried it, I told myself that he was at rest. I told the Professor as much. You heard it yourself. I saw my own heart and mind, and I knew what was false in it. And yet I came into London in secret, because I couldn’t let it alone.”
“You come into London for the good of us all,” Kraken told her.
“So I told myself. Listen to me, Bill. You’re not to risk yourself trying to recover it. I forbid it.”
“The dreams, Mother…”
“The Professor’s boy is our aim now, Bill. As for the dreams, we’ll leave Heaven and Hell to sort themselves out.”
The train slowed and stopped, and they stepped out onto the platform, Kraken carrying the satchel that Mabel Morningstar had lent Mother Laswell. At the end of the platform, beyond the stairs to the street, stood a shop in the old style, the long front window set with horizontal shutters, the top tilting upward to make for a bit of shade, and the bottom tilting downward to make a counter. There were pipes and tobacco and magazines for sale in the shop. A small sign advertised a lending library. Mother Laswell’s spirits raised a notch at the sight of it. She dearly loved a lending library, which was a variety of Aladdin’s cave, although, like so many things, it was often better in anticipation than in fact. If she were at loose ends today, she thought, she at least might have something to read.
“I’ll just look into this shop, Bill,” she said. “They’ve books to lend.” She walked toward it, her eyes on the dim interior, which even from several feet away was redolent with the pleasant smell of cut tobacco. A man stood within, measuring something on a scale. Behind him, on the rear wall were several shelves of books – a tolerably small Aladdin’s cave, to be sure.
“I’d like to borrow a book,” she said to the man, who was small and vaguely amphibious. He wore heavy spectacles through which he blinked at her. “A novel,” she said. “Something in the Gothic line.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a man sitting on a nearby bench stand up and walk away, which was nothing remarkable in itself. And yet there was something about him that drew her attention. She was half certain that she knew him, but from where? Or did he know her? Yes, she thought; that was it. She had felt the very instant of recognition, like a random thought passing through her mind. He was utterly nondescript – medium height, neither fat nor thin, dark clothing slightly down at heel. He crossed the road now, looking straight ahead so that she could see nothing more of him than his back, and at the first opportunity he turned up between two buildings and disappeared. Perhaps she was wrong, she thought now. In any event, he was gone.
She brought her mind back to the shopkeeper, who was clearly waiting for her to attend to business, and after a brief exchange she settled for a dilapidated copy of Mrs. Gaskell’s Lois the Witch. “Can you recommend an inn?” she asked him.
“Yes, ma’am. The Chalk Horse, just across the street. A coaching inn, ma’am, on the Strood road, which runs along behind. Comfortable, they tell me, and I can vouch for the food and drink.”
She thanked him, rejoined Bill Kraken, and the two of them waited out a chaise and a slow-moving wagon before crossing the road to the inn, a pleasant place built of whitewashed stone. There was a deeply carved wooden sign out front depicting a white horse against a dark hillside, and on the broad porch stood monstrous great dahlias in pots, bright red and pink and yellow, the size of dinner plates. She took a room on the second floor, and after Kraken saw to food and drink and a basin of hot water to soak her feet, she sent him down again for foolscap, quill, and ink. When all was done, Kraken put on his cap and stepped to the door.
“I’m a-going on into the marsh,” he said, “now that you’re settled.”
She nodded at him, recognizing the look in his eye – the same squint that he had worn when he was laying into Lord Moorgate with his fists, and although she admired his resolve, she feared it as well. She saw the pistol in his hand now, with a long barrel, a wicked looking thing. “You’ll take care of yourself, Bill? You’re no good to me nor anyone else if you’re shot dead or if you’re taken up for shooting someone else.”
“I’m no good to myself if I don’t do what I must, Mother.” He stepped out into the hallway, then turned back to the room and said, “You’re a good woman, and I’m main glad to have found you.”
Before she could answer he shut the door quietly. She listened to his footsteps dwindle away down the hall. His words remained in her mind, however. There was something doomful about them, as if he had said what couldn’t wait, because there mightn’t be a chance to say it if he waited.
Here she sat, soaking her corns. Yesterday morning she had lain in the darkness in just this same condition, knowing that she must act, but not acting, as if she were a thing of clockwork that had wound down. Her goal had changed somewhat, but it was equally urgent. It was true that Kraken was now acting for her, and he was a capable man, but that didn’t make the pill go down any easier.
She soaked her feet until the water grew cold, and then dried them, mopped up the floor with the towel, and pitched the cold water out the back window onto the lawn below, surprising two goats that were cropping grass. She saw the ostler at work near the stable, and thought of the coach into Strood and then on to Maidstone, which was next door to Aylesford, no great distance to the south.
Her corns felt tip-top now, all things considered, and she regretted having stayed behind. The wild idea came into her mind that she might catch up with Bill if she hurried – except that he had a half hour’s start and would be moving quickly. Probably he was already making his way north through the tunnels that he had spoken of. She couldn’t abide the idea of going into a tunnel at any rate – spiders and bats, no doubt, and eternal darkness. The very thought of it brought her dreams back into her mind, and she slammed the door on them.
Resigned to her fate, she took up the quill and turned to the paper and ink, thinking hard about what she meant to write. Plain speaking was best – no false hope. Language, she thought, was as often as not meant to deceive as to speak the truth, but there could be no deception here. She wouldn’t be guilty of the crime of euphemism.
Mrs. St. Ives, she wrote. We’ve never met, and yet we’re thrown together, perhaps by fate, if it’s fate you believe in. I believe in something more than that, which is helping oneself, if only I can find a way. We both have a son named Edward, and the man that murdered my son is the same man who has taken yours. We have a bond, I mean to say, and I must share with you what I know. I’m writing to tell you that last night I saw your boy Eddie, and he was unhurt. He’s still in the hands of the man you know as Narbondo, who is feeding him and treating him well for all I could see. I tried to take Eddie back and failed, and we’re now looking for Narbondo in the Cliffe Marshes, where he’s gone to ground, perhaps to further his schemes. It’s my belief that he’ll return to London, and soon. Bill Kraken is in the marsh now searching for him. You know Bill, I believe, and so you know he’s a good man, who would die for any one of us. I was told that Professor St. Ives came into London, but I don’t know his whereabouts. There’s a very marvelous boy, too, who is doing his part and has the gumption to prevail. We’re all of us hard at work, is what I mainly wanted to say, with saving your boy Eddie as our one contentious goal. If it comes into your mind to go into London, you can get word of me and what I’ve learned from my dear friend Mabel Morningstar, who lives above the Ship Tavern, Lime Street, the City.
Your friend and neighbor, Harriet Laswell of Hereafter Farm, writing from the Chalk Horse Inn, Cliffe Village.
She reread it, was satisfied with the missive, and went downstairs to ask the innkeeper about the post, thinking to buy a penny stamp and post the letter straight into Aylesford, to Hereafter Farm. “I’m in a great hurry,” she told him.
He shook his head. “Aylesford, ma’am? Sure enough it’s close by, but the post is roundabout, you see, what with the sorting and sending on. I doubt it’ll reach Aylesford for days.”
“That won’t do,” she said, disappointed. “It’ll be of no consequence then.”
“Send it with the coach, ma’am. It’s due any moment. I don’t mean to come it too high, but a few shillings might speed your letter on its way directly. It puts in at the Chequers in Aylesford, you know.”
“Splendid,” she said. “Can you lend me a slip of paper and a pen?”
“Certainly, ma’am.” The man found the items and laid them on the countertop, where she jotted down a quick note, waved the ink dry, and folded it.
She brought out a half crown and two shillings from her purse and pushed the coins toward him. “If you could just ask the coachman to give the shillings to young Sweeney, at the Chequers. He’s to run the letter and this note out to Hereafter Farm and pass it on to the boy Simonides. The half crown he’s to keep for himself, with my thanks.”
“That’s generosity, ma’am. He’ll do it happily enough, will old Bob.”
Mother Laswell trudged back up the stairs to her room. With luck, and if Simonides did his part, Alice might play her hand yet, although God knew what cards she would come to hold. “A mother should know,” Mother Laswell muttered, worried now that Alice might end up coming to harm. She frowned at the sudden doubt. Life was like a stage play, with something doomful waiting in the wings to put in its appearance on stage. “For good or ill,” she told herself out loud, “a mother should know.”
She settled herself in her chair and picked up Mrs. Gaskell, hearing the coach rattle into the yard before she’d read to the bottom of the second page. She laid the book down, distracted with anticipation over the letter, and went to the window, seeing that the goats were still engaged in their supper. A man and woman descended from within the coach, along with old Bob, the coachman, who walked in through the back door of the inn while the stable boy stood with the horses. Two minutes later she was happy to see the door open again. A man came out – a commercial traveler, from the look of him – followed by the coachman, who was apparently a slave to his pocket watch. The passenger climbed in through the door, held open by the stable boy, and the coachman climbed up onto his seat, and without any delay the coach rattled away down the road. It came into Mother Laswell’s mind that she had saved a penny on the stamp, although at the cost of a crown and two shillings. She smiled at the thought, and at the relief of having accomplished something.
The back door of the inn opened again, and the innkeeper stepped out, followed by another man – the man who had been sitting on the bench next to the lending library. His back was to her again, and she willed him to turn around so that she could see his face. Instantly he did her bidding, or so it seemed, for he looked in the direction of the departed coach, and in that moment she knew him – the man Fred, he of the ravaged face, who along with his friend Coker had escorted her out of Angel Alley last night. He glanced upward now, as if he saw her watching, and she moved out of sight. Moments later she risked another look, but he was gone, and so was the innkeeper, the yard empty of life aside from the two insatiable goats.