A Christmas Odyssey cn-8 Read online

  There was much drink flowing, mostly whisky and gin. And, with the right request, and accompanied by the right money, laudanum, opium, and various other, stronger substances such as cocaine were available to enhance the vividness of the experience, or to block out a grief that might intrude upon pleasure.

  Henry Rathbone masked his distaste, but it was obvious that it was with great difficulty. Then as the evening wore on, Squeaky saw in his eyes a look that he knew was pity.

  Crow asked questions, but Squeaky realized how acutely he was watching the people he saw, understanding the pasty skins, the scabs no paint or powder could disguise. A feeling of hopelessness settled over him.

  It was near Piccadilly, in a narrow, gaslit old music hall, toward morning, when they met Bessie. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen. It was hard to tell because she was thin and narrow-chested, but her skin was still blemishless and had some natural color. She was fetching and carrying drinks to people for the barman, who was pouring out and taking money as fast as he could. Bessie wove her way through the crowd with a certain grace, but in spite of her air of innocence, she seemed quite capable of giving back as good as she received in any exchange. One man who ventured to touch her caught a full glass of cider in his lap. He leapt to his feet in fury, to much laughter and jeering from those around him.

  “Yer lookin’ fer Lucien?” she said in answer to Henry’s question. “ ’E in’t ’ere no more. Gone after that Sadie.” The expression on her face was not so much disgust as a weary kind of sorrow. “Yer’d think a man like that’d know better, wouldn’t yer?”

  “You know him?” Henry said quickly.

  She shrugged a thin shoulder in an oddly adult gesture. “Talked with ’im some. Listened to ’im, more like. See’d ’ow ’is face lit up when ’e told us about ’er. Think she was like Christmas come. More like bleedin’ ’alloween, if you ask me. Let the devils out that night, din’t they? God knows wot yer’ll meet with.” Then her face was wistful. “But she were pretty, in a mad sort o’ way.”

  “Do you know where they went?” Henry asked her. “I am a friend of his father’s, and I would dearly like to give him a message.”

  She shook her head. “I can guess, sort o’,” she admitted. “I in’t never been there meself, but I ’eard.” She hesitated.

  “What?” Crow asked quickly.

  “I dunno.” She snatched the tray on which she carried the glasses and pushed her way back into the crowd.

  Crow swore under his breath.

  “Do you think she knows something?” Henry asked dubiously. “She’s only a child.”

  Squeaky got up off his seat and forced his way between two men with glasses full of whisky. One slopped over and he swore with low, sustained fury. Squeaky ignored them, and the group of painted women beyond them, flirting desperately. A man and a woman in a red dress argued over the price of opium, another two over cocaine. Squeaky caught up with Bessie again as she neared the barman.

  “What were you going to say about Lucien?” he demanded. “You know where we could look.” He wondered whether to offer her money, or if it would insult her. She certainly must need it, but those who were the most desperate were also at times the most easily insulted. “We need your help,” he finished. If she asked for money, he would give it to her—Henry Rathbone’s money, of course.

  She looked him up and down, her lips pursed. “ ’E won’t go with yer,” she told him.

  “I know that,” he replied. “But Mr. Rathbone don’t. He’s … a bit innocent, like. He won’t stop until he finds out for himself.”

  Bessie shook her head. “In’t goin’ ter do any good. But I can ’elp yer, if yer want.”

  “Show us?”

  She hesitated, a flicker of fear crossing her thin, soft face.

  “We’ll look after yer. Yer won’t come to no harm,” Squeaky promised rashly, aware even as he said it that he was speaking wildly out of turn.

  “I s’pose,” she agreed, looking down at the floor, then suddenly up at him, her eyes bright and afraid.

  Squeaky cursed to himself. He really was losing his grip.

  Over the next two nights Squeaky went with Henry, Crow, and Bessie deeper and deeper into the squalid world of illicit pleasure. In New Bond Street they turned into an alley westward and immediately found themselves on steps down into a garishly lit cellar where both men and women were lying around, some on makeshift beds, others simply on the floor.

  Henry stopped a few paces in, his mouth pulled down at the smell.

  “Don’t stop,” Squeaky warned him. “It’s opium, an’ sweat, an’ sex. Don’t take no notice.”

  Henry started moving obediently. A little ahead of them a man in a black coat reeled on wobbly legs, laughing at nothing. To his left someone was weeping; in the red light it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. It was hard for him to think of this as a place of pleasure, and yet these people had come here willingly, at least to begin with.

  He watched a man rocking back and forth, his face distorted as in his mind he clung to an ecstasy so brief, so illusory it slipped from him even as they watched.

  Bessie led them, occasionally faltering. Often she looked back to make certain they were all there, as if she feared suddenly finding that she was alone, and somehow betrayed. At times she clung to Squeaky, gripping his thin hand so her hard, strong little fingers dug into his flesh. He found it painful, and yet the couple of times she let go, he was hurt, as if she had stopped needing him.

  “Squeaky, you’re losing your wits,” he said to himself with disgust. “You always thought being respectable was stupid. Now you know for certain.”

  To Henry Rathbone it was a descent into a kind of hell that was not just visual. The noise of it, and the stench of body fluids and stale alcohol were almost worse. His stomach clenched at the sight of ground-in filth mixed with the harsher stench of sewage. Voices were loud, angry, then whining. Ahead of him someone laughed hysterically and without meaning.

  To Crow it was a series of sicknesses. A man shambled across the floor with the gait of the drunkard and collapsed sideways. His nose was swollen and broken-veined, the skin of his arms flaccid. Crow recoiled without meaning to, and knocked into another man who turned on him. His face was scabbed and ulcerated, yellowed with jaundice, the whites of his eyes the color of urine.

  The nightmare grew worse.

  Crow bumped into a couple who seemed to have no control of their limbs, and little awareness of where they were, their eyes vague, unfocused.

  The man, no more than thirty years old, reached to grasp a bottle, only to have it slip from his fingers and smash on the floor.

  Two old men engaged in disjointed conversation, then became lost, as if the ideas behind it escaped them into the fog.

  Crow knew the reasons. He knew that those who drank to oblivion seldom ate. Their bellies were bloated, and yet they were starving. Perhaps that was the core of it all: their dreams and their senses were frantically consuming but never fed.

  Then in all the babble and moaning someone mentioned Lucien’s name. Crow spun around. An old woman with unnaturally bright hennaed hair was telling Henry very clearly that she had seen Lucien, only two days ago.

  “Pretty, ’e were, an’ gentle spoke,” she said with a toothless grin. “Twenty years ago, in me prime, I’d ’ave ’ad ’im.”

  Crow thought her prime was more like forty years ago, or even fifty, but he did not interrupt.

  “Who was he with?” Henry asked her patiently.

  “Another pretty feller,” she replied. “But got a nasty eye. Looked at yer like rats, ’e did. Ol’ Roberts ’ates rats. Breaks their necks if he catches ’em.” She held up both her hands and twisted them sharply, as if she were wringing the water out of laundry. She made a clicking sound with her tongue, to imitate the breaking of bone.

  “Were they friends, these two?” Henry asked her with as much patience as he could manage.

  “Nobody’s friends.” She
looked at him witheringly. “Particular these two weren’t. After the same bint ter lie with, weren’t they!”

  “Sadie,” he guessed.

  “Mebbe. Long-legged piece, with black ’air.”

  “Where will I find them?” He was blunt at last.

  She cackled with laughter.

  “Where will I find them?” he repeated, with an edge of annoyance.

  She blinked. “Wot?”

  “Where are they, yer stupid mare?” Squeaky interrupted angrily.

  She turned to him, her eyes suddenly focusing. “Go an’ ask Shadow Man,” she hissed. “See if ’e’ll tell yer. Go an’ get ’is soul back fer ’im.”

  There was a moment’s silence. One or two people close to them pulled back a step or two.

  “Who is Shadow Man?” Henry asked.

  “Shadwell, ’is name is. The devil, I call ’im.” She stared at him, then her face seemed to contort into a kind of convulsion, and she started to shiver violently.

  Henry turned to Crow. “Can you help her, man? She’s having some kind of a fit. Can’t you …” His voice trailed off.

  “No one can help her,” Crow answered. “Her demons are inside her own head. Come on. We’ve one more place to try tonight. It’s not far from here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Had enough?” Crow looked at him with some sympathy.

  Henry lifted his chin a little. “No. If we’ve more to try, then we’ll try them. Word is bound to spread. How much deeper is there to go?”

  “There are tunnels under the river,” Squeaky answered. “Old ones, before they rebuilt the sewers. Believe me, we’re not at the bottom yet. Although the real bottom may be up a bit from there.”

  Henry stared at him, confused.

  “There’s a bottom of despair,” Squeaky replied. “And a bottom of power, an’ cruelty. We haven’t even touched the places where people do things to each other like some of those paintings by that German feller, or Dutch he was maybe. Pictures of torture, an’ things with animals you wouldn’t even think of.”

  “Lucien wouldn’t …” Henry began, then stopped. “Or perhaps he would. As you said, the real demons are in your own mind. If they conquer, perhaps anything of other people’s pain may be illusory to you.”

  Squeaky was not certain what he meant. The demons he knew were real enough: cold, hunger, disease, fear, and even at times loneliness. That wasn’t illusory.

  “Who’s this Shadwell?” Crow asked, looking at each of them in turn. “Do you think that’s just the drink talking in her?”

  “No,” Bessie interrupted them for the first time, shaking her head violently. “ ’E’s real.”

  “Have you seen him?” Henry asked her.

  She put her hands up to her face, her eyes wide with fear. “No! I don’t look. But I ’eard. ’Is voice is soft, like ’e got summink in ’is throat an’ ’e can’t speak proper. But you can ’ear ’im anyway.”

  Squeaky looked sideways at her. “Yer sure you ain’t making that up?”

  “Course I’m sure! ’E’s real! I’ll show yer where ’e’s bin, but I won’t take yer there.” She put out her hand, and—cursing himself again—he took it.

  She led them through freezing alleys. The steady dripping of eaves left long icicles hanging like glittering daggers above them in the sporadic lamplight. The air was bitter with the acrid smell of old chimneys and open drains.

  They turned into a tiny square and through an archway into a whorehouse. The madame eyed them grimly.

  “I apologize,” Henry said hastily. “We appear to be lost.”

  The woman let out a gale of laughter, and belched from the depths of her huge stomach. “Yer got no money, get out. That way!” She jabbed her fingers to the left.

  They escaped obediently down steps, along a somber passage and up again into a noisy hall that was apparently the entrance to a very large house. It was initially quiet, except for a sudden shout that made them all start and then move closer together, as if in the face of some unseen threat.

  A man appeared in the doorway, leaning on a stick to support himself. He was Squeaky’s height, but skeletally thin. His face was pale, as if it were painted with white lead, and his eyes were odd colors, one lighter than the other, and both ringed with black. He was dressed in old-fashioned breeches to the knee and a velvet frock coat, all in a faded lavender. He could have stepped out of a previous century. He surveyed them.

  “Nothing for you here,” he said, pronouncing his words with pedantic care. “Trying to get lost, are you?” He addressed the question to Henry Rathbone.

  “We are looking for a friend,” Henry replied, matching courtesy for courtesy. “We think he may have come this way, and perhaps you have seen him?”

  “I see everyone, my dear.” The man took a step closer, and Squeaky was aware of a draft of cold air in the room. “Sooner or later,” the man added with a twitch of his lips that was not quite a smile. “What does your friend look like?”

  “In his early thirties, dark-haired, slender, unusually handsome.” Henry struggled to think of something unique about Lucien. “His eyes are actually dark hazel, not brown, and he speaks with a slightly husky voice.” Was he making a fool of himself, by being so detailed? What would this odd-looking man notice about anyone else’s appearance?

  “Oh, yes,” the man said with a sigh as if some deep emotion filled him. “He came this way, with Sadie, of course, with dear, fickle, dangerous Sadie. Such fun, on her good days. Or perhaps one should say ‘nights.’ Cruel sometimes, but then aren’t we all?” He looked directly at Bessie, who shivered and stepped backward, closer to Squeaky.

  Without thinking, Squeaky put his arm around her, and then wondered what on earth he was doing. He was going soft! His emotions were rotting along with his wits.

  “Where can we find them?” Henry asked, still facing the man in his absurd lavender velvet. Squeaky marveled at his persistence. If he was afraid, there was nothing of it in his face, his calm blue eyes. Only looking at his hands did he see that they were stiff, as though he had to concentrate to keep them hanging at his sides, apparently casually. What a strange man he was, completely incomprehensible. Squeaky wanted to despise him—and yet he found that he could not.

  This whole adventure was a very bad idea. He should have had more sense, and sent Henry Rathbone and his dreams on his way. That would have been best for everyone—even this spoiled, self-indulgent young man in his descent to hell. Let him go, if that was what he wanted. He wasn’t coming back; anyone but a fool knew that.

  The lavender-coated man turned slowly on his heel, keeping his balance with difficulty, and pointed to a small door to his left. “That way,” he whispered. “And down, always down.”

  “Thank you, Mr. …” Henry said.

  “Ash,” the man replied with a bow. “Lionel Ash.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ash.”

  Crow went first. They had opened the door, and were through it before Mr. Ash called after them. “Be careful of the blood! Don’t slip on it.”

  Crow froze.

  Henry turned back. “What blood?” he said grimly, a flicker of annoyance in his face.

  “At the bottom of the stairs,” Mr. Ash answered. “On the floor. Terrible mess.”

  “Whose blood?” Squeaky lunged toward Ash and gripped him by the throat, his strong fingers pressing into the scrawny, completely unresisting flesh.

  “My, haven’t we got a nasty temper!” Ash said, seeming quite unaffected by having his neck squeezed till Squeaky could feel the sinews and the bones of his spine. Squeaky tried to yank Ash off his feet, and found him unaccountably heavy.

  “Whose blood?” he hissed.

  “Why, the ones who were killed there, stupid!” Ash answered. “Heartless, it was.” He gave a violent shudder, as if he were seized with some kind of convulsion. Then, just as quickly, he went completely limp. Suddenly he seemed to collapse and tears streamed down his white cheeks. “So much blood,” he whis
pered. “So much.”

  Crow swore under his breath. He glanced at Bessie, then at Henry Rathbone, his brow furrowed.

  “You had better let him go,” he advised Squeaky, nodding toward Ash in his ridiculous lavender coat. “He can’t tell us anything if he can’t breathe.”

  Squeaky loosened his grip, then pushed Ash hard against the wall. “Who was killed?” he said between his teeth.

  Ash straightened his velvet coat. His eyes were narrow, like slits in the paper-white of his face.

  “The handsome young man, and the woman with so much black hair,” he replied. “Isn’t that who you were looking for?”

  Henry’s shoulders sagged, and the anger and hope drained out of his eyes. “You said he’d gone down.” He shook his head.

  “Oh yes, far, far down, places most people don’t even know about,” Ash agreed. “Dream, maybe, in the silent reaches of the night, and wake up sick with a cold sweat. Down there where the shadows move in shadows!” He gave a little giggle that was almost a sob. “Shadow Man.”

  Suddenly Henry was angry. “Your nightmares are no more real than any other drunkard’s or opium addict’s. They’re paper devils of your own making. Is Lucien alive or dead?”

  “A good philosophical question.” Ash’s attention was now completely focused on Henry, as though Crow and Squeaky were not real, and Bessie was half a creature of this world anyway. “At what point do we step across that slender, eternal line, eh?”

  “When our hearts stop beating and our eyes cloud over,” Henry snapped.

  “Ah—hearts.” More tears slid down Ash’s face. “Who knows where their hearts are, or ever were? Eyes can be cloudy in more ways than one. Who sees? Who doesn’t?”

  Squeaky was losing his patience again. He grasped Ash by the collar of his velvet coat and jerked him around. “I think we’d better take him with us,” he said to Henry. “He’s a bit slow to give a straight answer.” He yanked him a couple of steps farther toward the door, and the collar of his velevet jacket tore, leaving the lapels crooked and a rent down the collar’s back seam.