The Paradox Read online

  from The Great and Hidden History of the World by the Rabbi Dr Hayyim Samuel Falk (also known as the Ba’al Shem of London)

  CHAPTER 19

  INTERROGATION

  The interrogation of the changeling took place in the cells in the Sly House at noon the next day. Caitlin waited, as requested, until The Smith had been summoned from the Isle of Dogs, and it was agreed that Lucy and Charlie could observe, this being if nothing else a good opportunity for some education into the mysteries of their new vocation. Caitlin begged the use of an iron stew pot from Cook, with the promise that it should be thoroughly scoured before being returned, and Charlie found himself deputed to carry it for her as they proceeded along the subterranean passage linking the Safe House to the hidden cells. It was a big, ungainly thing, and banged against his knees as he walked. The second time he knocked the lid off, Lucy bent and took it for him.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “I just don’t want you dropping it on my foot,” she said. “This thing’s heavy.”

  The Smith was gruffly formal with Caitlin, as if he were more worried about being correct and observing some hidden rituals of politeness than actually being welcoming. She in return was cheerful and direct. Lucy warmed to her instantly, responding to the challenging flash of her eyes as she gripped her gloved hand in greeting.

  “Well, ’tis a Glint you are,” said Cait. “And a burden that is to bear for one so young, I’m thinking, having to take the weight of all the nasty past on your shoulders when you least expect it, nastiness you’ve no responsibility for as well.”

  “It can be turned into a useful tool,” said The Smith.

  “Well, I’m sure it can,” said Cait, grinning at Lucy, “but who wants to be a tool when they’d rather be a free person?”

  “We are born with responsibilities,” said The Smith.

  “We are not, begging your pardon,” said Cait. “We are born with freedom. Responsibilities only come later, when we have the experience to choose them and the strength to bear them.”

  “You are a philosopher,” said The Smith. The way he said it didn’t sound like a compliment.

  “The devil I am,” said Cait. “I’m a hunter. Simple trade for a simple girl. Point me at my prey and I catch it. Eventually. Philosophers spend their time weaving nets of words to catch ideas and just get themselves all snarled up in them instead.”

  “There’s truth in that,” admitted The Smith, unbending a little. “And you seem to have caught a changeling.”

  “Two of them,” said Cait, leading the way along the passage to the cells. “I’ve righted the wrong they were doing here in your fine city, but I’m afraid I have some unfinished business with them. I’m obliged for any help you may be able to give me, and I’m certainly more than grateful for the use of your cells.”

  “If you’ve stopped them swapping a child here, then we owe you a debt, no doubt about that,” growled The Smith. “Were we not so reduced in our numbers, I’m sure we would have found them ourselves.”

  “Arrah, I’m sure you would, sure as guns in the great heyday of the past, but no offence, it’s not a secret that you’ve been powerful dwindled for a generation.”

  “Dwindled but effective,” said The Smith. And he had, Lucy noted, the grace to harrumph and look a little embarrassed at the claim.

  “So you are,” said Caitlin, quite as if she believed him. She looked at Charlie and Lucy.

  “This’ll be your first dealing with changelings, yes?”

  They nodded.

  “Well, the thing to remember is nothing is as it seems, and what may look cruel to you is just necessity. They’re both older than this building, and they’ve left a long trail of tears and misery behind them over the generations. Keep an eye on their faces and see if you can see them changing, trying to be something they’re not, something you like more than what they really are. Which is murderous parasites and leeches.”

  And with that she opened the door, standing to one side and letting The Smith enter first.

  The changeling girl was sitting on a bed against the back wall of the wood-lined cell, her knees raised defensively to her chin with the baby held in the wedge-shaped gap between her legs and torso. It was grizzling, quite quietly but determinedly.

  “I know what you want,” she said, glowering out at them from beneath the lock of hair that had fallen over her eyes.

  Cait smiled breezily back at her.

  “Well, I should hope so because I told you fair and square last night, just before you refused to tell me what I wanted to know.”

  “You want to eradicate us,” spat the girl.

  Cait shook her head and began rolling up her sleeves. The girl’s eyes flickered as she followed this seemingly innocent action, and Lucy could see she was wondering why Cait was doing this, what future action necessitated such a workmanlike preparation. She was wondering the same.

  “I’ve no such large ambitions,” said Cait. “It’s not my job like The Smith here to keep the whole wide world at peace. My job’s just to keep the little scraps of my own bit of it together, where they should be. And my little piece of the world is in Cork, as I told you. And you’ve worked a mortal wrong on the Factor and his wife, stolen their child and replaced it with one of your kind.”

  “Why are you rolling up your sleeves?” said the girl. “What are you going to do?”

  “Whatever’s necessary,” said Cait, hooking a stool out from under the table against the other wall and sitting on it. “All you need to do is tell me what you did with the Factor’s child. If it’s still alive. If it’s not… well, that’s another song, and let’s not start it till we know the facts here.”

  The girl stared at her, eyes wide. Cait’s calmness was terrifying her.

  “If the child’s alive…” began the girl carefully.

  “If?” said Cait, dragging the stool two feet closer with a terrible squeal of wood on wood. “If?”

  “No, it’s alive,” gulped the changeling.

  The baby let out a complaining squall. She hugged it tight–more, Charlie thought, to silence than comfort it.

  “Then all you need to do is to tell me where the true child is so I can return it.”

  “And then?” said the girl.

  Cait spread her arms wide.

  “And then our business is done, acushla.”

  The girl’s eyes slid off Cait and found The Smith standing against the wall by the door. She hooked her chin at him.

  “And what about their business?”

  “Their business is none of mine,” said Cait.

  “But you put me in their hands,” spat the girl.

  “No, no, no,” said Cait, calm as ever. “You did that all by your lonesome self, so you did, first by breaking Law and Lore and then by not telling me what I wanted to know. If you’re feeling stitched up, young lady, sure but isn’t it yourself did all the fine needlework in the first place?”

  The baby growled. The girl crushed it tighter to her chest. Her face twisted into a surly fear-stained scowl.

  “Well then, there’s no reason to tell you anything, is there? I’m done for, sewn my own grave cloth is what you’re telling me, right?”

  “I’m sure there’s accommodations can be reached,” said Cait. “There always are.”

  “No. You may be done with me if I tell you what’s what, but look at him—”

  She pointed at The Smith again.

  “He’s just waiting like a thundercloud. He’s not done with me.”

  “That’s The Smith,” said Cait. “And he always looks like his eyes are about to spit lightning, from what I’m told. But though I’ve just met the man, I’ve heard the stories since I was a little thing, and I’ll tell you, I never heard anyone say he wasn’t a fair man, true to his own lights…”

  The girl spoke over Cait’s shoulder, directly to The Smith.

  “You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”

  “No,” said The Smith. “We don’t hold
life as lightly as you. We have other means of… rectification.”

  “Rectification?” said the girl. “I don’t even know what that means…”

  “It means we’d rather extinguish your abilities, cauterise your mind and set you to make amends—”

  “Means he’s not going to be nearly as tough as I am if you don’t help me,” cut in Cait. “Because the talking’s over.”

  She moved suddenly and the girl flinched, but all Cait was doing was turning to look at Charlie and Lucy.

  “So. This thing that is going to happen now, it’s going to happen and you won’t like it. But the thing to remember is that the little pink babby there looks gentle and innocent and nice as pie, as all little morsels of life do. But he’s older than this building, like I said, and he’s mired in dark deeds and other people’s misery, generations deep. He has killed babbies that look just like him again and again, and if not killed, then he has ripped them from their loving families and cast them alone in the world, lost for ever among strangers.”

  Something in her words, particularly the last ones, made Lucy’s eyes sting. Her mouth was already dry with anticipation of whatever was to come next.

  “Why are you telling them that?” said the girl on the bed.

  Cait stretched out a hand and clicked her fingers without looking back.

  “Charlie Pyefinch, may I have it now please?”

  Charlie stumbled forward, exchanging a worried look with Lucy as he passed. He placed the bail of the iron pot in Cait’s hand.

  Her fingers closed on it and she held it at full arm’s length, swinging with a slight creak of iron on iron. He realised that she must be much stronger than her lithe physique hinted at, because the pot was more than heavy. He didn’t think he’d be able to hold it like that without bending his arm.

  “Why are you telling them that?” said the girl again, eyes locked on the swinging pot as if it were a pendulum that was starting to hypnotise her.

  Cait let it dangle for a couple more beats, then suddenly put the pot down on the floor between her feet with a thump and lifted the lid.

  The girl jumped at the noise.

  “Because I’m going to put your brother-son-father thing into this iron pot. And then I’m going to put the iron lid on the iron pot—”

  There was a gasp of indrawn air from the girl.

  “—and then the lid will hopefully muffle the worst of his screaming as all that nasty iron leaches the power from him. At least it starts by leaching the power and the abilities, but I’ve found it then goes on and starts to eat away at the mind. And by the mind, mind, I mean all the long ages of memories in there. All the lives it’s stolen and cuckooed onto for its own selfish survival. So even if it keeps breathing, it’ll come out as limp and useless as a dishrag. No sense of past or present. A husk. And all your years of tricking and stealing and harming gone for nothing, because your brother won’t remember what or who he was or how he can go on being the very filth he is. And like enough he’ll go to sleep and forget to wake up, soon enough. I’m told that’s what happens to a changeling when the long passage of years is wiped from the mind. See, life’s a long or a short journey over uncharted waters, and cheat as you might try to, everybody pays the tillerman in the end.”

  She reached gently for the baby.

  The infant’s eyes widened, and then its head twisted and its free hand slapped and clawed at the girl’s face as it screamed at her with a shrill, ragged and above all venomous howl that seemed to tear the barely formed vocal chords as it came.

  “TELLTHEMSTUPIDBITCH!”

  The baby–the now horribly talking baby–had drawn blood on his sister-mother’s face. Cait turned and raised an eyebrow at Charlie and Lucy.

  “Do you hear the mouth on him? Charlie, pick him up and pop him in the pot…”

  Charlie hesitated, but the brother-son was in too much of a frenzy of panic to notice. He jerked his head forward and bit the girl on the chin, worrying her as a terrier might. She yelped and held him at arm’s length.

  “TELL THEM!”

  He yowled, eyes screwed so tight the tears started from them like little sprays.

  “BITCHWHORESTUPIDBITCHWHORE! TELL THEM!”

  “Lady of Nantasket,” whimpered the girl, holding her face in shock.

  “What?” said Cait.

  “TELL HER STUPI—”

  The girl slapped the baby. Hard. It quietened the spitting imp whose face puckered in shock, and it calmed the girl. She looked at Cait.

  “Lady of Nantasket, out of Boston,” she said. “Boston, Massachusetts.”

  “What about it?” said Cait.

  “It’s a ship on the American trade. Brings over lumber, dried fish, rum, goes back with finished goods.”

  “And why do I care about that?” said Cait.

  “Because the owner and Master is called Obadiah Tittensor, and he and his wife, who travels aboard, by the way, being a half owner, wanted a child.”

  “They wanted a child.”

  “They couldn’t have one the normal way,” said the girl. Cait stared at her.

  “And having swapped the poor Factor’s baby with your own spawn in the unnatural way, you sold these Tittensors the real child. The real child that wasn’t yours to sell.”

  The girl nodded, eyes wary, as if expecting a blow.

  “They’re kind, prosperous people,” she said. “We haven’t harmed the child!”

  Cait’s eyes shut her up.

  “So,” said Cait. “So, now I have to harm this kind, prosperous couple by taking away a child they will have grown to love, in order that I can fulfil my vow to the rightful parents.”

  There was a dangerous edge to her voice.

  “Do you know what I wish?” she said, holding up the pot lid.

  The girl shook her head.

  Cait crashed the lid on the pot at her feet.

  “I wish I had a pot big enough for the evil pair of you.”

  Something seemed to suddenly occur to her.

  “Arrah now, but how do I know you’re not lying?”

  The girl shrugged and looked at the baby. He just spat at her.

  “Charlie,” said Cait, snapping her fingers. “One for the pot. Though mind yourself, he’ll as like bite and scratch at you.”

  “TELL THEM!” shrilled the baby.

  “I told the Tittensors my sister was having a baby soon, and didn’t want it either,” the girl said. “They wanted a baby brother for the one they had off me.”

  “And you’re going to America to sell them a baby?” said Cait. “Now that sounds like altogether too much trouble even for such as you…”

  “No,” said the girl. “Lady of Nantasket docks five times a year in the Pool of London.”

  Cait sat back. Looked at The Smith.

  “We can confirm that at the port office,” he said. “Hodge has contacts…”

  Cait turned back to the girl.

  “And when might we be expecting it next?” she said sweetly.

  The girl told her. Cait nodded and turned on her stool, stretching as she stood up.

  “Smith, sir. Might I have the use of your cells until then?” she said. “I’ll be happy to pay my way in cash or kind.”

  “What manner of ‘kind’ were you thinking of, Miss ná Gaolaire?” The Smith said.

  She grinned at him.

  “Well, as we were saying earlier, though I take you at your word, for sure who wouldn’t, that you are dwindled but effective, it seems as if you didn’t know either of these beauties was in your fair city and up to no good. So I’m thinking you could do with an extra pair of eyes, temporary like?”

  “You want to join…” he began.

  “No,” she said. “No, no, no. Begging your pardon, but I’m no joiner at all. I am a helper though, and I’m more than happy to pay my way as a supernumerary friend of your enterprise, of my own free will.”

  The Smith looked back at her, face giving very little away.

  “I’
ll talk to Cook,” he said.

  “Fair dos,” said Cait, winking at Lucy. It was just a wink given in passing, but it produced a tiny and unexpected flutter in Lucy’s stomach, as if a butterfly had just woken up.

  “What are you going to do to us?” said the girl on the bed, voice flat now. Tears were rolling silently down her cheek, and she was staring in something close to shock at the small smear of blood on her fingertips where she had felt the wound on her chin left by the four sharp teeth in the malevolent baby’s mouth.