The Oversight Read online

  Coram cleared his throat by spitting onto the crupper of the horse in front of him and went on.

  “And ’e remarked, the pastor did, that the ’ouse Ketch gone in was the Jew’s ’ouse, and that she was a good woman, though not of his faith.”

  Templebane nodded approvingly, his hands busy with a short-bladed shucking knife as he opened another oyster.

  “Quite, quite. He has no malice in him, none at all. As solid and upright and clean as a new mast of Baltic pine is the Danish reverend. Which will make his testimony all the more credible, should we require it.”

  Here he paused and slurped another oyster, tossing the shell out into the road. He chewed the unlucky bivalve once, to burst it, then swallowed with a shiver of satisfaction.

  “Mark it, Coram: there is no better instrument of destruction than an honest man who has no axe to grind.”

  And with that the panel slapped shut and Coram Templebane was alone with the horses and the fog that thinned as he drove up towards the higher ground of Goodman’s Fields.

  CHAPTER 4

  HAND IN GLOVE

  Sara Falk crouched in front of the trembling young woman and smiled encouragingly at her.

  “Lucy,” she said.

  Lucy Harker just stared at the door through which Mr Sharp had led Ketch, as if expecting them to walk back in at any moment.

  “Lucy. May I?”

  She reached for Lucy’s neck, pushed away the hair, and then lifted the collar of the pinafore as if looking for something like a necklace. Finding nothing she sucked her teeth with a snap of disappointment and shook her head.

  The eyes stayed locked on the outer door. Sara Falk moved into her field of vision.

  “Lucy. You must believe the next three things I tell you with all your heart, for they are the truest things in the world: firstly, that man will never walk back through that door unbidden and he shall never, ever hurt you or anyone ever again. Mr Sharp is making sure of that right now.”

  Lucy’s eyes flickered and she looked at the slender woman, her eyes making a question that her mouth could not, her body still tense and quivering like a wild deer on the point of flight.

  “Secondly, I know you have visions,” continued Sara Falk, reaching out to touch the pitch-plaster gently, as if stroking a hurt away. “It’s the visions that make you scream. Visions you have when you touch things. Visions that make you wonder if you are perhaps mad?”

  The eyes stared at her. Sara smiled and raised her own hands, showing the gloves and the two rings that she wore on top of them, one an odd-shaped piece of sea-glass rimmed with a band of gold, the other set with a bloodstone into which a crest of some sort had been carved.

  “You are not mad, and you are not alone. As you see, others have reason to cover their hands too. And if you come with me into my house where there is a warm fire and pie and hot milk with honey, we shall sit with my glove box and find an old pair of mine and see if they fit you.”

  She removed the rings, reached for the buttons at the wrist of one glove, quickly opened them and peeled the thin black leather off, revealing the bare hand beneath. She freed the other hand even faster, and then reached gently for Lucy’s bound hands.

  “May I?”

  Lucy’s eyes stayed locked on hers as she gently began to unwrap one of the hands.

  “I have something that will calm you, Lucy, a simple piece of sea-glass for you to touch, and I promise it will not harm you but give you a strength until we can find you one of your own—”

  Lucy pulled her hand sharply away but Sara held onto it firmly and smiled as she held out the sea-glass ring: the glass, worn smooth by constant tumbling back and forth on a beach matched Sara Falk’s eyes perfectly.

  “You need to touch this—”

  Lucy goggled at it, then ripped her hand out of Sara Falk’s, shaking her head with sudden agitation, emphatically miming “No!”

  “Lucy—” began Sara, and then stopped.

  Lucy was tearing at her own bandages, moaning excitedly from behind the tar and hessian gag. It was Sara’s turn to watch with eyes that widened in surprise as the rags wound off and revealed their secret.

  Lucy freed one hand and held out a fist, palm up, jabbing it insistently at the older woman.

  Then she opened it.

  Clenched in her hand was another piece of sea-glass, its light hazel colour like that of Lucy’s own eyes.

  Sara Falk’s face split into a grin that matched and made even younger the youthful face she carried beneath the prematurely white hair. It was a proud and a mischievous grin.

  “Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, you clever girl. Clever, clever girl! You kept your own heart-stone. That’s how you survived that awful man unbroken! Oh, you shall be fine, Lucy Harker, for you have sense and spirit. The visions that assault you when you touch things are a gift, and though it is not an easy one to bear, believe me that it is a gift and no lasting blight on your life.”

  A tear leaked out of one of Lucy’s eyes and Sara caught it and wiped it away before it hit the black plaster.

  “And this heart-stone, I mean your piece of sea-glass, does it glow when there is danger near?”

  Lucy again looked startled and on edge, as if she was on the point of breaking for the door. Sara put a hand on her shoulder, gently.

  “Did you know that only a true Glint can see the fire that blazes out of it when peril approaches?” said Sara. “Ordinary folk see nothing but the same dull piece of sea-glass. Why, even the estimable Mr Sharp who has abilities of his own cannot see the fire that guards the unique power that you and I have. It is not glowing now, is it?”

  Lucy looked at the dull glass in her hand; it was like a cloudy gobbet of marmalade.

  “Then if you trust it, trust me,” said Sara. “And we shall find a way to soften that pitch and peel this wretched gag off without hurting you. Come to the kitchen and we shall see what we can do.”

  She smiled encouragingly at the gagged face. Her grandfather had indeed once sought out oddities like Lucy Harker and other people with even stranger abilities. The Rabbi Falk had been one of the great minds of his time, and though not born with any powers of his own, he not only believed in what he termed the “supranatural” but also toiled endlessly to increase his knowledge of it and so harness it. He had been a Freemason, a Kabbalist, an alchemist and a natural scientist, obsessively studying the threads of secret power that wove themselves beneath the everyday surface of things and underpinned what he called “The Great and Hidden History of the World”.

  It was perhaps proof that Fate had a sense of humour in that his granddaughter had been born with some of those very elusive powers which he had spent a lifetime searching for and trying to control.

  Sara reached for Lucy’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “You are a Glint, Lucy, and you have fallen among friends,” she said. “You are out of danger here, for this is the Safe House, the most secure house in all London, safer than the Tower itself for it was made so to guard a grave secret, a key of great power, and because of that you can rest, secure that none may enter unless I let them, and so none shall harm you. Now come with me, for you are cold and the kitchen is warm and altogether more welcoming.”

  With that Sara led Lucy from the room so that all that remained was the echo of their footsteps walking away down a stone-flagged passageway, and the sound of her voice saying, “The third thing you must believe, Lucy Harker, is that the world in general, and London in particular, is a far, far stranger place that most people ever know.”

  And as if to prove that fact to the empty room, the hollow clay mannequin stood up, walked across the room and quietly closed the door behind them, before returning to his seat and sitting as motionlessly as before.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE BLOODSTONE BADGE

  Ketch felt woozily happy, despite the chilling fog blanketing the gas-lit streets.

  The companionable arm over his shoulder steered him past the King’s Arms
at the edge of the square, and he looked sideways at the fugged windows and the inviting glow of firelight and candles within. It was a large building, and an observant passer-by might have noticed the horseshoes nailed up above all of the windows as well as the more customary main doorway. Ketch was not of a mood or disposition to observe small details: he was glowing and sentimental and he felt the tavern exerting a magnetic tug on the heavy jingle of coins in his pocket, and then he had a marvellous idea.

  “Tell you what,” he said, looking up into the face of his wonderful new friend, “tell you what! I should like to stand you a drink to round off a mutually profitable night’s work. We could slide in here and have the landlord make us a nice hot ale, or maybe a steaming jug of bishop, yes, bishop’s the thing for a chilly night like this, wouldn’t you say?”

  He was so taken with the idea of sharing a warm glass or two of spiced port with his companion that he could already hear the sizzle of the red-hot poker the landlord was going to plunge into the jug to heat it. In fact he was imagining the lovely smell of orange and cloves and strong wine so intently that he didn’t notice Mr Sharp had walked them into a dark side alley until it was too late.

  “No,” he said. “No, the door’s over there—”

  His voice was strangled by a fleeting moment of worry, triggered both by the knowledge that this particular alley was a dead end and the sudden memory of the alarming knife this man carried somewhere beneath his coat. But the moment dissolved and he instantly relaxed as the eyes turned on him again: even in the stygian black of the blind alley he could see their tawny glow and felt flushed and content, as if bathed in the warmth of a thousand summers.

  “Nah, but this is fine too,” he smiled, with a look on his face that was quite as blurred with happiness as if he had already drunk that imaginary jug of fortified wine.

  Mr Sharp gently slid his hand off Ketch’s shoulder to grip his chin in such a way that the man could not look away.

  “Indeed it is. But it is also goodbye. And it is also this…”

  He raised his other fist to show him the gold ring he wore. The ring was set with a bloodstone like the one Sara Falk wore, into which was carved a rampant lion facing an equally wild-looking unicorn. He held it out, and when he spoke again there was a distinctly official tone to his voice.

  “By the Powers, Mr William Ketch, and as a Free Companion of the London Oversight, I charge you that you will go now, and you will forget what you did with the girl Lucy Harker, and you will forget us, and you will forget the house we have just left: if asked, you will remember she ran off while you were drunk. And because of that,” he continued, with a sparkle of cheery malice in his face. “Because of that you will never touch liquor again, and you will be kind to the needy—”

  Mr Sharp’s nostrils flared slightly and his head came up as he scanned the darkness around them for whatever smell had interrupted his thought. Ketch just nodded, his mouth smiling so sloppily that a thin line of drool dribbled out of the side and spattered on the ground by his boots.

  Mr Sharp shook his head and his eyes returned to Ketch. Ketch opened his mouth to say something, but Mr Sharp gently pushed the chin up and closed it again.

  “—and because of what you did to the girl’s mouth, you shall be unable to speak from now until the first day the dog roses bloom next spring, and when they do you will go and offer your services at the very Bedlam Hospital you spoke of, and help with the washing and cleaning of the poor turned minds who are locked within. That shall be your own punishment and means of rectification.”

  He reached forward and pressed the ring to Ketch’s head. When he took it away, the image of the lion and unicorn was indented on the skin, and for a moment it seemed to glow a mottled red and green like the bloodstone itself, and then it was just a temporary dimple, and then it was gone.

  Ketch opened his mouth to speak, and then found he couldn’t. He sneezed three times, looked a little confused, then shrugged and scratched his forehead as he turned and stumbled off down the alley, back into the street.

  As he walked he rubbed at the itch above his eyes, and then forgot it as he felt the jingle of coins in his pocket and pulled a handful out, pausing to examine them beneath the first gas lamp he came to. He saw a scrabble of tarnished copper ha’pennies and farthings and felt an unaccountable pang of surprise: surely these coins were meant to be something else? But then he couldn’t quite remember what or why he might think they would be anything other than they were.

  He pocketed the change and was swallowed up by the fog.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE MISSING UNICORN

  Lucy Harker could not keep her eyes still. She sat at the huge wooden table at the warm heart of Sara Falk’s kitchen, her neck craning and swivelling as she tried to take in the extraordinary room that almost ran across the whole basement of the house. The only clear space was the table itself, a big five-sided thing with age-darkened oak legs supporting a top almost white with the repeated scrubbing it had received over the years.

  At the centre of the table burned a single candle surrounded by five leafy twigs, all of different woods, laid in a rough star: an oak twig bearing an acorn crossed another bearing the distinctive keys of an ash, which crossed a sprig of white hawthorn resting on a spray of pink apple blossom that supported a hazel stick heavy with green nuts. Beyond this calm half acre of scrubbed wood there was an ordered mayhem of shelves and racks and cupboards, with alcoves and pillars leading into glimpsed side-larders and pantries all crammed with boxes, bookcases and bottle racks.

  Wherever the eye looked, it found a bewildering variety of things in which the unfamiliar comfortably outnumbered the familiar: apothecary jars with ancient gilt lettering on them fought for shelf space with irregular ziggurats of spice tins while below them on a groaning dresser bucket-shaped stone crocks sprouted explosions of spoons, spatulas and porridge spirtles like exotic wooden flower arrangements. Lowly potato sacks slumped next to metal-trimmed tea chests which in turn supported a regiment of black japanned canisters emblazoned with yellowing paper squares stamped with impressive red Siamese chop marks that made them look more like battle pennants than labels.

  One windowsill was piled so high with jars containing such a multicoloured variety of liquids and preserves that the gas lamp shining in from the street above turned it into a three-dimensional stained-glass window.

  Even the ceiling was full; every spare inch was jammed with bunches of drying herbs hanging next to smoked hams and strings of onions, and something that looked suspiciously like a blunderbuss. There were recognisable kitchen tools scattered about–homely, useful things like graters and colanders and rolling pins and very up-to-date mechanical devices like hand-cranked apple-peelers and sausage-stuffers. There were also indeterminate contraptions made of metal, wood or glass which seemed as if they’d be equally at home in an alchemist’s laboratory, a mechanic’s shed or even perhaps a very experimental dungeon.

  Knives, hatchets and blades of every shape, size and age (including a notched cutlass and a very hacked-about boarding axe) fanned across one wall next to a similarly bewildering profusion of pots, pans and chafing dishes, all scoured and polished to a high copper sheen which reflected the fire glowing red in the centre of the huge cast-iron range at the heart of the room.

  The range was a great contraption of stove-blackened metal and brass-bound hinges, in the centre of which a fire crackled happily behind the bars of an open grate. “The Dreadnought Patent Range” was embossed in blocky lettering across the back of the fireplate, and a kettle the size of a baby hippopotamus hissed and bubbled on the hotplate beneath.

  Next to it on a leather-topped club fender sat Cook, dobbing a mixture of sugar, currants and allspice into the centre of six pastry circles laid out on a small table beside her.

  Cook had been introduced to Lucy as just Cook, as if no further name was necessary or indeed available.

  She definitely looked at least part of the part: she was built o
n a heroically stocky scale, and the expanse of white pinafore straining across her ample bosom combined with her generous wide-set curves to give her both the cut and jib of a small galleon, one that had been built at a time when the broadest of beams were in fashion. The part of her that didn’t look the part was her face: the wisps of greying and once-blonde hair that escaped from the white cotton mob-cap were ladylike enough, but the black eye patch and the scar that emerged from it to dent her nose and the opposite cheek gave her a wild, buccaneering air. It was an impression entirely supported by the fearless sparkle in her one blue eye, and perhaps explained to the curious and associative mind how a blunderbuss and a boarding axe had become part of her eccentric batterie de cuisine.

  Despite her size, Cook seemed to have something of Mr Sharp’s ability to move fast because Lucy thought she had only glanced up for a moment to examine a duck carcase which appeared to have been run over by a lawn roller before being hung from the roof to dry, but when she dropped her eyes she saw Cook had placed six pastry lumps on a baking tray in front of her. They were the shape (and almost the size) of cannonballs and had been rolled in sugar.