cutaway tails?
Instead, like a kind of walking doghouse, along came a pale man wearing sign-boards, front and back:
For
IRREPROACHABLE
HAIR GLOSS
Use
Van Kempt’s
Oil of
Macassar
Dirty children swirled around him, taunting, knocking his dented derby off his head. A capering girl shrieked at him, “Where do ye keep the mustard?” Evidently a great joke, for her mates laughed like little banshees.
The dark streets rang with such noise, shopkeepers roaring at the street urchins, “Be off with you!” while wagons rattled past and a fishmonger cried, “Fresh haddock fer yer supper!” and sailors shouted greetings to one another. From an unswept doorway a stout woman shrieked, “Sarah! Willie!” I wondered if her children were tormenting the board-man. Meanwhile, folk brushed past me, chatting in vulgarly loud voices, and I walked faster, as if I could somehow escape.
What with so many strange sights and so much commotion, small wonder I didn’t hear the footsteps following me.
I did not notice until the night deepened and darkened—or so it seemed at first, but then I realised it was the streets themselves that had grown grimmer. No more shops gave light, only glaring public houses on the corners, their drunken noise spilling into the darkness. I saw a woman standing in a doorway with her face painted, red lips, white skin, black brows, and I guessed I was witnessing a lady of the night. In her tawdry low-cut gown she reeked so badly of gin that I could smell it even above the stench of her seldom-washed body. But she was not the only source of odour; the whole East End of London stank of boiled cabbage, coal smoke, dead fish along the nearby Thames, sewage in the gutters.
And people. In the gutters.
I saw a man lying drunk or sick. I saw children huddled together like puppies to sleep, and I realised they had no homes. My heart ached; I wanted to awaken those children and give them money to buy bread and meat pies. But I made myself walk on, lengthening my stride. Uneasy. Some sense of danger—
A dark form crawled along the pavement in front of me.
Crawled. On her hands and knees. Her bare feet dragging.
I faltered to a halt, staring, struck motionless and witless by the sight of an old woman reduced to such wretchedness, with only a single torn and thread-bare dress inadequately covering her, no underpinnings beneath it. Nothing on her head, either, not even so much as a rag of cloth, and no hair. Only a mass of sores covered her scalp. I choked back a cry at the sight, and dully, creeping at a snail’s pace on her knuckles and her knees, she lifted her head a few inches to glance at me. I saw her eyes, pallid like gooseberries—
But I had stood still a moment too long. Heavy footsteps sounded behind me.
I leapt forward to flee, but it was too late. The footfalls rushed upon me. An iron grip grasped my arm. I started to scream, but a steely hand clamped over my mouth. Very close to my ear a deep voice growled, “If you move or cry out, I will kill you.”
Terror froze me. Wide-eyed, staring into darkness, I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. As I stood gasping, his grip left my arm and snaked around me, clasping both arms forcibly to my sides, pressing my back against a surface that might as well have been a stone wall had I not known it to be his chest. His hand left my mouth, but within an instant, before my trembling lips could shape a sound, in the dim night I saw the glint of steel. Long. Tapering to a point like a shard of ice. A knife blade.
Dimly, also, I saw the hand that held the knife.
A large hand in a kidskin glove of some tawny colour.
“Where is he?” the man demanded, his tone most menacing.
What? Where was who? I could not speak.
“Where is Lord Tewksbury?”
It made no sense. Why would a man in London be accosting me about the noble runaway? Who could know I had been in Belvidere?
Then I remembered the face I had seen pressed against the glass, peering into the
Instead, like a kind of walking doghouse, along came a pale man wearing sign-boards, front and back:
For
IRREPROACHABLE
HAIR GLOSS
Use
Van Kempt’s
Oil of
Macassar
Dirty children swirled around him, taunting, knocking his dented derby off his head. A capering girl shrieked at him, “Where do ye keep the mustard?” Evidently a great joke, for her mates laughed like little banshees.
The dark streets rang with such noise, shopkeepers roaring at the street urchins, “Be off with you!” while wagons rattled past and a fishmonger cried, “Fresh haddock fer yer supper!” and sailors shouted greetings to one another. From an unswept doorway a stout woman shrieked, “Sarah! Willie!” I wondered if her children were tormenting the board-man. Meanwhile, folk brushed past me, chatting in vulgarly loud voices, and I walked faster, as if I could somehow escape.
What with so many strange sights and so much commotion, small wonder I didn’t hear the footsteps following me.
I did not notice until the night deepened and darkened—or so it seemed at first, but then I realised it was the streets themselves that had grown grimmer. No more shops gave light, only glaring public houses on the corners, their drunken noise spilling into the darkness. I saw a woman standing in a doorway with her face painted, red lips, white skin, black brows, and I guessed I was witnessing a lady of the night. In her tawdry low-cut gown she reeked so badly of gin that I could smell it even above the stench of her seldom-washed body. But she was not the only source of odour; the whole East End of London stank of boiled cabbage, coal smoke, dead fish along the nearby Thames, sewage in the gutters.
And people. In the gutters.
I saw a man lying drunk or sick. I saw children huddled together like puppies to sleep, and I realised they had no homes. My heart ached; I wanted to awaken those children and give them money to buy bread and meat pies. But I made myself walk on, lengthening my stride. Uneasy. Some sense of danger—
A dark form crawled along the pavement in front of me.
Crawled. On her hands and knees. Her bare feet dragging.
I faltered to a halt, staring, struck motionless and witless by the sight of an old woman reduced to such wretchedness, with only a single torn and thread-bare dress inadequately covering her, no underpinnings beneath it. Nothing on her head, either, not even so much as a rag of cloth, and no hair. Only a mass of sores covered her scalp. I choked back a cry at the sight, and dully, creeping at a snail’s pace on her knuckles and her knees, she lifted her head a few inches to glance at me. I saw her eyes, pallid like gooseberries—
But I had stood still a moment too long. Heavy footsteps sounded behind me.
I leapt forward to flee, but it was too late. The footfalls rushed upon me. An iron grip grasped my arm. I started to scream, but a steely hand clamped over my mouth. Very close to my ear a deep voice growled, “If you move or cry out, I will kill you.”
Terror froze me. Wide-eyed, staring into darkness, I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe. As I stood gasping, his grip left my arm and snaked around me, clasping both arms forcibly to my sides, pressing my back against a surface that might as well have been a stone wall had I not known it to be his chest. His hand left my mouth, but within an instant, before my trembling lips could shape a sound, in the dim night I saw the glint of steel. Long. Tapering to a point like a shard of ice. A knife blade.
Dimly, also, I saw the hand that held the knife.
A large hand in a kidskin glove of some tawny colour.
“Where is he?” the man demanded, his tone most menacing.
What? Where was who? I could not speak.
“Where is Lord Tewksbury?”
It made no sense. Why would a man in London be accosting me about the noble runaway? Who could know I had been in Belvidere?
Then I remembered the face I had seen pressed against the glass, peering into the
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