Whitechapel Gods Read online

  It wasn’t so. He hung now in a chair, arms and legs supported by thin scraps of brass, six copper tines penetrating his neck. He spasmed randomly. He drooled. He bled dark oil from his eyes and ears. To his left and right, above and below, thousands more trapped souls shuffled mindlessly, their bodies jerking in the indecipherable rhythm of the Great Machine.

  He’d fought when they dragged him here, to the Chimney. He’d despaired to see the endless column of quivering humanity vanishing upwards into the core of the Stack, and to know the fate of those there interred. He’d soiled himself from terror, and begged for death instead.

  But the baron, in his passionless monotone, had directed the Boiler Men to string him up and keep him conscious while the tines did their work. The baron had stood and watched with immobile copper eyes as the encroaching cacophony of Grandfather Clock’s thoughts had hammered their way into Aaron’s mind. Aaron’s last visual memory was of that man’s featureless face: not even a smile of triumph, nor a vicious grin to condemn Aaron as a man. Aaron was a mere faulty part in the Great Work, now tempered and put to better use.

  Aaron threw imaginary arms over an imaginary head. He ran on imaginary legs, desperately searching for a spot to hide, but in the Chimney all was Grandfather Clock. Every turn took him between grinding gears or into the path of uncoiling springs.

  He ran this way for ages, in an agony beyond measure, swallowed, like all the others, worn down until he was but a dead man who hadn’t properly died. The tines tore into his neck as the gears and the noise tore into his mind, and he gave up every secret he had ever held. He gave up his friends, his plans, his secret hideaways, his many paltry indiscretions against propriety and against God—anything to make the pain stop. But Grandfather Clock cared nothing for pain, as long as the gears turned.

  After countless long hours, something changed. The million ticks did not come together in one. For a single instant, they cascaded like a short but powerful wave as Grandfather Clock hesitated.

  Aaron came alive again. He stole the smallest and quietest of breaths, and as he did so he felt his body do the same. What was it he felt drawing the attention of the vast being all around him?

  He reached out, felt the gears and springs around him clacking in their altered pattern. The rhythm came to him, clearer now that it was not so loud. His subconscious did its work, and impressions formed in his imagination: thickened, greyed images of Grandfather Clock’s purposes and directives. Huge, unfathomable, yet with character, with flavour.

  Apprehension: that the Great Work may not be finished.

  And then a command: to seek, to capture, to preserve.

  Joseph, Aaron realised. Joseph escaped.

  He laughed.

  And suddenly the ticks came together again. A crashing slap of sound battered him. A hundred thousand bells exploded into chaotic song—church bells and electric buzzers, alarm clocks and hammers striking anvils.

  Grandfather Clock had seen and heard Aaron’s thought. All the sharply ordered energies of the machine tumbled onto Aaron’s head. He felt bones breaking in his real body.

  Stop laughing! was the command.

  So Aaron laughed more, even as he screamed.

  Grandfather Clock crunched him down like a mechanic scraping rust off a stubborn bolt. Aaron flaked apart and drifted away. What remained tightened securely, then began to spin at its designated frequency. It became part of a work greater than itself, part of an infallible string of physical logic inside the perfect machine.

  It was the chin, Missy decided. The broad chest, the muscled arms, the swept-back short blond hair were certainly no drawback, but it was the square, almost Roman chin that really caught her attention.

  The man had taken position on the edge of the road, head down, back to the closest wall. He and Missy and all the other grubbers of the Shadwell Underbelly stood squashed to the edges of the street as the Boiler Men passed through. The cloaks, one could have fun with: a shoe in the wrong place when passing was always good, seeing as they were too proud to sully their dignity with childish finger pointing; a little flash of ankle at the right moment was amusing as well, for the canaries at least—eyes like hawks, them, but feet like an elephant on a frozen lake when their blood rose up. With Boiler Men, one just kind of got out of their way.

  If she was like most people, Missy would have dropped her eyes and tipped her ash hat down and tried to have no more presence than a pig in a butcher’s shop. She would have held her curiosity down with fear and shuddered in her shoes until the Ironboys passed, then gone on about her business as if all was fine and the sun was due to come out any minute. But Missy was not like most people, and neither was the man with the chin.

  He watched the Boiler Men with narrowed eyes. Missy noticed his hand had twitched towards the large leather-wrapped object he carried on his back the instant the Ironboys had appeared. He’d restrained himself, evidently, and had retreated to the steps of a storefront flanked by his two companions, a brown-clad ogre and a slim urchin boy. The vantage allowed him an unobstructed view of the grim procession, and Missy an unobstructed view of him.

  Now what is this lovely specimen up to? she mused. He was far too fixated on the Boiler Men to notice her, and so she was free to study him at leisure. He stood with muscles taught, legs comfortably wide as if he expected to dodge aside at any moment. His thick moustache and mop of hair seemed to bristle like tiger’s fur. He stood alert, tense, exuding an aura of control.

  You must not judge a client by his looks, nor his manner. To you, all men are Adonis and Casanova.

  Missy frowned at the thought, and wondered if it was wrong to wish that they had all been like this one.

  Even though you flee me, the lusts are still on you. You were born to this work, child.

  The Boiler Men moved off, though their heavy, synchronised footsteps would echo in the Underbelly for some time yet. The crowd began to swell out into the street again, silent at first, gradually building to hushed conversation.

  The object of Missy’s observation conferred with the ogre at his side a moment, then gestured with his head for the lad to follow. He shot a glance sideways, directly into Missy’s eyes. Her heart jumped at first; then her face flushed with sudden anger. He was playing me! She responded automatically with a coquettish smile and a wave.

  The man quickly looked away and down, shifting his focus to the street ahead and the crowds swarming about.

  Ready for anything but the tempting touch of womanhood, Missy realised. Refreshing, after a fashion.

  The three hurried ahead at a good clip, purposeful and terribly out of place in the Underbelly. Missy walked more naturally, mimicking the shifting wanderings of the tower’s occupants. Though her quarries moved faster, their directness clashed with the aimless dance of the crowd, and Missy kept pace without difficulty.

  The floor of the Underbelly was like a giant bowl of concrete, warped and misshapen to conform to the vagaries of the tower’s steel supports. She tracked the three strangers between two-and three-storey tenements, inexpertly constructed of whatever spare wood and plaster could be scrounged from the city above. The place had a ruined graveyard quality about it, enhanced by the few ghostly street lanterns that Missy had always detested. When this silliness with the queen’s agents had run its course, Missy intended to make Oliver buy her an apartment in Aldgate. Oh, why compromise on fantasy?…in Cathedral Tower!

  She trailed her foxes into a nest of rum dives and two-step alleys called, for reasons unknown, the “Blink.” They must know the area, she decided, to stride so confidently into that labyrinth. Why, then, had she not seen them before? The other two, though odd in stance and motion, would pass for locals with a little effort. The man with the chiseled chin, however, she would surely have remembered him. She slipped into the alley some minutes after them, to ensure they’d passed the first of the alley’s many pointless corners. The hem of her skirt brushed the narrow walls, and she gathered it together in front of her to keep i
t from staining on the piss and puke all over. Why was it the drunks never managed to quite make it to the street?

  She stopped at the first corner. Cursing sounded from ahead, echoing off the stained walls above: possibly the ogre having trouble manoeuvring through, and the chin man’s backpack as well. She peeked around the edge and saw, just as she thought, the ogre’s wide shoulders stuck between loose window trim and a pipe. The chin man must have been in the lead, for she saw only the teenaged lad. He cocked his head, and began to turn.

  She darted back into cover with a stifled yelp. Something in the lad’s posture, head lowered between raised shoulder blades, suggested a cat about to pounce, or a dog about to growl and charge.

  A sudden fear blinked in her mind like an electrical spark: why was she following these men?

  Because Oliver will ask you what they were up to, and if you don’t have an answer he is sure to chastise you like a little girl and sulk the rest of the evening. There. It was on his head now.

  It is preposterous to maintain belief in the innocence of your motives, child. You sully the very idea of goodness in people by your association.

  Heedless of the noise, Missy slapped herself hard on her cheek.

  I’m done with you, old woman. Leave me be!

  Gradually the cursing ahead subsided, and after a few minutes in silence, Missy plucked up her courage and followed.

  After a few more turns, she emerged into one of the little plazas that were referred to by a term she wouldn’t repeat, even to herself. Lit by a single oil lantern hanging off a second-storey windowsill, the plaza gleamed with moisture and stank of filth of every kind. A descending stair on the left led to a rum house entrance, a boarded door on the right to a condemned shop with broken windows.

  Three more alleys led off. All three took their first turns too early to see very far along, and the only sound audible, despite the constant muted thrum of the factories from above, was some murmuring and a badly played tin whistle from the rum house. She could find no trace of her little foxes.

  Well, that’s that. Perfectly acceptable, me losing them in here. And Oliver can’t rightly argue with me not wanting to take my lone, feminine self into a grog house, can he? She dusted her hands together in symbolic dismissal of the whole affair and turned to leave.

  A man stepped from the dark of the rightmost alley. Missy’s hand flew to her chest as her heart began to thunder. Words came automatically to her, rehearsed and practiced so many times before: “Goodness, you do give a lady a fright, sir.”

  The man with the exquisite chin gestured for her to step towards him, and backed into the alley.

  “If you would, miss,” he said. His voice was rich with a husky Germanic accent, though it was also scratchy, as if he had spent a lot of time yelling.

  Missy fixed him with her most disarming flutter of the eyelashes. “Now that would hardly be proper, would it? Me following a strange man into a dark place.”

  “You have been following this strange man for some time, miss.”

  The bastard prick knew. She smiled shyly. “Sharp eyes on you, I see.”

  He made no response to that, though his eyes flicked for an instant a little lower than her face. Revulsion surged in her gut for an instant.

  Remember that your client has come to you to be toyed with. It is his wish to be led by your wiles and have that responsibility lifted from him for a time.

  Something useful from you for once, old bat.

  As an experiment, Missy took one direct and intentional step inside the range of his arms. He responded by backing away, wary, hands by his sides but open and turned out slightly to be ready to reach up at any moment. She fancied she saw his skin pale and chuckled inwardly. Why was it the big strapping ones were always the easiest to unman?

  “Now, what’s a fellow handsome as yourself doing in the Underbelly, I wonder.” She gauged his pained squint to mean she could safely proceed further. “Nothing that can’t wait, if the company’s right, I hope.”

  His neck flushed red. Missy folded her hands sweet-as-you-please in front of her, the back one slipping her switchblade partly out of her sleeve. Befuddled though he was, the man carried a sidearm just out of sight in the shadow of his right hip, and she wondered if the slight lump beneath his shirt just above the waistband might be a belt of ammunition, like Heckler carried. The man’s right hand held steady just above the sidearm’s grip.

  “I am not interested, miss,” he said.

  Her fingers wrapped around the knife’s grip. Oh, but you must be, for I’m ready for you.

  “Well, not yet, love. But the day is young, and you’ll find I know a mite of pleasurable conversation, among other things, if you’d give a doe a chance.”

  The flush and jitteriness vanished, to be replaced with a cold, discerning stare. The man’s entire posture grew fierce, and Missy suddenly realised just how large he actually was.

  Stupid. Too forward. Now he’s…

  “Why were you following me, miss?” he asked, voice flat as cold slate.

  She retreated one step from the force in the man’s eyes and managed to sound cross.

  “I’ve told you already, sir. Well, I can see you’re not interested. Good day to you and I’ll be on my way.”

  She stuck her nose up and spun away. What on earth had possessed her to trail this man into the Blink of all places? Dignified, now. Slow down. Dismiss him. He’s nothing at all.

  His hand engulfed her shoulder and spun her back around like a top. She found herself staring into startling blue eyes, as hard as steel. She tugged the flick-blade loose. A quick poke and he would drop like a domino, just as before.

  From some unexplored part of her, a primal rage welled up, a screaming order to thrust the knife through his heart. He deserved it. They all did. All these cruel and lecherous swine that thought they had so much power.

  She pressed the catch and the blade leapt into place. Was it the eyes that made her hesitate? Was he just that much faster?

  He never broke their gaze. His other hand snatched her wrist the instant she began to thrust. Shoots of pain darted up and down Missy’s arm and out into her fingers. She cried out and the knife clattered to the street.

  She couldn’t move her arms. She couldn’t run. He leaned in closer, filling her nose with his scent.

  “Listen!” he hissed. “Do not continue following us. My associates are heartless villains and they will murder you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded meekly. He shoved her away.

  “Play your Versuchung games elsewhere.”

  She nodded again, swallowed to quell the shaking of her insides, and retreated. She kept him in sight, watching his eyes and his firing hand until she reached the little plaza, then spun and bolted down the nearest alley. She ran through the twists and turns, bashing her elbows on the downspouts and scuffing her dress on the walls, and did not halt until the vast lamp-lit cavern of the Underbelly opened around her.

  She found a rotting crate behind a bakery where no one could see her from the streets, and sat down. Tears poured out of her eyes, soaking her cheeks and chin, dribbling onto her jacket.

  “No, no, no,” she muttered. She crammed her fists into her eye sockets.

  Do you require further demonstration of how powerless you are, child? Surrender these unladylike ideas of independence and return to me.

  Her entire body shivered. Her insides rolled and squirmed. A sharp pain began throbbing between her legs. From inside her mind, Matron Gisella fixed her with a tight-lipped scowl.

  The world abounds in examples of your weaknesses. You are as frightened a little girl now as you were when you were dumped upon my doorstep.

  No, no, no, no…

  She pulled her slick fists away from her face and clamped them down on her legs and then her arms, until they went stone still. Then she hugged her midsection so tightly she thought she might break it.

  She held herself in that death’s grip until her insides stilled and Gisell
a’s voice fell silent. Then she inhaled with great deliberation, rose, straightened her clothing, wiped her face.

  She would get another knife. She would get a gun. Then she would teach that Kraut bastard not to make her feel like that. She would teach anyone who crossed her that she was powerless no longer.

  She headed for the hideout.

  Chapter 5

  I see a great city behind my closed eyes. It is the vision of all my failures of architecture, standing together against all possibility. I see humanity living on these creations, driven far from the mud of which they are made. I see our homes and churches broken; I see our God snubbed and ignored; I see our books rendered unreadable by smoke and by ashes.

  —IX. ii

  A passing wash of smoke hid the platform even as the cable car settled into its berth. Oliver had tied his kerchief over his mouth and nose before disembarking, but that did little to stop the sudden burst of fire in his lungs at the first taste of the air. This close to the Stack, breathing and not breathing were of equal detriment to one’s health.

  The Dunbridge Concourse was constructed on a sharply slanting hill with the station at its base. By virtue of the way the steel girders had grown up, the black cloaks had elected to build only on the west side of the tower; the east stood open to the air and the rain. The dwellings of Dunbridge rested one atop the other, with all the order of a stack of rubbish, and for the most part were devoid of light.

  Every station and street they’d passed through in Stepneyside and Cambridge-Heath had been crawling with gold cloaks. Even the women and children members of that bizarre order worked the crowds, eyeing up the midday commuters as they passed. The burlier and better-armed canaries randomly hauled people from the crowd to perform searches of their pockets. This had happened to Oliver only once, and he was able to palm his knife and derringer while the man roughed him over. The cloak had contemptuously shoved him aside to make space for the next victim, whom his lackeys were already dragging up.

  “This is an affront to basic human dignity,” Hews had said. “What do they honestly expect to find with all this? In the whole of Whitechapel, we can’t number more than a few dozen.”