The Claws of Evil

The Feathered Men were always at their most passive when they had finished gorging. Now Carter spoke with them, if not as their friend, then at least not as their prey.

Carter had accumulated a great many languages in his travels; he was fluent in Mongolian, Russian, Swahili, Mandarin, Gujarati and many obscure tribal dialects, as well as the French, Spanish, German and Portuguese of the less adventurous traveller. Often he found that his claw could speak louder than words, but sometimes a more subtle message needed to be conveyed.

The language of the Feathered Men was ugly on the tongue, all clicks and soft palette noises, interspersed with shrill shrieks. It was not a rich idiom, it lacked beauty and rhythm; although it did contain forty-five different words for killing, Carter noted. Most importantly, by learning it, Carter had made himself the only one who could communicate with these fallen Seraphim in their own language. A vital persuasive skill if you wanted to employ them as your own private army.

A large Feathered Man, whose battered wings had grown steel-grey with age, barged his way to the front of the flock, asserting his status as leader. Carter ignored the blood that dripped from Grey Wing’s battle-scarred beak and the two conversed, while all around them the chamber echoed with the noise of bones being gnawed.

“The missing Coin,” said Carter.

Grey Wing observed him coldly, his eagle head tilted to one side. “The search continues,” the Feathered Man replied.

“And?” said Carter, with some frustration.

“And?” Grey Wing mimicked.

It was often this way; Grey Wing was the most capricious of a spiteful breed.

For a fleeting second, Carter appeared downcast. Grey Wing squatted on his haunches and regarded him mockingly. Then, in a single fluid movement, Carter stepped in tight, grabbing the feathers on the back of Grey Wing’s skull and yanking his head backwards until the soft tissue of his neck was exposed to the tip of Carter’s claw.

Overhead, the other Feathered Men screamed; some in anger, others in cruel delight.

“You need me more than I need you,” Carter hissed. “Don’t you ever forget it!” He allowed his claw to draw blood and saw alarm in those huge yellow eyes. “Mr. Sweet and the Council of Seven will keep you locked down here for ever. Is that what you want? To rot? But help me find the Coin, and I will usher in a new day for the Legion. No more interminable plans that come to nothing, no more skulking around in the shadows, but open war on the streets of London. And you, my fine feathered friend, will rule the skies, and dine on anyone you choose!”

Gradually, Carter relinquished his grip as he felt Grey Wing’s acquiescence. When he was released, the Feathered Man staggered back, making a gagging noise. Grey Wing brought his hand to his throat and it came away bloody. He considered that for a moment and then resumed his squatting position, unfurling his great dark wings and wrapping them around himself like a cloak.

“There was a man, yesterday, at the docks,” Grey Wing began.

“Go on.”

“He was a Coin carrier.”

“You’re certain?”

Grey Wing nodded. “There is no mistaking the scent of a man entirely given over to evil.”

“And?”

“We found him in his hiding place and he danced a merry dance with us.”

“You mean you tormented and ate him,” Carter offered.

Grey Wing made a repulsive noise which Carter took to be laughter.

“He was a scrawny thing,” said Grey Wing. “All bone and gristle.”

“And the Coin?” Carter prompted.

“He no longer had it, he had passed it on to another.”

“But you can track it, sniff them out?”

“No,” said Grey Wing. “The Coins don’t consume a man instantly; some men don’t yield to their influence at all. It’s all down to choice, as you well know, Professor Carter. It’s not compulsory to yield to temptation.”

“So we are no closer to finding it.” Carter could feel his anger growing.

Grey Wing allowed the silence to stretch between them; with his beak for a mouth, it was impossible to tell whether he was smiling.

“We have a name,” said Grey Wing finally. “The Coin is now in the hands of someone named ‘Kingdom’.”

Carter was jubilant. “Then I have one last thing to say to you,” he said, standing aside to allow Grey Wing a glimpse of the open door. “Fetch!”

It was strangely heavy for such a little thing.

Ben cupped the Coin in his hand and was struck by the uneasy thought that if he fell into the Thames with it in his grasp, it would drag him down to the bottom, never to surface again.

He had waited for his father and brother to leave for the docks, watching from the window until they were both out of sight before he made his move. And now the Coin was his. He didn’t feel comfortable going behind his father’s back; but he was only taking the Coin for Professor Carter to have a look at, he reassured himself. He was not stealing it; that was important. He was borrowing it.

He often took things up to the museum that he found when he was mudlarking: bits of pottery, hatpins, lost brooches, old coins, all left in the silt of the river and dredged up by scruffy urchins like him. He had never found anything really valuable, more’s the pity, but over the years he liked to think that he had struck up a friendship with Professor Carter. “Bring me what you find, my boy,” the man would say. “Particularly any old coins you discover.”

It was all very clear to Ben when he ran through the scenario in his mind. Carter would be delighted to see him and would declare the Coin to be an amazing find, a real treasure. Then, after a special ceremony, at which the Kingdom family would be guests of honour, the Coin would take pride of place in the British Museum and people would come from miles around to gaze upon it. Finally, Her Majesty Queen Victoria would be so grateful that she would reward Jonas Kingdom for his services to the Empire, and in his quiet and modest way, his father would become a man of means and no longer have to break his back for the price of stale bread. That was how Ben saw it, anyway. His pa was going to be so pleased with him.

Buoyed up on these thoughts, Ben was bounding down the stairs three at a time and didn’t see Mr. Wachowski occupying his usual step at the bottom until he was stumbling over him. Ben fell forwards clumsily, his hands slapping onto the hard tiles just in time to stop him from breaking his nose. Mr. Wachowski groaned with the impact, holding his back in pain. And the Coin slipped from Ben’s grasp and went rolling across the floor.

They both forgot their injuries and instead watched the Coin, mesmerized. A single coin, spinning like a ballerina; more fascinating and alluring than any dancer who ever graced the stage.

Slowly, the Coin stopped its dance and then toppled flat onto the cold tiles.

Neither of them spoke.

“What’s this, Ben Kingdom?” said Mr. Wachowski, reaching out with a podgy hand. “You’re a rich man?”

Ben’s left hand flashed out and snatched the Coin away before the Polish man could touch it. “Watch carefully,” said Ben, holding it up before the man’s eyes and passing it back and forth. Then, just like the street conjurer he had learned the trick from in the first place, Ben rolled his knuckles and made the Coin tumble from finger to finger across the back of his hand, before making it disappear completely, ending his routine with a theatrical clap.

“Which hand?” he asked the confused man, holding out two fists for him to choose from. After a moment of deliberation, Mr. Wachowski picked the left. With his flair for the dramatic Ben opened his fingers with agonizing slowness to reveal an empty palm. He then puzzled the man even further by opening his right hand and showing that to be empty too.

“What’s this, Mr. Wachowski?” said Ben, mimicking the man’s favourite phrase. And as Mr. Wachowski sat dumbfounded, Ben reached into the tobacco pouch that was a permanent resident on the man’s lap, and retrieved the Coin from within.

“Bravo!” declared the old man, clapping joyfully.

“Right, I’m going to hook it,” said Ben. And with a cheeky grin on his face and the Coin deep in his pocket, he opened the front door and left.

Outside, the feet of men and horses had turned the snow to slush. Above him the sky was a sheet of cloud the colour of bad milk. More snow was coming.

He set off at a breakneck pace that quickly ate up the ground. Ben knew that if he turned up late for work, his master would have a nice warm beating waiting for his backside; Mr. Smutts was a generous man like that. In his haste, he almost didn’t register a shape standing motionless in the alleyway opposite his front door: the shape of an old man, with gnarled hands twisted around a white cane, and a battered case at his side. Jago Moon, the blind bookseller.

Moon didn’t call out or signal to Benjamin in any way, and yet Ben could feel the cloudy spheres of his blind eyes burning into his back all the way down the Lane.

Of course, Carter knew that it was all rather hit or miss. There had to be dozens of Kingdoms in London, possibly hundreds. It was quite likely that a lot of innocent people would get hurt before the Feathered Men found the right one. War was like that unfortunately; civilians got wounded all the time.

Kingdom... The name rang a bell from somewhere. Was one of those guttersnipes that he employed to trawl the sewers called Kingdom? He tried to put a face to the name as he made his way down the tunnel that would take him to his rooms in the basement of the British Museum. He had to keep up the day job; for now.

“Knight Commander Carter, sir!” a voice called behind him and he turned to see a young Legionnaire rushing to report. The boy came to a stop in front of him and stood ramrod straight, his left fist clenched to his breast in salute.

“Busy night, Captain Mickelwhite?”

“Yes, sir, we almost had a run-in with Jago Moon, sir.”

Carter could feel his interest waning already.

“He and another Watcher were guarding a boy on Old Gravel Lane.”

Carter nodded and began to move on again. “Good, good,” he said dismissively.

“We asked around and we were able to find out the boy’s name, sir,” Mickelwhite called at his retreating back. “Ben Kingdom.”

Claw Carter halted in his tracks. He believed in many things, but not coincidences.





Ben was almost twenty minutes late.

He was going to be in trouble. Mr. Smutts would take the belt from round his waist and Ben was going to taste its lick right across his backside. He thought of the Coin in his pocket, so hot and heavy, and didn’t think one small beating was too big a price to pay.

However, as it turned out, being late was the least of his worries.

When Ben turned the corner of the Lane towards the cooper’s, he ploughed straight into a solid wall of bodies. Old Gravel Lane was often a crush, but this took the biscuit, Ben thought. The throng was so thick that he could barely shoulder his way between them. The most unusual thing about the crowd was that they weren’t going anywhere; they were just stood there, gawping at something, and muttering. And there was a strange tang in the air that was beginning to scratch at Ben’s nose. He barged his way through the crowd, his ears pricked as he made out snatches of conversation.

“Ain’t it terrible.”

“Someone should do somefink.”

“Oh my gawd, they’re all gonna perish.”

“Let me through,” Ben gasped, using his elbows to fight his passage through the pack. “Have a bit of mercy and let me through!”

With a last desperate push, Ben finally emerged in front of the cooper’s and it was then that he understood. In the place where Mr. Smutts’s workshop used to stand, Ben was greeted by an inferno. The flames were having their way with the old wooden building, raging without thought or compassion, consuming whatever they chose. In the distance, Ben could hear the bell of the fire wagon, and even as he urged it on, he already knew in his heart that it was too late. It was winter in London. All the water was as hard as bricks. What were they going to do, throw snowballs at the blaze?

“What’s the matter with you people?” Ben screamed, already feeling the heat licking at his face. “Why don’t you help?” Squinting against the sting of the smoke, Ben searched for two figures in the haze: Old Man Smutts and his son, Stanley.

“Mr. Smutts!” Ben shouted. He went as close as he dared, hot splinters raining down on him as the workshop began to groan with the effort of standing. “Mr. Smutts! Stan!”

A figure staggered from the mouth of the blaze, through the ring of fire that marked where the door had once been, and then fell face down. Ben ran to him and turned him over, cradling his head in his lap. It was a boy, about his own age, the skin on his hands red and blistered where he had tried to protect his face.

“Stan, listen to me, you’re going to be alright,” said Ben, scooping up handfuls of sooty slush and rubbing them across the boy’s burned hands. “Is your father safe? I haven’t seen him.”

Stanley’s eyes opened wide and looked back at the blazing building, salt tears drawing lines down his blackened cheeks. “Pa,” he said.

The fire brigade had finally appeared at the end of the street and almost grudgingly the crowd began to admit their wagon and horses. But Ben didn’t have time to wait for them to act. Nor did Mr. Smutts.

Quickly, Ben whipped off his jacket and began to roll it in the slush. When it was wet through, he shoved his arms back into the sleeves and, hunching his shoulders, pulled his jacket up over his head, hat and all. With his face pushed into the crook of his arm, he made for the door.

Standing there on the edge of Hell, with only the flames before him, he paused. “I’ll bring him back for you, Stan,” he said.

Ben knew that it was a bad idea as soon as he stepped inside. A cooper’s shop was not a good place to be in a fire. Planks of wood stored out the back. Fresh wooden barrels stacked floor to ceiling. Wooden roof supported by wooden beams. Wooden frame around the small windows. Wooden frame around the wooden door. Carpet of wood shavings on the floor. One thing Ben knew about wood: it doesn’t half burn.

Pretty much as soon as he entered the building, Ben was convinced that he was going to burn with it.

Steam was already rising from his sodden jacket and his boots were beginning to smoulder beneath his feet. It was as if he had stepped inside a furnace: all that he could see was flames. Beautiful, rampant, hungry flames.

“Mr. Smutts!” he shouted, edging his way towards the back of the shop, squinting to see through slitted eyes. The air around him was alive with sparks where the sawdust was igniting in flight. Ben’s words were lost against the roar of the inferno, and his lungs were filled with heavy smoke that threatened to drag him to his knees. Ben coughed until his guts ached, but he dared not give in to it; he knew too well that if he let the fire take hold of him, it would never let him go.

Above his head the rafters gave an ominous groan and released a shower of sparks and cinders that fell onto the shield of his sodden coat like molten rain. The fire was so hot now that the iron hoops on the barrels were beginning to burst and the rivets that had been hammered so carefully into place were exploding from their sockets. Ben could smell his own hair beginning to catch.

Through the hole of the doorway and the clouds of smoke, he could just about make out the shapes of the firemen outside, shouting and barking their orders and not rescuing him from the blaze. Ben dropped to his knees as a chunk of ceiling detached itself and came crashing to the ground behind him while he sheltered beneath the remains of his coat. The smoke was so thick that he couldn’t tell one direction from another. Each breath sucked more pain into his lungs. His exposed hands were raw, the floorboards beneath his knees burning yet more holes in his trousers, seeking out the soft flesh inside.

And there’s you thinking you might freeze to death this winter, he thought wryly as the window exploded outwards, showering firemen and gawpers alike with razor-edged splinters of glass.

With a final effort, Ben pushed on through the firestorm and out to the back of the workshop, where the flames had not yet completely taken hold. He quickly saw that a large beam had fallen from the roof and lay heavily across a man’s legs, pinning him down. Kneeling beside the prone body, Ben saw thick blood soaking through the trousers and a terrible stump of white bone. Mr. Smutts’s face was grey, his eyes shut. His chest was still.

“NO!” shouted Ben. He took his employer by the shoulders and began to shake him. “No!” he said firmly. “You’re not dead.”

“And I’m not deaf either,” said Mr. Smutts, and they shared a moment like none that had passed between them before.

Mr. Smutts smiled at Ben and touched a hand to his cheek. “You’re late, Master Kingdom,” he said gently, wincing through his pain. “Is this any way to treat your master?”

“Sack me later,” said Ben.

Even when he thought about it afterwards, Ben couldn’t explain how he shifted the beam from Mr. Smutts’s broken leg, or how he managed to drag the man from the burning building. It was as if he had found a well of energy inside himself that he never knew existed.

He remembered the strange throbbing sensation in his right hand though, along his whole arm in fact, and the feeling that he was somehow much stronger than he had ever been before. Strong enough to lift a burning rafter, strong enough to carry a full grown man to safety. And he’s quite a fat bloke too, thought Ben to himself proudly. I don’t know me own strength.

Exhausted, Ben lay down in the snow beside his employer, gasping for a breath of air that wasn’t poisoned with smoke.

Stanley crawled over to his father’s side and the look they exchanged was all the reward that Ben could ask for. Then the cooper’s shop collapsed in on itself in a mushroom cloud of flames and the true agony of Mr. Smutts’s shattered leg began to really kick in.

Clenching his teeth, Mr. Smutts beckoned Ben closer with a twitch of his fingers. “Benjamin,” he hissed.

Reluctantly, Ben obeyed. He didn’t want any thanks, although a shilling wouldn’t go amiss. “Really, Mr. Smutts, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up and listen, Ben!” The voice was full of urgency.

Ben shut up and listened.

“They were looking for you, Benjamin. The ones who did this...” Mr. Smutts pointed to the cinders where his life’s work once stood. “They were monsters, Benjamin. Demons.” His eyes were wide as he spoke. “They were like men,” he continued, “but with these huge wings, and their heads...” Smutts could hardly bring himself to say what he had seen. “Benjamin, they were an offence before God. As if some cruel boy had torn the head off a doll and sewn on a raven’s head in its place.” The haunted expression on Mr. Smutts’s face gave Ben a hint of the nightmares the poor man would be suffering, long after his bones had mended.

“They spoke to me, if you could call it speaking; their accent was that thick. Would you believe it? Bird-men speaking the Queen’s own English with their filthy tongues.” He shook his head. “They said that they wanted Kingdom,” Smutts continued and Ben’s heart turned to lead inside his chest. “Well, I wouldn’t tell ’em anything, told them to be off.” Mr. Smutts tried a smile, but in vain.

“Then they grabbed Stanley, said that they would hurt him... I’m sorry, Benjamin. I had no choice.” Mr. Smutts’s eyes were filled with remorse. “I told them where you live.”

Ben was on his feet and running even as the words sank home.

“Run, Benjamin,” Mr. Smutts shouted from somewhere behind him. “Run!”

His blood roaring in his ears, Ben only had two thoughts as he pelted along. Nathaniel, he thought. Pa!





What if Pa and Nathaniel had gone back to their room? Would there be a monster with a bird’s head waiting there to rip them apart?

Part of Ben considered running to Professor Carter for help. There was something about the man’s fierce intelligence and even more fearsome claw that made most problems seem much smaller. But Ben’s heart steered him straight towards home. Danger was looking for him. Last night it was in Skinners Lane and on the rooftops shrouded by snow, this morning it was waiting at the workshop in the flames.

Why was everyone suddenly out to get him?

The questions hammered with the beating of his heart and the pounding of his feet. His fingers reached for the Coin in his pocket as he raced through the streets. He touched the cold metal and felt that same shudder of emotion run through him; triumph mixed with desire. It was a small consolation as he turned the corner and saw Mrs. McLennon standing on their doorstep.

She was weeping uncontrollably. As she saw Ben approach, all that she was able to do was point behind her up the stairs and then begin to cry again.

Ben took the stairs two at a time, passing Mr. Wachowski in the hall, smoking and shaking his head. Mrs. O’Rourke stood watching through a crack in her door, the two smallest O’Rourkes gathered safely round her skirts; even Mrs. Viney had taken a rest from her screaming and was standing in her doorway, silent and pale.

He had no idea what he would do if he actually found someone waiting for him in his room. These people – he wasn’t ready yet to believe Mr. Smutts’s fantastic description of the bird-men – these people had already burned Mr. Smutts’s workshop to the ground and they’d only escaped by the skin of their teeth. It was not a good plan to try to confront them single-handed, he knew that.

Pa, he thought, and he climbed the last few stairs regardless of the danger that might be waiting for him at the top.

The bedroom door was shut and the lock appeared untouched. Ben put his ear to the wood and listened. There was nothing. Either the intruders had fled, or they were waiting patiently on the other side.

There was only one way to find out.

Ben chose to fling the door open with all his might, imagining that if there was someone lurking, there was a chance that the door would hit them and hit them hard. Instead, he found himself alone and face-to-face with destruction.

Everything that his family owned had been torn apart. The small table and chair had been reduced to firewood, the hiding place beneath the floorboards was now a gaping hole. Their clothes had been ransacked. The mattresses where his father and brother lay each night had been sliced open with knives. His own bed was in tatters, his secret books nothing more than strewn pages. Even his mother’s Bible had been ripped to shreds.

It was no mystery how the culprits had got in: half the roof was lying on the floor. Ben looked through the ragged gap at the iron-hard sky. His visitor from the night before had obviously returned.

Well, ain’t life grand? thought Ben.

“I didn’t see the scoundrels,” said Mrs. McLennon when she joined Ben in the wreckage of his room. “But mark this, Moira McLennon will not be caught napping a second time.” There was fire in her words and flint in her grey Scottish eyes, but Ben had no desire for this old woman to fight his battles for him.

There was nothing more for them to discuss.

Mrs. McLennon handed him a beef broth, which he received gratefully, and then after a moment of awkward silence she left him to it. “If there’s anything else you’re needing,” she said, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Half-heartedly, Ben tried to bring some sort of order to the room. However, it didn’t take long to realize that everything was too far gone to be rescued, and all that he had the energy to do was to re-stuff the mattresses as best he could and gather the rest of the debris to one side. Even that exhausted him, and he sat for a while with his back to the wall, hugging his knees. The one thing he did do was to put the pages of his mother’s Bible together. It was a tiny book, so small that she might have carried it in her purse, and with print so dense that it made his eyes hurt. He placed a small kiss on the Bible’s thumb-worn cover and imagined that in that breath he could smell his mother’s perfume; a sigh of lemons and summer. He tucked it back under his father’s pillow, then he closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything at all.

When he awoke, the hole in the roof showed Ben that the day had raced away from him and the night would soon be drawing in. He put on his topcoat over the burned remains of his jacket, and settled his billycock hat on his head. It would be bitterly cold again tonight. Sitting on the remains of his mattress, he ran through a long list of questions and came up with no answers at all.

Ben still wanted to visit Professor Carter; he was convinced that the man might be able to shed some sort of light on this present darkness. That would have to wait though, because above all else Ben needed to be here when his father and brother returned. He had a vision of bird-men swooping down on them out of the sky, slashing at his family with sharp beaks and hands like talons.

He shook his head vigorously. I’ve really got to stop reading such scary books, he thought.

It was not unusual for Jonas and Nathaniel Kingdom to return home late. They would sometimes stop for a drink together at the Jolly Tar, which wasn’t much to ask after a hard day’s work. It was very unusual, however, for them to be out this late.

Ben had listened to the chimes of distant St George in the East ringing out first ten, then eleven and now twelve o’clock.

All was not well.

The moon was out and watching the city like an owl preparing to swoop. Ben couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible had happened to his family. The wickedness that had come looking for him at Mr. Smutts’s was surely searching for them too. He stood in the window, watching and waiting. And shivering.

Then, from above his head, Ben heard the scrape of a boot against the tiles, and voices whispering, low and urgent.

Ben made a dash for the door. His own flurry of movement was matched by frantic activity overhead; there was no attempt to disguise the footsteps now.

Ben charged down the stairs, almost tripping over his own feet in the dark as he tried to put some distance between him and his pursuers. He plunged out of the front door and into the Lane. Looking back towards his small window, he could see two figures on his ruined roof, stark against the moonlit sky.

One of them was surprisingly small, Ben thought, probably not much older than him. It was the other one that scared him rigid. Ben recognized the silhouette and shuddered.

Even without seeing the tears on his cheeks or the sword beneath his coat, there was no mistaking the Weeping Man.

“Benjamin Kingdom!” called the Weeping Man, reaching out to him from the rooftop. “Come with me.”

Before waiting for a reply, the Weeping Man’s accomplice drew a crossbow from a shoulder holster and aimed it in Ben’s direction.

Panic grabbed him tight. He looked around, uncertain which way to turn, but knowing that each second he delayed might cost him dearly. Then another voice hissed to him and his eyes were drawn to a gloved hand emerging from the shadows of a side alley.

“Oi, ginger! This way, if you fancy staying alive.”

It was a pleasant voice, Ben thought. Certainly more reassuring than the one shouting at him from the roof.

The gloved hand spurred him on with a beckoning finger. Hugging the wall tight for cover, Ben ran over to find that the hand belonged to a girl with short, jagged hair and the most incredible eyes he had ever seen. It was the best surprise he had had in a long time.

She held out her hand to him and flashed her eyes.

Ben took her hand and ran.

It was all he seemed to do these days.