City of Darkness

Chapter FORTY-SEVEN

9: 25 PM





Tom’s frantic pounding brought Gage to the door with Geraldine right behind him. They watched in shock as the girls they assumed were dining out were carried in by John one at a time. Geraldine helped Emma get changed into dry bedclothes while John, with the unsteady assistance of Gage, rinsed the blood from Leanna’s scalp and stitched up her cut. The bruising around her neck would take longer to heal. Then he went downstairs to see to Tom, whom he suspected was the most badly injured of all.

The boy had collapsed on the couch. It was almost impossible for him to believe that this just this morning he had awakened naked on the floor with a hangover and that so many strange things could have happened in the course of a single day. He had broken into a house, stolen a knife, sprained his ankle, walked through London in a bloody shirt, gone on a bender, ridden in an official Scotland Yard carriage, dislocated his shoulder, witnessed his first birth, and nearly lost his sister to Jack the Ripper. Now that he was safely back within the confines of his aunt’s home the adrenaline had abruptly left his body and he could not seem to stop trembling. John, who was nearly as exhausted as Tom, wrapped his ankle and popped the boy’s shoulder back into its socket. The pain was great enough to make him cry out and afterwards the two men sat on the couch, side by side, staring into the fire.

“Did you talk to them?” Tom asked.

“Offered them something to help them sleep,” John said. “But they both said no.”

He does like it when women go to sleep, Tom thought. He is indeed quick to offer the needle. But he had seen John’s face as he eased the infant from her mother’s body, the deep and unfeigned relief when he heard her first cry, and that had told Tom everything he needed to know about John’s character. When the women had babbled in the carriage, all that they could speak off was Trevor. How he had appeared like some sort of vengeful god, Leanna said, swooping down unexpectedly through the air, but Emma thought his arrival was more like a warrior on horseback or perhaps, no, perhaps more like a locomotive, swift and powerful. He had been heroic, certainly, on that they could agree. Leanna kept repeating “He saved our lives” in a mechanical fashion while Emma had been so distracted that she’d lain beneath John’s cloak and allowed him to cut her wet clothes completely off her body.

John had worked steadily, moving back and forth between the two girls, offering what medical care he could in the darkness of the coach, and he had not spoken during the entire ride. Tom considered the man’s profile for a moment and then looked back into the fire. It was too early to predict how things would play out.

Geraldine came down the steps reporting that both the girls were asleep. She dropped into the chair opposite the couch and said “John, I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

John smiled wanly. “I hope you never have to find out.”

“Please stay the night.” Geraldine said. “I wish I could offer you the guest room, but - I forgot to tell you Tom, in the thrash of getting the girls upstairs, but your brother is here. He just showed up unexpectedly saying he had news.”

Tom’s heart sank. “Why did you let him in?”

Geraldine looked surprised. “He’s my nephew, of course.”

“But Cecil won’t rest until he –“

“No, not Cecil. Of course not. Cecil’s dreadful. It’s William.”

A little better, but still confusing. “What the devil is William doing in London?”

Geraldine shrugged. “He said he was exhausted and would be turning in early. Should I wake him?”

“Yes,” Tom said. “And bring Gage in too. I only want to tell this story once.”





10:10 PM





They all poured brandies and settled in. When Tom described the contents of the letter that had been sent to Emma, Geraldine closed her eyes and wept softly. William had sat through the tale with both feet on the floor and both hands at his side, Gage paced, and when Tom got to the part about stealing the bloody shirt from John’s hassock they all actually laughed a little.

“At the time I didn’t know how much blood there was in childbirth,” Tom said. “Now I do.”

But as he had tried to explain how they’d all wound up at the waterfront, the story grew so complicated that Tom hobbled over to fetch the pieces of the chest set so that he might demonstrate the sequence on the tabletop. He used the queens for Emma and Leanna, the bishop for John, the knight for Trevor, a rook for Davy and a pawn for himself. He would never be able to explain why the Ripper was represented by the king, but they all bent forward in concentration as he went through his tableau. When he finished with the scene of the bobbies fishing the big brute out of the water, he flicked the king to its side and said “Checkmate.”

Geraldine leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. “When I picture those poor girls walking the streets of Whitechapel….”

Tom looked at his older brother. “You must think you’ve come into absolute insanity. Aunt Geraldine said you had news?”

“Oh that,” said William. “It hardly matches your story for drama, in fact it doesn’t seem worth mentioning in the light of all this.” He looked at John. “My sister will fully recover, won’t she?”

“Up and about in a day or two,” John said.

Something in him has shifted, Tom thought. The anger has gone. He hasn’t come to London to rant and rave, to fight the will, or to try and drag Leanna back to Rosemoral. He’s thinking of something other than himself now.

“Tell us, William, really,” Tom said. “Why are you here?”

William shifted his large frame uncomfortably in the chair. “Well, it’s the damnest thing,” he said. “But Cecil has disappeared.”