Jackdaw (The World of A Charm of Magpies)

“Naturally you will.” Ben rested his head against the brickwork. The night chill was coming on, biting through his thin coat. “All right. You’ll be at Queen Mary’s Gardens, at four. I…I’ll think about it.”


Jonah nodded. “I’ll get you down now, if you like. The police will be long gone.” He reached out a hand, standing steady on the roof, and Ben took it, rising far more cautiously. Jonah was washed clean by moonlight, the blood and bruising Ben had inflicted mere shadows under his piebald hair, and Ben wanted for a stupid, painful instant to kiss the lines of his throat and the generous curve of his mouth, to see him smile again.

Of course Jonah was not callous or uncaring. He never had been. Ben had made him into a monster in his mind, because it had kept him sane to do so, but this was the reality: a deeply flawed man, a thief, a coward who ran away. He had saved Ben this evening because he could, but he had left him when he could not, and Ben knew, with a sullen weight on his heart, that the explanation Jonah promised would be no more than that bare, sad truth of self-preservation at all costs, dressed in fine words. A jackdaw in peacock’s feathers.

Perhaps Ben could stop hating him, though. That would be something, a small victory against the loneliness, if he could not be full of hate.

“Nobody about.” Jonah was peering over the rooftop. “Come on, I’ll take you back to earth.”

Ben barely slept that night. He probably wouldn’t have slept anyway, but it didn’t help that, every time he closed his eyes, he saw the first lurching step into empty air. The fact that he’d had his eyes shut was neither here nor there: his imagination painted a yawning chasm into which he tumbled, as Jonah laughed from the house opposite.

He couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t decide what to do.

He could go to the justiciary. Bring them along to Regent’s Park. Perhaps Jonah would escape, but at least he would have done his duty.

He could walk away. Leave London, go home—no, there was no home. Go somewhere. Take a new name, start a new life, leave all this behind. Forget about vengeance, forget about betrayal, remember only never to trust or to leave himself open to another person ever again. That wasn’t Ben’s way, but perhaps that had been his mistake.

Or he could step over the parapet of the nearest bridge, over the turbid waters of the Thames, and jump. That had tugged at him for long months, the urge for this to be over because there was nothing to carry on for.

(Jonah, under him, grinding back against his thrusts. Jonah holding out his hand as Ben ran impossibly towards him.)

Ben lay awake for hours, thinking of all the options, all the different paths to an empty future. When he slept at last, it was to be awakened far too soon by the stir around him, as the other men in the cheap, stinking dosshouse rose off their pallets, preparing for another day of survival. He washed under the cold pump water, ignoring the ridicule of a pair of urchins, who felt that cleanliness came a very poor second to warmth. As he shivered and dried himself with his grubby towel, he could see their point.

He went to look for employment that day, joining the loose crowds of men who offered themselves for manual labour. He was becoming too shabby for anything except labouring work, but London was full of jobless men, scrabbling for piecework, anything to keep the wolf away, and he was one among hungry thousands.

There was nothing. He put his name down with a few hard-eyed men who claimed they could find him work, for a share of the few pence it might bring in, and lunched on a hot, greasy slab of suet pudding that filled his stomach, much as concrete might. At four o’clock he was sitting on a bench in Queen Mary’s Gardens, looking at the blossom and the crocuses bursting through bare, dry earth.

“Ben.” There was hesitancy in Jonah’s voice, from behind the bench, and pleasure, and Ben had to take a deep breath to stay still and controlled.

“I’m here. What do you want to talk about?”

“Shall we walk?”

Ben stood, turning, and Jonah’s black brows snapped together. “Are you all right? You look—”

“Tired. I’m tired.”

Tired, and hungry, and shabby, and Jonah in clean linens with a smart blue waistcoat setting off his eyes, even though his face was still marked by Ben’s blows. Resentment surged. Ben turned on his heel and set off, not waiting. Jonah caught up after a couple of strides. He didn’t speak, simply pacing Ben.

Ben wanted to ask, didn’t want to. He said, instead, “Tell me about the murders.”

“Murders?”

“Dead policemen. You must remember.”

“Well, yes, but that wasn’t me.” Jonah sounded mildly indignant.

“It was your gang. That’s what the justiciars said. Your criminal associates—”

“Hold your horses. I don’t know what they told you, but I’ve never had a gang.”