‘Are you coming?’ Kate demanded from the doorway, her thick body silhouetted by the lamplight within.
Helen nodded. There could be no turning back. She rolled her shoulders within her jacket, easing the cling of her damp shirt. Kate had set a fast pace across the Steine and into the Lanes, but the sweat was not from exertion. Helen could feel the fear oozing from her skin, gathering in the small of her back and behind her knees.
They passed quickly to the back of the sparsely populated coffee room and through the red curtain. Kate waved back the new bruiser standing on the other side with a curt, ‘It’s me, Tom.’
‘Your man Henry?’ Helen ventured as they made their way along the dingy corridor that smelled this time of cheap lavender perfume and beef tallow.
‘Got no use for a man with a busted hand,’ Kate said.
Helen felt a moment of guilt, then reminded herself that the man was a thug.
Their entrance into the parlour halted the low conversation of the three girls seated around the card table. Helen remembered one of them from her last visit: Jessie the pianoforte player. No sign of Binny. She must be still at the windows.
Jessie and the other two girls watched as Helen placed her hat on the bureau and followed Kate through the room, their silent stares crawling across her back.
The sense of being watched intensified as Kate led the way to the staircase. Helen looked over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of a pinched white face peering around the edge of the bedchamber doorway at the end of the corridor. Sprat.
The girl shook her head, filthy topknot slipping to one side, her eyes squinting with the urgency of her message. Don’t go down there.
‘Sprat, clean that room,’ Kate ordered.
The girl drew back, disappearing from view; no doubt thinking of what Lowry had done to her friend.
Helen shifted her jaw, the click of bone in its socket loud in her ear. The image of Lizzie curled up on that bed, dying, preyed upon her mind too. Once Lowry was her Terrene, she would always have to be on guard. And if she should be incapacitated, vulnerable … She gripped the wooden banister, anchoring herself in the here and now. No use conjuring terrors when she was about to face one.
They descended the wooden steps into the dim cellar. Helen shivered as the cooler air chilled the sweat on her skin. She slid her finger between the cravat and her throat, easing the damp choke of the fine muslin.
‘He’s set up all the doings in the old coal room,’ Kate whispered, ushering her into the stone corridor. ‘He thought it would be funny.’
Helen’s shoulders lifted. A room where he had tortured and killed a girl; very funny, she thought savagely.
Kate regarded her owlishly in the gloom. ‘Remember, he likes to get in your head,’ she tapped her temple, ‘likes to find the weakness.’ She dropped her voice to a bare breath. ‘Don’t let him find it.’
Kate, it seemed, was trying to protect her son’s chance at sanity. Not exactly an ally, but not totally loyal to her brother either.
Helen focused past her own hard heartbeat and Kate’s phlegmy breath. Yes, Lowry was here already, his respiration slow and steady. The breathing of a confident man.
At the end of the corridor, a narrow rectangle of light cut across the stone floor from the coal room. The bright glow cast a halo of light that gave shape to the stack of kegs ahead and the dark doorways of the molly rooms.
‘He’s told me not to let anyone else down here,’ Kate said, leading the way past the wall of barrels. She stopped a few feet from the sharp edge of light. ‘Bartholomew, she’s here.’
‘Well, send her in then.’
The words were nonchalant, but Helen heard the note of anticipation like a coiled snake in his voice. His breathing placed him in the centre of the room, away from the doorway.
Kate waved her forward, her hand lifting to tap her temple — a final warning — before she turned to retrace their steps.
Helen ground her palms together. The door had not been replaced; the stone jamb was pocked with ragged holes where Carlston had ripped out the former hinges. No locked door then. Did he have the journal with him?
‘If you are wondering, the journal is not here,’ he said lazily. He likes to get in your head. ‘Once the ritual is done, I’ll tell you where it is.’
She stretched out her fingers, trying to loosen the tight fear in her body. The healing scabs on her knuckles pulled under the strain. A tiny pain but it focused her mind. She stepped into the coal room.
Candles; a fortune of them arranged around the room in tin holders and glass lamps and one large iron candelabrum set upon the table in the centre of the room. No wonder the light was so bright. Their flames brought an airless waxy heat into the room that seemed to stick to Helen’s skin.
Lowry stood before the table, one hand leaned back upon it, head tilted in sly regard, lank black hair tied back. His florid complexion showed signs of strain: pale blue pouches beneath the narrow eyes, lines cut deeper between nose and mouth, and a bristle of beard across his cleft chin. The smell of him — old sweat and a fusty maleness that she now understood — brought a gagging swallow into her throat.
The bed had been pushed up against the wall. Helen angled her face from it and the memory curled upon its bare straw mattress.
‘I was surprised that you and Carlston tried for the journal the other night,’ he said. ‘You’re not as honourable as I thought.’ He made it sound like a compliment. ‘Carlston’s well on his way to bedlam, ain’t he?’
Carlston; his name pushed Helen further into the room. ‘Let us get this done,’ she said.
Lowry straightened, green eyes narrowing even further into wariness. For a second it startled her; but of course, she was as strong and fast as him. Probably more so.
‘Didn’t think you’d be so eager.’ He waved her over to the table. He was an inch or so shorter than her, but twice as broad with a bull neck and shoulders. The weight behind one of his fists would be devastatingly heavy. ‘Do you know the words to be said?’
‘Yes.’
She studied the ghastly implements. One blue ceramic bowl full of thick red liquid already beginning to congeal: goat’s blood. One empty blue porcelain bowl: to collect their own blood from the crosses cut into their flesh. Sweet heaven, he would be cutting into her hand. She curled her fingers over her palms, her eyes fixed upon the dagger. So sharp. She forced her eyes to move to the other items. Water in a long, thin glass vial, presumably sanctified; long pieces of cloth; a thin wooden yew switch; and a pitcher of milk with a yellow skin across the top, exuding a faint sourness.
Lowry hooked a finger around the lip of the empty bowl and dragged it closer to the edge of the table. Helen flinched at the scrape of porcelain against wood, the reflex bringing a small smile to his lips.
‘For our blood,’ he said.
‘I know.’