“As sure as I am that you will never tire of asking me that particular question,” said the man.
“‘Measure twice, cut once’ is a habit that has served me well enough since I was old enough to think,” she said flatly, “and it has kept this house safe for much longer than that.”
“Are you the Jew?” said Ketch. His voice squeaked a little as he spoke, so happy was he feeling, bathed in the warmth of the handsome young man’s open smile.
“I do not have that honour,” he replied.
The woman appeared at the man’s shoulder.
“Well?” she said.
The chill returned to Ketch’s heart as she spoke.
“He is as harmless as he appears to be, I assure you,” repeated the man.
She took off her glasses and folded them in one hand. Her eyes were grey-green and cold as a midwinter wave. Her words, when they came, were no warmer.
“I am Sara Falk. I am the Jew.”
As Ketch tried to realign the realities of his world, she put a hand on the man’s shoulder and pointed him at the long bundle on the floor.
“Now, Mr Sharp, there is a young woman in that sack. If you would be so kind.”
The man flickered to the bundle on the floor, again seeming to move between time instead of through it. The blade reappeared in his hand, flashed up and down the sacking, and then he was helping the girl to her feet and simultaneously sniffing at her head.
“Mr Sharp?” said Sara Falk.
“As I said, I smelled something out there,” he said. “I thought it was him. It isn’t, nor is it her.”
“Well, good,” she said, the twitch of a smile ghosting round the corner of her mouth. “Maybe it was your imagination.”
“It pleases you to make sport of me, my dear Miss Falk, but I venture to point out that since we are charged with anticipating the inconceivable, my ‘imagination’ is just as effective a defensive tool as your double-checking,” he replied, looking at the girl closely. “And since our numbers are so perilously dwindled these days, you will excuse me if I do duty as both belt and braces in these matters.”
The young woman was slender and trembling, in a grubby pinafore dress with no shoes and long reddish hair that hung down wavy and unwashed, obscuring a clear look at her face. At first glance, however, it was clear she was not a child, and he judged her age between sixteen and twenty years old. She flinched when he reached to push the hair back to get a better look at her and make a more accurate assessment, and he stopped and spoke quietly.
“No, no, my dear, just look at me. Look at me and you’ll see you have nothing to fear.”
After a moment her head came up and eyes big as saucers peered a question into his. As soon as they did the trembling calmed and she allowed him to push the hair back and reveal what had been done to her mouth to stop the screaming.
He exhaled through his teeth in an angry hiss and then gently turned her towards Sara Falk. She stared at the rectangle of black hessian that was pasted across the girl’s face from below her nose down to her chin.
“What is this?” said Mr Sharp, voice tight, still keeping the girl steady with his eyes.
“It’s just a pitch-plaster, some sacking and tar and pitch, like a sticky poultice, such as they use up the Bedlam Hospital to quiet the lunatics…” explained Ketch, his voice quavering lest Mr Sharp’s gaze when it turned to add him up again was full of something other than the golden warmth he was already missing. “Why, the girlie don’t mind a—”
“Look at her hands,” said Sara Falk.
The girl’s hands were tightly wrapped in strips of grubby material, like small cloth-bound boxing gloves.
“Nah, that she does herself, she done that and not me,” said Ketch hurriedly. “I takes ’em off cos she’s no bloody use with hands wrapped into stumps like that, but she wraps whatever she can find round ’em the moment you turn your back. Why even if there’s nothing in the rooms she’ll rip up her own clothes to do it. It’s all she does: touches things and then screams at what ain’t there and tangles rags round her hands like a winding cloth so she doesn’t have to touch anything at all…”
Sara Falk exchanged a look with Mr Sharp.
“Touches things? Then screams?” he said. “Old stones, walls … those kind of things?”
Ketch nodded enthusiastically. “Walls and houses and things in the street. Sets ’er off something ’orrible it does—”
“Enough,” said Mr Sharp, his eyes on Sara Falk, who was stroking the scared girl’s hair. Their eyes met once more.
“So she’s a Glint then,” he said quietly.
She nodded, for a moment unable to speak.
“She’s not right in the head is what she is,” said Ketch. “And—”
“Is she your daughter?” said Sara Falk, clearing something from her throat.
“No. Not blood kin. She’s … my ward, as it were. But I can’t afford to feed her no more, so it’s you or the poorhouse, and the poorhouse don’t pay, see…?”