Kitty Peck and the Child of Ill-Fortune (18 page)

He stroked the golden bell of the cornet. I pulled the letter over and smoothed it out on the table. The gold at the edges of the paper glinted in the firelight. I wasn’t sure what to say.

‘Have . . . have you ever wanted to go home again, Peter?’

He shook his head. ‘London is my home. I fit, there are people like me here – and anyway in Russia I am still considered to be a traitor. I ran away from the Czar’s army, remember? Even here, sometimes I wonder if I am truly safe. The Romanovs are a powerful family.’

I ran my fingertips over the double-headed bird on the page. No wonder he hated them.

‘Now, I have a question for you, Kitty.’

I looked across at Peter. He was sitting in Zhena’s chair, his bushy black eyebrows tangled together above troubled eyes.

‘In Russia it would be a crime for anyone except a member of the Imperial Family to possess paper embossed with such a crest. Why would someone send you a letter from the desk of a Romanov with that word written on it?’

I couldn’t answer him.

At least it had stopped raining – or I thought it had. It was difficult to tell in the narrow confines of Pearmans Yard. I looked up at the crack of dirty yellow overhead and wondered if the sun ever shone down here. Nanny Peck would have called it a ‘cat’s piss sky’ – the sort that threatens to scratch up a storm.

‘I need a walk to clear my head, Lucca.’

He nodded. ‘The tea was strong.’

‘And not just the bleedin’ tea. What does it all mean – ‘
blood
’, that Russian crest, Romanov? Why would the Monseigneur send it to Lady Ginger? And why would she say it was a warning? Tell you something for nothing, it’s times like this I wish Swami Jonah was the real thing instead of a scouser with a ringer in one of the boxes. I don’t feel any clearer on this now than I did before.’

Lucca buried his chin in his collar and flattened up against the wall as a tiny, skull-faced woman with a half-naked baby in her arms splashed past. Her soiled skirt was sodden with rainwater up to the knees. I watched her disappear into an open entrance a dozen yards down.

I shook my head. How did a family keep the meat on their bones here? Robbie might be separated from his father – and his mother, whoever she was – but at least he was warm and fed. And loved.

I stepped down into the alley. ‘I promised Peggy I’d be back before six. She’s been at The Palace all day again with Robbie and I don’t want to take another liberty with her time. We better get moving. Perhaps we should take a cab after all?’

Lucca nodded. ‘And I think it will rain again.’ He took my arm and we started back to the courtyard with all the passages running off. One thing I was sure of at least: the single thread running through all of this linking everything up was Russian. Once we were in that cab together I was going to have to tell Lucca about Misha Raskalov.

‘
Che idiota!
’ Lucca snapped his fingers and stopped. ‘The umbrella! I left it in Peter’s room.’

I wiped a splot from my nose and saw the scummy surface on the puddles around the yard begin to dance. ‘We’ll go back then. But I’ll wait at the bottom for you. I’m not climbing all those stairs again – and I certainly don’t want another mug of that tea.’

I stood on the step just inside the entrance to Peter’s building and watched the brown water gushing past down the narrow alley. It frothed and whirled around the mouth of an open drain just a few foot away, sucking everything – sticks, leaves, little bones and clotted lumps of pallid gristle – down into the sewers under the City. From there I guessed it spat out into the Thames and then on to the sea.

I felt for Joey’s ring and Christopher at my neck. I’d hung them on another, thicker chain now. I rubbed the medal, wondering about the letters I’d sent to Paris. Had Joey got them yet? David too? Perhaps David was bobbing about on the sea right now coming over to London to fetch his boy away?

I tucked the chain back into the ruffles of my collar. My brother attracted bad luck like a magnet.

Bartholomew waits
.

What did that mean? What else had he done in the past to make him an exile? And what had he got me into now? The more I learned about Joseph Peck the less I knew him. I watched a scrap of soiled rag wind itself around the grille of the drain, catching more filth in its folds.

At the sound of Lucca’s footsteps on the stairs I turned from the alley.

‘
Where is he?
’
The soft familiar voice was in my ear and the smell of leather and spice filled my nose. A hand crept over my shoulder.

But I was ready this time. I grabbed the fingers, yanked them up to my mouth and bit down hard. My teeth cut through the leather to the skin beneath. I was gratified to hear a yelp. I brought my left arm up and swung the point of my elbow back, catching something soft with a vicious blow.

I didn’t turn. Instead I jumped up to catch a metal bar that ran across the top of the low doorway. My bag caught in the crook of my elbow as I lunged forward. Adjusting my weight, I arched my back, bent my legs, pointed my feet and kicked out behind as hard and fast as I could as I swung back. My boots connected with a solid mass. I heard a grunt of pain and a clatter as someone fell back onto the cobbles.

Lucca appeared at the foot of the staircase as I swung forward again and dropped to the stone floor. I whipped round to see a hooded man crouched in the alley. I’d knocked him against the wall opposite. He was winded, but he jerked the hood forward to cover his face, pulled himself together and reached behind to produce a black walking cane tipped with a heavy silver hawk head from the folds of his cloak. The cruel, curved beak was sharpened to a point. The man started to haul himself up against the wet black bricks.

He was tall. Under the black material his shoulders were nearly as broad as Fitzy’s.

‘Oh bravo, Miss Peck!’ The harsh voice was almost a whisper. ‘Now let me show you what I can do.’

‘
Non la penso così!
’

Lucca stepped swift from behind and poked the metal tip of the umbrella into the man’s face. There was another howl of pain. At the same moment he released the catch so the stiff black canopy opened with a flourish. It wedged itself across the passage cutting the man from view.

‘Run, Fannella!’ Lucca grabbed my hand and we leapt from the entrance of Old Peter’s building and splashed along Pearmans Yard, moving in the opposite direction from the clock-dial courtyard.

I could hear scraping behind as the man pushed the umbrella aside and then the pounding of feet as he followed. The passage veered left. As we rounded the corner Lucca dropped my hand so we could keep pace. The space between the buildings narrowed again and the bricks closed around us. The cabman was right, this was a maze.

I sprinted forward, hitching up my skirts to free my boots. Lucca was just behind. My bonnet skewed to one side, and the ribbons came loose. I felt it bump down onto my back but I didn’t catch at it. I couldn’t keep hold of the bag and my skirt and deal with the hat. After a moment it fell off.

‘K . . . keep going.’ Lucca’s voice was hoarse. ‘I heard him slip in the water back there, but he’s coming again.’

I didn’t even turn to see where the bonnet had gone. Ahead, the passage branched into two. The dark alleyways topped by a pair of brick arches looked like unblinking eyes.

‘Wh . . . which way now?’ Lucca didn’t answer so I jagged right. It was black along there. I could hardly see a hand in front of my face. The alley was low, the arched ceiling pressing just above my head. I supposed there was houses built above us – I could sense the weight of them. Since that time under the warehouse, I hadn’t much liked being underground. It smacked of being buried alive.

I tightened my grip on the bag, the handle slippery with the wet, and ran on. After twenty yards or so, the alley opened out overhead. Thin yellow-grey light showed the way again. That’s to say it would have done, if I hadn’t led us into a dead end.

A great black wall reared up in front. I span round, rain streaming down my face and over my shoulders. Strands of hair were caught across my mouth and nose. We were standing in a rectangular space the size of the trap under the stage of The Comet, only no one was going to pull a lever to spring us out in a shower of sparks. We were like cornered rats.

I tried to catch my breath. My chest felt as if it was going to burst open.

The sound of footsteps echoed from the alleyway. Lucca turned.

‘This way!’ I caught his arm and dragged him into one of the two entrances set either side of the tiny yard. Inside it was like Old Peter’s building. A couple of doors at ground level and a narrow staircase rising up at the back.

‘We’ll . . . we’ll go up!’ I ran across to the steps and started to climb. Lucca followed.

The steep stairs twisted back on themselves at the first landing and then turned again at the next so they ran up through the centre of the building, taking as little space as possible from the rooms on each floor. The doors were shut, some of them barred over. If anyone heard us clattering up them stairs they didn’t think to poke their noses out to take a look.

‘Wh . . . where are we going, Fannella?’ Lucca’s voice was frayed. He stopped for moment, gasping for air, and kicked out at a pile of empty wooden crates stacked against the wall of the fourth landing. I glanced back to see them tumble down the stairs creating an obstacle of sorts.

‘I d . . . don’t know. There was . . . wasn’t nowhere else to go, was there?’ I rounded the fifth flight and came to a boxy landing, the corners crusted with cobwebs and pigeon shit. We had reached the top. Patches of sky showed through ragged holes in a low ceiling that slanted down on three sides. There was a thumping noise on the stairs below, but from the muffled sound I couldn’t make out how far down he was.

A pigeon muttered and strutted across the boards between us as I scanned the doors off the landing. Two were criss-crossed with wooden planks. They’d been nailed across by the landlord, I guessed, to keep out those who couldn’t pay for such luxury. The third door was shut. Just above it a small window was set into the angled roof about six foot up. Most of the glass was missing.

‘Look!’ Lucca nodded at a spindly metal ladder propped in a corner. He pointed up at the window. ‘It’s the only way from here?’

Without bothering to answer I grabbed the ladder and set it against the wall under the window. I climbed up and pressed my hand against one of the remaining glass panes. The catch was broken like everything else here. It swung open easily. I pushed my bag out onto the flat bit of roof visible in front of me and scrambled through after it.

‘Come on then. Quick as you like.’ I knelt beside the window as Lucca clambered up.

‘P . . . pull up the ladder too. Then he can’t . . .’

The words died on my lips as the head of a cloaked figure appeared on the shadowed stairs below. I heard the scrape of his cane against the wall. Lucca leaned down and yanked hard on the ladder, dragging it up, hand over hand, until it was out through the broken window. We rested it against the sooty parapet.

‘What now?’

I gulped down a lungful and patted the ladder. ‘Well, he can’t follow us up here, can he?’

Lucca shook his head doubtfully and leaned back against the sloping roof. I could hear the rattle in his chest. ‘But wh . . . where are we to go?’

There was a huge thud from below and the sound of splintering wood. I sprang up and stared about. The flat part of the roof was about nine foot square. Over to the left it slanted sharply upward. A cluster of blackened chimney pots sprouted from a stack in the centre of the lead-tiled slope. I wiped the rain from my eyes and peered over the parapet on the right. A chasm yawned down to another alley running far below. And beyond that I could see a warren of passages running off in all directions separating the scores of buildings clustered around Pearmans Yard.

I straightened up. Across the alley, around six foot distant by my reckoning, there was another roof. Pointed it was, not flat like this one, but hemmed round again with a smoke-smudged parapet. I knotted my hair back. It had come loose with the bonnet and was flying all round my face up here. The sound of something heavy being dragged across wooden boards came from below.

‘I think he’s found a way to reach us.’ Lucca was peering down through the broken window. ‘That noise just now? He . . . he broke into the room across the landing and now he’s piling things up against the wall.’ He looked up at me, his good eye wide with fear.

‘I . . . I don’t think I could protect you from him again. He’s . . .’

‘Built like a brick shit house?’

Lucca nodded. ‘I wouldn’t put it qu . . . quite like that, but on this occasion you are right. And the cane?’

‘You saw the hawk head?’

‘
Sì
. It is a vicious weapon.’

There was another grating sound from below. I stared at the roof of the building opposite. If I jumped I could clear the gap, but I’d need to take a run at it to be sure and I couldn’t do that on account of the parapet. I scanned the bare roof for an alternative. There was nothing here except jittering puddles, a couple of dead birds, me, Lucca and the ladder.

The ladder!

I dragged it to the edge of the parapet, swinging it out so that it rested on the ledge of the building opposite. It reached easily.

‘You got a head for heights, Lucca?’

He left the window and came to stand next to me. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I, Fannella?’

I knelt to pull off my boots, not bothering with the laces, and I hurled them over to the roof across the alley. They rattled across the tiles and came to a rest behind a chimney stack. I threw the bag over after them.

‘Shall I go first?’

Lucca nodded and turned at an ominous thump from behind.

As I saw it there was two ways of tackling the ladder. I could swing from bar to bar underneath and roll myself up onto the ledge, using the strength of my arms and the curl of my stomach – just as Madame Celeste had taught me on the trapeze in her attic all them months ago – or I could go across on the top.

I took a breath. ‘Don’t even think about what you’re doing. Choose one rung to step on – you won’t need more to get across, trust me – fix where it is in your mind and go. Keep your eyes on the stack straight ahead and don’t look down.’

I ripped off my stockings and without another word I took off. My bare foot made contact with a metal rung halfway along the ladder and then I sprang for the roof on the far side, throwing my weight forward to give me some heft. I landed safely in the gulley just beyond the ledge.

I turned back. ‘Now you.’

Lucca just stood there. He was staring down into the alleyway some fifty foot below.

I swiped the rain off my cheeks. ‘Take off your shoes and throw them over. It will be easier that way.’ He shook his head slowly, but didn’t make a sound. The window behind him crashed open and a dark hunched shape appeared. I saw something silver gleam in the thin light.

Lucca jerked his head up.

‘You have to come
now
!’ I stood and held my arms forward. God knows I wouldn’t have been able to catch him if he fell, but it was something.