The Angel of Highgate (6 page)

“Yeth,” Crynge lisped, his ulcerous tongue waggling around the rotted stumps of the few teeth left in his mouth. “Bloody toffs!”

“Wot they doin’ on our patch, Mister Fowler?” Snudge muttered dimly.

“Come to rub shoulders with the less fortunate,” Fowler said. “Have themselves a bloody good old larf at how us rats live in the gutter. That’s wot the likes of them is here for, Snudgy.” Fowler slipped a hand inside his outermost coat. His stubby fingers closed around a gnarled, wormwood handle. “I fink it’s time my friend Mister Pierce made some new acquaint-tin-sees,” Fowler said. “Come along, lads.”

The three men stepped out of the shadowed doorway and tromped toward the unsuspecting friends.

Just then the sound of horses’ hooves grew louder as a pair of brewer’s carts, laden with barrels, turned the corner and clopped toward Algernon and Thraxton.

The carts stopped the mobsmen in their tracks. Unknowingly shielded by the passing carts, the two gents stepped to a battered green door, which opened at the first knock and drew them inside. Just a few feet away, Fowler and his mobsmen could only watch as their prey made good an unwitting escape.

“The toffs have gone into the Chinee’s place,” Fowler rumbled. “Gone to chase the dragon.”

“That’s a bloomin’ shame,” said Snudge. “Coulda had ourselves a bit o’ fun wiv them toffs.”

“We could wait here for them,” Crynge suggested.

Fowler grunted, scratching a stubbly throat with his filthy nails. “Naw. We got a job. Our friend the doctor has ordered a fresh ’un and he’ll pay a lot more than wot them toffs has in their pockets.” Fowler shook himself like a crow fluffing its feathers, yanked his coat shut and cinched the rope belt tight. “We’ll need shovels and the ’orse and cart.” He nodded to his men. “Come on, lads. Plenty more mischief to be done tonight.”

With that, the three mobsmen crossed the street and stepped into a narrow alleyway where the shadows swallowed them up once more.

* * *

“Opium,” Thraxton blurted as he pulled the pipe from his lips and exhaled a stream of smoke, “is the truest of all vices.”

“Whysh that?” Algernon said, struggling not to slur his words and slurring all the more for it.

Each lay on a low palette covered by a thin mattress. The palettes were scarcely six inches apart, but in the gloom of the opium den it was impossible to make out each other’s features in the sputtering light of a solitary greasy candle.

“Because… because…” Thraxton paused. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember. What were you saying?”

“Me? I wasn’t saying anything. It was you.” They both fell silent. For a while the only sound was the faint crackle of opium burning in the bowls of their pipes.

“Oh God, Algy,” Thraxton moaned from inside a cloud of smoke. He narrowed his eyes and tried to locate his friend’s face in the gloom. “What am I doing with my life?”

As Algernon slipped beneath the surface of an opium dream the pipe fell from his lips and clattered to the floor. He slumped on the mattress and began to snore.

Thraxton put the pipe to his lips and drew deeply, filling his lungs, holding it in. In his mind’s eye he could see the smoke billowing inside, a violet nimbus roiling in a body as hollow and empty as a porcelain doll’s. He pulled the pipe from his lips and released the breath. The plume he exhaled drifted sluggishly across the narrow room and burst against the wall, where it coalesced into the shape of a wizened old Chinese man sitting in a broken and lopsided chair. The old man, who must have been in his nineties, had a long gray braid of hair draped over one shoulder and was dressed in the traditional silks of old China. His lips were clamped around the mouthpiece of an opium pipe, which he never removed as he puffed, but rather drew in air through the side of his mouth and jetted out smoke through both tiny nostrils. The old man’s glittering black eyes remained fixed upon Thraxton all along.

“I know who you are,” Thraxton said.

With those words the old man’s wrinkled face blurred, dissolved, and rose up to the ceiling as smoke, revealing the grinning skull beneath. Death’s bony fingers continued to hold the pipe to the lipless mouth. But as it drew in again, smoke leaked from the eye sockets and the fleshless nostrils.

“I see through your disguises,” Thraxton continued, “all of them. If you want me, take me now. But I tell you this. I shall not love again. So there is nothing you can take from me.”

Thraxton’s eyes began to droop.

“Nothing.”

The pipe dragged from his lips and began to burn a hole in the mattress.

“Nothing.”

A trap door opened beneath him and he fell for a thousand years.

The horse and cart clopped slowly up Swain’s Lane, the road that ascended in a steepening grade from Highgate Village to the cemetery. Seated three abreast on the seat were Mordecai Fowler, Walter Crynge, and Barnabus Snudge, who held the reins of a sagging-backed gray mare so mangy and skeletal that every rib showed clearly, and whose rheumy eyes seemed wistful for the glue pot. It was fully dark by now. At this hour no one would be traveling this road, for the only place it led to was the cemetery at the top of the hill. And although the dead of Highgate were not used to receiving visitors at such an hour, on this particular night they would have plenty of company.

Fowler’s eyes scanned the cemetery railings moving slowly past. They reached the point where the cemetery beyond the railings lay in an obsidian pool of shadow cast by a stand of mature oak trees. “This’ll do us,” Fowler spoke in a low mutter. “Roit here.” He nodded to Snudge, who gave a tug on the reins and the cart lurched to a stop. All three jumped down and walked around to the back of the cart where they unloaded a pick, a shovel, three Bullseye lanterns and armfuls of heavy sacking. Without a word and with practiced moves, they crept stealthily to the railings and threw several layers of sack cloth over the spikes. Next they tossed over the pick and shovels. Snudge heaved his shovel a little too far and the metal blade struck a gravestone with a ringing
clang
.

Fowler balled his fist and gave Snudge a solid punch in the ear.

“Stupid arse!” Fowler cursed in a low voice. “Want the whole bleedin’ world to know we’re here? You’ll have the sexton on us!”

“Ow!” Snudge whined, rubbing his throbbing ear. “That hurt, that did!”

“Shattup and give us a leg-up!”

Snudge bent down while Fowler stepped into his cupped hands and then clambered onto the wall. Uttering low grunts and breathy curses, his short legs kicking, Fowler struggled to heave his rotund bulk over the railings. He finally dropped heavily to the other side and stood there panting. “You two,” he hissed. “Get yer arses over here and hurry up about it!”

A few minutes later all three had cleared the railings and were creeping stealthily through the graves, the metal shields of their Bullseye lanterns narrowed to a slit to conceal their glow. Despite the darkness and the confusion of pathways, the three made their way unerringly through the cemetery until they reached a grave mounded with loose soil that had yet to be topped by a stone slab.

“Right,” said Fowler tossing the spade to Snudge. “You start diggin’ while I keeps an eye out for the sexton.”

Snudge had to quickly drop the pick he was carrying to catch the shovel Fowler tossed to him. In the dark he missed the catch and the spade handle whacked him in the nose, springing tears to his eyes.

“Mister Crynge,” Fowler said. “You hold the lantern while Snudgy digs, but keep the light low. The sexton’s sure to be prowlin’ around ’ere somewhere.”

“Yeath, Mither Fowler!” lisped Crynge.

Snudge drove the spade into the grave. The soil was loose and easy to dig. He tossed a heaped spadeful to one side, nervously looking about. Snudge had always been afraid of the dark. Of churchyards and creepy places. Cemeteries, especially at night, held a unique terror for him.

“I doesn’t much like this sort o’ work, Mister Fowler,” Snudge said. “It don’t half give me the willies.”

“I’ll give ya somethin’ worse than the willies if you don’t hurry up with that diggin’! The doctor pays good money for a nice fresh corpse. It might just as well be yours.”

Snudge grudgingly resumed his spadework. As he tossed another shovelful of dirt onto the pile he looked up and saw the stone angel on the monument next to the grave he was digging in. The angel’s eyes were cast downwards. She seemed to be looking straight at him. Snudge had only a confused, childlike knowledge of religion, but he knew that what he was doing was a sin, and that God was watching him. “I’m going to hell,” Snudge muttered. “And I’m digging my own way there.”

* * *

“You go now!”

Rough hands shook him. Thraxton’s eyes flickered open. A young Chinese face hovered over him.

“You go now!” the young Chinese man was saying.

Many hands seized Thraxton and dragged him to his feet; someone rammed his top hat upon his head and thrust the walking stick into his hand. Then he was hustled through the warren of tiny rooms and cubicles that made up the opium den. Along the way he passed by other smokers sprawled on low couches, each one drowning in an opiate fog. A door opened upon the night and Thraxton was propelled through it.

Sudden darkness. Cold air washed over him. He was out on the street. A second later the door opened again as Algernon stumbled through it and bowled into him. Thraxton caught his friend before he could fall.

The two looked around, dazed and disoriented. It was late afternoon when they entered the opium den. Now it was dark. At some point rain had fallen. The cobblestones gleamed wet under the gas light.

“I could have asked to have been prized from the arms of Morpheus a bit more gently,” Thraxton remarked.

“Where are we?”

“I was rather hoping you’d remember.”

Both men looked up at the clop-clop of approaching hooves. Miraculously, it was a hackney, moving fast toward them.

“I say,” said Algernon. “There’s a bit of luck.” He stepped forward and waved at the driver. They were in a part of town avoided by most cabmen, but it was late and this one was taking an unusual shortcut, eager to be home and in the warmth of his bed. He saw the two friends and veered to go around them, unwilling to stop. However, Thraxton stepped into the middle of the narrow road, blocking the way and daring the cabbie to run over him, who barely managed to pull up the horse in time.

“You must be mad,” the exasperated cabbie breathed. “I’d like to run you over.”

“Your last fare of the night, my good man,” Thraxton shouted up to the driver. “Belgravia, my man, but take the long way round, via Highgate Cemetery.”

“Highgate? At this hour?” repeated the nonplussed driver. “But that’s miles outta me way, guvnor!”

“I’ll make it worth your loss of sleep.” Thraxton fished a sovereign from his pocket and tossed it up. “There’s another for you when we get home.”

“Right! Right you are, sir!” said the driver, who quickly pocketed the coin. The two companions had barely clambered aboard when he cracked his whip over the horse’s head and the hackney lurched away.

* * *

The road from Highgate Village wound in a ponderous uphill climb to where the cemetery had been built. By the time the Hackney cab reached the top, the horse was steaming with sweat, the bit between its teeth dripping white foam.

In the cab, the friends sprawled in their seats, heads lolling. Algernon was out to the world, mouth open and snoring. Thraxton rested his head on the window frame and gazed out as the cab jogged along, his eyes opening and closing as he fought sleep. From this elevation it was possible to see over the cemetery’s low wall with its spiked railings. Between the twisted silhouettes of tree limbs, the tops of gravestones showed sepulchral white in a moon that darted through ghostly gray clouds.

Suddenly, Thraxton stiffened, his eyes opening wide as he was jolted wide awake by something he saw. He struggled to sit upright in his seat and began furiously banging on the ceiling with his walking stick. “Driver! Stop! Stop, I say!”

The cab jerked to a halt, shaking Algernon awake. “What? Are we home?” he asked, dopily.

“Did you see it?” Thraxton said.

“See it? See what?”

“A wraith! A spirit. Moving through the gravestones.”

Algernon groaned. An incipient migraine throbbed behind his eyes and he massaged both temples with his fingertips. “Geoffrey, it’s the opium. You’re still dreaming, man.”

Thraxton scanned the cemetery, peering intently. “No, I saw it. A dark wraith. At first I thought it was a shadow. But then it broke free of the earth and floated over the ground without touching.” He fixed his friend with a manic gaze. “It was a ghost, Algy. A spirit!”

Without another word, Thraxton flung open the door and jumped down. The astonished driver watched open-mouthed as one of his passengers sprinted across the road, coat tails flapping, leaped up onto the cemetery wall, and vaulted athletically over the railings in a single bound.

Algernon stumbled out of the cab a moment later. “Geoffrey!” he shouted after. “What the devil!” But Thraxton had vanished. Algernon started after him, but paused a moment to yell back to the driver. “Wait here!”