The Devil's Mask (15 page)

The man comes for Oni.

It is night. She is asleep, wrapped in the frayed blanket, her head cushioned by her forearms. Then she is awake and aware that he is in the underground room, lamp held high, watching her.

The man holds a golden hoop. There are keys on the end of it. He angles them towards the lamp and chooses one, then slips it into the padlock. The fetter comes undone. He lifts it off her leg gently, like a doctor taking off a bandage. But the sensation has gone from that part of her leg. She cannot feel his solicitous touch. When the man offers her his hand it is as if she has just fallen, and he has stopped to help her up.

Somewhere upstairs, the sound again. It is a deaf bird's song.

She stands. She is as tall as he is. She cannot look at him directly. He starts to whisper, just as he whispered to Abeni, fake reassurances. Then he takes a bag from inside his coat and fumbles it open and puts it over her head. She does not move. She makes no noise. The sack smells strange. Something spiced, crushed bark, embers. Its foreignness makes no difference.

She lets the man lead her from the room. There is no point in resisting him. Where would she run to? She knows she cannot escape. Pretending otherwise is as pointless as imagining herself capable of flight, or breathing underwater, a bird or fish.

Oni sees: flowing water, darkening sand. Her feet advancing,
one after the other, into the coolness. The water inching up, a gentle tugging circle around each ankle, calf, knee. The ribbed floor of the river puffing and shifting between her toes, the river reaching her backside, her hips, her waist. She remembers it: the weight of herself giving in. Up it rose, covering her chest, her shoulders, her chin.

But then she feels a hand on her arm. He is leading her. The ground turns cold and then wet, pushing up between her toes. Her mouth opens in surprise and the bag is rough against her lips. The man grips her arm tighter, bringing her to a halt. Then he's steering her up into a cart, a closed-in cart. It rocks back and sideways and they are moving. She can hear the animal breathing, its feet striking the ground, and the wind, and the man whispering, but now there's something different in his voice. He is whispering to steady himself, she realises. She moves her head within the sack and it works. The scratching blocks his noise out.

Everything comes to a stop. She is steered out, steps down, and is led forward inside somewhere new and up, up wooden stairs, which go on and on, and it's not just the not knowing caused by the sack, it's the longest set of stairs she's ever trodden. Eventually they stop. There's wind over silence. Oni thinks: is this it? Will it happen here?

Or will there be another man, like the last time, ready to take her somewhere else?

No.

When the sack comes off it is just her and him in a room leaping with shadows as he sets his lamp on the wooden ground. He stands up. She sees it, then, sees his intentions written upon his face, and for a second everything switches place. He is
insignificant in his obviousness, and she looms above him. Then, in a blink, she is powerless again. He pulls the blanket from her shoulders; it pools around her dirty feet.

He gestures at her. Take your clothes off. She cannot. He reaches inside his coat again and brings out a knife. He points at her rags with a casual flicking motion of the knife's tip, then drops it to his side. Her shadow upon the wall leers at her as she complies.

He takes hold of her, but she's in the water again, weightless, stepping deeper. She sends ripples across the reflected sky as he unbuckles his belt but she can't see or feel him through the blessed, benumbing cold. Her eyes are shut tight against it. He's moving and breathing hard and it goes on but she's not there. The water has closed over her head. She cannot think.

Eventually he stops.

There's just the sound of the wind.

Until he starts breathing again, very slowly, sips of air, controlling himself with difficulty. And finally the wind forces its way into her lungs as well, in a great rushing gasp that makes him turn away. He doesn't look as she covers herself. He's focussing on the blade. She's mesmerised by it, too. The vicious hope in the thing. This is it. When he finally faces her she can see he is sick, sick with guilt, sick with shame, sick to the heart. And she is the cause of it. It's her fault. She draws herself up again, daring him not to do it. I have made you feel this way. The knife is trembling in his hand. His knuckles are purple. He must do it, he must. She knows only a handful of his words, and uses one now. She lifts her chin, exposes the length of her neck.

‘Please,' she says.

He blinks.

He advances, stands before her. For too long. No, no, no. He slides the knife away. She has no idea what he's saying but his meaning is plain. He points at the blanket, indicates she should pick it up.

‘A keeper,' he says. ‘For now.'

I cut down towards Brandon Hill on my way into town. Thunderbolt Street was in my sights, but somehow I found myself veering towards Bright House. Though I did not admit as much to myself, I wanted help, approval that I was doing the right thing.

The front door was locked, so I let myself into the boot room at the side of the house. I called out a greeting but received no answer. I was therefore surprised, on advancing into the main hallway, to see my brother, John, slumped upon a chair there. He was staring at the grandfather clock as if he'd never seen such a thing before, much less this one, which had stood in the hallway all his life. I knelt before him and he turned his head toward me slowly and sighed, and I immediately discerned the pinch of hard spirits upon his breath. He seemed almost not to know me at first. Then his recognition and greeting were ridiculously forceful.

‘Oh, oh! Inigo! Marvellous!' We stood up. He hugged me; I thought of his encounter with the dancing bear. No sooner had I returned his embrace, however, than his knees seemed to give beneath us, and I found myself supporting his weight. John is a big, heavy fellow. It was all I could do to steer him back on to the chair, which scraped sideways on the flagstones.

The noise must have disturbed Sebastian; next thing I knew my youngest brother was coming down the stairs. He
seemed less surprised to find John in this state than he was anxious that our father should not. He raised his eyes at me in greeting and said, ‘To his room. Q-quick. Between us we can manage.'

I did not argue. I helped lever John upright again. Working together, each of us with a shoulder under one of his arms, we manhandled him up to the first floor landing. Once there, he seemed to regain some sense of himself, and shucked us both off. I noticed he was wearing no shoes, and only one stocking. It was disturbing to see him like this, and yet a thread of satisfaction ran through my concern. John would appear more fallible to our father now. He swayed on the faded rug.

‘Bed,' said Sebastian.

I steered John towards his bedroom, opened the door. ‘What cause have you for such celebrations? At this hour of the day?'

He shook his head. ‘Ha!'

I looked at Sebastian. ‘Is business really this bad?'

John's laughter redoubled. ‘The big bad wolf of commerce,' he nodded, swaying at the foot of his bed.

‘Our troubles haven't gone a-away,' murmured Sebastian. He guided John to sit down and said, more loudly and more slowly, ‘But it's not all John's doing.'

John seemed to find this amusing, too. He laughed and shook his head and rolled on to his side.

‘I doubt drink will improve the balance sheet,' I said. ‘At least not taken yourself. You're better off plying customers – or the competition.'

This attempt at levity seemed to work, inasmuch as John laughed harder still. But when I looked back at Sebastian, I
regretted my poor taste. He reached a trembling hand to his brow.

‘He'll sleep it off,' I said, and together Sebastian and I withdrew.

I had barely shut John's door behind us, before the scattering of paws upon stone downstairs announced Father's arrival. He was without his stick, and limping, and viewed from over the banister, there was something about the shifting of his shoulders as he progressed to the foot of the stairs that was unapproachable. I was therefore surprised, when he looked up, to see a broad smile upon his face.

‘Welcome home, Inigo!'

We descended to meet him.

‘You're looking hale,' I told him.

‘Early nights, and time in the saddle. I've been out hunting!'

‘As ever, it agrees with you.'

‘Eh? Course it does. It would agree with you, too, if ever you chose to accompany me.'

This took me aback. It was unusual, so inclusive an offer coming from Father. Compared to John's ashen complexion, his was boisterously red; the outdoors appeared to have flushed him into garrulousness. Why could I not thank him for this unexpected kindness? I don't know. The best I could do was mumble, ‘One day, one day.'

‘Well, suit yourself.'

‘I'm glad business isn't standing in the way of your enjoyment,' I heard myself say.

‘Business? No. My only distraction just now is an empty belly. By the end of the ride I could have eaten the horse. Have you taken your lunch yet?'

Sebastian was shifting from foot to foot beside me.

‘It's just that John seems troubled by the firm's predicament.'

Father became still. ‘Is he now? Is he?'

‘It seems he's taking –'

‘And this is a concern of yours now, the business?'

‘It's John I'm concerned about.'

‘Quite right.' Again Father flashed me his newfound, countryside grin. ‘Well, between the three of us,' he winked at Sebastian here, ‘I think John's overreacting. The firm has sailed stormier seas than these. Of course, he must still be frustrated at his failure to bring in the Adams business, but such a mistake is forgivable. I'll have a word with him, don't worry.'

The light in Father's eyes had turned glittery and deceptive; ice crystals are no warmer for being caught by the morning sun. One of the lurchers was turning circles between us. I bent to run my fingers through the rain-beaded fur between its ears. There was no way for me to broach the subject of my predicament. Whatever I said, however he replied, we'd both know deep down he felt no sympathy for me.

‘Some kind words from you will galvanise John, I'm sure,' I told Father. ‘He stands in need of your help.'

I excused myself from lunch with the half-truth of work as a pretext and staggered back out into the day. Even the rain had given up. The sky still hung heavy, though, an opaque grey, like milk spoiled with mud. They would be letting Carthy go by now, they had to be. He was probably already back at the house, meeting Anne's canary, cursing me for having given it to her.

But just in case he wasn't home yet, I jinked into the Thunderbolts to give the situation some more time to come right. From a seat in the window I'd be able to watch the front of the house, so I chose a dark corner in the rear of the shop instead. That way I would not be plagued by the sight of nobody arriving. One bowl of coffee became two, and then a third, which Mary kindly laced with rum, which dampened my surprise when she slid heavily into the seat beside me, announced that her shift had come to an end, and placed a hand upon my leg.

‘There's a strange look about you today,' she went on.

Very slowly I replied, ‘I'm engaged to be married.'

‘So you are.'

Her hand slid up my thigh. She leaned into the table.

‘Maybe that's what's put you out of sorts.'

‘Not exactly.'

The waitress's hand had moved higher still. Emboldened,
she whispered a direct invitation. And it wasn't the rum, or the coffee, or Adam Carthy's disappearance, or the dead Captain hanging from his rope, or my having been held out of a window, and attacked in the street, or even the combined, disorientating effect of those separate factors, so much as the conviction of the girl, the sight of her teeth wet behind her lips, and the delicate red spreading up the side of her thick neck, which made me accept her offer without blinking. I left behind her, followed her through the everyday street, skirting the fresh horse-dung and nodding at the boy who sells whelks on the corner and noting the brilliant burnished feathers of the headless pheasants hanging outside the butcher's, tracking Mary to her nearby lodgings, as I had promised I would. In those moments Lilly was as remote from me as a star in the night sky, and as I made my way up the stairs to Mary's bed-sitting room, the star was snuffed out.

Later the girl held me and rocked me and before the guilt crashed in I shut my eyes and I fell: through the open window, the air, the filthy docks, the silt at their heart, the rotten centre of the earth, and lay buried there for I know not how long. Then, smells. The heavy honey-and-sweat hair-smell of a pillow, grey up close, and ash, ash spilling out of an unswept grate. I licked my lips and tasted salt. My shirtfront was undone. I levered myself upright and it fell open, revealing the oily pallor of my chest. There was a smudge of some sort across my midriff; I rubbed at it and flinched. A bruise, one of the collection I'd received outside the Llandrodger Trow … just the day beforehand, less than twenty-four hours ago. Already that version of me seemed distant. A glass stood on the bedside table, with a hopeless rose stem in it. What had I done? Mary was awake beside me, with her face turned to the wall. I sat up on the edge of the cot, every joint creaking, every bruise aching, and got dressed.

‘I have my own sweetheart,' Mary began.

‘He needn't fear … I won't …'

‘And yours has nothing to concern herself with either.'

‘I appreciate …'

‘Yes, yes.' She rolled up on to an elbow, dishevelled, grinning. I couldn't work out whether her bravado was
frightening or heartbreaking. ‘You can run along now. I'll be seeing you soon no doubt. No use us not pretending!'

I touched her shoulder and her smile widened and I forgot my hat on my way out of the door. There was no question of going back for it. It was late in the afternoon. I stumped my way out into the mire again, a man who had paused to visit relatives and drink coffee and take a strumpet to bed, unsure of whether his patron, confident and closest friend, at the mercy of their joint enemy, was yet alive or dead.