Heaven's Bones (5 page)

It was raining at the gravesite when they lowered the coffin into the crumbling loam. How many coffins had rotted away, and their contents rotted too, generation upon generation dissolved into the mournful earth? The London drizzle puddled atop the matte black surface, and the first shovelful of dirt hit the lid with a dull thud.

Something twisted in Robarts' chest with that sound; something broke inside him. He didn't think he had anything left to break; he thought he'd reached the apex of his pain. He was wrong.

Someone was touching him on the arm. He looked down. Lady Cecelia Agnew—Margaret's sister, who had ventured out in defiance of tradition and propriety to attend her sister's funeral. In the background loomed the gray figure of her husband, Lord Agnew, a baronet whose fortune had been made in bananas, or plantains, or some such. Robarts couldn't be bothered to remember
.

“I am so very sorry, Sebastian,” she said, in the low clear voice she had shared with her sister. “I won't pretend I can help you, but please, if you need me …”

Cecelia had something of Margaret about her face, enough so that the differences were a mockery. He turned away from her and walked away, blind in the rain, the rhythmic thump of the dirt on the coffin behind him like a dreadful drumbeat
.

With a start, he realized that he was crumpling the watercolor. The soft paper was tearing.

Too fragile. Like Margaret. Angel as she was, she had not the strength or substance to carry her child, to survive the labor, to live.

What kind of God creates something that destroys itself in the course of its own destiny?

What kind of creature is built for perfection but is torn apart achieving it?

His hand relaxed on the paper, smoothing it out. Then in a sudden spasm, he seized it and tore it from its binding. It came away, the edges ragged, and fluttered to the floor.

Sebastian Robarts let it lie. He lowered himself back into the armchair and watched the motes dancing in the reddening light.

I'll tell you something about Tibor Vadoma that not even he knew, nor will ever.

When his mother nursed her twins, she feared putting her son to her breast because once his teeth started coming in, sometimes he'd suckle sweet as any other babe, and sometimes he'd bite her, and she was too proud to ask the advice of the other women, who might know how to discourage a suckling from nipping. Also it seemed to her that there was a knowing look in his face when he did it, and that he would intentionally lull her into complacency before he bit down on her, so that she never knew when to expect it.

She was ashamed of thinking so, and ashamed that she nursed the girl more than the boy, so that Jaelle grew plump and strong while Tibor, though not starving, stayed thin, almost wiry.

One morning she put her boy to breast and he bit her hard, like an animal, and she flung him halfway across her chamber inside the caravan. He landed on a pile of cloth ready for the dye vats and so did not crack his head, but lay squalling. His sister stirred in her cradle and cried too, while Mirela Vadoma hunched on her bed, clutching at her bleeding breast.

Pride and fear and yes, love, were her downfall.

Pride because her brother was the Feri, the headsman of the clan by common agreement, pride because Pietre Volmi, her husband, was desired of many women but gave her brother a mare
pregnant by a stallion of the rarest bloodlines, and a string of gold pieces, and a bottle of Krishnov brandy as her bride-price.

Fear because one who has much has much to lose, and Mirela knew some of the women would gloat over her pain. Fear of losing the regard of her handsome, broad-shouldered husband, who brought in the most horses each year, over her failure to nurse his son. Fear that that son would be destroyed, for already she knew that he had the Sight.

Although the Vadoma, unlike other Vistani tribes, sometimes tolerated the existence of a male with the Sight, even they would kill a demon-child—and what else would seek blood from its mother's breast?

And that fear most of all kept her silent, for despite all, Mirela loved her son.

She packed the torn flesh with cotton and bound her breast, and went about her business as if nothing was wrong. But because the bite was not cleaned as one of the wise women would have taught her, the wound festered and infection spread rapidly through her body, and three days later she lay in her cot, soaked with sweat and babbling of horses, while Pietre paced outside and the twin babes stayed tucked up with their cousins in their uncle's wagon.

Jut before dawn she died, and when the women washed her body with the cold water from the river they found that her breast was a rotted mass of tissue, purple and black and foul smelling.

They told the Feri, her brother, that her milk ducts might have blocked, or maybe she had a cancer deep in her breast that she never knew about, that burst into fatal bloom at the birth of her children. Why she would have hidden her affliction away, when there were those willing and able to succor her, they could not say.

Pietre stayed for his wife's burning—for like a very few other Vistani tribes the Vadoma put their dead to the torch so that their souls would ascend to heaven the faster, rather than burying
them, so that they might have time to return before they rotted away. The next morning he took his prize mare and a gelding and returned to his father's tribe, saying he was done with the Vadoma who would keep a manchild with the Sight alive. Since Mirela died he had spent some time studying Tibor's infant face, and he didn't like the look of knowing in those innocent-seeming dark eyes.

Tibor and Jaelle were left in the keeping of their mother's brother, and well enough he raised them. It may be worth noting that the babies were put in the care of a wet nurse until they were weaned, and, save for one nip, which earned him the tap of a hard finger on his tender gums, Tibor did not bite her.

I see it, while the monstrous engines of this time rumble through the stone and steel over my head; it falls on me to remember what no one but a dead woman knew.

The girl took him for nothing but an evening's employment, and Robarts took care that no one else should get a good look at his face in the dusk. She was pregnant—Robarts' practiced eye saw that. The thin face and wrists and the slightly protruding belly, where the fetus sucked every scrap of nutrition. The violet shadow under the eyes that betrayed her weariness, her body's need for rest denied by the bare brutal need to work, to walk the streets, to sell herself to keep body and soul together.

He remembered Margaret at four months gone, the exhaustion that would overcome her in an instant. He'd make her rest in a darkened room, feet up on her needlework footrest.

There was no one to do that for this girl, he knew. A terrible pity welled in his throat like a stone and he forced himself to swallow it, to speak before he lost his courage.

Before he lost his nerve, as he had between Margaret's legs, holding the scalpel impotently, unable to act. He lost Margaret then; he'd failed her.

But this girl he could save, if he acted quickly. If he had the courage to do what needed to be done to
fix
her.

He let his accent slip: a little more vulgar, but not enough to put her off. A successful clerk out for a lark, or a ship's officer home on leave and looking for a bit more than a cuddle.

“At my place,” he said. “You can rest a while. Put your feet up
by the fire and have a bit of a meal and a cuppa.”

He smiled at her warmly. “My housekeeper's off to visit her sister, and won't be there to give you trouble. She'll have left me some supper, more than enough for two. Come on, love. I'm up for a bit of fun, but I want a girl rested and fed, first.”

She paused and he could see she was thinking of warming her cold legs, of soft cushions for her aching back and hot toast with butter. He knew he had her then.

Cherise was cold, and damn tired. Her feet were swollen in too-tight boots, and the weariness and chill of the streets struck through her body.

She smiled hesitantly at the gentleman before her. She'd never gone to a customer's place, and it was very rare they'd ask. No one much liked taking the likes of her to their cozy nests.

She was hungry too, although nausea had plagued her much of the morning. She knew the reason for that right enough, and would take care of it as soon as she could get together a little money to pay the midwife.

Just now a warm chair and tea and toast sounded like absolute heaven, and payment enough for any services the gentleman might require.

She reached for his proffered arm, and then hesitated. Something chimed from deep within her—a warning.
This isn't right, there's mischief here
. A girl wasn't on the game long without getting some sort of street sense.

She glanced at the toff's face, and saw no danger there. Last year a punter turned on her and bruised her face up bad before she could claw her way out, but there was a look to him, a sort of a sneer beneath the façade that showed he thought she was scum. This one had none of that.

And damn, but she was tired. She smiled and took the proffered arm.

Haymarket, 1855

“Stop, thief!”

The frantic yelp cut through the babble of the morning marketing crowd. Artemis, holding onto his mother's hand more to save himself from drowning in the crowd than because of residual shyness, turned with the rest.

The orange-seller, his fruits set proudly before him in his barrow, individually wrapped like the precious objects they were, pointed accusingly at the skinny figure that hunched before him.

“That one! He took an orange!”

The accused looked around him bewilderedly, as if some unimaginable fate had fallen from the skies upon him. Thin to the point of emaciation and twisted as if his bones bent inside with the stress of his slight weight, his mouth moved in what Artemis supposed was denial, but only faint, choppy sounds came out.

“ 'Ow d'ye know, then?” called out a woman nearby, stout as the accused was meager, with red arms chapped to the elbow like a washerwoman's. “Ja see 'im do it?”

“There was one right there”—the fruit-seller pointed to a bare space in front of the heap—“and now it's gone, and 'im passing by.”

No one present doubted that he knew, with painful precision, exactly where each and every one of his precious fruits was at all times. Oranges were a luxury, an exotic treat, and if one had a chance to taste the sweet juice once a year, one was lucky.

Some shoppers passed on impatiently but most stayed to see what would pass. Some surged closer, closing their ranks with the vague idea that they would stop the miscreant from escaping, should he dare try.

But he showed no sign of trying, spreading stick-thin fingers wide.

“I never!” he managed, finally. “I never took nought.”

“Couldn't be no one else,” retorted the merchant. “You was right there. Stepped across and it was gone. I know where my goods are, and I'm right sick of thieves like you ruining my business.”

“Come on home, then,” said Mrs. Donovan, giving Artemis a little tug with her left hand, her right being burdened down by her great market basket.

Artemis hesitated, resisting. “Hold a minute, Mum,” he said.

He looked at the space where the orange had been, then at the thin man who wriggled like an insect on a pin in the Museum.

Something was wrong here, and he couldn't tell what.

A burly figure pushed through the crowd, dressed in dark blue and made taller still by the top hat on his head.

“Officer!” called the merchant eagerly.

“In time,” said the peeler, curtly. He took in the situation with a practiced eye and came to a stop in front of the accused man, who looked smaller still by comparison.

“Now, what've you been up to, Bill? Not stealing fruit, are you? You disappoint me.”

“I tell you I didn't!” Bill was turning purple with earnestness. “Search me, then!”

He spread out his arms, increasing his resemblance to an outsized spider.

“ 'E's got a million nooks and crannies to hide things in, the old pickpocket,” sneered the fruit-seller. “You'll never find it, but 'e took it right enough.”

“Turn him upside down and shake him!” The suggestion came from somewhere in the crowd, and the others laughed.

“Search 'is bones,” said another, grimmer voice, and poor Bill grew pale indeed as cruder suggestions came from the crowd.

“It'll be transportation for you right enough this time, me lad,” said the peeler. “So you might as well be out with it now.”

He laid a huge hand on Bill's shoulder.

“He didn't do it,” shouted Artemis.

He felt his mother give one last frustrated tug, but he pulled his sweaty little hand free of her and dodged to the front of the crowd.