Splendors and Glooms (9 page)

“Oh, poor Ruby!” cried Lizzie Rose, and went to rescue her favorite.

“I’ve got breakfast,” Parsefall said joyfully. “I asked for stale bread, but the old lady at the bakery said there was only fresh. She said she’d give it to me ’ot an’ cheap, if I’d just get the bloody dogs out of the shop.”

“How clever of you, Parsefall,” cried Lizzie Rose, “and shame on you, using such horrid language in front of a refined lady like Mrs. Pinchbeck!”

Parsefall blinked at her. Mrs. Pinchbeck was charmed, as Lizzie Rose had intended, and assumed an air of mincing gentility. “There’s fresh dripping in the larder,” the landlady hinted, and Lizzie Rose clapped her hands. She had an unappeasable craving for meat in any disguise.

“Bread and dripping for breakfast!” announced Lizzie Rose. “I’ll run downstairs and put the kettle on, and we’ll have a feast.” She reached under the sofa, nabbed the gin bottle, hauled the bulldog off Parsefall’s leg, and went bravely downstairs to face Mrs. Pinchbeck’s larder.

Clara slept. Never in her life had she known so dense a sleep: a sleep without dreaming, without the slightest twitch of finger or eyelid. She was as lifeless as a pressed flower. If she had been awake, she could not have said whether her eyes were open or shut. Her mind was empty, freed from guilt and terror and grief. Only the night before, she had spoken of her fear of cold and darkness; now darkness and cold claimed her, and she was not afraid.

T
hat night Parsefall had a nightmare. It was Ruby who sounded the alarm, sniffing at her mistress’s face and whining softly. Lizzie Rose heard Parsefall’s labored breathing and climbed out of bed. She drew a blanket around her shoulders, tiptoed out of her room, and knelt down beside the sleeping boy. She wanted to rouse him before he screamed; Grisini did not like being awakened.

“Parse,” she whispered urgently. She took his hand and squeezed it. “Parse!”

His eyelids lifted, fluttering. He flailed his arms and sat up, straining to see through the darkness. Ruby whimpered and tried to lick his face.

“It’s just me,” Lizzie Rose whispered. She put her arms around him and drew him close. He was trembling so hard that her own heart beat faster. She steadied herself, taking deep breaths. If feelings could cross from one body to another, he must catch hers, not the other way around. “I’m right beside you, Parse.”

Parsefall burrowed into her. She felt the heat of his breath against her shoulder and a few damp spots, tears he would never admit to shedding. Once, after one of his nightmares, he had bitten a hole in her nightdress. Lizzie Rose rocked him back and forth, stroking his hair. It felt greasy and smelled horrid. She tried not to inhale. “You had a bad dream,” she murmured, “but the bad isn’t real. I’m here, and you’re safe.”

For perhaps a minute and a half, they clung to each other. Then he pushed her away. “Get off me,” he growled.

It occurred to Lizzie Rose that it would be easy to hit him. It would serve him right, and he was certainly within range. She pushed the tempting idea aside and reached for the poker. “I’m going to stir up the fire,” she whispered. “You’re cold as ice.”

Parsefall wrapped his arms around his knees. He was still quivering, but he didn’t argue. He watched as Lizzie Rose put coal on the fire and stirred the embers. As the firelight grew stronger, his narrow little face took on a different cast. By full light, he was a weedy, homely little boy, but now he was weirdly pretty. His hollow cheeks held the shadows, and his pale eyes gleamed silver.

“Now,” Lizzie Rose said briskly, “what was your dream?”

She knew he wouldn’t tell her. He never did. She wondered if he even remembered.

“Nuffink,” said Parsefall tonelessly.

“Do you want to go back to sleep? I’ll sit by you.”

Parsefall didn’t answer.

“Do you want me to tell you a story?”

She had him there. Caresses he spurned and sympathy he could resist, but Parsefall loved stories. No one had told him stories in the workhouse. As a figure worker, he had learned the plots of Grisini’s puppet plays, but he knew no others. He could not read and he resisted all Lizzie Rose’s attempts to teach him his letters. But stories he loved. He said hungrily, “Cinderella?”

Lizzie Rose smiled to herself. It was his favorite, and her masterpiece. She had told it many times over and perfected each detail; if she was in the mood to describe every gemstone on the enchanted coach, or every ribbon on Cinderella’s gown, she didn’t spare him. “Wrap yourself up,” she whispered, “and I’ll tell.” She reached for his quilt so that she could wind a cocoon around him.

Something fell from the folds of the cloth, striking the floor with a sharp
plonk.
“What’s that?” hissed Lizzie Rose.

Parsefall’s hand moved rapidly, but for once Lizzie Rose was quicker. She snatched the object from him and held it close to the firelight. It was a photograph in a silver frame. “Parse, where did you —?” Then she knew. “You stole this!”

“Did not,” Parsefall said automatically.

“You did. You stole it from the Wintermute house. Oh!” Lizzie Rose recalled the frantic haste with which Parsefall had tidied away the blankets that morning. “That’s why you were so afraid of the coppers!”

Parsefall said, “Woz not,” but without much force.

“You’re a thief !” Lizzie Rose cuffed him. “Oh, Parsefall, for shame!”

Parsefall switched tactics. “They’re rich enough,” he said defensively.

“Rich enough!” Lizzie Rose hissed scornfully. “All their children dead, and you say they’re rich enough! Have you no pity?”

“One of ’em’s living’,” Parsefall said weakly.

Lizzie Rose cuffed him again. “Yes — poor Clara!” she said again. “If she isn’t kidnapped and she comes back home. Oh, Parsefall, how could you? Don’t you know right from wrong?”

Parsefall opened his mouth and shut it again, as if realizing that this was a dangerous question.

“What are we to do?” Lizzie Rose turned the photograph in her hands, reading the writing on the back. “
Charles Augustus Wintermute
— he was Clara’s twin.” She brought the photograph closer to her eyes. “Oh, Parsefall!” she wailed. “He’s in his coffin!”

“No, is ’e?” Parsefall took the photograph and peered at it narrowly. “I didn’t look that close. I thought ’e was sleepin’. He’s a real little swell, ain’t he?”

Lizzie Rose frowned at him. “You shouldn’t call him a swell now he’s dead.”

“It ain’t my fault ’e’s dead,” Parsefall said, stung. “They’re all dead in that family.”

Lizzie Rose cuffed him a third time. Parsefall slapped back. He did not hit hard, but the blow served to discourage Lizzie Rose. She hugged her knees to her chest and let her head fall forward. “Oh, Parse! What are we going to do?”

Parsefall shrugged. Then a look of naked fear crossed his face. “Are you going to tell the coppers?”

Lizzie Rose shook her head. “No. I don’t know if they’d hang you, but they might. Or they’d put you in prison; I don’t know which. I suppose”— she considered —“we
might
send the photograph through the post. That way poor Mrs. Wintermute —” She stopped. “Oh, no, how horrid!”

“What’s ’orrid?”

“Don’t you see? If you were Mrs. Wintermute — and Clara’s still missing! — imagine how dreadful to open a parcel and find a picture of your son in his coffin!”

Parsefall said tentatively, “There’s the pawnshop.”

“There isn’t,” Lizzie Rose snapped back. “If you think I’m letting you get a single farthing from this photograph, you’re mistaken. You’ve been wicked — not just naughty, but wicked — and you ought to be punished. You ought to be whipped.”

“You can’t whip me,” Parsefall said coolly. It was true. Lizzie Rose was taller than he was, but she wasn’t strong enough to immobilize him and strike him at the same time.

“No, I can’t,” Lizzie Rose admitted mournfully. “Oh, Parsefall! What’s to become of you? You can’t read and you don’t go to church, and you steal things, and you smell so bad. How are you to grow up to be respectable?”

“You ain’t going to tell Grisini, are you?”

Lizzie Rose looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “Of course I won’t. I’m not a telltale. Anyway, Grisini would whip you too hard.” Her eyes flashed; for a brief moment she envisioned herself defending him from a furious Grisini. On the heels of that thought came another. “Parse —”

“Wot?”

“Today — I was talking to Mrs. Pinchbeck and she said there was a child that was kidnapped years ago. It was in Brighton. She said the coppers came after Grisini then, too.”

Parsefall put one finger over her lips. He shook his head emphatically and pointed in the direction of Grisini’s bedroom.

Both children listened. Grisini’s snores were regular and even. “He’s asleep,” whispered Lizzie Rose.

Parsefall’s answer was almost inaudible. “What if he ain’t?”

“Parsefall, do you know —?”

“Shhh.” Parsefall was gathering up the blankets. He layered one over the other, making a tent over their heads. Ruby, who was not the sort of dog who tolerated being shut out, clawed at the tent and made piteous noises. Parsefall muttered, “Bloody ’orrible dog,” raised one corner of the blanket, and let her in.

“Grisini don’t like it talked about. It wozn’t Brighton; it woz Leeds.” He counted on his fingers. “Four years ago.”

Lizzie Rose protested, “Mrs. Pinchbeck said it was eleven years —”

“No. I remember it. It was winter, and there was snow. We woz in Leeds, but we couldn’t do the shows, ’cos it woz too cold and we woz ’ard up. Then that girl went missin’. She was a rich man’s daughter. The coppers came and questioned Grisini. There was talk of locking ’im up. But then the little girl come ’ome safe and sound. After that, Grisini ’ad money again, so we come to London and lived with Mrs. Pinchbeck.”

“But that’s
two
children,” Lizzie Rose whispered. “A boy in Brighton, eleven or twelve years ago, and the little girl in Leeds. Parsefall, what does it mean?”

His breath was hot and sour inside the tent. “Dunno. Only Grisini don’t like it talked about.”

Lizzie Rose leaned closer to whisper directly into his ear. “We ought to tell the coppers.”

Parsefall grabbed her wrist and squeezed it warningly. “We can’t tell the coppers,” he hissed. “There ain’t nuffink to tell. We don’t know nuffink.”

“We know that Grisini knew two other children who disappeared. It must mean
something,
” hissed Lizzie Rose. “Perhaps the coppers could find out what it is. It might help them find Clara!”

“Grisini would kill us,” Parsefall said desperately. He dug his fingernails into her hand. “If we peached on him, he’d kill us. You don’t know ’im the way I do.” He heard his voice rise and lowered it again. “Promise me you won’t go to the coppers.”

Lizzie Rose gave a little shiver. She wasn’t promising anything.

F
ive nights after Clara’s disappearance, Constable Hawkins left the police station and headed home.

He walked rapidly but remained alert. The night was misty, and he knew how many people lost their way in the city’s fogs; he had seen the bodies of men struck down by carriages and trampled by horses; he had examined the corpses of drowned Londoners who had fallen into the Thames. He made his way from streetlamp to streetlamp, keeping count of the cross streets as carefully as if he were blind.

The fog curdled and thinned. A nearby church tolled quarter past ten. A dog barked shrilly. All the sounds of the night — the clop of hooves, the grinding of iron-shod wheels on stone — were distorted by the moisture in the air. For a moment he thought he heard someone call his name.

A hand reached through the fog. “Sir —”

The constable halted, pressing his arms to his sides to protect himself from pickpockets. He felt a surge of impatience. His wife was keeping supper for him, and he was hungry. He said gruffly, “What is it?”

The fog receded, and he caught sight of the person who had touched his sleeve. A tall child with red hair, surrounded by innumerable dogs.

“Please, sir — it’s Constable Hawkins, isn’t it?”

The child spoke prettily, with just a trace of Welsh accent. All at once the constable knew who she was. “Why, it’s David Fawr’s little girl!” he exclaimed. His face softened. “What are you doing out so late, miss?”