The White Forest (32 page)

I
did not need to search for Vidocq. Vidocq, in fact, found me. Pascal went off to La Dometa to see if Maddy had returned, and I was left to meditate in my father’s conservatory among the exotic plant life. The foundation beneath the greenhouse had crumbled, and the floor of the room was cracked and tilted. Several large panes of glass had fallen from their leaded frames, allowing the Heath’s cool damp air to fill the room. I didn’t mind this state of disrepair. Sitting in the greenhouse made me believe nature would one day consume Stoke Morrow entirely, and I would no longer be forced to suffer the house’s shadows.

I tried to work out some solution to what had occurred when the old man had grabbed me in the tavern. I’d clearly manifested a vision of the Empyrean due to anxiety, as I’d done with Nathan, so perhaps Ariston Day was correct. If provoked forcefully enough, I could open a gateway to that other place, but what then?

I was so deep in my meditation that I barely heard Miss Anne knocking timidly on the doorframe. Her knock at first seemed yet another obscure sound rising from the objects around me. At her persistence, I opened my eyes and found her looking skittish, as if she’d caught me in the midst of a Satanic ritual. “What is it then?” I asked.

“You have a visitor, Miss Jane. The Inspector Vidocq is here asking to see you.”

“Admit him,” I said, adjusting my dress and wondering why he wanted to see me. Likely not to bring good news.

“You’ll see him in the Clock Parlor?” Miss Anne asked.

“I’ll see him here,” I said. “The sun has a calming effect today.”

“You do look vexed, miss. What’s happened—something to do with Mr. Ashe?”

“It’s not of your concern, Anne. See the inspector in.”

“Jane,” Miss Anne said in a serious tone. I turned to look at her. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Sorry for what?” I asked, but Miss Anne had already disappeared.

She returned briefly to install Vidocq in the rattan chair across from mine, cane resting between his long legs, both large hands propped on its handle. Miss Anne only glanced at me briefly as she left the room, and once again, I saw an expression of remorse—or was it pity? Vidocq himself was calm and focused. I was glad he did not decide to smoke one of his black cigarettes because it would likely harm the fragile plant life. “Please excuse the interruption, Miss Silverlake.”

“It’s no interruption,” I said. “I need to speak with you.”

Vidocq didn’t act surprised. “You are wondering about Miss Lee, I suppose,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“I wouldn’t be a very good detective if I didn’t make it my business to observe the movements of the young Mr. Ashe’s boon companions.”

“You were having us followed?”

“Protected is more like it. I was having you protected. But apparently my agents’ vigilance had no effect, as Miss Lee is yet to be found.”

“But she must be near,” I said. “She was in the carriage, and then she came looking for me. Ariston Day must know her whereabouts.”

“Mr. Day is also a difficult person to locate,” Vidocq replied. “And
yet he found you of such consequence that he brought you into his theater where only young and sullen men of money are permitted.”

“Yes,” I said. “I suppose that’s correct.”

Vidocq studied me keenly. “I know you confiscated my information regarding Ariston Day after our interview, Jane.”

I sat utterly still, waiting.

“And I know you created a panic in the Temple of the Lamb. You have some gift, isn’t that right? Something you didn’t reveal during our interview. Madeline Lee made obscure reference to it. That’s what I’ve come here to talk to you about.”

“I thought you put no stock in the supernatural,” I said, trying to retain my composure.

“Answer my question, Jane.”

“It’s an affliction,” I said. “I’ve experienced it since childhood—a psychic anomaly. Ariston Day mistook it for a thing of greater significance. That’s why he invited me to Southwark.”

“I’m wondering if you’ll allow me to experience it,” Vidocq said. “You can transfer the sensation through touch, isn’t that right? I had quite an interesting conversation with your maid on that very topic. Anne was hesitant to reveal anything, of course. She believes you can put her in Hell.”

So that was what Miss Anne was sorry for. “There is no Hell,” I said, quietly.

“But there’s somewhere else. You can show me, Jane. You’re the Doorway, as Nathan Ashe said.”

“I’m finished letting others in.”

“We need to explore your ability further,” he said. “This is quite an exceptional case, and I no longer think I’ll find Nathan Ashe caged in the basement of some tenement building or even dead in the Thames.”

“Why is it that all men wish to
explore
me?” I asked. I started to stand, intending to excuse myself. Stoke Morrow provided plenty of places to hide. But before I could leave the room, Vidocq gave some signal to his agents who were waiting in the hall. They entered quickly, taking hold of my arms and forcing me back into my seat.
The agents were strong and wore leather gloves, as if they knew how dangerous it was to touch my skin.

“Let me go,” I said. “My father will have you all deported for this.”

Vidocq approached and put his hands on either side of my face. I struggled to move my head away from him, but his grip was tight. In my state of agitation, I could not control the transference. I allowed the inspector to hear the greenhouse’s glass panes crying softly to themselves, and he saw the shifting pools of color produced by the cracked marble floor. Both glass and marble became telescopes, looking onto a faraway place of white trees and a still stream. The inspector’s eyes grew wide, filling with the kind of fear I dreaded. “Why didn’t you show me this before?” he demanded.

I glared, wanting to destroy him.

“I’m taking you to my offices for further questioning,” he said.

“You’re arresting me?” I asked, incredulous.

“I pray the evidence you’ve obscured won’t prove fatal to Nathan Ashe,” Vidocq said.

“My talent isn’t
evidence,
and I’m not going anywhere with you.”

But even as I spoke Vidocq’s gloved agents were lifting me from my chair. Like it or not, I would go anywhere they pleased.

•   •   •

I was escorted down the crumbling steps of Stoke Morrow, an agent on either side, Miss Anne watching from the front window of the house. In a carriage separate from Vidocq’s, I was taken not to a proper jail, but to an office on Bond Street. The building was an unassuming brownstone with a tailor shop in its storefront. A stoic agent sat across from me in the carriage, smoking a cigarette. Like all the agents, he wore a mustache and wooly sideburns, and I hoped he’d catch all that hair on fire.

“I am simply to be kept here?” I asked, looking out the window at the tailor’s shop, “along with bolts of fabric and sewing machines?”

The agent lifted the cigarette from his mouth and said, “For a time.”

“I wish to speak with my father.”

“The barrister will be contacted, mademoiselle.”

“I should like to speak with him immediately,” I said.

The agent shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “There is no immediate here. The inspector works by his own clock.”

“And I’m to be held for questioning? Is that it?”

He waved his hand to indicate he didn’t know the answer.

“You can understand how irritating this is, can you not?” I asked.

“Mademoiselle must realize I am nothing more than the arm of Vidocq. I do what the inspector tells me.”

“So, as the arm, do you believe Monsieur Vidocq is making any headway in the case of Nathan Ashe?”

The agent looked into my eyes, and I couldn’t tell what he was searching for—my guilt or perhaps my innocence? “As the arm,” he said, “I have seen no headway made in the case. But that does not mean there is none. Only Vidocq sees the entire puzzle.”

“I’m beginning to think we’ve all put our trust in a criminal idiot,” I said.

“I wouldn’t let Vidocq hear you say that,” the agent replied.

“I’m no longer concerned with what Vidocq does and does not hear. What’s your name?”

“I’m called Karl,” he said.

“Are you aware that
both
of my friends are now missing, Karl?”

“I am,” he said. “And I’m sorry for it. We’re looking for Miss Lee.”

“Tell Vidocq that I mustn’t be held here for long. Tell him if he tries to hold me, I’ll find a way of escaping, and it might not be pleasant for anyone involved.”

“Of course,” Karl said. “You may trust that I will tell him this.” He handed me a handkerchief from his pocket, and the look of kindness on his face made me feel that I
could
trust him. Karl seemed a man of his word.

•   •   •

Without another audience with Vidocq, I was taken up a narrow flight of stairs by Karl and another agent and locked in a terrible yellow room. The only furnishings in the room were a wooden chair painted green, a straw bed, and a stand with a basin and a cracked pitcher for washing. This room was, in every aspect, a cell, though one that was entirely controlled by Vidocq and not by the Crown. The objects in the room recognized my presence and shivered. I could barely hear them murmuring due to the clatter of sewing machines in the tailor’s shop below. I went to the window and looked onto the walk, where Vidocq was giving orders to the other agents before once again mounting his coach and setting out. Seeing him depart in such a perfunctory way infuriated me, and I determined to demand more forcefully that I be allowed to speak to my father.

This plan did not work in the way I anticipated, as no one came to the door of the cell when I called. I pounded my fist against the door until an agent came to tell me that the inspector had given strict orders not to make contact with me until he returned. “If it so pleases you, mademoiselle, could you cease all that pounding?” he said.

“Where is Karl?” I said.

“Why would you want to speak with Karl?” the agent asked.

“Because he listened to me.”

There was some conversation that I could not make out, and then the agent moved away from the cell door without reply.

There was nothing for me to do but to sit and wait for Vidocq. But he did not return, and soon the sun was setting, turning the smoke-filled London sky a shade of leathery brown. I was in a room without a lamp, and soon enough, with nothing else to occupy me, I fell asleep on the prickly straw bed, imagining it to be full of burrowing insects.

•   •   •

That night, I dreamed of a stag that stood atop a hill and looked over an infinite forest. It was the same stag I’d seen in my vision of Nathan’s final evening. When the great animal began to run, I moved
along with it, hovering somehow between its horns as it crashed through the forest. The oaks shuttled by with such speed I thought we’d surely smash into one. Finally, we stopped in a clearing. There in the center was a great tree, and I approached the tree reverently. My dress was a dark red, and its fabric moved as water might. I saw the knot in the tree that had burst long ago and knew it to be the place from whence I’d issued. The hole inside the tree, covered in dried sap, was the womb where I’d incubated. I knelt beside the tree and finally lay on the forest floor, staring up into the branches at the light spilling through. I thought how good it was to be with the entity that had born me, even if the entity was alien. In that moment alongside the tree, I knew the measure of my own power.

I fell asleep in the dream, and in doing so, awoke in the darkness of reality. I wasn’t sure where I was at first, but soon enough the knowledge of the cell came back to me, along with the notion that there was someone else in the room. A presence sat on the edge of the straw bed—a dark body that seemed to swell and contract. There was no moonlight, and the gas lamp outside the window had gone out, so it was impossible to ascertain the identity of the figure. I listened for the noise of objects—clothing or jewelry—and it was then that I realized I could hear the twittering of the spyglass that Madeline sometimes wore around her neck. In that same moment, I smelled her perfume.

“Maddy?” I asked.

“It’s me, Jane.” Her voice was hushed, and there was a distinct note of coldness there.

I began to sit up.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Just listen.”

“Where did you disappear to?” I asked, still half-asleep and wondering if this might be a continuation of my dream. “I was so worried.”

“I’ve been working on a plan to find Nathan,” she said. “We have to find him soon. Time is running out.”

“I understand that, Maddy.”

“You
don’t
,” she said. “You’ve never understood. When I left the
carriage yesterday, I didn’t follow you into the Temple of the Lamb. I went to the Thames, to look down into its murk. I’ve feared this entire time that Nathan simply fell into the river and drowned. But when I saw the bulwarks, I knew that Nathan was not in that black water. The embankments were too high. It would have been impossible to simply fall in. On top of that, I did not
feel
him there. Then joining me at my side was a man I did not recognize—a man with black hair and a silver tie pin.”