The Devil's Workshop

“It doesn’t sound good,” the boy said. “By the way, sir, my name’s Winthrop. Constable Rupert Winthrop.”

“Dr Bernard Kingsley.”

“Kingsley? Are you…?” He gestured vaguely at Fiona and back as if drawing a line in the air between them.

“Yes, we are. Tell me, you said just now it doesn’t sound good?”

“Sir, she’s done a good bit of screaming and shouting since Fiona left.”

“Yes, well, she’s having a baby. But she’s a healthy young woman and her pregnancy has been relatively normal, so there’s little enough to fear.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d better go check on her. I’ll leave you to it, Constable.”

“Sir? Is there anything…? I mean, I wonder if there’s something I could do to make things easier for her. I know you said… Still, it seems like it might be going rough.”

Kingsley smiled at the boy. Rupert’s hair had escaped from under his hat and was plastered across his forehead with sweat, like the wet tail feather of some nervous tropical bird. Kingsley felt a momentary urge to reach up and pull off the constable’s hat and set the bird free. He could see that thirty seconds spent talking to Rupert Winthrop now would help calm the household. The last thing Claire needed was a frantic boy running about the place.

“How are you at fetching water?” Kingsley said.

“I can do that.”

“Very good. I’m going to need clean water and lots of it, in both cold and warm varieties, so you’ll need to heat some up for me at the fireplace. I’ll also need every basin you can find in the house.”

Constable Rupert Winthrop stood at attention and saluted, then turned and trotted off down the hall toward the kitchen.

“He seems like a nice boy,” Kingsley said.

“He’s a bit hopeless, isn’t he?” Fiona said.

“Give him time. He just needs a bit of seasoning. Now, it’s high time we looked in on our patient.” And he followed his daughter up the stairs toward the bedroom where he could already hear Claire Day moaning.

34

The sun was higher in the sky when Jack awoke, but he was sure he hadn’t slept for more than an hour. Sleep annoyed him. It smacked of weakness and mortality and inefficiency. But it was one of the many prices he had to pay in order to walk among his people as one of them.

He took a standing bath at the washbasin in Elizabeth’s bedroom, soaking a cloth in fresh water and wringing it out in the pail on the floor, using Elizabeth’s harsh soap, lye and ashes, scented with lavender. After, he pissed into the pail, watching the ripples spread across the surface of the dirty bathwater. There was a small tin of tooth powder that appeared to be brand-new and a toothbrush with a wooden handle behind the handbasin. He brushed his teeth hard, scrubbing them until his gums bled. Then he drank the rest of the water in the pitcher beside the basin and wiped his mouth on his bare arm.

Naked, he unlocked and opened the bedroom door and stepped over Cinderhouse’s body in the hallway. He crouched over the tailor, who was sound asleep, his eyelids fluttering, a smear of old blood on his chin. His mouth had not yet healed, and Jack resisted an urge to pry the tailor’s mouth open so he could see the stump of muscle that was left there. Cinderhouse was dressed very well in one of Elizabeth’s altered suits, and he was clutching a kitchen knife in his right hand, his knuckles white, his fingers rigid.