Chapter Eight
The sun slipped down to meet the horizon as we pressed on through New Fiddleham, the sky darkening like a dying ember. A lamplighter was making his way from streetlight to streetlight as we passed. My feet were beginning to ache and I had a stitch in my side, but Jackaby’s inner fires seemed only to have been stoked by our encounter with the thugs. He marched forward briskly and I began to lag behind.
A hansom cab rolled past with rubber wheels that glided smoothly along the cobblestones behind its horse. The couple seated within looked impossibly, almost arrogantly comfortable. “Have you ever considered hiring a driver, sir?” I called ahead breathlessly. “It’s just that we do seem to do quite a bit of traveling.”
“There is a great deal to be experienced in this city,” he answered, not looking back. “No reason to limit the scope of our vision.”
“The scope of my vision,” I said, panting, “is not quite the same as the scope of yours, Mr. Jackaby. And I have experienced blisters before.”
He paused at the end of the street and waited for me to catch up. I half expected him to be cross with me, but he looked sympathetic. “There is quite a lot to miss,” he said. “Do you know that long before it was ever called New Fiddleham, this area was already inhabited?”
“You mean by Indians?” I said.
He leaned against a wrought iron hitching post and nodded. “Do you see that?” He pointed at the empty road. At midday, this stretch of Mason Street would be a blur of carriages and pedestrians clamoring to and fro, but in the dwindling light of dusk it was abandoned. “Just there,” Jackaby prompted, “in the middle of the lane.”
Between the worn path of countless carriage wheels, a single weed had pushed up through the paving stones. “I see a little green plant, if that’s what you mean” I said.
“And I see the spirit watching over it,” he said. “The Algonquian peoples would call it a manitou. It is older than any of these buildings, older than the city, older even than the tribes who named it. I would wager it will be here long after all of these bricks have crumbled to dust.”
He began to walk again, but slowly. “There is something humbling about knowing that an entity capable of moving mountains and reshaping continents still takes the time to tend to the smallest patch of dirt. Little things matter. Footsteps matter.” He stepped a little farther down the block and I followed. “There,” he said. “The flower shop. Do you see the little alcove in the wall?”
“Yes,” I answered. It was an inconspicuous break in the masonry, an indentation only a foot deep, topped by a simple awning of red stone. I might have taken it for a bricked-up window.
“This whole block had become home to predominantly Chinese immigrant families until about the 1880s, when the ungentle gentry saw potential in the neighborhood and bought the property out from under its denizens. Most of the Chinese inhabitants who stayed in New Fiddleham relocated to the burgeoning tenement district a few blocks south. But not everyone left.”
He put his hands together and bowed respectfully to the hollow. “Tu Di Gong is a modest figure, but a noble one. He’s there now, still looking over his village like a kindly grandfather. That was where they kept his shrine. He serves his little corner of New Fiddleham in whatever ways he can these days, though his influence is overlooked and misunderstood. I find it all too easy to sympathize.”
We came to the end of the block, where the city opened to accommodate a broad park bordered by streetlights. The sun was setting on us—it was no time to be wandering in the darkest quarters of the city, but the shadows were not so intimidating here. The lamps shone brighter around the park than they did in the rest of the city, and the whole park hummed with pleasant energy.
“This is Seeley’s Square,” said Jackaby. “Mayor Spade’s only successful foray into his grand electrical city. Do you know for whom the park is named?”
“Erm, Mr. Seeley, I presume?”
Jackaby shook his head. “Not for a Mr. Seeley, nor for any man. The Seelies are kindly fae. They arrived with the city’s founders, long ago, and I do believe they like it here. They and the native manitous might be more kindred spirits than the humans who tell their tales. This park is a haven for benevolent beings of all kinds.”
He looked out across the open space, and I followed his gaze. I could almost convince myself that I could see what he was seeing. Flickers of light seemed to dance through the greenery—although it might have been nothing more than the bright streetlamps reflecting on the leaves. “People often feel more alone than ever when they first arrive in a new place,” Jackaby continued, “but we are never alone. We bring with us the spirits of our ancestors. We are haunted by their demons and protected by their deities.”
He took a deep breath and turned to me. “I prefer to walk, Miss Rook, because I appreciate this city—and all the more when it’s being threatened. I like to see the lights all around me and feel the ground beneath my feet. This city is alive. It has a soul, and that soul is a glorious mess of beliefs and cultures all swirling together into something precious and strange and new.”
“Like Monet,” I said.
“Nothing like Monet,” said Jackaby. “What’s a Monet?”
“A painter. He’s French. My mother met him once at a gala in Paris. They had a few of his works in the museum back home. He uses a hundred little daubs of color, and then from a distance they all melt into one big lovely picture. When you’re right up close, though, it’s just beautiful madness.”
“Oh. Yes.” Jackaby smiled. “Just like Monet. Exactly like that. I prefer to walk because I like to be right up close to the beautiful madness.”
The museum back home also had cushioned chairs you could take a rest in whenever your feet were sore, I remembered, but I kept that thought to myself. A figure was marching across the park now, making a beeline right for us. “I do believe one of your more colorful daubs is coming to see you, sir.”
“Hm?” Jackaby locked on to her and smiled. “Oh, Hatun! Auspicious timing.”
Hatun could have been the queen of her own kingdom in some far-off land, had the streets of New Fiddleham not needed her more. She was an elderly woman, poor, but with a naturally regal air about her and a domineering presence. As much as she stood out, she seemed equally able to do the opposite, melting instantly into the scenery in that subtle way that made it hard to remember if she had ever been there at all. She wore several layers of faded petticoats, and her pale gray hair was tied up in a handkerchief.
“Good evening, Hatun,” I said.
“Hammett’s cat,” she replied.
“Come again?” I said. “Hammett the troll?”
She nodded. “Yes, yes, of course the troll. He has an orange tabby, only it’s gone missing, and now Hammett’s in a terrible state.”
“Not to put too fine a point on the matter,” Jackaby said, “but isn’t being in a terrible state Hammett’s natural state? He may be diminutive, but he’s still a bridge troll. How many times has he threatened to eat your toes?”
“Pardon me, Detective Knows-So-Much, but which one of us spent all season looking after him? I know my troll, Mr. Jackaby, and he’s off.”
“Fair enough. Still, he can’t have expected the thing to stick around forever,” Jackaby said. “You’ve seen the way he abuses the poor creature. Cats were not bred for riding.”
Hatun squinted her eyes at my employer. “Those two were nigh inseparable, thank you very much. Should’ve seen them hunting voles together at night. Two halves of a whole. It was like watching music by moonlight. Music played on a miniature saddle made from gopher leather.”
“I’m sure we can help find Hammett’s friend,” I said. “Only right now we’re already on a rather pressing case, Hatun. People have gone missing and lives are once more at stake in New Fiddleham.”
Hatun looked at me for several long seconds, until I began to feel a little uncomfortable under her gaze. Her eyes swam out of focus, and I could tell that she was leaving lucidity and falling into something else. Hatun, like my employer, saw visions the rest of us could not perceive. Unlike my employer, whose sight was constant, invading even his dreams, Hatun’s visions were unreliable. She oscillated from normalcy to profound insight to absolute gibberish. Her inscrutable predictions included the coming insurrection of the city’s united weathercocks, a strong chance of a mild rain on Thursday, and the approach of my imminent and inescapable death—a fate which thus far I had escaped. Twice. “What is it, Hatun?”
“This is the one,” she whispered. She was squinting at me as though gazing into the sun. “Oh my. Oh dear. You’re already so far down the path, aren’t you? I told you not to follow him. I told you.”
“Yes, you did, Hatun. Thank you for the warnings, truly. I do promise to be watchful.”
“I see a hound,” Hatun continued. She had screwed her eyes shut while she spoke. “And a man with red eyes at the end of a long, dark hallway . . .”
Jackaby went ashen. “What did you say?”
“Death. Death is waiting for you on the other side of Rosemary’s Green. This is the one, Miss Rook. This is the path.”
“Of course there’s death on the other side of Rosemary’s Green,” Jackaby said. “There’s a cemetery on the other side of Rosemary’s Green. What about the man—the hallway? What do you see? Hatun!” His sudden intensity seemed to rattle the woman. She opened her eyes. Dilated pupils contracted and she blinked up at him.
“What? Yes, rosemary’s always green. It’s an herb, isn’t it? What’s got you so bothered?”
Jackaby deflated. “Nothing. We will look into the matter of Hammett’s cat at our earliest convenience, Hatun. Come along, Miss Rook.”
“Take care of yourself,” I said.
Hatun smiled weakly back at me, her eyes hung with quiet sadness. She patted my arm gently. “Good-bye, Miss Rook.” She spoke the words heavily.
Jackaby was already halfway up the block when I turned to hurry after him. He said nothing. His shoulders were stiff and his face was clouded with dark thoughts as he rounded the corner ahead of me.
My feet still ached and, beautiful or not, New Fiddleham’s labyrinthine streets were a shade of madness I would be hard pressed to appreciate even in full daylight. I froze as I reached the turn. The street was empty. I silently cursed Jackaby and hurried toward the next crossing. The alleyways to the left and right were dark. There was no sign of my employer in either direction. Children giggled somewhere nearby, and I could hear footfalls and the distant clop of hooves. A leaden feeling hit my stomach as I realized I was alone in the middle of the night with a murderer on the loose.
“Sir?” I called, trying not to sound too timid. “Mr. Jackaby?”
“This way, Miss Rook.”
The voice crept in a whisper out of the shadows to my left. “Oh, my word!” I jumped and then collected myself, stepping out of the glow of the gaslights and into the gloom of the alleyway. “I lost you for a moment, sir. You nearly startled me out of my—”
My voice caught in my throat.
The face in the darkness was not Jackaby’s. “Your skin?” The face was round and deathly pale, tinted with a bluish shadow along the chin. The pale man smiled and tipped his hat, and the grin etched wrinkles from his brow up into his jet-black hair. “Hello, Miss Rook. I’m so glad we could meet face-to-face at last. Please, call me Pavel.”