The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

“I know that,” Mrs. Palmer snapped. “You’ll be well looked after.”

So a shark might say to the fish he was about to eat. Mrs.

Palmer closed her mouth tightly and refused to speak again. Beth swam in and out of consciousness as the hansom rolled on. She dimly wondered how quickly the wound would kill her.

“I need a doctor,” she groaned

“I told you, you’ll be looked after.”

Beth pressed her hand against her side and closed her eyes. She was nauseous and too cold, her legs numb, sweat coating her face.

At last the hansom stopped moving. The cabbie rumbled something at Mrs. Palmer, and coins clinked into his hand. Beth hung onto the side of the hansom, but Mrs. Palmer pried her away and pulled her down the street, arm around Beth’s waist.

“Hate to see two pretty ladies so drunk,” Beth heard the cabbie say.

Mrs. Palmer laughed raucously, but cut it off abruptly as she dragged Beth around a corner. Lamplight shone through some windows, but little illumination penetrated the slums. The brick buildings were gray and black from years of coal smoke and dirt. Filth collected in the streets, and grime coated people staggered drunkenly or hurried, fearful, to the nearest shelter.

Mrs. Palmer propelled Beth through alley after alley, twisting and turning. Beth realized Mrs. Palmer was trying to make her lose her bearings in the maze of streets, but Beth knew Bethnal Green like the back of her hand. She’d grown up here, had fought to stay alive here, had even once been happy here.

“Where are we?” She gasped, pretending to be confused.

“Where are we going?”

“To my sister’s. Stop asking questions.”

“Hart will know about your sister and where she lives, won’t he? And I know I won’t be looked after. You’ll kill me once you get me there. She’ll help you kill me.” Mrs. Palmer’s fingers were like iron pincers. “I’m not letting you run back to them until I’m well away. I’ll send a confession of everything I’ve done once I’m gone, and tell them where you are.”

“I don’t believe you,” Beth sobbed, putting every bit of drama she could into her voice. “You’ll let Ian hang for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“It’s Hart I’m trying to save, you little idiot, and I don’t care who hangs instead. It’s always been Hart.” Again she snapped her mouth shut and kept Beth stumbling beside her. Beth’s greatest fear was that Mrs. Palmer would simply leave her on the street, hurt and alone. Beth knew the denizens of this part of London would rob her blind in a minute and leave her for dead. Some kind soul might summon a constable, but perhaps too late. “Please,” she tried. “Let’s find a . . . a church or something. Let me seek sanctuary there, and you can run away. I won’t know where you’ve gone.”

Mrs. Palmer growled under her breath. “I don’t know why they marry such insipid women. That pale-haired creature Hart married ruined him. Stupid woman had to go and die, and it cut him up something horrible. And that bitch who jilted him before that was no better. Broke his heart. I hate them all for what they did to my lad.” Fury rang in her voice, and she gave Beth’s arm an extra jerk. Beth could see what Sylvia had: that here was a woman who’d do anything for the man she loved. She’d murder for him, lie for him, risk going to the gallows for him.

Around a few more corners, that was all Beth needed.

There. “There’s a church.” Beth hung heavily onto Mrs. Palmer, pointing to the gray brick of Thomas’s former parish church. “Take me there, please. Don’t leave me in this hellhole. I’ll go mad. I know it.”

Mrs. Palmer snarled something and dragged Beth toward the church. She didn’t approach the front doors but tugged Beth down the narrow alley between buildings. The small churchyard opened in the back, hemmed in by the walls of buildings and the vicarage itself. In Beth’s day the chapel’s back door had been left unlocked, because Thomas liked to nip from vicarage to sacristy through the churchyard and always forgot his key.

Mrs. Palmer grabbed the handle and easily opened the door. She pushed Beth into the small passage that led to the sacristy. The familiar scents of candles, dust, books, and cloth assailed Beth, and transported her in her stupor back to her life as a vicar’s wife. Those had been days of peace and order, of one season following the next like pearls on a string. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Whitsuntide, Trinity. One knew what one had to read and eat and wear, what flowers should be in the church, and what colors on the altar. Up at dawn for the joy of Easter, late to bed on Christmas Eve. No meat at Lent, a feast on Shrove Tuesday. Morning prayer, Evensong, the main service on Sundays.

There hadn’t been enough money for an organ, so Thomas had blown a note on a pitch pipe, and the congregation had lurched through the hymns they knew by

heart.

O, God our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home.

She could hear the even rhythm of the slow tune, old Mrs. Whetherby’s high-pitched warble floating out from the front row.

The church was empty. The whitewashed walls looked the same, as did the high lectern to the right of the altar. Beth wondered if the lectern door’s hinges still squeaked as they had every time Thomas marched up the tiny flight of stairs and opened the half door.

The trump of doom, he called it. Now they have to listen to the vicar preach. When Beth suggested he have the sextant oil the hinges, Thomas replied, Then there won’t be anything to wake them up when the sermon’s over.