Artful: A Novel Read online

  An undertaker’s wagon—typically drawn by a horse who appears to have one or more hooves already settled within that six-foot-deep hole to which the horse is journeying toward, so there was some measure of poetic justice intertwined with a mute commentary on inevitability—makes its way down the middle of a street. All stand aside or watch in silence, sometimes even doffing their hats out of respect, particularly if they know the occupant or if there is a sufficient number of mourners trailing behind to indicate that this was someone of respect or status.

  This particular early evening, behind this wagon to which we now turn our attention, there were no mourners. Not even a small child trailing behind, with a tear in his eye, typically in the hire of the undertaker to foster sympathies upon onlookers (which as it so happened was Oliver Twist’s very first job once he had been shunted from the confines of the workhouse, because crying came so easily to him).

  If anyone had been predisposed to follow behind the wagon, he would have been cheering or hooting or catcalling over the demise of the occupant, and holding up his passing as proof that there was indeed a benevolent God looking down from on high, despite the fact that it often seemed the perpetual cloudiness that hung over London obscured the city from His attention and left the residents therein more or less on their own. In fairness to the Almighty, though, it should be noted that lack of attention from God is not necessarily a bad thing, as the former residents of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the entirety of the Earth prior to Noah’s construction of an ark would have been able to attest. This would run counter to the desires of many former occupants of London who would have been delighted to see London, upon their departure, erupt in a tower of flame, cleansed by the wrath of God . . . .

  We have wandered from the horse and will reorient ourselves.

  Guiding the horse was one Mr. Sowerberry, a cadaverous individual whose stock in trade was cadavers. Mr. Sowerberry’s thoughts were his own, and not of overmuch interest to our narrative, other than that they were interrupted in a rather odd manner.

  The street down which the wagon proceeded was narrow and darkened and not particularly pleasant. It would be relatively easy for a single man to impede the progress of anyone coming down the street in a vehicle of any width, and that so happened now to be the case.

  It was odd, this man, that he was in the way, for a moment before he had not been there at all. Instead, he had been securely in the embrace of the shadows, and they had now apparently disgorged him for the explicit purpose of making certain that Mr. Sowerberry could not continue upon his path.

  It was odd, too, that he was tall—unusually so—but stoop shouldered and hunched, which served to undermine his natural height. He wore a black greatcoat that hung loosely around him. His face, or what Mr. Sowerberry could see of it, seemed to be composed almost entirely of chin, and a cap pulled low over his brow served to obscure his eyes.

  “How now!” called out Sowerberry. “If you’re seeking to rob me, I have barely two shillings to rub together, and I assure you that my sole passenger is traveling light in the pocket.”

  “I would imagine that he is,” said the man, in a voice that was low and unpleasant and brought to mind images of worms wending their way through the occupants of the great dirt collective. “To where do you travel, if I may ask?”

  “You may not ask,” said Sowerberry stiffly, but then he shrugged and said, “but I may answer if it will satisfy your curiosity and send you on your way. Common sense would dictate that I am on my way to the graveyard.”

  “I am not asking common sense. I am asking you.”

  “Very well,” said Sowerberry with unrestrained impatience, “I am on my way to the medical college. This fellow has a date with an interested student of human anatomy.”

  “For which you will be paid handsomely,” said the man.

  “That is none of your concern. You are not my agent in these matters.”

  “True. I am an agent of altogether a different nature.”

  “And what nature would that be?”

  At that moment, the horse suddenly reared up, astounding Mr. Sowerberry, who would have guessed the animal had as much ability to make such a movement as did the wagon’s cargo. The horse’s panic distracted Sowerberry from the man who had been blocking him, and so it was with astonishment that he discovered the man was no longer in his path, but at his side on the rig.

  “The nature of which will bring about your death,” said the man, who had actually known the entire time what Mr. Sowerberry’s destination was and had simply been engaging him in conversation until the sun was sufficiently receded for him to be at his full power. With this declaration of his agency, he drew back his lips to reveal a pair of glistening fangs that seemed to elongate as Mr. Sowerberry looked upon them, and now he could see the man’s eyes, burning red with the power of inner fires that reflected his hellish origins. Sowerberry’s mouth moved, but no words emerged, which was a tragedy because a man’s last words are important, and Mr. Sowerberry’s were the utterly forgettable inquiry as to his killer’s nature from moments earlier.

  The man’s head speared forward, his fangs sinking deep into Sowerberry’s neck. Interestingly, the horse calmed, as if realizing that it was not the target of the monster’s appetites and thus was content to let matters run their course.

  Blood trickled down the sides of the man’s face, and Sowerberry was too terrified to do anything other than provide a small, pathetic whimper of protest. Then his head slumped to one side, and his skin went ghastly pale, drained of the juice of life, and in less than a minute, he was gone.

  The new commander of the vehicle wasted no time at all. He tossed the empty sack of meat and bones that had once been Sowerberry in the nearest alley and turned his attention to the back of the wagon.

  The sun, already low upon the horizon, had set completely, leaving the shadows to lengthen at will and consume the entirety of the street. Yet the man within moved with the assurance as one might if he were striding through daylight or—more accurately in this instance, because a stroll under the nurturing rays of the sun would be less than salutary to him—a cat padding through the midnight hour.

  Yanking open the back of the hearse, the man gripped the end of the simple coffin within and pulled. It was a mere pine box with handles on either end, and yet one would have thought it would have some weight. But the man did not grunt or exert the slightest effort. The coffin slid out, and he angled it so that one end rested upon the street and the box leaned upright against the wagon that had been its conveyance.

  The top was fastened with a simple padlock, and the man gripped it firmly and snapped it off with his bare hand. Then he threw open the cover and looked inside.

  The deceased lay within, his head at an odd angle, the imprint of the noose still fresh and impressed upon his throat. His blazing red hair was sticking out untamed in a variety of directions, and his beard was bristling. His eyes were closed. His chest was not moving. He wore black, threadbare clothing upon a frame so thin and frail that it was a wonderment he had ever been alive at all.

  “Fagin!” snarled the man.

  The corpse started awake, his red-rimmed eyes snapping open.

  Yes, they snapped open. We know that this may well be startling for the reader who was unprepared for this moment, despite all our previous warnings. This constitutes our first actual foray into the world of the living dead. If the more faint-minded of you need to take a few moments to compose yourselves, we will wait.

  There. That should constitute sufficient wait time. Onward.

  The eyes actually moved independently of each other for a few moments before finally coming to focus upon the man in front of him. “Sanguine Harry,” he whispered, “as I live and breathe.”

  “You do neither,” Sanguine Harry reminded him. “Get out of the coffin, you lazy good-for-nothing.”

  “Coffin? Why am I in a coffin?
” He put his hand to his throat. “What’s wrong with my voice? Why are you sideways, my dear?”

  “You strangled. You took the short drop and sudden stop.”

  “Did I?” said Fagin, and then slowly the memories crept back to him. “Ah. So I did. So I did.”

  “Come here, you old fool!” said Harry. He reached over, gripped Fagin’s skull firmly with either hand and then snapped the dead man’s head upright, a movement that was accompanied by a very distinct crack. Fagin let out a cry of pain and then slowly, experimentally moved his head this way and that. It flopped a bit, but otherwise appeared to be in normal, functional order.

  “Thankee, Harry. You was always a kind one, you was.”

  “I was never anything of the sort,” Sanguine Harry retorted. “And if you believe that, more fool you. Come. Come quickly.” He returned to the alley, retrieved the body of Sowerberry, tossed him into the coffin, then shoved the coffin back into the hearse and secured the door. Then he clambered back into the driver’s seat, Fagin slowly climbing up to sit at his side. Snapping the reins, Sanguine Harry continued the route upon which the late Mr. Sowerberry had been engaged.

  “I thought I was done for, my dear, I truly thought I was,” said Fagin, his hand going to his throat. “I wasn’t sure that I, in my frail condition, could possibly survive. Not in the full light of morning. Eight in the a.m. An ungodly time to ask someone to give up their life, even if they had one to give up, which was not the case with me. Still, at least I had the black hood on; that was a blessing,” he said, speaking of the typical headwear placed upon the condemned so that he was allowed that small measure of dignity and so that the onlookers did not gaze upon the final death agonies as reflected in the condemned’s twisted countenance. “Kept the sun from doing me a treat, it did—”

  “Shut yer yammering mouth,” ordered Sanguine Harry. “There was no sun that morning. Darkness and clouds. Even the Lord didn’t want to waste His time looking down upon you, nor does your brother, nor do I. Yet here am I, the only one forced to looked at your wrinkled, ghastly hollow of a face, so at the very least, spare me the endless array of useless verbiage that spills out of your mouth like sewage from a pipe!”

  Fagin attended to keeping quiet for as long as he was capable, which happened to be just over a minute, and then he asked contritely, “My brother is put out with me, is he?”

  “The right honorable Mr. Fang almost wishes that the noose had torn your fool head off.” And then, with something almost akin to sympathy, Sanguine Harry emphasized belatedly, “Almost.”

  “Well . . . that’s something, I suppose, isn’t it, my dear? That my beloved brother allows for some small joy that I’m not bereft of my head?”

  “It’s not as if you were putting the damned thing to any useful purpose. What were you thinking, Fagin, to let yourself wind up in such a folly?”

  “It weren’t my fault, Harry—I swear to the living God what made me and turned His back on me, it weren’t,” Fagin said with such urging that he sounded not unlike a plaintive child. “They were lookin’ for a scapegoat, is what they wanted, and that’s no lie. Nancy, poor Nancy, old Sikes gave her what for. Murdered her in cold blood he did, and he died by his own hand, and that’s not what the mob wanted—no, it wasn’t. They wanted a warm body that they could hang for themselves to believe that they and they alone had brought proper vengeance to the situation. And who do they turn to as the object of their hatred and receiver of their unjust justice?” He thumped his chest in indignation. “The Jew. Always the Jew. You dislike the way of things? Grab the nearest Jew and vent your spleen upon him. It was a grouse miscarriage, is what it was. A grouse miscarriage.”

  Sanguine Harry suddenly pulled up on the reins, and the horse, which needed very little incentive to come to a halt, obliged. Fagin looked up and saw that they had arrived at the medical college, a rather undistinguished brick building with gargoyles leering down at them from the drainpipes overhead.

  “Wait here,” Sanguine Harry ordered him.

  At first, Fagin was inspired to ask why and, for that matter, inquire as to why he could not simply be on his way, but when he opened his mouth to speak and made as if to depart the immediate area, Sanguine Harry glared at him with that evil eye of his, and Fagin kept himself exactly and precisely where he was, murmuring, “No reason not to be keeping peace in the family; no, there isn’t.” So he kept his peace—and while he was at it, kept himself in one piece—while Harry offloaded the coffin and, hoisting it onto one shoulder, strode into the college as if he were delivering a box filled with bread. He was there for several minutes, and when he emerged, it was with a black purse that jingled when he walked. He vaulted to the driver’s seat and once again snapped the reins. Had the horse been a man, he would have groaned audibly upon being made to start walking yet again, but the horse had been given no say in the status or social ranking it had achieved thus far, and so offered no protest, correctly judging that it would serve no purpose.

  “You have to be getting out of London, Fagin.”

  Fagin nodded. “Yes. Yes, taking a short break could—”

  “Not short and not a break neither. You need to get completely out. For the love of all that’s unholy, you old fool,” he continued, running right over Fagin’s attempted protest, “you were dragged out into the street. Dozens of eyes saw you. You were hung. All London knows you were hung. The bloody newspapers wrote of it. If you’re seen as alive, it’s going to raise all manner of questions that no one wants asked, most especially you and me, and even more most especially, your brother.”

  “Then it’s my brother I’ll be approaching to learn his opinion of this wretched notion of exile.”

  “It isn’t a matter of opinion, Fagin. This is what your brother wants of you and for you. You’re toxic to him and to all our kind right now. The citizenry can’t know that dead don’t always mean dead, or it could ignite a witch hunt the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

  “Witch hunt?” scoffed Fagin. “Nonsense, Harry. People are more forward-thinking than that. More enlightened. This is not the Dark Ages. This is the nineteenth century.”

  “And we—all of us—desire to see the twentieth century, and will do nothing and allow no one to endanger that.”

  “I don’t pose any sort of threat.”

  “And if you’d been allowed to be delivered to the college? Lying there on the slab, still sound asleep, the moment they cut into you, you’d have sat up and started shrieking like a banshee. You think such a thing wouldn’t have gotten some small bit of notice, eh? You think they wouldn’t have backtracked every step of the trail you left behind, and where do you think that trail could lead? Ah, you’re silent in response to that, eh? Finally! I thought nothing save ripping the tongue from your withered head would accomplish that. Gods, Fagin, look at you,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “Why have you let yourself get this way? You’ve near to starved yourself! Let yourself become a withered shell of what you should be!”

  “If my dear brother is concerned over my drawing attention to myself,” said Fagin defensively, “I’d think he’d be appreciative that I’ve been restrained in my appetites.”

  “There’s restraint and then there’s self-deprivation!”

  “Just haven’t been as hungry as I used to be. It’s none of your concern, my dear Harry.”

  Sanguine Harry said, “What concerns me is what the Magistrate says concerns me.”

  “And he’s concerned about my getting out of London, is he?”

  “He’s concerned about you getting your priorities in order, and he’s concerned about you doing it nowhere near him. He has long-term plans for you, for us, for our kind, for the whole of London and our influence, and he don’t want you being in the mix as some sort of wild card. Not gone forever, you understand. Just gone long enough so that people have time to forget Fagin. Come back as someone else.”
/>   “Someone else?” Fagin stared at him, swimming in confusion, drowning in bewilderment. “I am what I am, my dear.”

  “And whatever that is, we need you to be it somewhere else. It is”—and his voice dropped to an appropriate sense of gravity—“what Mr. Fang requires. Who are you to act in contravention of that?”

  “Who am I indeed? That is the question in front of us, innit? And I have to be findin’ that out for meself, it seems.”

  “It seems so, yes.”

  When they reached the outskirts of London, Sanguine Harry drew the horse up and extended the purse to Fagin. Fagin stared at it, and Harry said to him with a sneer, “Why starin’? Flummoxed by someone just handin’ you a purse, rather than you tryin’ to pluck it out of their pocket unawares?”

  Fagin snatched it from his hand and jingled it slightly, putting it against his ear. “Decent pay just for deliverin’ bodies. Perhaps I’ve been spendin’ me time in the wrong line o’ work.”

  “Then find a better one elsewhere. You’ll have somethin’ in your pocket just to attend to basic need. Creature comforts.” He gave a short, strangled laugh, amused at his own comment. Then he leaped down from the driver’s seat and watched as Fagin slid over to take the reins. Pointing, he said, “Give yourself the distance of time, of geography. Hie yourself to the Midlands. Scotland, perhaps. Make something new of yourself. Mr. Fang will see you anon.”

  “As you say, my dear,” said Fagin softly.

  He snapped the reins, and the horse began its slow, steady movement toward the King’s highway. Sanguine Harry remained where he was, his arms folded, not trusting Fagin for a moment, not moving from where he stood. A statue would have been more lively.

  Finally, when Fagin had dwindled to little more than a speck, Sanguine Harry growled, “Idiot,” in that low manner that was the very antithesis of mellifluousness, and shoved his hands into his pockets as he turned away.