BETRAYAL
in TIME
1
Edward Price almost caught the bugger, could actually feel the coarse wool of the boy’s raggedy coat skim across his fingertips as he reached out to snag a bone-thin arm. But the urchin evaded him with a twist of his narrow shoulders, and in a spurt of youthful energy, he sprinted across the cobblestone street, slick with sleet and snow, leaving Edward clutching only cold air.
“Oy!” he shouted. “Halt, thief!”
Even though his watchman duties wouldn’t begin for another eight hours, Edward pelted after the young criminal, annoyed that the boy had gained a sizeable lead already. A more seasoned watchman would most likely have let the brat go, he knew. But he was only two nights into his job—tonight would be his third—and Edward was still filled with the bright earnestness of a new recruit called upon to keep the peace in London Town. He could hardly look the other way when the bold little napper snatched an apple—never mind that it was shriveled and wormy—off the costermonger’s cart right in front of his very own peepers. And certainly not when the costermonger himself and at least a dozen witnesses had turned to fix their eyes on him, expecting him to do something.
“Stop! Stop, I say!” Edward bellowed, his gaze locked on the small figure running ahead. The thief dodged pedestrians and peddlers’ carts with the agility of someone who belonged in the city’s criminal class.
Even though he hadn’t yet reached his nineteenth year, Edward was less nimble. As he raced after the boy, he crashed into three wooden crates stacked on the pavement, having just been hauled off a wagon. He winced when they toppled and the slats cracked, and he had to dodge the potatoes, onions, and turnips spilling underfoot. The two burly men who’d been unloading the wagon stopped long enough to hurl curses after him. Edward gritted his teeth and ignored them—as well as the stitch that had begun to pulse in his side—and plowed on.
He was pretty sure that he was gaining on his quarry. Elation gave him a burst of speed. Edward smiled grimly when the thief tossed him a quick look over his shoulder, his eyes going wide. You’d better be afraid, brat.
As quick as a fox, the boy darted to the right, vanishing from the wider street into a narrow, twisting lane. Edward didn’t waste his breath—he didn’t have any to spare—on ordering the two men loitering outside a candlestick shop to try to capture the urchin, or on again demanding that the boy halt. Instead, he barreled after him, gasping when his boots hit a patch of ice crusted over the dirt road. Arms flapping, he managed to right himself before he fell on his arse.
Bleeding hell. He heard the two men laughing behind him, but he tightened his jaw and renewed his pursuit. The stitch in his side was beginning to feel like someone was jabbing him with a red-hot fire poker. Despite the temperature hovering near freezing, the exertion made him sweat. He could feel perspiration pool in the pits of his arms and slink uncomfortably down the base of his spine.
Still, he ran on. His gaze was fixed on the thief, a small shadow against the area’s crumbling buildings and broken cobblestones. Edward wasn’t sure exactly when it began to dawn on him that no one else seemed to be about. He’d chased the boy into one of London’s more derelict sections. A narrow, unkempt park of dead trees was in the center of the street, creating a poor man’s version of a square. Four- and five-story buildings rose up on either side of the street, the windows either boarded up or the windowpanes broken, the glass like jagged teeth. Snow drifted across steps and stoops, piled in shadowy corners, stained revolting yellows and browns. Even though it was still morning hours, the abandoned buildings cast deep bluish-gray shadows across the square. The back of Edward’s neck prickled with unease.
Bugger it. Edward slowed to an unsteady stop as he sucked in great gulps of cold air, ready to abandon the chase. He swallowed hard, his eyes flitting this way and that. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting someone in London, so it was peculiar to be in a section of the city that was as desolate and silent as this. The only sounds came from pigeons cooing from rooftop ledges, and curtains that fluttered and snapped in the breeze against empty window frames. And his own pounding footsteps and ragged breathing.
The thief glanced back at him, flashing a cocky grin before scampering up the steps of a building across the square and ducking through an open doorway.
Anger surged through Edward. The thief’s blatant insolence renewed his flagging spirits. His lungs were still burning something fierce and the stitch in his side had yet to subside, but he pushed himself forward into a half-running, half-loping gait. A moment later, he was up the short flight of stairs and clearing the doorway. Only when he was through the door did he register that the building was a Catholic church, long since abandoned. The vestibule was barren, with two water fonts carved into the granite walls left dry and filled with spider webs. Puddles, now iced over, spread across the entrance’s flagstone floor.
Chest heaving, Edward slammed through the swinging doors, hinges shrieking, into the nave of the church. Like the vestibule, the nave was empty of its popery trappings. The pews and wall plaques had been removed, the sanctuary stripped bare. A chorus of pigeons cooed from up high, where the birds had made nests in the vaulted ceiling niches. Weak light came through the stained-glass lancet windows, and rainbows fell across the stone tiles of the floor, which was crusted white in places with dried pigeon droppings.
Edward only glanced at the surroundings, as his attention was on the thief. Surprise and triumph flitted through him when he approached his quarry, and saw that the boy had come to a standstill in the middle of the room. The boy looked around, and Edward noticed that the bold smile was gone. Now his small face was pinched, his eyes round with something approaching horror. Still, it never occurred to Edward that the boy’s horror wasn’t about his imminent capture until his gaze dropped to where the scamp stood.
“Good God . . .” Edward came to a stumbling halt, his breath catching painfully in his throat.
For just a moment, he thought that maybe the wretch lying on the floor was a wax sculpture, like the ones Marie Tussaud used in her traveling exhibits, maybe placed here by schoolboy pranksters. Except who was around to fool?
The man was naked, his flesh nearly blue, his body hair shimmering silver with frost. Edward was no stranger to death. Two nights ago, his first night as a watchman, he’d been the one to discover a poor sod who’d frozen to death huddled outside a coffee shop, across the street from St. Paul’s.
But this . . . this . . .
Edward’s shocked gaze traveled across the dead man’s face, which was swollen and appeared to be twisted into a silent scream. The watchman tried and failed to suppress a shudder.
Someone had cut out the old man’s tongue.
2
The church had probably been beautiful at one time, with its flowing arches, marble columns, and delicate workmanship. But now it had a hollowed-out feeling, Sam Kelly thought, like someone had scooped out its guts, the pews, altar, religious statues, and candles all gone. The church and its congregation had most likely fled these bleak streets for the more prosperous sections of London. Or, rather, for neighborhoods that were more Irish, and, therefore, more Catholic. Sam understood. As the son of Irish immigrants, he’d spent his childhood in those streets and squares that echoed with cheerful brogue and drunken bellows, the latter of which could either end in violent fisticuffs or laughter and friendly backslaps.