Chapter 25
We climbed down the metal ladder and stepped back into the water, which felt even colder to my feet and ankles. My teeth chattered audibly as we made our way toward the boat. The red string had vanished, lost underwater.
From up ahead, we heard the intermittent echoing bleat of voices.
Art immediately doused the lantern, and I froze.
Instead of the complete darkness I expected, there was a dim light glimmering in the black water ahead. Was it light from the Thames? Or from someone else in the tunnel?
I prayed no one had found James. He could hold his own in a fight, even against two, but not when he was injured.
“Close your eyes,” Art whispered. “Use your hands.”
I obeyed and instantly my other senses became more acute.
The plunks and smacks of the waves against the walls, a creak from something up ahead.
The sour, briny smell of rot and the river.
With the water sliding up and down my shins with each step, my right hand felt along the stone, finding jagged edges, chips and divots.
Art and I proceeded at a snail’s pace, silently enough that I could hear the difference between the slaps of water against the bricks and the sloshing flow of the Fleet as we neared it.
At last, I opened my eyes to near-complete darkness. Whoever was here had doused their light or moved away. Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed movement. It vanished as I turned toward it.
“James,” I said softly.
“Shhh.”
Then I heard it. The echoes of splashes and voices.
I held my breath listening, hoping they were moving away, but after a moment I could hear them more clearly, and then well enough to distinguish a word.
I inched my feet forward until I heard “Kit,” not more than a few feet from me.
I expected my shin to hit a gunwale but found nothing.
“Smugglers,” Art whispered.
“They came downriver and went into the tunnel above this one,” James muttered. “They’re coming this way.”
“Where’s the boat?” I groped and found his arm.
“Near the Thames by now, I hope. Had to shove it off or they’d hear it and find us.” He must have felt my fear, for he added, “You’ll be fine, Kit. Art will help you.”
“Can you swim wi’ your leg?” Art asked.
“I’ll manage.”
The thought of his open wound in the vile water turned my stomach, but there was no help for it.
Art stepped forward. “Put your arm over my lef’ shoulder, mate,” he said, his voice low. “And Kit, take the other. It’ll be over your head in the deep part.”
“Get me to the middle,” James said, “where I can swim. I just can’t walk to get there.”
I gripped the coat over Art’s right shoulder, and he stepped out into the Fleet.
I anticipated the river water moving faster than in the tunnel, but the sudden icy lurch of it against the middle of my back stopped my lungs.
My hand slipped from Art’s shoulder, and the water rushed over my head, dunking me.
I came up gasping, Art’s hand grasping my coat.
My hands clutched his shoulder, tighter this time.
Art braced himself, one foot forward, one back, and then he moved.
Now that we were in the river, we could hear the voices more clearly.
They sounded close, but they had doused their light, for all was darkness behind us.
They could no more see us than we could see them, so long as we stayed silent.
But they were moving faster than we were.
The voices grew louder. If I could have swum, we all could have moved faster, and in that moment, I vowed that if I ever got out of this, I would bloody learn to bloody swim.
I cursed in my head, but stayed as still as I could so as not to throw Art off-balance.
The water swelled. It was at the middle of my back, and I could feel the strain in Art’s shoulders as he tried to keep the three of us afloat. I knew what James was thinking as clearly as if he’d spoken. He wanted Art to get me to safety—and I wanted the same for him.
“I’m letting go. Ready?” James said, and Art braced again while James slid ahead of us with soft splashes. Art and I could move faster now. I held myself as still as possible, and the water grew colder and faster. I fought down my panic as it reached my neck.
“’Old your breath,” Art said, and I felt him lose his footing. But I could see the Thames, with the moonlight on it, not twenty feet ahead.
“Hey!” came a shout behind us.
The light coming from the end of the tunnel had thrown us into silhouette. I turned and saw our shadows as vague enormous shapes—heads and shoulders—moving on the wall.
“Stop!” came the voice again. “Or we’ll shoot!”
“Kick!” Art shouted at me. Silence was pointless now. The report of a gunshot snapped, then echoed through the tunnel.
We wouldn’t make it.
“’Old your breath!” Art said again.
I gasped for what air I could and shut my eyes, letting him swim ahead, pulling me forward to the Thames. Below the water, we were invisible.
A second gunshot rang out, but it was muted by the water.
It’s a different world below the surface, I thought. My eyes remained closed, and I felt Art’s hand with a firm grasp on my coat, and we moved through the water in bursts driven by his strong kicks and my lesser ones.
Suddenly the water changed again, like the prow of a small boat pressing along the right side of my body. I clawed my way up to the surface, with Art’s hand still clenching my coat.
We’d reached the Thames.
“Turn on your back! Suck breath into your belly,” he shouted, and I heard the note of relief in his voice.
I did as he said, and to my surprise, the water stopped rushing at me or past me. It carried me, fast, and Art and I let it bear us east on the tide until we reached a dock where James lay flat, a long plank extended out over the water for us.
Art grasped it and hauled me forward until my hands reached it too.
I was so cold I barely felt the wood against my palm, but I hung on for bloody life and James pulled us out of the flow and toward the pilings.
I grasped the post and found cross bars and notches for my feet, pulling myself over the top, where I flopped down, panting, my cold cheek against the river-rotted plank.
Art clambered up after me and rolled onto his side, retching.
“Hullo, water rats,” James said, a wry note in his voice. But a moment later, he cursed. “Merde. Stay down. They’re looking for us.”
A bull’s-eye lantern appeared, arrowing light across the water. I bent my forehead to the planks, and through a crack between them, I saw glints on the wavelets below.
At last it was dark again, the boat gone, and I turned my face toward James. Blood trickled over his forehead.
“What happened to your head?”
“Hit it on the dock.”
“How’s your leg?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said, but shortly. He was in pain.
“Y’need a doctor,” Art said. “I know one no’ far from here.
But first.” He withdrew a flask—was there anything he didn’t have inside that bag?
—and offered it to me. I took a swig, letting the spirit burn down my insides, and handed it to James, who drank and returned it to Art, who, meanwhile, had taken out something wrapped tightly in oilskin, tied closed with a length of twine.
He unwrapped a pistol and handed it to me. “You know how to shoot i’?”
The metal was ice-cold but dry, heavy against my palm. I nodded, checking the chamber the way Amelia had shown us. There was no bullet. I thought about what Art said about not killing people, and my heart sank. This gun was only for show.
“Bullet’s in the second chamber,” Art said as he stood. “First one’s empty for safety.”
Art took James’s left arm over his shoulders, and I hooked myself under James’s right.
The difference in our heights made us a clumsy trio, but we shuffled up the pier and into Whitechapel.
James made no jest of it, which told me how badly he was hurt.
We stopped often, each time longer. When we reached an alley and Art pointed toward a door, I stepped behind, following them through damp muck underfoot that almost made me slip. “Is this the doctor?” I asked.
“He won’ make it to the doctor,” Art said. “I’ll bring the doctor here. This is a friend. She gets to her shop early.” He knocked quietly, three raps. Then three more.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice.
“It’s me.”
The lock slid and the door opened to reveal one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen. Her golden hair fell in a long braid over her wrapper, and her bright eyes darted over us. “Come in then,” she said and stepped aside, beckoning us through the open door.
Something about her gesture, the ready kindness of it, turned my heart over.
I gave her a grateful look as I entered.
A sturdy Irishwoman stood in the kitchen, pouring tea.
God only knows what she thought of us, drenched and stinking of the river, with James bleeding all over his face and ready to drop.
But she only said, “Why, Artie.” Her eyes were wary, watchful, questioning, and it seemed she and Art understood each other.
“He needs a doctor,” Art said. “Can I bring ’im here?”
The woman set the kettle down, caught up her apron, and dried her hands. “No names.”
For everyone’s protection.
“You’re drenched,” said the beautiful girl to me.
“I’ve a dress you can borrow.” She led me into a bedroom with two narrow beds and a squat black stove whose open door revealed coals, red and ashy.
The door shut behind us and my limbs began to jerk like a street show marionette.
In the sudden warmth, I couldn’t manage them.
She fetched a towel and threw it onto a chair nearby.
“Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph,” she murmured. “Let’s get you out of these clothes.”