Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Zephyra noticed that there were two men following her, but she easily eluded them both. Really, the men Maxham and Jack hired were quite poor quality.
She had several copies of Bianca’s notes, naturally. The original pages were hidden near her greenhouse in the country, and another copy was hidden in her bedroom, where she had studied them nearly every night for the past several years.
She had also made another copy and placed it in a leather satchel along with coins and various types of clothing. She had prepared this bag in the event she would need to run away from home quickly, and she had hidden it where no one would find it.
The notes in that satchel were closest to Maxham’s house, and so she headed across the river.
It was late by the time she entered the Long Glades. Brannon Church was a tall shadow that seemed darker and weightier than the bulks of the buildings around it. It was already deep into the night, and so the curate at the church had already left for his rented rooms.
She passed the front door facing the street on the west side, for it would surely be barred for the night.
Also, she was certain the curate purposefully did not have the door repaired or maintained so that it was difficult to open and created a horrendous screeching, to allow him to hear when someone entered the church.
The south door, while smaller, would also likely be barred.
It did not groan and squeal like the front door, but it always gave a long, low moan as it swung open.
The curate’s rooms were a five-minute walk away, but the sounds were loud enough that the neighbors would certainly hear and might come to investigate.
So she crept down the narrow, pitted lane that bordered the east side of the church, a road with ramshackle tenement houses on the other side. Most were two or three stories, and they loomed over the lane, casting it in pitch black darkness.
Zephyra picked her way carefully but quickly—the lane stank with refuse thrown from the buildings and also the smell of decay coming from the graves.
The church was near enough to the river that the fog was still thick, and she could barely make out the low brick wall topped with iron spikes that enclosed the churchyard.
She finally found the wooden gate, a flimsy affair that no longer locked because the entrance was so narrow that gravediggers and coal men would frequently knock into it, and the latch had finally broken at some point in the past. She knew the rusted hinges would creak if she opened it, so she grabbed the spike set in the wall next to it and hoisted herself up and over the gate.
Her feet landed with an unpleasant squelching sound.
It was muddy from a recent, brief summer storm, and although she tried to reason with herself that it was simply dirt, there was a foul smell and texture to it that made her feel as though the rot from all the bodies in the graveyard had spread out through the ground and up to the surface.
Zephyra made her way through the churchyard, but slowly and quietly. She paused several times to gag at the smell of withering bodies from the only half-buried pits full of paupers’ corpses, awaiting more burials before being covered with feet of dirt.
She had difficulty traversing the graveyard, for it was compact and chaotic, chock-full of leaning headstones and wooden markers.
She moved from a yew tree to a larger stone monument, old and pitted, a remnant of a more affluent family from decades earlier.
She placed each step carefully so that she would not turn an ankle in the soft earth, which sometimes would give way to reveal ancient, shrouded remains whose shallow graves had been exposed by the erosion of years.
Her silent caution was rewarded as she reached the northeast corner and spotted the faintest glow of a shielded lantern that flickered in between the headstones.
She stopped to listen and could just barely hear the sounds of digging—softer than when she dug into earth with her own steel trowel.
It was the sound of wooden shovels, which made less noise than metal.
Resurrectionists! Of all the rotten luck! There must have recently been a burial earlier today or yesterday.
She still had a visceral revulsion toward grave robbers, which she knew was hypocritical of her. She had herself made use of such men to quietly get rid of the body of the true Miss Tolberton.
But that meant she also knew how dangerous these men could be, especially for a lone woman roaming around a dark churchyard after midnight.
She had been moving slowly before, but now she went at a snail’s pace as she swung wide around the grave that the men were robbing.
The resurrectionists could be vicious in order to protect their unsavory business selling corpses.
Many would not hesitate to create another corpse that they could sell.
She gasped and jerked in surprise as the crack of wood sounded across the yard. There was a muffled curse at the loud sound, and the subsequent cracks of wood were softer. She held in place for a minute or two, but it appeared the men had not heard her gasp.
They were remarkably quick—it could not have been more than fifteen minutes since the sound of them cracking into the coffin—when she suddenly heard them speaking in low voices as they began to weave their way through the headstones.
Their cart’s low rumble barely covered the sound of hushed voices.
They were too faint for her to hear, but she caught the words “paupers’ grave” and deduced that they were arguing about whether they wanted to drop down into the mass grave to see if there were any fresh bodies on top.
She crouched down behind the headstone, but was alarmed when it sounded as though they were heading toward her. Her breathing came in shallow puffs as the faint light of their shielded lantern created a shadow of the headstone upon the ground.
They were going to pass by next to her on the right side. What multitude of bad luck had befallen her!
She would have only one chance. She held her breath as they drew closer. Now they were arguing about splitting the profits.
As the shielded lantern drew even with the headstone, she slowly crept around the other side, remaining in the shrinking shadow until she had passed out of sight. She lay curled in the darkness on the ground as the lantern and the cart rolled away from her.
Only then did she let out her breath, panting against a patch of wet grass and stifling a cough that threatened to rise up her throat.
She waited, listening as the men made their way to the northeast corner. Then she heard the wooden wheels of the cart rattle over stones near the churchyard wall. The sound grew softer as they headed toward the entrance gate.
Zephyra did not know exactly when they had left, but a profound sense of calm settled around her, as if the darkness, along with her, had sighed with relief. She continued making her way toward the church’s north wall—or what she assumed was the north wall, since everything was in shadow.
She nearly stumbled into the open trench that served as a mass grave—the smell had grown truly foul, and she stopped, wondering if she were going to vomit, when she realized that only a foot away was the edge of the grave. She walked around the large hole and its half-hearted covering of earth.
The church’s north door, or Devil’s Door as it used to be called, hadn’t really been used even before the additions of a meeting room and director’s office had been added on to the original Norman building.
But then the neglect of previous rectors and groundskeepers had allowed several thorn bushes to grow in a sunny patch right in front of the door.
It was now blocked and almost indistinguishable from the walls, blackened with the same soot that darkened the stone so that only the barest outline showed even in daylight.
She was still several yards away when a sudden noise made her freeze. She darted behind a headstone. The sounds grew louder, and then the light of two shielded lanterns flitted like ghosts over the grounds.
More resurrectionists! She wanted to pound the ground with her fists in fury at her abominable luck tonight.
Zephyra thought they were perhaps after the fresh grave that had already been looted by the other gang, but instead they were heading directly for the open trench—the paupers’ grave into which she had nearly fallen.
It was not directly in front of the north door, but the angle was just enough that they would be able to see her as she tried to sneak into the church.
She could wait until they were done, but she would also risk being discovered. She hesitated in indecision for a moment, then made up her mind.
Zephyra sprinted as hard as she could toward the north door.
The lanterns were still too far away and should not pick up her fleeing form.
She was dressed in soot-blackened rags with a black wig on her head, and she trusted that she had rubbed enough dirt onto her skin that it would not reflect what little light came from the lanterns.
She heard no shouts as she ran. She skirted around the thorn bushes as she had many times before, although that had always been in daylight.
There was another reason she continued working with her charitable group, the Society of the Benevolent Voice in the Wilderness for the Rescue of Souls Lost in the Darkness of Heathenism.
It was useful for her to hear of the news in the Long Glades, to pick up rumors and stories about Jack and occasionally Maxham.
But it also gave her access to this church, and to this unused door. Unknown to the curate, she watered the thorn bushes, encouraging them to grow tall with their spikes. She also oiled the hinges of the door.
Zephyra inserted the spare key she had had made, and the plank door opened with only the softest click.
It swung wide silently on the oiled hinges, and as she hurriedly shut it behind her, she saw the faintest streaks of light from the lanterns as the resurrection men drew close to the paupers’ grave.
Then she had closed the door and locked it with the faintest scrape of metal from the key.
She turned, although all she saw was darkness from the inside of the church. She smelled old, cold stone and ancient draperies musty with age. There was also the faint thread of smoke from the candles that illuminated the dim interior during the day.
Zephyra walked forward blindly, waiting for her eyes to accustom themselves, but the darkness only turned into a lighter shade of gray. She finally knocked her knee against the end of one of the wooden pews, causing the small sound to echo through the high-ceilinged sanctuary.
She headed toward the front, counting the pews idly, then turned toward the right side of the altar. Stone steps led down to a half-sunken door—the entrance to the crypt under the church.
This door, also, she kept oiled, specifically for situations such as this, when she needed to sneak into the church at night quietly, without alerting the curate. She closed the door behind her and was completely enveloped by blackness.
Zephyra had long since ceased to be afraid of the dark. She could not afford the luxury of fear if she wished to survive.
She made her way slowly, carefully down the steps, keeping her hand against the wall to guide her. She stumbled a little at the bottom when she expected a step and there was none.
Her left hand reached toward the stone wall and felt along until her fingers found a small indentation that she had worn into the stone brick. She pushed on one side of the brick, causing the other side to swivel out so that she could easily remove it from the wall.
Within, she had stored flint and steel and a candle, which she lit. The feeble light pushed back the darkness enough for her to see the dim outlines of the walls and a few of the holy items that had been stored in the basement.
There were several small alcoves, including one directly to the right of the stairs, partially hidden by the wall and a stone pillar.
She glanced at the flimsy cot that remained there, a remnant of the days when Shepherd Willie’s injured men could find refuge in the services of a healing woman in Brannon Church, before Jack killed the criminal leader.
Zephyra crept toward the back of the large space, which had been broken up into twisting hallways.
At one point, they had hoped the wealthier patrons would pay to have their loved ones interred in private family vaults, but the rector at the time had charged such exorbitant rates that the crypt remained woefully empty.
The patrons who could afford such prices—such as Shepherd Willie—would not have made such arrangements.
In most of those cases, they suffered violent deaths and their wealth was appropriated by whoever took over after them, so their remains were never placed to rest in the way that they would have liked.
Eventually, the empty crypt had devolved into nothing more than an elaborately decorated storage area.
One short hallway ended with a very ugly, poorly carved statue that stood a few inches from the wall. Zephyra slipped behind the large bulk and knelt down, searching the bricks near the floor.
She found the ones she wanted, marked with indentations she had worn into them, and proceeded to remove them. A jagged hole opened in the wall, reminding her of teeth.
After reaching a hand inside, she pulled out a leather satchel. Then she took the time to replace the bricks—after all, she never knew when she might have need of a place to store her secrets. She moved out of the alcove and back toward the entrance.
Zephyra had turned the last corner into the long hallway that led to the stairs when the light of her candle fell upon a pair of legs. Startled, she nearly shrieked until she raised the light and it caught on Maxham’s ghostly, pale eyes.
He gave her that unnerving smile she hated. “Hello, Zephyra.”