Chapter 13 #2
She had made another pot of coffee. “Come, sit, and spare me carpet, at least for a while until Mr. Munro returns.
I left the parlour window and joined her in the kitchen as she set two cups of coffee on the table.
“Perhaps a look at the cards while ye wait?” she suggested.
Tarot. I was familiar with it from Lady Antonia. She frequently had a card reader provide readings for her ladies, or as entertainment at her celebrations. It was something I had always made light of.
The truth was, such predictions, supposedly read in cards a person chose, both fascinated me and made me uneasy.
What would I learn? Was it possible the cards would tell me about my family? About my friend at the Foundling Hospital?
A person I might encounter? Prosperity? Adventure? Travel to a foreign place?
She reached for the deck of cards, her coffee cup wobbling as she almost knocked it over. I reached out as I had before for that vase.
There was a faint warmth at the tips of my fingers. The cup immediately settled into place with hardly a ripple of the coffee it held.
We exchanged a look. It was there again, the same as before, only stronger this time. She smiled at me.
“Ye must ask a question for the cards,” she began. “Then hold it in yer thoughts.”
A question. Perhaps the one that was there from the beginning. Why was Dory murdered?
“Do ye have it in yer thoughts?” Elizabeth asked. “Then cut the deck.”
She gathered the cards once more, then fanned them out across the top of the table. She looked up.
“Now, ye must pick seven cards, and keep them face down.”
I selected the cards one by one, stopped, then began again. When I had picked seven, she arranged them in a V-shape.
“The pattern reveals the past and then the future,” she explained and turned over the first card at one side of the V.
“The past—you have travelled far, but there are journeys yet to take.”
I only half listened as an icy rain had begun and pelted the parlour window.
“You are looking for answers that will be revealed quite soon,” she continued. “But with some sadness that you will overcome.” She turned over four more cards. “You have a gift of knowledge...” She continued to the last card.
“A man is revealed.” I looked up to find her watching me with a secretive smile. “He is already known to you and will be very important.”
Mr. Elias? Was there more?
“The card reveals...”
A different sound caught my attention, a rattling sound on the glass. I left the table and crossed the parlour to the window.
It was there, persistent, urgent, a single crow on the window ledge that looked back at me with a sharp black eye and the warning was there as clearly as if the bird had spoken.
“What is it dear? The weather? It’s either rain or fog this time of the year,” Elizabeth lamented as I looked down into the street below and saw a man, short of height in that long coat.
I didn’t need to see more to know there were feathers down the lapels of that coat—bright blue feathers—as he approached the entrance then disappeared from view.
The crow was gone into the night sky. As well as the man, yet I had no doubt where he had gone.
I glanced about the flat, clean and well-kept, yet much the same as any other tenement across the city.
With a basic key lock on the door that could be opened if an intruder chose.
Mr. Elias was inside the building even now, making his way up the stairs.
“We need to leave,” I told her and saw the surprise on her face.
“What is it?”
I turned toward Kip, still asleep on the settee.
“Someone is coming—we need to leave now!” I heard the urgency in my voice as I went to the settee and wakened Kip.
“We need to go.” I told him as Elizabeth still hesitated. I pulled the blanket from him.
“It’s the man from the Close,” I told him.
He was instantly awake, his face pale but alert as he thrust his feet into the oversized shoes that were undoubtedly stolen.
“He will come here,” I told Elizabeth with new urgency. “We have to go!”
“Who is coming here?”
There was no more time for questions as I pulled her by the arm from the chair. Kip ran ahead to the door, and like the sneak thief he’d become, he stopped and listened with an ear to the door. He shook his head that told me no one was there yet.
I opened the door and we stepped out into the hallway.
“I don’t understand...” Elizabeth whispered.
There was no time to explain. And then another sound from the stairwell with an icy gust of wind, followed by footsteps on the stairs.
“Who lives in the end flat at this floor?” I whispered.
“That would be Mr. Porter and his wife.”
“Go there now,” I told her. “Explain that there is someone dangerous in the building.” I turned to Kip.
“Yer to go with her.”
He shook his head. “I go with ye.”
For a second, perhaps even less, I glimpsed a memory from when I had stood in that cold hallway at the Foundling Hospital with a friend who had shared the darkness of that place.
I couldn’t persuade her to go with me.
“I’m goin’ with ye,” Kip said, pulling me from that memory. “Mr. Munro said as how I needed to protect ye.”
Protect me. A young boy.
“We’ll protect each other,” I told him.
There was no more time as Elizabeth reached that end flat and urgently knocked at the door. It opened.
Whatever she told Mr. Porter, she stepped inside, but not without an attempt to get Kip to come as well.
It was too late, and the door closed behind her. I glanced down into Kip’s anxious face. Stubborn, grubby little thief.
I had hoped that both he and Elizabeth could hide from Elias, and I would draw him away with the hope of finding a constable nearby. That part of my hastily made plan had now changed.
I had no weapon and softly cursed. The knife I carried was still in my bag in Elizabeth’s flat.
“Dinna worrit, miss. I got this. I’ll split the wanker’s head open this time.”
A short, thick, wood club was clenched in his fist.
“I dinna make the same mistake as at the market.”
Incredibly brave if foolish, all three stone of him.
There was another possibility that I had seen in some of the buildings in London, including the building for the Times Newspaper. It if was there and we could escape, I would be able to find a constable.
Another sound made the decision for me. I grabbed Kip by the other hand, and we went up the stairs to the next floor, and then the top floor.
There was a door at the end of that hallway. I gathered my skirt and we ran toward it, then out onto the roof of the tenement.
The rain was blinding, the roof dark with shadow.
“Stay here,” I told Kip.
“Where are ye goin’?”
“To find a way off the roof.”