Chapter Eight
Ebony trees, which include several species in the genus Diospyros, produce some of the hardest woods in the world. Ebony trees can take centuries to grow and have been cut to near extinction for their beautiful heartwood, which is dense enough to sink in water and resistant to damage and rot.
Elswyth crept into the hall and gently shut the door behind her.
The click of the lock echoed through the old house, and she paused for a moment, her muscles tensed.
When the hall was silent again she made her way into the shadows, stepping soundlessly on the carpet.
The wool of her gown seemed oppressive, scratching at her skin.
Over her shoulders lay an old riding cloak, its edges fraying, the hood concealing her scar.
She reached the staircase. Uncle Percival’s chambers lay beyond it, looming. No light came from beneath his door, nor any sound. Still, she held her breath as she tiptoed down the staircase, cloak whispering along the steps.
Finally, she stood in the basement of the house, where a long hallway stretched in either direction. To her right were the storerooms and the kitchens. To her left, at the end of the hall, was the servants’ entrance.
Elswyth hurried to the door at the end of the hall, placing her hand on the silver knob.
A voice came from behind her.
“A strange hour to be making calls.” She froze, hand hovering above the doorknob. The voice was deep, laced with an accent, and sounded subtly amused. She turned, and a shape stepped into a beam of moonlight: Kehinde, with his dark skin set with scars, his black suit, and his ebony cane.
“Mr. Ogunlana,” Elswyth said, looking around the room. “I did not expect you to be awake.”
He smiled. “Clearly, or you would not be trying to escape.”
“Escape! No, no, of course not—”
Kehinde wagged a finger at her. “Ah, ah. I know exactly what you are doing.”
“I find that unlikely,” Elswyth said, losing her patience.
“So you do not believe the recent murders attributed to this Reaper have something to do with your sister’s disappearance?
You aren’t sneaking through the servants’ entrance because Percival has forbidden you from leaving the house unsupervised?
” He shrugged, clearly still amused. “Well then, I must have been mistaken, and we can all go back to bed.”
Elswyth’s shoulders slumped. “How did you know?”
He reached out and knocked on the wooden wall to his right. “It’s an old house; the boards creak, and the walls talk. But I’m afraid that I can’t let you out that door.”
Frustration swelled in Elswyth. She’d been so close to beginning her search for Persephone in earnest. She’d spent nearly a month as Mrs. Rose’s captive, forced to suffer through frivolous lessons, unable to search for her sister.
A month spent plotting a single night, a night she could escape into the city and see if there truly was a connection between the Reaper and her sister’s disappearance.
She’d been so careful, so cautious. Only for Kehinde to spoil it.
“And if I refuse to return to bed, what will you do? Restrain me?”
Kehinde shrugged, leaning against the wall to his right. “If you make it necessary, then yes.”
Something grabbed Elswyth’s wrist. She flinched, but her fingers stuck to the doorknob as roots grew from the wood of the door and crawled over her hand. A living shackle formed there, holding her fast. She pulled, but it was no use—she was stuck.
“I’m sure my uncle will be pleased to hear that you detained his houseguest,” Elswyth said, still stubbornly trying to wrench her hand free.
How had Kehinde manipulated the wood of the door?
He was standing five feet away. But perhaps there was some connection she could not see, some system of roots beneath the wooden walls.
Kehinde dropped his hand from the wall, and the roots retreated from Elswyth’s wrist, returning to the wood of the door. Manipulating dead wood as well, she thought. No small feat. It seems that Mr. Ogunlana is more than he appears.
“Percival has asked you to stay in the house at night,” Kehinde said, gesturing back down the hall. “It would be an abuse of his hospitality, don’t you think?”
“If only you had been so watchful of my sister,” Elswyth spat, “then I would not need to be here at all.”
A chill settled over Kehinde’s usually cheerful features.
“Yes. That is what people say, isn’t it? Everyone—your father, society, the police—assumes that Persephone’s death is somehow our fault. They call your uncle a fool and I’m sure they call me much worse… Some even call us murderers. All while your uncle grieved for her.”
“I did not mean to—”
“You will not put us through that misery again,” Kehinde said. “I will not let you.”
Kehinde stared at her, his expression unyielding. In the moonlight, his face seemed carved from wood.
“That is precisely the reason you should let me go, Mr. Ogunlana. If I can discover what really happened to my sister, then you and Lord Devereux will be cleared of suspicion. Either way, I will go to the Rows. Perhaps you may stop me tonight, but I will try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. You cannot restrain me forever.”
Kehinde scowled. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“You Elderwoods are all the same. Common sense chases you and you run faster. Curse the day I ever met your uncle.”
Elswyth hesitated over the door, noting the way Kehinde’s scars twisted as he scowled. “Does that mean you’ll let me go?”
Kehinde took his cane, donned his hat, and then moved to the door. “It means I’m going with you.”
The labyrinth of slums known as the Rows lay across the city from the West End, far from the glamour of St. James and Mayfair and Belgravia.
The tenements seemed to grow around Elswyth as their carriage descended into the twisting alleyways.
Chimneys rose from gabled roofs like trees from craggy mountainsides, supporting a canopy of laundry wires and time-worn shop signs.
The streets were rougher here, the carriage bouncing on old cobblestones as round as skulls, and the buildings were slanted, ancient things, their crooked brick walls leaning over the street as though they would fall at any moment.
Here and there wooden shacks rested against them, sometimes two or three, like mushrooms sprouting from the trunks of great trees.
Despite the condition of its buildings, the main causeway of the Rows was not so different from any in London.
The smell of smoke and soot lingered in the air, mixed with heady scents from the spice factories, where floromancers worked day and night fabricating cinnamon and ginger and cardamom.
At the end of the long street, the city sloped downward to where the docklands began, and the masts of ships bobbed above the river, concealed by mist.
There was light on the main road, at least enough to see by, lit by gas lamps and candles in shop windows, but between the ancient buildings, dark alleys waited like gaps in teeth. Shadows moved within them, lurking just beyond where Elswyth could see.
The carriage stopped, and Kehinde opened the door and stepped into the street without hesitating, extending a hand to Elswyth.
She looked at it, then at the street outside, and descended from the carriage.
The night was icy, and the ratty cloak only did so much to keep her warm.
She brought the hood up, concealing her scar.
It would not do to be recognized in a place like this.
Kehinde moved toward the alley to her right, across the crowded causeway, and Elswyth followed.
On either side of the alley stood a factory and a pub.
Workers—their hands withered from the extraction of spices—poured out of the factory like escaping prisoners.
Half of them went down the road to wait for an omnibus.
The other half went straight to the pub and waited for fresh beer.
Elswyth must have heard six different languages in that crowd of factory workers; foreigners capable of fabricating exotic species were almost guaranteed work sating London’s demand for herbs.
Any money they made went toward food to replenish their vitae, and so most were little more than indentured servants, living day to day in the workhouses.
But even that was better than living on the streets.
As they walked, Elswyth noted a large posting on a brick wall near the alley. She hesitated, reading the massive print:
CURFEW IN EFFECT; NO-ONE SHALL BE OUT-OF-DOORS PAST TWELFTH BELL; WOMAN-SLAYER AT LARGE; STAY VIGILANT; INFORMATION ON ‘REAPER’ REPORT TO METROPOLITAN POLICE; 150-POUND REWARD
Next to it, someone had posted a recent news sheet proclaiming the discovery of the last victim.
Around the main causeway, Elswyth spotted identical postings plastered to the windows of shops.
The crowd from the nearby omnibus disembarked, walking quickly past her.
Some glanced at them, but most simply kept their heads down, sticking to the well-lit areas beneath the gas lamps.
Kehinde signaled for her to move along with a jerk of his head.
He slipped through the crowd, looking back to ensure that Elswyth was not far behind.
They followed the slope of the alley downward, over the muddy stones as bedsheets, drying on strings, waved like ghosts above them.
What struck her most was the darkness; away from the gas lamps of the main streets, the alleys felt like caves, oppressively dark.
A smog-choked moon struggled through the thin opening above the alleyway, casting fractured light on the cobblestones, and the walls of the brick tenements grew closer as they descended, like the shifting walls of canyons.