Epilogue
It should have been spring.
It should have been April or May, the first waxy yellow-green leaves unfurling from their buds, the air laced with the hum of bees and the perfume of apple blossoms.
But there was no such thing as bad weather, Charlie had always said. Only bad clothing. And at least it wasn’t raining.
So it was that on a cold, clear morning, a few days before Christmas, Caroline Foster buried her brother.
The retinue that threaded its way from the front steps of 212 Old Montague Street was a strange one.
Two women, both in black. Eight men of every shade and size; one in the white turban of a Sikh, shivering in his emerald silk jacket against the British wind, a Black man with shoulders like a bull beneath a finely cut wool coat, a bowlegged fellow in an American rancher’s hat, and a man who, were he to raise his eyes from the paving stones, would have made a child shriek with the ruin of his face.
But John did not look up as he was borne through the streets by Rab and Alfie, and the mourning party reached St. Mary’s without incident.
It was a quiet morning, not yet seven, the city still stretching its arms overhead with a yawn.
It had been weeks since cries of Murder!
had sounded on Whitechapel’s street corners, over a month since Mary Jane Kelly, the Ripper’s last victim, was buried in St. Patrick’s Cemetery.
Although the Metropolitan Police were still out in force, and respectable citizens didn’t leave their homes after dark, the newspapers had turned their attention back to Parliament and distant wars, and a sense of tentative normalcy had settled back over the borough.
Caroline thought, sometimes, about the shriveled bit of Caroline Eddowes’s kidney in Sergeant Corbet’s icebox and wondered what had become of it.
Someone must have found it; the police would have been called moments after she escaped into the street.
If they had put the pieces together, then they had immediately covered them back up.
Scotland Yard would not survive the disgrace that Jack the Ripper had been one of their own.
The tall iron gates of St. Mary’s were thrown open, though at this hour, the churchyard was empty save for some crows scratching in the shadows of the yews.
Caroline, with her mother’s cloak secured firmly beneath her chin to hide the bruises that still ran down the white length of her throat, pointed down the path to where the headstones were the oldest and the grass was the longest.
Speech was still painful, so Rab, with a long, golden look at her, said, “Over there, gents. Over by the wall, under those trees.”
They walked single file like empty-handed pallbearers until they reached the place Caroline had indicated and, at her mute nod, formed a tight circle around the tree roots.
To a casual observer, they were a mismatched group of mourners, huddled together in the cold shade.
Caroline closed her eyes, breathed the smell of black earth and broken grass.
It was not Stafford, not the green hills and dense woodland that her brother had loved so deeply.
But he was surrounded by friends, and she could come visit him whenever she liked.
—
The loss of Charlie was still too great to comprehend.
It was easier to pretend he was gone, that he had purchased that falsified ticket on an ocean liner.
But as Rab knelt in the center of the circle and pulled the trowel from the pocket of his coat, the weight of what they had come to do hit her like a closing door.
“Steady,” whispered Viv, wrapping an arm around Caroline’s waist. “He’s watching us, love. Show him you’ll be all right.”
Caroline inhaled, pressed her feet down into the ground like the roots of the yew. She was here for Charlie. For Charlie, she would be strong.
She had recovered quickly from her injuries.
But the shock still woke her at night, and she sat at her desk for hours, trying to translate it all into words.
Across the landing Rab’s lamp burned, too, and it comforted Caroline to think of him with his beakers and burners, searching for an antidote for the pathogen that poisoned her blood.
But it didn’t feel like a poison. It felt like a cure.
She saw the difference in her glass, felt it when she lifted buckets of water or climbed the stairs. She was no longer a flickering flame. She was a blazing fire. She wished her brother were here to see it, see the new brightness in her face, the muscles wrapping her bones.
She had given Rab two vials of her blood; he had spent every free moment hunched over Mr. Tythe’s microscope.
But even if he discovered what differentiated her blood from the others’, even if he created a medication that would stop the change for them all, Caroline did not think she would take it.
She felt, for the first time in her life, that she was the captain of her own ship.
One night of suffering each month was a small price to pay.
—
Rab stood now, wiping the dirt on his black trousers, and found Caroline’s eyes.
The hole he had dug was as wide and deep as a hand.
Once, in the woods, Caroline had found a dead baby bird, and she and Charlie had buried it ceremoniously beside the river, marked it with a little stick cross.
That’s what Charlie’s grave looked like.
The memory reached out for her like a hand.
“Um,” Rab said, “I’m not, er, much for speeches.” He glanced down at the little impression in the dirt, and Caroline felt her already swollen throat tighten.
When he spoke again, the words were clotted with tears.
“Charlie should still be here,” he said, blinking furiously. “And he’s not. And that’s the worst thing that I can think of. The worst thing in the world. He was good, and kind. On your worst day, when life was looking darkest, Charlie would come along and have you laughing before you could think.”
A chuckle from Mr. Tythe, a nod from Mr. Toussaint.
“He was like that,” Rab went on. “Like the sun coming out from the clouds. And he was taken from us. I get so mad when I think of it. I feel like a pot about to boil over.”
Rab’s hands were knotted at his sides, his knuckles white. A frisson ran through the circle of men, a shiver of shared anger.
Then Rab took a breath and loosened his fingers from their fists.
“And then I remember that life isn’t fair.
And there are lots of people that were good and kind and should still be here but aren’t, and lots of bad people who are still here and don’t deserve to be.
It’s downright maddening. But there’s nothing to do, I suppose, except be kind to each other.
Be as good as possible, and remember those that have gone before, and try to make them proud.
“And so today…” He trailed off, swallowed. Collected himself. “Today, we bury my brother. Miss Foster’s brother.” His yellow eyes caught Caroline’s again and held them. “Today we bury Charlie Foster, and we vow to see the good in ourselves and in others. We vow to be the sun, not the clouds.”
Caroline smiled at this and drew the enamel box from the folds of her cloak.
It contained Charlie’s ring and a folded-up portrait of Mary Jane. A strange casket, a strange collection to signify a life. But as she stepped carefully forward, knelt, and placed the box in the miniature grave, Caroline felt her brother.
She felt him there, between Monsieur Rodart and Mr. O’Riley, between the discrete brush of the backs of their hands.
She felt him in the warm, damp eyes of Mr. Toussaint, and Mr. Bajwa, and Senhor Perreira; in Mr. Tythe’s watery smile.
She felt him in her aunt’s arm around John’s bent shoulders, and in the wind in the trees and the living earth and the waking city.
And she felt him in Rab. In his long limbs, in his easy movement, in the broken look in his eyes. In how, she knew, he wanted to reach for her. In how she wanted to reach for him.
Caroline dropped a fistful of earth over the white and pink enameled box and whispered, so that only she and Charlie could hear, “You saved me. I will carry you with me, always. Rest now. Rest. I’ll be all right.”
As she stood and reclaimed her place in the circle, the other men followed suit.
One by one, they sprinkled a handful of dirt over Charlie’s grave with a word, or a prayer, or a tear, until the box was obscured, and they all stood in silence with soil creasing their palms.
It was done. Charlie was gone, and Mary Jane was gone, and the man who called himself Jack the Ripper was gone. And all across the world babies were crying and hearts were stopping and seeds that would be wheat or tulips or beech trees cracked open and sent green fingers toward the light.
The hurt was not gone. It would never be. And Caroline didn’t wish it to leave her. For in the ache in her chest, in the scar on her heart, she would know her brother had lived, and had made this mark on her and on the world.
As they turned back to the churchyard gates, back to the high street that was now rumbling with cartwheels, back toward the boardinghouse that Caroline had begun to think of as home, she glanced over her shoulder.
Rab was still standing beneath the yews.
When he felt her eyes on him, he looked up and gave her a sad smile.
Caroline stopped. Viv passed her, and Jim and Alfie and Mr. Toussaint and all the rest. And when Rab caught up with a question in his face, she reached out and took his hand.