“It’s been a disheveling day,” Crawford agreed, thrusting his arms through the sleeves of his soggy coat.
Johanna waved back at the room, though the jiggling of the hanging dolls seemed to be the only response.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Crawford, taking her arm and turning her toward the ladder.
He went first up the old wooden rungs, but the few people on the street, huddled in doorways against the rain, only glanced at him incuriously. He waved the rest of his party up, and in a few minutes McKee had led them to the more populated expanse of Earl Street, where she turned left, back toward Seven Dials.
Johanna was limping, but when Crawford gave her a concerned look, she told him, “I’ve worn worse, I’ll get used to them.” Then she grimaced up from under the umbrella. “But do I sleep in them?”
“I — don’t know,” he said.
Johanna shrugged and kept walking. “That boy Andrew didn’t look well, did he?” she said after a few more paces. “I bet soon there’ll be another straw doll.”
Hurrying along beside them, Christina whispered something that might have been a phrase from a prayer.
The rain trailed to a stop just as they emerged into the irregular square at the junction of the seven streets, and a stray beam of sunlight flickered across the circle in the center, momentarily visible between wheels and horses’ legs.
Christina had rolled her wet sleeve down again, and a stain of blood showed at her elbow, but she didn’t seem to have any trouble walking, and they would be able to flag a cab here.
Then she halted and touched her throat and brushed her face as if she’d walked through a spiderweb. Crawford caught Johanna by the hand and asked, anxiously, “Miss Christina? Are you well?”
She managed an unhappy smile. “As well as I ever am. We seem to have reestablished our footsteps — his attention is on me again.”
Crawford glanced quickly at Johanna, who tentatively spread her fingers and sniffed the air. “Not on me,” she said softly. Then, more loudly, “He’s not watching me!”
“Yes,” said Crawford, starting forward again and peering around for a cab, “you sleep in them.”
And it looks as if we’re going to France tomorrow after all, he thought.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘… I wander, knowing this
Only, that what I seek I cannot find;
And so I waste my time: for I am changed;
And to myself,’ said she, ‘have done much wrong
And to this helpless infant. I have slept
Weeping, and weeping have I waked; my tears
Have flowed as if my body were not such
As others are; and I could never die.’
WILLIAM AND MARIA were at Tudor House when Christina arrived there at one thirty in the afternoon. Gabriel was sitting at a small table by the bay window in the long drawing room upstairs, cradling a moldy notebook in his hands and looking out over the river, when young Henry Dunn showed her in, and William and Maria stood in the far corner of the room, whispering.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed William, stepping around the long table. “You’re all wet and muddy! Did you fall somewhere?”
“I was saving a girl from our uncle,” Christina said, “for a while, at least.” She walked up to Gabriel and waved toward William and Maria. “Have you told them?”
He looked up at her blankly, but Maria said, “We know the statue is not yet destroyed — Gabriel has misplaced it here in the house somewhere.” She was staring at Christina’s dress. “I thought you were going to a wedding! Did you get in a fight?”
“I had to climb down a hole in a street in St. Giles, and”—pointing at her stained sleeve—“lose some blood.”
Maria drew in a breath with a hiss, and Gabriel looked away.
“Algy didn’t take it,” he said. “I asked him.” He idly flexed the old notebook in his hands, and bits of the cover flaked off in his lap.
“You’ve read his poetry,” Christina said witheringly, echoing Trelawny.
Gabriel shrugged.
William cleared his throat. “We think Gabriel may have misremembered where he put it last night. I should have helped him hide it, after he woke me and told me he had retrieved it. But I just said, ‘Good,’ and went back to sleep.”
Gabriel nodded. “I had a lot to drink before I finally went to bed. Understandable, I think, under the circumstances.”
Christina’s mouth was open in astonishment, and she said to him, “But you saw those two creatures this morning! — you saw them appear! — in your bedroom! And you must—”
“They’ve appeared in this house before,” interrupted Gabriel irritably.
Christina looked out the window, and after a moment she pointed to a passing wagon. “And what is that?” she demanded.
Gabriel looked out the window. “What,” he said, “trees, a street, a wagon…”
“What kind of wagon?”
Gabriel peered through his spectacles. “I don’t know. A yellow wagon. Have you lost your wits?”
Maria had stepped up behind Christina and was peering over her shoulder. “Comer India Pale Ale,” she said, giving Christina a mystified look.
Christina bent over to hug her brother and sighed. “Oh, I’m so glad your eyesight hasn’t recovered!”
For a moment Gabriel’s face clouded in real anger, and then he just laughed softly and pushed her away with one hand. He took a deep breath, then said, “You thought I blooded it? That wasn’t what our uncle wanted — I was never one of Boadicea’s victims.”
And how can you be certain of that? wondered Christina; but she said, “It would nevertheless have constituted renewing your vows to him, I’m sure.”
William was standing by Christina now. “We need to search the whole house, attic and basement too, and the garden,” he said. “Gabriel might have hidden it anywhere, in his … distracted state last night. And Gabriel, you must try very hard to remember! Walk around the house with us! Christina, do you think you could sense the statue, if you were near it?”
Christina frowned and glanced at Gabriel.
He was staring out the window again. “Never mind, William,” he said softly. “Christina is right. Algy has certainly taken it and rubbed his restorative blood on it.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “The only thing my midnight escapade accomplished was to make our uncle stronger.”
“And to recover your poetry,” William pointed out, nodding at the moldy notebook in Gabriel’s hands.
“Yes.” Gabriel laid it down and wiped his hands on his waistcoat. “My poetry.” Christina could smell the book’s mildew.
Gabriel put his spectacles back on and stood up, and he gripped Maria’s shoulders. “He almost took Christina by force on Wednesday night,” he said. “The only thing that saved our sister was the timely intervention of Charles Cayley!”
“I know,” said Maria, staring straight back at him, “of no way we can use to trap our uncle.”
She turned and left the room.
Christina called after her, and crossed to the doorway to call again down the hall, but a moment later she stepped back into the room, shaking her head.
“Moony won’t play,” she sighed.
After a pause, “‘No way we can use,’” echoed William, “Christian scruples of some sort?”
“Yes,” said Gabriel, sitting down again. “And immovable.”