As they entered the city, Lucy gripped Norah’s arm, for the scene around them was not one of refinement, but horror. London had always had its poor, but the new mills built upon the river, spewing forth thick clouds of black smoke, seemed like something out of Dante’s Hell. It was like the poverty of Nottingham, multiplied a thousandfold. A boy walked shirtless against the cold evening air, his body so gaunt Lucy could all but identify his organs. A woman, almost equally uncovered, held her naked baby upside down by its feet while she shouted at a leering, finely dressed man. Two gentlemen laughed while they slapped an insensible woman’s face. A young man, with no hands, held up his begging bowl between the raw stumps of his wrists.
This was the worst of it, but not the whole. Gangs of thieves roamed the streets, their occupation so obvious it might have been emblazoned upon their coats. Likewise the whores made no effort to disguise their trade. The most brazen of them exposed their breasts to the coach before realizing it was inhabited by ladies, at which observation they would spit or hurl turds. Lucy had never seen such filth—the animal refuse that gathered in the street, the human refuse that did likewise, and besides came flying out of windows as they passed. The stiffly moving rivers of kennel that made their slow, muddy way down the street. Dead dogs, dead cats and rats and horses—the latter being dissected by a gang of feral boys after meat—lay everywhere. And everywhere was soot—so deep and thick and inescapable it caked Lucy’s throat and nostrils and made her long for a bath.
Norah laughed to see Lucy’s response. “Oh, this isn’t really London. We shall go to places in town where these sights do not exist. I don’t trouble myself to look.”
Lucy nodded, not because she agreed or saw the wisdom in pretending that people did not live so, but because she dared not speak, dared not say what was on her mind. Here, in this terrible place, Lucy understood that the Luddites were right, that Ludd, whatever he might be, was right. The machine breakers, the revolutionaries, those who raged against what they could not stop—all of them were right. And Mary Crawford—whatever role she may have had in replacing her sister’s child—she was right too. What terrible thing would Lucy herself not do, would not any sane person do, to turn back the tide upon these horrors, to stopper up the vomiting chimneys, to wipe away the soot and ash and dirt that fell from the sky like snow.
Then, as Norah predicted, their surroundings improved. The streets became wider and cleaner and less populated in general, less populated with mendicants and felons and whores in particular. Suddenly there were broad, glorious houses, gentlemen with ornate walking sticks, ladies in fine gowns, servants with neat little children in tow, or happy little lapdogs in baskets. There were elegant horses and majestic equipages. There were parks and lawns, fields where careless children played, watched over by mastiff-faced nurses. The air was still heavy and thick and dirty, and the occasional wretch still crossed their path, and the occasional whore still leered as she searched for willing coin, but even so it was a different world, and Lucy found herself pretending that the other place did not exist—not because she wanted to, but because she did not know that she could do otherwise and survive.
Not an hour in London, and Lucy was becoming a Londoner.
Mr. Gilley had rented a large, luxurious town house in Crown Street, perhaps not quite so close to Hyde Park as Norah would have liked, but close enough to be somewhat fashionable. The interior of the house seemed even more massive than its exterior suggested. The rooms were well lit and beautifully appointed, with the most fashionable furnishings and window treatments and paintings. There were too many servants for Lucy to learn their names at once, and she had the choice of three unoccupied rooms to call her own. Both of Norah’s parents were home, and while Mrs. Gilley greeted Lucy with cool indifference, Mr. Gilley appeared delighted that Lucy was there, and gave her a lengthy lecture on how to protect herself from catching cold while walking about London. He fussed over her in a thousand ways, begged her to make any adjustments to her room, inquired into her preferences for dinner, and promised her that she would enjoy the delights of London or he would alter London to her liking. A room below stairs was found for Mrs. Emmett, and so there was an end to all the necessary adjustments. Mr. Gilley cared not how long she remained because he liked her, and Mrs. Gilley cared not because she had no regard for her at all. Lucy could hardly have asked for more, and the charms she had brought to effect these ends might, perhaps, never have to be unpacked.
Lucy’s next order of business was clear. It was far easier to make her way to Kent from London than it was from Nottingham, but now that she was in London, she began to realize just how little she had planned. Besides determining how to get to Kent, she would need to determine the best possible course for getting inside Lady Harriett’s house undetected, discovering the pages of the Mutus Liber from Byron’s library, and then getting out again.
That she would be no closer to saving her niece saddened her immensely. Mr. Morrison, after all, was no doubt deflowering virgins in some foreign land as he searched for other pages, and if he found them, would it do Lucy any good? He would return to her if he could—her spell would see to that—but would he have the pages with him when he did? There was no point worrying about what she could not control, however. She would find the pages, one at a time if she had to. She would study and learn and experiment and practice until the pages were hers.
Lucy had hoped that Mrs. Emmett might prove to be of some use in these matters, but she appeared utterly confounded when Lucy asked her for advice. “I cannot say anything as to that, Miss Derrick,” she answered. “I only know when it is time for you to go to Kent, you will go.”
“Then you know I will get there?”
“I cannot tell you that, Miss Derrick,” she said. “I can only say that if you are meant to go, you will go, and at the time you are meant.”
“Meant by whom?” Lucy asked testily.
Mrs. Emmett appeared to detect none of Lucy’s irritation. She only smiled and looked off to the distance, as though the person or force she referenced was just beyond her vision. “By them who mean such things.”
Only after her arrival did Lucy realize that she had somehow expected Mrs. Emmett to ease her way in London, but that would not be the case, and she was hardly better prepared for the confusion of the metropolis than if she were on her own. How precisely did one get to Kent? How much did it cost? Lucy had her quarterly allotment of ten pounds, and she had to spend with caution. Money could be made by other means. She knew that, but she was reluctant to practice cunning craft when she did not have to. Every spell cast required herbs and paper and pen and ink—things that cast money or might be missed. More than that, she’d never felt comfortable with the idea of using magic to earn money. What came into her purse must exit from another’s, and how could she say whose need would be greater?
So she told herself that she did what she could. She learned what she could learn, and she planned as best she could plan. She was who she was—a young woman of limited means and almost no freedom, and she could not help being that. If she truly were at the center of things, as so many had told her, then would not the right opportunity present itself? Fate had sought her out in quiet Nottinghamshire. She could hardly be said to be hiding in London.
Meanwhile, the routine of fashionable London life soon settled on her, and a week had passed before she knew it—a week in which her sister, Martha, lived with a monster and her poor niece was held captive somewhere by something Lucy dared not even contemplate. Instead of searching for lost alchemical books or battling creatures from the invisible world, she browsed in dress shops, attended music recitals, and visited fashionable homes to view art and collections of curios. There was more in her future too: the opera and the playhouse and the tea gardens. On all of these excursions, Mrs. Emmett accompanied her, as though she were Lucy’s chaperone, and dutifully allowed herself to be sequestered in kitchens and servants’ rooms when they were not in transit. Servants began to complain of her, however. They spoke to Norah, and Norah, in turn, spoke to Lucy.