AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THERE IS A PARTICULAR CIRCLE OF HELL NOT MENTIONED in Dante’s famous book. It is called comportment, and it exists in schools for young ladies across the empire. I do not know how it feels to be thrown into a lake of fire. I am sure it isn’t pleasant. But I can say with all certainty that walking the length of a ballroom with a book upon one’s head and a backboard strapped to one’s back while imprisoned in a tight corset, layers of petticoats, and shoes that pinch is a form of torture even Mr. Alighieri would find too hideous to document in his Inferno. GUE
1893
LONDON
THE NIGHT WAS COLD AND DISMAL, AND OUT ON THE Thames, the rivermen cursed their luck. Skulking through the shadows of London’s great river for profit wasn’t a cheery occupation, but it paid for a meal here and there, and the damp that stiffened your bones, put the ache in your back, was a part of it, like it or not.
“See anyfin’, Archie?”
“Nuffin’,” Archie called to his friend, Rupert. “’S as foul a night as I’ve seen.”
They’d been at it for an hour now, with nothing to show for it but a bit of clothing taken from the body of a sailor. That, they could sell to the rag-and-bone men come morning. But a pocketful of coins would put food and ale in their bellies tonight, and for rivermen like Archie and Rupert, the here and now was what counted; hoping to see beyond tomorrow was a cockeyed optimism best left to people who didn’t spend their lives scouring the Thames for the dead.
The boat’s single lantern wasn’t much use against the infernal fog. The gloom haunted the banks. Across the river, the unlit houses were skulls of dark. The rivermen navigated the shallows of the Thames, poking their long hooks into the filthy water, looking for the bodies of anyone who’d met with misfortune on this night—sailors or dockworkers too drunk to save themselves from drowning; the sorry victims of knife fights, or of cutpurses and murderers; the mud larks carried away by a sudden strong tide, their aprons heavy with prized coal, that same coal that pulled them under to their deaths.
Archie’s hook hit something solid. “Oi, slow there, Rupert. I got sumfin’.”
Rupert grabbed the lantern from its perch and shone it over the water where a body bobbed. They fished the corpse out, dropping it onto the deck and rolling it over onto its back.
“Blimey,” Rupert said. “It’s a lady.”
“Was,” Archie said. “Check ’er pockets.”
The rivermen set about their grisly task. The lady was well heeled, in a fine lavender silk dress that could not have been cheap. She wasn’t what they were used to finding in these waters.
Archie smiled. “Oh,’ ello!” He drew four coins from the lady’s coat pocket and bit each.
“Wot you got, then, Archie? ’Nuff to buy us a pint?”
Archie looked closely at the coins. Not pounds. Shillings. “Aye, and not much more from the looks o’ it,” he grumbled. “Take the necklace.”
“Righ’.” Rupert removed it from the woman’s neck. It was an odd thing—metal fashioned into the shape of an eye with a crescent moon dangling below it. There were no jewels to speak of; he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting it.
“Wot’s this, then?” Archie called. He peeled back the woman’s stiff fingers. She tightly clutched a scrap of sodden paper.
Rupert nudged his partner. “Whassit say?”
Archie shoved it at him. “Dunno. Can’t read, now, can I?”
“I ’ad schoolin’ till I was eight,” Rupert said, taking it. “‘The Tree of All Souls lives.’”
Archie nudged Rupert. “Wot’s that supposed to mean?”
Rupert shook his head. “Dunno. What should we do wif it?”
“Leave it. There’s no profit in words, Rupert, m’boy. Take the clothes and toss ’er over.”
Rupert shrugged and did as he was told. Archie was right that there was no money to be gotten from an old letter. Still, it was sad when the deceased’s last words were lost with her, but, he reasoned, if this lady had anyone to care about her at all, she wouldn’t be floating facedown in the Thames on a rough night. With a sharp shove, the riverman dropped the dead woman overboard. She made only the slightest splash.
Her body slid slowly under, the bloated white hands remaining on the surface for a few seconds more as if they were reaching for something. The rivermen pressed their hooks against the muddy bottom and cast off with the current, looking for treasure that might make a night in the cold worth the ache.
Archie gave the woman’s head a last prod with his hook, a violent benediction, and she slipped below the filth and muck of the mighty Thames. The river swallowed her up, accepting her flesh, taking her final warning down with her to a murky grave.
CHAPTER ONE
March 1896
SPENCE ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES
