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Chapter 18
A Vipers’ Den
As it turned out, the easy part of the journey was the long stretch of country roads. Though they were all unfamiliar to Laurence, particularly the main thoroughfare from which he’d first collected Alicia, they proved easy to navigate. All roads, it seemed, led to London.
But the city itself was a different matter. As the sun dipped lower in the sky and Robinson grew tired and sweaty, the road became crowded. First, he found himself having to steer his horse around hay wagons and country folk on foot, but as the sky became thick with dark smoke and twinkling lights appeared through the haze on the horizon, the road was populated with all manner of sinister figures.
If the road into London was long, the rat’s nest of winding lanes and alleys in the city itself was so much the longer. Buildings tall as trees loomed over him, and poor Robinson dragged his hooves through rivers of garbage and filth as they haplessly failed to navigate the cobbled streets. Eventually, Laurence decided he would only be able to find his way with the guidance of a local citizen.
“Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where I might find…?” Laurence asked a passerby. But the man only continued to pass him by, no answer to his question but a glob of spit cast to the ground. He redoubled his effort with other Londoners to similar effect:
“Pardon me, do you know where…?”
“Madam, I’m sorry to trouble you, but I’m afraid I don’t…”
“Could you tell me the way to…?”
This is madness, thought Laurence, trying to keep his cool.Thousands of people in the street, and not one of them willing to help a stranger.He shook his head as he grimly remembered the afternoon when a carriage accident had brought a dozen Dunwood natives to the aid of one of London’s own.
“Oi, guv, I’d be happy to show yer around,” came a gruff but friendly voice speaking an unfamiliar dialect. Laurence turned to see a burly man with close-shaven hair and a glass eye—an intimidating appearance that was belied by his welcoming smile and casual posture.
“Oh, thank God, I was beginning to think I’d never find my way,” Laurence laughed, stepping closer to the man. “I’m trying to find my way to—”
“Oh, yes, it’s right terrible, the roads around this city,” the man interjected, his arms still folded as he leaned against a low stone wall. “From out in the country, are you, then?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. If I’d known this city was so damnably big I would have gotten better directions before I came!” Laurence produced the piece of paper with Alicia’s address written on it and held it out to his seeming saviour. “This is where I’m trying to find, if you happen to know the way.”
The man’s eyes glittered with laughter as he shrugged helplessly. “Afraid I ain’t much for readin’, guv. Where is it you’re tryin’ to go to, exactly?”
Laurence winced and cursed himself for being presumptuous. “Apologies. It says the house is in…Smithfield? On a street called—”
Abruptly the man left his position by the wall and stood close to Laurence, then pointed a sausage-like finger to some inscrutable point on the horizon. Though taken aback, Laurence tried not to shudder at the man’s overpowering smell. “Right, easy as pie. Y’see that church steeple?”
Laurence squinted, trying to make out the shape on the horizon. “Which one?”
“Just over there, near the tall, square rooftop. That’s it, guv, over that way a bit further.”
“…I don’t think—”
He was nearly ready to give up and ask the man for a different landmark to orient himself when he detected movement behind him. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, Laurence pushed out with both arms and bounded forward, turning to see a small man whose fingers had nearly closed around his purse.
“Brigands!” Laurence bellowed, putting up his fists ready to defend himself. “Robbers!”
By the time he glanced around to see if anyone heard his cry—if they had, they gave no sign, and continued to walk about on their own business—the two ruffians had disappeared in a cloud of mocking laughter. Laurence spat in frustration, his face a mask of rage as he moved to leave this place he had found himself in.
Alicia, I cannot for the life of me imagine why you would willingly live in this awful place,he thought, swallowing and mounting Robinson once more to find somewhere better to get his bearings. He cast a nervous look at the sun, which had nearly disappeared.Have to hurry. Given my apparent haplessness, I may not survive this blasted city after dark.
* * *
At long last, when the streets were lit with flickering yellow lamps and the shadows were long and ominous, Laurence found his way to his target.
Though he was unsure just what he had expected—in truth, searching his mind, he realized he had not even attempted to picture the house that Alicia lived in—he found himself surprisingly disappointed at how…ordinary it looked. Like all the other houses he had passed over the previous hours wandering through London, this was a towering stone edifice, ugly and utilitarian despite being bedecked with all manner of unnecessarily garish architectural touches. The lamplight flickered over the looming house, casting monstrous shadows over its façade, and the moon bore an eerie yellow pallor in the London sky.
Which part of it is where Alicia and her sister live, I wonder?he took the time to wonder, suddenly anxious at the prospect of knocking on the door.Or is this enormous, ugly house all for her family?Not for the first time, Laurence felt a gnawing at the pit of his stomach, and a voice that sounded suspiciously like his brother-in-law’s whispered that he was truly a poor, ignorant farmer.
The sound of feral dogs baying somewhere down the road jostled Laurence back to reality. He once again struggled to summon the resolve that first sped him along on his journey. Holding Robinson’s reins tight in his fist, he beat his fist heavily on the wrought iron gate, wincing at the pain that shot through his fingers. After a moment or two of waiting in silence, he noticed a cord hanging from an ornamental opening near the gate. Shrugging, he pulled the cord and was rewarded with the distant tinkling of a bell.
After a scant minute, an old man in an impressively ornate uniform appeared on the other side of the sharp iron bars. The man’s eyes were rheumy and tired-looking, but the up-and-down look he gave Laurence seemed to dissect him into tiny pieces.
