“As will his wife, God help the woman. Maybe what you need is your own documentation.”
“A forged will?”
How quickly Michael grasped the expedient measure. “I know somebody—Ricardo—Henderson’s man of artistic business. Has a shop on Tallis Close, off Pickering Street near the Handsome Hog. He’s an engraver of no little talent and a friend of my late spouse’s. He’d oblige your request and keep his mouth shut.”
They walked along in silence as darkness began to fall, and winter’s chill returned.
“I’ve already committed one felony,” Michael said, “and probably a dozen mortal sins. I’m reluctant to rely on more felonies to best my enemy.”
“Well, prayer hasn’t yielded the desired result, has it?” At some point, Psyche had discarded her polite widow’s walk and begun striding along at Henderson’s more robust gait.
“If Arbuckle publicly involves the authorities, Bea will remain in his care,” Michael said, though he didn’t sound convinced of his own words. “He won’t create a scandal and then be seen to shuffle her aside. She’ll be miserable in his vicarage, but she’s canny. If I explain to her that obedience to Arbuckle is her only hope of a peaceful life, she’ll figure out a way to be obedient.”
“As you did?”
The neighborhood grew subtly finer, the streets wider, the carriages more fashionable, while Psyche felt as if she were escorting Michael into the underworld.
“Michael, you cannot hand the child over to a devil. Come to Rome with me.”
“You do not want to go to Rome, and Arbuckle is mean enough to pursue me even there. Running isn’t the answer. If I explain to Helmsley the evil Arbuckle would have committed…”
“Helmsley will think only of protecting the Church, and that means you hand Bea over and slink off to teach Latin to squirming little boys in some fourth-rate public school.”
“And in that case, I am to be grateful for even that much liberty.”
They turned onto Psyche’s street, and the lights of her home glowed warmly in the chilly gloom.
“Then don’t remove with me to Rome,” she said, “but go somewhere. Take the children and find a place Arbuckle can’t reach you.”
Michael trotted at her side up the steps. “You manage disguises well, Psyche. The biddable wife, the contented widow, the aspiring young fellow at the back of Berthold’s classes. I lack your talent for dissembling, and I don’t want Bea to have to learn that skill either.”
Not a skill, a necessity for survival, and one that had come at some cost, despite its benefits. “What will you do now, Michael?”
He took her hand and bowed politely. “I will not leave without taking a proper farewell from you, if that’s at all possible. Arbuckle has given me three days—biblical of him—and I will use that time to consult what oracles I can and to prepare for the worst if necessary.”
“Those are not fighting words, Michael.”
He kissed her cheek. “Nor are they words of surrender. I love you.” He was down the steps and onto the walkway before Psyche thought to call after him.
“And I love you!”
Her declaration echoed in the darkness until Michael was lost to her sight.
Michael walked through the gathering gloom and set aside the shock of finally having to deal with Arbuckle—time to reel with disbelief later. He focused on Psyche’s question: What to do now?
She’d invited him to go with her to Rome, but had not offered to go elsewhere with him. Michael grasped why: Bea’s welfare must come first, and while Psyche was willing to fight for a life with Michael, her commitment had not yet had time to extend to Bea, a life in hiding, and an end to all artistic aspirations.
Damn Arbuckle and his infernal skill with an ambush.
Psyche grasped the gravamen of the threat: Arbuckle would produce perjured testimony, false witnesses, forged letters hiring the fictitious wet nurse, and every other indicia of official truth, while Michael had…
All the love for Bea in the world, but no witnesses, no documents, no legal right to raise any child…
He paused on the walkway before a thronged intersection. Carriages, drays, phaetons, and pushcarts filled the streets, the mild day having roused London to greater activity.
“Be you Preacher?”
The boy had no scarf, no gloves, and a spectacularly dirty face. He exhibited the pallor of the London native and looked as if he hadn’t eaten for a week.
“I am known as Preacher in some surrounds.”
“Because you don’t preach, Ma says. You saved my sissy.” The boy hugged a too large, buttonless coat closer. “Ma lost her milk. Sissy were hungry. She cried all the time, then she stopped crying, and Ma said Sissy had to go to the church steps because Preacher would see to her.”
Michael wanted nothing so much as to be alone, to think through the day’s disaster. He’d have to warn his family about what was afoot. First, he needed to gather what remained of his wits.
“Your sister is being well cared for,” he said. “Your mother made a very hard decision, but your sister is safer because of it.”
“I asked Ma to leave me on the church steps. She said I were too ornery.”
“I suspect she needs you, and the foundling homes aren’t interested in fellows old enough to begin an apprenticeship.”
The lad scuffed a cracked boot on the walkway. “I’m too slow fer pickin’ pockets, too big to be a climbin’ boy, and Ma don’t want me to get the sooty warts. I try not to eat much, because I don’t bring in coin. The mud larks guard their turf something ferocious, but I found a pair of boots once. They were the same size too. A true pair.”
Had he found them on a sleeping drunk? On one of the corpses occasionally gracing London’s meaner alleys? I do not have time for this. I do not have the patience for this.
This child is not my burden. “What’s your name, lad?”
“Mickey. Me real name’s Michael, for the soldier angel, but nobody calls me that.”
Of all times for the Almighty to indulge in irony. “Come with me.” Michael threaded his way across the intersection, keeping his pace modest in deference to Mickey’s shorter legs. “Where do you live?”
“Holy land. Our alley don’t have a name, and Ma says that’s a good thing, because it would be a curse word.”
The boy likely knew his way around St. Giles in pitch darkness, but he’d strayed considerably from home turf.
“You were looking for dropped coins?”
“Don’t nobody have coins to drop where I come from.”
“Do you know of Colonel Sir Orion Goddard?”
“I’m not working in no molly-house, Preacher.”
The boy couldn’t be more than nine years old. “Sir Orion manages the Coventry, a fancy gaming hell that puts on an excellent supper buffet for the sake of appearances.” Also to attract discerning clientele and keep them on the premises. “His wife is the head chef, and they do not believe leftover food should go to waste. They also don’t believe children should be wandering the streets alone at night.”
Mickey stopped. “I’m not going to no poorhouse. You die there, get the consumption, and worse. It’s like prison, but they work you harder, and you’re supposed to be grateful for that. Ma said she’d lie down with the devil before we go on the parish, and I never heard o’ no buffay.”