The Devil's Workshop

The light didn’t hurt so badly anymore and Jack’s eyes were fully open, drinking in the sight of the cell, really a cave, the tall gaunt man in prison dress standing at the edge of the darkness beyond. Cinderhouse was holding a lantern and the light from it reflected on his bald scalp, pink and vulnerable. Jack took a deep breath of cool, fresh-smelling air. He glanced down and saw that his own blood and sweat and shit and piss had turned the ground at his feet black, had soaked into the earth so deeply that it would never wash away, even if these tunnels flooded. He closed his eyes and smiled again.

“How many have you killed?” he said. “Aside from the man who followed you. Anyone might have done that. How many did you put your hands on simply because you could?”

“How did you know?”

“More than one, am I right?”

With his eyes still closed, he heard a rustle of fabric as the bald man moved, and he guessed that Cinderhouse had nodded.

“You are an infernal machine,” Jack said. “I knew that you were. But you were simply reacting, not following any sort of plan, am I right?” Jack said. Another nod from the bald man. “Wouldn’t you like to finally understand the importance of what you do?”

“Importance?”

“There is a plan, you know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. But you will.”

Jack licked the blood from his lips. It was time. He had performed his miracles, had allowed himself to be tortured, and had taken root in the soil. London grew up through him now, and he had spread out into the city, into the world, completely. He had achieved immortality. He was deathless.

He was death.

He was London.

“There is still work to do,” he said. “Come, Peter, come closer and let me whisper in your ear. You are no longer alone. You are mine now, and I call you my rock.”

Cinderhouse’s left foot moved as if he weren’t in control, as if he had become a puppet. He took a step toward Jack, and then his shoulders set and he raised his lantern and he moved fully into the little cell.

“Tell me what to do,” the bald man said.

Silly little fly.

11

I’ve been sent to watch over you, ma’am,” the constable said.

He was at least an inch taller than Claire’s husband and broader through the shoulders, she thought, but he was not nearly so handsome, nor did he possess that glint of intelligence she saw in Walter’s eyes. He had knocked on the door a few minutes after Walter had left, and Fiona had answered without looking through the judas hole first, which Claire intended to lecture her about when they were alone.

Claire looked at the rather large young man who stood in her parlor with his hat in his hand and an earnest expression on his face and she suddenly felt very tired and very irritated and wanted nothing more than to have a salty snack of some sort and then go back to bed and sleep for at least a month and a half.

“Do you have a name?”

“Of course I do, ma’am.”

“Well, what is it?”

“Oh, it’s Rupert, ma’am. Constable Rupert Winthrop. At your service, ma’am.”