Rage: Ashes to Ashes

Rage: Ashes to Ashes Chapter 2/?







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The seventh day, a Sunday by coincidence, I was well enough in my nurse\'s view to make it downstairs with a bit of help, to sit in the kitchen with her. I was bundled in blankets, head to foot, wound so tight I was certain I understood how the mummies found in the Egyptian desert must have felt. I was allowed one arm free from my enveloping shroud, and a cup of steaming hot tea had been placed within my reach. A slice of lemon sat on the edge of the saucer, and my mouth instantly began to water as I smelled the fresh citrus as it was dropped into the liquid. The vague sense of nausea hanging around my stomach disappeared. I fell on the heavenly brew with alacrity.







While I sipped and nearly moaned over the drink, Ma\'am, which was what I had taken to calling the older woman as I had no other name, was going about preparing luncheon. She washed and scrubbed vegetables pulled fresh from the garden and wielded a knife with glittering precision. The blade flashed, and food emerged, perfectly diced, sliced, and prepared to be tossed into the huge pot already set to cook on the stove behind her. The iron pot was emitting a thick, meaty, utterly mouthwatering smell. The grainy smell of baking bread came from inside the oven.







The young man who had always been with her when she came to my sick room was not in evidence today, briefly I wondered over days off, she had escorted me down stairs herself with a sturdy strength I marveled at, propped me up in a chair and wrapped me snuggly in the blanket over my white nightshirt, and now we were alone in the kitchen. Carrots, squash, turnips, potatoes all fell beneath the blade of her knife, then to the cook-pot. I watched her energy with a degree of envy. Used to heavy physical activity, I had never, until this time, been too tired to do whatever I wished. Now, just watching her had become nearly too much, I sagged in the chair more than grateful for the two arms it had. She crackled with life, and I, like her pot, merely simmered.







I sighed and her sharp blue eyes turned to me, raking me from head to foot, looking for any sign that I should be returned to bed posthaste. I straightened as much as I could and tried to look healthy. There was no doubt she was more than capable of bundling me up those stairs and back to bed, despite any objection I might raise. And I was so bored with the idea of bed, having only just been permitted out of it after an entire week.







She let out a snort when I refused to squirm under her gimlet eye, and turned back to her cooking. I sipped my tea reveling in the little victory.







"It is good tea, ma\'am. Thank you." I told her as the silence stretched.







"It is tea," she replied, as if dismissing it, and who knows, maybe not being English she didn\'t understand what a good cup of tea meant to an Englishman. "It is good for you, William. Drink."







"How do you know my name, ma\'am?" I asked, mystified, seizing on the question, feeling curiosity for the first time in this house.







She glanced back at me a small smile on her face. It didn\'t slow her chopping one whit and I suffered a degree of anxiety on behalf of her fingers.







"Easy as anything. Mrs. Cole." She said and turned back to her work, leaving me no more enlightened.







"Mrs. Cole?" I asked when no further explanation seemed forthcoming.







"Your landlady." She explained. Landlady meant the woman who had rented me the room, letting me stay for a week after I ran out of funds to cover the cost. Until shame had forced me to vacate when I could no longer pay and realized I had no hope of a job. I could not let the debt grow. Thin, short, and quiet she\'d been, rather efficient and quick with a change of linen. I could remember no more than that image of her. I had had other things like survival on my mind at the time. Similarly I could not recall a single face among the young men, there had been at least six, who had sheltered on the same floor of the rooming house as I.







"Ah." I said, at a loss for better. She reached for another vegetable, taking care of it in a few brisk moves. I couldn\'t see her face but I felt certain she was smiling again.







"Yes. Mrs. Cole. She called me when you vanished, in a state she was. You gave her quite a worry disappearing like you did. A boy loose on the streets, she was beside her self. I called Nicholas. She wouldn\'t rest a moment until he promised he\'d find you." I blinked at her words. They were not ones I\'d expected to hear at all.







"You sold all your things, Nicholas could find nothing to bring here for you, not a single change of clothes. Why wouldn\'t you ask for help, child? Before you almost died in the street?" She asked me, and I blinked. I hadn\'t really thought about it, and that wasn\'t like me at all. Then again, if I questioned it, maybe it would all disappear like a dream that was too good to be true. I mumbled into my chest, not wanting to be rude to my hostess, but not finding the topic comfortable. She snorted again. "Mrs. Cole would have more than been content with your kitchen magics if that was how you wished to pay your rent, you know. She would have let it stand for room and board more than."







I stared at her blankly. I had no magics, certainly no "kitchen magic", I couldn\'t cook at all, my attempts at bread turned out lumps, my meat pies gummy and stringy, about my limit was a decent tea, if I only had to lay it out, not bake the biscuits.







"A gypsy boy if ever I seen one! Independent, foolish and headstrong. We hold no grudges for magic in this country, lad. It is not like those fancy people in Europe, not here. Here we use what we have and don\'t complain of it." She said quite loud enough for me to hear. And when I didn\'t respond, my confusion making it impossible, she continued, "take it as it comes, and no asking for help." She brandished the knife in emphasis. "Foolishness," she said again.







"Yes, ma\'am." I muttered, wishing she\'d change the subject. "I am grateful for your hospitality," I said, and I was. Without her, without the man who brought me here, I would now be dead, of that I held no doubt. And I had no way of repaying them. None at all. It shamed me. Foolish or not, I had my pride. "I do not wish to be a burden."







"Burden?" She exclaimed, "A boy, skin and bones as you are, and you eat like a bird, it is no burden to have you here. Pretty as a picture, too."







Flushing scarlet I wondered what that had to do with anything. Girls and women were pretty, and they might make their way in the world on it. Not a man, it mattered not at all if a man was any kind of beauty. I resolutely refused to listen to the whispers reminding me of the filthy suggestions in my ear.







"Our Nicholas been back \'round more than ever in the last week than in the whole two years before, no matter how busy he has been, he\'s made the time to see how you were mending. And that is worth far more than the little care you take." She said as if the whole matter was decided. Well, it wasn\'t for me. And who was he? The man who had rescued me? Her Nicholas? Her son?







"I\'d be pleased to help you in any way I can, to repay your generosity." I assured her, setting down my cup decisively and reaching for the tucked edge of the blanket. The knife flashed once again, lifted in blatant punctuation. I dropped my hand quickly. She smiled approvingly at me as I got the message she so clearly sent.







"Just sit there and drink your tea like a good lad. Time enough for helping when you are up and around under your own power. We\'ll set up a chair in the garden in a day or two, and we\'ll see what occurs." She told me. Then she as if she could taste it, she said my name, "Sweet William. Such a lovely voice, I do love to listen to you talk." People had said that to me since I had come to San Francisco, my accent being uncommon. She shook her head in exasperation.







"I am past being a boy," I began, meaning to tell her my age as proof, but she\'d started to sing, low and sweet under her breath, and I\'d caught the words. A lullaby, one I remembered from childhood, though the words she sang were not all the same as the ones my mother had used, not even the same language. The melancholy tune was comforting, and I fell to silence. We stayed companionably, me sitting mostly mummified in my blanket, and she bustling about, humming now, the words abandoned. I listened and mourned that I was no longer a child. No longer safe in my mother\'s house, in a time so far away.







So we sat in content quiet until the door burst open and two boys rushed in. I say boys because though they topped my height by a good six inches they couldn\'t have been more than twelve years of age, and possibly younger. Their sleeves were haphazardly turned back, smudged with dirt, and their collar buttons undone showing triangles of brown skin as tanned as the skin of their faces and arms. The cavorted across the immaculate floor leaving cods of dirt in their wake.







The older woman seemed to take the excited shouting all in stride reminding them to mind their feet on her clean floor. They dashed back into the little mudroom and ripped off their boots before tumbling back into the kitchen like a pair of exuberant puppies. There wasn\'t a bit of difference in the two faces, they could only be twins. Tall, gangly, blond and bubbling with vigor.







I couldn\'t understand most of what they were saying, one would start a sentence and the other a second sentence halfway through the first, then in the middle they switched and finished the one the other had begun. It all resulted in a tangle I could not decipher, but the woman didn\'t seem to have the same trouble. Her knife went down, clattering to the floor as her hands came up to cover her mouth. Her eyes were wide, horrified. She stared at them, then fearfully, she looked over to me, her eyes filled with tears as I watched. Whatever had happened it was bad, and I felt my skin prickle and once again I tugged at the edge of my cocoon. She let out a sob which froze me in my efforts to get out of the wraps.







"What is it?" I cried, "what has happened?"







"There has been a murder," she said. "A terrible murder in town." And she untied her apron with shaking hands before lifting it to daub at her eyes with the skirt.







"A murder?" I repeated, and started working on the blanket again. "Who is dead?" As if it would make a difference to me when I knew no one. But I liked the lady and if she was this upset then I was upset as well. "Was it some one known to you?" I pressed.







Her eyes had none of the warmth I was used to, none of the mirth or joy of living. She rounded fully on me, her hands resting on the big boys\' arms, her fingers white with the pressure she held them, her mouth trembling. She looked me over thoroughly, until I felt alarm skitter up my neck raising my hair as it passed. She looked so afraid, so unhappy.







"A woman." She said at last, her voice choked. "Another woman killed dead." She sounded angry and scared and so very sad.







"Another? How many have been killed before her? Did you know her?" I asked, having managed to get one turn of the blanket undone, but now stymied by the fact I was sitting on the next bit that needed undoing.







The boys had come close to her and were comforting her, but I could still see the guilty excitement in them. She allowed them to pat at her, bumping into her in an odd way I knew I\'d seen before but couldn\'t place, they even rubbed their cheeks on her hair. It seemed to calm her and her breathing slowed, the distressed sounds issuing from her throat fading away.







"Too many," She said as I was beginning to wonder if she\'d heard my question absorbed as she was with the jostling and patting from the two boys. "Mrs. Mark makes the fourth in half a year." Her voice was hushed but I managed to hear her words. And it came to me, when she had set her hand on Nicholas\'s shoulder, that one had turned his head and rubbed his face along her skin, just so. The recognition was strong, and I knew they were brothers, Nicholas and these two.







Now, I am no stranger to city living. And I assumed she referred to San Francisco, a fair sized port, as the environ where the killings had taken place. Surely four murders were not out of the ordinary. Though, I hadn\'t any idea how many women there were here, there didn\'t seem to be all that many in truth, certainly not as many as even in a small part of London. I saw few women while I had gone about, scouring the city for work. Perhaps one woman for every twenty men and most of those whores if I was any judge.







In London the deaths of four women would hardly call for such a degree of surprise as common law husbands, pimps or strangers accosted women with regularity. Some of those poor women died. Over a years time there were far more than four killed in that city, mostly destitute but a few of better family. San Francisco of course was not near the size of London, but still, only four women, it seemed not so vast a number as to incite comment.







"Cut to bits." She added as I was opening my mouth to say something, though I had no idea what, maybe just a wordless murmur of sympathy, when she barged on with, "Butchered! The work of a madman!"







"Butchered?" My voice rose to a squeak. That was different. My stomach flipped in not so subtle warning.







She looked up at the boys again, and something seemed to pass between the three. I stopped my renewed struggling with the blanket and watched them.







Something was not...usual. I saw them, their excitement and I\'d put it down to what boys would feel anywhere when faced with a gruesome thing, a thrill that thankfully all boys grew out of. I was well aware as was anyone who spent time at all around youngsters that they had a fascination with things that no adult would countenance. But these boys....their nostrils were flared, their color high, they twitched and were in constant motion, as if it were entirely beyond them to be still.







I heard the door open again, and looked in that direction.







A big man, wide shouldered with a strong but plain face stepped into the kitchen. Behind him came a smaller man, though not reduced by much in size, still far larger than I. Both were broad and deep across the chest and dressed in what could only be a uniform, brass buttons polished bright. Each looked eminently capable of violence and keeping the peace by what means necessary. A long, polished club was fastened to each man\'s belt and a holster carried a revolver on each man\'s hip. A pair of white gloves were tucked into the front of their belts.







The first man carried his round topped hat in a rough knuckled hand, and had a three tiny stars pinned to the breast of his blue coat. He\'d knocked the dirt from his stout boots as best he could, I saw. His hair was cut short, barely more than a dark bristle over his head, and glasses stood perched on his nose, the lenses round and well polished.







The second man had enough hair I could see it tended to a waviness when let grow, but it wasn\'t more than an inch long cap now. His jaw was squarer, his nose classically formed, lips full, his hair a few shades lighter, but still a rather dark brown. His eyes were hazel where the first man\'s were brown. He was of the two the handsomer by far. His hat resided under his burly arm, and on his chest were two small stars, lovingly polished to a blinding brightness.







"Maggie." The first man said, his gaze taking in the two rambunctious boys who quieted under his gaze until they stood docile at the woman\'s side, and lastly, at me, as I sat at the table having little choice immobilized as I was. The man nodded at me, and I back at him. The second man stepped up to the first ones side, Maggie nodded at him, clutched the boys to her as she met the first man\'s eyes behind his glasses. No one spoke for a long second.







Then Maggie sighed and said to the men, "Best come in and sit. Joseph, Thomas, you boys go on now." She herded the youngsters towards the door. "Bring me meat for the stew," she told them, and that seemed to excite them once more, one whooped then shyly cast a look at the men waiting in the doorway, both heads ducked in the presence of the uniforms. The boys went for the door, moving around the guests, muttering a greeting or a farewell or something else entirely, and after a brief scuffling were outside, their shouts alerting me to the fact they were running, feet pounding though they hadn\'t taken the time to put on shoes. Then the running sounds stopped. And yet, I swear they were still out there, still running. Only I couldn\'t hear them any longer.







The bigger man stepped further into the room, and Maggie pointed at the chair which sat empty next to mine. "Have yourself a seat, you two," she repeated. She poured tea without asking what they wanted, set out some sweet vanilla biscuits. They sat as they were bid, loosening their top buttons and setting their hats on the far end of the table. She took the opportunity to introduce us. "This is Sargent Tanner, and Sargent Reed." She said to me. Then to them, "this is William."







"Andrews, William Andrews. I\'ve come from England. London." I supplied. I offered first the midsized man and then the larger one my left hand, the only one that I had free. We shook, then gingerly, carefully we all lifted our delicate cups of lemon tea.







I sat in my chair and stared at the door, and at the table, and once or twice at the men drinking next to me, not wanting to be caught staring. They seemed hesitant to talk and I had the impression it was my being here that was stopping them, but neither one had trouble looking me over. Police had to be able to look, to observe after all, a police man who was easily intimidated wouldn\'t go far or last long.







The woman came up beside me, clucking, calm again, though the not yet dried sheen on her cheek and in her eyes remained. She firmly tucked me back into the blanket, then poured me more hot tea, adding another slice of fragrant lemon and selected a single biscuit, placing it beside my cup on the saucer. The men said nothing as if waiting a prescribed amount of time in order to be polite. Then the one named Reed cleared his throat.







She rounded on him, and they shared a long look. "I know what has happened." She said. "The boys told me what they heard."







He nodded, sipped again. "I wish it hadn\'t." Beside him the bigger man grunted his displeasure with the events that had transpired.







"We\'d like to talk to him." The man said after a minute. "Find out what he has to say. If he knows anything."







"That didn\'t go so well the last time." She said, and her tone was anything but promising, and the men both flushed uncomfortably. I wondered just how badly it had gone. Sargent Reed cleared his throat.







"Yes. The Lieutenant..." He began, to be stopped by her snort of disapproval. "He\'s been taken off the case." He offered as if to placate her. "The Captain has made it clear how we are to conduct ourselves on this case. We need help and we aren\'t to proud to ask for it."







She made a sound. She was standing there, watching him with particular intensity. "Tonight. He\'ll be here tonight as he\'s been every night since that one came. just in case your lieutenant is looking for an alibi this time as well." She lifted her chin in my direction. The men regarded me more openly than ever, with blatant curiosity. It was my turn to color.







Maggie offered not a word more, and I had no clue what to say. I sat like a stump while they eyed me up.







"Tonight," Tanner said after too long. She pinned him with her eyes, until he set his cup back into its saucer.







"You\'ve been a friend to me, Maggie, and I hope I\'ve been one to you. We just want to talk. Pass the word to him. We need his help. The department was wrong before, we know it now." The man stood. "Mighty good tea." He said and put his hat back on his head. He stepped up to Maggie and kissed her cheek, then he jerked his head in my direction, and left. Reed gave a stiff bow towards me while he shook Maggie\'s hand, as if he couldn\'t stop looking at me. Then he follwed the other man\'s retreat. The door closed behind them.







We sat in the kitchen without speaking for a time. Then Maggie sighed.







"Drink your tea." She said, coming over and smoothing back my hair with a quick hand, surprising me. I watched her turn and go back to her counter, resting her hands on it for a moment, then heaving one great sigh. She retrieved the knife from the floor and washed it. She tied on the apron again. Under her breath the humming lullaby started up. I sat and stared at my steaming cup. I was no longer in the mood to drink it, good as the clean, damp smell of it was rising up into my nostrils.







I was remembering the look in two excited pair of eyes as the boys had run for the door. There had been such a gleam in those two sets of eyes....







I remembered how the policemen had looked at me, the curiosity sharp. Their surprise at Maggie\'s firm announcement that placed Nicholas here every night. I had only woken to him beisde my bed in the chair one time. But I did not doubt he could have come and gone each night as I slept and healed. But I was at a loss to say why.







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