Razors & Ruin (Rare Horrors #1)

Chapter 7

7

Sweeney

N ellie never reappeared with the food. Petulant little cow.

I meander around the market, looking for shadows. Faces I may have known, or indeed, shaved. Back when I was a lad with nothing but a lovelorn heart and fanciful notions of a future worth fighting for.

Johanna . Her name is like a talisman, a sign. Maybe there’s some light left in this world; if so, I mean to find it.

Gerald Cope was a barber to the clergy, the gentry, and the royals. Husband to the superlative Ms. Veronica and a man of refinement and grace. Behind closed doors, he had fast, painful hands for his wife and me both.

I was a child when he took me from the workhouse, and it wasn’t until he married that he pulled his punches. My greater height and build certainly dissuaded him, but his gentle young spouse would place her arm on his and still his ire.

“Enough, Gerald,” she’d say. “Let Currer be.”

He didn’t see the fire in her. She had sense enough to coax him into calm rather than fight, but she bore the bruises her challenges earned nonetheless.

I hated him. Despised him with everything I had. As Veronica and I lay together the first time, the falling rose petals in my mind were already turning to ash.

She was my salvation, a grace I didn’t deserve, but her bastard of a husband deserved her even less. I didn’t know what to expect when her belly began to swell, but she was terrified.

Her death always comes to me in freeze-frames, as though my mind cannot bear to play the reel. Gerald’s grip on her throat, her choking gasps, his vicious, spittle-spraying vitriol as he squeezed the life from her. I remember, but it’s a storybook.

I do recall fighting him, the blind fury that powered me into the street on his fleeing heels, the blade in my hand flashing in the spring sunshine. My life and his, unravelled in a gesture.

A couple walks in front of me, pushing a shining baby carriage. Inside, I glimpse a rosy-cheeked little girl, a paste-work doll tucked in beside her. She smiles at the sky with the open gaze of a child who fears nothing and has only good things to look forward to.

Where is my girl? Lost to the workhouse, as I was. In the employ of some wealthy degenerate who believes her to be nothing more than property. She’ll be almost eleven years old now if she lives.

At the book cart, I see a man whose face I know all too well. The Beadle, Higgins, who stood in court and claimed there was neither mitigation nor mercy for a man like me.

I never blamed the judge in my case; he was ninety if he was a day and had no stomach for hangings, and without the mercy of his weak constitution, I’d have gone to the gallows.

It was this pontificating prick who spun it up into a frenzy, claiming I had killed my lover and her husband because I was The Devil’s willing instrument. He was a parish official and the confidant of priests and holy men. His judgment was not to be questioned.

Higgins must be at least semi-retired now, but he carries himself well, his grey pinstripe pressed and clean.

As I approach, he picks up a book and flicks through it. I see the legend, ‘Exotic Practices: a series of etchings’ on the cover.

“Beadle Higgins.” I give a nod. “Good morning to you.”

Higgins raises his eyes to mine, and I immediately see he has no recollection of me.

He contributed to so many character assassinations before his friends and associates. Why would he commit one lowly barber’s apprentice to memory?

“Good morrow, my friend.” He gives an unctuous leer, and for once, I’m glad to have an empty stomach. “May I be of service?”

“I am Sweeney Todd of Fleet Street,” I begin. “My tonsorial parlor is almost ready to open, and I wondered if you’d do me the good courtesy of patronizing my business? No charge, of course.” I wink. “Not for a man of your good standing.”

“Certainly. That is a most kind offer.” He puts the book down, sending a thump of dust into the air. “How does tomorrow afternoon suit you? Your timing is marvelous, as I have an engagement to attend in the evening.”

Excellent . I can probe a little while I have him beneath my towel. If I shine him up with a haircut and a good, close shave, maybe he can put in a good word and get me access to the workhouse records.

“I look forward to it, Beadle Higgins. You’ll find me above Mrs. Lovett’s meat pie shop.”

Higgins laughs. “So, might I get my meal and my grooming? Champion!”

I shake his hand. “Yes indeed. Until then.”

At Paulie’s shop, his wife assured me my parcel had already been left for Fleet Street. I curse; I intended to scrounge a ride back with him. As I trudge over the slimy cobbles and back to Nellie, the rain begins to fall in solid gray sheets.

She’s a nasty, deviant little thing and a lot of fun to fuck. The dull pain in my abdomen is a testament to that.

I was surprised but gratified to discover that her unhinged lust was not just window dressing. Veronica wouldn’t have gone so far, not a chance.

I shouldn’t have let Nellie cut me, though. A little of my life force left my body, taken into hers, but it’s not like come. It doesn’t make anything, and it cannot give life.

The loss of blood is just that; loss. It’s gone from me to her, and when I came to think of it, I didn’t let her. I told her to do it.

My head aches as I shake it. Nellie is not on par with me. She’s playing. A silly little girl and nothing more.

But I have to wonder about what that fool Wetherby said. Did she kill Harry Lovett? Theirs was obviously an arrangement—if she married and nursed him, he’d leave her everything—but did she get impatient?

Poisoning seems most likely. She’d only have had to give him a couple of those cunting pies for his stomach to have punched its way out of his body and run away of its own accord.

And Marianne. Running over like she was my biggest fan or something, rather than the girl who’d whispered in Veronica’s ear, telling her I would ruin her life.

Maybe she wanted me for herself, being closer to my age, but she had nothing I wanted. All gangly limbs and broad, trusting eyes. She’d come from the gutter just as I had, but she thought she was better than me.

Seeing Nellie slash through Marianne’s plump cheek was unexpected but thrilling. It makes me wonder what else her jealousy might move her to do. The thought of exerting that kind of control gives me a twitch in my groin and an urgency to my step.

A productive morning. Now, to Nellie, and we will see what’s cooking.