When he’s gone this long, he usually leaves the terrace window open. Forgotten, or delayed. Either way, the food’s running thin, and the city’s seductions are calling. The strays in heat are yowling and leisurely carriages are clip-clopping outside my brickhouse lair. I pounce up the stairs to my landlord’s study, three flights above the terrace, a touch more dangerous but still an option. There’s a window over his desk, a window with a ledge. A ledge which leads to a long crawling trellis, laced with soft flowering vines to ease my descent.
I land an easy pounce onto the writers desk, paws rustling past scattered papers of inky sketches, charcoal scratches and red spilled ink. Silhouettes of naked women, knives, bound wrists. Pencil shavings, carved letters. Bull-headed, goat-legged men. My reclusive landlord’s frantic scribbles, no business of mine. So long as my bowl stays full.
Peering through the street facing window, and indeed it’s open, just a crack. But not enough to squeeze through. My ears perk and I spot a rickety carriage slowing below. Heaven sent! Is this my lord’s wagon? A gloved man leans out, face obscured, and lures one of the harlots from under a streetlamp for closer inspection. I know her, if only by the ankles. Not my lord’s steady mistress, but someone he strays to occasionally. Penny, or Polly, I think she was called. A kind creature in those moments when I brushed her leg. Good scratches, sweet voice, and an occasional scrap of fish morsels to spare. My little heart is beating faster when I realize she’s closing the buggy door behind her. They were not coming inside.
Stomach growling, my mind races to improvise. I must catch them, I must confront my lord for his neglect. There is little time to find my way out, then down, then after them.
But then a squeak. A small little scurry turns my left ear, and my mouth waters at the waft of fresh mouse from the attic door. I look across the room to its door and spot the transom window overhead. It’s cracked open to a venting position. This would be a perilous climb, but there is a chance.
Glancing about the room, My eyes chart a path: desk, bureau, curtains, a clawing scramble up to the towering bookcase. Then I begin my ballet to the top, the bookcase so high my head brushes the ceiling. I size the gap across to the vented transom. There’s no going back now, if the dormer window is shut up there, I will be stuck in the attic. Unable to return the way I came. I hold my faithful breath and I leap.
Onto the attic stairs on the other side of the door. A musty sour odor instantly hits my flared nostrils. Tattered rags and undergarments strung along the floor, soaked in ammonia and ether. One of my landlord’s dolls is still chained to the brick wall, chewed and stripped from neglect. Another mouse-scurry scatters my attention, tracing old caked blood to a holed floorboard. Past black candlewax droplets and floor drawn pentagrams, it retreats. A hidden passage to the wetwall. But there is no time for mice hunting, my desires are grander.
My little heart flutters like a whisper in a cathedral. I leap to the dormer windowsill, only to see the window here is latched closed too. Through its glass, I hear a wail and recognise it to be Gabriella, my tabby alley cat companion. I brush my breath fog from the window and I can see her better, perched across the neighboring rooftop, blinking those feral chartreuse eyes like mooring buoys. She grooms her turquoise-shell forehead while I paw uselessly at the latch. She yawns impatiently for me to join, unimpressed by my domestic problems, never knowing what it was to be stuck inside. This is my puzzle to solve alone.
I try the loose floorboard instead where the mouse retreated, and find enough space to squeeze under, ignoring the pillaged mice, making my way to a vent at the wall. Another gap to try, if it weren’t blocked by a bolted drainpipe. Another dead end.
Until a loud tin crash, and the drain pipe rattles and squeals. Bolts and screws are screeching loose from the brick and the pipe is bending. It’s Gabriella, hanging from the top of the tall cylinder. A death defying leap to have made but it is just enough to pull the drain free as I squeeze onto the ledge. She leaps softly down beside me and we rub our foreheads together.
Together, we platform our way down, ledge by ledge to the streetside. I can smell the horse manure, and try to distinguish that of my landlord’s. Nothing’s familiar except the tangy musk of Penny’s perfume. As I follow, I catch only a trace of my lord. It is his carriage, but he is not inside it. As I turn past the next corner, I can spot it halted by a seedy alleyway, rocking with fervent aggression. I catch the odor of a man’s nervous sweat. Someone else familiar, that terrible desperate stress sweat of stir-fried leeks. That clammy hand assistant, they call Netley. Under the employ of my lord or that of the prince, I can never be sure. He often appeared in the mornings to clean up after those rotten affairs. Protecting the party’s dark secrets, disposing of the stale and the rotting.
Weaving through horse piles, my paws steal softly up behind them. Afraid of what I’ll see inside, afraid I’ll lose my only lead. When cloaked men rush to the carriage, I shrink to shadow, Gabriella patiently by my side. Flash warrant cards and barking, I know these men my lord called ‘Wantwit Inspectors’ every time he slammed his front door in their face. They are dragging the breathy pair from the cart, handcuffing the man, and guiding Penny to sit on the curb. I assumed Netley was in heat for her, but it is clear now he was just cleaning up. Sweat and pheromones are so easy to confuse with these animals.
The pair of dark cloaked men, the ‘Wantwits,’ are beating Netley, as they question him. His potent odor boils back into its familiar stink. They send Penny walking but take my lord’s ward into their carriage, beating him along the way. Demanding he confess where in Whitechapel they could find his employer. An excellent question.
Gabriella mewls a low-pitch reminder that snaps me back to our dinner mission. Well, for her it is dinner. For me, it is becoming a quest for answers and what I can expect for future dinners ahead.
I am pleased Penny is safe. She is one of few dolls that my lord never brought to his attic ceremonies. But she’s lost many of her friends to those freemason rituals. There are only so few women that my lord seemed to show restraint from his beastly ways. Perhaps I could still follow her, she is sure to be heading back to the brothel district across the south banks of Southwark. Where my lord’s other kept mistress lived, the sweet and stern, Cyrilla.
Cyrilla! Of course, he would surely be hiding there if these detectives were looking for him. The madame of Old Town, Cyrilla is loyal and will surely be harboring him. Holed up in her sin city fortress where no police would enter. Just like any of his other stints away – on some short gambling and opium bender. Even if he isn’t there, Cyrilla would still greet me with fresh sardines and clean water. I owe Gabriella that at least for the journey.
As we prowl along the Thames, Gabriella’s hopping on rubbish bins and chattering for me to slow, but I have fresher fish heads in mind. We’re prancing invisibly through the legs of night walking couples, arm in arm in their opulent draping formal wear. The men’s black riding boots are still reeking of horse and foxhound slobber. The women’s lifted lace trimmings wafting remnants of jasmine and champagne from their summer afternoon’s garden parties. We make our way unperturbed under the swaying shadows of silk gowns, cane strikes and top hats held high.
Gabriella’s patience is waning as an old fishwife puckers her lips at us. We are weaving through stumbling tramps and trollops, and Gabriella licks some of roast beef dribbles from a passed-out face. I hiss at her for lingering. She could stay behind for some vagabond scraps if she chose, but my hunter’s eyes are deadset. She catches back up reluctantly. Even for us cats, curiosity has its limits.
Past London Tower and across the bridge, we’ve made our way past a mixed pack of stray mongrels, busy chewing on some fresh rat. Over the southern banks we cross the closing street market, only broken bottles and stumbling drunkards left from the day’s hot swill. All the empty stinking fish monger carts locked together for tomorrow’s fair. A harlot mother is leading her lagging child, who’s pulling apart pieces of bacon and dropping them for Gabriella to follow. One final straw and she finally succumbs. So I head on alone.
Emboldened by the final press into tighter twisty quarters, I hug the corners safely tucked in shadows closer and closer to the promise of a welcome meal. I expect the district’s sweat-stink to fill my nostrils but black smoke hits first, thick with the panic of huddled masses. The hot roar of open building fires consume the brothel, and bobbies and brigade are scrambling to keep back the sooted naked mob, covering their genitals with bunched up clothes.
Among the fleeing chaos, there lies a gurney. And bloodied on that gurney is Cyrilla, veins spilling from her wrists and the same lifeless eyes as she always had when my lord was on top of her. I can catch his dry gin and musk, and it follows the blood trickled path to the man hand shackled on the curb.
My lord looks up at me briefly, with a baton beaten face, nods a warning and farewell to me, before turning his proud smirking attention back at the looming police. He is hoisted up and taken in custody as the harlots are spitting and calling him the devil. He merely shouts his proclamations back for a world burning in preparation for a dark lord’s cometh.
I’ve glimpsed many ghosts and fairies around these smokey streets but never have I seen this dark beast my lord raves about. I have been half in and out of this world several times but this is far from my ninth time round. I know only of this demon prince from his scribbling portraits back home.
And it occurs to me, the police will come looking for those pictures next. I decide to follow them. They’ll surely search the house next. When they pry open the pantry, I’ll slip in behind them. I could camp there through a perfectly feline winter. Jars could be knocked from shelves. Cans could be picked open with patient claws. All the pickled sardines and minced meats my purring stomach can ever want. My own lord. A good kitty. A happy Jack.
Paul Carreo 