Claws of Evil 1 Read online

  He often took things up to the museum that he found when he was mudlarking: bits of pottery, hatpins, lost brooches, old coins, all left in the silt of the river and dredged up by scruffy urchins like him. He had never found anything really valuable, more’s the pity, but over the years he liked to think that he had struck up a friendship with Professor Carter. “Bring me what you find, my boy,” the man would say. “Particularly any old coins you discover.”

  It was all very clear to Ben when he ran through the scenario in his mind. Carter would be delighted to see him and would declare the Coin to be an amazing find, a real treasure. Then, after a special ceremony, at which the Kingdom family would be guests of honour, the Coin would take pride of place in the British Museum and people would come from miles around to gaze upon it. Finally, Her Majesty Queen Victoria would be so grateful that she would reward Jonas Kingdom for his services to the Empire, and in his quiet and modest way, his father would become a man of means and no longer have to break his back for the price of stale bread. That was how Ben saw it, anyway. His pa was going to be so pleased with him.

  Buoyed up on these thoughts, Ben was bounding down the stairs three at a time and didn’t see Mr. Wachowski occupying his usual step at the bottom until he was stumbling over him. Ben fell forwards clumsily, his hands slapping onto the hard tiles just in time to stop him from breaking his nose. Mr. Wachowski groaned with the impact, holding his back in pain. And the Coin slipped from Ben’s grasp and went rolling across the floor.

  They both forgot their injuries and instead watched the Coin, mesmerized. A single coin, spinning like a ballerina; more fascinating and alluring than any dancer who ever graced the stage.

  Slowly, the Coin stopped its dance and then toppled flat onto the cold tiles.

  Neither of them spoke.

  “What’s this, Ben Kingdom?” said Mr. Wachowski, reaching out with a podgy hand. “You’re a rich man?”

  Ben’s left hand flashed out and snatched the Coin away before the Polish man could touch it. “Watch carefully,” said Ben, holding it up before the man’s eyes and passing it back and forth. Then, just like the street conjurer he had learned the trick from in the first place, Ben rolled his knuckles and made the Coin tumble from finger to finger across the back of his hand, before making it disappear completely, ending his routine with a theatrical clap.

  “Which hand?” he asked the confused man, holding out two fists for him to choose from. After a moment of deliberation, Mr. Wachowski picked the left. With his flair for the dramatic Ben opened his fingers with agonizing slowness to reveal an empty palm. He then puzzled the man even further by opening his right hand and showing that to be empty too.

  “What’s this, Mr. Wachowski?” said Ben, mimicking the man’s favourite phrase. And as Mr. Wachowski sat dumbfounded, Ben reached into the tobacco pouch that was a permanent resident on the man’s lap, and retrieved the Coin from within.

  “Bravo!” declared the old man, clapping joyfully.

  “Right, I’m going to hook it,” said Ben. And with a cheeky grin on his face and the Coin deep in his pocket, he opened the front door and left.

  Outside, the feet of men and horses had turned the snow to slush. Above him the sky was a sheet of cloud the colour of bad milk. More snow was coming.

  He set off at a breakneck pace that quickly ate up the ground. Ben knew that if he turned up late for work, his master would have a nice warm beating waiting for his backside; Mr. Smutts was a generous man like that. In his haste, he almost didn’t register a shape standing motionless in the alleyway opposite his front door: the shape of an old man, with gnarled hands twisted around a white cane, and a battered case at his side. Jago Moon, the blind bookseller.

  Moon didn’t call out or signal to Benjamin in any way, and yet Ben could feel the cloudy spheres of his blind eyes burning into his back all the way down the Lane.

  Of course, Carter knew that it was all rather hit or miss. There had to be dozens of Kingdoms in London, possibly hundreds. It was quite likely that a lot of innocent people would get hurt before the Feathered Men found the right one. War was like that unfortunately; civilians got wounded all the time.

  Kingdom... The name rang a bell from somewhere. Was one of those guttersnipes that he employed to trawl the sewers called Kingdom? He tried to put a face to the name as he made his way down the tunnel that would take him to his rooms in the basement of the British Museum. He had to keep up the day job; for now.

  “Knight Commander Carter, sir!” a voice called behind him and he turned to see a young Legionnaire rushing to report. The boy came to a stop in front of him and stood ramrod straight, his left fist clenched to his breast in salute.

  “Busy night, Captain Mickelwhite?”

  “Yes, sir, we almost had a run-in with Jago Moon, sir.”

  Carter could feel his interest waning already.

  “He and another Watcher were guarding a boy on Old Gravel Lane.”

  Carter nodded and began to move on again. “Good, good,” he said dismissively.

  “We asked around and we were able to find out the boy’s name, sir,” Mickelwhite called at his retreating back. “Ben Kingdom.”

  Claw Carter halted in his tracks. He believed in many things, but not coincidences.

  Ben was almost twenty minutes late.

  He was going to be in trouble. Mr. Smutts would take the belt from round his waist and Ben was going to taste its lick right across his backside. He thought of the Coin in his pocket, so hot and heavy, and didn’t think one small beating was too big a price to pay.

  However, as it turned out, being late was the least of his worries.

  When Ben turned the corner of the Lane towards the cooper’s, he ploughed straight into a solid wall of bodies. Old Gravel Lane was often a crush, but this took the biscuit, Ben thought. The throng was so thick that he could barely shoulder his way between them. The most unusual thing about the crowd was that they weren’t going anywhere; they were just stood there, gawping at something, and muttering. And there was a strange tang in the air that was beginning to scratch at Ben’s nose. He barged his way through the crowd, his ears pricked as he made out snatches of conversation.

  “Ain’t it terrible.”

  “Someone should do somefink.”

  “Oh my gawd, they’re all gonna perish.”

  “Let me through,” Ben gasped, using his elbows to fight his passage through the pack. “Have a bit of mercy and let me through!”

  With a last desperate push, Ben finally emerged in front of the cooper’s and it was then that he understood. In the place where Mr. Smutts’s workshop used to stand, Ben was greeted by an inferno. The flames were having their way with the old wooden building, raging without thought or compassion, consuming whatever they chose. In the distance, Ben could hear the bell of the fire wagon, and even as he urged it on, he already knew in his heart that it was too late. It was winter in London. All the water was as hard as bricks. What were they going to do, throw snowballs at the blaze?

  “What’s the matter with you people?” Ben screamed, already feeling the heat licking at his face. “Why don’t you help?” Squinting against the sting of the smoke, Ben searched for two figures in the haze: Old Man Smutts and his son, Stanley.

  “Mr. Smutts!” Ben shouted. He went as close as he dared, hot splinters raining down on him as the workshop began to groan with the effort of standing. “Mr. Smutts! Stan!”

  A figure staggered from the mouth of the blaze, through the ring of fire that marked where the door had once been, and then fell face down. Ben ran to him and turned him over, cradling his head in his lap. It was a boy, about his own age, the skin on his hands red and blistered where he had tried to protect his face.

  “Stan, listen to me, you’re going to be alright,” said Ben, scooping up handfuls of sooty slush and rubbing them across the boy’s burned hands. “Is your father safe? I haven’t seen him.”

  Stanley’s eyes opened wide and looked back at the blazing
building, salt tears drawing lines down his blackened cheeks. “Pa,” he said.

  The fire brigade had finally appeared at the end of the street and almost grudgingly the crowd began to admit their wagon and horses. But Ben didn’t have time to wait for them to act. Nor did Mr. Smutts.

  Quickly, Ben whipped off his jacket and began to roll it in the slush. When it was wet through, he shoved his arms back into the sleeves and, hunching his shoulders, pulled his jacket up over his head, hat and all. With his face pushed into the crook of his arm, he made for the door.

  Standing there on the edge of Hell, with only the flames before him, he paused. “I’ll bring him back for you, Stan,” he said.

  Ben knew that it was a bad idea as soon as he stepped inside. A cooper’s shop was not a good place to be in a fire. Planks of wood stored out the back. Fresh wooden barrels stacked floor to ceiling. Wooden roof supported by wooden beams. Wooden frame around the small windows. Wooden frame around the wooden door. Carpet of wood shavings on the floor. One thing Ben knew about wood: it doesn’t half burn.

  Pretty much as soon as he entered the building, Ben was convinced that he was going to burn with it.

  Steam was already rising from his sodden jacket and his boots were beginning to smoulder beneath his feet. It was as if he had stepped inside a furnace: all that he could see was flames. Beautiful, rampant, hungry flames.

  “Mr. Smutts!” he shouted, edging his way towards the back of the shop, squinting to see through slitted eyes. The air around him was alive with sparks where the sawdust was igniting in flight. Ben’s words were lost against the roar of the inferno, and his lungs were filled with heavy smoke that threatened to drag him to his knees. Ben coughed until his guts ached, but he dared not give in to it; he knew too well that if he let the fire take hold of him, it would never let him go.

  Above his head the rafters gave an ominous groan and released a shower of sparks and cinders that fell onto the shield of his sodden coat like molten rain. The fire was so hot now that the iron hoops on the barrels were beginning to burst and the rivets that had been hammered so carefully into place were exploding from their sockets. Ben could smell his own hair beginning to catch.

  Through the hole of the doorway and the clouds of smoke, he could just about make out the shapes of the firemen outside, shouting and barking their orders and not rescuing him from the blaze. Ben dropped to his knees as a chunk of ceiling detached itself and came crashing to the ground behind him while he sheltered beneath the remains of his coat. The smoke was so thick that he couldn’t tell one direction from another. Each breath sucked more pain into his lungs. His exposed hands were raw, the floorboards beneath his knees burning yet more holes in his trousers, seeking out the soft flesh inside.

  And there’s you thinking you might freeze to death this winter, he thought wryly as the window exploded outwards, showering firemen and gawpers alike with razor-edged splinters of glass.

  With a final effort, Ben pushed on through the firestorm and out to the back of the workshop, where the flames had not yet completely taken hold. He quickly saw that a large beam had fallen from the roof and lay heavily across a man’s legs, pinning him down. Kneeling beside the prone body, Ben saw thick blood soaking through the trousers and a terrible stump of white bone. Mr. Smutts’s face was grey, his eyes shut. His chest was still.

  “NO!” shouted Ben. He took his employer by the shoulders and began to shake him. “No!” he said firmly. “You’re not dead.”

  “And I’m not deaf either,” said Mr. Smutts, and they shared a moment like none that had passed between them before.

  Mr. Smutts smiled at Ben and touched a hand to his cheek. “You’re late, Master Kingdom,” he said gently, wincing through his pain. “Is this any way to treat your master?”

  “Sack me later,” said Ben.

  Even when he thought about it afterwards, Ben couldn’t explain how he shifted the beam from Mr. Smutts’s broken leg, or how he managed to drag the man from the burning building. It was as if he had found a well of energy inside himself that he never knew existed.

  He remembered the strange throbbing sensation in his right hand though, along his whole arm in fact, and the feeling that he was somehow much stronger than he had ever been before. Strong enough to lift a burning rafter, strong enough to carry a full grown man to safety. And he’s quite a fat bloke too, thought Ben to himself proudly. I don’t know me own strength.

  Exhausted, Ben lay down in the snow beside his employer, gasping for a breath of air that wasn’t poisoned with smoke.

  Stanley crawled over to his father’s side and the look they exchanged was all the reward that Ben could ask for. Then the cooper’s shop collapsed in on itself in a mushroom cloud of flames and the true agony of Mr. Smutts’s shattered leg began to really kick in.

  Clenching his teeth, Mr. Smutts beckoned Ben closer with a twitch of his fingers. “Benjamin,” he hissed.

  Reluctantly, Ben obeyed. He didn’t want any thanks, although a shilling wouldn’t go amiss. “Really, Mr. Smutts, you don’t have to—”

  “Shut up and listen, Ben!” The voice was full of urgency.

  Ben shut up and listened.

  “They were looking for you, Benjamin. The ones who did this...” Mr. Smutts pointed to the cinders where his life’s work once stood. “They were monsters, Benjamin. Demons.” His eyes were wide as he spoke. “They were like men,” he continued, “but with these huge wings, and their heads...” Smutts could hardly bring himself to say what he had seen. “Benjamin, they were an offence before God. As if some cruel boy had torn the head off a doll and sewn on a raven’s head in its place.” The haunted expression on Mr. Smutts’s face gave Ben a hint of the nightmares the poor man would be suffering, long after his bones had mended.

  “They spoke to me, if you could call it speaking; their accent was that thick. Would you believe it? Bird-men speaking the Queen’s own English with their filthy tongues.” He shook his head. “They said that they wanted Kingdom,” Smutts continued and Ben’s heart turned to lead inside his chest. “Well, I wouldn’t tell ’em anything, told them to be off.” Mr. Smutts tried a smile, but in vain.

  “Then they grabbed Stanley, said that they would hurt him... I’m sorry, Benjamin. I had no choice.” Mr. Smutts’s eyes were filled with remorse. “I told them where you live.”

  Ben was on his feet and running even as the words sank home.

  “Run, Benjamin,” Mr. Smutts shouted from somewhere behind him. “Run!”

  His blood roaring in his ears, Ben only had two thoughts as he pelted along. Nathaniel, he thought. Pa!

  What if Pa and Nathaniel had gone back to their room? Would there be a monster with a bird’s head waiting there to rip them apart?

  Part of Ben considered running to Professor Carter for help. There was something about the man’s fierce intelligence and even more fearsome claw that made most problems seem much smaller. But Ben’s heart steered him straight towards home. Danger was looking for him. Last night it was in Skinners Lane and on the rooftops shrouded by snow, this morning it was waiting at the workshop in the flames.

  Why was everyone suddenly out to get him?

  The questions hammered with the beating of his heart and the pounding of his feet. His fingers reached for the Coin in his pocket as he raced through the streets. He touched the cold metal and felt that same shudder of emotion run through him; triumph mixed with desire. It was a small consolation as he turned the corner and saw Mrs. McLennon standing on their doorstep.

  She was weeping uncontrollably. As she saw Ben approach, all that she was able to do was point behind her up the stairs and then begin to cry again.

  Ben took the stairs two at a time, passing Mr. Wachowski in the hall, smoking and shaking his head. Mrs. O’Rourke stood watching through a crack in her door, the two smallest O’Rourkes gathered safely round her skirts; even Mrs. Viney had taken a rest from her screaming and was standing in her doorway, silent and pale.

  He had
no idea what he would do if he actually found someone waiting for him in his room. These people – he wasn’t ready yet to believe Mr. Smutts’s fantastic description of the bird-men – these people had already burned Mr. Smutts’s workshop to the ground and they’d only escaped by the skin of their teeth. It was not a good plan to try to confront them single-handed, he knew that.

  Pa, he thought, and he climbed the last few stairs regardless of the danger that might be waiting for him at the top.

  The bedroom door was shut and the lock appeared untouched. Ben put his ear to the wood and listened. There was nothing. Either the intruders had fled, or they were waiting patiently on the other side.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Ben chose to fling the door open with all his might, imagining that if there was someone lurking, there was a chance that the door would hit them and hit them hard. Instead, he found himself alone and face-to-face with destruction.

  Everything that his family owned had been torn apart. The small table and chair had been reduced to firewood, the hiding place beneath the floorboards was now a gaping hole. Their clothes had been ransacked. The mattresses where his father and brother lay each night had been sliced open with knives. His own bed was in tatters, his secret books nothing more than strewn pages. Even his mother’s Bible had been ripped to shreds.

  It was no mystery how the culprits had got in: half the roof was lying on the floor. Ben looked through the ragged gap at the iron-hard sky. His visitor from the night before had obviously returned.

  Well, ain’t life grand? thought Ben.

  “I didn’t see the scoundrels,” said Mrs. McLennon when she joined Ben in the wreckage of his room. “But mark this, Moira McLennon will not be caught napping a second time.” There was fire in her words and flint in her grey Scottish eyes, but Ben had no desire for this old woman to fight his battles for him.

  There was nothing more for them to discuss.

  Mrs. McLennon handed him a beef broth, which he received gratefully, and then after a moment of awkward silence she left him to it. “If there’s anything else you’re needing,” she said, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”