Read Online The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy) by Maggie MacKeever - Free Book Online
Authors: Maggie MacKeever
Tags: Romance
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stroll from London Bridge, lay ‘The Mint’, a labyrinth of rookeries where bailiffs and thief-takers dared not enter save in force. Coiners and cracksmen, prostitutes and pickpockets, footpads and beggars had long congregated in this maze of alleys and open cesspools and narrow filth-strewn streets. The notorious Jack Sheppard had trod these broken pavements. Jonathan Wild had kept his horses at the Duke’s Head in Red Cross Street.
Dilapidated buildings, broken-windowed and unroofed, stood shored up by great beams placed in the center of the road. Here paupers slept in bare dirt cellars, their slumbers sweetened by sewage bubbling up through the floors. In and around these ruins, behind the old three-story shops on the main streets, ancient houses lined narrow courts that remained unchanged since Cromwell had sent out his spies to hunt Cavaliers. In their midst squatted a timber building with a steep time-blackened roof, bulging bay windows and dormers, great eaves overhanging the ground floor; reminiscent of a spider snoozing in the middle of her web.
If the exterior of the house was as ramshackle as its neighbors, the interior was not, yet even the boldest of cracksmen dared not trespass here. Rumor claimed many things about this building, and its owner, and the horrors that lay within.
Rumor did not mention a certain room located at the rear of the house. Few who glimpsed it remained alive long enough to tell the tale. Horus thought of the chamber as his cenotaph, a somewhat ironic flight of fancy on his part, a cenotaph being a sepulchral monument erected in memory of a deceased person whose body was buried elsewhere.
Horus was responsible for any number of people being buried elsewhere.
Present in the cenotaph were none of the excrescences so fashionable since Napoleon’s ill-fated Egyptian expedition; no wallpaper featuring Egyptian motifs, no furniture carved with Egyptian emblems, although the chamber contained canopic jars in which human organs had been stored, an armchair fashioned from ebonized black beech and gilded wood, and a mummified cat. A carved stone sarcophagus, dating from the 20 th Dynasty, rested against one wall. Anthropoid in shape, the sarcophagus was fashioned to resemble the human form; decorated with colored paintings and hieroglyphic inscriptions from spells found in the Book of the Dead; illustrated with (among other things) the lions of the horizon and the embalmer’s tent. Had the original occupant been male, the stone hands would have clutched a sculpted amulet. Since she was female, her hands lay flat on her breast.
Came a scratching at the heavy door. A slight, slender man slipped into the room. Gully had the knack of blending into his surroundings without attracting any more attention than a housefly.
Of Horus’s servants, Gully alone had entry to the cenotaph. If any of the other staff were curious, they kept their speculations to themselves, knowing (as the cook had put it) not only on what side their bread was buttered, but also what became of burnt toast.
Horus said, “And?”
A bead of perspiration broke out on Gully’s brow. “I searched top to bottom. The documents weren’t there.”
Those damnable documents, thought Horus. If someone found them, what then? Would they be turned over to the authorities?
And which authorities might those be?
“Do you have the lists?” he asked.
Gully held out several sheets of paper. Horus took them from his hand. A Burlington House guest register . D escriptions of the costume each guest wore.
If he hadn’t known Diana, Horus had recognized her companion. To disguise Angel Jarrow required more than blue-powdered hair. Whoever Diana might be, she wasn’t Mr. Jarrow’s current inamorata, a circumstance worthy of note, since Angel was faithful in his fashion to the lady of the hour.
If it had been Horus’s Diana that Angel embraced and not another. Horus’s Diana was distinguishable in that she wasn’t distinguishable
Dilapidated buildings, broken-windowed and unroofed, stood shored up by great beams placed in the center of the road. Here paupers slept in bare dirt cellars, their slumbers sweetened by sewage bubbling up through the floors. In and around these ruins, behind the old three-story shops on the main streets, ancient houses lined narrow courts that remained unchanged since Cromwell had sent out his spies to hunt Cavaliers. In their midst squatted a timber building with a steep time-blackened roof, bulging bay windows and dormers, great eaves overhanging the ground floor; reminiscent of a spider snoozing in the middle of her web.
If the exterior of the house was as ramshackle as its neighbors, the interior was not, yet even the boldest of cracksmen dared not trespass here. Rumor claimed many things about this building, and its owner, and the horrors that lay within.
Rumor did not mention a certain room located at the rear of the house. Few who glimpsed it remained alive long enough to tell the tale. Horus thought of the chamber as his cenotaph, a somewhat ironic flight of fancy on his part, a cenotaph being a sepulchral monument erected in memory of a deceased person whose body was buried elsewhere.
Horus was responsible for any number of people being buried elsewhere.
Present in the cenotaph were none of the excrescences so fashionable since Napoleon’s ill-fated Egyptian expedition; no wallpaper featuring Egyptian motifs, no furniture carved with Egyptian emblems, although the chamber contained canopic jars in which human organs had been stored, an armchair fashioned from ebonized black beech and gilded wood, and a mummified cat. A carved stone sarcophagus, dating from the 20 th Dynasty, rested against one wall. Anthropoid in shape, the sarcophagus was fashioned to resemble the human form; decorated with colored paintings and hieroglyphic inscriptions from spells found in the Book of the Dead; illustrated with (among other things) the lions of the horizon and the embalmer’s tent. Had the original occupant been male, the stone hands would have clutched a sculpted amulet. Since she was female, her hands lay flat on her breast.
Came a scratching at the heavy door. A slight, slender man slipped into the room. Gully had the knack of blending into his surroundings without attracting any more attention than a housefly.
Of Horus’s servants, Gully alone had entry to the cenotaph. If any of the other staff were curious, they kept their speculations to themselves, knowing (as the cook had put it) not only on what side their bread was buttered, but also what became of burnt toast.
Horus said, “And?”
A bead of perspiration broke out on Gully’s brow. “I searched top to bottom. The documents weren’t there.”
Those damnable documents, thought Horus. If someone found them, what then? Would they be turned over to the authorities?
And which authorities might those be?
“Do you have the lists?” he asked.
Gully held out several sheets of paper. Horus took them from his hand. A Burlington House guest register . D escriptions of the costume each guest wore.
If he hadn’t known Diana, Horus had recognized her companion. To disguise Angel Jarrow required more than blue-powdered hair. Whoever Diana might be, she wasn’t Mr. Jarrow’s current inamorata, a circumstance worthy of note, since Angel was faithful in his fashion to the lady of the hour.
If it had been Horus’s Diana that Angel embraced and not another. Horus’s Diana was distinguishable in that she wasn’t distinguishable
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