Marlowe looked back at him, his eyes big.
“You are quite remarkable, child. You contain a spark from the orsine. You are a piece of it. You were born in that other world, your mother gave birth to you there, before she was murdered by Jacob Marber. You can survive there as long as you wish. The orsine cannot harm you.”
All at once it was like all the air was sucked out of the room.
Dr. Berghast had said it so casually, with such easy disregard. It was shocking. Charlie gripped Marlowe’s shoulder firmly.
The little boy was staring at Dr. Berghast. His mouth was open.
“My mother was—？”
“Murdered. Yes. You did not know?” Dr. Berghast grimaced coolly, and then he said, with a look of satisfaction playing at the corners of his eyes: “She was a kind woman, a remarkable woman. She would have loved you more than her own life, child. Marber took her from you, from all of us. And then he tried to take you. If you wish to avenge her, if you wish to make Marber suffer … then this is the way. Bring me that glove, and I will destroy his master.”
* * *
After the boys had left, Henry Berghast carefully put the replica glove away and opened a second drawer in his desk and took out a ring of heavy iron keys. He went to one of the doors in his study and unlocked it and lit a lantern from a sconce on the wall and began to descend. His footsteps scraped on the stone stairs. The steps wound down into the earth and stopped at a thick oak door.
It was a bolt-hole, a secret room built centuries ago, to keep Catholic priests safe in a time when they were being persecuted by the king. Berghast had long since converted it to his own purposes. Only he and his manservant, Bailey, knew of it. It was damp, this deep under the ground, and cold, the walls carved out of the very rock itself.
He unlocked the door, shone the lantern into the dark. There came a soft clink of chains; a clicking noise, almost like the wings of an insect. A figure was suspended by its arms, on the far wall, its head drooping down onto its chest. The smell was terrible.
“Mr. Laster,” said Berghast softly. “May I call you Walter again?”
The litch raised its face, blinked its liquid eyes. There was a black intelligence in them, something quick and cruel and no longer human. It watched him.
Berghast hung the lantern from a hook in the ceiling and looped his thumbs into his waistcoat and regarded the creature. Then he went to a small table in the corner and picked up a dish. It held a black gumlike substance: opium.
Walter gave a quiet whimper, watching.
But Berghast did not want him to suffer. No, such suffering—and Berghast’s eyes, his every gesture radiated his sorrow—was the last thing he wanted for poor Walter. No, what Henry Berghast wanted most of all was for Walter to end his own suffering. Or, rather, to let Berghast end it for him. All Walter had to do was give himself over to Berghast’s questions, all he had to do was tell him what he wanted to know, and his suffering would end. It would be so easy, surely—
All this Walter’s quick loathsome gaze took in; Berghast saw it flicker and vanish, like a lizard under a rock.
“So Jacob wanted you to be taken by Mrs. Harrogate,” he said, by way of beginning the night’s session.
“No.”
“But that is what you told me last time. Is it not?”
Walter licked his lips. He said, shakily, “Jacob knew she would … bring us. To you.”
“It wasn’t because of the child, then? He didn’t send you to kill the boy?”
Walter was whispering something under his breath, something Berghast didn’t catch.
“Walter?”
“Walter Walter little Walter…，” the creature echoed in a whisper.
Berghast studied it in impatience. “So he did not send you to kill Marlowe, Walter?”
Walter shook his pale hairless head. Berghast saw the thin red lines of blood where the iron cuffs had rubbed his wrists raw. “Jacob … knows. He knows where we are.… That’s why we’re here, yes. He wants this.”
“Oh, Walter,” Berghast murmured sadly. “You believe he wanted this for you?” His gaze took in the grim cell, the chains, the opium unsmoked in its little dish, with a profound disappointment. “I think not. No. You are here because Jacob has abandoned you. No other reason. Jacob has left you to perish because you are no longer of any use to him. But you are of use to me. It is I who had you rescued, I who had you brought here. It pains me to say it, of course, but your Jacob does not love you. Not anymore. You have failed him, and he despises you for it.”