Searcher by T. J. Alexander

Author:T. J. Alexander [Alexander, T. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0719826551
Amazon: B07BLPL5DZ
Publisher: Robert Hale Fiction
Published: 2018-05-21T00:00:00+00:00

Magpie Alley

‘Have you money for a cab?’ she asks Raphael, as they run down Lambeth-Street towards the main thoroughfare. ‘There’s not a moment to lose, and it’s too far to walk at this hour.’

‘Where are you taking me?’ cries Raphael, following in her wake.

But Adah does not want to put her thoughts into words. She needs first to confirm her fears with her own eyes.

‘Spital Square,’ she says.

The cab that stops for them is shabby. Its interior smells strongly of stale tobacco. Adah perches stiffly on the seat, looking down at her hands. The nail of her left thumb digs into the skin of her right thumb, just below the knuckle.

‘Let it not be too late,’ she says silently to herself, over and over again. ‘Let it not be too late. If we are too late, after all this, how will I live with myself?’

Raphael watches her questioningly, but says nothing.

For seemingly interminable moments, their progress is blocked by a great, slow-moving cart, laden with sheep being brought in from the country to some London slaughterhouse. Adah tries to quell her rising frenzy of impatience. After so many months, what difference can a few minutes, or even a few hours, make? And yet the frantic words run like a prayer through her head. ‘Let it not be too late. Let it not be too late.’ The plaintive bleating of the sheep from the cart in front of them is a mocking echo of the fear in her heart.

It is already dark by the time they alight from the cab at the entrance to Spital Square.

‘Can you fetch two lanterns?’ says Adah. ‘But don’t light them yet.’

Without a word, Raphael disappears through the front door of his house and re-emerges a few moments later carrying a brass lantern in either hand and a tinder box tucked under his arm. Adah runs ahead of him down White Lion Street and into Blossom Street, looking up to see the wavering candle light behind the un-shuttered windows of her own house as they pass. Young Will promised to stay home with the other children this evening; she can only hope that he has kept his word.

Already gasping for breath, she reaches the laneway that leads off Magpie Alley, and begins to fumble with the twine that ties the gate shut. But the knots have been pulled too tight, and refuse to yield to her shaking fingers.

‘Let me do that, Adah,’ says Raphael. He sets the lanterns and tinder box on the ground and, to her surprise, produces a small, sharp sheath-knife from his coat pocket, and proceeds to cut the twine with a swift slashing motion. The flimsy gate collapses to one side, and Raphael stoops to light the lanterns, handing one to Adah. She leads the way along the dark path beyond.

The weak swaying flame of her lantern casts a wavering pattern of light on the rutted path and stray branches of hedge on either side. Her cloak catches on a bramble, and she feels the cloth tear as she pulls it loose.

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