Free Beneath London by James P. Blaylock Page A

lead for her, which diminishes the effect, but the girl is unhappy wearing them. The shoes diminish her powers, you see, and her second sight fades because of the layer of lead that separates her from the earth. When one has second sight in abundance but is lacking in eyesight, one is loath to lose one’s powers and be left impaired. At times she wards off such threats by reciting rhyme or running through the alphabet in strange sequences that she has invented. Sarah taught her a poem by Mr. Lear – ‘The Jumblies’ – making certain that she had it word for word despite its being nonsense, or perhaps because of it. They used the poem to call each other – telepathically, to use the modern term. Those who know the art scarcely need to name it.”
    “Clara is an interesting girl, to be sure,” St. Ives said. “I don’t wonder that you wanted to keep her out of the hands of Monsieur Charcot or anyone else who wanted to make a study of her.”
    “Then you can perhaps understand that I must know what Dr. Pullman discovered in regard to Sarah Wright, but that I very much want to remain out of the way, if you take my meaning, and Clara also.”
    “Certainly,” St. Ives said. “You seem to be carrying a great weight, Mother; you needn’t bear it alone. There’s no greater burden than secret knowledge.”
    “You’re in the right of it there. To put it plainly, I fear that my dead husband is the source of this evil. When I first spoke of him to you I refused to utter his name, which was an abomination to me. But our doings in London and in the marsh a year ago left me a changed woman, and his name no longer has any power over me. He was born Maurice De Salles. Now you two know his name, in case you hear it again. When they hanged him for practicing vivisection and for the murder of children I wrote that name on a slip of paper and buried it in the dung heap, in order to be done with it. I haven’t used the name since. It has become imperative, however, that I know whether his… whether Maurice De Salles’s legacy, so to speak, is at work here.”
    “Your dead husband’s legacy is not your own legacy, Mother, whatever his name is,” Alice told her. “And the man has been dead as a stone for a good many years.”
    “So he has, after a fashion. But what he knew hasn’t died with him, Alice, nor ever will, apparently, and it attracts those who want the knowledge for their own ends. I told you something about him, Professor, when we first met on that dark night after poor Mary Eastman was slaughtered in the graveyard, but I left much out, because it didn’t signify. I believe it signifies now. After my husband was hanged, they buried his body at the crossroads down from the old bridge in order to maze the body, and a stake was driven through the body to fix it in place.”
    “Surely that sort of thing was given up in the last century,” Alice said.
    “Not in special cases, ma’am, I do assure you, and his was a special case. Worse than you can easily believe. The body still lies there today, pinned in place, but not in the state in which it was first buried. I have no desire to offend you with what I reveal, but I’m afraid I must reveal it. The night after the burial, when the dirt in the grave was still loose, it was opened in the dark of night and the head was taken. The grave was closed again, the soil tamped flat and swept clean, and so it’s remained. The road was metaled some years since, but thank God the body was deep enough to lie undisturbed. The desecration of the body was done at my request, and I’ll tell you plainly that I would do it again without a qualm.”
    Alice had covered her mouth with her hand and stared at Mother Laswell now in simple surprise. “Why on earth?” she asked. “It must have been terrible.”
    “It was … necessary, ma’am.”
    “In certain European countries,” St. Ives said, saving Mother Laswell the effort, “it is still quite common to cut out the heart or