Free Alice by Christina Henry Page B

know the name of his ghost. Was there comfort in that? she wondered. Did it make it better or worse to know who or what chased you through your dreams?
    Hatcher indicated the pub across the way, and they crossed the street. The folk going about their morning business paid them no mind. A few bleary-eyed fellows staggered out of the pub in question. Hatcher slipped around them and Alice followed, blinking in the dim light as they entered.
    A middle-aged man wiped long wooden tables with a grey rag, and a woman of about the same age collected plates and glasses in a bucket. Both of them had the worn faces and knotted fingers that showed a lifetime of hard work. A much younger woman, younger than Alice, mopped the floor in lazy circles.
    The man looked up, frowning as the door shut behind Alice and Hatcher. “We’re closed,” he said, straightening. “Just chivvied the last of the stragglers out.”
    Hatcher didn’t speak. He approached the man, who appeared to swell a little. Alice saw that despite his age, the forearms exposed by rolled sleeves were thick and muscled.
    “I said we’re closed,” he repeated.
    Hatcher put two shiny silver coins on the table. The girl paused in her pretense of mopping and watched the proceedings with avid eyes.
    “We’re looking for a room for the day,” Hatcher said, his voice quiet, nonthreatening, but Alice noticed he let his jacket fall open a little.
    The tavern keeper’s eyes flickered from the axe at Hatcher’s waist and back to his face.
    “Dolly!” he shouted.
    The girl with the mop started, nudging the bucket and sloshing grey water on the floor.
    “Take yourself back to the kitchen and get yourself a pie for breakfast before you leave,” he said.
    Dolly eagerly picked up the bucket, obviously pleased to be released before her task was complete. She stopped halfway to the kitchen, looking from Hatcher to Alice to the keeper. “What about me wages?”
    The older woman huffed, putting the dishes on a table. She hurried to the girl’s side, muttering, “Come along, you ninny.”
    They disappeared into the box, leaving the other three around the table. The keeper looked at the scar on Alice’s cheek, and then back at Hatcher. “I don’t want no trouble with Mr. Carpenter.”
    Hatcher reached into his pocket and doubled the number of coins on the table. “We don’t know Mr. Carpenter. We just need a bed until nightfall, and perhaps some food.”
    The man looked at the coins on the table, and back at Hatcher, who added two more. “You’ll never even know we were here,” he said, and Alice understood this to mean that the keeper was to forget them entirely after they left.
    The keeper nodded, scooping up the coins. “Up those stairs,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. His eyes moved to Alice’s shirtsleeve.
    She saw the blood there, coating the cuff, which she hadn’t noticed before. Hatcher’s right hand, his axe hand, had it too, and along the back of the wrist. Alice supposed they should have done a better job of cleaning up, but then, the blood seemed to help the tavern keeper take them more seriously than he otherwise would have.
    “My wife will bring you up some pies in a moment. Second room on the left. I can’t vouch for the mattress. Some of the lads who come in take it for an hour.”
    Alice paused on the steps behind Hatcher.
    “Don’t worry,” he said, not looking back.
    At the top of the stairs there was a little turn and then a hallway that stretched back above the tavern floor. Hatcher opened the door to the room and waved Alice in ahead of him.
    She exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. For a moment she’d been afraid that they would come upon a man and a woman in the act. But the room was empty.
    There was a dirty mattress on the floor, straw leaking from a hole in one side. A filthy wool blanket was tossed at the foot. Alice had spent ten years sleeping on the floor in the asylum, but she shuddered when