The Ripper Affair

(The third book in the Bannon and Clare series)

A novel by Lilith Saintcrow

Alone in a crowd

Chapter One

A Messy Method

The trouble with dynamitards, Clare had remarked to Valentinelli that very morning, was the inherent messiness of their methods.

Of course, the Neapolitan had snorted most ungraciously. Anyone who killed with such a broad brush was a bit of a coward in his estimation–a curious view for one who named himself an assassin, certainly. Still, Clare had not meant merely their means of murder, but everything else as well. It was just so dashed untidy.

This Clerkenwell courtroom was packed as a slaughteryard’s pens, and the lowing crowd stank of rotting teeth and stewed potatoes, violet or peppermint cachous and sweat, wet wool and the pervasive breath of Londinium’s yellow fog. It had been a rainy summer, and even those venturing into the countryside to pick hops had been heard to grumble. The weather did not fully explain the crush; there were hangings elsewhere in the city that served the lower classes as better amusement.

However, the public–or at least, a certain portion of that great beast–expressed quite an interest in these proceedings. It did not take a mentath’s faculties of Deduction or Logic to answer why–the Eastron End of Londinium’s great sprawl was slopping over with both foreigners and Eireans; Southwark crammed to the gunnels with Eireans as well. Twenty or more to a stinking room and their blood-pricked fingers, Altered or not, largely responsible for the gleaming, expensive mechanisterum shipped out each Tideturn.

It was no wonder they were restless, given the ravages of the Red, cholera and tuberculosis as well–and the rampant starvation on their Emerald Isle, where their overlords, most of supposedly healthy Englene stock, behaved more like petty feudal seigneurs than benevolent citizens entrusted with the task of dragging Papist potato-crunchers from their ancient green mire.

That was, however, not in the purview of a lone mentath to speak against. He was merely present to give evidence. He could not allow Feeling to intervene with Logic or Truth.

Sometimes, even a mentath could wish it were otherwise.

“The device you refer to is unquestionably the work of the accused,” he said, clearly and distinctly, and ignored the rustle that went through the courtroom. Whispers and hisses rose. “For one thing, the manner of twisting the fuse is very particular, as is the signature of the chemica vitistera used to make the bomb itself. Had it not been defused, it would have been rather deadly for anyone visiting Parliament that day.”

“A modern Gunpowder Plot, then, sir?” the judge enquired, his cheeks flush with pride at his own wit.

Archibald Clare did not let his lip curl. Such a display would be unworthy of a soul dedicated to pure Logic. Still, the temptation arose. Under the powdered wig and above the robes of Justice, the man’s petty chuckling and drink-thickened face was a florid insult to the very ideal he had theoretically been called to serve.

Still, one could not have shaggy brutes blowing up Parliament. Once that was allowed, what on earth was next? He had no choice but to send the young Eirean, shackled in the Accused’s box and guarded by two sour-faced bailiffs, to the gallows. There would be a crowd of murdered souls waiting for the lad in whatever afterlife he professed, since he had already been twice successful–the explosion on Picksdowne, and another at the Bailey. Now that

had been a horrific event.

The question of how these events could be traced to the Great Blight wracking the young man’s homeland was an open one. There were whispers of the Eirean spirit of rule struggling to manifest itself–a blasphemous notion, to be sure, but even such blasphemy found a ready hearing when the staple crop rotted in the ground and the tribes of Eire found themselves starving as well as browbeaten and outright terrorised. Could such a thing excuse this young man, or mitigate his murders?

When, Clare was forced to wonder in some of his private moments, could a man, even a mentath, cease unravelling Causes and concern himself only with Effects?

The young Mr Spencewail was accused of treachery to the Crown, both as a dynamitard and as a member of a particular Eirean brotherhood that called its members Young Wolves. Eireans were subjects of Britannia; but the Englene’s privilege of a trial by jury did not apply to them as a whole, and the Crown had not seen fit to intervene or offer a pardon.

Distaste for the whole affair, finished or not, was a sourness against Clare’s palate. “Perhaps,” he said, carefully. “That is outside my concern, sir. I may only speak to what I witnessed, and what may be deduced.”