Red, White and Blue (Book Two of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Forty Nine: A Prelude to the Pain

Another church – but this one was only on fire with colour. 

Jack had never seen inside a Catholic Church before, although he'd sometimes caught a glimpse of this one through the open door, when the congregation had been pouring out after mass and his roving eye had been looking for valuables, or some interesting, bloody pictures of saints in their death-throes.

In this last expectation, he wasn't disappointed. Even in the dark – broken only by the two candles at the altar – the windows and walls were splashed over with colourful, violent scenes. There was a man tied to a stake, with arrows sticking out of him, and another one standing upright in a cauldron, presumably being boiled alive.

Jack thought it was the most brilliant place he'd ever seen. Of course, he was frightened. He was with William in the middle of the night, before he'd had a chance to sleep off the booze, and that was bad enough. But then there was also this strange man with the cat-like face, stalking through the shadows beside them. 

He didn't really have a cat's face, of course – just bright eyes, and a look of almost kittenish prettiness. He had grabbed Jack and William by their collars, and in the case of William, who was either unconscious or insensible with booze, was dragging him one-handed down the aisle towards the altar.

It was like a bizarre wedding ceremony. And the bridegroom waiting at the end of the aisle was a young woman with black hair, kneeling before the altar. She was dressed as a nun, but had taken off the wimple. Her long hair was spilling down her back, and looked like oil-paint in the candlelight – much darker and shinier than the black dress it was resting on. She didn't glance round at them, not even once. There was a lit candle on either side of her, and each long flame was as straight and still as her back.

Jack wasn't entirely sure about the chain of circumstances that had led him here, but, as far as he knew, it had happened like this. William had come home late, stinking of whisky – which was the rule. He had gone to Jack's bed and shaken him awake – which was not unusual. But, instead of pummelling his eight-year-old son into the mattress – which was to be expected – he had announced that they were going out to a church, so that Jack could pray for his soul. His prayers would count for more, apparently, because he was an innocent.

Jack was not an innocent, but he knew how to act like one. It was a good way of getting pennies and comfits from the passing swells – especially the lady-swells, who would exclaim with delight at his blonde hair and blue eyes, and talk about the unfeeling ways of this wicked world, that could reduce such a cherub-boy to poverty.

So William had dragged him out of bed and led him, to Jack's surprise, not to the local chapel, but to the Catholic Church of St Michael's in Camden Town. He wondered if somewhere, way back in the murky recesses of William's past, there had been a Catholic upbringing. It would certainly explain a lot.

A well-to-do church like St Michael's would be locked up at night, of course, so they had vaulted the railings into the churchyard, looking for a back door or an open window. William had been peering in at one of them when something exploded out of the shadows and thumped him in the back, sending his head straight through the window. 

There had been a lot of blood and shattered glass. To Jack's eyes, it had been the most amazing thing he'd ever seen – including that time when Riley's old mum had gone mad and thrown herself out of a third-storey window. Old-lady-blood was all very well, but it could never be as satisfying to see as William's. 

He must have passed out, because his knees sagged while his head was still in the window. For a second, Jack thought his neck was going to fall against the jagged glass at the bottom of the pane and get ripped open.