Chapter 3: Aoife (part 4 of 4)

  Aoife emerged from the rows of tightly packed houses and onto a walkway beside the River Lea. The walkways here were lined with streetlamps on both sides of the river, giving her a reliable way to gauge the distance she covered. Five streetlamps—or roughly fifty yards—then a right turn onto the footbridge. Across on the other side was an imposing stone building. Its features were inscrutable in the cloudy night, but Aoife knew this to be the remnants of a monarchical era castle, now repurposed as the local church.

  Crossing the bridge brought her directly in front of the lofty portcullis, which was fully lowered at the moment. Neither she nor anyone else at this hour had any business entering St Marcus from the front. Instead, she went around the side of the building, keeping close to the walls to mitigate her lack of vision. Here, with the castle wall to one side and tall hedges on the other, was near total darkness. There were no voices nor movements beside her, which meant that tonight's guests had already finished filing in.

  Soon, the side path opened on to the back lot of the church. Were there fewer clouds tonight, she might have been able to make out the cemetery here bathed in moonlight—a scene straight out of the ghost stories Clodagh sometimes liked to read. Often in those stories, the unsuspecting protagonists were wont to stumble onto a gaggle of Ghouls or be taken unawares by a Barghest stalking the graveyard. Aoife knew that these were mere fancies within the safety of the city walls but she nevertheless deemed this to be the most discomforting part of her commute. She rounded another corner and was relieved to see the orange light spilling out of the back entrance.

  As she approached, she saw that the outer wooden door was open but the inner metal gate was shut. The sources of the orange light were torches lining the stone walls of the hallway inside. A thin, old man with a scruffy beard sat just past the inner gate. He was dozing with his chin in his chest, and jumped off his chair when Aoife rattled the gate.

  "Wha—? Who goes there? Oh, it's you," he managed to say, still thick with interrupted sleep, then sat back down. "Password?"

  "Come on, Dignan, you already know it's me. Just open up."

  "Uh, miss, I still need the password. I can't let anyone in without it."

  Aoife rolled her eyes. This part of the process always felt ludicrous to her, like something out of one of Clodagh's adventure novels. By now, half the riffraff in Enfield likely knew the password anyway. But in this business, most people dared not deviate from Mr Carmichael's instructions, Dignan perhaps the unlikeliest to do so. So she mumbled, "Oberon."

  "Right you are," Dignan chirped then removed the latch, allowing the gate to swing open with a loud creak. Aoife didn't know much about what the word Oberon meant, beyond that it was supposedly some kind of rare and powerful Malady in one of the old stories. She wasn't even sure if it was a real thing. Mr Carmichael hadn't struck her as the type who would be so taken with Malady lore, but to be fair, she hadn't made any effort to get to know him.

  She entered the building, brushing past the old gatekeep without another word. Inside, the hallway almost immediately turned onto a staircase leading down. Aoife started down the stairs, taking slow and careful steps. Behind her, the metal gate shut with a hefty clang. At the bottom of the ancient-looking staircase—at least thirty steps at a sharp decline—was another wooden door, much more worn down than the one she had come in from.

  Inside the basement, she was greeted by several sensations at once. First was the noise. As soon as the door was cracked open, she heard the distant roar of an appreciative crowd, followed by some laughter and jeering; she must have happened on a particularly exciting sequence. Second was the smell. The basement of St Marcus was a deceptively vast space but it had almost no ventilation. As soon as she stepped inside, she was hit with a unique concoction of sewage, mould, and ancient remains. This was never pleasant, but at least she wouldn't have to notice it after a while. Third was the cold. Low underground, the air was damp and the chill cloying in turn. But this too, she knew would pass once she joined the party proper.

  She walked further into the hallway, subconsciously leaning closer to the torches on the walls to brush past their warmth. As she did, she found herself stifling a yawn. She seemed to be more tired than she was willing to admit. It would be best to get tonight's shift done and dusted as quickly as possible.

  As she neared the end of the hallway, the noise of the crowd grew louder. There seemed to be a break in the action, and most of the noise was now composed of idle chatter and a few angry shouts—likely arguments of a financial nature. Ahead, the hallway split into two paths, and a lone figure stood at the fork, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He noticed Aoife approaching and extricated one hand to greet her, smiling broadly. "Griffin. You had me worried for a minute."

  Seth Marlowe was a tall, thin boy with a strange fashion sense. He wore tailored pants and a woolen vest but no jacket. The white shirt underneath was missing a few buttons near the collar and its sleeves were rolled up to reveal his sinewy arms. He had a smooth, youthful face, and couldn't have been much older than Aoife, yet his wavy, white-blond hair gave him a strangely ageless appearance.

  Aoife tried in vain to ignore her own fluttering heartbeat and reddening face, something that seemed to be occurring with more regularity in his presence. The shadows in the basement masked her change in complexion, and for this she was grateful. She was yet unwilling to admit that the happiest benefit to reducing her shifts at Aunt Cara's was the additional time she could spend training with Marlowe. Whenever her thoughts strayed in such a direction, she would do her utmost to overwrite them. He was a co-worker, a useful one who had shown her the ropes and continued to help hone her craft. Nothing more and nothing less—lest she stray off task.

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  "Marlowe," she nodded up at him as she came to a stop. The path to her right opened onto the central hall where the crowd was gathered. She was close enough to it now to make out words spoken by the guests. The smell of fluids—of both the alcoholic and the bodily varieties—now joined the primeval musk of the basement. She wrinkled her nose before asking, "How am I doing for time?"

  "Not too bad, all things considered," Marlowe said then glanced toward the hall. From where they stood, the view was blocked by a throng of rowdy guests with their backs turned to them. "One more card after this break, then you're up."

  "Are you fighting today?"

  "Of course. The last card of the night, after yours. The marquee," he flashed her another grin as he replied. He seemed to have the idea that there was a competition between the two of them, but Aoife certain didn't see it that way. To her, this was merely paid work, and the card order was altogether irrelevant. But Marlowe looked so pleased with himself that she didn't have the heart to refute the point.

  "Right. Well, good luck with that. I'm going to the spare room," with that, she turned toward the left path, opposite from the crowd.

  "That's it?" Marlowe called after her blithely. "I was waiting for you for so long. Can I come sit with you?"

  "Please don't. I need to focus," Aoife said without looking back. She could hear him chuckling behind her, and knew that he wouldn't follow. Marlowe liked to watch the other fights too much, and there was still one more card ahead of hers. He claimed that it helped to get him in the right mindset for his own fight, and it was also a handy way to keep tabs on potential regulars. As for Aoife, it felt most natural to her to limit distractions as much as possible. A shameful part of her was disappointed that he didn't follow, however, and she once again fought to rid herself of the thought.

  The path she had taken wound about in a semicircle that would end in another entryway on the other side. Along the way, there were rooms that connected the hallway to the central hall. One of them was left unlocked and filled with randoms that joined from week to week; Mr Carmichael had affectionately dubbed this 'the Kennel'. The other room, kept under lock, much better-maintained, and called 'the Paddock'—a name Aoife found to be only a slight improvement over its counterpart—was reserved for Mr Carmichael's favourite regulars. Spare keys had been bestowed on these favourites, and Aoife was one of the few recipients of the honour.

  She turned the key and entered the Paddock. The heavy wooden door along with the thick stone walls shut out nearly all of the outside noise. Mr Carmichael had spared no expense to make this room comfortable, blatantly hoping to give unfair advantage to its occupants. It was well-lit by several scones on each wall. Every inch of the floor was covered in soft carpet, something Aoife had never experienced outside of this room. Anyone hoping for a rest was spoilt for choices, including an elegant cushioned sofa and something even larger that Aoife had been informed was called a day bed. A tea table was set out in front of the sofa, on it plates full of a variety of fruits and sandwiches. There was even a Huaxian training dummy in one corner of the room, though from the looks of it, it hadn't been put to much use.

  In her current state, Aoife was worried that she just might fall asleep if she sat on the sofa. So she opted for a simple wooden chair beside the dummy. She leaned forward and closed her eyes, resting her head against her hands.

  One door separated her from the arena where she would be fighting this week's opponent, in view of upwards of a hundred rabid and drunken Enfielders. A surge in the muffled noise outside told her that the next card had started. Depending on how long this bout might last, it could be her turn within minutes.

  Aoife had tried to keep the details vague with her family. She wasn't about to tell them that she secretly frequented a fist-fighting racket in the basement of St Marcus Church. Not to watch, not even to gamble, but to fight in it herself.

  She didn't know how long she could keep this up. The fighting, the secrets, the blood tricks... they weighed heavier each week. But up to now, she had found a way to win every match and take home a good sum, money that she diligently hid under a flap she had cut out of her mattress. Surely, at some point she would save up enough to do everything she wanted. Bring Ma to the hospital. Keep her siblings happy and well-fed until they were old enough to find decent, honest work. Buy them books, toys, and all the things that other children didn't lack for. But she wasn't there yet. For now, she'd simply have to keep going for as long as she could.

  The fatigue that she had been trying to ignore all evening resurfaced with a vengeance. Even with her eyes closed, she felt her head swim and the room spin. The rooftop, the Testimony, sharing her warmth with Ma, the miscreants she met on her way here... It had been an unusually long and eventful day. And now she faced its toughest test yet.

  When the dizziness settled, she dug into a pocket on the inside of her jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a page she had taken out of a stack of handwriting—a manuscript of some kind—that had been in Ma's possession even before Aoife was born. Ma was illiterate, but she had kept this manuscript with her all her life, from the old farm by Galway to Dubhlind to Thameside. She seemed to know almost nothing about it, only that it was something that was given to her for safekeeping when she was a small child. For Aoife, on the other hand, this manuscript had been the earliest thing she could remember learning to read. She had grown up reading and re-reading it, to the point that it had passed into her possession by unspoken consent.

  Even to her, however, the manuscript was an enigma. The author was a doctor; that much she was sure of. Who this doctor was, where he was now, or how this unbound manuscript had ended up with Ma, was all a big mystery, one that Aoife had long given up on trying to solve. Instead, she took comfort in the words, at least from the passages that she found easiest to comprehend. These seemed to be directed to the doctor's younger peers, but they weren't about Medicine, not really. Even to Aoife—someone who would never step foot in a medical school—the personal stories, the words of encouragement, and the occasional nuggets of wisdom rang true. There was one passage that she especially liked, and her younger self had taken to carrying it in a pocket everywhere she went, to be retrieved in moments of fear and uncertainty.

  She wanted to believe that those moments were becoming fewer and farther in between. She had made a promise to Da—a promise to herself—that she would always have the courage to do what was right for her family. But here in the Paddock, facing the hardest part of the longest day of her life, she allowed herself to unfold the paper and read.

  ...just one man's account of how he bent but didn't break. This is the story of how I inserted myself into a party of intrepid adventurers.