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Back Cardinal Black Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. Title Page
  2. One: Into the Storm
  3. One
  4. Two
  5. Three
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Two: London Calling
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Three: The Malignant Seven
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-One
  26. Twenty-Two
  27. Twenty-Three
  28. Four: Squirrels and Cats
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-One
  37. Thirty-Two
  38. Five: Revelation
  39. Thirty-Three
  40. Thirty-Four
  41. Thirty-Five
  42. Thirty-Six
  43. Thirty-Seven
  44. About the Author

Right there I realized that evil existed to corrupt innocence. To take innocence and turn it into an ugly thing that could be bought and sold like any commodity. At that moment I wished with all my heart to kill him, to rend him to pieces and to rend to pieces all the evil men who preyed on those who could not fight back. RakeHell Lizzie awakened and began to think on murder as a remedy … if not a remedy for the whole world’s evil, at least a remedy for evil in the small world I knew.

I bided my time. I was at the house for nearly a year, Missus Spanner began to trust me to accompany her out to buy fabrics, but always one of the Arab men went with us. I acted as docile as I could, until the moment was right. Then I bolted into the crowd of people on the street, and I ran and ran until I had to collapse in an alley.

I hope Missus Spanner was all right. DeKay might have had her killed for losing one of his properties, but I knew I had to get out. But where to go next? We had been in the Spitalfields district where most of the textile work in the city was done. I could sew and weave. Many of the workers in the mills were children. I had no trouble finding a job for a few pence a day, and at that time I had just turned seventeen—much older than most of the other workers—and I also had no trouble finding a little hovel near the mill.

On my walk from work one evening I saw a man take up a little girl by the neck and drag her into an alley. I realized—RakeHell Lizzie realized—that here in Spitalfields was a paradise for evil. The predators came from miles around to get at the children, most of whom were orphans and lived in groups in small rooms like myself. I began to roam around at night and recognize the signs of the predator who was looking to further corrupt innocence that the world had already touched. So I—she—bought a knife. It became her obsession … a driving need, to strike back at the Robsons and the DeKays. It was on her all the time, and she realized it was the only way for either of us to not lose our minds to madness.

She dressed as a younger girl and made herself look like a child. The first man who came at her got away because she swung with the blade and missed. The second one she only cut on the arm. She realized she needed something better, something more efficient. Thus I bought for her ten blades and I stole some leather, and I sewed the gloves for her.