Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia [40]
My natural curiosity had driven me to explore the heavy oak shelves and bookcases in the library. The selection of novels was decent but not breathtaking, featuring some old books and some newer ones, such as George Henry Borrow (I flipped through one that looked like a gypsy romance, and decided to save it for later). What interested me most however were thick sheaves of newspapers—The Times of London, going decades back, all stitched together and bound into massive tomes.
I was able to read them only when there was no one else in the library—I did not want to attract attention to the fact that I selected newspapers between last year and five years previous, and combed through them looking for reports of arrests. Jack might have shown me himself if asked, only it did not seem right to inquire. Besides, I rather enjoyed the sense of secrecy, the feeling it was I who spied on him. It somehow fulfilled my sense of justice.
Because of this situation, I only learned of Jack’s past in brief snatches, in short but illuminating glimpses between the creaking of floorboards and consequent slamming shut of heavy volumes. Garnered in this constant atmosphere of vertiginous trespass, his tale seemed all the more marvelous. I tried to reconstruct the chronology, from the first brief report of a robbery and two drunk eyewitnesses swearing they saw the robber leap onto a nearby roof of a three-storied townhouse and sprint away, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, to much more detailed accounts, dozens of witnesses—a growing and calamitous impossibility of denial.
One of the more recent stories struck me as especially telling: it spoke of a hansom cab hired to transport a jeweler and two men he employed to protect his person and the diamonds and gold he had with him. The valuables were in a heavy chest held together by three iron strips that ran the circumference of the chest. The chest was locked, and the key was hidden under the jeweler’s jacket, cravat, and shirt, hanging from a plain velvet cord. The newspaper was especially insistent in listing all these details.
Eyewitnesses reported that a man fell out of the sky, landing on both feet with such force that his knee had to touch the ground to absorb the impact, and that the cobblestones on which he had landed splintered with the shock of his arrival (I did a quick calculation in my mind, trying to figure out the force of a falling human body, and decided that—by itself—it was not enough to split stone, but the newspaper was quite adamant about the fact. The image of Jack splintering stone consequently haunted my dreams.) The horses spooked and reared, upsetting the cab and rendering the jeweler and his bodyguards ineffectual. As they struggled to free themselves from the cab and avoid the horses, the man who fell out of the sky grabbed the chest and heaved it over his head—which was a feat in itself, as the chest was quite heavy. He then brought it down with such force the strips of metal holding it together broke as easily as violin strings, and the wood burst into a shower of long splinters. Gold and jewels showered the street, and the man shoved a few handfuls of the treasure into the pockets of his long overcoat, leaving the rest for gawking onlookers and the street urchins, who fell on the bounty like scavenging magpies. No one saw what happened to the robber, although most felt that he probably jumped onto a nearby roof and was gone in his usual manner, taking one roof after another with his gigantic, inhuman strides.
I felt exhilarated just reading the story, but did not understand why. I supposed that it was the sheer fact of Jack’s existence, the very impossibility of there being a man such as he—impossible, I whispered, impossible. A man who could jump atop buildings now studied philosophy