Chapter Text
Fleet Street granted no solace to either the baker or the barber as they pulled up their horses in front of the shop. Johanna’s tears had mellowed, her face stark and pale, lips pressed into a thin line. “Toby, tie the horses behind the shop and see if you can’t find some water for them.” He grunted heavily in pain as he dropped to the ground, breaths shallow and wheezing. I’ll live. “Hurry, get inside before anyone sees,” he urged the two women. Nellie smoothed Johanna’s hair down out of her eyes; the teen moved in a trance after her.
Once in the pie shop, Nellie locked the front door. “Into the parlor, lass, so we can pull the curtains,” murmured the baker, inviting eyes soft on the blonde. “Warm us some tea and have some bread and butter, then we’ll make us both look a little less like ourselves.” She lifted her head to Sweeney. “Bring us down some pants and shirts, would you? I look like a blooming rose in the street in this dress, and they’re sure to recognize her if we don’t pin up her hair.”
The gems on the bosom of her dress had lost their sheen, too streaked with blood to cast the lustrous reflections onto the floor. Her hair frizzed out in all directions. He wanted to smooth it down with his hands and kiss her. “Absolutely,” he replied, a slow nod following.
“And put something on yourself with a high collar.” She gestured around her throat. “On account of all those bruises, yeah?” She smiled at him, grim and sad but still a comfort. He nodded again, eyes transfixed upon her. The rush had abandoned him, and he desperately wanted to drop dead in sleep. He needed rest. But rest was still many hours away, perhaps days.
Heading upstairs, he gazed at his haggard, black eyed self in the mirror. He had never planned on returning to the barbershop. He had stripped it bare, barer somehow than before, and had not even a razor on his person, as Johanna still had it. Only a few sets of clothes hung in his closet, what he couldn’t pack. From it, he took a high-collared shirt and buttoned it up to the top to cover the purple discolorations around his neck where the beadle had seized him. I wish I had made him suffer more. His jaw clenched. I hope he was afraid. I hope he was in a lot of pain, bloody agony. Gentle Anthony lay with his brains splattered on the sidewalk, waiting for discovery. As a dawn lark lifted and chittered outside, h knew he didn’t have much time--a few hours at best before the judge would arrive.
He could only pray that the judge would come alone. Surely he would have to; otherwise, he would have to confess his involvement in the beadle’s kidnapping of Mrs. Lovett. But if Sweeney had learned anything, he had learned that the empowered men of London would go to any lengths to pervert the law, the officers serving as pawns in a sickening game of chess.
After changing his clothes, he returned to them, having a pair of pants, a shirt, and a hat for each of them. “Hide your hair,” he mumbled in a flat voice. Then, extending his hand to Johanna, he focused on her. She gazed back at him in a question, pale and shivering and so small. The ferocity, the intrepidity, that she had demonstrated so aptly earlier had faded away. She was a shadow. “My razor,” he prompted.
From her hand to his the shiny blade transitioned, unused and clean. He pocketed it. “You both hide. When he comes, I’ll pound three times, and three times again once he’s dead.”
“You’re going to kill him?” whispered the girl faintly.
Nellie squeezed her hand. “Just doing what has to be done, dear.”
“Oh. Alright.” The agreement passed from her in the same manner she would have consented to being measured by a seamstress or complied with potatoes for dinner, like the words brushed across her and their meanings didn’t sink in at all.
“Lass, you go on into my bedroom--the door right there. We’ll hide there.” Nellie pointed. “You go on in there. You can lie down and try to rest if you feel a little tired, if you want.” The girl didn’t argue and bumbled back into the room. Sighing, the baker tossed her hands through her kinky hair. “God, that girl’s a wreck--I’m a wreck--you look like a mess--”
No longer able to restrain himself, he kissed her. Her babbling ceased as their lips collided. When they separated, she hovered there so near to him, her eyelashes brushing his cheeks, her warm breath wafting over his dry lips. In her eyes, unshed tears swam. He longed to sweep her into his arms and comfort her, but he knew they had hours yet before they could revel in any such frivolities. “Where are we going to go?” she asked him, voice a thin whisper.
With his hand, he tilted her head upward so that she looked directly in his eyes, and he sang, “Down by the sea,” in a low tone. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to her forehead. “Nellie?” he murmured, his arms around her waist.
She hugged him and rested her head on his chest. “Yes, love?”
“Don’t breathe a word to Johanna.”
“You know I won’t.” Tipping her head back again, she pecked him on the lips, brief and chaste. “I’ll see to her. You prepare for the judge.” A grin danced onto her face. “I know how long you’ve waited for this--perhaps under different circumstances, but, well.” She tittered.
When she went to pull her hand away, to walk away, he tightened his grasp on her, and she hesitated. “One more thing,” he prompted, keeping her tugged close. “Nellie, promise me something.” She waited, eyes fixed on his bruised face. He licked his lips. “Promise me that if something happens, if I’m captured, you’ll run away. Don’t surrender yourself, or do anything else ridiculous like that--just take Toby and Johanna and run for the bloody hills.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line, and obstinate as ever, she replied, “You know I can’t do that, Sweeney.”
“They’ll hang you.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want you to hang for my crimes.”
She squeezed his hand. “They were our crimes, and I committed them willingly beside you.” He gritted his teeth. “If I’m to hang, then I will hang. But I prefer to be a little more optimistic than that.” Stepping forward, she kissed his cheek. “Let me go now. You can’t linger on things. Go upstairs and make your preparations, and we will wait for you. Go now.”
Their hands separated. He wondered fearfully if he had grasped her hand for the last time. Then she whirled around and strode away as confidently as ever, with the same carriage she always used when she had customers in her chairs. He gulped and, with faltering steps, returned to his barbershop, though the walls felt more accursed than ever before, no more his home than the sewers or the plague hospital or bloody Australia. He would not hail God. If such a thing existed, its benevolence would have no good will toward him of all people. But he prayed to anything out there, anything beyond, that they would all escape safely.
..
With a big bottle of ale under her arm, Nellie entered her bedroom. Johanna sat in the small rocking chair in the corner with black eyes cast downward. She looked so much like Lucy, all except for the beautiful black eyes that she shared with her father. “Here you go, lass. You need a little something to soften your system. Take a drink. Then we gotta put on this man-garb.”
The girl took the bottle, but she didn’t drink it. She stared at it. “How are we going to sail away without a sailor?” she then muttered, eyes narrow and lips a thin, white line. Her clammy hands quivered cold in her lap.
“Oh, I suppose Mr. Todd knows how to sail a ship halfway, at least, what from the time he spent down in Botany Bay.” Nellie turned her back on the girl as she shimmied out of her violet dress, the poor expensive thing stained and ruined from the spray of blood. She’d thought he was as good as dead when she’d gotten off of him, and then he’d killed Anthony. Should’ve put it in his goddamn throat, what I should’ve done. But she couldn’t linger upon it.
As she pulled on one of Sweeney’s shirts, smelling his cologne (and he used the finest cologne, being a barber), she felt Johanna’s eyes fix abruptly onto her back with a snap of her head. “Botany Bay?” the girl repeated, voice a little more alive and invested in the situation. “He’s a convict? We’re running away with a convict?”
Nellie tugged up the pants and cinched them around her middle. “Darling, lots of people are convicts. Mr. Todd is a good man with good intentions, and he’s going to get us all the hell outta dodge once we’re in the clear from the judge--”
“He’s going to kill my father!”
“That tyrant isn’t your father,” retorted Nellie as she adjusted her hat to cover the frizzy kinks of hair that tried to spring out of place and into her eyes.
Johanna froze. “How do you know that?”
Sighing, the baker replied, “Love, put on your clothes and have some ale. You’ll feel much better, I promise you that.” She had promised not to breathe a word, and she wouldn’t, tempting as it was. If she didn’t tell her, she knew Sweeney never would, not unless the girl figured it out on her own and brought to him, and even then, he would likely deny, too fearful of her rejection to accept her affection. That man kills to cover his own feelings. Or maybe to express them. She thought herself lucky that she hadn’t ended up on the wrong side of his razor before he admitted his feelings for her.
And how glad she felt that he had finally come forth. Goosebumps erupted on her arms at the mere thought of him whispering in her ear those three treasured words that she had so long awaited. “ I love you. ” He had come for her. He had saved her. The fuzz that built up in her chest at the thought of him cradling her, kissing her. One day, and a day in the future that she cherished already, they would tangle up their limbs and learn each other in a new fashion. She anticipated the consummation of their relationship more than she anticipated her next birthday or her death; she knew she would find the answers to all of her questions that she had asked herself, whether he was gentle and careful and slow or wild and erratic and crazed, how he would lay his hands on her when they had no worry of eyes upon them and only each other and the bedsheets.
Damn you, crazy woman, fantasizing about your man when you’re in the same room as his daughter. You’re sick. Johanna’s voice interrupted her self-chiding. “You both know more about me than Anthony could have told you,” the girl pressed. “I’m starting to think there’s some plot going on that I don’t know about, revolving around me.”
Nellie pivoted, and she donned a smile, a gentle look, as she gathered Johanna’s flaxen hair into her hands and wound it up to stuff it under the hat. Johanna leered at her. “Yes, dear, there’s more afoot here than we’ve told you. But it’s Mr. Todd’s business, not mine, and I can’t go around betraying the trust of my friends and the like.”
“Please tell me he doesn’t want to marry me.”
Chuckling, the baker shook her head. “Of course not, girl.” She patted Johanna’s shoulder. “Far from it, I can promise you that.” The blonde sighed and pitched forward, burying her head in her hands. Her long locks cascaded between the two of them like a pale curtain. “Come now, lass. Once we’re on that ship, headed to France or Belgium, certainly things will look up a little. You can stay with me and Mr. T, or you could find your own way, and we’d be there all the same.”
“Anthony’s dead on my account,” replied the despondent teenager, voice hollow and eyes anguished as they peered upward at Nellie. “And now I’m to run away with a convict who has some business with me that I can’t know, and who may not even know how to sail a ship.”
“Anthony’s dead on all our accounts,” Nellie soothed. She rubbed her shoulder. “Come now, lass. I’ve known Mr. Todd since I was your age, and I can promise you that he has no harmful intentions toward you or toward anyone.” The girl sniffled, and Nellie bit her lip. Don’t you start bloody crying now, too. You’ve got to keep your head on straight, at least until you’re out of London. She shushed her voice very softly, barely a whisper, so that it wouldn’t sound thick with the unshed tears. “Come here, dear. Give me a hug. It’ll all be okay.”
The trembling teenager wrapped her up tightly in an embrace, and Nellie squeezed her back, sitting them both on the bed so she could cradle the child with the demonic black eyes just like her favorite barber. A sob muffled into her chest. She rocked slowly back and forth the girl who had never known a mother’s affection. I hope we’ve got many more moments like this in our future. Her hand smoothed up and down her narrow back. “Oh, child, it’s really alright. No one’s going to hurt you. Me and Mr. Todd are going to take really good care of you from now on. Maybe not what you received at the judge’s house, but we’ll do our best, that’s for sure.” She lowered her head to whisper into the cold ear. “You’ll see. I promise, we’ve waited a long time to meet you at last.”
Johanna buried her wet face in the crook of Nellie’s neck, and she sighed heavily through her snotty nose. “Why can’t you just tell me what you want with me?” she whined.
“Not my secret to reveal, love.” She opened her mouth to continue, but a striking noise cut her off, the clomping of boots outside. They both froze where they sat. The footsteps proceeded along the porch and onto the steps that led up to the barbershop. With baited breath, they waited.
Slam. Slam. Slam. Sweeney pounded three times upon the floor. “It’s the judge,” Nellie whispered, voice hushed, eyes wide. “Quick, get your boots and your gloves. He makes fast work on throats, and then we’ll have to fly.”
..
Sweeney Todd gazed upon the gray, slushy street that he had called home since his wedding when he was a mere nineteen years old. Even in Australia, when asked about his life--Fleet Street, the tonsorial parlor that he ran with his wife above a pie shop in downtown London. The barbershop and given and the barbershop had taken away, and still it stood, filled with ghosts around every turn, and still it would stand long after he and Nellie had fled for better things.
He whirled away from the window and paced to the center of the room, where he sat in his chair, cradling one razor against his cheek, eyes falling closed in the illusion of rest while his mind wandered. Nellie was safe. Johanna was his daughter again, at least in his mind; whence he would tell her, or if he would tell her at all, he hadn’t yet decided. But their troubles would fade soon enough. They would sail. “Oh, Nellie,” he whispered. A coast in France or Belgium would welcome them kindly, he hoped.
The newly lit fireplace illuminated the room faintly, warming it for the judge’s arrival. He required comfort and perfection so the vulture would suspect no ill intentions when he entered the barbershop. Aloud, he practiced his address. “Good morning, your lordship. As always, an honor to receive your patronage… But I suspect you have not come for me to tend your custom, my lord.” He would bow a most humble, low bow of total mocking submission. Then he would mix his tale, filled with half-truths and sullied falsehoods to charm the judge. “Truthfully, your lordship, and if you don’t fault me for my unlawfulness--”
His soliloquy ended as abruptly as it had begun when he heard the distinct sound of footsteps upon Mrs. Lovett’s porch. Springing up from his chair, he rushed to the door and peeked. There, the abominable man took his first stride onto the wooden staircase, his first step toward his own demise. The judge’s eyes surveyed the area, full of suspicion, like he wanted to avoid detection from anyone who might have spotted him.
Faster than I expected. Sweeney stomped three times so hard that the floor shook a little. “The bell on the door jingled as the man opened it. “Mr. Todd,” addressed the judge, expression calculated. But he comes alone. No officers had accompanied him. Sweeney could end his life at his chose; the judge’s earthly shell lay open and at his disposal.
“Good morning, your lordship.” He kept his expression genuine and kind. “As always, an honor to receive your patronage…”
The judge waved him off. “Cut out the shit, barber.” Sweeney clenched his jaw, a little surprised at the vulture’s vulgarity. A blackened mouth would never trouble a vulgar soul. “I am here on legal affairs and legalities alone. I have not come to frequent your damned peasant establishment.” I feel so honored, Sweeney wanted to sneer in return, the smile descending from his face into a blank deadpan. “My ward, Johanna, has been kidnapped, and the guardian with whom I placed her savagely murdered.”
Lips parting in feigned horror, Sweeney widened his eyes in disbelief. “That--That is truly tragic, my lord--”
“ I am not finished! ” snapped the heathen man, fire alighting into fury on his face. “Do not interrupt an officer of the law when he addresses you, lest I hold you in obstruction of justice!” Obediently, the barber fell silent. “And this morning,” he continued carefully, “we discovered the body of my dear friend, the Beadle Bamford, his life also cut short by many stab wounds to his chest, alongside the rogue sailor who had for so long threatened the welfare of my ward.”
Jaw tight, he spat the next words. “I know what company you keep, barber, with that miscreant of a young man and his plot to steal Johanna the first time that I was so fortunate to have thwarted.” Eyes glinting, he continued, “And I also know that you have a...vested interest in the return of your downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Lovett, who is also missing from where the beadle had sheltered her before their scheduled wedding. She is now missing. You see how this is rather incriminating of you, Mr. Todd.”
Their eyes met, and he held the judge’s gaze hard and fast. He hoped the man saw Johanna in his eyes. “Truthfully, your lordship, I will speak, if you hold no fault on according to my unlawfulness. I swear to it that I had no involvement in any murder nor kidnapping.”
“Hadn’t you?”
“No.” Sweeney softened his expression into one of grief. “And you speak the fact that I regretted my neighbor’s sudden disappearance with the beadle. The rogue sailor came to me when the baker did not return from the ball. As it happens, he had sneaked into the ball and learned of Johanna’s whereabouts in a disguise, and he saw Beadle Bamford and Mrs. Lovett make off together. He bargained with me that he would free her from the asylum where she was kept, and if I allowed her shelter in my home temporarily, he would also go to the beadle’s house and free my neighbor.” He held out his hands, palms open. “I am harboring the girl now in the basement, but the sailor never returned to me, nor has Mrs. Lovett. He failed his bargain and left me with a charge I did not desire facing a crime I did not commit.”
A cool look passed from the judge to the barber. “If you relinquish my ward, Mr. Todd, I will forget your involvement in this crime and allow you to return to your life without any prosecution on this account.”
Sweney smiled, sighing heavily in relief. “Absolutely, my lord!” He wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “The girl is in fine shape--perfectly and agreeably repentant, I assure you, and desiring only your affections, I swear it! Thank heavens that she has seen the error in her ways, attempting to flee the first time.” He lowered his voice. “Thank heavens, too, that the sailor did not molest her, and she remains intact for your wedding night, which, dare I say, will be soon? Tonight, or perhaps tomorrow? In time for the new year?”
“Yes, yes.” A self-conscious hand wandered to his stubbled face and dusted coat. “Mr. Todd, I will grant you quite the reward if you would spare me a shave--a spritzing of bay rum, or eau de cologne--I must impress my intended--”
“You speak before I could even suggest it, my lord.” Flying to his death like a bat flies home to his cave at sunrise. “Sit, sir, sit. A free shave for you, on account of all of my folly!”
The man sat in the chair, and Sweeney whipped the lather in his bowl. My friend. He studied the blade of his razor in the light, then swiped the blade a couple times to ensure its sharpness. He sponged the judge’s stubbled cheek. Make fast work of it. I won’t have another interruption. “How rare it is to meet a man with a fellow spirit!”
One clammy hand came down to rest on the judge’s warm forehead. The man could not escape, could not move. Trapped. “With fellow tastes--in women, at least,” he purred. The eyes his heathenous enemy popped open from their peaceful closed position. “The years have indeed changed me, sir, but then I suppose the face of a barber--the face of a prisoner in the dock--is not particularly memorable.”
His eyes widened in terror, mouth an O until he whispered, “Benjamin Barker,” and Sweeney snarled back at him in a thunderous shout, “ Benjamin Barker! ” He plunged the blade into the neck of the man. Pulling it free, he stabbed again and again, making no smooth slashes. His victim gargled and protested, legs and arms lashing. Sweeney paid no heed to him. Once the neck was thoroughly mangled, he moved downward with his razor into the man’s chest, flinging it into the flesh again and again until only a dying croak emerged from his mouth.
The corpse lurched in the chair, down the chute, and Sweeney was alone. Blood matted into his short hair and covered his shirt and hands and razor. It mattered not. He dropped it heavy into his pocket and started onto the stairs. From the staircase, he spotted them in the alley: officers, what he thought the judge had arrived without. “There he is!”
He sprinted down the stairs and into the pie shop. “Hurry! Come now! There are officers outside!” he shouted. “Toby, get the horses!” The boy bumbled past them, and Nellie and Johanna followed, each of their faces smudged with soot from the fireplace and their hair crammed under the hats. “The side door--they’ll be coming at the front--they saw me on the stairs.” Trotting hooves echoed outside. “We have to go now!”
In a beeline, the party darted to the exit. Sweeney leapt onto the horse and hauled Toby up after him; the backpack sloshed heavily on the boy’s back, carrying all of their luggage in itself. Nellie clambered onto the mare, and Johanna followed her. Around the corner, two officers dashed, and Sweeney heard Toby yell, “They’ve got muskets! They’ve got muskets!” before he kicked his horse so forcefully that the animal burst forth into a flat gallop, no longer prancing like a dancer.
When the first musket fired, Johanna shrieked, and he glanced back once to ensure that none of them had fallen from their horses. Toby was crying, his face buried in Sweeney’s back and arms clenched around his middle. The mare and gelding raced side by side down the brightening streets. A second gun fired as they wheeled around a corner, and he heard the bullet ricochet off of one of the buildings.
The officers hadn’t anticipated that they would have horses, and he could only hope that it would give them enough of a head start to make it to the shipyard and escape on the good ship Bountiful , Anthony’s pride and joy. Thundering hoofbeats scattered the crowds in the streets; they split like Moses had raised his arms for the Hebrews to pass on their dry earth. “Toby, hold on!” he urged when he gathered his reins, and the horse arced gracefully over a wagon full of fruit. Nellie’s mare skidded through the landing on the icy cement and lurched the rider onto her neck. Sweeney pulled up his gelding and glanced back at her. “Nellie!”
She dangled onto the mare’s neck, clinging with desperation. Johanna seized her by the waist of her pants and hauled her into the saddle. “I’m okay, I’m okay,” panted the desperate woman as she gathered her reins. But the tell-tale sound of hoofbeats rumbled after them, and she kicked her horse again, urging her onward. The mare limped forward a bit, favoring one of her forelegs. “Bloody hell, I’m awful sorry,” whispered the baker. “Go! Yah!”
Once he ascertained that their horse could manage, Sweeney lashed his own gelding with his legs, and they resumed their sprint. “We’re almost to the yard!” He could see the sails of the ships in the distance. Another gun fired at their backs and busted a streetlamp to his right. They’ve caught up to us! He didn’t dare look back at them to see what had begun to ensue just beyond the rumps of their horses.
The sound of hooves on wood as they dashed onto the dock startled Sweeney’s gelding. The animal danced beneath them in fear, rearing. Another musket fired. Blood burst from the horse’s shoulder in a spritz that caught him in the face. They pitched over onto the dock. The horse, squealing in agony and in terror, collapsed onto Sweeney’s leg. He perceived a scream and a splash, and as he tilted his head back, he saw Toby’s head disappear under the choppy waves of the water.
“Sweeney! Toby!”
He pulled from his coat the gun that he had taken off of Anthony when the sky was still black and the death still fresh. He fired with remarkably better aim than the officers; the leader’s skull split open with the wound, and his horse slammed into one of the others. “Head for the ship!” he roared to Nellie and Johanna. “Get the sails raised!”
“Toby--” protested the woman, and he interrupted, “I’ll get him!” He kicked himself free from the dying horse and threw the gun to his daughter. She fumbled it and caught it by the butt. Then, before he had the chance to second guess himself, to hesitate, to argue that the boy was not worth it, he dove under the icy water headfirst, not so much as removing his jacket or his shoes.
Under the deep navy waters, faint gray sunlight cascaded, and the sounds above muffled. The frigid water bit him like a thousand snakes wrapped and writhing around his body, restraining it so that his limbs numbed and couldn’t paddle or reach out into the darkness. He sank. Toby. The chill forced his eyes closed. Something brushed his foot, the leg of the dock, and he kicked off of it, downward, arms outstretched. Toby. The boy had done too much for them for him to let him drown. Toby. Nellie would be beside herself, absolutely inconsolable; Toby was the closest thing she had to a child at all, the only one she would ever have. Toby. The simple mite had never argued or debated, and his eyes lit up so gleefully when he received his first Christmas gift. The book was in his backpack. It would certainly be ruined by the water.
His hand brushed something that felt like hair, and he grabbed it all the way to the scalp and dragged him upward. Arms bumped against his torso. He wriggled his body upward. A need for air pinched in his broken chest. He folded his arms around Toby’s middle and strained to keep his limbs in motion long enough for them to break the surface. His eyes refused to open and have the icy waves assault them. Please don’t let us drown. His knees didn’t want to cooperate as he fished himself upward, and then a gasp of air broke across his frozen face. “Toby,” he croaked as he heaved the boy up under the arms.
The face was blue. Brown eyes flitted opened, and the small blue mouth coughed water out from its little O. “Hold onto me,” Sweeney urged. They had been swept out far away from the dock, and from his place, his head barely bobbing above the surface of the water, he couldn’t see which ship was the Bountiful, which way the women had run off. Gun fire sounded, but not pointed at him.
Toby grappled at his shoulders. He pressed his cold face against Sweeney’s neck, and he kept coughing, hardly able to breathe between long spells of hacking. “Papa,” grunted the child, eyes fluttering against his cheeks.
“Sweeney!” It was Nellie’s voice. “This way! Can you hear me? We’re over here!” The frigid water kept stinging his eyes, and he swam blindly in the direction of her voice, his movements clumsy and weighted by Toby, who desperately clung to him. The coast of Australia would never have felt so unwelcoming and chilled. His limbs lashed through the thick water, thick like blood or honey or something worse. The gunfire grew louder and more rapid until he bumped against the side of the ship. “Oh, love!” She dropped something into the water beside them, and he grabbed onto it--a rope.
She couldn’t pull him up. “Toby,” he wheezed. “Toby, here. Let…” His eyes wanted to suck into darkness. So bitterly cold. “Let Mrs. Lovett pull you up.” I did not make it this far to drown beside the bloody ship. The child scrambled off of his shoulders, and she heaved him up out of the water. She threw the rope down again. “Gonna break your back,” he mumbled, unable to get a firm grip upon it.
“Toby, help me.” His weight dangled there, them straining and him bouncing off of the wooden side of the ship. He drew his torso up onto the edge of the deck, and he lolled forward and splatted there on the ground at their feet. “Bloody hell, you both look like little icicles!”
“We duh-did c-come out of the ocean, m-mum.”
“Where’s Johanna?” Sweeney breathed as he struggled out of his sodden coat. The droplets on his arm hairs froze into little silvery beads. “Where’d she go?”
Nellie slid her arm underneath him to prop him up. “She’s goin’ to raise the sails. Come on, they’re still shelling the ship, we gotta get low and--” A bullet pierced the wall of the cabin, and wood splintered at them, silencing her babbling as they crouched down. Sweeney dropped onto his hands and knees, limbs still cold and uncooperative, and crawled past the cabin to the helm of the ship. “Sweeney, where are you going?”
At the helm, he gazed upward at the lookout stand. Johanna rested there. She had removed her hat and raised the sails, and a gust of wind sent the wooden ship out onto the bay. We’re sailing. “We made it,” he breathed to Nellie. The ship lurched forward, and rapidly they began to cruise across the choppy navy waters; fewer shells hit the ship, and then none at all as the men standing on shore became a distant memory, out of range of their muskets.
Both eyes fixed on his daughter above, he watched as she extended her arms and the wind caught her yellow hair, wild and free and so much more than he ever could have imagined her. She turned. A broad, relieved smile lit her face. Even from below, he could see her black eyes gleaming, perhaps not in joy--she couldn’t yet feel joy for the lover she had lost--but in a certain deliverance that came from knowing she would never return to London. “We’re free.”
Nellie jolted upright behind him. “Sweeney!” He snatched his head around to see a final officer on the end of the dock, his musket pointed not at the three passengers on the deck of the ship, but above, upward, like he intended to shoot the clouds from the sky. Nellie shrieked, “Johanna!” and buckled, shielding her eyes when the bullet fired from its barrel.
In slow motion, the girl swooned. Her yellow hair waved, and the impact drove her backward off of the lookout stand, arms wide open. As she descended, her beautiful golden hair cast her in an angelic halo. He had never seen anything so pure. Sweeney lunged forward toward her like a dog diving upon prey, but not quick enough to catch her, and she landed flat on her back on the deck of the ship. Breath caught in her chest and gargled there around the gaping wound blown through her middle.
He put his hand over it. “Johanna, Johanna, no,” he repeated. If he couldn’t see the wound, he could pretend it wasn’t there. But the stain of blood blossomed underneath his pressure, and she squirmed, eyes wide and afraid. His arm cradled her head. “No, no, I’ve so much left to tell you…” He blinked, and twin tears fell onto her cheeks. “It’s okay now, I’ve come home, I’ve come back to take care of you and your mother--” Johanna’s small hand touched his where it blotted out the ugly hole in her middle. Her eyes didn’t leave his.
“Tell her your name, love,” Nellie urged, thin and shaking. She had Toby nestled in her arms, his face in her chest, hidden from the trauma.
Swallowing hard, Sweeney forced the words from his lips. “My name--My name is Benjamin Barker.” The grip on his hand lost its strength, slackening. “Johanna, no, I’ve come back for you, I’ve come--I’ve come--you--” Her eyes didn’t close, but they glossed over, and he knew she was dead, and he couldn’t stop the useless babbling from his lips.
Loud noises followed.“No! No! No!” He didn’t recognize his own voice. “No!” The shouting resounded from his chest and his throat until his voice was so hoarse he could no longer manage a single word, and when the air would no longer pass by his vocal cords, he crumpled up there on top of her, bloody hands stroking her face and her hair and leaving smears behind. Folded at the waist, he kissed her forehead and her cheeks, and he wept until his eyes were nearly swollen shut with the redness and snot poured out of his nose.
The time that had passed, he didn’t count. But neither Nellie nor Toby moved until he had quieted from his rage of violent misery. Then, the baker extended one delicate, trembling arm and used her fingertips to close Johanna’s black eyes. Her hand took his elbow. “Sweeney, love,” she prompted, uncertain, like she hadn’t a clue what to say. Of course she didn’t. She smoothed a rubbing motion onto his back. “I’m sorry.”
He leaned back for a moment, his knees tired and aching from the position, but he didn’t stand. He couldn’t leave her lying there on the deck. Drooping over, he remained curled up in that position, his head resting upon her chest. She slid an arm around his chest. Soft brown eyes sought his out, but he felt hollow and could not look back at her. “You’re freezing. Gonna catch your death.” Her warm hand brushed his cheek. At her words, he darted his gaze to hers and held it, making no effort to move at all, and she sighed. She kissed his cheek. His eyes flitted closed again. Her warm flesh gave him humanity, restored him. But he didn’t know if he ever wanted to restore again.
She did not prompt him again. After a few more minutes passed, Toby murmured, “What now, mum?”
“I don’t know, love. I--” Nellie’s voice cracked, thick with emotion, but she didn’t cry. “I just don’t know.”
There they pitched on the half-frozen waters, London long behind them, the ocean stretched before them: A freedom of opportunities that none of them could now cherish as so long anticipated. Rocking on the uncertainties of tide and weather, they held one another, filled with regret.