Stella lay on a roof overlooking Hatton Garden, taking in the lay of the land. It was a narrow, busy place where the work showed no sign of stopping as evening approached. It was crowded, dirty, and completely devoid of children. There were very few women, too, and the ones she saw weren’t shopping.
The people here were either men in leather aprons or grim-faced watchmen. Clerks called out as delivery carts were filled and horses pulled wagons away. The windows were barred, the doors were heavy, and the atmosphere was serious.
Stella knew she had done Hildy Johnson dirty by agreeing she could ask questions but not answering them. Hildy had apparently had her vengeance by telling her the woman were roomed above a jeweller’s in a street that was almost entirely jewellers.
Everywhere she looked, the soot-stained Victorian buildings had signs for goldsmiths, silversmiths, or general jewellery. Almost every diamond in the city probably passed through these grimy, narrow streets. Everyone down there knew the value of what they had. It was one of the most guarded places in London. Victoria Tower had been easier to scale.
The strangest thing about Little Italy, she though as she watched the street, was that so many residents spoke Italian. The Italian Wars had ended in 1559 with Venice holding the North-east of Italy, and Spain holding the rest. It was the first step in what would become the Holy Spanish Empire, with Spain holding the entire Western Mediterranean, both in Europe and in Africa. Italians had spoken Spanish for over three hundred years.
But then they moved to London and started learning Italian again. They had revived a dead language from books and scholars, and they held classes in community halls and churches for newly arrived adults.
Which wasn’t that strange, now she thought about it. They came here to get away from Spain. It just made things more difficult because the street below her was full of people speaking Italian, and that wasn’t a language Stella knew.
There was a second language on the street. She wasn’t sure, but she felt it might be Yiddish. That was a language she had no experience with at all. Italian she could at least recognise.
Heavily fortified. Heavily guarded. Everyone one on watch because the street had a lot of money in easily moveable and relatively untraceable jewellery that held value in any country in the world. Except Antarctica.
Was Antarctica a country if it didn’t have a government?
She pinched her wrist, reminding herself physically to focus.
Fortified. Guarded. Watchful. At least twelve jeweller’s workshops with dwellings above them. Multiple potential locations. Brick was probably around somewhere. Sabini’s gangsters were definitely around, and after the gang war she’d started, they were on alert.
What would her mother do? Look at the street for ten seconds then make a twelve folder plan with coloured sections for the guards, the buildings, the locations, and six potential escape routes.
Oh, escape routes. She’d forgotten escape routes! With twenty vulnerable women, she was going to need a bus.
Or an airship.
She couldn’t fly an airship, and she didn’t have time to kidnap a pilot.
Fortified. Guarded. Watchful. Multiple Locations. Brick. Gangsters. She didn’t need a bus; she needed a miracle. A magic trick worthy of Houdini.
Stella gasped. Of course. It was so obvious. So easy. So Houdini.
Step one. Find an informant.
She scanned the street, looking for the right one. Her mother had taught her to hunt, and hunters took from the edge of the herd. The isolated. The vulnerable. Not a child, never that. But them? Those four young toughs, with their jackets off and shirt sleeves rolled up, laughing and smoking? Not isolated enough.
The delivery driver sliding a package under his seat, hoping no one saw his bribe. Not the right target. The lone police officer, striding through a street where coppers almost never came, even in groups. He was interesting, but he was also a copper.
Ah, there. The swaggering young man, putting his jacket on as he walked down the steps of a building. The relaxed stance and smile of a man who had just had sex, or at least that’s what she imagined his body language might mean. The real clue was the Tawantinsuyun woman at the window. What a nice young man; he’d told Stella everything she needed to know without her asking a single question. So kind.
Step two. Houdini.
She descended from the roof two streets away in alley, slipped her mask in her pocket, and changed her clothes into a dress more appropriate for a young lady. Then she considered her appearance and changed it slightly.
Her mother didn’t go for much entertainment, except for when Farnika took them to see a moving picture. Games and fun had always been different ways to train. Books had been educational; she’d read every existing work by every general in the last four thousand years they could find a translation of. The three indulgences Stella had been allowed were tinned peaches, her wonderful telescope, and the marvellous Harry Houdini. She’d seen him perform three times, and he astounded her with every performance.
People said Houdini was all about look here whilst something happens over there, but he wasn’t that simple. He was look here but the thing you think you see happen here isn’t happening at all, and this other thing is happening right where you’re looking, but you can’t see it even as you stare at it. It was masterful.
It was genius.
It was absolutely guaranteed to work.
She left the alley, drawing stares. Let them stare. She altered her walk a little as she went, changed her breathing, hunched a little. She drew a hand along one wall, and then across her face. She bit her lip, let the blood run down her chin.
She limped into Hatton Garden, her clothes ripped, her face bloodied and dirty, her breathing hitched, trembling as the men there turned to stare, then ran towards her, ready to help. Italians were always such gentlemen.
“Te-tell Darby,” she whispered, her voice catching, “tell Darby, the Elephant Boys… coming here… war.”
The street sprang into action around her as one man took her arm gently and guided her into a building, offering her a cup of tea.
Hatton Garden. Fortified. Guarded. Watching outward, whilst she sat in the centre like a spider on her web.
Houdini.
Step three.
She didn’t really have a step three beyond save the women which was more like step six. Or eight. So she sat there and drank her tea like a good little girl whilst a runner was sent to give Darby her message, and a heavily built man with a massive black beard took a seat opposite her, and very gently interrogated her.
He could have given Northwoods lessons in interrogation techniques. He probably should have. Northwoods was terrible, yet she found herself giving this gentle bear of a man everything she knew about the Elephant Boys forces. Which was probably more than the Sabinis knew; her research had been extensive, and she’d even been inside their little gang headquarter.
It had been grimy.
And smelly.
She’d sharpened their knives and let herself out a window.
When she had given up everything she knew about the Elephant Boys forces, and had finished her tea, she asked if she could freshen up, and the bear apologised and led her upstairs to a toilet. The toilet bowl had a crack running up one side that didn’t go all the way through. It didn’t leak so it hadn’t been repaired.
She washed her face and dried it on the hard towel that hung on a nail.
Step three. Something.
Her plan was a work in progress, and it was progressing. Quickly. She really needed a step three.
Hopefully one that didn’t involve burning down half the city. There had to be an easier method than an inferno. She pegged that as a last resort and considered her options.
Option one: do something.
Option two: do something else.
Option three: do nothing?
Option four: inferno!
When she left the bathroom, she discovered she was alone. The bear man had gone, and the building was quiet. She moved slowly through the first floor rooms and found a front window, then glanced out into the street.
The Sabinis had commandeered two wagons and lined them up at the southern end of north Hatton Garden, where Grenville Street ran through it east to west, then pulled them on their sides to make barricades. The wagons were about fourteen feet long, and the road was about forty feet wide. There was a twelve feet gap in the centre of the road, and they were filling that with barrels, crates, and paving stones they’d pried from the ground. There were a lot of men inside those barricades, and a lot of guns. The Elephant Boys would never show.
Someone should do something about all those guns.
She moved back downstairs quickly. The building was empty. Glancing around, she saw it was a silversmiths that made the most darling little bracelets with fox charms on them. She put five pounds on the worktable and slid a bracelet over her wrist. So cute.
Step Three. Make some noise, boys!
She walked over to the telephone she’d spotted on the way in and lifted the receiver.
“Number, please,” the operator asked.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the correct number, but I must be put through to Snow Hill police station immediately. It’s terribly urgent.”
“Connecting you now.”
After a moment, the call was answered. “Snow Hill police station.”
“Listen carefully, I don’t have long and I won’t repeat myself. The Sabini gang have barricaded Hatton Garden. They have turned delivery wagons side on and blocked off the street. They have rather a large amount of rifles and handguns, mostly Eibar pistols. I saw six Lewis guns, and they have a Vickers gun they wheeled out on a wagon. They’re saying it’s war.”
“Hey, what are you-” a voice started behind her, but the hem of her dress snapped out in a tentacle of silk and swallowed the young man’s head, muffling his voice.
“I’m afraid something terrible will happen. Send everyone, please, and consider calling the army in for backup.”
She sat the phone on the receiver, dropped the young Italian with a well-placed punch to the temple, and reformed her dress. Then she smiled, pleased with what she had accomplished so far.
It was something her mother had drummed into her from an early age. Casual escalation was for boardroom negotiations. In war, there was only decisive overwhelming force.
Stella wandered back upstairs, her tentacles dragging the young man with her. She dumped him on the toilet pan and closed the door. There was enough of a gap below the door for a tendril of silk to slip beneath it and rise up on the other side. It was hard to sense anything through the silk, so it took her a few minutes to latch the door. It wouldn’t hold the man once he woke, but anyone out here would assume the toilet was in use.
Stella returned to the first floor window.
She’d lied to the police. There wasn’t a Vickers gun. A three-man-operated, tripod-mounted, water-cooled machine gun owned by a London gang would be ridiculous. Still, the threat should get them moving, and there were machine guns, rifles, and pistols.
She wondered how the police would respond. There were two distinct areas within London, the City and the greater Metropolitan area. The City was a square mile of land that housed the financial centre of London. It was controlled by a corporation and had its own police force, who did not play well with the Metropolitan Police.
The City of London ended at Holborn Circus, which the southern edge of south Hatton Garden opened onto. Hatton garden was in the metropolitan burough of Holborn. Technically, the Metropolitan Police should respond here. She’d called the closest station, though, and Snow Hill was in the City of London. They’d be the ones to respond, and because Hatton Gardens was the heart of London’s jewellery trade, and had a massive impact on the finance industry; they’d want to be in charge.
Of course, the Metropolitan Police would also turn up and demand to be in charge. And with her mentioning a Vickers gun, the City police might even call for military support.
What a glorious mess.
The first response took only a few minutes, long enough for a constable to jog down from Snow Hill, see the barricades and guns, and fall back around the corner, blowing his whistle and probably peeing his pants. She smiled in satisfaction as she listened to the frantic whistle shrieks.
Stella opened the window and climbed onto the roof, her dress forming tentacles to pull her up. Once there, she lay back on the dark, sloping slate, and let her clothes change around her as she watched the barricades.
At one point she thrust her hips up, supported by shoulders and feet, as leather panels slid under her back
By the time her clothes had settled around her, the second police response was here. Ten constables and one sergeant; no guns, and completely out of their depth.
“Put the weapons down,” the sergeant was yelling, whilst two of his constables were overturning a wagon for them to hide behind at the northern end of the southern half of Hatton Garden, and the other six were trying to convince the onlookers wandering about Grenville Street, between both barricades, that they needed to move and standing here was dangerous.
Stella didn’t really understand the barricades. Did they think the wood would stop bullets?
The Sabinis were shouting at the sergeant in Italian, which he clearly didn’t understand. He was shouting back in English, which they knew but were ignoring. The entire farce kept getting worse. By the time the city police had established barricades, failed to move the onlookers, and failed to convince the Sabinis to stand down, a city DI had turned up and taken charge.
She’d love to see what happened next, but Stella had things to do.
Previous Chapter: Chapter Twenty-four
Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty-six
Author’s Notes
99% of everything on the queerguide is optional and today’s post is, technically, optional too.
Sometimes there is something really complex that can’t easily be explained in the world, through the POV I’ve chosen, because it’s just so complex and weird. The times this will happen will be about things that are real, because I worldbuild in ways I can explain and reality is just confusing.
If you understand exactly what just happened, you won’t need the queerguide, but if you felt any confusion about this chapter, the guide should help.
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