Gillie wiped apple juice from her lips. “You a peeler?”
“A what?”
“Police,” Kehinde said from behind her.
Elswyth shook her head. “No. I am looking for my sister. She is lost. I think whoever killed the woman in this alley might have hurt her.”
This seemed to quell Gillie. Her eyes no longer flickered to the exit.
“Did you see who killed the woman in this alley?”
Gillie shook her head. “No.”
Elswyth had hoped, if the girl had lived in the alley, that perhaps she would have seen something.
To her surprise, Gillie kept talking. “But other people did. They saw him. The Reaper.”
Elswyth’s pulse quickened. She wanted to shout, but she kept her voice slow and calm. “Did they see his face?”
Gillie shook her head. “He hasn’t got a face.”
A chill settled over Elswyth. “What do you mean?”
“That’s what they say. Where his face should be, it’s all shadows. Shadows like leaves. They say he’s an eldren. Like from the stories.”
Elswyth cocked her head. Eldren were spirits from folklore, tree giants with faces of leaves and trunks for limbs. They gobbled up children in fairy tales, but they certainly did not murder women in London. Perhaps it had been too dark for anyone to make out the Reaper’s face. Or perhaps he’d worn a mask—she supposed that made sense for a murderer.
Elswyth handed Gillie the first coin. The girl examined it for a moment, rubbing the silvered face of Queen Viscaria as though she’d never held a shilling before.
“Gillie, my sister, who I’m looking for, the one who went missing. I think she might have been here, in the Rows. Have you seen a woman like me, here? A noblewoman? Her hair was a silver color, like that coin, but she was young. About my age.”
Gillie looked at her for a long moment, as though deciding whether or not to trust Elswyth. Finally, she nodded.
“When?” Elswyth asked, trying to keep her voice measured.
“Just after Hallows’ Eve. I remember because it snowed.”
All Hallows’ Eve was at the end of October. That matched with when Persephone had disappeared. Elswyth’s heart began to pulse in her throat.
“Where did you see her? Was anyone with her?”
Gillie shook her head. “She was alone. And she was… She was bleedin’, miss.”
“Bleeding,” Elswyth said. Panic began to boil up inside her.
“Aye. And running from something. But she seemed hurt, miss.And then she got into a carriage. A black one with silver on the doors. I figured… I thought someone had come to pick ’er up.”
Something screamed inside Elswyth. She wanted to shake the girl, to make her tell her everything. But Gillie looked so frightened, then. Or reluctant. Slowly, she offered Elswyth the filthy blanket that she had been clutching to her chest. “And she… she dropped this.”
Elswyth hesitated, then reached out and took the bundle of cloth from her.
It unfurled in her hands and she saw that it wasn’t a blanket at all. It was a gown.
Her hands began to tremble as she felt the soft fabric, now stiff with dirt. The ivory muslin had been ruined, stained with black and red. It seemed that someone had tried to wash it clean, scouring the fabric, so that the skirt was ghostly thin. Elswyth slowly turned the gown over to find the bust. And there, embroidered against the collar, was a twisting design of elderwood branches.
Elswyth’s throat shrank until her breath was a whisper.
“Miss Elderwood?” Kehinde asked. “Are you all right?”
