Anno Dracula (46 page)

As they passed the law courts, a scatter of broad-sheets blew across the dark pavements of the Strand. Passersby, even those marked by their dress as of the upper orders, hastily picked up these papers and stuffed them into their coats. A constable did his best to collect as many as possible, but they rained down from some garret heaven like autumn leaves. Hand-printed in basements, these were impossible to stamp out: no matter how many premises were raided, how many scribblers arrested, the hydra-headed spirit of dissent persisted. Kate Reed, Charles’s admirer, had become a leading luminary of the underground press. In hiding, she had won a reputation as an Angel of the Insurrection.

In Pall Mall, Netley, whom Geneviève judged a fidgety sort, stopped at the Diogenes Club. After a moment, the door was held open and Charles joined her in the coach. After kissing her, lips cold on her cheek, he sat opposite, discouraging further intimacy. He wore immaculate evening dress, the scarlet lining of his cloak like spilled blood on his seat, a perfect white rose in his lapel. She glanced at the door as it was shut and saw the closed face of the moustached vampire from Miller’s Court.

‘Good night, Dravot,’ Charles said to the servant of the Diogenes Club.

‘Good night, sir.’

Dravot stood at the kerb, at attention but suppressing a salute. The coach had to take a circuitous route to the Palace. The Mall had been blocked by Crusaders for most of last week; the remains of barricades still stood, and great stretches of St James Street had
been torn up, cobbles converted to missiles.

Charles was subdued. She had seen him several times since the night of the 9th of November, and even been admitted into the hallowed Star Chamber of the Diogenes Club to give evidence at a private hearing of the ruling cabal. Charles had been called upon to account for the deaths of Dr Seward, Lord Godalming and, incidentally, Mary Jane Kelly. The tribunal had as much to do with deciding which truths should be concealed as which should be presented to the public at large. The Chairman, a warm diplomat who had weathered the changes, took in everything, but gave no verdict, each grain of information shaping the policies of a club that was often more than a club. Geneviève supposed it a hiding place for pillars of the
ancien régime
, if not a nest of insurrectionists. Aside from Dravot, there were few vampires in the Diogenes Club. Her discretion, she knew, had been vouched for by Charles. Otherwise she assumed the Sergeant would call upon her with a garotte of silver wire.

As soon as they were underway, Charles leaned forwards and took her hands. He fixed her with his eyes, intently serious. They had been together two nights ago, in private. His collar hid the marks.

‘Gené, I implore you,’ he said, ‘let me stop the coach outside the Palace and turn you loose.’ His fingers pressed her palms.

‘Darling, don’t be absurd. I’m not afraid of Vlad Tepes.’

He let her go and sat back, obviously distressed. Eventually, he would confide in her. She had learned that, in many things, Charles’s desires conflicted with his duty. Just now, she was Charles’s desire. His duties lay in directions she could not immediately discern.

‘It’s not that. It’s...’

... the disarray in which Beauregard found Mycroft had an air of the
Final Act. At this meeting, he alone was the cabal.

The Chairman toyed with the scalpel. ‘The famous Silver Knife,’ he mused, testing the blade with his thumb. ‘So keen.’

He laid down the instrument and let loose a sigh that set his cheeks wobbling. He had lost some of his prodigious weight and his skin was slackening, but his eyes were still sharp.

‘You’re to be invited to the Palace. Pay your regards to our friend in the Queen’s service. You must not be startled by him. He is the gentlest of fellows. A touch
too
gentle, if truth be told.’

‘I have heard him spoken of highly.’

‘He was a great favourite of the late Princess Alexandra. Poor Alex.’ Mycroft steepled his fat fingers and rested his chins on them. ‘We demand much of our people. There’s precious little public glory in this bloody business, but it must be done.’

Beauregard looked at the shining knife.

‘Sacrifices must be made.’

Beauregard remembered Mary Jane Kelly. And others, some only names in newspapers, some frozen faces: Seward, Jago, Godalming, Kostaki, Mackenzie, von Klatka.

‘We would all do what we ask of you,’ Mycroft insisted.

He knew that was true.

‘Not that many of us remain.’

Sir Mandeville Messervy awaited execution on a charge of high treason, along with other worthies; the dramatist Gilbert, the financial colossus Wilcox, the arch-reformatrice Beatrice Potter, the radical editor Henry Labouchère.

‘Chairman, one thing perplexes me still. Why me? What did I do Dravot could not have? You let me run through the maze but he was there always. He could have accomplished this all on his own account.’

Mycroft shook his head. ‘Dravot is a good man, Beauregard. We did not choose to burden you with knowledge of his part in our larger plans, lest it interfere...’

Beauregard swallowed the pill without choking.

‘But Dravot is not you. He is not a
gentleman
. No matter what he did, he would never,
never
, be invited into the Royal Presences.’

At last, Beauregard understood...

... an engraved invitation had been delivered into her hand by a pair of fully-uniformed Carpathian Guardsmen; Martin Cuda, who pretended not to remember her and kept his head down, and Rupert of Hentzau, a Ruritanian blood whose studied sardonic smile constantly threatened to become a cruel laugh. As the more-or-less permanent Acting Director of Toynbee Hall, she was busier than ever but a summons from the Queen was not to be ignored. Presumably, she was to be commended for her part in ending the career of Jack the Ripper. A private honour, perhaps, but an honour nevertheless.

Their names had been kept out of it. Charles insisted public credit be taken by the police. It was generally believed that Constable Collins had come upon Godalming and Seward as they left the room where they had together mutilated Mary Jane Kelly. Hastily-summoned reinforcements trapped them in Miller’s Court and both were killed in the confusion. Either the murderers did for each other to escape the stake, or the police, enraged and appalled, destroyed them on the spot. Influenced by the recent habits of justice in London, most favoured the latter explanation, although Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors offered a vivid recreation, complete with actual clothes, of the two Rippers gutting each other.

At Scotland Yard, Sir Charles Warren had resigned in exchange
for an overseas posting, and Caleb Croft, an elder with a reputation as a hatchet man, was his replacement. Lestrade and Abberline were on fresh cases. The city hunted a new maniac, a warm murderer of brutish disposition and appearance named Edward Hyde. He had trampled a small child, then raised his ambitions by shoving a broken walking-stick through the heart of a new-born Member of Parliament, Sir Danvers Carew. Once Hyde was apprehended, another murderer would come along, and another, and another...

Red light rippled in the carriage as they passed Trafalgar Square. Although the police kept dousing the bonfires, insurrectionists always rekindled them. Scraps of wood were smuggled in, and even items of clothing used for fuel. New-borns, superstitiously afraid of fire, didn’t care to get too near. Crowds scuffled with policemen by the fires, while an engine crew, perhaps half-heartedly, tried to train hoses. Captain Eyre Massey Shaw, the popular superintendant of the London Fire Brigade, had recently been removed from office, allegedly because of a refusal to deal with the Trafalgar Square conflagration; Dr Callistratus, a sullen Transylvanian with no appreciable experience of or interest in fire-fighting, was installed in Shaw’s stead and was reportedly unable to occupy his office due to the pile of resignations heaped against the door. Geneviève looked out at the blazes heaped around the stone lions, flames leaping up a third of the height of Nelson’s Column. Originally a memorial to the victims of Bloody Sunday, the fires now had fresh meaning. Word of a new mutiny had come from India. Sir Francis Varney had been dragged by sepoys from the Red Fort in Delhi and bound over the muzzle of one of his own guns to be blown away. A jumble of old scrap-iron and silver salts shot through his chest, Varney was cast into a fire and burned down to ash and bones. Many warm British troops and officials had
thrown in with the native rebels. According to the broad-sheets, who plainly had highly-positioned sources, India was in open revolt, and there were further stirrings in Africa and points east.

Placards were waved and slogans shouted. JACK STILL RIPS, a graffito read. The letters still came, red-inked scrawls signed ‘Jack the Ripper’. They had been received by the press, by the police, by prominent individuals. Now they called for the warm to rally against their vampire masters or for British new-borns to resist foreign elders. Whenever a vampire was killed, ‘Jack the Ripper’ took credit. Charles said nothing, but Geneviève suspected many of the letters were issued from the Diogenes Club. A dangerous game was played out in the halls of secret government. Even if a madman became a hero, a purpose was served. To those for whom Jack the Ripper was a martyr, there was Jack Seward taking his silver knife to the vampire oppressors. To those for whom Jack the Ripper was a monster, there was Lord Godalming, the arrogant un-dead disposing of common women he regarded as trash. The story had a different meaning for each retelling, the Ripper a different face. For Geneviève, that face would always be Danny Dravot, fingers bloody with ink, standing by while Mary Jane Kelly was ripped apart.

Public order in the city was at the point of breaking down. Not just in Whitechapel and Limehouse, but in Whitehall and Mayfair. The heavier the hand of the authorities became, the more people resisted. The latest fashion was for warm Londoners of all classes to black their faces like minstrels and call themselves ‘natives’. Five army officers awaited court martial and summary impalement for refusing to order their men to fire upon a peaceful demonstration of mock blackamoors.

After some negotiations, and not a little shouted abuse from a
black-faced matron, Netley was allowed to take the carriage through Admiralty Arch. The coachman must wish he was able to paint out the crest on his conveyance.

A vampire but not of the bloodline of Vlad Tepes, Geneviève was left, as ever, on the side-lines. It had been refreshing at first, after centuries of dissembling, not to have to pretend to be warm; but eventually the Prince Consort had made things as uncomfortable for most of the un-dead as for the living he called cattle. For every noble murgatroyd in his town house with his harem of willing blood-slaves, there were twenty of Mary Jane Kelly, Lily Mylett, or Cathy Eddowes, as miserable as they had ever been, vampire attributes, addictions and handicaps rather than powers and potentials...

... with Geneviève, he called upon the Churchwards. Penelope was out of bed now. They found her in a Bath chair in the heavily-curtained parlour, a tartan rug over her legs. A new-purchased coffin, lined in a white satin, stood on trestles in place of the occasional table.

Penelope was getting stronger. Her eyes were clear. She had little to say.

On the mantel, Beauregard noticed a photograph of Godalming, posed stiffly by a potted plant with a studio background, ringed with black crepe.

‘He was, in a manner of speaking, my father,’ Penelope explained.

Geneviève understood in a way Beauregard could never hope to.

‘Was he really such a monster?’ Penelope asked.

Beauregard told the truth. ‘Yes, I’m afraid he was.’

Penelope almost smiled. ‘Good. I’m glad. I shall be a monster too.’

They sat together, untouched cups on the low table, darkness gathering...

* * *

... the carriage sped smoothly down Bird Cage Walk towards Buckingham Palace. Insurrectionists hung in chains from cruciform cages lining the road, some still alive. Within the last three nights, open battle had raged between the warm and the un-dead in St James’s Park.

‘Look,’ Charles said, sadly, ‘there’s Van Helsing’s head.’

Geneviève craned and saw the pathetic lump on the end of its pike. Some said Abraham Van Helsing was still alive, in the Prince Consort’s thrall, raised high so that his eyes might see the reign of Dracula over London. That was a lie; what was left was a fly-blown skull.

The main gates loomed before them, new-fangled barbed wire wrapped around the upright bars. Carpathians, midnight black uniforms slashed with crimson, hauled the huge ironwork frames aside as if they were silk curtains, and the coach slid through. Geneviève imagined Netley sweating like a frightened pig at an Indian Officers’ Ball. The Palace, illuminated by watch-fires and incandescent lamps, poured black smoke into the sky, its face an image of Moloch the Devourer.

Charles’s face was a blank, but he was focused in his mind. ‘You can stay in the carriage,’ he said, urgent, persuasive. ‘Safe. I shall be all right. This will not take long.’

Geneviève shook her head. She supposed she had been avoiding Vlad Tepes for centuries, but she would face whatever was inside the Palace.

‘Gené, I beg you,’ his voice almost broke.

Two nights ago, she had been with Charles, delicately lapping blood from cuts on his chest. She knew and understood his body now. Together, they made love. She knew and understood him.

‘Charles, why are you so worried? We’re heroes, we have nothing to fear from the Prince. I am his elder.’

The carriage halted by the maw-like porch, and a periwigged footman opened the door. Geneviève stepped down first, relishing the soft crunch of the clean gravel under her shoes. Charles followed, taut as a drawn bowstring, gathering his cloak about him. She took his arm and nuzzled against him, but he would not be comforted. He eagerly anticipated what he would find inside the Palace, but his anticipation was blackened by dread.

Beyond the Palace fences stood crowds, as usual. Sullen sightseers peered through the bars, awaiting the Changing of the Guard. Near the gates, Geneviève saw a familiar face, the Chinese girl from the Old Jago. She stood with a tall, old oriental man whose aspect was somehow sinister. Behind them, in shadow, was a taller, older oriental form, and she had a flash of a past terror, returning. Looking again, the Chinese party was gone, but her heart still beat too fast. Charles had still not told her the full story behind his bargain with the elder assassin.