Beneath London (22 page)

He drew up toward the big gate once again, which he saw was locked. He contemplated going over the wall – easy enough to do, but a risky business in broad daylight. He could see the sweep of the carriage drive and the front door now, and he stopped on the pavement, deciding to make his stand, as the soldier would say. It was a useful place to set up shop, at least until he was told to move on.

He hobbled the wheels of his cart and helped himself to one of the puddings, which was first rate. People passed along the pavement, the morning having come into its own, and Lazarus Walk being a short cut between Tudor Street and the Temple. Sales were brisk and it quickly seemed to Finn that he might recoup a measure of Mother Laswell’s money, which he had squandered on the cart. Low clouds hurried across the sky on a south wind, however, and there was little doubt that it would rain soon. The street was increasingly empty of people. He was grateful for his coat and happy that the cart sported a wide umbrella that could be hoisted overhead, which, along with the wall behind him, would shelter him well enough from the rain.

A flurry of drops fell, and then a double crack of thunder opened the sky and the rain came down in earnest. Finn wafered himself between the cart and the wall, sheltered and dry enough for the moment beneath the umbrella. He wondered what to do next as he ate a second pudding and then a third, filling his belly against what might be a very long day. Setting up as a costermonger had seemed a good ruse an hour ago, but not as good now that he was threatened with a soaking.

The wind picked up, endeavoring to blow his umbrella into the next county, and he held tightly to it, gripping the pole in front of him as well as the fabric over his head and watching the slow approach of a covered van drawn by two horses. The van was a small wooden house on wheels with a flat, lean-to roof of tin. When it drew near he saw that a sign on the side read “Waltham’s Goods and Parcels.” The driver sat snug out of the rain beneath a canvas enclosure that was an extension of the walls and roof of the van. He was a long-legged man in a red bowler who looked overmuch like a spider, all elbows and knees. The horses drew to a stop, and the man jumped down, unlocked the gate with a key that he carried in his pocket, and swung the gate open – a strange business. He gave Finn a hard look, as if he would happily kick him into the street.

The man took his seat again in order to swing the wagon into the yard. As the van moved forward it seemed to Finn as if he would be offered no better chance than this. He must do something rash on Clara’s behalf or nothing at all. “Death or glory,” he muttered, seeing that the road was mostly empty of people.

Hidden by the van itself as it moved past him, he let go of his umbrella, which the wind immediately carried off, and he darted around behind, stepping up onto the footboard and grasping the latch of the wooden door, pulling it open and slipping through. Strangely, the floor beneath him slid forward two inches, and he caught himself before he fell. Then it stopped abruptly and rolled back, as if it were on wheels, which made not a bit of sense. He expected darkness, but it was not dark.

The interior, lighted with a pale green radiance, stank like a filthy stable, although it was a human animal that it housed: Doctor Narbondo himself, whom Finn had first met on a dark night in Aylesford a year and a half ago, and whom he had last seen falling into a fissure in the floor of the Cathedral of the Oxford Martyrs several days later. It was confounding to see him now, perched on what were apparently enormous, glowing mushrooms, which sat in a shallow metal box. Narbondo’s eyelids were half open, although he stared at nothing at all.

Finn began to breathe again after the first shock, and seeing that Narbondo was apparently no threat. His right arm was held in the grip of the mushrooms, and the thick leaf of fungus growing over the top of his head was apparently attached to his scalp. The translucent green flesh of the fungus throbbed like a heartbeat, and he could see fluids moving within it.

Finn pressed himself against the door, fighting the urge to open it and leap out. He heard the horses champing and shuffling, the sound of the driver jumping to the ground, and then of the horses being led away. Silence followed, and he took the chance of opening the door a fraction and peering out. They were in the carriage house. He could see the black brougham, the high wall beyond it hung with tackle. A curtain of rain fell across the doorway, visible for only an instant, and then the door slid across, closing off the carriage house from the world outside and making flight impossible.

Finn eased the door shut and watched Narbondo, who shifted uneasily now, like a sleeper about to awaken. The fungi that imprisoned him shimmered, as if enlivened by his restlessness. The rim of a plate-sized mushroom cap stood near Finn’s shoulder, and it very slowly shifted toward him now, as if sensing his presence, its outer perimeter wrinkling and rippling like a human lip. There were tiny suckers visible roundabout it, thousands of them, which expanded and contracted. Finn stepped back against the door, but something held his foot – the cap of a low mushroom that had settled over the toe of his shoe. He yanked his foot away, tearing off a crescent of green flesh, and a smell like a wet manure heap rose around him.

He took out his oyster knife and unsheathed it, wondering whether the monsters would try to defend themselves if he cut them – how quickly they might move. The piece that had torn away with his shoe still glowed. Voices sounded now, and Finn was surprised to feel the wagon rolling forward again, bouncing on its springs. It stopped with a muffled clank, having run up against something. He kept his eyes on the mushrooms, his knife in his right hand and his left hand on the door latch. The wagon lurched once again, and then there was the sound of a mechanism coming to life, and it felt for all the world as if they were moving downward.

Astonished at this, Finn peered out past the door again and saw that they were indeed descending along an illuminated wooden shaft. The interior of the van, evidently a wooden box, had been rolled onto a lift. Doctor Narbondo must dwell in this cabinet as if in a tomb, supported by the mushrooms and hidden away beneath the great house. The box settled on the ground now, and the sound of the lift motor died away. Finn considered various lies to explain what he was doing in the house, but could think of nothing better than to say he had climbed inside the van to get out of the rain.

Now there was the sound of turnbuckles or bolts being manipulated, and the entire wall began to fold in on itself, at the same time swinging outward and upward, a blood-red light filtering into the van to mingle with the green, so that everything was a sickly yellow.

Finn held the oyster knife behind his back now and flexed his knees, getting ready to jump, hearing an odd assortment of noises – the wheezing of a bellows, a bubbling sound like a cauldron on the boil, and the ticking of a great clock or pendulum. He considered his choices, which were few. He had cut someone only once with the knife, and he hadn’t liked it, although it had saved his life. He would rather run, if given the chance.

There was a clatter overhead as the folded wall settled onto the roof of the box. Directly in front of him a dwarf was just then climbing down from a short stepladder. He wore an immense beard, a tall beaver hat that was an upside-down twin of the beard, and a stained leather apron. He stared in at Finn without any show of surprise. Then, in a strange, high voice – a voice that Finn had heard before – the dwarf asked, “Do you have a name, young roustabout?” The question was entirely matter-of-fact, neither angry nor surprised nor suspicious.

“Finn Conrad, sir,” Finn said, climbing down to the floor and putting away his knife.

“
Finn
, is it? That’s a good name, with something of a fish in it. I’m known far and wide as Beaumont the Dwarf, on account of my size. My mother was a French woman, bless her heart. In this house of villainy, howsomever, I go by the name of Mr. Filby Zounds.”

“Might I call you Beaumont, then, or do you prefer Mr. Zounds?” It occurred to Finn that this was a monumentally unlikely encounter, and he wondered what the dwarf was playing at.

The dwarf stood for a long moment regarding him and then said, “You might call me Beaumont, but not in company. I
know
you, sir, and you know me. Think on it. You was a stowaway in the marsh all that time ago, in Narbondo’s Landau coach, a-going out to Shade House. I glimpsed you when you clumb on behind and hid yourself there at St. Mary Hoo, and I saw you again when you fetched me my breakfast next morning. And you was the one as rode the great air-ship into the Cathedral and come down along a ladder made of rope as nimble as a gib cat. Aye, it was me who drove the Doctor’s coach, do you see, and it was me a-playing of the organ when the Cathedral fell. I played the church to pieces, is what I did. The great organ was the jawbone that brought down the walls, Jericho come again. It was the ‘Little Fugue’ that done it. Do you recall it? You was there. You heard it, no doubt.”

Finn was dumbstruck, but he managed to nod. Every word the dwarf said was true, although Finn knew nothing of the “Little Fugue.” The entire business was mystifying, as was the dwarf’s presence in this room. Finn had first seen him clearly near Angel Alley near George Yard, driving Dr. Narbondo’s carriage. Finn had stowed away on the back of the carriage in London and had climbed off to limber his bones when they got to St. Mary Hoo in the marsh, just as the dwarf said. He had climbed aboard when they set out once again, thinking himself unseen, but he was wrong in that regard, and no doubt about it. The dwarf had seen him then but hadn’t peached on him. Finn didn’t know what to think about that. Certainly the dwarf showed no sign of hostility now, and Finn could sense hostility in a man even if it wasn’t made plain. He felt as if he had found an old friend in a time of great need, except that the dwarf had no reason to show him any kindness.

He saw now that some few feet behind the dwarf stood several barber’s basins brimming with bubbling green fluid along a wide stone bench bathed in red light. In two of the basins sat severed heads, a man and a woman, on neck-like trunks of glowing flesh. He realized that the “flesh” was a thick slice of mushroom stem, moored in the bubbling fluid. The man’s eyes were open, his mouth working as if he were both chewing and trying to speak. The other, a woman, was evidently asleep, or was dead, although that was scarcely sensible.

It came into Finn’s mind that the woman was perhaps Clara’s mother. Probably it was. Tommy had told him that her head was gone, and he knew it was Shadwell who’d done it, and who had perhaps brought Clara to this very house. The woman’s eyes moved now, shifting behind the close lids. Above hung a geometric maze of brass pipes, aerated fluid dripping through holes into the basins, bathing the mushrooms and the heads. There was a wheezing sound from behind the bench, the inhaling and exhaling of a round bladder the size of a moderate hippopotamus. It was depressed by an iron plate, which lifted off again when the bladder was squeezed flat, at which point the giant lung re-inflated, drawing in air. One of the sleeping heads – the woman – made an unhappy noise, something between a sigh and a groan. Her eyes blinked open and peered at Finn, who looked away from the ghastly sight.

“They’re alive, do you see,” Beaumont said, “although they’re nought but heads. It’s the toads what does the trick, and the green blood, which is from the toads as well. Now and then one of them says something, and you can just make it out if you listen right close, but it don’t amount to nothing. They tell me there’s a third head in that there lead crate standing yonder, which will be opened tonight and set onto a bed of toads. It’s been a long time dead, although it’s true that salt pork lasts a hundred years in the keg.”

The dwarf took up a length of rubber hose that snaked out of a brass panel covered with dials and spigots and shoved it over the spout of a similar spigot set into the side of Narbondo’s prison. He turned the handle and Finn heard the burbling noise of fluid swirling into the metal box that covered the floor.

“They’ll keep like this for a tolerable long time,” Beaumont said, “their brains a-working as ever, by way of the fungus blood. Mr. Klingheimer puts it into his own self, or so they say, and has lived past his earthly time. Mr. Klingheimer’s rich as Creases, the Greek fellow.”

“It’s a great marvel,” Finn said, “although the heads might have been happier when they had a body to go with them.”

“Mr. Klingheimer wants the brain, but not the body. A brain don’t cut up rough, you see. How did you come to be a-riding along of the Doctor?” He jerked his head toward Narbondo’s box.

There was no useful falsehood, and so Finn told the truth. “I waited outside the gate and climbed in when the wagon drew up.”

“What for, then? You don’t have the face of a sneak-thief.” He peered at Finn closely. “You’ve got a true face.”

Finn looked into the eyes of the man who stood before him, who had the face of a gnome beneath the beard, but it held no apparent cunning, no deceit, nothing hidden. “A girl I know was kidnapped from Hereafter Farm, Aylesford,” Finn said boldly. “I’ve come to fetch her back if she’s in this house. They killed her mother before they took her. That’s no doubt her mother’s head there in the basin.” He nodded at what he supposed to be the head of Sarah Wright.

Beaumont’s face grew dark when he heard this. “The blind girl, is it?” he asked. “The one who just this morning come in with the scoundrel Shadwell?”

“Yes, sir,” Finn said, his heart racing now. “It was like as not Shadwell who murdered her mother. You’ve seen Clara, then?”

“Oh, aye. I’ve seen the girl, but she ain’t seen me, by which I mean no disrespect. She oughtn’t to be here. It’s a fell house you’ve come into, Finn. There’s things in this house to turn a man’s stomach.” He gestured toward the bubbling basins now by way of illustration. “These two weren’t always heads, like you already said. They was
divested
of their bodies. But now it’s my lot to keep the heads alive, so to say, which is the Christian thing to do.”