The Aylesford Skull (51 page)

FROM THE ARCHED WINDOW

D
r. Narbondo looked down the barrel of his rifle, a Martini-Henry, the solid brass cartridges loaded with .30 caliber bullets tipped with white phosphorous. They were crude, but he knew from experience that they were serviceable. He peered over the sight at a leaded, stained-glass window depicting the death of Thomas Cranmer, the bald-headed, heavily bearded martyr who had been Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of Queen Mary’s reign, and who had tried to avoid being burned as a heretic by recanting his faith. When it was decided that he would burn anyway, he had recanted his recantation, no doubt facing immolation in a sad muddle. Narbondo had always found the archbishop’s story one of the more amusing burning-at-the-stake tales.

The tip of the rifle barrel was steadied atop a tripod that stood in the window, and he aimed it now at Cranmer’s left eye, which, when it blew out, would make for a round hole in the pane too small to release any troubling amount of coal dust. If his aim was off, and he shot Cranmer through the nose or the ear, or even the forehead, the result would be much the same, since the very glorious window – all the very glorious windows – would cease to exist within a few seconds of the flaming bullet passing through, given, of course, that there was enough suspended dust. He had a number of bullets, however, and the three martyrs had numerous, lead-encircled body parts, so in the end he would prevail.

He set the rifle on the floor, tilted against the wall. Nearby stood an assemblage of heavy gears operated by an iron lever. The mechanism opened a trapdoor in the floor, the door raised at the moment, standing ready. Within, built into a hollow in the walls in the floors below, was a long slide that led to the deep cellar, through which he could disappear beneath the city. Today, however, he intended merely to shield himself from danger, to be traveling downward when the inferno blew the cathedral apart, and away beneath the street and up again into the devastation.

Lower in the tripod he had fixed a triangular shelf, canted forward, on which sat the skull of his brother Edward, the boy’s ghost entrapped within the bone and silver and crystal, longing to find its way into the afterlife. Narbondo would do his best to set the spirit free at last, for which the ghost would no doubt be grateful, if ghosts were capable of gratitude, which was doubtful.

He looked at his pocket watch, the minute hand just then finding its way to the top of the hour. He heard the organ commence. The rising sound of the Fugue muted by glass and distance, but distinguishable even so. The greatest of the pipes, thirty feet in length, had a deep base resonance that shook one’s bones. Twenty seconds into the piece the counterpoint melody came in, and Narbondo smiled and nodded, moving his right hand as if conducting an orchestra and happy that he had allowed Beaumont to choose the piece. The man was bound for glory along with the cathedral.

Narbondo activated the lamp within the skull now. The beam could be detected only dimly in the rainy air, but he could see it quite clearly where it shone on the golden raiment of the pews. He also saw, to his intense happiness, coal dust pouring from the mouths of the organ pipes.

Suddenly there was a shattering explosion – not unexpected – on Tallis Street. It would be the Nabob Pub ceasing to exist, along with many of its patrons, the cellar having blown to pieces. He consulted his watch and then glanced out of the window to view the sudden madness that had infected the mob, people running and screaming, soldiers shouting and holding up their hands to stop the rout, swept aside by the fleeing crowds. London was in a sad state, cowed by the numerous anarchist atrocities of the past months and ready to flee at the sound of a sneeze.

He glanced at the watch again and counted slowly to five, at which point another explosion sounded, this one farther up the road, a boarding house that was almost certainly frequented by prostitutes, run by a woman who had sneered at Narbondo openly one afternoon. He was deeply pleased with himself, and he hung bodily out of the open window to see what havoc the second explosion had wrought. The crowd that had fled west had been turned back by it, and now, God help them, by a third explosion, which Narbondo witnessed quite clearly: north up Carpenter Street, the roof of a butcher’s shop blowing off entire, disintegrating in the air and showering down onto the devastated shop and the buildings around it. He saw bodies on the pavement, some endeavoring to drag themselves away, people vaulting over them as they ran helter-skelter toward the river, impeding each other, pushing and shouting. There were flames, he saw happily, although the rain had begun to fall in earnest, as if the explosions had opened the skies.

He pulled back into the room, cursing the rain, looking upward as he did so and opening his mouth in surprise, his eyes wide. A quarter of a mile away to the northwest a dirigible airship flew beneath the lowering sky, a madman, certainly, aloft on such a day...

It came to him that it was Langdon St. Ives. Where did he suppose he would land the craft? The yard at The Temple, perhaps – the only open ground nearby. But landing an airship would be impossible in this weather, and The Temple lawn would be crowded with pedestrians. It was sheer madness. St. Ives had come too late to the fair, although he might perhaps sift through the wreckage of the cathedral later for fragments of his wife and son.

Narbondo laughed out loud, happy as a schoolboy as he watched the dirigible’s gondola sway dangerously in the wind and rain, trailing half a dozen long pieces of what must be mooring line. The ship skimmed the dome of St. Paul’s, coming steadily on. Was it angling down toward the cathedral itself? An idea came into his mind – a quite possibly
spectacular
idea – and he set the barrel of the rifle on its tripod and aimed it at the airship, imagining with great pleasure the result of an incendiary missile piercing the wall of the great, hydrogen-filled gasbag.

* * *

Alice tore herself away from the scene outside, realizing that Helen had disappeared, and that the black vapor pouring from the organ was indeed smoke or dust, heavy in the air now – not smoke: there was no smell of it. She glanced back in the direction of the hidden panel and caught a brief glimpse of Helen pounding and pushing on one of the panels, shouting at it. The soldiers would escape beneath the street, of course,
had
escaped. She grabbed Eddie’s hand, surprised when he tugged it forcefully away.

“The airship!” Eddie shouted, pointing upward toward the dark, shifting sky.

She saw it then, the great balloon with its tiny gondola gliding over the dome of St. Paul’s, evidently descending, but what in God’s name...?

“It’s Father!” Eddie shouted. “Finn told me Father would come in the airship!” He nodded his head with determination, as if the unlikely appearance of the ship had settled a bet.

She took his hand and ran now. Something was coming to pass, and swiftly. Helen stood at the panel, searching the seams with her fingers. “Open!” she barked, her voice breaking with fear.

Alice and Eddie ran toward the great altar now. The cloud of black dust that shrouded the interior seemed to be growing darker, raining down in a fine black grit over the golden pews. Alice could feel the grit in her throat, but she saw that the air was still comparatively clear in the transept.

“Climb beneath!” she shouted to Eddie, when they were still several paces away from the arched openings under the altar. He seemed to know full well what they were about, and he threw himself sideways across the marble, sliding on his hip beneath one of the arches and into the shadows. Alice scrambled in beside him, hauling in her skirts. When she looked out again, she saw Helen run back out along the pews, looking around wildly. She stopped, however, seeing something now, putting her hand to her mouth in evident surprise. Alice saw it too, now, and could scarcely believe her own eyes.

Hovering in the air over the pews was the illuminated image of a boy, quite large, perhaps a projection – an animated projection. He looked around, as if he could see his surroundings, and then gazed quite distinctly at his own out-held hands. Alice saw the fingers close, the black dust swirling around him, seeming to give him substance. The airship, she saw, was quite close, tilting and swaying in the wind, headed straight for the cathedral – too close, she saw, far too close to avoid disaster.

It came to her that they might get out of the cathedral altogether – find something heavy and throw it through one of the windows before Helen took it into her mind to shoot them. But when she turned her mind to the idea of escape, her ear was attuned to the shouting and screaming on the streets – utter chaos, certainly – and there was the sound of another explosion somewhere nearby, distinct from the sound of thunder.

She saw Helen hurrying toward them, the pistol held in front of her, a look of madness in her eyes. Sparks exploded from the muzzle of the weapon, and a chunk of marble blew out of the altar, cutting Alice’s face, although she scarcely felt any pain. “Stay!” she said to Eddie, and slid out from under, clutching her hatpin, blood flowing into her eye as she stood up to meet Helen, who threw herself forward like a mad thing.

* * *

“What do you see inside the cathedral, Finn?” St. Ives shouted above the noise. “People in the pews?”

“No, sir. Empty, what I can make of it, but there’s much I can’t see for the black dust.”

They were dangerously close to the rooftops – had come within an ace of knocking the top off the bell tower of the Church of St. John the Baptist, but there were no more encumbrances now, only the wind, upon which they rose and fell and swerved sickeningly. But it was pushing them hard forward, which was good. St. Ives’s intention, which he had revealed to Finn, was to look to the bowsprit with its heavy glass ball to save them by punching through the roof of the cathedral, smashing out enough glass to disperse the coal dust, and then to rise above it undamaged. He knew, as did Finn, that it would be precious close work, and that there was a good chance they were within minutes of death.

The cathedral appeared to be monumentally frail, and there was the possibility of the gondola simply knocking it completely to pieces. What if, St. Ives thought now, Narbondo had foxed him, perhaps intending to blow up the palm house at Kew Gardens instead, or to blow up nothing at all, but to coerce St. Ives into...

“The black dust rises from the organ pipes, sir! Can you hear the sound of it?”

“Yes,” St. Ives said. He could indeed hear what must be a monstrous, steam-driven organ. He saw now that the streets and pavements roundabout the cathedral were full of people, from Fleet Street to the Embankment, with more pouring in from the north, perhaps ignorant of the explosion, although others ran frantically through them, out of the area, and there was great confusion. The Temple grounds, just to the east of the cathedral, were a-swarm, and people were thick again in the area of St. Andrew’s Hill, making their way toward the cathedral beneath raised umbrellas. Soldiers appeared to be herding people away, but there were too few soldiers, and a general chaos seemed to be growing in fervor. He saw a fire brigade coming along Fleet Street, the horses hampered by the crowds. “Another minute, more or less,” he said. “You’d best take your seat, Finn.”

Finn gave up the telescope willingly and strapped himself in. Rain flew out of the sky in waves, obscuring everything, clearing again. There was a flash now, not lightning, but a small streaking flame that pierced the wall of the cathedral, leaving an orange trail as it flew through the black dust. The gondola swayed in the wind, the cathedral looming up before them – forty feet away, thirty, the ball at the tip of the bowsprit would strike the cathedral, and no avoiding it.

Yet another orange track cut through the dust, pinwheeling this time, throwing out a radiating circle of flame:
An incendiary bullet
, St. Ives thought.
Of course
. Much more sensible than Greek fire. But he had no sooner conceived the thought than there was yet another bullet, which struck the window of the gondola just to his right, the glass shattering, the spent projectile falling to the deck of the gondola. It dawned on him that Narbondo would achieve his end were he to send a bullet through the hide of the great balloon, and he considered the enormity of his own folly and the likely result of the explosions that would follow.

FORTY-THREE