The Curious Case Of The Clockwork Man (39 page)

Despite his terrible wounds, it is—as he’s known it would be all his life—the water that kills him.

He dies believing the British have had their revenge.

He is wrong.

The assassins are German.

The year is 1916, and Nietzsche, now the most powerful man in the world, considers himself well rid of the Mad Monk. Russia, without a visionary in control, will never pose a threat. It is left isolated, friendless, ungoverned, and poverty-stricken.

With millions of its sons killed in the war, the sprawling country’s agricultural infrastructure collapses. Famine decimates the population. A harsh winter does the rest.

Russia’s death is lonely, lingering, and catastrophic.

“There!”

The woman’s voice hissed through Burton’s skull.

He gulped in air and a tremor shook his body as consciousness returned.

“There!”
she repeated.
“That is why I do what I do! I have seen Mother Russia die, and I will not allow it! No! I shall change history! I shall ensure that Britain is in no condition to oppose Germany! I shall see to it that the World War is over in months rather than years! I shall cause your workers to bring this country to its knees! And when the terrible war comes—for there is no stopping it—Germany will wipe your weakened, filthy Empire from the Earth without need of Russia’s aid. And while it is doing so, Rasputin will be making the homeland strong, and when the war is done and Germany is weakened, he will strike! There will be a new Empire—not Britain’s, not Germany’s, but Russia’s!
”

You’re insane.

“No. I am a prophet. I am the saviour of my country. I am the protector of Rasputin, the death of Britain, and the destroyer of Germany. I am Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Destiny is mine to manipulate!”

She pushed deeper into his mind. Burton opened his mouth to scream but could make no sound. It felt as if his cranium was filling with maggots.

“Dorogoi!” she exclaimed.
“You killed Babbage! How gratifying! But what is this? Even more guilt? My, my, Gaspadin Burton, what a brilliant mind you have, but so filled with fears and insecurities—and so many regrets! I see now that killing you is not enough, for there is something you fear more, and that shall be your punishment: I will cause your own weaknesses to deprive you of your reason!”

Her mesmeric power intensified. It overwhelmed his crumbling resistance. His capacity for independent thought was summarily crushed and immobilised.

A fracture opened. Burton’s subtle and corporeal bodies lost cohesion. His mind began to splinter. His viewpoint suddenly changed and he found himself hovering outside his own body. He watched the intelligence fade from his own eyes.

The odd disassociation gave him his one slender chance.

An insuperable obstacle to rapid transit in Africa is the want of carriers, and as speed was the main object of the Expedition under my command, my duty was to lessen this difficulty as much as possible. Rotorchairs were the obvious solution.

—henry Morton Stanley

Algernon Swinburne was in no fit state to conduct an interrogation. He’d been drinking with Charles Doyle, first in the Frog and Squirrel, then in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, and, in Herbert Spencer’s opinion, he’d taken another step closer to becoming a chronic alcoholic. The philosopher hoped the pitiful state of Doyle would teach the young poet a lesson.

The Rake had not put up much resistance when they and Burton had shanghaied him. As a matter of fact, when informed that the séance had been postponed—which was a lie, of course—and invited for drinks at Montagu Place, he’d expressed relief, hooked his arms in theirs, and cried: “Lead on, Macduff!”

They had led on, after first indulging in a comedic charade of jacket and hat swapping which baffled the already befuddled Doyle and had Swinburne in fits of giggles.

Burton headed off toward Gallows Tree Lane, while Swinburne and Spencer ushered Doyle north along Gray’s Inn Road, then west along the Euston and Marylebone Roads. Rioters were still on the rampage but they paid scant attention to the trio, who weaved through and around the wreckage and fights and fires, appearing to be nothing but an urchin, a vagabond, and a hopeless drunk.

They were twice stopped and questioned by the police. Fortunately, Swinburne was familiar with both the constables and, after he surreptitiously lifted his wig to reveal the carroty red hair beneath and whispered words of explanation, they allowed him and his companions to pass.

The next hurdle was rather more intimidating. Mrs. Iris Angell responded to their hammering on the front door by opening it and placing herself on the threshold, with hands on hips and a scowl on her face.

“If you think you’re setting foot in this house while three sheets to the wind you must be even more intoxicated than you smell. How many times must I put up with it, Master Swinburne?”

Unable to reveal his mission while Doyle was beside him, Swinburne charmed, flattered, wheedled, demanded, apologised, and almost begged, all to no avail.

In the distance, Big Ben chimed ten. In his mind’s eye, the poet pictured Richard Burton joining the séance, and he jumped up and down in frustration.

Then he remembered that the agent and his housekeeper had shared with him a password to use when on king’s business.

“My hat, Mother Angell, it completely slipped my mind! Abdullah.”

“Now then, you’ll not be using that word carelessly, I hope. Sir Richard will not stand for that, you know!”

“I promise you, dear lady, that I employ it fully cognisant of the consequences should your suspicions, which I insist are entirely unfounded, prove to be true. Abdullah, Mrs. A. Abdullah, Abdullah, and, once more, Abdullah! By George, I’ll even throw in an extra one for a spot of blessed luck! Abdull—”

“Oh, stop your yammering and come in. But I’m warning you, gentlemen: any monkey business and I’ll have Admiral Lord Nelson ejecting you from the premises with a metal boot to your posteriors!”

She allowed them to pass through.

“Master Swinburne, a message arrived by runner for Sir Richard. I left it on his mantelpiece.”

They climbed the stairs and entered the study.

“Buttock face! Strumpet breeders!”

POX
JR5 fluttered across the room and landed on Herbert Spencer’s shoulder.

“Gorgeous lover boy!” the parakeet cackled.

Doyle collapsed into an armchair.

Swinburne read the message mentioned by the housekeeper:

Miss Nightingale communicated with me the moment you left Bedlam. Situation understood. Thank you, Sir Richard. I am in your debt. If you require assistance, my not inconsiderable resources are at your disposal. I can be contacted at Battersea Power Station
.

p>. 
Isambard Kingdom Brunel

The poet raised his brows and muttered: “An old enemy may have just become a new friend.”

He took a decanter of brandy from Burton’s bureau and joined Doyle. They set about emptying it.

Spencer abstained from drinking. He felt obliged to remain sober enough to record any useful information Swinburne might extract from Doyle. By contrast, Burton’s assistant felt it incumbent upon himself to make their guest—who was too far gone to realise that he was actually their prisoner—feel that he was among friends; that he could talk freely. He therefore matched the Rake drink for drink.

The subsequent conversation, if it could qualify as such, was, to Spencer’s ears, verging on gibberish.

Doyle, who didn’t seem to care that he was drinking with a child—for that’s what Swinburne, in his disguise, appeared to be—was regaling the “boy” with “facts” about fairies. His voice was thick and slurred and his eyes rolled around in a disconcerting manner.

“Sh—see, they—they fiss-fick-fixate on a person, like they’ve fig-fixated on me, then they play merry miz-mischief. It’s peek-a-boo when ye least essexpect it; diz-distraction when ye least—
urp!
—need it; wizz-whisperings when ye least want ’em. Aye, aye, aye, they’re not the joyful little sprites I dep-depict for the pish-picture books, ye know. Och no. I have to paint ’em that w-w-way, y’zee-shee-see, just so I can sell ma work.” He groaned, swigged from his glass, and muttered: “Damn and—
urp!
—blast ’em!”

“But where do they come from, Mr. Doyle? What do they want? Why are they tormenting you? What do they look like? Do they speak? Have they intelligence?”

“Och! One q-question at a time, laddie! They are eff-etheric beings, and they latched onto ma ash-ash-ass-astral body while I was shhh-sharing the eman-eman-emanations.”

Swinburne started to say something but Spencer jumped in with: “Sharin’ the emanations? What’s that mean?”

Doyle belched, drained his glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and held the tumbler out for a refill. His hand trembled.

Swinburne took aim and poured the brandy. Half of it hit the tabletop.

“The Ray-Rakes want a better sh-sss-society but no one listens to us, do they? They do-don’t take us sh-say-seriously. Ye’ve sheen our dec-declarations?”

“Posted on walls and lampposts.” Swinburne nodded, and quoted: “’We will not define ourselves by the ideals you enforce. We scorn the social attitudes that you perpetuate. We neither respect nor—
hic!
—conform with the views of our elders. We think and act against the tides of popular opinion. We sneer at your dogma. We laugh at your rules. We are anarchy. We are chaos. We are individuals. We are the Rakes.’”

“Codswallop!” Pox squawked from Spencer’s shoulder.

“Aye, w-well, it was a waysh-waste of good ink and paper. Sh-so our new leader—”

His voice trailed off and his eyes lost focus. The glass slipped from his hand, spilling brandy into his lap. He slumped forward.

“Damn, blast, and botheration!” Swinburne shrilled. “The bally fool has passed out on us just as he was getting to the good bit!”

“Yus, and he’s out for the count by the look of it, lad,” Spencer observed. “He won’t be openin’ his eyes again until tomorrow, mark my words. What shall we do with him?”

“We’ll carry the bounder upstairs and lay him out on the sofa in the spare bedroom. I’ll sleep on the bed in there. You can kip here, if an armchair’s not too uncomfortable for you.”

“I’ve slept in so many blinkin’ doorways that an armchair is the lap o’ bloomin’ luxury!”

“My sweetie pie,” Pox whispered.

Swinburne stood and swayed unsteadily. He stamped his foot.

“What the dickens is all this fairy nonsense about, Herbert?”

“It beats me.”

By midnight, Algernon Swinburne was staring at the spare bedroom’s ceiling, wishing he could be rid of the sharp tang of brandy that burned at the back of his throat.

He couldn’t sleep and the room seemed to be slowly revolving.

He felt strange—and it was something more than mere drunkenness.

He’d been feeling strange ever since Burton had mesmerised him.

Tonight, though, the strangeness felt … stranger.

He shifted restlessly.

Doyle, draped over the sofa, was breathing deeply and rhythmically, a sound not too far removed from that made by waves lapping at a pebble beach.

The house whispered as the day’s heat dissipated, emitting soft creaks and knocks from the floorboards, a gentle tap at the window as its frame contracted, a low groan from the ceiling rafters.

“Bloody racket,” Swinburne murmured.

From afar came the paradiddle of rotors and the muffled blare of the police warning.

“And you can shut up, too!”

He wondered how much damage the riot had caused. There had been a great many acts of arson and vandalism, and beatings and murders, too.

“London,” he hissed. “The bastion of civilisation!”

He could hardly believe that the supposed return of a lost heir had developed into such mayhem.

He looked at the curtained window.

“What was that?”

Had he heard something?

It came again, a barely audible tap.

“Not a parakeet, surely! Not unless its beak is swathed in cotton wool! Good lord, what’s the matter with me? I feel positively spooked!”

Tap tap tap.

“Go away!”

He experienced the horrible sensation that someone other than Doyle and himself was present in the room. It didn’t frighten him—Swinburne was entirely unfamiliar with that emotion—but it certainly made him uneasy, and he knew he’d never sleep until he confronted it head-on.

“Who’s there?” he called. “Are you standing behind the curtains? If so, I should warn you that I’m none too keen on cheap melodrama!”

Tap tap.

He sighed and threw the bed sheets back, sat up, and pushed his feet into the too-big Arabian slippers that he’d borrowed from Burton’s room. He stood and lifted a dressing gown from the bedside chair, wrapped it around himself, and shuffled to the window. He yanked open the curtains.

Smoke and steam, illuminated by a streetlamp, were seething against the glass.

“Hasn’t it cleared up yet?” the poet muttered. “What this city needs is a good blast of wind. I say! What’s that?”

The fumes were thickening, forming a shape.

“A wraith? Here? What on earth is it up to?”

He pulled up the sash and leaned out of the window.

“What’s the meaning of this? Bugger off, will you! I’m thoroughly fed up with phantoms! Go and haunt somebody else! I’m trying to sleep! Wait! Wait! What? My hat! Is that—is that you, Richard?”

The ghostly features forming just inches from his own were, undoubtedly, those of Sir Richard Francis Burton.

“No!” the poet cried. “You can’t be dead, surely!”

His friend’s faintly visible lips moved. There was no sound, but it seemed to Swinburne that the defensive walls Burton had implanted in his mind suddenly crumbled, and the noise of their destruction was like a whispered voice:
Help me, Algy!

“Help you? Help you? What? I—
My God!”

He stumbled backward away from the window and fell onto the bed.

The ghostly form of Burton had melted away.