The Iscariot Sanction (31 page)

‘Now, there’s some honesty,’ said Pickering, his face softening. ‘Diplomacy be hanged; we all are here for personal reasons, Lieutenant, for there is no greater motivation to face mortal peril than the defence of a loved one. What do you say, Cottam?’

‘I trust ’em, sir. They might have left me at the station so as not to give them away. But they rescued me all the same. If’n you can ’elp ’em, and in doing so ’elp me to repay a debt, I’d be grateful fer it.’

Pickering turned back to the two agents. ‘Well, gentlemen, it seems you have an advocate. Cottam is one of ours, and a useful man to have about. If he says you’re all right, then all right you are. I will help you if I can, but I state to you again: there is no way out of this city by road or rail—the Knights Iscariot control all the routes except for the sea. Beyond the Humber, I maintain my freedom.’

‘Why don’t you just leave, then?’ Smythe asked.

Pickering fixed Beauchamp Smythe with a measured gaze. ‘Why do you follow this man, when it is his sister on that train and not yours? We all have our reasons for doing apparently foolish things, Agent Smythe; and sometimes those reasons are better left unsaid.’

Smythe looked admonished. John stepped in while the relations were still friendly.

‘If there is no passage from Hull, what aid can you offer us, Mr. Pickering?’

‘I can put a telegraph at your disposal, if that would suit.’

‘It would.’

‘And I can smuggle you aboard one of my stamps and sail you along the coast. North or south; I shall leave that decision to you.’

‘If we were to go north, is there a place we could be free of the Knights Iscariot? And from where we could take a train unmolested across the moorland route?’

‘Bridlington would have been the best place to pick up the train,’ Pickering said. ‘But now that the Knights have made their home at Scarrowfall nearby, it fair crawls with traitors.’

‘I would suggest Scarborough, sir,’ said Cottam. ‘I know the stationmaster there, and he is true to his kind still, if I am any judge.’

‘And the train?’ John asked, with growing frustration.

‘Aye, sir, ye’ll get your train from Scarborough, and more direct, too, but not until morning light.’

‘Then I would suggest we make arrangements quickly,’ said John. ‘Mr. Pickering, I would send a telegram to London, and then would ask that you take us to Scarborough. Is that possible?’

‘It is,’ said Pickering. ‘I will not sail in the dead of night, for that is when our enemies are most active. The sea fret is up, too, and it will only hinder us. If we leave at sun-up, you’ll make your train, have no fear.’

John considered this. Pickering proposed that they wait almost eight hours before getting underway, and he already had a bad feeling about the fate of the royal train. But he knew he had no choice—to make haste out of Hull was to attract the enemy to their presence, and if there were no more trains out of Scarborough until the next day, then there would be no advantage gained in courting unnecessary danger.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I thank you, Mr. Pickering, for all your help. Now, about that telegram…’

Pickering nodded and led the way through the warehouse, past a covered boat shed, and across the other side to a small harbour building. Inside was a surprisingly well-appointed office, with desks enough for several clerks and assistants. At the end of a row of benches sat an electrical telegraph machine, a sight that raised John’s spirits.

‘Do you require an operator to assist you, Lieutenant?’ Pickering asked.

‘No, sir, thank you. We have been fully instructed in the use of the machine.’

‘Then I shall leave it at your disposal.’

Pickering left John and Smythe to their own devices. Smythe at once took a small copybook from his breast pocket, and began to create a coded message at John’s dictation.

To: Lord Hardwick, M.

HAVE MISSED THE TRAIN STOP SETTING SAIL NORTH STOP JOURNEY SHALL CONTINUE BY DAWN STOP ADVISE BY RETURN SHOULD CIRCUMSTANCES DICTATE

Lillian’s eyes opened and she jumped awake. She blinked several times, rapidly gathering her wits. The windowless kitchen was dark—the paraffin lamp had gone out, and the warmth from the stove was barely enough to keep the shivers from her bones. Everything was washed with grey.

As her eyes slowly adjusted, she peered towards the table on which Arthur lay. A bundled black shape told her that he still slept. His shallow breathing was the only sound she could hear; she thought that a good sign.

Lillian stood, placing her hand upon the nearby sideboard to steady herself. She felt around for the book of matches she’d left there. She’d forgotten to check the oil in the lamp, but she knew there was a candle nearby that would suffice for now. As she felt for a match in the darkness, she stepped towards the shelf that housed the lamp, but her toe bumped something hard and uneven on the floor, almost tripping her. She cursed under her breath, steadied herself, and then froze. There had been nothing on the floor in front of her earlier, she was sure. The outline of something square and dark lay before her now. Finally finding the matches, she struck one.

In the bright fizz of the match-light, the shadows of the room retreated in a sinister dance. On the floor before her was a planked trapdoor, open, the kitchen rug folded back with it. In her groggy, weakened state there was almost too much to take in all at once: the black space beyond the trapdoor; the suggestion of stairs leading down into a cellar; the hood over Arthur’s head and the binding at his wrists and ankles. And then the creak of floorboards behind her.

Her training gave instinctual life to her leaden limbs. She turned to face whatever threat came at her in the gloom, but she was weakened by her ordeal. She saw a scrawny face—a human face, a man—loom momentarily towards her, and etched upon that face was a look of fear or, more closely, desperation. A hand was raised high, and crashed down towards Lillian’s head. Pricks of light like sparkling cascades of Chinese fireworks filled her vision. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she felt herself go weightless, falling, seemingly for ever, as the lights, along with her senses, blinked out one by one like London streetlamps snuffed before the dawn.

The mirror crack’d from side to side;
‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried
The Lady of Shalott.

A
LFRED
, L
ORD
T
ENNYSON

COVERING NOTE FROM ‘A FIELD STUDY OF CROOKES’ NECTAR AND ITS EFFECTS ON MAJESTIC AGENTS’, BY DR. F.W. MCGRATH ADDRESSED TO LORD CHERLETEN, 16TH JUNE 1876

Sir, on the subject of etherium—that powerful stimulant of Majestics known among the common folk as ‘Crookes’ Nectar’—I can offer no comfort such as I know you were hoping for. My studies of the Nightwatch, and of lesser Majestics in the field, both licensed and otherwise, have shown quite clearly the dangers of this drug.

Of the thirteen subjects that used etherium on a regular basis, seven have shown signs of pronounced mania, with a clear danger of developing further into forms that will certainly cause harm to themselves or others. The remainder have all exhibited various physical ailments, from brain fever to wasting disease. All have become insomniac, only finding respite after receiving a higher than usual dose of narcotics. They fear sleep, claiming that it is a gateway to the ‘Eternal Night’, a supposed netherrealm from which one day they may not return. Those Majestics within the Nightwatch are no longer capable of independent function, and their promised rehabilitation into society now seems impossible.

I enclose within my report additional statistical analysis conducted by Dr. William James, of Rift anomalies and their correlation with Majestic phenomena. These data illustrate clearly the increased probability of Riftborn incursions into our world while the loci are under the influence of etherium.

The harvesting and distillation of fluid from the pineal gland is a distasteful process in itself; the properties inherent in the Majestic form of this fluid is unstable, its effects upon the Majestic psyche unpredictable, and its attraction to the Riftborn irrepressible. The mooted development of ‘mundane etherium’ will only serve to compound the underlying dangers of etherium dependency. After discussing these matters extensively with Dr. James, I have reached a decision. It will be my firmest recommendation that the use of etherium—in any form—by agents of Apollo Lycea be prohibited immediately.

Lillian drifted upon a warm ocean current, her eyes closed; she was suspended, weightless. Water lapped her naked body. It felt like the womb, like a memory from before her birth.

All at once she knew that it
was
the womb. She was an infant, dreaming of a life yet to be lived. She breathed not air, but her mother’s life-giving fluid. She almost panicked, but knew instinctively that it was the natural way of things; that she could not drown. She opened her eyes but saw nothing. Darkness, and the warm liquid, within and without…

* * *

Lillian awoke, and the feeling of calm that had so permeated her being moments before drained from her in an instant. She saw nothing, but she was drowning.

Warm fluid filled her lungs. There was something in her throat, some foreign object pumping liquid into her. There was a bag or sack over her head. Her hands were tied behind her, her feet tied fast also, and she tried to struggle, scream—do something,
anything
—but found she was helpless.

The liquid filled her gullet, her belly, her lungs, warm and salty. Seawater? She gagged and heaved, the taste of her own bile mingling with the brackish fluid. Her nose was pinched closed so that nothing could escape her. Each time she heaved, the fluid rose up into her mouth, only to be forced down again. She could not breathe, only swallow whatever was being pumped into her; whatever was killing her.

Lillian’s throat burned with pain. Every muscle strained against her bonds. She knew she was crying, and it felt like the only thing she could do; the only thing she had left to prove to herself, and to her killers, that she was fighting. And then, in the moment that she felt she was truly mad, that she could take no more without dying of sheer horror, she was dragged violently from the darkness, into the light.

Momentarily, she was blind. White light filled her vision. And then she was falling, feeling for a second as weightless as she had in her dream, until a hard, cold floor rose up to meet her.

The light shrank away into orbs somewhere above her. She now faced a grey expanse, a heavily stained lime-ash floor, onto which she spilled the contents of her stomach and her lungs.

Only then did it occur to her that she was not alone. Her bonds had been cut. She tried to shake the lethargy from her limbs, to bring circulation into hands and bare feet to save her from slipping around on the wet floor. Wet with blood. Bare feet… She was naked. The sudden shame of that sensation, the feel of rapidly cooling liquid on her skin, of air rushing over her, was numbing.

Lillian tried hard not to focus on the pool of wine-red liquid that had poured from her. She whimpered as something was pulled from her, from deep in her throat and out of her mouth, and she saw a slick red tube whip away across the floor, snake-like, leaving undulating trails in the pooling blood that she had regurgitated. Through watery eyes, she struggled to focus upon the scene before her, her mind lagging some distance behind the proof of what she saw, comprehension wilfully evading her. She followed the whipping movement of the tube, and saw where it led. In that moment she forgot all else; the shame of her nakedness, the desperation of her situation, the utter perversity of what had been done to her. How could any of it make sense when confronted by depravity and cruelty of such proportions?

Sitting upright in a chair to which he was bound, was Sir Arthur Furnival. He was unconscious—at least, she clung to the hope that he was not dead. His head drooped lifelessly to his chest. His skin was pale and greying in the cold light. The rubber tube was attached to him, penetrating the bulging, blue vein of his left arm, where he so often injected himself with etherium.