Word of Honour (32 page)

George sank into a chair. His attention was entirely on
the cap he now held in both hands. He wrung it back
and forth, back and forth. 'It looks as if the farm is gone,'
he said softly.

'What?'

'The bank marched in on Friday and demanded
immediate payment. Father couldn't, of course. He was
left with no choice but to sign it over.'

'But that land has been in your family for generations!'

'Funny, that didn't seem to make much difference to
the bank manager.'

'But what happens now?'

'The land, the house, the stock will be auctioned off in
a few weeks. If there's any money left over after paying
the bank, we'll end up with it. I think Father would
choke before he took it.'

'Your mother will take care of any money,' Aubrey said
absently. 'But how did this happen?'

'Bit by bit, really. Like a boat slowly sinking – when we
noticed, it was too late to do anything about it.' George
gave his cap a particularly vicious wrench. 'Father says
they'll have to come to the city. He'll look for some sort
of job.'

Aubrey felt a stab in the heart. 'And you?'

The hat wrenching stopped, but George didn't look
up. 'I'll have to leave college, of course. Get a job, too.'

'No,' Aubrey said. 'I'm sure we can do something.'

'Father won't allow it. Pride, remember?'

An enormous hollow opened in Aubrey's chest. He
felt as if his entire being could cave in and disappear at
any moment. 'George, this is horrible.'

'It's a nightmare.'

'What happens now?'

'I don't know. But I know what
won't
happen now.
Aubrey Fitzwilliam won't ride to the rescue.'

'Even though I could.'

'That's right. This has crushed Father. Accepting help
would destroy him.'

George stood. Then he shook himself, like a dog
emerging from a river. 'Let's go and see what Jack wants.
If we're lucky, we can head off and do a spot of saving the
country. It's just the sort of thing I need.'

Jack Figg was waiting in the drawing room. He'd just
finished blowing his nose and when the handkerchief
disappeared into his pocket it was plain he was in a
state of shock. His hands shook until he clasped them
together. His face was pale. 'I have word of Maggie and
her Crew,' he said in a trembling voice.

'Did you call the police?' Aubrey asked.

Jack gathered himself. 'Police? What do you think
I am? Cooperating with the bully boys of the establishment?
Not on your life.'

Aubrey sighed. Jack Figg had a whole hive of bees in
his bonnet, police being one of them. At times like this
it didn't make things any easier.

'As much as I'd like to discuss the proper role of law
enforcement in a civilised society, I gather that time is an
issue here.'

'Where is she?' George asked.

'She's at the clinic.'

M
AGGIE LAY ON THE HOSPITAL BED, PALE AND SHAKING,
eyes closed, moaning with pain. Her hospital gown was
soaked with sweat.

'I've never seen anything like it in my life,' Dr Wells
said. He pushed his glasses back on his nose and looked
for something to do with his hands. He finally stuck
them in the pockets of his white coat and frowned at his
patient.

'What's caused it?' Aubrey asked.

'Nothing natural.' Dr Wells mopped at the young
girl's brow with a flannel, but it caught on the wire
protruding from her temple. With extreme delicacy, he
detached it. 'It must be magic. The wires are all through
her body.'

Aubrey's whole being wanted to crawl away from
what he was seeing. He heard a whimper and he hoped
it wasn't his.

Maggie had been transformed. Hundreds of bright
copper wires stuck out of her skin in horrid profusion.

Many were at her joints – elbows, knees, shoulders – but
just as many were in random clumps, bursting out of her
neck, her feet, her hands. Wires snaked around from
underneath her, and it made her look as if she were lying
on a bed of metal straw.

The skin around the wires was red and angry-looking,
but it wasn't bleeding. It appeared to have closed up
around the wires, giving the appearance of the metal
belonging there, a natural – if hideous – growth.

The loose ends of the wires were twisted, some were
knotted, and all showed signs of having been broken or
snapped off.

'This is ghastly.' George's face was pale. 'Can you do
anything, Aubrey?'

'I can't. But I know who might. She must go to St
Michael's Hospital. They have some of the new X-ray
photography machines and some fine medical magicians
on staff.'

George swallowed. 'But how did this happen? Who
did it to her?'

Jack Figg hadn't said anything since they'd entered
the small, brightly lit ward. He wiped a hand over his
face, knocking his glasses askew, but he didn't seem to
notice. 'She staggered into the Society for Moral Uplift,
delirious. She collapsed and we brought her here.'

'Did she say anything? Anything useful? Where has she
been? Where are her Crew?' Aubrey asked.

'She mumbled about the underground, tunnels, the
hydraulic railway. And the dark. She's afraid of the dark.'

In a dreadful, jerky movement that set them reeling
backward, Maggie sat up. Her eyes flew open. Someone
gasped.

Her eyes were glazed and feverish, heavily bloodshot.
She stared straight ahead, seeing something that wasn't
there, while wires sprang back and forth. They caught
on bedclothes and wafted in the air like seaweed on a
drowned corpse.

'The dark,' she grated, in a voice that was thick and
pained. 'Don't go down where the dark is.'

Aubrey was the first to recover. 'Why not, Maggie?
What's down there?'

'The dark is down there. It's down there everywhere.
It's alive.'

'What is?'

'Darkness. Power. Darkness.'

Her teeth clicked together and she spasmed, hurled
backward by the force of the seizure. Wires clashed and
tangled and Aubrey was astonished they didn't tear out.
Ignoring any sharp ends, Dr Wells took the young girl's
shoulders and held her to the bed. 'Leave,' he snapped
over his shoulder. Aubrey and the others hustled for the
door with no pretence of hesitating, only to find
Caroline Hepworth hurrying into the clinic.

Aubrey was brought up short. 'Caroline! How did you
know we were here?'

'Harris told me.'

'We've found Maggie,' Jack said abruptly. 'But don't go
in there.'

Aubrey flinched. Jack hadn't had as much to do with
Caroline as he had. Telling her what not to do usually
wasn't productive.

When Caroline emerged, all the colour had fled from
her face. Her blue eyes blazed with fury. 'Who's responsible
for this?'

'We don't know,' Aubrey said. 'But I know what I'm
going to do about it. I'm going to find the rest of
Maggie's Crew.'

I
T WAS A DILEMMA
. A
UBREY HAD WEIGHTIER MATTERS
at hand, more important concerns than a handful of
street urchins. The world was lurching toward war, spies
and agents were at work, the economy of the nation was
under threat.

But he didn't hesitate at all. He liked Maggie's pluck,
her independence, the way she'd been making a go of
things. Her torment angered him in its callousness.

And this callousness, added to her tortured warning
about the darkness, made Aubrey chillingly certain that
he could see Dr Tremaine at work.

Ready to rush out of the clinic to find the rest of her
Crew, to right the wrong done to her, he pulled himself
up short and struck himself on the forehead.

He had no destination.

Planning. He burned to spring into action, to do
something to help the poor girl and her friends, but he
forced himself to stop, to think.

The reception desk of the clinic was vacant, the nurse
having gone home for her midday meal. Aubrey
searched the cupboards, the shelves behind the counter,
the desk drawers until he found a map of the city, a new
one that had been used to note the addresses and neighbourhoods
of patients, the sort of thing that a doctor
would need when summoned on a house-call. He
unrolled it and George and Jack weighed down the
corners with a penholder, a blotter, a small jar of boiled
sweets and a steel ruler.

'Here's the hydraulic station,' Aubrey said. Caroline
reached over and circled it with a pencil. 'And the Bank
of Albion is there.' Another circle. 'And here's where
Maggie was found, near the Society for Moral Uplift.
Count Brandt's headquarters.' Circle.

Aubrey stood back. The patterns of the map swam and
moved, starting to fall into place.

'The Southern Line railway tunnel,' Caroline said
before he could. She pointed. 'It connects the Bank of
Albion with the hydraulic station, near enough.'

George shook his head. 'It stops short of both of them.'

'The part of the tunnel that we know about stops short
of both of them,' Aubrey said.

'But what would make you think that there is
anything suspicious about it?' Jack asked.

'It's a Rokeby-Taylor construction,' Aubrey said. 'That
makes me suspicious.'

Aubrey studied the map. It had the underground lines
marked, as well as the above-ground lines of the City
Rail Corporation. They extended to the edge of the
map and criss-crossed each other, linking in an irregular
way that made Aubrey think of a fishing net constructed
by a worker who had his mind on other things at
the time.

For a moment, despite the urgency, he lost himself
in the intricacies of the map. Roads intersecting and
connecting, looping about on themselves, splitting
and reuniting. The map also indicated the major electricity
supply lines for the city, so people would know
which company was providing for their neighbourhood.
Aubrey knew that no matter how recent the map
was, this aspect must be out of date because of the rate
at which these companies were spreading their wires
though Trinovant.

He tried to picture the subterranean layers of the city,
the world he'd lately been shown. Water pipes, gas pipes,
sewerage pipes ran in all their which-ways, underpinning
the world of the surface. Wires for telephones ran under
streets, pneumatic tubes connected offices – and mysterious
chains and cables ran along Dr Tremaine's tunnels,
even though the tunnels were recently made. Why?
With Dr Tremaine nothing was insignificant. Could they
be some sort of new weapon?

'What's here?' he asked, pointing to a spot just to the
south of Rokeby-Taylor's railway tunnel under the river.

It was situated halfway between the tunnel end and the
hydraulic station, a gap of half a mile or so. And it was
very near where Maggie had been found.

'The Southern Electricity Generating Station, 'Caroline
said promptly. 'It's another of Rokeby-Taylor's.'

'It is?' Aubrey said. 'How on earth do you know that?'

'Mother was approached to paint a mural inside it.
She refused.'

'Good thing,' Jack said. 'I've seen it. It's a monstrosity.'

'She was given a commission document that specified
certain aspects of the mural. The dominant figure of The
Rise of Commerce was to be modelled on Rokeby-Taylor himself. Mother couldn't stomach such strictures,
nor such appalling big-headedness.'

'This is worth investigating,' Aubrey said, chewing
his lip.

'Shadwell Phelps took the commission,' Caroline went
on. 'He could never do people. Has trouble with hands.

And faces. Bodies cause him some difficulty, too. He's
quite competent on ankles, though.'

Aubrey stared at the location of the electricity
generating station. The Southern Line passed nearby,
obviously, and it wasn't far from the river either.

'Jack, you know this area. Wasn't there a canal here?'

'The old Bedford Canal. It was roofed over, years ago.
I doubt if it's there now.'

Aubrey was prepared to believe otherwise.

'I think I see what you're on about,' George said.
He pointed. 'Unless I'm completely wrong, the main
sewerage drain on the south side of the river goes right
past this electricity station. The pumping station is on
the river's edge, directly north of the place.'

Caroline drew a star on the location of the electricity
station. 'It's right on top of a junction of these underground
lines.'

'A nexus,' Aubrey said. 'A place that all roads
lead to.'

'I understand that they're having guided tours,'
Caroline said.

'You know this because your mother was invited?'
Aubrey said.

'She declined. She has no interest in bad art, nor
electricity generating stations, and the combination made
her feel positively ill.'

'I have a strong stomach,' Aubrey said.

'I can take notes without looking suspicious,' George
said. 'And who knows? It might turn into a genuine article.'

Jack Figg wanted to go with them, but Aubrey
convinced him to stay with Maggie while she went to
St Michael's. Jack agreed, reluctantly, and Aubrey was
glad. He had an inkling that Jack might slow them down.
Despite his enthusiasm, Jack wasn't the sort who'd be first
choice for a commando unit.

T
HE
S
OUTHERN
E
LECTRICITY
G
ENERATING
S
TATION WAS A
hulking brick building that took up an entire block – a
block that had been cleared of slums. As they approached
it along Tartar Street, Aubrey had the unsettling feeling
that the building was crouching below the level of the
ground, waiting for them.

It may have taken up an entire city block, but it was
set back enough from the street to allow a circus in front
of it.

A large red-faced man ground away at a barrel organ,
entertaining a crowd of youngsters, most of whom were
more interested in the candy floss that was being handed
out free of charge. A sweating clown in a spangled jacket
had his own audience as he put his troupe of trained dogs
though their paces. Other entertainers did their best to
make the visitors see an electricity generating station as a
place to have fun.

They alighted, and Aubrey paid the cabby. 'Mr
Rokeby-Taylor,' Aubrey said as they strolled through the
crowds. 'Mr Bread and Circuses.'

'This sort of display must be expensive,' Caroline said.

A juggler wandered by, showering a mixture of balls and
plates, and smiled at her. 'I wonder where he's getting his
money from.'

'A fine, useful question to which I'd very much like
the answer,' Aubrey murmured. 'For someone in financial
difficulty, he's remarkably free-spending.'

George snorted. 'You know what they say. If you owe
the bank a thousand pounds, you're in trouble. If you
owe the bank a million pounds, the bank is in trouble.'

Aubrey didn't blame George for his sour outlook on
banks, but he wasn't accustomed to seeing his friend
so cynical. George's troubles were affecting his usually
happy-go-lucky ways, Aubrey was sure, and it pained
him to see his friend so. If only he could do something
about it.

No
, he thought,
I gave him my word
.

But the vow hurt.

Aubrey turned his attention to the task at hand. He
patted his pockets and felt the chalk, the handful of brass
tacks, and the string that he'd stowed – just in case. The
assorted needles stuck in cardboard were a precaution
against unknown circumstances. The small bag of glass
marbles, on the other hand, was simply insurance, the sort
of thing that could be useful in facing powerful forces.
With the application of some clever magic.

Immediately Aubrey saw the mural in the gigantic
entrance hall, he knew why Ophelia Hepworth had
refused the commission. It was vast, taking up a whole
wall the size of a tennis court. But it wasn't the size that
would have made Mrs Hepworth unhappy, it was being
dictated as to the contents and the style.

He couldn't imagine an artist inventing this appalling
display. They stood, transfixed, while people moved around
them, averting their eyes.

It was the style that Aubrey had become used to on the
sides of fruit boxes and packets of soap powder. It was a
sort of Commercial–Industrial–Propagandist approach,
but with none of the subtlety or humour that that school
of art was renowned for.

Aubrey guessed it was a paean, a tribute to the power
of Hard Work or such. Hordes of blocky figures were
tilling soil, harvesting crops and digging mines. Quite a
bit of mine-digging really, and plenty of hauling mountains
of what must be coal, towards something that vaguely
represented the Southern Electricity Generating Station,
in the same way that the face on a coin resembled the
reigning monarch.

Smiling beneficently down on this scene of activity
was a giant figure in a white robe, surrounded by clouds
and golden birds who – Aubrey assumed – were singing
songs of praise.

'That's Rokeby-Taylor, isn't it?' George asked.

'Yes. Give or take several dollops of idealising, but
who's that behind him?' Caroline asked. 'Right on the
edge of the picture. Side profile, looking towards him.'

Aubrey moved closer. Lurking on the edge, almost
disappearing into the corner, was a figure.

'Tremaine,' Aubrey said softly and a number of pieces
began to lock together. While it may not have stood up
in a court of law, it was the first substantial evidence
they'd had linking Rokeby-Taylor and their nemesis.
'It's Dr Tremaine.'

Then Aubrey had a moment of self-doubt. Was he
imagining Dr Tremaine again? Was it obsession? And if it
was him, would the others see him this time? He hoped
that having encountered him in the flesh had interrupted
the confusion spell that Dr Tremaine had been using in
his guise as Spinetti. 'At least, I think it is.'

'What do you mean?' Caroline said fiercely. 'Of course
it's him.'

'I wonder who insisted on including him?' George
said. 'Rokeby-Taylor?'

'That's something worth considering,' Aubrey said,
relieved that they could see Tremaine too. 'Or is someone
else in control? He loves a puppet, does Tremaine.
Rokeby-Taylor would be perfect.'

'This place is Rokeby-Taylor's triumph,' George said,
'but I don't see him around here.'

'With the battleship bill at a crucial stage, I imagine
he's doing what he can to persuade members to pass it.'

They joined a guided tour, where a bowler-hatted
gent who must have been chosen for his loud voice
conducted a group through heavy steel doors into
the main part of the electricity generating station. The
whining of the turbines was like the shrieking of a
thousand chained-up demons.

The guide managed to make every third or fourth
word intelligible, but he supplemented this with extravagant
gestures at intake pipes, furnace hoppers and the
squat, massive turbines themselves. It was an eloquent, if
puzzling, dumbshow.

On one level, Aubrey could appreciate the work that
had gone into the place. He was impressed by the technology,
bringing light to homes that had, for years, had to
battle with difficult, dangerous gaslights – or oil lamps,
which caused more than their own share of fires.

He could sense, too, the magical refinements that
had gone into the place. Bearings and turbine blades had
been magically protected, while some of the thermal
efficiency of the furnaces was monitored magically.

Overhead, the pillars of the smokestacks thrust up
through a roof that was a stark curve. Skylights were set
amid the reinforcing struts of the roof, allowing sunlight
to illuminate the immense space. Aubrey shaded his
eyes and squinted upward. His eyes opened wide. He
clutched the railing with enough strength to turn his
knuckles white.