Airship Shape & Bristol Fashion (28 page)

Leaving the hospital a half-hour later, once we were sure we had all the facts of the case, we took a steam hansom back to the Professor’s city residence off Whiteladies’ Road. As we made ourselves comfortable after the journey and subsequent odd meeting with Superintendent Chalmers, he lit a pipe while I thumbed through his books looking for references. It was getting dark, and the Professor looked over at me.

“William, my boy… Where’s Groom?”

“Off in the Aether somewhere, I’m guessing. He’s sulking.”

A book leapt off the top shelf, narrowly missing my head. I gave the space it had previously occupied a baleful glare, before adding: “Or, he could be right here and being a colossal pest.”

The Professor ignored our exchange, picking up the book Groom had thrown off the shelf at me. He thumbed through for a few minutes, then looked at me. “No… I think your little friend may be helping more than you think. Look at this.”

He handed me the book, and I looked at the cover. “Tales of the Yorkshire Moors?” I frowned, then turned to the page he held open with his finger.

As I read, I began to see what he was getting at. “Black Annis: The Black Annis, or ‘Black Agnes’, is a hag that is said to haunt a small cave system in Yorkshire.” I read further, and at each mention of her physical characteristics I nodded to the professor.

“It’s all here: claws, blue skin, a single, removable eye. It ties together, but why would she be in Bristol? A different Annis, perhaps? Nothing to say there must only be one.”

The Professor drew long and hard on his pipe, then clicked his teeth before exhaling. “No… there are other reports of hags that are similar to this one. Legends from all over the country — Lancashire’s Jenny Greenteeth, the Luideag of Skye, the Cailleach Bheur of the Scottish Highlands… even the Witch of Wookey, Somerset’s very own hag, who used to hunt down children and newly-engaged couples for food.”

I looked at him hard. “Wookey, you say?” My travelling bag was in my room; I went and withdrew the newspaper from it before returning to the parlour. “This article here.” I showed him the piece I was reading earlier that morning.

Hoard Found in Somerset Caves

A Bristol archaeologist has reported uncovering a hoard of Saxon treasure whilst excavating a cave system in Somerset.

Historian and geologist Miss Katherine McClure found the hoard, believed to date back to 500AD, in a cavern that makes up part of the Wookey Hole cave complex near Wells.

Among the treasures currently being studied at the Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts are a sword, several pieces of pottery and coinage, and a piece of Saxon glasswork in the shape of a human eye.

The hoard will be displayed at a cocktail reception tonight at eight.

“Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear…” The Professor’s face turned grim. “William, my boy… send a runner to the police station. We’re going to need help with this one, I fear. I trust you brought Titania with you?”

I nodded.

“Good, I have a suspicion that we may need her services before the night is out. Grab a crucifix as well, and holy water, and iron. If I remember the legend right, the monk who banished her before used holy water to turn the body to stone… but what if he merely succeeded in banishing her back to the Aether? And now that her resting place has been disturbed…”

“She’s coming back. But for what?”

“Goblin-Groom knows why she’s come,
Stupid humans never learn.
No need for more of you to die,
The Annis only wants her eye!”

“Have I ever told you, Groom, that you are a terrible poet?”

Another book, this time perfectly-aimed, crashed into my temple, and a resounding “harrumph” echoed around the parlour.

“Boys,
please
!” The Professor snapped. “It’s almost eight. If we hurry we can be there by about twenty minutes past. Tuck that fowling piece under your overcoat, William… would hate to upset the public.” I did so, thankful for the truncated barrel, one of several modifications to the weapon that Mr. Scott had worked into the finished article. I grabbed my bowler and my cane, pursuing the Professor as he dashed out the door, swinging his top hat onto his head with a flourish as he did so.

Whiteladies’ Road was quiet as we made our way past the Art Galleries and the site of the new Victoria Rooms, built in the honour of our glorious monarch. We turned down on to Park Street at ten minutes past eight, hurrying as fast as we could to the Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts. The building sat, squat, square and unassuming, overlooking the old aqueduct that now carried Park Street over Frogmore Street below.

As we got there the doors flew open with a crash, and a figure barrelled out carrying another struggling person bodily under one arm. The first was a horrifying sight, a spindly, naked woman easily a head and shoulders taller than me, a single baleful eye glaring from the middle of her forehead as she screamed at us in defiance before turning and leaping over the aqueduct railing to the street below. I’d only had the opportunity to grab a quick glance at the person being abducted, but I saw enough to tell it was a young woman. She yelled as they fell out of sight, and I whipped Titania out from under my coat, thumbing the catch and pulling one of the triggers as she levelled with my hip. The solid iron slug tore into the stone balustrade, throwing a cloud of dust and masonry chippings into the open air, and I let out a rather ungentlemanly curse. Dashing to the side of the aqueduct, the professor and I saw the Annis and her unfortunate prey disappear under the bridge.

“William! The stairs! After her!”

The Professor gestured with his cane. Across the road, a set of stone steps wound down the side of the bridge to Frogmore Street. A crowd was beginning to pour out of the Institute and what little traffic — both pedestrian and vehicular — using the street at this time of night had stopped at the sound of Titania’s report. I took the steps two at a time, a good six feet ahead of the Professor. I vaulted the last dozen steps, and dashed out onto the cobbled street just in time to see the Annis running towards the turning for Denmark Street. I whipped Titania to my shoulder, took aim, and pulled the second trigger.

She roared in anger, and the solid iron slug spat out of her barrel. I have to say, given the circumstances it was probably one of the best shots I ever made. It missed the Annis, but it clipped her left shoulder as she turned the corner. She yelped in pain and her arm spasmed, flinging the young lady onto the floor. The Annis turned, screamed at me and then took off down Denmark Street, leaving her quarry sprawled on the flagstones. The Professor and I sprinted down the road to where the young woman lay. She must have been in her mid-twenties, with auburn hair in a tight braid down her back, dressed in breeches and a simple shirt. As we approached she sat up and dusted herself off, wincing as her hand brushed a long cut down her right forearm. I skidded to a halt, and offered her a hand to her feet. The Professor pulled out his augmentators and started looking out into the gloom, seeking any kind of aetheric trail left by the supernatural creature.

“Are you okay, Miss?”

At the time, it seemed like a perfectly valid enquiry. Looking back, it may not have been the most intelligent or well-crafted opening line for the situation.

“Okay?
Okay
?! Do I look okay to you?” A slight Irish lilt lent an additional edge to her indignation, before she wrenched her arm away from me.

“One minute I’m displaying the most important archaeological find for a decade, the next that… thing bursts in, steals the centrepiece of the collection, puts it into a hole in the middle of her face and tries carrying me off!” She winced and glared at her arm, blood staining the sleeve of her shirt a bright crimson. In a flash I’d taken off my belt, and held it out to her.

“Might be best to tourniquet that and get you to hospital.”

“Nonsense! That creature has my artefact, and I want it back. I’ll take the tourniquet though.” She tied it around her upper arm and winced, pulling it tight. I looked at her in mild disbelief. She was certainly an odd one, not quite like any woman I’d come across before. Before I could think, I was offering her my hand. “I’m Will. William. William Dalton.”

“Katherine McClure. Now, can we get after that thing please, Officer?”

I stuttered. “Off… officer, I’m not with the pol…”

“Sweetheart, I really don’t care. Let’s go.”

The Professor was standing a good thirty metres away, looking perplexed. Miss McClure and I joined him moments later, as he took the augmentators off and fiddled with them.

“The trail… it’s disappeared. She’s gone to ground, but there’s so much aether in the air I can’t tell where.”

“What do you mean?” asked Katherine.

“There’s too much aether residue in the air — from the factories and carriages and the like — I can’t follow her trail properly.”

“No need to do that.” I motioned them over to where a few drops of fresh blood glistened on the grimy flagstones. They sat at the top of a set of steps leading down to an open manhole cover.

“She hasn’t so much gone TO ground as gone under it. She’s in the sewers.”

The Professor and I looked at each other, then at Katherine. “Miss, with that cut open to…”

She met my gaze levelly, then ripped a large strip off the bottom of my shirt, eyes meeting mine in challenge and thwarting any protest. She proceeded to roll up her sleeve and bind the cut, while the Professor and I exchanged uncertain glances.

“There. Done. Wound no longer open. Now, can we go and recover the highlight of my career, please?”

I imagine that descending into the depths of Bristol’s sewer system would be less than pleasant now, despite the advances in sanitation of the last fifty years. Back in 1866, with the city in the grip of a cholera epidemic worsened by the poor state of the city’s effluent control, it ranks among the least pleasant experiences of my life. With handkerchiefs tied over our faces to keep out the worst of the fumes, humours and vapours, we made our way down the filth-slick ladder and into the tunnel below. It was pitch black, but the Professor felt along the wall of the tunnel until he found a Davy lamp hanging on a nail near the sewer entrance. He lit it carefully, and the wan half-light illuminated a slow-moving river of unmentionable foulness, the detritus of a city of two hundred thousand souls. A vile morass of refuse meandered slowly down the bubbling, reeking flow of effluent, following a weak eddy as the filth made its way to God only knew where; a dead dog, carcass half-rotted away, bobbed and butted against a protruding pipe. The rough flagstones that formed the raised walkway on which we stood were smeared with everything from decomposing food and human excrement to algae.

“Well. This is shit.”

Katherine’s voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes sparkled with amusement in the yellow-tinted lamplight. Despite her impropriety I couldn’t help but give her a half-smile, hidden under my handkerchief, before fishing two shotgun shells out of my pocket. I broke Titania open and slotted one into each barrel before closing her with a snap. The Professor had his augmentators out once more, and motioned off down the passageway. Katherine took my cane as I cradled Titania, all of us alert for any sign of movement from… well, anything. Lord only knew what existed down in those filth-ridden tunnels, but we knew at least one of the denizens was very strong, very well-armed and more than a little bit miffed with us.

We found the first body about five hundred yards later.

The Professor stumbled upon the corpse first — and I mean that in the literal sense. The booted foot that he tripped over belonged to a body sprawled in a small alcove off the main tunnel. Chunks of flesh had been gnawed from the unfortunate fellow’s arms and legs, his blood-and-filth-spattered coveralls ripped to reveal gaping holes, ragged flesh greening at the edges. He’d obviously been dead a few days. Stencilled in dye on the fabric were the words ‘Bristol Water Authority’. I felt my gorge rising at the same time as I saw Katherine go ghostly pale. The Professor merely frowned, looking the body over with a practiced air.

“Number nine, I fear. Look at this neatly-punched hole in the upper chest. I’d wager that it’s the same size and circumference as the perforation that has laid low our dear Constable Atherton.”

We exchanged another look, and he rolled his eyes as he examined my face.

“Really, William… you’ve seen worse than this, I’m sure. Come on, my boy. Buck up!”

Leaving the unfortunate water company employee behind us, we made our way further into the depths of Bristol’s sewer system. The stifling air only got worse the longer we spent underground, and by the time we found what we were looking for, all three of us were light-headed from the fumes and vapours. It was Katherine who heard it first, a half-hiss, half-weep coming from a culvert leading off the main tunnel, just tall enough for a man to walk through. The Professor listened, then nodded. “Faerie tongue,” he said in a low whisper. “We’ve found her. Be careful now. I’ll lead with the net, William, you follow me. Miss McClure, may I suggest you wai…”