Fiendish Schemes (23 page)

“Ye’re late.” A grizzled face scowled in at the carriage’s window. “Been waitin’ a right fair bit, I have.”

“You have my apologies.” Stonebrake further mollified the individual with a bright coin laid in one grime-blackened hand. “But unforeseen circumstances delayed us.”

“
Sorghum stanzas
be buggered.” The other gummed the coin, lacking sufficient teeth to test its authenticity. Frustrated, he pocketed it and yanked open the brougham’s door. “Diff’cult enow to smuggle the two of you in, ’fore all the cursed yammering begins. Place be fookin’ empty back then; could’ve fired a fookin’ cannon down the halls, not hit a blessed soul.” The sooty crevices of his face deepened with an even sourer expression. “Now’ll be packed with fookin’ bleeders, goin’ ’bout their ’fernal pre
ock
- upations.”

“All the better for us, it would seem.” Stonebrake had already dismounted from the carriage; he gestured for me to follow him. “We shall lose ourselves amongst the crowd.”

“Aye, ye’re a devious sort. Simple type such as meself would ne’er thought o’ these wily stratagems.”

Once outside the carriage, I was better able to look around, attempting to place myself on the perhaps outdated map of London that existed inside my head. The first thing I spotted—and difficult not to, given its size—was the four- sided tower rearing above my head, bearing massive clock faces at its highest elevation. A certain disorientation afflicted me, despite the landmark’s familiarity, even to one absent from the city as long as I had been. As many occasions as I previously had seen the grand clock tower at the north end of Westminster Palace and set my pocket watch to coincide with its observance of the passing hours, it struck me that I had never glimpsed it from the precise angle at which I viewed it now. The secretive gate through which I had been conveyed, and the narrowly winding route leading to it, had placed me on some spot not otherwise accessible to the casual pedestrian.

“What is this place?” I turned toward Stonebrake, seeking the answer. “It must be of extreme importance to the nation, given that it exists where the Houses of Parliament formerly stood.”

“Hargh!” The gatekeeper emitted a phlegmy laugh. “Ye’re not so clever then as yer mate. Bluidy
is
Parliament, ye great booby.”

“You’ll have to forgive him.” Stonebrake spoke with a condescending smile. “My companion has been out of town for a while. He has experienced so many changes upon his return, that he has evidently assumed
everything
must have been altered during his absence.”

“Feh—we’re not bluidy likely to prise up the centers o’ guv’mint and plunk ’em down in the middle o’ Swindon, just to ’commodate his fookin’ self.” He directed his glaring squint toward me. “They be fine where they are.”

“Come along, Dower.” Stonebrake seized my arm and drew me away from the carriage. “You’ve made enough of a fool of yourself for the time being, expert as you are at that.”

A guttural shout followed after us: “Go ’bout yer business, ye daft prat!”

“It seemed a reasonable enough observation—” I shook myself free as our footsteps brought us through a low stone arch and into a dankly odorous corridor. A trickling sheen of water outlined the rough bricks by which we passed. “The fellow spoke of masses of people who would soon be thronging the corridors. What was I supposed to deduce from a comment such as that? Surely the Houses are not in session at this late hour, unless there is some great governmental crisis under way. Though if we were at the precipice of war with another land, I’m sure I would be the last to be informed of that as well.”

“Calm yourself.” He strode purposefully toward the flickering glow of gas lamps farther ahead. “The affairs of state are in no calamitous predicament. These are but the normal hours of business for the nation’s leaders. Or rather, to be precise, those leaders when they are engaged in matters of actual consequence, rather than mere sunlit playacting.”

“Pardon me?” I hurried to keep pace with him, taking care to avoid contact with the mouldering walls on either side. My surmise was that if we were entering upon the Houses of Parliament, we were doing so
via
some conduit for the disposal of whatever effluvia was generated by their inhabitants. “You seem to imply some subterfuge on the part of the government—”

“Imagine that.” He spoke with evident sarcasm. “Is there no limit to human perfidy?”

“I suspect there isn’t,” I replied, “but this is the first I’ve heard of a nocturnal aspect to the regulation of state affairs, opposed to how they might be conducted during the day.”

“As with so many things that come as a revelation to you, Dower, it is a recent development; that Steam, of which our friend Miss Stromneth spoke so reverently, has not only transformed the higher aspects of human sexuality, but the baser category of politics as well. But then—perhaps it’s all really the same thing underneath the surface appearances.”

“The connection, frankly, is completely occluded to me.”

“Are you sure?” Stonebrake came to a sudden halt and turned upon me, the somberness of his altered expression once again indicative of his rapidly shifting temperament. “I see it quite clearly now.” He leaned in closer to me, as though imparting some confidence made even more ominous by the grim tunnel in which we stood. “Is it not all about
Power,
however conveyed? When you think about it, what essential difference is there between the ability to express one’s will in matters carnal—or in the case of that which you witnessed for the first time back at Fex, such an ability as augmented by steam and iron—and the capacity for making others heed one’s will in matters political?”

“The ones whose attentions are fixated on the carnal realm—or carnal and ferric, in the case of Miss Stromneth’s clientele—at least have the decency to pursue their obsessions in private.” This was about the only virtue I could imagine them possessing. “Or at least they do so for the time being—God only knows how public they might make their activities in the future.” A vision entered my thoughts, no less appalling by being sunlit, of the debauched and transmogrified creatures I had witnessed at Fex, continuing their monstrous
coitus
on tracks running through some previously idyllic English countryside, to the discomfiture of fleeing dairy herds and horrified rural onlookers. “Whereas politicians are by necessity in the public eye.”

“Yes and no,” mused Stonebrake, obviously deep into one of his occasional reflective moods. “We would often like to think so, until we discover more about them and their doings, and then we would prefer to have been left unencumbered by such dismal knowledge.”

“Agreed.” I stepped away from the man. “So let us leave now, before you have the opportunity to show me something else I would rather have not seen.”

“For God’s sake, Dower.” The meditative state was just as easily transformed to irritation. “If you’re this fearful now, what will you be like when something truly horrendous is placed before you?”

“I see no need to discover that, either. I’ll meet you back at the carriage.”

“Come along,” snapped Stonebrake, his irascibility renewed. He took my arm firmly in his grasp, preventing me from turning and heading back toward my preferred destination. By main force, he dragged me toward the rough-hewn wooden door that terminated the passageway through which we had traveled. “Whatever courage you lack, it is more than made up for by the excess of my own.”

Voices and the hubbub of churning human interactions swept over me, as we emerged into a high-ceilinged chamber with more of the appearance of civilization about it. The crowds of which the illfavoured gatekeeper had spoken, enough to fill the building, seemed to have arrived as he had anticipated. And as Stonebrake had foreseen, their preoccupied state, as they rushed about their business, precluded any observation they might have made of us and our sudden appearance amongst them. They no more directed a gaze toward us than the fish thronging a mountain stream would have glanced through the surrounding waters at a figure who might have wandered, staff in hand, to the sandy bank beyond them. So oblivious were they of our presence, that Stonebrake took the caution of drawing me back against the darkly paneled wall, so that I might not be trampled by any of the chamber’s hurrying denizens.

As my vision adjusted from the passageway’s dimness to the more ample illumination in which we now stood, I discerned various aspects of the crowd. The sable robes of bewigged barristers fluttered behind them as they ran past us, great portfolios of pleadings and testaments and other legal documents tightly clasped under their arms. Other, less impressive minions trailed in their wake, towing wheeled file cabinets, presumably less important papers spilling from the oaken drawers. Wheedling supplicants, in every mode of garb from starched and brushed prosperity to utter tattered destitution, sprinted to keep pace with the great officials of the law, even more heedless of the others with whom they collided shoulderfirst, as they breathlessly recited their petitions and protests into the jowled faces from which they hoped to derive some indication of mercy or concern.

“Why are there barristers here?” The mingled racket was of such deafening proportions that I was forced to shout into Stonebrake’s ear to make myself heard. “Shouldn’t they be at the inns of court?”

“Different times, Dower—” He cupped his hand to the side of my head, the better to amplify his own words. “Your memories of how legal procedures were conducted, and where, are but a thing of the past. There have been other changes in your absence, resulting in a great concentration of all elements of authority in one place, advantageously beneath the oversight of those in charge.”

His explanation seemed to account for the breathless chaos I witnessed. Whatever inconvenience might have been associated with the former, archaic ways in which such matters were administered, the arrangement had at least resulted in some stately if somewhat ponderous grace in the slow, methodical dispensing of justice. It had been a situation much remarked upon, that one might grow old and die before one’s case was adjudicated, allowing one to proceed to a greater reward or a more fitting punishment in the next world than one might ever have expected in this life. That dusty, creaking realm of the law was apparently no more, as evidenced by what I saw and my companion’s explanation of it. Now all was a breathless fury of expectations and results, conducted at a sprinter’s pace. Everyone engaged in the intermingling processes hurled themselves toward unseen destinations, as though pursued by demons wielding sulphurous pitchforks, brooking no delay from their harried victims. Indeed, as I watched, judgements were rendered on the fly, with pronouncements from judges so old and grey that they required assistance from ranks of bailiffs, holding the dignitaries upright and carrying them forward, slippered feet ineffectually paddling an inch above the once polished floor. Their words were hastily scribbled by the court-clerks, the worn iron nibs of their pens spattering ink across the vellum pages of massive leather-bound ledgers. In rippling circles about them, the plaintiffs, defendants, petitioners, the odd
amicus curiae
or two, morbid-minded spectators, and other interested parties either boisterously applauded the judges’ verdicts or bewailed their fates, wringing hands, rending garments, or tearing hair, all depending upon what understanding they had been able to derive in the chamber’s din. The officers of the court appeared to possess no greater comprehension, seizing upon various individuals as though at random and dragging them off through the encumbering crowd, either to some squalid dungeon or the gallows, judging from the flailing, panicked reaction of their elderly, mild-aspected captives. Such events took place concurrent with swarthy brigands, obvious criminal types from their appearance, delightedly receiving the misdirected proceeds, everything from antiquated jewelry to deeds of title, rummaged from brassbound caskets that had been held by the court in escrow.

“This is madness,” I sternly informed Stonebrake beside me. “How could anyone call this a
rationalization
of the legal process? It’s worse than before!”

“Only in terms of outcome,” he shouted back. The swirling, yammering chaos seemed to have a salutary effect on his mood. “The courts’ pronouncements might be somewhat more variable than they had been, as far as the propagation of justice is concerned, but they are now rendered with astonishing, commendable speed. Think of it! A man might be accused, tried, convicted, and hung, all between midnight and the following hour. Surely that is a great relief to his mind, not to have to ponder over his fate for weeks or months, or even years.”

“Truth be told, I would prefer to elongate the pondering as much as possible, if there were to be a rope at the end of it.”

The unrelenting din had made Stonebrake’s words difficult if not impossible to make out, but I felt confident that I had gleaned the essential gist of them, and that his general approval of all things modern was just as continuous as before. I had expected as much from him, a member of that happy tribe who throw themselves ecstatically headfirst into the abyss of the Future, resembling those more primitive types who cast themselves into tropical volcanoes to propitiate their rude deities.

“Very well, then.” My own voice I raised as loudly as possible. “I have seen this latest hideous display— to what effect I am uncertain, unless you merely intended to oppress my spirits even further. Might we leave now?”

Now that I had become accustomed, however unhappily, to the chamber’s tumult, further details had made themselves apparent to my senses. The perfuse flush on the faces of those madly rushing past was due not alone to the stress of their exertions, but to the humid atmosphere contained within the walls. Indeed, the air was so heated and damp that finger-thick rivulets of water trickled down the dark wooden panels like shimmering, translucent snakes. That degree of moisture had produced deleterious effects on the building’s aged fixtures. I saw now that virtually every scrap of wood, some no doubt hewn centuries ago from the nation’s ancient forests, had bent and warped; some of the larger panels were cracked and split from having been bent nearly double in this suffocating environment.