Onyx City (The Lazarus Longman Chronicles Book 3) (6 page)

The Siamese men grabbed Lazarus under the shoulders and after hauling him to his feet, dragged him from the room. The carpeted stairs banged against his knees and toes as they took him up first one flight and then up a second set, leading to the attic.

A bare room with a single chair in the centre awaited him. Several boxes covered in sheets loomed like ghosts in the shadows. A small window was set in the slanted ceiling, and through it Lazarus could see that it had started to rain. Fat drops drummed on the glass, making the dark little room seem totally isolated from the outside world. Opposite the window was a small door set into the brick wall that Lazarus assumed led to the water cistern.

Lazarus was shoved roughly into the chair. While one of the men stood guard by the door through which they had come, the other began rummaging around in a battered leather chest for some rope with which to bind their captive.

Lazarus wasn’t about to let himself get tied to a chair for the pleasure of anyone, and so was on his feet in an instant, grabbing his chair by its back and swinging it with all his might onto the head of the man by the door.

The chair splintered into fragments and Lazarus jammed his knee into the man’s groin as an added weakener. The man at the chest came charging towards them and Lazarus turned, gripping his man in a neck hold, and hurled him into his accomplice. The two men went sprawling and Lazarus made for the door that held the cistern.

He had an idea that, as in many terraced London houses, the attics of all in the row were connected by a long corridor. This had been remarked upon in the papers as a dangerously easy opportunity for burglars but in his current predicament he desperately hoped that it was the case here.

He flung open the door and squeezed himself behind the cistern, peering into the gloom. He thanked his stars to see a long, narrow corridor vanishing into the darkness, brick-lined on one side. There was no floor and so he hopped from rafter to rafter as he heard his enemies squeezing into the space behind him.

His plan was to find the door to an attic in one of the neighboring houses and then descend, terrifying the house’s occupants and a maid or two if need be, to street level and then be out and away. He flung open the first door he came to and stepped into a cluttered box room filled with a child’s toys, luggage cases, a dress-maker’s mannequin and other paraphernalia. He made for the door and cursed when he found it locked. He could hear the approach of his pursuers down the passageway and looked around desperately.

He saw the window and was up at the latch in a flash, heaving up the sash. He managed to squirm through the aperture just as the first of the men entered the box room. The rain hammered down on him, and the slate tiles were slippery. Several came loose and clattered down to the street below as he scrambled along the roof.

The terrace ended in a gabled house, with a small balcony above a larger one. The drop was still too far, but there was a small gatehouse to St. Georges Gardens just over the mews that had a sloping roof and a little chimney. Lazarus dropped down onto the first balcony, grabbing at its iron railings. The Siamese men were scurrying along the roof much more nimbly than he had managed, not loosening any tiles. He dropped down to the balcony below and climbed up onto its railing.

Lazarus leaped through the rain and landed heavily on the slanted roof of the gatehouse, loosening an avalanche of slates. He slid down with them, landing on all fours on the gravel path that led into the gardens. He looked up. His pursuers were contemplating the balconies and the leap. Men and women walked up and down the street, huddled under umbrellas. He snatched one from the nearest gentleman.

“I say!” the man cried. “You! Thief!”

Lazarus ignored him and hurried down the street to mingle with as many people as he could see. The pavement was a sea of black umbrellas, and he knew that if his pursuers had reached street level yet they hadn’t a hope in hell of picking him out of the crowd.

He continued walking to Brunswick Square and then hailed a cab. He shook off his stolen umbrella and got in. He felt around in his jacket pocket for the bundle of papers he had taken from the journal. They had not got wet, and he quickly glanced at them. It had taken a mere moment to swap the journal pages with whatever notes and documents he could gather from the desktop, and he had only finished cramming them into the leather book and retying the string before Westcott had come into the study. He smiled when he thought of Westcott’s rage when he discovered that his precious journal contained his own notes and not the pages so valued by the both of them.

“Where to, guv?” the cab driver asked.

“Edmonton,” Lazarus replied. “I’ll give you the address when we’re near it.”

He was bruised and bleeding, but he had the journal at last and there was only one person on earth that he wanted to share his company with right now.

Chapter Six

In which our hero learns his true name

The house in Edmonton was a grotty little two-bedroom place of red brick, with a bay window that had not been washed in years. Lazarus took a key from his pocket and let himself in. It was dark inside and a single gas lamp burned in the back room. He entered and removed his cap. The old man on the couch, blankets mounded on top of him, turned and gave him a flicker of a smile.

“Hello, son.”

“Hello, sir,” Lazarus replied.

“You look like you’ve been in the wars.”

“When am I ever not?”

The man did not reply nor smile at the jest. Lazarus sat down and looked around the room. This was not the house he had spent much of his childhood in. That had been a fine place in Pentonville. His guardian and the closest thing he ever had to a father had been forced to move to more humble dwellings before Lazarus had reached the age of fifteen. The small pile of cherished leather-bound tomes in the corner was all that remained of the vast library he had whiled away many hours of his youth in, reading about Ancient Egypt, the Punic Wars, the Gupta Empire and fabled Babylon.

And the snow-haired old man, feeble with disease on the couch before him, was all that was left of the upright explorer who had plucked him from the slums of Bangkok and brought him back to London to raise as his own.

“How are you?” Lazarus asked the man, trying to keep the pity from his voice, refusing to believe that this strong man who had been his mentor and father figure for so many years was dying.

“Doc was here earlier, blasted quack,” said Alfred Longman, explorer, abolitionist and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. “He bled me and is making me drink powdered nitrate with camphor water and laudanum.”

“Just do what he says,” Lazarus urged. “It’s for the best.”

Alfred doubled over in a wracking cough that lasted nearly ten seconds and brought the sweat out on his brow. “Gah! Confound this thing!” He wheezed down lungfuls of air. “Now, my boy, tell me what you’ve been up to and why you look like you’ve been engaging in bare-knuckle fisticuffs down at the docks.”

“I have the journal, sir,” Lazarus said. He reached into his pocket and showed his guardian the handful of papers.

Alfred’s face grew even paler and he swallowed as if preparing himself. “Finally you have it. Are you sure it’s the one?”

“The journal of Thomas Spencer Tyndall,” Lazarus confirmed. “The very man you believe was my father.”

“No doubt about it, my boy. When I caught you trying to lift my timepiece in that back alley in Bangkok, the only white street urchin in the whole city, I knew that you were something special.” His lips parted in a smile of fondness at the memory. “You were such a scrawny thing but you put up such a fight when I accosted you! The other street boys had been teaching you how to fight Siamese style.”

Lazarus smiled. “I wish I had been a better student. I wouldn’t have so many lumps to show for myself today.”

“I couldn’t understand how a white boy, surely of European extraction, could have wound up living in doorways and eating toasted gutter rats,” Alfred continued, his eyes misted over with reminiscence. “I did all the research I could, consulted every known traveler in those parts and all I could dig up was the name Tyndall.”

Lazarus knew the story well, for it was all he had to cling to of his former life. Thomas Tyndall had been an English botanist who had moved to Bangkok with his wife and young child to study the flora of Siam. He had vanished on some trip into the hills, and his wife had died soon after. Of the child, nothing further was known. Alfred Longman was convinced that this child was the bare-footed urchin he had found living the life of a tough little pickpocket. He had rescued this boy from poverty and crime and renamed him Lazarus in honor of the saint who had been brought back from the dead.

“The journal had been purchased by a wealthy fellow in Bloomsbury,” Lazarus said. “Your man Walters was a rather unscrupulous dealer. He knew I wanted the journal, and yet he sold it only days before our appointment.”

“Walters is a degenerate gambler,” said Alfred with distaste. “His debts have consumed his family’s wealth, and that house on Cavendish Square is a ruin of its former glory.” He then sighed. “Much like my own turn of fortunes. Our academic pursuits are not the only thing we have in common, it seems. But how did you get the journal from this man in Bloomsbury? I hope you didn’t ruin yourself.”

“The bruises you see on my face are all I let them have of me,” said Lazarus. “I was caught red handed in the man’s study and his Siamese thugs gave me a thorough going over.”

“Siamese thugs?” Alfred asked.

“But I had switched the papers before I was caught and made off with the real goods,” Lazarus added with a grin.

Alfred frowned with disapproval. “You take too many chances, my boy. You always have. Your pursuit of ‘adventure’—or what others would call outright danger—has always stood in the way of you becoming a serious scholar.”

The grin vanished from Lazarus’s face. His impetuousness had always been a point of contention between the two of them. Alfred was the typical bookish type who saw the act of travel and physical application of archaeology as a necessary evil, while Lazarus, although bookish too in his own way, had always thirsted to see the places he had read about, to feel the history etched in the weathered stones of far off lands. To him the pursuit of the academic was useless unless one actually stood in the shadow of the pyramids or smelled the festering jungle of the Yucatan.

Alfred had nearly cut him off when he had decided to enlist in the army and go to fight in the Ashanti Campaign. The aging archaeologist disapproved of imperialism and conquest with a passion and although Lazarus was far from in agreement with these things too, he needed to leave England and find his way in the world. Capital was a problem for them in those days, as it had been ever since. Their Pentonville home was long gone, along with any chance of further education for Lazarus. The only way he could escape the life of a clerk or a librarian in London and see the world for himself was to enlist and take his chances in the African wars.

“I might be inclined to agree with you this time, sir,” Lazarus told his guardian. “This fellow is a serious piece of work. He tried to have me killed in a house in Stepney. He lured me there by leaving his calling card with Walters. He’s surrounded himself with nimble fighters from Siam that I don’t stand a chance against. I only escaped by outwitting one, and nearly met my end at his Bloomsbury residence. He wants me dead, and doubly so since I escaped with his journal. I have no doubt that he will try again.”

“Then you must keep yourself hidden from him,” said Alfred. “Your clothes, they are a disguise?”

“Alas no, but they may function as one. I am working for the government again.”

Alfred closed his eyes and squeezed them tight as if in pain. “I cannot have this argument with you again, son. You must do as you see fit but it breaks my heart that you sell yourself so cheaply. What business do they have you on this time?”

“There’s some trouble brewing in the East End. It’s to do with Bismarck’s visit. Some worries about the Jews and the Socialists. I really shouldn’t be discussing it with you.”

“Then don’t. I have no wish to hear of our government’s war against the working class. Bismarck is a bloody-handed tyrant. He speaks of peace, but how many Poles and Jews have suffered at his hands? He’s no better than the Kaiser he serves.”

“I won’t be drawn into a political debate with you, sir,” said Lazarus. “For we both know that our views are the same and argument is pointless. But I have my living to make.”

“A living you choose to make as the bulldog of Whitehall rather than through the study of the past.”

“It pays better,” said Lazarus. He felt bitter now. Of all the suffering he had felt in life, the disapproval of this man he had never even been able to call ‘father’ stung the most. “I want to get you into a good hospital. You’ve been sick these three years past. It can’t go on.”

“I won’t be coddled by you, boy. You go and make your living. I tried to make mine through honest pursuits and you can see how that has served me in my old age.”

“I will help you, sir. I will somehow pull together the capital to have you moved into Guy’s.”

“Just worry about yourself. You’ve got enough to deal with without thinking of me. Beware this man you tangle with. He sounds most dangerous. Do you know his name?”

“Yes, he introduced himself as Constantine Westcott.”

Alfred sucked the air in between pursed lips as if in terrible agony. This brought about another fit of coughing which Lazarus tried to relieve by fetching him a glass of water. Alfred sipped some, but most ran down his chin, which Lazarus mopped up with the corner of his blanket.

“Son,” Alfred began when he was able to speak once more, “you must forgive me. What I am about to tell you I do so out of necessity but it is a secret I had hoped to keep from you. I only hid the truth out of fear that it would harm you. Now I see that it still has the power to bring you pain these many years later, and for that I am sorry.” His eyes rolled sadly in their sunken sockets and focused on Lazarus. “Constantine Westcott is your cousin.”

Lazarus felt a great sinking pit in his stomach. “Cousin? Then I have family here? In London? Family that you knew of!”

“Forget them! They are bad eggs, the lot of them! When I took you into my care, I sought out your relatives here in England. Tyndall had a brother who had died years previously, and no other known family. But his wife—your mother—had a brother by the name of Barnaby Westcott. I contacted him and explained who you were. I was frightened of losing you to your family, but contact him I did for I felt it was only right. My fears were in vain, for he was a proud man, uninterested in anybody but himself. He balked at the thought of being lumbered with a half-feral nephew who had been presumed dead for several years.

“There I thought the matter closed. But a little after your fourteenth birthday, Westcott contacted me. He had somehow reversed his previous attitude and now wanted custody of you. I was more than a little surprised and so I did some asking around. Those who knew Barnaby Westcott said that he hadn’t the slightest interest in raising a nephew, but was more concerned with your father’s inheritance that might be due him should he take charge of you. I tried to find out what this inheritance was, but in vain. He took me to court. It was a long, hard battle, but I won in the end and Westcott had to leave you be.”

“And all this happened when I was fourteen?” Lazarus asked. “Just before you had to sell up Pentonville? The court costs...”

“Bankrupted me, yes.”

“Sir, I...”

“You have no cause to feel any guilt in this matter, my boy. I would have done it a hundred times over to keep you in my charge. Besides, once I knew that Westcott wanted you for nefarious purposes, I knew that I had to conceal you to keep you safe. So I sold up and moved here, telling nobody. For a few years it appeared to have worked, even though we lived in biting poverty. And now it seems that Barnaby’s son has found you at last.”

“But I don’t understand,” Lazarus said. “Why does Constantine want me dead? That would suggest that there is some truth to all that inheritance rot.”

“Perhaps there is. As I said, I never could find anything out. Your father vanished without a trace and your mother died of her grief in their tenement in Bangkok. But, lord son, here we sit pondering the answers when you have your father’s very journal in your hands! Let us have a look!”

Lazarus examined the bundle of papers he held. There appeared to be a good deal missing, for the first entry began rather abruptly, but he began to read it aloud.

November 16th, 1863,

We have made our passage into the Phetchabun Mountains, and as I write this we sit amidst these ramparts that fence the Khorat Plateau off from the rest of Siam. Tomorrow we shall begin our descent onto the plateau where, if my guide is correct, I shall find fields of the Siam tulip (Cucuma alismatifolia) and possibly hybridizations of it. Singular to northern Siam and Laos, acquisition of specimens is a must for the Botanical Garden in Calcutta and Kew back home.

The Khorat Plateau (known as the Isan region) is divided by the Phu Phan mountain range into the northern Sakhon Nakhon and the southern Khorat Basin. It is towards the northern extremities of these table-top mountains that we are headed. I still have not drawn from Kasemchai the nature of the people with whom he trades nor the location that is his destination. He has remained as secretive of his business since we first met in Ayutthaya and whenever I press him on the matter he just grins at me with those hideous teeth of his blackened by the constant chewing of the betel leaf and areca nut and shakes his head. But I draw a certain honour from his cagey attitude, for if his business is so dear to him that he must speak of it to no one, then it is a privilege indeed that I am allowed to accompany him on his journey. And so the pounds of salt wait patiently in the saddlebags of our elephant as I must wait, ever patient to discover our final destination.

I have not written of our dear elephant yet and I feel that I must allow him a little space in my journal, for his is such a stout old comrade that I have come to consider him the third member of our expedition. The elephant manages about three miles an hour which is a lumbering pace indeed, but the roads are so appalling here that such a beast is invaluable. The ancient highways of the Khmer Empire are cracked and overgrown and other roads are muddy and hopelessly intraversable. But the elephant keeps us high above the dust on the former and out of the mud on the latter. And in the steep climbs of the mountains he hauls himself up with the use of his trunk, grasping at firm boulders as we might stretch out a hand in a scramble.