Newbury & Hobbes 04 - The Executioner's Heart (15 page)

She trusted him without question, so she willingly acceded to his wishes, deeply inhaling the fumes of the foul-smelling chemical he presented to her on a rag. Her mind swirled, and soon the dizziness overcame her, sending her spiralling into a deep slumber.

She dreamed of devils and demons, of searing flames and eternal damnation. It was five days before she woke.

She recalled how she struggled to sit up in her bed, the curious sense that her body felt somehow different, awkward and ungainly. She felt the weight of something pressing on her left shoulder. In the darkened room, she imagined it to be a bandage strapped tightly across her chest.

Whatever her father had done for her had worked. She could sense her body was already stronger, flushed with vibrancy and life. He had fulfilled his promises and saved her from the demons that were slowly eroding her heart.

Hesitantly, she swung her legs out over the side of the bed and climbed unsteadily to her feet. She fumbled for a candle and lit it from the dying embers of the fire that still glowed faintly in the grate. She carried the candle to the looking glass so that she might examine his work; see how the colour had returned to her cheeks.

At first the sight of the stranger that confronted her baffled her. Had she been confused and inadvertently gone to the window instead? Who was this demonic woman who glowered at her in confusion?

Then realisation had dawned on her and she screamed. The sound that erupted from her throat was like none she had heard before. What had he done?

The woman staring back at her from the looking glass was covered in the same elaborate symbols as the walls in the inventor’s study: circles and whorls, pentagrams and stars, runes and words. They covered her entirely from head to toe. Not an inch of her still-pale flesh remained untouched.

She tried rubbing at the strange marks, wiping them away, but they refused to be scrubbed clean. They were etched deep into her flesh, as much a part of her now as the tiny blemishes and imperfections that she’d noted as a child. Furthermore, nestled amongst the ink-black tattoos were traceries of precious metals: silver, platinum, and gold. They shimmered in the reflected candlelight, highlighting particular symbols or runes like accents on particular words.

Worst of all, the tightness she had felt across her shoulder was not, as she had thought, a tightly bound bandage, but the brass instrument she had seen on the workbench in the inventor’s study. It was a brace that fit over her shoulder like a sword guard. She could feel the mechanisms inside it slowly turning, hear the gurgling rush of fluid as her blood passed through the metal chambers inside. A tiny key jutted from a hole in its surface—a winding mechanism, she realised, with which to operate it. This was her new heart, the clockwork engine that would beat in place of her own.

On the front of the device, filling the space where her left breast had once been, was a glass panel like the porthole on a ship. Inside she could see the shrivelled remains of her own damaged organ, now black and necrotic and fused to her new, unnatural components.

She wanted to turn and run from her horrific image, to pretend that she was still dreaming, that the living hell she had glimpsed in the mirror was just another trial, another imaginary torment placed before her by the demons and the old woman. But she now knew the true nature of her damnation. She had been saved from the clutches of the devil by the ministrations of the inventor, but the devil had found a means to punish her regardless: The fallen one had worked through her father, imbuing him with dark intent and the occult powers with which to afflict her.

Something broke inside of her, then. A cold numbness seemed to spread outwards from the void in her chest until it utterly engulfed her. She had lost her heart, and from that day onwards, she would never feel anything again.

CHAPTER

15

“Are you sure this is where Sir Charles suggested we meet?” said Veronica, shielding her eyes from the dazzling afternoon sun.

“Do you doubt me?” asked Newbury, chuckling.

“No. But I do
know
you,” she said, playfully.

Newbury smiled impishly. “I protest! I am quite innocent, Miss Hobbes. I understand from Charles that Professor Angelchrist proposed the location of our little get-together. Although, I admit, I have been rather anxious to pay a visit since the exhibition opened last week.”

“Yes, I thought you might be,” said Veronica, grinning. “Well, come along, then. Let’s take a look.” She hooked her arm through his and led him across the lawn towards the entrance.

It was a pleasant afternoon, and the sun was streaming down upon the pleasure grounds that surrounded the immense, impressive edifice of the Crystal Palace. Veronica had never seen the famous structure before, and the sheer scale of it took her breath away. It looked like an enormous summerhouse or orangery: pane upon pane of plate glass mounted in a towering framework of cast iron. It gleamed in the sunlight like a beacon upon Sydenham Hill.

As they approached, she could see that the once-great building had grown a little tired; not all of the panes sparkled as they once might have. Green stains had begun to encroach on the curved glass panels over the atrium, and creeping moss peeked inquisitively from the gutters. Nevertheless, it was one of the more impressive structures she had seen, rivalling even the grandeur of Buckingham Palace. She found it hard to believe that the structure had originally resided across town at Hyde Park, and had been rebuilt here following the closure of the Great Exhibition, moved piece by piece like the fragments of a jigsaw puzzle.

Banners streamed above the entrance, billowing and rippling in the wind and proclaiming the myriad spectacles to be found within. She had read of the show in the newspapers, of course—Urquart’s Monstrous Menagerie and Mechanical Wonders was a travelling exhibition that had toured the great cities of Europe: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and now London. She had anticipated that Newbury, ever fascinated with progress and the modern arts, would wish to pay a visit while the exhibition was in town, but she had to admit she hadn’t anticipated it would be under circumstances like this.

The grounds around the palace were swarming with people. Hundreds, if not thousands of them were strolling in the sunshine, or disgorging from the station of the atmospheric railway that ferried them here from Central London, all wide-eyed and ready to be astounded by the wondrous sights within.

An airship berthing post had even been installed on the pleasure grounds, and was presently occupied by a fat, silver-skinned vessel that cast a broad shadow across the palace as it rocked and buffeted in the wind. Looking up at it was like seeing the underside of an enormous, glittering fish hovering right above their heads. Flights of steps buttressed the passenger gondola, and people descended them in droves. They were mostly the wealthy cognoscenti of the Empire, adorned in fine dresses and tailored suits from Savile Row.

The exhibition was open to anyone, from any walk of life—provided, of course, that they could muster the small entrance fee. For every well-to-do lady or gentleman she spotted, Veronica noted scores of working class families on outings with their children, there for the once in a lifetime opportunity to glance technological and zoological marvels and treasures from other lands.

Newbury led on into the vast atrium, where they were jostled by milling people. He produced two tickets from inside his jacket pocket and handed them to an attendant, who waved them straight through.

“Sir Charles?” asked Veronica, wondering how Newbury had managed to procure the tickets in advance.

He laughed and shook his head. “No. Scarbright picked these up for me earlier in the week. As I explained, I’d been anxious to pay a visit, and I had thought to invite you along. I simply hadn’t found the right occasion.”

Veronica smiled and tightened her grip on his arm. “Or the right excuse,” she said, laughing.

The first things that struck her upon entering the main hall were the clamour of sights and smells, and the almost deafening background chatter of a thousand or more people as they exclaimed in shock and delight at the wondrous exhibits within. The next was the gargantuan brass elephant that was nearly on top of them as soon as they emerged from the atrium. It was immense—at least the size of a real Indian elephant—but it was constructed from a series of interlocking brass plates and rivets. It had been built with intricate care, each of the plates engraved with delicate filigrees of silver and gold.

Its trunk was a snake of segmented copper pieces that curled and whipped through the air in perfect mimicry of its biological counterpart. Steam hissed and vented through ducts behind the machine’s enormous ears, which were vast vanes of hammered metal, almost paper thin, that flapped back and forth like fans, as if the elephant were attempting to cool itself. Veronica noted the trickling rivulets of condensation running across the metal plating as the steam cooled.

Atop the beast, in something reminiscent of a dickey box from a hansom cab, sat the driver. He was a short, balding fellow in a brown suit, with wire-rimmed spectacles and a green bow tie. He looked utterly out of place on the back of his immense, ungainly creation.

He appeared to be controlling the elephant via a series of wires and pulleys, not unlike a huge steam-powered puppet. It responded to each of his commands, raising one foot after another, ponderously stomping across the exhibition hall. A crowd of admirers clapped in glee as the creature raised its trunk in the air and bellowed with a loud trumpeting sound that would not have been out of place at London Zoo.

“Marvellous, isn’t it?” said Newbury, nudging her. He had a broad grin on his face. “Just look at this place!”

Veronica couldn’t help but laugh at his childlike glee. It was nice to see him smile, for once, to seem genuinely happy or inspired. There hadn’t been much of that recently, and she felt somewhat responsible. She knew he was helping her sister for reasons beyond pure altruism. He was doing it, even at the expense of his own health, because Veronica had asked him to.

They moved on, pushing their way through the crowd and leaving the elephant and its beaming driver to solicit further rapturous applause from the audience as it performed yet more tricks.

Nearby, a large arena was fenced off. Veronica could see little of what was taking place inside due to the gathered crowd of people. Newbury dragged her towards it. She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation, but truthfully, she was as intrigued as he was to see what all the fuss was about.

As they inched their way closer through the press of people, Veronica became aware of a familiar sound over the din of the crowd: the clashing of sword blades. Clearly then, this was some sort of demonstration of swordsmanship or the like. She glanced at Newbury, who was standing on his tiptoes to see over the heads of the people in front.

“Most impressive,” he said. “Can you see?”

Veronica shook her head.

“Hold on.” He led her on a circuitous route through the crowd until, a moment later, she found herself standing beside one of the corner posts of the makeshift arena. The ground inside was covered with sand, and—as she had imagined—two men were deep in the midst of an impressive display of sword fighting. They were bedecked in what looked to be mediaeval plate armour.

She turned to Newbury, a question in her eyes, but then stopped as one of the fighting men fell back to avoid a swipe of his opponent’s blade, turning the manoeuvre into an athletic back flip and landing once again upon his feet.

“They’re not human,” said Veronica, astonished.

“Indeed not,” replied Newbury. “They’re automatons.”

“Automatons!” echoed Veronica, with a shudder.

“Oriental, I believe,” mused Newbury. “If I’m not mistaken they’re soldiers from the army of the Chinese Emperor. It’s claimed he ordered thousands of them to be constructed in the workshops of his magus, and that he keeps them stored in the vaults beneath his palace in Beijing, oiled and ready for use. One day, it’s feared he may unleash them upon the world.”

Veronica could barely imagine the damage that could be wrought by an army of such things. Like the elephant, they were fashioned from interlocking plates of brass, designed in every way to resemble a human being dressed in plate armour. Now that she could see more closely, their faces looked keenly human, and each of their mechanical eyes swivelled on a twisting axis as they each took measure of their opponent.

“Where are we meeting Sir Charles?” she asked suddenly, as if she was really saying: “Can we leave this place?”

Understanding her hidden meaning, Newbury took her arm again and led her away from the scene of the fight. “He said he’d find us.”

“What, amongst all of these people?”

“He’ll find us.” Newbury shrugged. “He is, after all, a chief inspector.”

Veronica couldn’t help but smile. She was sure he was only searching for an excuse to continue wandering around the exhibits for a while. She didn’t want to spoil his mood. Nevertheless, she had to air her concerns. “I remain … unconvinced about all of this, you know,” she said, squeezing his arm a little tighter to let him know she was searching for reassurance, as opposed to simply questioning his judgement outright.

“The exhibition?” asked Newbury.

“No. Professor Angelchrist,” she replied. “Meeting him here. What if we’re seen?”

“We shall have to be exceedingly careful,” said Newbury, acknowledging her concerns. “We shall talk as we tour the exhibits, being careful not to be heard or seen together. I have no doubt that more of Her Majesty’s agents will be here at the exhibition, perhaps even unknown to us. We should remain cognisant of that.”

“Hmmm,” said Veronica. However impressive Newbury’s stealth skills might be, remaining unseen was not going to prove easy. “Are you sure we can trust him?”