The Aylesford Skull (32 page)

George looked at him in silence, his head canted to the side so that he seemed to be inspecting him through the corner of his eye. The appraisal went on long enough so that Finn began to wonder whether the balaclava had done its work after all. He looked past George, into the trees, ready to bolt. Apparently making up his mind, George said, “Do you have a name, boy?”

“Newman, sir.”

“Just Newman? No Christian name?”

“No, sir. I’ve always been Newman, your honor. Newman ain’t Christian?”

“Some Newmans are and some aren’t,” George said. “When were you last in London?”

“Some time back,” Finn said. “Six months, maybe.”

“Not more recent?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re right certain of it?”

“Yes, sir.”

George looked at him for a time again, saying nothing. A bird with a particularly mournful note called from the nearby wood, but otherwise the night was silent.
He knows
, Finn thought, looking out toward the dark trees, but in that moment George surprised him by nodding.

“Stable’s around behind, Newman, near the Doctor’s cottage, him whose carriage you rode in on uninvited. You stay out of the Doctor’s way. He doesn’t hold with senseless talk, nor with boys, neither. Thinks they’re worthless, and he’s probably right in that regard. I’m saying this for your own good.
Stay clear of the Doctor
. When you’ve curried the horses and put them up, find me in the kitchen. If you don’t see me, ask for George. We’ll see what you’re made of and whether lying is on your list of talents. Be off with you now.”

“Yes, sir,” Finn said, and immediately climbed up onto the seat of the landau and picked up the reins, clicking the horses into a walk and following in Narbondo’s wake around the side of the inn, looking sharp, since he had no idea whether Narbondo would recognize him from their conversation on the road in Aylesford two nights back. He was still half certain that George had seen through him – remembered the coat, maybe, from Angel Alley, although he would have seen it only briefly. But if he had recognized Finn, then what was his game?

There was no sign of Narbondo, only the cottage, a mean, one-room shanty built of drift lumber hauled out of the bay. The window was propped open and the shutters pushed aside – easy enough to get in, although Finn could think of no good reason to do so, since Eddie wasn’t there. A brook ran along behind the cottage, with a mill beside it farther down, the brook turning the wheel.

The stable stood nearby. Finn unhitched, fled, watered, and curried the horses, and then mucked out their stalls and pitched in clean straw before putting them away. He blew out the lanterns, walked out into the yard, discovering that it was morning outside, and he looked around one more time at the prospects for escape before walking in through the open back door of the inn. George was in the kitchen, as he had promised. It was a wide room, surprisingly clean and squared away. Finn took in the brick-and-iron ovens, the carving and breadboards, the hams and herbs and iron pots and pans hung on the walls and ceiling. A long window of bullseye glass let in the early morning light.

“All ship-shape in the stable, sir,” Finn said, picking up a long knife and feeling the blade. “I’ll just put an edge on this, if you’d like, and slice up that side of bacon, if it’s bacon that’s to be served out.”

“You’ll put the goddamned knife down,” said a man who was just then coming into the kitchen, carrying an enormous sack of flour over his shoulder as if it were nothing and bending low to clear the top of the lintel above the door.

“Yes, sir,” Finn said, and he put the knife down as he was told.

The man was big, immensely tall and heavy, dangerous looking. His black hair was long and his eyes sharp and smoldering. His left arm was put up in a sling that was dark brown with dried blood.

“This is Mr. McFee,” George said. “He’s particular in his ways, is Mr. McFee. I’ve told him you were to be given a trial in the kitchen, Newman. You’ll do just as he tells you, if you’ve got any sense.”

“If he had any sense he’d take himself off,” McFee said, not looking at Finn. He set the flour down on the floor with his one good arm.

“I’ll stay, sir, with your leave,” Finn told him.

“Then put an edge on that knife if you can, boy,” McFee told him. “We’ll test the blade on your hand. If you ruin it, and I have to grind it again, it’ll cost you an ear. We’ll cook it with the chowder as a lark, like the French do with hens’ ears. McFee’s ear chowder, we’ll call it.”

Finn stared at him, wondering whether the man was practicing on him, but there was no humor in his face at all, something more like a simmering rage. Finn took up the knife, felt the edge again, and began to hone it carefully against the steel, wishing that he hadn’t told George the nonsense about making cheeses. If McFee put him to work in that regard, Finn had best run, for he had no more notion of making cheese than of building chimneys. He handed over the knife, which McFee took from him, at the same time grasping Finn’s wrist with the hand that was in the bloody sling.

“Open your fist, boy,” he said. “When I say I’ll do something, you’d best remember that I’ll do it.”

Finn did as he was told. It seemed to be the safest course, since running was out of the question. He kept his face utterly still as McFee ran the sharp blade lightly across his palm. A line of blood welled up. Reaching into a crockery jar that stood on the breadboard, McFee brought out a handful of black dust, which he held in front of Finn.

“This here’s coal dust and human bone,” McFee said, “ground up precious fine, which the Doctor takes with his vittles like another man takes salt. You’ll mind yourself around the Doctor, boy, if you’ve got a head on you. Hear me now – you’ll jump to it when I tell you to, or I’ll slit your throat and feed you to the hogs.” He sprinkled the coal dust liberally on Finn’s sliced hand, rubbing it into the line of blood with his thumb. “That’ll put paid to the bleeding, boy, and give you a gaudy mark into the bargain, permanent like. You’ve come into John McFee’s kitchen. You’re mine now. My mark’s upon you.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

ALOFT OVER LONDON

S
t. Ives had got perhaps four hours of real sleep, and in the middle of it had lurched awake from a nightmare that had filled him with a profound, breathless dread – a vision of Eddie and Alice disappearing into a black cleft in a stone wall, which had closed tightly behind them. Even so, he had fallen asleep again, and this morning his headache had quite disappeared, and he found that his mind was clear and sharp. He had no regard for the idea that dreams were prophetic.
No doubt they sometimes illustrated one’s deepest fears,
he told himself,
but almost certainly in a manner that was merely symbolic.

Almost certainly,
he told himself again, and in any event, last night’s blue devils had been consigned to Hell, where they could abide until he had some use for them, which wouldn’t be soon. He had been shown the way by Finn Conrad, a boy alone in London and with precious few resources aside from his wits and his cleverness. The lesson might have been humbling rather than inspiring to any reasonably competent man. To St. Ives it was a tonic of the first water, to coin a somewhat ridiculous phrase, and so was the eastern horizon, which, seen now from their great height in the airship, glowed a magnificent orange, the sun coming up dripping out of the Dover Strait, and London laid out below them.

The gondola was a skeletal-looking, boat-built structure, very much like an enclosed launch, its keel tapering into a bowsprit in front. The gondola’s wooden frame was stick-like, and scarcely seemed sturdy enough to bear the weight of the craft and its cargo. The plank floorboards creaked, and the breeze blew in through open ports – a potential irritation, perhaps, if St. Ives hadn’t been wearing goggles. There were glass windows, in fact, hinged open at the moment, which might be closed in the case of rain, but it was Keeble’s idea that the effect of the wind pushing against the gondola would be lessened if they remained open.

By now St. Ives felt safe enough, and was used to the movement of the spokes of the ship’s wheel, which felt like a living thing beneath his hands. As soon as they had ascended above the rooftops his attention had been drawn to the miniature city laid out below them. He saw the dome of St. Paul’s now, off the port bow, Queen Victoria Street and Blackfriars Bridge identifiable alongside, Hyde Park a leafy green acreage in the distance, everything small and neat. He took in the view of the shipping on the Thames, the first boats already plying back and forth to the Custom House or mooring at the Billingsgate docks. Smithfield Market lay dead ahead, with Billson’s Half Toad Inn somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t quite discern the inn among the many tiny buildings and streets, Lambert Court looking like any of a thousand other such courts from the air.

He had been aloft in balloons a number of times, but motive power made this something pleasingly different – a true, dirigible airship, not at the mercy of the winds, at least for the most part. He was a pilot rather than a passenger in that sense. Just as this thought came into his mind, however, a sudden gust shifted them bodily in the direction of the river, and for a moment he had precious little control of the craft as the nose quickly fell off course.

“She pays off to leeward prodigiously even in this moderate breeze,” St. Ives said to Hasbro, who was peering intently into the periscope lens.

“Dizzyingly, I might add,” Hasbro said, “what with the smaller view through the lens. One keeps losing perspective. I’m endeavoring to keep the St. Paul’s in sight...” He looked out through the gondola window, then back into the lens, adjusting the periscope controls. “There, I’ve found it again.”

First-rate practice
, St. Ives thought. He moved the king-spoke of the ship’s wheel to starboard, the airship turning slowly, heading back into the wind at an oblique angle and making tolerable headway against it. He intended to come completely around in a circle to starboard if he could, to see what the wind would do in all quarters. The controls were simple enough, the propeller providing surprising motive power, towing them rather than pushing. At twelve nautical miles an hour it was as fast as a sailing ship or a steam launch, although it didn’t seem so, with the ground so far below and no visible wake or bow wave to judge by. He wondered what the effect of a thirty-knot headwind would be, or a quick downdraft, but he would have to wait until Aeolus provided him with useful examples of such things. God willing it wouldn’t mean disaster.

Keeble’s clever electric engine hummed as they made their circuit, St. Ives keeping an eye on the compass needle, which traced the course. An imagined Aylesford swept past somewhere in the hazy distance, Alice and Cleo comfortably asleep, he hoped, and then, much farther away, the Channel and Beachy Head, with the coast of France beyond. They circled around farther, looking away west now, up the Thames, Wales lurking out there somewhere, and then very shortly what must be the Great North Road appeared below. Around they came into the east again, and a flock of birds flew past, out of the sun, which had crept higher into the sky, well clear of the sea, although the city was still largely in shadow. The blue lenses of St. Ives’s goggles reduced the glare, but gave the world a strangely aquatic tinge, as if they sailed beneath a tropical ocean rather than through the sky. They were over Smithfield once again, back on course, although some distance west of where they had started their turn, no great time having elapsed in the experimental circuit.

“London is admirably quiet at this altitude,” Hasbro said, not looking up from the periscope lens.

“Are people taking notice of us?” St. Ives asked, the idea appealing to him.

“Indeed. They come out into the street and point skyward. Some seem to be determined to follow, although our circuitous route has confounded their efforts.”

“We’ll drop down a few hundred feet,” St. Ives said, “in order to give them a better view. See if you can pick out the Half Toad. I’d like to get several more absolute bearings before slanting away toward Greenwich.”

When released by a foot pedal, an iron tiller with a ball atop tilted the propeller up and down, shifting the craft vertically. St. Ives pushed the tiller forward now, the ship descending toward the rooftops and leveling off when they were quite low.