Realms of Fire

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Realms of Fire Page 16

by Sharon K Gilbert


  “Is that a rat or one of Danny Stephens’s ghosts?”

  “Neither,” Wentworth answered warily. “I think it’s another lantern. Holly, is that you? How’d you get ahead of us? You really are a spy, aren’t you? I’ll wager you’re working with Flint to scare us, but it won’t work, mate!”

  The third light swayed back and forth, then multiplied into a pair. Unsure if the additional lamps were real or just a manifestation of his astigmatism, Patterson decided to conduct an experiment.

  “Lower your lantern, Worthy. Set it on the ground.”

  Lionel did so. “What’re you thinking?”

  “That it’s a reflection,” Patterson answered. “See there? Both lights have gone still now. Pick yours up again.”

  Wentworth obeyed, and sure enough, only one light moved.

  Both men sighed in relief. “Not a ghost,” Wentworth said happily. “But how can it be a reflection? Stone doesn’t reflect light.”

  “Polished stone does,” Patterson suggested. “If there’s another of those finished galleries down here, then it may lead to a second crypt. I’ll say, though, it could use a bit o’ my mum’s rose petal potpourri! Phew! This place makes a night soil cart smell like a perfumery!”

  “Hold your nose, then, and let’s see what it is,” Wentworth decided, holding the lantern high as he moved towards the reflection.

  That’s when everything went wrong.

  Sideways.

  Or rather downways.

  Without warning, the floor of the cavern collapsed beneath their feet, sending both men tumbling down the slanting shaft like a pair of captive passengers in a runaway coal car. Down, down, down they fell, screaming the entire way. Free-falling through the cold blackness, the two men continued to scream until their mad flight deposited them into an even madder place.

  The adventurers landed with a painful thud on a rock-hard surface, smooth as glass, surrounded by a thick blanket of silence. Even the sonorous bells had at long last stopped. Once he recovered his senses, Wentworth ran a quick inventory of systems: bones, blood, breath. All good.

  “Pitt, you all right?” he asked the other.

  “Yeah, sure,” his friend gasped, rubbing his backside. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Hell’s an appropriate way to put it,” a gravelly voice answered as a figure stepped out of the shadows.

  The pair of unwilling travellers gaped in disbelief. It was altogether impossible! Before them, stood Albus Lucius Flint; pale-faced, long-armed, and attired in his customary black frock coat and gloves, looking like a grim mourner at a mid-century funeral.

  “Congratulations,” Flint told the startled men. “You are the first to find your way here. How very lucky you are.”

  “You... I mean, we, uh...” Wentworth stuttered.

  “I’m sure your tiny brains are presently burning up a great deal of energy in an effort to make sense of your situation, gentlemen, but you’ll soon adapt.”

  “Are we dead?” asked Patterson hesitantly.

  Flint’s waxwork face elongated into a grotesque approximation of a grin. “Not yet. Just how long that remains true depends on how you proceed from here. Do you recall the contract you signed?”

  The students stared at one another, for neither had bothered to read the dense document, assuming the language contained within stipulated the usual sort of paragraphs: An agreement to serve the project for a fixed period of time in return for a stipend, lodging, and food. Probably a section explaining what would happen should either party fail to comply. Straightforwardly complex, as with all such legal mumbo-jumbo.

  “Ah, I see. You didn’t read it. Still, qui tacet consentire veditur. He who remains silent consents,” the lawyer laughed. “And your signatures are on the contract. In blood, I might add. All legal requirements are satisfied, meaning you now belong to the Blackstone Society. Heart, mind, and soul.”

  “Our souls?” echoed Patterson in despair.

  “Of course. The bargain was struck and sealed in the usual manner. You joined willingly. Now which of you is ready to continue to the next phase?”

  Wentworth rubbed his eyes, wondering if he’d fallen asleep in the chamber above, or perhaps still dreamt in their room at The Abbot’s Ghost.

  “What do you mean, continue? To where?”

  “To sublime knowledge, my friend! But I warn you: Great reward comes with great cost. If you wish to earn the bonus, then you must make certain sacrifices. It’s all in the contract. You saw the charred cavern floor above, Mr. Wentworth. Do you think the previous occupants of the abbey were merely warming their hands before that fire?”

  Neither man answered, and Flint continued as though speaking to children. “Humans are so very predictable. You deem yourselves wise, despite knowing nothing about how the world really works. You quoted from Macbeth earlier. I must admit, it’s one of my personal favourites. Such bleakness! Such despair! Such treachery! Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death,” he quoted. “Ah, that Will had genuine style, I’ll grant you that. If only he’d taken my advice, he’d have earned a far greater reward.”

  “Who are you?” Wentworth dared ask.

  “I am your worst nightmare come true,” Flint replied, twirling a black cane, capped by a silver wolf’s head. “I’ve used many faces throughout my long life, inhabited many suits of clay. But names must be precise and descriptive; not mere appendages or decorations. Names are only useful if they contain power. A few of my appellations I’ve liked better than others, but all have their uses in the human realm. You humans so love to name things, don’t you? Adam spun out thousands of them.” He laughed, the sound like a million, low-pitched caws. “For the moment, you may call me Flint, though, my other names will eventually seed themselves into your crippled psyches, I daresay. Now, which of you would like to earn the reward?”

  “Look, Mr. Flint, if you’d just show us the way out, we’d be happy to go back to Cambridge,” Patterson bargained. “I’m very sorry I neglected to read the contract, but had I done so I wouldn’t have agreed to this sort of nonsense.”

  “Nonsense? Do you think my plans nonsensical, Mr. Patterson? Perhaps, you treasure human logic more than immortality.”

  A series of sharp tapping sounds slowly reached the students’ ears, as though a twig scraped against broken glass.

  “What’s that noise?” Wentworth dared to ask.

  “That, Mr. Wentworth, is the sound of my friends.”

  “Friends? The others, you mean? Colonel Collinwood and the Oxford group?” suggested Patterson, inwardly praying the answer would be yes. “Is there some passage from that old castle to here?”

  Flint laughed; a harsh, cackling sort of snort. “Collinwood? Hardly! The man’s a bumbling fool! My friends are much more interesting than that smug colonel and his Oxford cronies. They’re like three little pigs led by a limping cockerel. I find Cambridge men much more tasty. As do my friends.”

  The persistent tapping rose to a raucous discord and echoed throughout the blackness, causing their ears to ring with pain. The men screamed for mercy.

  “Why are you doing this?” cried Patterson in despair.

  “Because I can,” Flint crowed, his black eyes turning into yellow orbs. “Simply because I can.”

  The wall behind the lawyer began to heave and bulge outward, its glittering obsidian surface cracking into a vast web of fine lines that spread outward in a radial pattern. Like a huge arachnid controlling every filament of a silken trap, Flint snapped his long fingers, and the web flew apart, shattering into a thousand-thousand deadly shards. Then, with the speed of a blink, the slivers of volcanic glass metamorphosed into a tornado of flying ravens, until the air was thick with black-winged terror; a riotous, swirlin
g cloud of anger, aimed straight at the terrified students’ faces.

  As the carrion crows descended upon his eyes, Lionel Archibald Wentworth discovered that he could be frightened; that there was something in the world beyond the reach of human reason; beyond the dominion of cold science; beyond the ken of mortal man.

  The bullseye lanterns winked out, leaving nothing but darkness and beaks and birds—and both men began to scream like a pair of terrified children.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Before the funeral cortege left Fitzmaurice Place, Ed Jarvis shared a few whispered words with Baron William Wychwright, explaining why he’d been forced to secure his father’s coffin lid without allowing the family a final look. To prove his statement, the distraught driver offered a paper signed by Commissioner Charles Sinclair, explaining that he’d ordered the coffin sealed for legal reasons.

  Oddly enough, Wychwright showed no surprise, and by half past ten, the procession of forty-nine coaches, all draped in black and many bearing colourful crests of England’s wealthiest and most influential families, commenced a slow drive to St. Marylebone Church. Calliope and Cassandra Wychwright seemed quite taken with Jarvis’s glass-sided hearse, asking the earl if their grandfather lay inside.

  “Do you think Grandpapa is comfortable in that wooden box? Does he know where he is? Is he all right?” the younger girl asked Aubrey as they journeyed along the route.

  “I think your grandfather has passed beyond such physical cares, Cassandra. That’s the nature of these things.”

  “The nature of death, you mean?” the elder asked. “Our father explained it all, you know. Grandpapa is with God now.”

  Stuart had no idea whether the baron had died in Christ, but he had no wish to enter into a philosophical conversation regarding salvation with grieving children. He measured his response carefully.

  “We all pass into another type of existence after death. An eternal state. Do you know what eternity means, Cassandra?”

  “Cassie,” the girl’s sister corrected, turning the pages of the picture book. “She likes to be called Cassie. And I’m just Callie. Calliope is simply unthinkable.”

  “I see,” Stuart answered, laughing. “I’ve never had a nickname, actually, though I’d like one. Paul is a difficult name to shorten.”

  “Have you no other names? Mine’s Calliope Jane Marie. Surely, you have others, too.”

  “It’s James Paul Robert Ian, actually,” he told her. “My father was Robert, and so I was always called Paul.”

  “Then, you might be called Jamie or Bobby, I suppose,” suggested Cassandra. “Though, you don’t really look like a Bobby.”

  “No one calls you anything else?” asked Callie.

  “Some have called me all manner of names,” laughed the earl, “but rarely one of endearment. My Cousin Elizabeth sometimes calls me Sir Paul.”

  “Why? I thought you were an earl,” the elder girl remarked.

  “I am, but when Beth was your age, she liked to pretend to be a damsel in distress, and I was Sir Paul, her knight errant. The name stuck, I suppose. She still calls me her Scottish knight.”

  The reference to the intimate friendship twixt the earl and duchess caused Cordelia to turn away and stare at the passing scenery.

  “My father likes to be called Ned, but our mother detests that name,” Callie continued, unaware of her aunt’s emotions. “She’s quite cross these days. I don’t think Mama likes Father any more. She prefers that other man. The one with the fancy horses. Will you be going to the party, Lord Aubrey?”

  Cordelia blinked, roused from her melancholic reverie, for she found the term shocking. “There’s to be no party, Callie. That implies a celebration, which this most certainly is not! It’s a wake, meant to allow friends to pay their respects to your grandfather by honouring his memory. Our Aunt and Uncle Cartringham are hosting it, but it is not a party. This is hardly a time for frivolity.”

  Paul squeezed Delia’s lace-gloved hand, noticing it trembled. “Take heart,” he whispered sweetly. “This will all be over soon. Trust me.”

  The sisters grew quiet and huddled close together as they enjoyed the picture book, marvelling at each new animal presented in the alphabetic listing. They’d just come upon a baboon, and Cassie laughed aloud at the comical appearance and curious red spot surrounding its tail. She was just about make a comment, when the carriage came to a dead stop.

  “Are we there already?” the child asked the earl.

  “Not yet,” Aubrey replied, warily. “Stay here, ladies. I’ll see what’s happened. It may be one of our horses has lost a shoe.”

  Cordelia glanced out the window, noticing a hansom cab parked to the southwest side of Portland Place and a man in a policeman’s uniform sitting inside. “Do be careful, Paul,” she told him, suddenly worried.

  “I am always careful, dear lady,” he assured her with a bright smile. “I shan’t be long.”

  Outside, the earl met a shorter man in a Homburg hat and tweed overcoat. The two spoke for several minutes, and then the earl called to his driver, speaking to him privately. Two minutes after that, the earl returned to the carriage.

  Sitting once more in the leather seat beside Cordelia, he explained. “Nothing to be concerned about, ladies.”

  “I saw a policeman in that cab. Was the man in the hat a detective? Has this anything to do with my father?” asked Cordelia.

  “No,” Paul assured her. “Something personal actually. I had a minor break-in at my home last evening, and that was my friend Tom Galton. He recognised the carriage and wanted to let me know he’s looking into it.”

  “A break-in? That’s terrible. Was anyone hurt?” she asked him.

  “No, but a few items were damaged. I told Galton I’d meet with him about it tomorrow.”

  “Is he a policeman?” asked Calliope.

  Paul found the question amusing. “Galton would laugh if you called him a policeman to his face, but he’s a sort of private investigator. Much better than a policeman in many ways. Now, what is it you girls found so amusing?”

  Calliope turned the book round to show him the baboon. “Surely, this is made up,” she insisted. “There cannot be a monkey with so comical a tail as this!”

  Paul’s mouth widened into a dimpled grin. “Ah, the Simea hamadryas, as Linnaeus would say. My sister Adele suggested the very same thing about the baboon, but I can assure you that it’s a real animal.”

  “How can you know that?” Cordelia asked him.

  “I know because I’ve seen this creature with my very own eyes,” he answered. “Three years ago, whilst on assignment to the Sultan of Samaroon.”

  “Samaroon? I’ve never heard of such a place. Where is it?” asked Cordelia.

  “It’s a tribal division in a wider clan called the Dir. They live in the northern part of the Horn of Africa, near the Red Sea. The British government have been negotiating treaties with the local tribesmen there, and I was sent as part of the diplomatic team a few years ago.”

  The girls’ eyes widened. “Do you mean you were really, truly there? In Africa?” Callie whispered, as though the idea both thrilled and terrified her. “And you saw one of these creatures? Did it bite you? It has very big teeth.”

  “It tried to bite me,” he answered, “but I escaped before it could. Shall I tell you the story?”

  They nodded, and soon all three Wychwright ladies forgot the sad reason for the processional for a few moments as they listened, spellbound, to the earl’s exotic tale of daring and intrigue.

  Chapter Seventeen

  10:58 am - London Hospital

  As the Wychwright funeral procession wound its way towards St. Marylebone, Death was stalking St. Katherine’s Dock in Whitechapel. Frederick Treves, Chief Surgeon for the London Hospital had never seen so much charred flesh; so many swollen, dead eyes, or so many broken bones and s
hattered lives in one day. Three hours. Three long, backbreaking, gut-wrenching, thoroughly exhausting hours of constant activity, life-and-death decisions, and enough despair to fill the Thames river basin all the way to the estuary.

  Fred Treves stared wearily at the hospital’s densely packed waiting area. Since shortly after eight that morning, he and six staff physicians had joined with every available medical student, nurse, attendant, and porter to treat traumatic injuries, burns, and breaks; and stem endless fountains of blood, caused by a devastating fire that raged through St. Katherine’s Docks. At last count, the surgeon had seen forty-one patients, made a hundred triage decisions, administered enough morphine to knock out every horse in Spitalfields, and even delivered a healthy baby boy—God be praised!

  Witnesses were divided on how the inferno began, but most described a tall man in bright clothing, who stood on the decks of a Russian steamer attempting to dock illegally at St. Katherine’s. Called the Podzhigatel, only half of those aboard spoke any English; most knew only Russian, which caused further problems for the triage team, until two Jewish immigrants from Kiev, Dr. Levi Portnoy and Dr. Joshua Kholodenko, arrived to join the medical response and offered to translate.

  Detective Inspector Arthur France, currently on loan to Leman Street for the Wychwright and Hemsfield investigations, led a team of valiant police sergeants and constables against the onslaught. The youngest and least experienced policemen aided the beleaguered fire brigades by pumping water, hauling buckets, unwinding rope, or tending to fire horses. The oldest men maintained order and held back worried families of affected dockworkers, but also reporters and ghoulish voyeurs. The most experienced and physically fit waded again and again into the cold river water to offload injured passengers and sailors from the burning ships and overburdened lifeboats.

  Treves had just left the operating theatre, having completed his sixteenth surgery, when he saw Inspector France pass through the hospital’s main entry. The lean detective had worked without a single break and looked as though he might collapse. Fred rushed to see if the lad were injured.

 

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