by Mark Hodder
When Brunel first created the system he encountered an unexpected problem: rats ate the oxhide. He turned to his Eugenicist colleague, Francis Galton, for a solution, and the scientist had provided it in the form of specially bred oxen whose skin was both repellent and poisonous to the rodents.
The pneumatic rail system now ran the length and breadth of Great Britain and was being extended throughout the Empire, particularly in India and South Africa.
A similar method of propulsion was planned for the new London Under ground railway system, though this project had been delayed since Brunel’s death two years ago.
Burton arrived home at 14 Montagu Place at half past six, by which time a mist was drifting through the city streets. As he opened the wrought-iron gate and stepped to the front door, he heard a newsboy in the distance calling: “Speke shoots himself. Nile debate in uproar! Read all about it!”
He sighed and waited for the young urchin to draw closer. He recognised the soft Irish accent; it was Oscar, a refugee from the never-ending famine, whose regular round this was. The boy possessed an extraordinary facility with words, which Burton thoroughly appreciated.
The youngster approached, saw him, and grinned. He was a short and rather plump lad, about eight years old, with sleepy-looking eyes and a cheeky grin marred only by crooked, yellowing teeth. He wore his hair too long and was never without a battered top hat and a flower in his buttonhole.
“Hallo, Captain! I see you’re after making the headlines again!”
“It’s no laughing matter, Quips,” replied Burton, using the nickname he’d given the newspaper boy some weeks previously. “Come into the hallway for a moment; I want to talk with you. I suppose the journalists are all blaming me?”
Oscar joined the explorer at the door and waited while he fished for his keys.
“Well now, Captain, there’s much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
“Ignorance is the word,” agreed Burton. He opened the door and ushered the youngster in. “If the reaction of the crowd in Bath is anything to go by, I rather suspect that the charitable are saying Speke shot himself, the uncharitable that I shot him.”
Oscar laid his bundle of newspapers on the doormat.
“You’re not wrong, sir; but what do you say?”
“That no one currently knows what happened except those who were there. That maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all had I tried a little harder to bridge the divide that opened between us; been, perhaps, a little more sensitive to Speke’s personal demons.”
“Ah, demons, is it?” exclaimed the boy, in his high, reedy voice. “And what of your own? Are they not encouraging you to luxuriate in selfreproach?”
“Luxuriate!”
“To be sure. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. What a luxury that is!”
Burton grunted. He put his cane in an elephant-foot umbrella stand, placed his topper on the hat stand, and slipped out of his overcoat.
“You are a horribly intelligent little ragamuffin, Quips.”
Oscar giggled. “It’s true. I’m so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying!”
Burton lifted a small bell from the hall table and rang for his housekeeper.
“But is it not the truth, Captain Burton,” continued the boy, “that you only ever asked Speke to produce scientific evidence to back up his claims?”
“Absolutely. I attacked his methods but never him, though he didn’t extend to me the same courtesy.”
They were interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Iris Angell, who, though Burton’s landlady, was also his housekeeper. She was a wide-hipped, white-haired old dame with a kindly face, square chin, and gloriously blue and generous eyes.
“I hope you wiped your feet, Master Oscar!”
“Clean shoes are the measure of a gentleman, Mrs. Angell,” responded the boy.
“Well said. There’s a freshly baked bacon and egg pie in my kitchen. Would you care for a slice?”
“Very much so!”
The old lady looked at Burton, who nodded. She went back down the stairs to her domain in the basement.
“So it’s information you’ll be wanting, Captain?” asked Oscar.
“I need to know where Lieutenant Speke has been taken. I know he was brought to London from Bath—but to which hospital? Can you find out?”
“Of course! I’ll spread the word among the lads. I should have an answer for you within the hour.”
“Very good. Miss Arundell is also making enquiries, though I fear her approach will have caused nothing but trouble.”
“How so, Captain?”
“She’s visiting the Speke family to offer her condolences.”
Oscar winced. “By heavens! There is nothing more destructive than a woman on a charitable mission. I hope for your sake that Mr. Stanley doesn’t get wind of it.”
Burton sighed. “Bismillah! I’d forgotten about him!”
Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist, was recently arrived in London from America. His background was somewhat mysterious; traces of a Welsh accent suggested he wasn’t the authentic “Yankee” he claimed to be, and there were rumours that his name was false. Whatever the true facts about him, though, he was making a big splash as a newspaper reporter, having taken a particular interest in the various expeditions organised by the Royal Geographical Society. Befriending Doctor Livingstone, Stanley had sided with him against Burton in the Nile debate and had written some less than flattering articles in the Empire, including one that accused Burton of having murdered a boy who caught him urinating in the European fashion during his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. As Burton had been quick to point out, his disguise, skill with the language, and painstaking observation of customs were convincing enough to fool his fellow pilgrims into believing him an Arab over a period of many months; it was therefore quite unthinkable that he’d have been caught making so basic a mistake as to urinate standing up. Besides which, killing the boy would certainly have led to his exposure as an impostor and a summary execution.
Stanley had also attacked Isabel in the press, vilifying her for her lack of subtlety and overly headstrong character. Burton couldn’t help but think that she was becoming a liability at this crucial point in his career, a situation which Stanley had spotted some time ago and was revelling in.
“Yum!” exclaimed Oscar.
Mrs. Angell had reappeared with a generous slice of pie. She handed it to the youngster.
“It’s nothing special, but I hope it fills that bottomless hole you call a stomach!” she said.
“I have the simplest tastes, Mrs. Angell,” declared the newsboy. “I am always satisfied with the best!”
Burton ruffled the lad’s hair. “Off you go then, Quips. There’ll be a second slice waiting for you when you return.”
Oscar heaved a sigh of contentment, picked up his papers, and flitted out through the door, which Burton held open for him.
As he closed the portal, the explorer looked at his landlady.
“You’ve heard the news?”
“Yes, sir. May God preserve him. It must have been a terrible shock for you.”
“He hated me.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I think he was misguided.”
“I don’t disagree. Have reporters been banging on the door?”
“No, sir, they probably think you’re still in Bath.”
“Good. If they call, empty a bucket of slops over them. No visitors, please, Mother Angell. I don’t want to see anyone until young Oscar returns.”
“Very well. Can I bring you something to eat?”
Burton began to climb the stairs. “Yes, please. And a pot of coffee.”
“Yes, sir.”
The old lady watched him as he reached the landing, turned right, and disappeared into his study. She pursed her lips. She knew Burton wel
l enough to recognise the developing mood.
“Coffee, my eye!” she muttered as she descended to the kitchen. “He’ll be through a bottle of brandy before the evening is old!”
Burton had, indeed, poured himself a large measure of brandy, and was now slumped in his old saddlebag armchair by the fireplace, his feet resting on the fender. He held the glass in one hand and a letter in the other. It was from 10 Downing Street and read:
Please contact the prime minister’s office immediately upon your return to London.
He sipped the brandy and savoured the fire that sank into his belly. He was tired but not sleepy, and felt the heavy weight of depression dragging at him.
Laying his head back, and with eyes half closed, he focused his mind on his sense of hearing. It was a Sufi trick he’d learned en route to Mecca. Sight was the primary sense; when another was given precedence and the mind was allowed to wander, ideas, insights, and hitherto unseen connections often bubbled up from its otherwise inaccessible depths.
He heard a bookshelf creak slightly as its wood adjusted to the changing temperature of early evening; it was the only sound from within the study, aside from his own breathing and the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. From beyond the two large sash windows, though, came the muffled cacophony of England’s capital: voices passing on the pavement below, the clatter and chugging engines of velocipedes, the cry of a street hawker, the choppy paradiddle of a rotorchair passing overhead, a barking dog, a crying child, the rumble and hiss of steam-horses, the clip-clop of real horses, the coarse laughter of prostitutes.
He heard footsteps on the stairs.
A question came to him: What am I to do now?
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Come.”
Mrs. Angell entered bearing a tray upon which lay a plate of sliced meats, cheese, and a chunk of bread. There was also a cup and saucer, a bowl of sugar, and a pot of coffee. She crossed the room and laid it on the occasional table beside Burton’s chair.
“It’s getting unseasonably cold, sir—shall I light the fire?”
“It’s all right, I’ll do it. Would you take a letter for me?”
“Certainly.”
The housekeeper, who often performed slight secretarial tasks for him, sat at one of the three desks, slid a sheet of blank paper onto the leather writing pad, and picked up a pen. She dipped the nib into the inkwell and wrote, at Burton’s dictation:
I am at at home in London. Awaiting further instructions. Burton.
“Send it by runner to 10 Downing Street, please.”
The old lady looked up in surprise. “To where?”
“10 Downing Street. At once, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
She departed with the note. A few moments later, he heard her at the front door blowing three blasts on a whistle. Within half a minute, a dog—almost certainly a greyhound—would arrive on the doorstep and, after she’d fed the animal, the housekeeper would place the letter between its teeth and announce the destination. There’d be an acknowledging wag of the tail, and the runner would race away en route for Downing Street.
They were part of a fairly new communications system, these remarkable dogs, the first practical application of eugenics adopted by the British public. Each hound came into the world knowing every address within a fifty-mile radius of its birthplace and with the ability to carry mail between those locations, barking and scratching at a recipient’s door until the letter was collected. After each task was completed, the runner would wander the streets until it heard another three-whistle summons.
Messenger parakeets formed the other half of the system. These phenomenal mimics carried spoken communications. A person only had to visit a post office and give one of the birds a message, the name of the recipient, and the address, and the parakeet would fly straight to the appropriate set of ears.
There was one problem, an issue that had troubled the Eugenicist scientists from the start: namely, that whatever modification they made to a species, it always seemed to bring with it an unexpected side effect.
In the case of the parakeets, it was that they swore at, mocked, and offended everyone they encountered. The person on the receiving end of the service would inevitably be given a message liberally peppered with insults not put there by the sender. Nothing, it seemed, could be done to correct this fault. Originally, it had been hoped that every household would have its own parakeet but, as it turned out, no one could bear the constant abuse in their own home. So the Post Office had stepped in and now each branch kept an aviary full of the birds.
In the runners’ case, the drawback was nothing more serious than a phenomenal appetite. Though they were whiplash thin, the dogs required a square meal at every address they visited, so despite being a free system, those who used it often found themselves investing a considerable amount of money in dog food.
Burton heard the front door close. His letter was on its way.
He took a swig of brandy and reached for a cheroot; he had a taste for cheap, strong tobacco.
Explore Dahomey? he thought, still dwelling on what he should do now that the Nile question was out of his hands; for though a new expedition was required to settle the matter once and for all, he knew that Murchison would not commission him to lead it. The Royal Geographical Society was already fractured by the verbal duel he and Speke had fought, and the president would doubtlessly offer the expedition to a neutral geographer.
So, Dahomey? Burton had been wanting to mount an expedition into that dark and dangerous region of West Africa for some time but now it was going to be difficult to raise the money.
A private sponsor, perhaps? Maybe a publishing company?
Ah, yes, then there were the books. For a long while he’d wanted to write a definitive translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night; perhaps now would be a good time to begin that ambitious project. At very least he should finish Vikram and the Vampire, the collected tales of Hindu devilry that were currently stacked on one of his desks, with annotations half completed.
Write books, keep a low profile, wait for his enemies to become bored.
Marry Isabel?
He looked at his empty glass, blew cigar smoke into it, held the cheroot between his teeth, and reached for the decanter and poured more brandy.
For more than a year, he’d felt destined to marry Isabel Arundell; now, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. He loved her, that was certain, but he also resented her. He loved her strength and practicality but resented her overbearing personality and tendency to do things on his behalf without consulting him first; loved the fact that she tolerated his interest in all things exotic and erotic but hated her blinkered Catholicism. Charles Darwin had killed God but she and her family, like so many others, still clung to the delusion.
He sought to quell his mounting frustration with another glass. And another. And more.
At eight o’clock there came a tap at the door and Mrs. Angell appeared, looking with disapproval at the drunken explorer.
“Did you even touch the coffee?” she asked.
“No, and I don’t intend to,” he replied. “What do you want?”
“The boy is back.”
“Quips? Send him up.”
“I don’t think so, sir. You’re in no state to receive a child.”
“Send him up, blast you!”
“No.”
Burton pushed himself up from his chair and stood unsteadily, his eyes blazing.
“You’ll do as you’re bloody well told, woman!”
“No, sir, I won’t. Not when I’m told by a foul-mouthed drunkard. And I remind you that though I am your employee, you are also my tenant, and I am free to end our arrangement whenever I see fit. I shall take a message from the boy and bring it to you forthwith.”
She stepped back to the landing, closing the door behind her.
Burton took a couple of steps toward the door, thought better of it, and stood swaying in the centre of the room. He look
ed around at the bookcases, filled with volumes about geography, religion, languages, erotica, esoterica, and ethnology; looked at the swords resting on brackets above the fireplace; the worn boxing gloves hanging from a corner of the mantelpiece; the pistols and spears displayed in the alcoves to either side of the chimney breast; looked at the pictures on the walls, including the one of Edward, his brain damaged younger brother, who’d been an inmate at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum for the past three years, a result of an incident five years ago when he was beaten half to death in Ceylon after Buddhist villagers took offence at his hunting of elephants; looked at the three big desks, stacked with papers, his half-written books, maps, and charts; looked at the many souvenirs of his travels, the idols and carvings, hookahs and prayer mats, knickknacks and trinkets; looked at the door in the wall opposite the windows, which led to the small dressing room where he kept his various disguises; and looked at the dark windows and his reflection in their glass.
The question came again, and he spoke it aloud: “What the hell am I to do?”
The door opened and Mrs. Angell, her expression severe and voice cold, stepped in and said, “Master Oscar says to tell you that Mr. Speke is at the Penfold Private Sanatorium.”
Burton nodded, curtly.
The old woman made to leave.
“Mrs. Angell,” he called.
She stopped and looked back at him.
“My language was entirely unwarranted,” he mumbled, self-consciously. “My temper, too. Please accept my apologies.”
She gazed at him a moment. “Very well. But you’ll take your devils out of this house, is that understood? Either that, or you remove yourself from it—permanently! “