by Mark Latham
I tried in vain to speak to the sailors around me, but they ignored me and went about their business. And then, amidst the peals of thunder, I heard another sound, a bestial roar that chilled my blood. And the sailors turned to face this new threat, and made all haste to the leeward side of the ship, to the great howitzers that lined the deck. And as the ship heeled and the lee side rose, the source of all my night terrors since the day of my birth hove into view. It was the dragon, and it arced through the air towards us, lighting the sky with orange fire. The rain that drove into the beast condensed to steam, creating clouds of vapour that coalesced around its body, before dissipating in an instant at the beat of those gigantic, leathery wings.
The dragon roared again, and I froze in terror. This thing was all evil personified, and its bellow seemed to shake me from within just as surely as it deafened me without.
The roar of the beast and the rumble of thunder were now a hellish concerto, punctuated by the thumping percussion of the howitzers. The sky was set afire by bursts of shrapnel, and the dragon wheeled and dived, as if swimming through a sea of flame.
It shrugged off the worst the seamen could throw at it, and swooped betwixt our foremost masts, spewing a gout of flame towards the fo’castle, incinerating a dozen men and turning the foremast to kindling. I felt the heat on my face, heard the screams of the men caught in the conflagration, and turned to flee the monster. Yet all I did was run into someone – a woman, dressed all in black. I looked up at her, bewildered, and recognised my sister, all grown up. Good Christ! How had I forgotten about her? She was the reason I had come to this place, and I had almost failed her. Yet she was not really Lillian at all – the more I beheld the woman, the more I sensed something… different about her. She took my hand, and spoke to me in a tone that was soothing, yet somehow dispassionate.
‘Come with me, John. Do not be afraid.’
She led me to the starboard edge of the ship. A wave pelted the bulwarks nearest us, sending a man crashing to the deck, yet it seemed to subside before us, and we walked unhindered to the deck rails as the water soused our feet. The dragon was turning back towards the ship for another pass. I was still afraid, but no longer petrified by my fear; not while Lillian held my hand. As the monster drew near, something changed in my sister. Before I knew what was happening, she had lifted me up onto the gunwale, and as the dragon drew steadily nearer, I turned to her in a panic.
‘Do not worry, brother!’ she shouted, her voice almost lost against the thunder and the monstrous roars from the raging skies. ‘This is your destiny. You must face your fears!’
‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘I’m frightened.’
‘There is nothing to fear, John,’ she shouted back. ‘How can it kill you if you’re already dead?’
And with those words, I looked down at myself. I was a boy still, but I knew that I was really a man. My little sister was full-grown, but I was not. I put a hand to my face, and my skin was cold and lifeless.
‘A storm is coming, John,’ spoke Lillian, ‘and you must be ready for it, in this life or the next!’
Then she let go of my cold, dead hand—such a small hand, I thought—and I slipped on the waxy netting of the gunwale, and fell back towards the sea. My sister’s face grew smaller and smaller as I fell into blackness. I turned my eyes to the heavens, and saw the flames spout forth from the dragon’s maw once again, enveloping the entire ship and reducing all on board to cinders.
The inky water enfolded me like swaddling clothes, and for a moment I was content to drift slowly, peacefully to the bottom of the ocean. I closed my eyes, and took a breath, so as better to fill my lungs with saltwater and continue my journey downwards, downwards in the briny deep.
ELEVEN
I will never forget the moment that I awoke from that nightmare, nor the perfect vision of the woman who was there to greet me as I roused.
How many times have I heard wounded men in the service tell of the pretty nurse who sat with them when they woke from their fever? How many of them compared their nurse to an ‘angel’? I heard more such tales than I could count, and always thought them charming in their own way, but likened the men in question to overly sentimental schoolboys. How the shoe was on the other foot now!
She leaned over me, mopping my brow with a cool cloth. Her eyes were large, her complexion dark, and her sable hair fell in a loose mane about her shoulders. A more comely girl I do not think I had ever seen, and I fear that my first conscious meeting with her may have begun with a blush as she drew so close to me that I could feel her soft breath against my cheek and smell the scent of her lavender perfume. At this she smiled broadly, and I forgot all of my troubles, all questions and uncertainty; my heart fair sang.
‘Where am I?’ I asked hoarsely, my throat as dry as desert sand.
‘He speaks,’ she said with a smile. Her voice was heavily accented, possibly Balkan. ‘You’ve had a bad time, but you are safe now.’
‘Safe where?’ I persisted. My question drew a pout from her.
‘Away from harm. The country. The weather is fine, there are hills and forests for miles around, and all your worries are behind you. Drink this, and try to rest.’ She supported my head and gave me water from a ladle, and it tasted sweeter than the finest wine. I glanced about me, but my vision was blurred. I saw only a soft, diffused light, as of early morning sunlight filtering through a forest grove, and I could smell a sweet scent upon the air, like a confection of incense and rosewater.
I was about to speak again, when I realised that she had been somewhat evasive, and I had the queerest feeling that all was not well. I was ‘away from harm’, but where? Only then did I remember, in pieces at first, my memory like a shattered porcelain vase being carefully glued together. I recalled with sudden violence the dark, cold night; the flight from the House of Zhengming; the journey along the Thames. I remembered, too, the confrontation with the ghosts of my past, and the dreadful moment when my father—no, when Lazarus—had pulled the trigger and sent me plunging into the murky river. I felt the bullet strike, and flinched bodily. As I did so a tremendous pain shot through my shoulder where the wound had laid me low. The woman placed her hand softly on my chest to steady me.
‘Be rested now. There, there, my brave soldier. Be at peace.’
A figure of speech, or did she know me for a soldier? How was that possible? And why would she not tell me where I was? A dark seed of thought took root in my mind, and grew along with my panic. Was I dead? Or was I on the other side of the veil, in the nightmare world of my adversaries? Perversely, I felt that the latter was the worse scenario of the two, for I held in my mind’s eye a concoction of what the other side might be like—a hell on earth, full of suffering and fire, where every dark corner held an enemy waiting to strike. I struggled against the woman as these thoughts entered my head, but her hand, pressed gently as it was against me, was like a leaden weight. She must be strong, I thought, and then realised that it was I who was weak as a kitten.
‘Please,’ I petitioned the woman, ‘I must know where I am. How long have I been here? Who are you?’ She looked at me, resignedly.
‘So many questions,’ she sighed. ‘I will answer you, but you must promise to rest after.’ Only when I nodded agreement did she take her hand away. ‘I am Rosanna, and I have been nursing you since you came to us. My friends found you half-dead in London, and pulled you from the river. Someone has hurt you, and we thought you were dead. You were very sick for a time, but you are getting better now.’
‘How long was I sick for?’ I asked, somewhat relieved that I was not in the afterlife.
‘You have been here for almost a week now, delirious and with a fever. You look better today, but you still need rest.’
‘A week… and where exactly is “here”?’ I asked, still uncertain as to which of James’ multiverses I was in.
‘The countryside; away from London, away from harm,’ she said. She placed a finger to my lips before I could speak further.
‘Please, my brave Captain, rest. You are safe with us—we are Romani, and whoever is seeking to do you harm will not find you here. Even we do not know where we are half the time.’
‘Captain?’ I asked. ‘So you know me. How?’
She sighed theatrically, and picked a tattered card from a side-table. My card, albeit a begrimed one. ‘There was more than one of these on your person,’ she said. ‘I guessed they were yours—and I guessed correctly. Don’t worry, Captain John Hardwick, I did not see your name in my crystal ball.’ With that she laughed musically and smiled at me, which made all of my fears and questions ebb away. She was older than I had first thought—I reckoned she was in her middle twenties at least—and her voice held some quality that made her quite impossible to contradict.
‘We found a few things in your pockets. Your cards, a few coins. There were scraps of paper, letters perhaps, but they were ruined by the river-water. The men who found you took you to an apothecary to remove the bullet—they were not sure if you would want to be taken to a hospital, in case you had… run afoul of the law.’
I doubted that these gypsies would understand the full significance of the information on my calling card, but I was still somewhat nervous that my identity was known. I had no idea if I could trust these people, or if they were who they said they were. I had only the word of this pretty gypsy girl, and even though for all I knew the agents in black could have been descending on that place at that very moment, I somehow trusted her. I glanced around once more, my vision becoming clearer. I was in a tent of some sort—the soft light that I had observed earlier was diffused by the pale canvas walls. For the first time, I noticed the sounds of men talking outside, of wood being chopped, of birdsong. A fire crackled somewhere near the tent. Everything seemed so pastoral and serene, I was quite overcome. I remembered suddenly the things that had befallen me, visions of torture and betrayal flooding violently into my mind. With a start I put a hand to my left eye, and was wracked with self-pity when I felt an eye-patch. For a fleeting second I had hoped that some of my memories had been just nightmares induced by fever, but I knew then that no nightmare could match the horror that I had lived through at the hands of the Artist.
‘Shh,’ Rosanna hushed me. ‘Someone has done something terrible to you, it is true, but you are safe and well. We do not care who you are or what you have done, only that you need help. When you are strong again, you can travel with us or go on your way, as you wish. But please, get some sleep, and we will talk later. Be happy, John Hardwick, for your fever has broken and you are on the mend.’
I tried to speak, but my voice stuck in my claggy throat. Rosanna offered me more water, which I gulped, and nodded my thanks. I had little choice but to follow her instructions and sleep, for my body was exhausted even if my brain was not. Indeed, the hallucinations I had been experiencing were beyond mere nightmares; I did not know how much opium the Artist had put into me, but it was enough that I still felt it, even now. And I wanted more. As Rosanna’s soft hand stroked my hair, however, I descended into a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep.
* * *
It was early evening when I woke, Rosanna still at my side. She led me from the tent into the heart of the bustling gypsy camp. I leaned on her as heavily as was proper, as my legs were leaden and my right side was numb after my operation. With my arm in a sling and an eye-patch over one eye, I must have looked like a real wounded soldier, though I certainly didn’t feel like one.
The camp was made up of around twenty gaily painted caravans, and several tents of varying sizes, sheltered on all sides by copses of woodland through which sparse trails wound in all directions. A group of men were gathered around a large fire in the centre, exchanging stories, whilst another man thrummed softly on a mandolin. Half a dozen old women were preparing game and vegetables for a feast, and I felt ravenous at the sight of it. Young girls carried water back from a nearby stream, while the lads of a similar age tended the spotted ponies and sturdy cobs that were kept nearby in a makeshift paddock. Smaller children still ran barefoot around the campsite, playing hide and seek around the caravans and carts, climbing trees and giggling as if they had no cares in the world.
We took our place by the fire, sitting on the fallen bough of an old tree, and Rosanna swayed to the mandolin music. The assembled men greeted us cheerfully, and one offered me a cup of mulled wine from an iron pot near the fire. I was unsure whether alcohol would do me any good, but Rosanna passed it over to me and smiled, and so I took it. A few of the children poked their heads around wagon wheels and out of tent flaps to get a look at the one-eyed stranger, and their playful curiosity made me feel at ease. I joined in the talk around the campfire, which was all of poaching game, drinking wine and travelling faraway lands. I knew plenty on that last topic, and very soon felt less of a stranger than I had expected. Presently, a group of men emerged from the woods—some of them little more than youths, really—carrying bundles of sticks and logs, and Rosanna stood up and waved to them.
‘Gregor, Willem!’ she called out. She nodded towards me, and two of the men peeled off from the group and came to us. As they drew near, Rosanna said to me: ‘John, you will be happy to know these men; they saved your life back in London, and brought you to our camp.’
I certainly was glad to know them, and I rose unsteadily, helped partway by Rosanna, and shook each man by the hand. Gregor was a gruff, dark-bearded man, of the same Romani stock as Rosanna, I guessed. Willem, by contrast, was a slight, mousey-haired fellow, with grey eyes that darted furtively about, and hands that were rough like a labourer’s, but slender like a pickpocket’s.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, guv,’ said Willem, in an unmistakeable cockney twang. ‘Very glad you’re still in the land of the living.’
‘Not half as glad as I am, Willem. And might I say, you have the sound of a Londoner about you?’
‘That’s because I am one, sir. Or was. William, is me name, though these folks all call me Villem, after the German way, like. I travel with ’em, sir—London got a bit tasty for my liking a few months back, sir, and so’s I stay on the road now. Keep me head down, if you see, sir.’
I saw only too well. That he had fallen foul of the law at some point was evident, but nevertheless he had done me a good turn, and could do no real harm out here in the countryside.
‘My friend,’ said Gregor, in an accent more in keeping with the gypsy camp, ‘my heart is glad that you live. Willem and I were about to leave the docks for the last time, and he saw you floating down the river. We thought you were dead for sure, but we felt your heart beat, and took you to a man we know in the East End. He make you well; take out bullet and fix up your eye. This is good. To think—if you had floated by just five minutes later, we would have been gone, and you would surely have drowned. This was meant to be.’
‘It was fortunate indeed—but to go to so much trouble… and expense?’
Gregor and William exchanged glances, and then looked at Rosanna, who nodded assent.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘My friend,’ said Gregor, ‘when we pulled you from the river, we knew that we had to bring you here. Rosanna had…’ he tailed off.
‘Foreseen it,’ Rosanna said, and my blood ran cold.
‘What do you mean… foreseen it?’ I asked, hardly wanting the answer.
‘In my crystal ball, as you would say,’ Rosanna shrugged.
‘Well, sort of, sir. We was on the lookout for an injured stranger, you see,’ William said, ‘on account of Rosanna’s instruction, like. But injured strangers are ten a penny in London, ’specially down by the docks. Then you come floating by, and we fish you out the Thames, and Gregor and me, we argues a bit about whether you were the one or not. After all, you didn’t look as if you’d pull through, pardon me for saying so. I was sure Rosanna wasn’t wanting no dead fella bringing back to camp. But while we was arguing, this toff comes walking by—’
‘Toff?’ I interjected.
‘Yessi
r. Dandy fella ’ee was. And he tells us to take you to a ’pothecary, and gives us ten shillings to cover the bill. So we did, and when the old sawbones says you’d pulled through, we figured you must be the one. So we brought you back with us, see?’
‘Not really,’ I said. I looked again to Rosanna. ‘“The one”? Your crystal ball?’
‘Gregor, Willem, I’m sure the captain is very grateful. Would you leave us, please?’ she said. The two men left at once.
‘John Hardwick, there is much to talk about, and much to explain. But trust me when I tell you that you are safe. Please, enjoy the hospitality of the camp, get well, get strong, and I promise I will make everything clear to you, all in good time. Will you trust me?’ She held out her hand.
Even the suggestion of prescience and crystal balls or whatever else had put me on my guard. After Sir Arthur’s warning, after the Artist in particular, I did not feel able to let myself fall into another circle of prophecy and destiny, from which it seemed there would be no escape. I wondered, too, at the identity of the ‘toff’ William had mentioned—was he a friend? A fellow agent? Or simply a well-meaning passerby? Part of me knew, deep down. I recalled the look of regret on Ambrose’s face as I’d staggered back from the gunshot and fallen into the Thames. If Ambrose Hanlocke had come back for me, out of guilt or sense of misplaced fellowship, then perhaps he was not beyond redemption. But it would take far more than fishing me out of the river to atone for his treachery against the Crown. I hoped it had merely been a stranger who had paid William and Gregor; that would make it all the easier to hate Ambrose Hanlocke.