“It would be worth the risk,” said Alice. Her blue eyes were blazing with excitement. “That’s how I want to spend my life, not sitting like a stuffed monkey as the grande dame of some ha’penny estate, surrounded by peasants who’ll sell their mother for a shilling. Lady Montagu roamed the East, why couldn’t I do it?”
“Mary Montagu was an amazing woman,” said Darwin, helping himself to a large slice of gooseberry tart. “But even she could not have travelled as she did without her husband.”
“Then I’ll marry, and take my husband with me,” cried Alice.
“But first,” said James Ledyard quietly, “you will have to get Philip Alderton to accept that idea. I do not think it is the role that he sees for you. He wants a mistress for Alderton Manor, to help him rule the roost. A high position is a new experience for Philip.”
His tone was bitter. The four of them were sitting at the table in the great dining room of the east wing of the manor. The remains of two stuffed capons had been removed to a side table and Bretherton, the chief housekeeper and butler, stood to answer calls for desserts. Despite his self-effacing manner, he had been unable to resist a slight nod of agreement at Ledyard’s final words.
“In any case,” went on the young doctor. “I do not understand your interest in only foreign antiquities. The Sphinx is fascinating, I do not deny it. I would welcome a chance to visit it, should opportunity arise. But what about the flint pits, not half a mile from here? They are the relics of a civilization as old as Egypt. Dr. Darwin made a visit to Lambeth, just to see them. But you, Alice, cannot be persuaded to look at them.”
There was a pleading note in his voice. Darwin rose to his feet and went to the window. “You should see them, my dear. But I suggest that you continue to ignore them, at least for tonight. The moon is rising, and there is again an east wind. Colonel Pole and I have it in mind to take a walk over to the mill. Ready, Jacob?”
“Let me get a coat. It’s less warm tonight.” Pole looked across the table, where James Ledyard was regarding Alice with hungry eyes. “And I think I’ll take a brace of pistols, too. I never found an Immortal yet that would relish a couple of bullets through the brisket.”
“Mister Charles was carrying a pistol.” Bretherton, mournful and angular, spoke for the first time. “It did nothing to save him.”
Pole looked at the black-clad servant in surprise, but said nothing until he and Darwin had left the room. “There’s a cheerful pox-hound,” he said when they were in the hall. “First time he speaks, it’s to tell me that my powder and ball won’t work. I hope he’s wrong.”
“But he’s right, Jacob,” said Darwin cheerfully. “Weapons did nothing to help Charles Alderton—and did you know that Philip Alderton was carrying a pistol, too? It seems that he had no opportunity to use it. All the same, I support your idea. Iron will master flesh, be it of Beast or Man.”
His manner was animated, as though he was looking forward to their exploration. They took a filled lantern from the rack in the halls. As they moved toward the door, James Ledyard came limping rapidly after them.
“Dr. Darwin, would you permit a third man to come with you?”
Darwin hesitated. “Normally, I would be happy to agree,” he said after a moment’s thought. “But I am not keen to leave Philip Alderton without medical care. I would rather that you stay here, in case any crisis should arise.”
Ledyard stepped back. “If you really think it necessary, I will not argue that view.” He looked at Darwin, who did not seem disposed to speak further, and moved slowly back to the dining room.
“He’ll be as happy there with Alice,” said Pole. “He hides it well, but I’ve seen it too often to miss it. He’s hot for her. I wonder what Philip Alderton thinks of that?”
“I doubt if he notices it at all,” replied Darwin. “Ledyard is not wealthy, nor of good family. Rickets is not a disease of the rich, you will recall. He will be deemed below the Alderton scale of evaluation, by Philip at least. I would just as well have Ledyard in the house, if we are to be exploring the flint pit. Come on, Jacob. Get well muffled up. We may be out there for a couple of hours. Bretherton has instructions to organize a search if we are not back in four—though I imagine he would not find it easy to obtain volunteers for that.”
“Four hours.” Pole sniffed. “Christ, Erasmus, if we’re not back in four hours, I fancy we’ll have seen a lot more of the Immortal than we care to. Bretherton will be coming out to pick up our pieces. He’ll be able to use our guts for garters, for all the need we’ll have for them. Lead on; and I’ll keep my hands on the pistols.”
* * *
The air outside was chilly. With the red-brick bulk of the manor behind them, they walked steadily uphill toward the dark mill. It stood at the brow of the hill, north and a little west of them. The moon was close to full, and they could pick their way easily enough without need of the lantern. Ahead of them, the great sweeps of the mill were turning rapidly in the gusty east wind, and as they drew closer they could hear the groaning of the wind-shaft and toothed head-wheel, eerie across the silvered landscape.
Darwin walked to the east side of the mill and looked closely at the turning sails, black in the moonlight.
“It’s an odd design, Jacob,” he said at last. “See the lattice pattern on the sweeps? And they are an unusual width. I don’t know how efficient that is, and they don’t use that style much any more. Alderton is right, this mill is an old one, but it’s still in good working order.”
He stood for several minutes longer in silence, watching the regular sweep of the great mill-sails.
“Do you realize, Jacob, that we may be looking at a dying industry? When Newcomen’s engines are perfected, and those of our friend Jamie Watt, the days of these mills will be over. Wind power is too fickle and too variable. In another hundred years, steam mills will be grinding our corn over the length and breadth of England.”
Pole stirred restlessly behind him. “Maybe. Not in our lifetime, Erasmus, and I must say I’m glad of that. You can keep your damned steam. I’ll take the old mill here any time, over a hot fart from one of Jamie’s iron boilers. Think of the Beasts that may walk out of them. Let’s get on down to the pit. We won’t track the Immortal this way.”
Darwin did not move. “I want to examine all the pieces of Gerald Alderton’s poetic message. ‘Moon full on the Hill,’ he says. Well, we have that, certainly. And we are not lacking for his ‘Wind strong on the Mill,’ either.” He turned and looked behind them, where a low bank of thin cloud lay on the eastern horizon. “That’s not so good. ‘No cloud to the East,’ we need, and that’s undeniably cloud—but it’s not covering the moon. I wonder how much cloud the message permits. So, let’s go to the next step. ‘Pit send forth the Beast.’ It hasn’t managed to do that tonight. Let’s go along and have a look inside it.”
He took a last look at the sweeps turning above them, then walked round the mill. The flint pit of Alderton was less than forty yards from there, a deep depression cut into the soft chalk on the west side of the hill. The steps leading down into it were broad and shallow, winding in a spiral around the outer edge. Twenty feet down, the pit floor was lumpy and uneven, still showing the marks where the flints had been pried from the soft chalk.
“Five thousand years,” breathed Darwin softly. “This has been here that long.” They were standing at the very edge, looking down into the pit. A faint current of colder air seemed to rise from the depths, like a breath from five thousand winters. It was easy to imagine faint darker shapes crouched close to the moon-shadowed eastern edge.
Pole and Darwin began to walk cautiously down the wide steps, looking about them with every pace they took. The white walls of the pit reflected the moonlight, making the lantern unnecessary until they were close to the bottom.
On the final steps, Darwin unshuttered the lamp and swung it to illuminate the shadowed areas of the pit. The dark shapes seemed to flee before its beam. There was nothing to be seen, and no so
und but the creaking of the mill sweeps and gears, and the soft whistle of the wind through the wooden lattice. The usual night noises were silent, cut off by the damp chalk walls.
Jacob Pole eased his pistols from their case, primed them, and quietly laid the case on the floor of the pit. The two men stepped cautiously across the uneven surface, exploring the dark clefts and overhangs where the moonlight never penetrated. On the side farthest from the mill, the chalk floor had a smooth, level area, like an oval table top. After a few minutes of fruitless search, they paused there together to decide their next actions.
The moonlight reached this part of the pit, with the moon standing almost exactly behind the mill. The latticed sweeps of the mill sails broke the beams to a pattern of rapidly moving black bars across the pit floor. Darwin watched the sweeps as they turned rapidly against the backdrop of the rising moon. His manner had become tense and silent.
“Well, ’Rasmus,” said Pole at last. He was reluctant to speak above a whisper. “What now? There’s no sign of the Beast. It will soon be midnight, by my guess, but where’s the Immortal? Did Gerald Alderton’s message tell us how long we have to wait to have it appear?”
Darwin did not answer. His eyes had fixed on the moon, as it flickered into sight through the turning mill-sweeps. His countenance was set in a frown, as though he was groping for something that was just beyond his recall. At last he nodded. He began to mutter to himself, as though counting, his left index finger firmly set on the pulse in his right wrist.
After a minute or two, he seemed to have come to some decision.
“All right, Jacob,” he said, “I don’t think we’ll be seeing the Immortal here tonight. Or tomorrow night, either. We may as well make our way back to the manor, before Bretherton begins to wonder about us.” His manner had become relaxed and yet resolved. “Could we get over to Kings Lynn, do you think, and back here again in three days?”
“Easily.” Pole drew a deep breath, and began to unload his pistols and put them in their case. “But I must say, Erasmus, this is a bit of a letdown. Where’s the Immortal? And why Kings Lynn? I thought we’d be stopping off at Stiffkey next. Is there a Beast, or isn’t there? Only yesterday, you were saying that no beast could be immortal, by its nature.”
“I’ll explain about Kings Lynn later. As for the other, I said only that no beast could ever advance the place of its species in the world, unless it would yield to its own offspring.” Darwin was beginning to retrace their steps back to the manor. “I did not say that a beast could not be immortal, in theory; only that any natural beast would at last die, as an individual, by accident or by sickness. So it must propagate its kind, if its race is to survive; and once propagation is admitted as a necessity, immortality or very long life must then appear as a disadvantage, since it reduces the rate at which the race has scope for improvement. Ergo, the Lambeth Immortal, regarded as an immortal being that has been living in the Alderton Pit for hundreds of years, must be revealed as a most improbable animal.”
Jacob Pole snorted, and jerked his thumb back in the direction of the pit. “Are you denying that Tom Barton was killed there? Do you dispute the reality of his death, or of Philip Alderton’s wounds?”
“Not at all.” They had reached the side door of the manor. “That death was very real, and the wounds fully tangible. That does not change my argument. Ghosts, if they exist— and as you know I am skeptical—cannot inflict real, corporeal wounds when they are themselves nonmaterial. And conversely, real beasts, for the reasons I have given you, cannot be immortal. Our problem, to my mind, consists only in providing the compatible link between immortality and the reality of those injuries sustained by Barton and Alderton. I prefer not to discuss this once we are again within Alderton Manor. We can go into chapter and verse on the road to Kings Lynn. I would like to leave early tomorrow morning. For now, that is enough philosophizing.”
Pole had followed most of Darwin’s comments with a look of incomprehension. “First time I’ve ever heard you call for less talk, ’Rasmus,” he grunted, as they opened the door.
The other man puffed out his pudgy cheeks thoughtfully, and turned back to look again at the dark and silent pit. “There’s good reason, Jacob, that I assure you. If ghosts were anywhere, I would have expected to meet them in that excavation. Couldn’t you almost see it, in your inner eye? The crouching figures, there in the dark, freeing the flint from the chalk, chipping away at the stone.” He shook his heavy head. “And I am not a man of a neurasthenic temperament. Well, let us defer speculation. I feel sure that no one in the manor has yet retired for the night. They are hoping or fearing a second appearance of the Immortal. I would like to have ten minutes of conversation with Alice, Alderton and James Ledyard. And I suppose we should have Bretherton present, too. Get rid of your pistols, prop your eyes open for another hour, and let us see what we can arrange.”
* * *
The coach was stuck. Despite their mightiest efforts, it would not budge from the mire that three days of rain had made of the carriage road. Darwin, cloaked against the brisk wind, looked apprehensively at the eastern sky. Far out over the metallic grey of the sea, the cloud was beginning to break.
“It’s clearing,” he said gloomily. “And the rain is over. Tonight it will be fair again, if the barometer is any guide.”
Jacob Pole looked up briefly from the side of the coach, where he was directing four local farm laborers, hastily recruited, in placing a heavy baulk of timber beneath the left side axle.
“We stayed over-long in Kings Lynn,” he said. “My fault. I had no idea that this road would become so bad with the rain. The chalk surface drains well, but there must be clay beneath. Give me two more hours, and we may be on our way again. If we hold closer to the dike for the rest of the trip I think we’ll not be mired a second time.”
Darwin had walked over to the side of the coach and was looking ruefully at the heavy clockwork instrument that lay there, carefully swaddled in gunnysacks and oilskin.
“Not your fault, Jacob. Mine. I needed to remain there until they had this ready for me. Were it not for this, I would favor going the rest of the way on foot. We cannot be above six miles from Alderton Manor. But having borne it these many miles, I reject the idea that we should leave the instrument behind.”
“Is it so all-important that we be there tonight? You told them there would be nothing of interest in the pit until we got back. Surely they will avoid it until then.”
“Not so, Jacob.” Darwin shook his head. “I wish that I had been so precise. I told them there would be nothing there for three days—which was true. But I was confident that we would be back before then. Now I regret that I did not speak more of what was on my mind. I wished to avoid starting a hare that might prove to be no more than my imagination working to excess. That would serve no purpose.”
The left timber was in place, and the right side was already similarly buttressed. Two other stout logs had been placed to serve as twin fulcrums. With the old mare pulling hard ahead, the men began to bear down on the levers that the long timbers provided.
“Come on, Erasmus,” said Pole, when Darwin, still looking east and deep in thought, showed no signs of action. “This was your idea, and you’re twice my weight. Get that arse on the end of the beam here, and see if we can’t have a little lift of the sulky. Use your heft.”
“You perceive at last the virtue of substance,” said Darwin, settling his ample rear at the very end of the beam. The sulky at once rose several inches in the mud. “A pity that you yourself are so much of skin and bone. ‘Let me have men about me that are fat’—an excellent philosophy for our present plight.”
“Hmph!” Pole grunted, heaving away on the same timber. From his spreadeagled position on the beam he could see little more than the expanse of blue cloth that covered Darwin’s broad buttocks, a few inches from his face. “Erasmus, you’re all mouth and britches. If you had been my size, we wouldn’t have bogged down at all.” He raised his voic
e. “Come on, lads. When I call to heave, bear down all together on the other side.”
“We must get to the manor before moonrise,” said Darwin. “If not, I am much afraid that blood will be on my head.”
“I think not.” Pole’s voice came as a series of grunts between concerted heaves at the timbers. “I still don’t see anyone going to the pit tonight, unless we are there too.”
Darwin was bouncing energetically on the beam, and the sulky gradually lifted free of the grip of the clinging mud. “Ledyard and Alderton may stay in the manor. The one that I am worried about is Alice. We know she is headstrong. She wanted to go to the pit even before we left, and I am sure that she is even keener to do so now. When that young lady makes up her mind about something, I am not sure that Philip Alderton, or James Ledyard, or even Cicero himself, has the persuasive power to change it.
“Aha!” The wheels had lifted suddenly, spilling Darwin from his position at the end of the beam full-length onto the gluey Norfolk mud. The mare, slipping as she went, managed to keep moving and haul the sulky free of the quag.
Darwin scrambled to his feet and cast an anxious look at the western sky. “An hour to sunset, at most. And feel that breeze. It’s freshening from the east. We have to get back and keep them out of that pit at moonrise.”
Pole was hurriedly handing out silver to their four helpers, then checking the wheels and axles of the sulky. “We’ll never do it. We’ll have to slow our pace when twilight comes on us, and Rebecca has had a hard time getting us clear of the muck. She won’t be able to make her best pace without an hour or two of rest.”
Darwin picked up the reins and grunted his disgust. “It’s scarcely credible. Twenty places between here and Kings Lynn where we could have had a change of horse, and now we find there is none to be had before Lambeth. Come on, Jacob, Rebecca must forget her age for tonight.”
The Amazing Dr. Darwin Page 18