Trafalgar and Boone in the Drowned Necropolis

by Geonn Cannon

  “Well... not everything.”

  Beatrice smiled slightly. “Your loss.”

  Trafalgar laughed. “I’m sure.”

  Beatrice held out her hand. “I was Dorothy’s majordomo, her protector. I am officially extending that to you.”

  “I would be honored.” She took Beatrice’s hand. “Thank you, Beatrice.”

  “You can call me Trix. If you’re so inclined.”

  Trafalgar said, “Another honor. But I think that is something best left for Dorothy.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” She gave Trafalgar’s hand a squeeze before she let go. “Again, sorry for disturbing you.”

  “Not at all. Your visit was very welcome indeed.”

  They wished each other goodnight and Trafalgar closed the door. She hadn’t expected gratitude from Beatrice, only because she didn’t think it was necessary. But it was definitely a gift she had no trouble accepting. Beatrice was fiercely loyal. Earning the respect of someone with that quality was hard to do. She smiled as she returned to her perch by the window. She didn’t know what the future held when they returned to London, what the community would think about their discovery. She also hoped the photographs came out clear and beautiful and not murky, questionable, and disappointing.

  In the end she decided it didn’t matter if their discovery was touted as a world-changing event or dismissed out of hand as a hoax. She and Dorothy knew what they’d seen. They knew where they had stood and, even if they weren’t certain of its significance, she knew it was a key to understanding the world history had forgotten. There was also one other key development she hadn’t even realized until she sat down and started looking out at the ocean.

  She wasn’t scared of the water anymore. She had dived to the submersible to retrieve the case, she had stayed underwater waiting for the trap to reset, and never had she panicked. Never had she felt the urge to look for the monster that had been haunting her for twenty years. She rested her forehead against the glass and felt how cold it was. She could hear the waves and now they soothed her, like a lullaby.

  There was another knock on the door just as she was about to fall asleep. It was quickly followed by a hushed, “Miss Trafalgar?”

  She smiled at the sound of Bert’s voice. It would seem she wouldn’t be going to bed alone after all. With one last look out at the water, she got up to let her new friend in.

  Epilogue

  January 1921

  “A DROWNED NECROPOLIS DISCOVERED!” screamed across the top line of the newspaper above one of Trafalgar’s photographs. It was a beautifully framed shot of a tombstone with the gold-tipped pillars framing it on either side. Another picture was one Dorothy barely remembered posing for. Her hair was wet and she had a slightly dazed look in her eyes. She regretted there were no pictures of Trafalgar, but when she brought it up, the look of terror in Trafalgar’s eyes revealed the lack of portraits hadn’t been an oversight. She wasn’t interested in seeing herself on the front of a newspaper. And now that Dorothy could see her own bug-eyed stare, her wet hair smoothed down on one side while the other stuck up insanely, she could understand why.

  She tossed the paper back onto the desk where Beatrice had left it with the rest of the mail. They’d been back from the Mediterranean for five months, and the time was spent going back and forth between translators and experts on ancient Greece, the Carians, and the Cyclades in general. There was a hefty amount of skepticism from all corners, as expected, but as their claims were confirmed, a general buzz of excitement began to grow.

  The newspaper article was the first official announcement of their adventure. Dorothy had been obliged to sit for interviews with a cavalcade of reporters. Some of them requested Trafalgar’s presence as well, and those who didn’t found her present regardless. Cora also sat in on several of the interviews, although she insisted privately that she didn’t feel she had done anything to merit inclusion. “I did some of the legwork,” she said, “but I put it all together incorrectly. You, Trafalgar, and Eula Boone are the ones who deserve to go down in history.”

  Of course now they would have to suffer the ignominy of fame. Such a big deal was being made about them - female explorers! An African adventuress! - that Dorothy was afraid it would overshadow their actual accomplishment. Then again, having a bit of clout also had its advantages. For months, she and Trafalgar had been trying to gather support for a federation of people in their profession. Their adventure in the labyrinth was enough to get them in the room, but none of the people they contacted had ever followed through on the offer.

  Now, though, within a month of the first whispers, Dorothy was fielding calls and summons from all over London. She’d been too busy with the actual work of their discovery to respond. And yes, full disclosure, she did quite enjoy making them wait for a change. She realized she had been staring at the newspaper for a full minute, so she picked it up again and skimmed the article. She was still reading it when the door opened.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Listen to this, Trix. ‘Lady Boone and Miss Trafalgar of Abyssinia.’ Why do you suppose they put my name first?”

  Beatrice said, “You’re more well-known, you have a title, your picture was featured with the story. Any number of reasons, I presume. Why?”

  “I’d like to hope it doesn’t have anything to do with race. But I know that’s naive.” She sighed and folded the paper. “Besides, Trafalgar and Boone sounds much better, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It has a certain ring to it, yes.”

  Dorothy put the paper down and turned to face her majordomo. “I assume you’re here to tell me lunch is ready.”

  “No, ma’am. Your meeting.”

  She looked at the clock, startled. “Oh, you’re right. Where would I be without you, Trix?”

  “Perpetually late and pleasuring yourself every night.”

  Dorothy gasped in horror. “The horror!” She brushed her hand down Beatrice’s arm as she left her office. Beatrice followed her downstairs where Desmond was waiting. He looked dapper in his work clothes, his beard neatly trimmed. The hand which had been crushed by Virago’s golem had long ago healed but occasionally she still caught him flexing his fingers and massaging the palm with his thumb. She had apologized profusely for her part in the injury, taking him to dinner and paying for his medical treatments, but Desmond insisted she had no reason to feel guilty.

  “The woman found out where you were going anyway, though how I have no idea. I only wish I’d done a better job distracting her so Beatrice could have been spared some pain.”

  “You’re a saint, Desmond Tindall,” she’d said, and took him out for another fine meal.

  Now he was offering his chauffeur services to get them to their meeting ‘to give Beatrice a chance to enjoy the sights instead of driving for a change.’ Beatrice was willing to take the afternoon off, so Dorothy had agreed.

  Desmond stood as Dorothy reached the base of the stairs. “You look much more ravishing in the flesh, my dear.”

  She scoffed as he helped her into her coat. “Compared to the drowned rat on the cover of the Post, I should hope so.”

  She had chosen a special outfit for the occasion; blending her typical masculine style with a softer, feminine flair. She wore a linen shirt and a lavender tie under a silk waistcoat, covered with a green velvet coat. Instead of the trousers she would ordinarily have worn, she was wearing a conservative black skirt. She wanted to make everyone she was meeting feel comfortable, and not all of them would take kindly to a woman being in charge. She hoped her fashion aesthetics helped put them at ease.

  They went out to Desmond’s car and he helped them into the backseat. He pulled away from the curb and eased into the road. Dorothy folded her hands in her lap and watched the people outside the window. Their route took them past shops in Cripplegate and the industrial warehouses of Clerkenwell. They followed narrow streets that had been carved out long before anyone had anticipated the need for motor vehicles. They inched along betw
een the classical buildings and green parks.

  “I’m loath to bring this up, but have you heard the news from Ireland?” Beatrice asked, breaking into her reverie and drawing her attention back into the car.

  “I stopped reading the paper as soon as I saw my fish-eye stare gazing back at me. I assume there was a flare-up with the war?”

  Beatrice nodded. “The IRA assassinated a group of British agents in Dublin. The Irish constabulary retaliated by attacking a rally that killed three civilians. Three IRA fighters were taken into custody and beaten to death.”

  “Bloody hell,” Dorothy said.

  “There’s worse. The article I read this morning had sketches of some of the people involved in the violence. One in particular...”

  Dorothy closed her eyes and groaned. “Oh, don’t tell me.”

  “In the flesh.”

  Dorothy sighed and shook her head. Virago had escaped from custody as promised not long after they returned to London. Beatrice had assisted Scotland Yard with the search of Virago’s usual haunts, but they came up empty. The police eventually declared she had fled to Ireland, and the new developments seemed to support that theory.

  “Well, at least she also kept her word not to come after us. That’s something, I suppose.”

  “I can’t help but feel like it was all left unfinished,” Beatrice said.

  “You?” Dorothy said. “You got to have all the fun. I got beaten up by her and never got a second round thanks to your heroics.”

  Beatrice brushed her finger over Dorothy’s cheek. “Poor darling.”

  Dorothy turned and snapped at Beatrice’s finger. Beatrice snickered and looked out her window. “I’m sure you’ll get another chance to best her. Someone like that doesn’t tend to retreat for long.”

  “Mm,” Dorothy said.

  Their destination was an unassuming three-story building surrounded by a brick wall. The gate was standing open and Desmond pulled in to a cozy courtyard with tables and chairs to the left and a parking area to the right. There were other vehicles present, including drivers who had taken advantage of the seats to smoke and read newspapers as they awaited their passengers. Desmond parked among the other cars and Beatrice looked out at the other chauffeurs and hired men.

  “Sure you don’t mind waiting out here with the rabble, Professor Tindall?” Beatrice asked with a teasing smile.

  “If they’re anything like you, Miss Sek, I’m certain it will be an extremely educational way to pass the time.” He winked at Dorothy and held the door for them to step out. Their arrival had gotten the attention of the small crowd, and some of them began to whisper and nod their heads in Dorothy’s direction. She bit back an exasperated sigh and followed Beatrice to the entrance.

  The building had once been a tavern, though its signage was long gone, Dorothy knew the name. The door was standing open to air out the large main room and let in some sunlight. Trafalgar had taken the boards off the windows but the musty sawdust smell lingered. The built-in elements, like the booths and the bar, were still present, and every five or ten feet a support beam interrupted the otherwise open space. Some of those who had gathered were sitting in the booths, two were behind the empty bar, and the rest were spread throughout the empty room. Dorothy took off her gloves and looked to make sure everyone was present.

  Cecil Dubourne, the son of Gerald Dubourne, a victim of the Weeks’ brothers. He had taken over his father’s work. He was young and brash, but he had been trained by a good man. Dorothy had met him once or twice and knew he had potential to do his father proud.

  Cora Hyde, of course, had come back from Wraysbury at the end of summer. She had yet to take any new commissions of her own, but she was consulting with the others by appointment. She smiled at Dorothy; she was one of the few present who knew what Dorothy was going to say and she’d already thrown her support behind the idea. Dorothy hoped the others were as agreeable.

  Abraham Strode was a bit of a dandy. He didn’t like the dirty aspects of their job, preferring to remain in his pristine office and libraries while hiring students to actually visit dig sites. He looked enormously uncomfortable in the dusty bar, arms crossed as his pale eyes darting about in search of a clean haven to settle.

  Leonard and Agnes Keeping were the ones behind the bar. They apparently had decided to provide alcohol for the meeting, and Agnes was mixing the drinks. The Keepings looked posh and unremarkable, but they were both well-trained in both martial arts and weaponry. Dorothy knew for a fact that Agnes was able to hold her own in a fight with Beatrice, while Leonard had proven skilled with a sword. She didn’t want to think of them in terms of bank account, but it didn’t hurt that they were also well-off. If her proposal was accepted, it would be good to know she could rely on someone else to help fund the endeavor.

  Rounding out their group was the member Dorothy thought would prove the most controversial: Ivy Sever. A year earlier she had been employed to kill Abraham Strode. She’d been prevented from succeeding and, judging by his lack of attention to her, the event seemed to have been forgotten by both parties. Ivy was still invisible so far as Dorothy knew, but she was dressed and made up to appear as fleshy as anyone else. The only clue to her true nature were the goggles she was wearing; there was still no way for makeup to mimic the human eye.

  Trafalgar was waiting to one side of the door. She’d arrived early to let everyone else in and let them know Dorothy would be there shortly. Beatrice took a position to the other side of the door as Dorothy moved to the center of the room.

  “First and foremost, I’d like to thank you all for agreeing to come. It took a while for you all to get onboard, but I believe it was time well-spent.”

  Abraham Strode said, “I’m sure you could have chosen a more appropriate meeting place than this, Lady Boone. Had I known you would be exposing us to the plague, I may have had second thoughts about accepting your invitation.”

  Dorothy said, “Oh, come now, Abe. It may not be much now, but the Inkwell was once home to great poets and scholars.” She pointed to a booth in the far corner under a moon-shaped window. “Marcellus Griffin spent an entire fortnight in that seat translating Greek journals. Dr. Lincoln was hired for the Antarctic expedition at a table that once stood right about here. And my grandmother, Eula Boone, made her first money as an explorer at that bar, when she was hired by a man who was too drunk to realize he was talking to a woman.”

  Agnes took a drink and ran her thumb over her lip. “That’s a wonderful history lesson. Honestly, I want to go over and sit in Griffin’s booth to see if I can feel his ghost. But what does that have to do with us?”

  “Everything. We’ve spent too much time bickering with one another. Competing and conspiring against each other. I’m guilty of it myself. Some of you remember when Trafalgar and I got into a fight in the middle of the street just last year.”

  Dubourne said, “My father used to tell me something about a submersible in Turkey.”

  “Istanbul, actually,” Trafalgar said. “Lady Boone stole it while my camp was sleeping. At least, she attempted to.”

  “Technically, I succeeded in stealing it,” Dorothy muttered. “But since then, we have become partners. We’ve worked together and, through that cooperation, we’ve discovered absolutely amazing things. We wandered the labyrinth and faced the Minotaur. We stood in the graveyard of an extinct and nearly-forgotten race. Not only would those things have been impossible without Trafalgar, I wouldn’t have survived either of them without her. I believe the truly great things are yet to come, but I also believe the times ahead are going to be incredibly daunting.

  “The magic unleashed during the Great War scarred this world. Never before had so many practitioners pulled so much energy from the veil at once. There were bound to be consequences. We’re just scratching the surface of the mess that has to be cleaned up. More creatures from prehistory, more enemies we can’t hope to fight alone. Our only chance to defeat them is to know they’re coming and prepare ourselve
s properly for their arrival.”

  Abe Strode said, “So we all join forces with you and Trafalgar? We become a horde of explorers all focusing on one site at a time?”

  Dorothy shook her head. “No. That would be disastrous. What I’m suggesting is a federation of people with a common interest. We would all remain autonomous, taking our own jobs and using our own resources for expeditions. The difference would be our cooperation with one other. Sharing information. Being transparent with one another.”

  Cora said, “Dorothy has been giving me credit for the necropolis she found. But the truth is, even though I did much of the research, I applied it incorrectly. I was hundreds of kilometers off and never would have known without her input and the journals her grandmother left behind.”

  Dorothy said, “Who knows what we could accomplish if we simply shared with one another? Last year, two men nearly wiped us all out simply because we didn’t trust each other. I was willing to believe Trafalgar had tried to kill me. Mr. Keeping, you put a sword to my throat when I came into your home to warn you of the threat. Mr. Dubourne, your father died in that attack, along with several other adventurers.

  “I purchased this tavern with the intention to revive it so we could use the upper levels as a meeting place. We can foster relationships, perhaps even collaborations, we can share information with each other on neutral ground, and we can prevent anyone from ever again using us as weapons against ourselves. We can also hopefully spot patterns and warning signs of future catastrophes. We can stop them before they can do unspeakable damage.”

  Trafalgar said, “And should something arise, we would trust each other enough to join forces to stop it. Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. So it falls to us to ensure history is not forgotten in order to preserve the future.”

  Dorothy said, “I believe the people in this room are the best suited to not only see the threat coming, but to stand up against it when the need arises.”