by Oisin McGann
A bizarre sight awaited him on the lawn as he came to the edge of the forest. Standing on the grass not far from the house were two enormous shapes, their feet shrouded in mist. At first the light of the low morning sun made their shapes indistinct against the grey walls of the house, but as his eyes adjusted, Nate recognized Trom and Colossus, the juggernaut. They stood perfectly still, as if awaiting orders. He gaped at the sight in amazement.
Trom could never be left alone like that without wandering and Colossus … Colossus was too wild—too insane to be let out of its enclosure. Nate stared, bewildered, until he remembered what Gerald had told him. One drop of blood in an engimal’s water and they were yours to command. He had found it hard to believe it would work on the simple mind of a toast-maker, never mind the tortured brain of the juggernaut.
He was under no illusions as to who was in command of the huge engimals. Creeping up along the hedge to the stables, he was careful not to attract their attention. Their eyes were dimmed, but he was sure they could come alert at any second. Unlatching the side door of the stables, he stepped inside and closed it after him. The stable boys were already up; he could hear them moving around upstairs. He knew the grooms would be here any minute too, to start feeding and exercising the horses. He had to be quick. He needed his velocycle, and then he had to find Abraham and his brothers. There was a plan to be hatched.
Flash was in its stall and looked up timidly as he leaned over the door. It whimpered and turned its face to the wall.
“Bloody right, you should be ashamed,” he snarled at the velocycle as he opened the door. “You’re a downright liability … But I need you now, so you’re getting one more chance.”
Looking down at the beast’s water trough, he thought about adding some of his blood to the mix. And yet there was something about Flash’s cantankerous spirit that he loved. Even though it meant taking the chance the velocycle might disobey him again, he preferred to leave it with a will of its own. He knelt down to look into the engimal’s eyes.
“We have to save my family today, Flash,” he said softly. “We have to save the people I love. I could feed you my blood and make you my slave, but I won’t. I need a friend now, not a servant … But if you let me down this time, I’ll have your bloody wheels cut off, you understand?”
Daisy sat on one of the sofas in Hugo’s private living room, with one hand resting on the secret pocket which held Gerald’s syringe. The curtains had been drawn to hide the morning light, and instead, candles burned in silver holders around the room. The late Duke had indulged his morbid taste in décor with oil paintings and tapestries of gruesome Old Testament scenes in ornate frames, and had equipped the room with outlandishly carved ebony furniture that might have pleased the devil himself, upholstered in blood-red velvet.
She had freshened herself up and changed into a scarlet taffeta gown with a low-cut bodice and suggestive embroidery. It was one of her most provocative dresses and had the added bonus of a hidden pocket in the folds that she normally used for a compact or a handkerchief. It served just as well for concealing a syringe full of gangrenous poison.
As she waited for Hugo to appear, her hands shook, her stomach knotted up and her teeth chattered. She had never been so scared in all her life. Even now, she wasn’t sure if she could go through with this. Daisy did not want to kill and she certainly didn’t want to die. Left sitting there alone, images flashed through her mind of what Hugo would do to her if she tried to attack him and failed. She found it difficult to breathe. This was no good; if she was to fool him into thinking she was attracted to him, she had to—
“My dear!” he cried. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
He was standing at the door of the hallway that led to his bedroom. Dressed in a burgundy smoking jacket, he had his hair oiled and curled, and a cigarette in a holder in his left hand. The leather collar and chain mail were gone. It seemed she was to have her chance. Stroking his goatee with the fingers of his right hand, he glided across the room and sat down on her left side.
“So, what’s your scheme?” he asked, smiling.
“I’m sorry?” she replied, her right hand unconsciously brushing over the syringe.
“Oh, come on,” he chided her. “You don’t fool me. You’re no more devoted to that wastrel of a husband than I am. You’re a conniving wench if ever I saw one … and I’ve seen a few, I can tell you. But don’t be put off, dear. I like a woman who knows what she wants and will do anything to get it. God helps those who help themselves—and I believe in helping myself to everything I can get my hands on.”
Daisy dropped her gaze. She knew she was perspiring, but hoped it would not give her away. Her hands were still now and her jaw had stopped its trembling, but her heart was still racing.
“You see through me, my lord,” she said shyly, looking up at him again with her doe-like eyes. “I confess, I married Roberto for what he was, not who he was. And now I fear he is no longer the man I married … in so many ways. I am a resourceful woman, my lord. But I am loyal to my master … for as long as he lives. The same cannot be said for some of this family. I fear Gideon, for instance, will betray you at the first opportunity.”
“Yes, he’s a back-stabber, that one,” Hugo agreed, sitting back, his arm casually draping across the back of the sofa behind her. “But a coward too. I know where I stand with cowards; they can always be trusted to fold under pressure.”
“Men think only of themselves. You need a strong woman by your side,” Daisy told him.
“But I have two,” he said, pretending not to understand her, and leaning closer to her as if that would help. He placed the burning cigarette in an ashtray on the table in front of them and put his free hand on her knee. “Two women who would die for me if need be.”
Daisy’s fingers slipped into the pocket and closed around the syringe. His face was inches from hers and she could smell the smoke on his breath. His jacket hung open, with just his shirt and waistcoat covering his chest. She wouldn’t get a better chance than this. Her breathing quickened. Gripping the glass cylinder, she pushed the rubber cap off the needle with her thumb.
“It wasn’t the role of a sister that I had in mind,” she said, staring at the point on his chest, just right of the sternum, where she would have to strike.
“Ah,” he sighed, with a raise of his eyebrows. “You hope to steal my heart.”
“Not exactly,” she said, pulling the syringe from her pocket.
But just as she did so, there was a sharp knock on the door and then Gideon burst in. Daisy pulled the hypodermic back out of sight before it could be seen. Hugo was already on his feet.
“I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed!” he roared.
“I wouldn’t … except … I …” Gideon stammered.
He stepped aside to reveal a grey-haired, middle-aged man with a ramrod-straight back, dressed in a fine suit. Daisy recognized him immediately. It was the Lord Lieutenant—the Viceroy, the Queen’s representative in Ireland.
“What is the meaning of this?” the Viceroy demanded, holding up what looked like a telegram. “Who the blazes are you, sir? Where is the Duke?”
“What is that?” Hugo asked, ignoring the questions and pointing at the piece of paper.
“I received this an hour ago,” the Viceroy snapped, holding it up. “Let me read it to you. ‘MY BROTHER HAS BEEN MURDERED STOP AN IMPOSTOR HAS TAKEN THE FAMILY HOSTAGE STOP SEND HELP IMMEDIATELY AND COME IN FORCE STOP GIDEON WILDENSTERN STOP.’”
Gideon looked stunned. Hugo looked ready to spit venom, and would have aimed most of it at Gideon.
“I’m afraid you’ve been the victim of a prank, sir,” the Patriarch said smoothly, managing a pained smile. “The Duke is bedridden with typhus—highly contagious —and as the brother next in line, it has fallen to me to take the reins until he recovers. His sons are not taking it well and have quite lost the run of themselves. It’s clear that they sent this message in a fit of pique, hoping to embarrass me …”
He gently ushered the two men out of the room, closing the door behind him. Daisy let out a shuddering breath and put her head in her hands. She couldn’t take much more of this. Beyond the door she could just hear the men’s voices:
“You’re the Duke’s brother?” the Viceroy exclaimed incredulously. “How have we never met? He’s never even spoken of you!”
“A family tiff that has lasted years, I’m afraid,” Hugo informed him. “He called for me when he fell ill …”
Daisy lifted her head and gave a start as she found a tall black man standing in front of her. She stared up at him for a moment, wondering how he had got there.
“Abraham, isn’t it?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s time to leave, ma’am,” he replied. “Master Nathaniel has asked us to take you to safety. The chief groom has a carriage waiting for you and your husband at the back entrance. Your husband assures us Mr. Hennessy can be trusted.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does,” she said acidly.
XXXII
TOO WELL-ARMED FOR TEA
TATIANA PEERED OUT of her bedroom window at the company of British cavalry, complete with a behemoth war engimal, approaching the front of the house. They were being led by the Lord Lieutenant’s carriage. Striding across the room, she swung the door open and confronted the two Gideonettes standing guard outside.
“Why is the British Army coming up the driveway?” she demanded.
They hurried to the window and looked out. She was pleased to see that they appeared concerned by what they saw.
“It’s nothing,” one said in an unconvincing voice.
“Just a social visit,” the other said, swallowing audibly.
“They seem to me to be a bit too well-armed for morning tea,” Tatty observed.
That was when they heard the sound. It was like an angry bee at first, then deeper, like the growling of a big cat. And it was getting louder. Her two cousins drew their pistols and held them up. Tatty cocked her head to one side, listening intently. She recognized the sound.
“It’s Nathaniel’s velocycle,” one of her guards said. “He’s in the house; come to save his precious little sister at last. We’ll have him now. Must be in the hidden passageways somewhere.”
“It can’t be.” The other shook his head. “A beast that size could never fit in the passages. How could it turn the corners?”
“It’s the velocycle, I tell you,” the first one insisted. “He’s going to try and just charge in and take her, the confounded fool!”
They leaned out into the corridor, revolvers at the ready. Tatty walked behind a screen in her room and started to undress, peeking through the cracks in the hinges to keep a weather eye on her two sentries.
“My big brother’s coming!” she called to them as she shrugged the dress off her shoulders. “You’re in trouble now!”
“Shut up!” one of them shouted back; then to his own brother, “There! Behind the oak panels—he’s in the south passage!”
They sprinted down the corridor, following the sound of Flash’s engine. Near the end of a row of oak panels, they pressed a knot and a secret door sprang open. The engine sounds grew suddenly louder. With their guns raised, they made ready to fire at the figure within.
“Thank God!” Gerald cried out. “I thought I’d be lost in there for days!”
That was when Nathaniel came out of the room behind them and, with vicious speed, struck each one over the back of the head with his revolver. Gerald stepped out and handed the small engimal with the ladybird spots to Nate, who quieted it with a word. The engine sounds stopped.
“A marvelous contraption,” Gerald remarked. “You’ll have to let me dissect it some day.”
“You have no soul,” Nate sniped back. “I’d never let you get your grubby mitts on Babylon.”
“I should hope not!”
They turned to find Tatiana standing waiting for them, dressed once again in Nate’s old clothes. Nate smiled proudly.
“Good God,” said Gerald.
“This whole sorry affair has opened my eyes,” Tatiana informed them as she handed them some curtain cord. “I’ve decided I want to devote my life to the furthering of women’s rights.”
“This,” said Gerald, “is what comes of letting women wear trousers.”
Using the curtain cord, they quickly bound and gagged the Gideonettes and threw them into a cupboard where they would not be found for some time. Then they made their way through the hidden passageway down to Gerald’s rooms. Roberto had already been stolen away by Abraham and his brothers and Edgar’s corpse had been taken to the refrigerators. Only Clancy and Brutus remained. The giant ancestor lay there in his bed, the occasional twitch in his face and hands showing the slow surfacing of his consciousness.
Standing near the door was Flash, and tied up next to it was the boy who worked the elevator.
“I wouldn’t’ve squealed,” he protested.
“Sorry, we couldn’t take the chance,” Nate told him, urging Tatty to get on the velocycle. “Ger, you sure you want to stay? It’s going to get a bit hairy.”
“I want to make sure Clancy is stable before I move him; and besides, I need to pack up a few things,” Gerald replied. “My work’s too important to leave in the hands of these luddites.”
“Right, then,” Nate said, shaking his cousin’s hand. “Good luck.”
“And you, old chum.”
Nate climbed into the saddle and tapped the engimal’s sides with his heels. The velocycle purred quietly as they rolled out of the door and down towards the elevator halfway down the corridor. The doors had been jammed open to keep the lift car where it was, but as they crept down the hallway towards it, Brunhilde came round the corner at the far end of the corridor with three footmen. They were all armed with pistols and double-barreled shotguns.
“Bugger,” Nate swore, seeing that they couldn’t make it to the elevator without being shot. “We’ll have to take the stairs.”
There was no need to be quiet any longer. Swinging Flash round in a circle, Nate steered his mount down a side corridor, Tatty clinging on tightly as the velocycle’s engine rose into a joyous roar. Leaping forward, they covered the twenty yards to the end of the hallway in seconds, swerving at the top of the landing between the staircases and plunging down the steps towards the next floor. Flash made the tight turn, swinging its back wheel round with a deft flick of its hips, and down again they went, the two riders rattled by the bouncing of Flash’s wheels over the steps. The noise of its engine was loud in the stairwell, but Nate reveled in the sheer power of it and roared in unison.
They made it down two more flights before a shotgun blast nearly caught them, taking chunks out of the wall above their heads. Brunhilde had taken the elevator to a floor below them and was coming up the stairs towards them with some of her men.
“Shed light on their insides!” she screamed, opening the smoking gun to reload.
Nate wondered momentarily where she had learned to use a scattergun, but he was already turning the velocycle, its spinning wheels burning scars across the carpet as they skidded off the landing and down the hallway.
“We need to make it to the stairs on the other side!” he yelled to his sister over the bellowing engine. “I think we can take a shortcut through the dining room!”
Tatty nodded in agreement as Nate turned in a wide doorway and through an anteroom into the massive dining room. Footmen were running down towards them on either side of the long dining table, but Nate jumped Flash up onto the tabletop, knocking candlesticks and vases of flowers flying as they raced down its length and flew off the end, leaving a trail of burned French polish. As soon as its feet touched the floor, Flash was turned out of another door, on through an unused hall to the corridor beyond, which led to the stairs on the other side of the tower.
Rattling down another few flights, they found their way blocked by a barricade of furniture, and Nate only just lifted the front wheel in t
ime before they careered straight into it. Flash half rammed, half climbed over the pile of wood, sending the defending footmen running for cover. But as it landed, Nate was unable to turn his engimal in time, and they spun into a suit of armor in a corner of the landing with a crash of metal, sending pieces of it everywhere. Seizing the arrowhead-shaped shield—a gauntlet still dangling from it—Nate got Flash back on its feet and only barely deflected the pistol shots fired at them as they took off down the corridor.
“The other side again?” Tatty asked expectantly.
“I suppose so,” he sighed, throwing the shield away.
They passed through one deserted hall after another, cutting across the building. Every now and then Nate slowed and looked out of the windows, hoping for another exit.
“I had no idea so much of the house was unused,” Tatty noted. “It seems such a waste.”
“Perhaps we’ll deal with that when we come back,” Nate replied, steering them down another corridor.
The family would be using the speaking tubes and elevators to pen them in. The servants would be converging on them from top and bottom. They had to get out of the house … quickly. Two more flights of stairs brought them to the fourth floor. Nate skidded to a halt, breathing hard and thinking fast. Turning a corner, he saw a window at the end of the corridor. He pulled off his jacket and threw it over Tatiana’s head and shoulders. He hoped it would be enough.
“Keep your head down and hold on tight,” he said to her. Then, to Flash, he added. “This is it … Don’t fail me now.”
The velocycle responded with a thrilled growl and they accelerated forward, the carpet wrinkling under the grip of the wheels as they drove the beast on. Nate lowered his head and screamed as Flash hurled them through the window.
Broken wood and glass cut gashes in his face, neck and hands as they exploded out of the building. They landed with a brittle thud on one side of the gabled roof of the south wing, sloughing slate tiles away beneath their spinning wheels as they slid down the slope, the old roof barely supporting the velocycle’s weight. They were going too fast to stop and they hurtled towards the edge … Nate pulling back to lift Flash’s front wheel as they slipped off in a shower of slate and glass and splintered wood, falling, falling, until they hit the roof of the stables and Flash’s back wheel punched through, jarring the two riders to the bone as they came to an abrupt stop.