It would be better for all concerned, she said, if I did not trouble my family again.
It is an understatement to say that it was with a heavy heart that I loaded up my ’stat and set off for the Indian Ocean. But a small part of me, one that I tried to suppress as I cast off my tethering cables and wept at the cruel blow I felt my wife had dealt me, exulted at the unfettered freedom I now enjoyed.
Oh, how ironic.
Whether it was recklessness at this newfound sense of utter freedom, or a lapse in concentration because of the cold way my wife had shut me out, or perhaps merely an unavoidable accident, I still do not fully know. But as I approached the point where my bearings and documentation said the unmapped, unnamed island should be, disaster struck.
It had been fine flying for the previous several hours, but I noticed the barometer showing an alarmingly steep fall in pressure, accompanied by the sudden swell of the sea below me and a brisk wind buffeting my ’stat. Too late I realized what was happening; I was flying right into a cyclone, such as often trap unwary sailors in that corner of the world. A hard rain began, and the winds rose to gale force, throwing my ’stat around. I struggled to keep altitude in the plummeting pressure and howling winds, and a tremendous cracking sound told me that the structure of my balloon frame had snapped in the onslaught. I went spiraling downward, thrown about by the cyclone, and it was only then that I saw the jagged black teeth rising from the sea, a ring of deadly rocks at the center of which was a small island, little more than a sea-bound hill crowned with a thick copse of trees and vegetation. This, I surmised, was my destination, but I had no time to check my documents and bearing before I smashed into the side of the hill.
When I came to, the cyclone had passed and the sky was blue once more. My ’stat was utterly wrecked; moreover, my leg was broken and severely gashed. I managed to crawl to the medical supplies in the wreckage of the ’stat and imbibed a dose of morphine while I tried to reset the broken bone and sew up the wound with fishing line. The effort and pain—despite the medicine—threw me into a black pit of unconscious despair, where I was beset by strange and terrifying visions.
What’s that? The morphine? Yes, I am sure it played a part in my dreams. But more to open doors in my perception. As I lay there in the Stygian black, I was approached, with much pomp and music, by an elephant-headed god sitting on an open carriage drawn by four immense rats. He had four arms, in which he held an ax, a noose, one of his own broken tusks, and a handful of food.
When I awoke I, as you are, was convinced it was merely a fever dream brought on by the morphine and pain. But as my time on the island passed, I saw the vision for what it was: guidance from Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, the Lord of Beginnings.
Because although I lay there in the ruins of my airship, looking out at the vast circles of cruel rock that no ship could possibly navigate, lost on an uncharted island in vast waters, I felt as though I was on the cusp of something new. As I crawled from the wreckage, I was suddenly sure I was being reborn.
It was a rebirth that was likely to be short-lived, though. The debris and contents of my ’stat were scattered all across the small island—only a mile wide and perhaps two in length, but with my leg so agonizingly debilitated I had little hope of collecting it all in the short term. I had been lucky to find the medical kit; I was less so when it came to my stock of food and clean water. The glittering Indian Ocean lapped tantalizingly on the shore, only adding to my thirst.
After a day and a night I was sure I would die, when a small black-and-white shape appeared at the edge of my vision. It was a colobus monkey. My first thought was to catch it and eat it—even raw; I was so hungry I would have considered that. But it evaded my clumsy lunges, and watched me with almost human interest from a distance. After some hours it disappeared, my only hope of food gone.
But it returned, and astonishingly it brought food for me. Nuts and berries from the thick copse of trees that crowned the island. I managed to drag myself to the ’stat wreckage and tore a bowl-like chunk of steel from the framework, miming a drinking motion. The monkey seemed to understand, and it took the bowl. To my amazement, it appeared an hour later, carefully carrying the bowl filled with fresh, clear water.
Thus the monkey nursed me back to health over the course of the next few days. I named it Jip, after a dog my father once had. When I was stronger I fashioned a crutch from the timber in the ruined ’stat and Jip led me into the trees, where he showed me with chattering enthusiasm the trees from which he obtained the nuts and berries, and a spring flowing from the hill that rose at the center of the island.
My leg, however, had become infected, and gangrene had set in near the wounds. I had no option but to use the last of the morphine and amputate below the knee, cauterizing the wound in a blazing fire on the beach. You cannot imagine that pain, Smith. I knew that if I blacked out before the operation was complete, I would not wake up. I gripped a length of wood between my teeth, and even with the morphine, it took all my reserves to remain conscious. It was Jip who saved me, I think, dancing and chattering before me as though to try to distract me from the horrific agony. Still, I fancied they would hear my screams even in Delhi, but they brought no relief parties to investigate.
Jip and I became firm companions, he abandoning the company of his fellow colobus monkeys, none of which came close to me. I made a makeshift shelter on the beach from the fabric of my balloon, and collected as many of my supplies as I could. I fashioned a wooden leg and learned to walk anew on it. The stump of my leg I buried in the sand, marking it with a wooden cross. It felt symbolic, as though it were the last of England I was interring, or at least the last of my England. The ring of rocks around the island created a lagoon in which fish were abundant, and I speared them, cooking them over large fires which I hoped would attract the attention of the rescue party I was sure was coming from England. When I returned, I would present Jip to my daughter; a monkey, just as she had asked for.
But no rescue came. I saw no airships in the sky, could see no boats from the crest of the island. My original mission was all but forgotten, until one day Jip led me to the entrance of a cave hidden by hanging vines.
Inside was a box, like no box I had ever seen before. It was smooth and without joints, of some kind of strong metal I could not identify. It opened on invisible hinges, and I realized that this was what I had been dispatched from London to find.
A small glass half-sphere that fitted neatly into the palm of my hand.
I laughed heartily at the irony, that I had been sent all the way to a lost island for this, and almost forfeited my life. Also in the box was a thin sheet of the same metal that the box was made from, embossed with symbols that meant nothing to me. At least I had the cave as a more permanent shelter, until they arrived for me.
And still, no rescue came. Days turned to weeks. I grew lean and brown in the sun, my hair long and gray. I spoke to Jip, but he never spoke back, and eventually I stopped speaking altogether, communing with Jip on a purely mental basis, or so it felt.
I tried to escape, obviously, but I knew how far from land my island was, and all rafts I attempted to build proved unable to pass the jagged rocks. Over time I forgot about escaping, indeed, forgot about my old life.
Then Jip died.
He had gone to sleep at the foot of my blankets, as he was wont to do, and in the morning he was cold and stiff. Curiously, I had dreamed of Ganesha again the previous night. New beginnings. In the absence of anything else to read, I had spent time trying to decode the strange symbols that accompanied the artifact, previously without any success. But then it suddenly became apparent.
The artifact was designed to encase a brain. A brain the size of Jip’s. Feverishly working, and following the symbols that now read to me like some wordless instruction manual, I severed the top of Jip’s head and connected the brain and spinal cord to the glass half-sphere. And he moved! He twitched and looked up at me! But my delight was short-lived; Jip’s body
was still cold and dead. Thus, over the next days, I worked to replace his joints and skeleton with discarded gears and cogs, pinions and flywheels, which had accumulated from the crash of my ’stat.
And, eventually, Jip lived again. His body was little more than a machine, but his brain was alive.
Smith? Are you well? You seem to be … no, of course. I shall go on. Not long after that—though I had long since given up trying to mark time—I saw the boat. It was an Indian fishing boat, several miles out at sea. I lit my fires and hollered and banged, but the boat did not turn to my island. I raged and shouted on the beach, wishing I could breach the walls of the rocks. Then Jip began to jump up and down excitedly, pointing to a smashed tabletop I used for gutting and cleaning fish. Of course! I could not pass the narrow gaps in the jagged rocks, but Jip could! I scribbled a note in half-remembered English, giving the bearing of the island as best as I could remember, and gave it to him. He mounted the tabletop, and I pushed it out into the lagoon, swimming with it to the rocks and pushing my friend through the narrow gaps until the swells of the ocean took him. Jip chattered a farewell, the note clutched in his hand, then he was lost in the rising waves.
By the time the second night had passed, I had resigned myself to the fact that rescue was not coming, and that I had also consigned my beloved Jip to a watery grave.
I was standing in the cave one morning, yawning and preparing for a day of fishing, when I saw the boat again. It was moored beyond the barrier, and the fishermen, in lunghis and sandals, were picking their way over the barnacle-encrusted rocks. Jip had found them, or they had found him. I was saved.
The fishermen took me back to their boat. They had been blown drastically off course by a cyclone themselves, and they were just finding their way back when they saw this amazing sight, a monkey on a table in the waves. They had rescued Jip, deciphered my note as best they could, and made for the island again. We were several hundred miles from India, but they were well stocked with food, and their boat had not been too damaged in the storm. They were fascinated by me, but I could barely even speak my gratitude. I managed to ask what month it was, so I could work out how many long weeks I had been lost.
It was September, he told me in singsong English. September 1877.
I had been on the island for seven years.
21
THE TRIAL OF ROWENA FANSHAWE
It was still dark when Bent stumbled down to the kitchen, but Sally Cadwallader was already busy, frying bacon and boiling water for the coffee. “I thought you would need a good breakfast,” she said. “If you’re going to be in that court all day, I imagine there isn’t much to lunch on.”
“Very good of you, Sally,” said Bent, accepting a cup of coffee from her and slumping at the table. He watched her as she turned to the frying pan and began to pluck out thick, sizzling rashers of bacon. “So where did you get to last night?”
Mrs. Cadwallader turned with a frown. “Why, that’s none of your—” She paused and took a deep breath. “Mr. Bent. I appreciate that this is a somewhat unorthodox household, but I feel it behooves me to remind you that I am the housekeeper here at 23 Grosvenor Square and that while you are under this roof you are in effect my employer. I would thank you to keep our relationship on a more professional footing.”
She handed him a plate piled high with bacon sandwiches. “You make me sound all highfalutin, Sally.”
“Mrs. Cadwallader, please.”
He shrugged and bit into one of the sandwiches. “Where’s Maria?”
“Still in her room, I suppose.”
“Do you reckon she sleeps, then, her being an automaton and all?”
Mrs. Cadwallader wiped her hands on her apron. “She has a human brain. I suppose she must have to rest in the same way as everyone else.”
Bent nodded. “Hadn’t thought of it like that. You’ll keep an eye on her today? I don’t want her going out to Whitechapel looking for Gideon, not after what she did last night. And any trouble here, you go straight to the police. And don’t let anyone in who you don’t know.” He shoved the last of the bacon sandwich into his mouth. “Especially Spaniards.”
Mrs. Cadwallader looked at him curiously. “You almost seem quite … paternal around Miss Maria, Mr. Bent.”
Bent smiled. “You never had kids, did you Sall—Mrs. Cadwallader?”
She looked at her hands. “No. Mr. Cadwallader and I were never blessed, unfortunately.”
“Me neither.”
Mrs. Cadwallader stifled a sound that was half-laugh, half-snort. Bent raised an eyebrow. “Would it surprise you to learn I was once married?”
She blinked. “Why … yes. Yes, it would, Mr. Bent.”
“I wasn’t always like this,” he said, pointing at himself. “I didn’t always look like ten pounds of horseshit in a five-pound bag.”
The housekeeper gave him a stern look for his language. “So … when?”
Bent sighed. “Longer ago than I care to remember. It didn’t work out. I wouldn’t let it work out. Daisy wanted children, wanted a nice, quiet life. She should never have married a journalist. Money slipped through my fingers like water, but I could hold my drink.” He inspected his coffee. “Not a good combination. Not for a happy domestic life.”
They heard the gentle tread of footsteps above them and both looked at the ceiling. “I’d have liked children, I think,” said Bent thoughtfully. He shook his head. “Look at us. Like that story, yeah? The one where the childless old couple bake themselves a baby. Maybe Maria’s our gingerbread girl.”
He thought she was going to give him a lecture again, but she just smiled. “I’ll keep an eye on her, Aloysius. You get yourself off to the Old Bailey, make sure Miss Rowena comes out of this safe and sound.”
* * *
As he climbed into the steam-cab on the queue near the square, Bent wrestled with what he was going to do with the fact that they’d unmasked Jack the Ripper. He should go to the constabulary with it, but something held him back. For years he’d been on this case, pounding away at the streets of Whitechapel, combing over the particulars of every single murder, turning the evidence this way and that, trying to crack it. It had consumed him. It had been his obsession. He should go to the police, but he thought he might keep this to himself for a while. After all, if Sergio de la Garcia now knew that Maria was the one he wanted, he wasn’t likely to go slicing up anyone else. No, this would be his secret, for a little bit longer.
He’d thought he might have been a bit happier about it all, though, after all this time. But he was distracted, couldn’t properly focus.
Sally Cadwallader had called him Aloysius.
Bent twisted around in the leather seat, casting an eye back toward the square, just in time to see a tall figure walking with a wary gait along the frontage to number 23, some kind of conical parcel in his hand. Bent frowned. That man he’d seen lurking by the gate the other day, he was sure of it.
But then the driver joined the main road and the man was lost from sight, and Bent tried to devote his full attention to the trial of Rowena Fanshawe.
* * *
The Old Bailey was smog-bound when Bent arrived, graying the snow that still fell and obscuring the statue of Lady Justice far above. He hoped that wasn’t some kind of omen. And was there ever going to be an end to this effing snow? The gawkers and ghouls were out early, jovially filling the foyer of the courthouse, laughing and joking as they waited for the trial to start. There were more hacks than Bent could count as well. He gave the press pack two fingers and shouted, “Sensation-hungry muckrakers!” before spying Willy Siddell flapping about in his robes by the courtroom door and ducking into the crowd toward him.
“Shine a light, Bent!” said Siddell, his eyes swiveling as though on stalks and his tattered wig askew. “Have you seen the size of this mob?”
“Hope you’re not going to get stage fright, Willy,” said Bent. “Have you been down to see Rowena?”
Siddell nodded. “She’s not good, Be
nt. I don’t think she favors being locked up.”
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she?” said Bent, rolling a cigarette between his cold, numb fingers. “She’s the Belle of the effing Airways, ain’t she?”
“Have you found Mr. Smith yet?” asked Siddell, struggling to keep his papers under control as a sudden breeze wafting through the marble and stone foyer snatched at them.
“Not yet,” said Bent, and lit his cigarette. “I’m working on it.”
Siddell’s mustache drooped. “So just who the hell am I going to call as a witness for the defense?”
It was, Bent had to admit, a problem. Gideon was their best bet, and could have swung the jury with just a toss of his pretty curls. But with him out of the picture, and Walsingham exempting himself … well, everyone else who might have said anything nice about Rowena was dead. Lucian Trigger, Dr. John Reed, even Louis Cockayne … they could all have won the public over. Bent sucked hard on the cigarette. He must remind Gideon when he eventually effing saw him to be a bit more bloody careful what he did with his friends.
“The door’s opening,” said Siddell. “We’re on.” He looked around wildly. “Don’t suppose there’s time for me to go to the toilet, is there?”
* * *
Squeezing onto the bench beside Siddell, with Scullimore and his assistants looking down their noses at them, Bent cast a glance around the courtroom. The galleries ranged around the upper story were packed with a jovial crowd, and he could hear the clink of bottles and the unwrapping of sandwiches. They were evidently here for a grand day out. The press bench was a scrum as well, familiar faces waving their pens at Bent and settling in for some good copy. The jury had been led in, twelve men good and true, a selection of London’s citizenry that seemed to take in stiff-collared bankers, down-at-heel laborers, and keen-eyed ex-servicemen. As Bent struggled out of his overcoat, two court stewards with Rowena in between them emerged from the cells below and into the defendant’s box.
Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper Page 23