by Paul Finch
“Of course.” She rose to her feet, tucking the blooms into a pouch at her side and tying them with a cord – her bridal bouquet, he realised. “You call and I must obey.”
She climbed onto the back of her mare.
“The king may spare me, you know,” Eric said. “Father’s plan might work.”
“It might,” she acknowledged. Then a tinge of colour appeared in her cheek. “You … you Snake of Midgard!” She glared at him with her faerie-violet eyes. “You’ve put me through Hell before. But this will be the worst of all. Finally wedding you and not knowing whether you’ll live to see our first anniversary. Carrying your child and wondering whether it will ever even know you.”
“When races mingle there is always peril,” he said. “But the outcome’s often better.”
“Let’s hope so, Eric.” She spurred her horse forward. “For all our sakes.”
16
At the rear of Wulfbury keep, in a rat-infested portion of the bailey, the daily refuse of the castle was heaped: rags and rotten food, broken tools and old garments too worn or sullied to be useful any more, all enriched by the sweepings of the stables, the scrapings of the kennels, and the slops and filth of the latrines. Every week six servants were charged with lifting a slatted hatch in the stockade, and with brushes and shovels, thrusting out this accumulated debris, sending it tumbling down the slope, where at high tide the surging waters of the Wash would swallow it.
Such was the procedure on this occasion. Though now the odious mound was greater by one particular item: a huge, heavy carcass. It was clad in mail, but also in a pelt of foul, blood-clotted fur which had been charred in many places. This object too, caked with dirt and crawling with bluebottles, was forced out through the hatch, and sent down the cliff with the usual shower of flotsam. It struck the rocks at the bottom and lay there like a bundle of rags, while gradually, piece after piece, it was pulled apart by the crabs and the gulls. Several hours later, when the sun descended in a blood-red orb, the sea – hued rose-pink as it must have been on that first morning of world – rose up again, and what was left of the carcass was taken by the tide, which foamed and roared as it had for countless centuries around the great coastal outcrop that had once been called Giant’s Throne.
THE AMPHIBIANS
Master’s Log, May 21st 1879
He is clearly a man of means. That much you can tell from his expensive frock coat and silken topper, neither of which he is reluctant to wear on deck even in the worst squalls. While the rest of us cower in our oilskins, he stands boldly at the prow in all his Haymarket finery. I have his name of course, Henry William Cromer, and various addresses where his executors might be reached should misfortune befall him; these are dangerous waters after all, even in the springtime. But of his motives, I know nothing. This is the fourth charter he has taken with the 'Eleanor Jayne', and always for the same exploratory cruise in this same desolate region between the Indies and the Azores, 30°N lat.
Mates and masters on other clippers have passed similar word to me; before the 'Eleanor Jayne' it was the 'Carrie Rose' and the 'Duke of Orleans', and always for reasons that were never explained. It must have cost him a fortune over these many years, but doubtless he can afford it. As far as I know, he made his wealth in munitions. He is missing an arm, which may indicate that he was a serviceman at some time, but his aspect is wrong for that, I think. He is too polite an old gent, too thoughtful of others. In that respect, it is difficult for a simple soul like me to imagine where this strange compulsion of his might have come from, or where, indeed, it might lead us to.
*
It was the year 1823, and wondrous changes were in progress: Home Secretary Peel had just abolished the death penalty for theft; for the first time ever covered cabs were abroad on the streets of English cities; and at Rugby School in Warwickshire a boy had picked up a football and run with it, creating an entire new field of sporting endeavour.
Not that any of this concerned the young apprentice hard at work in the hot and sooty basement. Little had changed down here for decades, but when a craft is already finely honed the fewer changes the better. The tools adorning the walls and strewing the oily bench-tops might be black as coal and slick with grease, yet, thanks to years of expert use, there wasn’t a notch on them. The air might have been heady with smoke, pungent with sweat and coke, the brick floor scattered with wood shavings and metal-chips – but in industrial dens like these the miracles of technology were wrought.
The apprentice laboured at the rifle-mount, his taut young muscles for once relaxed as he adjusted the spider-clamps. New and gleaming, the two steel tubes must align in perfect symmetry before they could be ringed as a double-barrel, or else the entire operation was wasted. Minutes passed before this delicate task was complete, and then it was back to the stove to bellow in more air. The apprentice checked his gauge as the furnace temperature rose, and reached for his soldering irons.
Only then did he sense a foreign presence in the workshop. He spun around, and saw a man waiting at the foot of the spiral stair.
“Is the gunsmith at home?” the man said.
He was clearly of naval origin. His flared white breeks, striped vest and short blue jacket gave him away, but also his ragged beard, darkly sunburned skin and tar-black fingers. He was skeletally thin, his physique emaciated, his ridged face all leather and salt-scars beneath a mop of bleached flaxen hair, but there was something in his chill manner and slate-grey eyes that belied this apparent frailty. Across the back of one mottled hand, the apprentice saw a string of badly tattooed words, which, taken all together, spoke volumes about the fellow’s past life:
Saint Vincent
Camperdown
Aboukir Bay
Malta
Trafalgar
Copenhagen
Boston
New London
“I said is the gunsmith at home?” The visitor’s accent was a raw Norfolk brogue.
“I’m afraid not, sir,” the apprentice said, wiping his hands on his canvas apron. “He died last month.”
The visitor showed a glint of yellow tooth. “I’ll wager you aren’t working for nothing, though? Coxton Gunnery are still in the market?”
“Of course.” The apprentice reached for the orders book. “Mrs. Coxton, herself, manages our affairs. It’s business as usual … she says.”
The visitor nodded. “I carry no papers recommending you to me, I should point out … but I’ve no time for dilly-dally. So I’ll have to trust you. I require the manufacture of a certain type of weapon. Something very special.”
The apprentice licked his pencil and set to write the particulars.
“A breech-loading shotgun,” the visitor said, “which will fire from six barrels simultaneously.”
The apprentice glanced up. “That would be a volley gun?”
“You know it?”
“I know of it, sir. It was first regarded as an eccentricity, though there was quite a market for it among non-commissioned officers during the Peninsula War. I believe it’s also popular in India, with sportsmen on tiger-shoots.”
“How old are you, boy?”
“Fourteen, sir.”
“You know your trade.”
“I hope to make my fortune from it someday.”
The visitor sniffed. “I need improvements on the old volley gun. Percussion rather than flintlock, rifled barrels not smooth-bore. It must have greater range and carrying power. The ball-cartridge must be larger, heavier …”
The apprentice scribbled. “Such a weapon would stop an army, sir.”
“That’s my intent.”
The apprentice stared up at him. The visitor stared back. Briefly, there was more than a glimmer of madness in his grey, watery eyes.
“Not here in Yarmouth, I hope?” came another voice.
Mrs. Coxton was standing in the door to the undercroft. The normal sight of her was enough to take a man’s breath away; trim and elegant, with her soft blonde hair tied
in ringlets. Even now, in her black dress of mourning and dark, heavy shawl, she was a comely woman.
“Mrs. Martha,” the apprentice said, “this gentleman …”
“So I’ve heard, Harry.” She entered the room properly. “The weapon you describe, sir … we can build it. But it may require development work. This will mean funding in advance. For materials as well as labour. Would that pose a problem?”
The man reached into a seaman’s kit-bag, and took out a purse. He tossed it at the apprentice. Harry caught it, and was surprised by its weight.
“Take what you need,” the visitor said. “All costs and expenses. Pay no attention to the dates or denominations. It’s solid gold. Every piece.”
Harry emptied the purse onto the workbench: a glittering heap of coins of various shapes and sizes, with all manner of inscriptions on them.
“Doubloons!” he exclaimed. “My eye, Mrs. Martha, doubloons!”
He held one up. Its Spanish lettering was unmistakable, its lustre pure as sunlight.
Mrs. Coxton looked curiously round at their visitor. At first she’d taken him for a vagabond or madman. Clearly the former was not the case, at least. But now she received her second shock of the day – for the visitor had vanished. Somewhere overhead, a door clicked shut.
“Go after him, Harry,” she said. “Quickly.”
The boy scampered up the steps and dashed out onto the dock-front, but in the midst of the evening traffic there was no sign of the man.
*
Harry completed his working day at seven, sweeping the shop, putting up the shutters and trimming the lamps. Afterwards he ascended to the parlour, where his mistress sat before a low table contemplating the heap of Spanish doubloons.
“This can’t be lawful,” she said.
Harry crouched to inspect the trove. “A commission is a commission, Mrs. Martha.”
“He’s signed no contract, presented no papers of any sort.”
“Is his money not his bond?”
“Are we sure it’s his money?”
Harry shrugged. “Can we be taken to task if it isn’t? We always accept payment in good faith.”
She looked back at the coins. There might have been several hundred guineas’ worth, for all she knew. “This is very different from the norm, Harry. And this horrible gun he seeks … you know it, I gather?”
Harry nodded, recalling several grubbily-thumbed pages in the workshop manuals. “Devastating, ma-am. Like a cannon.”
“None of this bodes well.”
“But Mrs. Martha, won’t it resolve your dilemma?”
“Ah, yes.” She half-smiled. “My dilemma.”
Old Coxton had died from pneumonia the previous September. He’d been in declining health for several years, but his death being foreseen did not help his widow in the event of it. Cantankerous and inclined to miserly ways, the gunsmith had always resisted the use of additional staff. Even the recruitment of cheap, untrained labour had been frowned upon. In consequence, as the master aged and sickened, an ever-greater burden had fallen on the single apprentice, and though the boy had struggled manfully, orders had inevitably dropped. By the time Coxton expired, profits had become losses. His wife had taken the business reins, but by then there was next to no business at all. The downward spiral towards debt and imprisonment had begun.
“Mrs. Martha?” the boy asked her again.
Martha glanced at him. As always, his innocent young face, with its sprinkling of freckles, moved her. She suspected he might be in love with her – why else stay loyal to such a declining firm? – though she wasn’t sure how serious this might be. At twenty-one, she wasn’t much older than he, though there was a gulf between them in terms of experience. He had energy, however, and talent.
She pulled her shawl around her and regarded the pile of coins warily. “When can you start on this weapon?”
Harry jumped up, delighted. “End of the week, ma-am.”
“Did he leave designs, specifications?”
“None.”
“He really is trusting us, isn’t he?” she said.
And this thought was no comfort to Martha. No comfort at all.
*
The following week, Coxton Gunnery received another strange visitor, though this one was considerably less welcome than the first. Harry was alone in the shop. He’d been alone for three days, as his mistress was engaged in the second of two visits to the Metals Exchange in London. A certain dealer had taken on the task of converting the gold, which had transpired to be worth even more than previously thought – many of the doubloons had been minted in the sixteenth century, which meant they were of also of historic value.
Even to an uneducated lad like Harry this was exciting news. He awaited his mistress’s return with full confidence that their fortunes had at last improved. When he heard feet coming down the spiral stair, he stopped work, expecting it to be her.
Not that she was normally so clumsy footed. Or so foully odorous.
Harry felt his hair prickle.
The person descending into the basement was like no-one he’d ever seen before. He was cowled and hooded, but in a bizarre patchwork of clothes sewn together from tarpaulin and what looked like pieces of old netting. In terms of bulk, he was huge but grossly distorted – broader almost than he was tall, with squat, bandy legs, long arms and flat, paddle-like hands encased in leather gauntlets. More terrifying than any of this was his face – the little Harry could actually see, for a black scarf covered the nose and mouth. Above that was pallid flesh, crusted around the eyes with warts so large they were more like barnacles. And then there were the eyes themselves. They weren’t a man’s eyes, but were wet and filmed and blank as a shark’s. The stench, loathsome as a fish-market gutter, poured off the creature in suffocating waves.
“Goooaaalllththth,” it said in a gurgling voice as it shambled across the workshop.
The boy backed away. “What … what’s that you say?”
“Goooaaalllththth!” Its dead eyes rolled as it extended a hand for alms.
Harry could scarcely believe what he was seeing. “Goalth … you mean … you mean gold!”
Good Lord, they were being robbed!
He grabbed a bar and swung it, but the intruder ducked with ease, striking Harry mid-chest with the flat of its great gloved hand. Harry went sprawling over his lathe, banging his skull hard. He lay dazed amid a wreckage of tools, before warmth on his face brought him round. He gasped when he realised that he had fallen close to the furnace-grate. Unfortunately, the intruder had also realised this, and was now pumping in air from the bellows. Flames roared inside the metal casing; the flue began to shudder. Harry tried to leap to his feet, but the thing snatched him by the apron-strap. The boy had never felt such strength in an arm; there was simply no resisting it. It swung him up into the air, where he shouted and swore helplessly. The intruder responded by striking him again, a limp but stinging slap to the side of his head, delivered with just sufficient force to kill the fight in him. With a loud clang, it yanked down the handle on the furnace door, and pulled it open. An intense heat blasted out.
Senseless, blood streaming from his mouth, Harry watched this groggily. Only when he felt his face being thrust towards the two-by-two aperture, beyond which flames blazed white on a bed of glowing coals, did he realise what it portended. He shrieked, kicking and wrestling frantically – but to no avail. He felt his eyebrows start to singe.
“Goooaaalllththth,” it repeated into his ear.
“I haven’t got any gold!” he wailed. The skin on his face was tightening, blistering.
“Goooaaalllththth!”
“That’s enough!” came a strident voice.
The intruder whirled around, hurling Harry to the floor. Stunned, he glanced up and saw that Mrs. Martha had arrived. It wouldn’t normally be her custom to come straight down to the workshop, but doubtless she’d heard the commotion. She was still wearing her bonnet and shawl, with her reticule by her side, but he
r face had gone white – not only with shock and fear, but also with rage. The pocket-flintlock she always took with her when transporting money was clasped in her dainty hand, its muzzle trained on the abomination’s barrel-chest.
“Whoever you are, whatever you are … I want you out of here!”
It held its ground, its hoarse breath wheezing.
“Now!” She cocked the pistol. “Do you hear!”
Harry scampered across the floor on all fours, leaping to his feet by his mistress’s side. He took a wrench from the wall. “You heard!” he shouted. “Get out!”
Very slowly, the intruder circled around them, pushing benches and trestles from its path. Never once did it avert those flat, shark-like eyes.
“And don’t be thinking of coming back!” Mrs. Martha added. “So help me, I’ll drop you with this … you think I won’t? I’ve dropped thieves before.”
Whether it believed her or not was uncertain, but clearly it had decided that discretion was the better part of valour. It reached the foot of the spiral stair and, in one swift motion, bolted upward and vanished from sight. The door above crashed closed.
The apprentice turned slowly to his mistress, his face red and scorched, his hair hanging in lank, sodden strands. “He … he said he wanted gold.”
“I know what he wanted,” Mrs. Martha replied.
“You know?”
“Not just any gold, Harry … the gold.”
Realisation struck the boy. He could only gape.
“I’m afraid our latest customer has been keeping strange company,” she said.
A dozen notions hit the boy at once: their new client’s naval garb; his battle-tattoos; and now this thing, this devil with its fish-oil stench and salted breath.
“How long before you make a finish?” Mrs. Martha asked, crossing the shop to where the volley gun was partly assembled on its stand.
He rubbed his bruises and considered. At present the barrels were too heavy; he’d only just begun the process of back-boring to re-balance the weapon. There was much work yet. “Several weeks, maybe. Then there’s test-firing …”