by Edward Carey
From the Deputy Lord Great Chamberlain, a public servant, Westminster Palace
There’s a very special place in the Palace that is used only twice of every year. It is entered so very rarely and is kept in general quite sealed up, so that one cannot help wondering how it fares all the rest of the year. But today is indeed one of those days when it is used, when it springs into life, one might say, and does its duty. It is the Robing Room, and it is here that Her Majesty shall put on the Imperial State Crown, shall be dressed for the State Opening of Parliament. She shall enter the building from the Royal Entrance, come through the Norman Porch and then she shall be here, in this very room. From here, once robed, she shall be escorted through the Royal Gallery, through the Prince’s Gallery and into the House of Lords, there she shall be sat at her throne whilst the Lord Chancellor reads the speech for her. Yes, the day has come around again and I am as nervous as ever I was. I am fully aware of my duty. The Robing Room is quite ready.
Only, only this is the very strange thing.
There is a marble mantelpiece.
It quite covers up the greater fireplace that has so many different colours, with its bronze statues of Saint George fighting the dragon and Saint Michael vanquishing the devil. I almost feel as if the dragon and the devil, now unseen, have risen again and have gained the upper hand.
What is this new, large, marble fireplace, complete with female caryatids in the Robing Room?
I call out for assistance. No one knows how it came to be here, and all swear it was not here last night. The Queen has such a sharp eye she shall certainly see this obstruction instantly. I call out for castors to be found to roll the monstrosity away.
It truly is a most ugly piece of furniture, of very crude carving, not at all to the taste of the room; how it does clash so! Before any castors can be found the thing must at the very least be covered over with some sheet to shield it from view. But can the dread thing be shifted in time, for the Queen shall be here and presently?
I do not feel at ease.
No, in truth, I feel that something is very wrong.
Westminster Bridge 08:00 8th February 1876
Whitehall 10:30 8th February 1876, Moments Before the Arrival of the Queen
31
THE PARTIES ASSEMBLE
More voices from around Westminster
From Clod
I was at Westminster Bridge by six of the morning. I felt the bitter cold, some sleet coming down. Terrible dark. I summoned all the things after me, and they did come, they all came out for me. I had only the feeling of the deepest, darkest, blackest, bleakest misery; I should do anything, I thought, to protect my family. This day would see all drowned dead if it came to it, I’d suffocate Lungdon in all its own things.
I’ve scattered the things all about the ground in the mud, in the sleet, they are everywhere about, and many massings of things either side of The Mall, some I have left in Green Park and others in St James’s Park – the closest large ground to Westminster Bridge – but others are beside me now, coming along with me in the sleeting. I shall summon them when they are needed, I need only think and all should come tumbling and wrecking down Birdcage Walk. If I called them, when I call them, those new rubbish heaps, then they will drown anyone in their path, then they will spit at, pick and pock, burst and crack, smash and ruin, chip and harm any building anywhere near. I will raise such a storm that it will be as if Lungdon itself were set before a firing squad as I send those million bullets smashing.
I was ready to do it, I was waiting. But, for now, just for this little while, I kept all my great armoury quietly in the parks, on the streets, everywhere about me.
And so I went on alone, yet in such great company, until I reached Westminster Bridge. Then I took out Eleanor Cranwell the candleholder, the traitor, slotted in a new candle, set it alight and waited and waited in such a little pool of light. A boy in a large overcoat, too big for him, in a tall top hat with thick mourning band, waiting for the end to come along.
Alone, all alone in the dark – the only person, at least. I’d never felt so lonely, as if I was all that was left of the world and all I’d ever loved or known had been smashed and was dead. I sang a little Iremonger song that we were taught to sing when we felt alone in our cold beds with just a nightlight for company, when a heapstorm was coming on, or just because a little noise seemed to help tame the darkness.
‘Help me, O help me candle light
From all the horrors of the night.
Keep me, O keep me this I pray
That I may see another day.’
Nothing at first.
Perhaps I was all that was left and the Gatherings had done for the others.
Oh my poor people.
‘Help me, O help me not to dread
As I alone lie in my bed.
Help me, I pray with this small beam
To keep me calm and not to scream.’
Like I was the last person of them all.
Just the slopping noise of the Thames beneath me, like a foul, upset stomach, sloshing against the side, like Lungdon had eaten something that didn’t agree with it.
All alone at the end; how I should make them pay for it.
‘Eleanor Cranwell.’
The traitor.
‘Yes, Eleanor, here we are. All over soon.’
‘Help me, O help me candle flame
Ignore the dark that calls my name.
Light me, O light me candle near
From all my ever-rising fear.’
A little rustle, I barely distinguished it at first, but then a rat scuttled onto the bridge, and then another, and two more followed it, five more, ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred, all rushing onto the bridge. One great rat in the centre of them all. Bigger and grimmer than all the others, like it could eat them quick and not be full afterwards.
‘Hullo, rats,’ I whispered. ‘How do?’
‘Good morning, Clod,’ said a rat, growing tall, standing on two clawed feet and then stretching further until it was taller yet than me, with or without my hat, and then the face morphed and shed its hairs and there was a man behind it, an old one, with bloody fingers.
‘Good morning, Clod. We’ve been waiting.’
There was Grandfather and all the people left of my family, and there were all the many familiar voices coming from him, like a great crowd of one man; Grandfather holding all birth objects – not mine though, mine was not there. I heard no James Henry.
I am Clod, this is my story, coming to its end.
From Umbitt, Lord of Dirt, a King without a Kingdom
This family, once a great family, stands upon the thinnest ice. One wrong turn and we may all be drowned. And then whoever should watch over all the rubbish? Today we make our great mark, today shall Lungdon bleed and all the bells of all this sceptred isle shall ring out in mourning.
They’ll call me villain, assassin, murderer.
Yes, yes they shall.
All shall be broken this day, I’ll rubbish everything. I am Umbitt, High Lord of Filth, and there beside me in the dark of morning comes Clod, Clod the killer, Clod who’ll pull all out, Clod, Clod, our dynamite.
‘Good morning, Clod, we’ve been waiting for you.’
‘Good morning, Grandfather, here I am.’
‘What have you done, my boy?’
‘I have such things, sir, at my command.’
‘In truth, I did see you do it. I am so proud. You have come home.’
‘We have no home.’
‘Not yet.’
‘We shall not all die, we Iremongers; we are a people and must breathe on.’
‘Good, my boy, or die fighting.’
‘Yes, sir, or die in the fighting.’
‘We’re going in, any instant now.’
‘Into Parliament there?’
‘Yes, my boy.’
‘To do the thing?’
‘To get it done.’
‘I’m ready sir, but how may we get in?’
‘We’ll turn rats again, my boy, and in we’ll squeeze. There never was yet a house in all Lungdon that did not have a hundred holes through which a rat may enter. But we must be careful to rat only for an hour, no more, or we shall remain rats for evermore. It is a dangerous state, but we must brave it again. There, you see, is your Aunt Rosamud, she that is still a rat, she failed, did Rosamud, to return to full Rosamud-shape before it was too late, and so must for ever after be a rat.’
‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Good morning, Aunt. Poor Binadit.’
The rat let out a sad screech.
‘Where’s Granny, sir?’
‘Gone before.’
‘Granny is dead?’
‘No, no, not yet; your grandmother is inside already. With her mantelpiece.
‘You do not have your plug with you, Clod?’
‘No, sir, I do not. Rippit has it, I believe.’
‘Does he?’
‘Is he here, Rippit? I do not seem to see him.’
‘No, no, he has chosen his own road; he is quite broken to us, Clod.’
‘I should dearly love to have my plug.’
‘Of course you should. We shall endeavor to find it, I’m sure we shall.’
‘Where is Pinalippy, Grandfather?’
‘No one has seen her, Clod. Did you lose her then?’
‘She came to warn you – there are Gatherings, many hundreds of them perhaps. They have been killing us!’
‘Yes, yes, Clod, of the Gatherings we know and may outwit them yet. But from Pinalippy there has been no word.’
‘I am sorry for it, indeed.’
‘They must be made to pay for that.’
‘Yes, yes sir.’
Yes, yes, sir, he says, the little doll. I have him, without the slightest struggle I have him now. And he shall do all I bid him. If only I had the plug; such a shame about the plug. I’d feel so much better with the plug, I may even live long if I had it, the plug. Then I should say I had all birth objects, each and every one, and so I would be wrapped in the kindest blanket that ever there was. But alas, no plug. Best that he knows nothing of it being lost.
On then, on we go.
‘It is not safe to linger longer, my dear children,’ I say. ‘When next we see each other thus we shall be within and the moment upon us. Come now, great people, great blood of mine, no redder river did swell these hearts of ours now in Lungdon beating, and to the heart we now proceed, thus: onward, ratlike!’
From Moorcus Iremonger
I had a clear shot of him then, but lost my chance. Grandfather does keep him very close. I’ll do it yet, what care I that Grandfather forbids it? I cannot see clear until I have Clod dead before me. How Grandfather favours him, how we all waited under the bridge, on the muddy banks in the sleeting rain, for his dismal arrival. And when Grandfather came to gather up all our birth objects for safekeeping he never took my medal but looked at it with disgust and passed me on. It’s Clod’s fault, it is Clod that ever is to blame. How I’ll revenge on him for what he did to my medal. But that’s not all of it, that’s not even the half of it: it was Clod that ruined my toastrack, he was the one. He came to me, to my room back in Heap House which I made him tidy, and I gave him my toastrack to clean, and how he polished it with some dread and kindness and through his hands turned it against me. When he had gone, within a little while, my birth object was ruined and in its place was the snivelling Rowland Cullis. The ignominy of it. I, who ever before was Grandfather’s favourite. And now am considered merely another Iremonger, not a special, not any more. Not on account of that horrible Rowland who’s gone and walked out on me.
I’ve lost my toastrack.
And so must succumb soon enough whatever befalls, and so I’ll shoot the Clod soon as I may, I’ll kill a Clod, I shall, I shall.
From Police Inspector Frederick Harbin
There is a giant. Never thought I may say such a thing. But I saw a giant, taller, taller than ever I have seen any thing to be, twice the height of any building, and moving about the streets, trampling all in its path, lifting roofs from houses, knocking whole buildings down. And this giant I have seen, oh am I mad, was made of things, of bits and of pieces, of stolen property from all over the city. I should never credit it if I had not seen it myself. It is the Smith, the very Smith himself, this great moving mountain of objects, thundering in the dark, it is John Smith Un-Iremonger after he has supped on all the people that have been turned by this dread illness. I followed the great pounding of its feet – for in all its collection, on all its great mounds of parts, it does somehow stick together in an approximation of the human shape. It does cause the most dreadful destruction wherever it does tread.
I rallied the men, I gathered up a good thirty and more of us, we are armed, we are armed I say, even I with my own pistol, my ‘man-stopper’, and with the strongest lanterns we have, good Bullseye, three-chimney-stack paraffin lamps that shed great light, thus supplied we set forth in pursuit of the beast. We followed its great shadow around the Long Water in Kensington Gardens and, firing shots into the air, I hollered at the creature to cease or we shoot. There followed an immense crashing sound as if all the world had been tipped over onto a street, a great blast, which I still hear echoes of ringing in my ears. Some men, further forward, had their eardrums burst at the noise.
I ordered all to follow after and the hunt was on; the great lurking giant hammering ahead of us, we swung through Kensington Gardens, and along the Serpentine River. Then the colossus was the other side of the river from us, and we swung round down Rotten Row. There was a body on the ground, that of a girl. She had been shot. I wonder who she was; strange to say I noticed there was hair on her upper lip. Some Iremonger child, no doubt. Towards the Albert Gate we sped in pursuit, and there, again, was a massive crashing.
‘Have your guns at the ready!’ I cried.
And then gone, the creature gone, the beast no more, just fog and men, suddenly upwards of a hundred men in the park alongside us who were not there a moment before.
One came forward to me, the fellow must have been near eight feet tall. It was the Smith there before me.
‘Whatever are you, man?’ I cried.
He looked at me but his face betrayed no emotion.
‘Harbin,’ he said.
‘What are you? You are no man.’
‘I am come to rid you of your pest, you are commanded to aid me.’
‘Things … you’re made of things!’
‘We are all that may save you.’
‘You’re the very devil, you are!’
‘You must aid us. You must listen or all shall be lost. All have gone down to the river now, and all may be caught there and drowned. All Iremongers that are left have gathered there, by Parliament. Some of my number are there in wait but not nearly enough. We had hoped to catch the worst of the family, the child who’d been moving in the night, but through the sleet and through the fall of so many objects we have lost him. So now we must to Parliament and with all speed.’
‘To Parliament. It’s the Opening! The Queen!’ I cried.
‘Quickly, Harbin! Now is the time!’
‘To Parliament!’ I cried. ‘With all dispatch!’
I saw them then, by our lantern lights, the people of the Smith. They all have the same face. No matter their size or colouring, their faces are one and all the same, and looking up at the statue of the golden man just by the Albert Gate, there is no doubting it any more, the Smith and all his minions are wearing masks, they all have on the face of Prince Albert, the dead consort. That face that I have seen everywhere, that is upon so many busts across the capital, marble and bronze, parian and plaster, that is on statues all over our city, that is on a million prints and paintings, that is upon mugs and basins, upon matchboxes and pipes, knitted into shawls and banners and positioned in every home. Our Mourning Man, the dead consort Albert. His face, that most popular of faces, they have taken up the more to fit in. They borrowed the face they co
uld most easily come by. And I run now beside them and beside my own people, as if it were not a thing to scream at, all of us running to Parliament in a panic.
From Rippit, hanging back before the Houses of Parliament, behind a tree on Speaker’s Green
Rippit.
From Lucy Pennant, journeying down Whitehall
I stand now as one of them, I move with the link boys of London, I don’t know how many we are all told, no one has done a counting of this great number. But I think we must be hundreds now, I think we must be. This is an army then. Always dreamed of that. So few of us now from Foulsham but I’m here and Bug and Jen and some others too, and maybe yet more inside the prison. We’re coming down the big street called Whitehall, so many of us barging through, so much stuff all over the ground, like we were out in the heaps again somehow, but here we are rushing on. For a moment I think I am right proud of them, I am. Look at us go.
And I think, will I see him? Maybe I will see Clod any moment.
My heart, my happy heart, how it sprints.
I may see Clod, he must be here. How I do love him so! Whatever has he been doing? Moving houses! Won’t he have a shock at seeing me! And I’ll give him his plug back – there then, that’ll be a double shock!
I don’t care about their Queen, she means nothing to me. She may as well be dead for all I care, she has much blood on her hands, it’s true. But if we may, if we might, somehow stop more bloodshed, end this finally whilst there’s still time, then that’s got to be the right thing hasn’t it? Hasn’t it? Only if they harm another hair on a Foulsham head I’ll rip their necks open.
From Binadit
Can’t stop, don’t stop, I follow on. After the Clod. But each step I move, there’s more and more of me. So big now. So much have I. More and more, every step an effort, I sit me down for to rest and more comes and sticks fast, so that the very effort of moving is hard, so hard.
And where’s Irene? Irene Tintype whom I mustn’t go near? Will I see her, will I ever see her again?