Clash of Empires

by Brian Falkner

  ESCAPE FROM BEDLAM

  Thomas Monro is the third of his line to hold the position of principal physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital. His father held the post before him, and his father’s father before that. In three generations they have made great strides in the medicine of lunacy. In this era of modern medicine the treatments are far more scientific and far less cruel than in his grandfather’s time, when they would open a man or woman’s skull to allow the supposed demons within to escape.

  And if helping others should make Thomas Monro a very wealthy man, then so be it. There was money in madness, his grandfather had always said.

  This third of the great Doctors Monro is a careful man, a cautious man. A man of thought before action. He walks with slow, deliberate movements, even when he is in a hurry—and this night, he is in a hurry.

  He emerges from the side door of the hospital warmly and fashionably dressed in a fine horsehair coat. A carriage waits on the road that encircles Finsbury Circus. Despite the urgency of the situation he strolls to it at a measured pace.

  The carriage looks like any other that plies the streets of London, without markings or insignia. But that is on the outside. On the inside, concealed from sight, is a sturdy metal cage. The carriage is used by the asylum to transport the most dangerous kind of inmates. Animal sounds come from within.

  A night fog has come up in the unseasonably cold air. It moves through the trees of the park like a living, breathing thing, inhaling and exhaling with the vagaries of the breeze, gasping through the leaves and branches. A heavier ground fog whispers over the grasses of the greens.

  Monro makes his way around to the front, and looks up at the driver.

  It is Adams, the orderly, a large man with haunted eyes. He wears a bandage just below his hairline where he was cut while fighting with the young soldiers.

  Adams had been an inmate himself a few years earlier, but was released, completely cured, according to Monro. Adams is eternally grateful for his release and his subsequent employment, and is therefore loyal, if troubled by occasional recurrences of the visions that had him admitted in the first place. But there are few others Monro trusts so completely, especially with such an important assignment.

  “You have what I told you to bring?” Monro asks.

  Adams nods and touches an oilskin on the seat beside him.

  Monro climbs up alongside the driver, wrapping his coat tightly against the cold bite of the damp air. He opens the narrow shutter that allows him to see inside the cage, and shuts it again quickly to avoid a stream of spittle from within. The cage rattles and there is a howl so loud that he fears it will be heard by passersby. Fortunately there are none. The hour is too late and the park is avoided at night by Londoners. Inmates have been known to wander.

  “It is the wild girl,” Monro confirms.

  “As you asked,” Adams says.

  Monro nods. Adams would have made no mistake. But still he had to check. This is his nature. Careful, methodical.

  The wind whips around the carriage, making swirling patterns out of the fog, which is increasing by the minute. Adams unwraps the oilskin on the seat, revealing a pair of flintlock dueling pistols, accurate and deadly.

  Monro takes one, tucking it into a large pocket of his fine coat.

  “Might I ask the reason for the pistols, doctor?” Adams asks. “And the late hour?”

  “Skulduggery,” Monro says.

  Adams nods as if this was the answer he was expecting. He flicks the reins to start the horses. The carriage bumps and rattles across the old, uneven cobblestones.

  They have turned out onto the road that runs along the old London saur-wall before Adams speaks again. “What manner of skulduggery? I should know what to expect.”

  The wall exudes coldness, as if it sucks the warmth out of the air around it. It sucks the light as well and here in its shadow at this hour of night even the twin oil lamps that swing from the front of the carriage make little impression on the darkness.

  “Nothing that we cannot handle,” Monro says, patting the pistol in his coat pocket. “You remember the Dutch artillery major and the blind lieutenant who interfered with our treatment of this girl?”

  “Of course,” Adams says, touching his head bandage.

  “Yesterday we had another inquiry. A man named Arbuckle. He wanted to know when we would be transferring this girl to the new hospital.”

  Adams steers the carriage expertly around a corner into Wood Street.

  “This Arbuckle is known to me,” Monro says. “A lackey for the Earl of Leicester.”

  “That old fool,” Adams says. “Thinks he knows all about medicine and he ain’t even a doctor.”

  “Exactly,” Monro says.

  “What would the earl want with the wild girl?” Adams asks.

  “That was what I wondered,” Monro says. “So I made some inquiries of my own. It turns out that the earl’s son was badly injured at Waterloo. He was treated in a hospital in the village of Gaillemarde. The village of the wild girl. Lieutenant Frost was treated in the same hospital. I do not yet see all the connections, but that can be no coincidence.”

  “Very suspicious,” Adams says.

  “They think they are dealing with simpletons, but I see right through their contrivances,” Monro says. “I fear they plan to engineer an escape, which would not be difficult from this creaky old madhouse. But the new asylum is far more secure and they must know that. Undoubtedly they wish to extricate the girl before she is shifted. But they are in for a surprise. We move her tonight. By the time they spring their plan, the girl will be safely inside the high walls of our new building.”

  “You are the master of cunning,” Adams says.

  “You flatter me,” Monro says with a slight nod of his head. “But I am certainly more than a match for a simple artillery captain, a blind boy, and that befuddled old earl. If they—”

  He is stopped by the jerk of the carriage as Adams wrenches at the brake. The horses rear up. A soldier has run right in front of the carriage, narrowly avoiding being knocked over.

  “Look out, man!” Monro shouts, but the soldier runs on, turning back only to scream, “French ships sighted in the Thames!”

  The carriage comes to a complete stop.

  “Can that be true?” Adams asks.

  “Napoléon’s forces could not cross the Channel,” Monro says. “It is well guarded by the Royal Navy.”

  Adams stares at him, uncertain. “Unless the French slipped a few ships past the Channel Fleet.”

  “It is nothing but hysteria,” Monro says. “Balloons, tunnels, now French ships in the Thames! The talk of invasion grows more lurid and preposterous by the day. But regardless, let us hasten to our destination.”

  The cobblestones grind beneath the wheels of the carriage and the clack of the horses’ hooves echoes off the buildings around them. Despite the darkness and the growing fog, they have no problem finding their way. Many of the houses have oil lamps hanging above their front doors, as is prescribed by law. The old saur-wall rises like a black ocean wave to their left, and more oil lamps hang from the battlements.

  “What if it is Bony, sir?” Adams asks. He sounds nervous. “What with those stories of dinosaurs an’ all.”

  “Then our troops and artillery would already be mobilizing to deal with them,” Monro says. “Do you see any sign of that?”

  Adams shakes his head. Other than the one panicky soldier, they have seen no other signs of the British Army. He seems reassured by this thought and flicks the horses toward Blackfriars Bridge.

  The crossing is deserted and, looking left and right over the river Thames, Monro can neither see the lights of warships nor hear the sounds of battle.

  They are over the bridge and traveling through the modern houses of Newington when they encounter the second soldier. An artilleryman. His face is a mask of blood and his uniform is disheveled. He is not wearing his hat.

  “Battlesaurs!” he shouts, before running off
into the darkness beyond the bright pools from the gas lamps that line the bridge.

  Adams looks at Monro in alarm.

  “Make all haste, Adams,” Monro says, now badly unsettled. “Whatever is happening, we will be safer behind the walls of the asylum.”

  Could the French really have landed a force at the mouth of the Thames? Could they even now be making their way to Whitehall? Every corner, every scrap of mist, now seems to be hiding something. In the distance he thinks he hears screams.

  He withdraws the pistol from his pocket and holds it ready.

  The streets are mostly clear until they approach the obelisk in the circle at St. George’s Fields. Here there are odd irregular lumps on the side of the road, just visible in the lamplight from the carriage’s twin oil lamps. Only when one of them stirs and moans does he realize that they are bodies.

  Adams is obviously rattled by this and urges the horses on. The carriage leans precariously as he sweeps around the circle into Lambeth Road, barely two streets from the new asylum, only to find the road is blocked. A delivery cart and an artillery caisson, perhaps fleeing in panic, have collided. The lane here is narrow, part of the old village, and the two overturned vehicles have made it impassable. The men who were driving the cart and the caisson have fled.

  Adams eases the carriage to a halt. Monro looks around nervously. Ahead of them, little more than a block away, he can see the high dome of the hospital. They are so close now.

  “We will have to back up and take another route,” he says, but even before the words are out of his mouth there is a scream from behind them, and another, and suddenly the street is full of people running: ladies in frocks; men in coats; beggars in rags; the people of Newington, terrified, panicked, screaming, some with blood on their faces.

  “What the hell, sir?” Adams asks, now panicky.

  “Dinosaurs!” comes a shout from the crowd.

  “Great beasts from hell,” a woman shouts.

  The terrified crowd surges past them, rocking the carriage on its springs before clambering over the overturned wagons in front of them.

  “Holy hell, sir,” Adams says. He too has his pistol up now, and stares behind them into the fog and the darkness.

  A roar comes from somewhere behind them, bouncing thinly off the brick walls on either side of the lane. Monro twists to look. More people run around the corner, screaming. He hears another sound now, a regular, recurring thump on the stones of the roadway, almost like footsteps.

  When he turns back, Adams has gone, disappeared into the panic-stricken crowd.

  “Adams!” Monro shouts. He climbs down and stands uncertainly beside the carriage. For a moment he thinks of the girl inside and he fumbles for his keys. But she will be safer inside the cage, he thinks. The fog swirls and seems thicker now, as if mixed with smoke. The roar sounds again and the footsteps are much louder. Then, the unthinkable: two eyes appear around the corner, glowing through the smoky darkness. Whatever they belong to is three times the size of a man. A twist of wind creates a sudden fissure in the fog revealing a long demonic snout and scaly skin surrounding a mouth of jagged teeth.

  “My lord, protect me,” Monro screams. He stumbles, the keys dropping from nerveless fingers as he grabs again for his pistol. He looks at it, then back at the head of the giant creature emerging from the corner behind him. He tosses the pistol away and runs after the crowd, squeezing between the wagon and the stone wall.

  He runs madly. His coat is heavy and flaps around his legs, slowing him, so he rids himself of it and sprints. He loses his hat but does not notice, his hair wild to the wind.

  He raps on doors as he runs, shouting for shelter, for refuge, but the doors remain closed. The windows are dark. Behind him, the footsteps get louder.

  He sees Adams in the distance and follows him down the long driveway toward the asylum. The high stone walls and barred windows will be their best protection against what follows.

  Adams reaches the asylum first, banging on the stone gates in the wall that surrounds the building. There is no answer. Monro arrives to find Adams pulling on the rope to the bell above the gates. The bell clangs loudly and after a moment the door opens. The orderly who opens it is clearly shocked to find his employer in a disheveled state at this time of night, but has no time to say anything as Monro and Adams burst past him, slamming the door shut behind them.

  Monro’s chest is heaving, his face dripping with sweat. He is hatless and coatless. His heart is pounding and his leggings are saturated.

  But that is not sweat.

  From outside they again hear the roar of one of the creatures, and it sounds closer.

  But after that, nothing.

  The city has gone strangely quiet.

  IRELAND

  The headlands at the entrance to the harbor are windy promontories, jutting into the Irish Sea. It is raining, an icy drizzle, and the red-coated British soldiers on sentry duty huddle beneath trees. They are cold and wet but dare not light fires for fear it will ruin their night vision.

  The moon is curtained by heavy cloud and of no use, so the sentries do not see the unlit French ships holding position just off the coast. Nor do they hear the sounds of the ships’ rigging through the hiss of the rain on the ocean.

  The French longboat that enters the mouth of the harbor has been tarred to a deep black. Thibault’s soldiers on board are covered by black cowls and the wooden cage at the stern is also black, as is what is inside. Two identical boats follow, also invisible on the dark ocean. The boats are not rowed, but sculled by a single oar at the stern. This is slow for a heavy longboat, but it is silent, and the current assists, sweeping them into the mouth of the harbor with the incoming tide.

  The British sentries neither hear nor see the disaster that approaches.

  The longboats slip past the headlands and keep to the center of the estuary, away from any curious eyes.

  The lights of Fort Charles approach, and the longboats slow. Silence is more important than speed. They veer toward the shore, well away from the fortifications, and make landfall on a tiny sandy beach squeezed between seaweed-covered stretches of rock. The fort looms ahead of them, and on the other side of the estuary the smaller Fort James is a distant glow.

  The eight soldiers on each boat now lift the wooden cages, nervously carrying them to the pathway that runs along the shore, trying not to listen to the scratching, slithering sounds and the strange rattles that come from within.

  Three cages are set on the path and three saurmasters uncage three creatures, surely born in the smoky depths of hell.

  Few men have ever seen such creatures and few of those who have, have lived. Even fewer know their name: demonsaur.

  Each has a ridged and muscular hide the color of old burnt wood. Long, skeletal arms lead to bony fingers, jointed like a human hand, but ending in hooked claws. Protruding from their skulls and down their backs are thin spines that rattle as they move. Their hind legs have hocks like those of a horse.

  With whips and low voice commands, the saurmasters guide the demonsaurs toward the fort, keeping to the darkest shadows.

  The soldiers from the longboats, twenty-four in all, now creep over the rock and scrub of the foreshore to the roadway that runs past the fort.

  The entrance to Fort Charles is via a drawbridge across a moat, leading to a set of heavy gates set in a stone archway. The drawbridge is down, in absence of any immediate known threat, but the gates are closed.

  The soldiers take position on the roadway. They split into two groups, one to the left and one to the right of the bridge. They load and ram their muskets. They wait.

  By the wall of the fort, the saurmasters release their hideous creatures and melt away into the safety of darkness.

  The three saurs approach the great wall, sniffing at the air, their spines rattling with anticipation. They each place a foot on the wall, then another, the hooked claws of their so-human-looking fingers finding purchase where no man could.

 
; They begin to climb, scaling the wall swiftly. They reach the top and disappear from sight. Almost immediately there are shouts of alarm and the clanging of bells from inside the fort.

  Then the screaming starts.

  There are gunshots, and the sounds of people panicking and running. A cannon fires within the fort, and the crackle of muskets is only overpowered by the piercing screams of the people.

  On the roadway the French soldiers take aim as, with heavy creaking sounds, the main gates of the fort open and the inhabitants start to stream out.

  The French muskets fire in volleys of eight, giving each group a chance to reload. On the drawbridge the bodies lie where they fall, or topple over the low wooden railing into the moat, gasping their final breaths in the cold, dark water.

  Volley after volley sounds but even the roar of the muskets is lost amid the shrieks and cries from inside the fort.

  * * *

  The moon has finally found a gap in the cloud curtain as Thibault stands on the walls of Fort Charles and surveys the much smaller fort on the other side of the harbor entrance. They lost only two ships in the Raz de Sein passage, a stroke of good fortune considering the foul weather that had rushed in from the west. One of those ships was the Sceptre, a big loss, almost a fifth of his men drowned in one incident. The other ship was a supply vessel and that concerned him less. He can pick up food easily enough in Ireland, and if all goes to plan he will have plenty of gunpowder to replace that which he lost.

  Montenot comes to stand with him to watch a British longboat pull away from the rocks below them, the two enemy soldiers on board rowing frantically toward Fort James on the other side of the harbor. One of them is a captain, until recently the second in command of Fort Charles. Thibault would sooner have sent the commander, but most of his head is now missing.

  “You think they will surrender that easily?” Montenot asks.

  “I do not ask them to surrender,” Thibault says. “The British captain will inform them that I have no interest in their fort, but if a single cannon fires on my ships, then every man, woman, and child within their walls will be fed to my dinosaurs.”