by Dan Vyleta
“We are no longer in England,” Smith comments as they walk the length of the building. “This place lies outside Renfrew’s jurisdiction.”
Deep in the building they come upon a lift. It is a crude thing, its chains and gears exposed to the air, the cage itself unornamented steel. They enter and stand side by side, the cage a-quiver with their weight. A memory rises up in Nil, of the elevator boy in New York and his realm of dead pigeons. He recalls the fleeting feeling of companionship, of twinning: a doubled Nil, half servant, half thief. Now he stands next to the man who will have beaten a statement out of the elevator boy, then punished him for his disloyalty. Smith’s hand hesitates over the buttons. A soft hand; fine golden fuzz along the knuckles; each fingernail topped by a white crescent moon.
“You must not tell a soul what I will show you,” he says. “Remember, boy. I’m your only link home.”
[ 10 ]
There are two subterranean storeys. The first replicates the warehouse space above. The crates here are smaller both in number and volume, and are clustered near the lift shaft. Beyond lies the mouldy emptiness of a cavern.
They walk out into this emptiness, segmented only by brick buttresses at every eight or nine yards. Above them run electrical cables; weak bulbs dangling from the ceiling creating islands of light. Deep in one corner, well masked within the floor, lies a trapdoor. Smith unlocks it with a key he produces from a chain around his neck. There’s no lift this time but a steel ladder; next to it a pulley system designed to lower goods. Smith hesitates, then descends first. When Nil follows him, he finds the Company man waiting at the bottom, his hand shoved deep into his coat. Its pocket might be big enough to hide a gun.
Ahead of them is another storeroom, much smaller than the warehouse above, if still sizable. It is empty apart from a handful of crates. Nil has seen them before, down in the hold of the ship: broke the lock that protected them not an hour before they were taken by the Storm. Now Smith walks over to the closest of these crates; drops to a knee and opens it wide. The insides are packed with straw. Nestled into the straw, Nil knows, lie pale, translucent grubs, fine black patterns running through their midst. He touched them, back on the ship, felt them curl under his fingers; remembered jungle fronds strewn with them as though with swollen raindrops.
Now he again approaches the crate and kneels down next to Smith; reaches in to part the straw. The grubs are not there. He searches carefully, the straw no longer golden but smeared with Storm Soot. It must have crept its way inside through minute cracks. After a minute’s groping, Smith’s hand takes hold of his and guides it to the crate’s inner sidewall. There they jut like boils out of the Soot-soaked wood: no longer pale, no longer grubs, but shrouded in cocoons, black and spongy—fungal—to the touch.
“They have turned into pupae,” Smith mutters, his voice subdued. Church whispers from one votary to another. “An entomologist—a bug man—told me they might do this. ‘Might,’ he stressed, and gave me a long lecture on the varied life cycles of vermin. That’s the problem with experts. You ask a simple question and you get a thousand ‘mights.’ Hard to do business based on that.”
But Nil is not listening, is touching the cocoons, stroking them, remembering this very touch and with it a place, a chant.
“Now watch!” Smith continues, oblivious to epiphany, and draws a syringe out of his pocket. He attaches a needle, plunges it into one of the cocoons, draws back the plunger. Pale, viscous liquid fills the glass chamber.
“It looks just the same,” he carries on. “Bug snot. But I tried it on one of the clerks here and it has no effect whatsoever. A dark rash for a day or two. Otherwise, nothing. And of course it kills the bloody thing.”
Smith yanks loose the cocoon he has just milked, rips it open between his thumbs, reveals a half-formed, flesh-pale thing more worm than beetle, then wipes his fingers on the crate.
Nils says nothing, his breath caught in his throat, his skin goosefleshed at Smith’s action. “Violation,” “sacrilege”: he has to cast around for the words. What presents itself instead is a sound, a sequence of syllables, so very far from English that his tongue is unable to shape them. A ghost within his thought.
“Don’t do that,” he manages weakly, touches the smear of gunk left on the wood, then lifts his finger to his lip: a moment of childhood residing in the gesture that he cannot otherwise recall. Smith sees it and grows excited; rises, towers over him who remains prostrate on his knees.
“There—you remember something, boy! Tell me. Show me how I get them to hatch. If you do—you will be rich! The richest man in the world. After me, of course.”
Indeed Nil does remember something: not as Smith imagines it, in chunks of information that could be listed and bartered with, but in dislocated fragments. A pattern of light within the canopy; the echo of a distant chant. The croak of a black-patterned frog. Rainwater and rot; the smell of fallen leaves transforming into soil. But Smith won’t wait and let Nil sink into this smell. He wants something immediate, concrete. Nil struggles to lay hold of it.
“There was a place,” he says at last. “Far from the village, a day’s walk, more. A valley, round like a cup.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. Black ferns. Birds and insects that were different from the forest. We sang and danced and touched the beetles.”
“Cultic rituals! Describe them to me.”
But Nil is stuck, words welling up in him that he does not know and cannot pronounce.
“A valley,” he says again. “An outcrop in the middle, covered in black moss.” Then the words spilling out without definite meaning: “We hail the rock.”
“A rock? Where—under the moss? How big?”
But Nil can only shrug. It is all he knows.
Smith studies him, greedy for more but not unsympathetic to his plight.
“Your people must have gone there to collect beetles. Strange insect life indeed! A place where things grow wonky. And then? Think, boy! They must have harvested the spore. How did they do it? Did they collect grubs and farm the beetle? To immunise the tribe?”
At this Nil shakes his head. His certainty is guided by logic, not memory. “No, we had no need for that. We don’t smoke, remember? We don’t have the organs. The Portuguese sailors—the sickness you describe, their blood rebelling against change…That only happened to me here. In London.”
Smith accepts this; straightens, his hand moving once again into the depths of his pocket. Perhaps he has just remembered what Nil is: a spy, a witness. One who has no knowledge to trade. What better place to murder someone than this hidden tomb? Nil shivers and speaks, turning assumptions into truths.
“It’s too cold for them down here. They need more heat. And they need to feed.”
“Yes. But what? The beetles seem to munch on Soot and poppies, as long as the Soot is very black and the poppies reasonably fresh.”
“They cocooned in the Storm. They ate it.”
“You mean they need another!”
Nil wonders at this.
“I don’t know,” he says at length. “They only hatch in the valley of the rock.”
[ 11 ]
They return to Smith’s room. The reverse journey through the warehouse. Outside, mist has rolled in off the sea, and with it a springtime chill. When they arrive, Smith locks the door, then proceeds to once again unearth the beetle.
“Well, there’s nothing for it. We only have one cow to milk.”
He produces the syringe once more, makes to plunge it in the beetle’s rump.
“Not like that! You will hurt it.”
Bemused, Smith hands over the beetle. Nil holds it, expecting his hands to remember how to do this only to find that they don’t. Still, that connection. It makes him feel whole. He takes the syringe, removes the needle, plunges the tapered end into
the glands at the base of the beetle’s abdomen. The spore pours out, viscous and murky.
“More,” says Smith. “We need to give Renfrew as much as we can. It’ll be a selling point. It mustn’t wear off for several weeks.”
Nil nods and accepts a second syringe. As he milks the beetle, it changes before him, growing paler, almost translucent. It becomes agitated, spreads out the horned back plates that cover its wings. Nil removes the syringe.
“Enough.”
Smith agrees. The beetle’s health is paramount. He combines the harvest in a single glass tube, holds it up to the light. Observed closely, a dark web can be seen hanging in the thick of its gloop.
“There! That’s more than enough. You know, in the beginning I was very careful. Two drops, that’s all I ever took. I ingested it at first, before risking injections. It would last a day, three days, five. Then on the ship, I panicked.”
He pauses. Regret colours his voice. “Now I don’t think I will ever smoke again.” He shrugs, smiles away his regret, strokes his whiskers. “Tomorrow then. Another demonstration! A bluff of sorts.
“You know, my boy,” he adds not without affection. “There’s nothing quite so joyful as pulling off a really good bluff.”
[ 12 ]
Early morning. An exchange before witnesses. Eleanor is there; Livingstone, Smith, Mowgli. And Uncle, of course: they are in his chambers. There is tea but nobody is drinking it. Smith is studying the paperwork, a legal deed, then requests a map of London.
“It’s not much,” he complains. “Not even half the city. Chances are I will go and find everything has long burned down.”
“It’s an opening payment. And it gives you control of the river.”
“There won’t be any legal problems?”
“The public has appropriated the whole of the city; I asked Parliament to ratify the seizure.”
“And you are the ‘public,’ so it’s yours to give out.” Smith nods, satisfied, and hands the paper back for signature.
“You first, Mr. Smith. Please proceed with the inoculation.”
“Will you yourself…”
“We will try it on my manservant here.”
“This brute? Your name? Livingstone? Well, Master Livingstone, would you kindly drop your trousers. With apologies to Miss Renfrew.”
For all his cool, Smith’s hand shakes a little as he produces a full syringe from his pocket and plunges its needle into Livingstone’s buttock. Eleanor notices it and she is sure her uncle does, too. Livingstone does up his breeches, rubs his rump.
“When does it take effect?”
“At once. There will be some…discolouration. Do not be alarmed, it is perfectly natural.”
Livingstone nods, takes up a teacup, starts spitting sweets into it. Eleanor watches Renfrew watch him with disgust and fascination. His evil twin. When Livingstone is done it is to her he turns: he reaches out with one hand and starts stroking her cheek. Her uncle does not stop him. Instead he asks: “Is it working, Godfrey?”
Livingstone studies himself, his limbs and shirtfront; laughs with surprise and delight. “Yes, Lord Protector. It works!”
“And your affect is unsuppressed?”
“Rest assured,” he answers quietly, still holding Eleanor’s cheek, “that I am smoking on the inside.”
“Very well. In that case, please let go of my niece. Thank you.”
Renfrew turns without waiting to see if he’s obeyed and signs the paper Smith has laid out for him. His manservant lets go of Eleanor, though not before reaching for the screw on her chest and giving it a little turn.
“I think you will find you need it.”
It draws a gasp of Smoke from Mowgli’s throat.
Renfrew sees it and frowns in displeasure. Then he turns to Smith and orders inoculations for an army of three thousand men.
[ 13 ]
It takes but a few minutes for Smith and Renfrew to finalise terms. The price, Eleanor can see, has long since been agreed on. The only point of negotiation concerns delivery times. Renfrew wants the vaccine at once.
Smith demurs.
“I will have the supplies sent for, but it will be a few weeks. Surely, Dr. Renfrew, you did not expect me to take the risk of arriving with all my goods in hand?”
They agree at last and shake hands. Then Smith and Mowgli leave. She follows them out.
“I need air,” she pleads.
Her uncle seems inclined to stop her, but he sees in her face the discomfort at Livingstone’s presence. “Stay away from Smith,” he says simply.
“I will.”
He does not remind her that disobedience will be punished by the death of innocents. There is no need to. The prison ships are as visible from his window as they are from hers.
Out in the corridor, Smith and Mowgli are already out of sight. She catches up by accident not design, for they have stopped. It is Miss Cooper who has waylaid them. Eleanor, too, stops, and hears Miss Cooper invite Smith to her room, for “a chat and a cup of tea.” The Company man accepts at once and offers her his arm.
“Only, leave your coolie here,” Charlie’s elegant sister adds. “I think we will have more fun without him. Don’t you?”
This leaves Eleanor alone with Mowgli. An idea takes hold of her that she has entertained before but dismissed as unwise. Now she walks past Mowgli, stiff in her harness, and asks him to “follow me.” He understands her meaning and hangs back ten, twenty, at times as much as thirty paces, seemingly on business of his own. They do not meet many people on their long walk through the Keep; those they do—aristocrats, petitioners, flunkies—take note of her, the Lord Protector’s ward, but not of him, the Company man’s servant, by now a familiar sight around the building. Soon they arrive in an isolated corner of the Keep: the top floor of the east wing. Here there is no foot traffic at all, nor any lodgers. Or rather: only one.
They stop at her door. Eleanor has been here before, trying to identify the room. She did not knock then but rather returned to her chamber, pondering the consequences of such a knock. Her uncle has not interdicted her coming here. In fact, it was he who alerted her to this lodger’s presence in his realm; indulging in a rare moment of vanity, perhaps, unable to banish triumph from his voice. Nevertheless, he might disapprove of any visits. Eleanor looks into herself, checks her breathing, the rate of her heart. She must not sin. Virtue is a walling-in of doubt; a dis-involvement of one’s self. Mowgli catches up with her, a question in his eyes. It is for him she found the door. He has a right to this meeting, more so than herself.
“Who?” he asks.
“You mustn’t smoke on me,” answers Eleanor, then swiftly raises a fist and raps the door.
[ 14 ]
Lady Naylor is surprised. It does not show in her bearing or her well-modulated voice, but a hint of colour has risen to her cheeks that are otherwise quite pale and somehow yellowed, as though she is suffering from some disease. Other than that she is just as beautiful as she is in the stories: near fifty perhaps, tall, straight-necked and angular, and dressed in an elegant gown of mauve. She recognises Eleanor at once—the tale of her harness must have made its way to her—then rests her eyes on Mowgli. There, too, recognition is instantaneous, along with a weighing, a judging of intent.
“How do you do?” she says at last, inviting them in. “I am afraid this is a rather squalid place in which to receive visitors. But do come in.”
The squalid place is a room identical to all the others in the Keep, if much more lavishly furnished, and richly wallpapered in a pattern of purple and silver. Eleanor notes that Lady Naylor locks the door behind them and pockets the key.
“Then it’s true what Uncle told me,” Eleanor says with awkward directness. “You really aren’t a prisoner. He says you came of your own free will.”
; “A prisoner? No, I am something a little more complex than that. And yes, I did come of my own free will. What was I to do? Sit in my dirty palace in Nottinghamshire? Or live in the North and pretend to be a proletarian? No, this is better. This way we keep an eye on each other, your uncle and I. He reads my mail and tells Parliament that I repent for my crimes; that I have thrown myself on his mercy—while I watch and listen and learn what I can. Did he tell you that he comes here quite often to chastise me? He is lonely, I believe. Though if I displease him, he will still put a bullet through my head. But sit, both of you, don’t let’s stand around like cattle. I really did not anticipate what damage my little revolution would wreak on simple courtesy and manners.”
Lady Naylor gathers her skirt and settles herself in an upholstered armchair before gesturing to a little settee next to her. Eleanor follows her invitation, sitting awkwardly on the softness of the cushion. Mowgli remains standing with his back to the door, breathing hard through his mouth. The Smoke he is battling is colouring his lips.
“Will you look at him!” says Lady Naylor with a note of impatience. “Standing there dumb like a post. Did he tell you he came to see me before? Oh, he did. Three or four years ago, when he was still half a child. He crept into my house and surprised me in my bedroom. And it was the same thing then: he stared at me from a distance and did not say a word. He only had one question. Where am I from? And of course I didn’t know, other than in the most general terms. That and I had laryngitis. I could hardly get a sound out. I thought he would murder me just for that.” Lady Naylor purses her lips—disgust or mockery?—then returns her attention to Eleanor. “And you? I see you are disappointed. Am I grown old and ugly? Or do you find me compromised by my decisions?”
“Uncle says you made a lot of money out of the revolution. That for you it was speculation, more than anything.”
“Money? Land, actually. Well, what was I to do? I knew it was coming, so I could either gain or lose on it. It hardly proves I am without ideals. But come, why are you here, other than to inspect me? And why bring this angry little man? He looks ready to soil my furnishings at the drop of a hat.”