by Jasmine Walt
"Anything for the lady who delivers my brandy," he said, flashing her a charming smile. Finishing his drink, he climbed down from his stool and offered her his arm. She took it, marvelling at how he navigated across the crowded bar, out the door, down the steps, and along the road to where his taxi waited. He did not steady himself against her, and he did not sweep the road with his stick the way she'd seen other blind men do. Instead, he moved with a casual grace, occasionally tapping his short walking stick against the cobbles. He explained, when she asked, that he used the echoes produced by the tap to discern obstacles, and by careful listening he built a picture of the world in his mind, and could therefore find his way.
As he helped her up into the carriage, Brigitte looked over her shoulder; certain she'd see the castle guard coming to arrest her. But there was no one, only the dark outline of the imposing castle looming over the town. She stared up at the ramparts, and shivered, tears welling in her eyes again as she thought of Maxwell and Miss Julie and Cassandra and everyone trapped inside.
Only once they had settled into their seats, and the carriage had pulled away and begun the long and clattering journey to London, did Brigitte let out the breath she was holding. She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve.
"Is something the matter, Miss Brigitte?"
Her head snapped up. "What makes you think that?"
"You fidget with your dress, and you are crying. I can smell the saltiness of your tears. Forgive me for embarrassing you so, I had hoped a journey with me would not have left you so distraught."
"No, no," she laughed, taking the handkerchief he offered and blowing her nose. "It has been … a traumatic night. Forgive me, you've been too kind, and I've been a horrid travelling companion."
"I've had much worse. In my studies at Edinburgh, I would sometimes journey into the countryside with a friend from the Navy who had gone completely deaf. Can you imagine what a pair we made, Miss Brigitte? A blind man and a deaf man." He chuckled at the memory.
"Are you off on another adventure today?"
"Only an adventure of the mind. Every second Thursday I meet with a select few individuals – scholars, engineers, doctors, and friends – to discuss matters of the mind in a forthright and unencumbered manner. It's a sort of secret supper society. This week, we're learning about some of William Buckland's biological discoveries, and Nicholas has promised us a wonderful roast pheasant."
She leaned forward. "Who was that again?"
"Nicholas Rose. He's the industrial architect for Brunel's Wall—"
"Mr. Holman," she lowered her voice. "Can you take me to him?"
His face broke into a sudden grin, and he too leaned forward and whispered. "So you are the woman he's smitten with?"
She blushed. "He has spoken of me?"
"Not by name, but he told me of the beautiful maid he met at the castle who has quite stolen his heart. I'd be delighted to take you to him."
The time passed quickly after that. Away from the castle and the frightful events of the night before, her pulse returned to normal. She stretched her muscles – stiff and aching from all the running – across the carriage, wriggling her toes and revelling in her freedom. Holman told her stories of his time in the Navy and at medical school, his yearning for adventure and travel, and of his friendship with Nicholas and how he came to lose his sight. She was so engrossed in his tales she didn't even notice they had passed into London until the familiar tang hit her nostrils. The accumulated filth of thousands of people living atop one another in crowded tenements, the dribbling remnants of rotted meat baked into greasy pork pies and sold cold on the street corners, the ditches overflowing with sewage … she pulled her collar tightly around her, remembering the horrid conditions at the orphanage.
Holman removed a pocket watch from his pocket and ran his fingers over the raised digits. "We're late," he murmured, "but when Nicholas sees what treasure I've brought him, he won't worry."
It took Brigitte a couple of moments to realise he was referring to her. An even redder blush crept across her cheeks.
Her old orphanage was in Whitechapel, one of the poorest and most notorious areas in London. But she had cleaned houses in Belgravia, Kensington, and Chelsea, and glimpsed the life of easy comfort afforded to the rich. It came as no surprise to her that the carriage stopped in front of the fourth in a row of pleasant terraced boarding houses on the edge of Upper Clapton. She'd cleaned for a doctor and his wife who'd lived just around the corner. Her heart beat against her chest, and she fidgeted with her dress as Holman helped her down and knocked on the door.
"If that's you, James, you are the last to arrive." a voice boomed from behind the door. She heard the latch turn in the lock. "I hope you've brought the brandy—" The door flew open, and Nicholas stood there, a carefree smile on his handsome face. His face sagged when he saw her and he fixed her with an intense stare.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I didn't mean to upset you. I shouldn't have come. I'll leave you alone."
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close, and she stared into his narrowed eyes and felt his hand tighten around her arm. After everything she'd seen it was too much, too much and she opened her mouth to scream but found he had covered it with his. The ferocity of the kiss tore the air from her lungs. Her chest burst, sending shivers down her arms. Her hands gripped his back, holding her to him.
I'm being kissed, she realised, her pulse dancing. A beautiful man is kissing me.
"Well, I'm mighty pleased my findings interested you so much, Nicholas, that you'd break the rules of our supper club to sneak in a woman."
She leapt back, startled by the unfamiliar voice. A man stood on the staircase, one hand gripping the railing, the other smoothing the pocket of his waistcoat. His comment would have been cruel if not for the grin on his face.
"Of course." Nicholas' mouth twitched into a smile. "Brigitte, this is William Buckland, an eminent professor of geology at Oxford. He was just beginning a lecture on his most recent studies of Ichyosuarus skeletons when you arrived. Buckland, this is my … this is Brigitte."
"Oh, I've interrupted you." Brigitte looked away, hoping the man wouldn't notice how red her face had become. "I'm so terribly sorry! I can leave—"
"Nonsense," Buckland interrupted. "It is no night for a woman to be wandering outside on her own. We have enough bacon sandwiches upstairs to feed an army, and Nicholas might even break open his best brandy now we have a lady present."
"Oh, but I shouldn't intrude—"
"It's no intrusion," Holman said. "A lady adds rather an air of sophistication to our affairs. And besides, I gather your situation is one of great urgency, so you might want to discuss it with Nicholas before he kisses you again."
If possible, Brigitte's ears turned an even darker shade of red.
They escorted her upstairs and settled her into the most comfortable chair in the parlour – an over-stuffed wingback upholstered in faded damask. If Nicholas noticed the shabby state of her appearance and the dried mud on her shoes, he did not draw attention to it, but merely wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and handed her a glass of brandy. Holman passed over the platter of sandwiches, accidentally knocking it against the chair arm and spilling a couple on the floor. Without a word, Buckland picked them up and threw them in the fire.
Nicholas introduced the other men in the room, starting with a dark-haired man named Aaron Williams. Dressed in faded trousers and a green tunic, with black soot smeared over his cheeks, he was clearly one of the Dirty Folk, a Stoker. She'd seen them once or twice – soot-caked faces glaring at her from the shadows when she'd gone to church with the other orphans – but never outside the Engine Ward. I do not want a Stoker to hear my story. Surely Nicholas will ask him to leave, she thought, but caught herself. He must be special, for Nicholas and this learned crowd to associate with him. She smiled at him, but he only stared back at her with brooding, intelligent eyes.
The others were all scholars of one sort or another
– a doctor, an artist, a young biologist named Charles something, and a historian. "I can trust these men?" she whispered, her eyes locked on the Stoker. Nicholas nodded.
And so, in a small voice, staring at her muddy boots and clutching her brandy glass as though it were the only thing holding her upright, she explained what had occurred in the castle – from the lead objects disappearing, to the King's inhuman pallor and increasingly erratic behaviour, to the Sunken rattling their cages and tearing at their own skin and all that Maxwell had said. She retold the story of her escape, how they'd chewed through the wooden door in their desperation to devour her, and her chance meeting with Holman. They remained silent while she talked, waiting ‘till she had recounted her tale up until she'd arrived at Nicholas' door, and even then they reserved their questions ‘till after Nicholas had refilled her glass and she'd had another bite of her sandwich.
"The situation is much worse than we feared," Holman said, tapping his stick against the toe of his boot. Brigitte looked up – she could not understand how these gentlemen, who did not know her and must regard her maid's uniform, soiled and odorous, with disgust, could believe her. But they had already known?
"You knew about this?" Buckland stared from Holman to Nicholas.
"I knew something was not right with the King," said Nicholas, who stood behind her, his gentle hands on her shoulder sending shivers of warmth through her body. "When I'd gone to the castle with Isambard, his manner seemed out of place for a monarch, even one just out of convalescence. He walked about in his nightclothes, so that I could see the fresh scars crisscrossing his chest. He drank a red tea—"
"It was blood," Brigitte said, her eyes wide. "I make it for him with blood from the castle abattoir."
"—and his eyes would not focus. They darted to every corner of the room, coming to rest only on the flesh of his youthful servants. When last I was there I saw him bite a man, tearing a chunk of flesh away like a wild animal. We have all noted his absence from the affairs of the Royal Society – or rather, most of us noted, and described it to James." The blind man gave a low chuckle. "And his dereliction of his duties to his own Gods—"
"He hasn't attended services at St. George's Chapel for nearly three months," Holman said.
"—Holman and I wondered if perhaps he'd gone the way of many kings, falling in with the ladies or gents down on the dockside and contracting syphilis, but this … this is something else entirely. "
"He is less a man than I," declared Brigitte. "He is a monster."
"A Vampire King," said Aaron.
"The question is," said Holman, "what can we do about it?"
"Without knowing his mind," declared Nicholas, "we can do nothing."
"The castle bursts with the Sunken, his children of lead," Brigitte said. "There are hundreds in the cellar and dungeon, and I know not how many more hidden throughout the castle. Perhaps he means to create an army."
This opened the discussion at great length, and it continued for many hours, each man putting forth a dashing plot which was summarily torn to pieces by his brothers. Brigitte tried to listen, but her eyelids fluttered shut, and she found her head flopping against her chest.
She awoke to the grandfather clock striking three, and felt her body lurch forward as a warm presence carried her up the stairs, bundled her in blankets, and placed her into a warm, soft bed. She slept peacefully, still dressed in her torn pinafore.
On this very same night, in a comfortable residence not far from Nicholas' home, Charles Babbage and his wife, Francesca, received two most unlikely visitors.
Annabella Milbanke, heiress and once wife to the gallivanting poet and previous Messiah of the Isis Sect Lord Byron, and a recent convert to the Church of the Great Conductor, was on pilgrimage in London. She'd come from her manor in Kirkby Mallory to see the completion of the Wall, and had brought her fifteen-year-old daughter Ada to see, firsthand, the wonders of Babbage's counting machine.
Babbage had been corresponding with Annabella for some years, and he had advised her upon many texts for Ada's schooling. In contrast to her wild ex-husband, Annabella had pursued a life of order and piety, slavishly devoting herself to exterminating every facet of Byronic psyche from Ada by way of the study of mathematics. It was this very desire to stamp out impulsivity and imagination that had drawn her to Byron, a tumultuous hurricane of a man whom she'd sought to tame with reason and logic. But chaos, of course, had won in the end, and Byron left England forever after an unspeakable sexual scandal involving his half-sister, leaving the Isis Church in the hands of Shelley, his Presbyter, and his daughter in the care of Annabella.
Annabella had spent the years since his departure trying to absolve herself in the eyes of her social circle for any part in their marital breakup. Despite Babbage’s fall from grace, she remained a loyal friend, and Babbage secretly hoped her support might one day lead him back into intellectual circles.
Ada, a young woman of exceptional intelligence cursed with Byronic impulses, became Annabella's greatest source of grief. But as Ada and her mother grew apart, Ada and Babbage corresponded with increasing fervour, together extrapolating the intricacies of various mathematical puzzles.
He had not seen Annabella or Ada since his excommunication, and welcomed the sour-faced woman and sprightly beauty into his home with trepidation. He had supported Annabella when her husband's scandals hit the papers, and he hoped she would remember this now, when he asked for her aid in helping him secure some kind of secular, non-engineering livelihood. Without the support of Annabella, he and Francesca would be on the streets within three months, never mind continuing his research on calculating engines.
He knew this visit was vital to their future. Despite their dwindling savings, Francesca decorated the drawing room with fresh flowers and set out a fine feast. Babbage chased away the organ grinders on the street outside with his garden fork and wheeled out his working model of a section of the Difference Engine, the only thing he had to show for his years of work.
While Francesca served tea, Annabella kept up a steady stream of chatter about recent scandals and events, particularly their journey to London with the Messiah Stephenson and Brunel's sermon. Babbage listened with half an ear, his attention focused on Ada. She sat like a proper lady, nibbling on her teacake. Her eyes betrayed a wit and intelligence far beyond her years. Far from a Byronic terror, this girl seemed mild and well-behaved, if prone to interrupt polite conversation with outbursts of chatter.
"Mother tells me you have been excommunicated," she blurted out. Annabella shot her a filthy look.
"Ada. Mr. Babbage will not want to discuss it—"
He sighed. "On the contrary, ma'am. It is a matter that very urgently needs to be discussed." Annabella's mouth formed a tiny O as he laid out his plans and implored her to reach out to her influential circle of friends and find him something, anything, to save them from ruin.
She closed her eyes, and didn't speak for several minutes. Charles studied her prim, drawn face, hoping to glimpse a clue to her thoughts, but he could find none. Instinctively, he reached across the arm of his chair and clasped his wife's hand.
When she opened her eyes again, he could see they were cold. "You must understand, Charles, I cannot do what you ask. I'm already in a precarious position socially, thanks to that rascal of a husband, may he rot forever in Isis' rancid milk. To offer open support for you would be social suicide, and I have Ada's future to think of. What chance have I of finding her a decent husband if it becomes known I'm a supporter of blasphemers? Why, that would be as harmful as declaring myself a Protestant!"
His stomach tightened as desperation sank in. "Annabella, please, remember when Byron left and I—"
She waved her hand in the air. "That was different. In the public eye, I was the victim of Byron's lust. Your support for me opened doors for you. If I support you now, do you think it will open doors for me? Do you think—"
"Is that the Difference Engine?" Ada asked, cutting off her mothe
r mid-sentence.
Annabella frowned, but Babbage was secretly delighted. He was sensing himself dangerously close to falling upon his knees and begging this sour woman for her help. He needed to step away, to collect himself and plan his next move. With a smile, he sat Ada on a stool next to the machine and explained to her how it worked.
"Ada, can you tell me what finite differences are?"
"Adding and subtracting simple equations in sequence to produce new sequences, like square roots or prime numbers. Mathematical tables are computed using finite differences, although sometimes I find mistakes," Ada explained in a breathless rush.
"That’s right. You have a keen eye to find those mistakes. They occur because the people who write out the tables, the computers, aren’t mathematicians like us. They use the simple method of finite differences because they don’t understand anything else, and sometimes they make mistakes. And even if they calculated the numbers perfectly, typesetting errors creep in at the printers. But what if you could use a machine to calculate and print the tables?"
"The machine won’t make errors. The tables would be perfect."
"Precisely. One of the great advantages which we may derive from machinery is the check which it affords against the inattention, the idleness or the dishonesty of human agents."
"Can a machine really compute finite differences?"
"It can, and more. Watch." Babbage cranked the handle. The figure wheels wound and dropped and produced the first result.
"Two," Ada read off. Babbage cranked the handle again, producing a four, then a six, then eight, ten, twelve … Ada read off each number with enthusiasm, enthralled with the idea of the machine performing this simple calculation.
When the machine reached fifty, it suddenly jumped up to ninety-two.
"Oh, no!" cried Ada, frowning at the erroneous number. "It's broken." Annabella frowned at him, concerned Babbage had been teaching her daughter on a flawed machine.