by S. M. Peters
“I thought it was the boy’s custom not to pry into the past.”
“I don’t hold to the same custom, sorry to say.”
Bergen hesitated. His wound shifted and he felt warmth spread through the fingers he held over it. He drew his hand away. Blood stained his palm and the shirt over his bandaged wound.
“We can wait here all evening, if need be,” Hews said.
Bergen growled, knowing he was caught. His first impulse was to lie, but the fog in his mind precluded any vestige of creative thought.
“Will you tell Sumner?”
“Only if he needs to know.”
Vague, noncommittal. Practical. I might have said the same.
“Bergen Keuper is dead.” Bergen breathed before continuing. “I shot him.”
“Do you have a proper name, then?”
Bergen stared down the long hall, seeing mockery in the flickering lamps, feeling defeated. “I was born Nicholas Ellingsly.”
“Ah, the explorer. I’ve read a number of your tales.”
Bergen snorted. “They’re all lies. I was little more than Keuper’s translator. Keuper shot the tigers. Keuper fought the Zulus and Boers. He never deigned to learn English, and so I could tell the tales however I wanted.”
“Why do you use his name?”
Bergen—Nicholas?—sighed deeply. He had not done so in a very long time, and something passed out of him with that long breath. Some edge or anger softened, some tension of the mind evaporated as water in the hot sun.
“You’ll want to hear the tale, then?”
“We have time enough.”
He slid down the wall to a tense squat. The words poured out of him like so much oozing blood.
“We were trekking through Zululand to Ulundi—Keuper, myself, and seven or so native porters. We came across a group of Boers camped in a little valley. We were shooting at one another within an hour.”
The ghosts of gunfire echoed in the halls of Scared’s hide.
“It wasn’t as if I’d never been in combat before. I knew my way around a rifle, and I brought down several myself over the first few hours. By the time night fell our porters had died or fled, and their men were spread over the hills and the forest. Bergen and I stalked them like animals. It was in the night when I started to slow down. I froze at ordinary night sounds. My hands and knees shook. Keuper took a hit in the arm defending me just after moonrise. At that moment he finally decided I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Nicholas shuddered as the memory came upon him of the German’s cold, stone eyes in the light of that moon, with the dry trees closing around like the fingers of death on all sides, and the air prickling cold as the last heat of the day seeped from it.
“He valued a life only so far as its strength. I knew he was going to kill me.”
In his mind the German raised that long-barrelled Gasser he cleaned but never polished. A dirty, ugly, remorseless weapon.
“I killed him first.”
The German hadn’t fallen. He’d stood with his neck a mess, glaring and cursing, as blood gushed onto his shirtfront. After an eternity, he’d fallen, but fallen forward, and in that memory Nicholas swore he saw Keuper take one step to reach out to his murderer.
“His blood got into my mouth and my eyes. I don’t know what happened then; perhaps I fainted. When I came to myself it was morning, and his body was in the grass beside me.”
The Gasser had been lying inches from his right hand.
“It was all wrong. It should have been the coward lying in the grass, not the hero.” He pulled the sidearm reverently from its holster. It sat in his palm like a block of lead. “And so I made a choice: the hero lived, and the coward died.”
Hews shifted his feet. “Killed by Zulus, as I recall.”
“One more lie to the British public.”
“Did Bailey know?”
Nicholas nodded.
“You should know he kept that secret to his grave,” Hews said.
A pause. The Gasser found Bergen’s hand, natural as rain into soil.
“And so will I.”
“I wouldn’t allow it any other way,” Bergen said. He slipped the pistol back into its holster and pushed himself to his feet. When he turned at last to look at the older man, his eyes were hard as granite.
The Englishman examined him a moment without expression, then pocketed his British Bulldog and straightened his vest and coat.
“Well, I have the answers I need. We’d best get on so we can tend that wound of yours.”
Bergen nodded and led the way up through the maze and into the fading light of evening. Then Hews, now the only man who knew his secret, took the lead through the incomprehensible ways of Dunbridge.
Much to Bergen’s surprise, he didn’t shoot the Englishman in the back.
He should sleep. He should eat. He should drink.
The red tea had cooled to match the temperature of the sticky air. The sots in the room lay insensible again, having woken one by one and gasped and pleaded for Mrs. Flower to bring them the pipe. She had obliged in her efficient and dignified way and relieved them of their coin in exchange for their demon. In the corner, beneath burlap blankets painted with Oriental writing, one poor wretch shrieked and gibbled in the grip of his nightmares.
Lucky bastard, Oliver thought.
It was not with his ears that he heard the war going on outside. Mama Engine’s roars and Grandfather Clock’s ticking rang inside his head. The sound of the god from below resembled a wet towel dragged rapidly across an uneven floor. When they clashed, Oliver felt the city shake, and a jolt in his body as if his heart had suddenly pumped hard in shock. The room around him remained static and gloomy.
The fire in the back of his neck had spread to his eyes and cheekbones. The nausea in his stomach had become a weakness in his legs and knees and cramps in his bowels.
Oliver gazed over at Tom, who lay beside him, still unconscious. Is this what it’s always felt like for you, chum?
Tom lay as still as the addicts all around, lost in some private dream.
He’ll either live through it or he won’t. The thought was far from comforting, but it did provide a certain release from worry. It was in God’s hands, after all, wasn’t it? Hews’ wife had always said such things.
He pulled his eyes away from his friend. He wiped them with the back of his bandaged hand, then quickly hid the hand from his peripheral vision. He was afraid of what colour his tears might be.
Mrs. Flower’s den was busier tonight than the last time he’d been here. The floor was carpeted in twitching, shivering men of the working class, not a one of them Chinese. Oliver imagined it must smell, but couldn’t tell through the horrid sensations growing in his body.
Was he actually envious of these wretches?
“I was taught that all men possess a hidden desire that they deny.”
The lamp didn’t get any brighter—he was sure of that—but the room was suddenly clearer, warmer, the wall hangings more beautiful.
“That desire, being denied, grows in magnitude until the man either gives into it, or rejects it entirely and goes mad.”
Missy bent daintily down into his field of vision. Her red lips twitched up at the corners.
“So in consequence: those who hold themselves in check are mad, and those who release themselves are only being natural. Polite society holds these two conditions reversed, which is why they are all buggers and hypocrites, though they get on quite well, for, being mad, they never quite realise it.”
She knelt down.
“Michelle.”
“Whomever did you expect, Mr. Sumner?” She adjusted her skirts and settled onto the blanket beside him. From behind her back she produced a frayed, cheap basket filled halfway with lumps of bread that could not completely be called biscuits and unidentifiable black rolls that gleamed unhealthily. She plucked one of these and offered it to him.
“The man I bought them from said they are made from ginger and seaweed, t
hat is, if I penetrated his atrocious accent properly. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve tasted one already.”
Oliver watched her eyelashes blink.
A peach, indeed. More than that: a warm fire, a full belly, a sensation as satisfying as the best night’s sleep.
Her hand swirled in a little gesture of impatience. “Am I to sit with this sticking to my fingers all day? They’re really not so bad as one might think.”
And here I am a right mess inside and out, body and mind.
He accepted it, despairing at how his scarred, dirty fingers compared to hers. He brought the object to his mouth and his stomach curdled.
So the little god didn’t want him to eat? Bugger him. He opened his mouth to bite down and nearly vomited. After one or two silent gags, he shoved the blackened thing between his teeth and bit down hard. Half of it came away, tearing like rubber, and plopped onto his tongue.
Even then he might not have been able to swallow it, but that Missy sat watching him, trying to feign that she didn’t care if he liked it. Normally in a moment like this, Oliver would curse his talent for reading people. Now it gave him more strength than he would ever have guessed was needed.
A bite: the bitter tang of the seaweed engulfed his tongue. A chew: a potent, rash flavor took its place. A swallow: his throat constricted around it, his gullet fought it, but with a few contractions he forced it into his boiling stomach. He sat back and licked the flavour from the backs of his teeth.
“That’s good,” he said, by which he meant it was the most satisfying morsel he’d ever tasted; by which he meant that she bolstered him and energised him even in this most ruinous and dejected state.
He elaborated: “Very good.”
“I’m glad.” She fetched one herself and slipped it whole into her mouth. They sat in silence a moment, chewing, each trying not to look too long at the other. The moans of the afflicted and the echoing warfare of beasts greater than man seemed farther away for a time.
“A man I met once,” Missy began, reaching this time for a biscuit. “I didn’t know him very long, mind—told me a tale of the country outside London. He said there were fields that rolled on and on once one gets far enough out. He said there were places where one could look in all directions and see not a farmhouse, nor a road, nor any signs of human habitation.” She chipped off a piece of the biscuit and spoke around it. “Can you imagine that? Just trees and grass and the sky.”
“Hews tells the same kinds of stories.” Oliver reached for another of the black treats, nausea be damned. “Like how the Thames looks during sunset or the way the waves crash at Dover.”
“Do you think we’ll get to see it?”
Oliver had seen it every day in his daydreams, until the Uprising had wiped all that innocence away. He saw it again now, that childhood vision of Hews’ ideal London. He saw the cattle markets and fishmongers. He saw stately cabs hauled by magnificent beasts of burden. He saw private courtyards and balconies and country homes away from the bustle, where one might read in quiet contemplation, or enjoy a cup of tea on clean china beneath naught but the sun. All of it flashed in brilliant, hopeful colour, the wishes of a child. Wishes that could come true, because one man said he had seen them and then made a little boy believe.
Oliver answered her.
They chatted as they ate. It had been a long time since Oliver had simply sat and enjoyed another’s company. Fascinated and engaged by Missy’s every gesture and turn of phrase, he felt himself coming slowly back to life. He could almost imagine them sitting in that field, gentle breeze and warm sun and all.
This is how life should be, he thought. Everyone should have such moments.
They talked about all those things neither of them had ever seen: about the Channel and France, about the great savannas of Africa, the palaces of India and Siam, the Swiss Alps, and even Heckler’s America far off in the New World. Oliver laughed as each of these images entered his imagination. The world was so much bigger than Whitechapel alone, and its gods but one of a whole series of wonders scattered over the Earth. Oliver promised to take Missy to each of those places, and others not yet discovered, and he promised her a house in the country and a tea set of china, and sun all the year round.
He reached sadly for the last biscuit, knowing that when it was consumed, the moment would end. It turned out not to be a biscuit at all, but a leather drawstring pouch.
“Your hidden desire, Mr. Sumner,” Missy said, “is to be a spit-polished, well-dressed, member of proper society. You wish nothing more than to be clean-shaven, wear tailored suits, and sit about drinking cognac all evening, telling inflated tales of your adventures to other venerable gentlemen of advanced age.”
Oliver turned the pouch over in his hand. “That’s awfully specific.”
“Furthermore, you have denied this desire entirely and rejected it in all its pretences. Therefore there are certain things you do only infrequently and with great reluctance.”
He drew from the pouch a folded razor and laughed aloud. “My,” he said. “I haven’t shaved in days.”
“And don’t think a woman won’t notice it. There’s some soap in there for lather as well. Now stay put a moment and I’ll prevail on our hostess for some hot water.”
Missy whispered to her feet and stepped off. Oliver stared after her and shook his head. I’ve got how many injuries and she thinks I need a shave?
Well…he did.
By the time she returned with a wide-brimmed bowl of water, he had decided a shave would be a little moment of heaven on Earth.
Missy held aside the hanging curtain on one of the enclosed areas that looked to be deserted. One of Mrs. Flower’s girls trailed after her, and set down a short table with a small hinged mirror on the back end. It was worn and dented, with paint and scrollwork hinting at lost beauty.
Missy set the bowl easily on the table and Mrs. Flower’s girl retreated without a word. Oliver shuffled over to her and knelt before the mirror.
“Our hostess says we may proceed in here,” she said. “I might have suspected there was no proper washbasin in this place.” She slipped the razor away from him and replaced it with a yellow hand towel. “Wash and lather, now.”
“Yes’m,” he said.
The water was just on the edge of steaming, but against his skin seemed cool. He scrubbed every inch of his face and neck. He didn’t recognise the man in the mirror. Sunken cheeks and wild hair greeted him. Blue-black circles rimmed his eyes. The bruise Bergen had given him was puffed and purple, while the rest of his skin was yellow, almost to the point of jaundice. Small, coherent flames burned deep inside his eyes, exactly as they had in the old bookseller’s. He probably had machines growing in his guts already.
“You’ve missed several spots,” Missy said, and proceeded to point them out with the razor’s handle.
“Thank you, Miss Plantaget,” Oliver said, then wiped where he was told.
In the mirror, he saw Missy watching him. Some sadness or darkness or fear passed over her face.
“That’s quite sufficient, I think.” She snatched the cloth out of his still-moving hand and laid it carefully on the tabletop.
Oliver took the soap and lathered his face. All the while, Missy watched him through the mirror, her expression oscillating between her familiar detached charm and that fear she tried to hide. His mental bell jingled quietly.
It would be polite not to pry, and with Missy, for some reason, he always wanted to be polite. But…something didn’t feel right.
He held out his hand for the razor with an if-you-please. Missy smirked.
“With that hand? You’ll leave yourself more of a mess than you are.”
“Ah, yes.” Oliver had completely forgotten about his hand, what with all else that was going on in his body.
Missy knelt behind him and slipped one hand beneath his jaw. There was something sacrilegious about those smooth fingers grating on his wiry beard. Oliver watched in the mirror as Missy deftly flipped open the
razor and lowered it to the base of his left cheek. He decided to ask before he had to keep his face still.
“What’s troubling you?”
She looked at him coyly through the mirror. “It’s not polite to pry, Oliver. A woman’s musings are her own.”
She held him still with surprising strength and dragged the razor slowly down his cheek.
Well, he’d tried, at least. She likes her mysteries.
On the second pass, she spoke. “Will you go out tonight, if the machine is ready?”
“The Underbelly is unlikely to hold out longer than that,” he answered.
She passed the razor over his bruise so gently he barely felt it.
“I suppose, in the proud tradition of male leadership, that you’ll be ordering me to stay behind?”
He didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Hews is handling the details.” He fiddled uncomfortably with his bandages. “I would as soon not take you into the Stack itself.” Oliver mentally braced himself for a flood of loud indignation.
“Maybe that would be best.”
“Sorry?”
“You do expect me to be difficult all the time, don’t you?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I…”
“Pish. Yes, you do.” She started on his left cheek. “I think it would be a good idea; let you men handle the important things. I’ll stay behind like a little trophy for you when you get back.”
The words were sarcastic. The tone was genuine.
The bell rang loud in his brain.
“Michelle?”
She swallowed. “I just don’t think it would be a good idea to take me along, is all. I…I’m not safe to be near.”
She scraped gently across his upper lip, then his chin.
This isn’t right.
On impulse, he began to turn to her, but her fingers on his jaw held him in place.
“Why do you say that, Michelle?”
She placed the razor on his neck. “I don’t know, Oliver. I can’t remember…There was a man, but…I’ll just finish the shave. I’ll finish the shave.”
“Missy?”
Her fingers clamped on to him. The tips of her nails dug into his skin. “I’m almost done. I’m just about…”