by S. C. Green
Nicholas heaved himself up the ladder, and knelt beside her. He looked back at Buckland. “Please,” said Nicholas. “Explain to Isambard what has happened. He saw me leave, and he will not be pleased. And do inform the other Blasphemous Men, if you should cross paths with them.”
With a cheerful wave, Buckland hurried back across the gangway. Brigitte heard a steady creak as he drew shut a metal gate on the other side. The clang of his boots against the metal faded into the darkness, and she was left alone with Nicholas and his secrets.
***
Brigitte set in with persistent questions, but Nicholas, so weary from the day’s activities and their flight he could no longer stand, begged for time to rest before he told his story.
“I deserve to know.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “You do, but, please … not now. We are out of immediate danger, and it is a long tale, cruel in the telling, and I have not the strength to tell it.” He slumped against the wall, and lifted up his arm.
Brigitte snuggled under it, and fell asleep quickly, her warm cheek pressed hard against his chest. But every time Nicholas’ eyes seemed to be closing, he would hear a noise or sense an animal or see an image of Julianne dancing under his eyelids, and he would be jolted awake again.
The Wall was not nearly as secure as the tunnels under Engine Ward, and Nicholas’ mind jumped from compie to compie as they raced along the pipes. Through their eyes he could see where they’d already gnawed through the metal structure in places, creating for themselves a network of secret tunnels. If he lived through this night, he’d need to have Brunel dispatch a crew to tidy up the gaps.
The compies spoke a complex language of scents, sounds, and signals, which he was only just beginning to decipher, but he’d learned enough to know that they had sensed the presence of the humans in this room. Used to the company of Boilers, these compies were wary of humans, and their scent signal leapt from body to body. Be alert.
But they were wary of something else, too. Some great and terrible shadow lurked in the corner of their minds. They could not see it in the dark, but they had heard it, smelt it. It worried them.
Nicholas could feel this shadow also, a looming presence on the periphery of his sense. He was too weak to hold onto it, and it was too great and dark for him to sense properly, but he knew whatever it was, it was nearby, and it was hungry, and very, very angry. But he had enough to worry about now without succumbing to a nameless fear in the darkness. He tried to ignore the presence and follow the compies in his mind, skipping from one to the other as they made their rounds of the tunnels. He knew if they sensed more humans in the tunnels, so would he.
Hours drifted by, and their lamp — the oil already low — gave a final flicker and went out, plunging them into total darkness. Sometime later — when, he could not tell, for no light penetrated their cell, and he had lost his pocket watch somewhere in the tunnels — the compies did indeed sense a human presence. This man came by a different route, down from the official entrances above. The compies knew his smell instantly, and so did Nicholas. It was Isambard.
He heard the gate swing open, and the Presbyter’s footsteps across the gangway, and he prayed to the Gods that Isambard had not come to give him over to Jacques.
“Nicholas!”
The voice rang out like a battle cry in the silent darkness. Brigitte shuddered away and gripped Nicholas’ hand as they listened to Isambard climbing the ladder into their hiding place. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Nicholas opened and closed his mouth, his throat dry and his words dying on his lips.
“Nicholas?” The voice was softer, but so close Brigitte screamed and leapt back. A second later, a match struck, and a shaft of light penetrated the room. Isambard’s face appeared at the top of the stairs. He held up a lantern and a parcel.
“Buckland said you had no food, so I have brought some. And some oil for your lamp.” He crawled in beside them and set the package down on the floor. “Nicholas … why didn’t you tell me?”
“You are not angry with me?” Nicholas leaned away from him, remembering Isambard’s face when he’d threatened him on the pulpit.
“If I am to understand correctly, a threat has been made on your life. I am concerned for you, and determined to keep you safe, at least as long as I am able.” Isambard opened the parcel and spread out a bounty of bread and butter, jam, and a draught of beer. Nicholas could not bring himself to eat, but Brigitte ate hungrily, stuffing bread into her mouth faster than she could chew. “I am saddened you did not come to me earlier. I have power now, and what good is such power if I can’t use it to help my friends?”
“There is a good reason for my silence. The man that follows me does not simply intend to kill me — he will hurt anyone in my life if he knew their deaths would wound me. I intended to keep a low profile, to claim friendship with no one, to extract myself with little disruption from London if he did find me here. But you two—” he said, glancing from Isambard to Brigitte, and sighing.,”you have destroyed my hope of this, for I care about you too deeply. Now that he has found me I must once again go underground, for I cannot have him catch me and destroy your lives in the process. Brigitte has, against my protestations, decided to go with me, but I’ll not have you forsake your own life for my mistakes.”
“This man hates you so much?” Tears streamed down Brigitte’s face.
“If you knew my crime, you would not be so quick to side against him.”
“Nicholas.” Brigitte’s voice seemed firm, large in the darkness. “I am hiding in a tiny box in the deepest reaches of an iron wall. I am cold and I am frightened. Your friend Isambard has come down here to tend to you when he should be celebrating. It’s time you told us what is going on.”
“We cannot help you until we understand the nature of the man we’re up against,” Brunel added.
Nicholas sighed. “Very well, but when you hear what I have done, you will change your mind and cast me forever from your life, and you will be all the happier for it.”
So he told them the tale of his escape from the Navy, of his meeting with Jacques and the beguiling black-haired woman named Julianne, of his days spent studying, of his nights holding her while she cried, of how the atmosphere at the monastery had slowly turned poisonous, of his discovery of Jacques’ brutality, and of their desperate flight that ended in him driving his sword into the heart of the woman he loved.
When he finished, he was weeping, the tears hot against his cheeks. Isambard pressed the beer into his hands, and he drank, long and heavy, ’till the rawness of the memories floated away.
All three were silent for a long time, the only sound in the room the steady dripping of water somewhere in the distance and Nicholas’ wretched sobs.
Brigitte spoke, her soft voice cutting the air like a dagger. “I could not ask you to do this.”
“Brigitte—”
“She was selfish, this Julianne. She wanted you to do this for her, knowing you loved her so, knowing what it would do to you thereafter.”
“It wasn’t like that—” He caught himself. “Perhaps she didn’t expect me to live much longer.”
“But live you did. And now you’re in a world of mess, and it’s her fault.”
Nicholas felt a strong sense that he should be defending Julianne, but he said instead, “You do not hate me?”
“Why should I? You fulfilled the last wish of a dying woman, a woman who was already numb and dead inside, and you’ve carried the guilt of that memory like a shroud ever since. Do you think me so fickle that my love for you could be extinguished by some past crime? Do you think you alone own all the sorrow of the world?”
Love … she had spoken that word. He’d not thought about it, not dared to utter it, since that night in the valley. And here she was before him, this maid who knew nothing about him save his one greatest secret, and yet she professed her love for him.
“I do not think you fickle,” he choked, trying to keep his voice steady. “But you
should not profess such things, for they cannot be taken back, and you may yet meet the same fate as the last person to utter those words to me.”
“She will not,” said Isambard. “Buckland has done right to hide you here, for du Blanc cannot possibly find you. As soon as Buckland told me of your flight, I sent a guard to your home. He saw Jacques arrive there but three hours ago, with two Navvies in tow. They broke the front window and stirred your papers into frightful disarray, but they left soon after. He tracked them back to Stephenson’s London residence, but they have not emerged since.”
“He aims to make my death look like a simple Stoker/Navvy rivalry,” Nicholas said.
“That is my guess, too. It was probably Stephenson’s idea. It will take all my cunning to design a solution to this dilemma. I do not know when next I can return to you, but when I do, it will be with your salvation.”
“Could you send someone else? What about Aaron?”
“He’s still playing hero with the Stokers. I’ll not trust him again,” Isambard said. “Apart from Buckland, I’m the only one who knows about these tunnels and this room, and I intend to keep it that way. But just in case, I have brought you this.” He drew from the darkness a long, thin object: Nicholas’ sword.
He took it gratefully. “Thank you, Isambard. For everything.”
With a nod of his head, Isambard retraced his steps back down the ladder, and Nicholas listened to his footsteps fading into the gloom. He reached across and clasped Brigitte’s hand.
“Brigitte?”
“Mmhmmm?”
“If we make it out of this alive, would you object to marrying me?”
“Nothing would make me happier.”
***
James Holman’s Memoirs — Unpublished
A night and a day had passed since Brunel’s sermon, and I was no closer to London. I had been ready to sneak off toward the castle after the night mass, when another Knight took it upon himself to be unusually talkative, and I was unable to slip away. I had already heard one carriage clatter away into the darkness — no doubt laden with a cargo of Sunken — and I knew I could not remain here much longer with the King’s disturbing secret weighing heavy upon me.
I made sure to leave Travers College at the earliest possible hour, and upon reaching St. George’s Chapel, some thirty-five minutes before service was due to begin, I took up a stall closest to the exit. I needn’t have bothered, for as the minutes drew out and the priests at last began their incantations, not a single other Knight appeared. They’d all decided to absent themselves from duty. Maybe luck would be with me tonight.
After the service had finished, I slipped around the side of the church, hid in a flower bed, and listened as the priests locked the chapel for the night. When I was certain the courtyard was empty, I slipped from my hiding place and crept toward the servants’ quarters.
Brigitte had said there was an entrance to the cellars in the castle kitchen, and although I’d never been there before, I’d have no trouble locating it. A short walk through the northern wing of the castle revealed a sharp scent of fresh herbs on the breeze. I’d found the kitchen gardens. From here it was a simple task to feel my way along the wall ’till I found the door to the kitchen. It was unlocked. I pushed it open and crept inside.
The door to the cellar could probably be found in the larder. I stood in the doorway of this unfamiliar room and rapped my knuckles against the wooden bench, once, twice … I listened, the echoes creating an image in my mind. The shapes and positions of objects — though not their form or function — became clear to me. I took a cautious step forward, careful to avoid knocking any pans from the overhanging rack.
A blind man builds his image of a room in a very different way from a man with eyes. While the sighted man can take in the basics of a room in a single glance, I build my perception in layers — first, the position, density, and relationships of objects, then the intricacies of the space that surrounds them, and finally a complex map of textures, scents, and sounds. Normally, I would build this “image” over weeks, visiting a room many times to familiarise myself with every detail, but this night I didn’t have the luxury. I stepped to the right to avoid the wooden table, my hands at my sides, fingers running across the surface of the object. Slowly. Methodically. Every sense on high alert.
I took another step.
On the other side of the room, a door creaked.
I froze, listening hard. There was a window beside the door, just behind where I stood. If the moon was high in the sky tonight, my silhouette would be illuminated to anyone looking in on the room.
I held my breath.
After several moments, I could detect no further movement, no other human presence. Satisfied it was just a draught, I took another step into the room.
A woman cried out, and a heavy object slammed into the side of my head. Pain arced across my eyes, and I felt my knees wobble and give way. I pitched forward and hit the side of the table with a thud, and everything around me passed into silence.
***
I came to and found myself propped up awkwardly in a hard wooden chair. A harsh female voice barked orders at another girl, and some smelling salts passed under my nose. I pushed the hand away.
“My head hurts,” I said.
“An’ that’s no one’s fault but your own,” snapped the rough voice. “Fancy sneaking in here in the middle of the night, frightening two helpless young women and all.”
The voice sounded neither helpless nor young, so I concluded there were at least three women regarding me from around the table. The matron cleared her throat. Clearly, I was required to furnish an explanation for my intrusion.
“Forgive me, ladies. I had hoped to navigate the kitchens without rousing you from your beds. I am Lieutenant Holman, one of the Naval Knights of Windsor, and I am trying to escape the castle before we’re forced onto those trains.”
“What do you know of it?” The woman sounded suspicious.
“I know that unholy creatures haunt this castle, and I know that tomorrow we’re being moved to a new residence in London, but the creatures are moving with us, secretly, so no one in London can glimpse them. I know our residence is behind a high iron Wall that promised to keep the dragons out, but will instead lock the citizens in.”
The matron and her companions — their voices belonging to young girls — gasped.
“And I know that tonight is my last and only chance to escape that fate, so I might find my way to London and send up some warning, perhaps stop Presbyter Brunel from closing every exit through his Wall—”
“Travers College is all the way down the other end of the garden. How do you know of the Sunken?” the woman cut in.
“Brigitte Black told me of them. She used to be a maid in the castle, but—”
“—she left,” a girl’s voice, high and musical, interrupted. “She had a gentlemanly sweetheart, and so she left. And not a moment too soon, for the very next day the King was calling her to his chambers.”
The matron’s voice remained hard. “You know of Brigitte? She is safe?”
“Safer than any of us. Her sweetheart, Nicholas Rose, is my very dear friend, and he is architect to Presbyter Brunel. He is, at this very moment, working to avert this crisis.”
“Maxwell the gardener’s gone, too,” the first girl piped up.
“Cassandra.”
“Well, he has,” she sniffed. “Last we saw him was the night Brigitte disappeared. He’d been so ill—”
“He helped Brigitte escape through the cellars,” I said. “This is where I am going. She told me about a door—”
“There’s no escaping that way,” the woman said. “Them creatures have overrun every inch of the cellars. If you put your ear to the door you can hear ’em, chomping and snarling. You won’t get ten feet before they tear you apart.”
“What are we to do, then?”
“We?” the second girl asked, her voice trembling.
“I can hardly leave
you ladies here alone now, can I? Not when you’ve shown me such hospitality.” I smiled, rubbing the lump on my head.
“Me an’ Cassandra an’ Rebecca have our escape all figured out. There is perhaps room for one more, but you must listen carefully to all we say and follow us without question. It will not be easy for a blind man.”
“Nothing ever is. When?”
“Tomorrow. You will remain here with us, and we make our escape early in the morning. You will sleep here, in the scullery, and you’ll not,” she said sternly, “move or make so much as a sound, or that frying pan will be the least of your worries.”
***
“I’m worried about Holman. And Isambard.” Nicholas hunched forward, folding his arms across his chest, then letting them fall at his sides, then clasping them together. If the room were tall enough to stand up in, he would be pacing, but it wasn’t, so he folded his arms again.
Brigitte leaned against the other wall, spreading her skirts over her knees. “Why? Is someone trying to kill them, too?”
“The Sunken—”
“—are not our biggest concern of the minute, Nicholas—” She stopped mid-sentence. He started to speak, but she hushed him. Then he heard it, too. A clank, like someone trying to open the gate on the other side of the gangway.
“It could be a compie,” he said, straining his ears and his sense to listen. He heard it again — more scrapes and clangs in the gangway below. They were definitely footsteps — someone was coming.
“It must be Isambard. I hope he’s brought some more food and oil.” Nicholas stood up, picking up the lantern — which was running low again — from beside her. “I’ll help him—”
“Please?” she tugged on his trousers, her eyes large in the glimmer of the lamplight. “I don’t want to be left in the darkness.”
Sighing, he stroked her hair and placed the lantern back on the floor beside her. Lowering his feet over the edge of the ladder, he climbed down onto the platform at the end of the gangway. He could see the faint glow of a lantern bobbing toward him, the figure shrouded in the shadow of a heavy cloak.