Eastachia began to fret. Had the terrible weapon of Kew Gardens imprinted something upon her skin? “What can you see on my forehead?” she asked.
“A sign, that tells me Lord Shiva himself has looked upon you. I see barbed lines, plus and minus signs, and more that I do not recognise.”
Plus and minus signs… the symbolism of Rutherford, Röntgen and the rest. She felt her skin turn cold: she shivered. “I fear the worst,” she said. “I had an argument with my husband, and ran away.”
“What was the argument about?”
Eastachia explained the situation, then said, “I do love him… I really do, but he doesn’t understand the importance of ordinary people. He looks down on them. But that’s only because he’s been trained to, he is a good man. But he has learned some bad lessons. Oh, I do miss him. D’you think I’ll ever see him again?”
“No doubt,” Vandana replied. “But I can tell you something that perhaps you do not yet know. You tell me that the chamber holding the Shiva device was activated by spoken passwords.”
“Yes…?”
“The device itself will be activated using the same method.”
Estachia nodded. “That’s why the government man called down Sir Raman from the Royal Institute.”
Vandana smiled. “Sir Raman – who is a genius – will never speak the password.”
“Why not?”
“It is imprinted upon your forehead, and until it comes off it can never be spoken… apart from by you, should you wish it.”
“Then…”
“The device has temporarily neutralised itself. Perhaps it sensed danger. Perhaps it knows of the chaotic situation in London Town, and does not want to be a part of it.”
“But that means the government will be looking for me!”
Vandana nodded. “They will when they realise Sir Raman has failed. With Gandy dead and his followers scattered to the four winds, they will certainly be looking for you. You are in great danger.”
“Then you must hide me!”
“I will. Lord Shiva’s wife Parvati can protect.”
Eastachia felt tears fall from her eyes. She wanted no part of the events in which she had become embroiled; moreover, she wanted Kornukope out of them too. What had happened to the wager, to the discovery of love? Everything had been reduced to politics and violence. She felt disgusted.
“Your husband loves you,” Vandana said, “but many obstacles in his mind block him.”
“I know. But I’ve got a secret at home… a syringe of Indoo germs. I can reveal the true man if I want to.”
Vandana stood up and led Eastachia out of the side chamber into the main temple. “Let us go and worship,” she said.
But Eastachia halted, staring at a figure across the way.
“What is it?” Vandana asked.
Eastachia hid behind a column, but it was too late. The wizened old man not ten yards away had seen her. “That man,” she replied, “is Mizanthrop Mahavishnu.”
Vandana glanced across, then returned her gaze to Eastachia. “I know him,” she said.
“He is an evil doctor, beholden to the violent cult of Gandy.”
“He presented himself as a decent man. He arrived here recently.”
Eastachia shook her head. “He is bad. And he saw me. If he noticed the mark upon my forehead…”
For the first time, Vandana looked worried. “Do you have a headscarf in your handbag?”
Eastachia nodded.
“Wear it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Back at the Suicide Club, Sheremy, Juinefere, Lord Blackanore and Franclin sat around a table, a pot of rosehip tea between them. The atmosphere was gloomy.
“It seems battle is inevitable,” Lord Blackanore observed.
Sheremy wanted to ask Blackanore about his knowledge of the war cabinet’s plans, but he could not, for fear of revealing himself.
“Farthing for your thoughts,” Lord Blackanore said.
Sheremy jumped in his seat, awoken from brief reverie. “Battle inevitable, did you say? Perhaps, perhaps… but not necessarily.”
“Yet what can we do?”
“You,” Sheremy replied, “could visit Lord Gorge and tell him not to be a fool. D’you want Britisher blood spilled on Charing Cross Road? No, neither do I.”
“But what could I tell him?”
“To negotiate with the Pearlies. To compromise. Change is inevitable, all of us here know that, not least because we traipse across the world looking at how it changes. We must accept it now in our own back yard.”
Lord Blackanore shrugged, then stood up. “Should I depart now?”
“Wait,” Sheremy said, standing also, “you need a plan.”
“A plan? Sheremy, there is more to you than meets the eye. What have you been up to?”
“It’s but a small thing. I know a little of the Cockneighs’ wishes because of my recent travels through the East End, that’s all. They wish to declare independence in their locale.”
“Independence? The East End? Moonstruck addlement of the worst kind.”
Sheremy nodded. He had expected this response. Now he felt trapped. He said, “Perhaps, but if Lord Gorge insists on fighting, London will never be the same. Surely you see that any bloodshed is wrong?”
“I do… but Lord Gorge is a sound man. A decent kipper if truth be told.”
Sheremy shrugged. He felt now more than ever the peril of the tightrope along which he walked. “Don’t go to Downing Street just yet,” he said. “There’s time yet for both sides to see sense.”
“Very well… but I do not like your posturing. You’re up to something, or I’m a Cockneigh.”
Sheremy drew himself up to his full height and replied, “I’m just trying to save London from needless bloodshed, which, some might argue, is the noblest path of all. Let’s not forget what happened in Parisi. Now good day to you, sir. Lady Bedwards and I are going to enjoy a light lunch.”
Sheremy and Juinefere ascended to her chambers, where, in the parlour, they discussed their options. “I don’t like this at all,” Sheremy said. “The tightrope I walk is sagging.”
Juinefere nodded. “Both sides are entrenched.”
Sheremy thought awhile then said, “The Government is, I suspect, unshakeable. We need to bring a boon of some kind to the Pearlies so that Lord Gorge simply has no option but to negotiate. The Pearlies want their independent country, but don’t believe it can happen – I think they would talk if they thought it might work. We need to give them something so powerful they halt the uprising and parley with the government.”
“But what?”
“I fear I don’t know. Probably there’s nothing we could give the Pearlies to halt the uprising.”
With that pessimistic assessment, they ate sproutlings and poached broccoli in a red wine sauce. Afterwards Sheremy departed Bedwards House, his hope another audience with the Pearlies. But he never reached St Paul’s.
On Ludgate Hill, with the wind whipping around his shoulders and the smell of rain in the air, a figure emerged from an alley. It was Murchison Volume.
“Pantomile, I’ll be bound,” the officer said. He took a rapier-thin swordington from the holster at his side and raised it, his stance naught but aggression. “Time for you to taste your medicine, you pipsqueak pipecleaner.”
Sheremy drew his swordington at once, but then another figure emerged from the alley. Sir Hoseley Fain.
Yet before anyone could speak further or make a move there was a flash of light from the rooftop on the opposite side of the street. Sheremy looked up to see a man standing behind a tripod, a smoking tray at his side. Magnesium flash! A photogram must have been taken. And then the man taking the photogram emerged from behind the tripod: Jomb Gravelspitte.
Sheremy’s heart leaped. “You are undone, Fain!” he cried. “My man has undisputable evidence now that you and Murchison are in cahoots, and out to kill me by swordington. And I know you are Jacques the Raper!”
Sir Hoseley snarled and gestured at Jomb. “I will have you! I will ruin your photograms! There will be no evidence!” And with that he was away; and Jomb also.
“So it’s just me and you,” Murchison said, approaching through the thin growth of hair separating them. “On guard, sirrah!”
Sheremy raised his swordington. He knew Murchison to be half madman, fuelled by hate and fear. The man would make a formidable opponent. But he had duelled on the High Wall of Rajapoot-Poor in the foothills of the Himalayas with the Black Fiend of Calcutty. Damn it, he knew how to wield a swordington…
But so did Murchison. The man pranced like a drunken leprechaun, the needle-sharp tip of his weapon whirling in all directions – seemingly at once. Sheremy altered his stance to one of defence. He needed to see what the man was capable of.
Murchison attacked, using mesmeric speed to try to hypnotise his opponent, whirling his swordington this way and that, so that on occasion it seemed to Sheremy’s half-befuddled eyes that the man held two weapons. Luckily the sun was hidden by cloud: dazzling reflections off that oscillating sliver of steel could be his undoing. In retaliation he used all his defensive postures, both to save his skin and to impart to Murchison the fact that he was not a man to be trifled with. For the Black Fiend had perished in the end.
After a gruelling ten minute bout, Murchison hopped back and said, “You cannot win, Pantomile. Give yourself up.”
Sheremy knew then that the man was fading; this was the classic tactic of a man facing his own demise. “Give myself up, Murchison?” he replied. “That’s an impossible habit to break, if you think about it.”
“If I think about it? Oh, I’m so stupid. I’m only a policeman, so I must be stupid. Gaaagh! On guard again, sirrah!”
Murchison launched an attack so aggressive and complex Sheremy was almost undone; forced backwards so that his shoulders struck the nearby wall he almost lost his defence, until Murchison’s terrible storm blew itself out and he was able to launch some small attack of his own. And he noticed something else. Murchison was beginning to lose his breath.
He decided it was time for a trick: a risk. The man seemed to be fading. His concentration would be fading too.
He paused, affected a glance over Murchison’s shoulder, then gasped as if seeing somebody. Murchison ducked and glanced back over his shoulder, but in that fraction of a second Sheremy whipped out with the tip of his swordington to cut a great gash across Murchison’s right arm. With a scream the man leaped aside and dropped his weapon, but then Sheremy was upon his enemy, his forearm across Murchison’s neck in an Indoo thuggee-grip.
“Got you!” he said.
Murchison was unable to speak. He tried to kick out, but Sheremy was easily able to control the man with his legs and free arm.
“You will be signing your confession, Murchison Volume.”
He relaxed the grip so that Murchison could speak. “Never!”
But Sheremy grinned. “Do you know what I’ve got in my pocket? Serjeant Cough’s automatic notebook. I’m going to set that notebook to omnipresent, so that when you write your confession in it every single officer in this part of London will be able to read it. And then you’ll be undone forever – and, I most fervently hope, flung into Bedlam where you belong.”
Murchison’s face exhibited fear. He knew the game was up. He went limp.
Sheremy wriggled to one side so that he was able to withdraw the notebook. “Roll over onto your front,” he said. “I will use the advanced thuggee-grip so that when you stand up to write your confession you don’t run away.”
This manoeuvre completed, Sheremy thrust the notebook into Murchison’s right hand. Blood from the man’s wound dripped onto it.
And Murchison wrote: I, Murchison Volume, confess that I aided Sir Hoseley Fain in the unlawful and malicious apprehension of Sheremy Pantomile, and that I did, also unlawfully, put him without care or attention into the confines of Bedlam. I sign myself – Murchison Q. Volume.
“Now we’ll deal with Jacques the Raper,” Sheremy said.
Murchison squealed and struggled. “You must believe me, that is nothing to do with me. I only discovered last week that he was Le Violeur!”
Sheremy hesitated. This could be true; and he had the confession he needed to deal with Murchison, his immediate enemy. He glanced to the rooftop where Jomb had taken the flashlight photogram, but saw nobody.
“Very well,” he said. “All we have to do now is await a policeman. Blow your whistle, Murchison.”
With bad grace Murchison did as he was told, whereupon, five minutes later, two officers approached through the hair of Ludgate Hill.
“Sir?”
“I have confessed,” Murchison growled. “Take me to the nearest police station, dammit!”
Sheremy watched the trio depart. He sagged against the stone wall upon which Murchison had pinned him. He felt exhausted.
Yet the Cockneigh Uprising was about to break like ocean swell against the stalwart lines of Government soldiers. What now for London Town, for himself, and for Juinefere Bedwards?
~
Velvene walked down Gray’s Inn Road not knowing what to do, though he knew the Cockneigh Uprising remained his eventual destination. All paths, it seemed, led to the standoff between government and uprising at Charing Cross Road.
Though he looked in all directions as he struggled down the hair-choked thoroughfare, he saw no hint of Tyko, nor of any other children of the factory, all of whom seemed to have disappeared into the hair and grime of London. But he sensed a febrility in the atmosphere, that he knew must emanate from events happening to the south. He wondered what would become of him. Already he was hungry and thirsty.
When he reached the junction with High Holborn he realised that Bedwards House lay not too far away. There would be food there. Walking down Chancery Lane, then creeping around the rear of the building, he tried to see if anybody was in the kitchen, and he was, on the last window he peered through, rewarded with a glimpse of Gentleman Smyth’s turban.
He knocked against the window, but the glass, in poor condition, splintered.
Hearing the noise, Gentleman came running. “Who’s that out there… oh! Mr Orchardtide, sir, I thought we’d never see you again.”
“Shhh!” Velvene hissed. “I cannot enter the club Gentleman, but I need sustenance. Do you have any old pasties or sandwiches lying around, eh?”
“Sir,” Gentleman said, eyes wide, “your attire appears to be in… disorder. Have you been attacked by–”
“Gentleman! Never mind how I look, just find me some food!”
“Very good sir. Shall I inform–”
“Just get food.”
Gentleman returned five minutes later with two porcelain plates, on one a pile of sealcub sandwiches, on the other a stack of chowder cakes. Velvene ate speedily: the entire lot.
He asked, “Who is around, eh? Any of the Suicide Club?”
Gentleman nodded. “Lord Blackanore, Mr Spar-Turney and Mr Tune are all well and present, sir, as is the good Lady Bedwards. Sir Hoseley was here, but he seems to be in a spot of bother, and has vanished. Then there was Mr Pantomile–”
“Pantomile? He’s around, eh? Has he spoken of the wager to you?”
“No sir. Nobody has. Mr Wetherbee has vanished also, but there is gossip, of the insubstantial variety I regret to say, to suggest that he is working for the government.”
“Government johnny, eh? Well, more fool him. Listen Gentleman, you are on no account to tell anybody that you saw me. Is that understood? I also am on an important mission.”
“Confidentiality is assured here, sir.”
“Excellent. Well, goodbye for now.”
Gentleman bowed. “Goodbye, sir. Are you sure I can’t clean, or just brush your clothes–”
“No time. Perhaps later.”
With that, Velvene ran back to Chancery Lane and headed for Fleet Street, the hair of which was tied back with coloured ribbons, where it was not flattened by t
he passage of thousands of boots, feet and wheels. He gazed west down the Strand. Even from this distance he could hear the noise of the two opposing sides, with martial drums and chants marking the presence of the army, and a massed rank of joannas and barrel organs marking the Cockneighs.
Not without apprehension he walked down the Strand, but a Cockneigh costermonger-general dressed in a white coat and shiny black boots stopped him near the Savoy and demanded to know his business.
“I am a member of the Marxist-Leninist Workers’ Movement Of London,” he replied, “and am known to the Pearlies. You must let me pass, my good man.”
The costermonger-general shook his head. “On yer own ’ead be it, mate. West of this ’ere spot is a war zone. Sure yer wanna risk it?”
“I must see the King and Queen!”
“Go on then. But don’t say I didn’t warn yer.”
Velvene strode on into a bizarre hinterland of tents, cannon, volunteer platoons and horses, making the Strand look like the roads of the south-west where he had fought the Bosch. Few people looked at him, but those who did seemed at ease with his presence, and he realised that the condition of his clothes and somewhat unshaven appearance marked him out as ordinary – not posh at all. He hurried on.
The Pearlies’ marquee flew the flag of the East End, a pie couchant on a field of mash, and it was surrounded by guards. Velvene gave his name, explained that he was known to the Pearlies, then awaited a response.
The response was cool. “The Pearlies is too busy what with all their war plans to see ya. Wait around – maybe tomorrah. Now scram.”
Velvene sighed. He turned. A man stood just a few yards away, staring at him. It was Sheremy Pantomile.
~
Vandana took Eastachia to her personal rooms at the summit of the Trimurti Temple; they were decorated in tones of crimson and silver, and smelled of Nag Champa incense. A standing statue of Lord Shiva stood next to a great open window, from which Eastachia could see most of the temple compound, with Southall laid out further away, and, hazy in the distance, the West End.
“Quite a view,” she remarked.
Vandana nodded. “But we must speak of Mizanthrop Mahavishnu,” she said.
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