Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

  Lyle wasn’t listening. He detached himself from the wall, smiling broadly, wrapped a fatherly arm round Thomas’s shoulder and said, ‘Come on. Let’s go and find ourselves a carriage.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Miss Teresa, sir?’

  Lyle’s smile turned slightly evil. ‘Miss Teresa is doing a very special job at the moment.’

  Tess was bored. She had been looking forward to traipsing round with Thomas, in order to ridicule him a little when he couldn’t understand what the locals were saying, and possibly to pick his pocket while he wasn’t looking. The boy, she was convinced, would be a mark for any decent thief, despite his burgeoning height and strength. However, as she had moved to follow Thomas, Lyle had put a restraining hand on her shoulder. Her talents, she knew, lay in different areas.

  And now she was lurking in a doorway, watching everyone, and feeling bored. She had done this since she was old enough to tell the difference between bulging pockets and sagging pockets, and the pockets in this place were, generally speaking, bulging. And she wasn’t allowed to touch them. So she had watched Lyle. For a while he ’d just stood there, staring at the blood. Then he ’d leant against a wall and stared at the sky, not moving, Tate lying dutifully across his feet, where he seemed to be most comfortable, also not moving. Then Thomas had come back, and by both his and Lyle’s expressions, the news had been good from the people around the bridge. Then the two of them had started walking.

  Tess had moved out of the shadows when they were thirty yards ahead of her and, keeping a shoulder to the wall, drifted along behind them, now very much alert. She had followed them up towards Cheapside with its bustling shops and shouting hawkers, joining the flow of people, ducking top hats and walking canes and leather boots and tweed elbows, keeping in sight as a guide Lyle’s sandy-red hair, brighter than the black top hats that moved through the streets, and when not searching for that, watching the people. Sailors, smelling of salt and tar and fish and sweat and grease, businessmen with white silk handkerchiefs and ivory-capped canes that they swung with a deadly ease, women with trays slung from their shoulders bearing steaming packets of nuts or fruit or vegetables or biscuits or tins of mushy peas or soup or flowers, or girls selling handfuls of ribbon, or burly men setting up their coffee cauldrons under the nearest bedraggled and blackened tree, or the priest scurrying to the service at St Paul’s or at the Guild Church with the gold dragon sitting on top of it, facing perpetually north despite the wind, or the man with the music box and the money, or the Dutch singers, or the bobbies in their blue top hats and capes, who she strained to avoid out of habit, or . . .

  For a second she saw someone who was immediately swallowed up by the crowd, and she felt a momentary flash of recognition, not sure where she ’d seen him before but trusting her instinct that she had seen him before. There again, a man all in black, coat collar turned up high about his face, a red scarf wound tightly across his mouth, neck and chin, brown leather gloves on his hands, a tall top hat looking somehow incongruous on his head, dark hair sticking out under it. Gone again. She kept following Lyle but now she was looking for the man with the dark hair beneath that hat, sitting at a rakish angle that didn’t really fit, supported mostly by his ears. As Lyle turned again into Gutter Lane, taking the most complicated route he knew, all the way up to St Alban’s Church and the red-grey stretch of the City Wall half-incorporated into the local building where it ran past the gold-rimmed marble-walled Goldsmiths’ Hall, he followed, that man in the lopsided top hat, eyes fixed on Lyle. And as Lyle ducked and weaved, making it harder with each inexplicable turn, so the man turned, and Tess soon was following him only, not Lyle, because he was following Lyle.

  Still she couldn’t see his face. Once she saw him raise something wrapped in a dark red silk handkerchief to his mouth, and in his footsteps she noticed a small spattering of ginger crumbs, but he never turned his face towards her. At last they were at the giant edifice of the Bank, and Lyle and Thomas were walking towards the tall, thick black-iron doors opposite the Merchant Exchange. Tess took a deep breath and ran forward. She barged straight into the man who had followed them all the way there, bounced off him, muttered a quick ‘Sorry, guv’, and ran on past, catching up with Lyle and Thomas just as Lyle put his hand on the door.

  Lyle turned expectantly as she ran to him, gasping for breath. ‘I seen him!’

  ‘And?’ asked Lyle mildly.

  She heaved in lungfuls of air before she managed to blurt, ‘He’s a chink!’

  ‘A . . .’ began Thomas uneasily.

  ‘And I went for his pockets!’ blurted Tess.

  ‘And?’ suggested Lyle, his voice kept tactfully away from disapproval.

  ‘He’s got a gun!’

  ‘A . . .’ Thomas tried stammering again.

  The door burst open. ‘Thomas Edward Elwick, what do you think you are doing?’

  Lord Elwick erupted on to the scene. And he was angry.

  CHAPTER 6

  Night

  Evening settled on the streets of London. In a carriage clattering back towards his dull mansion with its dull books on dull counties full of dull people, Thomas had already shut his ears to the rantings of his furious father, and was watching the blind drawn down over the window. He didn’t know whether it was there to prevent the world contaminating him, or to stop him and his family contaminating the world. He thought of the last thing he had seen or heard before his father had practically lifted him off the street and thrown him into a carriage. Lyle had put a hand on his arm and said, ‘How could a thief get hold of your family seal and father’s signature, Master Elwick?’

  The question buzzed in his mind. The servants would never have given out the seal, used for all formal documents, nor any of the family papers bearing Lord Elwick’s signature. He could guess what Lyle was worried about; he didn’t need to be told: the documents used to get the sarcophagus into the vault had to be signed by his father. Thomas looked at Lord Elwick, and felt his own anger settle into a seething resentment. He knew in his heart that his father was a fool; nonetheless, he realized that he might be a loyal fool, and that he was, for whatever reason, genuinely angry and upset at the loss of the Fuyun Plate. Thomas knew Lord Elwick would not have contrived to give someone, anyone, the means to get into the vault.

  How could a thief get hold of your family seal and father’s signature, Master Elwick?

  They rattled on, through growing darkness.

  When the sun set, Tess noticed, it didn’t reach the horizon, but shimmered out in a dirty brown pool before its light could touch the ceiling.

  ‘Water vapour,’ Lyle said, coming up behind her where she stood in the window of his house, watching the red evening. He thought about this. ‘And general dirt. You know, there are some people who suspect it could have a detrimental long-term effect on the climate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dirt.’

  ‘Will it?’

  He looked sheepish. ‘It’s not really my field.’

  She grinned. ‘You don’t know, do you?’

  ‘Well, no.’ He added, before her grin could grow any wider, ‘Come on. There’s more work before supper.’

  Night settled, thick and dark and suffocating. As the temperature dropped, the fog rose, drifting up into the emptier sky and rolling across the town in a choking green-grey wave that slithered into every pair of lungs and tickled them with dirty blackness. In the street, a policeman swung his rattle, and the theatre halls started to drain out for the evening.

  In the Elwick mansion - a new, ugly white stain on a large swathe of green land encased by high red walls - the family sat down to supper, and Lady Elwick began the conversation. ‘My dear, I am concerned for Thomas’s Latin.’

  ‘It is not the only blemish which should concern us, Lady Elwick!’

  On the other side of town, in a house too small for Tate, too large for Lyle and perfect for dark goings-on, someone struck a match in a dark, cold cellar, and someone else blurted, ‘F
or Christ ’s sake, not in here! Wait until I’ve opened the vents!’

  The match went out. There was a scuffling sound. ‘Ow! That’s my foot!’

  ‘Well, what are you doing standing there?’

  Something clicked. Cold air started to flow, taking away an oppressive smell. ‘Now can I strike a match?’

  ‘No. Take this. It ’s safer.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A magnet and a bit of wire.’

  ‘That ain’t helpful, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘Just turn the handle, Teresa.’

  A sound like a cricket. Light slowly blossomed in the room, illuminating Tess’s astonished face. She stared at the single bulb stapled to a small piece of wood, on which was attached, simply, a short coil of tightly wrapped wire and a magnet, which spun inside the wire as she turned the handle. The faster she turned the magnet, the brighter the bulb glowed. She whispered, ‘Jesus Christ.’

  On the other side of the room, Lyle was fumbling with a pair of levers. ‘You believe in God, Teresa?’

  ‘I’m gonna say sorry just in case.’

  ‘Watch.’

  He pulled a lever. There was another click. Somewhere beyond the wooden door in a corner of the room, something started thundering. Across the room bulbs lit up, flooding it with white light, illuminating desks lined with bits of bent glass and metal and strange liquids of every colour and thickness, and tubes and tools and bits of wire and gears locked together in a monstrous mountain that somehow, through the chaos of metal teeth, seemed to be connected by rods to more gears that disappeared into walls or cupboards or metal contraptions waiting for a use. She stared, speechless. Lyle, grinning proudly, unlocked and pushed open the small wooden door at the end of the room and the sound of distant thunder grew a whole lot louder. ‘Look.’

  She crept to the door, no longer turning the handle on the magnet in her hand, and peered through. The room beyond was covered with tubes and gears and felt hot and dry and smelt terrible . Central to it all a huge coil of wire, sparking and hissing, spun around a single metal core attached to wires that ran into every wall, nook and cranny, huge heavy wires hanging across the ceiling while pistons pumped up and down below, driven from the pipes that seemed to rise out of the floor itself.

  ‘How the hell . . .’ she began.

  Lyle looked like a child with a toy. ‘Natural gas,’ he chuckled. ‘Burnt natural gas drives the pistons which push the wire which spins round the magnet, cutting the magnetic field, which creates -’ his grin was huge - ‘electricity. Magnetism makes electricity, electricity makes magnetism - you can’t have one without the other. Faraday is the new God, and he explains his universe in lines of force around a wire.’

  ‘Where do you get the . . . the . . .’

  ‘Natural gas to burn?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In a distant, reverent voice, he said, ‘The sewers.’

  She stared at him in horror. He shrugged. ‘Wonderful natural source, right under us. I’m thinking of calling it something like “Lyle ’s gas”, but then that means my name will be forever associated with sewage, and I’d much rather it was associated with . . . oh, I don’t know . . . coffee or a new and better kind of light source or sugar or something like that.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Perhaps I’ll call it “Vellum’s gas”. But no. That would give him too much credit. I’ll think of something. ’

  Out in the dark street as the fog and the night wash over the world, a man with a lopsided top hat and a mysterious bulge in his coat pocket that might just be a gun casually breaks the end off a neatly wrapped ginger biscuit, and chews thoughtfully, watching the house across the road and wondering about its inhabitants. A woman goes by, nodding at him in the dark, and says, ‘God bless you, good sir.’

  ‘Ma’am.’

  He watches her go into the house opposite Lyle’s, but not before she casts a longing glance at the gloomy windows. He thinks that he really must try and break the bad biscuit habit. He has to stay in shape. Especially now.

  A carriage rattles by. It slows as it nears Lyle ’s house, and the watcher ponders on how grand the carriage seems to be, how really it is too well oiled to be in this part of town, and how dark the livery of the driver is, before it picks up speed again and drives quickly by.

  He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink.

  After a while, he looks down at the pavement, and wonders whether it should be humming under his shoes or not.

  ‘So how long have you had a . . . a . . .’

  ‘Electricity-magnet generator?’ prompted Lyle, carefully dipping a slim piece of wire into a glass pot of blue liquid.

  ‘. . . in your basement?’

  ‘My father started building it when I was a child,’ he replied. Satisfied with his work, he started digging in his pocket. He found a paper bag and tipped its contents out on the table. ‘My first memories are going to the Royal Institution to listen to Faraday’s lectures on the principles of electric and magnetic interaction. My father built the original coil, but had to power its rotation through the magnetic field given out by the magnet via an old-fashioned coal engine, adapted from a railway locomotive. The gas was my idea. The second I heard that Bazalgette was going to build a new sewer system I went straight to him for the plans. A good man, Bazalgette.’

  ‘Your father . . .’

  ‘He died several years ago. Harry Lyle. He believed in metal and machines, thought that if you just knew how, you could make a machine do anything - even think. People said he was a heretic. The letters he got were unbelievable - he was told he was betraying Britain by giving over all of life to iron and steel.’ He sighed, frowning. ‘It’s a little sad, really.’ Then shook himself, snapping back to attention. ‘Right!’

  From the paper bag he took the fruit stone and the orange peel, examining both under a magnifying glass and tutting to himself. Finally he sighed, and dropped them into two separate, foul-smelling jars of clear liquid, which he hastily capped and locked away on a shelf.

  Tess watched, suspecting that she was starting to get interested, but trying to keep a bored expression. ‘What you doin’?’

  ‘Just trying to narrow down the search area,’ Lyle replied gaily. ‘How do you feel about fish?’

  She blanched. ‘Fish? You do things to fish here too? Like you have all these things what you power with fish, like how you do things with gas an’ all? How do I feel ’bout fish?’

  ‘Supper.’

  And somewhere, behind the steel and iron and smoke and dirt and fog and dust and dark, something just a little bit magical was about to happen, and something evil was about to extend a tentacle towards the light.

  ‘I really do feel that fear of a Chartist revival at this stage is absurd, although if Disraeli continues with . . . Charles!’

  Thomas rarely saw his father so animated, and more rarely still did he hear him address anyone by their first name. Everyone in the drawing room rose to their feet, including Thomas, who had been attempting to cultivate a taste for port, and failing. The man who entered was tall, elegant, with fine features carved on a white, bony face above a bony, handsome body clad in black silk. As he came in, he pulled off a long white glove, and Thomas noticed keenly the tiny pinprick of blood on one of the fingers. For some reason he felt his stomach turn.

  ‘My lord,’ said the man with the white gloves, and his voice was like black leather, and his eyes were emerald green and . . .

  ‘Lord Moncorvo,’ said Thomas’s father, recovering himself, ‘welcome.’

  Lord Moncorvo glided towards where Thomas stood and draped himself into an armchair. Though the man had given him just a glance Thomas felt his green eyes boring into him.

  ‘You had some discomfiture today, my lord.’

  ‘A robbery, no less!’ Elwick’s face hardened as he looked at Thomas. ‘My son can probably enlighten you. Today he went gallivanting by himself without a word to me. Children today have . . .’

  ‘Gallivanting?’ Moncorvo stared straight at T
homas, who couldn’t look away from those green eyes.

  Elwick seemed to take no offence at being interrupted. ‘With the son of Harry Lyle, no less.’

  Moncorvo’s eyes filled Thomas’s world. ‘Is that so?’

  Something turned in Thomas’s stomach, something old and dry like leaves rustling across the forest floor. He could feel the coldness of the iron door into the Bank, he could see the green eyes filling his own, burning down on him as if they read his mind, and he heard a distant voice, almost in a dream, saying, ‘And how much does Constable Horatio Lyle know, boy?’

  And he’s speaking, he ’s speaking, and his father just sits there, his mouth slightly open, eyes fixed on some vacant point, spittle slowly accumulating in one corner of his lips, like a madman in an asylum staring at something else, and there’s just green eyes and . . . and a feeling like . . . or rather a sound like . . . or a smell like . . . black leather leaves rustling over an emerald forest floor and . . .

  ‘What did he ask you to do, boy?’

  ‘Sir, he wants to know how someone could get my family seal and my father’s signature in order to put the sarcophagus into the vault.’

  ‘Does he indeed?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Does he know what the Fuyun Plate is?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  . . . and he felt like sinking, drowning, falling and . . .

  ‘Boy, perhaps it is time we discussed Horatio Lyle in more detail.’

  He ’s sitting with his father, reading about the fall of the Roman Empire, and his father is saying, ‘. . . this absurd reform nonsense then I fear the Party will decay into a Gladstonian state!’