Horatio Lyle

by Webb, Catherine

  She heard a clattering outside. Men exploded through the doors. Tess saw dark blue uniforms, and recognized their wearers as policemen. One man stepped forward. It was Charles. A crossbow bolt bounced off the stone beside him; he frowned but didn’t flinch. Seeing Tess he said briskly, ‘You? Is that Horatio who’s causing all of this?’

  ‘Have you seen Mister Lyle?’

  ‘Not lately. You?’

  She shook her head. Charles sighed. ‘Right, well, I suppose we ought to restore a little order here.’

  Lyle fell, the Plate bouncing away from his stretched fingertips. Dew crawled past and over him, digging an elbow into the small of Lyle’s back as he went, stretching for the Plate. Lyle felt anger rise up inside him, and rolled savagely to one side, knocking Dew off. Dew slammed against the scaffold, his back precariously close to the edge, knees bent, arms trying to catch a pole to hold him in. Lyle ran for the Plate again, the wind pushing against him, then he bent down, curled his fingers round it, and heard a cracking sound behind him. Dew was on his feet, and he had a loose section of pole in his hands. Lyle paled and backed away as Dew swung it loosely, enjoying the feeling of weight at the end of his arms. Lyle ducked to avoid the first swipe, which bounced off the dome.

  Far below, Tess heard the echoes of the strike, and felt her stomach turn.

  As Dew swung again, lazily, Lyle raised the Plate, and the pole bounced off it without a scratch. Lyle dropped to the floor, slid his knees out over the edge of the planks, grabbed hold of a pole with his spare hand and swung himself off, sliding down until he landed hard on the next layer of planks. Beside a pile of sandbags he saw a loose pole, shorter and slimmer than the monstrous weapon Dew wielded like a feather. He grabbed it in one hand just as Dew dropped lightly down from the layer above, streaming with water from the rain and still clasping the pole. He advanced towards Lyle, who fought the instinct to run.

  Lyle brought the pole up clumsily in one hand, feeling it slip through his bloody fingers. Dew just grinned, swiping easily at it like a cat playing with string. The blow almost knocked the pole from Lyle’s hand. Lyle hesitated, then tossed the Plate down at Dew’s feet. Dew frowned, then in a single movement reached forward to grab it. Lyle ran at him, both hands on the pole, bringing it up towards Dew. It struck somewhere soft, and Dew bent over with a little umph. In the same movement Lyle bent, grabbed the Plate, kicked Dew very firmly in the kneecap, tossed the pole aside and swung on to the ladder. He crawled up, and up again, until he stood on the very top of the scaffold, staring at the golden cross that crowned the cathedral. It was half-melted from the lightning strike, the thick cable trailing limply around it. Lyle sidled towards it, clenching his bloody fingers tighter on to the Plate, heart pounding. He looked at the sky above, at the clouds spiralling, at the night. He looked at the city, spread out before him like a carpet.

  He heard the sound of his own breathing. He heard carts rattling far away, the rigging by the Thames, the tide changing, the dogs barking, the cats fighting, the inn doors banging, the windows creaking, the rain falling. He saw the messy, higgledy-piggledy streets stretching away, pinpricked with light. He saw the rain shining on the cobbles. He tasted the cold wind and the dirty rain, smelling of a million lives scratching across the old stones day after day, of tar and orange peel, of salt and dried fish, of iron and coal. He thought about it, smiled, looked at the storm and held up the Plate.

  Mr Dew, bloody and dishevelled, hit him over the back of the head with a pole.

  CHAPTER 25

  Fall

  The Tseiqin fell back under a rush of police and guardsmen, slowly pressed into the far end of the church, beyond the altar. They fought furiously, but the soldiers were angry now at the loss of their comrades, and with the extra police swinging truncheons and the weapons of the fallen, fought with more confidence. As they advanced, the pathway to the stairs cleared. Tess grabbed Charles by the sleeve, and she, Thomas and the bemused copper followed Tate as he bounded, yapping furiously, up the steps, smelling his master at hand. The stairs seemed to go on for ever, endless spirals and corridors, working through the intestines of the cathedral. Tess could hardly breathe, and her legs screamed at her to stop, but still Tate was barking ahead, galloping up the stairs as fast as his paws would allow him. They reached a shattered door out into the storm and piled past it. From there they looked at a dark scaffold above, and then beyond, towards the gleam of the cross. Tate started howling at the sky, water streaming off his fur. Thomas said, ‘There are people up there!’ Tess said nothing. She felt the compass, still in her pocket. As Thomas rushed for the ladder, Charles in tow, she stood still, and looked at the compass. The North-aligned needle was pointing directly towards the top of the dome. Even though that wasn’t where North lay.

  Pain was happening. Lyle knew that much. He tried to get up, and a boot connected with his side. He collapsed, tasting blood in his mouth. His bloody fingers danced blindly across the planks, and touched the very edge of the warm stone Plate, which was still giving off white sparks. A boot landed on his fingers and pressed down. Dew’s face swam into focus.

  ‘Mister Horatio Lyle,’ he whispered. ‘This is a pleasure.’

  Lyle tried to speak, but could only cough blood. Dew reached past him and picked up the Plate. Smiling, he held it to the sky, letting the water fill its bowl while Lyle lay helpless and watched. The water blended with Lyle’s blood. Dew slowly turned, so that Lyle could see everything in perfect detail.

  ‘I pity your kind,’ said Dew softly. ‘Animals grown too intelligent for their own petty needs. I pity your death. It is trivial. Your kind will come and go like the tide. Nothing you do will ever change Earth. It will endure with or without you. You cannot make or create. You can only change what is there, and eventually, it will change back. What a futile life; what a futile death.’

  Lyle crawled on to his knees, curled in over the pain that seemed to want to slither out of his skin. He looked into the face of Dew as, grinning like a shark, Dew tipped back the Plate and drank the bloody water trapped in its bowl. Lyle didn’t move. Dew lowered the Plate again, eyes shut as if to savour the taste, water trickling down either side of his mouth. He let out a long, relaxed breath, and opened his eyes. They were pure white. He turned over his hand. Where it had held the pole, the skin was burnt. But even as Lyle watched, it started to heal.

  ‘Do you see your own end, Mister Lyle?’ asked Dew quietly.

  Lyle licked the rainwater around his lips, swallowed as much as he could, and felt the croak of words come to him. He tried to speak. The words were faint and hoarse, but came nonetheless. ‘You bloody fool,’ he muttered. ‘Didn’t your mother tell you not to stand in high places during thunderstorms?’

  As the look of fear flashed across Dew’s face, Lyle staggered on to his feet and grabbed Dew’s hands. They burnt his fingers to touch; they seemed to crackle with electricity. He dragged them up, pulling the Plate still clenched in Dew’s fingers with him, until the Plate was high above them both and his face was an inch from Dew’s. Lyle screamed with the wind and the rain, ‘This thing is still magne—’

  Lightning struck.

  Later, Tess thought that perhaps the lightning hadn’t fallen from the sky to the ground, but perhaps the ground had gone up to the sky, all corners of the earth folding in on each other towards that one point of blinding light. The sky cracked in two, the dome of the cathedral ran with white fire, and the Plate, held up as an offering, the highest point in all of London, turned white and exploded.

  Shards of white stone bounced down the side of the dome, rolled along the stone of the walkway, slid through the gaps between the balcony, and fell away to earth. Tess heard them hit a long way down, little thuds in the night, like heavy balls bouncing against hard wood floors. A piece rolled near her foot, ricocheted off it, and lay in the pooling water, steaming. She looked at the compass in her hand. The needle was slowly turning, to spin towards true magnetic North. The rain was slackening. The wind was dying
down. As it blew this way and that, it brought with it Tate’s intermittent howl.

  The thunder rolled, one last time. It poured through the narrow, dirty black streets, slid into the gaps between cobbles, rippled across the water of the river, made the still bells hum, and passed on, spreading out into the countryside beyond, where it bent the grass, whispered in the trees and eventually died away.

  Clouds raced along like frightened fish, trying to pretend they hadn’t been there, spreading out in wisps that faded into the night. Behind them, the stars were wetly visible, made larger and more twinkling by the water still hanging heavy in the air. The moon was huge on the horizon, silver light slowly spreading and catching the rain as the clouds retreated.

  A black shape slid off the dome, rolling down the damp metal like a barrel down a hill, smoke rising from its feet, falling in total silence; it hit the base of the dome with a little splash, tumbled until it bounced against the stone balcony, then didn’t move. The rain slowly pooled around it, sliding off it in trickles, mingling with the blood on its fingers. The figure blended with the night, just another statue in a cathedral of stone shapes, and, as the lights of distant lamps multiplied, and as the men shouted and the dog barked and the rain fell, still, he did not move.

  Afterwards, an intrepid bobby climbed up to the top of St Paul’s Cathedral to survey the damage. Between all the shattered wood and twisted metal of the scaffold, past the half-melted golden cross, with the gold pooled in thick blobs below it, revealing the cheaper metal underneath, he found a pair of empty, smoking black shoes, and a very large scorch mark.

  And later, much later, searching the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, they found Lady Lacebark lying against one of the tombs. She had just time to hiss, ‘Feng xiansheng, ni shi . . .’ before she died. Dead, she seemed almost skeletal, her face fixed in a scowl even after all strength had left it, her hands too long, her arms so thin you could wrap your fingers round the elbow joint easily, her neck so long and white it could hardly have supported the weight of her head. They buried her outside a small country church in Scotland, in a very, very deep grave.

  Later still, as the bells struck in the city and shutters were pushed back on to streets smelling of dead leaves in decaying forests, the rich smell you get after a cold storm in a warm morning, a soldier, picking through the stones of a staircase where a small chemical explosion had shattered half the steps, saw a hand in a dirty white glove lying underneath a pile of rubble. A few seconds later, the voice echoed through the high halls, bouncing off the sad faces of the saints, off the giggling cherubs, off the martyrs and the flickering candles lit to the dead, ‘This one’s still alive, sir!’

  CHAPTER 26

  City

  It is night in the city of London, a cool empty night, full of stars ahead and a thin moon rising over the river, twinkling in the still water, bouncing off a thousand panes of glass and back again, so that the city almost glows.

  In the grandeur of Drury Lane, Hamlet puts his hand to his forehead, takes up the stance that audiences across Europe recognize as ‘tortured pain’, and announces in a rich voice that carries to the back of the black auditorium, ‘To be, or not to . . .’ In the audience, someone sneezes. It is an ordinary night.

  The hansom cabs flock around the Strand, and the shouts carry above the clattering of horses’ hooves on the cobbles. ‘Move over, move over!’

  ‘You’ve got a bucket for things like that, mister!’

  ‘You want to tell that to the horse?’

  ‘What’ve you been feedin’ him?’

  ‘None of your business!’

  On the battlements of the Tower, the ravens croak at each other, eyeing up the large ship sailing past Traitor’s Gate, laden with meat, as they concoct their schemes for a feast. Below them, a lock turns in a particularly heavy iron door, a foot pads on a particularly cold stone floor, and a voice says from the darkness, ‘You haven’t won, you know?’

  Iron chains clink in the darkness. Lord Lincoln lights a long wooden pipe, and puffs.

  ‘We will still win. You can’t stop us, you don’t know how. We will come and we will finish what was started. This world cannot hold us back for ever, don’t you see?’

  Lincoln smiles. ‘My lord,’ he says politely, removing the pipe from his lips, ‘I know.’

  Down by the river, the colliers drag sacks of dusty coal up on to the banks, backs bent, faces filthy, some wearing loose yellow cloths across their nose and mouth to keep out the dust, some coughing until black spittle clings to their teeth, while from the ships the sailors pour, searching for food, drink and company away from the sea. The houses stand on poles sticking out of the tidal mud, creaking in the wind that blows up from the estuary. Geese fly overhead in a V, heading home.

  Milly Lyle rocks backwards and forwards in her armchair, staring up thoughtfully at the picture of old Harry Lyle hanging over the fire. Then, after a while, she stands up, takes the picture down, turns it over, gently pulls away the paper across its back, and from inside takes out a small gold box that sits neatly in the palm of her hand. It is engraved ML. She opens it. The needle of the compass swings towards North. She smiles, closes the compass and drops it into her apron pocket. When she goes back to the armchair, she puts her head on one side, and sleeps.

  A door closes in a house near Hyde Park. There are footsteps on the stairs. A lock clicking. Another door opening. A door closing. Footsteps on empty, neglected planks.

  A voice in the darkness. ‘Xiansheng.’

  A cat miaows somewhere outside. A horse neighs down in the mews below, stamping its foot.

  ‘Xiansheng.’

  ‘It is finished, xiansheng?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And Lyle?’ Silence. ‘The Emperor will be pleased. You can go home, if you wish. The Empire may have need of you in other places. There are always needs.’ Silence. ‘What will you do now? You can have any place, any country. For the glory of the Empire, and our cause. Here is finished. Here is the past. There will be other battles. Xiansheng?’

  Silence. Then, very thoughtfully, ‘I think . . . I think I’ll see if Mrs Oak has any more of her fine ginger biscuits left, xiansheng .’

  A door opens. A door closes.

  In the dark slums of Bethnal Green, the Missus of a house of some repute looks out at a room full of smoke, and breathes deeply the mist of forgetfulness. In the offices of the East India Company, a man with a portly belly closes a book, looks up into the candlelight and says, ‘Does that mean the import of lychees is unviable? Goddammit, at this rate we’ll have to switch to bananas!’

  In the Palace, a small, dumpy woman with a tight-lipped expression and pasty face looks round the room. A chamberlain clears his throat. ‘Her Most Royal Majesty Queen Victoria, by the grace of God Regina Britannicae, Defender of the Faith . . .’

  In a corner, another woman sobs happily into her handkerchief. Next to her, a man with too many sidewhiskers mutters, ‘Madam! You are embarrassing yourself,’ and then leans towards the tall boy with the determined expression. ‘And you, young man, if you think that the praise of the Queen is excusing you from your Latin verbs, you are greatly mistaken.’

  Thomas just smiles. Inside his jacket pocket, a thick sheet of paper rustles ever so slightly. On it, he has drawn, in immense detail, a bird. Made entirely of bamboo struts and cloth.

  He thinks about it, and his smile grows wider.

  The thieves eye up purses as they hulk together around one of the factories of Stepney. One whispers, ‘Him.’

  Another whispers, ‘Tess could do ’im in a second.’

  ‘Where is Tess?’

  ‘Ain’t seen ’er for days.’

  ‘I ’eard something ’bout a fight. Said a man got ’urt.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A bobby.’

  ‘Christ. She’ll’ang if she ’urt a bobby.’

  ‘I dunno if she ’urt ’im . . .’

  ‘Then where is she?’

  ‘Dunno.
Perhaps she made big?’

  ‘Nah. Not our Tess. That’s like sayin’, “Perhaps there’s elves” an’ all!’

  Later the moon shines down on a stone building of domes and corridors, nooks and crannies, ghosts and ghouls, and in a hall buzzing with low, expectant noise, like a congregation waiting on a priest, someone says, ‘So, this Faraday: he’s all right, is he?’

  ‘Faraday? He’s a genius, he’s the father of modern science, he’s . . .’

  ‘All right, all right, bigwig, keep your hair on. Give Tate another biscuit.’

  ‘I think he’s had enough . . .’

  ‘Tate’s never had enough, have you, Tatey-watey. No you haven’t, no you haven’t, have you?’ The voice descends into incomprehensible baby talk. A dog whines in appreciation. There is the sound of healthy teeth closing over a biscuit. There is a long crunching sound.

  ‘I’m bored.’

  ‘He hasn’t got here yet.’

  ‘This place is full of bigwigs.’

  ‘They’re scientists.’

  ‘He’s not!’

  ‘Well, no, he’s not, he’s just an enthusiast.’

  ‘Like you?’

  ‘I’m . . . I want to be a scientist. Father’s given me an allowance now, and Lord Lincoln said that he’d be willing to allow me access to the Greenwich Observatory and if I can just . . .’

  ‘But you’re a bigwig. You don’t have to do nothin’!’

  ‘But I want to be something more.’

  And a door opens, and someone comes in. The audience starts to clap.