He had known the Governor wanted them gone, but this sudden urgency was odd. There had been rumours for days of great events, though what these events were nobody knew. He left the note with Abigail and said he would be back by lunchtime.
First, he went to the barn where he had found Abigail on that terrible night. In daylight it was a trim, well-cared-for place, and inside it had lost some of its secrets. The vast puddle of silk had gone, as had the big basket which, he suspected, had been designed to hang beneath it. The pile of material where Abigail had been sitting turned out to be rattan, presumably taken from East India ships where it had been used as ballast. He found this interesting. Mina had presumably used the rattan to make the basket.
Next, he walked up to the fort, where the door which had befuddled him for so long stood open, and he stood before it for a long while. He had perhaps four hours, and in his pocket was a ball of string.
He tied the string to an old screw in the doorframe, and jammed the door open with a heavy rock. He walked inside and turned up the oil lamp he had brought with him. Then, down he went, walking into the Leviathan a final time.
He walked down dozens of tunnels and several different staircases, doubling back on himself time and time again, using the string to keep contact with the strange door above him. He found a wooden bridge across the crevasse within the cave, and discovered another set of steps built into the rock on the far side. These went all the way down to the level of the sea, and gave out onto a little beach. The same little beach he had seen from the sea when he had gone out with Seale.
There had been a boat on this beach, the last time he saw it. There was no boat now.
He thought of Jacobus Aakster, that old Dutch mercenary who had tricked a cabal of Dutch merchants and whose family had, ever since, held a great trading company to ransom. Mina had learned a good few things from him, after all. The art of misdirection, for example.
If he looked further, he suspected he would find the remains of a fire somewhere up near the barn – a fire which had consumed the silk and the basket from the barn. Mina Baxter had flown away in her balloon, the wizard’s final apprentice flying into the sky as she had dreamed of doing. Except, he believed, she had done nothing of the sort. He spent some time on that little beach searching the horizon, but could see nothing.
Over that horizon was London. Soon, the things he had discovered here would come to light there. He had fled the East India Company’s clutches, and now he had discovered the Company’s ultimate secret. Alderman Burroughs, Magistrate Markland, even Home Secretary Sidmouth. Would they welcome Constable Horton with open arms?
Finally, a question to which he knew the answer.
Some time later, he was walking down the town’s single street when a great boom of cannon resounded through the air. Seale stepped out of his front door to look down to the sea, and turned to Horton as he walked up.
‘I have never heard such a racket,’ said Seale.
‘I should be surprised if you had,’ said Horton. ‘That was a 15-gun salute.’
‘How on earth do you know that?’
‘I was a Navy lieutenant.’
‘And what does it signify?’
‘It rather suggests an admiral has arrived in St Helena.’
That 15-gun salute was an emphatic full stop to the Governor’s odd letter. Horton itched to get down to the wharf, now, and found himself hovering around his wife as she made their luggage ready for the voyage, her arm in the carefully engineered cotton sling.
‘Husband, make yourself useful, and wait outside,’ said Abigail, so outside he went, and encountered a familiar face scurrying down to the sea.
‘Ken!’ he exclaimed, grabbing the boy by the arm as he hurried by. Ken’s gigantic and slow friend Hippo came to a halt at the same time, as if they were connected by an invisible spring.
‘Here, now, let go of me, constable,’ said Ken, outraged. ‘I’ve got important business down in the town.’
‘Important business watching ships and fleecing new arrivals, I’ll wager,’ said Horton.
‘Now, then, what do you mean by that? An affront, that is. An affront to my dignity.’
‘I wanted to discuss Edgar Burroughs with you, Ken.’
At the mention of this name, Ken’s body went loose and Horton was able to let him go. The boy’s face looked miserable.
‘He made me point out your missus to him, constable. He was a forceful character.’
‘Tell me a bit about him.’
‘I don’t know anything about him. Company man, he is. Big fellow.’
Horton noted the boy’s use of the present tense. Word had not got out, then.
‘His character?’
‘You mean, what is he like?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Keeps himself to himself.’
‘And what about the Cannibal?’
‘The Cannibal? Who you been talking to?’
‘Have you seen him?’
‘Of course I haven’t bleeding seen him! He’s a fairy story, isn’t he? Something to scare the kids with to get them to behave.’
‘I seen him.’
They were the first words Hippo had spoken, and the lad looked as surprised by them as Horton and Ken were.
‘I seen him up at Deadwood.’ Hippo gazed back up the valley, into the heart of the island. ‘He saw me and he ran off. He only had one hand. And no ears.’
And then Ken grabbed his friend’s hand and yanked him away, and the two of them set off down to the wharf.
‘Ready, husband?’ said Abigail, appearing at the door of the Castle of Otranto.
‘Ready, wife.’
Seale came out behind Abigail, carrying her bag.
‘I shall be your packhorse, my friends,’ he said, and winked at Abigail, and Horton saw that his remarkable wife winked back.
There was a great scurrying in the square behind the seawall. St Helena’s population could not run to a crowd, but it was doing its best now. A mighty ship had arrived, it seemed, one which would bring paying customers.
A man was waiting for them by the drawbridge. He looked entirely out of place in this sun-kissed square, his thick beard and heavy body speaking of frozen seas and ice-clad spars.
‘Horton?’ he said, and when Horton nodded he nodded back and would not speak again until they were approaching Tenerife, weeks from now. Horton, Abigail and Seale followed him out through the wall and over the drawbridge.
There were five ships out in the James Town roads. One was obviously a whaler, and under normal circumstances it would draw the eye by its ugliness alone. But today it was competing with a creature of a different stripe – a ship of the line, third-rate and elegantly lethal, every one of its lines speaking of war and glory. She was ringed by three other vessels, all frigates – a small fleet sent, presumably, from England. But for what purpose Horton could not imagine.
A longboat was making its way from the warship, and a large group of islanders had gathered on the wharf near the point it was to tie up. At their front Horton could see the Governor, Colonel Wilks, his face fixed on the longboat. The seaman from the Bala stopped and waited patiently for the longboat to arrive, presumably used to biding his time when he had to.
A few minutes later a rope was thrown to the wharf from the boat and tied fast. A man stepped up onto the steps. He was an admiral, a creature Horton had not laid eyes on since the Nore Mutiny, an elegant peacock of a fellow whose dress uniform glittered with prestige and made everything on the wharf seem suddenly drab and austere.
‘Admiral Cockburn, I presume,’ said Colonel Wilks.
‘Governor Wilks,’ replied the Admiral, as if he were talking to a shopkeeper. He looked at the crowd of people that now surrounded him on the wharf. ‘Perhaps we can retire to somewhere more discreet?’
‘Of course. Follow me, sir.’
The crowd parted, and the Admiral and the Governor made their way along the wharf and into the town. Cockburn glanc
ed at Horton and his whaler companion briefly and saw only two specks of humanity for whom he had no time. The man from the whaler continued his interrupted walk down the wharf, picking his way through the crowd which was beginning to disperse.
‘Horton, goodbye,’ said Seale. ‘It has been an interesting experience making your acquaintance. I trust, though, we shall not meet again.’
‘My thanks to you, Seale. You have aided us greatly. I wish you well.’
Abigail squeezed Seale’s arm and leaned up to kiss his cheek; he smiled delightedly, and he hugged her to him, scandalously and delightfully.
Then they were in the whaler’s boat, rowing away from the island. Seale waved to them from the wharf, and some in the crowd looked at them as if they might be part of the excitement of the Admiral’s party. But no, they were a dull affair compared to the Naval masque being played out in the roads.
‘I wonder why they are here,’ said Abigail.
‘Yes. It is extraordinary for an admiral to arrive with such a small fleet. Unless he is bringing something to the island.’
He looked at the warship, and noted a small figure in a bicorne hat standing on the forecastle gazing intently at St Helena. It turned its head towards him, and raised one hand in greeting, and Horton, despite himself, raised a hand in return.
‘You look pensive, husband,’ Abigail asked, and he noticed her hand was holding his, and squeezing gently.
‘Doubtless I do,’ he replied. ‘Where would you have us sail to, wife?’
He felt the lump of gold in his pocket. The lump Mina had shown him in the little wooden case. The lump he had put in his own pocket while Edgar Burroughs told his tale.
Enough to buy a ship. Probably.
Abigail looked at the horizon as her husband had done.
‘West?’ she suggested.
She almost didn’t make it. She had prepared this little voyage for years, but Horton had nearly discovered her in the days after the explosion and the death of her son. But then the little barque had appeared off Prosperous Bay and had made the agreed signal, and the plans she had put in place to escape as soon as her son had been taken from her moved smoothly into effect.
She and Fernando burned the silk and the balloon basket – not without a twinge of sadness on her part. She would never fly up to the clouds now, but flight of a different kind was required. The smoke from the fire was still visible as they rowed the boat from Prosperous Bay and out to the barque.
They sailed away. Francesco died after only three days, and it had been terrible to see. The further from St Helena they voyaged, the more he aged, his skin drying and his body shrivelling as if he had been placed inside a gigantic oven, as if every bit of moisture inside him was being burned away.
She tried feeding him and giving him water, but it was no good. He ate and drank what he could, but still he continued to wither. Whatever had kept him alive for so long was disappearing. The minute St Helena slipped below the horizon behind him, his death began. He began to mutter in his own language, words that she did not understand which sounded ragged and bitter, and when his death came it was like a wind had become a breeze which had finally stilled, leaving only silence.
She cried, not just for Fernando but for herself, for this baleful inheritance, for the knowledge locked inside her head which was both a curse and a lifeline. She wrapped his body in some silk left over from her balloon. She weighed him down with some of the gold she had brought with her. It seemed a small price to pay for his companionship. She pushed him over the side. The dozen men who crewed the boat muttered beneath their breaths and crossed themselves and felt relieved that they no longer carried an ogre.
The barque sailed east towards Africa, despite the prevailing winds. She sailed for a week, until the master spied land and the barque anchored off a beautiful beach. Mina paid the master and his crew in gold, and they piled provisions into the boat which she had brought from Prosperous Bay, and she rowed up to the beach alone.
The land here was flat and unpromising, but she had heard there was gold in the land beyond. She had enough to keep her alive until she found it.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As in my previous books, The Detective and the Devil contains a mix of fact and fiction. Those who are interested in what is real and what is not should read the following.
The cyanide method of gold extraction is now widely used in the gold mining industry, but it was not invented until 1887 by John Stewart MacArthur, Robert Forrest and William Forrest.
The alchemist J[ā]bir ibn Hayy[ā]n did write about gold, as he wrote about a great many things, but he did not know about cyanide.
The history of the discovery of cyanide as described in the book is based on true events.
There is not and never has been, to my knowledge, a gold mine on St Helena. Other than that, the history of the island’s discovery and its ownership in the story is drawn from fact. The story of Fernando Lopez’s exile on the island is also true – up to the point at which it isn’t.
Edmond Halley did visit St Helena as described within for the purposes of making a star chart and to observe the transit of Mercury (which creates its own little alchemical echo, Mercury being ‘quicksilver’, a substance alchemists believed had arcane properties).
He also drew a chart of lines of magnetic variation based on his own observations. The line of zero variation does indeed pass close to St Helena before heading north-west and crossing Florida, a fact which readers of my first book The English Monster may find resonant.
John Dee did live in a house at Mortlake, and his library was ransacked, though I give the ransacking mob an intent they cannot have had.
I also have taken the liberty of having Dee’s house still standing in 1815, a fact I have been unable to confirm and which, I am sure, must be said to be entirely made up.
I also have no evidence that the Royal Society did indeed think Dee had found the source of eternal life, nor do I think the Society has any particular interest in that subject (though I’m sure if they did, they would keep it to themselves).
Charles Lamb did work as a clerk for the East India Company, and was known to take drink to settle his stammer. His sister did suffer the mental disturbances I describe herein, and her poor mother was a victim of them.
My thanks to Sophia Tobin, Goldsmiths librarian and novelist, and to Rupert Baker at the Royal Society Library. I should also like to take this opportunity to particularly thank my editor at Simon & Schuster, Jo Dickinson, and my agent, Sam Copeland. This book is dedicated to my brothers at a particular time of crisis and care, and to my wife Louise, who can read me like a book.
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