Wilhelm took a proffered cognac from a footman and settled himself into a chair, sipping appreciatively. “Grandmamma, your cellar is as exquisite as ever.”
“If only settling matters between our two empires were as simple as remembering your wine preferences,” Victoria smiled.
“Lord Robert, with which of your portfolios are you concerned this evening?” asked Wilhelm. “Prime Minister or Foreign Minister? Your skills as a diplomat are legendary. I am a plainspoken man, and consider myself somewhat at a disadvantage treating with you without my own diplomats here to keep me from verbal missteps.”
Salisbury chuckled dismissively. “Your Majesty is far too modest. It is well known that German foreign policy closely reflects Your Majesty’s own views.”
“As it should be, don’t you think, Lord Robert?”
Salisbury nodded. “Your Majesty’s long efforts to mold the German nation in your own image are bearing remarkable fruit.”
“Indeed they are. I am most pleased. My changes will echo throughout the twentieth century. So, what is on your mind? Economics? Trade?”
“Colonial affairs, Majesty.”
Wilhelm’s eyebrows rose. “Colonies? Surely we are not in conflict?”
“I am most gratified to hear that, Your Majesty. We are most concerned with the rights that are denied Her Majesty’s subjects in the so-called Boer Free States within Her Majesty’s South Africa colony.”
“Ah. You mean the British outsiders who went there to take the diamonds and gold from the recent discoveries.”
“The Boers, these Dutch farmers, are Her Majesty’s subjects. They invited others to invest their capital and expertise, which the Boers lacked. They never could have achieved the riches they have without Her Majesty’s other subjects from around the Commonwealth.
“Yet these new men, moneyed and educated, captains of industry, are denied the vote and representation in what has become their homeland. Her Majesty’s government must see to their rights.”
Victoria, who hadn’t yet shown an overt interest in the conversation, said without looking up from her needlepoint frame, “The Boers’ behavior is most troubling. We find it distressing that a tiny minority tramples the rights of the many. The native workers are virtual slaves, and our subjects from around the Empire are treated as second-class citizens. Most troubling.”
After a pause, Wilhelm shrugged. “These are matters that will be settled far away, and are not central to German interests.”
“Your Imperial Majesty,” exclaimed Salisbury with a smile, “I am most gratified to hear you say that. In that light, such things as, for instance, three shiploads of German armaments bound for the Boers, would not be in Germany’s best interest.”
~*~*~*~*~
There was scarcely an unbroken piece of crystal or glass anywhere in the Kaiser’s stateroom aboard the Hohenzollern II. He strode about the cabin, kicking out angrily at already overturned furniture.
Every retainer but von Lyncker, who had long since steeled himself to his monarch’s outbursts, had scrambled for cover. He stood just inside the open doorway, ready to duck into the passageway should Wilhelm’s ongoing tirade send a missile his direction.
“The blode Kuh ambushed me! She and her Schweinepriester. En famille? Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths!”
“Your Majesty, we must consider it a veiled warning, must we not? Their spy network obviously knows about the three arms shipments to the Boers. Should we not call them back immediately? Via wireless?”
“No, you idiot! I will not be bluffed and intimidated! They want to seize the whole of South Africa for its diamonds and gold? They must declare themselves to the world! Hypocrites! They prate on about democracy and voting rights? It is nothing but crass commercial imperialism of the plainest sort. It’s India all over again.”
“Majesty, this may not be the opportune time for a confrontation with the British Navy. They are unquestioned masters of the seas. We are not yet in a position to prevail.”
“No, but we are building toward that position. Rapidly. And our new fleet of airships will soon fill the skies. My new mechanized foot soldiers will dominate anything anyone in the world can put up against them.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, if Malieux succeeds in obtaining the key to total control.”
“He must! And soon. I want you to keep the pressure on him day and night. Go to him personally. Find out where we stand. I want those soldiers as soon as possible.”
~*~*~*~*~
The squad of Enforcers thundered along through the inky black maze of back alleys of the warehouse district. Their clockwork mechanisms clicked and whirred, steel feet thudded, brown cloaks flowed behind. Their haste and fear were a palpable accompaniment, like the pounding piano chords the theater pianists played with one of the new moving pictures.
And their fear was well-founded. Shaka had made it clear to them that they would each share in Jack’s fate if they failed to prevent him from harming the Spiegel girl.
But Jack had an almost preternatural knowledge of the back streets and alleys of London, a rat’s knowledge of the bilge of an old rusty freighter, and he had no interest in allowing them to keep up. He had even less interest in letting them know he was headed toward the hospital where Doctor Malieux had told him the Spiegel girl’s friends were hiding.
His hate lent urgency and energy to his steps. He reveled in the surge of unbridled power that he hadn’t felt since his old Whitechapel hunting days, when he had held the capital terrified in his grip and his fame had spread around the world.
For long years since his railway accident and slow recovery from the refit at the hands of Doctor Malieux, he had languished, unable to hunt. He had been unable to spread horror to millions by inflicting it on a single piece of human refuse of his own choosing. And then putting her on display. Always the display.
But tonight, all the waiting was at an end. The headlines would blare around the English-speaking world tomorrow: ‘Jack is Back!’
So the blood of the pursuing Enforcers ran cold when they rounded a corner and found him crouched over an old doxy who had stumbled into his path. “Just a warm-up, mates,” he laughed into their chagrined faces. His remaining arm rose and fell, his bayonet, honed to a razor edge, flashing even in the cellar-black alley.
“All the saints preserve us,” muttered one of the Enforcers. Many of them crossed themselves superstitiously as they stepped over the prone woman in her spreading pool of blood, her viscera splayed around her in Jack’s trademark grizzly tableau. The entire encounter had taken no more than half a minute from start to finish. Jack indeed was back. And deadlier than ever: his terror was now mechanized.
ToC
There came a Day at Summer’s full,
Entirely for me—
I thought that such were for the Saints,
Where Resurrections—be—
—There Came a Day at Summer’s Full, by Emily Dickinson
Chapter Seventeen
Crypt
“This way, Alex,” Clementine urged. “Hurry! We have to get out of here and find the others before Malieux and his nasties catch up to them.”
The underground level of the vast hospital was a bewildering warren of brick passageways, morgues, workrooms, and storage rooms soot-blackened from the widely spaced paraffin lamps of generations.
Clemmie felt her skin crawl at the wisps of cobweb that sighed across her face and tangled in her hair. The cobwebs festooned the less-traveled stretches of tunnel—the very stretches she sought out. All the better to remain inconspicuous. Something had to have spun these webs, she knew, and her senses were soon a-jangle imagining slow, creeping spider feet on her neck and face.
Her latest ineffectual efforts to wave the webs away were interrupted by Alex’s urgent hand on her shoulder, pulling her into a side passage, his other hand gently covering her mouth.
“Shh,” he breathed into her ear. Only then could she hear approaching footsteps, and she backed Alex
further into the side passage.
A pair of stokers, their work apparently done for the night, came down the larger passage without speaking, their slow, exhausted footsteps the only sound they made. There was no conversation, no jolly camaraderie. They were blackened from head to foot by the soot and coal dust that were their daily lot as they stoked the furnaces and boilers of the hospital.
When their footsteps could no longer be heard, Clemmie and Alex stepped back into the passageway. “Do you suppose they earn enough to pay for the soap it must take to get them and their clothes clean?” Clemmie whispered.
“I doubt there is that much soap in the entire world,” Alex shuddered. “I can’t imagine being that filthy.”
Clemmie nodded. “Right. Let’s head the direction they came from,” she whispered. “I have an idea how we can get out of here.”
“If there were a way out from the boiler room,” argued Alex, “I rather imagine the stokers would have used it, don’t you?”
She pushed ahead at a rapid clip, forcing him to step lively to keep up. “Slow down!” he urged. “We don’t know how many more men are down here.”
“If I don’t miss my guess,” she answered, “it’s a few minutes shy of midnight. I will venture that there is a shift change at the top of the hour, and that the replacement stokers are on their way this direction even now.”
As if in confirmation, they heard jolly greetings far behind them, the words indistinct, but the tone that of men freshly rested, ready to trade twelve hours with their shovels for their daily bread.
Clemmie hurried on, and soon paused to peek around the corner of the large, iron-hinged door that opened into a cramped furnace room. Her quick look revealed a dimly lit room filthy with coal dust, packed with piping and the hulking shapes of a pair of steam boilers and a large furnace. The ghastly glow from the yawning, tooth-filled maws of the furnace doors lent an orange cast to the dusty blackness.
A pair of shovels protruded from a mound of one-inch lumps of coal that sloped up to a brick wall below a heavy square iron door, slightly narrower than Alex’s shoulders. Clemmie pointed. “There’s our way out.” She scrambled up the pile until she could unlatch the door. Beyond it was complete darkness.
“Surely you jest!” whispered Alex. “That doesn’t even lead outdoors!”
“It must lead to a coal chute. Besides, we’ve no alternative now,” she whispered back. “That other pair of stokers will be here any moment. We’re at a dead end. Hurry!” Grasping the lip of the door, she scrambled up halfway through, legs kicking behind her. Alex followed closely, hesitating for a moment, hands raised, wondering whether or not to boost her.
“Don’t even think about it,” came her voice from the echoing darkness, and her legs disappeared within.
Alex managed to clamber up, squeeze through the door, and pull it closed moments before the stokers entered the room. “Oy!” exclaimed one. “Latch the door to the bin! The delivery wagon will be pulling up any minute. Blimey if we wants the whole load to pour out around us!” Deep in the darkness of the bin, scarcely daring to breathe, Alex and Clemmie heard the latch of the door slapped closed behind them.
Alex slowly got to his feet on the gently sloping floor of the bin, groping about in the dark, not daring to make a sound. As quietly as he could manage, he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a sulfur match.
“No lights!” came Clemmie’s insistent whisper. “This bin is full of coal dust. I can feel it in my teeth. It could explode.”
Putting his hands out in front of him, he felt his way toward the sound of her voice, missed her, and found his hands against the slippery tin-clad walls of the bin. “The chute is over here,” whispered Clemmie. “I can’t quite reach high enough to get up into it. Give me a leg up.”
“Let me try,” he said, fumbling his way toward her. He grasped the smooth edges of the coal chute and jumped up, gaining nothing for his attempt but a knock on the pate from the metal roof.
He felt Clemmie take his ankle, as a groom might help him mount his horse, and found himself scrambling for purchase on the floor and walls of the steeply angled chute. Clemmie continued pushing on his feet until he was so far up that she could no longer reach him.
“Can you feel the outside door?” she whispered. “Please tell me there’s a latch on the inside.”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Can’t feel the end yet.”
At that moment, the door at the upper end of the chute slammed open. The paraffin lantern on the huge coal delivery wagon in the alley flooded the chute with light. “Ready?” called one voice. “Dump it!” cried another, followed by the groan of a hydraulic lift. Alex’s warning cry was drowned in the cascade of four tons of coal that swept him from the chute, down into the darkness.
~*~*~*~*~
“The Bad One . . . the Very, Very Bad One . . .” hummed Peaseblossom to Mote sadly, “. . . walks abroad. He hunts. The stench of rage and human blood is on him. He thirsts for more. The Artificer is his quarry. She must be safeguarded. She must not leave her hiding place.”
Together, the two Friends hovered nearly motionless in the warm night air of the St. Thomas’s Hospital courtyard, deep in conversation. An eager young bat, anticipating an easy, large, and tasty meal, dove on them. Peaseblossom, already put out of sorts by Jack’s misdeeds, swooped to meet the bat and boxed his ears so roundly that he was hearing double for a week. He beat a retreat and, if the tale told among the Friends was to be believed, never dove on another dragonfly again.
Mote danced her amusement, zipping to and fro around Peaseblossom as they circled the hospital. Together, they kept a close watch for the hansom cab pulled by the dapple-gray mare. For several trips around the giant hospital complex, the cabman had followed Pauline’s meticulous instructions to circle at the cab’s normal traveling pace, hoping to blend in and avoid notice. But as the hour grew later and the cabs fewer, anonymity was growing harder and harder to maintain.
Pauline had tucked away her disguise in order to convince the cabbie that she was a legitimate fare. As the cab circled, she had marked the presence of a half-dozen Enforcers watching the hospital and scrutinizing everyone who came and went. But as yet, none had taken notice of her cab. It was just one more among the hundreds they saw every day.
Three and a half times in the last hour, they had made the circuit up Lambeth Palace Road and down the waterfront with no sighting of Alex or Clemmie. Could she have missed them as they escaped the sprawling hospital campus? Possible, she thought. But a large hummingbird darted periodically through the open window of the cab, so iridescent that she almost glowed in the dark. Pauline recognized her instantly as one of Lakshmi’s Friends. Mote, if she remembered correctly. Surely Mote would let her know if Alex and Clemmie were sighted. How, she could not begin to guess. But she had come to understand that the Friends were masters of pantomime.
As the cab made the turn from the Westminster Bridge down the service road on the embankment along the river, it slowed to allow a large coal wagon to leave a narrow service lane at the back of the hospital. As it paused, the hummingbird darted in the window once again, hovered an arm’s length in front of Pauline, and alit on her shoulder. She shook out her feathers, tucked her head under her wing, and for a moment appeared to go to sleep. Then she darted forward in front of Pauline, her head cocked quizzically to one side.
“You are Mote, are you not?” asked Pauline. Mote darted happily up and down. “Thank you, Mote. I understand. I am to bide my time and not leave hiding.” Mote danced her affirmation about the cab for a moment, and then darted out the window.
As the cabbie clucked his mare into motion, Pauline could hear the heavy tramp of running metal feet from ahead on the cobbled road. She leaned near the window and saw a squad of Enforcers turn from Lambeth Palace Road toward the hospital. In front of the squad loped the one-armed figure of Jack the Ripper.
~*~*~*~*~
Clemmie had heard of such things—the surge of superhuman s
trength that let mothers lift wagons from crushed children—but she never expected to experience it herself, let alone in the pitch black of a coal chute. As Alex yelled his warning, she put out her arms in a vain attempt to stop him hurtling down the chute. She failed to stop his slide, but managed at least to grab the back of his collar.
With a mighty heave, she yanked him to the side of the avalanche of black bituminous rock and, with a straining yell, pulled them both back until they were pinned against the side of the bin. It seemed the roar of the streaming coal would never end, but together they kicked and climbed, keeping themselves rising with the incoming coal. At last, the roar subsided into a clatter, finally into a rattle, the door slammed and latched. The delivery was complete.
Miraculously, both were still upright, Alex pressed back against Clemmie by the weight of the coal, pinning her against the wall, his neck kinked sideways against the ceiling. The coal rose to Clemmie’s shoulders, but slowly, with great struggle, she extracted first one arm, then the other.
Alex groaned, spitting and coughing out a mouth packed with coal dust. For a moment, he was convinced that the coal had blinded him, until it came to him that no matter how much dust he wiped from his eyes, there would still be no light in the bin. With a start, he realized that the pressure from behind was Clemmie pushing at him with all her might.
“Get . . . off . . . can’t . . . breathe . . .”
He instantly began clawing his way forward, pushing coal to the sides and back in a grotesque, frantic swimming motion. He heard Clemmie gasp, then cough, then begin kicking her way upward. For several long minutes, to the ragged edge of exhaustion, they struggled, until it seemed that they crossed a tipping point. They were able to scramble free of the smothering coal and at last crawl forward up the sloping pile, groping their way toward the chute, desperate for the open air.
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