The Aylesford Skull

by James P. Blaylock

  “I take it this is one of the fabled skulls,” Tubby said.

  “Dismantled, yes. I believe that Narbondo called its ghost forth, if you’ll allow me to use equally fabulous language, imprisoned it within the glass box, and blew it to pieces. I very much hope that its spirit was released from bondage, if that’s the case.”

  “Sheer lunacy, it seems to me,” Tubby said. “Do you have any objection to burning the entire lot of it?”

  “None whatsoever,” St. Ives said, dropping the pieces of photographic plate back into the skull.

  Tubby laid the top hat back over it and emptied the second receptacle, another quart of fresh oil over that which had by now soaked in.

  St. Ives walked to the door and opened it, going out into the afternoon without a word. The place wanted badly to be burnt, and Lord Moorgate wouldn’t object. Tubby followed him, smoke already swirling out through the window. They left the door standing open, found their companions, and followed Finn into the wood and along the creek. It came into St. Ives’s mind to wonder how Lord Moorgate had found his way into the marsh. There had been no evidence of a coach, nor of a dead servant, had he brought one along. And the woman who had trodden through the blood? Was she the mysterious Helen? Clearly she had been safe from Narbondo’s depredations. There were mysteries unsolved, he thought, but much had become clear to him.

  Some distance up the path they found George’s body in the brook, as Finn had described. There was no time to bury the man, and they could scarcely take the body along, for they were moving quickly now, bound for Cliffe Village, where Tubby, Jack, and Doyle would take the South Eastern Line back into London. In the village they could send someone to retrieve George’s body. It was their good luck that the path followed the stream, for there were enough footprints in the soft soil to tell a coherent story, or at least parts of the story. The big pirate had murdered George, but hadn’t gone on. The Crumpet’s fate was well known to them. There were no other tracks save Eddie’s for some little distance beyond where Finn and the Crumpet had turned back, but then Eddie had been met by someone coming along from the direction of the village – a woman. Who was she? Not the woman with the bloody shoes, surely. A stranger, then?

  As for Narbondo, he had certainly removed himself and the coal to London. The emptiness of the inn, which had apparently been abandoned in haste, had spoken volumes. Finn had told them of a landau carriage in the barn, but the carriage and horses were gone. They had found a dead man in the tunnel. From the way the body lay, and from what Finn had told them, the man had almost certainly been shot while pursuing Kraken, which was heartening, unless there had been others involved in the pursuit who had been luckier than the dead man. Venturing deeper into the tunnel might have told the tale, but that wouldn’t do. They hadn’t the time. It was a difficult decision to make, since Bill might be lying in the darkness bleeding. The quicker they made their way into Cliffe Village, the quicker they could send someone into the tunnels to find him.

  “Here now,” said Jack. “Someone’s joined. A man’s boot-prints.”

  “A tall man,” Doyle said, given the size. “And staggering, too. Wounded perhaps.”

  “Kraken!” St. Ives said, certain that he was right, yet worried that he would tempt fate with his certainty.

  It took only a few minutes now to track him back to the tunnel in the limekilns, which settled the question. If these were the boot-prints of one of the pirates, the man would have gone off in the other direction, returning to the inn. Kraken was alive, or at least had been alive when he came out of the tunnel.

  They hastened forward now, St. Ives calculating how long it would take for him and Hasbro to return to Uncle Gilbert’s bivouac for the airship. What they would find in London was uncertain. The only certainty was that speed was of the essence. If they were lucky, and Eddie were indeed safe, then they might do their part to stop the debacle at the cathedral. It suddenly seemed to St. Ives that his luck might perhaps be in again.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  MRS. MARIGOLD

  The very elegant coach, black lacquer and gold leaf, belonged to a Mrs. Marigold, whom Alice had met after Mother Laswell had gone off to the surgery to sit with Bill Kraken. The coach stood behind the inn, the horses apparently anxious to be away. Alice had put Eddie into the coach, the boy sleeping soundly again and likely to continue that way until they arrived in Aylesford. She stood in the sunshine, waiting for the driver and chatting with Mrs. Marigold, who was bound for Maidstone.

  “Aylesford ain’t out of the way at all, Mrs. St. Ives,” the woman said to her. “Imagine having run into you by chance. My husband has spoken of Professor St. Ives on many occasions – very recently, I believe, when they were both in London, at the Bayswater Club. Mr. Marigold tried to interest him in becoming a member of the Piscatorial Society.”

  “Mr. Marigold is keen on fish, then?”

  “Nearly a fanatic, you might say. Very keen on pike, although he’s an enemy of the chub. He intends to rid the Medway of them, the poor dears. He’s organized an anti-chub meeting today, in fact, in order to give them a general cursing.” She smiled at Alice in a friendly way, and Alice smiled back. She rather liked the woman, although she had a hard appearance. In any event, Alice was happy not to spend the night in Cliffe Village waiting for the regular coach to appear in the morning.

  “The chub has the habit of appearing where it’s not wanted,” Alice told her, “and of driving other species out.”

  “In that way it’s not far removed from some women of my acquaintance. Here’s my driver now.”

  An exceptionally small man with an immensely wrinkled, blackguardly face, wearing an old, high beaver hat, walked toward them. He touched his hat as he passed, and opened the door to the coach for them. Alice got in beside Eddie, Mrs. Marigold sitting across from them.

  “Thank you Beaumont,” Mrs. Marigold said, and the driver closed the door. Mrs. Marigold manipulated a locking mechanism, which clanked home solidly. “The door has the unfortunate habit of flying open, especially on an unpaved road,” she said, “and Mr. Marigold understands the latch to be an effective deterrent to highwaymen, after that nasty incident at Bridgewood Gate.”

  “At Bridgewood Gate?” Alice said. “Not recently, I hope. I would have thought the roads safe enough from highwaymen these days.”

  “In the dark of night,” Mrs. Marigold told her, smiling in an odd way, “there is no safe place.”

  The coach clattered out of the courtyard and away down the road at a good clip, running smoothly, the door making no effort to fly open. The two sat in silence for a time, Alice thinking of St. Ives, wondering where he was and wishing that she could tell him that Eddie was safe. It would be the one thing that he would pay a fortune to know. And she was horrified at the idea that Langdon might come to harm pointlessly, trying to save Eddie when he didn’t want saving. She knew there was nothing further she could do about it, however. In Cliffe Village she had sent a telegraph message to Dorothy Owlesby. If Langdon were in London, Jack or Dorothy would surely find him and send him home. She set her mind to imagining their return to the farm – the look on Mrs. Langley’s face.

  Soon they were passing through Strood, where they would turn southeast toward Chatham, and then south again toward Aylesford and Maidstone. Alice had often enough come into Strood in the late summer with her Aunt Agatha to attend the Strood Fair, and they passed the site of the fair now, alongside the railway station, although it was too early yet for anything to be underway. She would bring Eddie and Cleo back in a month, she thought.

  Eddie stirred now and sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking around, evidently having no idea where he was or how he had got there. He frowned, and then stared at Mrs. Marigold, who said, “Hello, child. I trust you slept well.”

  Eddie remained silent, looking around in a puzzled way. “Can you speak to Mrs. Marigold?” Alice asked him.

  “This is the same coach,” Eddie said, frowning now.

  “The sam
e as which, Eddie?” Alice asked, and in that moment Mrs. Marigold reached up and thumped twice on the ceiling for no conceivable reason except perhaps to signal the driver. They crossed an intersection, the signposts announcing a confluence of roads to Tonbridge, Gravesend, Greenwich, Canterbury, and Maidstone. The driver whipped up the horses, and the coach sped up, rollicking along uphill now, along Watling Street, according to a street sign.

  “I believe we’ve passed our turning,” Alice said, feeling Eddie tug on her arm.

  “I’m certain we haven’t,” Mrs. Marigold said to her evenly.

  “I distinctly noted the signpost,” Alice said. “We’re on the Greenwich Road, toward London.”

  “Only temporarily, ma’am, I assure you.”

  “What is it, Eddie?” Alice asked.

  “They took me in this coach,” Eddie whispered.

  “Who took you, dear? We’re taking you now; is that what you mean?”

  He shook his head, glancing furtively at Mrs. Marigold, then glancing away again. “The Doctor. They called him that.”

  “I see, dear,” Alice said, suddenly deflated. In fact she did see, quite clearly now. She smiled woodenly at Mrs. Marigold, whoever she actually was, thinking to put her at ease, and then glanced at the door latch, the workings of which were not at all clear. She hadn’t seen what the woman had done to lock it – a hidden mechanism, no doubt, designed to trap people inside.

  Eddie gripped her arm tightly, and Alice looked up, still smiling. From out of her purse Mrs. Marigold had drawn a small but lethal-looking pistol. Her face was utterly blank now, and she held the pistol in her lap, aimed in Eddie’s general direction. The coach was running downhill, into open country, the road to Maidstone and Aylesford falling away behind them.

  In Cliffe Village, they found Bill Kraken easily enough. Everyone in the village knew that a man had been shot in the marsh, and that he lay close to death in the surgeon’s house. The bullet had been awkwardly placed, very near his lung and an artery both, a miracle that Kraken had come all that way through the tunnels without bleeding to death. The doctor had dug it out, however, and it lay now on a metal tray next to the bed where Kraken lay sleeping. There was nothing to be done for him except to wait, which, Mother Laswell informed St. Ives, she was competent to do. She would wait forever, if that were what it took.

  There was a train just leaving for London, and Doyle, Jack, Finn and Tubby hastened to catch it. Now that Eddie was safe, their duty was clear. St. Ives agreed that it was clear, at least for his friends. He was full of extreme joy to hear that Alice had taken Eddie home to Aylesford, and the idea of returning to London was very nearly unthinkable to him.

  “They’re long gone in the coach by now,” Mother Laswell said. “No doubt already crossed over the Medway. You and Mr. Hasbro had best follow along, Professor. I intend to, as soon as Bill is fit to travel.”

  St. Ives nodded, once again thinking of his duties – to Alice and Eddie and Cleo on the one hand, and to the Crown and putting a stop to Narbondo on the other, if such a thing were possible. What had he told Alice? That he had no regard for the lunatic notion that a man might open a lane to the land of the dead. And yet even as he had said it, he had known that he doubted himself: something in him, as irrational as it might be, had feared such things might be true. Denying it had merely been the simple thing to do under the circumstances. He and Alice had been caught up in a happy moment, after all, with a cheerful, carefree day laid out before them. One recollection led to another, and now he recalled his conversation with Alice on the night that he had returned home from London: I don’t want a dead husband, she had told him, and your children don’t want a dead father. Can you grasp that?

  He had grasped it only superficially at the time, but he positively clung to it now as he weighed his duties, one against the other, wavering between them. There was the dirigible, of course, two hours away to the north. He and Hasbro would have to retrieve it. Hasbro had gone off to find a constable in order to tell him of the mysterious dead man they’d seen in the brook. Hasbro would go into London, he thought, and no doubt about it. Duty to the Crown would be paramount to all else, now that Eddie was safe.

  St. Ives looked out of the window at the flower-strewn meadow that lay beyond the house, running downhill toward the edge of the wood. The sun shone on the flowers, a circus of yellow, purple and white blooms. He loved Alice with all his heart, and felt it keenly now. The poet Lovelace had recommended loving honor more, of course, but had been sent to Peterhouse Prison for his love of honor. Fear of dishonor, St. Ives thought, was often equally persuasive, although perhaps it was dishonorable to be persuaded by it.

  “Hasbro and I had best be about our business,” he said to Mother Laswell now. “Your predictions of an atrocity in London are quite possibly coming to pass.”

  She nodded. “I’ve had dreams that revealed as much, Professor. I’ll tell you, however, that I’ve changed my thinking in certain ways, now that Bill has made his feelings clear to me. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I mean to see out my time on earth at Hereafter Farm. The shepherd is as vital as the soldier, Professor, and there’s much to be said in favor of love.”

  “I believe that utterly,” said St. Ives, “but I’ll tell you plainly that our conversation two nights past has been very much on my mind. Last night I had a dream that seemed to me to be prophetic. I denied what it so clearly seemed to mean, but despite the denial I cannot rid myself of… a certain belief.” He smiled at her, recalling her words to him when they sat around the seven-sided table in her astronomical seance parlor.

  “We’re masters of denial, Professor. I choose to deny nothing at present, but to act on my heart, since belief is tolerably multifarious. It seems to change with the seasons. But tell me, did your dream have to do with a door, sir? With a cave, perhaps, a cave of flames? Hell, to be more exacting, although surely that was something you would have inferred, something that you knew only through nameless dread?”

  “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

  “Then I can tell you that you and I have had the same dreams.”

  “A week ago that would have seemed to me to be mere coincidence.”

  “I’m not a great believer in coincidence,” Mother Laswell said. “Bill found me on Hereafter Farm, adrift, you might say, and he found me in London last night in trouble once again. Both times he led me out of the desert. I won’t deny him a third time, sir, and call it coincidence, but that’s my business and not yours. I don’t mean to know more than I know. I speak only for myself.”

  “Of course,” St. Ives said.

  “I, too, dreamt, this very afternoon. It was of the catastrophe. My son, Narbondo, if you will, inhabited a house on the Thames from which he projected Edward’s image out over the city. The ground shook and buildings fell, as we hear will happen in end times. I can tell you that the house was shuttered, the windows and door arched, a bridge behind it spanning the river. I saw it clearly – a vision, I believe.”

  “Did you recognize the bridge, ma’am?” St. Ives asked, a query that wouldn’t have found itself in his mouth only two days ago, when he had no faith in dreams.

  She shook her head. “My knowledge of London doesn’t stretch that far, I’m afraid.”

  The door opened at that juncture, and Hasbro stepped in. “I believe that if we make haste, sir, we can put down in Keeble’s yard before the sun sets, although the wind is rising.”

  “Then we’d best be on our way.”

  “Will you do an old woman a kindness, Professor?” Mother Laswell asked him.

  “Happily,” he told her.

  “If you find my son Edward’s skull, and it’s still… enlivened by that hellish machinery, will you dismantle it and bring it home to me? Don’t for the love of God put yourself in any peril to do so. It’s not worth injury, but I’d rest easier, as they say, if Edward were at rest.”

  “If ever I can,” St. Ives said.

  They met the doctor in the passage
. “He’s awake,” the doctor said. “It’s a miracle, to my mind, but he’s asking after Mother Laswell. I hope that the shock of seeing her isn’t too much for him.”

  “I believe it’ll set him up like a tonic,” St. Ives said, smiling broadly, and he and Hasbro looked in on Kraken, thanked him for his courage and loyalty, and went out into the late afternoon, striding toward the path through the wood and carrying Gilbert’s shotgun in order to return it to him, the uneasy wind blowing in their faces until they were in the shelter of the trees.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  CARRIED AWAY

  “It’s blowing tolerably brisk,” St. Ives said, when he and Hasbro had come within a quarter mile of the bivouac and could see the smoke from Madame Leseur’s stove slanting out toward the Thames. They were in among the dunes, now, slowed by soft sand, and could occasionally gauge the breeze – which was out of the southwest – better than when they had been sheltered by trees. The sand wasn’t flying yet, St. Ives noted, which was a positive sign.

  “We’d best launch quickly if we launch at all,” Hasbro said.

  “Agreed. We’ll ascend at once, to my mind, and not a moment to lose. In London we’ll want the advantage of an aerial view. Hello, who the devil is this now…?”

  Someone had appeared atop a distant dune and then disappeared again, certainly heading in their direction.

  “I believe it to be Finn Conrad,” Hasbro said.

  “I’d say the same, except that the boy surely went into London with Jack, Tubby, and Doyle.”

  “That was his intention, certainly – or his orders, perhaps. I’ve often noted, however, that Finn has an independent spirit, which I quite admire.”

  “As do I,” St. Ives said, “although I pray the boy survives it.”

  Finn appeared again, crossing another hill. When he saw the two of them he waved heartily and broke into a run. A minute later he rounded the edge of a dune and joined them, scarcely out of breath and quite cheerful, which St. Ives ascribed to Eddie’s rescue.