The Aylesford Skull

by James P. Blaylock

  He set the rifle on the floor, tilted against the wall. Nearby stood an assemblage of heavy gears operated by an iron lever. The mechanism opened a trapdoor in the floor, the door raised at the moment, standing ready. Within, built into a hollow in the walls in the floors below, was a long slide that led to the deep cellar, through which he could disappear beneath the city. Today, however, he intended merely to shield himself from danger, to be traveling downward when the inferno blew the cathedral apart, and away beneath the street and up again into the devastation.

  Lower in the tripod he had fixed a triangular shelf, canted forward, on which sat the skull of his brother Edward, the boy’s ghost entrapped within the bone and silver and crystal, longing to find its way into the afterlife. Narbondo would do his best to set the spirit free at last, for which the ghost would no doubt be grateful, if ghosts were capable of gratitude, which was doubtful.

  He looked at his pocket watch, the minute hand just then finding its way to the top of the hour. He heard the organ commence. The rising sound of the Fugue muted by glass and distance, but distinguishable even so. The greatest of the pipes, thirty feet in length, had a deep base resonance that shook one’s bones. Twenty seconds into the piece the counterpoint melody came in, and Narbondo smiled and nodded, moving his right hand as if conducting an orchestra and happy that he had allowed Beaumont to choose the piece. The man was bound for glory along with the cathedral.

  Narbondo activated the lamp within the skull now. The beam could be detected only dimly in the rainy air, but he could see it quite clearly where it shone on the golden raiment of the pews. He also saw, to his intense happiness, coal dust pouring from the mouths of the organ pipes.

  Suddenly there was a shattering explosion – not unexpected – on Tallis Street. It would be the Nabob Pub ceasing to exist, along with many of its patrons, the cellar having blown to pieces. He consulted his watch and then glanced out of the window to view the sudden madness that had infected the mob, people running and screaming, soldiers shouting and holding up their hands to stop the rout, swept aside by the fleeing crowds. London was in a sad state, cowed by the numerous anarchist atrocities of the past months and ready to flee at the sound of a sneeze.

  He glanced at the watch again and counted slowly to five, at which point another explosion sounded, this one farther up the road, a boarding house that was almost certainly frequented by prostitutes, run by a woman who had sneered at Narbondo openly one afternoon. He was deeply pleased with himself, and he hung bodily out of the open window to see what havoc the second explosion had wrought. The crowd that had fled west had been turned back by it, and now, God help them, by a third explosion, which Narbondo witnessed quite clearly: north up Carpenter Street, the roof of a butcher’s shop blowing off entire, disintegrating in the air and showering down onto the devastated shop and the buildings around it. He saw bodies on the pavement, some endeavoring to drag themselves away, people vaulting over them as they ran helter-skelter toward the river, impeding each other, pushing and shouting. There were flames, he saw happily, although the rain had begun to fall in earnest, as if the explosions had opened the skies.

  He pulled back into the room, cursing the rain, looking upward as he did so and opening his mouth in surprise, his eyes wide. A quarter of a mile away to the northwest a dirigible airship flew beneath the lowering sky, a madman, certainly, aloft on such a day…

  It came to him that it was Langdon St. Ives. Where did he suppose he would land the craft? The yard at The Temple, perhaps – the only open ground nearby. But landing an airship would be impossible in this weather, and The Temple lawn would be crowded with pedestrians. It was sheer madness. St. Ives had come too late to the fair, although he might perhaps sift through the wreckage of the cathedral later for fragments of his wife and son.

  Narbondo laughed out loud, happy as a schoolboy as he watched the dirigible’s gondola sway dangerously in the wind and rain, trailing half a dozen long pieces of what must be mooring line. The ship skimmed the dome of St. Paul’s, coming steadily on. Was it angling down toward the cathedral itself? An idea came into his mind – a quite possibly spectacular idea – and he set the barrel of the rifle on its tripod and aimed it at the airship, imagining with great pleasure the result of an incendiary missile piercing the wall of the great, hydrogen-filled gasbag.

  Alice tore herself away from the scene outside, realizing that Helen had disappeared, and that the black vapor pouring from the organ was indeed smoke or dust, heavy in the air now – not smoke: there was no smell of it. She glanced back in the direction of the hidden panel and caught a brief glimpse of Helen pounding and pushing on one of the panels, shouting at it. The soldiers would escape beneath the street, of course, had escaped. She grabbed Eddie’s hand, surprised when he tugged it forcefully away.

  “The airship!” Eddie shouted, pointing upward toward the dark, shifting sky.

  She saw it then, the great balloon with its tiny gondola gliding over the dome of St. Paul’s, evidently descending, but what in God’s name…?

  “It’s Father!” Eddie shouted. “Finn told me Father would come in the airship!” He nodded his head with determination, as if the unlikely appearance of the ship had settled a bet.

  She took his hand and ran now. Something was coming to pass, and swiftly. Helen stood at the panel, searching the seams with her fingers. “Open!” she barked, her voice breaking with fear.

  Alice and Eddie ran toward the great altar now. The cloud of black dust that shrouded the interior seemed to be growing darker, raining down in a fine black grit over the golden pews. Alice could feel the grit in her throat, but she saw that the air was still comparatively clear in the transept.

  “Climb beneath!” she shouted to Eddie, when they were still several paces away from the arched openings under the altar. He seemed to know full well what they were about, and he threw himself sideways across the marble, sliding on his hip beneath one of the arches and into the shadows. Alice scrambled in beside him, hauling in her skirts. When she looked out again, she saw Helen run back out along the pews, looking around wildly. She stopped, however, seeing something now, putting her hand to her mouth in evident surprise. Alice saw it too, now, and could scarcely believe her own eyes.

  Hovering in the air over the pews was the illuminated image of a boy, quite large, perhaps a projection – an animated projection. He looked around, as if he could see his surroundings, and then gazed quite distinctly at his own out-held hands. Alice saw the fingers close, the black dust swirling around him, seeming to give him substance. The airship, she saw, was quite close, tilting and swaying in the wind, headed straight for the cathedral – too close, she saw, far too close to avoid disaster.

  It came to her that they might get out of the cathedral altogether – find something heavy and throw it through one of the windows before Helen took it into her mind to shoot them. But when she turned her mind to the idea of escape, her ear was attuned to the shouting and screaming on the streets – utter chaos, certainly – and there was the sound of another explosion somewhere nearby, distinct from the sound of thunder.

  She saw Helen hurrying toward them, the pistol held in front of her, a look of madness in her eyes. Sparks exploded from the muzzle of the weapon, and a chunk of marble blew out of the altar, cutting Alice’s face, although she scarcely felt any pain. “Stay!” she said to Eddie, and slid out from under, clutching her hatpin, blood flowing into her eye as she stood up to meet Helen, who threw herself forward like a mad thing.

  “What do you see inside the cathedral, Finn?” St. Ives shouted above the noise. “People in the pews?”

  “No, sir. Empty, what I can make of it, but there’s much I can’t see for the black dust.”

  They were dangerously close to the rooftops – had come within an ace of knocking the top off the bell tower of the Church of St. John the Baptist, but there were no more encumbrances now, only the wind, upon which they rose and fell and swerved sickeningly. But it was pushing them hard fo
rward, which was good. St. Ives’s intention, which he had revealed to Finn, was to look to the bowsprit with its heavy glass ball to save them by punching through the roof of the cathedral, smashing out enough glass to disperse the coal dust, and then to rise above it undamaged. He knew, as did Finn, that it would be precious close work, and that there was a good chance they were within minutes of death.

  The cathedral appeared to be monumentally frail, and there was the possibility of the gondola simply knocking it completely to pieces. What if, St. Ives thought now, Narbondo had foxed him, perhaps intending to blow up the palm house at Kew Gardens instead, or to blow up nothing at all, but to coerce St. Ives into…

  “The black dust rises from the organ pipes, sir! Can you hear the sound of it?”

  “Yes,” St. Ives said. He could indeed hear what must be a monstrous, steam-driven organ. He saw now that the streets and pavements roundabout the cathedral were full of people, from Fleet Street to the Embankment, with more pouring in from the north, perhaps ignorant of the explosion, although others ran frantically through them, out of the area, and there was great confusion. The Temple grounds, just to the east of the cathedral, were a-swarm, and people were thick again in the area of St. Andrew’s Hill, making their way toward the cathedral beneath raised umbrellas. Soldiers appeared to be herding people away, but there were too few soldiers, and a general chaos seemed to be growing in fervor. He saw a fire brigade coming along Fleet Street, the horses hampered by the crowds. “Another minute, more or less,” he said. “You’d best take your seat, Finn.”

  Finn gave up the telescope willingly and strapped himself in. Rain flew out of the sky in waves, obscuring everything, clearing again. There was a flash now, not lightning, but a small streaking flame that pierced the wall of the cathedral, leaving an orange trail as it flew through the black dust. The gondola swayed in the wind, the cathedral looming up before them – forty feet away, thirty, the ball at the tip of the bowsprit would strike the cathedral, and no avoiding it.

  Yet another orange track cut through the dust, pinwheeling this time, throwing out a radiating circle of flame: An incendiary bullet, St. Ives thought. Of course. Much more sensible than Greek fire. But he had no sooner conceived the thought than there was yet another bullet, which struck the window of the gondola just to his right, the glass shattering, the spent projectile falling to the deck of the gondola. It dawned on him that Narbondo would achieve his end were he to send a bullet through the hide of the great balloon, and he considered the enormity of his own folly and the likely result of the explosions that would follow.

  FORTY-THREE

  THE GHOST’S REVENGE

  A light shone ahead of them as Jack and Tubby moved toward what was apparently an outrage already in progress. They had proceeded for some distance in darkness, downhill again, before seeing the glow of a headlamp on the front of a barrow and the silhouettes of three men at work. One of them depressed a great bellows over and over, pumping coal dust into whatever building they had decided to destroy. Finn had told Jack of the flaming syllabub, and it seemed to him now that it was one thing to face a pistol, another to face a flood of burning vitriol.

  They stood watching for a moment, taking stock. Tubby might try his luck with de Groot’s pistol, but from this distance hitting one of them would be luck indeed, and would certainly announce their arrival. Would a bold stroke prevail? Success – survival, perhaps – would depend on the man with the syllabub nozzle being wary of the burning liquid, and of his not wanting to destroy his companions out of mere recklessness.

  The Fleet River lay ahead of them, a bridge arching the flood. They must be very near the outfall into the Thames. It would be on the bridge that they were exposed at the edge of the barrow light, still twenty feet away. It seemed madness to Jack, and he began to insist that Tubby remain sensible to the danger, but Tubby winked at him, uttered, “Death or glory, Jacky,” hefted his blackthorn, and set out in a crouched run. Jack followed, the bridge dead ahead, the light growing around them, twinkling on the dark water.

  Jack saw the man who worked the bellows step away, saw one of his companions pumping at a canister, no doubt pressurizing it. The third manipulated a lever on a hose that snaked away out of sight. Jack and Tubby leapt onto the bridge, now, their luck still with them. There was suddenly a heavy concussion, the wall of brick in front of the three men blowing outward, slamming them into the wall behind in a vast rush of flame and debris. In the sudden darkness Jack was flung into filthy water, deafened by the concussion and having no idea what had happened to Tubby. He struggled to keep his head above the current, paddling to steady himself and milling his feet in a search for the bottom, swept away down the subterranean river into utter darkness.

  The ball plunged through a great square pane at the top of the cathedral wall, the roof tilting away above, shards of glass falling. St. Ives pulled steadily back on the tiller, and the gondola began to lift through the roof, which tilted away above them. They surged forward, shattering glass panels and tearing apart the thin, cast-iron framework of the roof.

  The increasing wind, however, was far more powerful than Keeble’s ingenious engine or St. Ives’s mental encouragement, and it pressed the balloon and gondola downward. Abruptly the ship no longer answered the tiller, but scraped and shuddered another couple of yards before running aground, having caught fast. The gondola listed over and settled, the outer wall of the great balloon now visible out the starboard side, the fabric billowing. The wind fell off and there was a momentary quiet. St. Ives tried once again to lift the ship off, but there was no response at all, and he realized that he couldn’t hear the hum of the engine.

  He stood up, hearing now an odd whistling noise, which quickly gave way to a massive whooshing, like wind through a tunnel – the hydrogen gas escaping the balloon in a rush. He saw bamboo ribs tear through the fabric of the balloon, and realized that the airbag was breaking to pieces. The wind heightened again, tearing at the balloon’s skin, opening great rents, pieces of fabric flying away into the air. Bamboo struts snapped and popped, screws tore free, and sections of bent bamboo rod twanged themselves straight. There was a constant groaning and creaking, the noise increasing by the moment, every sprung joint in the egg-shaped skeleton of the balloon weakening the entire structure.

  “The ladder, Finn!” St. Ives yelled, but he saw that the boy had anticipated him, and was already dropping the length of the ladder out through the open door, hanging onto the doorframe with one hand, his hair blowing wildly.

  Finn waved at St. Ives and shouted, “Don’t look down, sir! Take a firm grip!” and then went over the side without hesitation, moving like a cat.

  The ship listed further to port with Finn’s weight on the ladder. St. Ives pressed himself against the farther wall, thinking to balance things, but the ship rocked ominously with the slightest movement. There was a sudden, vast, rending sound, and he was thrown forward onto his hands and knees. He looked back through the starboard window and saw that more than half the dirigible had flown to pieces and was simply gone, and that the rest, an immense eggshell-shaped kite, its lacework trellis of bamboo visible within, was being raised by the wind and was endeavoring to lift the gondola. He held on, prepared to be swept away into the sky. He heard lines snapping, and then the kite spun and broke free, sailing skyward on an up-rushing current of wind. A bolt of lightning struck it even as he watched, and the entire thing burst into flaming pieces that were beaten downward again by a monumental rain, littering the rooftops of London with the torn and broken remnants of Keeble’s triumph.

  There was a shattering crash, and both Alice and Helen looked up in shocked surprise, seeing the gondola plowing a furrow through the roof of the cathedral. Glass shards and iron bars rained down onto the pews, eighty or a hundred feet away. Helen had a look of utter confusion about her, and she set out toward the falling debris, changed her mind, and ran back toward Alice, looking hard at the altar now and possible safety. As Helen ran past, Alice tri
pped her, and Helen sprawled forward, the pistol flying from her hand, spinning away toward the altar. Eddie’s hand shot out, grasped the pistol, and snaked back in.

  Helen picked herself up, looking frantically around for the pistol. She apparently understood what had happened to it, and she crawled forward toward the altar. Alice grasped her by the ankles, pulling her back, Helen shrieking and struggling. She overturned herself suddenly, crossing her legs and kicking at Alice in a single motion, throwing her off. Alice slipped on the gritty marble and went down. Helen slithered in beneath the altar, Alice following, praying that Eddie wouldn’t try to shoot the pistol, that he would pitch it away, that he would climb out from under the altar and run before Helen got to him.

  In the twilight beneath the altar Alice saw Helen grasp Eddie’s foot and yank him forward, snatching the pistol out of his hand and flinging herself back against the low wall. She pointed the pistol at Alice, who flinched away at the sight of it, the explosion immensely loud in the enclosed space.

  Jack was swept along through the wild, rain-swollen torrent of water and sewage. He could see nothing of Tubby, although it seemed to him that Tubby had fallen in before him, and so must be somewhere ahead. He could get no purchase on the wall in order to slow himself down. A dead dog, immensely bloated, rose up out of the water and stared at him. Jack shouted in surprise, seeing Tubby in the dog’s face for a demented instant and then realizing his error when the dog was drawn under again. A circle of light appeared ahead – the outlet into the Thames. It was unbroken by the lines of any sort of grate, and Jack was washed through the outlet into the rainy morning, the roiling flood dragging him helplessly down the embankment behind the dog, the current driving him over backward, so that he somersaulted the last five yards into the calm waters of the Thames, not ten feet from a moored steam yacht. A man in a badly crushed top hat stood on the deck holding a great long hook and smoking a pipe.