Jack saw that Tubby Frobisher was already aboard – they had no doubt been watching for Jack’s issuance – and he sat with his back against the cabin looking half drowned. Jack waved and shouted at him happily, thinking of the bloated dog and whether the story of its appearance might be made more humorous than horrible.
Tubby struggled tiredly to his feet when he saw Jack, who turned to face the shore in order to give the hook some purchase. He was snared under the arms, hauled to the side, and dragged up onto the deck in a reek of tobacco smoke. Over the tops of the Thames-side buildings he could see plumes of smoke rising from the explosions. There was a mass of people and vehicles crossing Blackfriars Bridge, fleeing the terror. Standing high above the street, the gondola of the dirigible sat empty and impossibly alone atop the Cathedral of the Oxford Martyrs like a skeletal bird resting on a nest of twigs.
Narbondo cast away the rifle in a fit of anger and threw himself bodily down the chute, wondering where he had failed. The fault lay in the bullets, certainly, which meant that it lay within himself, since he had fashioned each and every one. He wasn’t happy with failure unless it was within others. He flew along through the darkness now, sitting up very straight, holding tight to his coat where the wide-bore signal pistol, loaded with a heavy phosphorus charge, was secure in its holster. There would be no failure this time.
He sailed out into the cellar, spinning halfway around on the stone floor, before scrambling to his feet. He jogged into the landing of the underground passage where he grabbed the iron railing and leapt down the stairs, picturing what would come. He would have the element of surprise in his favor – the panel flying open, himself stepping out into the cathedral, his weapon drawn. The very look of the pistol would unnerve whoever thought of contesting with him.
He reached the cool air at the bottom of the tunnel, saw the iron door standing open where Fox and his men would have made their way into the sewers and hence to the street again, where they would help to quell the rout and to ensure that the cathedral remained locked. He could hear the laboring of the steam engine, now, McFee and Sneed earning their keep, and very faintly he heard the playing of the organ, Beaumont performing for no one. The stairs stretched away ahead of him, fifty or sixty feet up, and he forced himself to slow down, to take them one at a time, to hoard his energy and wits like a miser.
St. Ives slid across the steeply sloping gondola floor, jamming his feet against the doorframe to stop himself from bumping over the sill and hurtling into the void. He turned onto his stomach and let himself out into the open air, compelling himself not to think, but simply to act. The gondola tilted with his weight, and the rain pelted his body. He groped with his foot, wishing he had Finn’s acrobatic skills, or perhaps his youth. Immediately he kicked a rung and discovered it to be strangely solid, as if the rope were being held tightly from below.
He found solid handholds and pushed farther out, the rung of the ladder taking his weight so that he was emboldened to grope with the other foot. In a trice he was firmly clamped to the ladder itself, both feet steady, and despite Finn’s admonition, he chanced a look downward – a startling, breathtaking distance – and saw that Finn held the bottom rung of the ladder, hanging on it, his feet just touching the floor. The gondola shifted above him again, and he uttered a surprised shout as he dropped a heart-stopping two or three inches, and then began his downward climb without further hesitation, rung by slick rung, hanging tenaciously onto the wet rope until he felt Finn’s hand slap his foot.
He descended until he was compelled to let go and drop to the floor, which was filthy with wet coal dust. He slipped, sprawled onto his breech, and stood up again, wiping his hands on his trousers. The cathedral appeared to be empty, filled only with the noise of the organ. Coal dust still gushed from the pipes, but was rising upward now, through the gaping hole in the roof and out into the open air.
Shading his face, he looked up to ascertain where the craft would fall, for fall it no doubt would, sooner or later. It was supported fore and aft by bent iron bars, but it was moving, the whole section of roof was moving, buffeted by the winds. There was a broad open section of the nave below it, with a vast, ornate compass rose inlaid in the marble floor, partly obscured by grit, long lines running out from it in the four points of the compass, the cathedral parallel with the east and west axis. He and Finn moved out of the area, out of the rain that fell through the hole in the roof, but stopped as one when they saw the glowing figure of Mother Laswell’s son Edward hovering over the pews.
Even now, St. Ives’s mind rebelled against the idea of the ghost’s existence, of its being a living ghost in some sense of the phrase, and not an ingenious parlor trick. It spun very slowly, looking around itself with a semblance of consciousness in its eyes, as if it were gaining substance by the moment, perhaps contemplating its surroundings. Although much of the blowing coal dust had been dispersed or damped down by the rain, the ghost was strangely solid, translucent rather than transparent.
St. Ives followed the cone of projected light out through the high wall and saw the lamp itself, the Aylesford Skull, peering back at him through an arched window across the street, its eyes as bright as tiny silver suns. It was from that room – the room that Mother Laswell had seen so clearly in her dream – that Narbondo had fired his incendiary bullets, too hastily and too soon to effect an explosion, and ultimately too late once the dirigible had opened the roof. St. Ives felt a small but increasing satisfaction within him – that his suspicions had proven true, that he and Finn had arrived in time, that running the gondola through the roof of the cathedral hadn’t turned out to be mere lunacy.
The organ abruptly lost its wind and played itself out, but the sudden silence lasted only a few moments before it was broken by the crack of a gunshot. St. Ives could still see no one in the cathedral, although in that moment Finn shouted, “It’s her!” and sprinted toward the long, heavy altar sixty feet away in the raised transept that formed what would be the horizontal member of a cross.
A woman, disheveled, her clothes filthy with coal dust, stood before the altar now, apparently having crawled out from underneath. In her hand she held a heavy pistol, which she aimed haphazardly at Finn when she caught sight of him. St. Ives, several steps behind Finn, shouted a warning, but Finn apparently saw the pistol, for he threw himself forward, rolling up against the edge of the pews and disappearing down a row, confounding her aim. She pointed the weapon at St. Ives, her arms and cheeks bleeding from small wounds, her face twitching, her eyes utterly insane.
Doyle and Hasbro followed a small stream that coursed through a brick tunnel connecting the Fleet River to the Walbrook far below St. Martin Ludgate. There was the sound of what might be an engine, which grew louder as they moved west toward the Cathedral of the Oxford Martyrs. Soon they found the Fleet itself, raging with floodwaters from the storm, and they set out downriver in the direction of the cathedral.
Mingled with the noise of the engine now was the unmistakable sound of organ music. Hasbro drew his pistol, Doyle closed the shutter over the lantern, and they moved forward as quickly as they could, the Fleet flowing at their left hand. The engine abruptly fell silent, and the organ music dwindled. Hurried footfalls approached, and within moments two men appeared, coming along in a ring of lantern light – a giant of a man with a tangle of black hair, his arm in a sling, and a bearded dwarf. Neither carried weapons. Doyle opened the shutter on the lantern and Hasbro raised the pistol and stepped out to block the path. The dwarf turned and bolted into the darkness, but the giant rushed forward with a wild roar, heedless of the pistol. Hasbro calmly shot him in the chest. He staggered but came on again, his rage doubled, and Hasbro shot him a second time, the giant’s body spinning around with the force of the bullet and toppling into the Fleet where it was drawn under the dark water.
Helen, St. Ives thought, the madwoman’s name coming to him – almost certainly the woman who had walked through Lord Moorgate’s blood after his throat was slit, w
ho had only a moment ago shot the pistol that she gripped in a shaking hand. She looked away from St. Ives now, toward the paneled wall to her left, which slid open silently.
Dr. Narbondo himself stepped through it, dressed in a black, wide-belted Anglican cassock, looking around with satisfaction as if the cathedral were his own. In his arms he carried an open basket in which sat a black cone with the pointed end lopped off and capped with a thick, white wafer. It was clearly cast iron – an infernal machine, oddly shaped, certainly, but with an evil look about it.
Narbondo glanced around, nodding at St. Ives as if he accepted his presence there and wasn’t at all concerned with it. Then he saw Helen and his expression grew wary. He took stock of her – watched the pistol in her hand. St. Ives saw Eddie appear behind the altar, under which he had no doubt been hiding. Not now, St. Ives thought. But Eddie looked about unhappily, saw his father, and dashed in his direction, as if his father’s mere presence would protect him. St. Ives held his hand up in an attempt to wave him back. He saw Alice pull herself out from beneath the front of the altar now, and shout after Eddie, calling him to her. She tried to stand, but fell to the floor, her face running blood, the shoulder of her white blouse red with it.
Helen ran toward Narbondo, her mouth wide, spittle flying, knocking Eddie aside with her left forearm. She held the pistol out before her in her right hand. Narbondo set his basket down gingerly and in the same movement leapt forward to meet her. She shrieked in surprise and pulled the trigger, the recoil flinging her hand upward, the bullet flying wild. Narbondo snatched her wrist and yanked her around bodily. He grasped the hand that held the pistol, turned the pistol toward her, and shot her at close range through the throat, casting her mutilated body into St. Ives’s path as he ran toward Eddie. Narbondo reached Eddie first, plucked him up, and threw him over his shoulder, Eddie kicking and pounding with his fists.
Narbondo stopped St. Ives in his tracks simply by pointing the pistol at Eddie’s back and shaking his head with unmistakable meaning. St. Ives made a conscious effort to slow his breathing, to gain control of himself. He saw that Finn was kneeling next to Alice. She tried to sit up, succeeded. Narbondo glanced in their direction, aimed the pistol casually, and fired it, marble shards exploding from the corner of the altar.
“Calm yourself, Professor, as you value the lives of your wife and son,” Narbondo said. “You tread on dangerous ground. If you’ll just pick up that basket, we can be about our business. You have my word that your son is safe, although I’ll keep him close for the time being.”
St. Ives did as he was told. His mind, he discovered, was preternaturally clear now. He was aware that the storm had abated, or at least that the heavy rain and thunder had ceased. The canister in the basket, nestled in packed excelsior, was almost certainly a bomb. It was curiously shaped – a black iron vase.
“I’m reduced, as you see, to something cruder than coal dust, thanks to your grand heroics. What you carry is the ace in my sleeve, as the sharper says, although in this case it’s a gelignite ace in a wicker basket. Its crown, simply put, is a thermal detonator. I warn you that the gelignite is somewhat sensitive to being dropped, so unless you wish to blow you and your son to flinders, I suggest that you take great care. Walk with me, now, sir.” He gestured with the pistol and set out, carrying Eddie along the edge of the pews toward the open section of the nave, never taking his eyes from St. Ives’s face.
“Place the basket on the pew, directly beneath Edward’s revolving ghost,” Narbondo said. “We’ll send my mother’s beloved son to kingdom come, where he longs to be.”
St. Ives did as he was told and stepped away, looking up at the gondola, lodged in the roof. Now that the power of the storm had diminished, the gondola was still, held tight astern, the glass ball caught in the crotch of a bent iron strut.
“I want to make one last experiment,” Narbondo said, “and it must be completed while the souls of the dead haunt the streets roundabout us. I assume that my mother told you about the door I mean to open when she summoned you to Hereafter Farm?”
“She did,” said St. Ives evenly, his voice sounding mechanical in his ears. “The idea flies in the face of reason.”
“My brother’s ghost flies in the face of reason, Professor, and yet there he stands, undeniably. You’re a man of great learning; surely you trust your own eyes not to lie.”
The ghost was no longer spinning, but seemed to be looking down at them – or particularly at Eddie, St. Ives thought, if that were possible. Narbondo was correct. Everything about the phenomenon flew in the face of reason. St. Ives watched for his chance, some distraction, the creaking of the gondola or the shattering of a piece of falling glass. “Even if this door exists, how can you say that it be worth opening, or what lies beyond?”
“What care I for its worth? A door is but a convenient symbol for the way between here and there, a mere poetic figure until it’s made real. We cannot begin to come at its worth until we see with our own eyes what lies beyond. I bid you, sir, to cast off the fetters that enslave your mind.”
“There are a wide variety of fetters,” St. Ives told him.
“Alas, you and I speak different languages, sir. I’ll make myself clear, however. I am going to set young Eddie on the floor now, where he must sit passively like the swamis of old and contemplate the pending wonder. Do you hear me, boy? Will you sit on your backside and be still?”
“Yes,” St. Ives said for him, recognizing the cast in Eddie’s eye, the same cast that appeared there when his tin soldiers had had enough of his sister’s mechanical elephant. St. Ives shook his head warningly.
Narbondo shoved the pistol into the belt around his cassock and drew a fat, pistol-like weapon out of his coat, a bulbous thing with a vastly wide bore, as if it was meant to shoot cricket balls as bullets. He pointed it at the wicker basket and pulled the trigger. A flaming orb of white fire blew out of the barrel, igniting the basket and the pew cushion and the white disk atop the device, which flared up brilliantly in the brief moment before an explosion ripped upward out of the iron cone in a burst of fire and smoke and flaming wad.
Edward’s ghost disappeared within the flame and smoke, and in that moment St. Ives, half-deafened by the blast, threw himself forward, grabbed Eddie, and flung him across the dust-slick floor, Eddie sliding away as if he sat on a block of melting ice. A strange banshee wail arose in the air, finding its way through the ringing in St. Ives’s ears, rising in pitch. Narbondo held his pistol again, having cast away the incendiary weapon.
“It wants a blood sacrifice,” Narbondo shouted at him, cocking the pistol. “You’ll do as well as the boy.”
St. Ives threw himself forward, clipping Narbondo’s legs out from under him. Narbondo slammed down onto his side atop the compass rose, rolled out from under St. Ives and sprang into a crouch, aimed hurriedly downward, and pulled the trigger even as St. Ives was scrambling out of the way like a crab. The bullet punched into the marble floor, blasted-out fragments hammering St. Ives on the side of his head and face as he pushed himself to his knees, fully expecting to be shot with the second bullet.
Narbondo, however, was staring fixedly at the marble floor, which had split open along a seam defined by the north-south axis of the inlaid compass rose. The stones of the floor snapped and cracked, the fissure running outward in both directions from the flattened bullet, which was lodged in the center of the rose. Narbondo watched it fixedly, his face glowing with wonder and triumph.
St. Ives felt blood flowing into his collar and discovered that his ear was partly severed. What had begun as a banshee’s wail was now a harmonic vibration that filled the cathedral with a single note, circling around them, seeming to emanate from all points of the compass and rising slowly in tone.
Narbondo raised the pistol and pointed it at St. Ives from six feet away – a fatal distance – but still he didn’t shoot it. He nodded up at Edward’s ghost, which still had a human shape but was composed entirely of swirling spark
s. The crack in the floor was widening, more quickly now, dust and fragments of stone falling into it, soil visible below, the very ground itself opening. St. Ives looked for Eddie and saw him within the several pillars that held up the arched ceiling of the portico, well back toward the wall. Alice and Finn were coming along down the pews, both of them looking anxiously upward at the gondola.
The iron framework of the cathedral sang now. The glass panes vibrated visibly, like square pools of water into the centers of which stones had been dropped. The whirling, densely packed stars that filled the void that had been Edward’s ghost glowed ever more brightly as the sound and vibration increased. Narbondo nodded with apparent satisfaction and cocked the pistol. Then, like the crest of a wave pitching over onto a beach, the swarm of stars fell out of the air and inundated him. He staggered forward, throwing his hands up. The pistol fell into the line-straight rift in the ground and flew out of sight. Narbondo, glowing within the whirling nebula of sparks, clutched at unseen things, his hands opening and closing spasmodically as he reeled at the edge of the chasm, several feet wide now. With an inhuman shriek he was dragged forward by the elemental particles of Edward’s ghost and cast into the depths in a shower of sparks. St. Ives saw him strike the sloped bank of the fissure, making a failed attempt to stop himself and rolling pell-mell downward into the darkness. In the moments before they winked out, the descending sparks illuminated a geometric field of pale structures far, far below, appearing to St. Ives to be a subterranean graveyard, perhaps, or the ruins of an ancient subterranean city, which vanished a moment after he perceived it.
The Aylesford Skull Page 37