He said, ‘Now, do you think it was a problem with the chemical composition and ratios, or with the packaging?’
The three regarded the crater a little longer. In his blanket, the dog made a contented snorting noise. Finally the boy, brushing snow out of his hair and off his greatcoat that barely disguised the thinness of his frame, said hopefully, ‘Do you think we can . . . have it filled in?’
Lyle didn’t answer. His eyes had settled on a dark shape beyond the crater, that was slowly getting closer, and a frown had started to draw together across his face.
The girl, however, turned and stared at her companion. ‘Uh?’
‘No one need ever know . . .’
‘It’s a hole in’a ground, bigwig!’
‘Perhaps it could serve as an ornamental fishpond?’
‘A pond?’
The boy shuffled, his feathers rumpled. ‘Well, what would you do with it?’
The girl didn’t hesitate. ‘We walk away, all polite, and if any bigwigs send the bobbies after, we can hide out in this place I know ’til the cry’s gone down an’ then . . . and then . . .’ she was warming to her topic, ‘then, ’cos you see, I’ve been thinkin’ about this, then Mister Lyle can take us to see Paris and Venice and that place with the big castles . . .’
‘Where? Specifically.’
‘. . . an’ when we come back it’ll all be better an’ no one will ever know.’ She beamed, pleased at her idea, and waited for everyone to agree.
Lyle didn’t reply. His eyes were fixed on the dark figure who had clambered nearer and was now fairly distinct in a huge black cloak lined with silk, a top hat so tall and shiny it seemed almost a pity to expose it to hair on one side and rain on the other, and a walking cane, topped with ivory. Behind him trailed a couple of men who had the detachment of people hired to be respectful, but only to one man, and downright offensive to everyone else. As they drew nearer, the dog’s nose twitched and both eyes opened. It stared at the man and started to whimper, trying to crawl, if such was possible, further into the blanket.
The girl followed Lyle’s eyes, saw what he saw and immediately, without seeming physically to move, attempted to shuffle round behind Lyle and pretend she wasn’t there. The boy looked up, saw the man, brightened and exclaimed, ‘Why, good morning, my lord, is it not a fine morning for a ramble across . . .’
Lyle put a very firm hand on the boy’s shoulder, and he closed his mouth hastily. The man didn’t seem to have noticed any of them. He stopped on the edge of the crater and peered down into it. Still examining it, he said mildly, ‘Crisp morning, is it not, Mister Lyle?’ Somehow, Lyle was always Mister Lyle. No one had worked out why, but then, no one had ever dared question it either.
‘A little cold, Lord Lincoln.’
‘I see you’ve been conducting ... experiments.’
Now the boy too began to edge round behind Lyle, and pretend he wasn’t there.
‘That’s right.’ Lyle could have been talking about the weather for all the expression he showed.
The man shifted ever so slightly, leaning on his ivory-capped walking cane and looking as pained as his limited range of expressions would permit. ‘I wonder,’ he began, voice clipped with vowels so precise they could have taken a job as an acupuncturist, ‘was it entirely necessary to conduct these experiments in the memorial flower bed of Lord Wessex’s third cousin killed in the Crimea?’
A flicker of something uncomfortable started at the edge of Lyle’s eyes, though he tried to hide it. ‘I’m sure Lord Wessex’s third cousin would have been only too pleased to give of his flower bed for the sake of scientific endeavour.’
‘What, pray,’ only Lord Lincoln could give ‘pray’ so many teeth, ‘is this scientific endeavour?’
Lyle hesitated. Lincoln raised one - just one - eyebrow. In Lincoln’s case, Lyle was willing to believe that the cold menace distilled into that single look was genetic, rather than acquired through the usual hard practice all people secretly undertake to learn how to raise just one eyebrow, and felt his toes start to go numb. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said dully, and led the way.
A few minutes later, when everyone else was gone, the dog untangled itself from the blanket where it had been snoozing, stood up, looked at the crater, regarded the path its master had taken up the Heath, considered its options, and then very calmly claimed a little bit of Hampstead Heath as forever part of its domain.
When that was done, it trotted after Lyle, and wondered what mess he was going to get into today.
Hampstead Heath, which was gradually becoming the ambling grounds of the city rich who sometimes felt the need for a little ‘untamed’ space, but without straying too far from their clubs, had recently acquired a new addition to its usually austere hillside. Half-hidden under the night’s snow, a straight stone path dropped rapidly through the heath towards the sprawled grey city below. Someone had driven several large roman candles into the earth beside this path, and filled over the many pot-holes with rickety wooden planks, to create an even surface. Standing at the top of it was a large wooden shed, looking as if a gentle breeze might knock it over, with half the main door open.
Lyle stood just inside this structure, and beamed at the thing it held.
The thing was a monster of struts and strains, a body of stretched canvas and wood carved so thin you could almost see the ground through it. The wheels underneath the main body were harsh metal things that gleamed, the two seats were crisscrossed with nailed-down ropes, the back wing stood up at least as tall as the boy, and the mess of ropes and pulleys and struts that pushed at the various crudely attached gears and flaps gave the impression that the thing was merely a prediction of what would happen when the shed that housed it collapsed.
Peering out from behind Lyle, the girl examined it. Teresa Hatch, though she always insisted that she only ever worked on the thing because Lyle paid her three shillings a week and gave her a place to stay, food and, unless she found a particularly good hiding place, regularly enforced hot baths, had to admit a certain attachment to the monster. There had come a point a few months after the night when she had first met Mister Lyle, during an attempt which had gone wrong to ... relocate . . . some of his property, when she had realized that not absolutely everything he said was nonsense.
To Tess the thing was known, if only in the privacy of her imagination, which understood when it was best to be silent, as ‘the big flappy thing with wings’.
To Lyle, who believed very firmly in precision with regard to scientific endeavour, it was ‘the pressure-differential-velocity aeronautical device’ and never anything else, however difficult it was to say in a hurry.
To the boy, whose dream it was and who, as if that wasn’t enough, secretly had a poetical vein, it was and would always be ‘Icarus’. He wasn’t sure why he’d chosen this name, and had the sneaky suspicion not only that it had unhappy mythological connotations, but also that if he dared tell the other two labourers on its production, they would give him that look, that two-pronged attack of two pairs of eyes that always managed to make him feel like a five-year-old and want to curl up in a hole and whimper. So he said nothing, and kept his poetic inclinations to himself.
The three of them waited for Lincoln’s reaction. Even the dog, who generally showed nothing but disdain for the work of any creature foolish enough to think that two legs were better than four, waited. Tess idly reached into her pocket, and gave him a walnut. He ate happily.
When Lord Lincoln finally spoke, it was so suddenly that Tess almost jumped. ‘Tell me - are those things wings?’
‘Yes,’ said Lyle in the same voice the inventor of the wheel must have used when asked if it rolled.
‘Do they . . .’ Lincoln searched for an appropriate word, ‘... flap?’
‘They do not!’ Indignation was plastered across Lyle’s face. ‘They’d have to ...’ the word seemed acid in his mouth, ‘flap far too fast or be far too large to push a sufficient amount of air to create lift. The win
gs are shaped,’ he said, warming to his topic as he saw the potential to enlighten the ignorant, ‘in order to allow for a faster acceleration of air above than below, thus reducing the pressure above and creating a difference in the forces acting. You see,’ he bounded towards the wings, eyes sparkling, ‘the curve of the wing, which I refer to as an “air splitting and differentiating curve”, for the simple way it . . .’
‘Does it work?’ There was a gleam of shrewdness in Lincoln’s eye that Lyle didn’t like. It was almost hungry, like a starved snake.
Lyle swallowed. ‘Well, theoretically.’
‘You haven’t tested it?’
Silence. Tess said quickly, ‘We was testing the prop ... propel . . . the thing that blows up and makes it go faster, this mornin’. That’s why you mustn’t arrest Mister Lyle and chop his head off in the Tower for treason, ’cos he was only blowin’ up your heath for scientific things and . . .’ She saw Lincoln’s expression. Her voice trailed off. She ate a nut as a distraction, and gave another to the dog, as if she’d never spoken.
There was no hint of that hunger now in Lincoln’s eyes, as the ice settled, suggesting it had never left. ‘Mister Lyle. A word, if I may.’
Lyle followed him dutifully outside. Not even the two body-guards followed, as Lincoln led him into a little grove of dead trees. Lyle was feeling, for the first time, the intense cold of the whitewashed morning.
‘Mister Lyle, can you surmise why I’m here?’
An expression of consideration, slightly larger than life, settled on Lyle’s face. ‘Yes?’ he hazarded.
‘And are you prepared to renew your services to the Crown?’
Horatio Lyle thought about it. ‘Do people still get executed at the royal behest?’
A very tight smile that was an answer in itself. ‘Last night in the docks the captain of the Pegasus, Captain Fabrio, and one of my own employees, Mr Stanlaw, were killed and the Pegasus was holed and is taking on water. She is in quays and the water is nearly frozen, so she does not sink all the way. But her lower decks are flooded.’
‘I can’t afford to take time out from my experiments at the present moment -’
‘I see,’ said Lincoln, ‘that you persist in having those . . . children . . . assist you. You care for the thief who on one occasion tried to break into your own home, and the young lordling who once nearly killed you. There is much confusion as to why you permit their presence. Is it truly because she can crack any safe in London and he is the next Faraday of his age? Or are you merely a bastion of care and charity?’
Lyle said nothing.
Lincoln smiled. It was always a surprise to Lyle, whenever Lord Lincoln revealed any teeth, that none of them were fanged. ‘You are obviously aware of the great benefits in working for me again. The prestige, for one. But naturally a man of your reputation needs a better reason to act, and here is one - there is a murderer on the loose, Mister Lyle. A killer who strikes people down in the dark and doesn’t care who they are or what sins they’ve committed. A killer who is a threat to us all, even the children.’
Lyle didn’t move. Lincoln’s smile widened ever so slightly, though humour had never entered it. ‘Kindly inform me when you’ve found him, Mister Lyle.’
And Lord Lincoln nodded once, with the same command as the starting gun at a race, turned, and strode away.
Lyle stared after him, and wondered exactly what property of Lincoln’s shoes let him glide easily across the snow, where mere mortals would have sunk. Perhaps the snow itself knew better than to cross this aide to Her Majesty?
Somewhere, the bells of London started tolling the hour, each in their own, very private world that couldn’t agree quite with that of any other clock and argued that ‘seconds’ were just such an arbitrary imposition on time.
Lyle reached a sudden conclusion. His eyebrows drew together and his lips curled into a scowl. ‘Damn,’ he muttered. ‘Damn damn damn.’
The boy and girl appeared, with the dog in tow, drawn by this mysterious utterance from the trees. The boy, practically saluting, said, ‘Sir, I trust that Lord Lincoln is in tolerably good hea—’
‘The evil bigwig what does all the evil murderin’ and schemin’ gone away, ’as he?’
‘Yes, Teresa, he’s gone.’
‘He ain’t a good person, Mister Lyle.’
‘No. I don’t think he is.’
‘Sir! He is the Queen’s personal aide, a servant of the Crown and the Empire . . .’ began the boy.
Tess rolled her eyes. Lyle gave the boy a wry, sideways glance and said, ‘Exactly.’ He let out a long sigh, looked once more into the distance as if trying to see all the way to the sea, miles to the south, clapped his hands together to bring himself back to the world and said, ‘Right! Get your coats!’
‘Where we goin’?’ demanded Tess as Lyle turned and began stalking through the snow.
‘To look at a ship. Just quickly, then we can have some lunch, and maybe we can go down to Greenwich and see if the hill there is long and steep enough to merit our attentions in terms of a sufficient downward velocity . . .’
The three walked through the snow.
Voices drifted back. ‘Mister Lyle, ’bout lunch . . .’
‘You can’t be hungry already.’
‘Tate ate my walnuts.’
‘You shouldn’t spoil him. He’ll get fat and lazy.’
‘Aw, but he’s just a little doggywoggy, ain’t he? Yes you are . . . yes you are . . .’
Together they walked towards the city.
If Lyle had doubts about accepting a commission from the man once responsible for his near-death who he regarded, if not as the root of all evil, then certainly as a branch of the tree, he kept them to himself. After all, there was a murderer on the loose. And Mister Horatio Lyle always liked a challenge.
CHAPTER 2
Docks
Travel across London.
Fog rises up from the river, thick and white and heavy, like suspended ice that almost jangles when you push through it, muffling sound and sight and smell, and making familiar streets an alien land. Hansom cabs, flagged at Liverpool Street and heading west towards the marble of Mayfair or the ballrooms of Belgravia, jostle with coaches caught at Dover, rattled up the old mud road that runs from the southern ports through the hop fields and past the oast houses to the southernmost suburbs beyond Victoria Station, where the great trains snort and belch like sleeping iron giants after a bad meal of coals, and the black smoke rises up to meld with the black smoke from the chimneys of Battersea and the fires of Clerkenwell, and the still blacker clouds above, laced with waiting snow that, just as soon as the last cart from the Norfolk fens has unladen its bucket of live, writhing eels on to the cobbles of Bermondsey, sloshed with salt and smelling of the mud, these clouds will empty their weight of snow and ice on to the steeped roof of Covent Garden, the towers of St Pancras, the dome of St Paul’s, and the carts and carriages and coaches and trains and horses and feet that dare clatter so inexorably, so fruitlessly, against the streets of Old London Town.
On Commercial Road, a hansom cab rattles, from the coffin-like recesses of which can be heard voices.
‘So . . . we goin’ to the docks?’
‘Yes.’
‘’Cos the bigwig asked?’
‘Yes.’
‘’Cos the bigwig paid?’
Embarrassed silence from the depths of the carriage, followed by an almost despairing, ‘Oh, Mister Lyle.’
Up Pall Mall, where the Horse Guards parade, in a grander carriage, bearing all kinds of official insignia and two frozen grooms clinging to the back by the tips of their white-gloved fingers, someone else says, ‘I have sent Lyle. He was not eager to go. But I have no doubt that his curiosity, not to mention over-developed sense of the moral side of things, will decide the argument.’
‘Is Lyle enough?’ A voice not English, speaking the language with the flatness of a tongue that has never met such strange syllables before, and doesn’t think much of
them.
‘He was last time. He prevented a disaster, xiansheng. Besides, Her Majesty had great satisfaction demanding that Mr Gladstone find the money from government resources.’
‘My agent was involved too, my lord.’
‘Your agent didn’t fall from the top of the cathedral. And his grasp of Newtonian mechanics is, I’m told, quite lacking.’
Elsewhere, in a room untouched by sunlight, colder almost than the ice outside, a man with a maple-syrup voice says, ‘Is anything lacking, your grace?’
Silence from the darkness, except, perhaps, for the gentle scrape of something hard against stone, like a rusted blade dragged across chalk, or rough crude bricks creaking against each other in a storm.
The maple-syrup voice doesn’t seem to mind the dark or the silence. ‘I think you will find everything provided for. There is a young lady, an heiress, who has placed her fortune entirely at my disposal. She is most Christian in her views and actions. You shall want for nothing.’
When the other voice does come out of the darkness, it is like a slow, rumbling earthquake, heard with one ear pressed to the ground. ‘What do you want for my liberty?’
‘What makes you think I want anything, your grace?’
‘All men want. You free me from the island, you protect me from the sun and the view of men. You want. It is written in your eyes. You cannot hide your face from me.’
There is the creak of new leather shoes bending slightly under a change in the weight on them. Then the voice launches into a prepared speech. ‘I have a vision, your grace. Sent by the Lord to serve His purpose upon this city. I know you have seen this city, your grace, but I assure you it has degenerated beyond all imaginings since your prime. I am here to change it, to wipe away the filth of its past and make for it a glorious future, untainted by the darkness that has seeped into the very stones. But I need your help.’
The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) Page 2