Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 24

FORTY-TWO.

THE PENULTIMATE ENDING.

Alice, St. Ives, Tubby, and Gilbert had eaten a late supper at the Half Toad, and now the port decanter made another circuit, along with a mountain of Stilton cheese and a plate of biscuits. Alice felt sleep settling over her mind, and Langdon had dozed off twice in the last ten minutes and was making an effort to attend to what Tubby was saying to Gilbert. Mother Laswell, Bill Kraken, Clara, and Finn Conrad had elected to return to Aylesford, although it meant traveling most of the night and arriving in the early morning. Within minutes of ascending the stairway in Narbondo's abandoned house they had rattled away in Mr. Klingheimer's Berlin carriage, Finn Conrad driving and Ned Ludd trotting along behind. Mr. Klingheimer had no more need of a carriage then he'd had need of a rifle, Bill Kraken had explained to Tubby with impeccable logic, whereas Hereafter Farm had need aplenty. Possession, as every right-minded person knew, was nine-tenths of the law.

"It was the most astonishing thing," Gilbert said now, looking at the fire in the hearth through the ruby liquid in his port gla.s.s. "When I saw Tubby shaking his cudgel at us from the heights, and I heard him hailing us, my memory was restored entirely and on the instant."

"That was almost certainly a result of post-traumatic amnesia, or so a medical man would tell us," St. Ives said. "You had taken a shrewd knock on the head, which resulted in a concussion. Do you have a clear memory of the time you spent in the stone hut?"

"It's tolerably vague," Gilbert said. "No day or night down below, you know. My stomach was my only clock far more accurate than my mind. It astonishes me that it was so short a time, however. Would you be so kind as to pa.s.s that plate of cheese, Tubby?"

The cheese crossed the table, and Gilbert spooned up a mountain of it and dumped it on his plate. "I do recall Miss Bracken going off with this dwarf, however, who pa.s.sed himself off as Commodore Nutt, which is errant nonsense, of course. I was quite unaffected by her leaving, aside from finding it strange. The dwarf had dug up a fat bag of treasure from under some rocks, do you see, and had enticed her with it. I don't harbor any ill will toward her, nor him neither. I was a mere walking halfwit. There was nothing I could offer her, and she could have no notion that I would recover the lost half of my wit any time soon. It seems to me now that Tubby was correct that she was not whom she claimed to be. I wanted badly to think otherwise."

"Still and all," Tubby said, "I behaved shamefully. Love should be above suspicion, after all. You, on the other hand, behaved gallantly, Uncle. It was I who was in the wrong."

"Don't talk nonsense out of a mistaken sense of duty, Tubby," Gilbert told him, piling a heap of Stilton onto a biscuit with great care and wolfing it down.

"There's nothing nonsensical about it," Tubby said, following his uncle's example with the cheese. "Desiring to be in the right of something is one of the great human weaknesses. It's true that I did not believe her to be any sort of Miss Bracken, as she claimed, but that mattered little. 'What's in a name?' as the poet asked. The woman was a rose of some variety, or a fern, and if her name was not Bracken, why then it was something else."

"That's a remarkably philosophical statement," Alice said, before Gilbert could contradict him. "And here's a happy thought for you, Gilbert. If our Miss Bracken was indeed not the authentic Miss Bracken's daughter, then what she told you about the death of her mother was no doubt false. The Miss Bracken of your youth might still await you somewhere in the world."

"A toast to you, Alice," Gilbert said, winking heartily at her, and Alice drank off the rest of her port. She pushed the empty gla.s.s away from her and waved Tubby off when he offered to refill it.

"I have something not quite so pleasant to relate, Uncle," Tubby said, setting down the decanter. "To put it succinctly, your jewel box was stolen with the jewels inside it. It had been in my portmanteau, but it is not there now."

"The Castellani box?" the old man asked.

"Yes, sir." Tubby glanced at Alice, who was observing him closely, and said, "Apparently it was stolen by two of Klingheimer's cut-throats, named Penny and Smythe, not to put too fine a point on it. Both are dead. Finn Conrad told me that the dwarf murdered them for attempting to have their way with Clara and Miss Bracken."

"By G.o.d I'm developing a high regard for that dwarf," Gilbert said. "Castellani is dead these past twenty years, of course, but I have a pa.s.sing acquaintance with his son Augosto, whom I met in Rome some time ago. I'll have another box fashioned and the trinkets reproduced. Think nothing of it, Tubby. We've got out of a tight spot with our skins intact, save for sundry wounds that people like us don't give a d.a.m.n for. Hasbro, of course, is another matter, but the medicos tell us that he'll live to fight another day. Our enemies, on the other hand, are routed, beaten, destroyed, or have run off in terror. The rest doesn't matter, Tubby neither stolen jewels nor stolen women." He looked sheepishly at Alice, as if thinking that he might have phrased this last bit more carefully.

"You're right," Alice said to him. "But what matters to me at the moment is sleep." She stood up and went around the table to St. Ives, who was dozing in his chair again. She put her hands on his shoulders to awaken him, and the two of them said goodnight to Tubby and Gilbert. As Alice ascended the stairs, she looked back with fondness at the two men, who remained at the table in an atmosphere of great good will, the decanter and the cheese and biscuits between them, both of them with stories left to tell.

EPILOGUE.

THE FIRST SNOWFALL.

St. Ives and Alice sat in the dining room at The Spaniards, a log fire roaring in the brick fireplace, casting a yellow glow on the paneled walls, the air cheerfully warm. "I'm just saying that I feel as if I failed Mother Laswell," St. Ives said. "I misjudged things, do you see?"

A short waiter with bowed legs and with a red bow as a tie brought a small decanter of cognac to the table, along with a plate of toasted cheese. "Vittles is up shortly," he said, setting down the plate and decanter, and then he went away again. It was Alice who picked up the decanter and poured a healthy dram into their gla.s.ses.

"To us," she said.

And then St. Ives said, "May our family prosper."

They both said, "Cheers" before they tasted it. It was entirely up to the standard set by Loftus's half keg, St. Ives was happy to find a perfect stimulant to precede the roast beef and potatoes that were being prepared in the kitchen. There were onions, too, sauteed in b.u.t.ter in the French style, and mushrooms braised in broth.

"I admit that I have a rather violent compulsion to twist your nose when you condemn yourself," Alice said, "except that you would tell me that it was nothing more than you deserve, and then I'd be compelled to twist it in the other direction. Humility is sometimes of limited value, as is guilt. I'll ask you this: why regret not doing what you didn't know you should do?"

"I'm simply saying that this was a test in... in morality, if you will, and that I failed it. I would that it weren't so, but there you have it."

"You utterly overlook the fact that your friends are safe. Even Sarah Wright was able to take her revenge upon that monster. I'll remind you that brandy is efficacious against the blue devils," she said, nodding at his gla.s.s.

Their table was very near a window alcove, and from outside now they heard the high-pitched voice of a young boy shout, "Horror on Wimpole Street!" and they watched him sell his last newspaper to an old gentleman who stood beside the tollhouse across the road, sheltered from the sharp wind.

"I feel as if I sold my soul against the promise of seeing a preserved auk."

"Have you considered that your failing to protect Clara put Clara in the way of protecting herself? Of becoming the heroine of her own tale? Mother Laswell came to us for help, and she found a way to help herself and Clara and Sarah Wright into the bargain. Finn Conrad was called upon to do his part, and he did it well. Clara is quite happy about that, by the way. All's well that ends well, I say."

St. Ives smiled at her. "You've always been formidably persuasive," he said.

"Then eat your toasted cheese before I s.n.a.t.c.h it out of your hand and eat it myself."

Alice was as beautiful as he had ever seen her, and he marveled at her ability to step away from the horrors of the preceding days as if through a door, which she had apparently closed behind her. But of course it wasn't as easy as that; she was simply a stoical creature, not looking back, as the saying went. His mind moved to the night ahead of them, but he reminded himself that it was equally wrong to look forward and miss what was before one's eyes in the present moment.

"Wimpole Street," Alice said flatly. "I'll avoid that address for the rest of my days. Have you any desire to read about what they found there?"

"None whatsoever," St. Ives said. It came into his mind that he would very much like to know the fate of Ignacio Narbondo, however whether Willis Pule would find a way to release him from the grip of the mushrooms or would keep him as a zoo specimen. Ideally the latter.

They sipped their brandy and watched through the window. It was the tail end of the dark afternoon and the leafless trees shook in the wind. Now it began to snow, the flakes blowing against the window gla.s.s and melting. The old man across the road hurried away in the gathering gloom and was soon out of sight. The newsboy blew into his cupped hands and then shoved them into his pockets, walking away downhill in the opposite direction. The toasted cheese tasted particularly well, the night outside giving it a certain relish. Very soon the ground beyond the window was white in the glow of the lamps, and snow had begun to build up on the mullions of the windows.

The soup arrived now: bisque de homard, the sh.e.l.led lobster claws floating in the red-gold broth. They clicked their spoons together an old habit and set in with a will, not having eaten anything since the morning's breakfast at the Half Toad, where they had said goodbye to Tubby and Gilbert and went off to visit Hasbro, who, thank goodness, would walk only temporarily with a cane.

The evening wound on as they ate and chatted, logs going to the fire at regular intervals, the soft snow falling in the lamplight, and the food appearing and disappearing, right through the treacle pudding with lemon sauce.

"I might never eat again," Alice said, "at least until breakfast." She looked lazy and happy, and the sight of her made St. Ives smile.

Together they rose from the table and walked arm-in-arm to the stairs where they ascended to their room "the very same room." Here too a fire burned in the grate, and they lay in bed cheerfully for a time, listening to the logs pop and fizz. Alice pointed out that Eddy and Cleo would be home from Grandmother Tippett's house in Scarborough in three days' time. St. Ives realized that he looked forward to it the family together in Aylesford, sitting around a fire in their own hearth, Alice reading something aloud before bedtime, and St. Ives carrying Cleo to bed, she having fallen asleep in the middle of the reading.

But there was tonight to think of. The wick of the lamp was low, scarcely enough light to read by, if reading had been on their minds. Whirling snow still fell beyond the window in the rising breeze, light shone from under the door, and someone's jolly laughter sounded from below. St. Ives cupped his hand over the shade of the lamp and blew out the flame.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

I'd like to thank several people who helped out when I was writing this novel: Tim Powers, Paul Buchanan, John Berlyne, and, for patient editing, proofreading, and invaluable suggestions, my wife Viki.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

James Paul Blaylock was born in Long Beach, California in 1950, and attended California State University, where he received an MA. He was befriended and mentored by Philip K. d.i.c.k, along with his contemporaries K.W. Jeter and Tim Powers, and is regarded along with Powers and Jeter as one of the founding fathers of the steampunk movement. Winner of two World Fantasy Awards and the Philip K. d.i.c.k Award, he is currently director of the Creative Writing Conservatory at the Orange County High School of the Arts, where Tim Powers is Writer in Residence. Blaylock lives in Orange CA with his wife; they have two sons.

ALSO BY JAMES P. BLAYLOCK.

AND AVAILABLE FROM t.i.tAN BOOKS.

Homunculus.

Lord Kelvin's Machine.

The Aylesford Skull.

Beneath London.