Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 8

He wasn't paralyzed, at least. His extremities were functional, his hands opening and closing, his fingers active, his toes working inside his boots. His head throbbed with pain, and he discovered a swelling above his right ear, where his hair was matted with blood, but he could discover no dizziness, nor any indication of a cracked skull. He wasn't apparently still bleeding from the head wound, which was poulticed with a clot of b.l.o.o.d.y dirt. His injuries were nothing desperate, he told himself the aches and pains, say, of a man who had been beaten or had fallen off a horse, the sort of thing that he had experienced often enough in the past.

He ordered his mind in an attempt to recall what had happened. The sound of grinding and cracking had filled his ears, the all-pervasive rumble of the earth moving. He had been but half conscious of the noise as he had wind-milled forward and then tumbled down the steep incline. But just before that he had looked back toward Gilbert, and he was certain that there had been a flash of light. He could picture Gilbert being suddenly and sharply illuminated. The sound of an explosion would quickly have been consumed by the indistinct cacophony of the cave-in, the world falling in upon itself. What had Alice seen from where she stood on the deck of Gilbert's yacht? He had waved to her a few minutes earlier, before joining Gilbert on the staging platform. Alice no doubt wondered if he was dead.

He abandoned that line of thinking and thought again of James Harrow being kicked by his horse, and of the strangely variable actions of the Metropolitan Board of Works, in particular their declining opinion of the exploration. Was there an unseen hand at work here? An old grudge, perhaps, playing itself out? Or, he wondered, were there powerful forces that meant to keep the subterranean world a secret for reasons of their own?

He caught sight of small movements on the ground roundabout him. He looked more carefully and saw that they were struggling insects in the grip of the fungi, which appeared for all the world to be consuming them, or perhaps paralyzing them with some variety of toxin. The mushrooms seemed to be a cousin of the blewit, although stinking and a phosph.o.r.escent shade of sickly green. They were stout, meaty things, despite their luminescence. Certainly they were nondescript: James Harrow's auk fungi. A hairy white spider the breadth of his hand struggled in a mushroom's grip, and the sight of it compelled him to stand. His dislike of spiders was both irrational and inarguable.

He made out the dark form of his knapsack now, very welcome indeed, lying on a glowing green carpet twenty feet away, and near it the basket containing the lamp. Its lid appeared to be securely fastened, its fall cushioned, perhaps, by the carpet of fungi. The coil of rope was nowhere to be seen. St. Ives found that he was steady enough on his feet, and so he trudged to where his knapsack lay, fetching up the basket first and unlatching it, removing the bag of stuffing and scrutinizing the lamp, which looked and felt whole, the Geissler tube evidently unbroken.

He set the basket down carefully and picked up the knapsack, drawing from an outside pocket his hand compa.s.s in its bra.s.s pill-box and putting it into his coat pocket. Then he drew out the wires snaking out of the induction coil before slipping his arms through the straps of the knapsack and hanging it onto his back, the wires draped over his shoulders. He sat down, holding the lamp securely in his lap. Squinting in the darkness and feeling the way of it with his fingers, he affixed the wires to the lamp. He turned the crank and the gas within the Geissler tube grew luminous, the glow increasing until it was a bright white, revealing the details of the world roundabout him. He hung the lamp around his neck, clipping the stiff metal harness at its base to his heavy leather belt in order to steady the lamp, and then very carefully rose to his feet.

"And Ruhmkorff divided the light from the darkness," he said aloud, looking around him to get the lay of the land, that which he could see. He calculated the angle of the rubble-covered hill in front of him a fifteen percent gradient perhaps. It would be hard going if he tried to ascend straight up it, probably impossible, given that he would slide backward with every step. And if he fell and the lamp were damaged it would be very bad indeed. Still and all, in that direction to the south lay the Thames, arguably the most sensible direction for him to travel if he meant to search for Gilbert.

He put his hands to either side of his mouth and shouted, "h.e.l.lo!" and then listened for a reply, which came at once: the cry of a seagull, however, and not of a man. The bird swooped into view and landed nearby, drawn by the lamplight and perhaps his voice. "Good morning," he said to it, wondering whether it was the good-luck bird that had honored him with a gift just a short time ago. He shouted again and then a third time, but there was no answer. His voice sounded strangely deadened, as if it carried no great distance at all.

He removed the compa.s.s from his pocket and opened the case. He knew that he was on the north side of the river, and unless the tumble had entirely turned him around, he was somewhere downriver from the sink-hole, although no great distance, certainly. As for searching for Gilbert, his best effort would be to shout at regular intervals, like a ship ringing a bell in heavy fog. He would travel west, he decided, rather than attempt a direct ascent, and do his best to keep track of the distance he traveled if he had any hope of finding his way back to the sink-hole by dead-reckoning.

The gull took wing now and disappeared in the darkness overhead. It would have a bird's-eye view of St. Ives in his bubble of light, but St. Ives would be blind to it unless it descended again. He suddenly felt tolerably conspicuous, as if spotlighted on a stage, and he was anxious to be moving. He set out across the hillside, leaving behind the field of mushrooms and taking his bearings often, shouting Gilbert's name when he did so. He shifted slightly downward with each sliding step, leaning into the slope in order to avoid falling. The traverse seemed to take a great deal of time, and it was impossible to tell exactly how far he had traveled, the lamp only shining so far into the darkness. The ground finally grew more stable, and was studded with immovable mineral formations, like sharply bent knees protruding from the sand: stalagmites in various stages of development.

Here the ground had little of the loose scree of the cave-in, and St. Ives began climbing upward and across it, making real progress. A forest of mature stalagmites slowly grew visible ahead of him, and he moved in among them, seeing here and there the conical tips of stalact.i.tes descending from above, hanging ghost-like in the dark void.

A movement in the gloom ahead brought him up short a large creature of some sort, or a man crawling on his knees. For a moment he ceased breathing. The creature moved out from behind a stalagmite now, and he saw then that it was a brindle goat, which saw him as well and scurried off into the darkness, quickly disappearing.

Had he imagined it? Were his wits astray? It was useless to speculate, and in any event a goat was no less likely to be wandering about in the underworld than was an auk considerably more likely, perhaps. It stood to reason that if a goat had found its way in, St. Ives could find his way out. Very soon, however, the way was blocked by an almost vertical wall of limestone, chalk-white in the lamplight. It was deeply fissured by little rills of water, and he was thankful for the rubber-soled Monticello boots, the wet limestone beneath his feet being dangerously slippery.

The wall, reaching into invisibility overhead, compelled him to travel even farther westward along a narrow track of stone that seemed to him to have been leveled and broadened in some past age. He could see what looked like the scars of picks or chisels the work of enterprising Romans, or perhaps of a civilization even more ancient. He wished to G.o.d that Gilbert's man from the Times could have come along. Six good photographs would be utterly convincing. St. Ives's testimony, on the other hand, would be explained away as madness due to the lump on his head.

He rounded a bend and found himself on a narrow landing, looking down into a steep-walled defile cut by a waterfall that rushed along sixty feet below. Stone stairs led away downwards along the edge of the waterfall. They were unmistakable stairs, not a mere quirk of geology, some of them cut out of the solid limestone, some of them enlarged by cleverly placed cut stones so tightly fitted together that he could only just make out the joints in the nearest of them. The track that he had been following also led away upward, perhaps to the surface. He would have to choose: up or down.

Far below him he saw the illumination of a vast field of the strange mushrooms very much the sort of light emitted from the female glow-worm or from within the bodies of luminescent squid. He drew out his bra.s.s, achromatic telescope, a finely crafted quadruple-tube instrument, which revealed a broadening-out of the canyon below him into a landscape of rectilinear shapes: gravestones or crypts, perhaps, or stone huts.

He peered at this phenomenon for some time, dumbfounded. He was convinced that he knew just where he was: somewhere beneath Blackfriars. He had seen these structures before not something similar, but this very thing when the ground had split open in the floor of the Cathedral of the Oxford Martyrs and Ignacio Narbondo had fallen to his doom. The fissure had revealed a clear view of the underworld that had closed again on the instant, and the brief image of it had been fixed in St. Ives's memory. As the months pa.s.sed he had come to doubt what he had seen, for that long afternoon had been very like a dream. There was no doubting it now.

Moving slowly in deference to his ribs, he reached behind him and drew a canteen of water and a newspaper-wrapped packet of food from his knapsack. He sat down and leaned back against a dry section of the limestone wall and unwrapped a sandwich of ham, mustard, and pickled onions, realizing that he was both thirsty and famished. Presently the seagull appeared once again, alighting very nearby and looking greedily at the sandwich. The gull hopped closer, and St. Ives tore off a piece of crust and tossed it to the creature, who caught it neatly and gulped it down.

St. Ives considered the great cavern below. He might well have been eating his sandwich on the second or third level of a vast house with a section of floor removed. The steep pa.s.sage between the levels had no doubt been carved out by the flow of water over countless eons, dissolving the limestone strata. The entire void beneath London had surely been excavated this same way: surface water from the many rivers and from endless seasons of rain trickling down through the limestone, patiently eating away solid rock. The wonder laid out beneath him was an open invitation complete with an accommodating stairway. It was clearly his scientific duty to consider this an opportunity rather than an inconvenience and to proceed deeper into the underworld.

He pitched a fragment of ham in the direction of the seagull and then reached for the smeared newspaper that lay on the ground beside him. The seagull s.n.a.t.c.hed the ham out of the air and gobbled it down, and in the same moment it lunged at the newspaper, plucking it away and flapping its wings wildly, launching into the air and flying out of sight carrying its greasy prize. Seagulls were the thieves of the bird world, St. Ives thought, which, alas, entirely accounted for their temporary gestures of friendship.

He stood up, found that his balance was still sound and took one last look through the telescope. After hollering Gilbert's name and hearing no response, he started downward, counting the steps while idly considering the irrationality of ascribing human emotions to animals the loyal dog, the inscrutable cat, the wise owl. Perhaps greed, he thought, was the essential foundation of human behavior as well. Perhaps love was merely biological in origin, and selflessness a mere illusion fabricated to put a good face on what was in fact self-serving. The idea didn't appeal to him, however, and his musings were interrupted when he saw, on a rock ledge some twelve feet below him, a black pistol with a fat barrel. It lay on a flat outcropping below the sheer edge of the staircase.

Here was yet another item that he had seen before. Narbondo had carried just such an unlikely and deadly weapon, which had fallen into the void moments before Narbondo had done the same. He considered the wisdom of attempting to retrieve it, but dismissed the idea as far too risky. Another dozen stairs farther along, the lamplight revealed a dark stain on the pale limestone. He stepped past it, down three more steps, then turned and knelt on the stone in order to get a better look at it. The stain was almost certainly blood, long dried. He couldn't think of an alternative explanation for it. He turned carefully, stood up, and resumed his descent, soon discovering more blood what had been a considerable pool of it and b.l.o.o.d.y boot-prints on the three steps below it. One of the boot prints very clearly revealed a pattern of hobnails that formed a pentagram.

There could be no question at all: Ignacio Narbondo, injured, had descended this flight of stairs a little over a year past. St. Ives was doubtful that the man had returned to the surface, for if he had he would have sought revenge against St. Ives and his family. Narbondo was scarcely human, motivated by a b.l.o.o.d.y-minded joy that he took in human suffering. St. Ives discovered that his scientific curiosity in the underworld had diminished now. That Narbondo might be alive or the more optimistic possibility, that St. Ives might find the man's corpse had become an unavoidable distraction.

Soon he came out onto the floor of the great cavern, which was sectioned off with high walls of limestone and pools of standing water. Patches of mushroom grew down into pools, illuminating the depths. There were enormous knee-high clumps that cast a substantial light, the air fetid with their odor. The geometric shapes that he had seen from above stone ruins, perhaps were hidden now, but were no far distance away. He stood for a moment tempted by them, but suppressed the temptation. If he found a way out to the surface world he could return to investigate the underworld more thoroughly, the Board of Works be d.a.m.ned. And if he could not find a way out, then he would become a denizen of this world and could investigate it at his leisure or until he went mad, the fate of many maroons.

A clear path, much-traveled, imprinted with hoof-prints and what looked like the remnants of a boot-print, led away uphill toward the north-west, and St. Ives set out in that direction, moving at a steady pace. He considered what he knew of London's underground rivers, which were quite likely the source of the subterranean water that was now in evidence all around him. The Fleet, he knew, rose near Highgate Ponds on Hampstead Heath, and the Westbourne and the Tyburn very nearby in West Hampstead. He had been inside the tunnel through which the Westbourne flowed, and had seen the iron doors and ladders that led to tributary streams and sewer tunnels on yet lower levels.

As he moved along, he pa.s.sed a number of pools filled with carpets of the glowing fungi, very apparently carnivorous, for they were often in the act of imprisoning both blind cave-fish and milky-white salamanders, all of their victims apparently alive or in stasis. He wondered whether the fungi lived in some state of symbiosis with the creatures they caught. If they did, the advantage was entirely with the fungi, for the trapped animals clearly suffered a variety of living death, whereas the fungi were quite monstrously alive. Floating duckweed grew in profusion in the light of the mushrooms, as if their luminescence was as potent as sunlight. The hoof-prints of goats and pigs were visible in the mud along the sh.o.r.e.

Spotting a black strip of fabric several feet from the path, he recognized it as the wide belt of the ca.s.sock that Narbondo had been wearing when he had entered the Cathedral, carrying the infernal device with which to blow them all to kingdom come. Some distance farther on he discovered the ca.s.sock itself, bloodstained, the dried gore visible against the black cloth. The man had apparently discarded enc.u.mbering garments as his strength gave out.

St. Ives traveled onward, into a country of ever-larger fungi, with caps as round and broad as pub tables. They dipped nearly to the ground, some of them, and glowed ever the more brightly when they were in possession of fresh meat, birds and bats for the most part, and the occasional rat. Again, most of the animals were still alive in some sense of the word, or at least had failed to decay. He entered a forest of head-high fungi with enormous trunks. The light emanating from them was quite bright bright enough so that the light from his lamp was consumed by it. It seemed to him that the fungi bowed toward him as he pa.s.sed, an uneasy thing to be sure, and he kept carefully to the depression trod into the soil by countless pa.s.sing creatures over the years.

As an experiment, he touched a finger to the jade-colored gills of a large fungus, which immediately sucked at his skin like an anemone, the cap pulling backward as if in an attempt to draw him into the thicket. He jerked his hand away, a flap of luminous gill coming away with his finger, stuck tightly to his flesh, and he felt a tingling sensation, like oncoming paralysis. Hurriedly he sc.r.a.ped his hand on the metal fixture of the lamp where it attached to his belt, scrubbing the fungus from his skin before taking out a magnifying gla.s.s and studying the gills more carefully. He was surprised to see that they were lined with tiny suction cups or disk-like mouths predatory creatures, to be sure.

A short distance farther on, he was stopped by a strange sight a broad swath of fungi that had been severed very near the ground, cut out in a neat rectangular box-shape nearly a fathom or so on each side. St. Ives stood and stared at the phenomenon, contemplating what it meant. Narbondo's boot prints had been scarce along the trail, trodden out by the animals that had come and gone in his wake. Now there were a plethora of human footprints that obscured the animal prints, very recent, apparently: a party of men who had come down the trail from above. There were the indentations of wheels along with the boot-prints, as if they had brought along a cart on which to haul out their treasure, or so it seemed to St. Ives a treasure of flesh and bone and luminous fungi.

SIXTEEN.

FELL HOUSE.

Beaumont's quarters were in the garret the most commodious quarters that he had ever enjoyed with a view looking out over the Temple and with easy access to the roof through gable windows. The room was often lit with sunlight, and the wind blew through the open cas.e.m.e.nts, chasing away the reek of physic and death and pain that filled the lower levels of the house. Beaumont had climbed out through the window and sat on the roof at present, smoking his pipe and watching a bank of clouds approach from the south. He was safely out of the wind because of a broad brick chimney with half a dozen chimney pots. Pigeons and house sparrows stood or hopped roundabout, regarding him carefully, waiting for him to share more crumbs from the half-eaten loaf thrust into his vest. A particularly fat sparrow hopped up onto his shoulder and pecked away at the top of the loaf. Beaumont sat very still so as not to frighten it. He was fond of a forthright sparrow.

When it hopped away, he tapped out his pipe, put it into his pocket, and then tore up the rest of the bread and cast it out over the slates, watching the birds scrambling happily after it, others winging down from the sky. He played a tune on his flute, a melody he had contrived himself, and noted with satisfaction that the birds seemed to enjoy it, especially the pigeons, who stopped their incessant eating and watched him play. He bowed to his audience after a time and put the flute away in his coat, removing a leathern bag from another pocket and shaking it, listening to the cheerful clink of sovereigns inside.

He had converted Mr. Klingheimer's Bank of England notes to coins, having a liking for gold but very little for paper money, which rustled like insect wings and would burn to ashes if a fire were hungry for it. The sovereigns shared the bag with the Spanish doubloons and Narbondo's ruby stick-pin. This last he had thrust down into a short length of India rubber tubing to keep it safe. He thought of his treasure hidden below ground enough to set him up in his carriage some day. He didn't mean to live alone, however. He was no hand with the ladies, alas no kind of fisherman in that regard and had suffered rebukes when he had been emboldened to speak to them. Some day, perhaps his luck would change there, too.

He put the thought aside and considered what Mr. Klingheimer would pay him for his services now that Narbondo was stowed away in his box. He had long ago decided to be beholden to no man, a rich man especially. His old father had told him to keep it in his mind that he was Beaumont the Dwarf, as was true of no other man on earth. Klingheimer had put him in charge of the toads and the heads, which was as good a situation as many he'd had over the years, although it meant working in the bas.e.m.e.nt in the stinking dead air and in the midst of unhappiness. But how long would Klingheimer have need of him? A man like Klingheimer would take Beaumont's head from his shoulders just as easy as kiss-my-hand if he had need of it, and that would be the end of poor Beaumont.

What would his old father say to him about Mr. Klingheimer? "Watch your poke," like as not, just as the potato boy had uttered when Beaumont was down on his luck and at the mercy of the p.a.w.nbroker. That had been good advice and even better advice when a man's luck was in especially in a house full of villains like the house of Klingheimer.

He stowed his bag of coins in his coat and took out his pocket watch, the very same watch that he had sold to the p.a.w.nbroker in Peach Alley: the silver watch with an F and a Z engraved upon the case. Its return had cost him three of the four crowns he'd been given for the watches in the first place. It was evidently a good-luck watch, however, and he would keep it as long as he kept Mr. Filby Zounds as his name.

Holding onto his hat, he climbed in at the window, shutting it and hearing that it had latched. Then he went out and down the dark and narrow garret stairway to the top floor landing, where there were proper stairs, with great fat newel posts and a broad banister and oil lamps lit night and day, which he liked better than the electricity. Oil was something that a man could reason with. He saw a moving shadow rising toward him, now, and he stepped back up the garret stairs until he was out of sight. He removed his hat and crouched as low as he could manage in order to see who it was and where they were going.

He was surprised to see that it was a girl who came into sight first a blind girl, apparently, who wore dark spectacles. Her face was expressionless, and her eyes, being hidden, told him nothing, but he sensed a deep unhappiness in her and a portion of fear and confusion. She was followed by the villain Shadwell, a rum-looking, hooknosed man with an unending forehead and evil features.

They turned away down a hall, and Beaumont was emboldened to creep farther downward in order to see where they went not far, as it turned out. The man stopped before a framed painting that hung on the wall, pushed the painting aside, and removed a key hidden behind it, with which he unlocked a door. He made no effort at secrecy because the girl was blind, perhaps, or because she would have no way to unlock the door from the inside, having no key of her own. He ushered the girl into the room, said something to her that Beaumont couldn't hear, and then laughed and shut the door and locked it again. Beaumont retreated quietly up the garret stairway, putting his hat on his head and preparing to descend once again as if he was just now coming down. When he returned to the landing, however, Shadwell was gone down himself, and the hallway was empty. Beaumont made his way to the painting on the wall and looked behind it a simple recess in the plaster where the key lay safe as a baby.

Clara sat on the side of the bed, her hands in her lap, her mind full of images moving in darkness, her ears full of sound. She had come from Dr. Peavy's hospital that morning, and she was mortally tired. At the hospital she had met Mr. Klingheimer. He was old, was Mr. Klingheimer, very old, although he hid his age and his thoughts behind a mask. He had told her that he knew her quite well, although she did not know him. She would soon come to know him, he had said, and he had spoken of himself as her benevolent friend. He had taken her hand and pledged his troth to her in a brazen manner. It was quite the last thing that she expected when Shadwell had brought her to him. He had also told her that he would come to see her later in the evening when she was comfortably ensconced in his mansion. They had much to talk about, he had said.

The old house creaked and sighed. Doors opened and shut. There were footsteps on the floor above. There were many people on the floors below. She could sense them a hive of evil, it seemed to her. She touched the crook of her arm, which was painful beneath the bandage where Dr. Peavy had put the heavy needle into her and had leaked Klingheimer's blood into her own veins.

She stilled her mind now and listened within herself, hearing the rush of blood in her ears, hearing her heart beating, searching for some sign that Mr. Klingheimer's blood had tainted her own, that his shadow lay within her. Impossibly, she felt her mother's presence roundabout instead, her mother's voice whispering to her, although the whispering was like the wind under the eaves, and she could not make out the meaning. Her mother was dead and gone, however. She could have no presence, no voice of any sort, not in this distant, closed-up place. And yet here it was, unmistakably.

Clara breathed deeply, smelling rain on the air creeping in through the window. The thought of rain brought her back to the present, and she contemplated the room that was her prison. There was the smell of apples on the air, and the closed-up, stale smell of dust and age. She stood up now and made her way around the room, starting at the door, which was locked. A small desk stood near the door, the surface marred with what must be years of use. Someone a boy, she imagined had cut his initials into the surface, a G and a B. She wondered what his name was, whether he was a prisoner, as she was, or perhaps a boy who used the desk under happier circ.u.mstances. She found her bag and set it on the desk.

There was a closet with a ring-pull to open it, the closet empty but for a blanket on a high shelf that smelled of damp wool and a chamber pot on the closet floor. Nearby stood a dresser with a heavy pitcher atop, full of water, and with a gla.s.s tumbler alongside the pitcher. She smelled the water before pouring some into the gla.s.s and drinking it. The apples, two of them, sat on a plate next to the pitcher. Should she eat one? It was doubtful that Mr. Klingheimer would bring her into London merely to poison her. Such a thing made no sense given Mr. Klingheimer's solicitations. She bit into an apple, which was quite good, and she went on around the room, feeling the high wainscot, the bit of carpet on the floor, the counterpane on the bed a duvet, stuffed with feathers, the cover finely woven, satin. She lay down upon it.

When she and Shadwell had crossed the bridge, leaving Aylesford for London, she had been sitting alone in the coach, grieving for Mother Laswell. A clear image of Finn Conrad had come into her head. He had been reading the book she had given him, happy with the book and happy with her, and her heart had lifted a tide of hopefulness flowing into her. In her vision Finn was sitting by a clear stream in which fish swam in the late afternoon sunlight. It was the very stream where Shadwell had compelled her to find the horrible box beneath the sand.

She knew it was the same stream, for she had seen it often enough when she was a girl when she could see the world roundabout her, not the ghost of the world that she saw through the crook of her elbow. And then they had pa.s.sed a boy walking on the side of the road, holding a lantern and carrying a brace of rabbits. In the light that briefly illuminated him, she had seen him quite clearly, her heart leaping at the thought that it was Finn, and that he had come for her. But the boy was not Finn, and he had quickly pa.s.sed out of sight.

Now Finn's presence was in her mind once again, as was her mother's. She wondered if their presence was merely a craving her wishes taking shape and color. And as she wondered about this, a flute started up, playing prettily, strangely at odds with the atmosphere of the old house. The music came down to her from above, where she had heard the footsteps earlier. There was a crack of thunder, and then another, as if the flute had called it down from the sky, and she heard the rain against the windowpanes, the sound of it lulling her to sleep.

Finn Conrad, pushing a cart of currant and meat puddings that he had bought entire from a costermonger on Fleet Street near the Old Bell Tavern, made his slow way along Whitefriars Street toward Lazarus Walk. He found number 12, giving it a glance through its broad, wrought-iron gate as he pa.s.sed: a many-roomed mansion of four and five stories, with an abundance of ornate chimneys and gables. The vast front yard with its cobbled drive was empty of people from what he could see, and the door to a wide carriage house stood open. He made out an elegant Berlin carriage inside and a black brougham, complete with white squiggles on the footboard, as Mother Laswell had referred to the ornamentation.

He walked toward the end of the street now, past a paved path that ran up along the side of the house. Dozens of windows looked out from the high wall, some of them barred with decorative ironwork. He wondered what that meant barred windows. Nothing good, to his thinking. He thought further, considering the foolishness of trying to gain entrance to a rich man's house and the likelihood of being taken up as a common thief and hung, as opposed to the shame of doing nothing at all to rescue Clara when he had his chance. He would rather die than miss his chance.

The barred windows argued that there had been prisoners within the house in the past, which meant that there might be a prisoner now. He looped back down a narrow byway, past a milliners and a tobacco shop and a chemist, and then, out of sight of the house, along Middle Temple Lane, and around to Whitefriars Street and Lazarus Walk again. "Currant and meat puddings, tuppeny each!" he shouted now and then for good measure, and stopped to sell two of them.

He drew up toward the big gate once again, which he saw was locked. He contemplated going over the wall easy enough to do, but a risky business in broad daylight. He could see the sweep of the carriage drive and the front door now, and he stopped on the pavement, deciding to make his stand, as the soldier would say. It was a useful place to set up shop, at least until he was told to move on.

He hobbled the wheels of his cart and helped himself to one of the puddings, which was first rate. People pa.s.sed along the pavement, the morning having come into its own, and Lazarus Walk being a short cut between Tudor Street and the Temple. Sales were brisk and it quickly seemed to Finn that he might recoup a measure of Mother Laswell's money, which he had squandered on the cart. Low clouds hurried across the sky on a south wind, however, and there was little doubt that it would rain soon. The street was increasingly empty of people. He was grateful for his coat and happy that the cart sported a wide umbrella that could be hoisted overhead, which, along with the wall behind him, would shelter him well enough from the rain.

A flurry of drops fell, and then a double crack of thunder opened the sky and the rain came down in earnest. Finn wafered himself between the cart and the wall, sheltered and dry enough for the moment beneath the umbrella. He wondered what to do next as he ate a second pudding and then a third, filling his belly against what might be a very long day. Setting up as a costermonger had seemed a good ruse an hour ago, but not as good now that he was threatened with a soaking.

The wind picked up, endeavoring to blow his umbrella into the next county, and he held tightly to it, gripping the pole in front of him as well as the fabric over his head and watching the slow approach of a covered van drawn by two horses. The van was a small wooden house on wheels with a flat, lean-to roof of tin. When it drew near he saw that a sign on the side read "Waltham's Goods and Parcels." The driver sat snug out of the rain beneath a canvas enclosure that was an extension of the walls and roof of the van. He was a long-legged man in a red bowler who looked overmuch like a spider, all elbows and knees. The horses drew to a stop, and the man jumped down, unlocked the gate with a key that he carried in his pocket, and swung the gate open a strange business. He gave Finn a hard look, as if he would happily kick him into the street.

The man took his seat again in order to swing the wagon into the yard. As the van moved forward it seemed to Finn as if he would be offered no better chance than this. He must do something rash on Clara's behalf or nothing at all. "Death or glory," he muttered, seeing that the road was mostly empty of people.

Hidden by the van itself as it moved past him, he let go of his umbrella, which the wind immediately carried off, and he darted around behind, stepping up onto the footboard and grasping the latch of the wooden door, pulling it open and slipping through. Strangely, the floor beneath him slid forward two inches, and he caught himself before he fell. Then it stopped abruptly and rolled back, as if it were on wheels, which made not a bit of sense. He expected darkness, but it was not dark.

The interior, lighted with a pale green radiance, stank like a filthy stable, although it was a human animal that it housed: Doctor Narbondo himself, whom Finn had first met on a dark night in Aylesford a year and a half ago, and whom he had last seen falling into a fissure in the floor of the Cathedral of the Oxford Martyrs several days later. It was confounding to see him now, perched on what were apparently enormous, glowing mushrooms, which sat in a shallow metal box. Narbondo's eyelids were half open, although he stared at nothing at all.

Finn began to breathe again after the first shock, and seeing that Narbondo was apparently no threat. His right arm was held in the grip of the mushrooms, and the thick leaf of fungus growing over the top of his head was apparently attached to his scalp. The translucent green flesh of the fungus throbbed like a heartbeat, and he could see fluids moving within it.

Finn pressed himself against the door, fighting the urge to open it and leap out. He heard the horses champing and shuffling, the sound of the driver jumping to the ground, and then of the horses being led away. Silence followed, and he took the chance of opening the door a fraction and peering out. They were in the carriage house. He could see the black brougham, the high wall beyond it hung with tackle. A curtain of rain fell across the doorway, visible for only an instant, and then the door slid across, closing off the carriage house from the world outside and making flight impossible.

Finn eased the door shut and watched Narbondo, who shifted uneasily now, like a sleeper about to awaken. The fungi that imprisoned him shimmered, as if enlivened by his restlessness. The rim of a plate-sized mushroom cap stood near Finn's shoulder, and it very slowly shifted toward him now, as if sensing his presence, its outer perimeter wrinkling and rippling like a human lip. There were tiny suckers visible roundabout it, thousands of them, which expanded and contracted. Finn stepped back against the door, but something held his foot the cap of a low mushroom that had settled over the toe of his shoe. He yanked his foot away, tearing off a crescent of green flesh, and a smell like a wet manure heap rose around him.

He took out his oyster knife and unsheathed it, wondering whether the monsters would try to defend themselves if he cut them how quickly they might move. The piece that had torn away with his shoe still glowed. Voices sounded now, and Finn was surprised to feel the wagon rolling forward again, bouncing on its springs. It stopped with a m.u.f.fled clank, having run up against something. He kept his eyes on the mushrooms, his knife in his right hand and his left hand on the door latch. The wagon lurched once again, and then there was the sound of a mechanism coming to life, and it felt for all the world as if they were moving downward.

Astonished at this, Finn peered out past the door again and saw that they were indeed descending along an illuminated wooden shaft. The interior of the van, evidently a wooden box, had been rolled onto a lift. Doctor Narbondo must dwell in this cabinet as if in a tomb, supported by the mushrooms and hidden away beneath the great house. The box settled on the ground now, and the sound of the lift motor died away. Finn considered various lies to explain what he was doing in the house, but could think of nothing better than to say he had climbed inside the van to get out of the rain.

Now there was the sound of turnbuckles or bolts being manipulated, and the entire wall began to fold in on itself, at the same time swinging outward and upward, a blood-red light filtering into the van to mingle with the green, so that everything was a sickly yellow.

Finn held the oyster knife behind his back now and flexed his knees, getting ready to jump, hearing an odd a.s.sortment of noises the wheezing of a bellows, a bubbling sound like a cauldron on the boil, and the ticking of a great clock or pendulum. He considered his choices, which were few. He had cut someone only once with the knife, and he hadn't liked it, although it had saved his life. He would rather run, if given the chance.

There was a clatter overhead as the folded wall settled onto the roof of the box. Directly in front of him a dwarf was just then climbing down from a short stepladder. He wore an immense beard, a tall beaver hat that was an upside-down twin of the beard, and a stained leather ap.r.o.n. He stared in at Finn without any show of surprise. Then, in a strange, high voice a voice that Finn had heard before the dwarf asked, "Do you have a name, young roustabout?" The question was entirely matter-of-fact, neither angry nor surprised nor suspicious.

"Finn Conrad, sir," Finn said, climbing down to the floor and putting away his knife.

"Finn, is it? That's a good name, with something of a fish in it. I'm known far and wide as Beaumont the Dwarf, on account of my size. My mother was a French woman, bless her heart. In this house of villainy, howsomever, I go by the name of Mr. Filby Zounds."

"Might I call you Beaumont, then, or do you prefer Mr. Zounds?" It occurred to Finn that this was a monumentally unlikely encounter, and he wondered what the dwarf was playing at.

The dwarf stood for a long moment regarding him and then said, "You might call me Beaumont, but not in company. I know you, sir, and you know me. Think on it. You was a stowaway in the marsh all that time ago, in Narbondo's Landau coach, a-going out to Shade House. I glimpsed you when you clumb on behind and hid yourself there at St. Mary Hoo, and I saw you again when you fetched me my breakfast next morning. And you was the one as rode the great air-ship into the Cathedral and come down along a ladder made of rope as nimble as a gib cat. Aye, it was me who drove the Doctor's coach, do you see, and it was me a-playing of the organ when the Cathedral fell. I played the church to pieces, is what I did. The great organ was the jawbone that brought down the walls, Jericho come again. It was the 'Little Fugue' that done it. Do you recall it? You was there. You heard it, no doubt."

Finn was dumbstruck, but he managed to nod. Every word the dwarf said was true, although Finn knew nothing of the "Little Fugue." The entire business was mystifying, as was the dwarf's presence in this room. Finn had first seen him clearly near Angel Alley near George Yard, driving Dr. Narbondo's carriage. Finn had stowed away on the back of the carriage in London and had climbed off to limber his bones when they got to St. Mary Hoo in the marsh, just as the dwarf said. He had climbed aboard when they set out once again, thinking himself unseen, but he was wrong in that regard, and no doubt about it. The dwarf had seen him then but hadn't peached on him. Finn didn't know what to think about that. Certainly the dwarf showed no sign of hostility now, and Finn could sense hostility in a man even if it wasn't made plain. He felt as if he had found an old friend in a time of great need, except that the dwarf had no reason to show him any kindness.

He saw now that some few feet behind the dwarf stood several barber's basins br.i.m.m.i.n.g with bubbling green fluid along a wide stone bench bathed in red light. In two of the basins sat severed heads, a man and a woman, on neck-like trunks of glowing flesh. He realized that the "flesh" was a thick slice of mushroom stem, moored in the bubbling fluid. The man's eyes were open, his mouth working as if he were both chewing and trying to speak. The other, a woman, was evidently asleep, or was dead, although that was scarcely sensible.

It came into Finn's mind that the woman was perhaps Clara's mother. Probably it was. Tommy had told him that her head was gone, and he knew it was Shadwell who'd done it, and who had perhaps brought Clara to this very house. The woman's eyes moved now, shifting behind the close lids. Above hung a geometric maze of bra.s.s pipes, aerated fluid dripping through holes into the basins, bathing the mushrooms and the heads. There was a wheezing sound from behind the bench, the inhaling and exhaling of a round bladder the size of a moderate hippopotamus. It was depressed by an iron plate, which lifted off again when the bladder was squeezed flat, at which point the giant lung re-inflated, drawing in air. One of the sleeping heads the woman made an unhappy noise, something between a sigh and a groan. Her eyes blinked open and peered at Finn, who looked away from the ghastly sight.

"They're alive, do you see," Beaumont said, "although they're nought but heads. It's the toads what does the trick, and the green blood, which is from the toads as well. Now and then one of them says something, and you can just make it out if you listen right close, but it don't amount to nothing. They tell me there's a third head in that there lead crate standing yonder, which will be opened tonight and set onto a bed of toads. It's been a long time dead, although it's true that salt pork lasts a hundred years in the keg."

The dwarf took up a length of rubber hose that snaked out of a bra.s.s panel covered with dials and spigots and shoved it over the spout of a similar spigot set into the side of Narbondo's prison. He turned the handle and Finn heard the burbling noise of fluid swirling into the metal box that covered the floor.

"They'll keep like this for a tolerable long time," Beaumont said, "their brains a-working as ever, by way of the fungus blood. Mr. Klingheimer puts it into his own self, or so they say, and has lived past his earthly time. Mr. Klingheimer's rich as Creases, the Greek fellow."

"It's a great marvel," Finn said, "although the heads might have been happier when they had a body to go with them."

"Mr. Klingheimer wants the brain, but not the body. A brain don't cut up rough, you see. How did you come to be a-riding along of the Doctor?" He jerked his head toward Narbondo's box.

There was no useful falsehood, and so Finn told the truth. "I waited outside the gate and climbed in when the wagon drew up."

"What for, then? You don't have the face of a sneak-thief." He peered at Finn closely. "You've got a true face."

Finn looked into the eyes of the man who stood before him, who had the face of a gnome beneath the beard, but it held no apparent cunning, no deceit, nothing hidden. "A girl I know was kidnapped from Hereafter Farm, Aylesford," Finn said boldly. "I've come to fetch her back if she's in this house. They killed her mother before they took her. That's no doubt her mother's head there in the basin." He nodded at what he supposed to be the head of Sarah Wright.

Beaumont's face grew dark when he heard this. "The blind girl, is it?" he asked. "The one who just this morning come in with the scoundrel Shadwell?"

"Yes, sir," Finn said, his heart racing now. "It was like as not Shadwell who murdered her mother. You've seen Clara, then?"

"Oh, aye. I've seen the girl, but she ain't seen me, by which I mean no disrespect. She oughtn't to be here. It's a fell house you've come into, Finn. There's things in this house to turn a man's stomach." He gestured toward the bubbling basins now by way of ill.u.s.tration. "These two weren't always heads, like you already said. They was divested of their bodies. But now it's my lot to keep the heads alive, so to say, which is the Christian thing to do."

Finn nodded. There was both sense and nonsense in what the dwarf said, maybe more sense than nonsense. "Where is Clara kept, then? Do you know?"

"Aye, away up on the fourth floor. It's me who lives in the attic above her. I saw the man a-locking her in, second door along from the stairs."

"Can we unlock that door?"

"We might, young sir, if no one's about. It's precious seldom, though, that no one's about in Mr. Klingheimer's house, it being watch and watch, day and night in this house, four hours on and then a new man to go around for another four. I had my turn for two days of it, but very soon they put me to this here business with the heads, me being handy and knowing something of the toads. In a word, if you're seen, Finn, you're like as not a dead man. Mr. Klingheimer is a pleasant-looking old cove, but there's a right monster living beneath the skin and bone, and make no mistake."

"He's the chief, then? Mr. Klingheimer?"

Beaumont nodded.

"What if I want to go out again? How do I manage it?"