The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack Part 54

"That would be excellent. Thank you."

She departed.

Burton rolled one of the copies and placed it into a canister. This he put into the messenger pipe. With a blast of steam, it went on its way to Buckingham Palace. A few moments later, he sent the second copy to 10 Downing Street.

He prepared the study for his guests-stoking the fire, arranging armchairs around it, refilling the brandy decanter.

He sat and read for half an hour.

Algernon Swinburne was the first to arrive. Like Burton, he was covered in yellowing bruises and healing injuries. He was limping slightly.

"Your little paperboy, Oscar, just accosted me on the street," he announced. "He asked me to pa.s.s on his congratulations and he hopes you're recovering from your injuries."

"How the d.i.c.kens did he get wind of it?" exclaimed Burton. "There's been nothing said to the press!"

"You know what these newsboys are like," replied Swinburne, easing himself carefully into a chair. "They know a great deal about far too much. He also asked me to advise you that 'one can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation."'

Burton laughed. "Quips is being exceptionally optimistic. I hardly think our little victory is enough to mend my reputation. Richard Burton might be battered and bruised but 'Ruffian d.i.c.k' is alive and well, I'm sure!"

"That might be true in certain quarters, but, for certain, your stock has risen with King Albert and Lord Palmerston, and that's what matters. I'll have a brandy, please-but purely for medicinal reasons."

"How are you, Algy? Recovering?"

"Yes, though the hole in my a.r.s.e cheek hurts like blazes. I fear I shall have to skip my birchings for a few weeks."

"Bad news for London's houses of ill repute," noted Burton, pouring his friend's drink. "They'll have to tighten their belts, if you'll pardon the pun."

"Thank you," said Swinburne, accepting the gla.s.s. "By the sound of those thundering footsteps, old Trounce is coming up the stairs."

The door opened and the thickset Yard man stomped in.

"Greetings, both!" he announced, slapping his bowler onto a desk. "The confounded fog is closing in again. Every pea-souper is a bonanza for the criminal cla.s.ses! I tell you, I'm going to have my work cut out for me over the next few days. I say, Burton, what the heck did Spring Heeled Jack mean?"

"When?" asked the king's agent.

Trounce threw himself into an armchair and stretched out his legs to warm his feet by the fire. He took a proffered cigar from his host.

"You said he told you to-what was it?-'enjoy your boots'?"

"No. He said 'enjoy your reboot.' A curious turn of phrase. Language is a malleable thing, old chap; it follows a process much like Darwin's evolution-parts of it become defunct and fade from usage, while new forms develop to fit particular needs. I have little doubt that 'reboot' has a very specific significance in the future. His future, at least."

"The meaning seems clear enough," mused Swinburne. "Replacing your old boots with new ones is like preparing yourself for a new and potentially long journey. Your old boots may not last for the duration, so you reboot, as it were, before you set off. Like reshoeing a horse."

"It seems as good an explanation as any," agreed Burton. "And it fits the context."

He handed Trounce a brandy and, with his own, sat down and lit a cigar.

"Detective Inspector Honesty should be along soon. Have you two made your peace?"

"I'll say!" enthused the police detective. "The man saved me from a werewolf! He may look like a whippet but he fights like a tiger. I saw him taking on men twice his size with his bare hands-and he downed the blighters! Besides, when the dust had settled he came over, shook my hand, and apologised for ever doubting me. I'm not one to hold a grudge, especially against a man like that!"

"Ow!" yelled Swinburne. "b.l.o.o.d.y dog!"

"Come here, Fidget!" ordered Burton. "Sorry, Algy. I forgot he was in the room!"

The ba.s.set hound hung his head and ambled over to its master, settling at his feet, from where it gazed fixedly at Swinburne's ankles.

"Blessed pest!" grumbled the poet.

"You owe this blessed pest your life," observed Burton. "Excuse me a moment."

He'd heard a rattle from the messenger tube. A canister thunked into it as he reached the desk. It was a message from Palmerston: Burke and Hare dismantled wreckage. Remains of Darwin, Galton, Beresford, and Oxford identified. Time suit recovered and destroyed. Good work.

"Palmerston says the time suit has been destroyed," he told his guests.

"Do you believe him?" asked Trounce.

"Not at all. It will at least have been put out of harm's way, though."

"We can but hope," muttered Swinburne.

Mrs. Angell entered with a tray of cold meats, pickles, sliced bread, and a pot of coffee. Detective Inspector Honesty stepped in behind her.

"Sorry, late!" he said. "Came on velocipede. Broke down. Accursed things."

"Have a seat, Honesty! Thank you, Mrs. Angell," said Burton.

His housekeeper glanced dolefully at Honesty's well-greased hair, obviously considering the well-being of her embroidered antimaca.s.sars. She left the study.

The newly arrived policeman sat, refused a brandy, and lit a pipe.

"A hundred and twenty-six men in custody," he declared. "Seventy-two Rakes. Fifty-four Technologists. All charged with a.s.sault."

"And Brunel?" asked Burton, returning to his chair.

"Location unknown. Nothing to charge him with."

"And to be frank," added Trounce, "the chief commissioner is reluctant to press charges, anyway. As far as most people are concerned, Isambard Kingdom Brunel died a national hero a couple of years ago. The powers that be are reluctant to expose his continued existence, the thing that he's become, or the fact that he appears to have crossed ethical boundaries."

"And Florence Nightingale?" asked Swinburne.

"Same," said Honesty. "No charges."

"She's a strange one," mused Swinburne.

"Not as strange as the Edward Oxfords," grunted Trounce. "I still can't get to grips with the fact that the man I saw trying to stop the a.s.sa.s.sination of Queen Victoria was struggling with his own ancestor, and was the same man as the stilt-walker who ran past me, the same man as the stilt-walker who jumped out of the trees, and the same man we fought over in the Battle of Old Ford twenty years later! Good lord! Time travel! It's more than I can cope with!"

Burton blew out a plume of cigar smoke.

"That's the least of it. We removed the cause but we didn't repair the damage. The fact of the matter is that we live in a world that shouldn't exist. Oxford changed the course of history. His presence sent out ripples that altered everything. If I understand it correctly, this period of time should be called the Victorian Age, and if you care to get up and look out of the window, what you'll see bears only a superficial resemblance to what you'd be looking at had he never travelled back through time."

"And we are changed, too," added Swinburne. "Our time has presented us with different opportunities and challenges; we are not the same as the people recorded in Oxford's history!"

"If we made it into his history at all!" muttered Trounce.

Sir Richard Francis Burton shifted uneasily in his chair.

Marry the b.i.t.c.h. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the f.u.c.k else they send you.

For the remainder of that evening, the four men relaxed together, discussed the case, and cemented their friendship. By the time the guests took their leave, another London particular had settled over the city and ash was falling from the dark sky. They waited until they heard a brougham creeping along, called for it, and said their good-byes.

Burton retired back to his study and sat with a book on his lap. His eyes slid over the words without taking them in. He hung his arm over the edge of the chair, his fingers idly fondling Fidget's ears.

He looked down at the ba.s.set hound.

"I killed a man, Fidget; cold-bloodedly broke his neck with my bare hands. Palmerston would say it was my duty-that I had to do it to preserve the Empire-but the truth is that I did it to preserve my own existence, as it is now!"

He rested his head on the back of the chair and cleared his mind, using his Sufi training to focus inward, searching for any awareness of a newly incurred karmic debt.

He found none, and was jolted from his meditation by a tapping at the window. Fidget barked. It was a parakeet.

"Message from sc.u.m-hugger Henry Arundell. Please meet me at the stinking Venetia at noon tomorrow. Message ends."

"Reply," said Burton. "Message begins. I'll be there. Message ends."

"Underwear-nabber!"

The next morning he donned his Sikh costume and delivered a bag of books to the Beetle, then returned home, washed and changed, and made his way through the fog to the Venetia Hotel. He arrived a little early and, after one of the doormen had brushed the ash from his hat and shoulders, proceeded to the lounge and sat contemplating the silver panther head of his cane until Isabel's father arrived.

He stood and shook the older man's hand. They had a difficult relationship, these two; a grudging respect.

Isabel's mother had always disapproved of Burton. To start with, she clung to the dwindling Catholic faith, whereas Burton was rumoured to be a Muslim, though he actually held no religious allegiances at all. Then, of course, there was his reputation-the dark rumours and general consensus that he was "not one of us."

Henry Arundell had none of his wife's prejudices. He did, however, love his daughter, and wanted only the best for her. He'd never been convinced that Burton was the best.

They sat.

"She's gone," Arundell said, without any preliminaries.

"What?" exclaimed Burton.

"Isabel packed her things and left the family home some few days agoon the twenty-first. We suspected that the two of you had fallen out over some matter and she was taking a holiday to think things over. Yesterday we received this."

He handed Burton a letter.

Trieste, 25th September; 1861 My Dearest Mama and Papa, Richard has broken off our engagement and I feel my life as it was, and as I expected it to be, has ended. I had considered that I was fated to be with him from the veay first instant I laid eyes on him in Boulogne ten years ago. It had been my intention that we should travel to the East together and settle there. I find it almost inconceivable that it should be him who denies me this destiny.How can it be that a future which had seemed to me set in stone can be so altered by another? Is Life so fickle a thing that we are helplessly cast about by whims that are not even our own?I cannot bear it.Mama, Papa, I will be mistress of my own fate! I will be answerable for my own mistakes and I will claim credit for my own triumphs! Though the world may change around me, it will be I who chooses how to meet its challenges and disappointments, and n.o.body else.The world! I now understand that we inhabit two worlds. There is the wider one that we live upon yet see but a faction of and there is the one which consists of the immediate influences f -om which we take our form. The first expands us; the latter contracts us. Richard was of the second world; from him I gained a sense of my own being, its limits and its character. Now he is gone and I find that I am uncontained.What do I do? Do I retreat f this breach and hide f the infringing outer world? Or do I flow out into it to discover new possibilities and perhaps to take on a new shape for myself?You know your daughter. dear parents! I will not flinch!Richard has made nay long-held vision of the future impossible. Should I therefore abandon it all? NO, I say! NO!I am in Trieste en route to Damascus. I know not what awaits me there. I hardly care. Whatever; I will at least be creating an Isabel Arundell who is defined by her own choices.

I do not know when 1 will be back.

I will write.

You are more dear to me than anything.

With deepest love Your Isabel "By heaven, but she's headstrong!" exclaimed Burton, handing the letter back to Henry Arundell.

"Always was!" agreed the older man. "Like her grandmother. By George, man! What made you do it? Leave her, I mean. I thought you loved her!"

"I do, sir. Make no mistake about it; I do. I was given a choice by Lord Palmerston: I could either accept a pitiful consulship on a disease-ridden island or I could serve the country in a capacity which, though hazardous, would offer far more by way of personal fulfillment. In either case, Isabel, had she become my wife, would've been placed in a perilous position. I broke off our engagement to protect her."

Arundell grunted, and said, "And in consequence, she's gone gallivanting off to Arabia on her own where, surely, she'll be at equal risk!"

"No, sir, don't let the popular image deceive you. The Arabs are an honourable race and she'll be in no more danger there than she would be if she were in, say, Brighton. London is a hundred times more dangerous than Damascus."

"Are you sure?"

"I promise you. It's in the British Empire's interest to portray other cultures as barbarous and uncivilised; that way there's less of an outcry when we conquer them and steal their resources. Lies have to be propagated if we are to retain the moral high ground."

Arundell shifted in his seat uncomfortably. To him, such statements sounded traitorous.

"Be that as it may," he grumbled, "I'm not at all happy. I'm concerned for my little girl's welfare and I hold you responsible."

"I cannot help that. The decisions I make are based on what I think is best. The decisions she makes are based on what she feels is best. The deci sions you make, likewise. We all act on what we know, what we see, what we are told, and how we feel. The simple fact of the matter is that not a single one of us operates under identical influences. That, sir, is why the future is always uncertain."

Henry Arundell stood and placed his hat upon his head.

"I am not mollified, sir," he said, somewhat resentfully.

Burton got to his feet. "Neither am I."

Isabel's father nodded and left.

Sir Richard Francis Burton wandered over to the bar and took a shot of whisky. A few minutes later, he put on his topper and his coat and, swinging his cane, walked out of the hotel and along the pavement toward Montagu Place.

The thick fog embraced him.

It was silent.

It was mysterious.

It was timeless.

It makes it seem as if, he thought, my world doesn't really exist.

MEANWHILE, IN THE.