The commotion from the crowd had grown both louder and higher-pitched. I shook off the befuddlement with which the rapid course of events had seized my thoughts. The device that the Brown Leather Man had lodged with me – that was the item of which he spoke; no doubt it had been Lord Bendray who had commissioned their unsuccessful attempt to steal it from these premises. So he desired it still and the promise of sanctuary was dependent upon my furnishing it to him. Without hesitation, I ran down the hallway to the workroom and came staggering back with the weighty mahogany cabinet in my arms.
In a matter of moments, my trunk was lodged on top of the carriage with Creff and the driver – one of Bendray's men, I assumed – and the balance of the party was safely installed inside. My father's creation, the source of so much skulduggery, lay on the carriage's floor between us.
Abel, as he was newly christened, scrambled up into my lap as the carriage, its brace of horses whipped into flight, shot from the alley. He barked furiously out the side window at the sight of Mrs Trabble's mob moving from its point of assembly towards my now-empty shop, their torches waving in gleeful anticipation. The shrill whistles of the constabulary, summoning others of their number to the scene, echoed through the surrounding lanes.
Such was to be my last sight and memory of that small haven, once so peaceful and undisturbed, for many a day to come. The carriage clattered on towards the dark boundaries of the city, and beyond.
PART TWO
An Evening's Entertainment
8
Long periods of travel induce a somnolence that neither refreshes the body nor soothes the mind. Whether one is enduring the nauseating roll of a ship caught between the crests and troughs of the ocean, or having one's spine jerked by the lurching crash of a carriage's wheels in the ruts and holes of England's roads, the effect is the same. One cannot sleep; dismal vistas pass by one's gaze, in day or night; one swallows over and over again the sour, nagging protest of one's digestion, rising constantly into the throat; comfort there is none, nor peace sufficient to order and reconnect the thoughts shaken against each other like the fragments of a crumbled mosaic.
I have little patience with the Oriental maxim It is bet ter to travel hopefully than to arrive. (Who has not savoured the delicious pleasure of stepping once more on to motionless ground and feeling one's muscles and bones sweetly unlock themselves?) Rather I believe that, if a dull and cramped Hell were to be one's final punishment, it would be best achieved in a perpetually rolling carriage.
Such was the nature of my reflections, once the initial excitement of my flight from the hands of the street mob had ebbed. We passed the greater portion of the journey in an uncomfortable silence. From time to time I would open my eyes and look about the vehicle's dim interior, lit only by the moon and starlight slanting through the side windows. Across from me, Miss McThane had managed to fall asleep, her mouth open to emit a soft, ladylike snore. Beside her, Scape sat with folded arms and chin heavy on his chest; his blue spectacles made it impossible to determine if he was unconscious or merely sunk in the contemplation of further villainy. When we had first left the precincts of the city, the carriage entering the deep quiet of the Kentward road, he had spent some time bending down to inspect the mahogany cabinet on the floor; he had at last given up the attempt to fathom the mysteries of the device owing to a lack of sufficient light. Abel – the only creature inside the carriage worthy of my trust, Creff being stationed atop with the driver – rested his chin oil my leg, only closing his eyes in an ecstatic swoon whenever my hand strayed to scratch behind his ears.
My own thoughts – or fragments thereof – chased and battered themselves against my brow. I knew not where we were bound, nor what my reception would be when we arrived. Perhaps I had been inveigled thus to my own murder; one attempt towards this end had already been encountered by me; of the circumstances that had delivered me from the cold embrace of the Thames, I still awaited explanation. Certain it was that ruthless forces had arrayed themselves in the London night: the corpses of Fexton and the Brown Leather Man attested to that. (The vision of the latter overturning the ruffians' boat I was even more certain of being a delusion; the sight of the poor man's fatal wounds remained sharp in my memory.) If Scape and his employer Bendray were not in league with these desperate men, there was still little else to recommend them to my confidence. Surely, I asked myself as the back of my head jolted against the carriage's thinly padded leather, surely these people were insane? How else account for the lunatic blasphemy of their attentions upon the church of Saint Mary Alderhythe? (A blasphemy, and lunacy, that I bitterly knew was now attributed to me.) I had yet to wake from the dream that my life had. become; my sleep had been rewarded not with the dawn's returning of my old dull life, but with the continuation of awful night and chaos.
These and similarly cheerless ruminations were interrupted by the dog Abel. His ears pricked up, and he started from his doze; in a trice he had scrambled into my lap the better to unleash a volley of furious barking against the window, his front paws pattering on the glass.
"Jesus H. Christ." Scape had been apparently asleep behind his dark spectacles; they rose for a moment up on to his forehead as he rubbed his stiff face. "What the hell's all the racket about?"
Beside him, Miss McThane burrowed her shoulder deeper into the corner of the seat, in a futile attempt to escape the sudden noise. "Shut your goddamn dog up, Dower," she muttered unladylike.
"Abel… I say-" I grasped the thin collar that his former master had bestowed on him and tried to pull him back from the window. "Calm down, old boy."
A small gap at the top of the window had been left open for ventilation during the journey. With renewed determination, Abel wedged his sharp muzzle in the space and howled even more vigorously.
"You know – I think he's seen something." I positioned the side of my face against the window, the better to view behind the carriage. "Something out there."
This pronouncement brought Scape sitting bolt upright, his irritable fatigue forgotten. Miss McThane lifted her head as well, her eyes widening.
Scape leaned forward, balancing himself with one hand against the opposite seat, and joined me in my scrutiny of the night unrolling behind the carriage's progress. We had been travelling out from London for such a time that dawn was no more than one or two hours away; already the darkness had thinned sufficiently to bring a thin grey outline to the black tracery of country hedge and tree.
The shapes of cloaked riders moved against those, keeping pace with us.
"Shit," muttered Scape. He had lifted his spectacles in order to discern the silhouettes following us; the slight radiance of the stars produced a slow tear from the corner of his overly sensitive eyes. "It's that friggin' Godly bunch."
"Them again?" Miss McThane sounded peeved. "How'd they find out about us coming here?"
He adjusted his spectacles to their original position. "Beats me – must have an inside line somewhere. Maybe ol' Bendray's butler or somebody is working a double."
"Godly bunch?" I echoed. "Who are they?"
"Never you mind." Scrape lowered the window and shouted to the driver: "You wanna pick it up a bit?" The whip snapped in response and the carriage jolted harder in the ruts as Scape began rummaging through the pockets of his coat. "This'll take care of those suckers."
I saw that he had extracted a bulky cap-and-ball pistol of considerable antiquity. "Watch it with that thing, will ya?" said Miss McThane. "The last time-"