Hackett seemed confused. ‘It does sound rather unlikely, Mr Radcliffe. If you would care to clarify—’
But Burdon cut him off. He stood, facing Radcliffe. ‘All I would care to clarify is that this meeting is over. Ta-ta, Radcliffe, and thanks for the tea. Now if you’ll show us back to our brougham—’
‘Now,’ Radcliffe said softly.
Luis, still sitting, sensed rather than heard the massive form step up behind him. Then it was as if a thunderclap went off inside his head. He was aware of two, maybe three powerful men grabbing him and flinging him to the ground.
And he fell into the dark.
When he woke, he was in the well-remembered vault under Windsor Castle. Radcliffe, evidently, had got his way. And when he tried to move Luis discovered that his wrists and ankles were locked in shackles of heavy iron.
In the gas-lit gloom, just as before, here were the decent but not ostentatious furniture, the shelving with books and records, the doorways leading to further rooms crowded with gifts and gewgaws: the clutter of monarchy. It seemed just as it had been when Albert had leaned against the fireplace opposite, quoting his own speeches about duty, and Luis had thought he’d glimpsed Victoria hurrying by … All that, he realized, was nearly a quarter of a century ago.
But while the room hadn’t changed, its human occupants had. Here was Radcliffe, standing before him with a cold smile. Luis, Burdon and Hackett, all of them struggling back to consciousness, shackled side by side in armchairs, each with a red-coated soldier at his back. There were more soldiers at the doors, by the walls, even in the rooms beyond.
As Luis moved his battered head the pain returned, a clamouring like gunfire. He bit his tongue to force himself not to cry out.
There was a nurse before him, a sweet-faced girl in a uniform. ‘Drink this,’ she said. She held up a cup of some liquid to his lips, warm and tasting of honey; he gulped it down greedily, and the pain in his head started to abate.
Hackett’s face was ablaze with fury. ‘You all right, Valienté?’
‘Been better. Head still works.’
‘Good man. Burdon?’
‘Better than you’d think, old boy.’
Burdon seemed oddly at ease. But then, Luis reflected, he seemed to have been in control of events since they arrived here, more so than Hackett. Luis fervently hoped he still was – somehow.
Hackett looked up at the man standing before them. ‘What’s the meaning of this? What the deuce are you up to, Radcliffe?’
Burdon laughed. ‘Yes, and where’s Bill Gladstone? It was all a blind, wasn’t it? The whole business of Bismarck – probably even our bogus trips to Berlin on government money – all a lure to get us into this trap.’
Radcliffe ignored him and studied Hackett. ‘So, Dr Hackett, are you impressed with the way we took you down? I’m fly to the dodge, you see.’
More East End slang, Luis noticed.
‘This is the way we’ve learned to tackle you Waltzers. Hit you with overwhelming force before you’ve got time to think about it, before you’ve time to slip away to whichever corner of hell you godless creatures visit when you’re not here. And then, unconscious, bundle you up in a hole in the ground like this, where even you can’t Waltz out – how do you put it? – either widdershins or deiseal. Efficient, ain’t it? You won’t give us the lucky dodge again. We’ve been practising, you see.’
Hackett glared at him. ‘What the devil do you mean?’
And Burdon asked, more calmly, ‘Practising on whom?’
‘On more of your sort.’ Radcliffe began to pace, calm, thoughtful. ‘Here’s what you fellows need to understand. Your day is done, you and your flash tricks. You were always something of an indulgence of the old Prince, God rest him. But once he had gone it was clear that Her Majesty had always found you rather repulsive. “More shadows than men,” she said of you.
‘Meanwhile I and many of my colleagues have always been suspicious of the power you wield, and the notion that it is only through your own good will that we can have any surety that you will not turn your powers against your own government. Why, every one of you when he’s had the chance has used his talent to enrich himself, has he not? You, Burdon, with your phantom gold mine, and you needn’t think we haven’t unravelled the truth about that. You, Valienté, with your absurd act as the Great Elusivo.’
‘What, are you a critic now? I got good notices in my time. Why, once in the Observer—’
‘Even you, Hackett! Pious and pompous as you are now, you weren’t so as a younger man, were you? I’ve a file on you as thick as my arm. No, you’re too dangerous to be allowed to run around uncontrolled, d’ye see? And then there’s the whiff of—’ He sought the right word. ‘The whiff of the unnatural about you. We’re British, by God, a manly race. And we don’t want your shifty, slippery sort pollutin’ the blood, no matter how useful you may occasionally be – and, I’ll grant you, you have been. Well, we’ve decided to bring you in – beginning with you three, among the first to present yourselves here all those years ago – what colossal arrogance you showed then! And now the first to be taken down.’
But not the last, Luis realized in a sudden panic, not the last. Now he feared for his family, for Ella and Robert.
Radcliffe said, ‘And believe me, you’ll never see daylight again. As you can see, we have learned how to deal with your kind.’
‘By practising,’ Burdon said. ‘You told us that. Answer my question, then: on whom?’
‘On whomever we could find. We’ve had the scientists working on it, chaps at the Royal Society, devising a programme of testing. Anybody we suspected might have your sort of faculty – the soldier who mysteriously dodged the bullets copped by everybody else in battle, the particularly prolific thief, the particularly persistent jail-breaker – that sort. And then we tested them to see if they could Waltz, or not.’
Hackett looked appalled. ‘How, man?’
‘By stressing them. Wall a man up in some sarcophagus. Set him in front of a firing squad. Chuck him in a cage and sink it in the Thames; if he can skip out he’ll do so, you see. Mostly it fails – and, no, we didn’t kill ’em all, but it’s no waste if we had. One in a thousand, or less, showed signs of what you can do. And once they’ve stepped out you might think they’d be away scot free and beyond our reach, but many of ’em didn’t even know they had the capability before being forced to use it – they had always just escaped unconsciously – and then almost all of ’em came right back again, and straight into the arms of my bonny lads in their red coats. Once we had ’em, it was down into a basement under the Royal Society for all of them. Very systematic people, these scientists. Very methodical. Although, if there’s something in the brain that enables this Waltzing business, well, they ain’t found it yet.’
‘You’re talking about vivisection,’ Hackett said. ‘You monster.’
Radcliffe bridled at that, and leaned over him. ‘You’re the monster, man! Not me! D’ye not even see that clearly?’ He straightened up and resumed his pacing. ‘What we have learned is how rare this ability of yours is. After all, the threat of violent death has been a common occurrence during human history; if Waltzing was any more prevalent you’d think we’d have noticed by now.
‘Anyhow the government, as expressed through the rather discreet agency for which I work, has come to the decision that for the likes of you, rare isn’t enough: extinct would be preferable. We’re considering how to persuade friendly governments to come over to that way of thinking, and be done with you once and for all. Certainly once Britain is cleansed we’ll be going out into the colonies with a similar programme.’ He came to Luis, and looked him in the eyes, the mouth, as if inspecting a prize horse. ‘We’ll be merciful. No scragging for you, which is all you deserve.’