Honesty nodded and got to work.
Burton put his left hand to the back of his head. His scalp was ridged with scars—gained last year when he’d narrowly missed being killed by an explosion—and had now acquired an egg-sized bump.
Pain was beginning to overtake him. His legs were shaking.
The snow all around was gouged with broad furrows, cutting through to the bright red beneath. Leicester Square—flesh-coloured and mutilated—appeared to reflect his own injuries, as if he and the world he perceived were a single, wounded being.
He shivered, fumbled for—and failed to locate—a cigar, and said, “I want to find my topper and swordstick, Algy. We should then make our way to Battersea Power Station. We need to consult with Brunel and Babbage. They know all there is to know about mechanical men.”
Swinburne gave a small and reluctant grunt of agreement.
Burton’s fingers, still absently in search of a cheroot, encountered a solid object and withdrew it from his coat pocket. It was a small, ornately labelled bottle. Saltzmann’s Tincture. Incredulous, he whispered, “Good Lord! It didn’t break.”
“I wish it had,” Swinburne grumbled. “Put it away.”
“My head is thumping. It’ll help.”
“So will Sadhvi Raghavendra. We’ll send a lad to summon her to the station. She’ll treat your wounds better than that stuff can.”
Burton hesitated, nodded, and slipped the bottle back into his pocket.
“Humph!” Trounce muttered. “I’d better get to work. There’s a crowd that requires dispersing. I’ll post a guard outside the restaurant. See you later. Keep me informed, will you?”
He stamped away.
Limping slightly, Burton started off toward the Cannibals. They hurried forward to meet him.
“God in Heaven!” Monckton Milnes exclaimed. “Are you all right? I’ve never seen such a scrap! How can you even walk?”
“I hurt all over,” Burton said. “But I’ll survive.”
“He wants to gulp down a bottle of Saltzmann’s,” Swinburne revealed. “So obviously his brain has been bruised, despite its small size and the thick layers that surround it.”
For an instant, Monckton Milnes locked eyes with the king’s agent. Both men knew that Swinburne operated in a very peculiar manner, often experiencing and expressing the opposite of what would be expected from any normal individual. When the poet felt pain, he considered it pleasure. When he was deeply concerned, he most often articulated it as humour or sarcasm.
“Lay off the confounded mixture, Richard,” Monckton Milnes advised. “I’ve told you before.”
“Enough! Enough!” Burton protested. “Will you both please give it a rest? I shan’t touch the stuff, I give you my word.”
Monckton Milnes responded with a brusque nod. He stepped aside as the other Cannibals crowded forward to voice their consternation and amazement. Burton endured their attentions. He was aware that Monckton Milnes and Swinburne were both watching and assessing him, and it irritated him that they considered themselves better judges of his condition than he. At the same time, he was touched, and cursed himself for a fool that he harboured such an idiotic spark of resentment.
Too much self-sufficiency. Why be so contained? Few men have such loyal friends. Swinburne, Monckton Milnes, Bendyshe, Bradlaugh—all of them. They are not attached to you. They are integral.
He felt the void that marked Isabel’s absence.
Bendyshe was hollering, “Bartolini will never forgive you, old thing! You went straight through his bloomin’ window! The restaurant is wrecked! Why aren’t you dead?”
Burton thought, I might as well be.
Swinburne grabbed at a hand strap as the landau in which he and Burton were riding bounced over the kerb while rounding a corner. He coughed and muttered, “Drat the thing!” He was referring to the carriage’s side window, which was jammed half open, allowing smoke from the vehicle’s steam engine to coil in to assault their eyes and noses.
“Spring Heeled Jack!” he exclaimed. “How is it possible? I thought Edward Oxford was dead.”
Burton, grimacing with the pain caused by the jolt, had finally located a Manila cheroot in his waistcoat pocket, and now shakily held a lucifer to it. He set about adding to the abrasive atmosphere. Blood was congealing on his chin and neck, and his tattered left sleeve was wet with it.
He gathered his thoughts for a moment then said, “Let’s consider what we already know. Oxford was from the future. In the year 2202—”
“Inconceivably distant!”
“—he created a wearable machine, comprised of a one-piece skintight suit with a flat disk on its chest, a black helmet that encased his head fully but for the face, a cloak, and boots to which powerfully sprung stilts were attached. These latter were necessary to propel him into the air, so that nothing touched him, there to be thrown backward or forward through history by the microscopic components of his device.”
“I can see why you’ve delayed your translating of A Thousand Nights and a Night,” Swinburne said. “You must find its tales positively pedestrian.” He produced a flask from inside his coat and unscrewed its top.
Burton grunted his agreement. “Oxford leaped back to the year 1840 to observe his ancestor’s failed attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria. He intervened, inadvertently caused the assassination to succeed, and accidentally killed his forebear. His suit, badly damaged, then threw him farther back through time to 1837.”
Swinburne took a swig, smacked his lips, and passed the flask to Burton. “He changed history and wiped himself out of the future. What an idiot.”
“Indeed,” Burton agreed. He took a drink and returned the vessel to the poet, wincing as brandy burned the cuts where the insides of his cheeks had been mashed against his teeth. He sucked at his cigar. His ribs creaked. They were badly bruised. Through billowing smoke, he went on, “Oxford had caused time to bifurcate. There was now the original history and, running parallel to it, a new one in which he was trapped. His prolonged exposure to the past caused him to rapidly lose his mind. He embarked upon a desperate hunt for the woman his ancestor would have married.”
“Meaning to impregnate her in order to reestablish the chain of descent that would eventually lead to his own birth,” Swinburne said. He giggled and hiccupped. “Only a lunatic could conceive of such a scheme! Please forgive the rotten pun.”
Burton waited for the landau to pass a loudly clanking pantechnicon. When he could again be heard, he said, “He was repeatedly spotted by the public, who regarded him as something of a bogeyman and named him Spring Heeled Jack. Meanwhile, the man who gave him shelter relayed to Isambard Kingdom Brunel some of Oxford’s hints about the machineries of 2202. Employing the materials and knowledge of our age, the great engineer acted upon this information, and, over the course of two decades, the British Empire quickly filled with his diverse and ever more eccentric inventions.”
Swinburne gestured at the interior of the landau. “Behold! A horseless carriage! The great age of steam!”
The vehicle’s motor produced a horrible grinding noise followed by a thunderous belch. They heard their driver swearing at it.
“Yes, but our history is not the one we’re discussing. For us, now, it is 1860. Where Oxford was trapped, the next significant event takes place a year hence, when a version of me—who, to avoid confusion, we shall refer to by the name he’ll later adopt, Abdu El Yezdi—will learn the truth about Oxford. He’ll also discover that a cabal of scientists intends to seize the time suit, repair it, and use it to create multiple histories in which to experiment with evolution and eugenic manipulation. To prevent this, and hoping to forestall any further interference with the flow of time, he’ll break Oxford’s neck and will take possession of the suit.”