“I don’t know what to think.”
Burton examined the crowd, his eyes roving from person to person. He noticed that one man, a thickset individual, was gazing not at the aurora borealis but at him. Burton stared back. The man’s eyes widened. He looked shocked. Then he turned and hurriedly moved away.
“I should get home, Mr. Pepperwick.”
“You’ll not have any trouble finding your way. It’s all topsy-turvy. The days are darkened by fog, the nights are lit up by whatever-it-is.”
“Indeed,” Burton agreed. “Good evening to you.” He touched the brim of his topper, strode off, and at the end of the street turned right into Charing Cross Road, heading toward Trafalgar Square.
For the first time since his return, Burton plunged into one of London’s throbbing arteries and was engulfed by the cacophony of the world’s most advanced city.
The middle of the thoroughfare was clogged with traffic. Horse-drawn wagons, carriages, and omnibuses vied with their steam-powered counterparts, the animals snorting and shying away from the hissing, growling, spluttering, iron-built competition. ‘Penny-farthing’ velocipedes clattered and bounced between the larger vehicles, their riders shouting and cursing through clacking teeth.
Burton espied one of the new steam spheres, which, he thought, was probably being condemned as a wasted expense by its owner due to it being jammed between—and completely immobilised by—a coal cart in front, a hearse to its left, a landau carriage on its right, and a massive pantechnicon behind. Amid the general hubbub, he could hear the sphere’s driver yelling, “Get out of my way, confound you! Get out of my blessed way!”
The sides of the road were lined with stalls and braziers offering jellied eels, pickled whelks, sheep’s trotters, penny pies, plum duff, meat puddings, baked potatoes, Chelsea buns, milk, tea, coffee, ale, mulled wine, second-hand clothes, old books, flowers, household goods, shoes, kitchenware, tools, and practically everything else a person could possibly eat, drink, or require for the home; as well as astrological charts, palm and tarot card readings, scrying by tea leaves, and prognostication by numbers, by bumps on the head, by marks on the tongue, and by the throw of a dice. The sing-song tones with which the traders called attention to their wares were almost, to Burton, the master linguist, an entirely unique dialect, barely comprehensible but very, very loud.
Between the stalls and the shops that bordered the street—many of which were currently open beyond their normal business hours—the pavements were packed with pedestrians who thought to take advantage of the peculiar light and the mild weather. There were couples and bachelors out strolling, ragamuffins playing and yelling and begging, dolly-mops touting for customers, jugglers juggling, singers warbling, musicians scraping and plucking, vagrants pleading and wheedling, and thieves as numerous and as persistent as African mosquitoes.
Burton shouldered through them, slapped away the pernicious fingers of pickpockets, and made painfully slow progress into Trafalgar Square and up St. Martin’s Lane, where he hoped to find Brundleweed’s jewellery shop open. Shortly before leaving for Africa, he’d ordered a diamond ring from old Brundleweed. The man was a craftsman of exceptional ability, and the explorer was looking forward to seeing the item in which he’d invested a considerable sum.
It was not to be. The shop was closed.
He strolled on into Cranbourn Street, followed it to Regent Circus, and traversed Regent Street up to the junction with Oxford Street.
Here, as fatigue gripped him and he realised he’d overestimated his strength, he made the decision to leave the main roads and cut diagonally through the Marylebone district to the top of Baker Street. It was more dangerous—he would have to pass through a poverty-stricken enclave of alleyways and crumbling tenements—but it would be quicker.
Keeping a firm hold of his swordstick, he entered a long side street. Shadows shifted around him as the aurora folded and glimmered overhead. A strange clicking began to echo from the walls to either side. He stopped and looked up. The clicking became a chopping. The chopping became a roar. A rotorchair skimmed over the rooftops and was gone, its noise rapidly receding, its trail of steam hanging motionless in the air, changing colour as it reflected the uncanny light.
Burton pushed on. He turned left. Right. Right again. Left. The maze of alleys narrowed around him. The stink of sewage haunted his nostrils. Mournful windows gaped from the sides of squalid houses. An inarticulate shout came from one of them. He heard a slap, a scream, a woman sobbing.
A man lurched from a dark doorway and blocked his path. He was coarse-featured, clad in canvas trousers and shirt with a brown waistcoat and a cloth cap. There were fire marks—red welts—on his face and thick forearms.
A stoker. Spends his days shovelling coal into a furnace.
Run. He’s dangerous.
I’m dangerous, too.
“Can I ’elp you, mate?” the man asked in a gravelly voice. “Maybe relieve you of wha’ever loose change is weighin’ down yer pockits?”
Burton looked at him.
The man backed away so suddenly that his heels struck the doorstep behind him and he sat down heavily.
“Sorry, fella,” he mumbled. “Mistook you fer somebody else, I did.”
The explorer snorted scornfully and moved on. His friend, Richard Monckton Milnes, had once told him he had the face of a demon. Sometimes, it was useful.
Burton continued through the labyrinth. A sense of déjà vu troubled him. Was it because the depths of London felt remarkably similar to the depths of Africa—tangled, perilous, toxic?
He came to a junction, turned left, and stumbled over a discarded crate. An exposed nail gouged into his trouser leg and ripped it. Burton spat an oath and kicked the crate away. A rat leaped from it and scuttled into a shadow.
Leaning against a lamppost, the explorer rubbed his eyes. Last night he’d been in the grip of a fever after a month-long illness and now he was walking home. Dolt!
He noticed a flier pasted to the post:
The Department of Guided Science.
A Force for Change. A Force for Good.
Developing the British Empire.
Bringing Civilisation to All.
“Whether you want it or not,” he added.
Pushing himself away, he continued along the alley and turned yet another corner—he wasn’t sure exactly where he was but he knew he was heading in the right general direction—and found himself at the end of a long, straight street bordered by high and featureless red-brick walls: the sides of warehouses. The far end opened onto what looked to be a main thoroughfare—Weymouth Street, he guessed. He could see the front of a shop, a butcher’s, but before he could read its sign, steam from a passing velocipede obscured the letters.
Burton walked on, carefully stepping over pools and rivulets of urine and filth.
A litter-crab came clanking into view near the shop, its eight thick mechanical legs thudding against the road surface, the twenty-four thin arms on its belly darting this way and that, skittering back and forth over the cobbles, snatching up rubbish and throwing it through the machine’s maw into the furnace within.
The machine creaked and rattled past the end of the alley and, as it did so, its siren wailed a warning. A few seconds later, it let out a deafening hiss as it ejected hot cleansing steam from the two downward-pointing funnels at its rear.
The automated cleaner vanished from sight as a tumultuous wall of white vapour boiled toward Burton. He stopped and took a few steps backward, leaned on his cane, and waited patiently for the cloud to disperse. It billowed toward him, extending hot coils which slowed and became still, hanging in the air as they cooled.