"Still hanging around with the wrong crowd!" observed Burton.
There came a sudden flash and Oliphant's body swung back into view, burning brightly; he had spontaneously combusted.
Burton watched as the blazing corpse vanished into the pall again, then he located the crossbow, picked it up, and went in search of Honesty and Trounce.
Visibility was severely hampered by the black dust that moved through the air and clung to his goggles, but it seemed to him that the battle had thinned out, with fewer men fighting and a great many lying dead or unconscious on the grass.
The mist parted and a massive swan emerged from it. Flying extremely low, it shot past him, the long leather straps attached to its harness trailing behind to a box kite in which a redheaded passenger was yelling: "The cottage!"
It was Swinburne-and his message was clear!
Burton started running down the field.
On the well-swept high street of the village, Old Carter the Lamp-lighter was attempting to restrain his neighbours.
"It ain't nothing to concern us!" he announced. "I happen to know that it's a police matter and they'll not brook interference from common folk!"
"Who're you calling common?" shouted a middle-aged man. "Old Ford is our village! It's bad enough we had Spring Heeled Jack back in '38-now we have to put up with giant swans, wolf-things, and all manner of flying contraptions! It ain't natural, I tell you!"
"Aye!" came a cry of agreement. "There's a bloody curse on this village!"
"There ain't no such thing as curses!" objected Old Carter the Lamplighter.
"Then how do you explain all that malarkey?" shouted another, pointing at the battle in the field across the small valley. "I tell you, it's the old mansion in Waterford that's the cause of it! There's been an ill wind blowing through Old Ford ever since the Mad Marquess took up residence there back in '37!"
"It's true!" called a voice from the back of the crowd. "He may be dead but he's not forgotten! His ghost haunts that place!"
"Darkening Towers was built by a mad 'un and it's had mad 'uns in it ever since!" a woman screamed. "We should have burned it to the ground years ago!"
"And what about this Mr. Belljar blighter? Has anyone actually seen him?"
"No!" they roared.
"Who is he? Why did he come here?"
"Look! Look! The flying ship is leaving! It's heading toward Waterford!"
"It's going to Darkening Towers, I'll warrant!"
"Let's follow! Let's find out who this Belljar is, once and for all!"
"Aye, and if it's him what brought this madness upon us, let's string him up!"
"Bravo!"
"Aye! "
"Hang him!"
"Stop, you fools!" yelled Old Carter the Lamp-lighter, but no one listened, and soon, brandishing makeshift weapons and burning torches, the mob was descending toward Bearbinder Lane, which, if they followed it to the right, would eventually lead to the main thoroughfare to Waterford.
"What the heck!" Old Carter the Lamp-lighter sighed. "If you can't beat em, join 'em!"
He hurried after his neighbours.
Down the hill they marched until, at the bottom, with the Alsop field sloping up before them, they came to the cottage.
Four constables, who'd been guarding the premises since the fight commenced, came forward.
"Folks! You should return to your homes at once!" said one. "It's not safe here!"
"Aye!" cried a villager. "And it'll never be safe until we're rid of Darkening Towers!"
"It's true!" shouted another. "We're going to burn the accursed place to the ground!"
The constable shook his head. "You'll be doing no such thing!"
Suddenly one of the women screamed and pointed at the field. They turned and saw the dirty cloud parting as a dreadful apparition came hopping toward them. The tall, gangling creature was familiar to them all; it had been associated with Old Ford ever since it attacked Jane Alsop twenty-three years ago on the very spot where they were standing. It was Spring Heeled Jack!
With cries of terror, the villagers scattered as the grotesque bogeyman ploughed into them, swinging a shovel left and right while shrieking, "Get away! Get away!"
The constables were mown down by his frenzied attack. The villagers raced away. The cottage was left unprotected.
The stilt-man threw the shovel aside and vaulted over the gate, stalked up the pathway, and slammed his shoulder into the front door. It swung open. He bent and peered into the hallway.
A young woman was standing in it. She held a pistol levelled at his head.
"Tell me, girl-do you have a birthmark on your chest?" he demanded.
"I'm not Alicia Pipkiss," she replied coolly. "She's been taken to a place of safety. You'll never find her."
He expelled a sulphuric hiss of fury and for a second Sister Raghavendra thought he was going to pounce upon her, but then a voice rang out: "Edward John Oxford!"
Spring Heeled Jack whirled around.
Sir Richard Francis Burton was standing at the gate.
He held a strange weapon in his hand.
He pulled the trigger.
A bolt crackled through the air and thudded into the time suit's control unit.
Oxford screamed and convulsed as lines of energy writhed up and down his body.
He tottered, nearly fell, crouched, leaped, and vanished.
"Bismillah! Where the hell has he gone now?" muttered Burton.
He heard his name called from the battlefield. It was Detective Inspector Trounce, who was waving his bowler above his head to attract the explorer's attention. He strained to hear what the man was shouting.
"He's here! He's here! The Technologists have him!"
When Spring Heeled Jack leaped out of 1861 with the energised crossbow bolt embedded in his suit's control unit, he had no clear idea of a destination. His mind had been pushed to the brink of unconsciousness by an electrical discharge. He jumped without considering a landing place and, for a split second, or possibly an eternity, he floated beyond time.
He fragmented.
All the elements that had made Edward Oxford the man he was separated from one another and drifted apart. Decisions taken were unmade and became choices; successes and failures reverted to opportunities and challenges; characteristics disengaged and withdrew to become influences.
He lost cohesion until nothing of him remained except potential.
Yet, set apart from this strange process, something observed and wailed and grieved as it watched itself disintegrate into ever smaller components.
It was that same something that clung despairingly to one final possibility; that issued a last command to the ebbing time suit; that hoped against all evidence to the contrary that another attempt to dissuade the original Edward Oxford from assassinating Queen Victoria might-just mightwork, and wipe this crazy version of history out of existence.
Spring Heeled Jack popped into existence above Green Dragon Alley on February 27, 1838, hit the ground, fell, and dragged himself into an angle in the narrow passageway.
He pulled the suit's cloak over his head, seeking darkness and a moment to remember, to gather his thoughts.
Who was he?
Where was he?
Why was he here?
What must he do?
There was a name: Edward Oxford-the Original.