Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (46 page)

She nodded.

“I have to ask you a rather personal question. I hope you don't mind.”

She swallowed and shook her head.

“Alicia, do you happen to have a birthmark? Something shaped like a rainbow?”

Alicia Pipkiss cleared her throat and put down the basket of flowers.

She looked up into Burton's eyes.

“Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

Back in the cottage in Old Ford, Mrs. Jane Pipkiss nee Alsop, onetime victim of Spring Heeled Jack, handed her guest a cup of tea.

Sister Sadhvi Raghavendra accepted it with a smile and placed it on the table next to her chair.

She sat and waited, the tea at her side, a pistol in her hand.

The hundred and eleven men of Letty Green village met on the cricket field at lunchtime to discuss the strange state of the sky. It was filled with streamers of white vapour that were coming in from the south, veering to the west over the little settlement, and dropping groundward to the east.

“It's comets, that's what it is!” claimed one.

“You mean meteors!” corrected another. “And they don't turn in the sky like what these 'uns are doing!”

“Maybe these 'uns are a new sort!”

“Maybe you ain't got no brain!”

The discussion went back and forth for half an hour until it was suggested that they head out of the village to see where the trails of vapour ended. This plan was immediately approved and, arming themselves with shovels and garden forks, broom handles and walking sticks, and the occasional blunderbuss and flintlock, the mob swarmed out of Letty Green, climbed the hill to the west, and stopped dead on its brow. The field below them was filled with rotorchairs.

“What in heaven's name is going on here?” muttered the villager who'd somehow emerged as the leader of the crowd.

He led them down the lane until they came to a stile that gave access to the field. A man, standing beside it, smiled at them.

“Good day, gentlemen,” he said. “I'm Constable Krishnamurthy of the Metropolitan Police-and I have just become a recruiting officer!”

Old Carter the Lamp-lighter had never seen so many strangers in the village. More particularly, he'd never seen so many well-dressed strangers. And even more particularly, he'd never seen so many well-dressed strangers carrying paper bags in one hand, canes in the other, and with small rucksacks upon their backs.

It occurred to him that the road needed sweeping again.

Five minutes later he nodded his head at a smart, paper-bag-carrying stranger and said, “Good day!”

The man nodded haughtily, flourished his cane, and walked on.

Fifteen minutes later another one appeared.

Old Carter the Lamp-lighter nodded at him and said, “Good day! Fine weather, hey?”

The man looked him up and down, muttered “G'day!” and pushed past.

When the next appeared, Old Carter the Lamp-lighter stood in his path, grinned broadly, raised his cap, and said breezily, “How do you do, sir! Welcome to Old Ford! You've picked a fine day for a stroll! What's in the bag?”

The man stopped and looked at him, taken aback. “I say!” he exclaimed.

“I do too!” agreed Old Carter the Lamp-lighter. “I say it's a lovely day to go for a walk with a paper bag under your arm! What's in it? A picnic, perhaps?”

“Why, yes, that's it-a picnic! What!” exclaimed the stranger, and made to move away.

“Up your arse!” said the bag.

The two men looked at it.

“Sandwiches?” suggested Old Carter the Lamp-lighter.

“Parakeet,” mumbled the stranger, sheepishly.

“Ah, yes. Training it, perhaps?”

“Yes, that's right. Training. Seeing how fast it can fly back to London, what!”

“Gas-belcher!” announced the bag.

“Is it a convention?” asked Old Carter the Lamp-lighter.

“A con-con--a what?”

“A convention, old bean. A gathering of the Oft-Spotted Parakeet Trainers of Old London Town? I say, you're not the chaps who teach 'em how to swear, are you?”

“Blasted impertinence!” exploded the stranger. “Let me past!”

“I do apologise!” said Old Carter the Lamp-lighter, standing aside. “Incidentally, the fishing's not good in that direction. No water, you see.”

“The fishing? What in blue blazes are you on about now?”

“There's a length of netting hanging out of your rucksack.”

The stranger strode away, swinging his cane, his countenance flushed with anger.

“Have a splendid day!” called Old Carter the Lamp-lighter after him.

“Goat-fiddler!” called the bag.

Sneaking along from the untended land to the north, a poacher approached the field opposite the Alsop cottage and quietly slipped into the thick border of trees that surrounded it. It was a good field for rabbits but there'd been police outside the cottage these past few days and he'd been too nervous to check his traps. Were the coppers still there? He was going to have a look.

Treading softly, as was his habit, he moved furtively from bole to bole.

Suddenly, a feeling of unease gripped him.

He froze.

He was not alone.

He could sense a presence.

Moistening his lips with his tongue, he crouched, held his breath, and listened.

All he could hear was birdsong.

A lot of it.

Too much!

An absolute cacophony!

“Maggotous duffers! Cross-eyed poseurs! Scrubbers! Bounders! Dirty baggage! Dolts! Filthy blackguards! Decomposing scumbags! Poodlerubbers! Piss-heads!”

The poacher looked around him in bewilderment. What the hell? The trees seemed to have more birds in them than he'd ever known-and they were screaming insults!

“Bastards! Stink-brains! Stupid fungus-lickers! Lobotomised chumps! Tangle-tongued inbreds! Curs! Fish-faced idiots! Balloon-heads! Little shits! Witless pigstickers! Crap masters! Buffoons!”

His unease turned to superstitious dread.

The poacher was just about to turn and take to his heels when an uncomfortable feeling in his neck stopped him. He looked down and his stubbled chin bumped into a wet red blade that projected from his throat. He coughed blood onto it and watched as it slid back into his neck and out of sight.

“My apologies,” said a soft voice from behind.

The poacher died and slid to the loamy earth.

The man who'd killed him sheathed his swordstick. Like all his fellow Rakes, he was well dressed, carried a bagged birdcage in one hand, and had a rucksack on his back.

Little by little, the Rakes had occupied the shadows under the trees around the field and now there were hundreds of them.

By the time twilight was descending over the village, there were no more smart, bag-carrying, cane-brandishing strangers for Old Carter the Lamplighter to accost.

He'd swept the street until it was practically shining. Now he was settling into his armchair to enjoy a cup of tea and a hot buttered crumpet.

He placed the teacup on the arm of his chair, raised the crumpet to his open mouth, and stopped.

The cup was rattling in its saucer.

“What in the name of all that's holy is happening now?” he muttered, lowering the crumpet and standing up. He crossed to the window and looked out. There was nothing to see, but he could hear an odd thrumming.

Moving to the front door, he opened it just in time to see a plush leather armchair descend from the sky.

It landed across the street from his cottage, the spinning wings above it slowing down, the paradiddle of its motor becoming lazier, steam rolling away.

The noise stopped. The wings became still. The man in the seat pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, lit a pipe, and began to smoke.

Old Carter the Lamp-lighter sighed and stepped out of his house. He closed the front door, walked down the path, opened the gate, crossed the spotlessly clean street, stood next to the chair, and said, “Sangappa.”

The man looked up, and with his pipe stem clenched between his teeth mumbled, “Beg pardon?”

“Sangappa,” repeated Old Carter the Lamp-lighter. “It's the best leather softener money can buy. They send it over from India. Hard to find and a mite expensive but worth every penny. There's nothing to top it. Sangappa. It'd do that chair of yours a world of good, take my word for it.”

“I do,” said the man, raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes and directing them down the street.

Old Carter the Lamp-lighter ate his crumpet and chewed thoughtfully while he looked to where the lenses were pointing: at the high street's junction with Bearbinder Lane, the lower end of the village, beyond which fields and woods sloped up to the next hill.

“Bird-watching?” he asked, after a pause.

“Sort of.”

“Parakeets?”

The man lowered his glasses and looked at the villager. “Funny you should say that.”

“It's been a funny sort of day. Police, are you?”

“What makes you think so?”

“Your boots.”

“Ah. Oh dear.”

“Good for boots, too, that Sangappa is. They're in the woods.”

“The parakeets, you mean?”

“Yes. In cages, in bags, in the hands of men, in the woods.”

“How many? Men, that is.”

“An infestation, I should say. Is that one of 'em new clockwork lamps?”

He pointed to a cylindrical object resting in a coil of rope between the constable's police-issue boots.

“Yes, it is.”

“Do me out of job, that would, if it weren't for the fact that I'm twice retired.”

“Twice?”

“Yes. Good, is it? Bright?”

“Very bright indeed, Mr.-?”

“They call me Old Carter the Lamp-lighter, sir, on account of the fact that I used to be a lamp-lighter before I retired.”

“I thought that might be their reason.”

“Detective, are you?”

“No. Constable. What else are you retired from?”

“Soldiering. King's Royal Rifle Corps. They have nets too.”

“As well as rifles?”

“I mean the men in the woods, sir. Nets and parakeets.”

“I see. Well, thank you, Mr. Old Carter the Lamp-lighter. I'm Constable Krishnamurthy. Your information is most useful. Would you accept a little advice?”

“Only fair, sir. I advised you about Sangappa, after all.”

“You did. In return, my advice is this: stay indoors this evening!”

The policemen and Letty Green villagers left Pipers End as the sun was setting. They moved in a wide, silent arc toward Old Ford and the southern, western, and northern borders of the Alsop field.

Detective Inspector Thomas Honesty led the men to the south.

Detective Inspector William Trounce led the men to the west.

Sir Richard Francis Burton led the men to the north.

Meanwhile, opposite the lower eastern end of the field, in the isolated cottage, the Alsop family hunched around a table in the candlelit cellar and played games of whist, while above them, on a chair in the hallway, Sister Raghavendra sat facing the front door. She held a revolver in her lap and kept her finger on the trigger.

Farther to the east, beyond the village, near a derelict farmhouse, six rotorchairs landed. Their drivers sat and watched Old Ford. If they saw Constable Krishnamurthy's chair rise from it, they would fire up their engines and follow him.

The forces marshalled by Sir Richard Francis Burton were ready to pounce.

However, so were the forces gathered by the opposition.

Beneath the trees surrounding the Alsop field, the Rakes slouched insouciantly and endured the insults hurled at them by the caged birds.

In Darkening Towers, on the outskirts of Waterford, three miles to the west of Old Ford, the orangutan known as Mr. Belljar, who was actually Henry de La Poer Beresford, the Mad Marquess, impatiently paced up and down the huge empty ballroom, its chandelier blazing above him. The light would attract any parakeet that happened to have a message for him.

Outside, in the grounds, two rotorships sat. The larger, which dwarfed the other, had its engines idling. It contained Charles Darwin, the automaton Francis Galton, Nurse Florence Nightingale, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, John Hanning Speke, and a great many Technologists.

Along the shadow of a hedgerow between Waterford and Old Ford, an injured albino limped eastward. At his heels, following obediently, were twenty-three robed and hooded figures who walked with a peculiar lurching gait and who occasionally emitted slavering growls, like starving dogs.

Soon these forces would meet.

It was just a matter of time.

On September 28, 1861, Spring Heeled Jack bounced onto the brown, dying lawn outside the veranda doors of Darkening Towers. They stood open and the lights were on in the ballroom. He stalked in.

“Henry! Henry, where are you?”

“Stay there, Oxford!” commanded a brash, ugly voice. It came from behind a French screen in the corner of the big, decrepit room.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded the time traveller.

“It's me, Edward-Henry Beresford.”

“You sound different. Why are you hiding? Come out!”

Fire suddenly erupted from the control unit on his chest.

“The suit is almost dead!” he groaned, smothering it with his cloak. “Come out, damn you!”

“Listen to me, Oxford. This is important. I had a serious accident,” gurgled the thick voice. “I broke my neck. They had to perform extreme surgery to preserve my life. Prepare yourself. I'm not the man I used to be.”

An orangutan lumbered out from behind the screen. The top of its head was missing and had been replaced by a liquid-filled bell jar in which a brain floated.

Edward Oxford started to laugh. “You've got to be fucking kidding me!” he gasped.

“It's temporary, I hope,” said the orangutan.

Oxford doubled over, his laughter rising in pitch, echoing around the large chamber.

“This world-is-fuck-fucking-insane!” he screamed.

“Calm down, Edward! It's strange for me, too. I was beginning to think I'd dreamed you up. I can hardly believe you're real after all this time.”

The orangutan lurched toward the stilt-walker and reached out a hand to him.

Spring Heeled Jack staggered back. “Don't touch me, ape!” he cried.