Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (48 page)

Spring Heeled Jack rolled to all fours and hauled himself upright. He held his arm and winced. He looked down the sloping field and forgot the pain.

It was all so familiar.

There were the lights of Old Ford; there was Bearbinder Lane; and there was the cottage where Jane Alsop lived, and where he would now find her daughter, Alicia Pipkiss.

He had no reason to think that she was the girl with the rainbow birthmark, but all of a sudden that's exactly what he did think.

He smiled.

Something came spinning through the air, hit his stilts, and wrapped itself around them.

He toppled sideways and fell onto his injured arm. Another scream was torn from his throat.

What the-?

He looked down and saw that he'd been enmeshed in bolas-throwing weapons consisting of a cord with weights at either end.

Men rushed out of the trees. A lot of men. They threw nets over him.

Colourful birds exploded into the air.

In Old Ford, Constable Krishnamurthy saw the flock of parakeets rising upward. They wheeled around then flew westward. Firing up his rotorchair, he ascended on a column of boiling vapour and steered the craft toward the field. Some distance behind him, by the ruined farmhouse, six more rotorchairs rose.

To the north, west, and south of the field, Burton, Trounce, and Honesty also saw the birds. They ordered their men forward.

Not far behind Trounce's team, Laurence Oliphant turned to the twentythree red-robed figures and snapped: “Go! Attack! Feast!”

They threw back their hoods and howled.

Men piled onto Spring Heeled Jack, holding his arms away from his chest. They hauled him upright. He struggled wildly and became entangled in netting. One punched him hard in the stomach. He doubled over and vomited.

“Sorry, old thing. Had to immobilise you, what!” said the aggressor.

“Blast it,” said another. “We have company.”

The Rakes, gathered around the time traveller, suddenly found themselves surrounded by men who were charging out from the very same trees they'd just vacated. The Libertine extremists formed a circle around their prisoner, faced outward, and drew their rapiers from their canes.

The advancing forces pulled goggles down from their foreheads to cover their eyes, reached into their jackets, and withdrew truncheons and pistols.

“I am Detective Inspector Trounce of Scotland Yard,” roared a voice. “I command you, in the name of His Majesty King Albert, to lay down your weapons and give yourselves up!”

“Not likely!” came a reply.

The Rakes chuckled and brandished their swords.

Seven rotorchairs began to circle the field. Bright lamps blazed beneath them, suspended on ropes, illuminating the scene, sending long black shadows angling across it.

“We need reinforcements,” Oxford heard one of his captors mutter.

“Don't worry. They're coming,” answered another.

A parakeet landed on the threshold of the veranda doors at Darkening Towers.

“Message for Henry bog-breath Beresford!” it squawked into the ballroom.

Another fluttered down beside it: “Message for the limp-wristed Marquess of Waterford!”

And another: “Message for the highly hideous Henry Beresford!”

And more:

“Message for Henry bastard-of-bastards Beresford!”

“Message for Henry tweak-nibbler Beresford!”

“Message for the mange-ridden marquess!”

“Message for barmy flesh-puller Beresford!”

“Message for the Marquess of buttock-wobbling Waterford!”

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Henry de La Poer Beresford, 3rd Marquess of Waterford, as a colourful tidal wave of parakeets swept into the room to insult him.

“Message begins,” they chorused deafeningly. “He's arrived, you bollockgroper. Message ends.”

The glass-headed orangutan blundered through them, waving its long arms, sending up a fluttering mass of colour. He lurched out into the grounds and bawled: “Get the steam up! Get the steam up! He's here! Spring Heeled Jack is here!”

The gigantic rotorship trembled as its crankshafts started turning, spinning the rotors. It vented steam from its exhausts. Men ran between it and the smaller vessel, which was landed nearby.

Beresford tumbled up the ramp, passing a man whose head was half brass: John Speke, who, with the key over his left ear slowly revolving, raced to the smaller craft.

The Mad Marquess entered the mighty Technologist ship and the ramp withdrew behind him.

The doors clanged shut.

With a powerful roar, the colossal platform lifted into the air.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, his eyes covered by leather-bound goggles, his cane thrust beneath his belt, plunged into the amassed Rakes and laid about him with his rapier. The blade clicked and clacked against those of his enemies, and, though he was vastly outnumbered, his skill was such that he disarmed or disabled man after man without sustaining even a scratch himself.

Beside and behind him, police constables pushed forward, swiping swordsticks aside with their truncheons, lashing out with fists and boots.

It occurred to the king's agent that the last time he'd been in a position such as this, it had ended in disaster.

“Not this time!” he grunted, leaning into the manchette and watching with satisfaction as his opponent flinched, cried out, dropped his sword, and clutched at his pierced wrist.

Soon, the crush of men became too tight for swordplay and his left fist became his primary weapon, smashing into jaws, noses, and foreheads. He grinned savagely, thankful to have at last reached the final reckoning with his enemies, glorying in the battle.

He laughed when he caught sight of Detective Inspector Honesty. The slightly built man appeared to be boxing under the Marquess of Queensberry rules, as had been demonstrated for the first time last June by the heavyweight pugilist Jem Mace, who'd won the Championship of England against Sam Hurst. Honesty's back was ramrod straight; he was dancing and dodging on his toes; his left fist was defending his chin, while his right was jabbing again and again into the face of his infuriated adversary. He appeared to be making no headway until, quite without warning, he swerved, stepped in, and whipped his left fist up in a devastating uppercut. His opponent's feet left the ground and the man flopped flat on his back, out for the count. “Bravo!” cheered Burton.

A pistol shot detonated somewhere behind him.

“No, man!” came Trounce's cry. “Take them alive!”

A terrible scream echoed across the field.

Something howled triumphantly.

“Werewolves!” yelled another voice.

More pistol shots sounded.

Something burst into flames.

A fist clouted the side of Burton's head. He reeled, recovered, and hit back, his knuckles crunching into his enemy's mouth, breaking teeth. The man went down and Burton stumbled over him, falling onto all fours.

“Burton! This is your doing!” hissed a voice.

He looked up, straight into the insane eyes of Spring Heeled Jack. With his captors distracted, the stilt-walker had managed to untangle himself from the bolas and netting and now crouched, ready to leap away.

“I told you not to interfere-but I'll stop you, Burton!” snarled the bizarre figure. “I'll stop you!”

Burton lunged at him and went sprawling as Edward Oxford launched himself high into the air. The king's agent rolled onto his back just in time to see the stilt-walker vanish. His view was suddenly blocked as a loup-garou came swooping down upon him. Reflexively, he swung his rapier up, catching the beast in the throat. Its heavy weight slid down the blade and thumped on top of him. Talons ripped down his upper right arm, slicing through the material and the skin beneath.

The creature went limp. Fierce heat began to emanate from it.

Burton quickly heaved it aside, stood up, and stepped back.

The werewolf exploded into flames.

Men were fighting all around him, the battle now spreading across the field.

Loups-garous slunk through the crowd, pouncing and tearing with their teeth and claws.

He saw, in the near distance, Laurence Oliphant easing a sword out of a man's stomach.

The air throbbed.

A huge flying platform slid over the tops of the trees, a wall of steam bubbling out beneath it, enveloping the battleground.

Doors opened in its sides and ropes were thrown out.

Men came sliding down into the swirling vapour.

The Technologists had arrived.

We're outnumbered! thought Burton.

Edward Oxford landed in Green Park on Sunday September 8, 1861. It was eleven thirty and the night was bitterly cold and misty.

He was near the trees at the top of the slope. Next to the path below, he could see a tall monument on the spot where Queen Victoria had been assassinated.

Ducking into the gloom of the trees, he stood and considered. Where would he find Sir Richard Francis Burton?

He couldn't recall where the man lived nor the location of the Royal Geographical Society. There was, however, the Cannibal Club above Bartoloni's Italian restaurant in Leicester Square. He remembered reading about that place and the eccentrics it attracted. He knew that Burton went there regularly.

Not long ago, the prospect of visiting Leicester Square without the protection of augmented reality would have filled him with dread. Now, though, he was so numbed by the preposterous environment in which he was trapped that he felt almost immune to it. An illusion. A dream. It was nothing more than that. He wasn't even sure why he had come here, and hardly cared. He clung to the only things that made sense to him, despite their patent absurdity: he had to get to the Pipkiss girl; there was only one night on which to do it; and the famous explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton had arranged an ambush to stop him.

Oxford didn't realise that opposing forces were battling over him. His broken mind latched on to just one thing: in order to have supper with his wife on February 15 in the year 2202, he had to stop Burton from interfering on September 30 in the year 1861.

Surely that wouldn't be too difficult?

He closed his eyes and swayed for a moment.

No! he thought. Don't let go! Get it done! Get it done now!

He jumped and landed five hours later in Panton Street behind Leicester Square. At that time of night it was empty but, afraid of being spotted, he immediately sprang up onto the roof of one of the buildings facing the street, and from there to a higher one. He leaped from building to building until he eventually found a chimney stack overlooking Bartoloni's, against which he could sit. Before settling, though, he jumped high and landed next to the stack the following night, just as Big Ben chimed midnight.

It was a long, cold wait and he didn't see Burton.

At three in the morning he gave up and moved ahead to the next night, September 10.

Again, nothing.

The next night the club members gathered, had a good time, and departed at two in the morning.

Burton wasn't among them.

Spring Heeled Jack tried the next evening, and the next, and kept going, waiting hour upon hour until exhaustion overwhelmed him and he slept, slumped against the chimney. He awoke at dawn, swore at himself, and moved through time again.

In the early hours of Tuesday the seventeenth, he finally caught sight of his man.

Sir Richard Francis Burton stumbled out of Bartoloni's at one o'clock in the morning.

He was quite plainly drunk.

As he staggered along, Spring Heeled Jack followed, hopping from rooftop to rooftop, his eyes fixed on the man below.

He trailed his quarry through the streets and alleys, and wondered whether the explorer had any destination in mind, for he appeared to be wandering aimlessly.

Oxford took a great leap over the canyon of Charing Cross Road, landed on a sloping roof, slid down it, got a grip, and sprang to the next building.

He kept moving across the city like a bizarre grasshopper.

Something big and white flapped overhead. It was an enormous swan, dragging a box kite behind it. A man looked down at him from the canvas carriage and yelled: “What the dickens is that?”

Spring Heeled Jack ignored him, dismissing the swan and its passenger as an illusion, for such things didn't exist in the Victorian Age, and followed his prey into a seedy section of the city until, eventually, Burton entered a long, lonely alley.

“This will do!” whispered the stilt-walker to himself.

He raced ahead, soared over warehouses, and, after waiting for another of those crazily designed penny-farthings to pass by, he dropped into the thoroughfare below.

A huge metal lobsterlike thing rounded a corner and clanked toward him. Multiple arms beneath it flashed this way and that, picking litter off the street. He watched it as it lurched by, amazed by the sight, and suddenly wondered if somehow he was on another planet. As it passed the mouth of the alleyway down which Burton was approaching, the contraption sounded a siren. The eerie ululation echoed into the distance and was then drowned by a terrific hiss as steam poured from the back of the mechanism and billowed across the cobbles.

Spring Heeled Jack lurched through the cloud and entered the alley.

He emerged from the steam and faced his enemy.

Sir Richard Francis Burton stopped and looked up at him, then stumbled backward and pressed himself against the side of the passage.

“Burton!” said the time traveller, stalking toward the famous Victorian. “Richard Francis bloody Burton!”

He jumped at the man and hit him, sending him spinning across to the opposite wall.

“I told you once to stay out of it!” he spat. “You didn't listen!”

He grabbed the explorer by the hair and glared into his face.

“I'll not tell you again! Leave me alone!”

“W-what?” gasped Burton.

“Just stay out of it! The affair is none of your damned business!”

“What affair?”

Oxford snarled, “Don't play the innocent! I don't want to kill you. But I swear to you, if you don't keep your nose out of it, I'll break your fucking neck!”

“I have no idea what you're talking about!” cried Burton.