The Detective and the Devil (38 page)

‘You look pensive, husband,’ Abigail asked, and he noticed her hand was holding his, and squeezing gently.

‘Doubtless I do,’ he replied. ‘Where would you have us sail to, wife?’

He felt the lump of gold in his pocket. The lump Mina had shown him in the little wooden case. The lump he had put in his own pocket while Edgar Burroughs told his tale.

Enough to buy a ship. Probably.

Abigail looked at the horizon as her husband had done.

‘West?’ she suggested.

She almost didn’t make it. She had prepared this little voyage for years, but Horton had nearly discovered her in the days after the explosion and the death of her son.
But then the little barque had appeared off Prosperous Bay and had made the agreed signal, and the plans she had put in place to escape as soon as her son had been taken from her moved smoothly
into effect.

She and Fernando burned the silk and the balloon basket – not without a twinge of sadness on her part. She would never fly up to the clouds now, but flight of a different kind was
required. The smoke from the fire was still visible as they rowed the boat from Prosperous Bay and out to the barque.

They sailed away. Francesco died after only three days, and it had been terrible to see. The further from St Helena they voyaged, the more he aged, his skin drying and his body shrivelling as if
he had been placed inside a gigantic oven, as if every bit of moisture inside him was being burned away.

She tried feeding him and giving him water, but it was no good. He ate and drank what he could, but still he continued to wither. Whatever had kept him alive for so long was disappearing. The
minute St Helena slipped below the horizon behind him, his death began. He began to mutter in his own language, words that she did not understand which sounded ragged and bitter, and when his death
came it was like a wind had become a breeze which had finally stilled, leaving only silence.

She cried, not just for Fernando but for herself, for this baleful inheritance, for the knowledge locked inside her head which was both a curse and a lifeline. She wrapped his body in some silk
left over from her balloon. She weighed him down with some of the gold she had brought with her. It seemed a small price to pay for his companionship. She pushed him over the side. The dozen men
who crewed the boat muttered beneath their breaths and crossed themselves and felt relieved that they no longer carried an ogre.

The barque sailed east towards Africa, despite the prevailing winds. She sailed for a week, until the master spied land and the barque anchored off a beautiful beach. Mina paid the master and
his crew in gold, and they piled provisions into the boat which she had brought from Prosperous Bay, and she rowed up to the beach alone.

The land here was flat and unpromising, but she had heard there was gold in the land beyond. She had enough to keep her alive until she found it.

As in my previous books,
The Detective and the Devil
contains a mix of fact and fiction. Those who are interested in what is real and what is not should read the
following.

The cyanide method of gold extraction is now widely used in the gold mining industry, but it was not invented until 1887 by John Stewart MacArthur, Robert Forrest and William Forrest.

The alchemist J
[ā]
bir ibn Hayy
[ā]
n did write about gold, as he wrote about a great many things, but he did not know about cyanide.

The history of the discovery of cyanide as described in the book is based on true events.

There is not and never has been, to my knowledge, a gold mine on St Helena. Other than that, the history of the island’s discovery and its ownership in the story is drawn from fact. The
story of Fernando Lopez’s exile on the island is also true – up to the point at which it isn’t.

Edmond Halley did visit St Helena as described within for the purposes of making a star chart and to observe the transit of Mercury (which creates its own little alchemical echo, Mercury being
‘quicksilver’, a substance alchemists believed had arcane properties).

He also drew a chart of lines of magnetic variation based on his own observations. The line of zero variation does indeed pass close to St Helena before heading north-west and crossing Florida,
a fact which readers of my first book
The English Monster
may find resonant.

John Dee did live in a house at Mortlake, and his library was ransacked, though I give the ransacking mob an intent they cannot have had.

I also have taken the liberty of having Dee’s house still standing in 1815, a fact I have been unable to confirm and which, I am sure, must be said to be entirely made up.

I also have no evidence that the Royal Society did indeed think Dee had found the source of eternal life, nor do I think the Society has any particular interest in that subject (though I’m
sure if they did, they would keep it to themselves).

Charles Lamb did work as a clerk for the East India Company, and was known to take drink to settle his stammer. His sister did suffer the mental disturbances I describe herein, and her poor
mother was a victim of them.

My thanks to Sophia Tobin, Goldsmiths librarian and novelist, and to Rupert Baker at the Royal Society Library. I should also like to take this opportunity to particularly thank my editor at
Simon & Schuster, Jo Dickinson, and my agent, Sam Copeland. This book is dedicated to my brothers at a particular time of crisis and care, and to my wife Louise, who can read me like a
book.