Eric Brown: Rites of Passage

She rang a bell and, when the maid appeared, instructed her to have the butler show Burns out. He bowed and bade her Majesty farewell.

“I have every faith in you, my mysterious Mr Burns. God speed.”

As he stepped from the palace, instantly accosted by the icy chill that had gripped the capital for weeks, he tightened his muffler against the wind and trod circumspectly across the iced cobbles. A minute later he was aboard a Hansom and heading for Newgate, staring out upon a twilight quickened by the winter fog. As the cab rattled along the Strand, busy with broughams and pedestrians, Burns considered the Queen’s careful words. A visitor … a singular invasion …

But why, he asked himself, had the word come from the lips of the Queen, and not from the usual source, a Sentinel?

Little realising the leading role he was about to play in the events of the next few days, Tommy Newton swaddled his chapped feet in rags, bound them tight with cord he’d fingered from a bale of linen aboard the H.M.S. Fortitude the day before, and jumped from the brandy barrel in which he had made his home for the past year.

He lifted the metal grille from the wall, poked his head through to ensure the alley was deserted, then scrambled out and replaced the grille. He set off at a clip down the sloping alley towards the river. It was odd, but today he felt drawn to the Wapping stretch of the river — it was as if a voice were summoning him there, promising him a pretty haul.

Life, at present, was good for Tommy. He had a warm, dry home to call his own, wedged as the barrel was next to the furnace wall of the smelting factory. He’d even managed to garner a few valuable possessions: three blankets, a bundle of candles and matches, and a spoon he’d filched from the unattended galley of a Russian steamer. And to think, it was less than a year since he’d arrived in London and fallen in with Ratty and Miller who’d introduced him to the dubious pleasures of mudlarking.

Things had been difficult all winter, but a month ago his luck had turned. He and Ratty had hauled a ship’s binnacle from the mud near Woolwich, and a bent chandler down Bermondsey way had given them three shillings apiece for it.

Three shillings — and just as winter was beginning to bite. He’d been tempted to buy himself a right feast on the first day, but sense had prevailed — prompted by the gnawing memory of hunger pangs last winter — and he’d rationed his spending to a penny or two a day. Even so he’d eaten well, able to afford a loaf that lasted three days, some old jerky from a butcher in Bow, and a pint of pale ale as a treat.

All in all, he thought as he emerged from between the crowded buildings and skidded to a halt on the icy cobbles beside the river, it was a good life.

The tide was out, revealing a flat expanse of black, jellied mud. The far bank was invisible behind a grey fog. A few small boats, moored to the walls, tilted this way and that, fixed in the river-bed. So far as he could see, there was no one else scavenging for the occasional treasure. No doubt the bitter cold was keeping the shiftless abed, but the cold was no deterrent to Tommy. A Bradford tyke, he’d braved winters up north cold enough to freeze the balls off a tom cat.

There was no sign of Ratty or Miller, which was all the better for Tommy. He could get an hour’s searching in before his friends, bleary-eyed and the worse for the bad navy rum they’d palmed the day before, turned up for work.

He still had sixpence of the three shillings left, which if he were careful would last him a week, but after that…? He smiled to himself. Something would turn up. It always did. If you work hard, you’re rewarded . Which is what his old Dad had always told him, before he was crushed to death in the sandstone quarry where he’d worked as a labourer.

Tommy wondered if it was lady luck that was calling him today, urging him to scour a stretch of river he’d left alone for a good week.

He climbed down the rusting iron ladder stapled into the quayside. The mud greeted his swaddled feet with enthusiasm, sucking him in up to his shins. He tucked his sack into the belt of his trousers and took a step. The mud didn’t want to release him, but the secret was not to pull too quickly: lift your foot slowly and evenly and it’ll come out still shod. Pull too fast and you’ll leave your boot behind, if you were lucky enough to possess boots.

Taking great high, slow steps, Tommy moved away from the wall, past the canted prow of an old coal steamer, and headed towards a section of the river-bed beyond.

The mud gripped his legs and froze him to the bone, and with his next step his foot came down on something hard and flat, perhaps an inch or two below the surface.

He crouched and, with a cupped hand, scraped away the mud from whatever it was beneath his feet, and his heart quickened at the sight. God in a galleon, but there was a great sheet of copper or brass beneath the muddy balls that were his swaddled feet.

The mud oozed back over the metal, stealing its lustre, and for a second Tommy wondered if he’d dreamed the sight of the dully glowing surface.

Instead of using his hands, he slid his feet across the metal, wiping a temporary swathe through the mud. More golden metal was revealed, and Tommy was astounded by its extent. Lord, but it went on for yards!

The trouble was, how would he be able to shift something this size all by himself?

Greed battled with his innate good nature — Ratty and Miller had taken him under their wings, after all. He’d go fetch them, tell them what he’d found, and they’d work out how to shift the brass and then share the booty.

He felt a curious sensation of warmth creep up his legs, and again that sense of being summoned filled his head.

He was in the process of lifting a foot and turning, gripped by sudden panic, when the gold surface of the metal gave way beneath him and he plummeted with a frightened yelp.

He saw a square patch of foggy daylight above him and he realised that he was in some kind of container, looking up. But the strangest thing was that, although he’d come to a sudden halt, he had no sensation of having landed . He blinked and looked about him and moaned aloud, for he was by some miraculous process suspended in mid-air, spread-eagled, in what appeared to be a… a what? A railway carriage, the cabin of a sunken ship?

Though it was like no railway carriage or ship’s cabin he had ever beheld. All the surfaces were black, and curved in an odd way, and flashing lights like orderly candles dispelled the darkness.

Above his head the hatch closed silently, and oddly the brightness in the container increased, as if to compensate for the sudden absence of daylight.

Only then did Tommy, bobbing and struggling in mid-air, make out the creature studying him from across the sable container.

He yelled with fear, and increased his struggles — to no avail, as whatever was restraining him would not let him go.

“Who… who are you? What do you want?”

He stared at the little man, who must have been a hundred years old. He was naked, and white, and his tallow-coloured skin seemed to be wrapped too tightly around his protuberant bones. The creature’s head was massive — almost as long as its torso — and possessed two great staring eyes as big as Tommy’s fists.

This abomination could only be a Spaniard, and the vessel a sunken galleon, and surely the Spaniard was dead by the look of him?

But then the Spaniard blinked, and Tommy noticed a great green vein upon the creature’s head pulsing in rhythm with its undoubtedly living heartbeat. And he noticed how the being’s thin body was imprisoned within spars and struts, as if but for this containment he might fall in a heap on the floor.