James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“He would do that?” Alice asked. “Poison children?”

“It would give him great pleasure,” St. Ives told her. “And he has no love for you, not after the hard way you treated him at Eastbourne.”

“My only regret is that we didn’t shoot the man and cast his body from the cliff,” Alice said in a dead-even voice.

Kraken gaped at Alice, as if not quite sure what to make of this pronouncement.

“Sorry to be so bloody minded, Bill,” Alice told him, “but I’ve had my fill of this Dr. Narbondo. Hasbro has put up some lemonade, if you’d like a glass. And you can meet Eddie and Cleo, our children. You’ll be Uncle William from this night on.”

“I’d like that above all things, but would you come out to Hereafter, sir?” Kraken asked St. Ives. “Would you hear her out? Quick-like?”

“ Now , Bill? There’s perhaps no great hurry. The Doctor will have gone on his way, surely. No murderer tarries in the neighborhood of the crime, not a murderer as conspicuous as Narbondo at any rate.”

“Meaning no disrespect, sir, but what you seen in the barn tells otherwise.”

“Does it Bill?”

“Aye, it does. You know the Doctor better than any man alive, sir, better than Mother Laswell, despite that she raised him from a baby, and …”

“ Raised him from a baby? ” St. Ives was dumbfounded once again.

“Yes, sir. She was his own natural mother. She give him his Christian name, which he threw onto the rubbish heap along with his soul. He’s been gone these thirty years, but now he’s come back, and he’s stolen the Aylesford Skull, the one object that he must not have, and Mother Laswell fears that it’s the end of all things holy if he puts it to use. Come along and speak with her, sir. I’ve got no living right to ask anything of you, and I wouldn’t ask it, neither. But for the sake of us all, I must.”

Amule greeted them as they walked up the lamp-lit path to the rambling stone farmhouse occupied by Mother Laswell and her people.

“This is old Ned Ludd,” Kraken said to St. Ives, who scratched the mule’s forehead. The creature showed its enormous teeth in a wide grin.

“Named after the leader of the infamous Luddites, I take it,” St. Ives said, thinking of Mother Laswell’s grudge against industry.

“That he is. He’s the guardian of the estate these last twenty years. Mother Laswell has taught him to count, and he knows his letters up to Q.”

“He’s a prodigy,” said St. Ives.

“She trained up a talking chicken, too, although no one who didn’t see it would credit it. One of the help cut its head off accidental like, more’s the pity, and it was eaten with red wine and bacon, in the French manner.”

Other buildings, many of their windows shining with the light of candles or lamps, stood nearby, and past the corner of one of them St. Ives could see the framed glass of an illuminated palm house in which a man nearly as old as poor Shorter worked over a bench of potted plants. Abruptly it seemed to St. Ives like weeks rather than days since he had returned from London, and Aylesford seemed positively like a holiday to him. One heard of lives changing on the instant, but he had always associated the change with tragedy – sudden blindness or a house burning – but this newfound homeliness that had settled upon him was a change of another sort, an unexpected boon.

Hereafter Farm appeared to be a wonder of productivity, with gardens laid out and fruit trees aplenty. Violin music emanated from one of the nearby cottages, played by someone with considerable talent. St. Ives was dumbfounded, although he couldn’t quite say what he had expected to find aside from some caliber of lunacy, which might possibly coexist with its more Edenic virtues.

Kraken led him up onto the broad veranda and into the house, where they were observed by several children peeking out from behind a half-open door, beyond which St. Ives could see shelves of books. The children seemed to be dressed as gipsies, and they studied St. Ives as if he were an exotic species. There was the smell in the air of something baking, and St. Ives was reminded that he hadn’t yet eaten supper. Kraken moved on into a vast, dimly lit sitting room, where a seven-sided table stood in the center of a densely patterned carpet, also seven-sided. If ever a table had levitational powers, thought St. Ives, this one clearly did. Atop it lay a Japanese magic mirror, its handle encased in woven bamboo. The ornamented backside faced upward, so that the several cryptic designs were visible. St. Ives was fond of the mysterious mirrors, as were his children, and in fact had several examples at home, with the oxy-hydrogen lamp set up in his study so that the patterns cast by the mirrors could be marveled at whenever the fit took them. He didn’t count himself among the many who believed that the projections from such mirrors had mystical powers, however, and he very much hoped that he would not be called upon to argue the point tonight.

Around the table stood the requisite seven chairs, the legs carved into the semblance of dragons. The walls, painted a deep blue, were dotted with white stars. Overhead hung an ornate, seven-sided chandelier that must have held a hundred candles, of which twenty or so were lit. Save the chairs and table, there was no other furniture. It occurred to St. Ives that the room would have seen some curious things over the years.

A door opened opposite the one they’d entered, and a woman, no doubt Mother Laswell, swept through it, shutting the door behind her and stepping into the light. She was large and imposing, with a mass of red hair that belied her age, which St. Ives took to be somewhat past sixty. She wore a voluminous, indistinct garment that must have been cobbled together from several bolts of oriental silk. In her hand she held a jewel-studded lorgnette through which she regarded St. Ives, her head tilted back. She had a theatrical look about her, but a good face, St. Ives thought – one that had seen its share of troubles.

“This is the Professor, Mother Laswell,” Kraken said to her. “Him what I told you about. Professor Langdon St. Ives, the great genius.”

“Indeed,” she said, moving spryly into the room. She took his hand, pressed it, and dropped it again. “I’m very pleased that you’ve come, Professor. What I have to say will take time in the telling, and I believe that you have family at home, so I’ll get straight to the heart of the matter. William has informed me that you are familiar with the man who styles himself Dr. Ignacio Narbondo.”

“Yes,” St. Ives said. “I’m not certain that anyone is familiar with him, not in so many words. I’m not convinced that he entirely knows himself. But I’ve had…dealings with him over the years.”

“ Dealings ,” she said, as if she didn’t half like the word. “I’d warrant they turned out badly. William told you that he was once my son?”

“I was astonished to hear it.”

“Not many people have heard it, sir. I have no occasion to mention it. I myself put him out of my heart and mind thirty years ago, and in those years I haven’t spoken of him save to one person, Mary Eastman, whom he murdered in the churchyard early this morning, although I assure you that there will be no evidence that he committed the crime. I pray that you won’t judge me too harshly, Professor, or think me an unnatural mother. I loved him when he was a child, but by the time he was five years old he had ceased to be a child, and within a very few years he was scarcely human. A human devil, perhaps, and I use the term literally. Will you hear what I have to say?”