James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

After a moment Hasbro said, “I’ve often found, sir, that grief and regret are much like the loaves and the fishes, although in a contrary sense, if you will. Those two humors reproduce themselves, sewing discord in the heart and mind.”

“You’re in the right of it there,” St. Ives said.

“A well turned out pasty, sir, is worth a great deal more than an entire hamper of either.”

St. Ives found himself smiling, and took the pasty from Hasbro, who, he knew, would carry on in this persuasive manner until he had his way. He bit into it, and was moderately happy with his decision.

“Look aloft!” he shouted, nearly flinging the pasty away into the brush in his excitement. Far overhead to the east, perhaps over the Thames itself, flew an airship, an immensely long cylindrical balloon, pointed on either end. St. Ives snatched the brass telescope from the open luggage behind him and brought it into focus. There was no gondola beneath, but rather a row of four swing-like seats hanging from netting draped over the entire ship. Four tiny figures sat in the seats, each of them rowing the air with long sweeps, although they seemed to make no headway at all. It appeared as if they were dwindling, in fact, making rapid leeway on a current of wind blowing out of the south, so that they were bound for Scotland although the nose was pointed toward Sheerness. He watched until the air vessel was a mere insect moving in the blue sky, a very beautiful insect indeed, although utterly inefficient. He longed to be aloft in a craft of his own, and would be soon enough. He imagined landing in the field at the farm, Alice and Cleo coming out onto the veranda and running toward them. He and Eddie stepping out onto the grass.

“They appear to lack motive power,” Hasbro said.

“Indeed they do. One cannot swim through the air, although fools keep trying. I pray they can bring it down somewhere safely. They’re badly in need of William Keeble and his miniaturized electric motor, if they want a truly dirigible balloon. I’ll just help myself to another of these pasties.”

He was swallowing the first mouthful when two men stepped out onto the road a good distance ahead, as if to block their progress.

“Hold up!” someone shouted in that same moment, in the voice of a sea captain out-hollering a storm. It was neither of the two ahead. St. Ives looked over his shoulder and discovered that two more men sat on horseback behind them. He recognized them immediately, even at a distance – Fred and George from the Queen’s Rest. It occurred to him that they must have set out soon after he and Hasbro had departed. George waved cheerfully. For a moment St. Ives was confounded, and he very nearly waved a greeting back. Then he saw that Fred held a pistol, exhibiting it now for St. Ives’s edification.

The muddle cleared and he understood: all had been a lie. They had been practiced upon, led down the garden path. He swiveled around and looked at the two men in the road ahead. One, a big man with long, unkempt hair, held a truncheon, and the other secreted his hand in his coat, which might or might not mean something. Their own pistols were in the portmanteau behind them. He added stupidity to the day’s list of his manifold criminal offenses, noting that the big man must be close to seven feet tall – twenty stone if he weighed an ounce, his black hair hanging past his shoulders, his beard equally lengthy. Hasbro drove the wagon forward very slowly, the distance of their enemies shortening both before and behind, and no escape on either side, unless they meant to burrow into the shrubbery.

“It’s Fred and George, from the Queen’s Rest,” St. Ives said. “We’ve been duped. The pistols?”

“On top the rest,” Hasbro told him. “I took the liberty of loading them. I suggest that I endeavor to run the two ahead down, sir, so perhaps you’ll attend to our friends along behind.”

“Say the word,” St. Ives said, as they moved into the shade of an oak that arched over the road like an immense umbrella.

“Now,” Hasbro said, whipping up the horse at the same moment. St. Ives twisted on the seat, the lurching of the wagon nearly throwing him off, and clutched at the portmanteau, which he tore open, reaching inside and closing his hand upon the pistols, one of which he thrust into Hasbro’s outstretched hand. There was a heavy thud on the bed of the wagon, and he was shocked to see a man crouching upon it, having dropped from a tree limb, his hat tied under his chin. The man was grinning at him, a knife in his hand, but trying to keep his balance on the moving wagon. St. Ives flung himself forward, onto the wagon bed, lunging straight at the man, who stepped forward, although off-balance with surprise.

St. Ives felt the wagon slow, Hasbro perhaps not keen on pitching him off into the gorse. Clutching the grip of his pistol with both hands, St. Ives fired a shot straight past the knife wielder’s head in the direction of the two men on horseback, who, seeing him take hasty aim, reined in and yanked their horses aside from the path. Without pause he struck the man before him hard on the side of the face with his weighted fist, simultaneously blocking a knife thrust with his forearm. The man grunted audibly and slammed down onto his back, although he saved himself from tumbling off the rear of the wagon and held onto the knife. He was endeavoring to heave himself to a sitting position even as St. Ives grabbed the wagon’s side for balance and hit him again on his open, leering mouth with the butt of the pistol, blood spraying, the force of the blow pitching the man over backward, knife flying, his upper body disappearing from sight behind the wagon, although he held on tenaciously with his knees to the low railing at the back of the bed.

St. Ives saw that George and Fred were riding up hard behind them again, Fred holding his own pistol aloft, trying to move in close in order to make the shot count, although George, not apparently a skilled horseman, was encumbering him. St. Ives grasped his assailant’s foot, levered him upward, and dumped him onto the road, where he struck his head and sprawled out, bouncing once before being run down by George’s horse, which stumbled and fell forward onto its knees, pitching George off into the scrub along the road. Fred came along gamely, his pistol held aloft, but turned shy and veered away down a side path when St. Ives found his balance again, leveled his own pistol at him, and blew the hat off his head.

There was a general shouting ahead of them now, and St. Ives heard a gunshot. He threw his arms in front of his face in the moment that the bullet blew a splinter of wood out of the edge of the wagon bed, the splinter tearing through his coat and shirtsleeve, taking flesh with it, although he scarcely felt the wound. He knelt on the wagon bed, seeing that his current assailant stood just ahead in the road with his legs spread, aiming his smoking pistol carefully. The big man stood farther on, the truncheon held in his grasp, his arm upraised. Clearly he meant to strike the horse if the wagon came on. The forward momentum would double the force of the blow. That would surely end it.

“Rein up!” St. Ives shouted at Hasbro, and he aimed the pistol at the giant, but then swung his arm slightly and shot the man with the gun, who slammed over backward onto the road, a lucky shot if ever there was one.

The wagon bounced over the body of the fallen man as St Ives turned back and fired a shot at Fred, who had ridden close upon them again, and who was half hidden in the rising dust. Fred instantly pulled back on the reins, clutching his shoulder, his pistol sailing away. The wagon bounced again, the body flopping down in a heap, and St. Ives turned to see the giant rushing upon them, the truncheon upraised, straight up the center of the road. His face was set with a blind rage, and he was roaring, his mouth wide.