James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

Mabel Morningstar felt very nearly human again. She had awakened famished – the pain in her forehead quite disappeared – and had gone downstairs to the tavern for a bowl of barley soup and some bread and cheese, which had set her up remarkably. Over dinner her mind and heart were caught up in considerations of her friend’s sad state, the warring emotions and the maelstrom into which she was determined to fling herself. Mabel could think of nothing she could do to help; indeed, she scarcely understood Harriet Laswell’s motivations or intentions. Rarely had she sensed a mind so terribly unsure of itself and yet so utterly compelled to act.

It was late when she returned to her rooms, carrying the uneaten portion of cheese and bread for the next morning’s breakfast. Having slept away most of the day and evening, bed was out of the question, so she poured herself a glass of cognac, which, she considered, she heartily deserved, and sat down in her reading chair in the corner of the room, where there was the best light. Northanger Abbey lay on the table beside the chair – not her favorite of Miss Austen’s novels, but by no means to be despised. When she tried to read it, however, she found that she couldn’t attend to it.

She studied the ruined table map again, astonished anew at the long, straight tear in the vellum, recalling the terrible moment when her senses had been overpowered and she had lost consciousness. She mouthed a silent prayer for her friend: that Harriet come out of this with her wits about her and without regret, or at least no more regret than she could tolerate.

She heard footfalls on the stairs now – a man, from the sound of the heavy tread. She snatched up the paper knife without a thought, fear surging through her as the memory of that staring, slowly approaching face imposed itself upon her mind. At the same time she was astonished that the memory had returned with such potency. The footfalls stopped outside the door, and there was a long silence in which she composed herself, the fear having passed away as quickly as it had arrived. It came to her that this was a complete stranger, a customer, perhaps. She set down the paper knife, feeling slightly foolish. There was a hesitant knock, a shuffling of feet.

She arose and opened the door, bracing it with the toe of her shoe. A tall, lanky, haggard-looking man stood on the landing, twisting his cap in his hands. He had evidently taken two steps back from the door, so as not to impose himself upon her.

“I’m Bill Kraken, ma’am,” he said. “You don’t know the name, but I’m a friend of Mother Laswell, and I’ve come up to London to see her safe back home to Aylesford. I come here straightaway on the chance that she called upon you, you being her friend.”

There was something about his demeanor that appealed to Mabel – a natural humility, certainly, and some sort of goodness that shone in his admittedly odd features. “She did indeed,” Mabel said. “Will you come in?” She stood aside and gestured.

He entered hesitantly, as if it were beyond his station to do so. “I’m main desperate to find her,” Kraken said. “She left Hereafter Farm this morning in a thundercloud. When I found out I most despaired of finding her once I got here, London being the behemoth of old. But it come to me to search for her logbook before I left, which is what she wrote in before supper. It took me most of an hour to find it. I come across your name in it, ma’am, and a mention of the Ship Tavern, what stands below on the street and what I knew well enough of old, and here I am, a-searching for lost things, like your sign says, and I mean to find her come what may.”

“I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Kraken,” she said, “and I’m happy to hear that she has a stalwart friend. Take a chair at the table and eat a morsel. You’ve had a long day of it.”

He stood staring, still twisting his cap, which she took from him and laid on the sideboard before gesturing at a wooden chair by the dining table. “Right there, sir. You can take five minutes to collect yourself and eat some of this cheese and bread. I can offer you a glass of this capital French brandy or a bottle of ale, or both.”

“Ale would go down most grateful, ma’am,” Kraken said.

She set the plate in front of him and fetched the ale from her small kitchen. “Eat that, sir,” she said. “Don’t stand on ceremony. I’ll tell you straightaway that Mother’s gone into Spitalfields to find…”

“I know who she means to find and what she means to do to him,” he said, talking from behind his hand as he chewed his food. “I mean to stop her, although I’m late in coming. It ain’t right that she kill her own son, and no matter the reason. It would do for her, do you see? For good and all. I’ll gladly take up the burden and…”

“Kill her son?”

“Yes, ma’am. She took her little flintlock pistol out of the case. She’ll use it, too, if I don’t find her, or else she’ll come to harm trying. Spitalfields, you say?” He rose from the chair, draining half the bottle of ale at a gulp and apparently determined to be on his way, dinner or no.

She picked up the vellum map and handed it to him. “It’s just here,” she said, pointing at the endpoint of the tear. “Do you know the area? It’s a Hell on Earth, the rookery is, so mind yourself.” She picked up a napkin and loaded the bread and cheese into it, tying it up into a bundle.

“When I was a pea-pod man I knew it well enough, although it’s nowhere for…” He shook his head darkly. “Ah, Christ,” he said. “I thank you for your kindness ma’am, but I’d best be on my way. If she should return, you’d do her a service were you to lock her in.”

With that Kraken snatched his hat from atop the sideboard, put it on, and took the bread and cheese in both hands. Mabel opened the door, and he loped away down the stairs clutching the torn map under his arm, his footfalls quickly fading. She stood for a minute looking down after him. In the many years she had known Mother Laswell, she had thought that both her sons were dead, but apparently she hadn’t known her friend well at all. The more a secret torments us , she thought, the more we keep it near, as if it were a precious stone and not a fragment of Hell .

She closed the door and sat back down, taking another swallow of brandy, which she relished – a small good thing at a time like this. The clock on the sideboard chimed midnight, but sleep was even farther off than it had been fifteen minutes ago. She settled into her chair again, opened her book, and took up where she’d left off.

Finn Conrad hunched across the rooftop, keeping out of sight as best he could. If he were seen he’d be taken for a thief, and although he could evade pursuit, he didn’t want to be forced to do so. He contemplated a return to Angel Alley – and why not? – no one knew his face. He might have a second chance to find Eddie, the dawn being hours away yet. Finn knew that there had been desperate fighting in the courtyard, with several shots Fred. If it had been the Professor and Hasbro, it might have changed everything. And yet if things had changed, he needed to know how. The fighting also meant that different lots of them were looking out for Eddie, if you counted the game old woman who had fired the pistol at Narbondo before following him out onto the bridge. She hadn’t any idea of shooting, but he honored her for the attempt. He also wondered who she was. In any event, she couldn’t help Eddie any more than she could help herself.

Crouching in the shadow of a chimney pot, he looked down at the alley and courtyard just west of Angel Alley, very nearly its twin, the same dozens of layabouts lounging in the yard, gin served out of a keg, a trussed up pig just then being hauled down from a spit over an open fire, the process watched intently by a knot of men, the smoke blowing away on the breeze. There was a curious smell on the air – not the roasting pig – rising apparently from directly below him – the smell of rotten eggs mixed with the odor of pitch. Finn had smelled it before during his days in the circus. It was a memorable smell, nothing else quite like it, not in his experience, anyway. What he remembered was something called “flaming syllabub” by the man who concocted it in order to cast liquid fire on the Witch of Winter in an open field where Duffy’s Circus was set up in Yorkshire. The man’s face was burnt off when the siphon tube blew to pieces. They had buried the corpse, its head and upper body charred, no longer recognizably human, behind a hedgerow, along with the syllabub and the pressurized device for spraying it. It was quite the most awful thing that Finn had seen in his life, and the dreams had taken months to pass away.