James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“It’s a gift you’ve got, Mother,” Kraken told her in a voice that was moderately stern.

“I’d as soon return it sometimes, Bill. Little happiness it’s brought me. Many a mountain I’ve made out of a molehill.”

“You oughtn’t to be so low, is what I’m a-saying. Keep your spirits up. That’s your only man to ward off the humdudgeon. Clap on to the recollection that you gave them reptiles a thunderous great dose yesterday, and by God we’ll do for them again today, maybe for good and all.”

“You’re right, of course. But I’ll tell you plainly that I don’t like staying behind. There’s nought for me to do in Cliffe, but to stand and wait. It makes a body feeble to contemplate it.”

“With them corns a-flaring up, Mother, you mayn’t come along. You’ll be a cripple before we’re halfway there. I don’t mean to take the easy route, neither. It’ll be hard going – in and out, and me back with the boy before sundown, and all of it quick and quiet as a weasel. Then we can find the Professor and take stock of the dreams.”

“Tossing the corns in my face doesn’t mollify me, Bill. The long and short of it is that I’m to darn stockings while you’re putting things right.”

The thought of waiting uselessly made her think of the Professor’s poor wife. She searched her mind for the name – Alice, Bill had said. She didn’t know the woman, had never seen her that she was aware of, but, again according to Bill, she was a great beauty inside and out. The black door had opened before Alice, too, and had swallowed her only son. If it were in her power, Mother Laswell decided, she would get a message out to Alice St. Ives, bearing some small scrap of hopeful news. She could perhaps do nothing about the waiting, but she might about the wondering.

“I’m at loose ends, Bill, that’s the gist of it. You’re certain, then, about the marsh? I’ll stay behind, but I must know your thinking. You came into London in my time of need, without asking my leave to do it, and I tell you plainly that I mean to do the same for you if my second mind tells me I must.”

“I’m main certain of the marsh, as certain as a man can be without calling down fate for a braggart. I knew where they’d taken the boy as soon as Mabel Morningstar mentioned the place of shadows when she was a-feeling of the tooth. Shade House, they call it. I been there myself, when I was down and out and living hard, tending the flocks for Mr. Spode, and I didn’t like it none at all. It’s always been a place for low types – cutthroats, people who don’t mean to be found. Last I heard it was abandoned, but like as not the Doctor has laid claim to it. I aim to get in and out quick-like, through the tunnels.”

“Tunnels, Bill?” Mother Laswell asked. “In a marsh?”

“Smugglers’ tunnels is what they are, cut through the chalk and the water drained off. They’re still in use – and so they aren’t safe. There’s an entrance below the old rectory, hid in the scrub growing up in the limekilns. It’ll lead you to the back edge of Egypt Bay if you follow it, always taking the right-hand fork. Ships would come up the river, and run up onto the mud, accidental-on-purpose, and toss the cargo overside into the boats that come out of the channels along the bank. If they was twigged, they’d claim to be lightening the load to float her off. Smugglers would haul the goods across the bay and into the tunnels; then out they’d come in a dozen places, and no one the wiser. That’s how they did it in the old days, and I can tell you that the old days ain’t gone away. Mind what I say, Mother. I know the marsh, and I know the turning that leads in beneath Shade House itself afore you fetch up to the bay. With luck it’ll be empty, the tunnel will, and I’ll bring the boy back with me. You don’t need to come a-looking. If it’s in me to do it, I’ll bring home your Edward’s skull along of the rest.”

She looked at him for a moment, having come to a decision some distance back, when they were leaving London behind them. “My Edward is gone,” she said. “I’ve accepted that now, Bill. He was gone these many years ago. It was me that kept him alive. The thing that my husband made, that’s not Edward, nor ever has been. When we buried it, I told myself that he was at rest. I told the Professor as much. You heard it yourself. I saw my own heart and mind, and I knew what was false in it. And yet I came into London in secret, because I couldn’t let it alone.”

“You come into London for the good of us all,” Kraken told her.

“So I told myself. Listen to me, Bill. You’re not to risk yourself trying to recover it. I forbid it.”

“The dreams, Mother…”

“The Professor’s boy is our aim now, Bill. As for the dreams, we’ll leave Heaven and Hell to sort themselves out.”

The train slowed and stopped, and they stepped out onto the platform, Kraken carrying the satchel that Mabel Morningstar had lent Mother Laswell. At the end of the platform, beyond the stairs to the street, stood a shop in the old style, the long front window set with horizontal shutters, the top tilting upward to make for a bit of shade, and the bottom tilting downward to make a counter. There were pipes and tobacco and magazines for sale in the shop. A small sign advertised a lending library. Mother Laswell’s spirits raised a notch at the sight of it. She dearly loved a lending library, which was a variety of Aladdin’s cave, although, like so many things, it was often better in anticipation than in fact. If she were at loose ends today, she thought, she at least might have something to read.

“I’ll just look into this shop, Bill,” she said. “They’ve books to lend.” She walked toward it, her eyes on the dim interior, which even from several feet away was redolent with the pleasant smell of cut tobacco. A man stood within, measuring something on a scale. Behind him, on the rear wall were several shelves of books – a tolerably small Aladdin’s cave, to be sure.

“I’d like to borrow a book,” she said to the man, who was small and vaguely amphibious. He wore heavy spectacles through which he blinked at her. “A novel,” she said. “Something in the Gothic line.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a man sitting on a nearby bench stand up and walk away, which was nothing remarkable in itself. And yet there was something about him that drew her attention. She was half certain that she knew him, but from where? Or did he know her ? Yes , she thought; that was it. She had felt the very instant of recognition, like a random thought passing through her mind. He was utterly nondescript – medium height, neither fat nor thin, dark clothing slightly down at heel. He crossed the road now, looking straight ahead so that she could see nothing more of him than his back, and at the first opportunity he turned up between two buildings and disappeared. Perhaps she was wrong, she thought now. In any event, he was gone.

She brought her mind back to the shopkeeper, who was clearly waiting for her to attend to business, and after a brief exchange she settled for a dilapidated copy of Mrs. Gaskell’s Lois the Witch . “Can you recommend an inn?” she asked him.

“Yes, ma’am. The Chalk Horse, just across the street. A coaching inn, ma’am, on the Strood road, which runs along behind. Comfortable, they tell me, and I can vouch for the food and drink.”

She thanked him, rejoined Bill Kraken, and the two of them waited out a chaise and a slow-moving wagon before crossing the road to the inn, a pleasant place built of whitewashed stone. There was a deeply carved wooden sign out front depicting a white horse against a dark hillside, and on the broad porch stood monstrous great dahlias in pots, bright red and pink and yellow, the size of dinner plates. She took a room on the second floor, and after Kraken saw to food and drink and a basin of hot water to soak her feet, she sent him down again for foolscap, quill, and ink. When all was done, Kraken put on his cap and stepped to the door.