James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

The driver rang a bell at the rear door of the house, and Alice could see now that lamps burned inside. There was an answering ring, and they entered, Helen peering around, as though she had never been there before. The house felt utterly abandoned, as if in fact no one had occupied it for an age, and had perhaps just arrived. The furniture was Jacobean – massive and dark, with enormous, deeply carved sideboards and cupboards and straight-backed chairs with turned posts, the seats flat, no doubt monstrously uncomfortable to sit in. Heavy curtains covered the windows, but here and there the curtains were not quite closed, and still no light shone through the glass, as if the ground floor windows were perhaps shuttered. There was little dust and no sign of cobwebs, the house having been cleaned in anticipation of someone’s arrival perhaps, or it might have been maintained that way for two or three centuries. The Turkey carpets, equally old from the look of them, and very rich, were apparently unworn.

There was the sound of a door shutting behind her, and Alice realized that she and Eddie were alone in the room, perhaps in the house, the driver and Helen having gone out again. She heard the tinkle of bells and the sound of the coach leaving the courtyard.

But now there were footsteps somewhere above, and then a door closed followed by more footsteps, perhaps someone descending a stairway. She looked around for a weapon of any sort, but saw nothing useful, the room cluttered with the heavy furniture but almost empty of objects that might be thrown or brandished or broken to produce a cutting edge. She cursed her unthinking hurry when the boy Simonides had come for her. In her excitement she had lost her mind. A clasp knife might be worth a fortune now. Helen hadn’t thought to search her bag, but if she had she would have found nothing but a hairbrush and a dressing case…

Alice hurriedly opened her traveling bag now and removed the dressing case, groping in the bottom of it, her hand closing on a bit of felt in which were enclosed three decorative hatpins. She removed the longest of the three, which had a piece of ivory affixed to it, carved in the shape of an elephant – a solid weight that she could grip in her hand. She returned the dressing case to the bag, which she set on a chair just as a panel in the wall whispered open and Dr. Narbondo bent through it.

He smiled at her and bowed. “Welcome to my home,” he said heartily. “Your stay in London promises to be brief, but eventful. I believe I can guarantee that.”

“Upon my honor, I have only the faintest idea why this new cathedral was built on that piece of ground,” Harry Merton told Jack Owlesby. “But then it’s scarcely the sort of thing that would be brought to my attention.”

Jack, Tubby and Arthur Doyle stood in Merton’s workroom – not in the Thames-side shop where St. Ives and Hasbro had found him, but in Merton’s second shop, open by appointment only. Doyle had picked the lock on the alley door when Merton hadn’t responded to their persistent knocking. The long bench or table at which he worked was covered in heavy paper and littered with inkpots and canisters containing strong reductions of tea and coffee, squid and sea hare inks, green algae and emulsions of garden soil, and dozens of other strange dyes and tints. There were brushes and quill pens and pieces of sponge lying about – all in all the stock in trade of a very advanced forger. Whatever Merton had been working on he had hastily slipped into a drawer when they stepped into the shop.

“We suspect that the cathedral is built on hallowed ground of some sort,” Doyle said, “or perhaps cursed ground that needs to be sanctified or cleansed.”

“Quite possibly,” said Merton.

“Quite possibly which?” Tubby asked.

“It’s true that it’s built over an ancient pagan cemetery, the most ancient of those in London.”

“I believe that the cemetery in Smithfield is the most ancient of the four Roman cemeteries,” Doyle said. “It dates to the fourth century, unless I’m mistaken.”

“You’re correct, sir, as far as it goes. But there’s an even more ancient burial ground, to my certain knowledge, that lies below Carmelite Street, stretching beneath the Temple itself, which predates the Roman cemeteries. It was not only pagan but was pre-Christian and pre-Roman, lost and forgotten centuries before Joseph of Arimathea carried the Grail to Glastonbury. It’s very deeply situated, I’m told, part of a lost city, or so they say. Its existence is largely unknown except to the… cognoscenti.”

“And Harry Merton knows it!” said Tubby. “You amaze me, sir.”

“Not at all,” said Merton, smiling at the compliment. Then the smile was replaced by a frown. “I deny that I know it. Not in so many words. It’s mere rumor, no more. There were certain objects alleged to have been taken from there that made their way to the British Museum when I was a very young man. I had recently been promoted, you see, to the position of Associate Purchaser of Antiquities, quite the youngest employee ever so honored. But of course I would have nothing to do with the objects in question. Robbing the dead is an infamous business. I deplore it.”

“All of us do,” said Jack. “What variety of object?”

“Carvings, sir. Of soapstone and ivory. Representations of the heads of devils or gods, I believe, which amounts to the same thing, to my mind. Nasty looking items. Grotesques. I recall that one was tentacled, with a diabolical human face, much elongated and with sharpened incisors. It was meant to suggest cannibalism, without a doubt.”

“And these were dug out of graves?” Doyle asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know. But I would guess that they were taken from crypts.”

“Is it conceivable that Ignacio Narbondo would be aware of these catacombs? He certainly wouldn’t scruple to rob graves.”

“I would be most remarkably surprised if he were not aware of them,” Merton said, “given that they exist at all. It was his nefarious stepfather who attempted to persuade me to traffic in the diabolical carvings. Of course I sent the man away. Would Narbondo have learned his stepfather’s secrets? Assuredly. Depend upon it.”

A bell tolled the hour somewhere beyond the walls of the shop, and Merton removed his apron, folded it, and hung it on a peg. “That was the bell of St. Mary Abchurch,” he said. “Remarkable tone and accuracy, gentlemen. Correct to the minute. It informs me that it’s time for me to lay down my work if I desire peace with Mrs. Merton.”

“We’ll need a map before you go,” Tubby said. “Do you have such a thing, Harry? Not a common ordnance map, but something more arcane?”

“I might,” Merton said. “Although it comes at a price. And I warn you that it’s monstrously dangerous ground. The catacombs and their environs lie far beneath the Fleet River in a land of perpetual night. The door to that world was shut many years ago, according to all sources, hence the value of these detestable objects. There were only those few, you see. As collectible items, there is perhaps nothing rarer on Earth.”

“We have no idea of seeking out these catacombs,” Jack said. “A reliable map of the several underground rivers and their tributaries and access ways will do nicely. We mean to scour the area, Mr. Merton, but only the more modern passages, in order to head off an enormity contemplated by Dr. Narbondo.”

“The man is my bane, gentlemen, as I told Professor St. Ives quite recently. I warn you that you take him far too lightly. How do you know that you were not followed here tonight?”

“We were followed,” Tubby said, “but we knocked the man on the head and pitched his body into the river. We’re the bane of Dr. Narbondo, sir. He won’t survive us. We mean to pull his nose for him.” He took de Groot’s purse from his coat now and dumped the contents among the pots and jars and brushes on Merton’s workbench.