James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“By God that’s one of Merton’s alleys,” Tubby said, as the two of them set out, Tubby carrying the dark-lantern. “‘Carmelite Culvert,’ it’s called on the map. Look to your weapon, Jack. It’s a dead end ahead. They’ll fight like rats.”

Jack was carrying de Groot’s tiny pistol in his pocket, but he had never shot the thing, had never shot a pistol at all, let alone at a man. He had thought there would be some comfort in carrying it, but at the moment he felt nothing of the sort. The alley was empty when they reached it. Halfway down stood a deep, foul-smelling alcove an inch-deep in standing water. Several feet into the alcove stood a low, iron door, heavy with rust, not just quite tight.

“They’re in a hurry,” Tubby whispered. “Too much of a hurry to bother shutting the door, the fools.”

“They mean to come back out this same way, no doubt,” Jack said. He peered into the passage beyond the door, immediately seeing the lantern moving along some distance down – two lanterns, he saw now, one carried in a man’s hand and the other the headlamp on the front of the cart, considerably brighter and showing far down the steeply descending tunnel.

Tubby set out, Jack following, pulling the door nearly shut behind them. The brick tunnel was thankfully dry – perhaps an access to the Fleet Sewer – and the loud creaking of the cart emboldened them to move even more hastily. Tubby carried his blackthorn raised across his chest for a backhand blow.

They were upon them quickly, apparently unheard until the last few steps. The man carrying the lantern turned toward them, his illuminated face bearing a puzzled look. He flung the lantern into Tubby’s face out of sheer surprise, and Tubby knocked it aside with his left forearm, the lantern clattering against the bricks on the opposite wall. Tubby struck with the blackthorn in the same moment, knocking the man sideways as Jack leapt past him, pursuing the one who pushed the cart, who was trundling along ever more rapidly down the decline, some distance ahead.

The man stopped abruptly, gripping the handle of the cart with one hand and skidding along for a moment on the soles of his boots. As momentum carried Jack helplessly forward, he saw the pistol come out of the man’s coat. There was the crack of the weapon firing as Jack threw himself down, realizing even as he did so that the man had missed the hasty shot, and tumbled forward into the man’s legs, bringing him down. His assailant hit him awkwardly on the side of the head, bit him on the hand, and then sprang up and sprinted down the tunnel in pursuit of the runaway cart, which careened away, bouncing on the uneven brick of the floor.

Jack followed at a run. The cart’s headlight showed a turning in the wall dead ahead of it. The right-hand corner of the cart struck the wall at the turning and the cart caromed off the brick. Immediately the front wheels caught against something unseen, and the cart overturned, its tin sides flying off and its contents tumbling. The man pursuing it, too close to it to stop, pitched bodily over the top and into the waters of the Fleet River along with a smoking kettle that instantly threw a blanket of roaring flame over the waters.

Jack reached the fallen cart seconds later, Tubby following behind him now. They saw Narbondo’s man rise from the flood entirely aflame, some ten feet down the river, the horror visible on his burning face. He tore at his clothing, yanking off his flaming jacket, wading downriver through the flood, shrieking inhumanly. He stumbled and went under, but when he rose he was once again covered with the burning sludge, and in another moment he fell and disappeared for good, the river carrying away the body and the flames together.

Tubby and Jack made their way back up the tunnel, silenced by what they had witnessed. Halfway along they passed the other of Narbondo’s people, who had been shot through the back. Jack realized that the man had caught the hastily shot bullet meant for him, and was startled by the sight of the body, unhappily imagining his own body lying on the bricks, the life leaked out of him.

They went on without speaking until, near the alley door, they discerned the dark mouth of another tunnel, which they hadn’t seen earlier, so intent had they been on their immediate task. Vague noises sounded from somewhere deep within.

* * *

From the centermost of the arched windows on the third floor of the old house, Narbondo watched with great satisfaction as the storm moved in over London. The sky was black to the distant horizon, and lightning flickered from the clouds, too distant yet for the sound of thunder to reach him. It was perfectly droll that it had appeared on this very day – life spectacularly imitating art – and it would add monumental impetus to the chaos he intended to provide for the city’s amusement. People were gathering in the streets for the ceremony, dressed in capes and hoods and carrying umbrellas, costermongers threading through them despite the weather, selling hot potatoes and pea-pods and pies. Narbondo had seen a pineapple cart move through half an hour ago, pushed by Sneed the Dwarf accompanied by McFee, the two of them disappearing into an alley that led to the river and to the iron door that opened onto the Fleet Sewer, disused since a century past, when the Fleet was first arched over with brick and mortar and hidden from the sun. In the cart were kegs of coal dust, with several more already delivered and waiting below, along with the bellows device consisting of several pneumatic tubes of great circumference, powered by the steam engine from Merton’s very useful launch and cleverly cooled by water drawn from the Fleet itself. Very soon the black dust would fly up, and it would begin.

He considered the myriad of tunnels that led away from the walls of the Fleet and the other underground rivers – the turnings, the double-backs, the hidden doors and iron ladders that went ever downward into the Stygian darkness. He had traveled those tunnels the first time as a sixteen-year-old boy, carrying rush-and-paraffin torches and lucifer matches of his own inventing, which had ignited for no good reason, burning him badly. Even then white phosphorous was known as “the devil’s element,” and perhaps that explained his attraction to it. His stepfather had regaled him with the legend of the ancient, long-buried world far beneath the London Temple, with its rumored access under Carmelite Street, and two days later Narbondo had betrayed his stepfather to the authorities. He had been on hand for his stepfather’s hanging, and had watched gleefully as he swung out over the crowd, his eyes and tongue protruding, his neck having failed to break due to the hangman’s ineptness. Narbondo had sold the body to resurrection men, and his stepfather’s skeleton no doubt lived on in an anatomical theater now, perhaps at a great university.

A light rain began to fall, umbrellas blooming below him like black flowers. The time was drawing near, and Narbondo turned away to inspect the rifle that leaned against its stand next to the window, and the small but very flammable bullets that lay waiting in their copper tray. He found that he was in a state of high anticipation, which he despised in himself as weak, and for a moment he was tempted toward a dose of laudanum, but he rejected the idea. If ever there was a time for his faculties to be sharply honed, it was today.

A bell at the rear door rang now – two rings, followed by a pause, and then a third. He stepped to the wall and tugged on the bell rope, hearing the faint sound of its chime. In a few moments Beaumont appeared at the door, his beaver hat in his hand, ushering in the very enterprising Helen and a man whom Narbondo knew to be connected to the War Office, a colonel, apparently, and the man Lord Moorgate had insisted on calling Guido Fox. Beaumont disappeared, leaving the door open.