James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

Alice tore herself away from the scene outside, realizing that Helen had disappeared, and that the black vapor pouring from the organ was indeed smoke or dust, heavy in the air now – not smoke: there was no smell of it. She glanced back in the direction of the hidden panel and caught a brief glimpse of Helen pounding and pushing on one of the panels, shouting at it. The soldiers would escape beneath the street, of course, had escaped. She grabbed Eddie’s hand, surprised when he tugged it forcefully away.

“The airship!” Eddie shouted, pointing upward toward the dark, shifting sky.

She saw it then, the great balloon with its tiny gondola gliding over the dome of St. Paul’s, evidently descending, but what in God’s name…?

“It’s Father!” Eddie shouted. “Finn told me Father would come in the airship!” He nodded his head with determination, as if the unlikely appearance of the ship had settled a bet.

She took his hand and ran now. Something was coming to pass, and swiftly. Helen stood at the panel, searching the seams with her fingers. “Open!” she barked, her voice breaking with fear.

Alice and Eddie ran toward the great altar now. The cloud of black dust that shrouded the interior seemed to be growing darker, raining down in a fine black grit over the golden pews. Alice could feel the grit in her throat, but she saw that the air was still comparatively clear in the transept.

“Climb beneath!” she shouted to Eddie, when they were still several paces away from the arched openings under the altar. He seemed to know full well what they were about, and he threw himself sideways across the marble, sliding on his hip beneath one of the arches and into the shadows. Alice scrambled in beside him, hauling in her skirts. When she looked out again, she saw Helen run back out along the pews, looking around wildly. She stopped, however, seeing something now, putting her hand to her mouth in evident surprise. Alice saw it too, now, and could scarcely believe her own eyes.

Hovering in the air over the pews was the illuminated image of a boy, quite large, perhaps a projection – an animated projection. He looked around, as if he could see his surroundings, and then gazed quite distinctly at his own out-held hands. Alice saw the fingers close, the black dust swirling around him, seeming to give him substance. The airship, she saw, was quite close, tilting and swaying in the wind, headed straight for the cathedral – too close, she saw, far too close to avoid disaster.

It came to her that they might get out of the cathedral altogether – find something heavy and throw it through one of the windows before Helen took it into her mind to shoot them. But when she turned her mind to the idea of escape, her ear was attuned to the shouting and screaming on the streets – utter chaos, certainly – and there was the sound of another explosion somewhere nearby, distinct from the sound of thunder.

She saw Helen hurrying toward them, the pistol held in front of her, a look of madness in her eyes. Sparks exploded from the muzzle of the weapon, and a chunk of marble blew out of the altar, cutting Alice’s face, although she scarcely felt any pain. “Stay!” she said to Eddie, and slid out from under, clutching her hatpin, blood flowing into her eye as she stood up to meet Helen, who threw herself forward like a mad thing.

“What do you see inside the cathedral, Finn?” St. Ives shouted above the noise. “People in the pews?”

“No, sir. Empty, what I can make of it, but there’s much I can’t see for the black dust.”

They were dangerously close to the rooftops – had come within an ace of knocking the top off the bell tower of the Church of St. John the Baptist, but there were no more encumbrances now, only the wind, upon which they rose and fell and swerved sickeningly. But it was pushing them hard forward, which was good. St. Ives’s intention, which he had revealed to Finn, was to look to the bowsprit with its heavy glass ball to save them by punching through the roof of the cathedral, smashing out enough glass to disperse the coal dust, and then to rise above it undamaged. He knew, as did Finn, that it would be precious close work, and that there was a good chance they were within minutes of death.

The cathedral appeared to be monumentally frail, and there was the possibility of the gondola simply knocking it completely to pieces. What if, St. Ives thought now, Narbondo had foxed him, perhaps intending to blow up the palm house at Kew Gardens instead, or to blow up nothing at all, but to coerce St. Ives into…

“The black dust rises from the organ pipes, sir! Can you hear the sound of it?”

“Yes,” St. Ives said. He could indeed hear what must be a monstrous, steam-driven organ. He saw now that the streets and pavements roundabout the cathedral were full of people, from Fleet Street to the Embankment, with more pouring in from the north, perhaps ignorant of the explosion, although others ran frantically through them, out of the area, and there was great confusion. The Temple grounds, just to the east of the cathedral, were a-swarm, and people were thick again in the area of St. Andrew’s Hill, making their way toward the cathedral beneath raised umbrellas. Soldiers appeared to be herding people away, but there were too few soldiers, and a general chaos seemed to be growing in fervor. He saw a fire brigade coming along Fleet Street, the horses hampered by the crowds. “Another minute, more or less,” he said. “You’d best take your seat, Finn.”

Finn gave up the telescope willingly and strapped himself in. Rain flew out of the sky in waves, obscuring everything, clearing again. There was a flash now, not lightning, but a small streaking flame that pierced the wall of the cathedral, leaving an orange trail as it flew through the black dust. The gondola swayed in the wind, the cathedral looming up before them – forty feet away, thirty, the ball at the tip of the bowsprit would strike the cathedral, and no avoiding it.

Yet another orange track cut through the dust, pinwheeling this time, throwing out a radiating circle of flame: An incendiary bullet , St. Ives thought. Of course . Much more sensible than Greek fire. But he had no sooner conceived the thought than there was yet another bullet, which struck the window of the gondola just to his right, the glass shattering, the spent projectile falling to the deck of the gondola. It dawned on him that Narbondo would achieve his end were he to send a bullet through the hide of the great balloon, and he considered the enormity of his own folly and the likely result of the explosions that would follow.

Alight shone ahead of them as Jack and Tubby moved toward what was apparently an outrage already in progress. They had proceeded for some distance in darkness, downhill again, before seeing the glow of a headlamp on the front of a barrow and the silhouettes of three men at work. One of them depressed a great bellows over and over, pumping coal dust into whatever building they had decided to destroy. Finn had told Jack of the flaming syllabub, and it seemed to him now that it was one thing to face a pistol, another to face a flood of burning vitriol.

They stood watching for a moment, taking stock. Tubby might try his luck with de Groot’s pistol, but from this distance hitting one of them would be luck indeed, and would certainly announce their arrival. Would a bold stroke prevail? Success – survival, perhaps – would depend on the man with the syllabub nozzle being wary of the burning liquid, and of his not wanting to destroy his companions out of mere recklessness.

The Fleet River lay ahead of them, a bridge arching the flood. They must be very near the outfall into the Thames. It would be on the bridge that they were exposed at the edge of the barrow light, still twenty feet away. It seemed madness to Jack, and he began to insist that Tubby remain sensible to the danger, but Tubby winked at him, uttered, “Death or glory, Jacky,” hefted his blackthorn, and set out in a crouched run. Jack followed, the bridge dead ahead, the light growing around them, twinkling on the dark water.