Part 23 (1/2)

”Everything, of course. Everything that you know. Can you reconstruct it?”

Arthur's heart sank still further. He had a vision of his future: working for Podmore, slaving over a third and still more inhuman iteration of the Engine, out in G.o.d knows where, with Podmore's uncanny thugs looking over his shoulder, nothing to keep him working but the promise that one day Podmore might return Josephine to him. He'd grow old. He'd go mad.

”Speak, Shaw. Answer the question.”

It would be better to charge Podmore, hope to bowl him over, break free, and escape into the street. Worry about how to rescue Josephine later.

”Can't speak, Shaw, or won't speak?”

He felt Abby trembling beside him.

”Shaw, do you know what they are? My men, that is. Has Atwood told you?”

”No.”

”I want you to understand who I am, and I want you to understand that I am a far greater magician than that upstart, so listen. Each of these men is an employee of one of my newspapers. I won't tell you their names. They don't know their names themselves, in their present state. They wouldn't know their own wives or children. And tomorrow they will remember nothing of tonight's events. Nothing of what they might do.”

”Lord Podmore-”

”Lord, they know not what they do! A state of ecstasy. No doubt you've noticed their eyes-ink, Mr Shaw. They drink it. At my command. A condition of employment in the inner circle. It's a precious commodity, that ink; rarer than diamonds. It costs me great labour to extract it. The ink of newspaper stories, Mr Shaw. The nastiest sort. Murders and pogroms and babies dead in their mothers' arms and disease and sin and wickedness and horror. All the worst that London is capable of imagining. They're drunk with it, Mr Shaw. Positively tipsy. Whatever they do now, they'll forget in the morning. Nothing but a nasty story. Do you understand? Do you believe me? In their trance they have a certain gift of prophecy. A gift for bad news. The terrible things that they say come true-even if they have to make them come true themselves. Shall we ask one of them now, what happens to Mr Shaw? What happens if he won't speak? Eh? Shaw, are you listening to me?”

The wound in Arthur's side throbbed again, stunning him with pain. He put a hand on Abby's arm and squeezed so hard that she gasped in shock. With the other hand he pulled up his s.h.i.+rt. The wound was hot and swollen, straining against the st.i.tches.

Arthur couldn't take it any more. He tugged at the end of one of the st.i.tches and it came loose, unravelling like a shoelace. Almost at once he felt such a surge of relief that he hardly noticed Podmore getting to his feet. He tugged at another st.i.tch. The pain eased more as the lips of the wound sighed gently open. Wondering why he hadn't thought of this earlier, he probed the wound. No blood. Longer and wider than he remembered. Another st.i.tch unravelled. He reached inside the wound as if into a pocket and a sharpness p.r.i.c.ked his finger. Something soft and warm and sleek brushed out past his hand, flapped out in front of Abby's open-mouthed face, and up towards the ceiling.

His wound had hatched a bird.

It was black, and no bigger than a sparrow, except for a long, elegant, ribbon-like tail. Its breast was a brilliant ruby-red, and there was a touch of yellow on its sharp little beak, the beak that had p.r.i.c.ked Arthur's finger. It didn't look English. Its call was clear and metallic. It circled the room, up near the ceiling, in a steady calm orbit, apparently not confused or surprised to be occupying a flat with Arthur, a shrieking maid, several silent thugs watching it with narrowed black eyes, and a furious red-faced newspaper-magnate-c.u.m-warlock.

Something about it seemed to utterly infuriate Podmore, or perhaps terrify him. He threw his drink at it, and then a cus.h.i.+on. He stood on his chair and tried to catch it with his hands. He shouted at his men to stop it, stop it at once! One of them jumped up on the sofa; another ran to get a broom; a third jumped from the mantelpiece, missed the bird, and crashed onto the table, putting out the candle. The bird shrilled overhead. Its call was louder now, loud as a bell, as if it were crying wake up, wake up, wake up.

For a minute or two Arthur watched all this as if he were in the theatre, watching G.o.d knows what. Then he jumped to his feet, ran for where he thought the fireplace was, and scrabbled for the poker. He pulled Abby with him. Someone big moved behind him and he turned and swung the poker. He hit something; there was a thump and a howl of outrage. He swung again. Something cracked, and the grunt of pain was Podmore's. Abby stumbled and nearly pulled Arthur over with her, and the next thing he knew, Podmore was gone. Arthur swung the poker once more. He seemed to be flailing at shadows. There were running feet and shouting and the shrill insistent call of the mysterious tropical bird.

Sun!-Sun must have done this, whatever it was, when he st.i.tched up the wound. A measure of protection, to make up for the watch he'd reclaimed. Which was all very well, but it would have been better if he hadn't kept it a secret-there were enough b.l.o.o.d.y secrets!

Arthur ran across the room, swinging the poker wildly, pulling Abby behind him, until he found the Cabinet. It seemed taller in the darkness, much taller and heavier than it could possibly have been when Podmore's men brought it in. He bashed it with the poker until it opened. Terrible cras.h.i.+ng and sparks. Bits of ornamental something or other depicting devils and angels and ibises and jackal-headed somethings fell off. The door swung open. No Josephine. White shadows tumbled out and enveloped him. There was a smell of dust and soap. He flailed at the shadows that covered his face; stumbled and tripped and fell and lay on his back as they fell on top of him.

Abby lit a candle.

Arthur was lying on his back under a small heap of dusty old clothes. There was broken china all around him. There was no looming and arcane Cabinet of Osiris overhead, only the wardrobe that had always been in the corner of the room, which he'd never bothered to open before.

He stood. Abby was in her nights.h.i.+rt, breathing heavily. The room was otherwise empty. No thugs, no bird, no Podmore. The table was not broken. No sign of Podmore's half-eaten meal or the gla.s.ses he and his men had drunk from. Apart from the damage Arthur had done to the wardrobe, everything was as it had been before he picked up the card.

He ran into the bedroom. One thing had changed: Josephine's bed was empty. He threw open all the doors and looked out the window. She was gone.

He went back and shook the wardrobe as if she might tumble out of a concealed chamber, like a magician's a.s.sistant.

Abby was already half-dressed and packing up her things. He started to ask her if she'd seen what had happened, if she'd seen Podmore and the Cabinet and Sun's bird too. She shook her head. She wouldn't speak or look him in the eye. She finished packing and left.

His wound was closed. A pink b.u.mpy scar. No st.i.tches.

He poked around the flat for a little while longer. Then he began to imagine Podmore's men returning. Or Atwood and Dimmick, wanting to know what had happened. Therese, paying one of her visits. He thought of all the things he'd told Lord Podmore, all the secrets of the Company he'd spilled. He packed up a handful of possessions and any money he could find, and fled.

Chapter Twenty-one.

By dawn, Arthur had decided that he had no choice but to return to Atwood, to confess his betrayal, to seek sanctuary and forgiveness, but when he arrived at Hanover Square, he found Atwood's house in ruins. Fire had shattered the windows and collapsed part of the roof. It was clear at a glance that the house was abandoned. The trees nearby were bare, and the square was littered disgustingly with dozens upon dozens of dead crows, and pigeons, and rats. Lord Podmore had obviously wasted no time.

Arthur turned and walked away, and walked for hours, until he hardly knew where he was any more. He found a cheap boarding-house room and a corner of a park to sit in until the evening; then he got drunk in a vile and noisy gin-palace. He told himself that he was drinking to get up courage-but for what? He didn't know. He had no plan. He drank with the diligence and patience of a man working out mathematics in Gracewell's Engine, and he staggered back to his room and fell asleep on the floor, where he suffered a terrible nightmare all night long.

In his nightmare, Josephine was lost on a vast blood-red plain, under a dark and s.h.i.+fting and shadowy sky. She stumbled in the gloom over sharp rocks. Something pursued her, something that was too huge and too dark to see clearly, something so huge that it seemed perhaps it was Mars itself. Arthur called to her to come and join him in his hiding place, but she could not hear him-or perhaps, he began to fear, she didn't trust him. He had failed her once too often. It was his pride and greed that had left them in their current predicament. He said as much to Atwood-in his dream Atwood was with him in his hiding-place, stroking his elegant little beard and chattering away about Albertus Magnus and Dr John Dee, and about the uses of vervain and mandrake root, and the thousand hidden names of Krishna, and the monsters (black and thousand-legged and hungry and squirming) that lived on Saturn. Gracewell was there too, drawing geometric figures on the walls of the cave. Sun stood behind Arthur, writing something on his back. Even Podmore was there, watching and taking notes. Arthur stood in the mouth of the cave and called out for Josephine. He called out all the names he could think of for her, until he was calling out nonsense words into a shrill wind that smelled of sand and blood and ruin. Josephine ran, and stumbled. The shadow loomed over her like the rising of a hideous purple-green moon, a sour and rotting thing.

He went to ground. The Company couldn't help him, wouldn't help him. If Atwood had survived the destruction of his house, he'd know that he had been betrayed. He would not forgive. Arthur was almost as afraid of Dimmick finding him as he was of Podmore. He hid from mirrors and covered the windows of his rented room with newspapers. He performed the few magics of protection against evil that he remembered from Pow-wows.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon he went out to Blackheath. He sat out on the gra.s.s by himself until it was dark, and all the holiday-makers and picnickers with hampers and nurses with perambulators and children with kites had gone home, and he was alone. Then he lay down on his back with his hands behind his head and waited for the stars to come out. It was a clear night and the sky was soon an unbroken spread of stars. Arthur thought he recognised Orion, and Cygnus. He could see the unwinking light of Mars in the southern part of the night sky, and he prayed. He willed himself to see Josephine. He strained to set his imagination free, like a hawk. He sought new modes of perception. He thought that perhaps, his need and desire being so great, he might somehow invent for himself methods that had so far exceeded the grasp of Atwood and Sun and Jupiter and all the combined minds of Gracewell's Engine. He focused his mind on the steady light of Mars, and he thought of its red plains, its two moons. He tried to imagine how Earth might look to someone standing on Mars; struggled to cast his imagination there, to forget his body, the damp of the gra.s.s, dogs barking, the dirt clumped beneath his shoulder. Josephine, he thought, Josephine, help me, show me the way, show me where you are, stretch out a hand to me. It didn't work. Nothing happened. He got very cold.

On Sunday he decided that it was high time he went to church again.

He didn't dare go back to his usual place of Sunday wors.h.i.+p, for fear that Podmore or Dimmick might be watching. Instead he went to St. James's on the Marylebone Road. It was a large and handsome structure. He chose it almost on a whim, dithered outside, and ducked in at the last moment. The congregation was numerous and bustling, the pews packed even on a beautiful summer's day.

The truth was that he was somewhat relieved to find that he could still enter a church. After all his dabblings in crime and sorcery, he'd been half-afraid that the congregation might sense his wickedness and cast him out. A bell might start ringing; lightning might strike him. Instead the s.e.xton gave him a pitying glance and led him to a vacant seat at the very back of the church, beside two old ladies in black who stiffened as he sat down. A marble angel overhead spread its wings and looked down, stone-faced.

He supposed that he looked like a desperate man, a vagrant in need of shelter, a sinner in need of salvation. He was all of those things. He'd hardly changed his clothes in a week. He was jealously h.o.a.rding the money he'd s.n.a.t.c.hed from Atwood's flat; he was afraid to visit a bank. The old ladies glared at him, and sniffed. He stared fixedly ahead at the pulpit as the congregation filed in, coughing, murmuring, and gossiping about business and children and holidays and politics and illnesses.

The congregation rose to sing ”Creator of the Stars of Night.” Arthur joined in, stumbling a little over the hymn's familiar words. If there were a Creator of the Stars, Arthur had seen enough to know that He could not much resemble the G.o.d Arthur had always believed in. He found himself trying to imagine the G.o.d that the native of the spheres might have wors.h.i.+pped, the G.o.d in whose image it might have been made. He simply could not see how it could be the same G.o.d that was known to St. James's Church on the Marylebone Road.

The minister stood at the pulpit. There was a hush in which every rustle of the minister's robes and the turning of the pages of his book could be heard, and then he coughed, and began his sermon. He held both sides of the pulpit in his hands and spoke firmly and plainly. His theme was pride, and he took as his text the temptation of Christ in the wilderness by the Devil. Arthur put his head in his hands and imagined the wilderness as the blood-red plains of Mars. He imagined the Devil, standing on a mountaintop, showing off all the ruined glories of the civilizations of Mars. He imagined the Devil with Atwood's face.

But it wasn't Atwood's fault; it was his own. Everything that had happened, to him and to Josephine. If he hadn't blundered blindly into Atwood's house! If he hadn't let greed and ambition blind him to the dangers of Gracewell's Engine! He thought of the men who'd gone mad in Gracewell's Engine, and wondered again what had become of them. Rising out of the room-how callow his ambition seemed now. His errors had multiplied and now it was too late to mend any of them.

The minister came to the end of his sermon, and Arthur realised that he hadn't followed most of the man's argument. Well, it was too late now. He stood again to sing. A collection went round. He fled.

It was bright and hot outside and he instantly missed his hat, abandoned in Atwood's flat. He didn't know where to go next. He stood, blinking in the sun, waiting there in the vague hope that some sign might show him what to do.

”Arthur!”

Someone was calling his name. His first instinct was to run.

”I say-Arthur! Is that you? Good Lord, Arthur, it is you! Wait-wait there! Are you-by G.o.d, you look an awful b.l.o.o.d.y mess. Is this your church now? I haven't seen you in weeks. G.o.d, my boy, if you've fallen on hard times you know you need only ... What happened to you?”

By the time he had completed that speech, Arthur's uncle George Weston had caught up with him, and extended his hand to shake.