Time's Mistress (8 page)

“We all appreciate you, Anthony, now please, talk before we die of old age.”

“All in good time, my man. All in good time.” Millington winked at him. “I’ve had my snifter but a man needs a smoke before he talks of unbearable things.” The actor snapped his fingers and Mason appeared at his shoulder with an open humidor. Millington made his choice, clipped the cured leaves and lit up, puffing theatrically on the thick Havana. “The city’s in a peculiar mood,” he said in all seriousness. “The Peelers have found a dead flower girl.”

“A shame, but not the most unusual of occurrences in our beloved city,” Carruthers said, tossing the thruppenny bit into the air. He didn’t catch it because it never came back down. “Pray tell, what is it to us?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Millington said, “other than where she was found.”

“And where was that, Anthony? It is like squeezing water from a stone getting information out of you sometimes.”

“A little too close to home.”

“Here? There was no commotion, surely we would have heard the cries of blue murder?”

“Bedford Square, in the shadows of the museum, soon after midnight.”

“Close to Charlotte Street,” Napier observed. “Perhaps the unfortunate girl merely wandered a little off her patch. There is nothing to suggest—“

“She had three and six in her purse.”

“So it wasn’t a robbery but there is still nothing to suggest we need to be overly concerned, I think you are jumping at shadows, dear boy,” Dorian Carruthers said. Once again the small coin walked across his knuckles. He didn’t so much as look at the actor when he said, “But then, you always did have a penchant for the melodramatic, didn’t you?”

Downstairs the door to the street slammed. The sound cut across their conversation. Frantic footsteps charged up the narrow flight of stairs. All eyes turned to the doorway as Fabian Stark, the last of their number, burst into the room. The emaciated Stark held up a hand for silence even as he bent double, gasping heavily. He straightened a moment later, his face livid as he took a final deep, steadying breath, and exhaled. He looked at the others one at a time before he finally said, “We’ve got trouble.”

O O O

Haddon McCreedy closed the door to the Reading Room.

The latch fell into place with a satisfyingly substantial snick. The door was heavy, made from well-seasoned thick oak timbers and varnished with a cherry lacquer. Every wall, from floor to ceiling, was lined with books. The room soaked in that wonderful aroma of old paper.

Haddon lit the gaslight and drew the heavy velvet drapes, effectively isolating the room from the outside world. There were curious markings etched into the wainscoting of the windowsill and again around the frame of the door; glyphs meant to ward off unwanted eavesdropping. He traced his fingertips over them. The same glyphs had been embroidered into the lining of the curtains themselves. More curious still was the thin line of salt beneath the sash window. The floorboards were polished to a shine, but even the thick veneer of gloss couldn’t mask the five-pointed rosewood star set into the boards. The round reading table was placed in the pentagram’s heart.

Stark, Millington, Locke, Carruthers and Napier were already at the table.

Carruthers stared at that coin of his as though it were the most fascinating thing he had ever seen while Locke breathed two streams of stale smoke from his nostrils that rose in front of his face like horns. The others sat unmoving, waiting for Haddon to join them and the Council of War to begin in earnest.

Haddon adjusted the girth of his exquisitely brocaded red silk waistcoat, and withdrawing the silver fob watch from his pocket to mark the time, sat himself at one of the two empty chairs.

“The Kruptos Door was breached,” Stark said, laying his hands flat on the table.

“Impossible,” Eugene Napier said without thinking, utter contempt in his soft voice.

“And yet at some time after midnight the seals were broken.”

“Just after midnight,” Millington noted, “while the Peelers were preoccupied with the dead flower girl, curiouser and curiouser, no? If this life of ours has taught me one thing it is that there is no such thing as meaningful coincidence.”

“What was taken?” Haddon asked, ignoring Millington’s musings. He snapped the silver cover of his fob watch closed and slipped it back into his pocket. There was no room for blather, what was missing almost certainly dictated who was behind the theft, and more importantly, their ability to do harm.

Fabian Stark turned to Haddon, his cracked front tooth chewing into the pink of his lower lip. “Only one thing, so far as I could ascertain.”

“And that would be?”

“The Homunculus Cross.”

“But … that’s just a gewgaw … why that of all the things?” Brannigan Locke steepled his fingers, cracking each one slowly and methodically.

“Why indeed?” Haddon said, thoughtfully. “I suspect the error of our thinking is going to be made very clear to us before the sun rises.”

“What do we know about the cross?” Dorian Carruthers asked.

“Precious little, in truth, but even what we know is enough to warrant great concern. Do you have the ledger, Napier, there’s a good man.”

The big man pushed back his chair, scraping the legs across the scored-deep line of the pentagram and rose to retrieve a large smythe-sewn ledger from one of the lower shelves. He placed the book almost reverently on the table, cracked open the spine and turned through the pages until he found the entry he was looking for amid the cramped spider-like scrawl and began reading: “The Homunculus Cross has been in our care since it was recovered from a mystic’s tomb in what was the Byrsa district of Carthage almost ninety years ago. Initial scrutiny suggests it pre-dates the Pyrrhic War by quite some time, centuries perhaps, though it is difficult to gauge its precise position in antiquity due to the poor record keeping of the region. There are several familiar markings on the limbs of the cross itself that lead one to suspect it is in some way alchemical in nature, as the pictograms balance the elements of earth, air, fire and water, but beyond that, there are a number of other symbols, including the central effigy of a homunculus from which the cross takes its name.” Napier closed the book.

“What about you, Fabian? What can you add?” Haddon McCreedy turned to the gaunt Stark.

“Enough to be frightened, Haddon. More than enough for that.” Of all of them Fabian Stark was the only true practitioner of the Art. Carruthers dabbled in sleight-of-hand and tricks of perception, Haddon himself had a knack for the uncanny, divination of dreams and auguring, but Fabian was different. When he had come to their door three years ago he had been a powerful looking youth, not the wraith that sat before them now. His obsession with the Art had done that to him, the arcana eating away at his physicality until he was a husk of a man. That was the cost. The Art devoured energy, for every manipulation it burned more life away. Eventually it would be the death of Stark, they all knew it. The time would come, inevitably, when the Art consumed him. For now they protected him as best they could because they needed him: it takes a thief to catch a thief, the old adage went. It had never been more applicable than now. Stark slumped forward in his chair, exhaustion clear in his eyes and the dark circles beneath them. “The symbols themselves form a cypher; interpreting them correctly will release the homunculus trapped within the stone.”

“So we are talking about a construct running wild in London then?” Locke said, “We have dealt with worse.”

“You are a simple soul sometimes, Brannigan,” Fabian Stark said, not unkindly.

“There’s no need for insults, Stark. Not all of us are blessed with your ahh talents.”

“That was no insult, my friend. Think of the cross as a key, whoever has control of the construct has access to the secrets it was made to protect.”

That notion hung in the air between them, weighted like a condemnation.

“Do we know what the homunculus was fashioned to guard?” Haddon McCreedy asked, finally, fearing the answer even as he voiced the question.

“We do,” Stark admitted. He closed his eyes. “The cross was the work of Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan.”

“Geber?” Dorian Carruthers’ walking coin fell from his fingers and clattered on the table’s top. He scooped it up quickly and thrust it into his pocket.

“One and the same.”

“So it has to do with the philosopher’s stone?”

“Hardly. That was nonsense cooked up by Abu Musa to shift attention from what he was really interested in. A stone that offers eternal youth? Even given the wealth of ‘impossible things’ we know, the notion is ludicrous.”

“Which was?” Carruthers asked, pointedly.

“The Hollow Earth.”

“What? You mean to say the construct is guarding the door down into the centre of the earth?” Carruthers laughed harshly. “And you said the philosopher’s stone was nonsense?”

Stark nodded, rubbing at his jaw. A thin shadow of stubble had begun filling itself in along his sharp chin. “It is not as outrageous as it sounds, Dorian, believe me. Where, after all, do you think our legends of Hell’s fire, devils and such originate from?”

“But a door down into the very core of the earth? It’s all so … Jules Verne!”

“That is a rather prosaic interpretation, I admit, but in essence it is true enough, though the actuality is more existential than substantial.”

“Sometimes you scare me, Stark,” Carruthers said, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I want to actually live in the same world you do. You say these words and all I hear is blah blah, blah blah, blah blah.”

“How does this door that isn’t a door work, Fabian?” Haddon pressed, cutting across the prestidigitator.

“The homunculus itself is the door, or rather it is capable of creating the doorway where so ever it chooses. It is the way.”

“So are you saying that all this fellow needs to do is crack the cross open and …?”

“There is no physical door,” Stark explained. “No stone arch or golden doorknob that any Tom, Dick or Harriet can walk up to, offer the secret knock and abracadabra open the door and simply stumble down the Catamine Stair into one of the greatest secrets of all creation.”

“Well, that at least, is a relief,” Carruthers said.

Millington had been unusually quiet since Haddon had closed the reading room door. “If we know what the Homunculus Cross does, surely the question has to be who would stand to gain most from its theft?”

“I don’t think there can be any doubt,” Haddon McCreedy said. “This smacks of the Brethren.”

Certain fears were left unsaid: had one of the Brethren infiltrated the hidden chamber, what then was there to stop them from taking the second door and following the tunnels back beneath old London town to their building on Grays Inn Road? The alternative did not bear thinking about. If it was not one of the Brethren, if it were merely some tinkerer working alone … It did not matter. Whatever their affiliations, someone had breached their defences. They were vulnerable.

O O O

Nathaniel Seth knelt before the cross.

He was outside, on the Whispering Gallery that ringed the great dome of Wren’s breath-taking Cathedral. The Great Bell rang out the coming of dawn’s first blush. Its harmonic rippled out over the slums to the bells of St. Clements, and on to St. Martins in the Field. He listened for the Old Bailey Bell, the rhythm of the children’s nursery rhyme taking root in his head. The wind had picked up, tattering the remnants of the early morning smog. The visibility was far from good, there was no actual sunlight, but instead of ten feet in front of his face he could see all the way down to the Thames. The shadows of the mudlarks were down on the river early picking over the detritus washed in by the tide in search of anything they could sell on or make use of.

The trawlers had already hauled their nets and were making toward the docks at Billingsgate to sell their fish and coal barges belched more black soot into the air as they chugged down the river. It was no wonder the city hadn’t seen the sun for a month. Black smoke thick with coal dust belched out of thousands upon thousands of chimneys, choking the sky.

Fleet Street was already awake, as were the labourers busy in the filth and mire of Smithfield’s meat market. The reek of corpses hung heavily in the smoke-filled air as the stripped carcasses were burned.

The London dawn was alive with thieves and idlers, hawkers and vagabonds. Before the hour was out a cascade of other sounds and smells would fill the air as the press of people woke and the discordant din of life commenced.

Beside him the young boy squirmed, writhing around against his bonds.

“Oh, do be quiet, child. You are trying my patience,” he murmured, caressing the outermost sigils on the great stone cross. “It will all be over soon enough.”

The boy wriggled all the more desperately, bracing his scuffed boots on the stone railing and arching his back as he fought with his bonds.

“Suit yourself, child, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” With that, the man who called himself Seth took an ivory handled flick-knife from his pocket, pushing the edge of the still-concealed blade up against the young boy’s pulsing pulmonary. “One touch is all it will take,” he promised, applying the slightest pressure to the small silver stud. The four-inch blade lanced out, opening up the boy’s soft flesh. Thick, rich red blood pulsed out through the gash for as long as it took the boy’s heart to stop beating. Dead, he slumped back against his bonds.

Seth stood over the child, hands and face smeared with innocent blood.

He inhaled slowly, savouring the iron-tang and the ripeness of the wind blowing off the various markets of the city. The boy stank, but then, Nathaniel knew, violent death seldom bore the aroma of rosehip or lavender. It stank. He grabbed the boy’s corpse and hauled it up over the stone railing. It took all of his strength to hold it there, arms bent back, and fasten each wrist, making a mocking crucifixion out of the boy’s body.

He knelt before the Homunculus Cross once more, sub-vocalizing the first rhythms of the incantation, and touching his bloody hand to the twisted face of the beast trapped within the crux of the cruciform. And with the first words off his lips, the sky broke, drops of rain coming down like Solomon’s tears.