The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

  “So nothing will happen by chance?” suggested Burton.

  “Precisely! Save the time suit!”

  “And you?”

  “And us! Yes, save us!”

  Burton glanced at the window.

  “We would have your response,” came Darwin’s double-toned voice. “What do you say?”

  The king’s agent paced over to the door. He looked back at the malformed scientist.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “There will be no debate today.”

  “The evolved must survive!” cried the scientist.

  Burton opened the door and passed through. Swinburne was holding Nurse Nightingale at bay with his pistol. A man lay on the floor clutching his bleeding side.

  “I was aiming at his leg, I swear!” claimed the poet.

  Burton gripped Nightingale by the arm and dragged her to the access ladder.

  “Up!” he ordered.

  “No,” she replied.

  He punched her forehead and she collapsed into his arms.

  “No time for niceties,” he said. “Up you go, Algy!”

  Swinburne ascended and Burton followed, with the woman over his shoulder.

  Less than a minute later, the front of the titanic rotorship collided with Darkening Towers. The ancient mansion exploded into a cloud of flying bricks, masonry, and glass. Crumpling metal screamed as it tore through the building and hit the earth.

  The inhabitants of nearby Waterford were jerked out of their sleep by the terrifying sound of destruction. The floor shook beneath their beds and their house windows shattered as the ship ploughed a wide furrow through the grounds of the Beresford estate before finally coming to rest almost a quarter of a mile beyond, a mass of torn and twisted metal.

  For a moment a strange sort of calm descended and it seemed that the devastation was complete. Then, one after the other, the ship’s boilers exploded—a series of terrific detonations that blew the back half of the ship to pieces, throwing debris hundreds of feet into the air and sending a thick pall of steam rolling outward.

  Finally, the scene of the crash became quiet but for occasional clangs and squeals as the wreckage settled.

  Of Darkening Towers, nothing remained except a smear across the landscape.

  Burton had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. Wrapped in a roll of the thick insulating material, he’d been thrown violently around the small storage bay until his senses were shaken from him. Now, as they returned, he gingerly tested each limb, and though his right arm pained him where Oliphant’s sword had pierced it, he found that all his bones were intact.

  With much difficulty, he wriggled out of the material onto the slanting and twisted deck, pulled his clockwork lantern from his pocket, and surveyed the ruins around him by its light. The bay was almost ripped in half; the floor was buckled and stars glinted through a wide and jagged gash in the ceiling.

  The swathes of insulation were in disarray; the roll he’d bundled Florence Nightingale into had come undone and she lay awkwardly amid the tangle. He crawled over to her and found that she was alive, though out cold.

  The folds that contained Swinburne were underneath a tangle of girders from the ruined roof. One long, thin fragment of metal had been driven right into the bundle, and when Burton peered into the end of the roll, he could see a red stain within. For a second, fear gripped him as he imagined his friend dead, but he then realised that the patch of crimson was actually the poet’s hair.

  “Algernon?” he called. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” came the muffled response.

  “It may take a while to get you out of there. You’re underneath a pile of debris. Are you hurt?”

  “There’s something sharp sticking into my left buttock. It’s not as thrilling as it sounds!”

  “I’ll get help as quickly as I can.”

  “And you, Richard? Are you in one piece?”

  “Apart from having my brains scrambled, yes. Hold on! I can hear movement. My light may have attracted someone.”

  The sound of metal being shifted had reached him, and he wondered whether Detective Inspector Trounce had arrived in a rotorchair while he was unconscious. However, as the noise increased, he realised that something of far greater weight than the burly Scotland Yard man was approaching.

  He looked up as mechanical grippers closed over the edges of the torn roof and peeled the metal back with a horrible squeal.

  Isambard Kingdom Brunel thudded into view, towering overhead. The arms on one side of him were twisted and bent out of shape.

  There was a moment of silence, broken only by the wheezing of his bellows, then he chimed, “She is alive?”

  “Yes,” replied Burton. “Merely unconscious. I wrapped her in this material to protect her from the worst of it.”

  A pause, then arms stretched down into the room, slid beneath the prone nurse, and lifted her out.

  “I thank you, Sir Richard. I am in your debt,” rang the huge machine.

  It retreated from view and they heard it stamping over the wreckage, onto the earth, and away into the distance.

  Burton began to clear the fallen beams away from Swinburne.

  Some time later he heard a rotorship rising into the air and departing.

  “That must be the medical laboratory,” he said to the trapped poet. “Speke is aboard. I wonder where he and Brunel will go?”

  Ten minutes or so passed before he heard the approaching paradiddle of rotorchairs. He climbed out onto the roof of the wrecked ship and waved down Detective Inspector Trounce.

  Exhaustion hit him.

  “By God!” he muttered. “Africa was child’s play compared to this!”

  CONCLUSION

  From too much love of living,

  From hope and fear set free,

  We thank with brief thanksgiving

  Whatever gods may be

  That no life lives for ever;

  That dead men rise up never;

  That even the weariest river

  Winds somewhere safe to sea.

  —ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

  t is incredible!” exclaimed Mrs. Iris Angell for the umpteenth time. “Poor Mr. Speke. I don’t say he was ever a bad man, but perhaps a little lacking in rectitude. He certainly didn’t deserve to fall into the hands of that immoral crowd. What will become of him, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know, but I feel I haven’t seen the last of him. Have you finished?”

  Mrs. Angell was sitting at one of Sir Richard Francis Burton’s desks, where she’d been writing out two copies of his report.

  Two days had passed since the Battle of Old Ford.

  “Yes. I must say, Sir Richard, your handwriting leaves a lot to be desired. I suggest you have a poke around in the attic. If I remember rightly, one of my late husband’s fancies was some sort of mechanical writing device. An autoscribe,’ I think he called it. You play it like a piano and it prints onto paper, like a press.”

  “Thank you, Mother Angell; that sounds like it might be useful.”

  The old dame stood and rubbed a crick from her back. She passed the two copies to Burton then crossed to the study door.

  “I must get back to the kitchen. Your guests will be here in half an hour or so. I expect they’ll appreciate some cold cuts and so forth?”

  “That would be excellent. Thank you.”

  She departed.

  Burton rolled one of the copies and placed it into a canister. This he put into the messenger pipe. With a blast of steam, it went on its way to Buckingham Palace. A few moments later, he sent the second copy to 10 Downing Street.

  He prepared the study for his guests—stoking the fire, arranging armchairs around it, refilling the brandy decanter.

  He sat and read for half an hour.

  Algernon Swinburne was the first to arrive. Like Burton, he was covered in yellowing bruises and healing injuries. He was limping slightly.

  “Your little paperboy, Oscar, just accosted me on the street,” he
announced. “He asked me to pass on his congratulations and he hopes you’re recovering from your injuries.”

  “How the dickens did he get wind of it?” exclaimed Burton. “There’s been nothing said to the press!”

  “You know what these newsboys are like,” replied Swinburne, easing himself carefully into a chair. “They know a great deal about far too much. He also asked me to advise you that ‘one can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”’

  Burton laughed. “Quips is being exceptionally optimistic. I hardly think our little victory is enough to mend my reputation. Richard Burton might be battered and bruised but ‘Ruffian Dick’ is alive and well, I’m sure!”

  “That might be true in certain quarters, but, for certain, your stock has risen with King Albert and Lord Palmerston, and that’s what matters. I’ll have a brandy, please—but purely for medicinal reasons.”

  “How are you, Algy? Recovering?”

  “Yes, though the hole in my arse cheek hurts like blazes. I fear I shall have to skip my birchings for a few weeks.”

  “Bad news for London’s houses of ill repute,” noted Burton, pouring his friend’s drink. “They’ll have to tighten their belts, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  “Thank you,” said Swinburne, accepting the glass. “By the sound of those thundering footsteps, old Trounce is coming up the stairs.”

  The door opened and the thickset Yard man stomped in.

  “Greetings, both!” he announced, slapping his bowler onto a desk. “The confounded fog is closing in again. Every pea-souper is a bonanza for the criminal classes! I tell you, I’m going to have my work cut out for me over the next few days. I say, Burton, what the heck did Spring Heeled Jack mean?”

  “When?” asked the king’s agent.

  Trounce threw himself into an armchair and stretched out his legs to warm his feet by the fire. He took a proffered cigar from his host.

  “You said he told you to—what was it?—‘enjoy your boots’?”

  “No. He said ‘enjoy your reboot.’ A curious turn of phrase. Language is a malleable thing, old chap; it follows a process much like Darwin’s evolution—parts of it become defunct and fade from usage, while new forms develop to fit particular needs. I have little doubt that ‘reboot’ has a very specific significance in the future. His future, at least.”

  “The meaning seems clear enough,” mused Swinburne. “Replacing your old boots with new ones is like preparing yourself for a new and potentially long journey. Your old boots may not last for the duration, so you reboot, as it were, before you set off. Like reshoeing a horse.”

  “It seems as good an explanation as any,” agreed Burton. “And it fits the context.”

  He handed Trounce a brandy and, with his own, sat down and lit a cigar.

  “Detective Inspector Honesty should be along soon. Have you two made your peace?”

  “I’ll say!” enthused the police detective. “The man saved me from a werewolf! He may look like a whippet but he fights like a tiger. I saw him taking on men twice his size with his bare hands—and he downed the blighters! Besides, when the dust had settled he came over, shook my hand, and apologised for ever doubting me. I’m not one to hold a grudge, especially against a man like that!”

  “Ow!” yelled Swinburne. “Bloody dog!”

  “Come here, Fidget!” ordered Burton. “Sorry, Algy. I forgot he was in the room!”

  The basset hound hung his head and ambled over to its master, settling at his feet, from where it gazed fixedly at Swinburne’s ankles.

  “Blessed pest!” grumbled the poet.

  “You owe this blessed pest your life,” observed Burton. “Excuse me a moment.”

  He’d heard a rattle from the messenger tube. A canister thunked into it as he reached the desk. It was a message from Palmerston:

  Burke and Hare dismantled wreckage. Remains of Darwin, Galton, Beresford, and Oxford identified. Time suit recovered and destroyed. Good work.

  “Palmerston says the time suit has been destroyed,” he told his guests.

  “Do you believe him?” asked Trounce.

  “Not at all. It will at least have been put out of harm’s way, though.”

  “We can but hope,” muttered Swinburne.

  Mrs. Angell entered with a tray of cold meats, pickles, sliced bread, and a pot of coffee. Detective Inspector Honesty stepped in behind her.

  “Sorry, late!” he said. “Came on velocipede. Broke down. Accursed things.”

  “Have a seat, Honesty! Thank you, Mrs. Angell,” said Burton.

  His housekeeper glanced dolefully at Honesty’s well-greased hair, obviously considering the well-being of her embroidered antimacassars. She left the study.

  The newly arrived policeman sat, refused a brandy, and lit a pipe.

  “A hundred and twenty-six men in custody,” he declared. “Seventy-two Rakes. Fifty-four Technologists. All charged with assault.”

  “And Brunel?” asked Burton, returning to his chair.

  “Location unknown. Nothing to charge him with.”

  “And to be frank,” added Trounce, “the chief commissioner is reluctant to press charges, anyway. As far as most people are concerned, Isambard Kingdom Brunel died a national hero a couple of years ago. The powers that be are reluctant to expose his continued existence, the thing that he’s become, or the fact that he appears to have crossed ethical boundaries.”

  “And Florence Nightingale?” asked Swinburne.

  “Same,” said Honesty. “No charges.”

  “She’s a strange one,” mused Swinburne.

  “Not as strange as the Edward Oxfords,” grunted Trounce. “I still can’t get to grips with the fact that the man I saw trying to stop the assassination of Queen Victoria was struggling with his own ancestor, and was the same man as the stilt-walker who ran past me, the same man as the stilt-walker who jumped out of the trees, and the same man we fought over in the Battle of Old Ford twenty years later! Good lord! Time travel! It’s more than I can cope with!”

  Burton blew out a plume of cigar smoke.

  “That’s the least of it. We removed the cause but we didn’t repair the damage. The fact of the matter is that we live in a world that shouldn’t exist. Oxford changed the course of history. His presence sent out ripples that altered everything. If I understand it correctly, this period of time should be called the Victorian Age, and if you care to get up and look out of the window, what you’ll see bears only a superficial resemblance to what you’d be looking at had he never travelled back through time.”

  “And we are changed, too,” added Swinburne. “Our time has presented us with different opportunities and challenges; we are not the same as the people recorded in Oxford’s history!”

  “If we made it into his history at all!” muttered Trounce.

  Sir Richard Francis Burton shifted uneasily in his chair.

  Marry the bitch. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you.

  For the remainder of that evening, the four men relaxed together, discussed the case, and cemented their friendship. By the time the guests took their leave, another London particular had settled over the city and ash was falling from the dark sky. They waited until they heard a brougham creeping along, called for it, and said their good-byes.

  Burton retired back to his study and sat with a book on his lap. His eyes slid over the words without taking them in. He hung his arm over the edge of the chair, his fingers idly fondling Fidget’s ears.

  He looked down at the basset hound.

  “I killed a man, Fidget; cold-bloodedly broke his neck with my bare hands. Palmerston would say it was my duty—that I had to do it to preserve the Empire—but the truth is that I did it to preserve my own existence, as it is now!”

  He rested his head on the back of the chair and cleared his mind, using his Sufi training to focus inward, searching for any awareness of a newly inc
urred karmic debt.

  He found none, and was jolted from his meditation by a tapping at the window. Fidget barked. It was a parakeet.

  “Message from scum-hugger Henry Arundell. Please meet me at the stinking Venetia at noon tomorrow. Message ends.”

  “Reply,” said Burton. “Message begins. I’ll be there. Message ends.”

  “Underwear-nabber!”

  The next morning he donned his Sikh costume and delivered a bag of books to the Beetle, then returned home, washed and changed, and made his way through the fog to the Venetia Hotel. He arrived a little early and, after one of the doormen had brushed the ash from his hat and shoulders, proceeded to the lounge and sat contemplating the silver panther head of his cane until Isabel’s father arrived.

  He stood and shook the older man’s hand. They had a difficult relationship, these two; a grudging respect.

  Isabel’s mother had always disapproved of Burton. To start with, she clung to the dwindling Catholic faith, whereas Burton was rumoured to be a Muslim, though he actually held no religious allegiances at all. Then, of course, there was his reputation—the dark rumours and general consensus that he was “not one of us.”

  Henry Arundell had none of his wife’s prejudices. He did, however, love his daughter, and wanted only the best for her. He’d never been convinced that Burton was the best.

  They sat.

  “She’s gone,” Arundell said, without any preliminaries.

  “What?” exclaimed Burton.

  “Isabel packed her things and left the family home some few days ago on the twenty-first. We suspected that the two of you had fallen out over some matter and she was taking a holiday to think things over. Yesterday we received this.”

  He handed Burton a letter.

  Trieste, 25th September; 1861

  My Dearest Mama and Papa,

  Richard has broken off our engagement and I feel my life as it was, and as I expected it to be, has ended. I had considered that I was fated to be with him from the very first instant I laid eyes on him in Boulogne ten years ago. It had been my intention that we should travel to the East together and settle there. I find it almost inconceivable that it should be him who denies me this destiny.