Clash of Empires (14 page)

“Come with me,” he says. “I will take you away from here.”

“They will track us and find us,” Cosette says, wiping away tears.

“Pah! I know this forest better than a thousand French soldiers,” François says. “I roam as I please.”

She shakes her head. “Willem's mother, Madame Verheyen, is imprisoned with me. I must return. If I escape, they will kill her.” She turns abruptly to look at the dead man by the spring. “But when Belette does not return…”

“I will dispose of the sinner's body,” François says. “They will think he has fallen victim to a bear or a saur.”

“Still, I must go back,” Cosette says. “I will not endanger her life for mine.”

“Then I must rescue you both,” François says.

“This is not possible,” she says. “They will not allow both of us out of the abbey at the same time. And even if they did, they still hold Monsieur Verheyen. She will never leave without her husband.”

“I will find a way to rescue all three of you,” François says. “How often do you come here?”

“Every few days. As often as I can,” Cosette says.

“Look for me next time you come,” François says. “I will be here.”

“You are truly a miracle, sent by God,” Cosette says.

“I do God's bidding, it is true,” François says. “Now go, before anyone else comes.”

Cosette touches his arm briefly, a more proper display of thanks and affection, before hurrying down the path back to the abbey.

Her heart and mind are conflicted. The relief of her rescue from Belette is tempered by her horror at the manner of his death.

But there are reasons for happiness also. François has survived, and thanks to him, so have many children from the village. She does not know who, but she sees faces. Pierre, the tailor's son; Sylvie, the orphan girl; bubbly little Veronique.

These are small joys amid great sorrow, like diamonds sparkling on a black cloth.

There is one thing that bothers her. How had François just happened to arrive at exactly the right moment? She remembers the feeling of being watched as she walked to the spring. Was it François, not Belette? Surely that cannot be true. François is pious and proper. He averted his eyes when she was unclothed. It is unthinkable that he would have spied on her bathing. His fortuitous arrival must have been just a coincidence.

Later, when it is too late, something else will bother her, but it does not occur to her now. When she mentioned Willem's father, François showed no surprise.

 

ESCAPE FROM BEDLAM

Thomas Monro is the third of his line to hold the position of principal physician at Bethlem Royal Hospital. His father held the post before him, and his father's father before that. In three generations they have made great strides in the medicine of lunacy. In this era of modern medicine the treatments are far more scientific and far less cruel than in his grandfather's time, when they would open a man or woman's skull to allow the supposed demons within to escape.

And if helping others should make Thomas Monro a very wealthy man, then so be it. There was money in madness, his grandfather had always said.

This third of the great Doctors Monro is a careful man, a cautious man. A man of thought before action. He walks with slow, deliberate movements, even when he is in a hurry—and this night, he is in a hurry.

He emerges from the side door of the hospital warmly and fashionably dressed in a fine horsehair coat. A carriage waits on the road that encircles Finsbury Circus. Despite the urgency of the situation he strolls to it at a measured pace.

The carriage looks like any other that plies the streets of London, without markings or insignia. But that is on the outside. On the inside, concealed from sight, is a sturdy metal cage. The carriage is used by the asylum to transport the most dangerous kind of inmates. Animal sounds come from within.

A night fog has come up in the unseasonably cold air. It moves through the trees of the park like a living, breathing thing, inhaling and exhaling with the vagaries of the breeze, gasping through the leaves and branches. A heavier ground fog whispers over the grasses of the greens.

Monro makes his way around to the front, and looks up at the driver.

It is Adams, the orderly, a large man with haunted eyes. He wears a bandage just below his hairline where he was cut while fighting with the young soldiers.

Adams had been an inmate himself a few years earlier, but was released, completely cured, according to Monro. Adams is eternally grateful for his release and his subsequent employment, and is therefore loyal, if troubled by occasional recurrences of the visions that had him admitted in the first place. But there are few others Monro trusts so completely, especially with such an important assignment.

“You have what I told you to bring?” Monro asks.

Adams nods and touches an oilskin on the seat beside him.

Monro climbs up alongside the driver, wrapping his coat tightly against the cold bite of the damp air. He opens the narrow shutter that allows him to see inside the cage, and shuts it again quickly to avoid a stream of spittle from within. The cage rattles and there is a howl so loud that he fears it will be heard by passersby. Fortunately there are none. The hour is too late and the park is avoided at night by Londoners. Inmates have been known to wander.

“It is the wild girl,” Monro confirms.

“As you asked,” Adams says.

Monro nods. Adams would have made no mistake. But still he had to check. This is his nature. Careful, methodical.

The wind whips around the carriage, making swirling patterns out of the fog, which is increasing by the minute. Adams unwraps the oilskin on the seat, revealing a pair of flintlock dueling pistols, accurate and deadly.

Monro takes one, tucking it into a large pocket of his fine coat.

“Might I ask the reason for the pistols, doctor?” Adams asks. “And the late hour?”

“Skulduggery,” Monro says.

Adams nods as if this was the answer he was expecting. He flicks the reins to start the horses. The carriage bumps and rattles across the old, uneven cobblestones.

They have turned out onto the road that runs along the old London saur-wall before Adams speaks again. “What manner of skulduggery? I should know what to expect.”

The wall exudes coldness, as if it sucks the warmth out of the air around it. It sucks the light as well and here in its shadow at this hour of night even the twin oil lamps that swing from the front of the carriage make little impression on the darkness.

“Nothing that we cannot handle,” Monro says, patting the pistol in his coat pocket. “You remember the Dutch artillery major and the blind lieutenant who interfered with our treatment of this girl?”

“Of course,” Adams says, touching his head bandage.

“Yesterday we had another inquiry. A man named Arbuckle. He wanted to know when we would be transferring this girl to the new hospital.”

Adams steers the carriage expertly around a corner into Wood Street.

“This Arbuckle is known to me,” Monro says. “A lackey for the Earl of Leicester.”

“That old fool,” Adams says. “Thinks he knows all about medicine and he ain't even a doctor.”

“Exactly,” Monro says.

“What would the earl want with the wild girl?” Adams asks.

“That was what I wondered,” Monro says. “So I made some inquiries of my own. It turns out that the earl's son was badly injured at Waterloo. He was treated in a hospital in the village of Gaillemarde. The village of the wild girl. Lieutenant Frost was treated in the same hospital. I do not yet see all the connections, but that can be no coincidence.”

“Very suspicious,” Adams says.

“They think they are dealing with simpletons, but I see right through their contrivances,” Monro says. “I fear they plan to engineer an escape, which would not be difficult from this creaky old madhouse. But the new asylum is far more secure and they must know that. Undoubtedly they wish to extricate the girl before she is shifted. But they are in for a surprise. We move her tonight. By the time they spring their plan, the girl will be safely inside the high walls of our new building.”

“You are the master of cunning,” Adams says.

“You flatter me,” Monro says with a slight nod of his head. “But I am certainly more than a match for a simple artillery captain, a blind boy, and that befuddled old earl. If they—”

He is stopped by the jerk of the carriage as Adams wrenches at the brake. The horses rear up. A soldier has run right in front of the carriage, narrowly avoiding being knocked over.

“Look out, man!” Monro shouts, but the soldier runs on, turning back only to scream, “French ships sighted in the Thames!”

The carriage comes to a complete stop.

“Can that be true?” Adams asks.

“Napoléon's forces could not cross the Channel,” Monro says. “It is well guarded by the Royal Navy.”

Adams stares at him, uncertain. “Unless the French slipped a few ships past the Channel Fleet.”

“It is nothing but hysteria,” Monro says. “Balloons, tunnels, now French ships in the Thames! The talk of invasion grows more lurid and preposterous by the day. But regardless, let us hasten to our destination.”

The cobblestones grind beneath the wheels of the carriage and the clack of the horses' hooves echoes off the buildings around them. Despite the darkness and the growing fog, they have no problem finding their way. Many of the houses have oil lamps hanging above their front doors, as is prescribed by law. The old saur-wall rises like a black ocean wave to their left, and more oil lamps hang from the battlements.

“What if it is Bony, sir?” Adams asks. He sounds nervous. “What with those stories of dinosaurs an' all.”

“Then our troops and artillery would already be mobilizing to deal with them,” Monro says. “Do you see any sign of that?”

Adams shakes his head. Other than the one panicky soldier, they have seen no other signs of the British Army. He seems reassured by this thought and flicks the horses toward Blackfriars Bridge.

The crossing is deserted and, looking left and right over the river Thames, Monro can neither see the lights of warships nor hear the sounds of battle.

They are over the bridge and traveling through the modern houses of Newington when they encounter the second soldier. An artilleryman. His face is a mask of blood and his uniform is disheveled. He is not wearing his hat.

“Battlesaurs!” he shouts, before running off into the darkness beyond the bright pools from the gas lamps that line the bridge.

Adams looks at Monro in alarm.

“Make all haste, Adams,” Monro says, now badly unsettled. “Whatever is happening, we will be safer behind the walls of the asylum.”

Could the French really have landed a force at the mouth of the Thames? Could they even now be making their way to Whitehall? Every corner, every scrap of mist, now seems to be hiding something. In the distance he thinks he hears screams.

He withdraws the pistol from his pocket and holds it ready.

The streets are mostly clear until they approach the obelisk in the circle at St. George's Fields. Here there are odd irregular lumps on the side of the road, just visible in the lamplight from the carriage's twin oil lamps. Only when one of them stirs and moans does he realize that they are bodies.

Adams is obviously rattled by this and urges the horses on. The carriage leans precariously as he sweeps around the circle into Lambeth Road, barely two streets from the new asylum, only to find the road is blocked. A delivery cart and an artillery caisson, perhaps fleeing in panic, have collided. The lane here is narrow, part of the old village, and the two overturned vehicles have made it impassable. The men who were driving the cart and the caisson have fled.

Adams eases the carriage to a halt. Monro looks around nervously. Ahead of them, little more than a block away, he can see the high dome of the hospital. They are so close now.

“We will have to back up and take another route,” he says, but even before the words are out of his mouth there is a scream from behind them, and another, and suddenly the street is full of people running: ladies in frocks; men in coats; beggars in rags; the people of Newington, terrified, panicked, screaming, some with blood on their faces.

“What the hell, sir?” Adams asks, now panicky.

“Dinosaurs!” comes a shout from the crowd.

“Great beasts from hell,” a woman shouts.

The terrified crowd surges past them, rocking the carriage on its springs before clambering over the overturned wagons in front of them.

“Holy hell, sir,” Adams says. He too has his pistol up now, and stares behind them into the fog and the darkness.

A roar comes from somewhere behind them, bouncing thinly off the brick walls on either side of the lane. Monro twists to look. More people run around the corner, screaming. He hears another sound now, a regular, recurring thump on the stones of the roadway, almost like footsteps.

When he turns back, Adams has gone, disappeared into the panic-stricken crowd.

“Adams!” Monro shouts. He climbs down and stands uncertainly beside the carriage. For a moment he thinks of the girl inside and he fumbles for his keys. But she will be safer inside the cage, he thinks. The fog swirls and seems thicker now, as if mixed with smoke. The roar sounds again and the footsteps are much louder. Then, the unthinkable: two eyes appear around the corner, glowing through the smoky darkness. Whatever they belong to is three times the size of a man. A twist of wind creates a sudden fissure in the fog revealing a long demonic snout and scaly skin surrounding a mouth of jagged teeth.

“My lord, protect me,” Monro screams. He stumbles, the keys dropping from nerveless fingers as he grabs again for his pistol. He looks at it, then back at the head of the giant creature emerging from the corner behind him. He tosses the pistol away and runs after the crowd, squeezing between the wagon and the stone wall.