Clash of Empires (7 page)

He uses the chamber pot although he does not really need to, then climbs back into the bunk, sitting up and drawing the bedclothes around him. He stares at the candle for a few moments, letting the intensity of its glow imprint itself on his eyes. When he closes them he can still see it, but reversed. Dark against the inside of his eyelids.

Facing the dinosaur at Gaillemarde was no dream. He and Jean slew the monster. But Jean is dead at the hand of his own cousin, and Willem knows that by himself he could never again face such a creature.

Even the gentle, innocent eyes of the herbisaurs chill him, and the microsaurs that sometimes skitter around his feet in the wooded lands of the artillery barracks seem to grow in his mind until they too are the terrifying monster of Gaillemarde.

He cannot return to the Sonian Forest.

And yet he must.

He pinches out the candle and darkness returns.

But for a long time, sleep does not.

 

BEDLAM

“I was told that Bedlam was at St. George's Fields,” Willem says. “Here on the south side of the river.”

The morning is cold and the Thames is covered with fog, a winter fog, even though it is autumn.

Willem, Frost, and Jack stand on the Woolwich jetty waiting for the ferry to return. Frost has requested Jack's services again today, as a guide, although Willem suspects that the real reason is to keep Jack well away from Hew McConnell.

“Héloïse resides at the old asylum,” Frost says. “At Moorfields on the north side.”

“The old asylum?” Willem asks.

Frost says. “The new building you refer to has only just opened at St. George's Fields. However, most of the patients, including Héloïse, remain at the old asylum awaiting transfer.”

Willem nods in understanding. He looks out across the river. He cannot see the ferry yet and only knows it is there because of the regular warning call of “Hoy!” from the ferry master, alerting other vessels to their presence. The ferryboat is invisible in the thick yellow fog that suffocates the river in this early part of the morning.

Two oil lamps are suspended from poles at the end of the jetty. The sun has risen but the lamps are still lit, twin beacons to guide the ferry in the mist. Their light is dull and barely penetrates the fog. The new gaslights that illuminate many parts of London have yet to be installed here at Woolwich.

Willem does not like the fog, which makes his breathing heavy. He can see no farther than the length of his arm, and tries not to dwell on the thought of what might lurk, unseen, in the mist around them. His hand strays to the hilt of his saber, and rests there for a while, as a comfort.

The fog begins to glow and the regular splash of oars signals the imminent arrival of the ferry. A few moments later the blunt prow of the boat eases into the jetty.

The ferry master checks their papers before letting them on board. There are no other passengers and soon the sound of the oars resumes. Within seconds the jetty has gone. Here in the middle of the river they drift in a world of murky yellow, as if everything else has ceased to exist.

Willem becomes conscious of every sound. Every smell. The regular dip and splash of the oars. The sound of water moving past the boat. The voices of the guards on the jetty behind them. The ferry master's warning call. The fog has a strange smoky smell. The river too has its own odor: a sickly blend of mud and decay. Willem can taste the air, bitter on his tongue. He can feel its clammy fingers on the exposed skin of his face and hands.

He realizes this is what Frost's world is like. A world of sound, smell, taste, and touch, but no sight. He looks at the lieutenant. If Frost is nervous he does not show it.

Jack does. He looks as nervous as Willem feels. His eyes dart around like those of a rabbit or a bird.

“When we get to the asylum,” Frost says, “do not be surprised and do not comment on anything you see.”

“Of course,” Willem says, although he feels these words were intended for Jack's ears.

*   *   *

A line of hackney carriages wait near the north-bank jetty as they disembark. Despite his lack of sight Frost seems aware of their presence and raises a hand. The first driver in line prods his horse forward until the carriage stops in front of them.

“Is it a long walk?” Willem asks. He is unused to riding in such a vehicle.

“More than two hours on foot,” Frost says as Jack helps him to the step. “We would not make it back to Woolwich for the rocket demonstration and the earl's visit if we walked.”

Jack opens the carriage door and Frost steps up inside. Willem follows.

“Where to, m'lud?” the driver asks.

“Bedlam,” Frost says.

The driver nods as if this is a common request, and the carriage growls forward over the cobblestones.

“How did you know the carriages were there?” Willem asks. “I heard no sound that would give away their presence.”

“I smelled the horses,” Frost says.

The streets of London are narrow and the buildings are tall, topped by chimneys that claw away the sky. In places the brick walls rise so high on all sides that it does not seem real, but rather like the painted backdrop of a theater. The people seem no more than players in a convoluted drama on a busy stage.

The fog adds to the air of unreality. It is thinner here away from the river but still swathes everything and everyone in a ghostly gauze.

The roads are crowded in spite of the early hour. Chimney sweeps and charwomen jostle with flower sellers on the narrow pavements. Laborers wait on street corners. Vagabonds curl in doorways. Street sweepers are still at work, cleaning up the last of the dung of the previous day, dodging the carriages, delivery carts, and men on horseback that are already starting to fill the streets. The fresh fields of the artillery barracks seem like paradise compared to the grimy buildings of London. The air here is thick with the smell of soot and sewage.

Two mounted constables, “Robin Redbreasts,” with their distinctive scarlet waistcoats under dark blue greatcoats, water their horses at a trough in front of a teahouse. One has dismounted, removed his top hat, and is energetically cranking the pump handle. The other glances idly at Willem as they pass.

Spread along the road by a small park, a row of costermongers in their colorful kingsman neckerchiefs are selling fruit, breads, fish, and other goods from wooden carts, while their donkeys graze on the nearby grass. One of them, a squat, ugly man with a long mustache and no beard or sideburns, is arguing with a dour-faced woman over the payment she has given him. He holds his hand out showing a single copper, while she indicates with her fingers that she gave him two. Willem wonders who is lying. He suspects it is the woman. Even back in Gaillemarde, a market vendor was very careful to avoid being labeled a cheat.

A little farther on, in dark alleyways running with rats and lined with straw to soak up the mud, Willem sees crawlers, old women who live on the street. They cannot, or perhaps choose not, to walk, and get around by crawling on their hands and knees. Willem thinks they look like animals, but he knows what his mother would say if she saw them. They are people too. They call out to the carriage as it passes and Willem tosses a few coppers from his purse, much to Frost's disgust.

“You should not encourage them,” he says. “More will fill these streets if they find easy pickings from such as you.”

“And yet those coins, which matter not at all to me, may mean that some of those women eat today,” Willem says.

Frost shrugs. “I suspect that you do not think very highly of London,” he says.

“It is what it is,” Willem says. “I neither like nor dislike it. But it is vastly different to Gaillemarde.”

That is an understatement. All his life, since he was old enough to remember, he had lived in a sleepy little village nestled on the bank of a river on the edge of the vast Sonian Forest. The houses were separate and scattered. The largest building was the church. Gaillemarde is a long way from London, in every possible sense.

He cannot think about his old village without thinking about two of the survivors of Thibault's massacre there, now held in Napoléon's prison. Cosette and his mother.

“You must help me convince Wellington to let me have my soldiers and my ship,” he says.

“I doubt my word will carry more weight than yours,” Frost says. “But I will certainly use all my powers of persuasion when we meet him.”

“He must not back down from his promise,” Willem says. When he closes his eyes all he can see is Cosette's lips, arcing into a smile.

Frost has an uncanny ability to read his mind. “Tell me about Cosette,” he says.

“What is it that you wish to know?” Willem asks.

“Is she pretty?” Frost asks.

“She is,” Willem says.

Even as he says it he feels guilty, suddenly conscious that prettiness is something the young lieutenant will never again experience. Lost to him forever are so many things, like the sight of a dancing field of flowers, the sun breaking over the hills at the start of a new day, or moonlight caught in the eye of a child.

“You have feelings for her,” Frost says.

“I have spoken of no such thing,” Willem protests.

“Yet when you speak of the rescue, it is always her name that you utter first,” Frost says.

“You have been too long with the Intelligence Office,” Willem says. “You find meaning where there is none.”

“Are you betrothed to her?” Frost asks.

Willem shakes his head.

“Are you promised?” Frost asks.

“I am not anything to her,” Willem says. He sighs. “Except a fool when I am around her and incomplete when I am away from her.”

“I thought as much,” Frost says with a smile.

“You see far and deeply without eyes,” Willem says. “Jean would have laughed at me. He'd have said there are many maidens to woo before settling on one.”

Speaking of Jean brings back memories of him, Willem's truest friend, murdered by his own cousin, François. It is a painful memory. Frost seems to sense his discomfort and they travel for a while in silence.

They skirt the old London wall, built by the Romans around the original city of Londinium to keep out wandering saurs. It is high and imposing, made of thick stone. Willem wonders if saurs were larger in those days, or perhaps more numerous.

Everywhere they see soldiers in small groups or marching in lines. They are a constant reminder that Napoléon's army is held back from London by just a short stretch of water. Not that the city needs reminding. Unease is everywhere: in the expressions on people's faces, on the pages of the newspapers, in the shop owners boarding up their shop windows in preparation for the imminent invasion.

They pass one news-seller with copies of the
Times
, holding up a hand-drawn poster of a dinosaur that looks more like a large rat.

“I heard that Napoléon is going to fly his battlesaurs over using giant balloons,” Frost says with a smile.

“And I heard that the French are digging a tunnel beneath the English Channel,” Willem says.

“Flying dinosaurs,” Jack says. “Imagine if one did its bottom business. I wouldn't want to be standin' under that.”

They all laugh.

*   *   *

The carriage finally turns into a wide tree-lined driveway on the grounds of an imposing building. It pulls to a halt outside a large gate in a curved wall, between two heavy pillars. On top of the pillars are statues, two reclining men with faces contorted by madness.

Jack seems immediately uncomfortable at the sight of this place. “I'll stay here and mind the carriage, if you please,” he says.

“Come with us, Jack,” Frost says. “I need your eyes.”

Jack hesitates, then says, “Mr. Willem has eyes too, sir.”

“Jack, I could use—” Frost begins.

“I'd rather not go in there, sir, if it's all the same to you,” Jack says abruptly.

Willem is surprised by the outburst. “Do you know this place?” he asks.

“I seen it before,” Jack says. “It's a bad place.”

“It's a hospital,” Frost says. “They help sick people.”

“Bad things happen in there,” Jack says. “I feel it.”

“Héloïse is in there,” Willem says.

Jack looks terrified. “Please, sir, Lieutenant Frost, sir,” he says.

“But—” Willem begins.

“Jack, stay here,” Frost says. He hands him some coins. “Here is the payment for our driver. Hold it for me and see that he does not leave before our return.”

It is Willem's turn to be Frost's guide. He takes the lieutenant's arm and leads him through the gates toward a heavy stone wall, topped by four Roman pillars. Set into the wall is a narrow door.

“That was unlike Jack,” Willem says as they walk.

“Decidedly,” Frost agrees. “Something about this place has affected him deeply. Perhaps it is not entirely unknown to him. A family member, perhaps?”

They stop at the door, which is locked. A rope to one side pulls a bell and they wait as the sharp tones fade in the cool morning air.

“Not long ago, you could pay tuppence to visit the madhouse and laugh at the lunatics,” Frost says. “It was considered a fine entertainment.”

“That seems cruel,” Willem says.

“Times have changed,” Frost says without conviction.

A nurse greets them and invites them into a small waiting room, where she writes their names in a visitors' book. She is a sharp-faced but stout woman, with one eye that constantly weeps.

“I must ask you to remove your swords,” she says. “No weapons are allowed inside, lest the lunatics take hold of them and use them to harm themselves or others.”

Frost unbuckles his scabbard and hands it to the nurse, who places it in a cupboard. Willem follows suit, and the nurse locks the cupboard.

“We have come to see Antoinette de Forêt,” Frost says.