Fiendish Schemes (9 page)

“Aye, this be naught, compared.” The carriage driver was able to discern my thoughts. “Ye still see a bit o’ green, here’bouts, when springtime comes. And the birds be nesting, where they can. Up north, all’s baked hard as the bricks o’ a farrier’s furnace.”

“But not everywhere.” I amended his observation, based upon the accounts I had read, of the transformations wrought by the steam entrepreneurs. “I have heard tell, that those towns and cities, whose factories had been driven by coal, are now abandoned for such usage. Pleasure excursions to idyllic Birmingham and Newcastle are now in vogue; such is my understanding.”

“Mebbe,” admitted the driver. “I’d ken but a mickle of sech grand doin’s. Them places might be veritable Gardens of Eden these days. All’s knowed by me is that they’ve made a right dog’s breakfast frae these parts.”

I could scarcely gainsay his comment. Whatever heaps of grey ash and clinkers that had been produced by our previous stoves and manufactures, the coal that fired them had the advantage of being relatively portable. A lump dug up in the north of England could be carried by canal boats to London and set alight, there to emit its pent-up heat. To convey the force of steam to its desirous recipients required the construction across the nation of a vast web of pipes, the very ones that I had mistaken for giant serpents.

Controversy, some part of which I perused in the journals that found their way to my remote village, accompanied this development. My carriage driver was of that unschooled mind that grizzled at all disturbances to long-established ways of life. And perhaps he had the right of it: the
Steam Barons,
as the popular press referred to these colluding businessmen, might have both over-extolled the beneficent wonders of this newly devised power source and belittled its possible disadvantages, the better to vanquish any objections to their schemes.

Not only was the English landscape disfigured by the enormous pipes and conduits that had been laid about its surface—though to certain sentimental types that would have been injury enough— there was apparently as well the constant danger of fatally scalding explosions, a risk magnified by the greater and greater pressures of steam forced through the web of pipes, to feed the increasing demand of populace and industry. I say “apparently,” as knowledge of such occasional explosions was ruthlessly suppressed by the Barons, their amassed wealth having been sufficient to purchase controlling interests in every publication to come rolling from the presses.

“Right bastards, they are.” The carriage driver’s gaze narrowed to slits as he surveyed the invasive pipeworks, as though he could trace their mazing course back to the manicured, beringed hands that turned the valves at their source. “Got us all by the bollocks, they have.” I knew he referred to the stranglehold the Steam Barons had upon our collective lives, in all but the remotest and least developed parishes, as the one I had just left. “Fancy themselves lords, they do! And sech they are, damn their eyes! Ye can scarce bile a pertato these days, without payin’ them a penny for the priv’lege.”

“Perhaps we had best be on our way.” I had seen my fill of what changes had come to modern society during my absence from it. “I was rather hoping we might reach a traveler’s inn before nightfall.”

“So we shall. Have nae fear o’ that.” The driver turned and headed back down to the road.

I followed him. In silence; given the dark, anarchic disposition he had revealed, I assumed that it would have scarcely improved his mood for me to disclose that the address to which I was bound was the palatial townhouse of exactly one of the powerful, worldbestriding Steam Barons he so murderously despised.

M
Y
familiarity with the habitations of the wealthy and powerful was a product of my own unfortunate practices. I have already written here of the too-frequent visits to the local betting shops, which had so effectively reduced me to penury. Such financial wisdom as I possess was purchased dearly. Certain other information was thrown in
gratis
.

The lust for riches is often spurred by the comparison between our own mean estates and those upon whom the gods have more beneficently smiled. As at many bookmakers’ dens, the one to which I had brought my dwindling capital encouraged such envy by adorning its walls with framed lithographs of the townhouses in which opulently luxurious existences were maintained by their deep- pocketed owners. No doubt, the attitude to be encouraged was that in which bettors assured themselves, in their silent hearts, that they were well on the way to living in similar fashion, as though the wagers laid down on the cash-worn counters were but small payments on their own elegant residences, soon to be bought outright with their amassed winnings.

One such architectural portrait, which I often contemplated as I fingered the most recent betting slip in my coat pocket, had been that of an immense edifice, fronted with marble columns and, above its portico, a
bas relief
representation of the Battle of Stenyclarus. A legend at the picture’s lower margin helpfully noted that Featherwhite House—the name being a fanciful reference to the plume emitted from a steam engine’s safety valves—was located in a fashionable district near London’s Strand. With that picture in mind, it was a facile process to note, in the various publications that purported to advise those who set wagers in the Sea & Light Book, the frequent mentions of the Honourable Marston Dredgecock of exactly the same Featherwhite House. Whatever considerable fortune had been his inheritance, that sum of cash and lands had evidently been augmented by his speculations in various commercial fields. Dark hints flitted through the smudgily printed pages, to the effect that Dredgecock’s kid-gloved hand might be found pulling the strings of a vast web of controlling interests, not the least of them including the purveyance of the steam power upon which the lighthouse corporations depended for the mobility and functioning of their luminous enterprises. There was every possibility that if I had more closely examined the massive pipes that I had spotted knitting up the fields by which my carriage had passed, I might very well have found somewhere upon their hissing flanks the insignia of one of Dredgecock’s interlocking corporations.

With that likelihood in my thoughts, I had hesitated to have the carriage driver deliver me directly to the front door of the famous—or, no doubt to some, infamous—Featherwhite House. A reasonable caution foresaw that the coachman, having already muttered scowling imprecations upon the oppressive Steam Barons—of which plutocratic band the aforementioned Dredgecock was so prominent a member—might well be spurred to some violent action upon seeing that he had delivered his passenger right to his sworn enemy’s abode, as it were. A vision came unbidden to me of my alighting from the carriage, only to have my trunk heaved directly upon my head. Small as my luggage might be, it still possessed enough weight to flatten me upon the London pavement, given sufficient accuracy as a projectile.

As a prudent compromise, I had the driver deposit me at a coaching inn on the outskirts of the great city. My funds had been significantly lightened by payment for the lengthy journey, but were still sufficient to have my luggage transferred to a hansom cab summoned for the purpose and directed to my ultimate destination.

Soon enough, I was engulfed by the sights and sounds of that urban conglomeration, the districts of which had once constituted my daily existence. It seemed to have changed but little during my long rural exile, the streets surrounding the hansom being as crowded and noisy as I remembered them. All about me, as I leaned forward to peer from the hansom cab’s small window, surged the clamouring tides and breakers of an ocean seemingly as large as that Atlantic, upon whose rocky Cornish coast I had so recently stood. Perhaps it was all the talk of evangelized whales and brooding, sentient seas that had been poured into my ears, that had resulted in my thoughts taking on a distinct aquatic cast; the result was that the crush and press of London’s citizenry, with its carts and bales, costermongers’ cries and jumbled coaxings and curses, struck my staggered senses like one of those monstrous waves reputed to lift ships upon their crests and tumble them to their capsized dooms.

The impression was heightened by the clarity with which I was able to view the city’s inhabitants and buildings, all the way to the great dome of St. Paul’s, looming above its less impressive neighbours as though it were some snow-capped Alp pried from its station upon the Continent and transposed to this metropolitan locale. A moment of puzzlement elapsed before I realized that the perpetual haze I associated with London, the smoky reek from its chimneys and furnaces that previously had filled its air with oft-times blinding soot, was absent from my view. Indeed, I could draw in a deep breath and not feel as if my lungs had just been the depository of a dustbin shaken of its contents. This apparent change seemed to have had a salutary effect upon the health of the city’s natives: turning my ear toward the hansom’s window, I could not detect in the mingled human roar any of that consumptive hacking and wheezing that had before divided virtually every spoken syllable from the next.

If the London air had been as murky as I recalled it being, I might not have perceived at last the actual change that had been wrought in the city’s streets and lanes. The phenomenon had been obscured by the throngs of people and their attendant conveyances, but as though a final obscuring veil had been lifted in my brain, I saw amongst them the same glistening metallic shapes that I had witnessed crossing in static place over the distant rural countryside, on my coach journey to this point. The immense vermiform constructions, the function of which was to convey the pressurized force from the even more remote steam mines to the north, laced themselves along the lengths of the streets and to either side, the human population forced thereby to divide themselves to left and right as they sought to achieve their own destinations. If the public areas of the city had indeed been the great ocean of which my fancy had briefly conceived, the steam pipes might very well have served as those whales and dolphins and other large aquatic creatures whose glistening backs are glimpsed breaking the surface of the waters or rearing even higher into the disclosing sunlight.

But this alteration to the city’s appearance was not confined to the level of the streets. From my vantage point inside the hansom cab, I lifted my gaze, following the course of the glistening pipes as they snaked up the sides of the buildings. Smaller pipes branched from the larger, penetrating the brickwork as a snake might plunge its tapering head into an earthen crevice in search of its furry prey, or creeping in through windows stripped of their glass panes in order to facilitate the entry of the steam conduits. As my memories of the London that had been before faded from my recall, I saw with appalled clarity that the entire city, as far as my gaze could reach, was tangled about with the interconnected pipes, as a child’s play house might be embraced by creeper vines, both inside and out, were it left abandoned in an unkempt garden for a sufficient period of time.

Nostalgia’s blindfold having thus been stripped from my sight, my other senses were freed as well, to more accurately discern the urban reality that had been erected in my absence. Through the hubbub of the clamorous voices, I heard now the perpetual underlying hiss from the pipes, as well as the occasional yowl of pain and surprise from an infant whose careless mother had brought him too close to one of the scalding white gouts from a leaky join or patch. These were of such frequency along the serpentine course of the pipes that the clouds overhead were, I realized now, merely the condensed emissions rising from below. The warm, damp flush upon my face, that I had glumly supposed to be the first symptom of an advancing fever, was similarly revealed to be the oppressively sultry atmosphere in which all the city’s inhabitants were caught, as though the entirety of London had been transformed into one of those steam baths of which various Asiatic cultures are reputedly so fond.

As the hansom made its slow progress through the crowd, I settled back in its leather seat. My mind was oddly at peace; having been initially appalled at the transformation that had been wrought in the city which had once been my home, I took a degree of comfort in knowing that I bore no responsibility for these changes. My earlier experiences, by which I had discovered the exact nature of the devices engineered by my greatly clever and overly heedless father, had left me as no great enthusiast for the various technological advances touted by those who so eagerly plunge toward some gladsome Future, the benefits of which are more often than not as elusive as their proponents’ ardour is frenzied. Indeed, my retreat to one of the most rural corners of the nation was prompted by the desire to evade as long as possible the encroachment of those dismal prospects to come, the outlines of which I had glimpsed in my father’s inventions. That mine was an opinion embraced by few, I was well aware; even in the distant village from which I had now removed, that which was most commonly labeled Progress was anticipated with the same heartfelt longing with which a child might view an unopened birthday gift, the bright delusive wrappings of which conceal delights yet to be realized.

Very well,
I thought smugly to myself.
Here upon you is that Future you so desired, in all its hissing, clanking glory. If your fingers are burnt as you grasp hold of it, don’t blame George Dower, Esquire.

Preoccupied with such self-congratulatory meditations, I was taken by surprise when the cab came to a halt. I had been made aware, by its hastening forward motion, that the crowds had become less numerous in composition as we left the more commercial thoroughfares behind us. Now at a standstill, I perceived complete silence about the vehicle, other than the horse’s wetly mumbling breath and the heel of the cabdriver’s whip stamping upon the floor of his seat above.

“Here ye be, sir.” The overhead hatch had slid open; the tophatted, bewhiskered face peered in at me. “I’d be most ’preciative if ye’d be of some haste in yer disembarking, as I’m not abs’lutely comfortable tarrying ’bout these parts.”

The cabdriver’s comment puzzled me. What sinister manner of event did he anticipate, in as fashionable a district as that in which my destination of Featherwhite House was located?

“Is there something amiss, my good man?”

“Oh, it’s not fer my skin I’m ’feared,” he hastily assured me. “It’s Molly—the horse, I mean. She’s a sociable creature, she is; seen naught but London streets ’er whole life. So she considers the ’ustle and bustle to be natural-like, and gets ’erself skittish when there’s no-one ’bout.”

The framed engraving on the wall of the village betting shop had shown elegantly parasoled women and their escorts promenading before the townhouse’s gates; I expected as much when I turned and gazed out the hansom’s window. Instead, I was greeted with a sight fully consistent with the assessment I had just been given. The street was empty, stones missing from its paving in such quantity as to render it impassable without the skill the cabdriver had shown in steering around the jagged chasms. On either side, the once palatial residences now appeared abandoned by all save ghosts and whatever homeless transients might choose to find temporary abode behind the broken windows and boarded-up doors.

Beyond a rusting, spike-topped fence, the anticipated outlines of Featherwhite House were recognizable, albeit only after a long moment of squinting study on my part. It appeared equally as disinhabited as the forlorn structures of its neighbours.

A sloping rise visible at the rear of the grounds shielded a view of the Thames. I was aware from my previous familiarity with the city that we were but a short distance from the hub of governmental powers, housed at Westminster Palace.

“Was there someone as was meeting you ’ere, sir?” The cabdriver’s query intruded upon my survey of the area’s dismal aspect. “Doesn’t seem as anyone’s waiting on your ’rival, though.”

I pushed open the cab’s door and stepped down to the pavement. “Wait here,” I instructed the driver after I paid him the fare which we had previously negotiated. “I might require further transportation.”

“At your bidding, sir.” He touched the handle of the whip to his hat and eased the horse’s leads.

The sagging gate creaked as I laid my weight against it. At the same moment, I heard a heavy thump behind me. I turned and saw the hansom cab speeding off, in the direction from which we had journeyed, its driver having yielded to his tender concern for the feelings of his draughthorse. No doubt reluctant to be considered a thief, he at least had the courtesy to deposit my small trunk upon the pavement, albeit from the height upon which he perched.

I returned to the roadside and secured my luggage, then carried it with me toward the darkened, unwelcoming
façade
of Featherwhite House. The path of my approach ran straight, bordered by gardens that had reverted through neglect to bramble and lichen-covered stone. One side of animation remained: one of the hissing steam pipes, those great serpents that had come to interlace the city with their endlessly uncoiling lengths, ran through a breach in the fence and across the grounds, penetrating the townhouse at its farther aspect.

Mounting the wide steps, my trunk still in hand, I glanced up past the capitals of the marble columns to the
bas relief
above. Humorous vandals had taken advantage of the townhouse’s vacancy, daubing with paint and tar the sculpted representation of battle, so that the Grecian warriors seemed less intent upon bringing their swords down upon each other’s heads than upon embracing and inserting the crude procreative organs with which they had been adorned. Some motto of plebian disdain had been scrawled across the formerly heroic scene, but I scarce had opportunity to decipher its exact wording before the towering entry door was pulled open.