Authors: Mark Latham
I broke from the daydream as Rosanna tugged at my arm. With the rain still tumbling down from a grey sky, I returned to my companion, and we bundled into the house.
For a moment I was overwhelmed by how perfectly my old home had been preserved, like a doll’s house that had never been played with. Then I realised that it was for a very simple reason—the house had been used. There was barely a cobweb, nor any speck of dust. The fire grates had been swept, and dry logs were stacked in the inglenook of the living room. Casks of paraffin for the lamps were lined up on the floor of the pantry, and we found tapers and matches in the kitchen drawers. Though there was nothing perishable in the house I was thankful to find a canister of tea, and there were plenty of pots, pans, utensils, tools and crockery. I was surprised to find my father’s old shotguns still resting in the gun cabinet, looking as clean and pristine as ever. When I thought of my father, I thought of his armchair by the fire in the living room, and was perplexed to find his favourite book still sitting there on the side table, Stendahl’s
Le Rouge et le Noir
. I reached out to touch its worn cloth cover with some trepidation, as if doing so would summon the man himself back into his armchair like a ghastly apparition. But no ghost was forthcoming; I touched the lettering on the cover, and tried to remember my father reading the book to me as a child, in an effort to teach me French.
Rosanna looked around the rest of the house and found that not all of the rooms were so well kept; some were cleared of all signs of human activity, though had the odd packing-box here and there full of old ornaments, bedlinen, scores of books, and children’s toys—most of which I recognised as though I had seen them only yesterday. I leafed through a few old volumes of foreign gazetteers and maps of the Empire—they brought a smile to my lips even now. I could not resent those treasured old tomes for starting me on this life of adventure any more than I could resent my own mother for having given birth to me. A man makes his own decisions, and carves his own destiny—though admittedly it had become increasingly difficult to keep telling myself that.
It was most curious to me that the bedchamber, bathroom, living room and kitchen were so homely looking, whilst the rest of the house stood silent and unlived in. If my feelings of nostalgia for the house had not been so strongly rekindled, I would have felt as though I was intruding in someone else’s home.
‘It looks as though the estate manager has taken a few liberties of late,’ I remarked. ‘Baxter, I believe his name is. Still, I cannot blame him for staying here occasionally, I suppose, and his endeavours have certainly done us a good turn today. Nevertheless, I shall go to see him tomorrow and inform him that I have returned. Lord only knows when I’ll be able to lay my hands on the requisite paperwork to prove my identity, though.’
‘He will just have to take your word as a gentleman,’ said Rosanna, putting her arms around my neck and looking up at me with her large, dark eyes. ‘You are still a gentleman, aren’t you?’
As our lips drew close, I realised the irony of her question. Gentlemen do not, I was sure, take wild gypsy women to isolated cottages. Nor do they wear stolen clothes, or fight thugs in the East End. These were things I might expect of the treacherous Ambrose Hanlocke, who had called me the ‘last honest man in London’. But I was not in London, and if there was one thing I had learned in the past weeks, perhaps more so than in all my time fighting abroad, it was that life is full of surprises, and that a man must adapt to them to survive. As I kissed her, it did not feel like ‘survival’, but it did not feel ungentlemanly either.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘that you are not the only one who has rules to live by, and to break. Being here with you would be considered shameful… if my sisters behaved this way, I would be expected to banish them. But I am the head of the family now, and I decide which rules to live by, and which to break. Is it the same for you, my wounded hero? Do you control your own destiny at last?’
‘Let me make up a fire to dry our clothes,’ I said, changing the subject rather clumsily, ‘and then I must secure the house in case the caretaker tries to gain admittance. If Thomas Baxter braves the weather and calls today, he will find his new employer in attendance.’
* * *
It did not take long to get the fire going—I guessed that the chimney had been swept regularly too. Even though it was still afternoon, we were forced to light some oil lamps, as the dun sky cast a grey and gloomy aspect throughout the house. We sat by a crackling fire, huddled in thick blankets and talking of every topic under the sun whilst our clothes dried on the clothes-horse and the rain pattered off the window panes. We ate the remnants of our picnic for dinner, and drank tea when the last of our wine had gone. I asked Rosanna, perhaps too forwardly, if the others would miss her back at camp if she did not return that night. She smiled at me so sweetly, and beheld me so intently, that I fair melted. It was all the answer I required. When it became apparent that we would stay the night in the farmhouse, I waited for a break in the rain—or as good a one as could be hoped for—and dashed outside beneath my woollen blanket to locate some feed for the horses and ensure that the little stable was secure. When I returned to the house, Rosanna was standing by the fire, with no blanket around her, her form silhouetted in the orange glow of the flames. The curtains were closed, and she turned to look at me with the light of the fire dancing in her dark eyes. If this is immodesty, I thought, then perhaps it is not such a bad thing.
As the first peal of thunder of the coming storm rumbled outside the farmhouse, I took her in my arms and kissed her, breathing in the scent of her and revelling in her warmth. She held my hand, and led me upstairs to the bedchamber. Even as I look back on that night, there is nothing that feels wrong—the opposite, in fact. Perhaps society will judge me more harshly for my ‘impropriety’, but in that moment I loved her like no one before, and I daresay like no one who will come after.
* * *
The house was aflame. Somewhere behind me I could hear my mother sobbing. I had tried to get her to leave but she would not; not until Lily had come back. I stood on the kitchen step, feeling the heat of the flames licking at my back, gazing out to the garden gate. The sky was red as blood, and the dragon wheeled and arced far above us, unconcerned with us now. Perhaps it, too, was looking for a loved one.
The gate flew open, and a man in black was framed in the glowing embers of the burning field behind him. It was my father, and he had a bundle in his arms. I ran to him, crying out, but he ignored me and marched past me towards the house. My sister was dead or dying, soaked to the skin and unmoving in his arms. Her knotted hair stretched across her face, which seemed pale and almost blue. Her left arm hung limp, swinging with every step that my father took towards the burning house. The dragon roared, the fire crackled, my mother screamed. Through it all I stared back towards them, as if there was nothing else in the universe, and became transfixed by the swaying of her small hand, with droplets of rainwater running from her wrist to her fingertips, and dripping from her nails. They seemed to splash to the ground with more force than all the distractions around me, as if my senses were heightened to some preternatural degree.
As my father stepped over the threshold, with my sister in his arms, the fires that had threatened to consume the little farmhouse were magically extinguished, and the painted kitchen door slammed shut behind them, leaving me standing agog in the dark kitchen garden, tears streaming down my face. Just like that, all was silence, until I heard it—a whisper that seemed to circumvent my ears and grow like a fully formed idea in my mind.
The sins of the father shall be visited on the son
.
It came from behind me, I was sure of it; from the garden gate. I turned slowly, not wanting to see whoever it was that had spoken. Yet no one was there. The gate was closed once more, and I was quite alone. Then it came again, the voice in my mind, yet which I was sure was coming from the gate. I found my courage, and stepped towards it. I could smell the honeysuckle, and feel the wet grass beneath my bare feet.
I reached the door in the high wall: the garden gate that Lily had always called the ‘secret door’. I held out my hand—a child’s hand, I noticed for the first time—and traced the cracks in the old blue paint with my fingertips. I reached down to the latch tentatively, until my small fingers closed around the cold iron. I swung the gate open towards me, and stared into the abyss that was just moments ago a field of glowing red embers. Except now, behind that gate stood a man, staring back at me with only one eye. An eye-patch covered his right eye—but he looked like me. I put my fingers instinctively to my missing left eye…
* * *
…And then I woke with a start, fair jumping out of my skin. In my bleary, half-awake state, it was difficult to take in what was happening. I was outside, by the garden gate. My feet were bare, I was dressed only in long-johns, and I was soaked through as the rain pummelled down at me. I was standing at the garden gate, which was flung wide open. However, instead of looking upon the pasture beyond, I was staring at my own reflection. I could scarce comprehend what was happening—it was as though someone had placed a mirror in the gateway. I was dreaming no longer, of that I was certain.
As I looked closely, I saw that each time a drop of rain hit the ‘mirror’, a small ripple appeared in its surface, smoothing out again with a fizz. I could hear a strange trilling hum, so quiet as to be almost inaudible, like bees on a summer’s day. I stared at my reflection—it was certainly me, and not some imposter from another universe that stood before me; I could see that from the long-johns and eye-patch—but I saw a strange yellow light around the edges of the reflective pane, which periodically crackled with some sort of electrical force.
I rubbed at my face, using the cold rain to revive myself, then I chanced a look back to the farmhouse to ensure that Rosanna was not witness to these strange events. The house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. Satisfied, and feeling somewhat restored to wakefulness, I turned to the portal. I knew that this was a gateway to the other side—I did not need William James to tell me that I stood before one of the wondrous portals that paved the way to the ruination of our great Empire. But what to do? I thought hard, and was struck by a sudden fear—how long exactly had this portal been here? I had not opened the gate when we arrived at the house, so it could have been there all along. The house had been tidy and lived in; I had assumed that the caretaker had stayed on his last visit, but what if it was serving a more nefarious purpose? Lazarus was in London, and London was less than fifty miles away. This house—my home—could well have been used as a safe-house for Otherside agents for goodness knows how long. And in fact… the thought occurred to me so suddenly that my heart raced at the wild ideas passing through my mind. Could it be? Could this portal be the Lazarus Gate? Could Lazarus be using this very doorway, Lily’s ‘secret door’, to pass to and fro between the worlds?
Half-mad with the idea, I put up my hand and reached out to the surface of the shimmering portal. It seemed to hum a little louder the closer my fingers got to it. If this was the Lazarus Gate, then I could pass through it, quite unharmed—the question of where I would end up or what I would do once there was of secondary concern whilst I was in that excited state. If it was not the Lazarus Gate, however, then I would be courting a fate worse than death. I would soon be sporting a hook for a hand at the very least, to complete my transformation into a pirate of old, or else I would be turned inside out like the wretches I had put to death at the Artist’s lair. That thought certainly made me pause. I stood there dumbly, with my hand outstretched to the portal, which rippled at my mere proximity as if it were a fishpond and the carp were rising to my hand to feed.
I realised it was folly to try to pass through without further investigation. I clenched my fist and took a step backwards. As I did so, I got the fright of my life—a hand burst from the portal, causing great ripples in its surface that crackled with amber light. The humming sound increased to fever pitch, and another hand appeared, and then an entire man, barrelling into me with some force. I staggered backwards, struggling to keep my feet as a man in black tumbled through the portal, like Alice passing through the looking glass. His forceful entry into our world was heralded by a shower of sparks that danced around his form, and at first I could see nothing of his features amidst the confusion. I wrestled free of his grasp and turned to face my attacker.
‘Jim? No…’
Before me stood James Denny, garbed all in black, from bowler hat to shiny shoes, with an arrogant snarl on his lips. The shock I received at seeing a man from the other side emerge from a portal—a man whom I knew—was quickly replaced by fear for my life, as I saw that in his hand Jim now held a pistol. He reached for me, grabbing my wrist in a vice-like grip, and jabbed the gun towards my stomach.
I smacked aside his gun arm with my left hand, stepped forwards and delivered an almighty head-butt to the bridge of his nose. That shook him all right, and the look of surprise that crossed his face showed that he had not been expecting a dirty fight. But I had not survived so long without soiling my hands. Though he may have been surprised, however, he was also tenacious; to my consternation he kept hold of both my wrist and the revolver. I had to press home my small advantage whilst I could, for a protracted struggle against an armed opponent could only go against me in my wounded state. I planted my feet as the agent raised the pistol again, and braced myself for the pain as I twisted under his arm and flipped him over my right shoulder as I had been taught to do by the native troopers back East. This time my manoeuvre had the desired effect—Jim went over me and hit the mud flat on his back with a loud slap, finally releasing his grip on the gun. I yelped in pain as my wounded shoulder took his weight, but remained focused. As Jim went down he relaxed his grip on my wrist, allowing me to grab his arm and twist it hard. My training came back to me in an instant—I threw myself backwards to the ground, holding his arm out straight and wrapping my lower legs around his neck. I pulled on his arm with all the strength I could muster to keep him prone, whilst choking him with my legs.