The Sunken (11 page)

Isambard led them out of Somerset House and down the Strand toward Waterloo Bridge, pushing his way through crowds of brightly dressed characters from the seedier quarters of the city that spilled over to the riverside at this time of night. Isambard, a spring in his usually measured steps, led the way over the bridge, chattering nonstop, firing question after question at Holman, who answered in halting stammers.

“I cannot believe it,” Aaron said, smiling from ear to ear. “Isambard, you’ve done it! You’re a Presbyter! A Stoker Presbyter!”

“Your name will be known throughout the kingdom,” said Holman, who walked behind Nicholas, his head turned toward the ground.

“Our fortunes are changing,” said Isambard, dodging around two streetwalkers and turning down a narrow alley. “The Stokers will finally have a place—”

“Wait!” Aaron held out his hands, his voice tight and urgent. “Don’t move!”

Nicholas’ head snapped up, wondering what was wrong. He looked around them, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. A bawd, her face drawn and haggard, chased two of her girls through the alley, while drunks cheered them on, and near the street an Isis priest preached from one of Shelley’s books of poems.

Then he felt it — the sinking feeling as a creature’s thoughts pushed their way into his head, crushing the other voices and his own thoughts under their intensity. A predator, feeding on flesh — focused on the deliciousness of the meat, its senses on full alert for possible challengers to its meal.

A dragon.
And it was close by.

The others couldn’t see it, and Brunel opened his mouth to protest. Aaron held up his finger, urging them to remain quiet. The men inched forward, deeper into the alley, Nicholas and Aaron taking the lead, exchanging between them a knowing, frightened glance. Nicholas fumbled in his pocket for his knife.

Aaron has turned a dragon away twice before,
he thought.
He could do it again.

He could have turned back, sent Isambard and James down another street, but the meat pulled him — the smell of the fresh kill tickling his nostrils. His stomach rumbled, and saliva rolled from the sides of his mouth.
So hungry …

The alley ended at the wall of the close-packed tenement blocks. An even narrower path — barely as wide as a man — ran between the tenements and a workhouse. One by one they wriggled inside, their feet splashing in the mud and filth that formed at the bottom of the gutters. The smell of sweet, tender flesh grew stronger, pulling him onward.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?” James asked, but neither Nicholas nor Aaron had the mind to reply.

The passage widened out, leading them into another alley. They rounded the next corner, the smell of blood filled the air, and Nicholas’ mouth watered as the dragon’s desires overcame his last human defences, and he seemed to become the beast he was now confronted with.

This dragon, another female, stood as high as a man, her tough brown skin dappled with green spots, and the scar of a burn along her muscular shoulders revealing a previous fight with a hot iron. She bent over the body of a man — a local butcher — her twin rows of serrated teeth making short work of his leather apron. She had dragged the body some way from the street, for the intestines stretched in a tangle down the alley.

In the distance, someone was screaming. The images floated in front of Nicholas’ eyes. In one instant he was inside his own head, looking on at the dragon, and in another he was staring down at the corpse from
inside
her head, the taste of that fresh meat sliding down his throat.

Isambard sucked in his breath. Holman, even though he couldn’t see the beast, sensed something was wrong, for he grabbed Nicholas’ arm, his fingers digging deep.

The head came up, and the dragon sniffed. Nicholas’ breath caught in his throat. He could smell himself and his companions as the dragon smelt them — four men, cornered and frightened. He smelt dessert.

Suddenly, another hand squeezed his. It was Aaron. Nicholas couldn’t hear his thoughts, but he could
feel
the dragon slipping, confused. It wanted to ignore the intruders, but it didn’t know why. The dragon’s thoughts receded, and his own mind slipped back into his head. Nicholas gathered his senses and concentrated on pushing out one thought, giving it to the dragon.
Ignore the people. They’re no threat.

Holman, not able to see what was happening, but smelling the blood and the stench of the kill, whimpered.

Ignore them. They’re nothing.

The dragon’s head whipped around, and her yellow eyes bore into Nicholas. He pushed harder, knowing the dragon could leap at any moment, knowing this was the only way he could save his friends.

Ignore the people. Ignore the people.

The dragon snorted, dipped its head, and returned to feeding.

Aaron glanced at Nicholas, and they pushed Isambard and a terrified Holman around the corner of the building and circled on to the main street. They huddled under a streetlamp and caught their breath.

“That was … that was …” Holman could only stutter. His fingers around his cane were white as bone.

“Two dragons in as many weeks,” Aaron teased. “You must smell mighty tempting, James.”

Shaken, they pressed on toward Engine Ward, the towering funnel of black smoke growing larger with their every step. As Nicholas walked alongside Aaron, the air between them seemed to sizzle with energy, like lightning bolts flicking between their fingers. Nicholas knew it had been mostly Aaron who had stopped the dragon, but he wondered what they might be able to do, the two of them together, if they could again direct their minds to the same purpose.

The Ward gates stood open, and the usual gaggle of priests and intellectuals passed to and fro, some going to the midnight masses held in the vaulted cathedrals, others leaving to take their pleasures in the bawdy houses and bagnios. Here, progress was slow, for men kept stopping Brunel to congratulate him on his appointment. He chatted with each of them, not scolding them for interrupting, paying as much attention to the ill-mannered rakes as to the sycophantic priests. Nicholas caught the sounds of music and revelry on the breeze, and as they neared the Chimney and the Stoker quarter, he could see Stokers dancing around great bonfires, already celebrating Brunel’s appointment.

Brunel didn’t go to them straight away, but stood on the steps of the Chimney, his gaze sweeping over the scene. Nicholas and Aaron watched him, and James faced the fire, each man lost in his own thoughts.

Finally, Isambard said. “I cannot get the image of that dragon out of my head. All we have built here — this great city of brick and stone and iron — cannot
control
, cannot protect those who dwell within her.”

Nicholas thought back to that horrific day, ten years ago, when Henry had been crushed in the beam engine and Isambard had regarded the incident with this same rapt curiosity. He shuddered.

“When you finish your Wall,” said Holman, “they will no longer be a problem.”

“They will always be a problem, as long as we fear them and don’t try to understand them,” said Isambard. “The Stokers understood them, back before I was born, when they lived in the swamps. Unfortunately, we understood them so much we used their own tactics against them — we hunted them practically to extinction. It seems only fair they should come to this city to kill us.”

“Is that why they’re in London, do you think?” Aaron asked. The idea seemed to intrigue him.

“I couldn’t say. Something is drawing them into the city. Why could it not be revenge? Do we so readily assume vengeance is the sole dominion of man?”

“I wonder why the Royal Society has never sent someone to investigate the dragons,” said James. “Surely someone like Buckland could study them in the swamps to ascertain the reason for their exodus.”

“Yes,” said Isambard. “I don’t understand this myself. But now that I’m a Presbyter, perhaps I can begin to unravel this mystery.”

“Let’s get this wall of yours built first,” said Nicholas.

Across the street from the Chimney, a man emerged from one of the warehouses. He bent down, a briefcase bursting with papers clutched tightly to his chest, and fumbled with the lock. Nicholas didn’t recognise him, but the moonlight caught the man’s face, and he thought his expression almost impossibly sad.

“Would you excuse me for a moment,” said Isambard. “There’s a matter I need to attend to.” Before Nicholas and Aaron could say another word, he broke away and slipped into the street below.

With a strangled sigh, Charles Babbage dipped his quill into the inkwell and scrawled his signature on the last of Clement’s many cheques. He folded the stack inside a crisp envelope, added his seal to the front, and dropped it into his satchel.

He would deliver the cheques tonight, after he closed up the office, and then he would go home and drink all the brandy in the cupboard. And then maybe he’d start on that bottle of port Francesca had bought him on their wedding anniversary. He would drink until he forgot all the trouble he was in, and if he drank so much he didn’t wake up in the morning … well, so much the better. He would drink ’till he forgot Clement, and the Royal Society, and the ridiculous blasphemy charges, and that could take a very, very long time.

Clement, the self-made precision engineer whose detailed drawings had brought Babbage’s dream of a Difference Engine to life. Clement, who could fashion a tool for any purpose and create minute parts so similar one could not tell them apart even under a microscope. Clement, the bastard son of a whore and a cheat, who’d been deliberately delaying completion of parts of the Difference Engine to extort more money from their open-ended contract. Clement, the rotten blagger, who’d robbed Babbage of every penny he had, cost him his Royal patronage and turned his congregation and the whole of the Royal Society against him.

Babbage locked the door to his office and stalked down the hall of the old shipping warehouse, now home to several small-scale engineers and their tiny, floundering churches. Some would go on to become great names in the sects of Great Conductor or Morpheus or Aristotle; others had been great once, but their fortunes had waned as new and greater inventions took hold of the people’s fickle interests. And some, like Babbage, had never really invented anything at all.

He closed his eyes as he passed by his workshops; dark now, and deserted. He couldn’t bear to see his beautiful engine, the racks of numbered wheels lined up against the shelves, ready to be assembled onto the great steel frame. And now they would never turn, would never execute the complex calculations for which he had designed them.

He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. It wasn’t bloody
fair
. He had devised one of the most singularly useful machines in existence — a calculating engine. No longer would engineers, mathematicians, and astronomers be forced to rely on the erroneous ledgers of equations calculated by the computing men. They could instead crank a handle and receive an accurate answer calculated by the machine.

When he’d first approached the Royal Society with his idea, they had immediately seen the benefit, and offered him a stipend of £1,500 to complete the first prototype. Then Joseph Banks had suggested he hire Clement — the most accomplished precision engineer in the Sect of the Grandfather Clock, and a Society favourite. And that was where everything had gone bloody wrong.

Outside the window, an organ grinder passed by, the high, tinny notes of “Down in the Sally Gardens” sealing his doom. Babbage ground his teeth together. The only thing he hated more than Clement was organ grinders. They knew it, of course, and worked together in teams to follow him all about the city, taunting him with their repeating, off-key tunes.

He turned away, hunching as he pulled the door shut behind him, locked it for the last time, and shoved the key back into his pocket. He turned, and his stomach dropped to his knees as a dark shadow emerged from the buttress of the Metic Church and floated towards him. He fumbled for his pocket knife, but barely had time to draw breath before the figure was upon him.

“Isambard, you startled me!”

“I’m sure many have said the same thing to you in past weeks,” Brunel smiled. “You were missed at tonight’s meeting, Charles.”

“I’m in no mood for mockery, Isambard.”

“It’s the truth. You’re not the only one who thinks the Society should focus more on constructive reasoning and less on robe-kissing. Davy’s calculations were wrong — it seemed a simple matter to me.”

“Hardly.
This simple matter has had me excommunicated. Banks informed me yesterday I shouldn’t bother to defend myself.” Babbage started walking, briskly, across the courtyard in front of the church, hoping Brunel would take the hint and leave him be. But the Stoker met his stride with ease, his casual demeanour only increasing Babbage’s unease.

“A move I’m certain you anticipated with great joy. After all, now you are unbound from their rules and scrutiny. Now you’re free to push the limits of your science.”

“The limits of my bank balance, more like,” Charles sniffed, cutting across the pavilion at the rear of the Church of Grandfather Clock. “This blasted engine is not even a quarter complete, and Clement has taken all his drawings, all my money, and all the precision tools he created to fashion the mechanisms. And without the Royal Society’s stipend, I cannot hope to afford the price of another engineer. No, sir, the Difference Engine is doomed for the scrap heap.”

“If that’s the case, then what I’ve come to offer will brighten your day.”

“What do you
want
?
”

“I want you to renounce your god, assemble what sections and plans remain, and join me in the Chimney.”

Charles snorted. “Join the upstart Stoker who plays at engineering? That would do wonders for my reputation.”

“That’s upstart Presbyter to you.”

Babbage stopped. “You didn’t—”

“Can’t you hear them praising my name?” He gestured behind him at the revellers. “I’ve been awarded the prize in the engineering competition, and I want you to work for me. It’s not as abhorrent as you make out, my friend. Think about it — you have a Difference Engine lying in pieces all over your workshop, an engineer who’s run off with your only means to fashion the precision parts, dwindling finances, and a church that’s about to desert you for someone less risky. I have a need of your analytical mind and work to occupy you, and what’s more I now have the funds and tools to help you complete your masterpiece.”