Firstly, Trounce, take one of my velocipedes and race it over to Scotland Yard. Speak to the chief commissioner and muster as many men as you're able. They need to be in place by midnight-”
He spoke for a few minutes more. Trounce nodded, gave Palmerston a halfhearted salute, and departed.
After Burton heard the front door slam shut, he turned to Burke and Hare.
“I require something that you two have in your possession. I need you to fetch it now, without delay.”
He told them what it was.
Burke turned to Palmerston and said: “With your permission, sir?”
“Absolutely. Go.”
“And bring back another carriage for the prime minister,” Burton called after the two men as they departed.
He turned to Palmerston's driver, who'd been sitting through the discussion with a bemused expression on his face.
“What's your name, sir?”
“John Phelps.”
“Tell me, Mr. Phelps, can the mobile castle outside be driven with just one steam-horse?”
“Aye, sir. No trouble, she'll just eat up coal twice as fast.”
“Then, if your employer permits it, I'd like you to drive Mr. Swinburne, Constable Bhatti, my valet, and I to Battersea Power Station this evening.”
Phelps looked at Palmerston, who nodded.
“Very well, sir.”
Burton next addressed the Technologist: “Presumably, you have your own vehicle, Mr. Gooch?”
“I drove here in my Folks’ Wagon. I'll return the same way.”
“Very well. Before you depart, can I call upon you to assist Constable Bhatti?”
“Surely. With what?”
Burton gave a lengthy explanation-during which Swinburne started whooping with delight-and finished by turning to Bhatti: “Do you think you can do it, Constable?”
“I'll give it my best,” the young policeman answered. “It's a case of removal and replacement rather than dismantlement, so we should be able to avoid the dangers. As for the rest of it, I'm sure Mr. Gooch will spot any errors I might make.”
“It's not exactly my field of expertise,” Gooch said, “but I'll do what I can, and Isambard can check the work over when you get to the power station.”
“And what of the task I've set Mr. Brunel?” Burton asked. “Do you think he can supply what I need?”
“Your request was certainly unusual, Captain-especially when communicated through a foul-mouthed parakeet-but it's not a difficult thing to design and Mr. Brunel is the best engineer in the world. He'd prefer to power it by steam, of course, but every single valve in a steam engine employs a spring, so that rules it out. Your alternative is-shall we say- eccentric? But it's feasible, and Isambard had already finished a blueprint when I left him. He has all the manufacturing power of the station at his disposal, so I assure you he'll provide what you need in good time.”
“Excellent,” the king's agent responded. He turned to his assistant. “Algy, tonight we're making our peace with the Steam Man.”
The poet, who'd spent the past few minutes with a huge grin on his face, now scowled. “After the way he treated me last time we met I'd rather kick the blighter right up the exhaust funnel!”
“Quite so.” Burton smiled. “But let the past be the past. For now we have to concentrate on saving the present!” He stood and paced up and down restlessly. “We have to hurry. I want to move against Blavatsky in the small hours of the morning.”
“Why then?” Palmerston asked.
“Because the human mind is at its lowest ebb during that period, sir. We know the woman is at full stretch. I want her exhausted. On which point: Algy, run up to my bedroom. You'll find a vial of Saltzmann's Tincture in my bedside drawer. Bring it down. We're all dog-tired, but if you, Bhatti, and I take five drops each, it will keep us alert for another twelve hours or so.”
“Smashing!” the poet exclaimed excitedly and scampered out of the room.
Palmerston drummed his fingers impatiently. “I'll not sit here in the dark! What in the devil's name are you playing at, Burton?” he demanded. “Explain your intentions!”
“There's no time, Prime Minister. As soon as Burke and Hare return, I recommend that you make a swift departure. Mr. Gooch and Constable Bhatti will be fully occupied with their project, while Mr. Swinburne and I have a great deal to arrange.”
“In other words, I'm surplus to requirements and in your way?”
“I wouldn't have put it quite like that, sir. I would point out, however, that you are the prime minister, the country is both at war and in the midst of a crisis, yet you are sitting in my dining room.”
Palmerston shot to his feet with such suddenness that his chair toppled backward to the floor. He glared at Burton and said slowly, in an icy tone: “There are limits to my patience, Captain. You are developing an unfortunate habit of addressing me with a marked lack of respect. I was warned before I employed you that you're an impertinent rogue. I'll not take it!”
Phelps, Bhatti, and Gooch glanced at each other uncomfortably.
“You gave me a job to do,” Burton said. “I intend to do it. If you are displeased with my conduct, you can release me from my duties immediately and I'll get back to writing my books while the country becomes a republic, Germany gathers her strength, and Russia waits in the wings.”
A tense silence filled the room.
No one moved.
Palmerston cleared his throat. “Get on with it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The door opened and Swinburne bounded in.
“I say!” he shrilled. “I'm much more resistant to that Russian cow's emanations when I'm drunk. Do you think I should down a few brandies before we proceed?”
C harles Altamont Doyle was extremely confused. Two-or was it three?-days ago, he'd awoken slightly before dawn in a strange house and had stumbled down the stairs and out of the front door.
He'd walked aimlessly, enveloped by chaos. People were overturning vehicles and smashing windows, setting fire to shops and attacking one another, chanting something about the upper classes and a conspiracy of some kind.
His memory failed him. The past few hours were nothing but an alcohol-fueled blur.
He wandered through the mayhem and the rioters left him alone.
The fairies, however, did not.
They danced at the periphery of his vision, whispered in his ear, and followed him wherever he went. He cried and screamed for them to stop hounding him. He reasoned and demanded and begged.
They ignored his pleas.
He staggered into the Bricklayer's Arms on Bedford Street, intent on imbibing his tormentors into oblivion. Drink, when taken in copious quantities, always worked. Fairies, he'd discovered, were particularly allergic to burgundy.
The pub was heaving with all manner of lowly types but that didn't matter because in recent weeks the working classes had looked with great favour upon the Rakes. As one man had said to him: “You hoity-toity types need teachin’ a blimmin’ lesson, mate, but since you be one o’ them Rake geezers, the only fing what I'm gonna teach yer is ‘ow ter git legless!”
Glass after glass was purchased for him. Doyle emptied them assiduously, and the next thing he knew he was waking up in a doorway halfway down a dark, mist-swathed alley.
How much time had passed? He didn't know. He could hear shouts and screams and violence in the near distance.
He went back to sleep.
The fairies came skipping into his dreams.
“It is in thy blood to see us,” they told him. “It was in thy father's and it is in thy sons’.”
