The Aylesford Skull

Soon they were passing through Strood, where they would turn southeast toward Chatham, and then south again toward Aylesford and Maidstone. Alice had often enough come into Strood in the late summer with her Aunt Agatha to attend the Strood Fair, and they passed the site of the fair now, alongside the railway station, although it was too early yet for anything to be underway. She would bring Eddie and Cleo back in a month, she thought.

Eddie stirred now and sat up, rubbing his eyes and looking around, evidently having no idea where he was or how he had got there. He frowned, and then stared at Mrs. Marigold, who said, “Hello, child. I trust you slept well.”

Eddie remained silent, looking around in a puzzled way. “Can you speak to Mrs. Marigold?” Alice asked him.

“This is the same coach,” Eddie said, frowning now.

“The same as which, Eddie?” Alice asked, and in that moment Mrs. Marigold reached up and thumped twice on the ceiling for no conceivable reason except perhaps to signal the driver. They crossed an intersection, the signposts announcing a confluence of roads to Tonbridge, Gravesend, Greenwich, Canterbury, and Maidstone. The driver whipped up the horses, and the coach sped up, rollicking along uphill now, along Watling Street, according to a street sign.

“I believe we’ve passed our turning,” Alice said, feeling Eddie tug on her arm.

“I’m certain we haven’t,” Mrs. Marigold said to her evenly.

“I distinctly noted the signpost,” Alice said. “We’re on the Greenwich Road, toward London.”

“Only temporarily, ma’am, I assure you.”

“What is it, Eddie?” Alice asked.

“They took me in this coach,” Eddie whispered.

“Who took you, dear? We’re taking you now; is that what you mean?”

He shook his head, glancing furtively at Mrs. Marigold, then glancing away again. “The Doctor. They called him that.”

“I see, dear,” Alice said, suddenly deflated. In fact she did see, quite clearly now. She smiled woodenly at Mrs. Marigold, whoever she actually was, thinking to put her at ease, and then glanced at the door latch, the workings of which were not at all clear. She hadn’t seen what the woman had done to lock it – a hidden mechanism, no doubt, designed to trap people inside.

Eddie gripped her arm tightly, and Alice looked up, still smiling. From out of her purse Mrs. Marigold had drawn a small but lethal-looking pistol. Her face was utterly blank now, and she held the pistol in her lap, aimed in Eddie’s general direction. The coach was running downhill, into open country, the road to Maidstone and Aylesford falling away behind them.

In Cliffe Village, they found Bill Kraken easily enough. Everyone in the village knew that a man had been shot in the marsh, and that he lay close to death in the surgeon’s house. The bullet had been awkwardly placed, very near his lung and an artery both, a miracle that Kraken had come all that way through the tunnels without bleeding to death. The doctor had dug it out, however, and it lay now on a metal tray next to the bed where Kraken lay sleeping. There was nothing to be done for him except to wait, which, Mother Laswell informed St. Ives, she was competent to do. She would wait forever, if that were what it took.

There was a train just leaving for London, and Doyle, Jack, Finn and Tubby hastened to catch it. Now that Eddie was safe, their duty was clear. St. Ives agreed that it was clear, at least for his friends. He was full of extreme joy to hear that Alice had taken Eddie home to Aylesford, and the idea of returning to London was very nearly unthinkable to him.

“They’re long gone in the coach by now,” Mother Laswell said. “No doubt already crossed over the Medway. You and Mr. Hasbro had best follow along, Professor. I intend to, as soon as Bill is fit to travel.”

St. Ives nodded, once again thinking of his duties – to Alice and Eddie and Cleo on the one hand, and to the Crown and putting a stop to Narbondo on the other, if such a thing were possible. What had he told Alice? That he had no regard for the lunatic notion that a man might open a lane to the land of the dead. And yet even as he had said it, he had known that he doubted himself: something in him, as irrational as it might be, had feared such things might be true. Denying it had merely been the simple thing to do under the circumstances. He and Alice had been caught up in a happy moment, after all, with a cheerful, carefree day laid out before them. One recollection led to another, and now he recalled his conversation with Alice on the night that he had returned home from London: I don’t want a dead husband, she had told him, and your children don’t want a dead father. Can you grasp that?

He had grasped it only superficially at the time, but he positively clung to it now as he weighed his duties, one against the other, wavering between them. There was the dirigible, of course, two hours away to the north. He and Hasbro would have to retrieve it. Hasbro had gone off to find a constable in order to tell him of the mysterious dead man they’d seen in the brook. Hasbro would go into London, he thought, and no doubt about it. Duty to the Crown would be paramount to all else, now that Eddie was safe.

St. Ives looked out of the window at the flower-strewn meadow that lay beyond the house, running downhill toward the edge of the wood. The sun shone on the flowers, a circus of yellow, purple and white blooms. He loved Alice with all his heart, and felt it keenly now. The poet Lovelace had recommended loving honor more, of course, but had been sent to Peterhouse Prison for his love of honor. Fear of dishonor, St. Ives thought, was often equally persuasive, although perhaps it was dishonorable to be persuaded by it.

“Hasbro and I had best be about our business,” he said to Mother Laswell now. “Your predictions of an atrocity in London are quite possibly coming to pass.”

She nodded. “I’ve had dreams that revealed as much, Professor. I’ll tell you, however, that I’ve changed my thinking in certain ways, now that Bill has made his feelings clear to me. The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I mean to see out my time on earth at Hereafter Farm. The shepherd is as vital as the soldier, Professor, and there’s much to be said in favor of love.”

“I believe that utterly,” said St. Ives, “but I’ll tell you plainly that our conversation two nights past has been very much on my mind. Last night I had a dream that seemed to me to be prophetic. I denied what it so clearly seemed to mean, but despite the denial I cannot rid myself of… a certain belief.” He smiled at her, recalling her words to him when they sat around the seven-sided table in her astronomical seance parlor.

“We’re masters of denial, Professor. I choose to deny nothing at present, but to act on my heart, since belief is tolerably multifarious. It seems to change with the seasons. But tell me, did your dream have to do with a door, sir? With a cave, perhaps, a cave of flames? Hell, to be more exacting, although surely that was something you would have inferred, something that you knew only through nameless dread?”

“Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“Then I can tell you that you and I have had the same dreams.”

“A week ago that would have seemed to me to be mere coincidence.”

“I’m not a great believer in coincidence,” Mother Laswell said. “Bill found me on Hereafter Farm, adrift, you might say, and he found me in London last night in trouble once again. Both times he led me out of the desert. I won’t deny him a third time, sir, and call it coincidence, but that’s my business and not yours. I don’t mean to know more than I know. I speak only for myself.”

“Of course,” St. Ives said.

“I, too, dreamt, this very afternoon. It was of the catastrophe. My son, Narbondo, if you will, inhabited a house on the Thames from which he projected Edward’s image out over the city. The ground shook and buildings fell, as we hear will happen in end times. I can tell you that the house was shuttered, the windows and door arched, a bridge behind it spanning the river. I saw it clearly – a vision, I believe.”

“Did you recognize the bridge, ma’am?” St. Ives asked, a query that wouldn’t have found itself in his mouth only two days ago, when he had no faith in dreams.

She shook her head. “My knowledge of London doesn’t stretch that far, I’m afraid.”

The door opened at that juncture, and Hasbro stepped in. “I believe that if we make haste, sir, we can put down in Keeble’s yard before the sun sets, although the wind is rising.”

“Then we’d best be on our way.”

“Will you do an old woman a kindness, Professor?” Mother Laswell asked him.

“Happily,” he told her.

“If you find my son Edward’s skull, and it’s still… enlivened by that hellish machinery, will you dismantle it and