Langdon St. Ives: Beneath London Part 23

"I'm with you completely," St. Ives said. "When it comes to matters of this arcane nature, I'm far out of my depth."

It was only moments later that Kraken said, "Douse the glim. They're a-coming up."

"Hoist the black flag, s.h.i.+pmates," Tubby muttered. "Both sides of the path, then."

St. Ives saw Tubby and Hasbro disappear into the complete darkness on the left hand. He and Alice followed Mother and Bill Kraken several steps aside on the right hand. They were in an area of long, narrow walls of rock, much like standing stones, lying on their sides. St. Ives felt his way to the edge of the one that sheltered them, and at once he made out two men ascending, perhaps fifty yards below. They had also veiled their lanterns, although carelessly. There was enough of a glow to see that both carried rifles.

The footsteps of the two men grew audible. St. Ives heard the c.o.c.king of Hasbro's pistol, and he heard Alice's breathing. He could neither see nor hear Mother Laswell and Kraken, and it came to him that they might already have gone on, creeping downhill in the shadows of the rocks in order to get below the men who were coming up.

He gripped Alice's hand, and in the next moment the downward glow of the first man's dark lantern swung into view on the path. St. Ives saw Hasbro's silhouette in the dim light, the pistol outstretched, and then he saw the flash of the muzzle and heard the immensely loud bang, followed close on by a second report. This second shot, however, was not from Hasbro's pistol, which flew from his hand as he pitched over backward.

Mother Laswell and Bill Kraken had made good time at risk of life and limb in the darkness, but then had been slowed by an interminable stairs. They were at the bottom now, Mother catching her breath. Away to their left stretched an extensive, luminous plane on which was built a veritable city of low stone huts. She wondered who had lived there, so deep within the ground. Troglodytes of some variety, long gone away, for the huts had the look of having been abandoned for eons. The two of them went on, through another field of great, upward-tilting stones, the path winding among them.

Abruptly they came out onto level ground, with a broad view, and in that moment Mother Laswell felt a tightening of her forehead, and a crus.h.i.+ng pain in her temples that nearly staggered her. A feeling of despair settled over her, and she had the sensation that an evil presence was very near. She felt a similar agitation in Sarah's mind, and she wondered what accounted for it. She realized that Bill held her by the upper arm now, and was endeavoring to draw her into the shadows.

Ahead of them, at a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, crouched a tall, heavily built old gentleman Klingheimer without a doubt and the villain Shadwell, who held a rifle. One of the covered cages sat on the trail between them. Mother Laswell stared at the object, knowing that the cage contained the head of her late husband. There could be no doubt that Klingheimer meant to use it against Clara. It seemed very like madness, however, for the man to bring the head along with him, and she wondered at the extent of Klingheimer's powers whether they were a long enough spoon to protect him, so to speak, when he supped with the devil.

Both Klingheimer and Shadwell looked ahead, apparently studying a hut very like those of the troglodyte village away to the left, but roofed, and with lamps burning. There were people within their shadows revealing their presence. One of them was Clara, of that Mother Laswell had no doubt, and surely Finn was with her.

"Shadwell won't shoot because he's got no target," Bill whispered. "That's plain." He lifted his blacksmith's hammer and dropped the head of it into his open palm with a light smacking sound. "How's Sarah Wright in her mind?" he asked.

"Troubled, despite the nearness of Clara. But there's something worse. Much worse. I must tell you that the cage between the two men holds the head of my dead husband, Maurice de Salles. He was an evil man, Bill. He is the source of Sarah's agitation, and my own."

"All right, then," Bill said. "We'll go back up to high ground. I'll come back down with Sarah Wright alone."

"No, Bill. I must see this through. It's my destiny to do so."

He stared at her, his face set, dropping the head of the hammer into his palm. "What are you thinking on?" Mother asked him.

"I'm thinking on taking that there rifle away from Shadwell."

"Don't be hasty, Bill."

"If I take that rifle, Klingheimer's ours, do you see? I'll feed him this hammer as a choke pear, and then I'll beat that cage flat with the head inside. We'll be done with them all, and can go home peaceful like."

"Don't speak so terribly, for heaven's sake."

"Heaven's heard worse," he said. "You stay low, behind this here rock, and settle in with Sarah Wright. I aim to stop this here and now. I don't hold with hocus pocus, nor with the filth like this crowd is mixed up in it. Here's what I say. If they catch sight of me, I'll take to the rocks and come back around to you. They won't have time to shoot me. If you see trouble, douse this here lantern, slip back a nip, and wait for me. I won't leave you alone." He winked at her and started forward in a crouch without waiting for a response, creeping through the shadows from rock to rock.

Mother Laswell said a prayer for them all and watched him go. But he hadn't covered sixty feet before there was a movement in the window of the hut Finn Conrad's face looking out, but keeping well down. Quick as a snake, Shadwell brought up the rifle, having a target at last, and Mother Laswell nearly cried out a warning to Finn and to Bill both. In that moment, however, she heard the report of yet another rifle, and she saw Shadwell jerk sideways before crumpling to the ground, a gout of blood spurting from his neck, dousing Klingheimer as if from a hose. Klingheimer staggered aside, crouched behind a handy rock, and stared down at Shadwell's shuddering form for a long moment. Abruptly he darted out, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the fallen rifle and the head of Maurice de Salles, and fled away into the field of standing stones.

Mother Laswell, filled with both horror and relief at seeing Shadwell dead, looked behind her up the path, thinking that the Professor and the others might have come down behind and shot Shadwell from a distance. There was no sign of them, however. Bill had turned back now, coming along quickly and crouching beside her, both of them well hidden, but with a good view of what lay below.

Within moments two people came into sight, crouched and running across the front of the hut and away along a narrow trail toward the troglodyte village. One of them was a dwarf, carrying a rifle. Incredibly, he held the hand of Miss Bracken. There was once again the sound of a rifle firing Klingheimer, she thought, endeavoring to shoot the two runaways. Very soon they were hidden among the ruins, however, and he had missed his chance. She saw the two reappear after a moment, heading downward along a stream that sparkled with green light. They walked easily now, like a mismatched couple out of a fairytale taking a ramble. It appeared to her that the dwarf was playing a flute, and there was the high, thready sound of "Bobby Shafto's Gone to Sea" clearly discernible on the still air.

"It were a dwarf," Bill said now in a surprised and unhappy voice. "Shadwell was mine, by G.o.d, and then a dwarf what plays a flute up and shoots him through the neck. Did you see it?"

"Indeed I did, Bill."

"I'm to be deprived of killing Shadwell my own self, then."

"Perhaps it was G.o.d's will a way to preserve you from taking a man's life in a state of pique. That would be a lot to account for on the Day of Judgment."

"But G.o.d went ahead and let the dwarf shoot him? That just don't seem right."

"Who knows what's right, Bill, when you're a mile underground in the darkness? We'll make our stand here, come what may. Here's what you must do: If I slip away trance-like, I mean watch over me. Maybe I won't, but I must do my part. I'll come back to you when it's done, and we'll go home."

St. Ives moved toward Hasbro, looking back down the trail as Tubby pushed past, growling like a beast. He took in the sight in a moment the fallen lantern and the flaming lamp oil revealing a lanky boy who knelt on the trail behind a dead man, the dead man's face blasted half away, a red bowler hat lying nearby. The boy looked downward and held his own rifle out with both hands, like an offering.

Hasbro had been shot through the thigh, St. Ives quickly discovered. He was also unconscious, his breathing labored. There was very little bleeding where he had hit his head perhaps a depressed fracture.

"It's Mr. Jenkins!" St. Ives heard Alice say, apparently to Tubby.

Tubby asked, "Do you know this villain, ma'am?"

"Yes. Club him only if he threatens to run," she said, "and please refrain from cutting his ears off." She turned and knelt next to St. Ives.

"Press steadily against my kerchief here over the wound," St. Ives said to her. "The bullet went through, but there's a mort of bleeding. That's right hard as you can. You won't hurt him."

He removed the laces from Hasbro's boots now, twisted them together, and wrapped them around the thigh above the bleeding wound. "Lend me your sheath-knife, Tubby," he said. "And your coat, also, if you don't mind. It'll be less of a coat when we're done, but we must get Hasbro topside and we'll want a stretcher. The boy's coat also. Three should do it."

Tubby, keeping an eye on Jenkins, pa.s.sed St. Ives his knife, which he used, sheath and all, to twist the tourniquet tight around Hasbro's leg, hooking it back through the lace to hold it. "We must loosen it from time to time," he said to Alice, "or we'll damage the leg." He looked at Hasbro's head again, moving his hair aside. "Nothing to do here," he said, "except get him to hospital. We'll make a stretcher of the coats frap together the rifle barrels for the second stave. My stick will work for the other. It'll take the lot of us to carry it, and it means that we must abandon our friends."

"It's a matter of practicality, surely," Alice said.

"Practicality, yes," he said. "It sounds like d.a.m.nation, but of course you're correct. We haven't a choice. Who is this boy, then? Can he be trusted?"

"This is Mr. Jenkins, an employee at the Metropolitan Board of Works," Alice said, standing up and looking at Jenkins, who was in a state of advanced fear, regarding Tubby warily. "He's an a.s.sociate of Mr. Lewis at the Board of Works, who I am quite certain set off the bomb that nearly murdered you in the second collapse."

"I'm no friend to Lewis!" Jenkins said. "I did what he and the others told me to do, or they said my family would cop it. I haven't held a rifle except to shoot hare and suchlike, not till today when Mr. Klingheimer said I must come along with him underground."

"When you and I first saw each other, Mr. Jenkins, did you know what was afoot? That Mr. Lewis was sending me into danger? The truth now."

"Danger? No, ma'am. Not that. I give you a look. Do you remember? I didn't know what more to do, so I done what I was told, which was to tell them you were going down to..."

"I believe you, Mr. Jenkins. You have a chance to redeem yourself now, sir. We'll want your jacket, your outer s.h.i.+rt, and braces, if you will."

"Bootlaces, too," Tubby said.

"But do you remember the look I give you, ma'am? I didn't mean for..." He began weeping now, mopping his eyes with the side of his forearm as he fumbled with his braces and jacket.

Tubby was at work on the stretcher. He threaded the staff and the rifles through the sleeves of his coat, which he b.u.t.toned over the top, and then set about strapping the rifles together along the overlapped barrels, yanking Jenkins's coat over the other end, the two coats neck to neck.

"I do remember the look," Alice said, "lucky for you. I should have heeded it. Here's the ribbon from my hat, Tubby."

"And if I might borrow the hat-pin, also. I'll want to tie these jackets shut, but I must pierce the fabric to do so. The b.u.t.tons alone won't hold."

St. Ives loosened the tourniquet for a moment and peered under Hasbro's eyelids. After securing the tourniquet again, the four of them picked Hasbro up and laid him on the makes.h.i.+ft stretcher.

"Fall in line, Mr. Jenkins," St. Ives said. "Put a hand under the frapping, there, so as to support it. And Tubby, you also, if you don't mind. We cannot afford to drop him. G.o.d help us this is a jury-rig if ever there was one. I'll carry the lantern. Lift now! All together!" And away upward they went at a shuffling, steady gait, Hasbro's weight shared among them.

FORTY-ONE.

THE BATTLE.

Jules Klingheimer sat in a limestone alcove, illuminated by his own phosph.o.r.escent flesh. The head of Maurice de Salles sat in its cage, which also emitted the green light. It emitted other things as well. There was something disturbing about the head, a mental decay that was almost like an odor. The man had been evil incarnate in his day, brilliantly so, but the emanations from within de Salles's mind now were essentially idiotic, and more essentially evil because of it a b.e.s.t.i.a.l insanity that was appalling even to Klingheimer, perhaps uncontrollable. But why should it be? he thought. The head was a mere thing a force, yes, but one that could be hammered into a jelly with a stone. Jules Klingheimer, being a living man, had the choice not to be disturbed by it. It was as simple as that. He gave the cage a kick with his foot.

By s.h.i.+fting just a bit he had a clear view of the hut in which the boy and Clara sheltered. He had seen another face within, that of a man who must be Gilbert Frobisher. None of them could leave without Klingheimer knowing of it, and he was fully prepared to follow them to shoot the two males if he had the chance. He would rather wait until Flinders and Jenkins returned, however, so that he would not have blood on his own hands, if only in deference to Clara, who had innocent sensibilities.

The side of his face, unfortunately, was sticky with Shadwell's blood, which very nearly sickened him, since he put a high value on personal cleanliness. His irritation, however, was offset by his happiness that the man was dead. Shadwell's failures were the cause of the day's distractions, and certainly of these unnecessary difficulties with Clara. Shadwell had instilled a deep fear within her instead of a trust that could be increased and played to advantage. Shadwell had been weak a nasty-minded, mean-spirited b.u.mbler when all was said and done, with only a pa.s.sing usefulness.

It was because of Shadwell's inept.i.tude that they were here now, far beneath London rather than seeing to the preparations for tomorrow's wedding. Women had a high regard for ceremony, especially a country girl like Clara. It would be strange if she did not come around once she allowed him to show her the way, which for Klingheimer proceeded ever upward.

Even now he did not know her true mind. It was entirely possible that she had been spirited away by Zounds and this renegade boy against her own wishes. Klingheimer had seen Zounds flee into the stone village with the woman alleged to belong to Smythe, carrying the rifle that Zounds had used to kill Shadwell. Carnality no doubt explained the dwarf's desire to possess the woman. It was a motive that was easily as profound as greed. The human animal was far too often a repugnant creature. Clara must be convinced of this: that Jules Klingheimer had no base motives whatsoever, but wanted simply to rise to a more elevated plane.

Leaning his back against the wall now, he made himself as comfortable as a man could be who sat in a stone chair. He endeavored to cast a veil over his surroundings now by looking inward, silencing the mind chatter and allowing himself to drift. He pictured the wooden box of his childhood where it dwelt in the void, contemplating it until the mountain scene painted upon the front panel grew clear in the smallest detail. He saw the grain of the wood and the small cracks in the boards and the black iron latch, flecked with rust. The lid opened slowly now, circ.u.mscribing an arc as it rose and then descended backward, opening a window into the spirit world. He allowed his own spirit to drift upward above his sitting form, and he hovered over the box for a moment before descending into it. After a time he perceived the bat-like shadows of the spirits flitting roundabout him. In the distances lay the deeper darkness of the distant sea that he suspected was consciousness itself. It heaved and s.h.i.+fted like an actual sea, and he wondered whether one might sail upon it, perhaps descend within it what varieties of monsters dwelt beneath.

With that thought came an awareness of two things the odious presence of the deformed spirit of Maurice de Salles, and the nearness of Clara, whose mind was quite composed. He experienced a flickering vision of her face, of her closed eyes and becalmed features. She was lying upon a mattress in the stone hovel, her mind seeking his, or wary of it. Yes, he thought, and he settled his own mind nearby, very like a shepherd settling himself near a sleeping lamb.

A sound like air escaping from a dead and bloated animal issued from de Salles's cage, bringing him partially out of his reverie, and in that brief, unhinged moment, Sarah Wright's visage floated an inch from his own face. It sat upon its fungal stem, its dribbling mouth partially open, its animate eyes staring into his with a look in them of stark loathing. She blinked, and his mind jerked away instinctively, as if it were a fish on a hook. The image began to draw away, retreating toward the distant sea, growing smaller until it floated in the darkness like a green-tinted moon.

He forced his mind to compose itself again, although it was hampered by the thought that Sarah Wright had evidently looked in upon him. Certainly it was possible he suspected that her mind had been active at Peavy's but such a thing was unlikely given the depth of stone that separated them. It was more likely a nasty trick of the imagination, an errant mental photograph and nothing more. A mind astray was a weak mind, he warned himself, and by and by he drifted downward once again.

Clara's mind awaited him there, remarkably steady and focused. He searched for a means to enter it, and he welcomed her into his own mind, anxious to reveal his dreams and desires...

...and on the instant he felt a swelling within his head, a cacophony of mental noise like the drumming of dry bones on tin plates. A fog arose around him that his vision could not pierce. Now a wind began to blow, a wind that he saw rather than felt as it opened windows in the fog. Loathsome images appeared within these voids like objects in museum cases murdered children, flayed animals, human body parts black with flies. In one he saw his own mother and himself as a child, his mother croaking out noises, grasping his wrist and dragging him toward the glowing coal that she held in an iron tongs in her other hand, a demented smile on her face. The images spun around him as if he were fixed at the center of a carousel. He remained still, not daring to move lest he step bodily into one nightmare or another.

The terrible pressure pulsated in his head, pus.h.i.+ng at the back of his eyeb.a.l.l.s as if another mind was shoving its way into the confines of his skull. He lurched forward, crying out and flailing with his hands in a wild effort to encounter the solidity of something actual. The back of his left hand cracked against limestone, and he found himself on his knees, his heart laboring, his knuckles running with blood. He clutched his temples and sat down again, breathing heavily and forcing down the gorge that had risen in his throat.

Where had the images come from? Clara had not generated them. She was incapable of imagining such things. But she had invited him to open his mind, and when he had, these things had rushed in, just as the silver bees had rushed into his mind at Peavy's. He had descended into the dark inner core of his own mind, its doorway having been held forcibly open. It had been a masculine presence that had engaged him; he had seen enough of the horrors to know that. He staggered to his feet, picked up de Salles's cage, and pitched it out through the door to the alcove in which he sat, watching as it bounced twice and then lay still closer than he would have wished.

This... intrusion would not, could not, happen again. He had not wanted to use his own mind against Clara as he had used it against the lunatic Bates, but Clara's willfulness left him no choice.

Clara lay on the mattress, pretending to sleep. She had no wish to talk, even to Finn, for talk was a distraction that she could not afford, and Mr. Klingheimer might return at any moment. There had been fear and anger in him, along with a measure of bewilderment. She knew very well what had caused it the odious presence of the thing that she had found for them on the riverbottom. The monster's head was here in the land beneath, which could mean only that Mr. Klingheimer had brought it with him, thinking that it might be of use to him. It might as easily destroy him. Certainly it would not be a willing ally.

She had been aware of her mother's presence for the past half hour. In Mr. Klingheimer's first attempt, Clara had done little else but guard the doorway, to trick him into thinking that she was open to his entreaties. It had been her mother who had unshuttered his mind and kept it so. Her mother's thoughts were disordered not thoughts at all, actually, but unexpressed essences of love and sorrow, loss and regret, and of a deep and chaotic fury at the men who had taken so much from her and now were trying to take it from Clara.

She became aware that Mr. Klingheimer's mind was ranging out once again, that he was seeking her own. As her mother had taught her, she envisioned her childhood in Boxley Woods: the black cat Larceny, whom she loved and who would take things that weren't his and hide them in her wardrobe closet when the door was left open; the white chickens in the yard and the yellow chicks that grew too quickly; the color of the leaves in autumn and the green of summer; the clear stream and the animals that lived along its banks....

The pain was sharp, concentrated behind her eyes, when he made his second effort to enter. She compelled herself to lie still, watching the stream bubbling over the rocks, running into a clear pool. She began to utter "The Jumblies," visualizing the words as they floated downward on the stream, the words and sentences pa.s.sing out of sight around the swerve of the sandy bank. She knew that the stream would turn back onto itself on a neverending current "They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, in a sieve they went to sea," and at once she felt her mother's watchful presence as she herself envisioned the circulating stream and the sieve and the Jumblies not caring a fig.

Klingheimer was puzzled by the placidity of Clara's mind and his utter inability to see into it, to communicate with her. He cast out pleasant thoughts and imprecations, beseeching her to understand who Jules Klingheimer was in fact, and what he offered her: wealth, of course, beyond measure. More than that, however, he offered her a father and husband at one in the same time, a superior man quite unlike her own drunken oaf of a father, whom Mr. Klingheimer himself had removed from the world. He offered her insight rather than power, and he contemplated their mutual ascent toward a vista that looked down on all other creatures, an Avalon where the two of them dwelt as one in utter and complete unanimity. The logical sense of his offerings was impeccable, of that there could be no doubt.

He could discover no response, however. Instead, he had a growing consciousness of the sound of running water, of a swift flowing brook pa.s.sing over stones. Beneath this sound a voice intoned verse a repet.i.tive, sing-song meter, the words and the rhythms and the ceaseless flow of water going round and round Clara like a moat. He listened for a time, mesmerized by the revolutions of sound. Then he caught himself and closed his ears to it, abruptly certain that it was more of Clara's willfulness. She had never been taught to listen, never taught to obey. By learning to obey, he thought, she would free herself from the whimsies and vagaries of her own mind.

It came to him that he might use Sarah Wright herself to overcome the girl's defenses an earthquake to bring down the barricade. It would horrify the girl, but out of that horror might come reason. He set about picturing Sarah Wright's head as he had first seen it, lying in a layered box within walls of b.l.o.o.d.y ice, the utter terror in the eyes: a terror that revealed the panic of someone who sees very clearly how she must die, who imagines the pain of the flesh parting around the blade, the nerves shrieking, the life blood flowing out. He envisioned the head in its cage: the horror of being alive in death, the grasping teeth of the fungal stem seizing on to the trailing flesh, the green fluids circulating, leaking out of her mouth and nose.

She was a hideous specter, and he focused on her with all the acuity that he could summon saw her with particular clarity, every detail sharp in his vision, the wizened flesh, the scraggle of hair. He had always kept joy at a distance a foolish emotion that opened the mind to distracting sentiment but he found something very much like joy in what he saw within the cage that held Sarah Wright: elation in the stupendous fact that he had brought it into being. He had given a dead thing life, or some semblance of it, and it was within his power to grant it life as long as he chose to do so.

He felt Clara's mind waver, as if struck by a blow, and he redoubled his energies. Without hesitation he thought now of the way in which her own father had used her, picturing it with invented clarity, but not far from the truth, for he had probed Clemson Wright's mind and was familiar with the man's misdeeds. He considered them quite specifically now, and again he was swept with a sharp elation. Spittle dripped from the corners of his mouth, and a laugh arose unbidden in his throat.

The sound of it checked him momentarily, but he considered that she had brought the unhappiness upon herself, and like a child she was resolutely clinging to childish notions, refusing to see, rejecting intellect for mere mawkishness. Again he a.s.sumed the persona of Clemson Wright, the pace of his dumbshow slowing as it increased in detail. He envisioned a summer afternoon, coming upon Clara in a forest glade, his intentions written upon his face. In his vision, the girl became aware of him, and her eyes revealed the loathing, the childish bewilderment, the knowledge of what was to be.

He had descended to a level of base l.u.s.t that surprised him but also compelled him. He spoke to her in what he imagined was a fatherly way base trickery, to be sure, for he knew exactly what he meant to do. She turned away toward the stream along which she had played since she could remember, but her escape was blocked by a th.o.r.n.y entanglement of vines. He felt a heightening pleasure as he moved toward her, hearing the sound of the water bounding over the stones.

But somewhere beneath the surface of that water there sounded the low murmur of a voice intoning rhymes Clara's voice and it came to him in the midst of his increasing euphoria that the only audience for the theater playing out in his mind was himself, and without willing it he beheld Clara standing safely beyond the entanglement of thorns. Her mother stood with her, looking as she did in life, the sound of water and verse spinning around them.

Klingheimer was thrust bodily backward now, as if compelled by a heavy, concentrated gust of fetid air, and his head cracked into the limestone wall with such force that his skull rang and his eyes flew open. Gasping for breath, he peered around in misty darkness, the only illumination radiating from the strange moon that was the head of Sarah Wright. He had the sensation that insects crawled within the confines of his brain, pressing upon his skull, and it came to him that something somebody had entered him, that he invited it to enter the demented spirit of Maurice de Salles. Unwillingly he pictured the decomposed face, and it seemed to him now to become his own face. In his mind he denied that such a thing could be, and he frantically willed it away in an effort to reclaim himself.

Instead of reclaiming anything, however, he recalled in vivid detail the day that he was hanged. He knew that he was enacting a role that wasn't his own, and yet he saw the gibbet before him in utter clarity as he climbed the several stairs, saw the grain of the wood and the black iron hinges, flecked with rust, that were affixed to the trap upon which he was compelled to stand, a rough hand pus.h.i.+ng him forward. He felt the noose tighten, heard the trap open with a ratcheting sound as he fell into the void, his breath choked off as he swung out over the crowd of people who had come to watch him die to celebrate his death.

A foul smell came into his nostrils, and he heard a high, keening noise arising from his throat. His hands twitched and scrabbled in the darkness, plucking at the cloth of his trousers and slapping the rough limestone floor. He fought to awaken, to return to the world of the sun and moon and stars, but to no avail. His teeth clacked together, and warm blood gurgled out of his ears and mouth, choking him into a silent death, his last thoughts a chaotic idiocy of incomprehension.

Bill Kraken raised the lantern over Klingheimer's body. Mother had told him that the man was dead, that his brain might have exploded, but he had not expected to see the yellow matter that leaked out of his ears and nose like b.l.o.o.d.y custard. He prodded Klingheimer with the toe of his boot. He had seen a number of dead men in his life, but no one deader than this. He picked up the rifle that leaned against the stone Klingheimer had no further use for it and he stepped out into the open again and made his way along the narrow trail toward the cabin where Mother and Clara waited for him, along with Finn Conrad and the old man.

He and Mother Laswell had buried Sarah Wright in her wire coffin, the cloth draped over it only the head. He himself had removed the toadstool that gripped her. She lay now in a hole near the village of stone huts, a cairn of heavy stones covering it. Mother had said a prayer over it and had wept, but a load of trouble and sorrow had pa.s.sed out of her face when the thing was done. It came into Kraken's mind that they were to be married at Christmas, only weeks away. He thought about his good fortune where he had gone in his life and come back from, and where he was bound.

He heard a snuffling sound away to his right, and he saw the silhouettes of two pigs standing together, one of them waist high and the other slightly smaller, back-lit by the light of the toadstools. Pigs could smell death better than any other animal, and they were overly fond of human flesh, especially feral pigs. No doubt they smelt Klingheimer, and were anxious to look in on him. He walked the remaining fifty feet to the cabin door before he looked back. It took a moment, but he made out the pigs' shadows moving along the narrow trail that led toward Klingheimer's resting place, if a man like that would ever have any rest.

The five of them set out toward the surface after putting out the lantern in Beaumont's hut and securing the door. Beaumont had left his hat behind, which Finn saw as a change in the dwarf, a nod to his high regard for Miss Bracken. Kraken strode on ahead, carrying the rifle, and Clara rode atop Ned Ludd again, Mother Laswell walking alongside, the two of them speaking in low voices. As they trudged upward Finn attempted to explain to Gilbert Frobisher what had happened over the past two days that which he knew, which wasn't much. Gilbert responded by asking what had happened to Commodore Nutt and the astonis.h.i.+ng woman he had gone off with. The whole thing was a sad confusion to him.

Within the half hour of their upward trek, however, a light appeared on the trail above. Finn let out a cheer, for it was Tubby Frobisher who bore the lantern. Seeing them, Tubby raised his cudgel in the air and hailed his uncle with a wild shout of happy relief.

"Tubby, by G.o.d!" Gilbert shouted back at him, and Finn looked away when he saw that the old man was openly weeping.