The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack Part 35

"Focus!" he whispered.

He noticed a man across the way standing in a relaxed but rather arrogant manner, looking straight at him and smiling. He had a lean figure, round face, and a very large moustache.

Can he see that I don't belong here? wondered Oxford.

A cheer went up. He looked to his right. The queen's carriage had just emerged from the palace gates, its horses guided by a postilion. Two outriders trotted along ahead of the vehicle, two more behind.

Where was his ancestor? Where was the gunman?

Ahead of him, a man wearing a top hat, blue frock coat, and white breeches, straightened, reached under his coat, and moved closer to the path.

Slowly, the royal carriage approached.

"Is that him?" muttered Oxford, gazing at the back of the man's head.

Moments later, the forward outriders came alongside.

The blue-coated individual stepped over the fence and, as the queen and her husband pa.s.sed, he took three strides to keep up with their vehicle, then whipped out a flintlock pistol and fired it at them. He threw down the smoking weapon and drew a second.

Oxford yelled, "No, Edward!" and ran forward.

The gunman glanced at him.

He looks just like me! thought Oxford, surprised.

He vaulted over the fence and grabbed his ancestor's raised arm. If he could just disarm him and drag him away, tell him to flee and forget this stupid prank.

They struggled, locked together.

"Give it up!" pleaded Oxford.

"Let go of me!" grunted the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin. "My name must be remembered. I must live through history!"

A distant voice yelled, "Stop, Edward!" and a flash of lightning caught the time traveller's eye.

He looked across the park toward it. The man with the pistol did the same.

The flintlock went off, the recoil jolting both men.

The back of Queen Victoria's skull exploded.

s.h.i.+t! No! That wasn't meant to happen!

He gripped the gunman, shook him, and heaved him off his feet.

His ancestor fell backward and his head hit the low cast-iron fence. There was a crunch and a spike suddenly emerged from the man's eye.

"You're not dead!" exclaimed Oxford, staggering back. "You're not dead! Stand up! Run for it! Don't let them catch you!"

The a.s.sa.s.sin lay on his back, his head impaled, blood pooling beneath him.

Oxford stumbled away.

There were screams and cries, people pus.h.i.+ng past him.

He saw Victoria; she was tiny, young, like a child's doll, and her shredded brain was oozing onto the ground.

No. No. No.

This isn't happening.

This can't happen.

This didn't happen.

The smiling round-faced man was suddenly at his side. "Bravo, my friend!" he muttered. "Jolly good show!"

Oxford backed away from him, feeling terrified, fell, got up again, shoved his way out of the milling crowd, and ran.

"Get back to the suit," he mumbled as his legs pumped. "Try something else!"

He raced up the slope and ran into the trees.

What had caused that bolt of lightning? It had come from the same direction as the shout: "Stop, Edward!" Who had that been? He hadn't seen anyone clearly; there was too much happening.

He found his suit, slipped on the helmet, and activated it.

A sense of well-being flooded through him as the distant noise of electric cars, pa.s.senger jets, and advertising billboards a.s.sailed his ears. He pulled on the suit and set the navigation system for three months into the past. His lunatic ancestor would be working in a public house-the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street; that was a recorded fact.

"I'll go and talk him out of it," he whispered. "It's what I should have done in the first place."

A terrifying feeling of inevitability sank into his bones.

It won't work.

Try anyway!

It won't work.

He pushed through the undergrowth, returning to the edge of the woods.

"Step out into the open, sir!" came a voice.

Oxford froze. What now?

He crept ahead, trying to see whoever it was through the trees.

"I saw what happened-there's nothing to worry about. Come on, let's be having you!"

He remained silent.

There! A policeman!

"Sir! I saw you trying to protect the queen. I just need you to-"

Oxford plunged out into the open.

The policeman gasped, stepped back, and fell onto his bottom. He threw his truncheon.

The club whirled through the air and crashed into the control unit on the front of the time traveller's suit. Sparks exploded and a mild electric shock jerked through his body.

"d.a.m.n!" he cried, and bounded away. He slammed his stilts into the ground, leaped high, ordered the time jump, and winked out of June 10, 1840.

The suit malfunctioned.

Instead of sending him back three months, it sent him a good deal further; and rather than s.h.i.+fting him half a mile northward to a secluded alley behind the Hog in the Pound, it threw him twenty-one miles beyond.

He blinked into existence fifteen feet in the air with an electric charge drilling through him and crashed into the ground, unconscious. His limbs twitched spasmodically for thirty minutes, then he became very still.

Four hours later, a horseman narrowly avoided riding over him. The man reined in his mount and looked down at the bizarrely costumed figure.

"By James! What have we here?" he exclaimed, dismounting.

Henry de La Poet Beresford, the 3rd Marquess of Waterford, bent and ran his fingers over the strange material of the time suit. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He grasped Edward Oxford by the shoulder and shook him.

"I say, old fellow, are you in the land of the living?"

There was no response.

Beresford placed his hand on the man's chest, beside the lanternlike disk, and felt the heart beating.

"Still with us, anyway," he muttered. "But what the devil are you, old thing? I've never seen the like!"

He pushed an arm under Oxford's shoulders and lifted him; then, with no small amount of difficulty, shoved him onto the horse's saddle, so that the helmeted head hung on one side of the animal and the stilted boots on the other. Beresford took the reins and led his mount back homeward, to Darkening Towers.

Oxford regained his senses five days later.

Henry Beresford had tried and failed to remove the time suit; he could find no b.u.t.tons. He'd succeeded, however, in pulling off the boots and in sliding the helmet from the comatose man's head. He'd then placed his unexpected visitor onto a bed, with his shoulders and head propped up against pillows, and had covered him with a blanket.

Unprotected by augmented reality, Oxford's first intimation of consciousness arrived through his nose. He was forced from oblivion by the stench of stale sweat, the mustiness of unlaundered clothes, and the overwrought perfume of lavender.

He opened his eyes.

"Good afternoon," said Beresford.

Oxford blinked and looked at the clean-shaven, moon-faced man sitting beside him.

"Who are you?" he croaked, his hoa.r.s.e voice sounding to him as if it came from someone else.

"My name is Henry de La Poet Beresford. I am Marquess of Waterford. And who-and, indeed, what-are you? Here, take this water."

Oxford took the proffered gla.s.s and quenched his thirst.

"Thank you. My name is Edward Oxford. I'm-I'm a traveller."

Beresford raised his brows. "Is that so? To which circus do you belong?"

"What?"

"Circus, my friend. You appear to be a stilt-walker."

Oxford made no reply.

Beresford considered his guest for a moment, then said, "Yet there are no carnivals or suchlike in the area, which rather begs the question: how did you end up in a dead faint inside the walls of my estate?"

"I don't know. Perhaps you could tell me where I am, exactly?"

"You're in Darkening Towers, near Hertford, some twenty miles or so north of central London. I found you in the grounds, unconscious, five days ago."

"Five days!"

Oxford looked down at the control panel on the front of his suit. It was dead. There was a dent on its face and scorch marks around its left edge.

Beresford said, "I apologise for the indelicacy of my next statement, but the fact is, I was unable to get you out of your costume and I fear you may have fouled it whilst in your faint."

Oxford nodded, reddening.

Beresford laid a hand on his arm. "I shall have my man bring you a basin of hot water and some soap, towels, and fresh clothing. You look to be about my size, a little taller, perhaps. I shall also instruct the cook to prepare you something. Will that be satisfactory?"

"Very much so," replied Oxford, suddenly realising that he was famished.

"Good. I shall leave you to your ablutions. Please join me in the dining room when you are ready."

He stood and walked toward the door.

"Incidentally," he said, pausing, "your accent is unfamiliar-where are you from?"

"I was born and raised in Aldershot."

The marquess grunted. "No, that's not a Hamps.h.i.+re accent."

He opened the door to leave.

"What news of the queen?" Oxford blurted.

Beresford turned, with a puzzled expression. "Queen? Do you mean young Victoria? She's not quite the queen yet, my friend, though His Majesty is said to be on his deathbed."

Oxford frowned. "What date is it?"