CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN #3
“What if I’ve miscalculated and it all goes awry?
They might—” I did not say the words.
I could not.
“Yes,” he agreed.
“They might.”
“And that doesn’t frighten you?”
I demanded.
My voice rose and Huxley shifted, grumbling a little as only an annoyed bulldog can.
“It scares the bloody hell out of me, if I’m honest,” he replied.
“But you cannot think like that.
You’ve made your gamble.
You’ve thrown the dice and now we wait to see if you’ve won.”
“But if I’ve lost—” I broke off and tried again, forcing the words past the lump in my throat.
“I accused you of being rash when you fled London after the baron’s death, but I am no better.
I have risked both our lives in this and I had no right to bring you any further into this fight.”
“I have been in it,” he reminded me.
“From the first.
And I will be there at the last.
Whatever happens.”
He dug in his pocket for one of his scarlet handkerchiefs.
“Here, use this before you give Huxley pneumonia from wetting him with your tears.”
His tone was mocking, but his gaze was unperturbed.
A calmness had settled over him, a serenity that I had never seen.
“Is this what it’s like?
Before a battle, I mean.
You must have seen a few in the navy.”
“A few,” he admitted.
“There’s always a moment, after the frantic preparation and before the firing, when everything goes quiet.
You can feel the men around you praying.
I never could.
For me there was only the silence.”
“What did you do with your silence?”
He gave me a small smile.
“What do you think?
I recited a few lines of Keats to myself.
I thought of the life I might never live, the life I wanted to live.
And I thought of my commander, the man into whose hands I had entrusted my life.”
“Do you think he prayed?”
“He did.
He was a righteous man, whatever that means.
But I don’t believe we won because God was on our side or because our men prayed more or cared more.
We won because we had bigger guns.”
“So might was right,” I observed.
“That’s how it often is in the world,” he reminded me.
“But sometimes right wins simply because justice demands it.”
“You sound terribly certain.”
“So should you,” he admonished.
“A captain can never show fear.
It’s bad for morale.”
I gave a sharp laugh.
“And I am the captain of this little endeavor?
Are you content to be led into battle by me?”
“You’re as fine a man as any I knew in the navy,” he assured me.
“And if I did not give you command, you would only take it.”
“True,” I admitted.
I toyed with Huxley’s ears.
“Thank you.
I feel better now.”
He gave me a long look.
“Good.”
He bent to retrieve his hammer.
“Stoker?”
“Yes, Veronica?”
“What do you think the odds are that we will survive this meeting?”
The lump from my throat was gone, and my voice no longer trembled.
He considered this a moment.
“One in five,” he pronounced.
My heart plunged to my feet.
“And still you are willing to bet on us?”
His smile was dazzling.
“Any man who bets against us is a fool.”
· · ·
My invitations had specified nine o’clock in the evening at Stoker’s warehouse.
The time and place had been chosen with care.
I had selected an evening appointment to allow the gentlemen sufficient time to receive the invitation and prepare.
I had decided upon Stoker’s workshop because it was the nearest we could come to a higher-ground advantage.
We knew they were coming, and forewarned was forearmed, I pointed out to Stoker.
He grumbled extensively about sitting ducks, but he had secured the back windows; the little yard behind was surrounded by a high, stout wall that admitted no entrance, and the sole front door was heavily barricaded.
There was no way they could gain entry without our knowing they were coming.
The early evening, predictably, crawled and then raced and then slowed again.
Time played tricks upon us so that one moment we were lamenting the length of the day, and the next we were hurrying to finish our preparations.
“Little wonder it seems long,” he pointed out.
“It is almost Midsummer Day.”
I did not reply.
I was busy admiring our handiwork.
Together we had cleared a large space in the center of the workshop.
We had extinguished the lamps, and shadows gathered in the far corners of the place.
From the gloom sharp teeth gleamed and eyes glimmered—hints of the mounts we had pushed to the perimeter of the room.
The shelves we could not shift easily were left in place, but the great jars of floating specimens lent an unearthly note, like something straight out of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece.
One could easily imagine the touch of a galvanic wire bringing all of them suddenly, horribly to life.
Now the cauldron was centered in the middle of the workshop, drawing the eye and demanding attention.
“We needn’t do this, you know,” he informed me at one point.
“There is a perfectly serviceable stove.”
“You are forgetting the power of theater,” I said.
“I want to create an effect they will always remember.”
“Perhaps you are your mother’s child after all,” he replied.
But Stoker himself was not averse to a little theatricality, I noted.
He had divested himself of coat, waistcoat, and neckcloth when we returned to his workshop and he made no effort to resume them again.
Instead, he rolled his sleeves to the elbow, baring the asklepian tattoo upon his forearm.
He had put on his eye patch as well; that might have been from fatigue—although it did occur to me he enjoyed the air of menace it conferred upon his appearance.
Once the cauldron was in place, we kindled a fire within it, burning stacks upon stacks of the old newspapers and broken shelves until the flames rose red and hot into the darkening air of the warehouse.
We flung open the windows overlooking the Thames, long windows that stretched from near the floor, barely above the level of the water, to twelve feet or more overhead.
Stoker had climbed like a monkey to open the skylights, and the smoke from the fire streamed out.
“‘Yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,’” I quoted.
“Yes, well, it doesn’t feel particularly auspicious to quote Job,” Stoker said with a repressive look.
He turned to me just as the clock struck nine.
“It is time.”
I did not make any special effort with my appearance.
My hands were sooty and dirty with newsprint, so I washed them.
But I left my hair tumbling half out of its chignon, and I did not put on my jacket.
My shirtwaist was white, like Lily Ashbourne’s most famous costume, and I wanted them to see the resemblance for themselves.
The clock had not finished striking the nine solemn tones when we heard them.
First it was a dull thud as they struck the main door.
Stoker had removed the barricade by then, but we did not go to let them in.
I wanted them to come to me, and the few minutes it took for them to force their way in only heightened their anticipation.
Stoker turned to me, and I noted a single-mindedness of purpose I had not yet seen within him.
This was not the wreck of a man I had met only days before.
This was a new creation—focused, determined, and bent upon resolving this matter, for better or worse.
He gave me a short nod.
“To battle stations, Veronica.
They have come.”