Burton & Swinburne 1 - The Strange Affair Of Spring Heeled Jack (20 page)

“I was trying to help you!”

“And in doing so made it appear that I lacked the wherewithal to forward my own career. By myself perhaps I could have secured Damascus. As it is, your intervention earned me an invitation to Fernando Po. They offered me a governmental crumb when I wanted a governmental loaf. Do you know where Fernando Po is?”

“No,” she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek. This visit wasn't going at all as she had planned.

“It's a Spanish island off the west coast of Africa; an insignificant, diseaseridden fleapit, widely regarded as `the white man's graveyard.' A man who is made consul of Fernando Po is a man the Foreign Office wants out of the way. The fact that Lord Russell suggested it for me means only one thing: I have irritated him. Except, of course, I haven't. In fact, I've had no contact with him at all.”

“It was me! It's my fault! Oh, I'm so sorry, Dick-I wanted only the best for you!”

“And achieved the worst,” he noted, ruthlessly.

Isabel hid her face in her hands and wept.

“Isabel,” said Burton softly, “when the king honoured me with a knighthood, I thought my future was secured-our future. Then came John's betrayal. Why he did it, I know not. He'd been a younger brother to me, but he was weak and allowed himself to be manipulated by a malignant force. I'd striven like no man to make a name for myself: in India, I had to overcome disappointments and the jealous opposition of officers; in Arabia, I risked execution by taking the pilgrimage to Mecca; in Berbera, I was nearly killed by natives; and in central Africa, I almost died from illness and exhaustion. It all became worthless when he turned against me and tarnished my reputation. The things he suggested! By God! I should have horsewhipped him! But sentiment caused me to stay my hand and in that pause, the harm was done. When he shot himself, it might have been my head he levelled the gun at for all the damage it did me; for now, on top of all the malicious lies he'd told, I am blamed for his attempted suicide. On Monday, when I learned what he'd done, the Richard Burton you met in Boulogne ten years ago-the Burton you fell in love with-that man ceased to exist.”

“No, Richard! Don't say that!” she wailed.

“It's true. You would have married a broken man-but for one thing.”

“What?” she whimpered.

“That evening, I was physically assaulted.”

Isabel blinked rapidly. “You were attacked? By whom?”

“By a thing out of myth and folklore; by a seemingly supernatural being; by Spring Heeled Jack.”

She stared at him wordlessly.

“It's true, Isabel. Then, on Tuesday morning, I was summoned by Palmerston and he offered me a post on behalf of the king. I have become a-well, there's no real name for it; Palmerston calls me the `king's agent,' though 'investigator' or `researcher' or even `detective' might do just as well. One of my first commissions is to discover more about the very creature that assaulted me.”

Isabel Arundell suddenly rose to her feet and crossed the room to one of the windows. She looked out of it as she spoke.

“This is poppycock, Dick,” she snapped, decisively. “Has your malaria returned?”

He moved back to the bureau, beside her, and poured himself a glass of port.

“Do you mean to suggest that I might be delusional?”

There was a deep sadness in his voice. She swung around at the sound of it.

“Spring Heeled Jack is a children's story!”

“And if I were also to tell you that I've seen werewolves in London?”

“Werewolves! Richard! Listen to what you are saying!”

“I know how it sounds, Isabel, but I also know what I saw. Furthermore, a man died and it was my fault. It taught me a painful lesson: that this post I now hold brings with it immense danger, not just for me, but for those close to me, too.”

“I can't-I can't-” she stammered. “Dear God! You mean to give me up?” She clutched at her chest as if her heart were failing.

“You know what manner of man am I,” he replied. “Discovery is my mania. Africa is closed to me now and, anyway, I have little desire for the ill health that expeditions bring with them. The last almost killed me, and I would rather die on my feet than on my back. Besides, geographical exploration is but one form of discovery; there are others, and the king has given me the opportunity to use my mania in a fashion I had hitherto never imagined. I can-”

“Stop!” commanded Isabel. Her chin went up and her eyes flashed dangerously. “And what of me, Richard? Answer me that! What of me?”

Ignoring the great ache that suddenly gripped his heart, Sir Richard Francis Burton answered.

Despite her flaws, Burton loved Isabel, and despite his, she returned that love. She was meant to be his wife, that he could not dispute, yet he had defied Destiny and willfully forced his life down a different path.

He was left empty and emotionless; yet he suddenly acquired a heightened self-awareness, too, and experienced an intensification of the feverish sensation that his personality was split.

As the afternoon gave way to early evening, he fell once again into a deep contemplation-almost a self-induced trance-under the spell of which he explored the presence of the invisible doppelganger that seemed to occupy the same armchair as himself. Oddly, he found that he now associated this second Richard Burton not with the delirium of malaria but with Spring Heeled Jack.

He and his double, he intuitively recognised, existed at a point of divergence. To one of them, a path was open that led to Fernando Po, Brazil, Dam ascus, and “wherever the fuck else they send you. ” For the other, the path was that of the king's agent, its destination shrouded.

The stilt-walker, Burton was certain, had somehow foreseen this choice. Jack, whatever he was, was not a spy, as he and Palmerston had initially suspected. Oh no, nothing so pedestrian as that! It wasn't just what the strangely costumed man had said but also the way he'd said it that forced upon Burton the conception that Jack possessed an uncanny knowledge of hisBurton's-future, knowledge that could never be gained from spying, no matter how efficient.

In India, he'd seen much that defied rational thought. Human beings, he was convinced, possessed a “force of will” that could extend their senses beyond the limits of sight, hearing, taste, or touch. Could it, he wondered, even transcend the restrictions of time? Was Spring Heeled Jack a true clairvoyant? If he was, then he obviously spent far too much time dwelling upon the future, for his grasp of the present seemed tenuous at best; he had expressed astonishment when Burton revealed that the Nile debate-and Speke's accident-had already occurred.

“I'm a historian!” he'd claimed. “I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861.”

Happened. Past tense, though he spoke of 1864, which was three years in the future.

Curious.

There was an obvious-though hard to accept-explanation for the discrepancies in Jack's perception of time: he simply wasn't of this world. The creature had, after all, twice vanished before Burton's very eyes and, back in 1840, had done the same in full view of Detective Inspector Trounce. Plainly, this was a feat no mere mortal could achieve.

What's more, everything could be explained Jack's inconsistent character and appearance, his confusion about time, his seeming to be in two places at once, his apparent agelessness-if it were accepted that he was a supernatural being whose habitat lay beyond the realms of normal time and space. Perhaps Burton's first impression had been correct: could he be an uncorked djinni? A demon? A malevolent spirit? Moko, the Congo's god of divination?

The king's agent emerged from his contemplation having come to two conclusions. The first was that, for the time being, the bizarre apparition should be treated as one being rather than as two or more. The second was that Time was a key element in understanding Spring Heeled Jack.

He stood and rubbed a crick out of his neck. As always, focusing his mind on one thing had helped him to forget another, and, though his meeting with Isabel had been painful, he wasn't immobilised by depression, as he'd sometimes been in the past. In fact, he was feeling surprisingly positive.

It was eight o'clock.

Burton crossed to the window and looked down at Montagu Place. The fog had reduced to a watery mist, liberally punctuated with coronas of light from gas lamps and windows. The usual hustle and bustle had returned to the streets of London: the rattling velocipedes, gasping steam-horses, oldfashioned horse-drawn vehicles, pantechnicons, and, above all, the seething mass of humanity.

Usually, when he looked upon such a scene, Burton, ever the outsider, felt a fierce longing for the wide-open spaces of Arabia. This evening, though, there was an unfamiliar cosiness about London, almost a familiarity. He'd never felt this before. England had always felt strange to him, stifling and repressive.

I am changing, he thought. I hardly know myself.

A flash of red caught his attention: Swinburne stepping out of a hansom. The poet's arrival was signalled by shrill screams and cries as he squabbled with the driver over the fare. Swinburne had the fixed idea that the fare from one place in London to any other was a shilling, and would argue hysterically with any cabbie who said otherwise-which they all did. On this occasion, as so often happened, the driver, embarrassed by the histrionics, gave up and accepted the coin.

Swinburne came bobbing across the street with that peculiar dancing gait of his. He jangled the front doorbell.

Everyone uses the bell, thought Burton, except policemen. They knock.

Moments later, Burton heard Mrs. Angell's voice and the piping tones of Algernon, footsteps on the stairs, and the staccato rap of a cane on his study door.

He turned from the window and called, “Come in, Algy!”

Swinburne bounced in and enthusiastically announced, “Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of things.”

“And what's prompted that declaration?” enquired Burton.

“I just saw one of the new rotorships! It was huge! How godlike we have become that we can send tons of metal gliding through the air! My hat! You've acquired new bruises! Was it Jack again? I saw in the evening edition that he pounced on a girl in the early hours.”

“A rotorship? What did it look like? I haven't seen one yet.”

Swinburne threw himself into an armchair, hooking a leg over one arm. He placed his top hat onto the end of his cane, held up the stick, and made the hat spin.

“A vast platform, Richard, flat and oval shaped, with a great many pylons extending horizontally from its edge, and, at their ends, vertical shafts at the tip of which great wings were spinning so fast that only a circular blur was visible. It was leaving an enormous trail of steam. Did he beat you up again?”

“On its way to India, perhaps,” mused Burton.

“Yes, I should think so. But listen to this: it had propaganda painted on its keel. Enormous words!”

“Saying what?”

“Saying: `Citizen! The Society of Friends of the Air Force summons you to its ranks! Help to build more ships like this!”'

Burton raised an eyebrow. “The Technologists are certainly on the up as far as public opinion is concerned. It seems they intend to make the most of it!”

“What a sight it was,” enthused Swinburne. “I expect it could circle the globe without landing once! So tell me about the pummelling.”

“I'm surprised at your enthusiasm,” commented Burton, ignoring the question. “I thought you Libertines were dead set against such machines. You know they'll be used to conquer the so-called uncivilised.”

“Well, yes, of course,” responded Swinburne, airily. “But one can't help but be impressed by such impossibilities as flying ships of metal! Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron shall a nation be moulded to last! Anyway, old chap, answer my confounded question! How come the new bruises?”

“Oh,” said Burton. “Just a tumble or two. I was clobbered by a werewolf, then, a few hours later, Spring Heeled Jack dragged my rotorchair out of the sky and sent me crashing through some treetops.”

Swinburne grinned. “Yes, but really, what happened?”

“Exactly that.”

The young poet threw his topper at the explorer in exasperation. Burton caught it and tossed it back.

Swinburne sighed, and said, “If you don't want to explain, jolly good, but at least tell me what's on the menu for tonight. Alcoholic excesses? Or maybe something different for a change? I've been thinking it might be fun to try opium.”

Blake slipped out of his jubbah and reached for his jacket, which he'd thrown carelessly over the back of a chair.

“You'll stay well away from that stuff, Algernon. Your self-destructive streak is dangerous enough as it is. Alcohol is going to kill you slowly, I have no doubt. Opium will do the job with far greater efficiency!” He buttoned up his jacket. “Why you want to do away with yourself, I cannot fathom,” he continued.

“Pshaw!” objected Swinburne, jumping up and pressing his topper down over his wild carroty hair. “I have no intention of killing myself. I'm just bored, Richard. Terribly, terribly bored. The ennui of this pointless existence gnaws at my bones.”

He began to dance crazily around the room.

“I'm a poet! I need stimulation! I need danger! I need to tread that thin line 'twixt life and death, else I have no experience worth writing about!”

Burton gazed at the capering little slope-shouldered man. “You are serious?”

"Of course! You yourself write poetry. You know that the form is but a container. What have I, a twenty-four year old, to pour into that container but the pathetic dribblings of an immature dilettante? Do you know what they wrote about me in the Spectator? They said: `He has some literary talent but it is decidedly not of a poetical kind. We do not believe any criticism will help to improve Mr. Swinburne.'

“I want to improve! I want to be a great poet or I am nothing, Richard! To do that I must truly live. And a man can only truly live when Death is his permanent companion. Did I ever tell you about the time I climbed Culver Cliff on the Isle of Wight?”

Burton shook his head. Swinburne stopped his bizarre hopping and they crossed to the door, went out, and started down the stairs.