End of the Century (10 page)

Blank waited in Miss Bonaventure's study, on the first floor up, while she was upstairs in her bedroom, getting dressed. Mrs. Pool, the day maid, had sniffed audibly on seeing Blank accompanying her mistress, evidently disapproving of the notion that an unmarried woman should spend so much time in the company of an unmarried man, but had accompanied Miss Bonaventure upstairs without comment.

Blank passed the time scanning the spines of the books on Miss Bonaventure's shelves. Her collection was impressive, as catholic in its breadth as it
was detailed in its depth. There also seemed to be, Blank noted with amusement, a small number of titles that had not, as yet, been published.

Blank's gaze was arrested at a copy of the Ward, Lock & Co. edition of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
. He reached out a hand, tempted to pull it down from the shelf and page through it, but resisted the urge. After all, he knew what it would contain. He moved on, taking down and flipping through other titles of less personal significance.

After some quarter of an hour had passed, Miss Bonaventure appeared at the door to the study, the heavier frock she'd worn that morning replaced by a silk walking dress, dark blue in color, the skirt straight and gored, tight around the waist, the hem a few inches from the ground. Over this was a matching double-breasted silk jacket. Her hair was gathered up under a straw boater, except for two strands that had defiantly worked their way loose and hung down on either side of her face like punctuation marks. The parasol in her bare hands was as much a concession to fashion as it was an item of practical use, but the only item of jewelry she wore was the wide bracelet which never left her wrist, the inset lenticular gem flashing in the sunlight through the open shade.

“Well?” Miss Bonaventure said, hand on her hip. “Are you ready to go, Blank, or aren't you?”

The driver steered his cab off Bayswater Road and south onto Park Lane, where the Marble Arch stood at the intersection of Oxford and Edgeware. Blank rested both hands on the silver-chased head of his cane, his eyes unfocused on the middle distance, already lost in thought. Miss Bonaventure, seated beside him, tucked her parasol to one side. She had pulled a copper coin from her reticule, which she now tossed in the air again and again; it glinted in the bright summer sun. Time and again she thumbed the coin flying into the air, spinning so fast it appeared a whirling copper sphere and then snatching it from midair before it fell.

By the time they passed Buckingham Palace and turned onto Vauxhall Bridge Road, Blank had still not spoken. Miss Bonaventure, evidently, had gotten her fill of silence.

“Penny for them,” she said, snatching the coin from midair and nudging Blank with her elbow.

“Hmm?” Blank blinked, somewhat startled, as if he'd forgotten for a moment where he was.

“Your thoughts, Blank.” Miss Bonaventure smiled. “Care to share them?”

He managed a weary smile in return. “Not really, if truth be told, but if you're hungry for entertainment, I'll do my level best.”

In point of fact, Blank
had
very nearly forgotten where he was, for that brief span. His thoughts had been years and miles away. He'd begun to dwell on the defeats of ten years previous as they left Miss Bonaventure's Bark Place house, but by the time they'd gotten into the cab he'd followed a chain of association that led far away. Very far away, indeed. The Torso Killer to Oscar, and thence to William, and thence to Quexi, and to Michel, and to Roanoke, and finally to Omega. All roads led to Omega, in the end. At least, that was Omega's most cherished desire. And if that desire was manifest nowhere else, it most definitely held true in Blank's thoughts. Through a tangled skein of association, it seemed that every notion which entered Blank's mind inexorably led, through one means or another, to thoughts of Omega, and of what Blank himself had become, and had done, in Omega's name.

That was the nettle upon which Blank's thoughts had caught, and which Miss Bonaventure had offered coin in exchange for hearing. In response, though, he instead said, “There seem a great many soldiers abroad in the city's streets, don't you think?”

Miss Bonaventure raised an eyebrow, giving him a quizzical look. Then, with a somewhat amused air, laced through with suspicion, she nodded. “Yes, I imagine there are quite a lot of them about, at that.”

She fell silent, her gaze lingering on Blank, while he turned to watch the buildings slip past the moving cab.

“Well,” she said at last, holding out the coin, good naturedly. “Aren't you going to take it?”

Blank glanced back her way and shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said, smiling.

Miss Bonaventure narrowed her eyes, suspiciously, and then resumed flipping the coin. “Suit yourself.”

As he turned away, Blank's smile slipped from his face. Still, he couldn't in good conscience have accepted the payment. Not when he'd failed to meet his end of the bargain.

Crossing the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, they turned back to the north and rumbled into Lambeth. As they made their way to the School for the Indigent Blind, in the shadow of the Obelisk in St. George's Circus, not far from Bedlam, they passed the entrance to Hercules Road.

“Blake used to live around these parts, didn't he?” Miss Bonaventure mused, glancing up the road.

Blank hummed his assent, and pointed with his chin up the road. “Number 13, Hercules Buildings.”

“Thought so,” Miss Bonaventure said, nodding. “Changed a bit since he lived here, though.” She smiled, a sly look in her eye. “I imagine so, at any rate.” She chuckled and tapped the foot of her parasol on the floorboard of the cab. “Mad old bugger, was Blake. Still, he was my favorite of the lot of them, much better than dour George Gordon, or strident Percy, or stuffy old Coleridge, heaven forefend.”

Miss Bonaventure ran the fingers of her right hand over the jewel inset in the bracelet on her left wrist. Then, eyes closed, she recited aloud.

 

“To see a World in a grain of sand,

And a Heaven in a wild flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,

And Eternity in an hour.”

 

She opened her eyes, smiled, and glanced over at her companion.

“There are times when I'm convinced that he was completely dotty and other times when I'm sure he knew precisely what he was talking about.”

“Mmm,” Blank hummed thoughtfully, moving his hands back and forth, palm to palm around the cane, spinning it like a caveman attempting to start a fire. “I wonder what he'd have made of all this martial finery, though, all
this talk of celebrating a great dominion upon which the sun shall never set.” He suddenly stopped the spinning of his cane, wrapping a fist around the silver-chased handle. “You can have your auguries of innocence,” he said, glancing over at Miss Bonaventure, “and leave for me his more fiery polemic.” He sighed. “But if once the king of England looked westward at America and trembled at the vision, I'm sorry to admit that his successor Victoria can cast her gaze where'er she will and suffer not the slightest twitch. In its prime the Roman Empire comprised perhaps one hundred twenty million people in an area a few million square miles in extent; today, Victoria holds dominion over some three hundred seventy million people spread across eleven million square miles, more than ninety times the size of these small islands. That's some quarter of the globe.”

Miss Bonaventure gave him an unreadable look. “It won't last, of course.”

“It's a comforting thought,” Blank said, “but how many years has it been since poor old mad William prophesied empire's end?” He took a deep breath, his eyes half-lidded.

 

“The Sun has left his blackness, and has found a fresher morning, And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night; For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease.”

 

He opened his eyes and smiled sadly at Miss Bonaventure.

“More than a century since, and I'm sorry to say that far from ceasing, the lion and wolf are very much still at it. And empire, as we've seen, has weathered the years quite nicely.”

Miss Bonaventure quirked a smile, her expression soft, and reached out to pat Blank's knee, consolingly. “Cheer up a bit, Blank. It's not all bad, you know. Look at all the positives empire brings.”

Blank cocked an eyebrow.

“Don't give me that look,” Miss Bonaventure scolded. “I'm quite serious. Just fifty years ago, a letter traveling from here to the farthest outposts of the empire took months, even years. Now, post from London can reach Australia in no more than four weeks, India in little more than two weeks, and Ottawa in scarcely more than a week. And if that's not quick enough, a telegraph
message can now be sent anywhere in the civilized world in just a matter of minutes.”

“And in future, these times will just diminish, and the distances themselves will seem to shrink, is that it?”

Miss Bonaventure smiled, knowingly. “Naturally. Though prices might fluctuate a bit, admittedly. Seventeen days and fifty pounds can get you to India, but I shouldn't be surprised if that time drops precipitously as the cost rises in inverse proportion.”

“As the steam engines' speed is improved, no doubt. No, let me guess. As they are gradually replaced with electrically powered engines, no doubt, cables snaking from London to Bombay.”

“Of course not,” Miss Bonaventure answered. “That would be ridiculous. No, by air, naturally.”

“Airships, is it, now?” Blank rolled his eyes. “My dear Miss Bonaventure, if nature had meant us to fly, it would not have put the sky so high up off the ground, now would it?”

Miss Bonaventure chuckled. “And what do you suppose mad old Bill Blake would have made of air travel, at that?”

Blank smiled. “Well, he was never one for convention. I suppose if there was some scandal to be had in an airship, William might well have been induced to fly. Not that he was a scandal monger, but seemed constitutionally incapable of escaping it. I remember the time that a Mr. Thomas Butts interrupted William and Catherine in the summer house at the end of the garden in Hercules Buildings, freed from ‘those troublesome disguises' that have prevailed since the Fall, and reciting passages from
Paradise Lost
. As Butts fled, blushing at the sight of so much naked flesh, Blake called out, ‘Come in! It's only Adam and Eve, you know!'”

Miss Bonaventure shuddered, squirming on the bench. “I quite prefer my Milton fully dressed, thank you. If at all, come to that.”

“I found old John a crashing bore, myself,” Blake said. “But enough of that.” He tilted his bowler back on his head with the top of his cane, as the hansom came to a halt. “The School for the Indigent Blind awaits, my dear.”

Once, long before, an inn had stood here, under the sign of the Dog and Duck. The patrons could drink at their leisure while watching a duck put into the water and a dog set to hunt for it. Sometimes the duck dove, and the dog went under after it. It hardly seemed deserving of the name “entertainment,” and Blank had never quite understood the appeal, but there it was.