Incarnation (16 page)

We managed—by dint of great effort, more than a little patience, and Marco’s strong arms—to reach King William Street on foot. There we came upon a lavish mini-pavilion in the Brighton style much loved at the beginning of the century by the prince regent, set incongruously in the center of busy London. A white dome gave way to a palatial entrance, which in turn yielded to a long staircase leading down into the bowels of the earth.

“The Tube?” I asked with mingled excitement and trepidation. Scant years before, the notion of blasting a tunnel under the venerable Thames in order to unite the northern and southern parts of the city, and further linking them with an electric contrivance meant to run cars underground, struck any sane person as outlandish. I could remember my father
grumbling as he read his newspaper, calling the scheme madness. Yet humans had managed it. The small, cramped trains—so tightly fitted that the cars were referred to as “padded cells”—had been running ever since, to the general acclaim of the public. So great was their success that there was talk of extending the Tube throughout London and even into the suburbs beyond. Some utopians claimed that soon the streets above would be free of all traffic.

Marco did not hesitate but plunged downward, down and down and down until at last we came to a deserted platform. The air felt unnaturally cool and damp. There was scarcely any sound expect for the far-off whisper of the dynamos that maintained the glowing yellow bulbs set in metal cages along the ceiling and the muted fans that made it possible to breathe. I shivered, not from cold for I was incapable of feeling that, but from the thought that this was how London would appear if we did not succeed—barren and empty.

“An hour ago,” Marco said, “the trains were packed. Now they’re scarcely running, but there should be one along fairly soon.”

He was as good as his word. Before I had time to do more than glance around, an engine hauling three cars lumbered into view. A handful of latecomers hurried off and sped up the stairs. We jumped on in their place.

The rattle and clatter of the train was such that it was impossible to speak. I was seated on the inside of a bench for two. With every sway along the tracks, I was pushed against Marco or away from him. The constant dance of our bodies distracted me from thoughts of what it meant to be passing under a vast river a few dozen yards above our heads. Before I could think
overly long of it, the train slanted upward. Not too soon for my peace of mind, we slowed and shortly came to a station. Set in tile along the walls, I read the name Elephant and Castle.

We left the train—I admit to being very glad to do so—and ascended another long stairway. At last, we came within sight of natural light.

“We’re at the top of the high street,” Marco said as we emerged. “The foundry is that way.” He gestured directly ahead but he needn’t have bothered. The clang of metal upon metal combining with the heavy smell of molten iron left no doubt as to what lay ahead.

Even so, I was not entirely prepared for my first sight of the massive, dark monolith that rose above a neighborhood of far more modest shops and factories. The foundry dominated the skyline, its chimneys seeming to reach to the heavens while its vast brick walls scarcely contained the cacophony within.

Despite the general holiday declared in honor of Victoria, workers were streaming in and out of the massive, soot-darkened buildings. We appeared to have arrived just as a shift was changing. The men emerging through the high, iron-grated doors were covered with soot; only their eyes shone unnaturally white and bright. For the most part, they were big men, tall and broad shouldered, but more than a few stumbled as they fanned out into the neighboring streets. They kept their heads down and did not speak, seemingly intent on escaping the shadow of the foundry as quickly as they could. Those going toward it took no notice of them. They walked singly and in pairs, roughly clothed with tin lunch pails swinging from their hands. Few spoke and none smiled. They trudged on, appearing resigned to where they were going and what they must do.

“They look scarcely alive,” I said. The privileged existence I had enjoyed as a human had not prepared me for the sight of these men. I was at once embarrassed by my own ignorance and appalled at what I was witnessing.

“The work drains them,” Marco replied. “The heat is intense, men shovel tons of iron ore and pour vast amounts of molten metal until their bodies scream for relief. The air is foul, the light poor, accidents are frequent and often deadly. It is not a life anyone would seek.”

“Yet they have no shortage of workers despite the strange things you told me are happening there?”

“People are desperate for jobs,” Marco replied. “If a man falters, he knows two or three at the very least will be waiting to replace him. It concentrates the mind, I suppose, but it also grinds down the soul.”

“Surely better provision could be made for them?” I asked.

He shot me a quick look. “We live in an age when better care is given to machines than to men. Ever more powerful machines have been replacing humans for decades now but of late, the speed with which they gain has increased. If it continues unabated, there will be nothing left for ordinary people in this world.”

“Except to feed vampires.” I regretted the words as soon as they were uttered. Marco truly did want to help me. It was the height of folly to remind him why his kind and mine were more naturally foe than friend.

“I doubt that humans will be content with that,” he said. “They lack the strength of vampires but they are intelligent and they excel at being able to adapt to change. We should not rule them out just yet.”

“Not to mention that there are so many of them,” I
murmured. Despite the throngs crowding the route of the Jubilee procession, the streets around the foundry remained filled with people. Many were pockmarked, their faces pallid, their bodies stunted by lifetimes of too little food and too much labor, yet they appeared more vital than the foundry workers. Ragged boys, shoeless and dirty, hawked wares, some peddling newspapers, others carrying trays of cheap buns hung around their necks. Wagons trundled past, most so laden with every manner of barrel and crate that they looked likely to tip over. Along one side of the street, immense dray horses pulled trams up the incline of the high street hill, brakes shrieking as they made the trip back down again.

All this drew my eye but only briefly. Looming over all, the foundry commanded attention.

“Can we get inside?” I asked Marco.

“If we hurry. The doors are locked between shifts.”

They were clanging shut even as we arrived, but Marco knew the guard on duty from his previous visits. A quick word, the exchange of several pound notes, and we were admitted.

“Good luck to you, sir,” the man said, glancing around nervously. “And you, too, miss. Hope you know what you’re doing.”

Marco might but I was quite certain that I did not. Keeping that uppermost in mind, I stepped into the bowels of hell.

CHAPTER 12

A
wall of sound slammed into us. Marco pushed against it as I followed, gripping his hand. His admonition to stay close no longer seemed foolish. Left to my own devices, I feared that I would be sent reeling back in defeat before taking more than a few steps. At length, we emerged onto a catwalk. Far below us, set deep below the ground, immense furnaces burned, their fiery red eyes like those of crouched beasts preparing to strike.

Open carts the height of a man and filled with raw ore entered one end of the foundry on narrow rail lines. The contents were spilled into the furnaces, from which a molten liquid emerged, flowing through elevated trenches into the casting vessels. Men with long grappling hooks swung blocks of metal toward immense rollers the size of small hillocks that flattened the blocks into thick sheets. From there they were pulled and dragged through razor-sharp cutters that turned them into metal plates and strips.

At every step, men stood perilously close to danger. If the flames of the furnaces and the heat of molten metal did not burn them, they were at risk of being pierced by the hooks, or falling beneath the crushing rollers, or losing a hand or worse to the cutters.

So intense was the roar of machines grinding against machines that conversation was impossible, not only for us but also for the workers. The men who appeared tiny and shrunken against the vast workings of the foundry were forced to communicate with hand gestures. Otherwise, each man was sealed off within himself, performing his task over and over with numbing repetition. After I had watched for a few minutes, it began to seem that it was the machine that was alive rather than the men themselves who were no more than cogs within it.

The heat was as intense as the noise, the air foul with the stench of molten iron. Waves of acrid steam rose, shrouding the workers as they labored. High above, behind a wall of glass, light glittered in offices and a few faces could be glimpsed but they seemed little more alive than those of the men on the foundry floor.

Marco bent closer. I felt the warmth of his breath on my neck as he shouted, “If you’ve seen enough, let’s move on.”

I nodded emphatically. A moment later we were through a door and into the relative quiet of a stairwell. Rickety metal steps stretched up the height of the building. I craned my neck, trying to see to the top, but failed.

“Can you sense anything?” Marco asked.

“Besides the fact that this really does seem to be hell on earth?” I shook my head. “The noise, the smells, it’s all too much.”

“Then perhaps we should leave?”

“No! I need more time, only a little. You will admit that this place is a shock to body and mind alike.”

“It is that,” he agreed. “Come, let me show what I found when I was here before.”

He led me down stairs that swayed with our weight, the rivets holding them to the walls easing in and out as though they
breathed. When we came at last to the bottom, I sagged a little with relief. But my respite was short. Marco started off down a long corridor that vanished into Stygian darkness.

“Where are we going?” I asked as I ran to keep up. He still had hold of my hand but it did not seem to occur to him to match his stride to mine. Not that it should matter. I was no wasp-waisted young lady perpetually short of breath. Indeed, I needed no breath at all. Reminding myself of that, I matched his pace.

“To a basement,” he said, “below the lowest level of the foundry. It seems to have been part of the original manor.”

I nodded even as I wondered how we were to find our way without light. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. A short distance down the corridor, Marco stopped near an alcove set into the wall. From it, he drew an oil lamp and a metal box of matches. Having struck a match against the wall, he set flame to wick. A small pool of light spilled from the lamp.

“This way.” He stepped into the darkness. The stone floor slanted downward. After the heat of the foundry, the passage felt startlingly cool and wet. As the cacophony faded behind us, I became aware of other sounds—Marco’s steady breathing, the murmur of air moving past us, and off in the distance, the faint gurgle of water.

“How much farther?” I asked.

“Just here,” he said and held the lamp high. Ahead I could make out the entrance to a room. Beyond I saw rotting wainscoting along walls decorated with peeling murals of hunters giving chase. At the far end, an archway led deeper into the darkness.

Marco and I stepped into the room. I looked around slowly. “What is this place?”

He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I think it may have been a reception area. Before Mordred purchased the manor, it belonged to a church prelate who either didn’t know who he was selling to or didn’t care. He had it in turn from the Duke of Suffolk, who was a great friend of Henry VIII’s. That scene on the wall over there seems to show the king and the duke hunting together.”

I stepped farther into the room and took a closer look. Two men, one with a trim beard framing his corpulent face, the other leaner and clean-shaven, were closing in on a stag. Trumpeters rode nearby, as did various lords and ladies of a long-vanished court.

“Would Mordred have kept this?” I asked.

“He might have found it amusing,” Marco replied. “If you look closely, the artist has depicted all six of Henry’s wives, including those he killed. They appear to be riding him down with blood in their eyes.”

So they did. Anne Boleyn was in the lead, but Catherine Howard wasn’t too far behind, and Henry’s first queen, Catherine of Aragon, was wielding a lance that looked set to dispatch her erstwhile lord into the great beyond. I drew my eyes away and scanned the rest of the room. A few scattered bits of furniture remained. A table, the top covered by the powdery remnants of long-dead flowers fallen from a porcelain vase covered with a coat of dust. Alcoves painted with other scenes too obscure for me to recognize.