The Detective and the Devil (37 page)

‘There was definitely a mine,’ said Charles. ‘We found workings, and explosives. Indeed, the explosives the gargoyle used.’

‘He was called Fernando, Charles,’ she reminded him.

The Governor had become involved, of course. There were Chinese workers attached to the mine, and when they discovered Seale and Charles poking around in the caves beneath the mine, word got
back.

‘We are to leave on the first available ship,’ said Charles. ‘The Governor seems very minded to see the back of us sooner rather than later.’

‘But what of the Company? Won’t they react to this?’

Are we in danger?
That was the unspoken question. She watched Charles ponder it.

‘I do not know, wife,’ he said, eventually. ‘When we return to London . . . a good many things may have changed. Harriott may no longer be well enough to work. Graham, too. My
word, they might not even be alive. We will have to talk of the future.’ He smiled, weakly. ‘When you are well.’

It was the first time she sensed they might not return at all. She changed the subject.

‘Alchemy was about more than gold, you know,’ she said.

‘Indeed?’ he said. He was looking at Seale’s map.

‘Gold is the purest metal – the purest state of matter. But alchemists believed there was a pure state of
being
, also. A state for mankind to aspire to. To be at one with
God, and to live forever. Some alchemists believed that you could reach this state if you drank liquid gold.’

Was that Fernando’s secret? Was the ogre the face of God? The thought was unfathomable and unspeakable. Watching Charles gaze at Seale’s map reminded her of Halley’s maps, the
ones showing the lines of magnetic variation and the way they bent over the surface of the Earth. Were these lines of magnetic force actually images of something invisible, a field of magnetism
enclosing the Earth, acting at a distance?

She wondered if the
Opera
had remained hidden for so long because, in most places and at most times, its recipes for gold extraction had failed to work. She wondered if there was
something different about St Helena – some confluence of magnetism, some expression of the inner workings of the Earth – which might explain Fernando Lopez and the endless stream of
gold which had poured out of this island and had, in some way, sustained an Empire.

That door with no lock, worked by magnetism. Indistinguishable from magic, if you did not see the mechanism. Was there a lesson there?

Her husband had been up at Mina Baxter’s house, and had, he said, discovered another of those strange doors. He had tried to use the same magnetised rod as had worked the door of the fort,
but to no avail.

‘A different lock?’ said Seale.

‘Perhaps,’ said Horton. ‘Or a different mechanism entirely.’

‘Another secret, then.’

‘Perhaps.’ He smiled at Abigail. ‘They have found us a ship. She sails tomorrow.’

But to where, thought Abigail, does she sail?

‘Will you find her?’ she asked Charles, and he looked up at this. He was happier to discuss investigations than he was listening to scientific speculations.

‘I think not,’ he replied.

He had been searching for days, but from the start he knew he would never find Mina Baxter. She had disappeared so utterly on the night of the explosion, along with her strange
ogre, that he found himself wondering if she’d uncovered other secrets in John Dee’s library – the secret to walking down into the Earth, for example.

On the morning of their departure he was woken at first light by a soldier carrying a note from the Governor, a carefully worded little missive which said more than it seemed. It was a
politician’s letter, designed to be read by others than those to whom it was addressed.

He had known the Governor wanted them gone, but this sudden urgency was odd. There had been rumours for days of great events, though what these events were nobody knew. He left the note with
Abigail and said he would be back by lunchtime.

First, he went to the barn where he had found Abigail on that terrible night. In daylight it was a trim, well-cared-for place, and inside it had lost some of its secrets. The vast puddle of silk
had gone, as had the big basket which, he suspected, had been designed to hang beneath it. The pile of material where Abigail had been sitting turned out to be rattan, presumably taken from East
India ships where it had been used as ballast. He found this interesting. Mina had presumably used the rattan to make the basket.

Next, he walked up to the fort, where the door which had befuddled him for so long stood open, and he stood before it for a long while. He had perhaps four hours, and in his pocket was a ball of
string.

He tied the string to an old screw in the doorframe, and jammed the door open with a heavy rock. He walked inside and turned up the oil lamp he had brought with him. Then, down he went, walking
into the Leviathan a final time.

He walked down dozens of tunnels and several different staircases, doubling back on himself time and time again, using the string to keep contact with the strange door above him. He found a
wooden bridge across the crevasse within the cave, and discovered another set of steps built into the rock on the far side. These went all the way down to the level of the sea, and gave out onto a
little beach. The same little beach he had seen from the sea when he had gone out with Seale.

There had been a boat on this beach, the last time he saw it. There was no boat now.

He thought of Jacobus Aakster, that old Dutch mercenary who had tricked a cabal of Dutch merchants and whose family had, ever since, held a great trading company to ransom. Mina had learned a
good few things from him, after all. The art of misdirection, for example.

If he looked further, he suspected he would find the remains of a fire somewhere up near the barn – a fire which had consumed the silk and the basket from the barn. Mina Baxter had flown
away in her balloon, the wizard’s final apprentice flying into the sky as she had dreamed of doing. Except, he believed, she had done nothing of the sort. He spent some time on that little
beach searching the horizon, but could see nothing.

Over that horizon was London. Soon, the things he had discovered here would come to light there. He had fled the East India Company’s clutches, and now he had discovered the
Company’s ultimate secret. Alderman Burroughs, Magistrate Markland, even Home Secretary Sidmouth. Would they welcome Constable Horton with open arms?

Finally, a question to which he knew the answer.

Some time later, he was walking down the town’s single street when a great boom of cannon resounded through the air. Seale stepped out of his front door to look down to
the sea, and turned to Horton as he walked up.

‘I have never heard such a racket,’ said Seale.

‘I should be surprised if you had,’ said Horton. ‘That was a 15-gun salute.’

‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘I was a Navy lieutenant.’

‘And what does it signify?’

‘It rather suggests an admiral has arrived in St Helena.’

That 15-gun salute was an emphatic full stop to the Governor’s odd letter. Horton itched to get down to the wharf, now, and found himself hovering around his wife as she made their luggage
ready for the voyage, her arm in the carefully engineered cotton sling.

‘Husband, make yourself useful, and wait outside,’ said Abigail, so outside he went, and encountered a familiar face scurrying down to the sea.

‘Ken!’ he exclaimed, grabbing the boy by the arm as he hurried by. Ken’s gigantic and slow friend Hippo came to a halt at the same time, as if they were connected by an
invisible spring.

‘Here, now, let go of me, constable,’ said Ken, outraged. ‘I’ve got important business down in the town.’

‘Important business watching ships and fleecing new arrivals, I’ll wager,’ said Horton.

‘Now, then, what do you mean by that? An affront, that is. An affront to my dignity.’

‘I wanted to discuss Edgar Burroughs with you, Ken.’

At the mention of this name, Ken’s body went loose and Horton was able to let him go. The boy’s face looked miserable.

‘He made me point out your missus to him, constable. He was a forceful character.’

‘Tell me a bit about him.’

‘I don’t know anything about him. Company man, he is. Big fellow.’

Horton noted the boy’s use of the present tense. Word had not got out, then.

‘His character?’

‘You mean, what is he like?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Keeps himself to himself.’

‘And what about the Cannibal?’

‘The Cannibal? Who you been talking to?’

‘Have you seen him?’

‘Of course I haven’t bleeding seen him! He’s a fairy story, isn’t he? Something to scare the kids with to get them to behave.’

‘I seen him.’

They were the first words Hippo had spoken, and the lad looked as surprised by them as Horton and Ken were.

‘I seen him up at Deadwood.’ Hippo gazed back up the valley, into the heart of the island. ‘He saw me and he ran off. He only had one hand. And no ears.’

And then Ken grabbed his friend’s hand and yanked him away, and the two of them set off down to the wharf.

‘Ready, husband?’ said Abigail, appearing at the door of the Castle of Otranto.

‘Ready, wife.’

Seale came out behind Abigail, carrying her bag.

‘I shall be your packhorse, my friends,’ he said, and winked at Abigail, and Horton saw that his remarkable wife winked back.

There was a great scurrying in the square behind the seawall. St Helena’s population could not run to a crowd, but it was doing its best now. A mighty ship had arrived, it seemed, one
which would bring paying customers.

A man was waiting for them by the drawbridge. He looked entirely out of place in this sun-kissed square, his thick beard and heavy body speaking of frozen seas and ice-clad spars.

‘Horton?’ he said, and when Horton nodded he nodded back and would not speak again until they were approaching Tenerife, weeks from now. Horton, Abigail and Seale followed him out
through the wall and over the drawbridge.

There were five ships out in the James Town roads. One was obviously a whaler, and under normal circumstances it would draw the eye by its ugliness alone. But today it was competing with a
creature of a different stripe – a ship of the line, third-rate and elegantly lethal, every one of its lines speaking of war and glory. She was ringed by three other vessels, all frigates
– a small fleet sent, presumably, from England. But for what purpose Horton could not imagine.

A longboat was making its way from the warship, and a large group of islanders had gathered on the wharf near the point it was to tie up. At their front Horton could see the Governor, Colonel
Wilks, his face fixed on the longboat. The seaman from the
Bala
stopped and waited patiently for the longboat to arrive, presumably used to biding his time when he had to.

A few minutes later a rope was thrown to the wharf from the boat and tied fast. A man stepped up onto the steps. He was an admiral, a creature Horton had not laid eyes on since the Nore Mutiny,
an elegant peacock of a fellow whose dress uniform glittered with prestige and made everything on the wharf seem suddenly drab and austere.

‘Admiral Cockburn, I presume,’ said Colonel Wilks.

‘Governor Wilks,’ replied the Admiral, as if he were talking to a shopkeeper. He looked at the crowd of people that now surrounded him on the wharf. ‘Perhaps we can retire to
somewhere more discreet?’

‘Of course. Follow me, sir.’

The crowd parted, and the Admiral and the Governor made their way along the wharf and into the town. Cockburn glanced at Horton and his whaler companion briefly and saw only two specks of
humanity for whom he had no time. The man from the whaler continued his interrupted walk down the wharf, picking his way through the crowd which was beginning to disperse.

‘Horton, goodbye,’ said Seale. ‘It has been an interesting experience making your acquaintance. I trust, though, we shall not meet again.’

‘My thanks to you, Seale. You have aided us greatly. I wish you well.’

Abigail squeezed Seale’s arm and leaned up to kiss his cheek; he smiled delightedly, and he hugged her to him, scandalously and delightfully.

Then they were in the whaler’s boat, rowing away from the island. Seale waved to them from the wharf, and some in the crowd looked at them as if they might be part of the excitement of the
Admiral’s party. But no, they were a dull affair compared to the Naval masque being played out in the roads.

‘I wonder why they are here,’ said Abigail.

‘Yes. It is extraordinary for an admiral to arrive with such a small fleet. Unless he is bringing something to the island.’

He looked at the warship, and noted a small figure in a bicorne hat standing on the forecastle gazing intently at St Helena. It turned its head towards him, and raised one hand in greeting, and
Horton, despite himself, raised a hand in return.