Lessons From Underground

by Bryan Methods

  “She’s reformed,” I said. “She doesn’t do bad things any more. This is her family’s business.”

  “I suppose that makes sense, what with the cleavers.”

  The Valkyrie reappeared alongside a surprisingly short man with a wide flat nose and a few strands of hair combed over the top of his head. He looked at us darkly as his daughter apologized for keeping us waiting.

  “Shall we go upstairs?” she said, lifting a hinged section of the counter to let us through. “I’ve boiled some water for tea.”

  We stepped past cuts of meat lain out on the counter, prices scrawled on little cards by each one. Like most butchers’ shops, Troughton’s was a grim and smelly place, with various cuts hanging up by the window in a way that always made me feel more queasy than peckish. I expected more of the same in the back room, or worse, but all we saw there was a neat desk for doing the accounts.

  “She’s a good girl, y’hear?” Mr. Troughton said, leaning back. “She’s keeping ’erself out of trouble.”

  “I think so too,” I said.

  The Valkyrie led us up a narrow staircase that creaked loudly with every step. She had to twist her broad shoulders a little just to make her way up. Waiting for us at the top was a funny little room with all sorts of dainty little decorative plates and crocheted cloths on every surface. Most of the plates depicted kittens, puppies, or chubby-faced little children. A doll dressed like Little Bo Peep sat in the corner with its glass eyes slightly crossed, a darling little sheep with a bow tie on her lap. There was a lot of pink about.

  An older woman who I presumed to be Mrs. Troughton—though she was slightly bigger than her husband—set a tea tray on the little table and then withdrew with a modest bow. The Valkyrie sat on a chair that seemed far too small for her and began arranging the flowery teacups to pour.

  “Erm, Miss Troughton, this is Mr. Jackdaw,” I said. “He’s from Scotland Yard.”

  The Valkyrie dropped the little spoon she’d been putting onto a saucer. Then she covered her face with both hands. “Oh no,” she said. “Have you come to take me away?”

  In a flash, Mr. Jackdaw went down on one knee in front of her and took her hands in his. “Oh, my dear young lady, not at all. Not at all! Please set your mind at ease. No misfortune shall befall you on my account, rest assured of that!”

  The Valkyrie looked down at him as though his head had fallen off. I suspected my expression was similar. After a moment of silence, I thought I had better try to clear things up.

  “We actually, er . . . we’re here to ask for your help.”

  “My help?” said the Valkyrie, pulling her hands free and absently rubbing them together. Mr. Jackdaw sat back, grinning wider than ever.

  “Yes. The thing is, well, you remember Mr. Binns and the Woodhouselee Society?”

  “Of course I do. Much as I might want to forget. Please believe me when I tell you I was a different person then.”

  “I . . . want to believe that,” I said. “Now Mr. Binns’s son, Aurelian, has come back. He’s gathering funds for a new Society in France. The Third Day, he calls it.”

  “You met him?”

  “Yes. We tried to stop him stealing one of the Crown Jewels. But we didn’t.”

  The Valkyrie handed us each a cup of tea. “Even with your Mr. Scant?”

  I looked at Mr. Jackdaw nervously for a moment, then said, “That’s what we’ve come to you for. Aurelian found someone, someone from Mr. Scant’s past—and, well, I don’t know all the details, but something’s wrong, and Mr. Scant isn’t fighting like he usually does. It’s like he can’t.”

  “So you . . . came to me?”

  “You’re the only one I know who could match him,” I said.

  “I haven’t done any fighting for a year or more. Well, hardly any,” she said uncomfortably. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “I don’t think you’ve forgotten. You’re the Valkyrie, after all.”

  “No, Oliver. No. I’m just Tilly Troughton.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “But you’re still the strongest person I ever met.”

  The Valkyrie chewed at her bottom lip. Mr. Jackdaw took a sip of his tea and placed it back in its saucer with a little clinking sound that got the Valkyrie’s attention. Then he cleared his throat.

  “Madam, this is a mission of the utmost importance to king and country. This is no simple errand, and of all the agents I could have approached, I have chosen you. Now, we both know what you expected when you heard I was from the Yard. You don’t want to be the Valkyrie anymore because the Valkyrie did some terrible things for terrible people. Well, madam, the past does not just disappear into the ether. Miss Troughton does not get to erase the Valkyrie and all she has done. But perhaps she can find redemption—even use her strength for good. Perhaps you can do something for the Yard, and the Yard can take that into account when considering everything that has happened in the past. And in the end, perhaps the Valkyrie can cease being a terrible shadow in your past and become instead a shining light at the very center of your life. Something beautiful.”

  Mr. Jackdaw’s little speech had swerved between flattery, patriotism, and veiled threats so quickly it almost terrified me. The Valkyrie was an intelligent woman and would surely recognize this attempt to manipulate her. Which was why I was so surprised when I looked back to her and saw that she was blushing.

  “Do you really think I can help?” she said.

  “I’m certain of it. There’s nobody I’d rather have by my side. But you must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice, with everything you might need for a long voyage.”

  “A long voyage? But I can’t leave Ma and Pa. The shop . . .”

  “I’ll see to all that,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “If they need to hire help while you’re away, I’ll arrange the funds. And when we succeed in this mission, you will be handsomely rewarded. Well enough that you can call your time away from your shop a fine investment. And I promise that you will see some marvelous things too.”

  “What if we don’t succeed?” said the Valkyrie.

  “Unthinkable,” Mr. Jackdaw said. “But I give my word your family’s business will not suffer in any way as a result of this endeavor.”

  “But what will I tell them?”

  Mr. Jackdaw grinned one of his particular grins. “Tell them you’ve been called to serve your king.”

  XV

  Pirate Stories

  he very next day, Mr. Jackdaw appeared again in my school. He was becoming increasingly disheveled, with wrinkles in his jacket and hair sticking up where he had forgotten to flatten it after taking off his hat. One of my classmates had come in with a note to say the headmaster expected me in his office, but Mr. Jackdaw pulled me aside before I could reach the headmaster’s door.

  “Did the headmaster really want to see me?” I said.

  “Oh, yes indeed,” Mr. Jackdaw said, in the earnest tone of voice I’d come to recognize as the one he used when he had made up a lie he was proud of. “It turns out you’ve won a special prize from the king himself for a story you wrote about pirates. You’ll be taking part in an event for gifted children in Penzance. Unfortunately it’s all rather hurried. You’ll be departing tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? What’s actually happening?”

  “Your young friend Binns is as brazen as they come. He booked passage on the maiden voyage of that new luxury ocean liner everybody’s been talking about. So as a result, I’ve spent the last who-knows-how-many hours ensuring we will also be on board.”

  “Blimey,” I said. “I’ve only been on a ferry before. Will it be like that?”

  “Well, yes. One could say the RMS Titanic is like a ferry—in the same way the Palace of Versailles is like a garden shed. Now, let’s go and talk to the headmaster about this pirate story of yours.”

  Luckily, I knew a thing or two about pirates. Doctor Crispin, headmaster of Judner’s School, listened politely as I improvised a story, the one I had supposedly already written. It
was about how Blackbeard captured a cabin boy from a merchant vessel. The boy kept escaping, again and again, only to end up on more and more pirate ships. He’d learn something from each captain, then finally meet Blackbeard again, using everything he learned to best Blackbeard in a swordfight and become a hero. Doctor Crispin nodded his turnip-shaped head and said it sounded like a fine thing, and he should like to have a copy, which Mr. Jackdaw said would be a problem on account of a possible anthology that might be made following the event I was going to attend.

  “I don’t quite follow why this gathering might take a month or more,” said Doctor Crispin. “That seems most irregular, and Oliver here already missed a lot of school last year.”

  “It will form a key part of his education,” Mr. Jackdaw said with a grin. At some point he had found the time to flatten down his hair. “He will belong to a group of older children instructing younger children, while at the same time receiving the finest education. The king himself has expressed his approval. There are also arrangements for all students’ home tutors to travel with them.”

  Mr. Jackdaw then presented with a flourish a letter with King George’s signature and personal seal on it. As Mr. Jackdaw was currently operating outside the knowledge of Scotland Yard, I had to wonder how he’d gotten it. But Doctor Crispin could hardly argue with the king.

  As we took Mr. Jackdaw’s motorcar—which he now drove himself, for reasons I didn’t enquire into—I asked him if the invitation was a forgery.

  “Not so,” Mr. Jackdaw said, looking pleased with himself. “The signature is quite real, even if I rewrote what came before it. Now, have you spoken to your dear Mr. Scant?”

  “No,” I said, “he’s been staying away from me. He’s doing his valet duties and that’s all.”

  “Then I suppose we just have to go for the . . . high-impact approach.”

  As it transpired, the high-impact approach involved using the same story on Mother that had worked on Doctor Crispin. Her eyes lit up with delight when she saw the old-fashioned scroll from the king. “I knew Ollie was a creative spirit!” she enthused.

  She listened intently to all the fabricated details of what I would be doing over the next month “or thereabouts,” while Mr. Scant watched from beside the hallway doors. I told Mother how excited I was, that I’d never won this kind of prize before, and that I was sure I could make new friends. She hugged me and said she wished I wouldn’t keep going off on these “adventures”—which made me look at her suspiciously—but that this sounded too important to turn down.

  Of course, the difficult part was talking to Mr. Scant after Mr. Jackdaw had left. We met in the music room, the place we had first spoken openly about his secret life as a thief. To my surprise, he seemed apologetic.

  “You know I don’t trust Jackdaw,” he said. “Even if he appears to be acting out of desperation, I feel certain this was all calculated well in advance. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew we would have the diamond stolen from us. But still, I take it you have made your mind up to go with him?”

  I nodded. “I think we have to do all we can to stop Aurelian. And I can see life getting a lot more complicated if we don’t get that diamond.”

  “Maybe it belongs back where it came from,” said Mr. Scant. “Maybe it should be in this new unified South Africa. That’s what I was known for, wasn’t it? Returning things to where they came from.”

  “When they were stolen,” I said. “Not things that have been properly bought and sold.”

  “I wish I could be certain that’s what happened with that diamond.”

  “What matters is that Aurelian will sell it for money that he’ll use to do terrible things. Do you think he’s the rightful owner? If he’s not, you should do what you’ve always done: steal from a thief.”

  With that, Mr. Scant stepped forward until he was bearing down on me. “I know what should be done. I know what should have been done. But I don’t know if I’m capable of doing it. With Hunter there, I don’t know that I can do anything at all.”

  “I don’t know why it matters to you so much,” I said. “Don’t you want to talk to him, and find out why he’s here, why he’s working with Aurelian?”

  “It’s not something I can explain in words,” said Mr. Scant. “The point is that you can’t rely on me to protect you this time. I can’t rely on myself—for anything.”

  “I’ve learned a lot from you, Mr. Scant,” I said. “I’ll go alone if I have to, but I’d feel a lot better if you were there. And if it comes to fighting, it’s okay. I’ve got help.”

  “Help?” Mr. Scant thought for a moment. “Mykolas’s fighting days are over after that bullet wound. Who else is there?”

  “We . . . asked the Valkyrie.”

  “The Valkyrie? Have you forgotten she worked for the Society for most of her life?”

  “That’s the past. We’re giving her a chance to move on. Maybe that’s what you need to do too.”

  Mr. Scant gave me a long, steady look and then nodded.

  “You’re the best,” I said, preparing to clap him on the shoulder but thinking better of it.

  Father was the last person to convince. He knew at once that my trip would involve something more serious than the reciting of a pirate story, but he mumbled his approval and said, “I suppose you’d better take Scant with you again. He’s good at these things. And, sad to say, I don’t have much use for him just now, being in the office all day to deal with this wretched coal strike.”

  “Thank you, Father,” I said, giving him a hug that seemed to quite startle him.

  And so it was that on Wednesday, 10th April, Mr. Jackdaw met us at the crack of dawn and took us to Southampton. We entered first a little police station near the docks where he knew the officers on duty. He showed us into a room for a briefing, and there, waiting for us with a shy look on her face, was the Valkyrie.

  “Gosh!” I said, a response that seemed to disappoint her. An attempt had been made to dress her in fine travelling clothes, with an elegant dress, pearls, and a fancy hat with flowers. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I added hastily. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You look very fine, I’m just used to seeing you in the apron and . . . breastplate.”

  “I know I look a sight,” she said. “Don’t rub it in.”

  “A sight? A vision,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “And that brings me to the matter at hand. We’re about to travel under assumed names, for which I’ve made arrangements. Here are your passports. Matilda and I are Mr. and Mrs. Booth, a surgeon and his wife.” For a moment, he looked a little flushed with pleasure at the thought of it. “The two of you are Jacob and Aaron Fisher, father and son. Jacob, you are a fashionable London hatmaker.”

  He gave each of us our travel documents and tickets, which looked as fine as wedding invitations. “First class?” I said. “That must be why we’re getting all dressed up.”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “Thankfully only half the tickets for this voyage had sold, so with some backs scratched and strings pulled, I got us abroad at a low cost. But do take care not to draw too much attention. I would have put you two in steerage, but then you wouldn’t be able to come up to the first-class decks.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “American immigration law,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “Everyone in steerage is going for a new life in America. They get off at a different port from the other tourists. Immigration procedures, you see. If the people in steerage could come to the second-class decks, they could simply slip away into the streets of New York upon disembarking.”

  “America?” said Mr. Scant. “I thought we were bound for the Cape.”

  “A little strange, I must confess,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “From what I gather, this voyage will be where the Binns boy makes the sale. I think the grandiosity of this liner appeals to young Aurelian’s sense of drama. The buyer will then take the diamond to South Africa on a different ship.”

  “How are we sure this isn’t a red herring?” said Mr. Scant. “That Binn
s didn’t leave this trail for us so we get on the boat while he’s somewhere else altogether?”

  “I considered it. We’re going to confirm the boy is on board before we depart. But from the brazenness of it all, I feel as though Binns’s message is that he doesn’t care if we know his plans or not.”

  “I have a question,” said the Valkyrie.

  “Yes?”

  “If we’re husband and wife, are we to . . . share quarters?”

  “Ah, not to worry. The room will have a partition, so you have nothing to fear!”

  The Valkyrie didn’t look entirely convinced by that.

  “The departure time is noon,” said Mr. Scant. “We don’t have time to dawdle.”

  “We are still on schedule,” said Mr. Jackdaw. “Let’s change into the clothes befitting surgeons and premier hatmakers. Then we can go and see for ourselves this ship they call unsinkable.”

  XVI

  First Class

  ocks and shipyards dominated Southampton, with a number of vessels floating like immense seabirds around wharfs where the city met the sea. Great crowds had gathered to see the maiden voyage of this brand new Olympic-class ocean liner, but most of them were on the promenade below our walkway.

  After porters took our belongings and ship’s officers inspected our documents, we approached the Titanic. I paused before boarding and marveled. As high as we were on the elevated walkway between the pier and the ship, the Titanic stood far taller still. Her sheer size was almost terrifying, with four vast smokestacks stretching up into the sky like the fingers of some ancient god. Or perhaps like a titan.

  The portholes farthest from me were little more than pin-pricks, but each one represented a cabin. Even only half full, the ship would have thousands of people on board. How would we possibly find Aurelian?

  A portly man with walrus moustaches cleared his throat loudly behind me, and I realized I was blocking his path. Nodding to him apologetically, I made my way inside.