by Adam Roberts
Bates might have screamed, except that he was too surprised, and that the pain had fined his nerves. He hurled himself off the bed, slapping his hands upon the bedside table to lever himself, vault-like, away. He landed on the soles of his bare feet. ‘What?’ he cried? ‘Whatwhat? ’
The Lilliputian was running now, lengthways along the bed. It was clear (Bates realised this a little later, when he had time to determine what the course of events must have been) that the little being had made his way from the windowsill, along the ledge of the dado and onto the bedside table, positioning himself on the bed ready to thrust his pike through the corner of Bates’s eye and into his brain. But now that route of escape had been cut off by Bates’s leap, and the creature was dashing as fast as it could for the far corner of the bed, hoping perhaps to clamber down the sheeting and across the floor. Like a mouse.
Without the least deliberation Bates grabbed the Bible from his bedside table and threw the book. Had he gauged and weighted the shot he surely would have missed, for he was no pitch-and-tosser; but from his instinctive throw the volume flew true. The spine of it squashed the Lilliputian hard against the mattress; the book bounced up; it fell hard upon the floor.
Bates, in a state of excitement that drowned out the higher functions of rational thought, hurried round the bed and plucked the Bible from the floor. On the bed the Lilliputian was endeavouring to rouse himself. Bates’s throw had struck his back, and appeared to have marred his ability to stand upright. Bates lifted the Bible and brought it hard down upon the little man. The book bounced on the mattress. Underneath the Lilliputian lay, now, motionless. Bates used the edge of the book’s front cover to lever the little creature from the bed, as he might have done a spider, and to flick him upon the wooden floor. He raised the book over his fallen foe, and readied himself for the coup de grâce - flinched, steeled himself and heaved down. The book banged a single thundercrack.
His heart beat, and beat again, and beat. The blood seemed to pass hard through his chest.
When Bates lifted the Bible again it was to reveal a starburst pattern of red on the floor’s planks. The Lilliputian lay face-down, his little limbs arranged in a swastika pattern.
Bates took in a long breath.
Another.
He felt round at the back of his head: had he not jolted his head upwards the pike would have been plunged through his eye. He could feel a scratch running, like the mark left by an acid teardrop, from the edge of his eye, along the side of his temple and ending in a gouge above his ear. Blood was sticky there, becoming granular.
He was trembling now, and he sat himself down upon the bed. His eye was drawn to the hieroglyph of death, written in flesh and blood, upon the floor. Now that the sharper fear was resolving itself into a trembly sense of alarm Bates felt guilt intruding. He, the friend of the Lilliputians! It rushed upon him that he should pray, straight away, with the blood of this little creature upon his hands, hot for forgiveness from the Father of all things. Bates allowed one thought to pass: Is this how soldiers feel when they take a life? Then his gaze lifted, and he saw the windowsill.
Two more Lilliputians were standing there, beside them an aeronautical toy. One of the Lilliputians was labouring at the leather strap, twisting it to build up motor power once again by leaning repeatedly on a wooden spar. The other stood, with that unearthly stillness the little folk were capable of, staring directly at Bates.
Bates stood up. His soul was poised precisely between a desire to abase himself before this miniature embodiment of conscience, and a rage at the monstrous race of all of these creatures. Attack him whilst he slept? The devils! He still clutched the bloodied Bible in his right hand, and he lifted this so that it crossed over his breast.
The standing Lilliputian raised a spear; but the distance between him and his man-target was far too great to cross with an arm’s-throw. Then everything happened very quickly. The end of the spear gave out a puff of smoke, and at precisely the moment that Bates realised it was a miniature rifle he was struck on the left cheek with a tiny pellet. It was a bee-sting sensation, and made him flinch and recoil, and then in the same motion, made him step towards the window. But the rifleman hopped into the cockpit of the aero-device, and the other one pushed the nose of the toy to face the world outside and jumped in too. The propeller whirred and the little machine drifted unsteadily into the air and dropped. Bates was the window in a second, but could only watch as the device banked and flew a lolloping rise-and-fall trajectory along the length of the street and turned the corner.
Bates examined his face in the hand mirror. His cheek still smarted where the Lilliputian bullet had entered. A red spot right in the centre of his cheek, exactly like a carbuncle save only that the border of this redness was a tiny ring of scorched and blackened skin. Probing the inside of his cheek with his tongue he could feel the peppercorn bullet itself, embedded in the flesh of his face. Resting the mirror against the angle of table and wall, Bates put both hands to his face and tried to squeeze the projectile out through the hole it had made, like evacuating a blackhead; but it was a sharply painful process, and the bullet seemed to have travelled laterally through the flesh of his cheek. He gave up.
He dressed and hurried from his room. And only at this point did it occur to him to wonder why the Lilliputians had mounted this attack up him. Audacious, in fact! Was it a general rising? Had he ended the life of some Lilliputian Spartacus?
Outside his door on the upper landing the silence of the hotel intruded upon his consciousness. Why so quiet? And there, right there halfway along the landing, was a body.
It was sitting, legs out, back against the wall, arms loose at its side, in a French military uniform. And the skin of its face was reddened and blistered above its beard - it was the French officer, slain by the pestilence. Evidently slain by the pestilence and not by Lilliputians at all.
With the instinctive fear of a man faced with a diseased body, Bates squeezed past, and fell to knocking lustily upon Eleanor’s door. There was no reply, but the Dean’s door opened and the Dean himself - nightshirted - emerged. ‘What the devil? What - oh,’ catching sight of the Frenchman’s corpse. ‘Oh!’
Bates was agitated enough to gabble. ‘A Lilliputian warrior has tried to murder me!’ he squealed. ‘This very minute, as I slept. It is merest chance that I am alive to speak to you now! It is chance - or’ (for this thought was just occurring to him) ‘God’s will that I survived! There may be a general attack!’
The Dean stepped forward, covered half the distance between himself and the corpse, and stopped. ‘Oh!’ he repeated. ‘But this is most unhygienic! How could this be permitted . . .’
‘Dean,’ said Bates. ‘Do you not attend to my words? I say that we are attacked, surrounded by enemies! We must preserve ourselves, we must escape, and save the life of Mrs Burton—’
Eleanor emerged, fully dressed and severe-faced, from the Dean’s room. ‘What clamour disturbs our breakfast?’ she declaimed, theatrically. ‘My affianced and myself?’
‘Eleanor !’
‘Now!’ barked the Dean. ‘We dress, we depart. We shall seize the Calculator and drive it to York. The time has come.’
But it took Oldenberg half an hour to dress himself and gather what he called ‘necessaries’. Bates sat in a chair in his room and told the story of the assault upon him, repeated it several times. Eleanor, her manner cold, peered at his face and tutted at the wound in his cheek. But otherwise neither of them seemed very interested in his adventures.
The silence of the hotel remained perfectly unbroken. From the Dean’s window, which gave out upon a side-alley, the view straight down revealed a number of motionless French bodies. There was no other motion; and no sound beyond the calling of the gulls and the hush of surf. ‘Perhaps,’ Bates said, ‘the pestilence has destroyed the French army.’
‘The whole army!’ said the Dean.
‘Perhaps,’ said Eleanor, her eyes flashing. ‘Yet it spared us.’
‘Providence,’ rumbled the Dean, seated on the bed. ‘Help me with my boots, Bates! I’m not so supple that I can stretch down to my own heels, sir!’
Bates knelt at the bed. ‘Divine Providence,’ he said. ‘It must be! For we three fell sick and have been spared, whereas these French invaders . . .’
‘Tush!’ snapped the Dean. ‘You pinch at my calf! Pay attention there!’
They hauled their luggage, all three, down the stairs. At the bottom, animated by the sense of escape, Eleanor took charge. ‘Henry, go out and look in the coachyard. See what life, if any, remains there: but above all see what carriage, and what horse, we can obtain to speed our escape.’
‘And the Calculator,’ announced Oldenberg. ‘I’ll look for that. Will you come?’
‘Bates and I shall go to the kitchens and take what food we can find there.’
‘Quite right! Quite right! Let us not starve upon the road! Fetch bread and cheese and anything else . . .’ He seemed happier than at any time since their arrival in Scarborough. Perhaps he hoped, in returning to the British forces, to obtain again some of his exotic snuff.
But it did not matter. Eleanor swept off and down the servants’ stair to the kitchen. Not a soul was about. A long central table had been scrubbed and cleaned and left bare. Most of the cupboard doors were open. Somebody had been there before them.
‘The parlour,’ said Eleanor. There was a powerful gleam of excitement in her eyes, and Bates could not contain himself. Despite all that had happened to him since awakening, he felt desire overmastering every other consideration.
‘How happy you look, my darling!’ he said.
‘Happy to be leaving this place,’ she said. ‘To be on the move!’ She pulled the door of the parlour and stepped inside. The space inside was dim, illuminated by a single grilled window high up. The shelves were mostly empty, although there were several jars containing dried fruit, a large wrap of lard and a Hessian-load of potatoes.
Eleanor passed these out to Bates, who placed them on the counter. Then he stood, shivering with half-suppressed desire, at the doorway.
‘Come,’ said Eleanor, hurriedly, and pulled him inside. With the door shut behind them the space was cramped, and the light low. Bates was pressed up against her, aware of the stiffness of the fabric of her dress against his own chest. She was breathing quickly. ‘He is outside now,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Perhaps,’ and she gestured with her hand, ‘only inches away, on the far side of that grill.’
‘Eleanor!’ gasped Bates.
‘Sss! My future husband - do you understand?’
He nodded.
‘That holy estate, that Godly estate. He a man of God. He is my betrothed, and you are nothing. He is a gentleman and you are nothing. He treats me with respect and you treat me with such - contempt. I am no gentlewoman in your eyes. You see me in terms of the merest harlot. Shame on you! And you - you—’
And of course Bates wanted to deny these shameful words; he wanted to insist upon the purity and wholeness of his love for her, but he knew that it was not his place to speak. Eleanor did not wish him to speak. His speaking was not the point of this encounter. She was rustling at her own skirt with one hand, and grasping Bates’s right wrist with the other. ‘He is inches away, you devil.’ She thrust his hand between her legs. She wore no undergarments there. ‘He is a man of God! And you - you—’
Her eyes rolled white in her head. It took all Bates’s self-restraint to prevent himself shouting out in excitement. He put his face over her shoulder, in at the space of an empty shelf. He stuck his tongue out as far as it could go, and bit at the base of it. With his right hand he was tickling her between her legs, fumbling at the smoothly wet membrane, at its enclosure of hairy skin. He needed, desperately, to touch himself. He tried to force his free hand in at the waistband of his own breeches, but there was not enough space. He tried undoing his buttons, but left thumb and fingers stumbled at the task. He strained to reach his own organ.
Eleanor breathed out hard and clenched her thighs together on his hand. She stiffened, and finally he got the top of his trousers unbuttoned. The tip of his membrum, all hard as mahogany, protruded, and he pressed the palm of his left hand over it, pressed and pressed and out it came in a gush, phlegmy and warm onto his wrist; and he was clasping Eleanor closer to him, tight as a child clings. But even in this moment she was pushing him away, and rearranging her dress, and squeezing past him to open the parlour door again.
‘All!’ he said. One syllable to express both release and disgust.
He took a sheet of ancient newspaper, lining the bottom shelf, and wiped himself as clean as he could. But, coming into the kitchen he saw that there was a stain on the front of his trowsers. Rubbing with the paper only spread the stain wider. ‘See!’ he said to her. ‘This is but dirty work.’
‘We have tarried too long already,’ she said, matter-of-factly. She pulled an empty basket from under the table and pushed into it the food they had found.
They came back up to the lobby and out to the front of the hotel again, and were faced with a scene of perfect desolation. Eleanor, the basket over the crook of her arm, came down the steps and crossed the road to stand at the seafront, and Bates followed her. The sun low in the sky still morning-white, and the mist visible far out at sea draping the horizon in gauze. The waves, nearer at hand, endlessly rubbing and grinding at the shore with a Lady-Macbeth intensity. Several men - soldiers - were sleeping on the beach nearby. But, no: for clearly they were not sleeping. One lay on his front with one arm flung out. His hand, visible, was rouge and black and puffed-up, like a clutch of carrots gone bad. The other lay on his back and his face seemed scaled like a fish’s.
Bates turned, and glimpsed a pile of bodies further down the street; but here was the Dean, bustling up with a cross visage. ‘I have found the Calculator,’ he gasped, trotting up to them. ‘Found the Calculator and its door is wide.’
‘Wide?’
‘It’s empty.’
Eleanor spoke decisively: ‘Show me.’
A road led up the side of the hotel to the coachyard. There were more bodies here; one still standing up, or rather leaning in at the coign of a stall and, by some freak of balance, not fallen over in death. This one’s face was puffed and very white, the eyes buried in the bulge of cheek and brow like a Chinaman’s. These others were sprawled on the floor. One of these still clutched an unopened bottle of wine.
The Dean took them to the far corner of the yard. Here a sentry sat on a stool, slumped forward and propped on his rifle. What looked like tendrils growing from his downward-pointing face were the dried and scummed remains of drool - from mouth, nose, and eyes, black and dark green. The stool and the ground beneath it were covered in a spread of foulness, like cow-flop. This man had been guarding a stall and had died at his post, yet Bates found nothing but a thrilling revulsion in contemplating his end.
His sentry keeping had been in vain, for the stall door was now open. The Calculator was there, but as Oldenberg had said its hinged side was wide and its Lilliputian occupants long gone.
‘Is it not interesting, though?’ Eleanor said, peering into the workings of the device. ‘These little hutches! These tumblers, and cogs - and what is that?’ Her eyes had brightened.
‘You are as little like a natural female,’ growled the Dean, ‘as an abacus is like a lily.’
‘This,’ she snapped, ‘will still be valuable to the army, to our army, sir. It is true that the little people have vacated it, but the working alone will surely be of interest to our generals.’
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Bates put in, ‘perhap Lilliputians loyal to the Crown could be trained to take the positions of...’
The Dean scoffed noisily. ‘Lilliputians loyal to the Crown! They have no loyalty, save to the Devil.’ And he squinnied at Eleanor, as if daring her to express offence at his vulgar expression.
Eleanor only ignored him. ‘We must harness a horse to the Calculator, ’ she said, ru
nning a hand along the spar at the front of the device. ‘Let us ride it west until we discover the English forces.’
‘There are no horses, Ma’am,’ said the Dean. ‘Look around you!’
‘None in the whole town?’
‘What d’ye think? Do ye hear the whinny of a horse? Can ye hear such a thing in this great silence?’
Eleanor fixed her eye upon the Dean. ‘Your tone, sir. It is unhelpful, sir. If we cannot find a horse then I suggest that you two gentlemen—’
No!’ interjected the Dean. ‘I’ll not haul a carriage about like a beast of burden! I am Dean of York! A gentleman, I!’
‘Perhaps,’ Bates put in, eager to act as peacemaker, ‘we might secrete the Calculator hereabouts - lock it away, and take the key to the English forces, with our knowledge as to how and where to find it?’
Eleanor and the Dean both looked at Bates. ‘An idea,’ Eleanor conceded. ‘A good idea.’
