Black Iron

by Franklin Veaux

  20

  The indecisive rain had finally made up its mind and was now falling with greater confidence. It sleeted down over the Palace, made complex patterns of spreading circles in the great mucky Thames, and fell in sheets over the cobblestones of Highpole Street, where it reflected the light of gas lamps, lanterns, torches, and brightly colored paper lanterns that swayed under the eaves of the complex tangle of shops.

  The weather did nothing to deter the crowds of people, many of whom had come from over the bridges to New Old London or streamed in from the slums of Whitechapel. The word was out that the police would enforce a mandatory curfew, and all of London, rich and poor, wanted to be there to see what happened next.

  Commander Skarbunket led a small group of perhaps fifteen men over the Blackfriars Bridge toward the Great Mosque. Behind him, the lights of the Cathedral of St. Paul glittered.

  On his more philosophical days, he sometimes meditated on the way that the two grand religious structures, mosque and cathedral, were so close to each other, separated only by a few blocks and the river Thames. It seemed fitting that these two houses of worship would be so near, yet separated by that gulf of inky blackness. If he tried hard, he could probably come up with a metaphor or something.

  Most of the rest of the two dozen or so men Skarbunket had chosen were entering Highpole from the west, over the Westminster Bridge. He had wanted the men to arrive in small groups, not all marching together in a single column like an army into a conquered land. It had worked. As the sun settled, the number of blue uniforms quietly increased, but at no point could anyone shout “There they are! The coppers are coming!”

  The eyes of the crowd were on him. Some watched with curiosity, others with hostility, still others with anticipation. The city of London could tell something historic was happening. Historic usually meant dramatic, and London loved her drama.

  “Sir?”

  Skarbunket looked in the direction of the voice. The man who had spoken was barely past his nineteenth birthday, though delicate enough of frame that he could still be mistaken for sixteen. His uniform was just a bit too big for him, which added to the impression. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and his skin was that exact shade of olive that suggested the Mediterranean. His expression was miserable.

  “Yes, Mister Habis?” Seeing the naked terror on the lad’s face, he said more gently, “You have a question?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I mean…this is how it starts, sir.”

  “How what starts?”

  The boy ran his hands through his hair restlessly. “All of it, sir. My jaddah—my grandmum, sir—she told me the stories.” He spread his hands, indicating the people around them. “The people here, sir, most of them came here to get away from this. This is how it started, sir, in Spain and Italy, I mean. The Inquisition, well…” He looked around helplessly. “They don’t just come for you all at once, sir. It starts small. Little things. Like telling you you can’t leave certain neighborhoods, you can’t go out at night. The people here, they know. They remember. This is how it starts. My grandmum…” He gulped for air. “The ones who left, who came here, sir, they were given a choice, all of them. Convert, leave, or die. They would not convert, sir. And now…” He trailed off, looking miserable. His dark eyes swam.

  “Go on.”

  “It’s just that prayers start at six twenty, sir. The people are going to want to pray. They won’t want to hear that they’re not allowed to. You’re asking me to uphold my vows, sir, and I want to do that, I do. I love this city. But it does not love me. My grandmum, she came here rather than give up who she was. She told us the stories, the ones from before, I mean, when it all started. How we were all rounded up, sir. How those of us who weren’t caught had to hide. They found her, her and my grandpa. He didn’t make it. He died, sir. He couldn’t escape the Inquisition. Now you’re asking me to make the same choice. I can’t…I can’t do it, sir. When the Call to Prayer starts, I won’t…” He stood up a little straighter. “I won’t be a policeman anymore, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I swore an oath, sir, to the London Metropolitan Police. But I also made an oath to God, sir. If I have to choose, well…”

  Skarbunket clapped him on the back. “Marvelous, Mister Habis. I am delighted to hear it. This is why I wanted you with me.”

  “Sir?”

  “Mister Habis, I have not the slightest intention of asking you to choose between your secular and divine duties. When the call to prayer comes, I expect you and Sergeant Nadeem to attend worship, together with the rest of the people of Highpole. And when the prayer ends, you will return to your duties for the police, and we will enforce this wretched curfew. After the prayer. Not before.”

  “But sir, our orders—”

  “As your commanding officer, mine are the orders you need to be most concerned with. As Commander of the London Metropolitan Police, I have a certain degree of…let’s call it discretion in how I choose to discharge my obligations. Leave that to me to worry about.”

  “Sir, I don’t understand—”

  “Again with the understanding. How have I inherited a command with so many subordinates who want to understand what they’re being told to do? Don’t look at me like that, Mister Habis, it was a joke. I see that disapproving tone of voice in your eyes. I understand this is no time for levity, but tell me this…okay, okay, you’re right.”

  “But sir, I didn’t say—”

  “You didn’t have to. Levy!”

  “Sir?” Levy said.

  “Ah, there you are. I have a special mission for you. You are acquainted, Mister Levy, with the, the what do you call him, short guy, almost bald, stooped back—the rabbi! You are acquainted with the rabbi of the Highpole temple?”

  “Synagogue, sir. Of course, sir. Rabbi Rosen, sir. I—”

  “Splendid, Mister Levy. I want you to go talk to him.”

  “Sir? Right now?”

  Skarbunket sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, right now. Would I bring you out here on a rainy night to tell you to talk to him next Tuesday? Next I suppose you’ll say you don’t understand, either.”

  “Sir, I don’t understand, what—”

  “Go and talk to him, Levy. Right now. I want you to tell him that the police are not his enemy. We count some of his people among our family in the Force, and it is our intention to treat him and his people with courtesy and discretion. Go! The rest of you, form up! When I said this could be ugly, I didn’t mean the Highpole citizens. We are here to protect them from the rest of their fellow Londoners as much as we are to enforce this curfew. Mister Habis is right: this is how many very ugly things start. We are men of the law, and I will have no bloodshed tonight, is that understood? We are here to protect the people of London—all of them. Now form up!”

  The police force, now thirty strong, arranged itself in a loose line down the center of Highpole Street, the various small clusters of watchmen spreading up and joining together. As is natural with human beings who see a line, the people on the street sorted themselves out along it, some on one side of the line, some on the other. The Highpole residents ended up, unsurprisingly, on the east side of the line, farthest from the Thames and New Old London; those who had come in to watch ended up on the west. Between them stood a thin row of policemen, all in their dress uniforms. Overhead, the drifting forms of the ever-present zeppelins were lost in the wet and dreary sky. Voyeurs hoping for an aerial view of murder and mayhem would be doubly disappointed this night, Skarbunket told himself. The thought pleased him.

  As the sun settled lower, the tension on the street increased. People pointed at the row of police, waiting.

  Across the Thames, the clock chimed six. The police stood unmoving.

  When the echoes of the last “bong!” had faded, the police remained in place, not moving a muscle. The crowd rippled. They had expected somethin
g, and clearly, this wasn’t it.

  Another minute ticked by. Still, the line of policemen did not move.

  Five minutes past curfew. The police remained in place, doing nothing, just standing there.

  By ten minutes past curfew, even the dimmest of London’s citizens had figured out that Something Was Not Quite Right. And when Something Was Not Quite Right, that usually meant Something Was Up. And that, in turn, meant Drama, with a capital D. Just the sort that the various residents of the city, respectable in their various disrespectable ways, most dearly loved.

  Almost imperceptibly at first, the crowd behind the line of policemen, on the Thames side of the street, became restless. It started to press forward, in little fits and surges, before flowing back again like waves at the beach. But the tide was coming in, and the crowd edged closer and closer to the line of waiting men.

  On the other side of the line, the crowd was starting to melt away. The residents of Highpole were tense and wary, but for the moment, nobody seemed to want a confrontation. Those people who remained outdoors knew they were violating the newly imposed curfew, but they didn’t seem to be looking for trouble; they were curious to find out what the plods would do. Skarbunket couldn’t see any weapons, but he had no doubt they were there, somewhere, convenient to hand in case they just happened to be needed.

  The evening balanced on a knife’s edge. Things could still go either way, he told himself, but for right now, nothing bad was happening.

  “Hey!” someone shouted from the river side of the line, emboldened by anonymity and distance from where the action, if there was any, was likely to be. “They ain’t doin’ nuffin! It’s past curfew and they ain’t doin’ nuffin!”

  “Just wait! They’ll do somefin!” another voice answered from the gathering darkness.

  Mayferry looked at Skarbunket, questions written on his face. Skarbunket held out his hands.

  From deep within the mosque, amplified by cunning architecture, came the long, trilling sounds of a human voice. The call to prayer had begun.

  “Mister Habis, Sergeant Nadeem, unless I am very much mistaken, and I don’t believe I am, that is your cue,” Skarbunket said. “Go,” he said, addressing a pair of skeptical looks. “Pray. Let your fellow worshippers know we respect their right to be here.”

  Hesitantly at first, in ones and twos, then in larger numbers, people began to stream from their houses toward the hall of worship. Many of them turned to point at the silent line of policemen, whispering to each other behind the backs of their hands. Not that it mattered; they could speak openly and Skarbunket wouldn’t have the slightest idea what they were saying.

  Habis and Nadeem left the ranks of the waiting policemen and headed for the mosque. An anticipatory hush passed through the crowd behind them. The worshippers gathering at the mosque looked suspiciously at them.

  “Aye, see?” came a voice from the crowd. “’E’s going to arrest the foreigners!”

  “They’re going inside!” an answering voice said. “They’re going in to pray! They ain’t doin’ their jobs! They’re in league with the foreigners!”

  “Brave words from someone hiding behind his friends,” Skarbunket said. “Would such a man, I wonder, be brave enough to say those words to my face? It’s easy to sound bold when you can run away. Even my gram can do that.”

  Laughter swirled in the crowd. Somewhere in the back, the laughter found its target. There was a disturbance that became a pushing that became a shoving. The crowd opened up enough to let three men through. They were all big, naturally, with the squinty eyes and restless dispositions of professional skull-crackers. One was tall, fair of hair and eye, with something rolled under the heavy leather coat he wore. A club, maybe, or a broken bottle. Maybe even a knife, if he was that particular flavor of stupid.

  The other two were shorter but broader, covered with muscle, and wore shirts with the sleeves ripped out to advertise it. Their eyes were dark and mean.

  Of course it would be three, Skarbunket thought. It can never be just one. And of course they’d all be reeking of gin. One of them would be the leader, unwilling to be shamed in front of his friends.

  The fair-haired one stepped closer, until his nose almost touched Skarbunket’s. He was at least four inches taller than the commander. Height meant reach. Reach meant trouble, if it came down to it. Probably best to make sure, then, that it didn’t come down to it.

  “You’re in league with these devils!” the man said. The words arrived borne on the wings of gin and halitosis.

  Next to him, Skarbunket could sense Mayferry tensing. He smiled slightly to himself. Oh, it had been too long…

  “What’s your name, son?” Skarbunket said.

  “Business,” the man replied. He glanced at his friends. “Nonya Business.” They laughed dutifully.

  “My condolences, Mister Business,” Skarbunket said. “It is never a good thing to have parents with an unfortunate sense of humor. Why, with a name like that, sir, a boy might grow up with all sorts of inferiority complexes.”

  “Har har.” The man reached under his jacket. Skarbunket tensed, fingers curling around his truncheon. He relaxed when the man pulled out a rolled-up newspaper, which he unrolled in Skarbunket’s face. “What do you think of that, smart guy?”

  Skarbunket glanced at it. It was a flimsy tabloid, printed that afternoon. “HIGHPOLE FOREIGNERS ABDUCT PRINCESS,” blared the headline. In slightly smaller print underneath, it continued, “IS ANYONE SAFE??” Below that, in type just a little bit smaller, it read, “WHO WILL HOLD THE OUTSIDERS ACCOUNTABLE??”

  Skarbunket looked into the stranger’s suspicious blue eyes. “I think using two question marks when you only need one is a crime against language, is what I think.” He scanned the paper’s masthead. “The Daily Rail? Isn’t that the newspaper owned by Chancellor Gaton?”

  The man looked confused for a moment. In his mind, or the bits of it that weren’t swimming with gin and the fiery rage of righteous anger, this wasn’t the way this conversation was supposed to go. “Who cares?” he said. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “The thing is, Mister Business, there’s not much I can do. You see, a newspaper editor is free to use two question marks in a subhead if he desires, as much as we all might prefer, Mister Business, and I’m sure you will agree with me on this, as much as we all might prefer he stayed within the bounds of grammatical decency and stuck with only one. Whatever editor approved that headline, I have no doubt that he believed he was doing the right thing. Sometimes, men of good conscience can do things they really ought to know are wrong, Mister Business, though we all might wish it were otherwise.”

  More laughter from the crowd. The man’s face turned red. Skarbunket watched the transformation with interest. It started as a flush of pink in the man’s cheeks that spread rapidly, darkening as it went, until the entire visible portion of his head resembled nothing so much as a freshly harvested beet.

  “No, not that, idiot!” he said, rage taking hold of him so completely that his hands, and the newspaper, shook. “I mean the foreigners! They abducted the princess! It says so right here!”

  “So it does, Mister Business,” Skarbunket said. “It is exactly as you say. Well done, Mister Business.” Keep the crowd laughing at this fellow, that was the key. If their allegiance shifted and they started laughing with him, well, sooner or later someone would work out that they outnumbered the cops by four to one, and then things might get just a hair too interesting.

  “So what are you going to do about it? When are you going to start arresting these devils?”

  Skarbunket smiled beatifically at the gin-addled agitator. “Ah, I think I see the problem,” he said. “I think, Mister Business, you may be suffering under a misapprehension. A mistaken idea,” he clarified at the man’s confused expression. “We are not here to arrest the good citizens of Highpole, Mister Business,
nor to force people back to their homes. The people of Highpole are honest, law-abiding citizens, Mister Business, who I have every confidence will obey the law without need of any prodding. No, Mister Business, we are here to make sure that the rest of London’s citizenry, many of whom, I might add, Mister Business, I hold much less confidence about in the law-abiding department, do not take it into their heads to come to this neighborhood for the purpose of committing unlawful acts.”

  “But it’s past curfew!” he whined. “Six o’clock! It says so right here!”

  “I’m sure it does, Mister Business, I’m sure it does. A regrettable oversight on the part of the Council, I am certain, who, had they known evening prayers started at six twenty, would no doubt have adjusted their timetable accordingly, Mister Business.”

  “Stop calling me that!” the man said, petulant.

  “Why?” Skarbunket said. “It’s your name, is it not, Mister Business? You must know your own name. Because, you see, if your name is not Nonya Business, that would mean, Mister Business, that you knowingly gave false information to an officer of the law when questioned. And that, Mister Business, would be grounds for bringing you in. It’s what we call a tech-ni-cal-i-tee, you see.” He enunciated the five-syllable word carefully.

  “You can’t arrest me for that!”

  “Oh, I assure you, Mister Business, the cells are filled with men who are there on razor-thin technicalities.” Skarbunket leaned closer to the man. “Do not test me on this, Mister Business.”

  The freshly christened Nonya Business glared back at him. Skarbunket knew this was it, the moment when the man would either back down and accept humiliation in front of his friends, or lash out and accept a beating from the police, or a night in the cells, or both. A small, mean part of him, a part he was not proud of, almost hoped it would be the latter.