The strange affair of Spring-heeled Jack bas-1

by Mark Hodder

  No. No. No.

  This isn't happening.

  This can't happen.

  This didn't happen.

  The smiling round-faced man was suddenly at his side. "Bravo, my friend!" he muttered. "Jolly good show!"

  Oxford backed away from him, feeling terrified, fell, got up again, shoved his way out of the milling crowd, and ran.

  "Get back to the suit," he mumbled as his legs pumped. "Try something else!"

  He raced up the slope and ran into the trees.

  What had caused that bolt of lightning? It had come from the same direction as the shout: "Stop, Edward!" Who had that been? He hadn't seen anyone clearly; there was too much happening.

  He found his suit, slipped on the helmet, and activated it.

  A sense of well-being flooded through him as the distant noise of electric cars, passenger jets, and advertising billboards assailed his ears. He pulled on the suit and set the navigation system for three months into the past. His lunatic ancestor would be working in a public house-the Hog in the Pound on Oxford Street; that was a recorded fact.

  "I'll go and talk him out of it," he whispered. "It's what I should have done in the first place."

  A terrifying feeling of inevitability sank into his bones.

  It won't work.

  Try anyway!

  It won't work.

  He pushed through the undergrowth, returning to the edge of the woods.

  "Step out into the open, sir!" came a voice.

  Oxford froze. What now?

  He crept ahead, trying to see whoever it was through the trees.

  "I saw what happened-there's nothing to worry about. Come on, let's be having you!"

  He remained silent.

  There! A policeman!

  "Sir! I saw you trying to protect the queen. I just need you to-"

  Oxford plunged out into the open.

  The policeman gasped, stepped back, and fell onto his bottom. He threw his truncheon.

  The club whirled through the air and crashed into the control unit on the front of the time traveller's suit. Sparks exploded and a mild electric shock jerked through his body.

  "Damn!" he cried, and bounded away. He slammed his stilts into the ground, leaped high, ordered the time jump, and winked out of June 10, 1840.

  The suit malfunctioned.

  Instead of sending him back three months, it sent him a good deal further; and rather than shifting him half a mile northward to a secluded alley behind the Hog in the Pound, it threw him twenty-one miles beyond.

  He blinked into existence fifteen feet in the air with an electric charge drilling through him and crashed into the ground, unconscious. His limbs twitched spasmodically for thirty minutes, then he became very still.

  Four hours later, a horseman narrowly avoided riding over him. The man reined in his mount and looked down at the bizarrely costumed figure.

  "By James! What have we here?" he exclaimed, dismounting.

  Henry de La Poet Beresford, the 3rd Marquess of Waterford, bent and ran his fingers over the strange material of the time suit. It was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He grasped Edward Oxford by the shoulder and shook him.

  "I say, old fellow, are you in the land of the living?"

  There was no response.

  Beresford placed his hand on the man's chest, beside the lanternlike disk, and felt the heart beating.

  "Still with us, anyway," he muttered. "But what the devil are you, old thing? I've never seen the like!"

  He pushed an arm under Oxford's shoulders and lifted him; then, with no small amount of difficulty, shoved him onto the horse's saddle, so that the helmeted head hung on one side of the animal and the stilted boots on the other. Beresford took the reins and led his mount back homeward, to Darkening Towers.

  Oxford regained his senses five days later.

  Henry Beresford had tried and failed to remove the time suit; he could find no buttons. He'd succeeded, however, in pulling off the boots and in sliding the helmet from the comatose man's head. He'd then placed his unexpected visitor onto a bed, with his shoulders and head propped up against pillows, and had covered him with a blanket.

  Unprotected by augmented reality, Oxford's first intimation of consciousness arrived through his nose. He was forced from oblivion by the stench of stale sweat, the mustiness of unlaundered clothes, and the overwrought perfume of lavender.

  He opened his eyes.

  "Good afternoon," said Beresford.

  Oxford blinked and looked at the clean-shaven, moon-faced man sitting beside him.

  "Who are you?" he croaked, his hoarse voice sounding to him as if it came from someone else.

  "My name is Henry de La Poet Beresford. I am Marquess of Waterford. And who-and, indeed, what-are you? Here, take this water."

  Oxford took the proffered glass and quenched his thirst.

  "Thank you. My name is Edward Oxford. I'm-I'm a traveller."

  Beresford raised his brows. "Is that so? To which circus do you belong?"

  "What?"

  "Circus, my friend. You appear to be a stilt-walker."

  Oxford made no reply.

  Beresford considered his guest for a moment, then said, "Yet there are no carnivals or suchlike in the area, which rather begs the question: how did you end up in a dead faint inside the walls of my estate?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps you could tell me where I am, exactly?"

  "You're in Darkening Towers, near Hertford, some twenty miles or so north of central London. I found you in the grounds, unconscious, five days ago."

  "Five days!"

  Oxford looked down at the control panel on the front of his suit. It was dead. There was a dent on its face and scorch marks around its left edge.

  Beresford said, "I apologise for the indelicacy of my next statement, but the fact is, I was unable to get you out of your costume and I fear you may have fouled it whilst in your faint."

  Oxford nodded, reddening.

  Beresford laid a hand on his arm. "I shall have my man bring you a basin of hot water and some soap, towels, and fresh clothing. You look to be about my size, a little taller, perhaps. I shall also instruct the cook to prepare you something. Will that be satisfactory?"

  "Very much so," replied Oxford, suddenly realising that he was famished.

  "Good. I shall leave you to your ablutions. Please join me in the dining room when you are ready."

  He stood and walked toward the door.

  "Incidentally," he said, pausing, "your accent is unfamiliar-where are you from?"

  "I was born and raised in Aldershot."

  The marquess grunted. "No, that's not a Hampshire accent."

  He opened the door to leave.

  "What news of the queen?" Oxford blurted.

  Beresford turned, with a puzzled expression. "Queen? Do you mean young Victoria? She's not quite the queen yet, my friend, though His Majesty is said to be on his deathbed."

  Oxford frowned. "What date is it?"

  "The fifteenth of June."

  "Still June!"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "What year?"

  "The year? Why, 1837, of course!" Beresford looked at his guest curiously. "Are you having problems with your memory, Mr. Oxford?"

  "I-yes-a little."

  "Perhaps you'll remember more once you have some food inside you. I'll see you downstairs."

  He left the room and moments later his valet, a thin and stiffly mannered gentleman, sidled in carrying a large porcelain basin, two towels, and a bar of soap. The valet departed then returned with a full set of clothes. For a third time, he went away and came back, this time with a bucket of steaming water, which he poured into the basin.

  Finally, he spoke: "Will you require anything else, sir?"

  "No, thank you. What's your name?"

  "Brock, sir. May I offer you a shave?"

  "I'll do it myself, if you don't mind."

  "Very good, sir. There is a bellpull beside the bed, here. Summon
me when you're ready, and I'll escort you down to the dining room. May I take your, er, costume to be laundered?"

  "The costume, no, Brock; I'd rather take care of that myself, if you don't mind. However, I have a suit on underneath and I'd be very grateful if you'd arrange for it to be washed. I'm afraid it's in rather a state."

  Brock nodded.

  Oxford sat up, removed the control panel from his chest, and slid his finger down the time suit's front seal. Brock's eyebrows rose slightly but his face remained impassive as the strange material fell open and Oxford shrugged out of it.

  The suit beneath followed and was handed to the valet, along with the soiled underclothes.

  Wordlessly, Brock departed.

  Oxford washed, shaved awkwardly with the cutthroat razor, and put on the clothes Beresford had loaned him. They felt rough and irritating against his skin.

  He turned the time suit inside-out and wiped the inner surface clean. The fish scales held no charge and, he guessed, had been flat for the past few days. A few minutes beneath the open sky would revitalise them. The control panel was severely damaged. Until it was repaired, he would be unable to travel. The most pressing problem, though, was that it was no longer able to transfer power from the suit's batteries to the helmet, which meant he had to somehow survive without augmented reality. Here, inside the house, with just a few people present, that wouldn't be a major issue. However, wider exposure to this time period might result in culture shock, which, in theory, could be intense enough to threaten his sanity.

  He rang the bell and Brock reappeared.

  "This way, sir," said the valet.

  Oxford followed him out onto a broad landing and down an ornate staircase. As he descended, he noticed that the house was in an extreme state of disrepair. Its onetime opulence had sunk into a lazy decadence; the moulded trim around the edges of the ceilings, once painted in bright colours, was now flaked and faded; the wood-panelled walls were warped and split; the rugs, hangings, and curtains were threadbare; plaster had cracked; dust and cobwebs had gathered.

  They reached the foot of the stairs and passed along a corridor, turned into another, and another.

  "What a house to get lost in!" muttered Oxford.

  "Darkening Towers is a very old mansion, sir," commented Brock. "The man who built it was somewhat eccentric and it has been added to many times over the years. The master purchased the estate less than a month ago and has not yet had the opportunity to effect repairs."

  "It's a veritable maze!"

  "The dining room, sir," said Brock, opening a door.

  Oxford passed through into a long, shadow-filled room. It was hung all around with portraits of stern-looking elders. A chandelier was suspended over a banqueting table. Beresford rose as he entered.

  "Ah, my dear Mr. Oxford, you appear much refreshed. I trust the clothes fit you?"

  "Yes, thank you," replied the time traveller, though in truth they were a little tight.

  Brock ushered him to the opposite end of the table and pulled out the chair for him.

  He sat.

  The valet bowed toward Beresford and left the room. His place was taken by a butler, who stepped to the table and poured red wine for the two men. A couple of maids hurried back and forth, bringing plates of meat and vegetables. The various odours seemed thick and cloying to Oxford; too rich and intense, as if the meal had been marinating in butters and fats before it was cooked. He eyed the food uncomfortably, noting the rivulets of grease on its surface, but, nevertheless, his stomach rumbled.

  Beresford emptied his glass in a single gulp, was served another, and said loudly, "So how's the memory, my friend? Has anything come back to you?"

  Oxford hesitated.

  He made a decision.

  "My Lord Marquess-"

  "Henry, please."

  "Henry. I have decided to tell you everything because, the truth is, I desperately require help. Do you mind if we eat first, though? I'm half starved!"

  "Not at all! Not at all! Pray settle my mind, though-you are not from a circus, are you?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "And your costume is something more than it seems?"

  "You are very perceptive, Henry."

  "Eat, Mr. Oxford. We shall talk afterwards."

  An hour later, the time traveller, feeling bloated and a little sick, accepted a brandy, refused a cigar, and told his host almost everything. He omitted the queen's assassination and, instead, claimed that he'd travelled back through time simply to meet his ancestor.

  They had moved to the morning room after the meal and were sitting in big wooden armchairs beside a crackling fire.

  Beresford was drunk.

  He was also incredulous.

  And he was laughing.

  "Great heavens above!" he roared. "You're as fine a storyteller as that Dickens fellow! Have you read Pickwick?"

  "Of course I have. This isn't a fiction, Henry."

  "Balderdash! What can be more fictive than a man from the future being propelled into the past by a suit of clothes?"

  "Yet I maintain that that's what happened."

  "You're a strange one, I'll admit," declared the marquess. "Your speech is rather too direct for an Englishman, your manner too casual by half. I have you down as a foreigner, my friend!"

  "I told you-I was born and raised in Aldershot."

  "In the year 2162, you say. What's that? Some three hundred and twenty-five years from now?"

  "Yes."

  Beresford refilled their glasses and lit another cigar.

  "Let's just say I'm prepared to play along with your rum little game, Edward," he said. "You say you require my help. In what manner may I be of assistance?"

  "I need you to purchase for me a complete set of watchmaker's tools."

  "For what purpose?"

  "I have to repair my suit's control unit. I'm hoping that watchmaker's tools will be fine enough for such work."

  "Control unit?"

  "The circular object you saw on my chest."

  "And am I to take it that when this `control unit' is repaired you will once again be capable of flight through time?"

  "Yes."

  "Phew! I have never heard such a tale in all my born natural! Yet I have it in mind to humour you! You will remain here as my guest and I shall get you your tools!"

  "There is something I can tell you," said Oxford, "that might lend credence to my story."

  "Really. What is that?"

  "Five days from now, you will have a new monarch."

  Slowly, over the next seven days, Henry de La Poet Beresford's amused disbelief began to waver.

  The death of King William IV at Windsor Castle had, of course, been expected and came as no surprise. The fact that Oxford had predicted Victoria's ascension to the throne on June 20 wasn't particularly amazing-more a lucky guess, in all probability.

  However, after extracting a vow of silence from his host, Oxford revealed a great deal more about the world he'd come from, especially about the different technologies and power sources available to future man. The human race, it seemed, would lose none of its inventiveness as time progressed.

  It was the way the man spoke and moved, though, that most convinced the marquess. There was something indescribably foreign about him, yet, conversely, the longer he spent with him the more Beresford believed that his odd visitor was, as he claimed, an Englishman.

  "You are evidentially a sophisticated individual," he said one morning, "yet-if you'll pardon my bluntness-you lack the social graces I would expect from a gentleman."

  Oxford, who was seated at a table and using the watchmaker's tools to poke at the incomprehensible innards of his "control unit," responded without looking up.

  "No offence taken, Henry. I don't mean to be rude; it's just that in my time social interaction is far less ritualised. We express our feelings and opinions just as we please, openly and without restraint."

  "How barbaric!" drawled the marquess, dangling a leg over the arm
of his chair. "Are you not permanently at one another's throats?"

  "No more so than you Victorians."

  "Victorians? Is that what we are now? Why, I suppose it is! But tell me, my friend: what possible advantage can there be in the abandonment of our ritualised'-as you would have it-behaviour? Are not manners the mark of a civilised man?"

  "The advantage is liberty, Henry. From this century forward, the concept of liberty becomes central to personal, social, political, economic, and technological developments. People do not want to feel suppressed, so great efforts are made to establish, if not true freedom, then at very least a sustainable and overwhelming illusion of it. I doubt there's ever been a time when human beings were truly free, but where-or, rather, when-I come from, more people believe they are than in any other period of history."

  "And what do they gain from it?"

  "A life in which they are able to pursue opportunities without restraint in a quest for personal fulfillment."

  "Fulfillment?"

  "The sense that you have explored your inherent abilities to their utmost."

  "Yes, I understand," replied Beresford, thoughtfully. "But surely if a person's opportunities are unbounded, then the possibilities increase? Doesn't that make it impossible to explore them all, and extremely difficult to settle upon any one area which can be explored to the point of fulfillment?"

  Oxford looked up and frowned. "You make a good point, Henry. It's true that many people in my time are frustrated not by limitations but by an inability to make choices. They feel their lives are without direction and struggle to find their place in society."

  "Whereas the humble `Victorian' labourer," mused Beresford, "knows his place almost from birth and almost certainly never gives thought to an idea so ephemeral as `fulfillment' except, I venture to suggest, in reference to a hearty meal and a pint of ale!"

  "Done!" exclaimed Oxford.

  "What?"

  "The control unit. Fixed! It's a makeshift repair but it'll get me home, where I can give it a proper overhaul before coming back."

  "To 1837, you mean?"

  "I have some business in 1840 to take care of first, but yes, I'll come back, Henry. I'll bring you a gift from the future as a token of thanks for the hospitality you've shown me these past few days."