The Aylesford Skull

by James P. Blaylock

  She opened the wardrobe and drew out a roll of heavy vellum from among other rolls, which she spread out on the tabletop, clamping the corners into place. Painted on it was a detailed street-map of London, stretching from Notting Hill Gate to the East India Dock, the more outlying streets and neighborhoods being slightly too distant for her inner sight to penetrate. Objects in the river, corpses included, had always been hidden from Mabel unless she possessed some fragment of the missing thing – a lock of hair, say, if the lost object were a human being. Sometimes a kerchief or a cap would do. Although she could easily have swindled anxious customers by overstating the distance that her mind could range over the city, she despised the idea of giving people false hopes.

  There seemed to Mother Laswell to be an almost frightening intensity in the atmosphere of the room, generated by something that was akin to hope, although not quite hope – something related to it: heartache perhaps, the dwindling of hope. She was aware of a heavy vibration that seemed to jostle the air, felt rather than heard, and the quicksilver in the barometer glowed distinctly, as if the heavy liquid was agitated, although not by anything observable.

  Mabel took a planchette from among several on the shelves within the cabinet, laid it atop the map, and closed the cabinet. “Let’s begin, Harriet,” she said, sitting down in the decorated chair. “If you’ll just draw the curtain across beside you…” She adjusted the needle in the planchette – not a pencil, but a pointer with a sharp, conical tip the color of iron. Mabel sat bolt upright, summoning her particular powers, her eyes unfocused and staring. A single candle burned in the sconce, the quicksilver in the barometer equally bright. The small room was warm – warmer, it seemed to Mother Laswell, than the larger room without.

  From the chair opposite, Mother Laswell could see her own face in the mirror, as well as Mabel’s back, the images repeated until they bent away into infinity. She became slowly aware of a continuous musical note as if someone were dragging a bow across a violin in a distant room. Although she couldn’t have said just how, she knew that it originated from within the air roundabout them and not from outside. She breathed rhythmically and gently closed her eyes, thus closing her mind to the turmoil of the world without. She pictured a brazier alight with a small flame, and she held the image in her mind, the flame flickering and flaring and then dying away for a moment before darting upward again. The musical note remained constant, lying beneath the sound of the blood moving through her veins.

  There Mother Laswell’s mind remained, unconscious of the passing of time, although time, or the semblance of time, was surely passing, for the flame at last began to grow indistinct, and in its place appeared Edward’s face as it had been before he died, slowly swimming into focus, wavering as the flame had wavered. The room suddenly grew chilly. Edward’s eyes seemed to be searching for her, and then, abruptly, to discover her. The effect so unnerved her that her mind nearly leapt back into darkness, his face losing its features as if hidden behind a veil. She held her mind and will steady, however, out of long practice, and after a moment the veil lifted, and Edward’s face floated before her again. Very faintly she heard the planchette moving across the vellum on the table, Mabel’s hands steadying it, Edward’s guiding it.

  Mother Laswell opened her eyes slowly as she drew a breath. Edward’s transparent face remained before her, Mabel’s features visible through it. The mirror behind Mabel reflected a long corridor of identical images: the edge of the curtain drawn across the door, the angular corner of the wardrobe cabinet, the glow of the candle flame, the back of Mabel’s head and Mother Laswell’s face, all of it overlaid by Edward’s floating visage.

  The planchette moved. Mabel’s hands seemed to hover above it, trembling just a little, keeping pace with it. Her breathing was labored, and there was something deeply unsettling, perhaps fearful, in her staring, sightless eyes. Mother Laswell compelled herself to focus solely on Edward, to summon memories of him, to call forth the decades-old joy that she had taken in his very existence. At the same time she could see that the reflection in the corridor of mirrors was subtly changing. The vertical line of the curtains and the lines that formed the corner of the wardrobe cabinet began to shift, until the reflections in the mirror lost the semblance of concrete objects and became sharply drawn geometric shapes, parallel and perpendicular lines intersecting on the silver-black plane of the mirrors.

  The room was dead cold now. Edward’s face was evidently unhappy, his eyes darting here and there, as if he labored to understand where he was. You’re with me, my darling, Mother Laswell whispered in her mind, casting the thought out before her. It did little good, however, and she was possessed abruptly by a presentiment of danger. The intersecting lines in the mirror slowly rearranged themselves into the features of another dim room – a room that was not a reflection of their own.

  A man sat before a table in that room, gazing forward. On the table itself sat Edward’s skull. Mother Laswell fought to maintain her mindfulness as she stared at the profile of the man who called himself Ignacio Narbondo, the murderer who had once been her son. Edward’s confused face hovered over the table before him. Narbondo reached out as if to touch it, his fingers brushing through it. Immediately it began to fade. Mother Laswell’s breath caught in her throat, and she heard the rushing of blood in her ears and the abrasive noise of the moving planchette. Mabel’s own breathing was labored and stuttering.

  There was the sound of the scraping of chair legs as Narbondo pushed himself away from the table and slowly turned toward Mother Laswell, a puzzled frown appearing on his face, his head canting with curiosity. The frown bloomed into a smile, and although she wanted to turn away from that smile, she would not, and perhaps could not. The room within the mirror faded slowly to black, until Narbondo’s disembodied head was the only thing visible in the darkness. Mother Laswell sat stupefied with horror, watching the visage as it grew in size, as if it moved toward them from a vast distance. After an incalculable space of time, it exited the mirror and hovered over the moving planchette as Edward’s had done.

  The needle rasped hard across the vellum, tearing a gash in it before coming to an abrupt stop. Mabel Morningstar uttered a soft moan, lurched forward in her chair, and slumped down onto the tabletop. Narbondo’s image fled back into the mirror, the candle flame guttered and went out, and the room was loud with sounds echoing up from Fenchurch Street and from the tavern below.

  Mother Laswell was aware of a church bell tolling as she heaved herself to her feet by an effort of will. She cast the curtain aside and staggered to the decorated cabinet where she vomited into the basin.

  FOURTEEN

  ON THE PILGRIMS ROAD

  As St. Ives had been warned, the road was nothing at first but an expanded footpath, just wide enough to accommodate the wagon and rutted by spring rains – hard on a bad wheel, certainly. St. Ives watched anxiously ahead, looking out for a sign that the road was “opening up.” Although Narbondo was a fiend in human form, he told himself, he hadn’t the power to make his wagon fly, nor could he be certain that he was pursued. They would have to be subtle, however. Narbondo wouldn’t hesitate to harm Eddie.

  St. Ives wondered exactly what he meant by the idea of subtlety. He could hope for no element of surprise if Narbondo’s wagon were broken down on the side of the road. The man would either scurry off into the underbrush like a stoat, which wasn’t likely, especially with Eddie in tow, or else he would threaten to kill Eddie, which he would do without hesitation, if only as a last, triumphant act. St. Ives would have to shoot him without preamble. It was far better to confront him in Gravesend, where they could hide in plain sight in the crowds.

  The land along the roadside became more wooded, and they passed beneath enormous oaks and beeches, which gave them a few moments’ grateful shade. Dense scrublands rose away on either side, with now and then an overgrown footpath angling away, but with no sign of human habitation. Away to their left, a kestrel hovered thirty feet above the ground, it
s underside a beautiful, spotted chestnut brown, its eye on a mouse or some other small creature. It plummeted suddenly, and in a moment flew skyward again and into a nearby copse.

  The land grew hilly, and the occasional chance of seeing some distance ahead gave St. Ives a brief respite from the recurring, dark labors of his mind. There was little to see, however, aside from more hills and scrub and the empty road. He realized that Hasbro was endeavoring to interest him in a pasty now, but he waved it away. The hope and enthusiasm he had felt at the Queen’s Rest had once again abdicated.

  “Regret kills the appetite, I find,” he said.

  Hasbro nodded. “It was a wise thing that you told young Finn, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so, when he carried his own measure of regret. Self-blame pays a shabby return.”

  “If there was wisdom in anything I told the boy,” St. Ives said, “it was a pittance. I’ve lost any claim on that commodity. The boy was nearly unhinged, however. I saw it at once. If only he had come up to the house and awakened me! Things would have gone differently for all of us, I can tell you. But he did not, which decision I quite understand in both my mind and my heart, although that understanding is worth precious little. As for my part in it, I neglected to tell Finn that Narbondo was in the neighborhood, which is far the greater of the two crimes, an omission that I cannot forgive nor understand. My regret at leaving Eddie and Cleo unprotected is…” He shook his head and left the rest to silence.

  There were more tracks leading away from the main road now, which was at last becoming a proper road, certainly smoother, although still dusty. The improvement would serve Narbondo equally well, of course. A partridge ambled out from one of the side paths, nearly under the wheels of the wagon, but then beat its wings and retreated again. There was the smell of vegetation, and the morning was quiet save for the sound of the wagon.

  After a moment Hasbro said, “I’ve often found, sir, that grief and regret are much like the loaves and the fishes, although in a contrary sense, if you will. Those two humors reproduce themselves, sewing discord in the heart and mind.”

  “You’re in the right of it there,” St. Ives said.

  “A well turned out pasty, sir, is worth a great deal more than an entire hamper of either.”

  St. Ives found himself smiling, and took the pasty from Hasbro, who, he knew, would carry on in this persuasive manner until he had his way. He bit into it, and was moderately happy with his decision.

  “Look aloft!” he shouted, nearly flinging the pasty away into the brush in his excitement. Far overhead to the east, perhaps over the Thames itself, flew an airship, an immensely long cylindrical balloon, pointed on either end. St. Ives snatched the brass telescope from the open luggage behind him and brought it into focus. There was no gondola beneath, but rather a row of four swing-like seats hanging from netting draped over the entire ship. Four tiny figures sat in the seats, each of them rowing the air with long sweeps, although they seemed to make no headway at all. It appeared as if they were dwindling, in fact, making rapid leeway on a current of wind blowing out of the south, so that they were bound for Scotland although the nose was pointed toward Sheerness. He watched until the air vessel was a mere insect moving in the blue sky, a very beautiful insect indeed, although utterly inefficient. He longed to be aloft in a craft of his own, and would be soon enough. He imagined landing in the field at the farm, Alice and Cleo coming out onto the veranda and running toward them. He and Eddie stepping out onto the grass.

  “They appear to lack motive power,” Hasbro said.

  “Indeed they do. One cannot swim through the air, although fools keep trying. I pray they can bring it down somewhere safely. They’re badly in need of William Keeble and his miniaturized electric motor, if they want a truly dirigible balloon. I’ll just help myself to another of these pasties.”

  He was swallowing the first mouthful when two men stepped out onto the road a good distance ahead, as if to block their progress.

  “Hold up!” someone shouted in that same moment, in the voice of a sea captain out-hollering a storm. It was neither of the two ahead. St. Ives looked over his shoulder and discovered that two more men sat on horseback behind them. He recognized them immediately, even at a distance – Fred and George from the Queen’s Rest. It occurred to him that they must have set out soon after he and Hasbro had departed. George waved cheerfully. For a moment St. Ives was confounded, and he very nearly waved a greeting back. Then he saw that Fred held a pistol, exhibiting it now for St. Ives’s edification.

  The muddle cleared and he understood: all had been a lie. They had been practiced upon, led down the garden path. He swiveled around and looked at the two men in the road ahead. One, a big man with long, unkempt hair, held a truncheon, and the other secreted his hand in his coat, which might or might not mean something. Their own pistols were in the portmanteau behind them. He added stupidity to the day’s list of his manifold criminal offenses, noting that the big man must be close to seven feet tall – twenty stone if he weighed an ounce, his black hair hanging past his shoulders, his beard equally lengthy. Hasbro drove the wagon forward very slowly, the distance of their enemies shortening both before and behind, and no escape on either side, unless they meant to burrow into the shrubbery.

  “It’s Fred and George, from the Queen’s Rest,” St. Ives said. “We’ve been duped. The pistols?”

  “On top the rest,” Hasbro told him. “I took the liberty of loading them. I suggest that I endeavor to run the two ahead down, sir, so perhaps you’ll attend to our friends along behind.”

  “Say the word,” St. Ives said, as they moved into the shade of an oak that arched over the road like an immense umbrella.

  “Now,” Hasbro said, whipping up the horse at the same moment. St. Ives twisted on the seat, the lurching of the wagon nearly throwing him off, and clutched at the portmanteau, which he tore open, reaching inside and closing his hand upon the pistols, one of which he thrust into Hasbro’s outstretched hand. There was a heavy thud on the bed of the wagon, and he was shocked to see a man crouching upon it, having dropped from a tree limb, his hat tied under his chin. The man was grinning at him, a knife in his hand, but trying to keep his balance on the moving wagon. St. Ives flung himself forward, onto the wagon bed, lunging straight at the man, who stepped forward, although off-balance with surprise.

  St. Ives felt the wagon slow, Hasbro perhaps not keen on pitching him off into the gorse. Clutching the grip of his pistol with both hands, St. Ives fired a shot straight past the knife wielder’s head in the direction of the two men on horseback, who, seeing him take hasty aim, reined in and yanked their horses aside from the path. Without pause he struck the man before him hard on the side of the face with his weighted fist, simultaneously blocking a knife thrust with his forearm. The man grunted audibly and slammed down onto his back, although he saved himself from tumbling off the rear of the wagon and held onto the knife. He was endeavoring to heave himself to a sitting position even as St. Ives grabbed the wagon’s side for balance and hit him again on his open, leering mouth with the butt of the pistol, blood spraying, the force of the blow pitching the man over backward, knife flying, his upper body disappearing from sight behind the wagon, although he held on tenaciously with his knees to the low railing at the back of the bed.

  St. Ives saw that George and Fred were riding up hard behind them again, Fred holding his own pistol aloft, trying to move in close in order to make the shot count, although George, not apparently a skilled horseman, was encumbering him. St. Ives grasped his assailant’s foot, levered him upward, and dumped him onto the road, where he struck his head and sprawled out, bouncing once before being run down by George’s horse, which stumbled and fell forward onto its knees, pitching George off into the scrub along the road. Fred came along gamely, his pistol held aloft, but turned shy and veered away down a side path when St. Ives found his balance again, leveled his own pistol at him, and blew the hat off his head.

  There was a general shouting a
head of them now, and St. Ives heard a gunshot. He threw his arms in front of his face in the moment that the bullet blew a splinter of wood out of the edge of the wagon bed, the splinter tearing through his coat and shirtsleeve, taking flesh with it, although he scarcely felt the wound. He knelt on the wagon bed, seeing that his current assailant stood just ahead in the road with his legs spread, aiming his smoking pistol carefully. The big man stood farther on, the truncheon held in his grasp, his arm upraised. Clearly he meant to strike the horse if the wagon came on. The forward momentum would double the force of the blow. That would surely end it.

  “Rein up!” St. Ives shouted at Hasbro, and he aimed the pistol at the giant, but then swung his arm slightly and shot the man with the gun, who slammed over backward onto the road, a lucky shot if ever there was one.

  The wagon bounced over the body of the fallen man as St Ives turned back and fired a shot at Fred, who had ridden close upon them again, and who was half hidden in the rising dust. Fred instantly pulled back on the reins, clutching his shoulder, his pistol sailing away. The wagon bounced again, the body flopping down in a heap, and St. Ives turned to see the giant rushing upon them, the truncheon upraised, straight up the center of the road. His face was set with a blind rage, and he was roaring, his mouth wide.