City of Shadows

Chapter 44

1 December 1888, London

Liam kept his eyes shut. The white mist of chaos space no longer held him in thrall; it wasn’t a Heaven-like magical white wilderness any more but a place that increasingly unsettled him. He’d seen shapes out there so faintly that he couldn’t begin to determine whether they had a certain form or not. They flitted like wraiths, like sharks circling ever closer. Or perhaps his eyes or his mind were playing tricks with an utterly blank canvas. Perhaps it was his imagination. But then hadn’t Sal said she’d seen them too?

His solitary limbo in chaos space couldn’t end soon enough.

A moment later he felt his feet make a soft landing.

Soft, and sinking.

‘Whuh?’

And sinking.

He tried to pull a foot out of whatever gunk he was gradually sinking into, and lost his balance. His hands reached out in front of him, bracing for a face-first impact with the sludge, but brushed past something firm. He grabbed at it.

It felt like wood. A spar of damp wood, coated in a slime that he nearly lost his grip on.

‘Liam?’

‘Rashim?’

It was dark and foggy and cold. But he could make out Rashim’s faint outline. ‘I think there’s been a mis-transmission. We’re out on some sort of mudbank.’

‘No… I think it’s low tide.’ There could have been some small offset miscalculation that had dropped them several yards to one side. In this case further into the river. It could have been worse. High tide for instance.

‘Bob, you there?’

‘Affirmative,’ his deep voice rumbled out of the fog.

Liam held tightly on to the wooden spar. He wasn’t sinking any more. He pulled one foot out of the glutinous mud with a sucking sound coming from the silt. ‘There’s a wooden post here, hold on to it. You can use it to pull yourself out of the mud.’

‘That is not necessary,’ Bob replied.

‘We’re not actually in the mud,’ said Rashim. ‘We’re standing on what appears to be a wooden-slat walkway.’

The fog thinned and he saw them both several yards away, standing on a creaking, rickety wooden jetty. Quite dry.

Liam realized there must have been a small error in Rashim’s calculation of his mass. Then again, not necessarily Rashim’s fault. He’d eaten a small bag of pecan doughnuts just half an hour ago. That might possibly have altered his mass enough to cause a deviation from where he was supposed to be.

Rashim had actually cautioned them all not to eat just before a jump. Liam cursed his carelessness.

Only got yourself to blame, greedy guts.

He muttered as he took several sinking, teetering, laboured steps towards them through the silt and pulled himself up on to the jetty to join them. His legs dangled over the side and he attempted to kick the largest clumps of foul-smelling gunk off his boots.

‘Information: the translation was offset by fourteen feet and three inches,’ said Bob.

Rashim nodded. ‘We should let Maddy know when we get back. She’ll need to recalibrate the spatial attributor.’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Liam. ‘It was three doughnuts that are to blame.’

‘Ahh… now, yes, I did warn you, Liam,’ said Rashim.

Liam got up off the damp wood, most of the cloying mud shaken off. He grinned in the dark at him. ‘Lesson learned.’ He took in the freezing mist all around them. ‘So this is Victorian London, is it?’

‘Affirmative, Liam.’

‘Yes… Liam. Say yes, not affirmative.’ He picked out the dark mountain of Bob’s back and slapped it gently. ‘You’re never going to get your head around that, are you?’

‘That particular speech file appears to be resistant to replacement.’

‘Should we not proceed?’ Rashim interrupted.

‘Hmmm, you’re right,’ said Liam. ‘Let’s find some solid ground.’

They followed the jetty until it widened and finally terminated on firm shingle at the base of a slime-encrusted stone wall. A high-tide line marked the top of the slime halfway up, and it was mist-damp stonework the rest of the way. The pinhole image they’d gathered earlier had shown this jetty wall. The mist hadn’t been here then. And there were the steps they’d spotted in the image. A dozen slippery, narrow stone steps up the side of the jetty wall.

At the top Liam looked around. A carpet of mist covered the river below like a wispy layer of virgin snow, dusted silvery blue by a quarter-moon. He saw the humps of river barges emerge from the mist, topped with pilots’ cabins like isolated stubby lighthouses rising from a milky sea. The milky sea itself seemed to stir with life; he watched enormous dark phantoms loom through the river mist, like those ever-circling wraiths in chaos space — shadows cast by fleeting clouds chasing each other across the moonlit sky.

The other two joined him.

‘It’s so dark,’ said Rashim.

Liam nodded. Compared to New York, compared to whatever future cities Rashim must be used to, it must seem like some medieval netherworld.

Dark, yes, but punctuated by a thousand pinpricks of faint amber light: gas lamps behind dirty windows, candles behind tattered net curtains. They were standing in a cobblestone square. On one side there appeared to be a brick warehouse or small factory.

They heard something heavy rumbling, rattling across the river, and turned round to look across the carpet of mist. It was then Liam noticed the arches and support stanchions of a broad, low bridge.

‘According to my data that is Blackfriars Bridge,’ said Bob.

Not so far beyond it another bridge… and the toot of a steam whistle confirmed what Liam suspected. It was a train crossing the river to their side. He could just about make out the faintest row of amber lights on the move — lamps in each carriage.

‘My God!’ whispered Rashim. ‘Is that a… a steam train?’

‘Aye.’

‘We should proceed towards our target destination,’ said Bob.

He was right. Liam would rather be back here for Maddy’s scheduled window than have to flap his hands around like an idiot hoping for one. There was no knowing how good their temporary set-up back in 2001 was at picking up hand signals.

‘We must head north,’ said Bob, pointing towards a narrow street.

They made their way up the street, dark and quiet. It curved to the left and a hundred yards up at the end it joined a much broader street. They could hear it was busy even before they stepped out of their dark side street. The distinctive clop-clop-clop of shoed horses, the warning honk of a bulb horn, the rattle of iron-rimmed coach wheels. They emerged on to a broad street lit on either side with stout wrought-iron lamps, twelve feet tall, that spilled broad pools of amber illumination across a wide thoroughfare busy with horse-drawn carriages and carts.

‘My God!’ whispered Rashim. ‘I never imagined it would be quite so busy!’

‘It’s only ten,’ said Liam, pointing to a clock on a nearby building. ‘People stay up even later in my hometown, Cork.’

He stopped himself from correcting that. Not his hometown… of course. But it was a constant, unsettling inconvenience for him and the girls, continually self-correcting statements like that, that he’d finally stopped giving a damn about it. As Maddy had told him, It doesn’t matter if they’re second-hand memories, Liam — we ARE the sum of what we remember. And that’s how I’m dealing with this.

Denial. It was as good a way as any of dealing with the knowledge that your whole life was a lie.

‘This is really quite fantastic,’ Rashim uttered.

‘Glad you like it. Which way now, Bob?’

‘This is Farringdon Street.’ He pointed up the busy thoroughfare. At the far end a low bridge arched over the wide street. Along the top of it were glowing orbs of light of a different colour, more of a pale amber, almost a vanilla colour. And a steadier, more resilient glow than the occasionally flickering, shifting illumination coming from the gas lamps.

‘And that is the Holborn Viaduct.’

‘Those lights…?’ Liam nodded at them.

‘Affirmative,’ replied Bob. ‘They are electric lights.’

The three of them picked their way up the broad pavement on the left-hand side of Farringdon Street. It was busy with pedestrians, a mixture of smartly dressed gentlemen and ladies taking the air after a show, and costermongers and hucksters of various goods packing up and making their way home for the night.

‘Come on! Make way there, lads!’ barked a thick-shouldered man with a handcart laden with pigs’ heads and trotters as he pushed his way past them.

An elegantly dressed woman walking with a whippet-thin man in a top hat curled her lips in disapproval as the cart wheeled past her. ‘Oh really!’ she muttered.

Liam and Rashim shared a grin. The noises, the smells — the acrid smell of burning coke, horse manure, the sight of such churning, shoulder-to-shoulder life — seemed reassuring, life-affirming. After all that time alone in the abandoned school it felt good to be back among so many people.

Liam caught the faintest whiff of it first: the smell of coffee beans roasting in a skillet. Parked up in the dirt at the side of the road was a large four-wheeled cart. Wooden steps unfolded down on to the pavement invited them up to a wooden deck where several tables and stools were occupied by gentlemen and ladies taking coffee and a slice of cake. At one end of the cart a woman and a man in aprons were serving cups of freshly roasted coffee from large tin urns that steamed over small skillets. Candles lit the small tables. Mini oil lamps were strung across the top, like Christmas lights.

‘Just wait till Maddy sees that,’ Liam laughed. ‘A horse-drawn Starbucks!’

A few minutes later they were standing beneath the viaduct, looking up at the thick ribs of glossy green-painted iron arching across the broad street. Overhead, alongside the road that crossed over the viaduct, the orbs of electric light at the top of tall iron lampstands bloomed proudly.

‘London’s first public, electric-powered street lights.’ Liam nodded approvingly. ‘Not bad.’

‘We have used half an hour of our allotted time,’ said Bob.

Liam stopped gawking at the lights and turned his attention to life beneath the viaduct. The underbelly was a row of hexagonal stone columns on either side of the street from which the arches of iron branched out to meet each other. On both sides of Farringdon Street there were pedestrian walkways lit by yet more electric globes. The walkways were flanked by stone columns on one side and rows of brickwork archways on the other, each archway seemingly occupied by one sort of business or other.

As they watched, on the far side of the busy street the thick oak doors of one of the archways swung open and several men worked together, rolling casks of beer out, across the pavement and on to a flat-backed cart.

Liam craned his neck to get a better look through the open doors to the interior beyond. He could see archways and alcoves, all seemingly stuffed with barrels, crates and boxes of all different sizes.

‘Let’s go over and get a better look,’ he said. They crossed Farringdon Street, dodging and ducking between horse-drawn vehicles that showed no intention of stopping or slowing for them.

Closer, Liam watched the three men working quickly, furtively even, as they loaded the cart up. ‘Stay here,’ he said then made a show of looking casual, whistling tunelessly as he strolled past the wide-open oak doors. He paused. Ducked down on to one knee and made as if he had a bootlace that needed tying up, all the while craning his neck to see through the open doors, getting a glimpse of the receding maze of archways and alcoves inside.

‘Hoy!’

He turned to find one of the men standing over him.

‘Hoy there! You get enough of a look inside, did ya?’

‘I… was, I’m just…’ Liam stood up.

‘Pokin’ ya nose in where it’s likely to get broken!’ A thought suddenly occurred to the man and he grabbed Liam’s arm roughly. ‘You a snitch for them bluebottles? Is that it? For the bleedin’ coppers?’

The man was short and tubby, with owlish bug eyes that bulged beneath wiry brows. Liam found himself looking down at him. He suspected the little chap was actually tougher than he looked — that or he was all bluster.

‘What? No! I’m… just… I’m…’

‘Cos I’ll get me lad, Bertie, to shank you good if you — ’

‘Actually,’ replied Liam, ‘I’m looking for business premises.’

‘Business premises? Likely story!’

The stocky man turned to look at Rashim approaching to help Liam out. He did an almost comical double-take at Rashim’s dark skin. ‘Good God!’ he blurted. ‘You with this lad?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course I am.’

Rashim’s carefully enunciated, alien-sounding English seemed to impress, or perhaps intimidate, the stocky man. He cocked his head as if flexing a stiff neck. ‘Well, all right, then.’

The man released his grip on Liam’s arm. ‘He your boy?’

Rashim’s eyes met Liam’s and he struggled to stifle an amused smile. ‘No, not really.’

‘I’m not anyone’s boy,’ sniffed Liam indignantly. ‘We’re uh… we’re business partners, so we are.’

The stocky man pulled a face. ‘Business partners, is it?’

‘Uh… yes, he’s quite right,’ said Rashim.

‘We want to rent one of these… archway places.’ Liam glanced at the open doorway. The other two men had finished loading the last cask on to the cart and one of them climbed up on to the running board and coaxed the horses to life. Their hooves clattered on stone and the wagon pulled away.

‘You seem to have a lot of space inside there,’ said Liam. ‘Could we rent a bit?’

‘Well, what I got inside ain’t none of your beeswax, lad!’

Bob emerged out of the gloom. ‘Are you OK, Liam?’ he asked, striding towards the stocky man. His voice reverberated beneath the iron and stone viaduct. A deep boom that made heads on the other side of Farringdon Street turn their way. A lamb shank of a hand reached out and grabbed one of the man’s upper arms in a vice-like grip. The stocky man’s bulging eyes widened still further. He looked like a tree frog in a waistcoat.

‘Oh, I’m all right, Bob.’ Liam grinned at the man. ‘There’s no harm done.’

‘Bertie!’ the man gulped, alarmed at the giant looming over him. ‘ Bertie! Get over here and help me!’

His colleague, ‘Bertie’, took one look at Bob and then backed up several steps into the gloom.

‘Can we not just have a little talk?’ asked Liam. ‘If you’ve got a spare room somewhere in there? Or perhaps you know of anybody else who does? That’s all.’

‘We have money,’ added Rashim. ‘We could pay a very generous rent.’

The man gulped, looking more like a toad than a frog now. ‘Generous rent, eh?’

‘Aye,’ said Liam. ‘Bob? Why don’t you let this nice gentleman’s arm go before you crush it to a pulp?’

‘As you wish.’ Bob loosened his grip and the man snatched his arm free, flexed his neck again and straightened his ruffled waistcoat indignantly.

‘Well.’ His bug eyes remained warily on Bob. ‘I suppose a little talk won’t hurt no one.’