第 38 页

It was an impasse. “Now what’s our course?” asked Mallory grimly. “Swim?”

“Never!” Brian shouted, his eyes reddened and wild. “Scale the walls, then?”

“We can’t,” Tom groaned, with a hopeless look at the slimy pilings. “We can scarcely breathe!”

“I wouldn’t wash my hands in that damn water!” Brian cried. “And my hands are caked in stinking muck!”

“Stow it!” Fraser said. “Swing’s men will hear you sure. If they catch us down here, we’ll be shot like dogs! Stow it, and let me think!”

“My God, the Stink!” Brian cried, ignoring him. He seemed near panic. “It’s worse than a transport—worse than a Russki trench! Christ Jesus, I saw ’em bury week-old pieces of Russki at Inkermann, and that smelled better than this!”

“Knife it!” Fraser whispered. “I hear something.”

Footsteps. The tramp of a group of men, coming nearer. “They’ve got us,” Fraser said in sharp desperation, gazing up the sheer wall and putting a hand to his pistol. “Our number’s up—sell your lives dear, lads!”

But in one moment—a series of instants shaved so thin as to be normally useless to the human mind—inspiration blew through Mallory like a gust of Alpine wind.

“Don’t,” he commanded the others, in a voice of iron conviction. “Don’t look up. Do as I do!”

Mallory began to sing a chantey, loudly, drunkenly.

“ ‘At Santiago love is kind,

And we’ll forget those left behind—

So kiss us long, and kiss us well,

Polly and Meg and Kate and Nell—’ ”

“C’ mon, you lads!” he urged cheerily, with a boozy wave of his arm. Tom and Brian, direly puzzled, chimed in the chorus, faltering and belated.

“ ‘Farewell, farewell, you jolly young girls,

We’re off to Rio Bay!’ ”

“Next verse!” Mallory crowed.

“ ‘At Vera Cruz the days are fine,

Farewell to Jane and Caroline …’ ”

“Ahoy!” came a brusque shout from the top of the wall. Mallory glanced up, in feigned surprise, to see foreshortened bodies. Half-a-dozen marauders were looming over them, rifles slung over their backs. The speaker crouched at the top of the pilings, his head and face swathed in kerchiefs of knotted silk paisley. He held a gleaming, long-barreled pistol, with seeming carelessness, across his knee. His trousers, of white duck, looked immaculate.

“Ahoy the shore!” Mallory shouted, craning his neck. He flung his arms wide in jovial greeting, and almost toppled backward. “How might we be o’ service to you flash gentlemen?”

“Here’s a conundrum!” the leader announced, in the elaborate tone of a man casting pearls of wit before swine. “Just how very lushed, how utterly well-pissed indeed, can four London pigeons be?” He raised his voice. “Can’t you smell that dreadful stench down there?”

“Surely!” Mallory said. “But we want to see the India Docks!”

“Why?” The word was cold.

Mallory laughed harshly. “Because it’s full of things we want, ain’t it? Stands to reason, don’t it?”

“Things like clean linen?” said one of the other men. There was laughter, mixed with grunts and coughing.

Mallory laughed too, and slapped his naked chest. “Why not! Can you lads help us? Throw us down a rope or the like!”

The leader’s eyes narrowed between his paisley wraps, and he tightened his grip on the pistol-butt. “You’re no sailor! A jack-tar never says ‘rope.’ Rather, he always says ‘line’!”

“What’s it to you, what I am?” Mallory shouted, scowling up at the man. “Throw us a rope! Or a ladder! Or a bleeding balloon! Or else go to hell!”

“Jolly right!” Tom chimed in, his voice shaking. “Who needs you lot, anyway!”

The leader turned, his men vanishing with him. “Hurry up!” Mallory bellowed, as a parting shot. “You can’t keep all that fancy swag to yourselves, you know!”

Brian shook his head. “Jesus, Ned,” he whispered. “This is a damn tight pinch!”

“We’ll pass as looters,” Mallory said quietly. “We’ll pose as drunken rascals, primed for any kind of mischief! We’ll join their ranks, and make our way to Swing!”

“What if they ask us questions, Ned?”

“Act stupid.”

“Halloo!” came a shrill voice from above.

“What’s that?” Mallory cried roughly, looking up. It was a masked and scrawny boy of fifteen years or so, balanced atop the pilings with a rifle in his hands.

“Lord Byron’s dead!” the boy yelled.

Mallory was dumbstruck.

Tom shrilled out in the silence. “Who says he is?”

“It’s true! Old bastard’s kicked the bucket, he’s dead as mutton!” The boy laughed in giddy delight, and capered along the edge of the pilings with his rifle waggling over his head. He vanished with a leap.

Mallory found his voice. “Surely not.”

“No,” Fraser agreed.

“Not likely, anyway.”

“Wishful thinking on the part of these anarchists,” Fraser suggested.

There was a long, empty silence.

“Of course,” Mallory said, tugging his beard, “if the Great Orator truly is dead, then that means …” Words failed him in a foundering rush of confusion, but the others watched Mallory for guidance, silent and expectant. “Well …,” Mallory said, “the death of Byron would mark the end of an age of greatness!”

“It needn’t mean much at all,” Fraser objected, his voice under firm control. “There are many men of great talent in the Party. Charles Babbage yet lives! Lord Colgate, Lord Brunel … the Prince Consort for instance. Prince Albert is a sound and thoughtful man.”

“Lord Byron can’t be dead!” Brian burst out. “We’re standing in stinking mud, believing a stinking lie!”

“Quiet!” Mallory commanded. “We’ll simply have to suspend any judgment on this matter until we have firm evidence!”

“Ned’s right,” nodded Tom. “The Prime Minister would have wanted it that way! That’s the scientific method. That was what Lord Byron always taught us….”

A thick, tarred rope, its end knotted in a fat noose, came snaking down the wall. The anarchist lieutenant—the dainty man with the paisley kerchiefs—posed one bent leg atop the wall, with his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand. “Put your arse in that, my friend,” he suggested, “and we’ll hoist you up in a trice!”

“I thank you kindly!” Mallory said. He waved with cheery confidence and stepped into the noose.

When the tug came, he braced his mud-caked shoes against the slick and nasty timbers, and stamped his way up, and over the top.

The leader tossed the emptied noose back down, with a kid-gloved hand. “Welcome, sir, to the august company of the vanguard of mankind. Permit me, under the circumstances, to introduce myself. I am the Marquess of Hastings.” The self-styled Marquess bowed slightly, then struck a pose, chin cocked, one gloved fist poised on his hip.

Mallory saw that the fellow was in earnest.

The title of Marquess was a relic from the years before the Rads, yet here was a young pretender of some sort, a living fossil, alive and in command of this vipers’ crew! Mallory could scarcely have been more startled to see a young plesiosaur lift its snaky head from the depths of the stinking Thames.

“Lads,” drawled the young Marquess, “pour some of that cologne over our pungent friend! If he does anything stupid, you know what to do.”

“Shoot him?” someone blurted, idiotically.

The Marquess winced elaborately—an actor’s gesture indicating a breach of taste. A boy in a stolen copper’s helmet and a ripped silk shirt slopped chill cologne from a cut-glass bottle over Mallory’s bare neck and back.

Brian rose next, at the end of the rope. “Those are soldier’s trousers, under that muck,” the Marquess observed. “Absent without leave, comrade?”

Brian shrugged mutely.

“Enjoying your little holiday in London?”

Brian nodded like a fool.

“Give this filthy personage new trousers,” the Marquess commanded. He looked about his little troupe of six, who were once again lowering the line with the clumsy enthusiasm of a May Day tug-o’-war. “Comrade Shillibeer! You’re about this man’s size—give him your trousers.”

“Aw, but Comrade Markiss—”

“To each according to his needs, Comrade Shillibeer! Doff the garment at once.”

Shillibeer climbed clumsily out of his trousers and proffered them up. He wore no undergarments, and he tugged nervously at his shirt-tails with one hand.

“For heaven’s sake,” the Marquess said quizzically, “must I tell you sheepish dullards every little thing?” He pointed sharply to Mallory. “You! Take Shillibeer’s place and haul that line. You, soldier—no longer the oppressor’s minion, but a man entirely free!—put on Shillibeer’s trousers. Comrade Shillibeer, quit that wriggling. You have nothing of which to be ashamed. You may go at once to the general depot for fresh garments.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“ ‘Comrade,’ ” the Marquess corrected. “Get something nice, Shillibeer. And bring more cologne.”

Tom came up next, Mallory helping with the heaving. The bandits were badly hampered by their clattering, poorly slung rifles. These were general-issue Victoria carbines, heavy single-shot relics now consigned to native troops in the Colonies. The rioters were rendered yet more clumsy by fearsome kitchen-knives and home-made truncheons, stuffed at random into their looted finery. They wore gaudy scarves, sweaty silks, Army bandoliers, and more resembled Turkish bashi-bazouks than any kind of Briton. Two of them were scarcely more than boys, while another pair were thickset, lumpish, thievish rascals, sodden with drink. The last, to Mallory’s continued surprise, was a slender, silent Negro, in the quiet dress of a gentleman’s valet.

The Marquess of Hastings examined Tom. “What is your name?”

“Tom, sir.”

The Marquess pointed. “What’s his name?”

“Ned.”

“And him?”

“Brian,” Tom said. “I think …”

“And what, pray, is the name of that grim-looking cove below, looking so awfully much like a copper?”

Tom hesitated.

“Don’t you know?”

“He never gave us any proper name,” Mallory broke in. “We just call him the Reverend.”

The Marquess glared at Mallory.

“We only met the Reverend today, sir,” Tom apologized glibly. “We ain’t what you’d call bosom pals.”

“Suppose we leave him down there, then,” the Marquess suggested.

“Haul him up,” Mallory countered. “He’s clever.”

“Oh? And what of you, Comrade Ned? You’re not half so stupid as you pretend, it seems. And you’re not very drunk.”

“Then give me a drink,” Mallory said boldly. “And I could do with one of them carbines too, if you’re divvying loot.”

The Marquess took note of Mallory’s pistol, then cocked his masked head and winked, as if they were sharing a joke.

“All things in time, my eager friend,” he said. He waved his neat gloved hand. “Very well. Haul him.”

Fraser rose within the noose. “So, ‘Reverend,’ ” said the Marquess, “what, pray, might be your denomination?”

Fraser shook the rope loose and stepped out. “What do you think, guv’nor? I’m a bleedin’ Quaker!”

There was evil laughter. Fraser, pretending a loutish pleasure at the others’ fun, shook his gingham-masked head. “No,” he rasped, “no Quaker I, for I’m a Panty-sucker!”

The laughter stopped short.

“Panty-sucker,” Fraser insisted, “one o’ them yellow-back Yankee ranters—”

The Marquess broke in with chill precision. “A Pantisocrat, do you mean? That is to say, a lay preacher of the Susquehanna Phalanstery?”

Fraser stared dumbly at the Marquess.

“I refer to the utopian doctrines of Professor Coleridge and Reverend Wordsworth,” the Marquess persisted, with gentle menace.

“Right,” Fraser grunted, “one o’ them.”

“That seems to be a copper’s sling and pistol that you carry, my pacifistic Pantisocrat friend.”

“Got it from a copper, didn’t I?” He paused. “A dead’un!”

There was laughter again, broken with coughs and grunts.

The boy standing next to Mallory elbowed one of the older louts. “This Stink’s turning me head, Henry! Can’t we hook it?”

“Ask the Marquess,” Henry said.

“You ask ’im,” the boy wheedled, “he always makes such fun o’ me….”

“Harken, now!” said the Marquess. “Jupiter and I shall escort the new recruits to the general depot. The rest of you shall continue shore patrol.”

The remaining four groaned in dissent.

“Don’t deviate,” the Marquess chided, “you know that all the comrades get a turn at river-duty, same as you.”

The Marquess, followed closely by the Negro, Jupiter, led the way along the embankment. It astonished Mallory that the fellow would turn his back on four armed strangers, an act of either arrant foolishness or sublimely careless bravery.

Mallory traded silent glances, full of meaning, with Tom, Brian, and Fraser. All four still bore their weapons, the anarchists having not even troubled to confiscate them. It would be the work of moments to shoot their guide in the back, and perhaps the Negro too, though the black was unarmed. A vile business, though, striking from behind, though perhaps a necessity of war. But the others were shifting itchily as they walked, and Mallory realized that they looked to him to do the deed. This venture had become his, now, and even Fraser had bet his life on the fortunes of Edward Mallory.

Mallory edged forward, matching his stride with that of the Marquess of Hastings. “What’s in this depot of yours, Your Lordship? A deal of fine loot, I should hope.”

“A deal of fine hope, my looting friend! But never you mind that. Tell me this, Comrade Ned—what would you do with loot, if you had it?”

“I suppose that might depend on what it was,” Mallory ventured.

“You’d carry it back to your rat-warren,” the Marquess surmised, “and sell it for a fraction of its worth to a fencing-Jew, and spend the lot of that on drink, to wake, in a day or two, in a filthy station-house, with a copper’s foot on your neck.”

Mallory stroked his chin. “What would you do with it, then?”

“Put it to use, of course! We shall use it in the cause of those who gave it value. By that, I mean the common-folk of London, the masses, the oppressed, the sweated labor, those who produce all the riches of this city.”

“That’s a queer sort of talk,” Mallory said.

“The revolution does not loot, Comrade Ned. We sequester, we commandeer, we liberate! You and your friends were drawn here by a few imported gewgaws. You think to carry off what your hands can clutch in a few moments. Are you men, or magpies? Why settle for a pocketful of dirty shillings? You could own London, the modern Babylon herself! You could own futurity!”

“ ‘Futurity,’ eh?” said Mallory, glancing back at Fraser. Above his gingham mask the policeman’s eyes showed unmitigated loathing.

Mallory shrugged. “How much tin will a quart of ‘futurity’ fetch, Yer Lordship?”

“I’ll thank you not to call me that,” the Marquess said sharply. “You address a veteran of popular revolution, a people’s soldier who takes pride in the simple title of ‘comrade.’ ”

“Begging your pardon, I’m sure.”

“You’re not a fool, Ned. You can’t mistake me for a Rad Lord. I’m no bourgeois meritocrat! I am a revolutionary, and a mortal enemy by blood and conviction of the Byron tyranny and all its works!”