End of the Century (16 page)

“What unity we have been able to forge is, I fear, a tenuous one. When my hour comes, will my successor be able to maintain those ties, or will they wither and fade?” He paused and shook his head, sadly. “No man can know the future, but I fear that the answer is a sad one.” He took a deep breath, straightening, and looked to starboard, at the coast of Britannia sliding by. “But our concern is today, not tomorrow. Our duty is to survive and to protect those who cannot protect themselves, and let the future worry after its own.”

It was morning, and Galaad was breaking his fast with a simple meal of dried meats and stale crusts of bread. Pryder and Gwrol sat with him, while Lugh worked the tiller and the others slept.

Pryder and Gwrol had eaten quickly, each complaining about the portions the other had taken, and then had retrieved their swords from their packs. Now, with whetstones and cloths, they tended to their blades, which flashed in the morning sunlight like lightning.

“Why do you sharpen your weapons, friends?” Galaad asked around a mouthful of stale bread.

The brothers exchanged glances and shrugged.

“Because…” Gwrol began, and then his words trailed off, as though Galaad had just asked him why they felt the need to breathe. “Because…”

Pryder shook his head at his brother, blowing air through his lips noisily.
“Because, because, because,” he parroted. He turned to Galaad. “We sharpen our blades because they needs must be sharp.”

“Oh.” Galaad nodded, thoughtfully. Then, after a pause, he said, “But why?”

Pryder sighed. “Why what?”

“Why must they be sharp?” With a sharp intake of breath, his eyes opened wide. “Do you fear an attack by Saeson?”

Gwrol chuckled, and Pryder treated him to a friendly, if somewhat patronizing smile.

“There are more things to fear in this world than the Saeson, my young friend,” Pryder said.

“Not that we fear the Saeson,” Gwrol added quickly, chest puffed with pride.

“No, indeed.” Pryder nodded. “Still and all, our potential enemies are many, and not all fight under the same banner.”

Galaad was confused, as his expression made evident.

Pryder set his whetstone down on the deck and sighted along his blade. “Tomorrow, if the winds hold, we should reach Llongborth, home of Geraint, king of half Dumnonia.”

“Or should that be ‘half-king' of Dumnonia?” Gwrol said, snickering.

Pryder shot him a sharp glance. “Do you mind stilling that babbling tongue of yours, if only for a moment? The boy and I are trying to have a conversation here.”

Gwrol pulled a face, but kept silent.

“In any event,” Pryder went on, “tomorrow we reach Llongborth. Now, Geraint is some distant relation to Artor, as I understand it, and is subject to the crown of the High King. But a study of history will show that client kings have not always shown obeisance to their masters, nor subjects to their kings. A warrior should always be on his guard, especially when abroad in some strange land…”

“And Dumnonia is stranger than most, if the boy's visions are to be believed, however unlikely,” Gwrol put in.

Pryder took a deep breath through his nostrils, closing his eyes momentarily. “Will you shut your hole?” Then he opened his eyes and continued speaking to Galaad as though no interruption had occurred. “A warrior's
blade should be as ready for combat as the warrior himself, and a blunted sword could mean the difference between life and death.” He held up his sword, a simple spatha with a pattern-welded blade and a bronze pommel. The sword's edge was notched here and there, scars of past battles, but was in otherwise excellent condition. “I don't say that I expect some treachery from our hosts. Or rather, that I always expect the possibility of treachery and gird myself appropriately. If it comes, I will be ready for it.”

Gwrol ran a whetstone down the edge of his own blade, with the hiss of stone on metal. “And you, boy? Have you no blade of your own?”

Galaad began to shake his head, then quickly scrambled to his feet. “Just a moment,” he said, and hurried to the place where they'd stored their effects. He rummaged around until he laid hands on his own bundle, then fumbled with the twine bindings until he'd got it opened. He pulled out his antique leaf-bladed sword and returned to where the brothers from Gwent sat.

“This is my sword,” Galaad said proudly, displaying the sheathed blade. “It belong to my grandfather's grandfather and has been passed from father to son since those days, finally coming into my keeping.”

Gwrol and Pryder exchanged glances, suppressing smiles.

“Do you mind?” Pryder said, sheathing his own blade and reaching out to Galaad. “Might I have a look?”

Galaad nodded, and handed the sword over.

“Well, now.” Pryder accepted the sword, glancing at Gwrol, his eye twinkling. “Your grandfather's grandfather, you say?”

Pryder examined the sheath, the leather aged and greasy.

“Buried with him, was it?” Gwrol said, grinning.

“Oh, no,” Galaad answered quickly, shaking his head, before he realized the Gwentian was jesting with him. “No,” he added, his tone firm, his lips thin, “it was not.”

“It is a…well-traveled sheath,” Pryder observed. Then, with considerable effort, he tugged the blade free and held it aloft.

Seen so soon after the flashing brightness of Pryder's spatha, Galaad's sword seemed in even poorer repair than ever. The leaf blade was black with rust and pitted with age, the leather wrapping on the hilt frayed and loose.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Pryder said, shaking his head sadly, his expression like
that of someone witnessing an unfortunate accident or an untimely death. “That's…that's just…”

“That's criminal, is what that is,” Gwrol said.

“Yes.” Pryder nodded in rare agreement with his brother. “This isn't a sword, boy. This is a relic.”

“Perhaps it should better have been buried with your grandsire after all, eh?” Gwrol reached out and, heedless of any danger, ran his finger down the length of the blade's edge. He held up his fingertip, unscathed. “It's as blunt as a baby's ass.”

“That's ‘smooth as a baby's ass,' imbecile,” Pryder said, scornfully. “But my brother is right,” he said to Galaad, and held the sword out to him. “No disrespect to your honored dead, but this thing is useless. Worse than useless, come to that, and you'd be better served swinging a stout length of wood than this crumbling antique.” Galaad took the sword by the hilt, and Pryder reached out and flicked a large flake of rust from the blade with his thumbnail. “The best use that this thing would be in a fight would be to serve as a distraction, since no opponent could bring themselves to accept the possibility that you were seriously wielding it in earnest and would likely double with laughter at the thought.”

“This is a real blade,” Gwrol said, presenting his own sword to Galaad, hilt first.

Galaad laid his leaf blade on the deck beside him and gingerly accepted Gwrol's spatha, fittingly a twin to Pryder's.

“Feel the weight of it,” Gwrol went on.

Galaad hefted the blade, which was so perfectly balanced that its apparent weight in his grip was only a fraction of what it actually weighed. He reached out a finger to touch the flat of the blade and found it surprisingly warm in the chill air, realizing only after a minute that it still bore the heat of the whetstone's friction.

“The blade should be an extension of your arm,” Pryder put in. He looked with scorn at the rusted leaf blade on the deck. “Not stand out from your hand like an overgrown scab waiting to be picked.”

Galaad's cheeks flushed red with anger and shame, and his fingers were white-knuckled around the spatha's haft.

“All joking aside, boy,” Gwrol said, “you should bury that thing with honors, and get yourself a proper sword.”

Gwrol reached out, and Galaad returned the spatha to his keeping. Giving the blade a final careful wiping with his cloth, Gwrol resheathed the blade and laid it across his lap.

“Don't worry,” Pryder said, smiling encouragingly. “When we reach Llongborth, we'll procure you a blade of your own.”

Galaad gamely tried to smile, fighting the lingering sense of humiliation. “But what if the Dumnonians prove treacherous, as you'd thought?”

“Well, then,” Gwrol said, grinning. “In that case, swords will be even easier to come by, as they'll be lying at our feet once we send their bearers off to meet God.”

Galaad found himself plagued by visions only once in the course of their journey, the scent of flowers filling his nostrils, the gloom of the night replaced by a flash of light, and then the world fell away from him and before his eyes was the White Lady and the tower of glass. Again he felt the thoughts embed themselves in his mind, the call for assistance, the plea for rescue. And washing over him, the inexorable, inexplicable sense of bliss and comfort.

And then it was gone again, as suddenly as it came. Caius at the tiller seemed not to have noticed any change in Galaad's mien or manner, and the rest of the seven were deep in their slumber, and so the vision went unremarked. But Galaad would not find sleep that night, and lay shivering in his thin blanket on the deck throughout the long cold watches of the early morning, trying desperately not to remember and proving unsuccessful.

THAT NIGHT, RETURNING TO
M
ARYLEBONE
, Blank and Miss Bonaventure enjoyed a bottle of syrah in his sitting room and recounted to one another the events of the day. It had been only a scant handful of hours since the police constable had arrived at Blank's front step and summoned them to Tower Bridge. As much as he hated to end a day with a mystery left unsolved, Blank feared it would be some time before a solution was within reach. But he would lay hands on a solution, eventually. That, he most fervently believed.

A cab was summoned and idled at the curb, waiting to carry Miss Bonaventure back to Bark Place and her own bed. Blank saw her to the door.

“And tomorrow, Miss Bonaventure?” he said, taking her hand. “Can I expect to see you in the morning, as usual?”

Miss Bonaventure's eyes fluttered. “Well, it isn't as if you could be expected to work this case all on your lonesome, is it?”

Blank quirked a smile. “I suppose not, at that.”

Miss Bonaventure tightened her fingers around his. “Blank, I'll never know just how you survived before meeting me.”

A haunted expression flitted across Blank's face, only briefly, like a dark cloud slipping in front of a full moon, only to be blown clear by winds. “That is a mystery you may never be able to solve, my dear.”

“Oh?” Miss Bonaventure's gaze darted to the stairs which led up from the
foyer. “Along with the secret of what you keep locked behind the door at the top of the stair, I take it?”

Blank's eyes narrowed, and while his smile remained on his lips, it became hollow and thin, a mask without humor behind it. “Perhaps,” he said at length, his voice strained. “Perhaps.”

Miss Bonaventure gave him a queer look but visibly resisted the temptation to look up the stairs, at the door just visible beyond the first-floor landing. Then she gave Blank's hand a shake, wished him a good night, and went out to the hansom cab waiting at the curb. As the driver helped her into the seat, Blank lingered in the open door for a moment, and then as the cab rattled away down York Place, he closed the door on the night, retreating inside, all alone with his secrets and mysteries.

That night, he received a summons from Omega. He was loath to communicate but unable to refuse. He slept little afterwards, and what little sleep he had was fitful, plagued with strange dreams and ancient memories which could not be forgot.

In the morning, the only sign of his recent distress the faint circles beneath his eyes, he drew himself a bath. As he soaked in the water, heated suitably within the gas-fired cistern in the basement, he counted the days until Quong Ti returned from China and he could return to the proper indolence of a gentleman.

After seeing to his toilet and dressing himself in his customary gray, he set out to see to the business Omega had communicated to him and was returned to his lodgings in time to greet Miss Bonaventure on her arrival, the morning's penny papers under her arm.

“I do hope I'll be able to finish the papers today, Blank. I've felt at loose ends since yesterday morning, having been forced to abandon the news of the day. Who is to say what I might have missed?”

Blank smiled and ushered her inside.

“I'm afraid your quest for knowledge in the printed page might be stymied again today, my dear.” Then, at her raised brow, he said, “I thought
we might do a bit of exploring today, in the perhaps less fashionable quarters of the city.”

Miss Bonaventure collapsed into a chair, the papers in her lap.

“Oh, no,” she said gloomily, “you want to go incognito again. Well, you can count me
out.
The last time I had to pass a few idle hours dressed as a gin-soaked vagrant for the purposes of surveillance, it took me
days
to wash the smell from my hair.”

“All right, all right,” Blank conceded, holding up his hands defensively. “I'll play the part of the vagrant this time round, if need be. But surely you can't object to the guise of a music hall performer?”

A slow smile crept across Miss Bonaventure's face, and she laid a hand on her neck, her fingers on one side, her thumb the other, as though sizing her throat. “Well, I
do
have a pleasing singing voice…”

The days that followed passed quickly. In various guises and disguises, Blank and Miss Bonaventure haunted the streets of London, the music halls and coffeehouses, the gin houses and rookeries, ferreting out any information about missing women. Of course, women went missing with alarming regularity in certain quarters, though only marginally more so than the men of their station and slightly less so than the children, and so it was disappointing but hardly surprising that, while the pair was able to produce a mountain of information, they derived from it very little in the way of intelligence.

The city, already congested, became even more tightly packed as the days wore on, and more and more people streamed into London in anticipation of Victoria's Jubilee. In the meaner sections of the city through which Blank and Miss Bonaventure moved, there was a noticeable deficit of patriotic fervor, though the police were much more in evidence than was typical.

Blank had communicated very little with New Scotland Yard since accepting the case, disregarding the urgent telegrams he received on a daily basis from Chalmers requesting updates on the status of his investigation. But while it was clear that news of the series of murders had not yet reached the fourth estate, the penny papers and their more respectable brethren likewise lacking any sensationalist headlines about the case, it was just as clear that the rank and file of the Metropolitan Police had been made well aware of the circumstances. Or, even if they lacked sufficient details, at least the constables had been informed that
something
was afoot, and that it was on their shoulders to see that it didn't interfere with the Jubilee celebrations. This was evident in the diligence with which the constables carried out their duties, scouring the streets, ever vigilant, arresting people on the mere suspicion of malfeasance, the actual commission of a crime for the moment not necessary to invite the attendant punishment.

Blank and Miss Bonaventure made their way back to Marylebone shortly before dawn, having passed the day and night in Whitechapel, hunting for news of any disappearances which might correspond with the appearance of the as yet anonymous murder victims. As had become a pattern in their investigations, they had found ample evidence of foul play in any number of disappearances, but sadly none that conformed to the details of the case at hand. They made their way through the still-dark morning, forced to walk since, given the state of their adopted clothing and the early hour, they'd have been hard pressed to convince a driver to accept their custom. As they walked, Miss Bonaventure expressed the desire to solve all of the evident crimes the evidence for which they'd stumbled upon in the days previous, if they had only the time and resources to do so, and Blank allowed that there were times when it seemed too grave an injustice to bear that he had to pass over so many crimes committed against those least able to protect themselves in pursuing the interests of those with power and prestige at their command. Many were the times that, singly or in concert, Blank and Miss Bonaventure had taken up the interests of the city's less fortunate souls, but it always seemed that, like Sisyphus and his rock, no matter how hard or how long they pushed, the rock simply kept coming crashing back down.

Finally, they rounded the corner of York Place and approached Blank's home. There, in the street before his door, they saw positioned a laundry van, a pair of well-traveled sway-backed nags between the traces. A quartet of Orientals,
Chinese by their look, was wrestling a pair of wicker baskets to the door of the type used to transport soiled laundry away and to return cleaned and pressed clothing and linens, two men to each basket.

Blank and Miss Bonaventure paused at the corner, as yet unseen in the dim predawn twilight.

“I didn't know that you employed a Chinese launderer, Blank.”

“I don't,” Blank answered, evenly. “And if I did, I can scarcely imagine generating that amount of work for him.” He allowed himself a sly smile. “Let us see how this plays out, shall we?”

Blank offered Miss Bonaventure his elbow, and then with her arm linked through his they continued up the street towards his door. As the pair approached, the quartet of laundrymen did not pause in their labors, giving every appearance of struggling under heavy loads, not speaking and not raising their eyes. Despite their best efforts, though, in the time it took Blank and Bonaventure to walk the length of the street to the steps to Number 31 York Place, the laundrymen had succeeded in shifting their burdens only a short distance.

Finally, Blank and Miss Bonaventure were only a few short steps from his door, and the trap that they had been expecting was finally sprung, to the surprise of neither.

The laundrymen flung their burdens to either side, the wicker baskets rebounding off the pavement lightly enough to make evident that their supposed weight had been only a sham. Then, in deadly silence, they launched themselves at Blank and Miss Bonaventure, arms and legs lashing out in meticulously precise movements.

Miss Bonaventure met the attack with relish. With an easy smile on her lips, she dodged the punch thrown by one of the laundrymen and snapped out with a high kick to the side at another, catching him in the jaw. As the kicked man went sprawling to the ground, spitting teeth, another of the laundrymen rushed forward, arms wide, apparently with the intent to encircle Miss Bonaventure and pin her own arms to her side. She allowed him to take her in a crushing bear hug, but just as his arms clamped vicelike around her, she bent backwards, knees bending and back arching, pulling the laundryman from his feet. Then, as the laundryman kicked his legs in the air, Miss Bonaventure
strained upwards with her arms, having the dual effect of breaking the laundryman's hold on her and of shifting his weight forward and down so that he slid headfirst into the pavement, landing with a sickening thud.

The other two laundrymen had not been idle, but had converged on Blank. For his part, though, Blank stood still, his arms relaxed at his sides, an almost bored expression on his face. He let Miss Bonaventure have her fun for a moment, a brief bit of exercise to get the blood flowing, and then just as his two attackers rushed him, he held up a hand.