The Obsidian Dagger (Horatio Lyle) Read online

  The Obsidian Dagger

  CATHERINE WEBB

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 - Heath

  CHAPTER 2 - Docks

  CHAPTER 3 - Pegasus

  CHAPTER 4 - Sinking

  CHAPTER 5 - Housekeeping

  CHAPTER 6 - Dusk

  CHAPTER 7 - Witnesses

  CHAPTER 8 - Church

  CHAPTER 9 - Houses

  CHAPTER 10 - Honesty

  CHAPTER 11 - Diane

  CHAPTER 12 - Mansion

  CHAPTER 13 - Earthquakes

  CHAPTER 14 - Marquis

  CHAPTER 15 - Priest

  CHAPTER 16 - Flight

  CHAPTER 17 - Chase

  CHAPTER 18 - Friends

  CHAPTER 19 - Escape

  CHAPTER 20 - The Great Exhibition

  CHAPTER 21 - Sasso

  CHAPTER 22 - Darin

  CHAPTER 23 - Blade

  CHAPTER 24 - Bridge

  CHAPTER 25 - Selene

  CHAPTER 26 - Ice

  CHAPTER 27 - River

  CHAPTER 28 - Perfection

  CHAPTER 29 - Thaw

  Catherine Webb was just fourteen when she wrote her extraordinary debut, Mirror Dreams. With several novels already in print at nineteen, Catherine has quickly established herself as one of the most talented and exciting young writers in the UK.

  By Catherine Webb

  Mirror Dreams

  Mirror Wakes

  Waywalkers

  Timekeepers

  The Extraordinary and Unusual

  Adventures of Horatio Lyle

  The Obsidian Dagger: Being the

  Further Extraordinary Adventures

  of Horatio Lyle

  The Obsidian Dagger

  CATHERINE WEBB

  Hachette Digital

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Published by Hachette Digital 2008

  Copyright © 2006 by Catherine Webb

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

  without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor

  be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover

  other than that in which it is published and without a

  similar condition including this condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those

  clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  eISBN : 978 0 7481 1113 8

  This ebook produced by Jouve, FRANCE

  Hachette Digital

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DY

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  INTRODUCTION

  London

  London, 1864

  It is said that there are forces beyond any mere man’s control. Some call it magic, some call it God, some call it luck, some call it fate. Very few know what it really is. And they’re the few who it, whatever ‘it’ may be, will never change.

  It is said that, when everything else is sleeping, the stones of London Town whisper to each other. The old cobbles of Aldgate murmur to the new of Commercial Road, telling them what a world they have inherited, what a place, what a hunger, pouring out their history, whispering with the changing tide as the Thames rolls gently from here to there and back again, bringing with it little pieces of the world outside, which are quickly lost and consumed in the city.

  It is said that, when every footstep is silent, the city is alive, aware, breathing, warning its brief inhabitants of danger coming from afar, and fighting it with the experience of centuries.

  Except, perhaps, tonight.

  Winter.

  In Heron Quays the last coal-carrier looks up as he heaves the final sack of black, lumped will-be-soot up from the base of the barge, just a small shape in a city of ships clinging to the side of the river, and sees, a long way above, the first few specks of snow caught briefly in the moonlight, as they drift towards the river, which shimmers in the dark corners where sunlight never reaches, still and frozen.

  In St Mary’s Church, Cheapside, the priest stops hacking at the long icicles hanging from his once-white spire, now almost black with soot, as the first snowflake touches gently on the brass bell of the tower, which seems to hum an old, forgotten tune picked up by the bells of St Paul’s and St Pancras, which whisper to each other:Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,

  The beggars are coming to town.

  The snow is trodden under the feet of the costermongers calling out in Brick Lane and Chapel Market and Whitecross Street and along Poultry and down Maiden Lane, until it is black and slushed and clings to the black ice that hides between the rounded cobbles for protection against the onslaught of hobnails and chipped leather and baked suede and rolling wooden wheels and iron hooves and bare toes turned blue.

  It falls across the light of the single lantern burning in the darkness on the deck of a ship, old and unusually tattered, rigging hanging down as if it has just sailed through a storm, its mast one branch in a forest of ships that sit, creaking to each other about the places they have seen, the spices and silks and sailors and smells that they have carried from Aberdeen to Zanzibar. The snow settles on the deck, where even the salt water, that has seen more oceans than the moon, begins to shiver and whiten in the cold.

  The snow falls outside a tall window, through which yellow light spills, eclipsed only by the black outline of a man. For a second the light warming the snow turns red as it catches a slurpful of port, swirled absently in a crystal glass, and the glass hums in sympathy to the voice that says, ‘One would have thought, that if they wished to avoid this situation, they would not have permitted him to be moved. It is unfortunate when our allies’ failures inconvenience us.’

  ‘Yet it may work to our advantage, my lord.’

  The owner of the voice regards the black and white landscape, pinpricked with yellow lamps and dirty candlelight, blurred behind the still-falling snow that blends at knee height with a grey-green fog rising off the frozen river, and wears an expression which implies that here is a phenomenon which, if it knows what is good for itself, won’t come anywhere near his shoes, and says in a voice colder than the icicles on every uneven roof and tortured drain, ‘I will not underestimate this ... person.’

  ‘Is your agent not competent? Mine is.’

  Yellow light turning red, port swirling in a glass, settling again. For a second the moon tries to make itself known over one of the clouds, but if the snow doesn’t eat up its light before it can touch the cobbles, then the smoke does. ‘He is competent. But . . .’

  ‘My lord?’ A voice, not entirely familiar with the sound of English, raised in polite enquiry.

  Yellow light, turning red, port swirling in a glass, drunk, gone. A little sigh, appreciation of the finer things in life, and nothing else besides. ‘He has an unfortunate inclining that we really cannot countenance.’

  ‘Which is, my lord?’

  ‘Scruples, xiansheng.’

  The snow builds up against a long window in a tall house that overlooks a steep hill, inside which a voic
e like marble warmed in the sun whispers to itself, ‘So soon.’ The owner smiles, and thinks of a time when the snow was heavier, whiter, colder, and there weren’t nearly as many fires to drive it away.

  And the snow falls on a tall, dark-haired man half-caught in the light of a ship’s dull lantern, who says, ‘You should not have brought him here, captain. He will cause no end of trouble!’

  A voice, fast, scared, teeth chattering in the cold, coming out of the darkness, across the loose rigging and old, battered, salt-stained wood, ‘He’s safe! I make sure! He go nowhere!’

  ‘He came here.’ A voice like stone, like the stones around, baked London clay, white Portland stone, granite and scarred limestone, yellow sandstone and chimneys of old, blackened brick. ‘You brought him here after he had waited alone for so long, you brought him here and now we are all in danger.’

  ‘I not know, I not know, the man he say . . .’

  ‘Which man?’

  ‘The man! Who come with the letter and say he was priest, and he say he go and see that cargo ready and . . .’

  ‘He’s here? Now?’

  Horror in the voice, horror and fear, a deep-down true knowledge of what is to come. And still the snow falls on the crooked roofs of Bethnal Green, on the tight, winding alleys of St Giles, on the high peaked roofs of Mayfair, on the carriages of Belgravia, on the dome of St Paul’s and the steel slope of Paddington, on the trains of King’s Cross and on the barges of the Thames, which gobbles up each snowflake and grows fatter, whispering always the old stories that run from Bromley to Barnes, from Swiss Cottage to St James, from Highbury to Holborn, and say,Hark, hark, the dogs do bark,

  The beggars are coming to town.

  Some in rags, and some in tags,

  And one in a velvet gown.

  And the snow falls between the pillars of the Royal Institute and through the cracks of the collapsing slums of Whitechapel and Bow, on the carts of the costermongers, the laden carts from Dover, the snorting train to Edinburgh waiting for the last passenger to save his top hat from a savage vent of steam, on the top hats and frilled bonnets, on the tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, on the lass selling roasted nuts in Drury Lane, on the man setting up his stall of dark green watercress while the bells ring out across Old London Town, each in their own little temporal universe that will never agree with its neighbour, telling stories of when the city was smaller than it is now, and the people crowded into the garrets of Holborn, and the world stopped at Hyde Park, where the murderers were taken to die, and the snow falls on an old ship, just one tree in a forest of masts, and on a dark-haired man who’s just felt horror and fear for the first time in his life, and realized that, again for the first time, he is standing with his back against the light.

  And from the darkness of the thick London night, something rises up, looks around, and for the first time in the city’s memory, hears its song, and remembers an older time, and looks down into two terrified faces and remembers the fear and the anger that has been burning inside for too long. And it says, ‘You would have tamed me. Learn, even changed with the dark, I cannot be tamed!’

  And, somewhere close, Old Edgar, king of the beggar men, wakes from a shivering, frost-touched sleep under the pier, where the sewers give a little warmth against the cold and the wind can’t quite reach its pale blue finger, and hears a scream - and another - above the whisper of the snow and the lapping of the water, which in the places where the sunlight never reaches has already started to freeze. The shrieks are cut off, as if the air that should be rushing by in a high, tight wail has suddenly found itself with nowhere to go. He shivers, and knows that tonight he’ll have nightmares to contend with, as well as the cold.

  And there is a carriage, snow still heavy on the roof, and a voice, like rich maple syrup, like an autumn tree bending in the breeze, murmurs, ‘Welcome to London, your grace.’

  And a man taller than most men, who walks with bare feet on the ice and feels no cold, looks round, hears the hum of the street and smells the darkness and the history pouring out of every crooked alley, off every slanting rooftop, climbing up from every broken cobble and drifting away from every cooling, toppling chimney and says, like a man coming home, ‘Yes.’

  CHAPTER 1

  Heath

  Morning after snowfall was, for a very brief moment, before the feet and the smoke of the city corrupted it, fresh and clean, or at least as fresh and clean as the city of London was likely to get, all things considered.

  The bells proclaimed the hour to be eight of the morning, and grey sunlight, embarrassed to be up this late when most folk of the city had been working for a good three hours already on a breakfast of cress, black bread and dripping, seeped across the white fields of Hampstead Heath. It crawled through the old trees, where pigeons nestled against each other to combat the cold; it slid past the high mansion walls of the very rich, which looked down on the black and grey city sprawled higgledy-piggledy below.

  The light drained the colour out of a brown and white dog with huge ears trailing in the snow, that lay, wrapped in a tartan blue blanket by a black tree heavy with snow, and slept.

  As it slept, it snored. Loudly. One long ear twitched in time to the tail, the very end of which flexed between the snores in a rhythmical sequence that would have impressed even the most stringent of conductors.

  Somewhere, just below the verge of the hill, voices, too lively for the black pall of smoke that rose out of the chimneys below and the heavy, snow-weighted clouds above, drifted into the air.

  ‘I said put it there.’

  ‘You said left!’

  ‘That way!’

  ‘That’s right!’

  An embarrassed pause. ‘Oh.’ Then, just in case, ‘Is it?’

  ‘I think you’ll find it is.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  The dog in the thick blue blanket, which itself seemed greyer for the monochrome landscape, stopped snoring, opened a single lethargic eye, and regarded the world over the end of its large brown nose. Unimpressed, it closed the eye again, and snoozed on.

  A man appeared from behind a thicket of leafless twigs, carrying a box of heavy tools and a large watering can smelling of oil. He strode past the dog, oblivious to anything but his task, humming under his breath. His head was bare, despite the cold, revealing sandy-red hair, looking as if it couldn’t decide whether to be entirely yellow or entirely ginger and had settled for a reluctant compromise. His face was young enough to still be deemed handsome, and old enough to be deemed respectable, though he had always suspected that respectability was just another way of paying tax. Grey eyes blinked at the grey landscape, and found themselves uninspired.

  There was the sound of feet crunching snow, accompanied by voices, rapidly getting closer. The man stopped to listen, head on one side, as if trying to understand an eccentric social ritual.

  The voices drifted closer.

  ‘Well, if you will light the fuse what do you expect?’

  ‘I was going to attempt to put it out . . .’

  ‘By steppin’ on it?’

  ‘I’m sure it could have worked and I feel sure that if you’d given me the opportunity, rather than just grabbing me in that undignified manner . . .’

  Two shapes appeared over the rise of the hill. One, a tall, skinny boy with yellow hair, wore a greatcoat that was clearly designed to give him a certain aged gravitas, but flapped embarrassingly around the wrists and ankles. The other, a girl somewhat shorter and younger than he was, bounded along at a lively pace, and was wearing so many layers of thick clothes in so many faded and stained colours, it was hard to tell where one garment began and the other ended. When the boy spoke, it was as if he had stolen all the vowels from her, so that each syllable dripped good diction, while she often stopped short of a full word, as if expecting any intelligent listener to surmise immediately what it was she could be talking about.

  Today, and not for the first time, the girl was dra
gging her elder companion by the sleeve and, sighting the sandy-haired man, she called out in a sing-song voice, ‘Mister Lyle? That ain’t a clean coat what you’re wearin’?’

  The man addressed as ‘Mister Lyle’ looked down at himself, as if he hadn’t given the idea much thought. ‘Well, I suppose it’s relatively -’

  Somewhere, just below the hill, something exploded. The noise sent birds, sleeping a second ago, racing for the sky, and set dogs barking all around. The shock wave caused trickles of snow to run off the branches of the trees, shook what few withered leaves still remained from the bushes, swirled the powdered snow in eddies and, in the direction of the actual blast itself, lifted up a fat, mammoth-sized spoonful of black earth and white snow, threw it twenty feet into the air, pushed it outwards, and then slowly dropped it down again with a squishplopsquish noise.

  The dog, snoozing in the blanket, twitched its nose disdainfully, and kept on dreaming of biscuits yet to come.

  There was a long silence, while everyone and everything waited for something else to happen. When it didn’t, Horatio Lyle picked himself up from where he’d dived on to the ground, brushed the worst of the snow and dirt off his front self-consciously, ran a hand through his hair in a nervous gesture that belied his deliberately calm face, and surveyed the crater below.

  When he spoke, his voice had a weary alertness and lilt that softened some vowels and gave some consonants a crippled edge, so that every costermonger in the street would touch their hand to their forehead in respect for a gentleman, and every gentleman would retreat a little polite pace, in suspicion of a man who couldn’t quite be of their class. It was a hard voice to place, so most people identified it as ‘not mine’ and left it at that.