Текст книги "The Secret of Abdu El Yezdi"

Автор книги: Mark Hodder

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Monckton Milnes slapped his hand to his forehead and groaned. “You are quite right. Florence stepped out to powder her nose during the interval and never returned. I sat through the second half of that bloody performance with her elderly chaperone huffing and puffing indignantly in my ear. I feel thoroughly humiliated.”

With renewed boisterousness, the gentlemen of the Cannibal Club toasted failed romance, then Richard Monckton Milnes, then Nurse Nightingale, then Burton, and finally each other.

“By Gad!” Bendyshe bellowed. “My bloody astrologist warned me off port—said it’d be the death of me! If it’s all chicanery, I’ve been denying myself for nothing! Open a bottle at once!”

The lull had passed. Thomas Bendyshe resumed his relentless foghorn-volume raillery; Henry Murray left the room to order a pot of coffee from Bartolini’s but returned with a fresh bottle of brandy; Charles Bradlaugh, apropos of nothing, proclaimed that the word “gorilla” was derived from the Greek “gorillai,” which meant “tribe of hairy women,” and proceeded along a course of speculation which, had the authorities been present, would doubtless have landed him in prison; Doctor James Hunt employed his medical knowledge to mix cocktails of foul taste and terrifying potency; and Sir Edward Brabrooke propped himself in a corner with a fixed grin on his face and, over the course of thirty minutes, very, very slowly slid to the floor.

Amid the uproar, Burton quietly told Monckton Milnes, “My point wasn’t to embarrass you but to demonstrate that, with a practised eye, any individual can discern a great deal about any other and pass it off as information received from the Afterlife. I suspect a little mesmerism is involved, too, just to make the victim more gullible.”

“And I suppose you, being an accomplished mesmerist yourself, cannot fall under another’s spell?”

“Correct.”

“But surely you don’t consider all spiritualists fraudulent? Why, there’s practically one on every street corner. The business has been flourishing for twenty years. If they were all duplicitous, it would be the swindle of the century.”

Burton was silent for a moment. Twenty years. Spiritualists had first claimed they could speak with the dead just weeks after The Assassination. Interesting.

“Certainly,” he said, “I accept that a few—and I emphasise, a few—practitioners might actually glimpse the future or gain unusually penetrating insight into a matter, but I attribute such occurrences to an as yet undiscovered natural function of the human organism; a ‘force of will,’ if you like, that enables a person to sense what they cannot feel, see, hear, touch, or taste. There is nothing supernatural involved. I do not hold with the soul or spirit—a self within a self; an I within an I—that continues to exist after the body has ceased to function yet still concerns itself with corporeal matters. The very notion is utter rot. The dead, my friend, are well and truly dead.”

“I cannot agree,” Monckton Milnes protested. “My prognosticator’s positive influence has been far more significant and widespread than I can possibly tell you. You should consult with her.”

“Perhaps. Let us first see what this Frenchman of yours has to say. Refill my glass, old fellow; I’m lagging behind.”

At four o’clock in the morning, having dedicated himself to catching up with the others, Burton stepped out into Leicester Square with his top hat set at such a jaunty angle that he’d taken just three paces before it fell off and rolled into the gutter. He bent to retrieve it, overbalanced, and followed it down. His panther-headed cane clattered onto the cobbles beside him.

“Now then, sir,” came a stern voice. “It’s not my place to lecture a fine gentleman like yourself, but I suspect you may be filled to the knocker, so to speak.”

The explorer looked up and saw a police constable looking down. The man had a swollen nose. It was purple and bloodied around the nostrils.

“I topped my dropper,” Burton explained.

“Dropped your topper, sir? Here it is.” The policeman retrieved Burton’s headgear and cast his eyes over it. “A very nice hat, that. A mite dusty now, but it’ll clean up with a little brushing. Here, let me help you.”

Burton gripped the outstretched hand and allowed himself to be hauled back to his feet. He bent down for his cane, stumbled, but managed to regain his footing before meeting the ground again.

“Tripped,” he said. “What happened to your nose?”

“It encountered a bunch of fives, sir. There are criminals about. And you? Your eye?”

“The same. Thwacked.”

“Are you a pugilist? I have it in mind that I’ve seen your likeness in the newspapers. Sports pages, I’ll wager. You look quite the fighter.”

Burton took his proffered top hat, pressed it firmly onto his head, and slurred, “There’ve been sketches of me in a few of the rags recently. The Nile. Africa. Orpheus.”

“The Nile? Ah, yes! You’re the explorer! Livingstone!”

Burton groaned. He squinted at the policeman’s badge. “Constable Bhatti, I would be very grateful indeed if you never, ever refer to me that way again. My name is Burton.”

“Right you are, sir. My apologies. No offence intended. Which way are you going?”

With a wave in a vaguely northwesterly direction, Burton said, “Thataway.”

“Home?”

“Yeth. I mean, yeth. That is to say—yeth.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“Good. Very wise. I’ll call you a cab.”

“No, thank you. I’ll walk. Clear my head.”

The constable raised his arm and whistled at a nearby hansom. “You’ll take a ride, sir. I insist upon it. The streets are dangerous at this time of night. Look at my nose.”

“I’d rather not. It’s an unpleasant sight.”

The carriage, drawn by a steam-horse, chugged across the square and drew to a halt beside them.

“What ho, Constable Bhatti!” its driver called.

“Hallo, Mr. Penniforth. I have a passenger for you. Take him to Montagu Place, please.”

“Rightio! In you get, guv’nor!”

Before he could protest, Burton was bundled into the carriage by the policeman.

“Wait!” he mumbled. “I don’t want—”

“You’ll be fine, Doctor Livingstone,” Bhatti said. “Straight home and into bed. That’s an order.”

“I’m not bloody Livingstone, you confounded—”

Burton toppled backward into his seat as the carriage jolted forward. His hat fell onto the floor.

“Damnation!”

He heard Constable Bhatti’s laughter receding as the hansom picked up speed.

“Penniforth!” Burton yelled, knocking on the roof with his cane. “Aren’t you the man who met the Orpheus?”

“Aye, guv’nor!” the driver called. “Small world, ain’t it?”

“Not as small as all that. Would you slow down, please?”

“’Fraid not. Orders is orders. Got to get you ’ome on the double, so to speak. You needs yer sleep. Gee-up, Daisy! I calls me steam-nag Daisy, guv’nor, on account o’ that bein’ me wife’s moniker. She has me in harness whenever I’m ’ome, so I figures it’s only fair what that I have ’er in harness when I hain’t.”

Burton grabbed at the window frame as the carriage bounced over a pothole and hurtled around a corner. “I really don’t need to hear about your domestic affairs!” he shouted. “Let me out! I demand it!”

“Sorry, yer lordship. I ’ave to do what the constable says. Wouldn’t do to cross a bobby, would it! I’ll let you hoff at Montagu Place.”

Burton gritted his teeth and hung on.

The question came unbidden. How the hell did Constable Bhatti know where he lived?

“Men who leave their mark on the world are very often those who, being gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore within a measurable distance of insanity.”

–FRANCIS GALTON

A little after three o’clock the next afternoon, at the end of the ceremony in Buckingham Palace, King George V of Great Britain and Hanover leaned close to Sir Richard Francis Burton and said, “I congratulate you. It was my pleasure to award you this knighthood. You deserve it. Are you drunk?”

Burton shook his head. “No, Your Majesty, but I may have dosed myself up rather too liberally with Saltzmann’s Tincture this morning. I’m still battling the remnants of malaria. It was a choice between the medicine or my teeth chattering throughout the formalities.”

“And this medicine has made you so clumsy?”

Burton glanced at the stain on the monarch’s trouser-leg. “Again, my apologies. My coordination is all shot through.”

“Which, I venture, is also how you came by the black eye my aide mentioned.”

The explorer nodded and silently cursed Macallister Fogg.

The king grinned, revealing his cracked and uneven teeth. “You are a man of firsts, Captain. The first East India Company officer to pass all his language exams at the first try; the first non-Muslim to enter the holy city of Mecca; the first European to look upon the source of the River Nile; and the first freshly knighted man to spill wine on the royal bloomers.”

Burton shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other and looked into the king’s filmy white eyes. It was said that blind men develop a sixth sense. Did the monarch somehow know that Burton had been drinking until the small hours and was still hung-over?

“I suppose I’ll be remembered, at least,” he mumbled.

“You can be sure of that, Captain. Now, tell me, how many stragglers remain?”

Glancing around the presentation room, Burton saw five Yeomen of the Guard, three ushers, the Lord Chamberlain, and six of the Orpheus’s crew, the latter proudly wearing their medals. Isabel—soon to be Lady Burton—was loitering at the door and just managed a wave before she was politely guided out into the reception chamber.

“There are a few by the entrance,” Burton said. “They are departing.”

“Good. I have no objection to the post-ceremonial shaking of hands and uttering of niceties, but today there happens to be important business to attend to, and I would rather get on with it.”

Reflexively, Burton gave a short bow, even though the king couldn’t see it. “Then I apologise again, and shall make myself scarce.”

“No! No! This business concerns you. Do you see a door off to my right? I understand it’s painted yellow.”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Then please oblige me by leading me to it. You and I and a few others have much to discuss.”

“We do?”

Damascus. There must be a situation developing in Damascus. They want to send me there post-haste.

Burton moved his left forearm up into the grip of the king’s outstretched hand and escorted him to the door.

“Open it,” the monarch said. “Down to the end of the corridor, then turn right.”

“I wasn’t informed,” Burton said, carefully steering the sovereign through the portal and around a plinth that stood against the wall to the left. His host reached out and brushed his fingers against the bust of King George III that stood upon it.

“My grandfather. The longest reigning British monarch. With him it was all war, war, war. He was mad as a hatter. Some say he was poisoned.”

“Was he?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, and if he was, he probably deserved it.”

After a moment’s silence, Burton said, “May I ask you a question?”

“By all means.”

“Aside from the Royal Geographical Society, what royal charters have you issued this year?”

The king gave a chuckle. “My goodness! That’s not an enquiry I could have predicted! Let’s see. There was the University of Melbourne in March; the Benevolent Institution for the Relief of Aged and Infirm Journeymen Tailors in July; and I plan to issue one to the National Benevolent Institution in September. Why, Sir Richard?”

Burton started slightly at the use of his new title. He said, “The words royal charter were a part of an incomprehensible telegraph message received by the Orpheus during the aurora borealis phenomenon.”

“I see. And you are curious as to the significance?”

“I am.”

“Has my answer cast any light on the subject?”

“None at all.”

They reached the end of the passage and turned right into another.

“Fifth door on your left,” the king said. “So you weren’t informed of this meeting? That’s not entirely surprising. Events have been moving rapidly. Decisions were made overnight.”

They came to the door.

“In we go, Captain.”

Burton turned the handle and pushed. King George stepped past him into the chamber and was immediately met by one of the palace’s beautiful clockwork footmen—a thing of polished brass and tiny cogwheels with a babbage probability calculator supplying its simulated intelligence. It led him to the head of a heavy table in the middle of the room. Five men, who’d been sitting around it, rose as the monarch entered. Having heard the scrape of their chairs, the king waved at them to resume their seats. “Come, Sir Richard. Settle here beside me, please.”

As he moved to the table, Burton examined the room. Its panelled walls were hung with royal portraits, heavy velvet drapes had been drawn across the two windows, and bright illumination shone from a huge crystal chandelier.

He lowered himself into the seat on the king’s left and struggled to maintain his composure as he recognised the other men. Opposite him, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli leaned back and tapped his fingernails on what looked to be Burton’s African reports. Lord Stanley, sitting on the premier’s right, reached for a jug of water, poured a glass, and slid it across to the explorer. Beside him, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the minister of arts and culture, long-haired and foppishly dressed, watched Burton with curiosity.

The far end of the table was occupied by His Royal Highness Prince Albert, who’d been present at the knighting ceremony. Next to him, on the same side as Burton, the home secretary, Spencer Walpole, fidgeted restlessly.

King George turned to the footman and said, “Are we all here?”

“No, Your Majesty,” the contraption responded in a clanging voice. It bent over the king until its canister-shaped head was close to his ear then chimed so softly that Burton couldn’t make out a single word.

“Indisposed?” the king said. “I rather think indolent would be a more appropriate word. Stand outside the door, please, and ensure we’re not interrupted.”

The footman bowed, ding-donged, “Yes, Your Majesty,” and left the room.

“Disgraceful!” Disraeli muttered. “The minister’s lack of respect plummets to yet greater depths.”

“We must indulge him,” the king answered, with a slight smile. “His eccentricities don’t undermine his value.”

“Just as long as that value remains intact,” Disraeli said. “Which, under the circumstances, remains to be seen.”

“Forgive me,” Burton said, glancing at the vacant chair between himself and Walpole, “but to whom are you referring?”

The king turned his blank eyes and answered, “The minister of mediumistic affairs.”

“Ah,” Burton replied. “I should have known.”

A dull pain throbbed just behind his ears. His mouth felt dry, his eyes hot. The acidic aftertaste of brandy still lingered at the back of his throat. He reached for the water and drained the glass in a single swallow.

I have discomfort enough. I don’t need the bloody minister of mediumistic mumbo-jumbo, too.

The king said quietly, “Well then, let us proceed. Mr. Disraeli, would you explain, please?”

Disraeli rapped his knuckles lightly against the tabletop, looked at Burton, and said, “Sir Richard, last Thursday evening, shortly after the Orpheus landed and while you were, I understand, at the Royal Geographical Society, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the head of the Department of Guided Science, walked into Penfold Private Sanatorium—you know the place?”

Burton nodded. “It’s where my colleague, Sister Raghavendra, worked before I commissioned her to join my expedition.”

“I see,” Disraeli said. “Well, Brunel walked into it and announced that, in two days’ time—that is to say, this Saturday past—he was going to have a stroke.”

“How could he possibly know that?”

“He received a warning from the Afterlife. The information was correct. At three o’clock on Saturday morning, he did, indeed, suffer an attack.”

“Is he all right?”

“We don’t know. At eleven o’clock that night, two men entered the sanatorium and attempted to kidnap him. They were prevented from doing so by two police constables. The men escaped. The constables removed Brunel from the building, telling the nurses they were taking him to a place of safety. He hasn’t been seen since. We haven’t been able to find or identify the policemen, and Scotland Yard’s Chief Commissioner Mayne says he knew of no threat to Brunel and issued no orders to protect him.” Disraeli paused, then continued, “It’s not the first unexplained disappearance involving persons of significance. Two years ago, as everyone knows, Charles Babbage mysteriously vanished. In March of this year, the engineer Daniel Gooch went missing. And, last night, a man witnessed two policemen forcibly removing Nurse Florence Nightingale from outside the Theatre Royal. She did not attend her morning appointments today and her whereabouts are currently unknown.”

“Nightingale!” Burton exclaimed. “She was there with Richard Monckton Milnes!”

“That fact has come to light. Commissioner Mayne has assigned a Detective Inspector Slaughter to the case. I understand he’s questioning Mr. Monckton Milnes even as we speak.”

“He’ll not learn much. My friend thinks she ran out on him halfway through the show.”

The prime minister grunted, leaned his elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers together. “Which brings us to Abdu El Yezdi.”

Burton looked around the table, from one man to the next. Their eyes met his but gave nothing away.

Sudden comprehension sent prickles up his spine.

Bismillah! This has nothing to do with the consulship of Damascus! Why am I here?

He said, “Who is he?”

No one answered.

After what felt like a minute’s silence, Disraeli said, in a very low voice, “We are about to discuss state secrets, Sir Richard. Is your confidence assured? I do not, at any point in the future, want to have to charge you with treason.”

Burton slowly nodded.

Prince Albert spoke. “Your Majesty, Prime Minister, gentlemen—already we haff chosen to trust Sir Richard, haff we not? We must proceed. I am sure that, once all the facts before him haff been laid, the need for secrecy he will recognise.”

There were murmurs of agreement.

King George nodded and addressed Disraeli. “His Royal Highness is correct. We must give Sir Richard all the facts if he is to fully appreciate the significance of what we are to ask of him. But I suggest we first review the relevant history. It will provide context.”

The prime minister bowed his acquiescence.

The monarch turned to Burton. “I understand you spent your childhood outside the Empire? Where were you on the day of The Assassination?”

The explorer was so stunned to be asked that particular question again, he could hardly respond, and stammered, “I—I—I was at sea. En route from—from Italy.”

“So you felt nothing?”

Burton shrugged and shook his head, then realised the king couldn’t see him and said, “Nothing at all.”

“Well then, um, Mr. Walpole, perhaps you would be good enough to describe your experience?”

Walpole, his face framed by whiskers and scored with a myriad of small wrinkles, straightened his back and said, in his characteristically terse manner, “Certainly. My diaries. Sir Richard, I’m rather a fastidious diary-keeper. It’s a discipline I’ve observed since childhood. During the hour before bed, I always record the day’s events and my opinions of them. I write in considerable detail, and have done so since 1822.”

He paused and glanced at Burton as if expecting to be challenged. The explorer, who was feeling completely bewildered, kept his mouth closed.

Walpole continued, “In the aftermath of The Assassination, I felt the need to consult what I had written during the months preceding it. I do not know why. Perhaps I was looking for some rhyme or reason for the crime. What I read in those pages made perfect sense. I remembered everything I saw reported. Yet—” He paused. “Yet something was amiss. I found myself hunting for accounts of other events—but exactly what events eluded me. What was I searching for? Why did I feel that material was missing? I looked back over three years’ worth of diaries before what I read started to feel complete.”

Walpole’s lips twitched as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the appropriate words.

“Thank you, Mr. Walpole,” the king said. “Yours is a typical example of what has come to be known as the Great Amnesia, which everyone inside the British Empire experienced to some degree or other. The consensus is that, during Victoria’s three-year reign, events occurred that were forgotten by everyone the instant she was killed, and which have somehow left no evidence behind them.” The king laid both hands palms down on the tabletop with his fingers spread. “It is also generally accepted that the Great Amnesia gave rise to the New Renaissance—a sensational outpouring of inventiveness by engineers and scientists throughout the length and breadth of the Empire.”

“Led by Isambard Kingdom Brunel,” Burton murmured.

“Quite right. But there is more to it than that. What very few people know is that, from its very start, the New Renaissance has been guided by a denizen of the Afterlife.”

Burton pressed his lips together. A sense of unreality crept over him. The world wasn’t making any sense.

The king sighed. “You’ll remember that, after the queen’s death, the foreign secretary of the time, Lord Palmerston, attempted to backdate the Regency Act to allow His Royal Highness—” he gestured toward Prince Albert, “—to accede to the throne. This in response to public opposition to my father, Ernest Augustus the First of Hanover, who, though the rightful heir, was believed to be as mad as his father, King George the Third.” Reaching out his right hand, the monarch groped until he touched Benjamin Disraeli’s forearm. “Prime Minister?”

Disraeli said, “Your friend Monckton Milnes, Sir Richard, has been rather more involved in affairs of state than you know. In 1840, a young prognosticator named Countess Sabina Lacusta approached him with the news that a spirit—Abdu El Yezdi—wished him to work against Lord Palmerston. Monckton Milnes should begin, the spirit advised, by talking to me.”

The prime minister reached for the jug of water, topped up his and Burton’s glasses, and took a swig.

“I was not long in politics at the time,” he continued, “and had lacked focus up until Palmerston started to play fast and loose with the constitution. I’d no objection at all to His Royal Highness—” he tipped his head respectfully toward Prince Albert, “—taking the throne, but I didn’t trust Palmerston’s motives. I felt he was manoeuvring himself into what could easily become an unassailable position of power.”

“How so?” Burton interrupted.

Prince Albert murmured, “With good health I haff never been blessed. The pressures that His Majesty bears so well would, I think, kill me.”

“And if His Royal Highness had become king,” Disraeli resumed, “then passed away before remarrying and fathering an heir—”

“Which I had, unt haff, no intention of doing,” Prince Albert added.

“—there would’ve been no one to follow him. Britain may well have slipped into republicanism with, in all probability, Palmerston as its president.”

“Ah,” Burton said.

“Ah,” the prime minister echoed. “So I founded the Young England political group through which to organise a campaign against Palmerston, and it succeeded in no small degree because Abdu El Yezdi persuaded Richard Monckton Milnes to secretly fund it.”

There came a lengthy silence.

When Burton—who’d known nothing of his friend’s involvement in Palmerston’s downfall—responded to this revelation, his voice came as a hoarse whisper. “Do you mean to tell me that the history of this country has been manipulated by a—by a—by a ghost?”

“More so than you can possibly imagine,” Disraeli answered. “As you know, when Palmerston was defeated, he attempted an armed insurrection, but he and his supporters—led by two men, Damien Burke and Gregory Hare—were forced into retreat. They holed up in secret chambers beneath the Tower of London, and on the thirtieth of October, 1841, a pitched battle ensued. It destroyed the Tower’s Grand Armoury and caused a quarter of a million pounds’ worth of damage, but Palmerston and his supporters were finally flushed out. Burke and Hare escaped. We have long assumed they fled the country. Palmerston was captured, tried as a traitor, and executed.”

Disraeli regarded Burton through hooded eyes. His right forefinger tapped three times, the fingernail going clack clack clack on the tabletop. “In the wake of those events, Melbourne’s government fell. I was elected head of the Conservative Party and, soon after, prime minister. I immediately made Countess Sabina my first minister of mediumistic affairs. Through her—and since ’fifty-six through her successor—I have received the counsel of Abdu El Yezdi. At his behest, I established the Department of Guided Science, and to counterbalance it, the Ministry of Arts and Culture. I gave Brunel access to the countess, and El Yezdi inspired him to build Battersea Power Station and the many varieties of steam transportation that our Empire so relies upon. The spirit also advised Babbage, Gooch, and Nightingale, among others. The marvellous mechanical and medical advancements we have made these past two decades are all due to his influence.”

Prince Albert interjected, “I, also, by him haff been guided. The—what is the word? Sagacity?—attributed to me as architect of the Central German Confederation, unt of the Alliance that will be formalised on November the eleventh, belongs, in fact, to our friendly phantom.”

“There’s more,” Disraeli said, “but that’s enough to demonstrate to you how crucial this inhabitant of the Afterlife has been in our political and cultural affairs; and it was he, via the minister of mediumistic affairs, who warned Mr. Brunel of his imminent stroke.”

Burton lifted his glass with a shaking hand, drank, spluttered, and said, “By God, don’t you have anything stronger?”

King George smiled. “Mr. Rossetti, there’s a small cabinet between the windows, yes?”

“There is, Your Majesty,” Rossetti replied.

“I believe there’s a bottle of port inside it. Would you fetch it, please?”

Rossetti did so, and moments later each man had emptied his glass into the water jug and refilled it with the fortified wine.

A few minutes passed while they sipped and thought and waited for Burton to regain his composure.

His heart was hammering.

It was wrong. All wrong!

Yet, he knew—instantly—that it was true. As incredible as it sounded, it made sense. It explained the unprecedented and almost supernatural progress the Empire had made during the past twenty years.

Almost supernatural?

“So,” he finally said, “you fear that someone is abducting the people the ghost has advised?”

Disraeli answered, “The situation is more serious even than that. Abdu El Yezdi has consulted with us nearly every day for twenty years. On Thursday, after giving the warning concerning Brunel, he fell silent. Every mediumistic attempt to contact him has failed. In short, we are concerned that he, like the others, has gone missing.”

The king reached for Burton’s arm again. “I want to make you my special agent, Sir Richard. I feel you have the unique skills required for the role. I will give you authority over the police, unlimited funds to draw on, and pay far and away above what you’d receive as a consul. Say yes, then begin your first assignment—locate Abdu El Yezdi and find out why our people are being taken.”

Burton snorted his derision. “Hunt a bloody ghost? In the name of Allah, I have no idea what madness has gripped you all, but I won’t be a part of it!”

“Sir!” Disraeli barked. “Have a care—you’re speaking to the king! Remember your place and mind your language!”

“My place is Damascus.” Burton turned to address Lord Stanley. “Sir, I formally request the consulship. I am ideally suited to the post and will do the government much greater service there than I will chasing wraiths here.”

“Denied,” the foreign secretary snapped. “It’s not available. If you want a consulship, I can offer Santos at best.”

Burton curled his fingers into a fist. “Brazil? That’s ridiculous. Put me where I can be of most use!”

“We are offering to do so,” the prime minister said. “You can be of most use as His Majesty’s agent.”

“I am not—” Burton began.

The monarch interrupted. “Everyone leave. I shall speak with Sir Richard alone.”

“But—” Disraeli protested.

“Out!”

The men stood, bowed, and left the room.

The king waited until he heard the door click shut then said, “You are angry.”

“Your Majesty, I am to be married. I want only to settle down with my wife. She and I both feel an affinity for Syria. Isn’t it sufficient that I located the source of the Nile? I’m tired of adventures and danger and—blast it!—I don’t believe in bloody spooks. Enough is enough.”

“What if the cause of Abdu El Yezdi’s silence threatens everything your friend Monckton Milnes has helped to establish?”

Burton raised his hands to his head and massaged his temples. He was confused by the interconnectedness of apparently random events. Oliphant had killed Stroyan in the first seconds of Thursday. The aurora borealis had appeared on Thursday. Brunel’s stroke had been foreseen on Thursday. Abdu El Yezdi had fallen silent on Thursday.

And The Assassination.

The Great Amnesia had been recognised just after it. The dead, including El Yezdi, had—supposedly—started communicating with the living around the same time. The New Renaissance, he’d just learned, was a consequence of that. And “Macallister Fogg” had wanted to know where Burton was on that precise date!

Why? Why? What the hell has any of this got to do with me?

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” he said. “A missing ghost, Your Majesty? It’s the height of absurdity.”

The monarch shrugged. “In your opinion, but nevertheless, the fact is, Sir Richard, that when I said I want to make you my special agent, I wasn’t asking. If you have an issue with the concept of the Afterlife, I suggest you make the corporeal your starting point.”