The Black Museum

Prologue-1

London. 1754. Bow Street. The Captain of the Night was dead. At last. His body lay on the back of a horse-drawn cart, underneath a shroud, borrowed that morning, from the blood-stained knackers at the local abattoir. Following the body through the streets was a large crowd. It swayed to the beat of a near silent song and in the spaces between the whispered words, the massed ranks hummed with hatred. Occasionally, a clod of mud was scooped from the gutter by someone in the cortege, and launched at the cart. When it hit its target, there was a ripple of approval.

borrowedRival gangs of street urchins had turned out in great numbers to watch the final journey of the Captain. A decision had been made that all territorial hostilities be put to one side for today. The fighting and scrapping would continue the day after, in the lane behind the washrooms. One or two of the scamps ran to the cart, hoping to get a look at the body, but the Bow Street Runners providing the escort warned them off with a growl and the swish of a wooden stave.

The Captain of the Night had terrorised Covent Garden. He had made the lives of the Under Folk that lived there – unbearable. In his dark, warped mind, London was rotting from the inside out, and these migrants from the realms of Fairy and the other magical worlds were responsible. They could not be permitted to settle lest they start to infect the entire population. He hunted, burned, drowned and butchered every magical creature that he could find. Still, here he was, on his way to captivity and then – destruction. That was why the crowds followed his body and why they remained silent. They would not waste another word on him. Their spittle, on the other hand, well, they gave that freely.

Under FolkThe horse reached the end of Bow Street, turned right and trotted on towards Waterloo. Ahead of the procession, strings of black smoke from thousands of chimneys tied the rooftops to the low, drifting clouds above the city. It should have been a day for celebration and festivities, but alas, many wounds still needed dressing, and there was no heart for singing and drink. The crowd following the cart began to thin and then, as if summoned away by some silent call, disappeared entirely. Only the horse and cart, its wicked cargo, and the Bow Street Runners carried on.

When they reached the London Necropolis Station, the Runners thanked the driver of the cart and paid him handsomely. One of the men produced a crisp red apple from one of his deep pockets and rewarded the horse for its endeavours. Whilst the driver counted his pennies and tugged his forelock, the horse chomped noisily on the apple, and the men formed a line at the back of the cart. The Sergeant signalled to his fellow officers, and they lifted the body from the cart and carried it into the ticket office nearby. A pair of wooden dollies, borrowed from an amenable undertaker just down the street, had been set up inside for two planks of wood to rest upon. This was where the officers laid the body of the Captain of the Night.

But not to rest.

But not to rest.The Bow Street Runners filed out and closed the door behind them, then the Sergeant produced a set of iron keys on an iron hoop and locked the door. They had obeyed their orders and completed their task, and now the dangerous part of ridding the city of the murdering bastard inside was someone else’s responsibility. It was getting dark, and they needed to return to Bow Street.

On the other side of the locked ticket-office door, on platform number 1, a vast, dark engine was waiting impatiently. Eruptions of angry steam shot up into the sky from the funnels like primitive mortars. Oil and water dripped onto the rails from the underside of the iron beast’s guts like dark sweat from a thoroughbred. In the spaces between the huffing and the puffing of the train’s metal lungs, rumbles of mechanical dissent and rage passed along the carriages like distant thunder at sea. If the Boatman ever tired of the River Styx, he would be happy to ride on this hotplate.

The London Necropolis Line and its impressive terminus had been created to help ease the pressure on London’s many churchyards. The Church was already complaining, albeit very quietly, to the people in power, good friends and relations, that most of their churchyards were already close to overcrowding. It was already rumoured that the graves of the dead were being – deepened a bit. There were stories of triple and even quadruple coffin towers already. Each excavation undermined faith and trust in the Church, and when the congregation started to thin, the pews saw fewer and fewer bottoms on a Sunday, and the donations plate went hungry. The Church did not enjoy a protracted period of Fasting.

theirdeepened a bitAt a hastily convened meeting, the Church council suggested an alternative: if the family of the deceased could find a small fee, then the body of a loved one could be whisked away to the leafy suburb of Brookwood, and there, your dear Mother, wonderful Father or wicked old Uncle, could be laid to rest amongst wild daisies, and under the wilt of great, sighing, oak trees. If a sizeable amount was paid by a rich relative, a place could be found in the main mausoleum; instead, that was where all the people of quality slept their eternal sleep, beneath ivory arches and under the guard and watchful eyes of angelic marble sentinels. And so, the London Necropolis Line was created.

qualityThe trains always set off after dark each day so as not to horrify the people of South London. Compartments full of coffins, the stench of old desiccated flesh and the wailing of grieving families were the stuff of nightmares and plummeting property prices. It had been running very smoothly, and the London Burial site, which was not actually in London, but in green and pleasant Surrey, had grown vast; it was so big now that it had become the most considerable burial ground in Europe. There were vocal members of Parliament and writers that set themselves up as wits and satirists who called the London Necropolis Line and the London Burial Ground, wonders of the modern age; to the man in the street, however, it was the railway of the dead, and no one wanted a ticket to ride on it.

The whole scheme was a phenomenal success, and it wasn’t long before a particularly active member of London’s clergy had an idea.

“Why not remove all the murderers, rapists and the rotten souls from London’s decent graveyards and then relocate them? Surely someone could find space in the London Burial Site?”

decentAnd then, said another, “we could reuse the vacant plots in our lovely local churches and put the decent, paying people into them.”

Of course, those attending the meeting cheered and rapped the tables with their knuckles tumultuously. Soon, the London Necropolis was calling at Brookwood, as usual, and then, once the good dead people had been whisked away to their new forever homes, there was now an extra stop, and this is where the bad dead people would be taken to rot and to keep the rats company. This was where the Captain was headed, and the train on platform one was taking him there.

as usualThe engine fired another cloud of steam into the air. It was impatient and champing at the rails. Night had fallen quickly, and the shadows all around were dark and deep. The train was eager to move, but something was holding it in check. The driver, a well-respected and experienced man who went by the name of Frank, leant out of his cabin and looked back towards the rear of the train. The platform was still empty, and the gates that would allow the engine to head south were still locked, so Frank got down from his cabin and started to walk down the platform.

He had only made it as far as the first compartment after the coal carriage when he heard a familiar sound, and he stopped suddenly. It was faint at first, and then it grew louder. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Metal on stone. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Closer and closer it came, but Frank was not scared, far from it. Tap-tap-tap-tap. The Blind Beak of Bow Street, his passenger, emerged from the darkness at the far end of the platform, his cane swinging from side to side and tapping at the ground. Left, right, left, right, left, right.

“Good evening Frank, I see that the board has chosen wisely and roped you in for tonight’s adventure. They have made a good choice. Now, away with you, Frank, back to your hotplate, I have some work to do, and then we shall be away!”

Frank retreated to the comfort of his kingdom and watched as the Beak walked over to the ticket office. His heavy topcoat hung down to the floor, and when the Beak walked, it hid the animation of his limbs from view and made him look like a small, gliding hill. He was sporting a top hat and carried a long cane, and the fashionable beard that he wore was styled to perfection.

They called him the Blind Beak of Bow Street. He was Magistrate, Thief-Taker, Head of the Bow Street Runners, secret intelligence agent, and a champion for those in most need, and as the name implied, he was blind.

One well-told tale had it that long ago, the Blind Beak had been but a normal man, he had made a pact with someone or something, and had given up his sight, in exchange for the magical powers he was said to now possess. Alternatively, some maintained that he was one of the ancients, a walker between worlds, and he had lost his sight fighting for the first King of Albion. None of the rumours were true, of course. His past was much more interesting than that. The Blind Beak could see, very well, as it happened, but just not in the same way that everyone else does.

He reached out, grasped the doorknob and stepped inside. The room felt colder than it should have, but that was not a surprise to the Beak. The creature lying on the board in front of him had the power to steal the warmth from a gravestone. He went to the cold, dead hearth and lit a fire in its empty stomach. He waited until it had caught, and then he walked over to the coat stand in the corner of the room and carefully hung his heavy topcoat on one of the stand’s thin, outstretched arms; it creaked ominously. Then, he placed his top hat on the bench near the door. From inside one pocket of his immaculately tailored black suit jacket, he removed a small book and a piece of white chalk, and from the other pocket, he produced a white handkerchief and a large feather. He placed the book and the chalk unceremoniously on the dead man’s chest, and then he unwrapped the handkerchief to reveal a small iron key.

The Blind Beak then started drawing shapes on the floor around the body. As he worked, he sang to the doors and the locks in a deep voice. The fire grew, and the room lost its icy edge. The Beak soldiered on, writing more strange words, sketching symbols that were old in the time of the Pharaohs and odd shapes around the door frames and the lintels. When one of the lamps started to sputter mid-incantation, it threatened to put him off, so he paused, took a breath and then refilled the lamp oil from a glass jug on the floor and started again.