He paused and looked at Alice.
“Miss Milner, you have now cut enough pork to feed the Tribes of Israel. Not an ideal choice of metaphor, I suppose.” He smiled to himself, and suddenly appeared a younger and more attractive man. “At any event, are you now ready to return to the manor? I wish to have a private conversation with the doctor.” Alice gave him a poisoned look. She seemed ready to argue, but Jacob Pole had stood up and walked across to the table.
“I may as well go with you,” he said. “I know from experience that we ordinary mortals get nothing from the conversation when a few bloodletters get together.”
He began to place pork and bread in a square of yellow cheesecloth. He winked at James Ledyard, who was looking at him gratefully, and turned back to Alice.
“I remember a conversation between three witch doctors, when I was looking for fire opals in Malagasy.” He began trying to ease Alice toward the door. “I had just been stung by the Great Madagascar Hornet, in an uncomfortable place that I prefer not to mention. Those potion-peddlers were jabbering away in their cuclapi dialect, discussing ways of removing the sting that would leave me enough to sit on. I lay there on my belly, warding off mosquitoes the size of bumble-bees…”
“Colonel Pole,” interrupted Alice. “We have no Great Madagascar Hornet in these parts, but”—she smiled—“if our local fishermen are to be believed, we have pike in our streams big enough to swallow a swan in one mouthful. You should get along well with them. I will come with you, but from choice, not from subterfuge.”
Darwin’s eyes remained on James Ledyard as the latter watched Alice leave the room with Jacob Pole. “A remarkable young lady,” he remarked.
“Very much so,” replied Ledyard fervently. He picked up the tray of pork and bread and gestured to Darwin to bring the eggs and beer. The two men went outside and settled themselves at a ramshackle table out of earshot of the inn kitchen.
Darwin began to attack the food with gusto. “I assume that there are aspects of Philip Alderton’s attack that are too unpleasant to mention in front of his fiancйe,” he said, through a mouthful of warm bread and goose-egg yolk. “What were his injuries?”
“As I described them,” replied Ledyard. “That was not the main reason for my reticence.” He was looking on with some surprise at the energy with which Darwin was demolishing the contents of the tray.
“Come on, man, eat up,” said Darwin, catching the look. “It’s the law of the world, you know. Eat or be eaten. Try some of these eggs. You can’t beat a goose egg for flavor.”
Ledyard shook his head. “Let me talk while you eat.” He settled back in the sun and put his knitted cap back on his head. “I was over in Moston last night, delivering a child. Stillborn, sad to say. I came back to Lambeth late, and was just settling into my bed when I was roused to go over to the manor and look to Philip Alderton. On my way, I went past the flint pit. Did Alice mention to you that Alderton and Barton were found actually in the pit?”
Darwin nodded.
“Then you may know that there is a particular story about it in the village. The pit is old—that’s why we were both interested in it. I estimate it was there thousands of years before the Romans, and as I told you in my letters it must be from the very dawn of our civilization. Now, did you ever hear of Black Shuck?”
Darwin leaned back and stopped chewing. His eyes were thoughtful. “Aye, I’ve read of it, but not recently. And not near Lambeth, either. It’s a legend by Cromer, forty miles along the coast. The black hound, big as a calf, that runs down travellers. What of it?”
“I’ll come to it. Lambeth has its own legend of a monster. The Lambeth Immortal. It has been here, the word goes, for hundreds of years, and it lives in the Alderton Pit. You’ll not get a villager there at night, and it’s hard enough during the day.”
“And the monster resembles Black Shuck?”
“In effect, if not in appearance. It rends its victim, as Barton and Philip Alderton were savaged.”
“But not Charles Alderton. Alice said he died of a seizure.”
“Of a stroke of some kind, an attack of apoplexy. Great excitement—or great fear— would produce that effect. Charles’ health in his final years was not good. But he had no wounds on his body.”
James Ledyard blinked his dark eyes in the bright sun. There was a restless and secretive air to him when he spoke of the Aldertons. Although Alice Milner had been raised in the West Country, it was Ledyard, with his broad, dark skull, who looked the Celt. He rubbed his unshaven chin and pulled his cap lower over his eyes.
“There is more,” he said. “Even Black Shuck could not account for last night’s attacks. Alice does not know it yet, but Barton had taken two of the hounds from the manor with them to the pit last night. Cambyses and Berengaria, each over five stone in weight, each of them young and strong. Their bodies were also found in the Pit. When I add that Tom Barton is a hefty young man, and that Philip Alderton has perhaps the strongest build of anyone I have ever examined, you will begin to see the problem. There is something in the flint pit that could kill two powerful and well-trained dogs and a strong man, and very nearly kill another with the muscles and build of a Hercules. Do you now see my dilemma? I am loath to add to village mutterings about the return of a monster, but I can offer no rational explanation of my own. It is a mystery.”
Darwin was sitting hunched on the bench, his double chin cupped in his hands, his elbows on the table in front of him. His grey eyes were thoughtful, alight with their usual burning curiosity.
“No,” he said at last. “It is not a mystery. It is three mysteries. What was it that killed Charles Alderton, that induced his apoplexy? What was it that killed the hounds and Tom Barton, and nearly killed Philip Alderton? And the final question: why were they all in the flint pit, at night? There must be a single answer that will explain all these things.”
He placed his hands on the table and pushed himself to his feet. “I do not think we will find answers here. With your permission, I would like to examine Philip Alderton, and inspect his wounds for myself. Also, I would like to see the body of Tom Barton. I too do not care for superstition. We must give the airy nothing of the Lambeth Immortal a local habitation and a name, and our efforts to do that must begin at Alderton Manor.”
“Why were we in the flint pit? I must say that was my doing entirely.” Philip Alderton’s bedroom was in the north wing of the manor, facing out to the distant sea. Alderton, weak but fully awake, lay propped up on pillows in the ornate four-poster bed. Darwin was seated by the bedside, and Jacob Pole stood by the window, watching the clouds sail up like great galleons over the northern horizon.
“Three days ago,” went on Alderton, his chest and arms bare, “I was going through some of Uncle Charles’ possessions in the old study in the west wing. As you can see from the style of this building, the manor is well over two hundred years old, and I wanted to find the master plan with an eye to a few changes to the buildings. There were old books and papers scattered everywhere, in odd chests and bookcases. I found all sorts of things, but not the plans I wanted. Late in the afternoon, I found the book that is over there on the mantelpiece. Colonel Pole, would you bring it over here and show it to Dr. Darwin.”
While Alderton was speaking, Darwin had been gently inspecting his wounds and his general physique. There were deep lacerations on the chest and arms, and one on Alderton’s cheek near his left eye. Ledyard’s description of him as a Hercules had been no exaggeration, although it occurred to Darwin that the likeness was drawn from the wrong mythology. With his pale blue eyes, straw-colored hair, great muscled arms, and huge rib cage, Alderton was a Norse god, a Thor who would have no trouble swinging a hundred pounds of double-bladed war axe at the enemy.