From a Drood to A Kill: A Secret Histories Novel Read online

  “Really?” said Molly. “How nice.”

  The two women glared at each other. I could tell they’d taken an immediate dislike to each other. I could feel frost in the air between them.

  “Strictly speaking,” said Kate, her cold gaze fixed on Molly, “this is a gathering for family members only.”

  “Molly is with me,” I said. “That makes her family.”

  “You’re not married to her yet,” said Kate. “And a lot could happen before that. You need to think about which side you’re on, Eddie.”

  “I have,” I said.

  Something in the tone of my voice must have got through to Kate, because she stopped glowering at Molly and looked uncertainly at me.

  “Ah. Well,” she said, “I won’t bother you during the funeral. We can talk later.”

  People were already frowning at us, for raising our voices during the vicar’s service. Kate backed quickly away, disappearing into the nearest collection of family members. Molly looked at me.

  “Controller?”

  “In her dreams,” I said.

  “I suspect that may be the problem,” said Molly.

  “What?”

  “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Looking forward to it,” I lied.

  Molly stared around her. “I have to say, I’m really impressed at the size of the turnout. Is this . . . everybody?”

  “Not everybody,” I said. “There’s still a skeleton staff on duty inside the Hall, manning the sensors and defences, just in case anyone should try to take advantage of the situation.”

  Molly nodded at the Librarian. “William’s looking almost . . . normal. At least he didn’t bring his giant white rabbit friend with him.”

  “The Pook?” I said. “He might be here. Being tactfully invisible.”

  “No,” said Molly, “I’d See him.”

  “Have you any idea what he is?” I said.

  “He’s the Pook,” said Molly.

  “Okay . . . ,” I said.

  I turned my attention to a small group of people standing to one side, keeping themselves very much to themselves. I knew who they were, who they had to be. Such a varied assortment of types and attitudes could only be James’ assorted illegitimate offspring. The Grey Bastards. Unacknowledged and unaccepted by the family—though that didn’t stop us making use of them when we needed people who operated in their murky twilight worlds. I shouldn’t have been surprised there were so many of them; you can’t swan around the world the way the legendary Grey Fox did, seducing one and all, and not leave a trail of illegitimate children in your wake.

  I’d met a few of them. Maurice Levallier, Le Freak. Charlotte Karstein, the Wilderness Witch. Monkton Farley, consulting detective. And so many others, whom I knew by name or reputation. All of them here for Jack. He always had time for them. He kept in regular contact with a surprising number of his nephews and nieces, looking out for them as best he could. I had to wonder why so few of them had been brought home, into the arms of the family. Certainly Uncle Jack had always been ready to go to bat for them, down through the years, convinced that it was wrong for us to leave them out in the cold.

  I moved over to the Matriarch, and quietly put the question to her. She shrugged quickly, as though irritated by such a question on such a formal occasion, but answered me anyway.

  “Most of them have been contacted and offered sanctuary at one time or another. Usually on Jack’s urging. And most of them politely, and sometimes not so politely, turned us down. They value their independence—perhaps because that’s all they have that’s rightfully theirs. They like to maintain a distance from us, though not so much that they won’t take work from us when it’s offered. As long as the money’s right. We would never turn away anyone in need, Eddie, as long as they have Drood blood in them. Now hush, please; pay attention to the service.”

  The vicar was winding down, coming to the end of his reading. I went back to looking round at the family. All the lab assistants were there, still wearing their white lab coats with all the usual chemical stains, electrical burns, and bullet holes, like so many proud battle scars. A great many older members of the family stood with them, also wearing lab coats, just for the occasion. Men and women who had been the Armourer’s assistants once, before moving on to take up other forms of service in the family. Few stay in the Armoury for long. It wears people out and burns them up, very quickly.

  The rows of mourners suddenly opened up, falling back to allow the coffin to be brought forward. It glowed brightly in the Summer sunshine; formed from the golden strange matter of my uncle Jack’s armour. Complete with a bas-relief representation of the Armourer, lying stretched out on the coffin lid, with a calm, composed face and his arms folded neatly across his chest. The golden figure looked very peaceful, very dignified. I barely recognised him. I wasn’t sure Jack would have approved of this. He certainly never gave a damn about appearing dignified while he was alive.

  “You still haven’t explained,” Molly murmured, “why your family felt the need to hold this funeral so quickly. When did the Armourer die exactly?”

  “Just this morning, apparently,” I said.

  “Then what’s the rush?”

  “There’s no body inside that coffin,” I said. “He would have been cremated immediately after his autopsy. Nothing suspicious or sinister about that; it’s standard family procedure. You have to remember, it’s all about Drood DNA. We can’t risk a Drood body, even the smallest part of it, falling into enemy hands. Or even potentially enemy hands. Which is pretty much everyone who isn’t family.”

  “Why?” said Molly, frowning. “What makes your family’s DNA so special?”

  “We have all been changed,” I said carefully. “First by the Heart, and then by Ethel, so we could bond with our armour. Only we can wear the torc, and summon the armour. So even if a torc should fall into enemy hands, they couldn’t use it.”

  “Then you’re not fully human?” said Molly, smirking suddenly. “That would explain a lot . . .”

  The lab assistants, past and present, formed a long corridor of white coats, two rows of bowed heads for the golden coffin to be carried through, as a mark of honour and respect. The coffin itself was being carried by six very favoured assistants. Chosen by lot, because they would all have volunteered for the Armourer. Several assistants at the back of the crowd fired off a bunch of assorted experimental weapons in salute. From the look on the Matriarch’s face, they hadn’t cleared that with her first. No doubt they meant well, but I thought it sounded a bit ragged. They should all have agreed on the same weapon. But then, getting lab assistants to agree on anything is like herding cats. It can be done, but only with lots of rough language and the liberal use of a cattle prod. A choir of assistants sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” a cappella. One of Jack’s favourites. Followed by “Moon River.”

  Molly leaned in close to me again. “I’ve never thought to ask before: is there any particular thing you’d like sung at your funeral, Eddie? Or haven’t you thought about it?”

  “Of course I’ve thought about it,” I said. “I’m a field agent, and damn few of us survive to reach retirement age. Many’s the stakeout I’ve passed, occupying myself with all the details of my funeral. I want lowered flags, and fireworks, and a day of general mourning. I want rent clothes and lives ruined forever. And as I’m put to my rest I want everyone to sing that hardy old perennial ‘Remember You’re a Womble.’ Just to annoy everyone. They’ll all be going, Oh, that must be very significant. It must have meant something special to him. But, no, it’s just me having one last laugh. In fact, if people listen carefully they’ll probably be able to hear giggling from inside the coffin. What about you, Molly?”

  “I want ‘The Witch,’ by the Rattles,” Molly said firmly. “It was an old Sixties hit, and my mother’s favourite song when she was a kid. Either that,
or Redbone’s ‘Witch Queen of New Orleans.’ My mother was always singing that when I was little.”

  “I’m sensing a theme here,” I said. “They’re both very you.”

  She grinned. “It’s either that or ‘Kick Out the Jams Motherfucker.’”

  People on all sides were glaring openly at us. So Molly and I glared right back at them.

  Next came a flyby overhead, as several female lab assistants in white coats rode across the sky in an organized display, on white winged unicorns. It all looked very impressive, as they swept back and forth in carefully executed patterns, though I was just a little bit worried about the danger of sudden unicorn droppings. I also wondered when they’d found the time to practise all this before the funeral. Unless this was just something people in the family learned for special occasions. I used to know about things like that; maybe I had been away from the family for too long. The flying unicorns finished their display and fluttered down to the ground, to be replaced by a grand aerial procession of steam-powered autogyros, modernistic hellicars, and a whole bunch of brightly glowing flying saucers. I thought it all looked splendid.

  The six chosen lab assistants carefully lowered the golden coffin to the ground before the Matriarch and the vicar and stepped back, surreptitiously massaging their aching shoulders. The vicar said a few last words, closed his Bible, and bowed his head. There was a pause. The Matriarch turned to me.

  “Would you like to say a few words, Eddie?”

  I looked at her, and then at the golden coffin. And at the bas-relief figure on the lid that didn’t look anything like Jack. I stepped forward and the family watched silently. I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but my throat just closed up and I couldn’t get the words out. In the end, all I could manage was “Good-bye, Uncle Jack.”

  And then I just stood there, unable to say or do anything, until Molly came and took me by the arm again and led me gently away.

  The Matriarch made a speech. All very nice, and very formal; nothing that mattered. I didn’t listen. And then we all looked round sharply as something exploded out of the artificial lake at the other end of the grounds. The Matriarch broke off, because no one was paying her any attention. We were all staring at the lake, where a great fountain had risen up out of the frothing, bubbling waters, sending huge ripples coursing across the disturbed surface. The fountain rose up and up, and then bent over suddenly and rained down onto the shoreline. It quickly formed into a pale blue human figure that strode forward across the lawns to join us.

  As it drew nearer, it became clearer; the figure was a woman, made entirely from water. The outer shape remained solid, though its movements sent slow tides surging back and forth inside it. The family fell back, to allow her to approach the golden coffin. Up close, we could all see heavy drops of water dripping continuously from her chin, like tears. The Matriarch bowed to her respectfully, and we all followed suit. It isn’t often that the undine in the lake takes on human form and favours us with her presence.

  “Jack Drood,” said the undine, in a soft, bubbling voice. “I was fond of him. He was kind to me.”

  We all waited, but she had nothing more to say.

  The ceremony continued. The Matriarch finished her speech, the vicar said a few last words, and the golden coffin disappeared quite suddenly. Leaving in its place a small golden urn.

  “The urn contains Jack’s ashes,” I explained to Molly. “They’ll be scattered across the grounds, in some place that was special to him.”

  “Are we supposed to . . . ?” said Molly.

  “No,” I said. “The Armourer’s ashes are the responsibility of the next Armourer.”

  Maxwell and Victoria came forward and picked up the urn between them. They both seemed surprised at how light it was. They turned to address the family.

  “We will sprinkle the Armourer’s ashes among a particular copse of trees, down by the lake,” said Maxwell.

  “He used to walk there with his wife, Clara,” said Victoria. “She has already been put to rest in that place, and now he gets to join her. So they can be together again, at last.”

  I was a bit upset that I hadn’t known about that. It seemed to me that I should have known about something so important to Jack. But then, there was a lot about my uncle I didn’t know. I’d always known that.

  “Droods have been put into the grounds of Drood Hall for centuries,” I said to Molly. “So we can become a part of the trees and the grass and the flowers. One way or another, none of us ever get to leave Drood Hall.”

  The undine suddenly lost her shape and became a fountain again. People fell back as she blasted up into the air, arcing high across the Summer sky. She rained down onto her lake and disappeared back into the waters. Not leaving even a single ripple on the surface.

  “She didn’t stay long,” said Molly.

  “I’m surprised she stayed as long as she did,” I said. “I’ve never known her to turn out for a funeral before.”

  “Look!” said Molly. “She left us a rainbow.”

  And so she had—a great brilliantly coloured bridge, sweeping across the sky from one side of the grounds to the other.

  “Our ways may seem hard to the outsider,” said the Matriarch, and everyone turned back to look at her again. “But they are necessary. For the protection of the living, as well as the dead. Be at peace, Jack Drood. Be at peace, the family.”

  Everyone bowed their head, and then they all turned away. The crowd started to break up. The Matriarch came over to join me and Molly.

  “I take it Eddie has explained to you about Drood DNA, Molly,” she said. “Even though he shouldn’t have? Of course he has . . . In the past, we have tried other ways of dealing with our dead. There was Iain, for example, who persuaded the Matriarch of his day that we should experiment with taxidermy. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Iain didn’t always wait for his subjects to be entirely dead before he started his work.”

  “What happened to him?” said Molly.

  “He was cremated,” said the Matriarch. “Alive. Along with all of his . . . creations.”

  “Where did the Armourer’s coffin go?” said Molly.

  “Back to Ethel,” I said. “All torcs, and all armour, return to her. Because she is the source of our strange matter, after all. The urn will disappear, after Maxwell and Victoria have finished with it.”

  “You know,” said Molly, “this probably isn’t the right time to ask questions like this, but . . .”

  “But you’re going to anyway,” I said. “Because propriety has never stopped you before. Go on; what is it?”

  “Well,” said Molly, “it’s just . . . how does an invisible and immaterial presence like Ethel produce entirely material things, like the torc and the armour? I mean, where does all the strange matter actually come from?”

  “Good question,” I said. “Basically, Ethel can do all the amazing things she does because she’s not from around here. Inasmuch as I, or anyone else in the family, is able to understand what she says on the subject . . . Ethel comes from a higher level of reality. You could say she’s realer than us. Realer than our world, or our reality. It’s not that Ethel won’t explain herself; it’s more that I don’t think any of us are equipped to understand her answers.”

  “But . . . ,” said Molly.

  “There’s always a but with you, isn’t there?” I said. “But what?”

  “But if she’s so very godlike and far above Humanity, what is she doing here, hanging out with the likes of us?”

  “Another very good question,” I said. “And one that would almost certainly keep me up at nights worrying, if I thought about it too much, which I try very hard not to do. I can’t help feeling that if we ever do discover the real reasons for Ethel being here, we’re really not going to like them.” I looked at the Matriarch. “Would you care to add anything?”

  “I would
n’t dare,” said the Matriarch. “The torcs and armour go back to Ethel. That’s all we know, and all we need to know. For our own good.”

  “It’s a pity she couldn’t be here,” I said.

  I am here! said Ethel’s voice from out of the air around us. In spirit, anyway.

  “I thought you could only manifest in the Sanctity,” said the Matriarch.

  Whatever gave you that idea? I’m flexible . . .

  “The body has been cremated, and you have his armour,” said Molly. “So there’s nothing left of the Armourer now. You don’t even have a tombstone to visit, Eddie. Shouldn’t there be a memorial wall somewhere, with the names of the honoured dead on it? For those who have fallen in battle, fighting the good fight, protecting Humanity?”

  “Too many Droods die,” said the Matriarch quite calmly. “The wall would soon be full, and the grounds would be overrun with tombstones. As a family, we’ve never been sentimental. We can’t afford to be. We always look forward. Not back.”

  “How do you feel about that, Ethel?” said Molly. “Hell, how do you feel about death? Ethel?”

  We waited, but there was no response.

  “I think she’s gone,” I said. “A fine time to discover our other-dimensional benefactor has a sneaky side . . .”

  “The Armourer will have his photo in the entrance hall,” said the Matriarch. “And yes, before you ask, Eddie, I have made it my business to see your parents’ photo reinstated in its rightful position there. It should never have been removed. Someone was just being petty. You get that sometimes, in families.”

  I looked around, at the departing members of my family. It was easier to see faces now that the ranks and rows were breaking up and everyone was going his own way. I kept hoping to see my parents in the crowd somewhere. I’d been sure they would turn up for the funeral, for the Armourer’s sake, if not for mine. But there was no sign of them anywhere. It seemed they were still missing . . .

  The ceremony had come to its proper close, and Maxwell and Victoria were now the new family Armourer. The family goes on . . . Married teams were not unusual in the position, but it had been quite a while. It was the kind of job that usually suited an enthusiastic loner. Like my uncle Jack . . . had become.