Moonlight, Murder & Machinery

Excerpt from the novel ...

 After dinner of squab pie and ale, Shelley lay on his bed for a while, listening to the faint sounds coming from the other rooms in the inn. He could not doze; his mind was racing as he tried to anticipate what would happen tonight.

He heard Gordon’s voice in his mind. “It is time, gentlemen. Don your masks.”

Dressing as quickly as he could, despite his fingers beginning to tremble slightly, he donned the stealth uniform and put on his mask and hat.

A soft knock came at the door. Shelley opened the latch, and saw Linnel’s partly hidden face, mouth grinning beneath the mask. “The guests sleep soundly and will not wake until past dawn – thanks to Gordon. Ready, Master Shelley?”

“I am ready,” Shelley answered, trying to keep his voice level.

 They descended the gently creaking stairs and met Rose and Gordon in the empty parlor. Cribb hooked the horses up to the carriage outside and, with wheels muffled with leather mesh, rode out into the night.

Within minutes they had arrived at the church. They stopped the carriage at the east side of the cemetery and dismounted. A low mist hung upon the ground and wreathed the graves with vaporous exhalations.

“Perfect place for a night walk,” muttered Gordon. “Gentlemen, the goggles.”

Along with the other three, Shelley reached into his cape, withdrew the night-goggles, and eased them onto his nose over the mask. The goggles, constructed by the Royal Engineers, were made of specially treated crystal, and part of the equipment issued only to members of Red Branch. The crystal, its precise composition a closely guarded secret, served to intensify the lunar light and rendered the graveyard a luminous, ghostly white, trees and tombstones rendered in stark outline to Shelley’s eyes.  

They advanced silently into the graveyard, four masked and caped figures merging with the night

“The verse described a Cherubim in the east of the garden,” muttered Rose.

“Over there,” Linnel said.

Before them stood the angel - a work of grandiose Gothic masonry, with the likeness of a flaming sword in its left hand.

 “The pastor was definitely trying to tell us something,” Rose said. “Usually, in statues of the Cherubim, the sword is held in the right hand. This time it’s in the left.”

“Does it make any difference?”

“To Red Branch, every anomaly makes a difference,” whispered Gordon

They walked over to the angel, the details of the face, robes and wings gaining clarity in Shelley’s goggles as they neared it. Thoughts of angels and devils chased themselves through his head as he peered at it. If the ancient mysteries of the earth were real, if the gates to the spirit realm were not as firmly closed as thought before, were angels real? Did they walk the world of men in disguise, altering and influencing events, just as Red Branch did?

No. He had to concentrate; it was vital that he not be drawn into supernatural fancies when the others expected him to keep a firm hand on his musket. 

Rose adjusted the tiny levers on his goggles and bent down to peer closely at the plinth. “There’s a fine network of scratches around the base, here. It looks as if the statue was dragged across, and back again.”

 “I knew that bacon-faced squire was hangin’ his arse,” Linnel muttered.

Rose stood, and leant over to examine the sword. “There are more scratches around the sword’s hilt. I think ….”