Chapter the 2nd
“Nothing like a good riot!” Officer Beacons hollered as he commenced the bludgeoning of his fifth carny of the evening. This particular carny, being of the younger persuasion, abandoned her protests rather early. Beacons stared down at his twitching victim, who lacked the fortitudinous pluck of proper Colonial women, and he briefly waxed nostalgic for his most recent bar-raid. There was no one quite so resilient, quite so prepared to take a beating, as a proper Colonial barmaid. “Not quite the same, eh?” he commented.
Officer Byuker, who was forcibly pressing his baton against the throat of an old man of indeterminate origin, spared a glance in Beacons’ direction. “Hey? What’s that old chap?”
“I say, these folk of the darker persuasion don’t seem quite as ready to resist as our good Colonial criminals, do they?”
Byuker grinned broadly. “You sound disappointed.”
Beacons nodded ruefully, chancing a poor-spirited kick at the waifish girl on the ground, who was beginning to show aspirations of consciousness.
Byuker, his new teeth shining whiter than himself, applied his formidable forehead to the asphyxiating oldster, thereupon the poor carny dropped to the floor, no doubt shattering a joint or two in the process. “Isn’t that the whole point, man? These folk are scared, they daren’t fight back against the Colonial crown. That’s why we’re here, yes?”
Beacons nodded again, examining the operatic carnage that surrounded him. A beautiful young lady, draped only in a bed sheet, was sprinting across the field, dodging small fires and deftly outrunning Sergeant Salking’s resolute pursuit. A gaggle of children had been corralled by Liam and Perkins, no doubt to be sold at discount rate to a nearby workhouse. The foreign children were inevitably harder workers than the local stock, but usually had to be housed by their keeper lest they die overnight on the streets: hence the cheaper price. Not far from said future laborers, some great gypsy chieftain could be seen struggling bodily with Sergeant Leonard “Lion” Mann, putting up a good show before the inevitable truncheoning by the swiftly outnumbering forces of the Colonial good-and-true.
“It just…” Beacons squinted in concentration as he twiddled his iconically wild black mustaches. “It… doesn’t seem very sporting.”
“Ah,” Byuker nodded, answering with a pair of stomps upon the oldster’s quivering face. “Well I for one am happy to do without the bruises and bite marks. Those bar harpies are a force, aren’t they just?”
Beacons nodded again. Considering the night, illuminated only by the sparse pyres upon which burned the various tarot cards, scarves, dolls, and treasured possessions of these now displaced people, the nodding seemed superfluous. This was particularly so, seeing as Byuker spent the entire time staring at the unconscious, ninety-pound girl at Beacons’ feet.
“What do you reckon of her?” he asked.
Beacons glanced down. “Oh… Italian, perhaps? Roman, or whatever they call those folk?”
“No, no.” Byuker twiddled his own slightly smaller but no less iconic mustaches. “I mean what do you reckon: fifteen? Sixteen?”
Beacons offered a widened eye to his old friend. “I shouldn’t think a day over twelve, Byuker.” He let the number hang in the air a moment. “Why?”
“Hmph… pity.” With that, Byuker turned and charged after a bent old crone, hobbling away with an old spinning wheel. His valiant war cry stunned her, though not so well as his black-and-crimson baton shortly thereafter.
Beacons turned away before the crack of wood-upon-brain-pan, and glanced again at the waifish girl, breathing feverishly as she was. For the barest instant, Beacons was troubled by a feeling almost totally alien to him. It reminded him of his wedding night, after he and Missis Beacons had spent a blissful twenty-seven seconds consummating their holy union. Officer Beacons (he had insisted she call him as such, even upon the evening in question) lie spent, red, and shining, a well-anticipated smile upon his cracked and gray teeth. Missis Beacons, however, celebrated their coupling but sitting on the bed-corner and weeping into her hands. Bewailing her lost virginity, he supposed. Naturally, Beacons left her to it and quickly slipped into a rapturous dream, but there was a brief moment, almost as long as the act itself, where he was overcome with a strange commixture of curiosity and sadness. A conjointure of warmth and uncertainty. He was quite sure the feeling had something to do with Missis Beacons’ crying, but sadly he was unable to place it.
Here and now, staring down at the gasping, bloody-scalped girl, Beacons was again unable to place the feeling. Luckily, it dissipated as quickly as it had before, and the officer was once more unto the breach, as it were.
Only a few minutes later, all the fun had been had. Everyone was arrested, fled, unconscious, dead, or some combination of the four. Captain Pluto made a brief appearance to congratulate the men on a job well done, then tottered off to the pub despite the late hour, offering some esoteric comment about a visitor occupying Missis Pluto’s time.
Sergeant Leonard “Lion” Mann was running the arrests, directing which officers to handle which collars, and Beacons and Byuker stood in dutiful admiration of their superior, awaiting their sacred orders. At length, Lion shoved three fat women, two old men, and a burly fellow in double-chains at the pair. “Take them down to the lory,” Lion commanded in his very Henry-the-Fifth-ish voice, dismissing the two with a barely perceptible pop of his chin.
As Byuker had no interest in handling the larger women, and neither Beacons nor Byuker held any desire to deal with the burly fellow, each grabbed an old man then stared at his partner, silently daring each other to volunteer someone or something. It was a convoluted and draining business, their jockeying to evade work, but it was a tradition. Beacons and Byuker were big on tradition. So they stared.
“Why not let them all go?” offered a strange voice.
The officers looked over to find a pair of glinting, glimmering coins floating together in the night. After a moment, they resolved into spectacles, blinding them from the small, academic-looking man that stood far from the now dying pyres. He spoke with the bassy ebullience of a headmaster. “I hope not to overstep my bounds, sergeants, but it appears you have no desire to hoist these ne’er-do-wells off to the clink, yes?”
He looked vaguely owlish, Beacons decided, more because of the glasses than anything else. Had Beacons been given to reflection, which he decidedly was not, he might have lamented that the owl is a predatory creature, famously and incorrectly credited as being far wiser than it actually is. Sadly, Beacons’ idea of poetry was whatever hymnal Missis Beacons forced him to sing along to each Sunday, so he looked at symbolism with suspicion at best, and downright hostility more often than not.
Herman Melville and Officer Beacons would not have got on well.
Byuker hoisted himself up. He was the tallest of the three and wanted to make sure everyone knew it. “It is our solemn duty, sir.”
The stranger pursed his lips and nodded. Beacons liked nodding.
The academician raised his brows. “Doesn’t look like much fun.”
At this, Byuker deflated slightly. “True.”
“But” the short man countered, “actually breaking up the riots. That’s fun, yes?”
In truth, there had been no riot to begin with. However, some Colonial citizen had gotten his fortune told or something and had been dissatisfied with his purchase. A flipped table and a harsh word later, the police were out having their field day. The citizen, presumably, was now at home sleeping off his tipsy outrage.
The owlish gentleman offered a shrug. “So… why not let them go? They’ll set up again, and you can recommence cracking skulls all the sooner, yes?” The officers shared a suspicious yet hopeful look. “I should explain, Sergeants, if you’ll grant me a moment.”
Beacons liked being called ‘Sergeant,’ as did Byuker. Neither was about to correct the misnomer.
The owl-fellow pressed on. “I am in search of an enterprising young man to assist me in a matter of private investigation. As all of your cohorts are off to the Yard, and you two seemed by far the most ambitious and focused of all anyway, I thought I might arrest your attention, if you’ll forgive the pun.” The pun went unnoticed and thence unforgiven. “If you would be so kind as to join me at the pub, we can discuss which of you is most fit for this very profitable endeavor. I leave the decision to you. Good evening.”
The owlish, nebbishy fellow strode off toward Milligan’s.
Like a vaudeville routine, the officers glanced at each other, then at the collars, then at each other again, then off after the slowly vanishing gentleman. They each very deliberately released their charges.
Byuker hoisted his belt in what he hoped as a very official-looking way and stared down at the carnies (except for the burly young man, who was taller and subsequently mostly ignored). “You lot have caught yourselves a lucky break tonight,” he assured them in his most patriarchal voice. “Now I want you to disburse, think about what you’ve done, and swear off this nasty business forever, and we’ll see you again in a fortnight. Good eve.”
Not needing to be told twice, the ladies and the burly man made themselves scarce. The two older men, who in fact did need to be told twice, were soon to follow.
The pyres were nearly dead, but the officers could have picked their way to Milligan’s blindfolded if needs were.
Byuker took a satisfied breath and rested a meaty hand on Beacons’ shoulder. “Welp, good friend, I’m off to Milligan’s. Someone’s got to explain the shifty escape of those villainous carnies to the Lion, and seeing as I’m the ranking officer-”
“By a lousy seven minutes!”
“-Well in seven minutes you’re welcome to pass the buck to some other poor sap. In the meantime, track the Lion down and spin a good yarn. I’ll see you at Milligan’s later. I assure you, I’ll give our new benefactor a glowing report of your ambition and focus.”
Byuker hoisted his belt again, just to be sure everyone knew who was in charge, then trundled off to the pub. As always, Beacons lost the fuel for argument, offering only a defeated sigh as epilogue. He screwed up his courage and turned to survey what little could be seen in the dying light of the pyres.
As he turned, the first thing Beacons saw was ninety pounds of waifish nails and teeth flying at his guileless face from less than a yard away. Shortly after, he never saw anything again.
What followed does not readily bear repeating. It is worth suggesting, however, that Beacons’ deliverance into unconsciousness was decidedly more merciful than what most of the night’s victims had received.
In sincere hopes to allay any dread or lack of resolution the reader might feel, the author here hastens to add that Missis Beacons, after lamenting the loss of her husband for a respectable hour or two, was soon seen in the company of her physician Jonathan Victor, who prescribed a number of elixirs and exercises to cure her melancholy. In time, Elizabeth Beacons nee Gardensen would become known as one of the first established female physicians in all of the Empire. She would be widely regarded as a beacon of reason in a superstitious age, though she could never abide the sight of an untended mustache.