The Tethered Goat

By Mikala Ash

Hell-bent on revenge for the death of her husband, Elizabeth takes the initiative and sets a daring trap for Vladimir, the Russian spy she suspects of the deed. Meanwhile, Peter Smythe, a handsome and dedicated correspondent, is investigating the disappearances of street people in the docklands of London.

The discovery of a horribly mutilated body of one of the victims reminds Elizabeth of the horrendous acts perpetrated by the Whitechapel murderer known as the Collector. Elizabeth slew that monster, itself a creature of Vladimir, and she fears this is a new apprentice.

Sparks fly when Peter and Elizabeth come together, and they set off on a roller-coaster adventure in a fogbound steam-driven world. When the hunted becomes the hunter, Elizabeth is the bait!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021

Book preview

Chapter One

The Hunted Becomes the Hunter

Alone at last.

I was sitting unaccompanied in a Cumberland steam-cab. By myself, without anyone to protect me.

It was a strange sensation after the intensity of the last few months. A return to normal, as it were, to a time before I began my Investigation Bureau, and before I became an Agent of the Queen.

A time when I had been just an ordinary widow.

Ha!

I pardoned myself for what was a small, but understandable, expression of conceit, for I’d given my protector, the ever-reliable Bisby, the slip. I forgave myself the sin of self-congratulation, so enamoured I was on the audacity of my cunning subterfuge. Sin or not, it had been a nice piece of work, using guile, disguise, and a certain boldness. I was still panting, and my heart still pounded with the excitement of it. Perspiration was running cold beneath my shift, and inside my button boots my feet ached appallingly. Despite these reminders of physical effort, the exclamation of conceit turned into a slightly manic chuckle, then into a full-blown belly laugh. Goodness knows what the cabbie perched above the cabin thought.

Today had been intended to be more practice of the techniques taught to me by Oxley, himself an Agent of the Queen, and assessed by the aforesaid Bisby, another agent. The two, posing as footmen, had been assigned to protect my household from the attentions of the Russian agent, Vladimir, a diabolical monster who I’d bested only a few months ago, when I’d killed his murderous slave, The Collector, who had terrorised Whitechapel with a series of brutal mutilation murders. Oxley could, I am certain, gain renown as a teacher, for I’d learned a great deal over the last few weeks. Tomorrow my skills in evasion were to be formally put to the test. The challenge being to evade Bisby for the period of one hour.

Do you think I’ll be ready for tomorrow’s test? I’d asked Oxley in a suitably tremulous voice, when he saw Bisby and me off after breakfast.

We must crawl before we can walk, he replied sagely. Just remember what we’ve been practising, and you will do well.

I’ll try, I said with a dash of uncertainty.

Of course, that was nonsense. I’d been ready for over week, so I took the opportunity of taking the test today instead, and not just for an hour. Bisby or Oxley had only themselves to blame, for I had given them fair warning with my dreadful overacting. I mean to say, pinched cheeks, fluttering eyelashes, trembling lips and a voice hesitant and pitched slightly higher than usual? I gave it everything. Proof that even the best Agents of the Queen can be the victims of feminine wiles.

Naughty of me, I know, but necessary, for it was integral to my grand plan.

To be strictly honest, I hadn’t thought it possible to evade the suffocating twenty-four-hour protection the general had erected about me. It seemed impenetrable, a forbidding brick wall a hundred feet high and a mile thick. As silly as that sounds, that’s the way I felt. Of course, a lady was never alone in public. She was either accompanied by her lady’s maid, a burly footman, a relative or mature female friend or companion, or, of course, by her husband. Such was the condition of women of quality, as we are termed in the year of our Lord 1860. Our virtue, and by that, I mean our reputation, was never safe if we were out in public alone.

Yet here I was.

Alone.

Admittedly the protection I suffered went even beyond what would be considered normal for the upper middle echelon of society. Whenever I left the house either Bisby or Oxley would be with me, disguised as footmen, a decadent luxury for a widow like me. At least they were not dressed in ostentatious livery as those working for the gentry. If those two professionals were not with me, I was with Archie, my late husband’s young batman during the Crimean War, who I considered the son we never had, and who now managed my Investigation Bureau, or with Felix, my former teacher of the erotic arts, a former prostitute and now assistant to Archie. If not with them then I would be in the company of Baudry, a doctor who had been intimately involved in my cases and had also graced my bed.

That was not the full extent of it. The general, my mentor, a confidant to the Queen, and commander of the clandestine force of agents protecting the realm, took it one step further. In addition to assigning Oxley and Bisby to watch from within my household, he also posted watchers over my house and staff. Thus there were eyes focussed on me all the time, unrelenting, and though invisible, the knowledge of their existence was like a heavy shadow from that imaginary brick wall, enveloping me, pressing in on me from every side, suffocating the life out of me. The general feared the eyes of Russian agents were also set fast upon me, ordered by the indefatigable Vladimir, awaiting his signal to strike.

Not now, though. For the moment I was free of watchful eyes, both benevolent and malignant.

As I snuggled in the warm glow of self-congratulation, I recounted to myself how I had achieved my freedom. A character fault, I admit, though encouraged by Oxley who had impressed upon me the importance of reviewing any action to identify areas of deficiency that could have been performed differently or more correctly, and I was simply being an obedient student, albeit a smug one.

We’d been in the Albert and Victoria Museum, admiring the new exhibition of developments in science and technology of the last decade. Using Prince Albert’s Great Exhibition of 1851 as the starting point the displays chronicled the surprising changes we had undergone in just nine years. The advancements were staggering, and not for the first time I felt our world had been wrenched from its normal course through time and set upon a different path, one of rapid science and technological development, for we had seen more change in a decade than in the ten centuries previous. The purpose of the exhibition was to pay homage to that new path, and celebrate the empire being at the forefront of global prosperity. Grandiose sentiments perhaps, but I was proud to be sworn to protect that empire, like my husband Jonathan, who had died for it.

After gazing wonderingly at the display of the new and astounding electrical gadgetry, strange power sources based on minerals that actually emitted energy, batteries to store and multiply that power, and devices to apply the energy in almost every aspect of civilised life. Bisby and I, among a bustling awestruck crowd, witnessed giant electrical sparks arcing between opposing terminals. We read the explanatory cards explaining the dangers of electricity itself, while at the same time extolling the safety features of the various electrical devices that will soon be available for every household, and at ridiculously low prices that even the poor could afford.

Imagine, for a ha’penny a day a family could illuminate their lodgings throughout the night. A ha’penny! Unbelievable. Though that luxury was still a few years in the future, the variety of batteries available, and the domestic uses they could be applied was simply amazing. The display of automatons was particularly captivating, illustrating the evolution from miniature toys to human-size household servants and industrial labourers. The bedroom automatons designed by the brilliant Cumberlands, Fleur and Horatio, of recent acquaintance were not present, of course. The purpose of a museum is to educate children, not scare them witless along with their governesses and other sensitive people of the female persuasion. However, I knew that sales of the lifelike male and female windup, and now battery-operated, mechanical lovers were increasing.

Sensing my chance was approaching, I’d sent Bisby to get a pamphlet explaining the soon-to-be-available electrical carpet cleaners.

I must order one, I said. Florence will be greatly relieved.

That she would, ma’am.

That’s when I made my escape. I’d waited till a group of matrons and their young charges -- visitors from Italy I suspected from their exuberant chatter -- had washed around me in a tide of gaily coloured silk and muslin. The innocence of the group would not signify to Bisby as posing any imminent danger, and he would direct his ever-vigilant eyes toward other more likely candidates. While he was occupied at the pamphlet desk the bubbly group surrounded me, and as many of their number were taller, I was suddenly overwhelmed, like a small sapling in the shadows of older mature trees, presenting me with the opportunity to make a transformation. I took off my petite bonnet with its distinctive blue feathers and replaced it with a crumpled cartwheel affair with long orange feathers which I had folded into the inside pocket of my coat. A swift reversal of my cape, from tartan to black, completed my disguise, and I took up a position in the middle of the flowing group, spouting my schoolgirl Italian much to their amusement.

"Miracoli della scienza, I recall saying reasonably correctly. However my attempts at pronouncing, dove posso acquistare una batteria, and, Il tempo non va bene oggi, were not as successful, going by their confused expressions and requests for clarification, Perdono, che cosa hai detto."

Language differences aside, I allowed myself to be swept along in the general direction of the aerospace exhibit which also, conveniently, passed an exit door that opened onto Exhibition Road.

I had studied a street map the previous evening and had planned my escape route with some care. A mere minute later I was outside walking sedately through a light shower of rain falling from a dark glowering sky. Being of small stature I believe I disappeared completely underneath the sea of black umbrellas. I didn’t pop open my own sangster, as it was lavender, and would stand out like a flower in a coal bunker. I went directly to Cromwell Road, where I found several waiting cabs near Thurloe Square.

I hired the third in line, a particularly attractive steam engine in the form of a golden unicorn drawing a cab of the classic hansom design. Manufactured in Edinburgh by the brilliant Cumberlands, these exotic models had quickly captured the transport market, and their machines were now ubiquitous in the London streets, replacing earlier steam cabs of a chunkier design. The machine was relatively new, as the leather seats still retained a pleasant scent. I gave the driver instructions to take me to Paddington Station. As we left I checked out the rear window, but no cabs seemed to follow. The roads were clogged, and our way was tediously slow. Once at the bustling station I alighted, paid the driver, then climbed directly into another cab, again third in line. This one had the shape of a lovely Arabian stallion, and I directed it to Great Western Road where I engaged my third cab. I gave the driver a fictitious address two streets away from my ultimate destination, Upper Brook Street.

I had put into practice the principles Oxley had so diligently taught me. I’d used my natural attributes, namely my small stature, and my knowledge of the environment which together with preparation, had allowed me to effect my disappearance. Bisby would be furious with me for breaking away, but I hoped he would be proud of me as well. Once my hubris faded, butterflies the size of eagles started flying about in my belly. I had escaped the watchful eye of Bisby, right enough, but now I was alone, left to my own devices.

If this should go wrong.

I suddenly felt like a tethered goat.

The thought was prompted by a flash of recollection. When I was a little girl I once read an adventure story about a wily old tiger in India. The story, meant for boys, was illustrated beautifully, and graphically. The tiger was a magnificent beast, with ferocious yellow eyes, long whiskers, sharp fangs, and powerful hindquarters. The creature was the very epitome of majestic feline savagery. Over a period of many months the beast had been terrorizing a village, indiscriminately taking old men, women, and children, leaving half-devoured remains to be found by terrified relatives in the morning. An equally wily hunter heard of their plight. He travelled across half of India and offered the hapless villagers his services. He was depicted as a tall, rugged man with a whiskered face, and long silver hair tied back. His shirt was unbuttoned exposing a broad sunburned chest, and his slouch hat was tilted at a rakish angle which bestowed upon him a certain roguish appeal, at least to my impressionable eyes.

After a week of fruitless tracking and failing to find the beast, the hunter bought a goat from the villagers. The hunter selected the killing ground, and employing machete and shovel, made his preparations. He tethered the goat to a tree in a large clearing in a natural hollow. He told the villagers that its plaintive bleating would attract the tiger into his gunsights. He then sent them away to safety and took up his prepared position on the rise overlooking the tree and the doomed goat. He was virtually invisible in his