The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(135)

With a vague feeling of security, like people watching from their theater boxes as the stage is destroyed by fire and wondering uneasily whether the flames will reach them, we all waited, pressed together on the quayside, to see the duel about to take place before our eyes, for at that moment the destroyer in front of us began firing furiously at the Martians, hitting a few buildings on the opposite bank, which crumpled like paper, but none of the tripods, which succeeded in dodging the shots with a slow rolling motion. They did not return fire but simply continued their terrifying and relentless advance toward the river. Then a cannon hit one of them, shattering its shell. The tripod reeled like a drunken giant before toppling over onto a building. Filled with excitement, we celebrated the strike with loud hurrahs, but our euphoria was short-lived, for we instantly perceived the brutal response of the other tripods. At least three of them closest to the riverbank fired their powerful heat rays straight at the destroyer, which rocked violently in the water. For a few moments, a thick cloud of smoke and steam obscured the combat from us, but we all heard the ferocity of the ensuing blasts and even saw a shower of metal shards and part of a funnel emerge from the vapor. Then the firing came to an abrupt halt.

A few moments later the smoke lifted to reveal the smoking wreck of the destroyer floating on the water like a dead bird. A pair of tripods fired at Albert Bridge, slicing through it with their swords of fire and spilling the handful of people fleeing toward Chelsea into the water, together with a shower of flaming debris. The rubble from the bridge formed a kind of barricade, isolating us from the bloody battle being waged up and down the river. We watched as the tripods waded into the roiling waters of the Thames, tottering like ghostly old men. It was clear to us that however precarious their foothold on the riverbed, they would soon be upon us, and no warship would be able to stop them. The most impatient among them began aiming at our side of the river. The first shot ripped into the quay not forty feet from me, reducing the onlookers who had been standing there to cinders and forcing the rest of us to make a mad dash toward the nearby side streets. Once more, I found myself being dragged along by the crowd. A few yards in front of me, I saw a little girl fall, only to be trampled by the unseeing mass of people, and then, powerless to stop myself running, I felt her little bones crack beneath my feet. This incident persuaded me to make a supreme effort to separate myself from the human tide of which I unwillingly formed a part. Eager to regain my autonomy, I flattened myself against a wall, letting the crazed mob surge past me, until the street was almost empty except for a few battered corpses. Then I resolved to find my bearings, and once I had done this, I set off at a trot toward South Kensington, doing my best not to give in to dread. Stopping every now and then to listen for the direction of the blasts, I managed to steer clear of the tripods, as well as of the fleeing crowds, and, sticking to the deserted alleyways whenever I could, I made my way cautiously across the city until I reached the Cromwell Road. I don’t know how long it took me to get there, but it felt like an eternity. At last I arrived, exhausted and trembling, and was relieved to find that all was calm in Queen’s Gate, and its splendid stuccoed mansions remained untouched.

I hurried toward my uncle’s house and burst through the door, breathless from running. Surprised to find the first floor deserted, I ran up the marble staircase to the second floor, discovering no one there either. Before going back downstairs, I could not help pausing to look at the terrifying panorama afforded by the picture windows. Columns of black smoke were billowing up to the sky from various neighborhoods, while far away, on the other side of the Thames, a rippling curtain of flame was visible. The tripods were spreading across the city like an unstoppable plague. In no time at all they would be here, and these lofty mansions would be razed.

I returned to the ground floor, shouting at the top of my lungs to announce my presence. But my voice was scarcely audible above the strident blasts and the clanging bells. Pausing, I glimpsed a chance reflection thrown back at me from one of the mirrors in my uncle’s drawing room and was startled at the sight of this grimy, frantic Charles with a haunted look in his eyes. I had lost my hat, my hair was disheveled, my jacket caked with dust and torn at the shoulder. I turned away from the mirror and paced the ground floor, wondering where my cousin and his guests could be. Had they left the house, driven by fear or curiosity?

Suddenly, I realized I hadn’t looked in what was undoubtedly the safest place in the house in the case of a catastrophe: the servants’ quarters in the basement. Alarmed by the explosions, everyone had no doubt decided to take shelter below. In all my visits to the house, my uncle had never invited me below, but I knew the way through a small, unobtrusive door next to the kitchen. I descended the stairs like an interloper, wondering whether I was mistaken, but instantly heard a voice emanating from one of the rooms. Letting the sound guide me through those bare passageways, soon I could make out what it was saying. The voice belonged to an older man, who spoke calmly and politely, as though he was accustomed to addressing people in a tone of scrupulous respect. I assumed this must be Harold, my uncle’s faithful coachman.

“And then I realized that if I was going to scare away the ferret, I needed to find the rake, but that was no easy feat, for as I already explained, I was trouserless,” Harold was saying.

Howls of laughter followed, from which I deduced that the coachman was telling his story to an audience as numerous as it was attentive, probably the rest of the domestic servants and the guests. And I was not mistaken, as I discovered when I pushed open the door behind which the gale of laughter had erupted. I stepped into what must have been the servants’ parlor. The chairs had been placed in a semicircle, at the center of which was the coachman, hands raised like a magician surprised in the middle of a conjuring trick. I was relieved to see my wife Victoria, her sister Madeleine and her husband, my cousin Andrew, sitting amongst the servants. They were the only members of the family in the house at the time, as my uncle and aunt were vacationing in Greece with my parents when the invasion began. But I also spotted their esteemed guests, who were none other than my wife’s and her sister’s two best friends: the former Misses Lucy Nelson and Claire Haggerty. Lucy’s husband, an inspector at Scotland Yard by the name of Garrett, was not there (it was reasonable to assume he was on duty, bringing order to the streets, if such a thing was possible), but Claire had brought her husband, John Peachey, whom I had yet to have the pleasure of meeting. I noticed they all had a brandy in their hands, and the faraway smiles on some of their faces suggested they were on their second glass. In order to enliven proceedings, a gramophone in the corner was filling the room with a merry tune, muffling the explosions. Victoria seemed happy that I was still alive, although her irritation prevented her from responding with anything more than a triumphant smile: my lamentable appearance was proof of the fact that the invasion was indeed making inroads, regardless of what the future held, as she had reasoned during our discussion. For my part, despite what I had witnessed, I continued to believe this meant nothing, that before long in some way or another the Martians would be defeated. Adamant in our opposing views, neither of us made the slightest move to embrace each other, as we would have liked, for, as everyone knows, wounded pride is a great destroyer of affection. It was my cousin Andrew who rose to greet me, breaking the harmonious tableau they formed.