TIMELINE

1664 – A comet traverses the skies above London’s sordid streets. Portent of the agonies to come.

1665 – The Great Plague. Bubonic Plague, spread by rat-borne fleas arriving in Dutch cotton trader vessels, decimates the population.

1666 – Unable to contain the spread of disease, King Charles II flees to Oxford and instructs the fortification of the existing London Wall with the intent of containing the spread of disease within.

1666-1667 – Court sanctioned, ‘curative experiments’ are carried out on the population within the confines of the wall. Primitive, and wrongly centred on the role played by rats in the spread of the disease, these barbaric practices include the direct transfusion of rodent blood into human recipients.

1668 – The Great Wall is completed. Within, the poor and destitute remain, surviving on meagre supplies from the world without. Cases of plague dwindle and the immunisation quest ceases.

1669 – The first hybrid ‘Rat-Kinde’ is born. Some die, but most survive, gifted of a robust constitution by their non-human lineage. Distinguishing features are subtle, most obvious being a fusion of the middle and ring fingers, and a red hue to the iris of the eye. The King proclaims the city ‘accursed’ and orders the wall to remain in place indefinitely.

1670-1803 – While subsequent generations of London’s denizens survive and prosper within its confining wall, sustained by the philanthropic kindness of an meagre few, England and the world engage in an endless stream of war. From the Anglo-Dutch war, through the Nine Year and American Revolutionary conflicts, the empire’s glories are matched only by the loss of its sons and daughters. As the Napoleonic Wars threaten, George III decrees the Great London Wall be torn down and London’s people to be once again embraced by the ‘caring’ arms of its country.

1803-1815 – The recruitment of the ‘Kinde’ is instrumental in bringing about the fall of Napoleon’s forces, and the demolition of the London Wall is completed. At twelve points, on remnants of where the wall had stood, monuments are erected. Fashioned after designs by William Blake, prophet of the abandoned city, they represent two angels praying, above gateways to the outside world.

1860 – Radclyffe is born. 10th generation ‘Kinde’.

1888 – Radclyffe gains employment as apprentice at Jarndyce and Jarndyce Engineering Company.

1890 – Sponsored by Jarndyce, Radclyffe wins scholarship at Tokyo College of Engineering.

1890-1900 – Travels extensively, working on various heavy engineering projects worldwide. After marrying in 1898, shortly after forming his own engineering company, he engages in his final foray – on the ill-fated Cape to Cairo Railway, before returning to England to be with his wife.

1900 – The story begins.