The Versatiles

by Alex Duncan

  ‘Mrs Slade, you are certain there is no possible way I could have known such things?’

  ‘None at all,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘You and I have never met before and I am not one for revealing my secrets to a single stranger, besides a theatre full of them.’

  There was a small roll of laughter at this.

  ‘Very good my dear, very good, then I shall continue. I have it written here that you are married to Mr Herbert Slade, of the shipbuilding Slades.’

  ‘Yes, yes I am,’ Mrs Slade coughed.

  ‘Yet the gentleman friend who escorts you this evening is not your husband. My, my!’

  There was another roll of laughter and Mrs Slade’s smile faded from her face.

  ‘The gentleman who escorts you this evening intends to help you sell vital secrets of your husband’s planned shipbuilding and the country’s defence to the highest bidder…’

  ‘Preposterous!’

  ‘You would sell the secrets of our naval defence for mere profit!’ shouted Apollo, waving the parchment above his head. ‘You so despise your own country since the death of your beloved father, that you wish to give it up as a lost cause and fill your pockets to the brim with riches before sailing from its shores within the year!’

  Jeers and shouts suddenly erupted from the crowd and Mrs Slade stood red-faced, twisting her hands around in a froth of panic.

  ‘It is lies, lies I tell you!’ she shouted over the racket. ‘Nothing but a bag of lies!’

  ‘I’m afraid it is quite the opposite my dear. It is written in your heart and your mind, and here is the proof.’ He waved his parchment in the air as if he held the word of God.

  More jeering and hollers and boos erupted from all around the theatre. Rosie could hardly take in the scene. Apollo had turned the entire audience into a mob, a pack of hounds baying for blood. Mrs Slade could do nothing but shrink back, quivering and stewing in her own guilt for actions she had yet to commit.

  ‘Are these the type of people we wish amongst us?’ Apollo called out.

  This was quickly answered by a resounding ‘No!’

  He gestured to two guardsmen in the wings of the stage to enter and escort the lady and her gentleman friend in the pit out of the auditorium, not without the necessary force, for both left protesting their innocence and insisting upon the stupidity of Apollo’s words.

  ‘Little more demonstration must be needed ladies and gentlemen,’ said Apollo, calming the audience with one sweep of his arm. ‘As you can see, we can now squeeze out the splinters in our society simply and effectively, with the help of the Oracle. We can read a mind with the accuracy of a well aimed pistol, for the seed of every action a man or woman will ever make, be it for benefit or chaos, rests in his mind and heart from the day he is born, and with our machine the future is now naked for us to see and judge!’

  Rosie shook her head and rubbed her eyes. The whole affair was insane. People were on their feet cheering Apollo and rushing towards the stage to shake him by the hand. They were moths to his flame.

  ‘What do you see here in Hope ladies and gentlemen? You see order, you see decency and you see respect. In short, you see a civilised society worthy of our country’s future. If we can restore Hope, we can restore the country, and more than that, we can once again prove ourselves to be the rightful rulers of the finest Empire on the face of the earth!’

  Now the whole house was on their feet. There was stamping and cheering and screaming like it was the day of some new coronation or the dawn of a new age.

  And Rosie didn’t believe a word of it.

  A flash of familiar black and red caught her eye as she gazed down at the rabble in the pit, but it was only a glimpse. Had it been more guards? She wasn’t sure, but when she saw a side door close nearby she was certain she saw a glimmer of steel. She arched herself further over but wouldn’t be able to see anything more until the crowd settled down around her.

  ‘There will now play for your entertainment ladies and gentlemen,’ Apollo announced, from the middle of the pit, in between shaking hands with his public. ‘A comedy form the estimable Mrs Inchly entitled Goodness Prevails, written especially for this occasion. I hope you enjoy it and I look forward to seeing you all at the home of the dashing Justice Brash later tonight!’

  It took at least another ten minutes before the clamour died down and people returned to their seats. Apollo climbed back onto the stage and the place where Rosie had been concentrating her attentions finally came back into view, revealing precisely what she feared. The seat was empty. Her grandfather had disappeared again.

  Rosie leapt up to go and pushed her way out of the box, only to be held back by her female admirer, giving her more of her smiles and alluring looks.

  ‘Going so soon, my handsome boy? You do not enjoy the evening?’

  ‘I enjoy it very much m’lady. It’s enlightening to say the least,’ she replied, yanking her arm back and lowering her voice as much as she could. ‘It’s just that with all the excitement…nature calls.’ She bobbed a curtsy, then, remembering herself, bowed, then made a quick exit.

  The curved corridor leading to all the boxes was empty and she ran down as the prologue to the new comedy began.

  ‘On nimble feet come journey here,

  Swiftly to where e’en crows do fear.’

  She ran on, turning the corner and bumped straight into the back of a tall, cloaked figure. The gentleman turned around and she looked up into his masked face.

  ‘‘Scuse me sir,’ she said, making her way around the man. ‘Urgent business. If I can just get by…’ But as she came to his side, the man held out an arm and stopped her. As she went to turn the other way she was stopped again and the man grabbed her firmly by the shoulders. Rosie went to twist herself free, but the man quickly raised a gloved hand to the mouth of his mask, signalling her to keep quiet.

  Rosie, not liking the gentleman’s temperament one bit, whipped her arm out and pulled his mask off in one swift movement. The man was silent but it didn’t take Rosie long to realise that she knew him. He was no longer in a fever or raving in his sleep, but it was definitely him. It was the stranger who had brought back her necklace.

  Rosie struggled to find any words.

  ‘Who…who are you?’ she stuttered.

  The man smiled a glowing, wide and wonderful smile.

  ‘I am a figment of imagination.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Images blazed across Sam’s mind as he slipped in and out of consciousness. He was unsure if what he was seeing was real or if some distant part of his imagination was toying with him. The only thing he was aware of was the dull, thumping pain on the side of his head and the sticky, bitter taste of blood in his mouth.

  He thought he saw more corridors, a maze of them, dusty and uninhabited, flickering across his vision as he felt himself being pulled onwards. He tried to strain his eyes open more, but the pain wouldn’t allow for it. He saw doors open and close and a concerned face look down at him, glimmering with beads of sweat in the faded torch light, a face he knew, the face of his father.

  Moving in and out of the shadows, as helpless as he was, he saw rooms pass by, all somehow familiar, but perhaps dreamt of all along, he couldn’t say. One room was bright and fine with a smooth, polished floor and a chandelier sparkling from the domed ceiling and one room stretched up out of sight with walls of papers and scrolls, and there was one room Sam didn’t recognize. As he was dragged on he saw more faces, and tables, and chairs, and chains. Though he couldn’t be certain of anything in the state he was in, he was sure he could see men and women, dressed in little else but rags, chained together in endless lines, all sat at desks and scribbling away, none of them looking down at him, all hunched over their work.

  His head hit the floor and he fell back into darkness.

  Then there was wind, blowing all around him, and the cold of the night, biting his skin.

  He blinked and saw the stars above him and tried to sit up. It t
ook three attempts before he succeeded in propping himself up on his elbows and reached up to feel the side of his head. It was tender to the touch, but not too sore and the cut was small and had already stopped bleeding. He looked around him but that did nothing for his feeling of detachment and disorientation. He was high up, that much he knew for he could see the town spread out behind and beneath him and he could hear the river running its course nearby. A few paces away sat his father, his legs curled up into his chest, and his brow creased up. The man had tears in his eyes.

  ‘I’m…I’m so sorry,’ he said in a cracked voice. ‘It was the only way. It was the only way to get you out of there. If they had got hold of you I daren’t imagine what they would have done to you. It’s all my fault, we should have gone further away, we should have got as far away from Hope as we could.’ The man put his face in his hands as he tried to breathe and control himself. Sam looked on, bewildered.

  ‘I’ve tried to keep them away from you. I’ve always tried. I’ve never let them get a hold of anything that belonged to you and I’ve only let you go into town when you’ve had to. Maybe I was to hard on you sometimes, but I wanted you to be strong and I…’ He broke down in tears and Sam reached out his hand.

  ‘I…I don’t know what you’re talking about?’

  ‘I always gave them a different object, something of mine, or someone else’s, never something of yours…’

  ‘Object? What object? You’re talking gibberish.’

  ‘And it worked, they ignored you. But if I found anyone so much as looking around, it was my job to deal with them. I never thought I’d find you…’

  ‘Father?!’ Sam shouted. Mr Steadfast looked up at him, for a moment taken out of his ranting. ‘What’s going on? Where are we?’

  ‘We’re on the rooftops, near the river, look, there’s the theatre over there,’ he pointed and Sam saw the arches of the grand building and the torches outside illuminating the steps. ‘I was ordered to bring you up here and…make it look like an accident…’

  ‘What?! That sounds an awful lot like you were told to…er… kill me.’

  ‘I’d never do that, you have to believe me, but I had to get you out, I couldn’t leave you there, with them, with those monsters.’

  ‘What were you doing there in the first place?’ Sam’s mind was reeling. ‘Have you got anything to do with what’s been going on here?’

  His father paused, wringing his hands together and searching for the right words. He drew his sleeve across his damp forehead and began again.

  ‘I…I so wanted to help, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. After your mother died, everything went downhill, the business, the town, everything. It all turned into a complete commotion. You saw what it was like, you could barely walk ten paces without being robbed or threatened, but, there were people who wanted it to change, to be better, to bring back order, people like me. I just didn’t think it would be like this…I could never imagine this. The things I’ve seen…I can’t describe them.’ He broke down again.

  ‘Father, it’s going to be all right,’ said Sam, leaning in to him. ‘There are people here in Hope who want to help us. The pair who checked in two nights ago, the old man and his ward, Mr Homespun and Miss Simply…except those aren’t their names…they’re the Versatiles…and she’s not his ward, she’s his granddaughter…at least I think she is. Anyway, they’ve seen what’s been happening and they want to help.’

  ‘We’re beyond help here, we’ve gone too far and messed with things we don’t understand. It’s our own fault.’ Mr Steadfast drew his fingers through his hair. ‘When the great plague swamped the country, it was said that some villages shut their gates if they knew they had the Black Death. They wouldn’t let anyone in or out to stop it spreading. It has to be the same here. We can’t let them continue. We can’t let this get out.’

  As far away as they were, they could both hear the cheering from the theatre carried on the night-time breeze.

  ‘These two,’ said Sam, ‘the Versatiles, they can do things, strange things, like magic or something, I don’t know what else to call it; I’m sure they can help us. They’re inside the theatre now, watching the event, but I’ve arranged to meet them at the Crossroads when the clock strikes eleven.’

  ‘No, there’s a play to sit through first. They won’t be out until after then. And how can I let you go gallivanting around the town when you’re meant to be…you know…’ He drew a finger across his throat and made a face. ‘I’ll go to the Crossroads and leave a message for them to meet you at the old mill…’

  ‘The old mill? But that’s three or four miles away.’

  ‘Exactly. If these Versatiles have any salt about them, they’ll find you there. And when they do, I suggest you all get as far away from this place as you can…’ Sam went to protest but his father cut him short. ‘I’m serious son, if you see the opportunity, leave and don’t come back.’

  Sam sank back down onto the flat roof and stared up at the cloudy night sky as a flock of birds silently passed them overhead, blotting out the stars as they flew. He felt hollow and numb.

  ‘You stole her necklace, didn’t you?’ he asked, but was answered with silence.

  ‘Why did you do it? What could you possibly want with her necklace, and don’t tell me it’s about money…we don’t do so badly up Hope Hill, things have been picking up…and now this. Why did you do it father?’

  Again he was answered with silence. He sighed. Any grip he had on the world seemed to be loosening. For the first time he wished he hadn’t offered Rosie and her grandfather his help. He wished he were ignorant of the whole business.

  ‘I just don’t understand…’ he said, pushing himself back up onto his elbows, ‘why you would…?’ He stopped when he found himself alone. He turned and looked down towards the town and saw the silhouette of his father running down Corin Street towards the Crossroads.

  For the first time in his life he wished he were imagining the whole thing.

  ◆◆◆

  ‘But how did you…what did you…where did you…?’ Rosie stammered, looking up into the face of the stranger, struggling to make sense of his unexpected appearance. The man smiled and shook his head.

  ‘I’m sure you have many questions Rosie Versatile, but don’t you think it would be best if we save them for later?’ His accent was strong but he spoke with a clear, clipped, deep and full voice.

  In contrast to the last time she had seen him, the man looked like a picture of health. His smile was wide and white, his skin glowed like polished obsidian and his eyes shone with excitement.

  ‘You’re from there aren’t you, from the other side of the door?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘Ah, I should have thought as much,’ she said, tapping herself on the forehead. ‘How else could you have found yourself in a town like Hope. And what name do you go by, sir?’

  ‘The man who first imagined me goes by the name of Zanga. I am in his image, so you may call me by that same name if you wish.’

  ‘Zanga,’ she said, feeling the unusual name in her mouth. ‘But how could you…?’

  The man’s smile broke into a laugh, so much so that Rosie stopped and glanced around her, hoping that no one would come out into the corridor and see the two of them.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, unsure of herself.

  ‘It is just that you are Rosie Versatile, the Rosie Versatile,’ he said, wiping a tear away from his eye. ‘You are quite famous where I come from you know.’

  ‘Really?’ Despite herself, she was intrigued.

  ‘Oh yes, famous and feared. You are Rosie Versatile, the girl who can step between her own world and ours, the banisher of nightmares, the dream warrior, the…’

  ‘Do stop it. You’re making me go red! Oh go on, what else do they say?’

  ‘That you are as dangerous as you are beautiful.’

  ‘Oh please!’ she blushed.

  ‘It is a great honour to meet you, I’m sure we co
uld spend many a happy hour in conversation but until then there are more pressing matters to deal with.’

  A great torrent of hilarity exploded from inside the auditorium, making them both start and they moved quietly away from the doors leading to the boxes, further down the curved corridor.

  ‘I presume you mean what’s going on in there,’ she said, pointing to a box door. ‘Did you see that machine they’ve built, that Oracle thing? Do you think they have any idea what they’re dealing with? You can’t go prying around people’s minds like that. It’s…well, it’s not right.’

  ‘You are of course correct Rosie Versatile,’ he said, his smile darkening for the first time. ‘But I wasn’t referring to the spectacle inside the theatre, I was referring to your grandfather.’

  Rosie scorned herself for forgetting why she had left the auditorium in the first place.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, hurrying to keep up with Zanga. ‘What’s happened to him? Where he is?’

  ‘He is currently receiving the heaviest beating of his life. If we continue to stand about gossiping like two old ladies I doubt he will survive the night. But do not worry,’ he said, nudging her in the side. ‘If you follow my simple instructions I anticipate that he will have even heavier beatings in the future.’

  ‘That’s of little comfort sir!’ gasped Rosie.

  ‘It should be,’ he smiled. ‘It means he will still be alive.’

  ‘Point taken,’ she admitted, following his lead down the passage. ‘What would you have me do?’

  ◆◆◆

  ‘That’s an easy one Mr Versatile. Give. Us. The. Stone.’

  Henry looked up into the young, grimacing face of the guard peering down at him, smiled and shook his head. Unfortunately he knew what was coming next and squeezed his eyes shut as the guard struck him across the side of the face with the hard hilt of his dagger. The old man felt his lip split and a line of warm blood make its way down his chin.

  I must look completely ridiculous, he thought, smiling to himself. An old man in a dress with blood on his face, a rare picture indeed!