Mortlock

by Jon Mayhew

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Lorenzo bellowed, raising a long skeletal arm, ‘from London, I bring you Artemis the Huntress and her faithful assistant, Alfie!’

  ‘Let him down. He isn’t well,’ Josie said, taking a step towards Lorenzo. Why were they doing this to her brother?

  ‘You must perform for both of you, my dear,’ Lorenzo said, his voice flat, as if he was resigned to their fate. ‘Or would you rather he became part of the crowd?’

  Josie’s gaze scanned the pitiful audience that lined the tent’s benches. Pale, they stared straight ahead with their hands lifeless on their knees. The Gambinis suddenly crowded around her.

  ‘We are cursed, Josie! Cursed to live for ever, neither alive, nor dead.’ Nicolao pawed at Josie’s arm, his fingertips pinching at her. His flesh began to dry and thin, crackling as it moulded to the bone beneath. Paulo tugged at her skirts, his face disintegrating, lips shrivelling to reveal a cadaverous grin. His cheek-bones protruded through the once plump skin of his face.

  ‘Paulo!’ Josie screamed and jumped back. ‘No, what’s happening to you?’

  ‘We need you, Josie,’ he croaked, reaching and grasping with dead dry hands. ‘We crave your presence. The power of the Amarant flows freely in your veins, we can feel it. It draws us, enlivens us!’

  Water began to seep up through the floor of the circus ring, trickling towards Josie’s feet. She looked down with horror. This was exactly what Arabella had warned them about. They had taken a terrible risk coming to this godforsaken place.

  ‘The tide rises. Perform for us, Josie,’ Lorenzo begged, his eyes shining from the deep sockets of his skull. ‘Throw your knives. Join us.’

  ‘I promised Cardamom I would find a thing called the Amarant,’ Josie cried, desperately trying to think of any way to reason with Lorenzo. She stared at the decaying ringmaster. ‘The Flower of Life . . . Maybe I can help you somehow.’

  ‘You could never help us,’ Lorenzo said, shaking his grizzled head. ‘As for your promise . . . as for your precious flower . . . it is lost, buried and forgotten.’

  ‘You must join us and perform for all eternity,’ hissed Ulrico.

  ‘Stay, please stay,’ Ashena whimpered, crawling through the water towards Josie’s ankles. She gazed up at Josie from eyeless sockets. Josie gave a scream and staggered back.

  The water swirled around her knees. She turned, aimed carefully and threw her first knife at the corkboard. The thud of the knife in the board seemed to awaken the audience. They suddenly looked up, alert. Josie tucked a second blade into the waistband of her skirts and tried to run forward, lifting her legs high to beat the frightening drag of the water on her sodden clothes. She flicked the third knife at the board as she ran. Her first had cut the bonds on Alfie’s left wrist. He slumped forward as the next knife sliced the ropes on his right. Josie dived and caught him before he slipped beneath the water.

  ‘Josie?’ he murmured, half opening his eyes. ‘It’s them. They’re drainin’ the life out of me . . .’

  ‘I know – we have to get out,’ Josie said, throwing his arm over her shoulder to hoist him up.

  The water lapped at their waists now, the shock of the cold reviving Alfie and making him gasp. Josie half dragged, half carried him to the centre of the tent, where the rope ladders swayed in the currents. Josie hesitated, wondering if the ladders would take their weight. A pale hand broke the surface of the water and grabbed at her, making her scream and push Alfie on to the first rung. Dazed, he pulled himself up, wheezing with the effort of each step. More hands fumbled for them as the water rose higher. Josie kicked them away with her feet.

  Higher they climbed. Each rung smeared their hands with slime, making them slippery. Josie’s knuckles ached and her muscles burned as she struggled to heave herself up the rope ladder, wincing each time the knife in her waistband dug into her stomach. She barely had time to jerk her head back to avoid being kicked in the face as Alfie’s boot slipped. He dangled by his arms and Josie could hear his gasping sobs as he struggled to place his feet back on the ladder.

  ‘Up there, Alfie, there’s the hole at the top,’ she called, hoping to encourage him. She fixed her eyes on the top of the ladder. The centre pole protruded through a wide gap edged with a metal ring, the same exit that Corvis’s raven had tried to reach. Josie hoped they’d be more successful.

  The incoming sea swirled around the tent now, narrowing the gap between the roof canopy and the water. It grew darker; the air felt warm and fetid. Josie could see pale bodies rising through the gloomy depths, floating upwards, arms extended. Alfie clambered up the pole and out through the hole. Josie could just see his hands clinging to the metal ring, the shadow of his body pressing into the fabric of the tent above her. He reached a hand down and she stretched hers up to meet it – but strong, bony fingers gripped her ankle and dragged her back.

  The water swirled in her ears and she struggled to keep her mouth shut. She glimpsed dead eyes, pale flesh white against the green water, grasping hands. Her wet clothes pulled at her, helping the desperate hands below. She could just see the circle of light and Alfie’s silhouette reaching in. With one last surge of effort, she kicked free and powered herself upwards. Alfie grabbed her upraised arms and dragged her through the hole.

  The tide had almost covered the tent now. Nothing tried to break out of the top, no hands snatched at them any more. Josie kicked her feet, trying to keep above the surface as the tide rose higher. She could see Alfie struggling, too, his heavy clothes weighing him down.

  Something snagged on her leg, stopping her rising with the water level. Josie glanced down, expecting another decayed fist to be gripping her. Instead, coils of green rope snaked around her calf, trailing down into the tent.

  Josie blew bubbles of panic and tugged at the rope. Alfie was just a dark shape on the surface now, only a few tantalising feet away. Her lungs burned. She felt as if she would burst. She pulled again, but the rope just gave a dull twang as it tightened in the water. Josie pulled the knife from her waistband and slashed at the coils, but the rope remained stubbornly taut. Her whole body ached with cold and the effort of holding her breath in. With a final flurry of desperate hacking, she managed to cut the rope and kicked to the surface with it trailing from her leg, breaking through with a sobbing gasp.

  Alfie splashed feebly over to her and they linked arms, trying to tread water. Below them, the tent became a dark, distant shape. The grisly audience was down there waiting for the two of them, waiting until they ran out of energy and succumbed to the numbing cold of the waves, waiting to welcome them back to the circus of the dead.

  .

  .

  He is sunk in the waters, there lies asleep,

  I will plunge there as well, I will kiss his cold feet,

  I will kiss the white lips, once coral-like red,

  And die at his side, for my true love is dead.

  ‘The Drowned Lover’, traditional folk ballad

  .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Galopede

  Water slapped Josie’s face as she kicked out, trying to keep afloat. Her clothes felt like lead weights pulling her down. She tried to tear them off, but every attempt sent her under the freezing water. Josie’s legs, still entangled in the rope, ached with the effort of it. The water surged over her head, shocking her into lashing out with her arms. She broke the surface with a strangled scream.

  A dark shadow filled the sky, black and rust red. Josie pulled her head up.

  ‘A barge,’ Alfie gargled, spitting out a fountain of saltwater. He panted beside her, spluttering and flailing his arms.

  The huge boat was close but nobody seemed to have noticed them. Josie glimpsed a solitary figure at the stern. She could hear the swish and crack of the wind in the sails, mixed with the sea sloshing into her ears. Alfie yelled and waved his arms, sinking more than once in the process.

  Kicking her legs, Josie pulled at the rope and coiled it up as best she could. Her fing
ers ached as she struggled to keep afloat and manipulate the rope. The waves from the barge splashed into her face as she plunged under again. She tied a loop in one end of the rope, pushing the handle of the knife through. The barge was passing rapidly – another couple of seconds and it would be gone. Josie willed her numb fingers to tighten the knot.

  With a desperate scream, she sent the knife flying, then watched in despair as the rope came free and the blade flew on. Water surged over her head, filling her mouth before she could see what happened to the knife. The Amarant, Corvis – even Cardamom and Gimlet – were forgotten as Josie plunged down again, water filling her nose, mouth and ears, blotting out all sound. She felt a warmth creeping over her, a calmness; all she had to do was breathe in and sleep . . .

  Something smacked on to the surface of the water above her. Instinctively, Josie grabbed hold of the floating object and felt rope criss-crossing soft cork blocks. A lifebelt! Heaving herself up on to it, she knocked heads with Alfie.

  ‘The barge, Josie,’ Alfie spat, retching up seawater and spluttering with laughter. ‘We did it! We’re safe!’

  ‘Safe!’ Josie coughed and pressed her forehead to Alfie’s. Her legs dragged in the water as she felt herself being drawn towards the boat with rust-red sails and a black hull. The smell of tar and tobacco flooded her senses as a calloused hand gripped her under the arm.

  ‘Welcome aboard the Galopede,’ said a soft voice, as she was hauled over the side of the barge and dumped on to the deck. Josie knelt over and retched on to the clean wooden planks.

  ‘Makin’ a mess, chuck ’em back. Bad luck is what they is,’ someone muttered angrily. A mop immediately swished under her nose, making her pull back.

  ‘Hang on a minute, Manny,’ said the voice. ‘Easy with the mopping. She’s ’alf the sea in her guts.’

  ‘Threw a knife at yer from the sea,’ Manny snapped. ‘Bloomin’ mermaid. Chuck her back.’

  ‘Don’t think the knife was aimed at me, Manny,’ came the reply. ‘An’ she don’t look like no mermaid neither . . .’

  Josie’s stomach heaved again, and she fell forward as whatever she had left inside her splattered over the deck. She looked up at a pair of bushy eyebrows and hard blue eyes set in a thin, angry face. The man wore a thick woollen hat pulled down over his hair. ‘Mess,’ he snapped and swished the mop again.

  ‘Don’t mind Manny,’ said the other voice. ‘He’s just a touch too house proud is all.’

  Josie turned to see a tall man bending down to thump Alfie’s back, helping him to bring up the water he’d swallowed. Behind him, Josie glimpsed her knife buried in the woodwork, right beside the wheel.

  ‘Darned near took me ear off,’ the man chuckled. His bearded face looked almost square, with a flat nose and squinting eyes framed by tight curls. ‘Got me attention, though!’

  ‘Mr Carr!’ Josie coughed, retching seawater again.

  ‘How in God’s creation d’you know my . . . Good lord,’ he said, his eyes widening. He gave Alfie a hearty slap on the back that sent him sprawling. ‘The girl from Rookery Heights! Now ’ere’s a tale we need to hear. But let’s get you below first before you freeze to death – or there’d be no point in saving you from drownin’.’

  Jacob Carr’s cabin was a small box of a room, crammed with old charts and packing cases. Alfie and Josie crouched on a low pallet that acted as a bed, their clothes hanging out to dry. Rough blankets were wrapped around their slowly warming bodies. The boards of the hull creaked. The smell of pipe smoke mingled with tar and the scent of the sea.

  They were safe.

  ‘So,’ said Jacob, narrowing his eyes behind his pipe, ‘it’s no business of mine, but Arabella left me a note to say you were in a spot of bother. I was expectin’ to collect you last time I called at the quay. I must confess, I was beginnin’ to think you were goners, both. What happened?’

  ‘It all went wrong, Mr Carr,’ Josie sighed. ‘We did try to get away but that Sammy boy was too slow with the delivery. We ended up . . . hiding in the marshes . . .’

  No need to complicate things by trying to explain about the circus, Josie thought. She shuddered at the memory of the pale, bloated shapes floating in the murky water and pulled the blanket tight around her, glad of its coarseness. She was still alive.

  ‘An’ the tide caught you, eh?’ Jacob muttered. ‘It’s dangerous for sure out there. Land becomes sea in the twinklin’ of an eye. Anyway, you bed down ’ere. We’ve one delivery, then on to London.’ He clambered up the stepladder and out of the hold.

  ‘So what now?’ Alfie said, rocking with the movement of the barge. ‘We’re no nearer that Amarant or Mortlock or anythin’.’

  ‘I know.’ Josie rested her chin on her knees. ‘Lorenzo said that the Amarant is buried.’

  ‘But how would Lorenzo know? That’s what I can’t fathom,’ Alfie said, scratching his wet head with the rough blanket.

  Josie shrugged. She couldn’t think straight. Her eyelids felt like stone weights. ‘It’s the Flower of Life, a magical thing . . .’

  Alfie shook his head slowly. ‘Nah. I reckon there’s more to it.’ He yawned and blinked. ‘Just dunno what, that’s all. Feels like . . .’ his eyelids fluttered ‘. . . the more we find out . . . the less . . . we know . . . with this Amarant thing.’ Alfie’s eyes slid shut, the warmth and the rocking of the boat combining with his exhaustion to send him asleep on the pallet, snoring.

  Josie smiled and lowered her head to the other end. For once she was safe. She let her eyes close and drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Screaming gulls dragged Josie from her slumber the following morning. She felt more rested than she had for days. A neat pile of clothes lay on the floor next to the bed. Josie tried her own garments on, but they still felt clammy. She held up the new clothes: a skirt, a thick woollen jumper and a blouse. Pulling them on, she wondered where Jacob had got them from. They felt dry and warm and were a comfortable fit, too.

  The wind whipped at Josie’s face as she popped her head out of the cabin. Alfie was chatting to Jacob, who stood square and solid at the helm of the barge. She shook her head. Yesterday, tied to the corkboard, drained by the ghostly circus folk, she wouldn’t have given a ha’penny for her brother’s chances. Now, far away from the circus, he had come back to life. Josie smiled, happy to have him back.

  They stood at the stern of the wide vessel as it ploughed through the waves. A single mast rose up from the centre of the deck. Manny bobbed and ducked as he wrestled with a length of rope, securing it to the side of the ship. The red sails snapped in the wind. Josie grinned at Alfie. He wore a huge baggy jumper that came down to his knees and cord trousers, bundled up at the ankles. The bargeman looked straight ahead, listening with a quiet smile on his face.

  ‘We’re just making our way down the Thames, miss. Those clothes fit?’ he asked Josie. ‘Thought they would. They belonged to my Susan, spares for when she got wet. She doesn’t come aboard these days. Married now, family of her own.’

  ‘They’re fine, Mr Carr, thank you. And I didn’t thank you for saving us last night . . .’ Josie said.

  ‘Don’t you worry, miss. Just glad you ’ad the sense to get our attention, however unorthodox,’ Jacob replied, with an easy smile. ‘Young Alfie’s been tellin’ me all about the funeral trade. Never knew there was so much to it.’ He winked at Josie.

  ‘No,’ Josie said, hiding her grin. She looked out across the river. They weren’t alone. The greys of winter were dotted with rust-red sails, barges bouncing through the choppy water towards London. In the far distance a dirty pall of smoke hung over the skyline of the city.

  ‘We’re makin’ good speed. Soon be in London. You’ll be glad to see this Mr Wiggins, then, I dare say?’ Jacob said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Alfie cut in. ‘He’s my guardian. He’ll be so glad to see us, Mr Carr.’

  Josie remained silent, feeling the emptiness again. Who waits for me in London? She sighed.

  ‘An’ what about
Lord Corvis?’ Jacob glanced sidelong at Josie. ‘Won’t he wonder where you are?’

  ‘I think we’ll be fine, Mr Carr. I don’t think he’ll be looking for us any more,’ Josie replied. The mention of Corvis made her uneasy. Could she trust Carr? He delivered to Rookery Heights, did business with Corvis after all. Maybe there was a reward out. Maybe Carr would sell them back to Corvis. Panic welled up in her chest.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Jacob said. His expression didn’t change. He carried on chewing at his pipe and watching the bow of the barge. Josie shook her head. They were safe with him, she was certain. ‘I won’t pry. Ask no questions, as they say. You can keep those clothes, Josie. Yours will take a fair while to dry out, I reckon.’

  Josie passed the morning sitting in the bow of the barge, watching it cut waves through the water. Alfie crouched with her, revelling in the sound of gulls and the hiss of the barge through the spray. The Amarant was never far from their thoughts. Each would start up a conversation, suggest an idea that would lead to a dead end or confusion.

  ‘It’s givin’ me a headache,’ Alfie grumbled. ‘Like I said last night, the more we find out, the less we seem to know. I sometimes think it’s hopeless . . .’

  ‘Where there’s a will, Alfie,’ Josie said. ‘We mustn’t give up hope.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Alfie asked. His jaw had fallen slack.

  ‘I said we mustn’t give up hope . . .’ Josie repeated.

  ‘Nah, before that. About a will.’ Alfie shook his head. ‘You said somethin’ about a will.’

  ‘Not like a last will and testament, Alfie. I meant the will to do something,’ Josie said. ‘What are you twittering on about? I think some of that water’s got into your brain.’

  ‘No, but I am thinkin’ about last wills and testaments.’ Alfie stood up. ‘That barmy note your uncle gave you – it’s been buzzin’ around my head for days now, like a tune you can’t quite remember but you’re sure you know. Insisting on being buried in Gorsefields Yard – now why would he do that? I can’t think of a dingier place to be planted.’