Blood Royal

by Jonathan Green

  Dismissed, Ulysses followed the governess and her ward as the two of them ambled along between the gravestones, reading the epitaphs inscribed upon them.

  “Ladies,” he said, offering Miss Wishart his arm as they walked. She accepted it willingly, flashing him a brief smile.

  “Uncle Ulysses?”

  “Yes, Miranda, my dear?” he said, giving her a broad smile.

  “Is everything going to be alright now?”

  Ulysses didn’t answer but stared off into the middle distance for a moment. He thought he heard something; the scrape of a metal digit on a tomb, the rattle of gravel on a grave. He shot anxious glances in every direction but saw nothing, and then all he could hear was the rustle of leaves in the breeze. A shiver passed down his spine and a weird sensation, like pins and needles, pricked his thumbs.

  “You know what?” he said, looking at each of them in turn. “I think we could all do with a holiday, don’t you?”

  ELSEWHERE ORANGE HAZARD lights bathed the bricks of the sepulchral lair in strobing light, as the eighteen inch thick steel door of the vault closed with a groan. The technician then set about spinning the wheel-lock to secure it.

  “Vault secure, sir,” he said, addressing the other standing behind him.

  The observer tapped a palm with the ebony cane he carried.

  “I hope so. We don’t want any more little accidents do we?”

  “It won’t be going anywhere, Mr Sixsmith, I can assure you of that.”

  “I hope so, Hollingsworth. I hope so.”

  “The door is tempered steel, eighteen inches thick.”

  “Eighteen inches? Really?” Xavier Sixsmith said, giving the door a tap with his cane. “Let’s see you get out of there, you bastard,” he growled.

  Turning on his heel he made his way back up the brick-lined tunnel, the technician scampering to keep up with his purposeful strides.

  “Come on Hollingsworth. Time to report in and see what the big man has to say.”

  ON THE OTHER side of the steel door, suspended in its cradle of nutrient-feed tubes and power cables, bathed in a ruddy electric glow, the assassin slept in a fug of formaldehyde gas.

  The chains supporting the harness rattled as the cyber-organic creation twitched and jerked, its resting mind reliving past crimes.

  Silvered finger-blades scissoring unconsciously, it dreamed its dreams of murder and mayhem, and, satisfied smile spread across its acid-etched face.

  I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games... The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you... My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.

  Act Three

  Blood Royal

  April 1998

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Russian Connection

  THE AIR WAS clean and crisp, so unlike London, Moscow seemed like a city that should, by rights, belong to a different age, rather than just one from another country. It had its heavy industrial centres, of course, but these were well away from the old city itself and were nothing on the scale of those found within the capital of the Workshop of the World.

  Fashions, Ulysses had noted, were not far behind the Neo-Victorian mores of the day that had, admittedly, been of more interest in the weeks before the Wormwood Catastrophe. Indeed, had Moscow’s civic leaders been fully aware of the ongoing issues surrounding the aftermath of the Wormwood Catastrophe, they might have realised that, with the twenty-first century on their doorstep, here was an unrivalled opportunity for London to be supplanted as ‘de facto’ capital of the world.

  But Moscow – and, Ulysses assumed, the rest of Russia – was still behind Britain. Whereas in London it sometimes seemed as though there was a broadcast screen on every street corner, here Ulysses had only come across them outside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and the Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and they had only been showing looped newsreel footage of the Tsarina Anastasia III, Queen Victoria’s great-great-great-granddaughter, at official state functions, there being particular excitement surrounding her planned visit to the Czech capital in a few short weeks.

  Perhaps the satellite states of Magna Britannia were not as well-connected as he – and the rest of the Magna Britannian populace – had been led to believe.

  On this particular morning, Ulysses was accompanying Miss Wishart and Miranda on a gentle constitutional through Tsar Nicholas Park, named after the great-grandfather of the current Tsarina. It was now the second day since they had decamped to the Russian capital, Ulysses taking a suite at the St Petersburg Hotel where his manservant Nimrod was, even now, making sure that everything was just as his master liked it.

  Ulysses and the governess were walking arm in arm as Miranda skipped along the path before them, chasing the butterflies that rose from the shrubberies and flowering buddleia as she passed by. At that moment, it seemed to Ulysses that she didn’t have a care in the world. She was a hardy soul, he had to give her that.

  The trees, wearing their coats of lush greenery hid the spires and domes of the city’s Krymsky Val district, the fountains and clipped rhododendrons making it feel as if they were enjoying the environs of some pleasant country estate. For a moment Ulysses could almost believe that he had left all his worries a thousand miles behind.

  “So, Mr Quicksilver,” the governess said, “are you going to tell me why we’ve really come all the way to Moscow to ‘get away from it all’?”

  “Miss Wishart,” he said, “do you mean to tell me that you think I have an ulterior motive for bringing you and the young Miss Gallowglass to this most marvellous city of shining cultural delights? And please, call me Ulysses.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I mean Moscow in April is hardly the most inspiring of holiday destinations. And if you insist on me calling you by your first name, then you had better call me Lillian.”

  “Lillian?”

  “What’s so funny about that?”

  “Forgive me, it’s just that I never took you for a Lillian.”

  “Oh? And what are Lillians supposed to look like pray tell?”

  “Well, more...”

  “Go on.”

  “Just, not like you.”

  “Whereas you look like exactly what you are.”

  “You can read me like a book, Lillian,” Ulysses said.

  “From cover to cover,” Lillian replied and laughed.

  “Very well then, seeing as how you’ve found me out...” Ulysses said. “We’re here following up a lead.”

  “But I thought you said your superior said you weren’t to,” she said, her cheeks flushing in excitement at the suggestion that they might be caught up in something even just a little illicit.

  “He did, that’s right. But he also told me to take a holiday. Practically ordered me as it happens.”

  “Is your man really back at the hotel making things ready?”

  “Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it?” Ulysses said. “Let’s just say that Nimrod had a life before that of gentleman’s valet and that he still maintains certain contacts.”

  The governess turned to watch the child skipping ahead of them through the park.

  “I do hope you are taking your new responsibilities seriously, Ulysses,” she said. “I hope that you would not be doing anything to put the life of my charge at risk, especially after all her poor father went through to keep her safe.”

  “And she couldn’t be safer than in the care of three adults as capable as you, me and Nimrod. She’s a good girl and I believe she is more capable than you give her credit for.”

  “Well, we shall just have to see about that shan’t we?”

  For a moment there was nothing but an awkward silence between them.

  “So, what happens now?” Miss Wishart said.

  “I thought a trip to the ballet might be in order. This evening? How about it?
”

  “The ballet?”

  “Yes, at The Bolshoi Theatre. It’s quite the done thing, you know. And the Firebird herself is said to be performing tonight.”

  “The Firebird? The prima ballerina of the Bolshoi ballet?”

  “Indeed.”

  “For all of us?” she said, her gaze taking in the child.

  “Well, to be honest, I thought Nimrod might wait outside for us in the lobby, but other than that...”

  “Well I suppose a trip to the ballet can’t hurt, can it? Actually, I think it would be a very pleasant way to spend the evening. What will they be performing tonight?”

  “Swan Lake, I believe,” Ulysses replied, trying to recall what had been printed on the tickets that had been delivered to his hotel suite the night before. They had arrived in an envelope bearing the image of a phoenix rising from a nest of flames.

  Miss Wishart suddenly pulled back and gave him a measured look of critical appraisal.

  “And this has nothing to do with what happened to Dr Gallowglass or what happened at Osborne House?” she asked, as if somehow party to the minutiae of his thoughts.

  He flashed her another devil-may-care grin. “Now I didn’t say that, did I?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Firebird

  THERE WAS ONLY one word for it: mesmerizing.

  That was how Ulysses felt about the Firebird’s performance. As he watched her pirouette about the stage, he barely blinked once, utterly transfixed as he was.

  He wasn’t a fan of opera and he hadn’t considered himself a fan of ballet either, until that night, but he was definitely a fan of the prima ballerina of the Bolshoi – Natasha Alina Eltsina, the Firebird – who was dancing the role of the swan princess Odette. He didn’t fall for her, however, until the fourth act and the scene where Odette and her lover Siegfried cast themselves into the eponymous Swan Lake to drown together, rather than be parted forever. Her portrayal of the dying swan had him utterly entranced, while Miranda and Miss Wishart remained enraptured.

  And from his seat in the stalls he felt as if he could have reached out and touched her, had he so desired. He would never have chosen a life on the stage for himself, but at that moment he wished that he were the taut-muscled, chisel-featured Adonis with his arms encircling her.

  As the music soared, so did his heart.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, he took out the gold-embossed tickets again and the note that had arrived with them.

  It read simply:

  Meet me in my dressing room, after the performance.

  And was signed:

  Firebird

  Much as Ulysses might have liked to fantasise that she had sent him the missive with amorous intention, the Firebird, he reasoned, was an agent like himself, although who she was working for he couldn’t be sure – not just yet. And he knew he had to tread warily from here on in, since he knew even less about the mysterious Hermes, who had set him on the Russian connection, as he did about the prima ballerina herself.

  As the crowd rose and gave a standing ovation, Ulysses made his excuses – leaving Miss Wishart and Miranda applauding furiously – and headed for the nearest exit, hoping to beat the rush.

  Ulysses made his way towards the back-stage area and through a velvet-clad door.

  A chorus of trotting ballerinas scampered past him, shooting him appraising looks, giggling to each other behind their hands. Their comments lost on him, Ulysses simply did what he did best and smiled back, which only provoked more wide-eyed expressions of delight.

  Ulysses signalled for the attention of a stage-hand, sitting on a crate and smoking a cigarette

  “I’m looking for the Firebird.” Ulysses said, speaking in that pronounced, rather-too-loud register that Englishmen abroad everywhere tended to employ.

  The stagehand grunted and muttered something incomprehensible.

  “Natasha Alina Eltsina?”

  The stagehand made a noise that sounded like “Ahh” and hooked a thumb over his shoulder, following it up with a set of directions that he attempted to deliver via a combination of Russian and complicated hand gestures.

  At long last, after wandering the rat-runs for what was probably only five minutes but felt like longer, in a quiet corner behind the stage, set apart from the hubbub of the junior ballerinas’ changing area, he came upon a door painted red and bearing a modest gold star at its centre.

  The door was ajar. Ulysses knocked, but his report was met with silence. Of course it was possible that the Firebird had not yet made it back from the stage; he had made his move as soon as the performance had ended after all. Perhaps she was entertaining fans at the stage door. He did not even know if the dressing room was hers, but who else – out of all those he had seen on stage that night – would warrant a gold star and their own private dressing room?

  Cautiously he pushed at the door and immediately met with some resistance. Giving it a good shove, he succeeded in pushing it open fully at last, clearing the pile of clothes that had fallen down behind it.

  The room was a mess and, for a moment, Ulysses was tempted to put the state of the place down to its occupant having an untidy, yet creative, soul. But on closer inspection he had to accept that the room had been ransacked.

  He took a step into the dressing room, taking care not to tread on the dazzling and expensive-looking clothes that had been dumped onto the floor.

  Where his hand touched the door it came away sticky and red.

  The pile of clothes stirred and groaned weakly.

  Ulysses was down on his knees in an instant, tugging gowns and boas clear of the pile to reveal the prone form of the Firebird.

  The prima ballerina was still wearing the costume she had worn in her role as the swan princess. It hung in scissor-sliced lengths from her semi-naked body, saturated and sticky with her blood.

  Realising that nothing he could do could save her now, her took her in his arms, cradling her head on his lap and rocking her gently, as he might a sleepy infant.

  And then the Firebird spoke. Ulysses started as he realised that her words were in English. “Shhh, rest easy. It’s going to be alright,” he said.

  “My knight in silver armour,” she answered. “Tsarskoye Selo.”

  “What?”

  “Go to Tsarskoye Selo.”

  “Tsarskoye Selo?” he repeated dumbly, still having no idea what she was talking about.

  “Yes, Tsarskoye Selo. It lies south of St Petersburg. Take what lies in the devil’s tomb... In Rasputin’s tomb.”

  And then she was gone.

  It took a moment for him to register the sound of the woman’s screams behind him.

  He turned and looked up into the terrified, youthful face of a ballerina on the cusp of adulthood, and his own face fell as she screamed again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Red Handed

  “NO, WAIT. YOU don’t understand!” Ulysses cried out as the ballerina turned and fled.

  Cursing, he gently laid the dead prima ballerina down amongst the swathes of strewn outfits, before springing to his feet.

  The killer might have fled, but it would have left indications of its passing and, besides, Ulysses already knew who it was that had gutted the Firebird. For here he was in Moscow, thousands of miles from Londinium Maximum, while the Metropolitan Police hunted the self-same killer there.

  Out in the corridor he could hear the young ballerina’s cries, joined now by gasps of horror and shouts of confusion. Ignoring them for the moment, Ulysses left the dressing room and glanced about him. There had been a steady stream of people moving around backstage when Natasha Eltsina had been killed and so it was likely that there were people who had witnessed the killer’s escape, and yet the shout of “Murder!” had not yet gone up

  Ulysses looked up and noticed the marks left by the gouging steel claws of the monster as it had made its escape. He set off in pursuit at once, his heart pounding in his chest. He bustled his way past flustered stagehand
s and then he saw it, scuttling along the ceiling.

  As Ulysses sprinted after it, it scuttled through a doorway.

  Following, Ulysses suddenly found himself in darkness, the shadowy cut-outs of sets crowding around him, and realised he was on the stage itself. The house lights had been turned down. A sliver of gold and red appeared ahead of him, as something pushed its way through the closed curtains and out into the cavernous space of the auditorium.

  With pistol in hand, Ulysses burst through the weighted curtains and after the killer.

  Row upon row of empty, red-upholstered seats greeted him. And nothing else.

  The curtains rippled behind him and Ulysses looked up.

  The Ripper was clawing its way up the plush red curtains. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to do the same, the dandy ran through the high-roofed space of the theatre auditorium as the cyborg made its escape above him. Reaching the pelmet, the horrific thing launching itself at a box at the edge of the upper circle, and from there flung itself sideways to land amidst the seats beyond

  Ulysses ran back across the stage and leapt over a parapet into the box that was side on to the stage itself. He was aware of figures moving towards him along the aisles between the seats. Somebody shouted something in Russian and then he heard the clear pronouncement “Stop!” in heavily-accented English.

  Ignoring the command, he made his way to the back of the box, wrenched open the door and bounded through. It was imperative that he now found a up through the building.

  He opened another narrow door and found himself on an even narrower landing with stairs leading both up and down. Without a second thought he flung himself up the stairs taking them two at a time, the sound of pounding footsteps on the stairs below him spurring him onwards.