by Zizou Corder
Lying low, Aneba looked about. There was an old wet tea bag stuck to his ear.
Sergei peered about, then went for an innocent-looking stroll; sniffing around, checking that there was no one near.
Aneba clocked the vehicles. There was a petrol car – one of the old-fashioned ones. They were much faster than the solar vannettes and cycles. Plus they didn’t get stopped by policeguys, because only important people had them.
There was no one around.
It was almost impossible to get fuel, but if there was a bit of fuel in it …
Many years ago, Aneba had learned to drive, and learned how those engines worked. And how to hot-wire one when you didn’t have the key.
He grabbed Magdalen’s hand.
‘Come on,’ he said.
Two minutes later, they were on the road to Paris.
Ten minutes later, Magdalen cried out, ‘Aneba! What about the cat?’
Nine minutes earlier, Sergei had stared in disbelief at the back end of the car as it disappeared without him. What were they thinking! They were meant to be super-intelligent, for crike sake! What were they doing just heading off like that, crike knows where? He was meant to be taking them to Venice! What the crike were they up to now?
‘We can’t go back,’ said Aneba in the car. ‘It’s too risky.’
They’ll be going to Paris, thought Sergei at the dump. Dingbats! They’re just following the newspaper story, not me. He sat down on a pile of rotting banana skins and felt stupid.
He’d have to go after them and try to steer them to Venice. What a bliddy waste of time.
But then a fat whiskery brown cat rushed up to him out of the dim evening, brimming with important news, and Sergei’s plans were changed again.
‘The boy!’ puffed the cat. ‘The human boy who the Lionesses pushed in the water who was in the hospital. He’s left – he’s going to get the Lionboy, the Catspeaker. Left this afternoon, going to Venice, thought you should know – my niece, anyway, in Paris thought you’d want to know, want to warn the Lionboy!’
‘Dang blammit!’ howled Sergei. ‘Anyone’d think I didn’t have a life of my own to lead!’
But as his own life consisted largely of eating, getting into arguments and wondering why things weren’t more exciting, he was pretty happy really to send the brown cat back to Paris (‘Follow those humans! Don’t lose them!’) and set off himself to Venice to tell Charlie that Rafi was out.
He only wished he were taking Aneba and Magdalen with him.
Chapter Eight
When the wings had been put away, and the men had left, and even Edward had gone to bed, Charlie sat at the window overlooking the piazza and pondered his situation.
They would have to go to the Doge. There was no way out. He had been searching this building for days, and there was no escape route. Plus the Lions were locked up and Edward was extremely careful with the key. He knew that Charlie and the Lions had already escaped from the Circus and he was taking no chances. Plus now there were all these people outside. He glanced over at them. Even in the middle of the night, there were a few holding vigil with their candles. Charlie was really annoyed. How could he get to talk to Enzo again if he couldn’t wait in the window and let Enzo see that he was there?
He held his face in the shadow, glad that he wasn’t white. White faces catch moonlight and reflect back. He and his dark face could hide while he thought and watched out for Enzo.
Security at the Doge’s was likely to be just as tight, if not tighter. So, could they escape on the way to the Doge’s?
The moon shone palely down on the piazza, and Charlie began to make a list in his mind, a rough list of questions and ideas.
How to get away without being seen?
A boat to get to Africa.
Or overland? No, too complicated, too many people. They’d have to go via Italy, but the Circus was going to be in Italy, and then they’d have to get a boat anyway at the other end of the contrary … If they took a boat all the way they could just hide.
They could hire a boat! With crew, paid to keep quiet.
Where would they get the money?
Why hadn’t King Boris written back?
Food, preparations, all those things – navigation, sailing.
Boat, boat, boat.
Oh, but all of that was pointless. All of that was for the Lions, not for him.
He didn’t know where his parents were, therefore he didn’t know where he needed to go.
He thought about this all night, and all of the next day. He thought about it when he snuck down to see the Lions, but he didn’t want to talk about it with them. He could talk about plans in general, of course, but even with the Young Lion it seemed disloyal somehow to bring up his longing for his parents.
Until the Young Lion himself brought it up.
‘Charlie,’ he murmured, ‘don’t you miss them terribly?’
Charlie knew at once who he was talking about. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘But you are planning all the time to carry on helping us, rather than to go after them … You are very loyal to us.’
Charlie smiled. ‘We have an agreement,’ he said. ‘We’ll help each other.’
‘You’re doing all the helping,’ said the Young Lion. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed.’
‘You helped get rid of Rafi, you helped get me to the train on time … Anyway, it’s not like that …’ Charlie was a bit embarrassed to talk about it directly.
‘Hmm,’ said the Young Lion. ‘Personally, I think we owe you a lot. And I think we need to think about your parents too.’
Charlie thought about them in bed that night, wishing that Julius was asleep on a bunk above him. Julius knew so much, he would have been able to help. But he had never been able to tell the truth to Julius, because he was a circus-boy and would not have understood about how the Lions had to escape. That didn’t stop Charlie from missing him, though. He wondered if he would ever see Julius again.
He thought about it when he heard Claudio singing, and when he leaned out of the window to wave to him, and Claudio waved back.
Most of all he thought about it by the back window, because that was where Enzo would come. But it was hard: one morning a television crew had appeared, planning to await the next manifestation of the Brown Angel. ‘Medicine falls from the sky like manna from heaven!’ a small child told them. They stood around with their cameras and their long furry arm for talking into. They wore sunglasses and smoked cigarettes, and made comments about the girls who passed by. They laughed a lot. They were having a lovely time. They didn’t go away.
Then finally at lunchtime, when the sun was at its highest and the heat began to beat down, the TV guys went off to find a cool café where they could eat. Charlie’s fans moved their deckchairs into the shade and settled down for their midday snoozes. Silence spread over the piazza like melting butter.
Charlie sat in the shade of his window, and waited. And after a while, he snoozed too.
He was woken by a kerfuffle. The fatter cats, the lazy slobs who lay around all day, were all in a circle, hissing, arching their backs like a ring of outraged semicircles. Charlie could hear their vicious little noises, and see them striking out with sharp cat claws. They had someone in the middle, and they were ganging up again.
Charlie was surprised. In recent days there had been hardly any Allergenies about. It was as if they had learned that they weren’t welcome here, and had decided to stay away. Charlie hadn’t liked that.
Charlie knew his history. He knew about times and places where black people had been turned away from cafés and restaurants, schools and buses, hotels and hospitals, jobs and churches, because they were black. He knew that not so long ago there were places where he and his own mother wouldn’t have been allowed to go together, because they had different-coloured skin. He knew that black people had been beaten up and punished by bullies, just for trying to go to work, or to college – for trying to lead their lives. It really really h
urt him to think about those things.
That same pain in his heart told him that these cats had no right to bully the Allergenies, no right to try to keep whoever was in the middle of that circle out of the piazza.
There was a cry of cat pain from the middle of the circle.
Without thinking about it, without even remembering that he was meant to be hiding, Charlie lost his temper. He jumped up on to the window ledge and roared across the canal. He roared in Cat, but his accent was Lion. He roared threat and danger and warning to the bully cats. He roared that he had seen enough, that he would take no more, that they were to leave, NOW, and if they returned they would have him to deal with. In the silence of the Venetian midday, his roar was shattering.
The bully cats turned, and froze, and then like water drops from a circling hose they scattered and disappeared, terrified out of their wits by this roaring human Lion.
The fans of the Brown Angel woke with a start from their siestas, just in time to see the Brown Angel making like a mad devil in his window. ‘E’ l’ angelo!’ someone yelled. ‘Guardate! L’angelo!’ Look, the angel!
But before they could gather their wits, he was gone again. At the sight of them all goggling up at him, he had remembered that roaring out of windows was really not a sensible and discreet way for a boy to behave if he doesn’t want anyone to know where he is.
He squatted down under the window ledge, in the cool dark beside the wall, and cursed himself for being so wild.
After a moment, a mangy furry head poked through the old salty, rusty iron bars above him.
‘’Ello,’ said a rustly feline voice with a strong Wigan accent. ‘There you are. I’ve been lookin’ for yer, and then you apparate just at the right moment. That was excessively useful timing – thanks, mate. Can yer sew?’
Charlie looked up. It was a scrawny, mouldy-looking black cat, with bald patches on its bottom and milky-looking blue eyes. It was the kind of cat you wouldn’t want to stroke in case it had fleas, or worse. Charlie was so pleased to see him he nearly hugged him. He stopped himself just in time, realizing that a) Sergei might not like it and b) he didn’t look that well.
‘Sergei!’ he squeaked. ‘Sergei! How are you? Where’ve you been? What’s the news? Tell me everything! What do you mean “sew”?’
Sergei made himself exceptionally long and thin, and squeezed through the iron bars.
‘I mean, I’ve already lost most of one ear and I’d like to keep the majority of the other, if it’s all the same to you, so if you can sew, you could just go and get yer sewing kit and embroider my poor little aural protuberance back into its right and proper location,’ he said. ‘It’s on the ledge there. ‘Ad to drop it so I could talk to yer.’
Charlie stood up and peered carefully out of the window on to the stone ledge. There lay a sad little flap of black fur, with tiny speckles of blood along the edge.
It didn’t look nearly big or tough enough to sew back on. He knew, too, that when things were sewn back on, the blood vessels had to be matched up, so the blood could keep flowing. Without blood-flow, the flesh would just die.
This poor little ear didn’t really …
He looked at Sergei.
Sergei looked at him. For such a mangy scruffy old cat, he looked very perky and hopeful.
Sergei, who’d brought the letter from his parents when he hadn’t had to, who’d taken Charlie’s letter back to them even though it was in completely the wrong direction. Sergei, who was here again, who had looked for him and found him … He really wanted to help him.
Sergei, who had told him his parents were in Venice when, apparently, they were not!
‘Sergei!’ he said. ‘Are my parents here or what? You said Venice – at least the Lions said you said Venice – but Edward says …’
Sergei’s eyes were looking milkier than ever.
Charlie looked at the ear again. It looked bad.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything when I’ve sorted this out. Wait here.’ He ran upstairs, grateful once again for the silence of stone floors, and grabbed from his room a tiny bottle, and flew downstairs again.
Two drops of his mother’s Improve Everything Lotion, one on the bloody edge of the limp little ear and one on poor Sergei’s tattered stump. Hold them together carefully … there now …
Sergei was trying to peer round sideways to see the side of his own head.
‘Keep still!’ ordered Charlie. ‘I need to hold it in place … Stop wriggling.’
‘What are yer doing? What’s that?’ Sergei said doubt-fully, his nose all wrinkled up. ‘What’s that muck yer applying on me? Is that lotion? Lotion’s not going to help, yer need to sew it …’
But the lotion did help. Ten seconds later Sergei was wriggling his ear, and saying, ‘I don’t believe that. I mean, that’s not physically possible. That can’t happen, that. I don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t know what that lotion is. That’s a crikin’ marvel. Look! I can twitch it!’ And he did. Which was when Charlie noticed that it was on a bit wonky … but he didn’t mention it, because frankly Sergei was such a mess anyway that it didn’t show up much.
‘Anyway,’ said Sergei. ‘My apologias that I couldn’t get here earlier. I was attempting to avoid those detrital graspoles in that square, swarming around like they own the place and not letting people pass,’ said Sergei. ‘Despicable. Yeah, well, hello. Now we’re finally here. Right.’
He fixed Charlie with his blue eyes. ‘Yer mum and dad aren’t, after all, in the vicinity. I said they would be and they’re not and I’m sorry for that. I was wrongly informed. What happened is this: from Paris, they were escorted to Vence in the south of France.’
‘The south of France!’ screeched Charlie.
‘They’re all right,’ continued Sergei. ‘Their resistance is strong and in a way they were safe there. But there was a degree of re-education going on, which tough though they are was … effects were being had … Well, they’re not there now.’
‘So where are they now?’ Charlie asked.
‘On the way to Paris in a stolen petrolcar.’
Charlie’s jaw actually dropped. He felt it. Quickly he closed his mouth again.
Paris? Stolen car?
‘Did they get my letter?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sergei. ‘And I gave ’em a news story to read, and … em … I was about to accompany them down here and deliver them in person to their esteemed offspring. But they, em, took off for Paris …’
‘So I should go back to Paris,’ said Charlie.
‘Don’t you even think about it!’ shrieked Sergei. ‘Paris is full of those circus people and police and all kinds, and … you probably want to know – well, you probably don’t, actually, but you need to – your detrital homeboy has removed himself from hospital and is proceeding in this direction, with the intention of causing a pest of himself again, as usual …’
This was all rather too much information for Charlie. He blinked a couple of times.
‘But are they all right?’ he said in a small voice.
‘Your parents? Far as I know, they’re getting better all the time. Well enough to nick a car.’
Charlie shook his head. Stealing!
He really really wanted to go to where they were. He could feel it tugging at him like a rope through his heart.
‘What’s the set-up here, then?’ asked Sergei.
Charlie swiftly filled him in – and as he went over it he realized there was indeed no way he could leave and return to Paris now. He’d never even make it out of the house. And anyway – he couldn’t desert the Lions.
Not even for his parents?
No. He wouldn’t desert his parents for the Lions, and he wouldn’t desert the Lions for his parents.
Sergei listened carefully, and then they sat in silence for a while, pondering.
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Sergei.
‘Tomorrow we’re all being taken to the Doge in his palace. One good thing – be
harder for Rafi to track us down there. Then, god knows. We’ll have to escape.’
Escape. There was the thing. The Big Thing.
‘Yer doing a great job with the Lions,’ Sergei said. ‘And it’s great yer lookin’ after the Smilodon. How is ‘e? Is ‘e all right?’
‘He’s fine,’ said Charlie. ‘Sad, but well.’
‘Yeah. ’E ’ould be. Anyway, everyone’s delighted you’ve hitched up because, well, yer know, they’d heard about what was going on and everyone was really disgusted and upset about it, but no one really thought he’d survive, so now he ’as, it’s just as well for all of us that ’e’s escaped and got together with you –’
‘Hang on a minute,’ said Charlie. ‘What? About the Smilodon?’
‘It’s great’ e’s with you and that ’e’s, you know, all right,’ said Sergei.
‘Yes, but what was that about hearing what was going on? What was going on? What are you saying about him surviving?’
Sergei gave Charlie a fairly serious look.
‘Yer know who he is, don’t yer?’ the cat asked.
‘Yes. He’s a Smilodon fatalis. The Oldest Lion named him Primo,’ said Charlie.
‘But yer know where he came from?’
‘Do you?’ said Charlie, suddenly completely eager. ‘Where did he come from? We found him in Paris, near the Natural History Museum, and he told us what he could remember but …’ Charlie fell silent at the memory of the Smilodon’s miserable story.
‘He doesn’t know?’ said Sergei, shocked.
‘No,’ said Charlie.
Sergei looked at his feet for a moment, then began to wash his ears.
‘Well?’ said Charlie.
Sergei’s tail flicked: left, right, left again.
Charlie just kept on looking at him with his inquiring look.
Sergei looked up.
‘You ever see that old film,’ Sergei began carefully, ‘where they got bits of old dinosaur DNA and …’ His voice ran to a halt.
‘Where they re-created extinct creatures. Cloned them or something,’ said Charlie.
‘Yeah,’ said Sergei.
Charlie sat in silence for a moment.
