A Treacherous Curse

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  I turned to him, my chest burning with some unnamed emotion. “And miss seeing my father? I would not dream of it.”

  Before he could reply, Horus Stihl had caught sight of us and made his way over. “Miss Speedwell, Mr. Templeton-Vane,” he said, inclining his head. “This is quite the to-do.”

  “The collection is fascinating,” Stoker told him. “Although I had rather see more art and less in the way of domestic goods.”

  Mr. Stihl waved a hand. “Doesn’t much matter, son. If it came out of an Egyptian tomb, it’s of interest. I could sell a dirty flowerpot if I said it belonged to Amenhotep,” he said absently. His eye had been caught by the diadem. “Why, Miss Speedwell. What have we here?”

  “Just a little something belonging to the Princess Ankheset,” I told him. “Do you like it?”

  He looked closely, taking in the crown from the animal figures on the top to the incised cartouche about the base. I could smell the bay rum of his shaving lotion, and he was near enough that I could see the precise line of whiskers at the edge of his moustaches. His breath was oddly cool against my cheek, and just as I began to grow very aware of his scrutiny, he stepped back. “Lovely” was all that he said.

  He looked around. “I don’t suppose there is anything stronger than champagne on offer?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

  “I have aguardiente in a flask,” I confessed.

  He grinned. “Miss Speedwell, you are a woman after my own heart. I have been married three times, but I am becoming quite determined to make it four.”

  Stoker rolled his eyes at the raillery and hailed a passing waiter. “Can you find a glass of whisky for Mr. Stihl?”

  The waiter bobbed obediently and Horus Stihl favored Stoker with a smile. “Bless you, son. A man can handle only so much fizz before he floats plumb away.” The waiter reappeared almost instantly, proffering the promised glass. Horus Stihl took it with a gallant gesture in my direction. “To your very good health, my dear Miss Speedwell.”

  At that moment the Hall was plunged into darkness, each gas mantle failing simultaneously as a low, unearthly moan filled the air.

  There were excited murmurings in the crowd as people speculated that the theatrics were simply part of the evening’s entertainment, but it was apparent from the Tivertons’ reactions this was not so. Lady Tiverton gasped and her husband sputtered in the blackness.

  “By God! D’ye know what I’ve paid for this place? I’ll have the proprietor up for fraud, I will. This is intolerable—”

  A light flared up in the musicians’ gallery, a torch held high in the grip of a figure that stepped from the shadows. It was Anubis, the jackal god, dressed much as we had seen him last with a low linen kilt and a breastplate. We were paralyzed with horror and shock as he stepped to the edge of the gallery, raising his torch towards us. He motioned to Sir Leicester. He said nothing, and it was this silence that was more chilling than any threat could have been. He merely stood, pointing an accusatory finger at the baronet. Then the torch went out and once more the Hall was plunged into blackness.

  For a long moment it seemed no one moved, but then everything happened at once. Sir Leicester gave a low moan, Lady Tiverton’s composure broke on a sob, and I felt a rough hand snatch the diadem from my head.

  I cried out and thrust my hands in front of me, trying to grab my attacker, but my fingers closed on empty air. Stoker struck a vesta and the little flame flared to life, illuminating the scene immediately around us. Sir Leicester looked stricken while Lady Tiverton started towards him, her lips pale with shock. He caught her to him in a desperate embrace, a drowning man clinging to his bulwark. There was no sign of the thief who had wrenched the coronet from me. Patrick Fairbrother looked utterly stunned as he stared blankly in the direction of the gallery. Horus Stihl, still clutching his glass of whisky, had his gaze fixed upon Sir Leicester, his expression inscrutable as Figgy collapsed with a wail into Stoker’s arms just as the vesta sputtered out.

  I do not know how long we remained in darkness—a few seconds only, although it seemed far longer—but the lights blazed on again, the gas mantles flickering once more to life. Lady Tiverton thrust herself from her husband’s embrace. “Figgy!” she cried. Patrick Fairbrother’s expression was grim.

  Sir Leicester took in the sight of Stoker, his arms full of Figgy, and began to bluster. “Here, now, sir—”

  “She swooned, Sir Leicester. She wants a burnt feather or perhaps just a stout slap,” I offered, lifting my hand. “Shall I?” At that, Figgy moaned and fluttered her eyes.

  Grasping my skirts in both hands, I made for the gallery, cursing the delay that Figgy’s swoon had caused. I glanced behind me only once to see her clinging to Stoker—no doubt begging him not to endanger himself—but I did not wait to see. It took a moment to find the stairs; concealed behind a bit of paneling in the corridor, they were narrow and dark, and I hurtled up them as quickly as I dared.

  The gallery, as I had feared, was empty. Stoker joined me a moment later, swiveling his head around as he peered into the shadows.

  “Which way?” he demanded.

  I spied a bit of paneling not quite flush with the others. “There!” The door was held in place with a flimsy lock, but Stoker put his shoulder to the panel and splintered it with a single thrust. Not waiting for him, I vaulted over the broken remains of the door and into the darkness beyond. Another narrow staircase wound up from the gallery and in the distance I could just make out the glimmer of a light.

  “I hear footsteps,” I called back to Stoker, not bothering to lower my voice. Anubis, whoever the devil might be, must have heard the commotion when Stoker broke through the door. He would know we were in pursuit.

  Stoker close behind, I charged up the staircase and into a series of narrow passages little better than catwalks. Each ended in another staircase that brought us still higher, climbing ever upwards into the eaves of the building. We pushed on, following the dim glow of the lantern bobbing ahead. But Anubis had the advantage of us. He was familiar with the intricate passages, and by locking two more doors on the way, he gained valuable time as we were forced to pause and light vestas as Stoker battered down the narrow panels.

  “You would think he’d have deduced that we are not to be stopped,” I muttered at the last of the locked doors.

  Stoker set his shoulder to it and gave a single brutal lunge, knocking it off its hinges. “He needn’t stop us,” he said grimly. “He need only slow us down.”

  The point was a valid one. No sooner had we burst into the last of the passages than we saw the figure of Anubis at the end of a long corridor, vanishing behind a door. We gave chase, wrenching open the door to find that it concealed a staircase.

  “Bollocking hell,” Stoker muttered. “He is doubling back and heading downstairs. We ought to have divided our efforts.”

  “Too late for that now,” I reminded him as we hurtled down the stairs. This staircase ended in the corridor outside the storerooms, and we emerged into the corridor with no sign of Anubis—only the door to the alley, still swinging on its hinges, provided a clue. We charged after, shouting for police, but none replied.

  “Where the devil are they?” I demanded.

  “On the front pavement waiting for the bloody prince,” Stoker replied as we emerged into the empty alleyway. He swore lavishly as we turned from side to side, looking for any clue as to where Anubis had fled.

  “There!” I cried. Just visible in the shadows was the lid of the sewer, askew. From it, a faint light emanated, growing dimmer and dimmer with each second.

  “Like a rat,” he said grimly. There was neither time nor inclination for discussion. We lifted off the iron disk and stared down into the stinking underbelly of London. Directly beneath us was a narrow vertical passage leading to a sort of underground chamber some twelve feet below the street.

  Stoker looked at me across the fe
tid hole. “Ladies first.”

  I gathered up my satin skirts and dropped into the opening, finding footholds on the slippery rungs of the iron staples set into the brick wall of the passage. When I reached the bottom, I put out one tentative toe. My evening slipper was instantly swallowed by the swirling brown water which flowed, ankle-deep, beneath the great city above. This was one of the legendary underground rivers of London, paved over earlier in the century to enclose the stinking open flow of sewage and halt the spread of disease. The water still flowed here, carrying refuse from the furthest reaches of town to Father Thames himself. I suspected the water was deeper than usual, for the melting snows from the storms would have raised the river, and the water gushing past us was cold and fast.

  I glanced down the length of the chamber and saw a glow at the far end. I signaled up to Stoker and he swung down, skipping two or three staples at a time until he reached my side.

  “We need light,” I told him. “Have you your vestas?”

  He shook his head. “Too dangerous. There are pockets of flammable gases down here. A spark could set off an explosion.”

  “But Anubis—” I began.

  “Is welcome to take his own chances,” Stoker said grimly. “We will navigate by his light and hope if it does blow up it doesn’t take us with it.”

  I pointed to the fading glow. “That way.”

  We made our way to the end of the chamber, unspeakable things floating past our legs as we walked. The odor was beyond belief, a living thing that curled into us, noxious and corrupting. Where Anubis had disappeared, the chamber narrowed to a tunnel, scarcely higher than my head, and Stoker bent double as we entered. Far ahead I detected a gleam of light and I could hear the flow of fast water. There was the rush of wind, marginally less foul than that of the chamber.

  We followed the little nimbus of light like a terrible star for a long while, so long that I lost all bearing, all concept of time in that dreadful netherworld. Anubis pushed forwards, no doubt out of desperation, for fear of discovery can drive one to do the incomprehensible. Still, we followed, driving him on like hounds upon a fox. The tunnels narrowed in places until I could barely fit through them; I dared not look behind to see how Stoker managed. In other spots, they opened into great stinking chambers, large as a ballroom, with high vaulted ceilings soaring overhead. And everywhere, the endless stench of filth and the bright, knowing eyes of rats watching us from the shadows.

  Still Anubis pushed on, and still we followed until we turned down one of the labyrinthine passages after him and the light went out with the abruptness of a death. One moment we had the fitful consolation of it, glimmering vaguely ahead, and the next it was gone.

  Bereft of illumination, we were blinded until our eyes adjusted. High above, a grille gave on to the night sky, admitting starlight and a fitful moon. It cast an eerie glow over the aqueous world, nightmarish and bleak. I could make out Stoker’s silhouette, a tall black shadow, but nothing more.

  “Bastard,” he said with feeling.

  “Where could he have gone?” I demanded.

  “Up and out,” Stoker told me flatly. “He must have seized the chance to nip up one of the ladders and let himself out, taking the light with him.”

  “Then we must do the same,” I said. I put a hand out to grasp the lowest of the staples embedded in the wall, but I turned too quickly, or the muck attached to the base of my slipper had grown too thick, for suddenly my feet were swept out from under me and I was flailing, falling, flat upon my back and caught by the current. I was carried away, borne aloft on that fetid, stinking water.

  “Veronica!” Stoker’s voice cut through the impossible, endless night of that forsaken place.

  “I’m here!” I cried. But I could not begin to compute where “here” was. There was no proper light, no marker by which I could gain my bearings. Only that river, carrying me away, as implacable as the Styx. The rush of it filled my ears, and after a moment I was conscious of it growing louder, ever louder, and I realized with horror that I was approaching a sort of confluence. We had seen passages like this already, places where one set of tunnels debouched into another. Sometimes, when the tunnels narrowed, it caused a great increase in the velocity of the water. In others, where the tunnels were of differing heights, it caused a sort of hideous waterfall, an unnatural cataract with falls of thirty feet in some places. The closer I was borne, the louder the water pounded, and I knew then where I was bound. I would be carried over the edge of the tunnel and off one of these precipitous drops into the hell depths below. The fall itself would at least maim. If I were lucky it would kill me quickly. I reached for purchase on the filth-slimed walls, but my nails scrabbled against the brick, breaking but never catching. My feet could not support me against the onslaught of that water, and I took as deep a breath as I dared and said one word as I was launched free of the tunnel and out into the open air of the chamber beyond.

  I waited for the sensation of falling, but it did not come. Instead, there was a moment of phenomenal weightlessness as I floated, light as a butterfly hovering over a blossom. And then the feeling of a hand, strong as iron, banding about my wrist before the pain rocketed through my arm and my shoulder was wrenched nearly from its socket. My body slammed into the wall below, but I did not fall. I looked up and saw Stoker’s face surrounded by a nimbus of light.

  “Good God, am I dead? I cannot be, for surely you are no angel,” I murmured.

  “Anubis left his lantern, you daft woman,” Stoker grumbled. “Now, steel yourself. I am going to pull you up.”

  He was flat upon his belly in that grotesque place, covered from head to toe in filth, but he was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. He hauled me to safety like so much cargo, shifting me about with more regard for speed than comfort. But when I arose over the lip of the tunnel, I heard his muttered thanks to a deity in which he did not believe. I saw too the leg he had locked through the iron staple on the wall to anchor him as he dove for me, and I knew he would be bruised to the bone. I said nothing of my own hurts, merely gave him a determined smile and plucked a dead rat from my bedraggled hair.

  I pointed to the tunnel looming just overhead. “He must have made his escape there. Let us follow.”

  Just then the moonlight from the grille above shifted. There was a scraping noise, and the glow of a lantern being thrust into the narrow shaft. “I say, what the devil are you doing down there?” an autocratic voice demanded. “Come out at once.”

  Our eyes dazzled by the sudden light, we peered up into the face of Sir Hugo Montgomerie.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Sir Hugo put his hand out to assist me but suddenly reeled back, either at the sight or the smell. It was impossible to say which was the more off-putting.

  “I suppose it’s too much to ask why the pair of you were galloping about the sewers,” he said politely.

  “We were in pursuit of the miscreant masquerading as Anubis,” I told him loftily. “Which is more than you can say for any of your lot.” He applied a handkerchief to his nose, perhaps as much in defense against our odiferousness as his ailment.

  “You ought not to be out in this chill when you are still suffering from a cold,” I told him as I was wrapped in a blanket by a nameless bobby.

  “I am recovered,” Sir Hugo said, stepping sharply backwards. “Might I suggest a change of clothing, Miss Speedwell? And do not attempt to launder the garments you are wearing. Burn them.”

  I pulled a face but obligingly stepped some distance away. “How did you find us?” I called.

  He pointed behind him, and to my astonishment I saw the looming façade of Karnak Hall. “You mean the bloody villain led us in a circle?” I cried. All that filthy water, the stench that sat in my nostrils, and it had all been for nothing.

  Sir Hugo smiled kindly. “My men discovered the cover was ajar only after the fellow made use of
this means of escape. He left his Anubis mask behind—but there are no clues to be found there. He seems to have led you on a merry chase,” he added.

  “And thanks to your interference,” Inspector Archibond said as he approached, “the villain has escaped justice.”

  “Really?” Stoker asked. “I would argue that we were the only ones in pursuit and we very nearly captured him.”

  Archibond whirled on him. “I have a good mind to charge you with interfering in police business!”

  “There will be no charges,” Sir Hugo said quietly.

  Archibond glowered as much as he dared at his superior. “Sir, I really must insist—”

  Sir Hugo’s aristocratic brows lifted, and Archibond, realizing his lèse majesté, hastened to make amends. “That is to say, I strongly believe charges are in order.”

  “A policeman is not interested in beliefs, Archibond. Only facts. And the fact is that this matter is now Mornaday’s purview.”

  Archibond’s mouth went slack. “Mornaday! Really, sir, with such a high-profile case, it seems highly irregular to put such an unreliable, unorthodox detective in charge.”

  “Taking my name in vain, sir?” Mornaday sauntered up, wearing an air of barely suppressed jubilation, hands thrust into his pockets.

  Archibond turned on him with a feral growl. “Take your hands out of your pockets! I told you to leave this investigation alone,” he began.

  “Yes, you did, sir. And I ignored orders, for which I am prepared to be reprimanded. But since His Royal Highness found the whole incident jolly entertaining and asked for me personally, I doubt too much will find its way into my official record,” he said, his merry brown eyes twinkling.

  Archibond, at a loss for words, stalked away, muttering under his breath.

  I scarcely noticed when he left. Stoker put a quiet hand to my shoulder, intuiting my thoughts.