Blood Fever

by Charlie Higson

  ‘I don’t have any idea what you’re going to do, Mauro,’ said James, aware that the boy wouldn’t understand half of what he said. ‘But so far so good. Just get on and do it.’

  Without another word, Mauro gripped James’s foot and started pounding his heel with the stone. James howled and tried to struggle free.

  ‘Is OK,’ Mauro repeated as he carried on working away with the stone and he was right, the pain was lessening still further.

  Horst appeared and came over to see what was going on. He was stripped to the waist and had a towel round his neck. Up close his bulging muscles looked ugly and unnatural. He chatted briefly with Mauro and Luigi in Italian.

  ‘He is doing the right thing,’ he said to James after a while. ‘Smashing the spines with a rock breaks down the poison and crushes the tips to dust so that your body can easily deal with them. If the spines are left in they can be the devil.’ He bent down to take a closer look. ‘You are lucky he didn’t let Luigi try and do it his way,’ he said, straightening up.

  ‘What did he want to do?’ said James.

  ‘He wanted to urinate on your foot,’ said Horst and he laughed loudly before slapping James on the back and wandering off.

  James didn’t know what to think about Horst. When he had written to Mr Cooper-ffrench, describing life at the villa, he had put in a lot about him and his ridiculous bodybuilding. He had tried to make it as funny as possible in the hope that Cooper-ffrench might read it out to the other boys. He wasn’t completely sure that Cooper-ffrench had a sense of humour, however.

  That night James ate supper at the big wooden table in the kitchen with Mauro, Horst and Isabella, the cook. Mauro enjoyed telling Isabella about James’s crazy dive and the incident with the sea urchin. Isabella tutted and clucked and kept firing off bursts of Italian at James, who couldn’t understand any of it, but between them they managed to patch together some sort of conversation.

  There was a happy atmosphere, with much laughter, and James realised how much more relaxed he was now that Mauro was on his side. This was his favourite type of meal, with good, simple food, fresh bread and friendly chatter. How much more enjoyable it was than the ghastly formal affair he’d sat through with Count Ugo and his weird sister.

  Isabella had just got up to go to the stove and serve second helpings when James heard a sound from next door.

  ‘What was that?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Horst.

  ‘I thought I heard voices,’ said James.

  ‘Maybe Victor is back already,’ said Horst but, as he stood up to go and investigate, four armed men burst into the kitchen and the atmosphere was suddenly changed.

  Everything happened very quickly, too quickly for James to be scared. There was a chaotic, noisy blur of hurtling bodies, crashing furniture and yelling voices.

  Horst screamed and ran around the kitchen like a headless chicken, shouting about bandits in a strangulated high-pitched whine.

  Isabella was braver. She threw a saucepan of boiling tomato sauce over one of the men, who yelled and tore at his clothing. But two of his friends grabbed her before she could do any more damage.

  James picked up a chair and battered one of the men off Isabella, and out of the corner of his eye saw Horst fleeing out of the back door. Mauro, meanwhile, had picked up a big kitchen knife and was attempting to fend off the fourth attacker. He cut him badly across the forearm but two more men appeared. One of them hit Mauro with a wooden club, knocking him to the floor. James ran to his side and swung his chair at the man with all his strength, smashing it across his back and scattering splintered wood around the kitchen.

  He helped Mauro up and they tried to make a run for it out of the back door, but the next thing James knew someone had pushed a gun in his face. He caught a brief glimpse of a masked face and a red tattoo of the letter M on the back of the man’s hand. James jerked his head out of the way, then there was a terrific bang and a blinding white light in his eyes, and after that, blackness and silence.

  The whole thing had taken less than 30 seconds.

  James awoke in the middle of the night, lying on the kitchen floor amid a wreckage of broken plates and furniture, with a terrible ringing in his ears.

  He ran his fingers over his face. His first thought was relief that he hadn’t been shot. There was a huge, painful lump on the back of his head, however. When he fell he must have struck the floor and knocked himself out. The men had probably left him for dead. He struggled to his feet and saw Mauro. It looked like he hadn’t been so lucky. He was lying beneath the table in a pool of sticky red stuff.

  ‘No,’ James gasped and went over to him. Mauro’s face was streaked with red gore. Fighting back tears, James wiped the hateful stuff away with his hand.

  He smelt tomatoes. He licked his hand. It wasn’t blood at all; it was Isabella’s tomato sauce. He laughed and went to the sink to fetch some cold water. When he got there he saw his reflection in the window. He too was covered in dried sauce. But as he cleaned himself he realised with a shock that the stuff that was dripping down out of his hairline actually was blood.

  There was no time to worry about that now. He had to revive Mauro and try to find out what had happened. He splashed some water over him and as he cleaned his face he saw an ugly purple bruise across his forehead where he must have been struck with the club.

  At last Mauro’s eyes opened, but as soon as he was conscious he was violently sick. James left him in the kitchen to clean himself up and went to see what damage had been done and try to find some clues as to what the men might have been after.

  He soon found out.

  The whole villa had been stripped bare. All the paintings were gone. Everything. All of Poliponi’s work, all of Victor’s work and all the other art that he had collected over the years. The only thing they’d left behind was the stuffed giraffe.

  James knew how devastated Victor would be.

  There was no sign of Horst anywhere, but he discovered Isabella in one of the bedrooms, bound and gagged, but still alive.

  Mauro, who by now was feeling more human, helped him to untie Isabella and in their halting, broken way they planned what to do next.

  First of all they carried out a more thorough search of the villa and grounds and, once they were sure that it was safe, they took the Hispano-Suiza out of the garage and drove Isabella to her sister’s in Palau.

  ‘Tell her to alert the police,’ said James. ‘Polizia.’

  ‘Sì, sì,’ said Mauro and he had a hurried conversation with the frightened cook.

  There were few telephones on the island so the only way to let Victor know what had happened was to go to Ugo’s palazzo and tell him in person. James realised how devoted Mauro was to his master. He was fully prepared, even now, after the terrifying attack and being knocked unconscious, to drive all night to give him the bad news. Anyone else might have been temped just to go away and hide, like Horst appeared to have done.

  But James wasn’t about to let him go alone and soon they were loading the car to drive down towards the Gennargentu Mountains. Luckily Mauro knew the way; he had grown up in the mountains. The Barbagia was his home. He showed James the route on an old army map, drawing it on with a thick red crayon, and they set off.

  They made good progress to start with, taking the inland route through Gallura and Logudoro as the roads were marginally better than along the east coast. After a couple of hours James saw that they were crossing the Valle dei Nuraghi and he recognised the squat, black shape of the Sant’ Antine tower off to their left. After that the road got steadily worse as they climbed into the mountains until it had deteriorated into a twisting, muddy track, pitted and rocky. Their progress became frustratingly slow, and they had no idea what was going to be around each bend.

  By now their faces were caked with dust and grime. James’s eyes stung from peering intently at the circle of light thrown ahead by the headlamps. He knew it must be worse for Mauro, who couldn’t stop concentrating
for even a moment in case they hit a rock or veered off into the bushes. James looked over at him. He was flagging. He had had no proper sleep and taken a nasty blow to the head. His eyes were drooping and he was fighting to keep them open. James knew he had to talk to him to keep him awake.

  ‘OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Sì,’ said Mauro. ‘You fight good, James. You OK. I sorry I bad to you. Friends now.’

  ‘Friends,’ said James.

  ‘Le montagne sono belle,’ said Mauro.

  ‘The mountains?’ said James.

  ‘Sì,’ said Mauro. ‘Buone. Good. You like. My home.’

  ‘Tell me about your home,’ said James, and Mauro told him his story.

  He had never wanted to leave his village, but life was hard and the people were poor. He would have liked to stay there and grow old among his own people, but his sister could look after the animals and make cheese with his mother and there was no real work for him. So, like so many other boys before him, he had gone off to find a job that would pay him enough money to send some home each month.

  He had worked at first in the salt marshes around Cagliari, but it had been hard and the pay small and in the end he had found easier work in a bar in Sassari, which is where he had met Victor.

  Victor had recently built his villa and needed staff.

  Mauro liked working for Victor. He was kind and life was easy. Sometimes when he travelled, to Switzerland or Italy or France, he took Mauro with him; at other times he left him behind and he was free to do whatever he wanted.

  ‘I swim,’ said Mauro, yawning. ‘I go in boat. I eat good.’

  As they crested a ridge Mauro had to brake suddenly to avoid running into three wizened old men in black cloaks with pointed black cowls riding wiry little ponies. The car stalled and stopped in the middle of the road. Slowly the men rode round them and carried on. They were in no hurry. Life here had gone on, unchanged, for centuries. James thought he could have seen men dressed like these, riding their ponies down these roads, five hundred years ago, maybe even a thousand.

  He looked round at Mauro. His head had flopped forward on to the wheel and he was sleeping.

  ‘Come along,’ said James, shaking him. ‘Move over. I can drive.’

  Mauro tried to protest, but he was too tired and by the time James had manhandled him into the passenger seat, he was fast asleep again.

  James took the wheel and looked over the controls. The Hispano-Suiza wasn’t too different from his roadster back in Eton and after a bumpy start he was driving with some confidence.

  The sun was coming up, which would make things easier, but they still had a fair way to go. Never mind. James felt alive, all his senses alert. The Hispano-Suiza had a big, powerful engine but he was in control of it. He was filled with a wild, reckless spirit.

  He knew that he would never forget this night.

  14

  The Last Thing That Goes Through the Mind of a Dying Man

  People had been streaming into the small town of Sant’ Ugo all morning, mostly poor peasants and shepherds but also a scattering of richer families and a few sightseers and tourists.

  The town had originally been little more than a collection of shepherds’ huts, but Count Ugo had enlarged it to accommodate his workers. It was now an ugly, dull collection of hastily built, and in some cases only half-completed, concrete buildings painted a lurid salmon pink and laid out on a formal grid design with wide streets. The only thing of any interest was a sports stadium at the edge of town, towards which the crowds were flocking.

  James nosed the big Hispano-Suiza down the packed main road, trying not to run anyone over. He was reminded of the Fourth of June back in Eton. Overexcited people, many of whom seemed to be already drunk, spilt off the pavements and wandered into the streets without a care.

  It was hot and noisy and confusing, especially to James who had been driving on deserted country roads all night. He wondered how he and Mauro must look – two grimy boys driving a big, dusty Hispano-Suiza – but nobody seemed to pay them much attention. Occasionally a group of rowdy young men would surround the car, singing and shouting and banging on the bonnet, but as far as anyone was concerned they were just two more revellers come to enjoy the party.

  James felt utterly worn out; his neck was stiff, his eyes ached and his mouth was full of gritty dust. The sun was burning in a clear blue sky, and it looked like it was going to be another scorching day.

  ‘This is no good,’ he said to Mauro. ‘We should leave the car and carry on on foot. We walk? Sì?’

  ‘Sì,’ agreed Mauro, who looked slightly numb and shell-shocked.

  They pulled off the main road, dumped the car in a side street and got out.

  Sant’ Ugo was built in an arid, rocky valley beneath two mountains; they had not been able to see much on the drive in, but somewhere up there was Ugo’s palazzo and Victor Delacroix.

  The two weary boys shouldered their way through the milling carnival-goers until they reached the far side of town, and, as they cleared the buildings, James got his first proper view of the twin mountains.

  The scene was just as Ugo had described it; far up above was the dam, spanning the gap between the two peaks, and directly beneath it was the aqueduct, crossing the valley on impossibly tall arches. To the right of the aqueduct, stuck on to the side of one of the mountains, was what looked like a model. Surely it was too strange and perfect to be real.

  It was a gleaming, white, fantasy Roman town, complete with temples, villas, colonnades and what looked like a small amphitheatre.

  It had been built on several levels, one on top of the other, so that a terrace in front of one building was the roof of the building below, and seemed almost to hang in space, far above the valley. He couldn’t help smiling. It was like a toy. He felt as if he could simply reach up with his hand and put a tiny model Roman soldier on it.

  Mauro pointed and James saw a steep funicular railway track leading up the side of the mountain. They headed towards it, leaving a trail of dust behind them.

  At the foot of the railway was a scene of frenetic activity. A team of boys was unloading baskets of food from a railway car that was parked in a shed. They bustled around, throwing the baskets to each other, shouting and arguing and laughing, while a bored-looking guard made a half-hearted attempt to oversee the chaos, struggling to stay awake and yawning heavily.

  James hurried over to the guard, knocking dirt off his clothing. He started to try and explain what he wanted in his halting Italian, but the guard simply stared at him with the same bored expression and yawned into his face. Mauro joined in, but it was obvious they were getting nowhere. The guard didn’t want to know.

  James’s head was throbbing and he thought that if he didn’t get out of the sun soon it would explode. He was just wondering what to do when one of the boys came over from the railway car.

  ‘Mauro!’ he cried.

  ‘Stefano! Che cosa fai qui?’

  Mauro grinned from ear to ear and the two of them gabbled excitedly to each other, interspersed with much Italian hugging and slapping.

  It turned out that Stefano was from Mauro’s village and he worked here in Ugo’s kitchens. He seemed to know the guard and eventually managed to get through to him that his friends had an important message to deliver to Victor Delacroix up at the palazzo.

  The guard shuffled into his hut and came out after a while with a sheaf of densely typewritten papers. He leafed through them, turning from one page to the next agonisingly slowly, but at last a vague glimmer of light came into his eyes.

  ‘Victor Delacroix?’ he said, and James nodded.

  ‘Bene.’

  He nonchalantly waved James and Mauro on to the railway car and explained the situation to another guard who sat inside, sheltering from the sun.

  As he climbed aboard, James studied the carriage. It was attached to a thick steel cable and sat on a sloping, wedge-shaped base so that it would remain level as it made its way up the dizzyingly ste
ep angle of the track.

  The guard pulled some levers and James heard a swooshing, gurgling sound from below. He looked out to see that a tank of water underneath the carriage had been emptied into a concrete channel. He assumed that the train must operate on some sort of counterweight system.

  With a jerk, they moved forward and began to climb up the mountainside.

  James sat down on a plush, velvet seat next to Mauro. He wondered if this ornate railway had once been part of Ugo’s mining operation. It certainly didn’t look like a mining carriage now, though: the seats were padded velvet and the walls were covered in carved wood and gold leaf.

  Halfway up they passed a second car coming down, packed with more baskets and palazzo workers, then they crossed over a bridge that spanned a deep black chasm in the ground. On the other side of the bridge they passed into a tunnel that had been cut into a great jutting outcrop of rock and as they emerged back out into sunlight they came to the first of the palazzo buildings. James looked up at high, sheer walls dotted with small windows and got the occasional glimpse inside as they climbed past them. The higher they got the finer the buildings became, and James saw lookout towers, large statues and raised walkways. Finally, nearly ten minutes after setting off, they came to rest at the top of the palazzo where a wide, handsome piazza had been built.

  James looked up. The great, grey mountain continued above the palazzo and near its peak was the dam that arced across the valley to the mountain on the other side.

  The piazza appeared to be at the heart of Ugo’s complex. One side of it was open and overlooked the valley and the aqueduct, which joined the palazzo just below here, the water in its canal sparkling in the sunlight. Tall, elegant facades stood to right and left of the piazza, and, at the back, a row of wide marble steps led up to the most imposing building of all, which had a massive portico held up by tall pillars and a statue of Julius Caesar standing on its roof.

  This must surely be Ugo’s private residence.

  The whole place was eerily deserted and looked unnaturally clean after the dirt and dilapidation of the rest of this poverty-stricken island. It felt unreal, like an elaborate stage set. It was all too neat and white. James had to shield his sore eyes from the glare.