‘Bad Rajah! No supper for you,’ said Kipo, as he tugged on the tiger’s chain and led him back onboard the steam train.
To anyone else this might have seemed a strange affair, but for Ruby Marstrand it was a common occurrence as part of Dr Marvello’s Travelling Circus. Surrealism she could handle – it was reality that was sometimes difficult to grasp.
‘Destine, thank God I’ve found you,’ she said breathlessly.
The elderly fortune-teller lifted her white lace veil. She was in her seventies, but her complexion was smooth and her misty blue eyes sparkled with youthful vigour. ‘Something that I can do for you, ma chère fille?’
‘I hope so,’ replied a flustered Ruby. ‘Mr Q hasn’t turned up and Butter says he’s gone to the docks with Prometheus. How can this be a farewell party if the guest of honour is nowhere to be found?’
Madame Destine rested her hand upon Ruby’s shoulder. ‘Calm yourself, child. I can feel your apprehension.’ Although her exceptional clairvoyant abilities had been noticeably infrequent of late, Destine was still possessed of her uncanny ability to perceive the emotions of those close to her – not that it was all that difficult on this occasion. ‘Do not worry, my sweet. Cornelius has a habit of making a grand entrance. When he arrives I shall let him know how he has worried you so. In the meantime, please try to enjoy yourself. This is a party, n’est-ce pas?’
‘It was supposed to be.’ Ruby puffed her cheeks in submission and pushed up on her toes, flapping her arms at her sides. ‘I’ll say one thing: it’s going to be awfully quiet around here without Mr Q. You’ve known him nearly all his life…how on earth are you going to cope whilst he’s away in Egypt?’
The Frenchwoman’s smile slipped, and she quickly pulled her veil down to cover her face. ‘Pardonnez moi, Ruby, I…I have something that I must attend to. Will you please excuse me?’
Ruby grabbed Destine’s wrist and tugged her back. ‘Destine? Are you…crying?’ She brought the fortune-teller into her embrace. ‘Oh, sweetheart, don’t do that, you’ll start me off. Listen, I’ll miss him too. We all will. But he’ll be back before you know it, you’ll see. It’ll be like he never even went away!’ Ruby gently pushed against Destine’s shoulders, hoping to see a smile blossom once more upon her delicate face, but the expression was as cheerless as before. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
Madame Destine looked at the crowd that bustled around them, before leading Ruby to a more secluded area of the platform.
‘I am afraid that it is not just Cornelius whom the circus will miss, Ruby,’ she said softly. ‘You see…I have decided to accompany him.’
Ruby’s face went ash-grey. ‘Accompany him where? To Egypt, you mean?’
‘Oui, that is so.’
‘But…why?’
‘Because he needs me,’ the Frenchwoman replied.
‘Rubbish! Mr Q doesn’t need anyone!’
‘He likes people to think that, true…but as you said, I have known him all his life. Far better than most. Better than he knows himself, in fact. Soon, he will be in most desperate need of a guiding light…and I must be there for him,’ said Destine, with an audible lament to her soft tones.
‘But…what about us? What about me? I need you too! You’re the only person that I can have a decent conversation with around here without you breaking wind, talking in riddles or bouncing around the place like a rubber ball. Losing Mr Q is one thing, but losing you as well? How on earth am I supposed to cope without you?’
Destine smiled warmly, fresh tears in her eyes. ‘You will cope just fine, Ruby.’
‘But…I don’t understand. After all we’ve been through recently…with what happened to Twinkle, and Prometheus being locked up. Why do you want to go?’
‘That is just it, my child, I do not…but I must,’ replied Destine. ‘Before my clairvoyant gifts became clouded with interference, they left me with a tantalising souvenir…a vision of something that is to occur in the near future. It is connected to the plot that Cornelius is hell-bent on preventing, I am certain. That is why I requested to accompany him on his voyage.’
‘And it’s bad news I take it?’ asked Ruby.
‘With Cornelius is it ever anything but?’ smiled Destine. ‘With my gifts absent, I cannot translate the true meaning behind what the vision was trying to show me, but even so the message was clear.’
Ruby could not resist asking, ‘And…what was it?’
‘Dark times are coming, my dear Ruby,’ Destine replied. ‘Dark times for Cornelius…and possibly for us all. The words in my vision still haunt me even now. “The past and the present shall entwine once more. Beware the dawn of the Eleventh Plague.” I can only assume that it refers to Cornelius’s impending quest. After all, was Egypt not visited by ten biblical plagues? The poisoning of the River Nile would certainly fit amongst their number. With my prophetic gifts playing hide and seek, it is like taking a leap of blind faith, and I must accept much. It is most disconcerting for a clairvoyant to be faced with an unknown future, Ruby. I only pray that the fog in my mind will clear once we arrive in Egypt.’
‘But what if it clears too late?’ asked Ruby.
‘I do not know, but I have to try,’ replied Madame Destine, taking Ruby’s hands within her own. ‘Cornelius is about to take the first step on a path that will be long and difficult, and the more that he progresses, the darker the path will get.’ The Frenchwoman smeared her wrist underneath her eyes, wiping tears from her cheeks. ‘I fear that if I am not there to guide him back to us…he will be lost for ever.’
CHAPTER III
The Unfriendly Negotiations
CHRISTMAS WAS LESS than a month away and scenes of revelry were not limited to the platform of Grosvenor Park station. In keeping with the season, all throughout London traders were busy selling roasted chestnuts in crowded market places, carol singers congregated on many a street corner, and the sound of brass instruments filled the air. Despite the onset of the season, however, there was one man severely lacking in any good will.
‘This is getting rather monotonous, Ferret,’ snarled Cornelius Quaint, sucking hard on his bruised knuckles. ‘For the last time…what you know about the Hades Consortium’s plans for the River Nile? Where is that damn poison?’
The owner of the neck that Quaint’s other hand was wrapped around wheezed pathetically before collapsing onto the cold, wet cobbles of the fogbound alleyway.
‘I already told you, Mr Q – I dunno what you’re on about, I swear I don’t!’ Bob Ferris (‘Ferret’ to those unfortunate enough to know him) was a loathsome individual who had crossed Quaint’s path before. Lacking in many redeeming qualities, his only speck of worth was that he was often party to insalubrious information. Few aberrant activities in London failed to reach his ears, and on a night such as this, Ferret’s particular variety of information was vital to Cornelius Quaint’s quest.
‘Why don’t ye let me have a go at loosenin’ his tongue, boss?’ growled the colossal Irishman at Quaint’s side, his brush-bristle beard twitching as he spoke. ‘I’m gettin’ fidgety just stood ‘ere twiddlin’ me thumbs…especially when I’d much rather be breakin’ his.’
‘Keep it at the forefront of your mind, Prometheus,’ said Quaint calmly. ‘We’ll try the nice approach first. If this worm still refuses to talk, we’ll up the stakes.’
‘Look, I swear, Mr Q, I don’t know nuffin’ about any poison,’ Ferret spluttered, getting up and wiping his fingerless-gloved hand under his nose.
‘If there’s one thing I abhor, it’s bad grammar, and double negatives stoke my coals something chronic,’ said Quaint, sucking air between his clenched teeth. ‘I don’t have all night to play games, Ferret.’
Still Ferret protested. ‘But I don’t know nuffin’ about none of it!’
‘I warned you about that grammar!’ Quaint punched him in the face, and a fine seam of blood trickled from Ferret’s nostril. ‘Let me make this easier for you, Ferret…I know that poison is headed for Egypt,
and I know what the Hades Consortium plans on doing with it once it gets there. I just need to know where it is right now. A man in your line of work – and I use the word “work” loosely – is surely in receipt of such knowledge.’
‘Please, Mr Q, I can’t tell you,’ Ferret whimpered.
‘Can’t?’ said Quaint.
‘This is the bloody Hades Consortium we’re talkin’ about, Mr Q – they’ll do me in!’ pleaded Ferret.
‘One of their crimes that I will applaud,’ said Quaint. ‘Ferret, you are one of the most despicable little parasites in all of London. You feed off lies and deceit like a maggot feeds off dead flesh, and even Cheapside’s rats take a bath after they’ve been in your company. You could die right here and now in this gutter, and not a single soul on the face of this earth would mourn you.’
‘Look, Mr Q, I’d love to help you, surely I would, but if I spill me guts, I’ll be dead by the end of the week!’ spat Ferret.
‘And if you don’t you’ll be dead by the end of this conversation,’ parried Quaint.
Ferret’s tear-stained eyes appealed to Quaint’s better nature – which was a wasted effort, for the caustic conjuror was devoid of one. ‘You…you wouldn’t do me in…would you, Mr Q?’
‘Me? Certainly not!’ trumpeted Quaint.
‘Thank you, sir! Thank the Lord!’
‘But I didn’t invite my gargantuan friend here along for his good looks,’ said Quaint. He motioned over his shoulder to his Irish cohort, and Prometheus took a step closer to Ferret’s quivering form. ‘I’m beginning to tire of this. Prometheus, grab his hands. Break one of his fingers for every minute that he refuses to talk.’
‘What happens when I run out of fingers, boss?’ asked Prometheus.
‘The human body has over two hundred bones in it, my friend.’ Quaint leered as close to Ferret’s stench as his tolerance would allow. ‘We could be at this all night until we run out of things to break.’
Ferret’s bottom lip trembled and he slid down the alley’s brick wall, sniffing into his hands. ‘All right, Mr Q! You made your point. Just…just call off your dog! Maybe I do know sumfin’,’ he said, with a deflated sigh. ‘I was in the Blue Boar last night and there was this foreign bloke, pissed as a newt. He was on about shippin’ sumfin’ to Egypt, and I heard him say the name of the bloke he was takin’ it to. Said his name was Al somebody or other. Al Fekesh, that’s it!’
Quaint’s black eyes narrowed. ‘He said that name – are you absolutely sure?’
Ferret’s glassy eyes blinked in earnest. ‘I’d bet my life on it, Mr Q!’
‘If you’re wrong, Ferret…I’ll be back to cash in that bet,’ said Quaint.
CHAPTER IV
The Breadcrumbs
CORNELIUS QUAINT BLAZED out of the grimy alleyway with his boots scuffing against the cobbles and his long black cloak dragging in his wake – much like Prometheus.
‘What the devil is wrong with this world?’ Quaint snapped. ‘What happened to the good old days when the threat of a good thrashing was enough to weaken the resolve of any lice-infested ne’er-do-well? Now I’ve got to get my bands dirty!’
‘What did ye expect, considerin’ where we are? This is the arse end of London! The place is full of Ferret’s kind. Maybe ye’re just gettin’ old.’
‘How dare you!’ snapped Quaint, with a prominently raised finger. ‘I am not getting old, Prometheus! I’m only fifty-five, damn it.’
‘I love the way ye say “only”,’ said the Irishman, as Quaint shot him a look. ‘“We’re just off fer a stroll along the docks,’ ye said. “Friendly negotiations,” ye said. Surely ye didn’t think this was going t’be easy.’
‘Well, it would have made a nice change.’ Quaint removed his top hat and swept his hand through his silver-white curls. ‘I really don’t need these distractions at the moment. I’ve got far too many other worries to contend with!’
‘I noticed.’ Stopping dead in the middle of the street, Prometheus cleared his throat loudly to gain Quaint’s attention. ‘Are ye even aware of what’s goin’ on at the station right now? The gang are holdin’ a farewell party, wishin’ ye well before ye take yer leave…and where would Cornelius Quaint rather be? Out in the pissin’ cold roughin’ up the local sewer life!’
Quaint said, ‘Hardly by choice. Running into Ferret was just a coincidence.’
‘Don’t give me that rot, ye don’t believe in coincidences!’ Prometheus eyed Quaint’s rugged face. The conjuror was foremost his friend before his employer, but of late there had been a chasm forming between Quaint and his circus, and it was growing wider by the day. Quaint was becoming more of the employer and less of the friend. ‘I’m worried, man. More than usual, I mean. What’s happened t’ye recently?’
‘That is a very long conversation for another time, Prom. There are other topics that beg my attention at the moment,’ Quaint said, recommencing his stride.
‘And the cares of a friend ain’t one of them?’ asked Prometheus, rooted to the spot. ‘For years I convinced myself that I was mute, remember? I was trapped inside a prison of my own makin’ whilst I tried t’figure out what was goin’ on in my head. I know all about keepin’ things to myself, and I know all about how easy it is t’slip the mask on and forget it’s there. After a time it replaces yer real face, so much so that ye forget what ye look like.’
‘This is different, Prom,’ called back Quaint, his pace not decreasing.
‘Oh, is it now? Ye’ve been distancin’ yerself from the circus, and at show-time that just ain’t like ye.’ Prometheus looked ahead of him into the enveloping shadows of the wharf, but the conjuror was nowhere to be seen. Cursing, he had no recourse but to follow. ‘Ever since that episode in Whitehall, neither ye nor Madame Destine has been actin’ right. What happened, Cornelius? Why won’t ye tell me?’ Prometheus jolted to a standstill as he bumped into Quaint, hidden within the shadows. ‘Jesus! Ye nearly scared the life out of me!’
‘I think I preferred it when you couldn’t speak,’ said Cornelius Quaint, a tired smile across his lined face. ‘Prometheus, you’re as stubborn as a mule!’
‘Must be the company I keep,’ said the strongman.
‘All right! If only to cease your incessant interrogation, I’ll tell you exactly what happened the other night. But you might not like what you hear,’ Quaint began, stepping into a shard of moonlight. ‘After I prevented the Hades Consortium’s plot to poison the Thames, I thought that would be an end to it. I thought that we could all go back to our lives as if nothing had ever happened. I was wrong. As our resident fortune-teller is so keen to remind me: sometimes, Fate has other plans for us. Just before I killed Antoine Renard…’ Quaint allowed a slight pause as his lips burned at the name, ‘…for the second time, as it goes…he let slip that the Thames was just the tip of the iceberg. There was more of that poison. How much, I don’t rightly know, but I can’t afford to take any risks. Egypt is in peril unless I can find that poison before the Hades Consortium can get its hands on it…and that is why I have to go.’
‘Why?’ asked Prometheus.
‘Why? Why what? I just told you why,’ clipped Quaint.
‘No, I mean why is it that ye have to be the one to go? Why not just tell the police and let them handle it? It’s their job, after all, not yours.’
‘Prom, have you forgotten Commissioner Dray in Crawditch? He was a Hades Consortium puppet, and for all I know Scotland Yard is rife with them! I don’t know whom I can trust, and I can’t just cross my fingers and hope this all blows over – there’s just too much at stake. I have a breadcrumb to follow…and follow it I must.’
‘All the way to Egypt? And I don’t suppose there’s any point in tryin’ t’talk ye out of it?’ asked Prometheus.
‘Not this time,’ replied Quaint. ‘You know how pig-headed I can be.’
‘I’m constantly surprised,’ grimaced the strongman, sweeping his large hands over his bald pate.
‘Anyway, it’s too late. Ou
r tickets are already booked. We set sail tomorrow morning aboard a steamship bound for Cairo,’ added Quaint.
‘And ye never thought t’tell me about any of this? We’re supposed t’be mates. Ye can’t just swan off whenever ye—’ The sentence dried in the strongman’s mouth, killing it dead. ‘Did ye just say our tickets? We set sail tomorrow?’
‘Destine is coming with me,’ replied Quaint. ‘In fact, she insisted upon it!’
‘Ye’re draggin’ her halfway around the world after what she’s just been through?’ asked Prometheus. ‘She was poisoned a matter of days ago, remember?’
‘I don’t need reminding of that, thank you very much!’ Quaint snarled back. ‘She was poisoned with the very stuff that I’m trying to stop getting to Egypt! And whose fault was it that she was poisoned, hmm? Prometheus, the Hades Consortium is like a puddle of oil leaking from a can. The stain will spread further by the second unless someone plugs it up. That someone is me.’
‘But ye said that ye were done gallivantin’ about the globe. Ye aren’t gettin’ any younger, y’know!’ said the Irishman.
Quaint folded his arms across his chest. ‘True, but neither am I getting any older.’
‘And what’s that supposed t’mean?’ frowned Prometheus.
Cornelius Quaint forced himself to swallow the words resting on his lips.
Although he wanted (perhaps even needed) to talk to someone about what had happened, he was not sure he believed it himself. The conjuror was certainly no stranger to the sublime, but whenever his mind replayed the events of the past week (which was frequently and without mercy) it all seemed so absurd. Had anyone told him that alchemists of the Anglican Church had created an elixir of immortality and buried it within a dockland cemetery in London, he would have pointed them in the direction of the nearest sanatorium. But that was before the bodies began stacking up, and Quaint discovered the involvement of his deadly nemesis, Renard. With the Frenchman’s hand implicated in the plot to unearth the elixir, Quaint had all the proof he required. Renard’s employers – the secret cabal known in hushed tones as the Hades Consortium – were searching for the elixir not for its potency over life, but for its potency over death. After centuries buried underground, the elixir had mutated into a deadly poison. Quaint was all too familiar with the toxin’s effects, for both he and his confidante Madame Destine had witnessed it firsthand. Against the odds, Quaint managed to obtain the antidote, and, just in time, he halted the deadly poison’s attack. But just as the elixir had mutated, so too had the antidote.
The Eleventh Plague Page 2
