Voyage to the Volcano
Page 3
The Countess knocked quietly, but it was clear that it was up to them to let themselves in. Inside, was a largish round room, in the base of the tumbledown tower. Across the circle from Cloudier, wooden steps, patched and cracked, led up to a gantry. On the gantry stood two guards, one with a lance in his hand, one plucking half-heartedly at a mandolin, each staring at nothing with a steely determination. And they needed that determination, for many, many people were trying to get their attention, and each of those people seemed to think their plea was more important than anyone else’s. Dozens of people were clamouring to be allowed through the door behind the guards, where the Count of Eisberg presumably awaited. There were more pearls, opera glasses and fur stoles in this room than Cloudier had ever seen assembled before, and it seemed that the people wearing them each thought that such accoutrements entitled them to be heard first.
A lanky man in a deerstalker was haranguing one of the guards, but his accent was so refined that to Cloudier he sounded like a drunken bloodhound baying at the moon. A woman who had apparently forgotten to remove the previous owner from her fur coat was proclaiming to everyone that she could trace her ancestors back three thousand years, which from the look of her took her back to about her seventh birthday. A plum-coloured man with more medals than teeth was recounting his part in some battle, or perhaps he was telling people about a dream he had had – Cloudier found it hard to tell and harder to care. The overall impression she got was of a roomful of people who were used to getting their own way, and who thought that manners were for servants. Cloudier’s stomach lurched as she heard a man shout, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’ at one of the guards, but she was pleased to see that the guard did not respond.
Beside her, the Countess took a deep breath and began to move. Like an icebreaker swishing through the floe, she seemed untroubled by the throng. People moved aside as she came through, without her having to say anything except the occasional quiet ‘excuse me’. Cloudier stayed close, knowing that the crowd would close up tight behind. As she moved, she heard the timbre of the noise in the room around her change. The indignant crowing of the entitled died down, and a kind of hissing murmur took its place.
‘That’s Hammerstein!’ Cloudier heard.
‘From the Galloon!’
‘He must be nearby!’
‘How uncouth, to send a countess to do the work of a mere captain …’
Cloudier would have responded to this last one, but she bumped into the Countess’s bustle, as she had stopped at the foot of the rotten, sawdust-strewn stairs. The Countess put a gloved hand to her mouth.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ she called politely to the nearest guard. ‘Is the Count quite well? Is there anything we can do to help?’
The nearest guard had been watching her from the corner of his eye as she made her way across the room, and Cloudier was not surprised to see that he appeared to be too tongue-tied to reply. But the second guard unrolled a scroll, and with barely a glance at it, declaimed the following prepared statement:
‘His Grace the Count of Eisberg is currently experiencing a very high volume of visits. You have been placed in a queue, and will be answered as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.’
Then he picked up his mandolin again and continued to play the plinky-plonky, music-free tune, with a glassy look in his eye.
‘Oh dear, no,’ said the Countess. ‘This is worse than I feared.’
‘There’s nothing I can do, Countess,’ said the mandolin-playing guard. ‘Please be assured your visit is important to us.’
Cloudier noticed for the first time that this guard seemed more nervous than the other. The hands that plucked the mandolin were steady enough, but he was shaking at the knees, and sweat beaded on his lip beneath his thin moustache. She stared further, and saw that his armour didn’t fit anywhere – the breast plate was for a much fatter man, the helmet was perched on top of his head like an eggcup, and the boots didn’t even match. The other guard, in contrast, was quite well turned out, albeit in armour that had seen better days. Beside her, the Countess began to climb the stairs, which seemed to make the mandolin-playing guard almost frantic, while the other could only stand and stare. Behind Cloudier, the volume was beginning to grow again.
‘Countess?’ said the Countess, in a firm but polite tone of voice. ‘How do you know I am a countess? I’ve never been here before.’
The first guard stepped out of the way, mesmerised, as the Countess moved past him. Cloudier saw the mandolineer set his eyes in a distant stare once again.
‘Ermm. Just heard you were coming, Countess,’ he said, but even he didn’t sound convinced.
Behind Cloudier, a stern-looking woman piped up.
‘Come along, woman!’ she called. ‘Order of precedence! If anyone is to gain access, I, as both a duchess and an abbess, should …’ But she chuntered into silence as the Countess turned a look of polite enquiry her way.
‘Sir,’ she said, turning back to the guard, who was now so nervous that he had stopped playing his mandolin. ‘I believe we can help. If you allow us access to His Grace, and find someone to provide warm drinks for the good people here and outside, I am sure we can find a solution to the Count’s predicament.’
‘No!’ said the guard vehemently. ‘Nothing can be done. Nothing! It’s gone too far!’
Finally Cloudier clicked. She tugged the Countess’s dress, and whispered in her proffered ear.
‘Is this him?’
‘Yes,’ whispered the Countess. And then, turning to the guard once more, so quietly only the three of them would hear: ‘Cloudier, meet His Grace Heinz-Marie Von fforbes-Martinez, the Count of Eisberg.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Cloudier,’ said the Count from under his tin helmet, a look of pale relief crossing his face. ‘Sorry about the cannon. I didn’t expect people to turn up!’
In a wood-panelled room, a face cracked in a smile. It was a much older, much more experienced smile than had been there a few minutes before. Tiny wrinkles round the eyes spoke of years of such smiles, and the wobbly jowls below seemed to be purpose built for jollity. Even the eyes, often said to be the windows to the soul, seemed to be those of a kindly gent, with a joke for every occasion and a pocket full of humbugs.
Despite what people say – even eyes can lie.
‘I will find it first,’ said the face. ‘I will find it. I. I, Captain.’
The smile faded, and its owner turned away. Leaving his previous life in a pile by the mirror, he opened a door and stepped out of the wood-panelled room.
‘And so you see, the cat had fallen clean out of the bucket!’ laughed the Countess, finishing off one of her favourite ice-breaking anecdotes. The Count laughed despite himself, and even Cloudier cracked a grin. It was a great anecdote.
They were now a little further into the castle, in a slightly more comfortable but barely less dilapidated room. There was a trestle table against the wall, with a paltry array of sausage rolls and a mucky punchbowl on it. Three sad little balloons bobbed against the ceiling above. The Count was sitting on a hard wooden chair, having given the only upholstered seat available to the Countess. They were drinking tea, which the Count had made himself, and the Countess was talking, charmingly and wittily, about life on the Galloon. Cloudier felt that the meeting had the atmosphere of an informal afternoon tea party, if it weren’t for the hubbub of plummy voices just beyond the door.
The Count was listening very intently, as people tended to do when the Countess spoke, but every once in a while he twitched or blinked as a raised voice from outside the room impinged on their conversation.
‘So …’ the Countess said, as a particularly violent twitch caused the Count to drop his biscuit. ‘We’ve come a long way. The Bilgepump Orchestra has been rehearsing specially for you. Let’s talk about your party.’
The Count stared into the middle distance for a short while, and then the floodgates opened.
‘I thought it was the right thing to do, an
d usually I send out hundreds of invitations and get perhaps twenty replies, which is fine because we can use the snug, but this time I sent out hundreds of invitations and got thousands of replies, because I may have mentioned, just in passing, that the Captain and his Galloon might be part of the celebrations, and everybody has heard about his bride and wants to ask him about it and now I haven’t got enough room to have a party that big because the roof has fallen in over the great hall and I can’t afford to fix it and it’s just me and Hawthorne the guard and my valet, Pill, but I can’t find Pill anywhere and I think he’s left me because of all this fuss and last night I had to do my own toothbrush and it didn’t even go foamy and I asked Hawthorne why that would be and he laughed at me and said, “Have you never heard of toothpaste?”, and I said no because someone’s always done it for me and how … how …’ A long sob racked his body as snot dripped off his nose and into his tea.
He took a deep breath, as if he were sucking up all the sadness in the world, before finishing: ‘And how can I have a party for thousands of posh rich people when they all think I’m posh and rich as well but I’m not rich at all and my valet has left me and I don’t even know about toooooothpaaaaaste!!?’
He clattered his teacup onto the tray, wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve, and threw his arms theatrically around the Countess of Hammerstein’s neck. She put her arms round him, and Cloudier watched as her eyes took on the familiar look of a woman making a plan.
After a couple of ‘there, there’s’, the Countess placed the Count’s arms back on his lap and stood up carefully. She beckoned Cloudier to follow her, and walked towards the door they had come in by. Cloudier watched as she opened the door, and whispered something to the guard Hawthorne, who they now knew to be the only remaining member of staff in the whole castle. Hawthorne stepped aside, and the Countess walked out onto the top of the flight of steps. The hubbub in the room, which had only been growing in volume, suddenly died down.
The Countess carried on walking down the steps, somehow getting through the crowd without having to push, and exited through the door to the courtyard. Cloudier followed and the crowd, without needing to be told, followed too, in a long and almost orderly line. Cloudier heard a few straggling voices saying things like, ‘True class, you know. Her father was a great man,’ before being hushed, as the crowd gathered once again outside, where the drivers were waiting in the cold. The Countess stepped onto the running board of a fine old carriage and cleared her throat. Everyone in the crowd leaned forward slightly. She smiled, and everyone leaned forward slightly further.
A rotund lady in a heavy crinoline dress leaned a little too far in her eagerness to hear, and pitched forward onto her face.
‘She’s gone again!’ called her husband, laughing despite himself.
‘Don’t mind me, I shall have a snooze while I’m down here!’ called the fallen lady, from underneath a flouncy bonnet. Silence descended again.
‘My Lords, Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the Countess. ‘The Count of Eisberg and I would like to apologise for keeping you waiting. We just had a few last-minute details to discuss, before being able to reveal to you our little secret. Do forgive us our whims. The Grand Winter Ball is not, after all, to be held here at Castle Eisberg, the Count’s ancestral home.’
The crowd began to murmur, with either disappointment or excitement, Cloudier was not sure which. Silence descended again as the Countess raised a hand. A contented snore rose from the pile of crinoline – everyone else was rapt.
‘We will instead, be holding it in a place loaned to the Count by one of his oldest and most trusted friends. I would like to invite you all to follow me to the grand ballroom on the Great Galloon of Captain Meredith Anstruther!’
The place erupted – everyone from General Lord Balcony Justice, the fourth Baron Mountebank, down to Little Ern the horse-muck boy, cheered and threw their hats in the air. The Countess was beaming and waving, and gesturing towards the sky, though the Galloon could not be seen through the fog.
Cloudier sidled up to her and tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Erm … Your Grace?’ she asked surreptitiously. ‘Do you think the Captain will be okay with this?’
Still smiling, the Countess spoke through perfect pearly teeth.
‘I hope so, Cloudier,’ she said. ‘I really do.’
A short while later, Stanley was staggering through the mess kitchen with a huge pile of silver plates in his arms. They were hot from the washing-up water, and they teetered alarmingly as he staggered about.
‘Onto the trolley, Stanley!’ called Cook, a big bristly man with the look about him of a portly pirate.
‘I’m trying!’ called Stanley, as the pile threatened to escape from him.
‘Then back here for a bucket of cutlery!’ called Cook, who was always quite brusque, but who now had a slight air of panic. ‘One thousand, one hundred people all in all, and each expecting a feast! I shall need all the help I can get!’
‘Yes!’ said Stanley as he crashed the plates onto a waiting trolley, to be taken along to the ballroom. ‘If Rasmussen were here, she could …’
‘One young girl will not be enough!’ said Cook. ‘We need an army of people. It’s not just the setting and decorations, there’s a buffet to be made and laid, drinks to prepare, and heaven knows what else. Wonderful as she is, the Countess has gone too far this time! It can’t be done … can’t be done …’
It occurred to Stanley, not for the first time, that while complaining about not being able to do something, the cook was simultaneously doing it. With his small staff of helpers, he was rushing about his little kitchen, piling plates, chopping veg, rolling pastry, counting spoons, and generally making ready for a ball. The message had reached the Galloon a short while before, by virtue of the Count’s firework-messaging system. The Grand Winter Ball was coming aboard. 1,100 people, with very high expectations, would expect to be fed, watered, entertained and impressed.
Cook dropped another pile of plates into his arms, and almost yelled at him to take them up to the ballroom, and to report back on proceedings up there. So Stanley plonked them on the now-full trolley, and stepping on the tread board at the back, pushed off and along the corridor, with the panicky sounds of the kitchen dying away behind him. He entered a kind of wooden elevator, and pulled a lever. The doors began to close, but were stopped by a young man in a stripy jumper and a woolly hat.
‘Sorry, Stanley!’ said Clamdigger, one of the Galloon’s busiest people. ‘Got to get onboard – busy work with the boatswain’s chair coming up!’
The door closed, and the lift began to move upwards.
‘Have you heard of the Chimney Isles?’ asked Stanley, knowing that Clamdigger was almost as good as he was at being outside the right door at the right time, and so may well have heard something.
‘Yes – everyone has, haven’t they?’ said Clamdigger, surprised.
‘No,’ said Stanley. ‘Not me.’
‘Pff!’ laughed Clamdigger, though not unkindly. ‘What do they teach you at school?’
‘Nothing,’ said Stanley. ‘I don’t go to school. But that’s beside the point. What does everyone know about the Chimney Isles?’
‘The Chimney Isles,’ said Clamdigger, his voice lowering dramatically, ‘are a mysterious chain of islands, peppered with active volcanoes and dramatic lakes of lava. It is perilous to set foot there for all sorts of reasons. Huge eruptions are common, as are rivers of magma and boiling geysers. They are part of the Countship of Eisberg, but no one lives there. Too dangerous.’
‘Corks,’ said Stanley, as the lift lurched to a stop. ‘Why would the Captain be interested in them?’
‘The Galloon has been there!’ said Clamdigger excitedly, as he and Stanley manoeuvred the trolley out of the lift. ‘We circled around the Isles a year or two ago, but the Count chased us off.’
‘Why?’ said Stanley, utterly intrigued but also concentrating on getting his trolley to go straight.
With which he ran off ahead, along the corridor towards the main deck, while Stanley veered off towards the ballroom.
An adventure! thought Stanley. Crikey. I don’t know what’s taking Rasmussen so long. ‘Getting ready’ indeed. She’ll be cross if she misses this …
The firework message still hung in the air as Cloudier piloted her weather balloon alongside the Galloon once more.
Great news! Ball going ahead – onboard Galloon. Please prepare for imminent arrival of 1,100 partygoers. Thank you, darlings. Hammerstein.
With Cloudier in the tiny craft, were the Countess herself, the Count of Eisberg, and Hawthorne, the guard. Cloudier could tell that Hawthorne was fiercely loyal to the Count, and was pleased that the Count had such a stalwart friend. Hawthorne leaned out of the balloon as they approached the edge of the Galloon, and heaved out one of the sandbags as a buffer. They bumped slightly as the two craft, one tiny, one huge, met, and then the Countess was whistling in her demure yet ear-splitting way, to a crewman on deck.
‘Coming aboard, Master Trump!’ she called. ‘Myself and one thousand, one hundred and three friends!’
‘Aye, miss!’ called Trump, breath steaming as he approached the rail. ‘Preparations afoot, as you requested!’
The portly skysailor gestured behind him, and Cloudier looked out across the deck of the gigantic ship. As far as the eye could see, people were busying themselves, erecting canopies and braziers, sweeping, clearing away ropes and chests, and generally making ready for an influx of people. As usual, she was impressed but not surprised by the quiet efficiency with which the Gallooniers went about such preparations. She resolved to write a paean to them as soon as she had time to look up what one was, but in the meantime there was the matter of the approaching aristocrats, their servants and helpers.