Mariah Mundi and the Ship of Fools

by G. P. Taylor

  She stopped shouting as a dressing-room door opened further along the corridor. The fat Frenchman looked out to see who was arguing.

  ‘My wife is trying to rest,’ he said in perfect English. ‘We have a performance. Argue elsewhere Miss DeFeaux.’

  Biba nodded and walked off, followed by Mariah close at heel.

  ‘They were part of the show?’ he asked. He looked at the names on the dressing room door as Biba stormed by. ‘They’re actors …’

  ‘Of course – you don’t think my father would allow Frenchmen to be blown from the stage, to strip naked and run around the theatre, do you?’ Biba asked, not wanting a reply. ‘It may be their national pastime – but not on the Triton.’

  Mariah looked back along the corridor; the lights flickered as he heard laughter coming from far away.

  ‘How can you believe that Shanjing is real when they use stooges in the show?’ Mariah asked as Biba walked even faster in front of him.

  ‘Because I’ve seen him. At night when I was alone. I saw him walking the passageway between the theatre and the saloon. It was when they were performing on the Ketos. Is that good enough for you, Mariah Mundi?’ Biba stopped, folded her arms and stared him eye to eye. ‘I think you should go and see your Captain Charity. The stairs are right behind you – don’t get lost.’

  With that she pushed Mariah in the chest and walked off. He waited a moment, not sure if he should follow. He thought it would be best not to pursue her. Mariah could tell that she needed to calm down.

  ‘She’s mad, totally mad,’ he muttered to himself as he pressed the handle of the door to the stairs.

  It opened slowly. Beyond was a steel stairwell that spiralled up and up. Each step was suspended from the wall and a brass rail went round and round, like a serpent reaching to heaven. Mariah’s feet clanged against the metal as he walked upwards. On each level was a doorway. Next to each doorway, in a glass-fronted red case, was a fire axe.

  Mariah took the treads two at a time. The sound of his footsteps echoed up the stairwell as he counted the decks. He went higher and higher, thinking of Biba as he walked on. He wondered why she was so different from anyone he had ever met. She went from silence to laughter and then immersed herself in anger. Her face changed like the seasons and her eyes showed deep bitterness. How can someone who has everything be so strange? He was wondering about this as he finally reached Boat deck 11.

  Mariah took the note from his pocket and read the words again. 2 p.m. – Lifeboat Station 13, Boat deck 11.

  ‘This is the place,’ he said to himself as he took hold of the steel door and turned the handle. He read the sign: Crew Only.

  The door gave way slowly. He pushed it open and felt a rush of wind against his face. Far in the distance he could see the white tops of the waves. It was like looking out on to a vast blue and lifeless desert. The sky was grey. The afternoon sun edging its way behind the clouds gave no shadows.

  Mariah stepped outside. The sign on the wall in red letters said Lifeboat Station 13. He looked the length of the short deck and saw four lifeboats covered in canvas. They swung gently back and forth as the ship rocked slightly. By each one was the winching handle that would lower them to the deck below, where the passengers would climb aboard should the lifeboats ever be needed.

  The wind blew against his face. It was scented with brine and cut at his skin. Taking a fob watch from his pocket he checked the time. Captain Jack was five minutes late. He looked again at the note and then to the sign on the wall – this was the right place, he thought as he waited.

  The door to the ship opened slowly. Max Arras looked out.

  ‘Mariah – so glad I’ve found you. There’s been a problem,’ Arras said as he stepped outside whilst holding the door open.

  ‘What?’ asked Mariah.

  ‘Jack Charity – he’s been injured,’ Arras said, sounding concerned by his fate, his voice emphatic and intense.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Come with me – they have him in the infirmary.’ Arras spoke with his usual smile that matched his cheap suit. ‘We must go this way – it will be quicker.’

  Mariah stepped forward to follow and then stopped. He looked down to the sea far, far below. He remembered the night before. He could see it clearly. There was Topher; and standing on the deck, near to him, lurking in the shadows, was a woman. Mariah had seen her before – he knew her face. Just as his mind searched for who she was, the vision went away once more.

  ‘We can’t wait,’ Max Arras shouted against the wind. ‘We’ll have to be going.’

  Mariah shook his head as if to judder away the hallucination and held tightly to the railing. ‘Are you sure Captain Jack will be OK?’ he asked as he began to walk towards Arras.

  ‘Fine. He needs you. You must come now – quickly,’ Arras replied, waving Mariah towards him.

  There was something about the way in which the man spoke that unsettled Mariah. Max Arras was brusque and coarse, with hands stained with dirt. Somehow he didn’t seem like an agent of the Bureau of Antiquities – even if he was undercover.

  ‘Have you been to Room 31 at Claridges Hotel?’ Mariah asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Arras replied.

  ‘Room 31 or 13?’ he asked.

  ‘Does it matter which?’ Arras said angrily. ‘Jack Charity needs to see you, now.’

  Mariah walked towards the door and then looked up. On the next deck, looking down, was Madame Zane. She nodded at Max Arras and then at Mariah. It was as if she knew the man. She gave a slight smile and then stepped back out of sight.

  Mariah stepped through the door. He could sense someone close. There was a smell of burnt almonds. A sudden and uncontrollable surge of fear swept through him. It was as if every sense in his body told him to run. Mariah dived to the right, hoping to avoid the dark shadow that fell upon him. He was knocked to the floor. A hand smothered his face with rough fingers that gouged his eyes.

  ‘Don’t speak, lad,’ came the voice of a man much older than Max Arras.

  ‘You got him?’ asked Arras. He stepped inside the stairwell and shut the door with a turn of the wheel.

  ‘Better get him below before someone sees us,’ said the rough-handed man.

  ‘Deck 1, Locker 17,’ whispered Max Arras as he slipped a black hood over Mariah’s head.

  ‘Not the fight you told me he would give,’ said the man to Arras as he held Mariah in his firm grip.

  Mariah slumped to the floor and gasped for air. His hand slipped to the leg of his trouser and clutched the handle of the gun. The man struggled to drag Mariah to his feet. Mariah slipped the gun from the leg holster and pulled back the safety catch as he pressed the barrel against the man’s leg.

  ‘Let me go,’ Mariah screamed. ‘In the name of the Bureau of Antiquities I demand you let me go.’

  ‘Did you hear that? The lad demands I let him go,’ the man said as they both laughed.

  ‘I won’t warn you again,’ Mariah said as he hunched forward with his finger on the trigger.

  ‘Take him down below, Mr Cody – let him see what we have in store for him,’ Arras said as he kicked Mariah in the back.

  There was a loud crack as Mariah pulled the trigger of the gun. He was thrown back through the air and against the door as a jet of flame exploded from the barrel. He gripped the handle tightly and pulled the trigger again and again. With every shot, more flame exploded in a bright white plume of light.

  For an instant he saw the face of the man who had held him mercilessly. It was blistered and unshaven. His coat was smouldering with black smoke as he stared at Mariah with eyes that no longer could express his pain.

  Max Arras grabbed his hand as the other man fell to the floor. He twisted Mariah’s fingers and tried to wrench the gun from him. Mariah pulled the trigger again. It blasted a sword of fire to the roof of the stairwell. Arras fell back, stumbled over the other man and rolled down the stairs.

  ‘I told you to let me go – but you didn’t listen,’ Ma
riah screamed at them as he jumped over Max Arras and ran down the stairwell. ‘You should have listened – I gave you a chance,’ he went on, his words edged with guilt.

  ‘Mundi – get Mundi!’ he heard Arras scream to the other man, whose reply was a dull groan as he tried to dampen his smouldering trousers with his hands.

  ‘Burning,’ the man whimpered. ‘Burning on the inside …’

  Mariah ran on as fast as he could. Far above he could hear footsteps chasing him.

  ‘Deck 1, Locker 17,’ he said to himself time and again as he tried to catch his breath and fight the fear that churned his stomach.

  Three decks lower, he could still hear the feet chasing him down the stairwell. As he ran he looked for places to hide or someone to stop and tell that he was being chased. But he knew that he could trust no one. A horror-filled thought stuck in his mind – what if everyone was the enemy? What if this was just an ambitious trap to get him and Charity in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? He dare not believe what he thought – he dare not believe that he was on his own.

  The stairwell was empty. The steam generator churned with every revolution of the piston. Mariah could hear the great portals on the side of the ship suck in the ocean like the mouth of a whale. The water boiled instantly as it was pushed through the Zane generator and back out into the sea to propel the ship.

  Mariah ran faster. He clutched the pistol in his fingers and slid the catch forward so it would fire the eleven bullets in the magazine. The footsteps behind him were getting closer. He stopped for a moment at a door of Deck 6. Mariah twisted the handle, but the door refused to open. He listened to the feet coming ever closer. There were now three men chasing him. Two ran quickly whilst the third followed on some way behind. It sounded as though he dragged his leg and coughed on every landing to regain his breath.

  ‘Stop now, Mariah – you won’t get far. We have people throughout the ship. You will never know who to trust,’ Max Arras shouted, his words echoing Mariah’s own thoughts. ‘If you don’t stop – Jack Charity will die.’

  Mariah ran on. He heard Charity whispering the words he’d said to Mariah one night long ago on the balcony of the Prince Regent: ‘They’ll use every trick they can think of to deceive you – never believe a word they say. If they say give in or I shall die – wish me farewell, for I know where I am going.’

  He stopped at the stairwell of Deck 5 and spun the handle to the hatch. Pulling the portal open and hiding behind the steel frame, he pressed himself against the wall. Mariah aimed the pistol at the top of the stairs and waited. He could smell the stench of the circus coming in through the door. The circus was in full flight and there were screams from the passengers as the trapeze artists swung to and fro, leaping from ladder to ladder.

  Max Arras ran into his sights. Mariah pulled the trigger of the pistol three times. Bullets ricocheted against the steel walls. He swung round and dived through the hatch, pulling it behind him and spinning the handle until the two bolts clunked into place.

  ‘What you doing back here?’ asked a tall clown with floppy feet and a tomato nose.

  ‘Miss DeFeaux has asked me to come for Rollo,’ he said, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘He’s busy – the tigers are on next. Can’t she wait?’ The clown grimaced with disdain for Biba as he spoke. ‘Gets everything she wants, that girl. Can’t be good for her.’

  The audience jeered as the trapeze artist fell to the net for the third time. The clown turned and clumsily walked away as the wheel of the hatch began to turn slowly.

  ‘Max Arras,’ said Mariah as he looked around him for a place to hide.

  The portal opened. Max Arras stepped inside the circus and looked about him. He was followed by another man in a black suit and then sometime later by Mr Cody. The man limped as he walked, clutching his leg. His trousers were burnt and torn and his jacket still smouldered. Half the hair of his long beard had been burnt away.

  ‘Got to be here somewhere,’ he said to Arras, who looked into the tented changing room of the clowns.

  ‘Hiding – somewhere we’d not bother to look,’ replied Arras. He stared at the audience from behind the row of tiger cages. ‘He’s not going to get away – we need them both for what we have to do.’

  Mariah listened from above. He had climbed the bars and now hid on the roof of Eduardo’s cage. The tiger prowled beneath him as Rollo and the others were pushed along a tube of steel wire and into the circus ring.

  ‘He can’t stay here all the time,’ Cody said as he sat on the steps of the cage to regain his breath. ‘All we have to do is wait for the circus to end and the people to leave and we’re bound to find him.’

  Max Arras thought for a moment.

  ‘You could be right. You wait inside the stairwell so he can’t escape,’ he said as he nodded to the other man. ‘Mr Saumur, go to the ticket office and tell Blake what we are doing. Don’t let Mariah Mundi get away from you.’

  Mariah heard the hatch to the stairwell open and close. He could sense that Max Arras was still close by. He peered over the top of the cage. Eduardo growled, angered by the presence above him.

  ‘What’s a big cat getting so upset about?’ Max Arras joked as he prodded the beast with the cane that hung from the door. ‘Won’t they let you go and play with the passengers?’

  He stopped and looked up to the roof of the circus. As the lights dimmed for the procession of the snow tigers the heights above him shone like a galaxy with miniscule lights that looked like stars.

  ‘What would you give to see this, eh, tiger?’ Arras teased as he prodded the beast once more with the stick. ‘Betelgeuse and Orion’s belt – how fitting that it should be those stars that shine tonight.’ Eduardo growled and bared his teeth as he smashed his gigantic paw against the bars of the cage and sniffed the air above him. Max Arras looked up. ‘Something bothering you, tiger? Something up there?’

  Just as Max Arras smashed the cane against the roof of the cage, the circus fell into complete darkness. The stars faded and a spotlight followed the ghostly pageant of white tigers. Everyone stood up and the circus erupted with applause. Arras walked the length of the cage in the twilight, staring upwards as if he knew someone was there.

  ‘A good place to hide, Mariah Mundi – but not good enough,’ he said as he took a pistol from his pocket and aimed it at the roof. ‘If you don’t come down I will be happy to shoot you – just where you are.’

  Mariah realised he was trapped. He slipped from the roof and onto the sawdust floor. He gave no protestation and didn’t try to run away.

  ‘Will you shoot me here?’ he asked as Max Arras pointed the gun at him.

  ‘Not here – perhaps not at all,’ he replied. ‘Let’s get moving. Back into the stairwell, now! And before we go, I would like your gun.’

  Mariah looked towards the hatch. He knew that if he stepped through the doorway, he would never see the light of day again. He felt in his pocket and took out the pistol and stepped towards Arras.

  ‘When can I have it back?’ Mariah asked.

  ‘Never. I have always wanted a Bureau pistol. What an invention, a flamethrower and a gun in one weapon. Mr Cody is still smouldering from his encounter with you,’ Arras said as he took the weapon from Mariah’s hand.

  ‘Then I’ll have yours,’ Mariah said as he snatched the other gun from Arras.

  Arras grabbed him by the throat and both pistols fell to the floor. Although older than Mariah, Arras was lighter and not as strong. Mariah twisted him to the floor and they rolled towards the cage. Arras kicked and punched, not sparing the boy because of his age, but fighting him like a man. Mariah fended the blows from his head and kicked back with his feet as he tried to get away. Arras was the quicker, a seasoned fighter with no care for what pain he inflicted. He punched Mariah again and again. Then, when Mariah could take no more, he dragged the boy to his feet and held him upright.

  ‘Stupid boy,’ he said breathlessly. ‘To think you could fight me …’
>
  ‘I had to try – I couldn’t just give in,’ Mariah replied.

  ‘Brave, but foolish. And if I let go will you try to run?’ he asked as he pushed Mariah towards the cage.

  ‘I have no strength left – what’s done is done,’ Mariah replied, his legs shaking.

  ‘Very well. This shall be the place,’ Arras said, and he pushed Mariah back and bent to pick up his pistol from the floor.

  Mariah seized the moment and grabbed Arras by his long white hair. He kicked the man and then pushed him back against the bars of the tiger cage in one last attempt to break free.

  Without warning, Eduardo leapt from the dark corner of the cage. The tiger seized Max Arras by the shoulder. The man kicked and screamed. Mariah let go of him, falling backwards to the floor in panic. He watched in horror as Max Arras was slowly dragged through the bars, screaming and screaming. His cries could not be heard over the shouts of the crowd in the circus as they watched Rollo the tiger dance around the arena to a Viennese waltz.

  The last thing that Mariah saw was the booted foot of Max Arras disappearing into the cage. He turned his head and looked no more as he grabbed his pistol from the sawdust and crawled under the trailer cage and hid. Above his head he heard the growling of the tiger, and then all was silent.

  [11]

  Vulgari Eloquentia

  MARIAH didn’t know how long he had waited, but from where he was hiding he had heard the tigers return to their cages. No one had seemed to realise what Eduardo had done or could see any remains of Max Arras. They had opened the cages and put the white tigers inside. Mariah could now hear the crowd laughing at the clowns as they tried to chase a kangaroo around the circus ring. He could see nothing. The tarpaulin hung like a thick, heavy curtain around the base of the cage, covering the wheels from view. Occasionally he could hear Eduardo growl and crunch bone in the small sleeping compartment at one end of the tiger cage. Mariah wondered how much of a man a tiger could eat. He knew he would have to explain to Captain Charity what had happened. He lay in shocked silence, knowing he had to move, knowing he must find Captain Jack.