by A. E. Moorat
He turned to go.
'Albert,' said Victoria.
He stopped and turned to face her.
'Yes, Victoria,' he said.
'Albert, it would really make me happy-too happy-if you would consent to marry me.'
He looked at her.
'Victoria,' he said, 'I thought you would never ask.'
They came together in an embrace, the passion of which caught them both by surprise such was its intensity. For the first time in her life, Victoria felt...
...safe.
XV
That night
Westminster
The drums were so loud it was as though the air about him was vibrating. The hot stench hit him at once.
'Roll up, roll up...' McKenzie heard as he made his way blindly down steep wooden steps so wet they seemed to squelch underfoot. He hugged the streaming, slippery wall for support.
'Roll up, roll up!'
At length he descended to a large underground cellar-the result, no doubt, of two cellars knocked together-and he was here, inside the famed Cockpit of Westminster, home to Raticide.
'Roll up, roll up, for...Raticide.'
It was the monthly rat-baiting event, where one might expect to witness in action the city's most legendary dog, Turpin, a bull terrier that had once killed one hundred and two rats in five-and-a-half minutes. Two or three in the jaws at once. A fearsome beast indeed.
McKenzie's mission was not to see Turpin tear into a hundred rats, however.
No.
Here at Raticide, he'd been told, he'd find Egg-finally. Egg, who had disappeared since the Hastings scandal. Egg: the man he had spent months trying to track down.
Who, so his contact said, would be here this very night.
This had better be worth it, he thought.
Inside the cellar was a sea of bobbing top hats worn by gentlemen come to bet on the games, some with handkerchiefs held to their noses. Smoke hung in the air in thick grey layers, doing little to mask the stench of stale beer, dirt, body odour and dogs, but, above all, of rats. Those rats destined for the pit had not yet been brought forward but still their stink was all-pervading. Those used were caught in sewers and drains and emitted a stench that, when he had first smelled it, had almost caused McKenzie to vomit. He supposed he was used to it now, but even so, the aroma almost sent him staggering as he entered the cellar, reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief and pressing it to his nose, eyes scanning the room in search of his contact, instinctively hunched against the noise of the drums, which were so loud they seemed to push the breath from his chest, a rhythmic, tribal sound there to whip up the fervour of the crowd and of the dogs. The source of it was a team of negroes who wore white shirts and caps and were hunched, grim-faced and sweating over their drums, faces slick with sweat, hands a blur, not so much playing the drums as channelling them. A dark, furious noise.
The sides and corner of the room were in virtual darkness. Instead, flickering gaslights lit the centre, where the arena had been set up, enclosed by wooden barriers. In the ring was a dog-Turpin, he took it to be-and Turpin stood with his front paws against the side of the ring, barking, though McKenzie could barely hear it over the din of the drums and the ringmaster and the rising sound of the voices as bets were placed.
The clamour increased, if that were possible, as a boy made his way through the crowd holding aloft a basket, like that in which you might keep chickens. Inside it were not chickens, though, but rats. The basket seethed with them so that they seemed to move as one. Behind this first boy came another boy, also carrying a basket. McKenzie was transfixed for a moment or so by the sight of the rats moving about in the baskets. For a brief second he felt that one caught his gaze and that it bared its teeth, and its eyes glittered.
He was so transfixed that he failed to see a gentleman who was waving at him from the other side of the arena, until at last the constant motion caught his eye and he waved to acknowledge his contact, then shoved his way through the crowd to reach him, an action made even more difficult by the increased excitement in the cellar.
'Hello, Mr McKenzie,' shouted the man, Cuddy, a name he always fervently denied was Cuthbert shortened. He stood at the side of the arena and McKenzie wriggled in next to him, incurring the displeasure of a drunken toff who was silenced with a glare from McKenzie.
'And good day to you, Cuddy,' he shouted. 'Is our friend Mr Egg in the vicinity?'
Cuddy grinned and pointed towards the second of the two boys who had appeared with the rat baskets, on the opposite side of the arena.
'There he is, Mr McKenzie,' said Cuddy, voice like a rusty saw, 'that's your boy Egg.'
'Good work,' said McKenzie. Money changed hands. 'What do you know of him?' he asked, watching as Egg and the other boy clambered into the ring placing the baskets on the wooden boards. At the other side the ringmaster held Turpin back by the collar. No easy task, by the looks of things, the dog barking and slathering, veins taut at its neck.
'Not much, sir,' rasped Cuddy, 'save to say that he wears a hunted look on his face, and they do tell that when he's taken too much ale he talks of a mistress he's lost, and that it was an employer very dear to him.'
'Aye, it all makes sense,' said McKenzie, but not loud enough for Cuddy to hear, who was pointing again.
'Something else.'
'Yes?'
'Once, they say, having drunk a little too much, he talked of dark forces occupying the very highest echelons of society.'
'I beg your pardon. Did you just say dark forces?'
'That I did, sir, that I did.'
'Was he specific?'
'Sir?'
'Did he mention any particular incarnation of these dark forces? For example, revenants?'
'Revenants?'
'Zombies. The undead.'
Cuddy looked askance at McKenzie. 'Well...now you come to mention it...'
'He did?'
'No, he bloody didn't, sir, excuse my bloody French.' He shook his head in bemused disbelief. 'The living dead, I ask you.'
Might not be as far-fetched as you think, Cuddy, thought McKenzie, his mind going to an object he had in his possession. Then Cuddy was indicating Egg.
'Don't think you're going to get to speak to him before the contest begins, Mr McKenzie,' he bellowed. 'You fancy a flutter on old Turpin? He's been known to do...'
'...one hundred and two rats in five-and-a-half minutes, Cuddy, I know.'
'A most impressive tally, sir,' Cuddy said with a grin. 'I'm proud to say that I was there when he set that record, sir. Up to three rats at once he was killing. By the time he'd finished the arena looked as though it had been pelted with strawberry jam, hair and meat.'
Now it was McKenzie's turn to look askance at Cuddy, who winked in return.
'He's getting on now, though, lost an eye an' all, they can be pretty vicious when cornered I can tell you, them rats, they sell their life pretty dear and it cost old Turpin one of his eyes.'
'So what's your bet?' asked McKenzie.
'Fifty in five, sir. Fancy joining me?'
'It's very kind of you, Cuddy, but I'm here on business-that business being young Mr Egg over there.'
Then the sound of the drums was rising, becoming even more frenzied. Some of the crowd put their hands over their ears but even so they were grinning, knowing what the increase in volume signalled: that the rat-baiting was about to begin. Reaching a crescendo the drums stopped, the cacophony replaced by noise of another kind as the crowd began shouting and gesticulating, money changing hands. Egg and the other boy opened the chicken baskets, then scrambled to escape. McKenzie was careful to keep an eye on Egg, noticing how the boy's eyes darted about the room. The rats now set free swarmed to one side of the arena, a black, oily mound of them piling up against the wall, desperately trying to escape the slavering jaws of Turpin who was straining at the leash, the ringmaster's teeth bared with the effort of holding him back.
Then the ringmaster straightened as best he co
uld, the look on his face indicating that he was relishing the moment.
'London, are you ready for Raticide?' he called.
The crowd screamed in approval. McKenzie, caught up in the delirium of the moment found himself doing the same.
'I can't hear you,' taunted the ringmaster. 'I said. "Are. You. Ready...For Raticide?"'
A great cheer went up.
'Five...' he began.
The rats, all hundred of them, squealed, claws scratching the wood, each of them trying and failing to claw its way to the top of the stinking mass and escape.
'Four...' The entire crowd joining in the countdown now. 'Three...two...'
The ringmaster reached to unclip the leash.
'One!'
The ringmaster vaulted out of the pit. Turpin tore forward, making straight for the centre of the pile of vermin. Immediately he came up with a rodent in his jaws, chomping down hard on its neck then flinging it to the side, where it dashed against the wood, leaving a smear of blood, Turpin already delving into the panicking pile of rats for another victim.
Then the dog yelped. A high-pitched anguished yowl that for just a second silenced the baying crowd.
Turpin appeared from within the roiling mound of rats, but not as had been expected, with one or even two rats between his jaws. Instead he had rats hanging from him, their pink, fleshy tails swishing so that in one hallucinatory moment, McKenzie imagined him to be wearing a tasselled jacket. But the dog was in pain. There were rats at his muzzle. Rats at his belly. Rats clinging to his body, holding fast with their snouts, legs scrabbling, tearing into its hide as the dog screeched, shaking to try and rid itself of the terrible biting teeth and lacerating claws. And in the next moment, poor Turpin's fate was sealed as those vermin that had been forming a pile at the far wall seemed somehow to realise that the tide of combat had turned in their favour and suddenly there was a pile no more as instead they swarmed across the floor to join those who had attached themselves to Turpin. Then the dog disappeared beneath bulbous, bristling bodies and all that remained of it was its dying yelps followed by one last agonised scream that tore into the crowd, leaving a shocked silence behind it. It took McKenzie a second or so to realise that the rats had stopped their noise, too. No longer panicking and squealing, almost eerily silent now, they seemed to slide away from their victim, leaving Turpin a bloodied mess on the floor.
'Cuddy?' said McKenzie no longer having to shout.
'Yes, sir,' replied Cuddy, his voice empty as though attempting to make sense of this turn of events.
'Isn't the dog supposed to kill the rats, not the other way around?'
'I've never seen its like, to be honest wiv you, sir. Never seen its like.'
The rats were still moving around on the wooden floorboards, but now McKenzie noticed something else. Many of the rodents seemed to be looking at something outside of the arena. More of their number were doing the same. Then more. Until most, it seemed, had their attention taken by the same thing and had affixed it with a watchful gaze, sniffing, snouts and whiskers quivering.
They were staring at Egg.
At the same time that McKenzie noticed so did Egg, the rest of the crowd oblivious, too involved with arguing over the bets or watching the ringmaster, who had broken down and was howling and screaming at the side of the arena, two men in top hats restraining him from clambering into the ring to retrieve the mauled corpse of his dog. Egg's eyes widened. McKenzie began pushing his way through the crowd, sensing that Egg might be about to take flight. The rats, too, began to move, scuttling as one to the wall of the pit, a great accumulation forming, becoming higher and higher. McKenzie saw it as he skirted the arena, shoving his way through arguing, hollering men, on his way towards Egg, who was now standing stock still as though terrified into immobility. He saw how the rats no longer scratched and scrabbled with panic, but rather moved with purpose, an organisation almost, and that they seemed to be building upwards towards the lip of the wooden boards surrounding the arena, soon to spill over it.
And that if they achieved their objective then it was Egg who was their quarry.
Incredible as it seemed the rats were after Egg, and were getting closer, were seconds away from escaping the arena.
When into the pit blundered the grief-blind ringmaster.
'Raticide,' he screeched, his war cry lacking its previous vigour, sounding somewhat plaintive now, as he waded into the heaving mass of rats with his boots stamping, his arms pin-wheeling and anguish etched deep into his face that was streaked with tears.
Instantly the pile of rats was in disarray. The spell was broken. Egg had taken steps backward, lost his footing and fell and McKenzie was almost close enough to touch him when he regained his feet and was making for the wooden stairs to ground level. McKenzie went to follow but there was a scream, a scream of such agony the like of which he had never heard before (and would only ever hear once again) and he found himself looking over to the arena where the crowd was parting as the ringmaster tried to climb over the boards to escape, unsuccessfully.
He had stopped trying to stamp on the rats in revenge for the death of Turpin. Now he was fighting for his life.
'Raticide,' he screeched as though he had forgotten all other words but that one. 'Raticide.'
He had them hanging from him.
From his body.
From his face.
Which gushed blood, and as McKenzie watched he grabbed one round, bristling body and yanked it away from himself, the rat coming free with a slurping tearing sound that was clearly audible in the cellar. From its mouth dangled the ringmaster's eyeball, hanging by the optic nerve clamped firmly between the rodent's teeth.
The ringmaster screamed, dropped to his knees and was immediately set upon by scores more of the creatures, one of them pushing itself into the eye socket, almost all of its body disappearing as it burrowed deeper into his skull, the pink, scaly tail protruding and waving about the ringmaster's face as he pawed at it ineffectually, more rats jumping to his body until he was writhing beneath them, sharing the fate of his beloved dog.
There was a moment of collective horror in the room, and then the crowd were stampeding for the stairs. McKenzie, already halfway there in pursuit of Egg, was one of the first to reach the steps and bounded up them, aware that behind him the sheer number of bodies was creating a horrific crush made worse by what was an obvious splintering sound. The steps were buckling, unable to cope with the weight of people.
For an instant he hesitated at the top, the sound of screaming behind him giving him pause to consider stopping and helping those who were in pain.
But no-the story. What could he do anyway?
'Egg,' he shouted, bursting out of the Cockpit and into Westminster, almost immediately seeing the boy, who had stopped at the mention of his name, then, when he saw McKenzie, turned to flee.
McKenzie, though no athlete, was nimble on his feet. Plus he carried a cane and knew how to use it, thrusting it forward to catch the boy between his ankles and send him sprawling to the ground. McKenzie was upon him almost immediately, dragging Egg up, taking him by the collar.
'I want to have a word with you, son,' he hissed.
'I can't, sor,' whimpered Egg in reply.
'Why were the rats after you?' demanded McKenzie.
'I don't know, I can't say that I know.'
'You know. And it's not because you're made of cheese. Why is it? It's because of your mistress, isn't it? Who was your mistress, Egg? Was she a lady-in-waiting at the palace?'
Egg whimpered and tried to turn his head away.
'Was she?' pressed McKenzie. 'Was her name Lady Flora Hastings, the Queen's lady-in-waiting?'
Egg squeezed his eyes tight shut as though trying to wish himself away but McKenzie simply bunched his hands tighter, pushing his face closer to Egg.
'Was it?' he pressed, shaking the boy. 'Was she your mistress?'
At last he nodded yes and McKenzie relaxed his grip upon the young man.
'The last time we met,' he said, 'you said she feared for her life and she's dead now. Either it's a ghastly coincidence or she was right to show caution. Which is it?'
'I never found out, sor, I read it in the newspaper like yourself. They say it was a tumour but I think differently.'
McKenzie dragged Egg to his feet. 'Why?' he asked, casting a look about them, 'what makes you say that?'
'My employer had been a follower of the Duchess's comptroller, sir.'
'Wait, don't couch your information-don't prettify it for my ears. You mean Lady Flora Hastings and the Duchess's comptroller--' he struggled to remember the name. Sir John something? '--they were lovers?'
Sir John Conroy. That was it.
'Yes, sor. By holding that position she discovered such things about the monarchy, sor, that I think may have killed her, sor, especially those that had much to lose in the light of revelations she may or may not have made.'
'Yes. Yes. Such as...?'
Around them people were running, either to the Cockpit or away from it.
'Like what, man?' snapped McKenzie. 'Like what? These dark forces, you speak of when you're drunk?'
'That's right, sor. At the palace, sor. She spoke of demons there.'
XVI
The grounds of Buckingham Palace
Blast! Since the engagement had been announced, Lord Melbourne seemed more than usually prone to gaffes involving Germans. Now, for example, he found himself apologising for an off-the-cuff remark in which he had stated that all Germans smoked, and that they rarely washed.
It was to the Queen's credit, and a measure of the happiness that the engagement had brought her, that she dismissed these improprieties with the lightness of air.
'Don't worry, Lord M,' she smiled, walking on clouds that took her through the grounds of the Palace. 'Even if it were true, I would not believe it of Albert. Not of my Albert.'
