Extraordinaires 1

by Michael Pryor

  ‘I am bound to all my clients,’ Soames said carefully. He felt as if he were negotiating with a keg of nitroglycerine.

  ‘Good. Remember it,’ Jia said.

  ‘This other matter?’

  ‘You know this writer, Kipling.’ It was a statement rather than a question. ‘Find him.’

  Soames was taken aback. Of all the things he could have been asked . . . ‘I shall bring him here immediately,’ he said.

  Augustus raised his hand. Soames had seen many dangerous people and many dangerous creatures in his time in the Demimonde, but he had never seen any as familiar with death as the Immortals who addressed him. Tolerance, patience and understanding were alien to such beings. ‘Do not disappoint us,’ Augustus piped in his horrible child’s voice. ‘We do not want Kipling. We want the boy.’

  ‘Kipling has been searching for a boy,’ Jia said. ‘A special boy. We have reports of them in the vicinity of your Hyde Park. Find Kipling and you will find the boy. Bring him to us.’

  ‘May I use some of your assistants? I may need to penetrate their police service, other officials . . .’

  ‘Spawn?’ Augustus glanced at Forkbeard, who was scowling. ‘By all means.’

  Soames bowed, but his thoughts were circling. If he could find out what was so interesting about Kipling’s target, he might be able to use it as a first step in ousting the Immortals and assuming their place.

  Jabez, he thought, only you could identify such a fleeting opportunity!

  ‘I will set to work with alacrity.’

  Forkbeard jerked his head around. His baby face was a dreadful blend of madness and hunger. ‘And you will bring us children.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘We need children. Young children. Many of them. Soon.’

  Soames stared at Jia and Augustus. ‘You will be well paid,’ Augustus said.

  ‘Phlogiston?’

  ‘No. We need it to power our manipulating machines. Gold will do.’

  ‘But of course,’ Soames said. He was already riffling through the long list of felons and cut-throats he employed, choosing the worst of them. ‘I will supply your needs immediately.’

  Jia pointed at him. ‘And then you will do something for us at the site of the great gathering in your city. Most secret, most careful.’

  ‘Great gathering?’

  ‘We have not left India on a whim,’ Augustus said with relish. The other two Immortals smiled. ‘These Olympic Games are an auspicious moment that we simply could not ignore.’

  The motor car raced along Bayswater Road as if fired from a gun. Kipling peered through the side window, hissed, then tapped his driver on the shoulder. ‘Faster, Trubshawe, if you please.’

  Next to Evadne, Kingsley was pressed into the rear seat as the automobile accelerated. He was numb.

  ‘It’s more serious than I thought,’ Kipling said after he turned around to face them.

  ‘More serious?’ Kingsley said.

  ‘They’re following us.’ Kipling pointed.

  Kingsley and Evadne leaned towards the window. After a moment’s embarrassed rearranging, they both found a position to view Hyde Park as it flew past – and Kingsley felt Evadne stiffen.

  He pressed his face close to the glass. He didn’t see police constables or the brutish figures of the intruders who had been in his foster father’s study. Instead, four or five shadowy forms were loping through the shadows on the far side of the fence. Behind the pickets as they were, it was difficult to discern details, but Kingsley shuddered at the sight. The creatures were unnaturally thin and long-armed, almost pawing at the ground as they ran. He was glad when the swiftness of the automobile left them behind.

  ‘What are they?’ he breathed, and he became aware that his heart was pounding.

  Kipling’s face was grim. ‘They’re a sign that we are in great strife indeed.’

  ‘I’d prefer to entertain you at home,’ Kipling said as he poured the tea for Evadne and Kingsley. Thin, early morning light came through the lace curtains of the hotel room. Traffic was beginning to cast its noise about, but the sounds coming from the street were still muted – horses’ hooves, a motor car or two. ‘But home is in the country, and here we are.’

  Kingsley took the cup Kipling offered him. He knew he should be tired, but the events of the night had pushed him past exhaustion into that stretched state where exhaustion was strangely irrelevant.

  Kipling wasn’t exactly unknown to Kingsley. His foster father had copies of all of the writer’s work in neat, identical leather volumes, each containing a thorough Kipling bibliography, but discouraged Kingsley from reading them – so naturally he’d done so in secret. He’d read them all, particularly enjoying Barrack-Room Ballads, but he’d never been able to find either of the Jungle Books, which were missing from the shelves of Dr Ward’s study.

  At the theatre Kipling had appeared to be a small man, but now Kingsley could see that even though he was short, he wasn’t small – his shoulders were broad and he was well built. His posture was upright and he moved about the hotel room with ease, never fumbling or uncertain in his movements. His thick spectacles naturally made him look studious, and already Kingsley had noticed how the writer listened intently, with all his being, whenever Evadne or he were speaking. He moved his top lip under the thick moustache while he listened, as if chewing on every word. He also showed a writer’s curiosity about Evadne’s exotic looks. He was frankly fascinated, but not rude.

  ‘We’re grateful, Mr Kipling.’ Evadne stirred her tea with a silver spoon. ‘But why on earth would a respected writer help two fugitives escape the police?’

  Kipling looked startled, then took another of the large armchairs that Kingsley and Evadne were occupying. He pressed his hands together. ‘I thought my assistance could be valuable.’

  ‘That it was, Mr Kipling,’ Kingsley said. ‘Most timely. Puzzling, but most timely.’

  ‘I could say it’s because I’m an admirer of Miss Stephens’s skill,’ Kipling said. ‘I saw you at the Bedford, last year,’ he said in response to her sceptical look. ‘Your juggling is sublime.’

  ‘But that’s not the reason for your rescue,’ Kingsley said. ‘Nor for your watching us in Aldershot, is it?’

  ‘Ah. You noticed me.’ Kipling looked disappointed. ‘I hoped I was doing a good job of being clandestine.’

  ‘There’s been altogether too much that’s clandestine for my liking,’ Kingsley said. ‘That’s why I’m asking you to throw some light on things.’

  ‘With apologies to Miss Stephens, it’s you I’m interested in, Mr Ward.’ Kipling paused. ‘Perhaps interested is too mild a word. Fascinated would be better. You were born in India, weren’t you?’

  ‘You’re fascinated in me because I was born in India? That’s hardly unusual, is it?’

  ‘I was born in Bombay myself, so I’d agree with you there.’

  ‘Then what is it?’ Kingsley was beginning to feel nettled. Granted, Kipling had whisked them away from a sticky situation, but Kingsley’s gratitude was wearing thin.

  ‘I’m after details, you see, details that could confirm my theory.’

  ‘What theory?’

  ‘That you’re Mowgli.’

  While Kingsley battled stupefaction, Evadne tapped her teacup with a fingernail. ‘Now, there’s a thought.’

  Even though Kingsley hadn’t read The Jungle Book, he’d heard of Kipling’s wild boy hero, mostly in taunts from lads at school who were unaware of just how apposite the epithet was. ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘It might explain a few things, Mr Kipling, and he does look a little Mowglish.’

  ‘Mowglish?’ Kingsley said. ‘Really, Evadne, you’ve lost me now.’

  ‘It’s not his looks, Miss Stephens,’ Kipling said, ‘it’
s his background. I have reason to believe that our young Mr Ward might once have been the child who was found by the Indian Forestry Service after being raised by wolves. The newspaper story about this child was the inspiration for my Jungle Book tales.’

  With an uncertain hand, Kingsley placed his cup of tea on the side table. ‘Wolves?’

  Kipling leaned forward, his eyes bright behind his spectacles. ‘I didn’t believe it when I first read the story, so I travelled to the Central Provinces and spoke to the forestry officers myself. Decent chaps, they convinced me that they had indeed found a child whose nurture had been solely undertaken by wolves.’

  ‘That sort of a start to life would tend to stay with one.’ Evadne looked pointedly at Kingsley.

  ‘What happened to the child’s parents?’ Kingsley managed to ask, while memories of his schooldays clamoured for attention – the yearning for freedom, the realisation that others did not have the same sort of wild side that he did, the understanding that he was different. With a start, he realised that for a long time he had shied away from his Indian past in an effort to be as the others around him.

  ‘The parents?’ Kipling looked away. ‘The forestry officers had no idea. There was no sign of them when they rescued the boy.’

  ‘Rescued.’ Kingsley’s memories of his earliest days were crowded and confused, but the notion of rescue didn’t jibe with them. He recalled terror and separation, but not rescue. Any memories of the wild came with feelings of exhilaration, four-footed security and the smells of familiar beasts surrounding him. He had comfort amid the pack, and the two-legged intruders had taken him away from it.

  He almost cried out as the loss he’d felt all those years ago reached out and plucked at his heart.

  ‘And what makes you think that Kingsley here is your Mowgli, apart from his being born in India?’ Evadne asked.

  ‘A month ago, your foster father delivered a lecture that I attended. It alerted me to several intriguing features of your background, Mr Ward. How your foster father brought you back from India, for a start, and of his business travelling about that country and the possibility he was in or around the town of Seoni at the time of your discovery.’

  ‘Discovery?’ Kingsley echoed, and his voice sounded thick in his own ears. His back ached, and he realised he was holding himself poised, tense, until his muscles were screaming. ‘You make me sound like an uncharted island.’

  The pain caused by the memories that had launched themselves upon him unbidden was redoubled by Kipling’s revelation. Even though Kingsley knew it was in his foster father’s nature to be forthcoming where science was concerned, he was still hurt to think his peculiar past had been shared with strangers.

  Kipling looked pained. ‘I apologise, Mr Ward, I truly do. It’s at times like this that my enthusiasm gets the better of me. I have a horror of those who intrude on my own privacy, and yet here I am doing the same to you.’

  Try as he might, Kingsley couldn’t dislike Kipling. The man’s enthusiasm was appealing, as was his careful formality. ‘You heard my father speak?’

  ‘At the Royal Society about the recent discovery of Homo heidelbergensis remains. He did tend to wander from the topic when he became excited.’

  ‘That is a weakness of his.’ Kingsley was spent, stretched thin by exhaustion and the events of the last half-day. His foster father was missing, his housekeeper had been murdered in the most horrible fashion and now, on top of all this, a writer was hinting at the origins that Kingsley had thought long forgotten. His hands trembled and it wasn’t solely due to lack of sleep.

  ‘Aldershot,’ Evadne said to Kipling. ‘How did you end up there?’

  ‘I have a great many acquaintances of all kinds.’ Kipling flipped the pages of his notebook. ‘Once it was clear that you had embarked on a career in the theatre, Mr Ward, I was able to make enquiries. Eventually, it was suggested that I visit the Alexandra Theatre and “I might see something to my advantage”, I believe is how my informant put it.’

  ‘You were in the balcony,’ Kingsley said.

  ‘For an unexpectedly captivating show,’ Kipling said, ‘ending in pandemonium.’

  Kingsley had almost forgotten. His stage career could be at an end before it even started. His life was in ruins. ‘Mr Kipling, I’m glad, and a little unsettled, to find that I’m your literary inspiration . . .’

  ‘A part of it,’ the small man said.

  ‘A part of it, then, but I’m not sure why you’re so excited.’

  ‘You don’t understand what it means to a writer to see a character he has written come to life and stand in front of him and . . . well.’ Kipling took off his spectacles and polished them sturdily. ‘But it is more than that. Since I first heard of your origins and first began planning the story that would become The Jungle Book, I have learned much. I do not exaggerate when I say that your fate and the fate of our species may be intertwined.’

  ‘I say.’ Kingsley rocked back in his chair as if he’d taken a blow on the chin. ‘One likes to think one is important, but don’t you think you’re overstating things a little here?’

  ‘I love India, my boy. When I was there, however, I saw things.’ Kipling paused, and for an instant Kingsley saw fear in the man’s eyes. ‘Things that here, in civilised England, I have difficulty believing weren’t a dream. Wonders and nightmares. Splendour and terror. Miracles and horrors.’

  Evadne chanted, in a whisper: ‘Hard her service, poor her payment – she in ancient, tattered raiment – India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.’

  Kipling smiled. ‘You know my work?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then you will understand that it – that everything – is a matter of the struggle between civilisation and the wild. Both impulses are in us, both tendencies have their strengths. You, my boy, because of your origins and your upbringing, have managed to unite both within you. If you are as I hope, you show that the wild can be controlled. Civilisation can subdue and benefit from the wildness within. You are unique.’

  ‘He doesn’t look unique,’ Evadne said. ‘He looks nonplussed.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Kingsley said. ‘And worried. And suspected of a murder. The combination is often mistaken for nonplussment.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Evadne said. ‘Meet adversity with a quip. It mightn’t help, but it will give your obituary readers a smile.’

  ‘None of us will have obituary readers,’ Kipling said. ‘Nor obituary writers. Not unless we manage to do something about the horror that is unfolding.’

  ‘We’ve seen horror tonight,’ Kingsley said.

  ‘I gathered as much.’ Kipling consulted his notebook, turned a page, and looked up, pencil poised. ‘Our motor car escape was a little too fraught for you to inform me about what you found at your home. Would you mind?’

  Kingsley began to explain, but stumbled badly when it came to the scene in the study. It took him a few false starts before he completed his story, and Kingsley was grateful for Evadne’s lack of mockery while she listened.

  Kipling blanched as the story unfolded but he gamely maintained his jotting. ‘Brutish burglars? I was more worried about those things in the park.’

  ‘Who were they?’ Kingsley asked.

  ‘They are minions of some depraved individuals I encountered in India, barely escaping with my life.’ Kipling eyed them carefully. ‘Sorcerers.’

  Kingsley went to scoff at this, but he caught Evadne’s expression. She was intently listening to Kipling, tight-lipped and angry. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘I guessed that you were prepared for this, Miss Stephens. Theatre folk often are.’

  ‘You may have seen things, Mr Kipling, but so have I.’

  ‘The Demimonde?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘The Demimonde,’ Kingsley repeated. ‘
We’re not talking about courtesans and wastrels and people like that, are we?’

  Evadne and Kipling exchanged glances. ‘Not exactly.’ She touched her lips with her forefinger, then appeared to come to a decision. ‘I’m not sure that you’re ready for this, but it seems as if we have little choice.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Pay attention. This is a rather abrupt introduction to the Demimonde. Usually we’d watch over you for a year or so before introducing it to you, if we thought you were ready, but sometimes, as all theatre people know, you have to ad lib.’

  ‘Wait,’ Kingsley said. ‘The Demimonde? The half-world?’

  ‘I knew you had an education behind you.’ Evadne pushed up her spectacles. She’d changed them; these were tinted slightly green. ‘Your courtesans and wastrels, as you so coyly describe them, are part of a realm that had been around long before absinthe had been invented.’ Evadne put her hands together for a moment, nodding. ‘It’s like this. Just as the curtain divides the world of the groundlings from the magic world that is the theatre, so there exists a curtain that divides the rest of the mundane world from the Demimonde.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kingsley said, not in comprehension but more because some sort of response seemed to be expected. Curtains?

  ‘It’s more a curtain of perception and tradition than a curtain of true magic, but it’s powerful nevertheless.’

  ‘Magic.’

  For a moment, she ran an upright finger left and right over her lips. ‘I shouldn’t have used that word yet. It only confuses things.’ She brightened. ‘What about an example? Everything works better with an example.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Try this. Sometimes when you see a banker walk straight past a beggar, it isn’t because he is making a point. The beggar is truly invisible to him, even though he is only inches away.’

  Kingsley frowned. ‘The beggar isn’t there?’

  ‘No. I’m talking about the two worlds, the world of the banker and the world of the beggar. Sometimes they intersect and the banker can see the beggar, but at other times the beggar is truly invisible.’