by Zizou Corder
‘Your Majesty,’ said Claudio, ‘I wish I knew. It seem to me he is …’
‘Is he eating?’ asked King Boris. ‘Sleeping well? Pooing and all that? Here – let me see his tongue.’
Primo, rather surprised, stuck out his tongue. It was pale and furry-looking.
‘It should be pink and gleaming!’ exclaimed King Boris. ‘Have you had a vet in?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ Claudio said. ‘And he didn’t know what was wrong. Such a strange creature – and you know I couldn’t tell him the history of the creature, you know, in case bad people come and try to take him away – let them try! – anyway … Your Majesty, I think I know what is wrong.’
King Boris gazed thoughtfully at Primo, who had lain down again and closed his eyes. His nose was a bit dry.
‘I think I know too,’ said the King. ‘What do you think, Claudio?’
‘Sad and lonely and homesick,’ said Claudio.
‘Exactly,’ said King Boris. ‘So we must take him home.’
Claudio broke into a great smile. Of course!
‘How?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ King Boris continued, ‘I was anyway going to say to you … Perhaps Edward would explain …’
Edward had been much chastened by his mistakes in dealing with Charlie and the Lions. He was actually very, very sorry that he had got carried away in the wrong direction, trying to use Charlie and the Lions to chum up with the Doge, instead of sending them on to Africa like he should have. King Boris had wondered long and hard about trusting him again after that, but one fact remained: Edward was better than anybody at getting information. And King Boris loved information. Knowing things was vital to him. So he had decided to trust Edward again – a bit.
‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ Edward began, rather pompously. ‘Information has reached me of developments in the search for the kidnapped scientists Aneba and Magdalen Ashanti. They escaped, you recall, from the individuals who had – ahem – overenthusiastically requested their services, and made their way to a location whereat they considered their son, Charlie, would be likely to join them, and indeed that reunion has, we are informed, taken place.’
Claudio, listening very carefully, managed to work out what this meant: Charlie had found his parents.
‘Fantastico!’ he shouted, jumping up and punching the air.
Primo quietly smiled behind his whiskers. Good.
‘However,’ Edward murmured, and Claudio stopped jumping up and down. ‘The reunion is under threat. The boy Sadler, Rafi Sadler, has removed himself from the hospital in Paris and taken himself to the same spot. It is believed that the missing Liontrainer, Maccomo, is also in the neighbourhood. The safety of the scientists and the boy –’
King Boris interrupted. ‘Claudio, this idiotic family is just staying in a hotel there as if they were on holiday and they seem to have no idea how much danger they are in. The Corporacy wants them back – they don’t care how. Sadler and this Maccomo are both, as far as we know, at liberty, and likely to seek revenge or recapture – or both. But never mind them – the Corporacy has far more efficient and powerful methods of getting what they want, and are likely to bring those methods into play now. Charlie is in danger – grave danger. I was going to send you down there to find out their plans, bring them back, guard them, talk sense into them – whatever it takes.’
‘So …’ said Claudio.
‘You should take Primo,’ said King Boris. ‘The other Lions live just nearby. Drop him off, and then sort Charlie out.’
Claudio gulped.
‘Take the balloon,’ said King Boris. ‘Much quicker.’
The Chief Executive of the Corporacy Gated Village Community at Vence was not a happy man. The two scientists, Ashanti and Start, had disappeared without a trace. Rafi Sadler, who was meant to have got hold of their child, to ensure their cooperation, was not returning his calls. The whole Gated Community was upset – people were asking why they would want to leave! Questions like that – well, any questions really – were not a good sign. Everybody had to be happy! To embrace their aspirations – but that did not include aspirations to leave the Corporacy.
And, worst of all, news of the disruption had reached Corporacy Headquarters. The Head Chief Executive had been on the phone to him. He wasn’t happy at all. Incidents like this were bad for business, bad for morale, bad for profits, bad for the Corporacy. These people were meant to be living happily as part of the Corporacy Community, not rushing about the place doing what they wanted! They must be brought back and made to be happy!
Well. The Chief Executive had given Rafi Sadler his chance. Rafi had brought the parents in, it was true, with his ‘I know the family, they’ll believe me,’ and his extremely talented sniffer dog. But he’d blown it.
The Chief Executive picked up his telephone. Now it was time to bring in the big boys. Corporacy Intelligence and Security would deal with this themselves. They had to get all three of those troublemakers in as soon as possible. And the boy Sadler as well, just to be sure.
At the top end of Essaouira is a malodorous area, where the poor people live – too poor to have anyone take the rubbish away, too poor to keep their houses upright. Rubble litters the street where houses have collapsed. Damp from the sea seeps up rickety walls, bringing sickness to the children who live inside. Rats scurry about, and six or eight people sleep in any room with a roof still complete.
Rafi Sadler, running from his fight with Charlie, ducking and dodging to get away before Aneba came out, had swiftly become lost in the tangle of streets in the Medina, the walled old town. Before long he had found himself among the rats and the rubbish and hollow-eyed children.
His arm, weak anyway from where the Lioness had savaged him in Paris, and only partly healed, flamed with new pain as he ran. His jaw ached where Charlie had whapped him. But worst of all was his heart. Shame – hot, flooding shame – brimmed out of it and engulfed him. Charlie had beaten him! Him, Rafi Sadler!
He had tripped over something, and fallen to the ground. His shoulder jarred again. The pain was monstrous. Panting, heart pounding, he lay there. Something smelt horrible.
He realized that he was crying.
He let himself. Never had he felt so low.
To the young woman who had found him lying there, he didn’t look so low. He didn’t look as if he were suffering especially – she had seen too much suffering to be impressed by this. No, he just looked European – which meant that he would have money. True, he did look down on his luck, for a European. So she would help him, and then he would pay her. No problem.
‘Come, I’ll look after you,’ she’d said to him, speaking in a mixture of French and Arabic. ‘My name is Leila. Come.’
And so Rafi had been hauled painfully to his feet and taken into a dark, damp house to be helped.
Under the wide spreading tree at Lionhome, Maccomo was pretending to be asleep. He did this most of the time. His head lolled back in the dust and he let flies settle at the corner of his mouth. He wanted the Lions to think he was drugged and incapable. They did think it. When they passed, they looked at him in disgust. He watched them, motionless, from under almost-closed lids. Even his eyes seemed dusty and hot and half dead.
Only the Young Lion didn’t trust him. The Young Lion, perhaps because he had been born in captivity, perhaps because of his closeness to Charlie, was more sensitive to movements of the human psyche. The Oldest Lion and the Lionesses were happily reverting to their wildness, remembering from before how it was to be a Lion in the forest. For them it was easy, and welcome, and wonderful. For the Young Lion, and Elsina, it was different. They had no previous experience of wildness to fall back on, no memories of how to be. They had to learn to hunt. They had to learn who the other creatures were with whom they shared the land. They had to learn how to tell good water from bad, good prey from bad, how to tell where you were. They had lost touch with the instincts that told them what the smell of the wind meant, or the shape of a footprin
t in the sand.
But they did know about humans, and they did not forget.
This is why it was a great shame that the Young Lion and Elsina were both away on a hunting trip the night that Maccomo made his escape.
He was not taking the drug. It had not been easy – part of him cried out for the ease of semi-consciousness, for the retreat from knowledge and pain, for the sheer soft comfort of not being … But he knew where he was, and he knew why, and he could not bear it. So each time the bottle was rolled towards him by a Lion paw, and he took it and put it to his mouth, he resisted. With enormous effort, he closed his parched lips against the drug, and only pretended to swallow the drops that would knock him out. Each time, he wanted to give up on reality, and accept that he would die a drooling idiot tied to a tree. But each time, the thought of Charlie made him strong. That boy would not beat him. That boy would not make a fool of him and destroy his life. He was Maccomo, the greatest Liontrainer, a man of power and mystery and reputation. This was not how he would die.
So at night when the moon was low and the Lions were sleeping, and sometimes even in the heat of the day while they took their siesta, he pulled himself towards a nasty, angular stone beyond the tree and, holding it in place between his feet, he rubbed the rope that bound his hands against its sharpest edge. The rope was thick, and the stone small, but Maccomo was determined, and the nights were long. If a Lion came near, he would let himself droop over the stone like a drug-sodden fool. He wasn’t scared. Lions don’t understand about tools. Only humans understand about tools. That’s why they were able to have power over animals in the first place. They have no claws, no tusks, no poison, no swift legs to chase with or sharp teeth to bite with; they’re not big like an elephant, strong like a hippo, or armoured like a crocodile; they can’t crush like a boa or spit venom like a cobra, or fly away like a bird, or snarl like a wolf – they’re just little soft naked creatures, with a brain to invent tools and hands to make and use them. And with those things they took over the world.
So, using his brain and his hands, Maccomo gradually wore through the rope that bound him. Then one night when there was no moon, and the Lions slept, he rubbed smelly Liondroppings all over him to disguise his human scent, and he set off west through the forest, following the last glow of the sunset and keeping the High Atlas Mountains behind him.
If the Young Lion had been there he would have had half an eye on Maccomo and it would never have happened. But he wasn’t, and it did.
Chapter Three
Aneba went on the Internet to plan their journey across the Sahara to Ghana. Solartrain to Marrakesh, then they’d have to cross the High Atlas over to Ouarzazate and Zagora, pass into Algeria – they’d be on camels by then. There was a Tuareg in Beni-Abbès who knew where the landmines were and could guide you through the rebel country … Fifty-two days to Timbuktu … Cross the River Niger, avoiding the feverswamps … Or maybe take the Route du Tanezrouft, through Mali – fewer people took it, so it would be safer – 1,300 kilometres of sand … Then was there a train from Gao? Otherwise Ouagadougou … He was busy with maps and timetables, secretive because he didn’t want word getting out of where and when they were going. ‘We don’t know where young Rafi is,’ he said. ‘We must be careful.’
This carefulness, it had to be said, was driving Charlie mad. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the need for it – of course he did. Hadn’t he rescued a pride of Lions from the giant circus ship? Hadn’t he plotted with gondoliers and an extinct sabre-toothed Lion to bring down the Doge of Venice? Hadn’t he been imprisoned by the head of the Bulgarian Secret Services, and been snowed in on the Orient Express? Hadn’t he seen off both Rafi Sadler, the teenage kidnapper, and Maccomo, the mysterious Liontrainer? Of course he understood about danger. Why couldn’t his parents understand that, and stop – well, actually this was what really got him – telling him it was his bedtime?
Oh, it wasn’t just that. It was the whole thing: stay in the hotel, Charlie; don’t talk to Sergei outside, Charlie (which was a bit much, given that Sergei wasn’t allowed in); no, you can’t go to the beach, Charlie. But most of all: Charlie, it’s your bedtime. He was practically taller than his mother, for crike sake. Weren’t there rules about how they couldn’t send you to bed after you were a certain height?
And another thing: they kept saying they didn’t know where Rafi was. He could tell them. If they let him out for five minutes he could find Omar, the leader of the Essaouira cats, and Omar would track him down in no time. Or he could ask Sergei to ask Omar.
‘No,’ said his mother. ‘I know it’s hard, love, but we mustn’t risk it.’
So he was imprisoned again! Every time he had anything to do with grown-ups they just imprisoned him. Even his parents.
He got pretty upset about it.
‘But Rafi knows we’re staying here!’ he said. ‘If he was going to tell the Corporacy he would have rung them days ago. They could be on their way here right now!’
‘All the more reason to get away quickly,’ said Aneba.
‘Shouldn’t we at least go and stay somewhere else?’
‘Best to keep our heads down,’ said Magdalen.
Charlie just didn’t agree. He was pretty sure Rafi had left town – otherwise wouldn’t Sergei have come and told him? Sergei would be talking to Omar, surely.
Charlie had searched the hotel for an outward-facing window, but everything faced in towards the courtyard. Except for the front, the walls were all party walls with other buildings.
There must be somewhere, he thought. On one occasion he tried to climb out on to the roof via the top balcony round the courtyard, but the hotel manager spotted him and called him down.
The one good thing about being stuck in was that he got the chance to talk to his new aunt. Of course, they talked about big cats. She was full of questions and Charlie was happy to have an opportunity to discuss Lions openly, and with someone who knew a bit about the subject. He held forth at such length that, though Mabel was delighted to listen, he felt it time he asked a question of her. He asked about her baby. He wasn’t that interested, to tell the truth, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
‘He’d be eighteen now,’ she said.
‘Eighteen!’ exclaimed Charlie. ‘That’s not a baby!’
‘No, darling,’ said Mabel. ‘People grow, you know.’
‘So do you know where he is?’ he asked, to cover his embarrassment. Of course he knew people grew.
‘Still with the woman who took him,’ she said. ‘Martha Sortch. I never met her. I never saw him again. The adoption people insisted.’
For a moment Charlie didn’t even notice. He was trying to imagine how his aunt might feel about that, and to be nice to her.
‘Does it make you sad?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s always this little gap.’
Then it hit him.
‘Sortch?’ he exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘Her name was Sortch? Martha Sortch?’
‘Yes,’ said Mabel. ‘Why?’
Maybe there were two. It wasn’t a common name, but …
‘Where did she live?’
‘In London,’ said Mabel. ‘Mag and I lived in the country then, so I went up to town and the hospital organized it. Why?’
‘Nothing,’ said Charlie.
But it wasn’t nothing.
Martha Sortch was Rafi’s mother’s name.
Rafi, thanks to the young woman’s tending, was much better – physically. Mentally, he felt dreadful. He was very glad the mobile phones didn’t seem to work around here, so he didn’t have to receive angry, humiliating phone calls from anyone at the Corporacy saying, Where is our item? Have you still not found it? They blamed him for not having delivered Charlie, because if they had Charlie they could get Aneba and Magdalen back. And it was true, he had lost Charlie over and over again.
Well, he wasn’t a fool. Charlie was much brighter and braver than Rafi had ex
pected. And stronger. And he had those bliddy Lions on his side. So, Rafi had to be realistic. He needed help.
Not for the first time, Rafi wished Troy were still with him. Nothing like a big dog to make a guy feel big himself. But Troy had deserted him in Paris, so there was no use thinking about him.
(In fact, Troy was in a dog pound at the very southernmost tip of Spain, having been picked up on the quayside, where he had spent three days mooning tragically after the ferry that Rafi had taken across to Morocco. But Rafi, like many disloyal people, wouldn’t recognize loyalty if it bit him on the bum. Which, of course, Troy was unlikely to do, being so loyal.)
Lying on the grubby blanket that passed for a bed in Leila’s hovel, Rafi thought things through.
It was easy, really.
He hadn’t the money or the contacts to hire anybody, plus they all talked bliddy Arabic and French, not proper English. He couldn’t trust ’em. No, the person he needed was the person he’d worked with before. The person who had been prepared to sell Charlie to him. The person who had also been tricked by Charlie, and didn’t forgive him. The person who wanted his Lions back, who was nearby – yes, Maccomo and Rafi would make a very good team.
He’d go and find him.
He didn’t want to run into Charlie’s dad, though. Crike, the size of the man. And Charlie threw quite a whack himself, so crike knows what the dad would be capable of.
Rafi’s arm felt a lot better. The bruising on his brow was going down. He was pretty sure he’d caught some kind of lice in this dump, though. Bliddy itchy. Never mind.
So where would Maccomo be?
He pondered.
‘Leila!’ he called. She stuck her head through the empty doorway from the other room.
‘Any animal dealers in this town?’
He assumed she didn’t speak English, so he explained by speaking really loudly.
