Fever Crumb

by Philip Reeve

  Charley thought back to the night before. That paper boy folded up and twitching in his hands as he tiptoed up to Solent's house. Later, back at Worm timber's place, he had watched as the former Engineer carefully snipped open the paper boy's finger

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  and took out a little rubber sac. He had let two ruby droplets fall from it onto a glass slide, and then carried it to another of his weird old machines. This one he called a 'Lectric Microscope. It was powered by a treadmill, and since Wormtimber's slaves and servants were all in bed and this was Skinner's business, it was Charley's job to walk the treadmill while the two old men peered into the machine's viewing window.

  "Is that Scriven blood?" Wormtimber had asked.

  "I don't know." Bagman Creech sounded unsure of himself, the same way he had at Summertown when he was staring at the Crumb girl's face.

  "Well, it ain't human, is it?" insisted Wormtimber. "There's something wrong with it.... What are all them little whirligig things?"

  "I don't know, Master Wormtimber. A disease, perhaps. Maybe the girl's sick and that's what makes her look not quite right...."

  "No one's this sick, Master Creech!" insisted Wormtimber, baring his sharp little dog teeth. "When I view human blood through this device, or that of any decent animal, I see little red spots -- corpuscles and such. Not this."

  They moved away, still talking, and Charley stepped off the treadmill. In the second or so while the microscope still had power he put his face to the viewing window and gazed deep into the ocean of Fever Crumb's blood. Strange things were swimming there all right. They left their afterimage on his eyes long

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  after the light of the screen had died. Little square shapes, dithering this way and that, as if surprised to find themselves no longer in Fever's veins, each one propelled by a tiny, twirling tail.

  ***

  He kicked his way out from under the sacks, pulled on his coat, and crept down a passage walled with stacked bundles of old newspapers to Bagman's room. That room was book-lined, too; there was also a desk and a lamp, and the old man sitting up in his narrow bed, coughing and coughing to rid his lungs of the snots and slurries that had puddled in them while he slept. He nodded his good morning to Charley, wet eyed, too breathless to talk.

  Charley stood and watched him from the doorway. He felt helpless in the face of Bagman's gales of coughing. You didn't grow up in Ditch Street without learning that a cough like that usually ended in a coffin, but he couldn't quite bring himself to frame the awful thought, Master Creech is dying.

  "What about some breakfast?" he asked nervously, feeling that he had to do something. "I could do some eggs and stuff."

  Bagman nodded, and gave him a thumbs-up. Inside his chest his lungs rustled like two brown paper bags being blown up. Charley didn't wait for the next fit of coughing, but fled down the stairs to the street door and out onto Ketch Causeway, buttoning his coat as he went.

  Bagman hadn't given him any money, but he guessed the Skinner's name was good for credit at any shop in the low city.

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  He crossed Ditch Street and ran round to the market on St Kylie Hill. The stallholders there knew him, and to his surprise they already knew about his change of luck. "You're with Master Creech now, ain't you, Charley? Give him my compliments, son. Any luck finding that Patchskin girl yet?"

  "We're working on it," Charley promised. He picked out six-eggs and a slab of butter, and they waved away any talk of payment. "Bagman Creech don't need to pay. 'Specially not in troubled times like these ..."

  Charley wasn't certain what that last bit meant. Then, walking home, he started noticing the clumps of people who stood gossiping on the street corners. Curious, he followed a gang of 'prentices into Celebrity Square, which he found to be full of men in the uniforms of the Trained Bands -- thick coats of russet felt with white facings and black leather helmets. Two quartermasters stood in the back of a wagon, handing down arquebuses and pouches of powder and shot.

  A big red fist seized him by his coat collar and spun him around. There stood Ted Swiney, his breath smoking in the chilly morning air. He'd come through from the Mott and Hoople to see the muster, and spotted Charley Shallow instead.

  "Well?" he said.

  "Well what, Ted?"

  Ted shook him briefly. "I told you to keep me informed, din't I? So what have you been playing at?"

  "I couldn't get away, Ted, honest ..."

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  Ted noticed that people were watching and let go of his grip on Charley's coat. He smoothed the crumpled fabric and grinned, as if he'd only been teasing. "So what's old Bagman turned up? Anything more about that Patchskin girl?"

  Charley was shaking so badly that he dropped one of his eggs. It broke on the cobbles between his feet with a sound like a tiny clap. "Master Creech ain't even sure she is a Patchskin. He's still investigating."

  Ted growled, looking past Charley at the militia men. A drum had started to rattle, and there was a lot of shouting and confusion as the part-time soldiers tried to form up in battalions. Some heavy horses, commandeered from a dairy in St Kylie, trotted past pulling a cannon. "Well, you tell Bagman he'd better hurry up," Ted said. "Our boys are off to guard the Moatway, in case those Movement numpties try breaking through. They don't want to think there's a Patchskin on the loose at home, menacing their womenfolk and nippers. They want to see it sorted."

  "But if she ain't a Scriven, Ted ...

  "Who gives a blog? Kill her anyway. You can always paint some speckles on her afterward. It'll cheer people up. Tell you what, once you've offed her, I'll have the skin. Look good on the wall behind the bar, a Scriven skin would."

  "I don't think Master Creech would like that, Ted."

  "Who cares what Master Creech thinks? I'm running this show, Charley. You bring me the skin. Think what a boost it'll be for

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  our brave lads." And he sent Charley on his way with a friendly pat on the head and called out to some passersby, "My boy. We're helping Creechey out. Don't worry, we'll soon have that Patchskin caught and butchered."

  ***

  Charley ran all the way back to Ketch Causeway. He didn't tell Bagman about his meeting with Ted, but he thought he ought to hear about the Trained Bands mustering. The sound of drum and fife came faintly from the streets outside while he breathlessly explained the news.

  Bagman Creech just shrugged. He had news of his own. "I been thinkin', Charley ..."

  The desk, the bed, and the floor of Bagman's bedroom were covered with open books and spread-out papers. There was a big, yellowed map with red crosses marking all the places where Scriven had been found and killed in the years since the riot. Bagman stabbed his finger down onto a little cluster of crosses out in the Brick Marsh, southeast of the city.

  "I checked the records, the notes the old Skinners made. There's things that don't add up; Scriven we had cornered at the Barbican during the riot who vanished and turned up weeks later, holed up in Godshawk's old gaff out on the marshes. I never caught on at the time, but there must be a passage, a tunnel of some sort. Linking Ludgate Hill with his old house. I reckon that's where Solent's doing his real digging. We need to

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  get down there, see what he's found, and how the girl's involved."

  Charley looked down at the bag in his hands. The five eggs and the butter. "What about breakfast, Master Creech?"

  "No time, Charley. A bite of toast, maybe, a mug of tea to set us up. We'll save your eggs for later. For a victory feast."

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  ***

  14 S kinners in the B rick M arsh

  That day, although the long walk through the tunnels was the same, the chamber and the vault door seemed changed. They felt too familiar to be places that Fever had seen only once. She remembered a cracked flagstone three paces from the door, and held her lantern up to look for it, and there it was, although she was sure she had not noticed it the day before, because it lay in the shadow cast
by the toolbox. So how had she known?

  She was starting to feel scared. She wished Dr. Crumb was there. She missed his calm, careful way of getting to the bottom of mysteries. Without him she felt panicky and very young.

  "Are you sure it would not be better to send word to Godshawk's Head?" she asked meekly. "Perhaps a more experienced Engineer ..."

  'Try the door," said Kit, and held his lantern up to light the lock.

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  Weird feelings of déjà vu flooded through Fever. Memories of yesterday mingled with memories of other yesterdays that could not possibly be her own. Pain was beating again at the base of her skull. She began to wonder if she were still inside her dream, if she climbed the stairs again and went outside, would there be lights in the unbroken windows of Nonesuch House? Would the float lanterns be rising still above the ornamental ponds, pink as blushes, gold as harvest moons?

  She forced her eyes to turn toward the line of keys set in the door frame, and suddenly, as if one of those gods in whom Engineers did not believe had just whispered it in her ear, she knew the code.

  ***

  They were pushing through the marshes south of 'Bankmentside, following one of the old causeways through the birch woods and diggers' heaps and the ruins of drowned boroughs. Bagman had commandeered a coracle, a marshman's little wicker and tar-cloth boat, and Charley carried it upended on his shoulders, blundering along behind his master like a black beetle.

  "Where is this place we're going?" he asked.

  "Godshawk's gaff," said Bagman Creech, scanning the drifting mist ahead for hints of trouble. "His summer palace in the Marsh."

  "I heard of Godshawk. He was King of the Patchskins, weren't he?"

  "He was at the end. He didn't want to be. The Scriven elected

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  him King thinking he'd save them, but they were past saving by then. Godshawk was an inventor, mostly. Forever tinkering and fiddlearsing with the old technology, the way some Scriven did. They said there was a laboratory under that summer place of his where he did experiments on dead people and stuff. Though I never saw it for myself."

  "You were there?"

  Bagman Creech nodded. "The place got overlooked in the Riots, but a couple of weeks later we got word that some escaped Scriven had holed up there. Me and some of the lads got together and came out here. We followed this very path you're walking now, boy."

  Charley tried to feel suitably awed, and told himself that he was walking on history, but mostly it still felt as if he were walking on porridge. The wood of the causeway was rotted and slimy, and the coracle on his back made him clumsy. Several times he almost fell, and at last Bagman called a halt. They left the path and squatted in the angle between two old walls, eating a bath bun and wiping the sugar and crumbs from their mouths on the sleeves of their coats. Bagman lit his pipe, and the smoke went up to mingle with the mist, and his memory went homing back to that day on this same path, long ago.

  "When we got to Godshawk's gaff we found they'd cut the causeway and we had to wade the last bit. A slough of water, shoulder deep, with Godshawk's gardens rising up out of it ahead. Croquet hoops still stuck in the lawns. I was in the lead,

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  halfway across, when all of a sudden these things started jumping up out of the water all around us. Wet and shiny they was, like black snakes, jumping straight up. I didn't know what was happening till the bloke on my right got hit, and then the bloke on my left, and I realized there were bullets coming down all around us. There were Scriven hiding in Godshawk's gardens, shooting at us with hunting guns."

  "What did you do, Master Creech?"

  "I ducked, didn't I?" Bagman fingered a half-moon nick in the brim of his bowler where a bullet had taken a bite. "It was all I could do. Went down quick, like I'd been shot. Ducked right under the water so that only my hat was left, floating on the surface. At least, that's how it would have looked to the Scriven. Only what they couldn't see was that I'd got my face poking up inside the hat so's I could breathe. I stayed like that for hours."

  "And the other men?"

  "All dead, son. There was one just wounded -- Billy Kite, from B@ersea -- I could hear him yelling out for help. But the Scriven kept banging their guns at him and after a while they must have hit him again, 'cos he shut up. And there I stood, up to my nose in marsh mud, hiding in my own hat till sundown. And then I pushed on."

  "Didn't you want to go back? Run away?"

  "Course I did. I was half frozen and two-thirds drowned. But I had work to do, didn't I? So I pressed on till I reached Godshawk's garden, and I reckon the Scriven weren't expecting

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  me, because they hadn't set much of a guard. I climbed out of the marsh looking like a part of the marsh, and I went creeping through them gardens and up to that house and I did what was needful. That's the good thing about a spring gun. There's no powder to get wet, so a soaking won't harm it much."

  "You killed them?"

  Bagman Creech nodded. "I was pretty sick of killing Scriven by then, mind. It didn't feel like a big victory. It weren't rock 'n' roll, the way the Riots was. It was just this nasty job I had to do. And when it was done I lit the place on fire, and the flames went way up high because it was full of smart furnishings and tapestries and stuff. And the light of all that burning was enough for me to find my way back home to London by."

  "And was Godshawk there?" asked Charley. "Was he one of the ones you killed?"

  "No, he was dead by then. Killed in the Barbican, third day of the riots. Gnasher Modbury's crew caught him. 'You can't kill me,' that's what he told them. Stood and laughed at them. He wasn't short of courage. But they killed him all right. Later there were stories that he'd tricked them somehow and escaped, but I saw his speckled hide with me own eyes. He's dead all right."

  They moved on, and soon the need for the coracle became clear. The causeway they were following stopped short, as if it had been bitten off. A stretch of glassy water spread itself before them, filled with clumps of reeds and drifting litter and the reflection of a strange, stepped hill that rose up ahead, with

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  overgrown gardens around its feet and a crown of old walls. Charley scrambled through the thick mud at the water's edge and set the coracle afloat. As he helped Bagman in, the vessel wobbled, and beads of water swelled along a badly sealed join, but it floated, and Charley scrambled in as well and unshipped the paddle that was lashed under the seat.

  Ahead, the hill was silent. The ruins blanched and faded as the mist blew past them. It was hard to imagine that there was anyone there, let alone Kit Solent and his tame Scriven, or whatever she was. Charley wondered what would happen if they found nothing. He didn't know if he'd be disappointed or relieved.

  ***

  And she knew the code. She stood there frozen, her fingers raised in front of the lock's keys, and just as surely as she knew that she was Fever Crumb, she knew that if she pressed the numbers 2519364085 in sequence, the door would slide up into the roof, and the door behind it would slide to the right, and the door behind that would slide to the left. The counterweights that moved the heavy doors would rattle, and the gears would make a noise like big dogs growling.

  "Go on," said Kit, softly and kindly, but with something steely *hard beneath the kindness, an eagerness she had not heard before. "You know it, Fever, don't you? Open the door!"

  Outlandish visions burst in Fever's brain. Battles and balls and ships at sea and Dr. Crumb kneeling before her on a tiled

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  floor and a woman she knew but didn't know laughing in sunlight and the pools and lanterns and -- "Open it!" shouted Kit Solent.

  Fever fled. She stumbled sideways, kicking the lantern over so that it went out, but she found her way easily through the darkness and her hand closed on the familiar ivory handle of the door that led outside. Outside, she thought. Fresh air. She could hear Kit behind her, calling out "Fever!" Up the stairs she went, and out through the door in the hillside, int
o mist.

  "Fever!" Kit Solent was calling, down inside the hollow hill. "Fever, come back! It's all right! I didn't mean to shout!"

  Fever still felt groggy, but she forced herself to move away from the door and climb the hill, going up from terrace to terrace the way she had the day before. She wanted to find somewhere where she could sit quietly alone for a while and think. What was happening to her? Was she ill? Was she going mad?

  On the top of the hill the mist moved among old, burned timbers, between the fallen walls. Something splashed in the marshes -- a bird, Fever guessed. She walked through the roofless, ruined rooms and found she knew them. This one had been carpeted; this one had been tiled. In this corner had stood a fine teak bookcase, glass-fronted, whose silver handles she uncovered with a bit of scrabbling, little dirty blobs of pooled metal buried in grass and clinker underfoot.

  I must have been here before, she reasoned. I must have been here

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  when I was a tiny child. But she knew that she could not have been more than a few months old when Nonesuch House burned. Surely a child that tiny would not know what a bookcase was, let alone remember it?

  Along the hall she walked, through the arch where the grand front door had been, out onto the gravel drive, gone all to moss and nettles now, where the guests used to leave their sedan chairs. She hummed a dance tune from twenty years before, and it stirred up fresh memories. The ghosts of Scriven dancers moved around her, shadowy, the great dresses of the women rustling and sighing. But they were not real. They were in her head. It's not the house that's haunted, she thought. It's me ....