by Alex Duncan
Rosie could only shake her head in reply.
‘Do not be alarmed,’ Apollo continued, once the machine had been locked into place on the stage floor. ‘One prick of its needle will not send you to sleep for a hundred years. You have not awoken to find yourself in the middle of some bedtime tale. You are here, sure enough, and like dogs on a leash, your eagerness for a demonstration betrays your coolness!’
There was a ripple of nervous laughter.
‘First, I shall need a volunteer.’
Everyone immediately sunk down into their seats, or became fascinated with their shoes and leant down out of sight, so small was the confidence to go near the Oracle.
‘How about you my dear?’
All eyes turned towards the lady he addressed in the middle of the stalls. Sighs of relief were barely disguised and shouts of encouragement surrounded her. The lady, dressed in a beautiful dark orange silk gown, looked anxious at first, but once people began clapping her, her embarrassment gave way to a sporting willingness and she stood up.
‘A fine sport indeed my dear, you shall be remembered in history for this!’ said Apollo, springing a flower from his sleeve and offering it to her.
‘A rose for a rose,’ he said as she took the flower and sniffed it, smiling. Where had Rosie heard that before?
Apollo took the lady by the hand and brought her up onto the stage. She curtsied to the audience and gave a bashful nod.
‘If you would care to take a seat here,’ he said, directing her to the chair at the front of the contraption. Awkwardly, the lady arranged her gown and sat down. ‘And please put your hands here, and relax.’ She took hold of the brass baubles on the end of each armrest and made out that she was as comfortable as could be.
‘Thank you,’ said Apollo, coming round to her other side and taking hold of the large lever by his right hand.
‘Now don’t worry my dear,’ he said, with a flourish. ‘This wont hurt a bit.’
◆◆◆
Sam slammed the door shut and turned to go back the way he had come from. Behind him, as he looked out, all that he could see was the confounded after-glow in front of his eyes, left from the shock of the glaring light through the door. The scar of it remained and thumped a changing luminescence on his eyeballs and beyond that there was only the darkness that he’d just crawled away from; the heavy oppressive darkness. He didn’t want to go back there. There was no other way but onwards.
The cramped room was no higher than a tall gentleman and stiflingly hot under the bright glow of the numerous lamps hanging around him. There were mirrors covering every available space on the walls giving the place the unusual effect of going on forever in its own infinite number of reflections. Sam hurried into the strange room and made his way hastily to another door.
Presently, he found himself in a well-lit corridor with several doors leading off it. Walking down, as briskly as he could without the floorboards squeaking under his feet, he paused only when noise burst from a door to his right and made him start. He stepped one way, then the other as the door began to open. There were few options left; either be discovered and pay the consequences or try one of the other doors. He chose the latter and darted into the room opposite and closed the door just in time.
Pressing his ear up against the wood he heard the muffled voices of two men on the other side.
‘Oh la Nathan, our play shall be the crowning glory of the whole evening, I’ll wager you that.’
‘I’ll not argue with you Quentin. We have such wit and mirth we’ll surely split the sides of the whole audience!’
Actors, realized Sam.
‘But egad, if I could but find another room to fit my trousers, they have squashed us down here like rabbits and I can’t bare to change in front of the ladies. How about through here?’
Sam heard the two actors approach his door and he shrank back into the corner of the small room, holding his breath and clenching his jaw.
The doorknob turned.
‘No, no Nathan, that’s the armoury, you’ll lance yourself on some pike or other in there as likely as not.’
The doorknob twisted back and Sam exhaled.
‘What about the door down at the end?’
‘Now, now Nathan, you know we’re not supposed to go down there. Your rebellious spirit will one day land you in mischief. Here, go into my room, I’m prepared enough. Once this demonstration, or whatever it is, is over, we’ll show this town how we entertain the finest folk in London!’
‘Oh Quentin, you’re a shiny penny, you are.’
And with that the two voices finally began to drift away until a door shut across from Sam’s own. He relaxed a little and edged open the door, letting the light from the corridor bleed in and illuminate the room.
It was chock full of weaponry. Every inch was taken up with sabres in fine scabbards, well-crafted daggers, pikes, spears, muskets, pistols and boxes of shot and barrels of gunpowder.
‘Now there’s a sight,’ Sam whispered under his breath.
Without thinking twice about what he was doing, he reached up and grabbed one of the loaded pistols and shoved into the belt of his breeches. He then took one of the swords and guided it down the back of his coat until its hilt rested on his collar. Then he took several daggers, which fitted snugly into the tops of his boots, and another pair of pistols for good measure. At least he could now defend himself.
Sneaking round the door and rushing down to the end of the corridor, Sam went through the door at the very end, the door the two actors were warned to never enter, and found himself in a further corridor that twisted this way and that. He walked down it as fast as he could, checking each corner before going to the next and it wasn’t long before he’d given up any hope of ever catching up with the guard he was meant to be following. He had clearly lost him, together with any chance of finding his way out of that infernal warren. Some adventurer he’d turned out to be.
Gradually the walls to either side of him stretched upwards out of reach and the corridor was suddenly as high as ten men. The walls then became huge shelves with row upon row of sheets of papers and parchments and sealed documents stacked on top of each other and bunched together in slots.
‘A…B…C…’ Sam read as he passed the brass letters adorning the shelves every ten paces or so. Whatever it was, it was kept in good order, he thought, and pulled out a scroll at random from the shelf marked with a large D.
‘“Thoughts on Steven Draper dated the 14th of February”,’ he read. ‘“Mr Draper will sleep little over the next fortnight. He is worried about his two children. He does not wish for them to stay in Hope and longs for someone to come and take them away and give them a life elsewhere. He does not know what is going on but has grown suspicious of the guards. He no longer thinks they are there to protect him. If this opinion does not change, in exactly ten days he will strike one of the guards after an evening of drinking…”’ Sam’s eyes drifted over the rest of the page. It was all like that, as was every further page. He could make no sense of it at all. He rolled up that sheet, replaced it, and pulled out another further down from a shelf marked H.
‘“Thoughts on William Hotchkiss dated the 21st of May”.’ This one was recent, he thought as he read on. ‘“Mr Hotchkiss has become a liability. His behaviour is unacceptable. He must not be permitted to continue his affair; doing so will have repercussions upon more than his family alone. He must be firmly dealt with…”’ Again this continued down to the bottom of the page. Questions began to jostle for room in Sam’s mind. What was all this? How did they know what every one was thinking or going to do? And more pressingly, who was doing this? The whole thing put yet more snakes wriggling in his gut.
He placed the scroll gently back where he had found it and continued down the shelf-lined room until he finally came to an ornate, gilded door at the end. He listened for voices on the other side before going through, but heard none. On the other side of the door was the word DELPHI, whatever that meant.
He walked into a beautiful, circular room, dripping with gold over white painted wood, all glistening from the light from a crystal chandelier. It was striking contrast to the dingy and dusty corridors he’d been wandering down for what felt like hours.
In the centre of the room was a leather-bound desk. Sam went over to it and picked up another pile of papers that were sitting next to a pot of tea and shuffled through them. They were more strange notes and scribbles. He saw that Pangloss the apothecary was mentioned in one, and Mr Potts and Ezekiel the town drunk in others. Then he came to the final sheet that was some smudgy drawing and stopped dead.
He instantly recognised the drawing of Rosie, with her dark, curly hair falling down over her shoulders, and next to her there was a young man holding a dagger.
The dagger was pushed up into Rosie’s middle.
It was him.
He was killing Rosie.
‘‘Ere, what are you doin’ down ‘ere?!’
Sam looked up. Stood in front of a pair of double doors was a man as wide as a carriage with close-cropped hair and the sort of expression that would have made grown men run in the opposite direction. Sam swallowed and pushed the drawing into the pocket of his frock coat as he searched for an answer.
‘No one aint supposed to be down ‘ere boy,’ the man said, pulling out a small blade from behind him, the steel ringing out in the domed room. ‘You’re fingerin’ things you don’t understand.’
Sam dropped the remaining sheets of paper back onto the desk and, before he had a chance to think better of it, he had one of the pistols in his hand and was pointing it directly at the large man’s chest. A look of mild concern spread over Thump’s face.
‘Yes…that’s right…you…er…better submit if you know what’s good for you my man,’ Sam said with as much gusto as he could muster, hoping the man wouldn’t see his hands shaking.
Sadly, his hope was misplaced. The man did see his hands quiver and Thump immediately lunged for him across the room with the sharp point of his blade. Without a moments hesitation Sam raised his pistol, closed his eyes, and pulled the trigger.
There was an almighty crack as the bolt hit the hammer and the puff of smoke filled the room with the sharp stench of gunpowder. Both Sam and Thump looked as shocked as the other and the larger man clutched his chest and staggered backwards until he hit the table.
‘You…shot…me,’ Thump gasped.
‘I know,’ said Sam. ‘I’m…er…very sorry, but you were going to stab me!’
The man coughed and lifted his hands to his face. His eyes grew wide and he rubbed his hands vigorously together. He then clutched his chest again and looked down at himself. There was no blood. There was no wound.
Aghast, Sam lifted up his pistol and inspected it. The barrel had a stopper over the end of it and had been welded shut. There was no way a shot could escape from it. He suddenly knew he was holding nothing more than a theatrical prop, a stage pistol.
Thump smiled and loudly cracked his knuckles.
Sam threw the useless weapon aside and did what any other young man in his position would have done. He ran for it. Through the double doors he went, as fast as his legs could carry him, down another corridor and up a twisting flight of stairs. Out of that house of tricks.
He burst through the door at the top into a vast ballroom flooded with light and slammed the door shut behind him. Only it wasn’t a door, it was a large portrait on hinges of that ghastly Justice Brash leaning against a marble bust of himself in the grounds of some wondrous Arcadia, and he was smiling from ear to ear.
I must have come out in the ballroom of Brash’s manor house, Sam thought as he gazed up at the portrait.
‘It’s a fine likeness, is it not, son?’
Sam span around to face the voice behind him and his heart leapt into his throat. Gliding towards him across the smooth ballroom floor was Samuel Steadfast the elder, his father.
‘Father, what’s going on here?’ he asked.
The man continued to steadily cross the room, without pausing once, and Sam found himself backing away. There was something in the man’s movements that was unfamiliar, something in his purpose that made him afraid.
‘Father, what is it?’
He backed up against the wall but his father didn’t stop and when he was but a few paces away Sam saw he was carrying something. It was a hammer. He came closer and closer and Sam had nowhere else to go.
‘Father?!’ he cried.
The man lifted up his arm and brought the hammer down in a great ark, striking Sam across the temple and everything went to black.
◆◆◆
‘Didn’t I promise you it wouldn’t hurt a bit my dear?’ asked Apollo.
The woman sat in the middle of the Oracle contraption nodded, though her expression clearly belied her answer. If anything she looked plainly terrified.
All around her the machine had whizzed into life in a way more dramatic than they had yet seen. Wheels span and cogs shifted, rods lifted and wires twisted and cords pulled metal and wood and the whole thing moved and banged in a dreadful, pulsing rhythm. Had Rosie seen such a thing on a factory floor it would not have looked out of place amongst the weavers with boys sweeping cotton out from underneath it, but here on the stage of the theatre it appeared both devilish and absurd.
In the Oracle’s centre, sat on a large, rickety chair, gripping the brass orbs on either side of her so tightly her knuckles had gone bone white, the lady was looking increasingly uncomfortable as everything moved about her. Her smile had utterly faded and she winced whenever some spike or bar flew near her.
Finally, and after some time, Apollo pulled the lever back up to its starting position and the pulsing rhythm slowed and the machine gradually came to a stand still. Apollo offered a hand out for the lady, which she accepted all too eagerly and looked all too pleased to be escaping the Oracle’s jaws and returning to the safety of the stage. She graciously received the audience applause with a small bob.
Then Apollo, with his now practiced flourish, opened a draw beneath the seat which Rosie had hitherto failed to notice and removed a piece of parchment covered with impeccable handwriting. He paraded this paper around the audience with obvious pride then perused it himself for a moment before turning back to the lady by his side.
‘My dear,’ he began. ‘Your name is Mrs Lucy Slade, is it not?’
‘Yes,’ the lady answered, blushing.
‘You were born in Lewes in East Sussex in October 1760. It says here on the 12th day of the month, is that correct?’
‘Yes, but how did you…?’
Apollo lifted a hand to silence her as he went on.
‘Your father was Mr Bernard Mortimer, he died…let me see…three years and…forty…two days ago, of consumption. You miss him terribly and you blame the parish doctor for his sudden demise. This is why you now never trust those in the medical profession and think all doctors are quacks.’
‘I think that is quite enough…’
‘And just to be sure about this, for you have never told a single person alive, the small scar on your left knee was the result of when the stable boy…’ He looked closer at the sheet of paper. ‘…going by the name of Dick Sodden, tried to take advantage of you and you slipped and banged your leg on a plough when running from the barn. Is all that quite correct?’
‘Well, really, I…’
‘Please answer the question my dear.’
‘All right, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Yes, yes, that’s all quite correct.’
Apollo raised his arms in triumph, like a soldier on the battlefield, and a huge cheer rang out from the audience as if they had witnessed the greatest magic trick of their lives. Rosie fell back into her seat in astonishment. What had Apollo done? Had he somehow created a machine, an Oracle, that had read the mind of the lady in the burnt orange dress like anyone else would read the chapter of a novel? How else could it know her mind, her past, her secrets? Rosie weaved her hands togethe
r as she looked out at the enraptured crowd applauding Apollo and his brilliant machine.
This was the devil’s work.
Rosie snatched the fan from the admiring lady next to her and opened it out with the intention of communicating with her grandfather sat up in the front of the circle in the guise of Mrs Bloomsdale, but when she glanced his way, all that was left of him was an empty seat.
‘Is something wrong?’ the lady asked, placing her hand back on Rosie’s thigh.
‘No,’ answered Rosie, nudging the persistent woman out of the way. ‘Just come over all hot and bothered with all the excitement is all. I’ll be right in a moment miss.’
She stood up and leant out over the edge of the box looking for the high-wigged shape of her grandfather but everywhere she turned her view was blocked by the strange collection of animal headed guests still applauding Apollo, strutting about the stage. Until, down towards a side seat in the pit, she saw him, excusing himself and pushing through several none-too-happy guests to get to an empty seat, the powder from his wig shaking out in a white cloud around him. The breath caught in Rosie’s throat. She knew exactly what he was doing, but hardly wanted to believe it. He was taking his correct seat, the seat he had been sent a ticket for. If he had been right and someone besides the King wanted him there, he was purposefully making himself known, albeit in a dress and a wig, to whoever it was.
He was throwing himself into the lion’s den.
Rosie bit her lip as she watched the old man take his seat and join in the applause with the rest of the audience. When they were through with this business she swore to herself that he was going to get a serious telling off.
On the stage Apollo had ceased his swaggering and quickly brought silence back to the room.