by Paul Stewart
‘I’m afraid I’m lost,’ I said. ‘Took a wrong turning.’ I shrugged, indicating my sling.
She smiled as she gathered the last of the tags and stepped past me to place them on the mortuary attendant’s desk beside the door.
Turning quickly away, she pointed to my arm.
‘Would you like me to take a look at that arm of yours?’ she asked.
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Miss …?’
‘My name’s Lucy,’ she said. ‘Lucy Partleby.’
We climbed the stairs, side by side, her with her lamp raised and me stealing glances. She had auburn hair, tied up and crowned with a starched white cap; milky skin, with freckles at the tops of her cheeks and in a line across the bridge of her nose, and the greenest eyes I’d ever seen. She led me down a long tiled corridor to an empty surgery, where she sat me down and began to undo my bandages.
‘I must say, this has been dressed very well,’ she commented.
‘It was my friend who did it,’ I told her proudly. ‘Professor Pinkerton-Barnes.’
‘Quite excellent,’ she said. Her nose crinkled as the last piece of gauze came away. ‘Though I don’t know about this,’ she said, poking at the green ointment beneath.
‘My name’s Lucy,’ she said. ‘Lucy Partleby.’
‘It’s a sphagnum-moss poultice,’ I told her. ‘The professor swears by it.’
Lucy laughed. ‘Well, I’m not sure what Matron would say, but it certainly seems to be working.’ She frowned, her pretty nose wrinkling. ‘This is a nasty bite, Mr Grimes. How did you come by it?’
‘Please, call me Barnaby,’ I replied. ‘It’s a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?’
‘Quite certain, Mr …’ Lucy Partleby smiled. ‘Barnaby.’
It was dark by the time Will and I left the hospital and, as we stepped out onto the street, the lamplighters had already done their rounds. The tall, cast-iron lights were lit and the main roads were bathed in their golden yellow light.
In High Market Street, Martindale’s – a swanky clothes emporium – had recently started a curious trend whereby they placed samples of their produce in the front window of the shop, which they then kept permanently lit. Others had followed suit. Kruger and Syme’s, J.F. Tavistock’s, Elspeth de la Tour’s; all now glowed with light.
A little further on, the bustling Theatre District was similarly well lit, with hissing gas lamps brightening up the ornate frontages of the buildings. Passing by the magnificent Petronelli Playhouse and music halls like the Alhambra and Molly Molloy’s, I paused to take in the advertising placards and posters – and wondered whether Lucy Partleby might like to take in a show with me …
Will had some night drops to do for the apothecary, so I bade him goodnight and we parted on the corner of Laystall Street and Hog Hill. For myself, I planned to get an early night and, since my arm felt so much better, to try my hand at some simple highstacking at dawn the next day.
I was wandering down the considerably less well-lit streets of my neighbourhood towards my rooms in Caged Lark Lane, when I heard the cheery babble of voices coming from the Goose and Gullet, and suddenly felt ravenously hungry. As I stepped through the door of the tavern, the warm cheerful atmosphere wrapped itself around me like a comforting blanket, and I smelled the delicious aroma of fresh mutton pie.
It was still early in the evening, and the dimly-lit room was barely half full. There were a few tradesmen, young and old, who had stopped by after work, and a trio of flower-women who met up regularly to put the world to rights. Some sat chatting at small round tables in twos and threes, some were standing, while a couple of solitary drinkers propped up the bar.
A short wispy-haired man – a flat Salisbury cap on his head and sleeves rolled up – was playing the battered piano softly in the corner. Head cocked to one side, he was knocking out a familiar music-hall tune, but with soft and delicate flourishes played over the melody, as though he was entertaining himself rather than the other regulars. A black and white dog lay at his feet, fast asleep.
‘Evening, Barnaby,’ said the landlady, a red-cheeked roly-poly woman who had been head parlourmaid to a duke in her younger days. She was wearing a gaudy red blouse with a high-collar and a spotted apron, and was vigorously polishing a glass with a cloth. ‘Haven’t seen you here in a while.’
‘I’ve been busy, Betsy,’ I said. ‘But I’ve missed your excellent mutton pies …’
‘Coming right up,’ she said, ‘with extra gravy, just how you like it!’
‘You’ll need something to wash it down with, young Grimes,’ came a familiar gruff voice to my right.
I turned, to see Blindside Bailey, the newspaper-seller, seated on a high stool at the end of the bar. He turned and fixed me with his one good eye.
I smiled. ‘A glass of old cider,’ I told Betsy, ‘and a pint of ale for Blindside, here.’
‘That’s very good of you, young Grimes,’ he said. ‘Please accept the grateful thanks of an old soldier.’ He shifted round on the stool. ‘I see you’ve been in the wars yourself, lad.’
He pointed to my bandaged arm. I smiled.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Just a scratch …’
‘Aye, that it is,’ said Blindside. ‘That it is, young Grimes, to be sure. But I’ve seen scratches turn nasty back there in the East. Fester and poison until a leg or an arm is lost …’ He rapped a dirty finger against his wooden leg. ‘And I’ve seen plenty more besides, lying in a stinking bed in a hell-hole that they called a regimental hospital in the Malabar Kush, trying to recover …’
Betsy placed the tankard of ale in front of Blindside. He swigged it enthusiastically, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
‘Oh, the tales I could tell, young Grimes,’ he said, staring into his half empty tankard. ‘The tales I could tell …’ He lifted the tankard to his lips and drained it in one gulp. ‘I don’t suppose I’ve told you the tale of how I lost a fortune in jewels picking up a glass of water?’
‘I don’t think you have,’ I said, as Betsy placed a glass of old cider and a slice of mutton pie in front of me. ‘But I’d love to hear it.’
Blindside stared into the bottom of his empty tankard.
‘Another ale for Blindside,’ I told Betsy, picking up my supper and crossing the tavern to the table by the fire.
Blindside Bailey followed me; ale in one hand, crutch in the other. We sat down opposite each other, the orange-yellow light of the burning coals flickering across his war-ravaged face. He raised his tankard to me, before taking another swig.
‘Well, it happened like this,’ he said, settling himself back in his chair. ‘I was in the hospital, having just lost my leg – though how that filthy barracks came to be called a hospital was beyond me. Mind you, most things were beyond me, given the state I was in, drifting in and out of sleep, the fever consuming me and giving me waking nightmares so I hardly knew when I was awake and when I was sleeping … Do you know what that’s like, young Grimes?’
‘I think I do,’ I said softly, taking a swig of old cider.
‘Anyway, my fever finally broke, and when I became aware of my surroundings once more, I was astonished. The filthy barracks had been cleaned. There was fresh linen on my bed and my poor stump had been dressed in bandages that hadn’t even been used before. Why, for a moment there, I thought I’d actually died and gone to heaven. Not surprising really, given that we were tended by angels, dressed in white and carrying lanterns. Ministered to our every need, they did, without complaint or a harsh word. Angels of mercy and no mistake …’
Blindside finished off his ale and I ordered him another one. I noticed how the firelight glistened on the tears that had gathered in the corners of his eyes.
‘Anyhow,’ he went on, ‘one night they brought in a forlorn hope and laid him in the next bed from me – the days of sharing four to a bed having been abolished …’
‘Forlorn hope?’ I asked, taking a mouthful of mutto
n pie.
‘That’s what we called the hopeless cases, ones that most likely wouldn’t live for more than a day or two,’ he said. ‘But this wasn’t just any old forlorn hope, no sir. This was none other than Colour Sergeant Stroyan McMurtagh of the Fighting 33rd – the meanest and most black-hearted scoundrel ever to wear the scarlet coat. He and his three corporals were notorious in the garrison for extortion, brutality and thieving. Back there in the Malabar Kush though, in those dark times, the top brass turned a blind eye to such things, especially when those rogues could fight like lions when called upon to do so. And to be sure they were called upon, especially the Fighting 33rd. Always in the thick of it – the fall of Dhaknow, the siege of Rostopov and the storming of the Great Redoubt, the thirty-third regiment of foot led the way. Why, I can still remember Sergeant McMurtagh standing on the ramparts of the Great Redoubt, waving the regimental standard through the gun smoke; the winged Angel of Victory on a sky-blue field …’
Blindside Bailey’s face had a faraway expression as he gazed into the crackling fire, and I noticed that his tankard remained untouched before him.
‘Go on,’ I said, intrigued.
‘Well, every one of us believed that McMurtagh and his corporals were nigh on invincible, so I was more than a little shocked to see the orderlies carry him in as a forlorn hope. Horribly injured, he was, a gaping hole in his chest and his left arm a jagged stump of splintered bone. The nurses did their best to dress his wounds and sent for the garrison surgeon, a fresh-faced young doctor who had replaced the drunken old sawbones who’d taken my leg. But it was plain that Colour Sergeant McMurtagh wasn’t long for this world. He must have sensed it himself for, as he lay there in the flickering lamplight, he seemed to want to unburden himself before he met his Maker. So I sat with him, and did the only thing I could do for him. I listened …’
Over by the piano, the dog had woken up and was growling at something only it could see. The man in the Salisbury flat cap stopped playing and leaned down to pat it.
‘Turned out,’ said Blindside Bailey, pausing to take a swig from his tankard, ’that he and his black-hearted corporals had committed one crime too many. In all those years in the lands of the East, between sieges and rebellions, McMurtagh and his comrades had gone to astonishing lengths to enrich themselves, by robbing palaces, plundering temples and holding petty princes and noblemen for ransom. Of course, they took great pains to cover their tracks and always denied any wrongdoing when challenged – and given their fearsome reputation, that was seldom. But now, as he lay dying, the colour sergeant confessed those misdeeds to old Blindside.
‘The four of them, he told me, had amassed a great fortune in jewels and precious objects, which they’d hidden in a certain cave in the dusty hills. But even so, such was their greed, they wanted still more - which is how they came to raid the Temple of Kal-Ramesh, goddess of the notorious Kal-Khee sect …’
‘I’ve read about the Kal-Khees,’ I interrupted excitedly, ‘at Underhill’s Library for Scholars of the Arcane. Weren’t they a band of assassins for hire?’
‘Oh, more than that, young Grimes,’ said Blindside, leaning forward in his chair. ’Much more than that. Up in that temple stronghold of theirs, they worshipped the demon goddess Kal-Ramesh, a golden statue with six sword-wielding arms, a necklace of jewel-encrusted human skulls and a single eye in the middle of her forehead. Kal-Ramesh, the Keeper of Souls, Goddess of Death and Gatekeeper to the Underworld … Of course, to McMurtagh and his gang, it was just one more bit of plunder to add to their haul.
Keeper of Souls, Goddess of Death and Gatekeeper to the Underworld …
‘He told me, as he lay there dying, about how they’d stormed the temple with fixed bayonets and sticks of dynamite, grabbed the statue and fought their way out, while one of their number kept the Kal-Khees pinned down with a mountain cannon they’d borrowed from Thurston’s Second Regiment of Horse Artillery. Escaped without a scratch on them, or so they thought …’
Blindside paused and, for a moment, I thought his tankard was empty once more, but when I looked, I could see that he’d hardly touched it. The piano-player had started playing a jolly polka that seemed oddly jarring given Blindside’s grim tale.
‘Corporal Lancing, “Mad Jack” as he was known, was found face down in the regimental latrines, half his head sliced open. Scatter-gun Thompson was the next to go – hanging from a mango tree from a length of rope. Dusty Arnold was found the following day in a narrow alley near the bazaar, a rusting axe embedded in his skull. The garrison was in uproar, the top brass running around like half-plucked fighting cocks, sentries posted at every corner with orders to shoot on sight …
‘But none of it did any good. McMurtagh told me how they had planned to strip the statue of its jewels, melt it down and add it to their hoard. But when Mad Jack and Scatter-gun had been murdered, Arnold and he had thought better of it. They’d taken the statue from their secret cave hideout and placed it in the bazaar in the dead of night, hoping to placate the Kal-Khees. And it might have worked, but for one thing …’
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘The eye of the goddess, a dark jewel said to be a portal from this world into the next, was missing. In their panic, McMurtagh said that neither he nor Corporal Arnold noticed, but the Kal-Khees did. The statue disappeared from the bazaar that night, and was spirited away back to the temple in the mountains – but not before Arnold received an axe in the head for his trouble. McMurtagh fought his way out of the alley and staggered into the regimental guardroom, before collapsing. A forlorn case if ever there was one.
‘As dawn began to break, he cursed the day he’d thought up the plan to rob the Temple of Kal-Ramesh. Then, the colour draining from his face, he spoke of the fortune in jewels and gold which lay hidden in that cave in the mountains.
‘“You’ve listened patiently to my sorry tale, Private Bailey,” he whispered, “and I’d like to repay you for your kindness by giving you directions to the hidden treasure trove my crimes have furnished …” His voice was cracked and raw as he spoke the words, and I turned to reach for the glass of water by my bed, to offer the dying man a drink. When I turned back, Colour Sergeant McMurtagh of the Fighting 33rd was dead.’
Blindside raised his tankard and drained it to the dregs before placing it dramatically on the table before him.
‘Which is the tale, young Grimes, of how I lost a fortune picking up a glass of water,’ he said. ‘And I haven’t touched a drop of the stuff ever since!’
Over the next few days I was up to my wing-tipped collar in work, getting up early and returning to my rooms late, as I struggled to catch up on the two days I’d missed. What was more, in the wake of a severe snowstorm, extra business came my way as clients sent urgent requests to the coal-merchants, roof-tilers and furnace-repairers.
Thankfully, my arm felt right as rainwater and I was back up on the rooftops, high-stacking across the city, making drops all over town – everywhere, in fact, except Gatling Quays, where the gangs were at one another’s throats over the disappearance of Firejaw O’Rourke’s body, and innocent bystanders were getting hurt. Ma Sorley’s Fried Eel and Lobster Shop on Pekin Street got wrecked in a near riot. Then a couple of warehouses – one full of brandy; another, resin – were burned out. The Lanyard Inn, a seedy harbour-side public house, was shut down after a small altercation turned into a street brawl, resulting in two dozen arrests by the Harbour Constabulary.
Each day, as I passed Blindside Bailey on the corner, he had another lurid headline to shout. ‘Sumpside Boys Fight Harness Riggers Gang in Firejaw War!’ ‘Thump McConnell takes on Flour Bag Mob!’ ‘Fresh Grave Robberies Fuel Firejaw War! Read all about it!’
No one, it seemed, was safe. From the carefully manicured gardens of the Westmede Cemetery in well-heeled Mayvale to the Boiler Road Graveyard in Cheapside, the stories were the same. Graves were being breached and corpses going missing. And each time it happened, it opened up the wounds caused by
the missing Emperor, and trouble flared anew down at the quays. For my part, I stayed away from Gatling Quays, and most particularly from Adelaide Graveyard, where I’d had my terrifying hallucination, for that was what I was now convinced it must have been.
Meanwhile, the weather continued to be bitterly cold. Slippery ice and numb fingers and toes make for dangerous highstacking, so the following morning I decided to give Will Farmer some useful tips for winter on his way to St Jude’s. We set off in freezing fog at six-thirty. Day was just beginning to break.
‘If you’re going for a Drainpipe Sluice, check whether there’s any frost on the joints,’ I said, as we reached the end of a split roof and looked down. I pointed. ‘If there is, like on that one, it’s too cold to use. Your hands could stick to the metal and then tear away the skin. If it’s melted, though, it means hot water has been washed down inside and warmed it up. Like over there,’ I said, pointing again. ‘We’ll take that one.’
We set off in freezing fog at six-thirty.
Will nodded. A little further on, we stopped again. I nodded to the roof opposite.
‘Be careful of black ice,’ I told him. ‘It’s all but invisible, but as slippery as a greased eel. On icy mornings like this, before you set out, you want to put some sand or grit in your trouser pocket. Then,’ I said, reaching into mine, ‘you can chuck some across to where you’re going to land for a better grip.’
‘Clever,’ said Will.
‘Thinking ahead,’ I said, and patted the bump halfway down the front of my gamekeeper’s waistcoat. ‘Always think ahead.’
Will frowned. ‘What’s in there, then?’ he asked.
‘Sphagnum moss,’ I told him, and grinned. ‘You’re not the only one who’s got a drop to make at St Jude’s.’
I wanted to see the pretty young nurse again, and this time I had a present for her.