Blood Royal

by Jonathan Green

  “Who knows,” his master replied, “but ours is not to reason why.”

  “Ours is but to do and die,” his manservant finished for him.

  “I was actually thinking more along the lines of, the enemy of my enemy...”

  Ulysses’ mind was awhirl as he and Nimrod ran for the cemetery gates. He barely had a handle on what was going on. First the Ripper-thing had hunted him down before breaking off its attack. Then, to his amazement, it had followed him all the way to Russia and prevented him meeting with the Firebird. And now, here it was, apparently saving his bacon. But he wasn’t going to worry about the details now; there would be time for that later.

  At the gates to the cemetery was a nervous-looking guard glancing from the Zil limousine, to them and then the graveyard beyond, as the sound of gunfire echoed strangely from the avenues of burial houses.

  Ulysses paused as the muzzle of the gun turned on him and stayed pointed at his chest.

  “Your friends are back there and they’re in a whole heap of trouble. Now you could stay here and wait for the fuss to die down and stop us from leaving, or you could go back there,” – Ulysses hoicked a thumb over his shoulder – “and save Kharkova.”

  “Kharkova?” the big Russian repeated, reaching for the personal communicator attached to the lapel of his trench coat.

  “That’s right, your boss. The one who’s in a whole heap of trouble. You could help her or you could walk away and we can all get on with our business, or, I suppose, you could simply shoot me.”

  Ulysses could see sweat beading on the gunman’s head now as his eyes darted backwards and forwards. His gun was shaking in his hand.

  Ulysses was only a few feet from him. His own hands wavered at his side, ready to go for either his gun, his sword-stick or simply to deliver a karate neck chop.

  “And I’ve just realised that you probably can’t understand a word I’m saying.”

  Glancing between Ulysses and his manservant one last time, tightening his grip on the gun the guard suddenly dashed away into the cemetery, leaving them alone with the car and its occupants.

  Ulysses saw the anxious faces of Miranda and her governess pressed against the glass, their breath misting the window.

  “What now, sir?” Nimrod asked, as the two of them scrambled inside.

  “Drive!”

  The engine revving loudly, the Zil tore up black mud and gravel and Nimrod directed it back onto the road and away from the cemetery.

  Ulysses glanced past Miss Wishart and Miranda, out of the rear window, at the collection of black cars parked up outside the cemetery. There was no sign of anyone attempting to follow them.

  “So where to, sir?” Nimrod asked, his penetrating sapphire stare locked on the empty road ahead as he pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor.

  A road sign flashed past on Ulysses’ side. “St Petersburg.”

  “St Petersburg?” the governess shrieked, probably more loudly than she had intended, from the seat behind him. “What in God’s name for?”

  “Sign says it’s only fifteen miles from here to the centre of the city. And you know what begins its journey from St Petersburg, don’t you?”

  “What?” Miss Wishart asked.

  Ulysses flashed Miss Wishart a wicked smile. “Let’s just say we have a train to catch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Prospero’s Book

  TAKING A SIP of the claret, Ulysses let it sit awhile in his mouth, savouring the rich notes of the wine before finally letting it slip, like warm syrup, down his throat. Placing the glass back on the table he took the book from his jacket pocket and regarded its cover with fascinated anticipation.

  Here it was, the thing that he, and probably a fair number of other interested parties, had believed to have been destroyed in the house fire at number 14 Elizabeth Street; the culmination of Victor Gallowglass’s life’s work.

  With something almost like reverence, Ulysses opened the leather-bound notebook, savouring the satisfying crack of the book’s spine and the rustle of its bound vellum leaves as he did so.

  There, on the very first page, written in Victor Gallowglass’s now unmistakable tidy hand, was what at first appeared to be the utter gobbledygook Ulysses had observed on first opening the journal. But it was a form of gobbledygook that probably only three people left alive in the globe-spanning empire of Magna Britannia today would have recognised, and one of those people was Ulysses Quicksilver.

  Warm memories of happier, simpler times came rushing into Ulysses’ mind, his ears flushing hotly in excitement, as if warmed by the sun that had always shone during those fine summers of his childhood.

  Victor Gallowglass’s notebook had been written entirely in code; a code that Victor, Ulysses and the rest of their close-knit band – which included Piggy Hoggett and Digby Lovelace-Smythe – had created during the summer term of their first year at Eton.

  Ulysses couldn’t remember the last time he had used the language, or Babel as they had called it. He had thought he had put away such childish things after the death of his father.

  Babel was not a language with its own unique grammar, syntax and vocabulary; rather a coded way of writing their mother tongue, English. As such anything could be represented by the code.

  But what made the code a bugger to crack was that it was not merely a case of simple letter substitution. Some symbols stood for single letters or digits, but they could also represent whole words.

  Equally, sometimes what looked like whole words, or even phrases, actually stood for individual letters. It was all very confusing, if you weren’t in the know. It had been Digby’s creation most of all, and when Ulysses had read in The Times, some years ago, that the man was now something in analytical engines, he hadn’t been at all surprised.

  And so, starting with Gallowglass’s carefully-inscribed frontispiece, Ulysses tentatively began to trawl his memory for everything he could remember of the whimsical language.

  An hour later, feeling that he deserved a break, Ulysses found himself gazing distractedly out of the dining car, observing the world whizzing by, not really seeing the pine forests and mountain villages flicking past his reflection.

  They had been on the train now for approximately six hours, since making it to the Moskovsky Vokzal Station in St Petersburg and onto the Trans-Siberian Express.

  The grand architecture of Moskovsky Vokzal and St Petersburg itself had soon given way to dull, grey industrial zones, which in turn gave out to acre after rolling acre of bleak-looking farmland. Now, hours later, the train was making the climb into the snow-clad foothills of the Ural Mountains.

  Even here, thousands of miles from home, Ulysses’ ID had worked its magic and he had been able to score four tickets to Vladivostock and a pair of adjoining berths; one for Miss Wishart and Miranda, the other to be shared by him and Nimrod, despite the older man’s protestations that he would happily bunk down in the postal car if Ulysses preferred.

  Feeling a delicate hand on his shoulder Ulysses started suddenly, lost in his drowsy reverie.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I disturb you?” Miss Wishart asked, taking a seat across the table.

  “No, don’t worry. I was away with the fairies, that’s all.” Ulysses’ eyes strayed to the book, facedown on the tablecloth, and he reached for his wineglass. “To be honest I could do with a break. Would you like a glass?” he asked, nodding towards the half-empty bottle.

  “Not for me, thank you,” the governess replied, possibly just a little too hastily. Her eyes strayed to the journal. “May I? It’s just that having been obviously so ill-informed about my employer’s work while he was alive...” She trailed off. “Just out of curiosity... Because I’m nosey.”

  “Please. Be my guest.”

  “Oh,” she said as she scanned the page in front of her. She turned to another, and another. “It’s all nonsense.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’ve been here studying it for hours.”

&nb
sp; “Fortunately, as it turns out, I’m fluent in gobbledygook. Where’s Miranda’s, by the way?”

  “I’ve just got her settled. She’s exhausted, poor dear. She’s been through more in the last few days and weeks than most adults have to put up with in a lifetime.”

  Ulysses nodded, gazing out of the window, noticing how the sky had purpled almost to black.

  “I wonder where Nimrod has got to, fussy old soul that he is.”

  “I shouldn’t complain, being waited on hand and foot like that.”

  “He does get paid, you know?”

  “Just the same.”

  “Just like it’s your job to look after Miranda.”

  “Well!” Miss Wishart harrumphed. “I don’t know what you’re doing wasting your time with the hired help here then. I suppose I’d better leave you to get on with whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “Now come on, I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “How did you mean it then?”

  “It’s just that... Well... Look, why don’t we discuss it over a little dinner? You must be famished.”

  The governess rose sharply.

  “Good evening, Mr Quicksilver,” she said. “Oh and, since you asked, Nimrod is kindly keeping an eye on Miranda. Good evening.” And with that she departed the dining car.

  Picking up his wineglass Ulysses took another swig. It was going to be a long evening.

  THEIR FIRST NIGHT on the train, despite the hours spent trying to decipher his old friend’s notebook and the wine, he’d barely slept, sure that the Agent K and her men would make an appearance as the train passed over the Urals. When he had slept, he had found himself running through the labyrinthine avenues of a graveyard, leading a sobbing Miranda by the hand, as they were pursued by a colossal, dagger-fingered monster and its army of over-grown, half-human locusts.

  He woke as the train had juddered to a halt to take on water in the early hours of the morning, thinking that the stop meant they had been discovered, but nobody came for them.

  Days later, with still no sign that the authorities were hunting them, Ulysses almost began to enjoy the journey. The days of enforced incarceration had meant that he had been able to translate much of Gallowglass’s journal. And there had been another unexpected benefit as well; after days of asking, he had finally managed to wear Miss Wishart down and she had accepted his offer of dinner.

  Ulysses rose as he watched Miss Wishart walk the length of the dining car towards him. She wore a slinky, low-cut black dress and Ulysses stiffened as he noticed how it flattered her hourglass figure. It was the first time he had ever seen her wear her hair down and it suited her.

  Over dinner, the conversation returned to the subject of Victor Gallowglass’s notebook and the mysterious nature of his work.

  “So,” Miss Wishart said, “what have you discovered?”

  “Well, it makes for fascinating reading; if you’re a geneticist or haematologist, I’m sure. I couldn’t even understand half what I was able to decode, but what I can tell you is that he was working on something big.”

  “Really?” Miss Wishart said.

  Ulysses’ gaze lingered on the plunging neckline of her dress. “Let’s consider the evidence,” he said, placing his knife and fork on his plate. “First we have Gallowglass’s notes, with all the details of what it was he was working on these last however many months.”

  Putting a hand into another pocket, Ulysses took out the phial of blood that had come in the cigar box with the hand-written note.

  “What’s that?” Miss Wishart asked.

  “To be honest, I’m not yet certain.”

  “And what does this mean? ‘This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’?”

  “It’s from The Tempest. It’s spoken by Prospero in reference to his slave, Caliban. So here we have Caliban and Prospero’s book and then there’s the girl.”

  “Miranda,” Miss Wishart said.

  “Precisely – Prospero’s daughter.”

  “You think there’s a connection?”

  “You think it’s a coincidence?”

  “Well, I suppose Dr Gallowglass could have been inspired to use The Tempest for codenames for the project he was working on.”

  “Or...”

  “You... You can’t mean... You mean, you don’t believe... Surely you can’t mean that Miranda was another project of his, like this Caliban thing?”

  ”What I do know is that there’s something special about the child. Did I tell you how stunning you look, by the way?”

  She coyly reached across the table and stroked the soft skin of his left hand.

  “Shall... Shall I get the bill?” Ulysses said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Ulysses was woken by a terrible howling. The berth was dark, but bars of moonlight flickered across the ceiling, the silvery luminescence penetrating the pine trees crowding the railway as it passed through the rocky uplands of the Kuzneckij Mountains.

  The blood-curdling howl came again.

  Ulysses tensed, feeling his flesh goose-pimpling, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He had faced all manner of horrors, but there was something about the howling of wolves that spoke to some primal part of his psyche, an inherited genetic memory of fear.

  Sitting up, the naked woman lying beside him moaning softly as she stirred in her sleep, Ulysses turned and peered out of the window.

  The wolves were running. He could see them quite clearly now, haring through the forest between the pines, attempting to keep up with the train. They were big and black, stark against the silvery snow.

  “Good God,” Ulysses gasped. He had never seen wolves like these before; never so large, never so heavily-muscled, never so possessed of such a malign intellect. He had certainly never known wolves to pursue a train.

  Ulysses slipped out of bed and started to pull on his clothes.

  “Mm... What is it?” Miss Wishart murmured.

  The howl came again. It was as if it was coming from right outside the carriage now.

  “Was that a wolf?” Miss Wishart whispered.

  “Shh!” Ulysses hushed. He paused, his shirt half on, listening intently.

  Was he imagining things? Had that last jolt been the train bumping over a join in the rails or the thud of something landing on its roof?

  And then there was the dull itch at the back of his brain, getting more intense with every passing second, his body tensing in response.

  “Stay here,” he told the woman.

  He finished buttoning his shirt, did up the belt of his trousers and pulled on his jacket; the phial in one pocket, the notebook in another.

  “I’ll do no such thing,” she said, climbing out of bed after Ulysses, dropping the sheet and starting to pull on her own discarded clothes. “I shall see to my charge.”

  “Very well. But don’t open the door to anyone until I return.”

  He picked up his pistol and strapped it on, checking the load at the same time.

  Pulling on his crumpled jacket, sword-cane in hand, Ulysses stepped out into the low-lit corridor.

  The next door along opened and a bleary-eyed, and only slightly bewildered-looking Nimrod peered out.

  “Are you alright, sir? I heard wolves.”

  “Yes, I’m fine, old boy,” Ulysses said, parting the curtains pulled across a carriage window and peering out.

  He could see black walls of rock closing in as the train entered a defile.

  Ulysses started, hearing a thud as something heavy landed on the roof.

  The two men looked up, watching the rattling lampshades, pistols trained on the ceiling. Whatever it was that was now on the roof was moving ahead of them towards the front of the train. They followed, the carpeted floor deadening their footsteps.

  Lights were starting to come on inside other berths now as their occupants were roused by the howling of the wolves.

  As Nimrod and Ulysses moved warily
down the corridor, a bitingly cold breeze stirred the curtains.

  A cold, clear scream cut through the sleep-befuddled stillness of the carriage. Ulysses was unable to determine whether it had been made by a man or a woman, so soul-rending was the sound.

  “Come on,” he hissed, “this way.”

  The door into the next carriage was open and banging against the wood-panelling as the train jolted on its way through the tunnel.

  Steeling himself, Ulysses stepped into the next coach.

  Something moved in the shadows at the end of the corridor. Ulysses tensed, raising his gun and then relaxed again. It was a man that was approaching them.

  At least it had the gait and silhouette of a man. But it was too tall to be a man, surely, its shoulders too broad, and that wasn’t a fur coat he was wearing, but a pelt.

  And then the shape stepped into the faint pool of light cast by an electric-lamp.

  “Oh my,” Ulysses gasped. “What big teeth you have.”

  The creature paused, ears flicking forwards, a low rumbling growl rising from within its great barrel chest. Blood, red and hot, steamed from its jaws while the horror regarded them with unsettlingly human eyes.

  In one paw it carried a man’s head, the wretched bastard’s last expression of horrified surprise etched onto his face, his signalman’s hat slanted at an almost jaunty angle. Of the rest of his body there was no sign.

  The beast had to be seven feet tall at least, its head almost brushing against the carriage roof.

  Dropping the signalman’s head, the werewolf threw back its head and gave a howl that set the glass shades of the electric-lamps rattling.

  Ulysses was aware of more lights going on inside sleeping compartments and a few doors opened, bleary-eyed passengers looking out of them for only a moment before ducking back inside. Muffled screams could now be heard along the length of the carriage.

  Ulysses raised his pistol and fired at the very same moment that the monster sprang.