Timecurse

by Tom Becker

  “They don’t have the most developed people skills,” conceded Carnegie. “But they are effective. So, if you haven’t come for a day trip, why are you here?”

  “I’m in trouble,” said Jonathan. “I need your help.”

  The wereman sat back in his chair and eyed him suspiciously. “What have you done now?”

  “Actually, Elias,” Raquella cut in, “it’s not Jonathan’s fault. . .”

  As the maid’s story unfolded, Jonathan, well used to Carnegie’s moody ways, expected the wereman to pace furiously up and down the room, peppering the air with oaths. He was surprised when Carnegie merely tilted back his head and listened quietly, nodding from time to time. When Raquella finished, the private detective smiled grimly.

  “That master of yours has a thing about Jonathan, doesn’t he?”

  “Not many cross Vendetta and survive,” Raquella agreed solemnly. “I don’t think he will ever rest until he feels he has exacted his revenge.”

  “Well, it’s not as though we haven’t stopped him before. Boy, you look like you’re sitting on a lit firework. What’s the matter?”

  “It’s nothing really,” Jonathan said cautiously. “Just that . . . this is usually where you shout at me for getting you into trouble.”

  Carnegie laughed gruffly, and playfully cuffed Jonathan around the back of the head. “Given how boring things are right now, I wouldn’t have minded if you’d tweaked the nose of Jack the Ripper himself. Anything for something to do.”

  “So what now?”

  The wereman stretched lazily. “Hmm . . . Raquella, you say that Vendetta refused to talk to you, but he did speak with the butler?”

  “Mr Pelham? Yes, he was the only person allowed into the study, but I don’t know what they talked about. As I said, I haven’t seen either of them since.”

  “Well, let’s go up to the Heights and find out if the butler saw anything.”

  “Go to the Heights?” Jonathan said dubiously. “I thought the idea was to keep away from Vendetta!”

  “If Raquella’s right, then Vendetta’s on the other side of London – the Heights is the last place he’ll look for you. Besides, it’s a prime opportunity to nose around the place while the vampire’s away, and I’m not about to miss out on that. Come on.”

  As the wereman punched his hat back into some sort of shape and rose to his feet, the sound of chattering voices drifted up from the street below. Carnegie looked out of the window and checked his pocket watch with a frown.

  “What is it?” asked Jonathan.

  “Forget my own head next,” Carnegie muttered to himself. He looked up. “Change of plan. We’ll go to the Heights after we go to the Tyburn Tree.”

  Jonathan was puzzled. “The Tyburn Tree? Why – what’s there?”

  The wereman flashed him a toothy smile. “In about half an hour, the new Ripper,” he replied.

  5

  After the eerie quiet of the previous night, it was reassuring to see the streets now busy, the Grand reverberating to the familiar shouts of hawkers and the rattling procession of carriages. But there was a strained nature to the doorway deals and shady plots – heads turned to look over shoulders, while eyes glanced nervously at the nearest wall, as though the conspirators were fearful that at any moment a Bow Street Runner would explode forth.

  Typically, Carnegie seemed immune to the atmosphere. Hands thrust deeply into his pockets, he barged his way into the stream of Darksiders flowing northwards along the Grand, carrying Raquella and Jonathan in his slipstream. Unusually for the borough, everyone appeared to be heading in the same direction.

  By the side of the road, a newspaper boy had taken up a vantage point on top of an upturned crate, and was exchanging copies of his paper for coins.

  “Get your Informer here!” he cried out. “Special early morning edition – Blood Succession begins today!”

  Jonathan felt a tingle of excitement run along his spine. During his time in Darkside, he had heard tales of the Blood Succession, but it had never occurred to him that he would actually be there when one took place. Tradition dictated that the Ripper’s successor was decided by a fight to the death between his children. The battle always took place in Lightside – apparently, as a reminder to Darksiders of the cowardly Londoners who had turned their backs on the blighted district during the time of Jack the Ripper.

  A siege had erupted around the newspaper boy as – tired of paying for their newspapers – the denizens of the Grand had started simply snatching them from the bundle beneath his arms.

  “’Ere! Gerroff!” the boy protested. “There’s enough to go round! Hold yer horses!”

  It was a futile protest: Jonathan heard the upturned crate crack under the pressure, and the newspaper boy toppled from view, his last copy of the Informer fluttering up into the air. Carnegie emitted a guttural chuckle.

  “I’m surprised everyone’s making such a fuss,” he remarked cheerfully. “This Succession will be a doddle.”

  “You really think so, Elias?” asked Raquella.

  “Simple arithmetic. Thomas Ripper had three children, didn’t he? Lucien murdered his brother James years before the Succession, managing to break just about the only rule we’ve got in this blasted borough. If he shows his face in public now, he’ll be lynched. Which only leaves Marianne as a rightful heir. Forget the Blood Succession – this is going to be little more than a coronation.”

  Although in one way Jonathan hoped the wereman was right, another part of him wasn’t so sure. Even though he had nearly died at the hands of Lucien in the past, the fact remained that the Ripper’s son was the only man in Darkside who knew what had happened to Jonathan’s mum. The unpalatable truth was that, if Theresa Starling was still alive, Jonathan needed Lucien to be too – at least long enough to tell him where she was.

  “Now Thomas’s Succession,” Carnegie continued, “that was a real event. He had three brothers, all as strong and as mean as he was. They fought in Lightside for two days without stopping, and by the time Thomas had polished them all off he was half-dead himself. Rumour has it he crawled back to Blackchapel on his hands and knees. No one thought he was going to pull through, and there was nearly a riot in the streets. Then the Runners stepped in and had a sharp word with some of the rabble-rousers. Funnily enough, everything went quiet after that.”

  Up ahead, the crowd was surging west at the crossroads on to Pell Mell, the broad thoroughfare that led towards the Rippers’ ancestral home. As the turbulent flow of humanity threatened to sweep them away, Jonathan and Raquella kept close to Carnegie, sheltered from pushes and jostling elbows by the tall wereman’s presence.

  Pell Mell was an unerringly straight avenue lined by two rows of stunted trees with scorched, arthritic trunks. The horizon was dominated by Blackchapel’s bleak outer walls, which had protected its nefarious inhabitants from the sullying stares of its subjects since the days of Jack the Ripper. Only the tip of an ornate spire gave any clue to the presence of a building beyond the wall. Each slab of stone was the colour of night, and must have weighed tons. To Jonathan, it seemed as though only time itself, the passing of century after century, could wear the barricade down.

  With each approaching step, the walls loomed higher, and the mood among the Darksiders descended into one of subdued awe. Before the Blackchapel gates, Pell Mell broke out into a wide plaza, in the centre of which was a strange wooden structure on a raised platform. The crowd milled around it expectantly.

  Jonathan nudged Carnegie. “What’s that? Where’s this Tyburn Tree?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  Jonathan had been expecting some kind of an imposing oak or beech tree with branches large enough to interrupt the skyline. Instead he found himself looking at three upright timbers rising into the air, joined at the top by a flat wooden triangle made up of three beams. As he peered more closely, Jonathan c
ould see lengths of rope hanging forlornly from the horizontal beams.

  “Doesn’t look much like a tree to me,” he murmured.

  Carnegie nodded. “It’s only a nickname, boy. Don’t you recognize a gallows when you see one?”

  Suddenly the dangling ropes assumed a much darker significance. Jonathan shivered. “I didn’t realize Darksiders could be executed.”

  “Only during the Succession,” the wereman said nonchalantly. “Why do you think everyone’s so jumpy? The Runners find that making public examples of a few citizens makes it easier to keep everyone else in line.”

  “You mean people come and watch?” Jonathan asked incredulously.

  “Well, Darksiders generally prefer a bit more of a battle, but you can usually rely on getting a decent crowd for a hanging.” Carnegie chuckled. “Nearly made it up there myself during Thomas’s Succession, when I was a little ’un. One of the Runners caught me stealing apples, and was very close to stringing me up.”

  “For stealing apples?”

  Carnegie grinned, baring his huge incisors. “Technically, the apple tree was in Blackchapel, and the Runners get a little testy if you start clambering around the walls there. . . Here we go. Looks like we’re about to get under way.”

  As Jonathan watched, four Bow Street Runners clambered up on to the wooden platform, which trembled beneath the weight of their stone footfalls. When each guard had taken up a position on a corner of the platform, a man with long, groomed white hair took to the stage. His clothes bore the trappings of fanciful ceremony, and a golden chain of office glinted around his neck.

  “Who’s that guy?” Jonathan whispered.

  “Aurelius Holborn,” replied Raquella. “He’s the Abettor – the Ripper’s right-hand man. He runs Darkside during the Blood Succession.”

  “The way I hear it,” Carnegie murmured out of the corner of his mouth, “Holborn’s been running this place for a lot longer than that. While Thomas Ripper has been laid up in bed these last few years, apparently it was the Abettor making most of the decisions.”

  Watching Holborn stride regally across the platform, Jonathan could believe it. As the Abettor stood calmly gazing out over the masses, the hush deepened with expectation.

  “Citizens of Darkside!” Holborn proclaimed, in a powerful voice that carried easily out over the throng. “Following the sad passing of our iron ruler, Thomas Ripper, we gather here today to signal the beginning of the Blood Succession. As tradition dictates, those children born of the departed Ripper may step forward and fight one another for the glorious honour of Darkside’s throne. Can anyone present lay claim to such a birthright?”

  For a few seconds nothing happened. Then an amused female voice broke the silence.

  “I suppose that would be me.”

  A figure emerged from the front of the crowd and moved gracefully up the steps of the wooden platform – a slender woman with dyed purple hair and porcelain skin. Jonathan recognized her all too well – it was Marianne, bounty hunter, and the only daughter of the Ripper. Their paths had crossed many times before, almost always with ill consequences for Jonathan. Even so, he couldn’t bring himself to hate her as perhaps he should.

  As she took her place beside the Abettor, Holborn bowed smoothly and kissed her proffered hand before turning back to his audience.

  “By the powers vested in me,” he boomed, “I recognize Marianne’s right to enter the Blood Succession. Does anyone else wish to press their claim?”

  Heads turned in the crowd as Darksiders looked about for another challenge. Caught up in the tension, Jonathan felt his heart beat faster in his chest. Even Carnegie looked engrossed.

  The seconds seemed to stretch on for hours, until Holborn finally looked up and announced, “With no other challengers, there can be no Blood Succession. It therefore falls to me to proclaim Marianne as the new. . .”

  “HOLD!” a voice cried out.

  The crowd gasped as one. There was a commotion at the side of the gallows, and then a hooded figure limped on to the stage. A Runner took a menacing step towards the stranger, only for Holborn to restrain him with a raised hand.

  “Declare yourself, stranger. Who dares interrupt this coronation?”

  “I would have thought that would be obvious,” the man replied. He drew back his cowl, revealing a gaunt face with closely cropped black hair. “My name is Lucien Ripper, son of Thomas, and I stand before you as the rightful heir to my father’s throne.”

  As uproar broke out around him, Lucien stood unbowed, his lip curling with disdain as he surveyed the crowd. Jonathan was suddenly reminded of the last time he had seen that face, when Lucien had taunted him about his mother. Hate surging through his veins, Jonathan made to push forward towards the stage, only for a strong hand to grab his arm.

  “Hold fire there, boy,” Carnegie murmured. “Not the right time.”

  “Brother-killer!” came a shout from the throng.

  The jeers rose to a crescendo, and a bottle came flying from the crowd, missing Lucien’s head by an inch. Immediately, the Runners rumbled forward to the front of the platform, forming a stone barrier between the crowd and the Rippers. Holborn held his hands up for quiet, and called out in a booming voice: “The next person to interrupt this ceremony will find himself hanging from the Tree.”

  Immediately the din abated. Having let his threat hang in the air, the Abettor continued in a softer voice.

  “Every man and woman present knows of the shameful deed in Lucien’s past, and that it is a stain on his claim that can never be removed. That being said, who here can deny that he is Thomas’s son? Who here can refute his birthright to take his place in the Succession? I cannot, and I will not. If the Rippers look down upon Lucien and find him unworthy of the throne, then may Marianne’s sword find the centre of his heart. The Succession will judge, not us.”

  There were mutters and grumbles amongst the crowd, but all took care to keep them out of the Runners’ earshot.

  “And so,” Holborn declaimed, “Lucien and Marianne will fight one another to the death to determine who shall become the next Ripper – as their father did before them, and his father before that. As the neutral judge of this combat, I will decide the location in Lightside and inform both parties. Until that combat, the Runners’ word is law.”

  At an abrupt signal from the Abettor, the stone golems stepped down into the audience and began herding people away from the platform. As the crowd began to drift reluctantly back towards the centre of the borough, Jonathan saw that only Marianne and Lucien had remained on the stage, brother and sister staring coldly at one another, death on their minds.

  6

  “I don’t believe it!” Raquella said indignantly, as they retreated back along Pell Mell. “How can Holborn allow Lucien to take part in the Succession after what he did?”

  “I guess the Abettor wants people to know that he’s not taking sides,” Carnegie replied. “I can’t imagine Lucien would have stayed in hiding for ever. Marianne might as well put an end to him once and for all.” He glanced at Jonathan. “You all right, boy? Thought you were going to climb the Tree at one point.”

  “Yeah, I lost control for a minute. I’d forgotten how much I hate Lucien.”

  “No shame in that,” the wereman said staunchly. “I don’t care how many rogues and scoundrels there are around here – if Lucien takes the throne, Darkside will descend into hell. Mark my words.”

  With that sombre thought ringing in their heads, they turned off Pell Mell and quickly left the milling crowds behind them, making for Savage Row, the exclusive street on which Vendetta Heights proudly stood. As they crested the low hills to the north of the borough, the air became crisper and cleaner, and they found themselves navigating a narrow, winding road that skirted round a succession of large mansions. As ever, Jonathan struggled to believe that Savage Row could exist in such a place
as Darkside, when the vast majority of its inhabitants lived in such squalor. The street was one long, extravagant boast. Despite the lateness of the year, the trees lining the Row maintained their leafy canopy, as though the usual rules of nature didn’t apply to them.

  The adrenaline that had coursed through Jonathan’s system at Lucien’s reappearance had slackened, replaced by a creeping sense of apprehension. For all Carnegie’s reassurances, Jonathan still couldn’t believe that turning up at the Heights was a wise idea. The events at the Tyburn Tree had only underlined the strangeness of the vampire’s disappearance. If Vendetta had chosen to go to Lightside in the middle of a Blood Succession, when the next Ripper was about to be decided, then it had to be for a reason of utmost importance. But how on Darkside could that involve Jonathan?

  The road suddenly levelled out, leading on to a straight, broad avenue. The trees were so thick that, despite the early hour, the way ahead was gloomy. The chatter that had sustained them this far abruptly stopped, and they continued in silence. The avenue ended at a high, moss-covered wall and a forbidding set of iron gates. Looking beyond that, Jonathan could see a sprawling Gothic building with scarred brickwork: Vendetta Heights.

  Raquella pushed open the ivy-clad gates and began briskly crunching up the long gravel driveway. Jonathan followed slowly behind, nervously taking in his surroundings. Although this was the fourth time he had visited the Heights, he still felt the same apprehension he had felt on his first visit. More than anything else, it was the stillness of the place, the absence of sound and life. In front of the house, even the fountain of the small crying child had been turned off, leaving the statue rubbing its eyes for no reason.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Jonathan muttered to Carnegie. “What if it’s a trap or something?”

  The wereman stopped in his tracks and stared pointedly at Jonathan. “What are saying, boy? You think Raquella’s sold you up the river? That lass may be a handful, but I’ve lost count of the times she’s put her neck on the line for you. You couldn’t dream of a better friend.”