Lionboy: the Chase

by Zizou Corder

  ‘And I’ll get the water,’ Charlie said. ‘In a moment I’ll go for it.’

  The Oldest Lion knew they were right.

  Omar smiled again.

  Charlie was still shivering.

  Omar watched him as he tried taking off some of his wet clothes and putting them on again, working out what would be warmest.

  ‘Follow,’ he said, and Charlie did. ‘Also you,’ the cat called to the others. They all went after him up a winding staircase at the side, moving slowly, all cold to their bones.

  An arched doorway brought them out on to the flat roof. The sound of the surf was louder than ever. The sea was very near. A low wall surrounded the roof and Charlie, looking over it, could see the walled town spread out before him, the beach beyond, and the minarets and domes of the mosques.

  ‘Stones still warm from the sun of the day,’ Omar said courteously. ‘Stays warm all night. Lie, like on heated floor. Feel better.’

  Stiffly, the Lions lay down. Charlie too. Sergei curled in beside him, in a surprisingly affectionate way. The hot sun had pounded down all day on these stones, and now, in the evening, the heat was trapped there, ready for them. They all lay as flat as they could, shifting and rolling to get the warmth on to every part of their damp, battered, chilled bodies. The sky was huge above them, and a low moon was rising, lying on its back like a cradle. Charlie wanted to climb into it and sleep for a week. Instead he thought of Elsina, and the Silvery Lioness, and his thirst. He sat up again.

  ‘Which way did the searching cats go, then?’ he said to Omar, stretching out his stiff neck and being grateful for at least that short moment of relative comfort. ‘Can you take me? I must be there to give the medicine. And I should bring some food and water.’

  ‘Of course,’ the cat replied.

  ‘I’ll come with yer,’ said Sergei.

  The Young Lion looked up. Charlie could see that he too desperately wanted to come, and to help.

  ‘Stay,’ Charlie said. ‘You’d be seen. You’re hurt.’

  ‘I know,’ said the Young Lion. ‘But you’re doing everything for us, Charlie. What are we doing for you?’

  ‘You dealt with the Dogepolice, didn’t you?’ said Charlie. ‘And with Rafi, when it really mattered.’

  The Young Lion still minded. It wasn’t that he was jealous of Sergei, just … but his head did really hurt.

  Charlie and Sergei looked out over the town for a few moments before leaving. Omar pointed out the market (closed now), the medina (the old town), with its main street where the cafés were, the rocks down the beach where the cats had gone to look for Elsina and the Silvery Lioness.

  ‘Onwards and upwards,’ said Sergei. ‘Per ardua ad astra. Illegitimi nil carborundum. Rien ne va plus. Come on, lad.’

  They went down the winding stairs, out through the rubbly doorway into the warm night, and on to the streets of Essaouira.

  Outside one of the cafés that Charlie had seen from the roof of the hammam sat Maccomo. He’d just overheard the shoemaker say to the waiter that young Khaled had now completely lost his marbles: he’d been telling everyone that he had been attacked by an army of mad cats on the beach, and that there were shipwrecked lions that the cats were trying to hide … poor Khaled. Lost it completely.

  Maccomo smiled, called the waiter over and ordered a couple of big bottles of water. When they came, he opened them. Then, carefully, without drawing attention to himself, he took a small flask from his pocket and poured a good dose of its contents into each water bottle.

  A small boy was helping his uncle on a drinks stall across the way. Maccomo clicked his tongue at him, calling him over.

  ‘There’ll be a boy along soon,’ he said. ‘Tired-looking and grubby, not Moroccan. I’ll point him out. Sell him this water and I’ll give you five dirhams.’ The kid shrugged, took the bottles, and sat down to wait for Maccomo’s signal.

  The cats were already bringing the Silvery Lioness and Elsina along the beach when Charlie and Sergei met up with them.

  The two Lions looked terrible: cold, weak and shuddery. But they were alive. Charlie found that he was smiling. He only realized it now, but actually he had been horribly afraid for them. Funny how that happens – when the fear is there, you deny it, then when the crisis is over, it is safe to say, ‘That was a crisis. Thank god we are OK.’

  Charlie immediately gave them each some Improve Everything Lotion, and took Elsina into his arms to carry her. She was heavy and limp, her big paws flopping. Charlie kissed her and talked to her. ‘Come on, girl,’ he whispered as he carried her. ‘You can make it. Come on. You‘re all right now. It’s all all right now.’ He thought he could feel her wanting to respond. The Lioness was a bit stronger, but she too had the cloudy eyes and absent look of utter exhaustion.

  They slipped back into the hammam. It was hard work getting Elsina upstairs, but he managed it. He lay her out on the warm stones. The other Lions, warmed up a bit now, clustered round the two and cuddled close to them to give some of their warmth. The Young Lion lay down by Elsina and whispered to her. Omar was still there, watching over them.

  They were all right. It was a miracle. They were all all right.

  Water, Charlie thought.

  As he approached the very first café on the main street, a small boy came over trying to sell him bottles of water. Charlie delightedly took the two big ones the boy held out to him. He tore the top off one and poured water down his throat – not too much. He had to take it to the Lions. But cool, sweet water. He shuddered in his skin, his body rippling with gratitude. It had been days since he had had enough to drink. He looked around for Sergei to offer him some, but the scraggy cat was already round the back of the café going through the bins, eating and drinking all sorts of stuff it’s better not to know about.

  In the café, a beautiful tune was playing on the radio, which immediately cheered Charlie up. He grinned and ordered twenty-five big kebabs, twenty-four of them raw, and sat down to a bowl of soup, hot bread and a big glass of orange juice while they were cooking. Thanks be for his mother’s dirhams, which had survived the shipwreck, soggy in his pocket. Thanks be for food and drink. Relief flooded him.

  Three doors down, Maccomo sat back in the shadows and watched. When Charlie collected all his meat and turned back towards the ramparts, Maccomo silently slid from his seat and followed. Invisibly, he slipped through the streets; patiently, he settled down in a dark shadowed corner in front of the hammam to wait for the medicine to take effect.

  Further into the medina, a woman climbed out of a cab. Behind her, a man and a woman climbed out of another.

  ‘You’ve just wasted fifty dirhams with your stubbornness,’ called Magdalen. ‘You’re being really pigheaded. We could at least have shared the cab.’

  Mabel ignored her, and strode ahead through a fairly nondescript stone archway, dragging her bag angrily after her.

  Inside, even Mabel gave a little gasp. The archway led to a beautiful courtyard. Or was it a tall, open room? You couldn’t tell if it was indoors or out, a chamber or a garden. The floor was stone, old and worn, but beautiful carpets were laid on it. The walls were high, and lined with wide balconies, each supported by rows of archways. Climbing roses and jasmine twined their narrow stone columns, and in the centre a fountain played, its basin strewn with rose petals, crimson and white. Low sofas and comfortable chairs sat in groups round small tables. Up above, the stars gleamed in the rich night sky.

  Mabel, Aneba and Magdalen all went up to the reception desk. Mabel had booked her room, and she smiled as a porter took her bag and led her upstairs. Aneba started to arrange a room for himself and Magdalen (right next door if possible) while Magdalen stuck by her sister. She wasn’t letting her out of her sight.

  Which was just as well.

  Maccomo was still in the shadows outside the hammam when the boy from the hotel found him. (Boys in small Moroccan towns always know where everybody is, even – especially – people who are trying to hide.) />
  ‘Madame at the Riad el Amira says please will you come,’ said the boy politely.

  Maccomo looked up, his eyes hooded in the darkness. He did not want to ask how the boy had located him – it suggested that he didn’t already know, and he liked people to think that he knew everything.

  ‘I know no madame,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Foreign madame,’ said the boy. ‘Very beautiful. Hair like fire.’

  Maccomo’s eyes flashed. Oh, really? And why was she here? How did she know where he would be?

  He smiled.

  Clever Mabel, lovely Mabel, had returned to him. It could mean only one thing. She was giving herself to him. This time he would marry her, she would help him, they would be together forever.

  He must go to her now – immediately!

  But did he have time?

  The drugs would soon knock Charlie and the Lions out, but once out they would sleep for a while … and before then Maccomo would be back – with Mabel! And then, together, they could take Maccomo’s revenge.

  Maccomo went first to his lodgings, to wash and change his clothes. He had to be beautifully presented to claim this woman as his wife. On the way from his room to the riad he didn’t notice the mangy scrag-eared cat who had followed him from the hammam, and clocked where he lived, and was following him now as he swept into the Riad el Amira.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bathed and changed after her long journey, Mabel lay back on a low divan in a chamber off the courtyard. The chamber was divided with screens, exquisitely carved from dark aromatic wood, so that each set of divans, draped with ornate cloths, seemed to exist in its own little room. The night was growing cooler, and in the big stone fireplace on the far wall a wood fire was glowing and crackling. The smell of it was delicious. The sweet mint tea – emerald green leaves gleaming within the crimson and gold glasses on the low polished table in front of her – was delicious too. Tall white flowers in a dim corner emitted a faint, delicious scent.

  Mabel stretched. How luxurious. If it weren’t for the knot of anxiety in her chest, her slow-burning anger at Maccomo, her confusion about her sister, her nephew, and the fate of the Lions, oh, and the constant dull ache down her belly where a tiger called Rajah had ripped her open and taken a bite out of her many years before … If it weren’t for all that, she would have felt marvellous.

  She looked up. Maccomo was standing in the gap between the screens.

  ‘Mabel,’ said Maccomo. ‘My love, you are here, you have come to me.’ Before she could respond, Maccomo was at her side, taking her hand. ‘My love,’ he said. ‘I know that I should address this to your father but as you have none, nor a brother nor an uncle, I will speak my heart direct to you. I wish to marry you, I wish you to honour me with your love. I am as you know me – a travelling man with little to offer but his skills and his heart. But before you refuse me because I am poor, listen: I have an opportunity. Some of this you know, but let me explain.’

  Mabel was shocked. Marry him! She had been married four times already … She was not planning to do it again. But explanation – yes, that was what she wanted.

  ‘My Lions were stolen from me,’ he was saying. ‘You must have heard about this. But I don’t care so much about that. I will capture them again, label them bad and have them sold to some cheap zoo, where they will be punished every day for their folly in running away from me – they will live in small cages, their meat will be old, their water will be scant and dusty, and small children will tease and annoy them daily. But no – you remember my Lionboy. Charlie.’

  Mabel remembered him, yes.

  ‘My love …’ Maccomo’s eyes burned into hers and he took hold of her elbow. ‘My love. Have you heard tell of Catspeakers?’

  Of course she had. It was an old legend among circusguys and zoopeople. A load of old nonsense.

  ‘Charlie is a Catspeaker.’

  Mabel stared at him, and in that instant knew that it was not a load of old nonsense.

  Maccomo was holding on to her elbow so hard it hurt. ‘Just so!’ he said. ‘He is the only one, for sure – probably the first for years. Think what he is worth!’

  Mabel blinked.

  She was thinking – he could talk to my tigers. He could tell me what they are thinking. He could – so where is he? Take me to him NOW!!! Mabel had never heard anything so wonderful in her life. Her own nephew! Everything else fell away.

  ‘So my friend – Rafi Sadler. You met him,’ Maccomo was continuing. ‘He trades in … well, many things. Including, you might say, skills. People with skills. The people who would like to employ them pay him, and he takes them to … where their skills are most valued. So he has offered to take this Catspeaking Lionboy. He has a very good client interested – very rich powerful people. They are interested to know how the Catspeaking works, why he can do it, and so on. They will pay a lot for this boy – perhaps you know them. The Corporacy. Very powerful people …’

  Behind one of the dark wood screens, at the next set of divans, Aneba jumped up, his face furious and his fist raised. Magdalen jumped up too and grabbed his face in both her hands. ‘Shhhhhhhhhhhh,’ she whispered, her face contorted with pain and the effort of keeping quiet. ‘Shhhhhhhhhh.’

  Aneba took a huge, long breath, and silently, hugely, he let it out. He spread out his clenched fist and lowered his hands, gently, flat, in a calming gesture. ‘I am angry but I control my anger,’ he said to himself silently. And again. And again.

  The firelight was flickering on the high, pale stone walls.

  Mabel stared at Maccomo and forced herself to smile at him, but behind the smile her mind was in turmoil. ‘Trades’? ‘People’? ‘Pay for this boy’?

  Maccomo was intending to sell her nephew? To sell a boy?

  That’s slavery!

  And to the Corporacy?

  Mabel knew about the Corporacy all right. She hated the Corporacy, and all that ‘you have to conform to survive’ stuff; the new Communities with their rules and restrictions. That’s why she ran away to join the Circus in the first place – to be wild and free.

  As she stared at Maccomo, her smile in place, Mabel thought swiftly. She thought: I don’t really know this man. She thought: I could never be in love with someone so wicked. She thought: I must pretend to be, and use his trust in me.

  And so her smile broadened, and she cried, ‘Darling, how wonderful!’ and she snuggled up to Maccomo, and his heart swelled with delight.

  Her heart, meanwhile, was fomenting deceit. She would talk to Magdalen. They would make up! Together they would rescue Charlie!

  But Magdalen, behind the screen, heard only the words her sister spoke, not the plan that was in her heart. And she was filled with horror, and this time Aneba had to restrain her.

  Charlie felt terrible. His head was heavy. It kept sort of falling off to one side. His eyelids had grown; they were too big for his eyes. His mouth was dry and his skin had shrunk. He felt very sick. He’d better lie down. Oh – look. All the Lions are lying down. I’ll lie on them. Lion them. Ha ha.

  He stumbled over the Oldest Lion’s huge paw, and fell on top of the Yellow Lioness. She didn’t stir. The Oldest Lion didn’t stir. Their breathing was heavy and peculiar, but Charlie didn’t notice. His ears had gone echoey. His hands dripped from the ends of his arms like melting wax. Only heavy. Got to turn over, he thought. Sick.

  Charlie was just about to pass out when Sergei sprang excitedly on to the window ledge. He was racing back to report that he had followed Maccomo to the Riad el something, and that in the seconds between sneaking in and being chucked out he had glimpsed Charlie’s parents – but he took one look at the pile of comatose Lionflesh and the groggy boy in front of him, and he shrieked.

  Sergei knew what was going on. He had seen enough alcoholguys in the streets of London and Liverpool, enough humans unconscious because of the poisonous chemicals in their blood. But how come the Lions were in this state? He ran through in his mind what they had consume
d. It had to have been in either the food from the café or the water.

  He remembered the water boy. Only he, Sergei, having helped himself to water from a puddle behind the café, hadn’t touched the bottled water. Only he, Sergei, was fully alert.

  He had seen how close Maccomo’s lodgings were to where the boy accosted them. He had heard all about the medicine the Lions had been given at the Circus, and how Charlie had given it to Maccomo to make him dull and dopey.

  Charlie rolled over and groaned. In a split second Sergei was beside him, yelling at him, berating him, cajoling him. ‘Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP! Don’t go to sleep! Come on, yer great twaggler, you can do it! WAKE UP!!!!’

  Maccomo had put a lot of medicine into the water.

  Charlie had drunk less than the Lions, and he had drunk the orange juice and the soup as well, which diluted the effect, but he had had enough.

  Sergei stopped jumping around and yelling. It wasn’t working.

  So what else?

  He thought. Why was Charlie more awake than the Lions, though he was smaller and therefore more susceptible?

  Soup. Orange juice.

  Spitting and cursing, Sergei leapt out the window again and snaked his way swiftly back to the marketplace.

  Sure enough, in the corner where the detritus of the day’s stalls was piled up, waiting to be taken to the dump, lay a lot of only slightly rotten oranges. Some children were going through the stuff, looking for anything good enough to eat or sell, but they didn’t mind the scrawny cat who was trying to roll oranges away. They liked him actually. They laughed, and one little girl in a pink silky dress decided to help him. Sergei played with them, nudging the oranges, pretending to talk to the children.

  Before long, a group of six skinny kids was carrying handfuls of oranges down to the old hammam, and throwing them in the window, because it amused the skinny cat. They were sad when he jumped in after the oranges and wouldn’t come out again, but then the father of one of them came along shouting and wanting to know what they were doing out so late, so they ran off back to the marketplace.