A Fever of the Blood

by Oscar de Muriel

  ‘I just missed her. Drop your weapons. Now.’

  We could do nothing but oblige, though we both tossed the guns as close to our feet as possible.

  ‘You, the pretty boy. There’s an envelope under that cat’s arse. Give it to me – and don’t try anything funny.’

  I hesitated for a bizarre moment. My breath, my thumping heart, the beads of cold sweat rolling down my temples, they all felt amplified.

  ‘I don’t have all day, son!’

  I slowly moved forwards. The table was only a yard away, but time stretched as if I’d moved a mile. The cat, oblivious to our situation, was still meticulously licking its coat. I thought it was the same animal I’d seen before, but being closer I saw this one’s eyes were yellow. I pulled out the small brown envelope, while the cat hardly acknowledged the movement.

  It was as though the paper burned my fingers. Lord Ardglass needed it, but why?

  ‘Kneel down and slide it across the floor.’

  I did so, slightly twisting my torso as I threw the envelope. I managed to catch a glimpse of his muddy boots and the leather bag sitting next to them. It was engraved with a much-embellished letter A.

  ‘Look away!’ he yelled. ‘And don’t try to run after me. I’ll be watching my back. Don’t make me kill you both.’

  We heard him pick up the paper and take a first step away. McGray’s chest was now heaving and he could not contain himself.

  ‘What did Pansy tell ye?’

  Lord Ardglass stopped. From that angle I could no longer see his reflection, but in the absolute quiet I could hear a shift in his breathing. Was it agitation? Anger? The briefest of glances would have let me know. I nearly growled in frustration.

  ‘You would kill to know, wouldn’t you?’ Joel Ardglass said, not a trace of emotion in his voice. ‘You’d kill for her.’

  ‘It would be a noble kill,’ McGray responded. ‘Not like poisoning a poor lass just ’cos yer bitch mother didn’t let ye marry that trollop ye liked.’

  I flinched as he spoke, expecting a bullet to stop his reckless baiting at any time.

  Lord Ardglass said nothing for a seemingly endless moment, and then I heard a burst, so sudden a gunshot could not have startled us more. He had erupted into laughter, loud and earnest.

  ‘That trollop I liked!’ he finally said, an eerie pleasure oozing from every word; the very voice of madness. ‘You’re a stupid fool, Nine-Nails McGray. You really know nothing! If only …’

  We were expecting him to say more, but all we heard was him moving again, and then pushing the door open, letting the icy wind inside. The blasted man was getting away and there was nothing we could do.

  I feared McGray would turn and attack him. All his wrath came out in his voice: ‘What does marigold mean?’

  Joel Ardglass cackled again. It was not crazed, delusional laughter but rather bitter … understanding, and when he spoke his words were chilling: ‘Don’t follow me, boys. The worst thing you can do to yourselves is find it out.’

  Then we heard the door slam. McGray instantly picked up his gun and sprinted out at striking speed, roaring.

  I reached for my weapon and jumped up. The door was flapping against the wind, obscuring my view of what was happening outside, and before I reached it I heard a deafening shot, and McGray howling.

  I pushed the door open and thrust myself towards the front garden, where I caught a glimpse of Nine-Nails’ horse falling into the deep snow.

  Lord Ardglass was already on my mount, spurring on the terrified Philippa, forcing her forwards.

  McGray was running after him, shooting an aimless bullet, but all we could do was watch my white mare gallop away, carrying Lord Ardglass, disappearing into the distance.

  15

  ‘Shit!’ McGray bellowed, his voice cutting the gusts of wind.

  He ran back and we both kneeled down to look at his horse.

  The body was still warm, a trail of breath still coming from its nostrils, but poor Rye was gone. He had been shot cleanly in the head, the bullet entering exactly between his eyes with chilling precision.

  McGray placed a soothing hand on the horse’s mane.

  ‘No …’ he said in a broken whisper. ‘He was a great beast. Didn’t deserve this, the auld brute …’

  ‘It was very quick, McGray,’ was all I could say. ‘Rye must have hardly known.’

  McGray gulped. ‘My father gave me this horse …’

  His eyes glistened and he tried to blink the tears away. I looked up – that was all the privacy I could offer him – and gave him a moment to grieve, but I was already thinking desperately what we could do. There was nothing in front of us but miles of open field, we had no mounts or a carriage, and as the seconds passed Lord Ardglass rode further and further away.

  McGray had realized all that too. He cleared his throat, gave Rye a last affectionate pat and then jumped to his feet. ‘The nearest place is the asylum,’ he said, already heading that way, pushing me back. ‘Yer too slow, dandy. I’ll head there and borrow a cart or something. Ye stay here and search the house.’

  He was running, kicking up snow in his wake, before I could reply. I was left kneeling by the dead horse, still stunned by how quickly it all had happened; it must have only been minutes since we’d arrived at the cottage.

  I stood up slowly, looking at the disturbed snow. Despite the blustery weather I reckoned this time we had a good chance of following Lord Ardglass’s trail. The snow was deep and it would take a while for the wind and sleet to erase the sharp hoof prints. It all depended on how quickly McGray managed to return.

  I decided to use that time wisely and ran back into the cottage. I made my way to the stairs, but then, without warning, a most unpleasant wave of shivering overcame my chest, shoulders and arms. I had to halt for an instant, taking a deep breath before I could climb the first step.

  ‘What on earth was that?’ I mumbled, grasping the handrail. I did not have time to dwell on it though.

  I found Miss Oakley’s bedroom as messy as the rest of the house, but it was the only place where I could tell there were missing items.

  The old wardrobe was open and half empty, some garments still crumpled on the bed. Among them I saw a little wooden chest, wide open and containing a meagre handful of copper pence and a small earring without its pair.

  Everything screamed that Miss Oakley had been packing, and in quite a rush. She must have fled the house before Lord Ardglass arrived; then again, how would she know he was coming? When we first called on her she’d not even seemed up to leaving the house, let alone embarking on a trip.

  I remembered Dr Clouston sending us to the farm. Had he told her something? Warned her? It would not be the first time he had kept information to himself … but if he knew she was in danger, why would he have sent us away?

  The room offered one more clue. I looked under the bed and found a familiar item: another red onion, sitting in a bowl full of brown sugar. Had Miss Oakley meant something when she’d said onion marmalade? She must have known about that onion under her bed; unlike the one McGray had shown me, this one was still fresh, no ants crawling on it yet. I did not even touch it.

  I had a quick look through the window, but there was still no sign of McGray, so I went back to the ground floor to inspect the kitchen. The blasted cat was still there, now grooming its paws, indifferent to the world, yet it did screech when I flung it aside. I looked through the small heap of papers on which it had been sitting.

  I found useless bills and merchants’ notes, but then a telegram and a newspaper cutting. It was a corner of the Scotsman, dated that very day, and listing train timetables.

  ‘Things are beginning to take shape,’ I said, as the telegram revealed her intention to travel:

  Too late. Come.

  The cryptic signature was simply Miss R, without any sender’s address. Fortunately the telegraphist had noted the office that transmitted the message: Lancaster. And Miss Oakley hailed from Lancashire. Hardly
a coincidence.

  I looked at the timetables again. Near the top were the services to Manchester, and Lancaster Castle Station was one of the main stops.

  ‘I have you now,’ I said out loud, pulling the chain of my pocket watch. To my dismay, the day’s last service would leave Edinburgh’s Caledonian Station in exactly forty-five minutes.

  ‘Nine-Nails, you’d better hurry …’

  I shoved the papers into my breast pocket and rushed to the front door. After a most frustrating wait, I finally saw a shape emerge in the distance. I recognized Clouston’s carriage, the one we’d seen earlier, but this time it was pulled by two horses.

  Soon I saw Tom, the hulking orderly, lashing the beasts, and McGray’s face shouting through the window.

  ‘Hop on, lassie!’ he yelled as soon as they halted.

  ‘Could you please stop calling me that?’ I barked as I took my seat. I noticed Dr Clouston only when our shoulders clashed. I snapped again: ‘You have some explaining to do.’

  ‘I beg your –’

  ‘Not now, Frey.’ McGray banged on the outside of the carriage and Tom instantly drove on, taking us north in a frantic race. ‘Follow that trail!’ McGray shouted, half his torso sticking out of the window, pointing ahead.

  The carriage lurched madly and I had to yell over the rattle of the wheels: ‘I know where Miss Oakley is going!’

  McGray did not even register my words, focused on nothing but the tracks ahead of us.

  I turned to Clouston, suddenly feeling angered. ‘What did you tell Miss Oakley? Did you prompt her to leave?’

  ‘Prompt her? I don’t even know what’s happening. Adolphus appeared out of the blue demanding a transport. He’s not explained –’

  ‘Miss Oakley fled.’ I was too impatient. ‘She packed her bags in a rush. From the look of her lodgings, she must have started doing so but minutes after we left her. Which makes you the last person she talked to – that we know of.’

  ‘I do not understand …’ We rode over a pothole and the doctor bounced, banging his head hard against the roof.

  ‘You must have told her something!’ I said.

  Clouston stammered. ‘I told her nothing! I hardly spoke to the girl. As soon as she opened the door she said she was late for some appointment. She was rather curt, so all I did was give her my regards and leave.’

  ‘You do realize how suspicious this all seems.’

  ‘Indeed I do, but I assure you, I didn’t even enter the house.’

  ‘You better be telling the truth, Doctor, or else –’

  McGray roared, then banged the door with both fists and kicked it too. All of a sudden the carriage was slowing down.

  ‘Lost the trail,’ Tom yelled.

  The carriage was still moving when McGray jumped out and ran ahead.

  Clouston and I stood up at the same time, our heads bumping against each other. I pushed the doctor aside and alighted first.

  The carriage had stopped by the bridge that crossed the Union Canal, right in between two enormous factories, crammed with tall chimneys and columns of black smoke. There were carts, horses and men running to and from the workshops, never allowing the snow to settle. The cobbled road was but a brown, muddy mess.

  I wrinkled my nose at the stench of rubber that came from the factories. Once more, I had to cover my face with my handkerchief, for the smell was making me terribly queasy. None of the others seemed affected, McGray least of all, pulling his hair in frustration.

  ‘What now?’ he thought out loud. He glared at me and my handkerchief, and I could not repress a gag. ‘Och, pull yerself together, ye look like an anaemic poodle blowing into a trumpet. We’ve real problems here!’

  I had to swallow and take a deep breath. ‘Lord Ardglass may be following Miss Oakley,’ I managed to say, despite my acute discomfort.

  ‘He what?’

  I handed him the telegram and the newspaper, and described Miss Oakley’s bedroom as he read them through.

  ‘The telegram came from Lancaster,’ I concluded.

  ‘Miss Oakley does have connections there,’ Clouston said, and he immediately felt my suspicious stare. ‘She was part of my staff; I interviewed her and telegrammed her references.’

  ‘Caledonian Station …’ McGray mumbled. ‘Up to here, Bampot’s trail could well have been going there …’ His eyes flashed between the factories, the trampled road and the bustling packs of workers. ‘This mayhem also looks like a paradise for hiding in …’ It took him less than a blink to decide. ‘We better check on that train first; then we can come back with a bunch o’ laddies and search these bloody factories.’

  ‘We’d better hurry,’ I said once we were all back in the carriage. ‘If we allow them to leave the city, this chase will become a living hell!’

  In fact, my own omens would turn out to be more accurate than Madame Katerina’s.

  16

  Tom drove at an incredible speed. He took us through some filthy alleys I had never seen, and we ended up rushing through a steep close, so narrow the damp brick walls flew past only inches from us.

  I checked my pocket watch, infuriated by not knowing where we were. ‘We have less than ten minutes.’

  Just when I thought Tom had got us hopelessly lost, the alley opened into Lothian Road, alongside Goods Station and its reeking coal yards. Adjacent to them was the ghastly sight of Caledonian Station, a hastily built wooden structure that served half the city, since the actual station – scheduled to open ten years ago – was still being built.

  Tom dodged carts, carriages and pedestrians, and halted right in front of the Princes Street entrance. The station did not even have proper gates, let alone a roof. The ticket offices were improvised sheds, and the platforms on either side of Scotland’s main lines were creaking stands of smoked planks that looked terribly frail.

  McGray kicked the carriage door open. ‘Which platform, Frey?’

  ‘We should alert the station’s constables.’

  ‘Alert the vicar of St Giles if ye want, but tell me the fucking platform first!’

  I glanced at the cutting. ‘Six,’ and McGray ran frantically through the crowd.

  ‘Bloody fast Scot,’ I mumbled, readying myself to follow him.

  ‘Can we assist you in any way?’ asked Clouston, but I did not have a chance to reply. I could barely see McGray amidst the sea of people, and with the noise of engines and steam whistles he could not hear me shouting after him.

  One of those whistles was piercingly loud, so much so it made me see stars. I covered my ears, stunned by the horrible sound, yet nobody around me seemed even slightly bothered.

  I turned to the source of the whistle: a large, roaring locomotive a hundred yards ahead of me, and when the steam dissipated I found it was the train at platform six.

  The engine was already starting, a thick column of smoke above it, and its wheels beginning to roll in an initially sluggish motion. I had to elbow my way forward, and a second later I saw McGray’s head, sticking above the crowd as he pushed past everything that stood in his way.

  He reached the very last carriage, a first-class one, then hurled himself at the door, grabbed the handle and nearly ripped the whole thing off its hinges as he opened it. As soon as he jumped on to the moving train a thin ticket boy tried to stop him, but McGray pushed him aside as if the lad had been made of paper.

  ‘McGray!’ I roared, now running in desperation. I saw the wheels speeding up, gaining momentum much faster than I ever could. Another deafening whistle resounded in my skull, somehow making everything around me appear blurred. ‘Get off! We are not going to Lancaster!’

  ‘I saw him hop in!’

  Had I not felt dizzy, or had the train been moving but a smidgen more slowly, I would have let McGray go; but without time or clarity, my first impulse was to sprint faster, run until my legs burned, and then I grasped the hand Nine-Nails offered. He lifted me into the air and I landed precariously on the very edge of the carriage’s steps,
waving my free arm to keep my balance. I felt my shoes slipping on the wet steel, but McGray managed to pull me in just in time.

  As soon as my feet were firmly planted on the train’s floor another chill took me by surprise, this time spreading to my stomach, which had been aching since we left the rubber factories. I had to lean forwards, my hands on my knees.

  ‘Ye all right, laddie?’

  I muttered something but then two tall train guards came up, yelling. One of them shut the velvet-padded door.

  ‘CID,’ McGray snapped, showing his credentials. He and the men argued while I took long, deep breaths, slowly coming back to my senses. The swaying of the train did not help my queasiness, so I tried to focus on where I was: the first-class carriage, with a red carpet, oak panelling and brass fittings on the doors.

  I managed to follow McGray’s explanations, and then one of the guards said: ‘Shall we stop the train, sir?’

  At once, McGray and I respectively yelled No and Yes.

  ‘We need to stop now!’ I insisted.

  ‘What for? To give Ardglass warning, so he can jump out through a window? He didnae see me get on. We can catch him off guard.’

  I looked through the windows; the train was accelerating slowly but steadily, and I grunted. ‘Blast, you might be right. It will be far easier to catch him now that we have him in a confined space.’

  ‘Warn the driver,’ McGray told one of the men. ‘Tell him we need the train to go faster than usual – soon. And no one else can hear we’re on board, youse understand? I don’t want people whispering that there’s a pair of peelers around.’

  The guard nodded and left.

  ‘We should hide until the train is moving at full speed,’ I said, and the second guard showed us to an empty compartment.

  I sat back, fearing I would not have a second to rest ever again, but McGray was pacing in the narrow space like a caged lion.

  ‘Are you absolutely certain you saw him?’ I asked, realizing it was a little too late to question the fact.

  ‘Aye. He nearly missed the train. I saw him jumping into one of the front cars.’