The Lazarus Curse

by Darren Craske

  ‘Simple. I shall politely ask the harbourmaster to impound her.’

  ‘And if he refuses?’

  ‘Then I shall ask him impolitely.’

  The Egyptian captain of the Horus joined them, and he followed Quaint’s gaze to a small gathering of men assembled on the docks below.

  ‘Friends of yours, Captain Madinah?’ asked Quaint.

  ‘No, Mr Quaint…which is a shame,’ replied the captain. ‘I have been to this port many times, and Master Barnaby is a stickler for regulations. Convincing him to let us dock without consent is going to be very difficult, but still, with a little coinage easing amicable friendship, I am sure that everything will be fine.’

  Madame Destine watched the captain stride along the deck towards the gangplank, and then turned to Quaint. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That everything will definitely not be fine,’ he replied. ‘We’ll need the harbourmaster’s consent, but he won’t thank us for dragging him out of his bed at five-thirty in the morning. So if this plays out like it usually does, tempers will fray, egos will abound, and there’s a distinct possibility of someone getting shot.’

  ‘Why do you persist in thinking—?’ However, Destine found she was speaking to thin air. ‘Cornelius!’ she called after him as he strode off towards the gangplank. ‘Play nicely!’

  ‘Madame!’ he called back. ‘This is me you’re talking to.’

  ‘My point exactly,’ muttered Destine.

  Captain Madinah was engaged in a discussion with the group of three men in thick-woollen overcoats down on the dock, and it was not going in his favour.

  ‘How many more times have we got to say this, mate?’ said one. ‘We don’t have a log entry for your ship, and no log entry means no mooring, simple as that!’

  ‘We’ve got ships coming and going at all times of the day, and we can’t just allow any old vessel to berth unless it’s been properly logged, right?’ added one of his fellow workers. ‘So you’d best just haul anchor and be on your way, quick-smart.’

  Captain Madinah shook his head. ‘But you do not understand! It is vitally important that you allow my ship to dock! A matter of life and death, in fact.’

  ‘Then you should have made sure your paperwork was sorted out!’ snapped the third of the dock-workers. ‘You look like a foreigner, so maybe you don’t understand how we do things round here. Whereabouts you from?’

  ‘I am Egyptian,’ answered Madinah.

  ‘Oh, yeah? Here lookin’ for your mummy, are you?’ The man nudged his cohorts’ ribs. ‘Geddit, lads? Lookin’ for his mummy?’

  The dock-workers rocked about in fits of laughter.

  ‘But this is an emergency!’ Captain Madinah pleaded. ‘I will gladly explain the seriousness of this request if you will allow me just one minute of the harbourmaster’s time.’

  ‘You’ve got to be kiddin’, mate!’ roared back the worker. ‘You want us to wake up Master Barnaby at this time of the mornin’?’

  ‘What a splendid idea!’ said Cornelius Quaint, joining the fray. ‘Let’s do that!’

  The group of men stared at the smartly dressed, broad-shouldered, top-hatted conjuror as if they had never seen his like before.

  ‘Who are you when you’re at home?’ asked one.

  ‘When I am home, my name is simply Cornelius Quaint, however whilst I’m at work in the Port Authorities’ office, I’m frequently referred to as Mister,’ proclaimed Quaint loudly (and not to mention falsely). ‘Now, I happen to be on extremely urgent business, gentlemen, so if you’d kindly point me in the direction of the Harbourmaster’s quarters?’

  The three men shuffled about, gazing at their boots, not a one of them brave enough to question the tornado of a man.

  Quaint clapped his hands like gunshots. ‘Today, if possible?’

  ‘You’d better follow us,’ the more vocal of the trio said, albeit reluctantly.

  Quaint breezed after him, shooting a wink at Captain Madinah.

  ‘Port Authorities?’ whispered the Egyptian. ‘You lied!’

  ‘It did the job, didn’t it?’ Quaint said.

  ‘But what about the harbourmaster?’ asked Madinah. ‘You do not know him as I do. With no official credentials, it will take a miracle to convince him.’

  ‘I’m a professional conjuror, my dear captain,’ said Quaint. ‘Miracles are my bread and butter.’

  The dock-workers led Quaint and Madinah towards a large, redbrick tower at the edge of the wharf. Rows of windows lined its sides, with a large window at the front giving the harbourmaster a panoramic view of the horizon. Uneven steps led up the side of the tower to a door in serious need of repair.

  Madinah took a step forwards, just as Quaint thrust out his arm to bar his way.

  ‘Leave this to me, Captain. I have a way with people.’

  ‘So I noticed,’ said Madinah.

  Skipping up the steps, Quaint rapped his knuckles against the door to the Harbourmaster’s quarters. There was no reply, no sound from within except the monotonous drone of snoring, peppered at intervals with pig-like snorts. Quaint’s eyes were drawn to a brass bell mounted by the side of the door.

  ‘Oi! Leave that!’ yelled one of the dock-workers. ‘That bell’s only for emergencies!’

  ‘Thankfully,’ replied Quaint, tugging on the bell’s rope, ‘this is one.’

  The bell’s toll echoed around the stillness of the early morning air, and the snoring inside the harbourmaster’s quarters ceased, followed immediately by a barrage of expletives. The door was wrenched open, revealing a grizzly old man with a full white beard and chilblained cheeks. A striped nightcap sat far back on his head, and he clutched his dressing gown across his portly stomach.

  ‘What the bloody hell is all this racket?’ he thundered.

  ‘Master Barnaby, I presume?’ asked Quaint.

  ‘Wh-what do you want?’ demanded the harbourmaster.

  ‘A quick chat, if I may,’ replied Quaint, raising his top hat.

  ‘Do you know what the bleedin’ time is?’

  Quaint lifted his fob watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘It’s just gone a quarter to five. Shall I come in?’ Not waiting for an answer, he barged past the dumbfounded Harbourmaster into the office-cum-living quarters.

  Barnaby followed after him, one shuffled footstep at a time, far too confused to know quite what to think. ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’

  ‘Cornelius Quaint, Port Authorities,’ said Quaint.

  The harbourmaster squinted. ‘Again? Anyone would think you lot were a bunch of bleedin’ vampires considerin’ the hours you keep!’

  ‘Time and tide, Master Barnaby,’ answered Quaint. ‘Pun intended, by the way.’

  ‘But you were only here last week checkin’ all me manifests. I told you then and I’ll tell you now: I run a tight port here. Everythin’s above board, and we’re up to date on all standard operatin’ procedures!’

  ‘Precisely what I intend to put to an impromptu test,’ said Quaint. ‘And it’s a little beyond standard operating procedures. I wish to assess your emergency measures when dealing with the quarantine of a vessel. You will no doubt be aware that there’s a ship due in this morning, a steamer by the name of Silver Swan?’ Quaint watched the flicker of recognition in Barnaby’s eyes. ‘I want it quarantined a mile off the port.’

  The harbourmaster’s red cheeks burned even brighter. ‘You want it what?’

  ‘Quarantined. A mile off port,’ said Quaint. ‘So tell me, sir, what do you need to make that happen?’

  ‘Written authority, for starters!’ snapped Barnaby. ‘For a bunch of bureaucrats, you lot seem awfully content to sweep due process under the rug whenever it suits you. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of any paperwork about all this!’

  ‘My dear harbourmaster, it would hardly be impromptu if we announced our intentions by letter, would it?’ said Quaint.

  ‘No, I… I s’pose it wouldn’t.’ Barnaby scratched nervously at his beard. ‘This is all mighty pecul
iar.’

  ‘Master Barnaby, you don’t know the half of it,’ said Quaint.

  Chapter II

  The Harbinger

  Madame Destine shivered as the cold wind clawed into her flesh. Waiting for Quaint to reappear from the harbourmaster’s tower, she had joined Captain Madinah and his crew down on the docks. As she watched the sun rise over the cliffs, she was distracted, as though she could hear someone calling her from far away. She often tried to ignore her clairvoyant gifts, but it was always a pointless endeavour. Even after all these years, all that she could do was succumb to them, accepting whatever message her mind was about to be given. It was uncommon for her visions to arrive so rapidly, and even more uncommon in the waking hours, so whatever its content was to be, Destine knew that this particular message was one desperate to be heard.

  Seeking seclusion from prying eyes, she retreated along the docks to a stack of wooden crates and sat down gingerly. She lowered her white lace veil to cover her face, as she always did when receiving a vision of the future. Visitors to her tent in Dr Marvello’s Travelling Circus assumed that the veil was all part of the charade; a theatrical tool merely to add mystique to the proceedings. But the veil was not for their benefit at all. It was for Destine to hide behind lest her expressions revealed what she had seen through her mind’s eye. Often in receipt of bad news, she knew that some futures could not be revealed, no matter how painful they might be – a fact all the more relevant considering what she had recently learned about Quaint’s future.

  Confident in her privacy, Madame Destine took a deep breath. Her mind relaxed, and she allowed the pictures to take form and substance, gaining voice and identity. Her lips moved slightly, her melodic accent flavouring each syllable:

  ‘I have to be honest, sir, I’ve never seen the like of this before. We’ve got passengers and crew dropping like flies every day! Considering the numbers of infected casualties that we have onboard, this gas or whatever it is has to be highly noxious, all the bloody ship seems plagued by it. It’s surely only a matter of time before it comes to claim us all.’

  The voice was hers, but the words were not.

  They belonged to man in the uniform of a doctor, speaking to another man with a thinly-trimmed beard lining his chin like an Elizabethan ruff. Recalling her journey on the Silver Swan to Egypt, Destine recognised the second man as the ship’s captain. Between the two men lay a woman on a stretcher; bright red tears of blood smeared down her cheeks from hollow eyes, and her pale skin was dried and brittle, as if all the moisture had been sucked out of it.

  ‘Doctor, what’s the average life expectancy after infection?’ asked the captain.

  ‘It seems to depend upon the physical wellbeing of the patient, sir – or should I say victim. The young tend to live longer, the old and infirm die quickly. Either way, no one lasts for long. I’m afraid that no matter how long you put it off, death is a foregone conclusion.’

  ‘Dear God, man…is there nothing we can do?’

  ‘From a medical perspective, Captain,’ said the doctor. ‘We can only pray.’

  The woman on the table arched her back, her face contorted in agony. Her body tensed, and she screamed a silent, aching wail of pain. Her scream resonated within Madame Destine’s ears, causing her to cry out herself as she felt the woman’s death. Hearing her cry, Captain Madinah rushed over, catching Destine just before she collapsed.

  ‘Madame! Are you all right?’

  Destine’s eyes ignited immediately. ‘That ship is cursed!’ she said, fighting to regain her composure. ‘We must warn Cornelius. He must not board that ship!’

  ‘Madame…I am sorry, but is too late,’ Madinah said, pointing to a small rowing boat in the distance, bobbing up and down in the water. ‘He has already left!’

  Chapter III

  The Invisible Killer

  The Silver Swan steamed relentlessly onwards, and was just over a mile from Dover when it was met by a much smaller craft in its path. Quaint gripped the sides of the boat as it rocked dangerously. Keeping the craft steady was not going to be an easy task – but it was going to be far easier than getting the ship to stop.

  Thankfully, he didn’t have to.

  Sounding its horn, the Silver Swan ground to gradual stop.

  ‘That’s good,’ muttered Quaint. ‘At least someone is alive up there.’

  Fighting against the waves to move the rowing boat into position alongside the gigantic steamship, he reached out at full stretch, snagging a barnacle-encrusted rope hung over the side of the railings. Tying up the boat, he climbed up the side of the ship one slippery footstep at a time.

  With a gruelling ascent that forced all his muscles to curse him, Quaint pulled himself over the railings and onto the ship’s deck. He searched for signs or sounds of habitation, but there were none. It was a ghost ship… perhaps in more ways than one. He scoured all around, looking about the ship’s upper decks, seeing wisps of steam from the vessel’s funnels, spying the windows of the bridge. As he had spent time onboard the Silver Swan from England to Egypt, he was familiar with her layout. Sprinting up an iron staircase onto the deck above, he headed towards the bridge. After all, someone had kindly slowed the vessel to a stop. Naturally that was where they were most likely to be.

  Unsure what he would find, Quaint wrenched open the heavy iron door and soaked up the scene before him. The bridge interior was dark, but he could see a single stub of a candle flickering on a workbench. Another sign of habitation. So where was the elusive shipman now? At the far end of the bridge were shelves containing books, maps and charts, and an open journal sat on a table in front of them. An officer’s white jacket with epaulettes and braiding on the cuffs was thrown over the back of a chair. Opposite the bridge’s window stood the ship’s helm, with a line of barometers and binnacles seated into a wide display. As Quaint tested the ship’s wheel, he felt it resist against his pull. Looking closer, he noticed a worn rope tied around one of the spokes, an effective locking mechanism like an automatic helmsman to keep the ship’s course fixed in one direction. Whoever it was that was still alive, they had obviously just pointed the Silver Swan directly towards Dover and let it carry on relentless.

  Noticing an iron door annexed to the bridge, Quaint snatched it open, hoping that this was where the bridge crew were to be found. The room was just a bunk area, a place for a crewmember to grab some sleep during a long shift at the helm, and it could just about fit one person comfortably. A cupboard behind the door contained kerosene lamps, and several oil-stained overalls were hanging from hooks. Snapping his fingers, Quaint remembered the journal.

  The last entry read:

  This affliction has affected nearly all the passengers, apart from those poor wretches barricaded in the ballroom. All of the ship’s crew are now dead, except for Gidlow, Whitlock and myself. The death toll has mounted by the day, and the ship’s mortuary was full to capacity weeks ago. This invisible killer has stalked us and claimed us one by one, as if the ship itself is attacking us. The engineer tells me that these new steam-powered vessels are susceptible to gas expulsions, which surely points to the cause.

  ‘He thinks it’s connected to the ship!’ Quaint said aloud.

  Unlike the captain, he was fully aware of what had afflicted the Silver Swan, and from where the disease had originated, and it had nothing to do with any gas. The crew were clearly unprepared for an outbreak of such magnitude, and as Quaint flipped through the previous log entries, every one of them recorded yet more deaths.

  We lost another five passengers this morning, and two of the dining staff. We are scheduled to reach Dover in a matter of days, yet I do not know if I will live that long. I have ordered the crew to begin moving supplies down to the cargo hold. A small group of passengers have rebelled against us, and have barricaded themselves in the Fountain Room. They have sealed their fate, and even if I could get to them, there is little that I can do now to save. As ship’s Captain, all souls aboard this vessel fall under my char
ge and I have failed them. Every single one of them.

  Quaint closed the logbook. There was only so many times he could read the same sort of entry, with only the date changing. He threw the book with all his might and it crashed into the bookshelf. There were so many dead, a trail of corpses from Cairo to Dover.

  ‘So where is everyone?’ Quaint demanded of the empty bridge. ‘The journal mentioned the Fountain Room. I wonder how many passengers are still alive.’

  The conjuror was suddenly of a mind to find out.

  He charged out of the bridge, back down the iron steps and headed amidships. If his memory served, in the centre of the top deck there was a corridor that led onto the main staircase and then down into the atrium. A tiny optimistic spark inside of him hoped that he would find all the remaining passengers and crew wondering what all the fuss was about – but Cornelius Quaint had lived too long to expect a happy ending. As he stood at the top of a wide staircase, he found death – and lots of it.

  Corpses covered in white sheets were scattered everywhere across the floor, laid out like a flock of sleeping swans on a lakeside lawn. Every one of them had the same distinguishing marks. Red stains seeped through the cotton sheets where the eyes and mouths were. It was dark red blood, dredged from the depths of the victims’ stomachs, spat out with their last breath of life.

  The Silver Swan was one of the first ocean-going steam liners in commercial use, and at full complement, she could hold somewhere in the region of two hundred people. Each one was a potential carrier of the Eleventh Plague. Polly had set sail from Egypt early on 30th December, which meant that the bacterium had been festering inside of her for weeks. Even if she were still alive, she would have little or no time left until the disease ran its course. A part of Quaint was glad about that, for if Polly was already dead, the threat to Queen Victoria had ceased, and part of his job was done. But if there were any survivors left on board, he could not let them reach dry land because it would only take one of them to trigger the infection. Finding Polly North, whether dead or alive, was his main priority. She could be anywhere, even beneath one of the sheets, and as Quaint stood and stared numbly around, a sickening realisation sank into his mind – if he wanted to be certain, he would have to look under each one.