On hearing this, Camembert and Madame Pamplemousse turned to each other sharply.
‘What is it?’ said Madeleine.
They made no reply but Camembert padded swiftly over to the other side of the tree house and came back dragging a small bag. From out of the bag he removed a jar with a vacuum-sealable lid and a small plastic comb, and with this he then proceeded to comb Madeleine’s hair. Afterwards, he opened up the jar and then, running a single claw along the comb’s teeth, caused small droplets of liquid to fall into it.
‘Is there enough?’ asked Madame Pamplemousse.
Camembert nodded briefly before replacing the jar’s seal.
‘Excellent!’ she said. ‘Then, Madeleine, it would seem your arrival here has already brought us luck!’
Madeleine stared at her in bemusement.
‘A most valuable delicacy: the freshly extracted drool from a Tyrannosaurus rex. Camembert and I have just spent this past week trying to obtain it . . .’ She broke off, abruptly, noticing Madeleine’s expression. ‘Is something the matter?’ she asked.
For Madeleine’s face had suddenly fallen. In the relief of being rescued, and the joy of seeing them again, she had quite forgotten the danger back in Paris. Paris now seemed very far away, as indeed it might, since the city would not be built for another eighty million years. But on hearing Madame Pamplemousse talk about cookery, she was filled with a sudden despair.
‘I’m sorry, Madame,’ she said quietly. ‘But something terrible has happened back home. The woman from the government – the one investigating you – she said they’ve seized your shop and that it’s going to be destroyed!’
Madame Pamplemousse received this news calmly, without appearing in the least bit surprised. ‘This woman,’ she said, ‘not, by any chance, a young woman with excellent teeth and hair, who goes by the name of Mademoiselle Fondue?’
‘Yes!’ Madeleine cried. ‘You know her?’
Madame Pamplemousse nodded. ‘Oh yes, we know her. Camembert has had his eye on her for some time.’
Camembert growled, causing Madame Pamplemousse to burst out laughing.
‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think I’ll translate. Suffice it to say he didn’t much enjoy her company.’
‘But you don’t understand! The police are looking for you. If you go back, they’ll arrest you immediately!’
‘Why, naturally,’ said Madame Pample-mousse. ‘I’d expect them to do nothing less.’
‘But, Madame, you can’t . . .’ Madeleine’s voice faltered. And then, quietly, she added, ‘You can’t stay here for ever.’
Madame Pamplemousse looked down over the panoramic vista that lay below them. She shrugged. ‘I could do a lot worse. At least here you’re not bothered by government officials.’
She turned back to Madeleine and smiled. ‘No, Madeleine, I won’t stay here. Apart from anything else, you can’t get a decent cup of coffee. I have no doubt Mademoiselle Fondue is very powerful – second only in power to the President himself, and some would say even more so. But that will also prove her undoing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Never mind that for now. But rest assured Mademoiselle Fondue is the least of our problems. Much more important are those ingredients we have yet to obtain.’
‘Ingredients for what?’
‘For a kind of medicine, a special tonic – one with which we shall restore the very spirit of our city. For the government is attempting to destroy that spirit, and already it has started to sicken.’
g
Later that night, they sat out under the stars. It was cooler and less humid at night, and Camembert rolled out a sleeping bag for Madeleine to climb into. Then he went over to the edge of the parapet to keep a lookout for passing pterodactyls.
Madame Pamplemousse, meanwhile, lit her pipe and told Madeleine of their adventures so far, seeking ingredients for the special tonic. She told her how they had been to ancient Peru to acquire a whole Green Demon Pimento, the hottest chilli pepper in existence, how they had been to Revolutionary France to steal some wine from Napoleon’s cellar. And she told her how they had travelled to India two and a half thousand years ago to obtain a cup of green tea brewed by the Buddha.
As a young man, the Buddha had sat meditating under a banyan tree and discovered the secret of eternal happiness. When Madame Pamplemousse came to visit him he was much older, around eighty, although on first sight she described seeing a beautiful young prince with eyes like dancing flames. Then she saw how he was, in fact, just an old man wearing a plain, saffron-coloured robe. His eyes, however, were unchanged. The idea of time travel seemed to amuse him and he laughed a good deal. He was also very interested to meet Camembert, treating him with great respect, and suggested the two of them play draughts.
Listening to her voice against the gentle hissing of the gas lantern, Madeleine soon began to feel drowsy. It did not seem to matter that they were up a tree in the middle of a prehistoric forest; with Camembert keeping watch and Madame Pamplemousse beside her, she would have felt safe anywhere. And so, before the story finished, she had drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Seven
The next morning Madeleine awoke to the sound of hammering. Camembert was banging nails into the tree house and binding the planks together with fresh vines. The remains of last night’s camp had been packed away into a large, black rucksack.
Madame Pamplemousse bade her good morning and offered her breakfast, which was a fruit resembling a banana, except that it was coloured bright blue.
‘Unfortunately there’s no coffee – the greatest hardship of time travel,’ she said. ‘For at the first taste of French coffee, we would be transported straight back to our own present. However, instead, we have this . . .’
She produced a silver-coloured Thermos flask. It was similar to the kind Monsieur Moutarde had given Madeleine in the café, with a sleek, Swiss look about it: the sort of Thermos you might take up a mountain. Madame Pamplemousse unscrewed the top and poured out the contents into three cups.
‘Are we ready?’ she said to Camembert.
He was still tinkering with the tree house, tying up a final knot with a nail between his teeth. Once he had knocked this into the wood he looked up and nodded.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then it’s time we were moving on. Thanks to you, Madeleine, we already have our precious drool. But we must now collect our next ingredient.’
She handed a cup to Madeleine and one to Camembert. ‘Your health!’ she said, raising her cup, and then together they all drank.
It was hot and dark-coloured, like the liquid from the café, although its flavour was totally different. The immediate effect, however, was similar.
Once again there was that sudden feeling of déjà vu, like an intensely recalled memory or dream. But in this dream Madeleine saw hills encircled by mist and wide expanses of silver-grey water. There was also the faint impression of music from far away, like the distant, mournful wailing of bagpipes.
Then the forest below them began revolving, moving faster and faster, until it became a spinning wheel of green. The sight of it made her so giddy that Madeleine closed her eyes. She tried clinging on to the tree house but then even this began to move. It started wobbling about as if it had come loose and, for one terrible moment, Madeleine thought they might be suspended in mid-air, until she opened her eyes and discovered they were on water.
They were floating in the middle of an enormous lake. The tree house was turning slowly, while gently bobbing up and down – except that, strictly speaking, it was no longer a tree house now, but had become a raft. They were surrounded by a mist, which was drifting in white trails above the surface of the water. The air was cool and fresh, and when Madeleine breathed, her breath formed its own misty vapour.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘The British Isles,’ said Madame Pamplemousse. ‘Scotland. Loch Ness. And if Monsieur Moutarde’s calculations are correct, we should be somewhere ar
ound the autumn of the year 1933. Here, you’ll need this.’ She handed Madeleine a blanket. ‘You’ll feel the cold soon; your body takes a while to adjust when time travelling.’
Just then Camembert miaowed and in reply Madame Pamplemousse reached into the black rucksack. She took out a length of rope, with a hook attached to one end, and a small glass container. Madeleine recognised this as coming from Madame Pamplemousse’s shop, with a yellow label on the jar and something coloured dark red inside it. Madame Pamplemousse opened the jar, which produced a foul fishy odour. She handed it to Camembert, who reached in with his paw and brought out a small, dark piece of flesh. Taking the rope’s hook, he stuck it into the piece of flesh and then flung it out into the water. The other end of the rope he tied about his waist.
‘Fermented Kraken Kidney,’ Madame Pamplemousse explained. ‘Extremely rare. I found this one washed up on a beach in Norway. It had started going rotten, but that’s fortunate for our purposes, since the monster likes them a bit rancid.’
‘Monster?’ Madeleine whispered. ‘You mean . . . the Loch Ness monster?’
Madame Pamplemousse nodded. ‘Or, to be more precise, a rare breed of sea serpent that was sighted frequently in these waters in the early 1930s, but has not been seen much ever since.’
‘Because it’s so shy?’ said Madeleine hopefully. ‘It’s such a shy, gentle creature, that’s why it’s seen so rarely?’
‘Shy?’ said Madame Pamplemousse. ‘Not really. Elusive perhaps. But also extremely dangerous.’ She inhaled sharply, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘We are here to acquire a small quantity of its venom. With this venom it stuns its prey, dragging it down to a cave beneath the loch, where it may be consumed at its leisure – a kind of monster’s larder, if you will.’
The idea seemed to tickle her and she roared with laughter, but on seeing Madeleine’s face, her laughter soon faded. ‘Oh, my dear Madeleine,’ she said, ‘please don’t be alarmed. No harm will come to you, I promise.’
Just then Camembert put up his paw to command silence. His ears were pricked up and with his one eye he was staring fixedly ahead.
Madeleine followed his sightline. The mist was now thick about them, a blanket of pure white. But the longer she stared, the more she seemed to spy something lurking beyond the mist: the silhouette of a distant, dark shape.
Then the shape disappeared, but from where it had been there came ripples spreading out across the water. They made the raft wobble slightly when they reached it, but then soon died away until all was still once again.
And then, from underneath, came the most almighty swell.
It lifted up the raft, splitting it asunder and tumbling them head first into the water. Madeleine plunged below the surface. Underneath the water her eyes opened to glimpse a horrible coiled mass of oily, dark skin.
She came up spluttering and gasping for breath. And there, above her, towered the monster.
Its full length would be hard to fathom, since its body was wrapped in coils and kept writhing about the water, churning it into whirlpools. But the neck alone rose up a good three metres high, and she could see a green serpentine head with two fierce, luminous-yellow eyes.
It had bitten deep into the Kraken Kidney but Camembert was still clinging on to the rope’s other end. He was hanging from the monster’s mouth, while the monster threshed wildly, swinging him from side to side. But Camembert clung on, twisting the rope about his legs until he was entwined. And then, with a sharp tug, he managed to wrestle the kidney clear and dropped down into the water with a splash. The monster gave a loud hiss from out of its nostrils, and then, plunging its neck downwards, disappeared below the surface in pursuit of him.
‘Camembert!’ Madeleine screamed. A hand gripped her from behind.
Madame Pamplemousse was clinging on to a piece of raft and she pulled Madeleine in close towards her.
‘Madeleine!’ she said. ‘Listen to me!’
‘We have to save him!’ Madeleine cried.
‘Listen to me!’ said Madame Pamplemousse firmly. ‘You must do exactly as I say.’ She was holding up a dark-green Thermos flask. ‘You must drink this now and go on ahead of us –’
‘No!’
‘We will find you, Madeleine, I promise, but you must go on ahead.’
‘But what about Camembert?’
‘I can save him but then I can’t protect you.’
‘I don’t care! I’ll stay with you!’
‘No, Madeleine! Listen – you will find yourself near an island. Swim straight to shore and wait there. Do you understand? Whatever happens, do not move from the shore!’
From underneath, something long and slippery brushed past Madeleine’s leg. She let out a scream.
‘Now!’ said Madame Pamplemousse.
Madeleine tried to protest but Madame Pamplemousse had already put the flask to her lips. With her other hand she cradled Madeleine’s head and tipped the flask back. And then the liquid was on her tongue, trickling down her throat, and a second or so later, she vanished.
Chapter Eight
At first, Madeleine thought the time-travelling liquid had not worked. She had been so afraid for Camembert and so terrified of the monster that she hardly noticed its effects. Added to which, she was still in water, and so did not notice any difference in her surroundings, until she realised the water was now considerably warmer.
Then she saw how the mist had cleared and above her the sky was blue.
She was swimming towards the shore of a small island. It had a long beach of pure, bone-white sand. Veering up from it, there was a rocky hillside strewn with cypresses and olive trees and bushes of wild herbs.
Soon the water became shallower and she was stepping out on to the sand. She looked around.
There was no wind, hardly any tide, and the only sound came from the waves gently lapping against the shore. She stared out across the sea. It lay vast and still, glittering emerald in the sun. But there was no sign of life, no sign whatever of Madame Pamplemousse or Camembert. Her mind began racing: what if the monster got them? What if they had been dragged down to an underwater cave? Or what if they had lost the black rucksack?
This terrible prospect seemed to grow ever more plausible until she was quite certain it must have happened. For, without the time-travelling liquid, there would be no way of them reaching her or, for that matter, ever getting home. They would be stuck in Scotland in 1933, while she would be marooned here on this island.
Just then she heard a sound.
It was only faint, yet loud enough to break the silence. She looked around, trying to find its source, but could find none, the island appearing deserted as before. However, she could have sworn that she heard it.
Then it came again, still faint, but clear and unmistakable this time: it was a woman’s voice calling from the hillside.
‘Over here,’ it cried distantly. ‘Over here!’
‘I’m coming!’ Madeleine shouted and began to run.
The hill was steep and hard to climb, littered with broken rocks and clumps of tangled weeds. But such was her relief at hearing Madame Pamplemousse’s voice that Madeleine managed to scale it in no time.
Then halfway up the hillside she stopped.
Here the landscape flattened out to form a rocky promontory jutting out to sea. There were no shrubs growing, no greenery, and the ground was dusty and scorched. But everywhere she looked there were bones.
She could not tell at first what animals they were from. They were all in shards, scattered around, but she could see bits of shattered ribcage and pieces of broken skull, and each one of them looked suspiciously human.
It was only then she remembered Madame Pamplemousse’s warning not to stray from the shore. Perhaps there had been no voice. Maybe it had only been her imagination and all that she had heard was the whistling of the wind.
Except there was no wind and everywhere, she noticed, was eerily quiet. And then she felt that strange pricking sensation down the back of
her neck, the feeling that lets you know you’re being watched.
She spun round. Ahead, the hill carried on upwards, becoming much steeper and rockier. And perched just above her, on top of an outfacing crag, was the most terrifying creature she had ever seen.
It had the face of a woman, slender and elegant, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. It was a face that might have been considered beautiful had it not been covered in black fur. The fur was sleek and glossy and covered its whole body, which she saw to be not human, but the body of a panther, with two velvety wings at its back.
Madeleine had once seen a picture of such a creature in a gallery in Paris, a creature whose name in ancient Greek means ‘the strangler’, for this was none other than the Sphinx.
The Sphinx was peering down at her and Madeleine could see why it had been so named, since its eyes alone held her paralysed. They transfixed her with their cold malevolence and seemed to see into her very mind.
‘What brings you to my island, little one?’ asked the Sphinx. Her voice was clear, faintly piercing and yet smooth as silk. And like a silken cord about her throat, with every word it seemed to tighten its hold.
‘I-I’m sorry,’ Madeleine stammered, trying to avert her eyes. ‘I d-didn’t mean to intrude.’
‘To intrude?’ the Sphinx echoed back, dropping down from the ledge with a gentle rustle of her wings. She proceeded to prowl stealthily about Madeleine, her muscular body rippling as it moved. ‘Then you came here of your own free will?’
Mute with fear, Madeleine managed to nod.
‘That is strange,’ said the Sphinx, ‘for usually girl children are brought to me in sacrifice, from parents who wish only to have boys.’
She stopped abruptly in her tracks.
‘Ah!’ she gasped. ‘But your parents did give you away, didn’t they, Madeleine?’ The Sphinx crept closer, peering into her eyes. ‘Though you tried so hard to please them. Just as now you fear your friends have abandoned you too.’
Madame Pamplemousse and the Time-Travelling Café Page 3