The Emerald Casket

by Richard Newsome

  ‘It’s like the world’s biggest onion,’ Sam said.

  Alisha glared at him.

  The pale white skin of the building’s domes glowed in the evening light. Ruby and Alisha scampered into the garden. Gerald and Sam followed. They were two-thirds of the way to the Taj when Sam called out.

  ‘Check the love birds.’

  Gerald glanced back and saw Mr Fry and Miss Turner sitting side-by-side on a stone bench near the reflecting pool. They were deep in conversation. Constable Lethbridge was hovering in the background.

  ‘That is so sweet,’ Ruby said.

  Sam gagged, ‘Where’s that bucket?’

  Gerald laughed.

  ‘You know,’ Ruby said, ‘every so often you remind me just what little boys you are.’ She and Alisha turned and stalked off towards a set of stairs that led up to the main buildings.

  ‘What’d we do?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Who can tell?’ Gerald said.

  They followed the girls and emerged at the top of the stairs onto a paved area the size of several football fields. At the centre stood the Taj Mahal. There was no sign of Ruby or Alisha.

  Gerald’s boots clattered across the white marble tiles as he wandered to the far end of the platform. He leaned over a railing.

  ‘There’s a river down there,’ he called to Sam.

  Lights from a small settlement shone from the opposite bank. Fingers of smoke from cooking fires crept up into the sky. The river lay black and mysterious.

  ‘Do you think there are any wild animals around here?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Could be snakes,’ Gerald said. ‘Or monkeys maybe.’ He paused, then said in a hoarse whisper: ‘Or…rats!’

  Sam flinched. ‘I think I saw something move down there.’

  Then, from behind them, a cut-throat-razor shriek sliced the night air.

  ‘That’s Ruby!’ Sam said. ‘It came from inside the Taj.’

  They sprinted across the tiles and rounded to the front of the white-domed building. Gerald shot a glance into the garden. The bench where Fry and Miss Turner had been sitting was empty. There was no sign of Constable Lethbridge.

  Gerald trailed Sam as they raced inside. They skidded across the floor into a large octagonal chamber. Ruby stood on their left, fists clenched by her thighs, her face a mask of fury. Two men, dressed in black robes with scarves wrapped around their heads, held Alisha by the arms. A third figure pointed a handgun at Sam and Gerald.

  ‘You!’ Gerald said.

  ‘Alisha?’ Sam called. Her cheeks were wet with tears, her eyes beseeching.

  The bandit nodded to the others and they dragged Alisha across the floor. She kicked and flailed, straining to free herself. But her captors simply lifted her until all she was kicking was air. Gerald took a step forwards but the bandit whipped the weapon around and aimed at Alisha’s head. Gerald froze. The three kidnappers bundled Alisha into the night.

  Ruby rushed to her brother. ‘They just came out of the dark,’ she said. ‘There was no sound at all.’

  ‘We’ve got to get help,’ Gerald said. ‘Fry. Miss Turner. Lethbridge. Anybody.’

  They bolted outside. There was no sign of the butler, the governess or the policeman. Gerald turned to his left. A movement in the garden caught his eye.

  ‘There!’ he shouted. ‘Alisha.’ He ran across to the top of the stairs, took them three at a time, and leapt to the bottom. About thirty paces in front of him one of the abductors had Alisha over his shoulder. He was climbing over the side of what appeared to be a well. They disappeared over the edge.

  Gerald came to a skidding halt. The bandit was clambering after Alisha but paused, one leg over the low brick wall. The gun was pointing straight at Gerald’s chest. They stared at each other, motionless. Then Gerald took a step. The bandit pulled the trigger.

  Gerald hit the ground.

  The crack of the shot reverberated through the trees, startling hundreds of birds from their slumber. The night sky filled with a dark confetti of feathers and screeches.

  Sam and Ruby raced to Gerald. He was face down on the paving, his arms splayed and right leg bent.

  ‘Gerald!’ Ruby cried. She grabbed his shoulders and rolled him on to his back. Vacant eyes stared up at her.

  ‘No…’ she whispered.

  Then Gerald sucked in a breath. ‘That was a bit close,’ he said.

  He ignored Ruby’s sob of relief and rolled back onto his stomach. ‘They went down that hole,’ he said.

  Sam got there first and peered over the edge. A rope ladder disappeared into a dark void. ‘Do we go down after them?’ he asked. He already had a foot on the top rung.

  ‘We don’t have any light,’ Gerald said. ‘It’d be hopeless.’ He ran a hand over the top of his head. How did this happen? What did this cult want with Alisha?

  ‘This drain must empty out somewhere,’ Gerald said. He turned to Sam. ‘The river.’ He sprinted towards the main gate, Ruby and Sam on his heels.

  The three of them burst onto the street. The place was deserted, the carts and hawkers gone home for the night. The road split in two—one avenue wound around towards the river.

  ‘They’ll have to come out onto the road to get away,’ Gerald said.

  ‘Unless they have a boat,’ Sam said.

  Gerald started running down the road. ‘Let’s hope that they don’t.’

  He’d only gone fifty metres when a bicycle bell rang behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see Sam in the driver’s seat of a cycle rickshaw, pedalling like fury. Ruby was in the back.

  ‘Hop in,’ Ruby said, stretching out a hand for Gerald to grab.

  Gerald made a running dive into the back seat. His head bobbed up behind Sam’s shoulder.

  ‘I borrowed this,’ Sam said, responding to the look on Gerald’s face. ‘Hope the owner doesn’t mind.’

  The road sloped downwards and they picked up speed.

  They’d gone about a kilometre with no sign of Alisha or her captors. Gerald was starting to get anxious that he’d made the wrong call, when Ruby shouted, ‘There!’ She stabbed a finger into the darkness. ‘It’s them.’

  A hundred metres ahead four figures emerged from the river side of the road. It was definitely Alisha slung across one of the abductor’s shoulders. But now she was not resisting.

  ‘Is she okay?’ Ruby asked.

  Sam eased off the pedals and coasted. ‘Let’s see where they go.’

  The kidnappers jogged along the roadway. They seemed to be unaware they were being followed. The path began sloping upwards and Sam had to ride standing on the pedals to keep up. They came to a roundabout that was choked with motorcycles, scooters, taxis and rickshaws. The bandits ducked through the traffic and into the forecourt of an enormous building. Gerald had been concentrating so hard on keeping Alisha in sight that he hadn’t noticed the structure loom out of the night shadows.

  ‘What is this place?’ he asked.

  They stared up at the outer ramparts of an ancient fortress. Red stone walls stretched out of sight to the left and right. In the middle, a broad pathway led into the stronghold.

  Sam searched for a break in the traffic. ‘We’re going to have to leg it from here,’ he said. They abandoned the rickshaw. Gerald was about to chance his luck running across the road when he was grabbed from behind. He whipped around to find a young boy had him by the sleeve.

  ‘You stole my rickshaw!’ the boy yelled through his gasps for breath. He’d chased them all the way from the Taj. He was barefoot and couldn’t have been more than nine years old.

  ‘Sorry,’ Gerald said. ‘It was an emergency. Here—’ he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a handful of notes and gave them to the boy. ‘Go get a policeman. Someone’s been kidnapped and taken inside the fort.’

  The boy looked at the money then back at Gerald. ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘Just do it. It’s our friend.’

  The boy shoved the cash into his pocket and jumped onto the rickshaw.

/>   ‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said. ‘My name’s Pranav.’

  ‘No, no. Get a policeman.’

  The boy shrugged and set off up the road. Gerald was certain they wouldn’t see him again.

  Ruby grabbed his hand and hauled him out into the traffic. ‘Come on, or we’ll lose them.’

  The three of them scooted across the road and into the deserted forecourt.

  The walls of the garrison stood over them like a disapproving teacher. Gerald slowed to a walk, his eyes struggling to adjust to the shadows. They entered a crowd control barrier shaped like a funnel. It led onto a bridge and then over a moat. The path cut to the left and stopped at a tall archway pinched to a point at the top and blocked by a wooden drawbridge. Gerald peered up to the top of the wall. Archers’ battlements loomed above them.

  ‘This thing was probably built to keep out war elephants,’ he said. ‘How are we going to get in?’

  Iron chains ran down either side of the drawbridge from notches high up in the wall. Gerald tugged hard on one. It didn’t budge. He turned to Sam and Ruby. ‘Any ideas?’

  Ruby stood to one side of the drawbridge and looked up.

  ‘I don’t think this thing is closed properly,’ she said. ‘It’s tilting out a bit.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Sam said. ‘There’s a gap at the top. If someone can get up there, they might be able to wriggle through.’

  ‘What do you think, Gerald?’ Ruby said. ‘You’re the rock climber.’

  Gerald inspected the stone facing around the drawbridge. It was as smooth and featureless as a pane of glass. There were no gaps to gain a foothold.

  ‘Don’t think I can climb this one,’ he said. Then he had an idea.

  ‘Ruby, remember how you got into the house at Beaconsfield? That gymnast jump?’

  Ruby sized up the height of the drawbridge. ‘That’s got to be six or seven metres to the top,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’d need a tramp to even think about it.’

  Sam paced across the courtyard and looked back at the arched entryway.

  ‘What if we did a totem pole? Gerald on the bottom, me on his shoulders?’

  Ruby considered it for a second. Then she grabbed Gerald and shoved him against the drawbridge. ‘Don’t sneeze,’ she said.

  Gerald braced his back against the timber. Sam placed a foot on Gerald’s thigh then pushed up onto his shoulders. Gerald winced. He was still tender from the thin man’s attack weeks before. The thought of that cadaverous face unsettled him. Even if they were able to breach the fort’s defences and find Alisha, what would they do against three armed members of a deadly cult? Gerald took a deep breath. He had to concentrate.

  ‘You can come up anytime you want,’ Sam called to Ruby.

  He was met by silence.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked. He was facing the drawbridge and couldn’t see back to the courtyard.

  ‘You’re too short.’ Ruby’s voice was plain and to the point. ‘Here, try this.’ She held up a plastic chair.

  Sam clambered back to the ground, squeezing another wince from Gerald on the way down. Gerald placed the chair by the drawbridge and he and Sam reassembled their human ladder. Again, there was a pause.

  ‘Still not high enough,’ Ruby said. ‘Hold on, there might be something over here.’

  Soon Gerald was back standing on the chair, which was now balanced on a wooden crate. Sam scaled up and perched on Gerald’s shoulders, extracting more gasps of pain. There was a slight wobble between the chair and the box but they held.

  ‘Do you want to try anytime soon?’ Sam called down, running out of patience.

  ‘Feeling the strain are we?’ Gerald muttered under his breath.

  Ruby clambered up to be face-to-face with Gerald. ‘Muscle up, Mack. Yertle the turtle is coming through.’ She clamped a foot on his sore shoulder and pushed up. Gerald grimaced but held tight. Within seconds he heard Ruby exclaim a triumphant ‘ta-dah!’

  ‘Is she through?’ he called up.

  ‘Not yet,’ Ruby called back. ‘But I’ve got a hand in the gap. Just need to push up a bit more…’

  Gerald’s heart skipped a beat. A leg of the plastic chair was starting to buckle. He didn’t have time to open his mouth and shout a warning. The platform under his feet toppled. His right shoulder hit the stone ground hard, igniting a flash of pain which surged throughout his body. He took a boot to the face as Sam crashed down on top of him.

  Gerald clamped a hand to his mouth, the warm tang of blood on his lips. They both ended up on their backs, gazing at Ruby dangling by her hands, gripping the top of the drawbridge.

  ‘Hold on!’ Sam yelled.

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ she grunted.

  Ruby drew her knees up to her chin and planted her feet flat on the wooden boards of the drawbridge. She pushed out. Her head raised above the gap between the massive door and the stone wall.

  Gerald glanced at Sam. ‘We might have to catch her.’

  ‘I heard that!’ Ruby called down.

  She swung a leg through the overhang and before they could shout any more encouragement she squeezed through to the other side.

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Then came the sound of iron chains clattering through the notches in the wall. The drawbridge was coming down. Gerald shoved Sam hard and they both rolled clear as the wooden door slammed onto the ground.

  Ruby appeared in the archway. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That got away from me a bit.’

  The three of them crossed the drawbridge and entered the fortress.

  Chapter 14

  The skies opened and rain pelted down as Gerald, Ruby and Sam trudged up a steep path into the fort. Stone walls rose high on either side. Gerald guessed that even if they were on the back of a rampaging war elephant, archers from centuries gone by could still fire down on them with ease. This castle had been built to stand strong.

  They reached the top of the rise and found a wide grassed area boxed in by more stone walls. There was no one else to be seen.

  ‘Keep close,’ Gerald said. ‘If they don’t know we saw them, we may be able to snatch Alisha back.’

  They made for the nearest wall and followed the edge of the gardens towards a set of gates. The archway was wide open and they ran through.

  Gerald ducked into a cloister that ran around the outskirts of a large rectangular garden. The others followed him. They stopped in the shadows, relieved to find some shelter from the downpour, and watched as the rain gathered intensity. Water gushed from spouts jutting from the roof onto the path in front of them.

  Gerald nursed his injured shoulder and ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. A lump was forming where Sam had kicked him. He spat a glob of blood onto the stonework at his feet and shook his head with frustration.

  ‘Now what?’ It was Sam. He sounded defeated. ‘This place is enormous. They could be anywhere.’

  ‘So you want to quit?’ Gerald snapped. ‘You want us to leave Alisha?’ He was tired and sore.

  Sam turned on him. ‘I didn’t say that.’ He shoved Gerald in the chest. Gerald fell heavily against a pillar, sparking a fresh burst of pain through his shoulder.

  ‘Dammit!’ Gerald cried. ‘You stupid—’

  Ruby threw herself between the boys before the first punch could be thrown. She grabbed her brother.

  ‘Stop it!’ she hissed. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  Sam glowered at Gerald but said nothing. He pushed Ruby aside and flopped next to a column a short distance away.

  Ruby was furious. ‘We’ve got to find Alisha,’ she said. ‘You two can kill each other after that.’

  Gerald stared out into the rain-soaked night. He took a deep breath and exhaled. He was tired of everything going wrong. He wanted to forget about his fortune, about his family history. He wanted to go…

  Home.

  Gerald blinked back tears. His eyes stung. He told himself it was because of his shoulder. He exhaled again and repeated t
he advice he’d given himself before: concentrate. All the other stuff could wait. Including arguing with Sam.

  Gerald could make out the silhouettes of a number of buildings on the far side of the gardens, maybe a hundred metres away. There was no sign of any people. If they were going to find Alisha, they were going to have to start exploring.

  ‘We need to look for her,’ he said to Ruby. His words were almost lost in the noise of the rain. Ruby nodded then went to her brother and spoke in his ear. Sam remained seated for a moment, scowling into the night. When he dragged himself up he refused to meet Gerald’s eyes.

  Gerald led the way along the cloisters to their left, keeping well inside the roofline. They reached a doorway that led through the rain to the ground floor of a large rectangular building, set around a central courtyard. They ducked inside. A line of arched windows, set close to the ground, looked inwards across a patchwork of shrubs towards the opposite wing.

  Gerald knelt by the nearest window and peered across the garden.

  ‘There!’

  He pointed to the opposite side. ‘Do you see it?’ he asked Ruby. ‘That yellow glow.’

  Faint and barely visible through the sheets of rain was a dull lamp inside one of the ground-floor rooms.

  ‘That’s got to be them,’ Ruby said. ‘So what do we do?’

  Gerald looked to Sam, who was staring into the shadows. ‘What do you think?’

  Sam didn’t move. ‘Whatever you want.’

  Terrific. Gerald shook his head. ‘We better see what we’re up against,’ he said.

  A ribcage of stone columns ran the length of the building. The internal walls had decayed or been demolished long ago. Gerald, Ruby and Sam jogged to the end of their wing, keeping in the shadows. They reached the final turn then pulled up short. A huge pile of rubble blocked their path. A section of the first floor had caved in.

  ‘Great,’ Sam said. ‘Now what are we going to do?’

  Gerald looked at the ceiling. The section closest to the inner wall had fallen through but the outer part was intact. It was supported by three rows of columns, forming a mezzanine that overlooked the ground level.

  ‘We can use this,’ Gerald said. ‘If we can get to that ledge we should be able to sneak along the length of the building and spy down on them.’