‘Not this time,’ Quaint replied. He half considered a lie, but he knew Destine better than that. She was too used to his techniques to fall for any bluff. ‘I just don’t know what to believe any more. About what happened to us, I mean. Ever since I drank that elixir, I seem to have found myself with far more questions than answers. I can feel it trickling through my veins sometimes. Especially at night. I know it’s there…that it’s real…but I mean, think about it, Destine. Eternal life? Immortality? It’s the stuff of a penny dreadful, surely. Can it really be true?’
Madame Destine took a brief sip of her wine before answering. ‘Are you asking me if the concept of immortality can be true, or merely our recent exposure to it?’
‘Both,’ answered Quaint.
‘Well, one answer cannot be true without the other. I am afraid that I am not the all-knowing oracle that you often paint me to be, my sweet. Since my clairvoyance left me, I can only give you my personal opinion rather than a resolution based upon fact. True, immortality is a subject that belongs in the realms of the fantastic…but that does not necessarily preclude it from being impossible.’
Quaint pushed the food around his plate, toying with the vegetables absentmindedly. ‘So there’s no way of knowing for sure if that’s what really happened to us?’
Destine smiled. ‘Only one, my sweet, but knowing how impatient you are, I do not think you will be content to wait until the end of time to see if we are still drawing breath.’
‘Destine, I need to know now!’ said Quaint. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable with the thought of unknown chemicals rushing around my veins. They could be doing anything to our insides. They turned my bloody hair white for starters!’
‘And healed your bullet wound and repaired all your cuts and abrasions too. Cornelius, your point is?’ enquired Destine.
‘My point is that the stuff could be dangerous! What if we both dropped down dead tomorrow?’ asked Quaint.
The Frenchwoman raised an eyebrow. ‘Then you would have received your answer, non? And know that your fears were well founded. But what if we are not dead tomorrow? It is pointless to worry about something that you cannot influence, Cornelius.’
‘That’s easy for an optimist like you to say,’ said Quaint, taking his frustrations out on the partridge, reloading his fork once more. ‘I need more proof than that!’
‘Ah! And perhaps therein lies your quandary, my sweet,’ said Madame Destine, circling her fingertip around the rim of her glass. ‘What is proof for one is not necessarily proof for another.’ She cocked her head to the side. ‘Let me put it to you this way: I can feel the change inside my body just as well as you can. I choose to accept that the elixir was genuine, and the antidote that we consumed somehow awakened the essence that had remained dormant for so long. But that is only what I choose to believe. You may choose to believe that it is nothing of the sort. You may choose to believe that the antidote was just that…an antidote that quelled the ravages of the poison just as it was intended to do. That is the simple answer. The one that requires no faith.’
‘So I’m expected to have faith now?’ quizzed Quaint, his fork halting in mid-air, inches from his mouth. ‘Don’t get all pious on me, Madame. That’s your answer to everything. That everything has some sort of cosmic meaning, even if mere humans aren’t supposed to know what it is. I’m not talking about a quest for faith…I’m talking about a quest for the truth!’
‘Is that why you are running around the docks night after night? Seeking a fight with the truth? Or is that merely your way of trying to put the theory of immortality to the test?’ asked Destine, a definite barb to her voice.
‘I never even entertained the thought!’ Quaint slammed his fists upon the table and partridge, vegetables and potatoes flew into the air as the plate flipped up, landing with a smash upon the floor. ‘But even if I were, where’s the risk if I can live for ever?’
Although she was positively incensed by his temper, and even more embarrassed by it, Destine reached across the table and took hold of Quaint’s shaking hands.
‘Be careful, my sweet,’ she whispered. ‘Immortality is a very dissimilar beast to invulnerability. You may not be able to die, but you can still be killed…and that is a very big difference – especially to one as reckless as you. Anger is never the answer to anything, Cornelius, have I not always taught you that? Together we shall find the answers; together we shall discover the truth…in time.’
‘A coincidental choice of words for an immortal, Madame.’
‘It was?’ enquired Destine, innocently. ‘I had not noticed.’
Quaint’s eyes fell to the mess on the floor. As the waiter rushed over, he gave the conjuror a decidedly distasteful glower. It was not the mess he was worried about – it was the fact that he had tipped a whole bottle of poison onto Quaint’s plate and the man had not even taken a mouthful.
‘It just…slipped,’ Quaint mumbled.
‘Accidents happen; it’s quite all right, sir,’ the waiter said, his expression saying exactly the opposite, as he set to work mopping up the steaming mess. ‘Perhaps I can fetch sir a replacement?’
Quaint waved the man away. ‘I seem to have lost my appetite all of a sudden.’
‘Oh, but really it’s no trouble!’
‘I said no!’ snapped Quaint, to the astonishment of the waiter, who scooped the food onto a plate and hurried from the conjuror’s table as quickly as his bony legs could carry him.
He pushed through the double doors into the galley and headed back through the enclosed white-tiled corridors. As he turned the corner, he nearly leapt out of his leathery skin as he bumped into Heinrich Nadir once again, taking root near the ship’s ice-box.
‘Has he finished the meal already?’ Nadir asked.
‘No, sir, I…I’m sorry but there was a problem,’ said the waiter sheepishly. ‘He appeared to get angry at something his companion said…he knocked the plate onto the floor.’
‘Did he eat any of it?’ Nadir demanded.
The waiter looked to the floor. ‘No, sir. I don’t believe he did.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Yes, it is! Does that mean I don’t get my money?’ asked the waiter.
‘I meant that’s a shame…for you.’
Nadir slipped a knife from inside his pocket and thrust it into the waiter’s heart. The man wheezed as a deep red stain seeped through his white clothes, and he fell limply to the floor. Looking around, Nadir unlocked the door to the large ice-box and clumsily steered the dead man into it, stuffing his body into the corner.
‘At least the incinerator will feast on one soul tonight…even if it is not my intended target,’ Nadir seethed, dusting off his suit. ‘I can see that killing you is going to cause me some bother, Herr Quaint. Next time I will not fail.’
CHAPTER X
The Second Shot
AFEW DAYS FOLLOWING, the Silver Swan was far out to sea and making good time as her great steam-powered engines motored the ship through the ocean. Waking just after dawn, Cornelius Quaint decided to take a morning constitutional along the deserted deck. He had so far lapped the ship six times, a distance equivalent to a couple of miles.
Quaint strolled along, setting his eyes out to sea. Soon he came upon a gentle old man idly mopping the deck as best he could – only for a wall of water to rise from the side of the ship and soak the walkway. As Quaint approached him, he stowed his mop into his iron bucket against the railings.
‘What is this now, Mr Quaint? Seven or eight times?’ he asked.
‘Six, Alf…only six,’ Quaint replied.
‘You’ll wear out your shoe leather at this rate,’ Alf said cheerily, wiping his forehead with a cloth from his overall pocket. ‘So which is it?’
Quaint frowned. ‘Pardon me?’
Alf chuckled to himself. ‘In my experience, there’re only two reasons why a man loses himself in a haze such as yours, Mr Quaint. You’re either walking to remember something�
�or walking to forget it. So which is it?’
‘A bit of both, I suppose,’ Quaint smiled. ‘The walking helps.’
‘Oh? And do you reckon whatever it is it’ll shift any time soon?’
The conjuror shook his head. ‘Not until we reach Egypt, at least.’
Alf nodded his head knowingly. ‘Bit o’ sunshine does wonders, Mr Quaint, you’ll see,’ he chirped, as he wrung out his mop and continued to swab the puddles of seawater from the deck. ‘I’ll see you on your next lap. That is, unless you manage to shift that cloud afore then, eh?’
Quaint walked past the old man, but spun around as a loud crash behind him set his nerves on fire. Two smartly dressed children thrust open the door from inside and rushed out onto the open deck. One was a boy of about five years old, dressed in a blue sailor suit, whilst the other was an older girl. All pigtails, gap teeth and pleated skirt. They were both squealing madly, running in circles around Alf’s bucket playing tag. Slipping on the wet deck, the young girl careered into her brother, sending both the young boy and Alf’s bucket flying.
‘Bleedin’ mongrels, what have I told you?’ cursed Alf, shooing the children away with his mop. ‘That’s the third time them little buggers’ve knocked my bucket over this morning. Their parents need to keep ‘em locked up!’
‘Children will be children, Alf,’ the conjuror said with a smile.
‘Aye, mebbe,’ Alf half-heartedly agreed, swabbing up the water. ‘You got any of your own, Mr Quaint?’
‘None.’ Quaint held his smile, feeling the corners of his mouth twitch.
Children. Now there was a subject seldom spoken of. He was fifty-five years old and it was far too late for him to even think about starting a family – even if he weren’t blessed with immortality. But that did add another layer to the question of his ‘condition’. How could he watch his kin grow up and grow old as he was captured in a perpetual state of eternity? How could he explain that? How could he expect them to live with that as he buried them one by one as he himself never aged a single day? He didn’t think he could bear it. He didn’t even dare think about it. No, it was better this way. He was better this way. With a wave of his hand he continued his stroll, his mind quickly regaining its clouded state.
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he failed to notice the furtive form of Heinrich Nadir peering out onto the deck through the porthole set into the door behind him. The German turned to a man at his side clothed in the grease-stained garb of ship’s engineer. His low brow overshadowed his simple features, and he slapped a heavy iron wrench into his open hand.
‘That’s the one there, is it?’ he asked Nadir. ‘The tall one?’
‘Ja. Do you know what you are to do?’
‘Yep. I’m going to wait for him to pass again, crack this tool onto his skull, and then watch his brains go splat all over the deck,’ rattled the engineer, taking up his position behind the door.
‘I do admire a man that takes pride in his work,’ said Nadir.
Some minutes later, Cornelius Quaint had nearly completed yet another lap and he was beginning to tire, so he decided to make this his last. Destine would no doubt be waking by now. As he saw Alf in the distance, he steeled himself for the impending conversation. So far that morning, every time he had passed him, the deckhand had continued his conversation virtually from the last word without missing a beat. Quaint prayed that he would gloss over the subject of children. Perhaps if he were to trigger a conversation first, maybe it would throw Alf off the scent?
‘Nasty storm coming in from the west there,’ Quaint chimed.
‘So, what would you have preferred then, a boy or a girl?’ Alf asked.
Quaint could have spat.
‘Me, I’ve got three boys and a girl,’ continued Alf. ‘They’re all grown up now course, but when they were young? Strewth! The boys were no trouble, but my girl was a proper madam, by crikey! I swear she’s to blame for this sorry state of affairs upstairs!’ He whisked off his cloth cap to reveal a practically bald head, save for sporadic patches of white tufts of hair. ‘I used to have a thick mop of chestnut up top, and now look at it! Old age happens to us all at some point, I suppose.’
‘Hmm,’ agreed Quaint. ‘I suppose.’
‘I think you might be right about that storm, Mr Quaint,’ said Alf, looking out to sea. ‘Looks like there’s something nasty heading our way.’
Alf could not have realised just how right he was.
Behind him, the door to the deck silently swung open and through it stepped the engineer. He scoured the soft pink flesh at the back of Alf’s skull and made a mental note to sort him out too once his target was taken care of – just for fun. Taking a couple of swift steps towards Quaint, he raised the wrench in the air…
Just then, the door behind the engineer was smashed open and its full weight slammed into his back. His boots skidded on the slippery deck, launching him at a rate of knots towards the ship’s railings, flipping him upside down and over the side like a rag doll. The last thing the engineer saw was two small children on their backsides in a pool of water with an upturned bucket between them, their excited squeals masking his screams as his skull smashed against the ship’s hull.
Quaint and Alf spun around.
‘Sorry, mister!’ exclaimed the boy with an impish grin, before he and his sister poked out their tongues and ran off.
‘Bloody damn bastard kids,’ mumbled Alf.
‘Oh, it’s just high spirits,’ said Quaint merrily. ‘It’s not as if anyone was hurt.’
CHAPTER XI
The Third Crack
ANOTHER WEEK PASSED, and Cornelius Quaint wished for a far quicker way to get to Egypt. He often looked up at the sky, wishing that he had a pair of wings like the seagulls that flocked above the ship looking for scraps to eat. He had always known that getting to Egypt would mean a long and arduous journey, but Madame Destine had convinced him that he should learn to calm his mind, and focus on the job at hand when the time came. But he could not afford to let go. He was primed for action and Cornelius Quaint was not a man who liked waiting.
For anything.
It was late into the evening, and Quaint was sat at the long wooden bar in the tavern onboard the ship. It was small but comfortable, decorated to resemble the lounge of an English gentleman’s club. Quaint had never felt particularly at home in those places – too much pipe smoke and bloated posturing – but Tanner’s Tavern served a great pint of pale ale and the conjuror had been glued to his seat all evening, way past the landlord’s bell calling time.
The conjuror’s mind was characteristically patchwork, endlessly replaying recent events and, in particular, Madame Destine’s words on their first night onboard. ‘We are all servants to our destinies,’ she had said.
And she was right, not that it made Quaint feel any better. Was it all really down to destiny? Could it be that cruel? If only he had sensed Renard’s presence in London some weeks past he would not be in this situation. He would be stood over the Frenchman’s grave, spitting into it. But would he be at the grave alone? Even though Renard had been Quaint’s most hated foe for much of his life, the man was so much more to Madame Destine. His betrayal ran so much deeper – within her blood. Having a callous, cold-blooded murderer for a son was a heavy weight to bear on its own, but knowing that the child she had brought into the world was mortal enemy to the man that had become her surrogate son was heartbreaking. Even the conjuror had to admit there was a certain sense of painful irony about that, and, strangely, that made Quaint smile. Every now and then, he was forced to revisit his past failures – and in truth, allowing Renard to draw breath after the first time they had crossed swords was a mistake. But Renard was finally dead now. No longer could he torment him. A score had been settled, a lifetime of battles won. So why then did he still feel on edge? Why could he not allow his mind to wander free? Why was he plagued with such doubts, as if death were stalking him from around the nearest corner? Had the conjuror been gifted with ey
es in the back of his head, he would have solved that mystery.
Heinrich Nadir watched Quaint through the glass of the tavern’s door, knowing that this was the night that his prey would die. There had been two slip-ups already and Nadir knew that he could ill afford a third. The closer they got to Egypt, the more his time was running out. This attempt would have to go like clockwork.
The landlord smiled politely as the German approached the bar, but flicked his eyes to the large clock above the main entrance. ‘I’m just about to close up, sir…but I can fix you a quick nightcap if you wish?’
‘A small cognac, thank you,’ Nadir said, battling with a twitch in his right eye as he took a stool next to Quaint. ‘Not having trouble sleeping, I hope?’
Quaint did not look up at this newcomer immediately; it was only when the German spoke that the flames of recognition were lit.
‘It’s being awake that I sometimes have trouble with,’ said Quaint, supping his ale. His sozzled eyes looked at Nadir’s face, transfixed by the multiple features swirling around in a whirlpool.
‘A rare complaint from a man on holiday,’ noted Nadir.
‘I never said I was on holiday,’ said Quaint.
‘Indeed?’ questioned Nadir. ‘You are an intriguing man, Herr Quaint.’
‘I hear that a lot,’ said Quaint, finishing his ale quickly.
‘Can I buy you another?’ Nadir asked.
‘No, thanks. I need to let Charlie here get some sleep. I’ve been bending his ear for hours. Right, Charlie?’ Quaint asked the landlord.
‘Always a pleasure hearing your old stories, Mr Quaint.’
Quaint slapped a handful of coins onto the bar and, with a wink to Charlie, he slid himself off his stool and tottered in a crooked line from the tavern. Nadir watched him zigzagging across the deck, the onrushing wind doing its best to dislodge his footing – and doing a good job of it too. The German’s face entertained a subtle smile, and had the landlord not been purposefully checking his pocket watch, he might have wondered about such a devious expression of delight.
The Eleventh Plague Page 5