Quaint eyed the grizzled bunch. ‘Brace yourself, Butter.’
Butter swallowed hard. ‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it, boss?’
‘Only if they hit you.’
‘What next we do then, boss? We run or we fight?’
‘Considering the numbers, not to mention the obvious disposition of those chaps, if we had a choice, I would have to say that perhaps discretion was the order of the day.’
‘Then we run?’
‘The problem is, Butter—we don’t have a choice. This place seems to have only one entrance…and one exit, and we have to get through that lot to reach it.’
‘Fight it is then?’
‘Afraid so, old chum,’ Quaint suddenly sprinted towards the oncoming rush of men, and launched himself upon the nearest one to him. His fists flailed wildly about. Within seconds, the pack of men was upon him, but Cornelius Quaint was not a man to go down without a fight. ‘Steel yourself, Butter!’ yelled Quaint, like a battle cry, as he left his Inuit companion behind him.
Butter shot a nervous glance from Quaint to the looming storm of men, and then back to Quaint again. ‘Boss, what do these men want with us?’
‘Who knows,’ replied Quaint, head-butting a man who’d just caught him a nasty blow on the jaw. ‘We’ll ask questions once we’re done.’
‘What shall I do, boss? I do not like to fight!’
‘It’s a simple theory, Butter—hit as many men as you can, as hard as you can—and don’t stop until you’re the only one left standing,’ shouted Quaint in reply as he jostled with a heavy-set foe. ‘If it makes it easier—imagine they’re a pack of walruses!’ He linked both his hands and smashed them down hard onto his foe’s back, bringing his knee up at the same time. The man hit the floor.
Butter gritted his teeth, and threw himself into the raging pack.
‘Good lad,’ said Quaint with a grin, but he couldn’t keep his eyes on Butter long—he had more pressing matters of his own to consider.
As Quaint was the first to attack, his group of opponents was quite a bit larger than Butter’s, and his furious fighting had to increase in ferocity also. No quarter could be spared, and he was damn sure none would be given. Drawing his fist back as far as he could, battling against grabbing hands from the rear, Quaint threw another punch at an assailant. The man tried to shrug it off, but the sheer force of will behind the showman’s blow had sent him staggering off balance, wheezing like a prize-fighting boxer caught on the ropes. The man teetered, only his body’s reflexes keeping him standing, and then he crashed unconscious onto the wet stone floor.
Given a little respite from the grappling pack, Quaint quickly joined Butter’s side, just in time. ‘Keep your back to me!’ he commanded. ‘Get in as close as you can like a rugger scrum. Don’t let them land a solid shot. Got that?’
‘I will try my best, boss,’ said Butter, surveying the swathes of clenched fists, raised weapons and gritted teeth before him. ‘But these odds do not favour us.’
‘What have I told you before, my friend?’ said Quaint, snatching up his unconscious attacker’s wooden stave from the ground. ‘Always play against the odds—it makes things far more satisfying.’
‘Only if you win,’ whispered Butter to himself.
Quaint threw himself into the mass of men, and was doing his best to disarm as many as possible with a few well-placed jabs with the stave. Considering the odds were indeed stacked against him, he was doing rather well. Using the stave as a brace, Quaint threaded the wooden post behind an assailant’s arm, and wrenched it back as far as he could. The man screamed in agony as the bones in his forearm snapped. His metal staff fell to the ground with a heavy clang, and Quaint quickly snatched it up. Trading up on his weapons, he brought the metal pole into contact with as many heads as he could.
Quaint hated physical violence—but that wasn’t to say he was no good at it. Many decades before in his wild, impetuous youth, he had befriended a bamboo-seller whilst travelling through the Yahn province of Northern China. The man had taught Quaint some basic attack and defence techniques—most of them involving a sturdy three-foot bamboo cane. The young Cornelius Quaint was a hungry learner, and this was advantageous considering the long metal pole that he now brandished between his hands. He jabbed frantically at the baying crowd, as sprays of blood smattered his hands and cuffs. Men were falling to the ground every second, clutching battered body parts, but still the combatants mindlessly continued their path, clambering over the bodies of the fallen to get at Quaint and his companion.
Smaller and far more nimble than his employer, Butter crawled on his hands and knees in the midst of the battle, amazingly untouched, letting the thrashing men around him consume each other. Every now and again he would leap to his feet and kick out when someone came near him. Even though Quaint’s plan was working, the tide couldn’t flow in his direction for ever. Butter was suddenly grabbed by his anorak’s hood and dragged across the oily ground, as the pack of men split into two warring factions. This increased the overall area of the fighting space, and soon Butter was swallowed by the maelstrom of fists and feet.
Trying desperately to elbow his way over to his friend, Quaint clambered on men’s shoulders as clamouring hands groped and scratched at him. A bald-headed man dressed in grease-stained overalls got lucky, and grabbed a handful of Quaint’s grey-brown curls. The man yanked back with all his strength, and Quaint had no choice but to go with the flow, lest his hair be yanked from his scalp, and he kicked out with his heels against his aggressors as he was dragged onto the ground. As he felt an onset of feet kicking at him—striking his ribs, his legs, his chest—the metal pole was wrestled from Quaint’s grasp, but he grabbed hold of one of his attackers, and managed to hoist himself back up onto his feet. Like a sledgehammer to the guts, Quaint landed a satisfying punch on a nearby attacker.
However, his sense of victory was short-lived as he noticed a flash of his Inuit companion’s jet black hair, caught in a headlock by a huge grotesquery of a man. His immediate thought was to get to Butter as fast as he could—a thought suddenly marred by the appearance of a limp-haired youth barring his way.
‘Come ’ere, you old bastard! You’re dead!’ he sneered, stabbing a dagger menacingly around him as he approached. ‘Let’s be ’avin’ you then!’
Quaint slapped the youth with the back of his hand, and brought his knee swiftly up into the lad’s groin. The young man collapsed onto the ground clutching his privates.
‘That’ll teach you to disrespect your elders,’ quipped Quaint.
Suddenly, Quaint’s blood ran cold as he heard an animalistic wail echo around the marketplace. With bizarre fascination, he watched as one by one, the men piled on top of Butter were thrown off as if grabbed by unseen hands, cast aside like toy soldiers. Men’s screams littered the air. Pure, horrific, unfettered screams, and in the centre of the thrall, he saw Butter, his tusk-handled knife in his hand. An expression of malice was etched upon his wizened face, making him almost unrecognisable to Quaint. Again and again, the little man sliced around him with his blade like a warrior bred for battle. Blood spots decorated his cheeks and hands, and he was gaining the upper hand. But just as the tide seemed to turn in his direction, it was all over so quickly. Butter lost his grip on the mêlée as if was suddenly fighting in quicksand. One of the men moved around behind him, and grabbed at his flailing arms, receiving a nasty gash to his arm for his efforts. With Butter promptly restrained, he was soon obscured by a mass of bodies. Unfortunately for him, Quaint was so preoccupied with the sight that he quite forgot his own predicament.
He was suddenly grabbed around the neck by a large pair of mitten-like hands, and wrenched backwards off his feet. Quaint clawed at the thick arm around his neck as a heavy black shroud began to descend upon him. He was finding it hard to stay conscious. His attacker released him, and Quaint sank to his knees, all strength sapped from his body. He was surrounded instantly by at least four men, their blurred, elongated faces le
ering at him as if he were standing within his own circus’s Hall of Mirrors.
‘What…d-do you want from me?’ he mumbled, wiping blood-spittle from his lips with his white cotton cuff. ‘You…c-can’t interrogate me…if I’m dead.’
‘Who said we wanted to interrogate you?’ asked one foe.
‘You’re goin’ the same way as your mate over there,’ agreed another.
Two men brusquely pushed through the pack of men with an unconscious Butter in their arms. They cast the Inuit’s apparently lifeless body onto the cold, wet ground.
‘What have you…done to him?’ asked Quaint, staring at the sight disbelievingly.
Whether his assailants answered him or not, Quaint didn’t hear. Unconsciousness climbed up his body, coiling its icy clinch around him, and his battered frame hit the wet, cold concrete ground with a sickening thud.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Chilling Tomb
WITH NO IDEA how long he had been unconscious, Quaint was rudely awakened some time later by Butter slapping his cheeks, calling his name repeatedly. Immediately after the spark of life reignited Quaint’s hazy mind, a multitude of questions jostled each other in an undulating swarm, all vying to be answered first. Where am I? Why is it so dark? Who were those men? Am I dead? No, I can’t be…I’m in too much pain to be dead.
‘Boss, please wake!’ called Butter through the darkness.
‘I’m here, Butter…I’m…awake,’ said Quaint hoarsely, his eyes slowly opening.
‘I am so pleased you are alive!’ said Butter elatedly.
‘As am I, my friend.’
Butter squeezed his hand tighter. ‘How are you?’
‘I’ve been better.’
‘I am so sorry, boss; there were too many in number. They were victorious.’
‘Yes,’ said Quaint, rubbing at his ribs. ‘I noticed that part.’
‘I only woke myself a short while ago.’
‘Where the hell are we?’
‘I…I am unsure, boss. It is so dark.’
‘And cold…it’s blood-chillingly cold!’ snapped Quaint, sitting up sharply. Immediately, he felt his body scream at him, and he clutched at his ribs. ‘Guess…I shouldn’t have got up so quick…Head’s swishing around like a fish in a bowl…and speaking of fish! From the stench of it, I’d presume we’re still in the market…in that large metal container we saw earlier. From the sound of the machinery, my guess was spot on. It’s an industrial ice box…to freeze the fish solid, ready for transportation,’ Quaint said weakly, rubbing at his bruised jaw, and trying to click his arm back into its socket. ‘And us too, if we don’t find a way to get out of here pretty damn quick. If those bastards out there didn’t finish me off, there’s no way I’m going to let a bloody ice box do it!’
In the pitch darkness, Quaint struggled to his feet, with Butter helping to support his weight. He limped over to the wall and traced his hands across it tentatively, searching the cold, glassy wet walls for the door. His fingers brushed against a stack of wooden crates, and his nose told him they contained a consignment of fish.
‘If this ice box is used to keep the fish frozen, we don’t have long until it starts to chill us too. An hour at the most, I’d guess…but then again, who knows how much air is in here. We might have been out of it for hours; we might only get twenty minutes. After the pasting I just received…I’m not exactly at my peak.’ Quaint tousled his curls madly with both hands. ‘Think, Cornelius! This is a machine. All machines work on the same principle—power in, function out. There must be an external cooling mechanism inlet somewhere, pumping in the vapours. If we can isolate that…maybe we can shut it down before we freeze to death. Then the hard part is getting out before we asphyxiate, because these industrial ice boxes are designed to be completely airtight -double-reinforced metal doors with rubber seals—which only serves to increase our peril.’
‘A machine, boss? To make ice?’ questioned Butter. ‘How silly!’
‘We British can’t just step outside the front door and pick up a handful of snow to keep our food fresh, you know,’ explained Quaint, flapping his arms about him, trying to keep warm. ‘We have to improvise artificially…mechanically.’
‘Do you think we can make breakdown of this ice machine?’
‘If we don’t, my friend, we shall almost certainly freeze to death,’ said Quaint, trying to search in the pitch blackness for the gas inlet pipe. ‘Unless we get lucky and suffocate first, of course -but either way we’re in big trouble.’
‘If only we had light,’ said Butter, scratching at his thick, black, matted fringe.
‘Hang on, we do! My tinder-box is right here in my coat pocket,’ Quaint said, fumbling down his body. He slapped his forehead with his palm. ‘Blast! The coat that happens to be outside.’
‘I have no Plan B, boss.’
‘Join the club.’
‘Then…I am useless.’
‘Far from it, Butter, you’re my sounding board—added to that, you prevent me talking to myself like a madman, and that’s a very important job!’ said Quaint, with a wince as he lifted his arm. The pain from where the dog had sunk its teeth into him earlier was now pulsating in sympathy with the rest of his battered body. ‘Come on, Cornelius, you’re a bloody conjuror. You’ve gotten out of far worse scrapes than this. There must be something we can use to try and lever our way out.’
Butter moved over to the heavy metal door and began slamming his weight against it, but it was pointless. The locking mechanism was designed to keep the door completely airtight, and true to its design, it didn’t budge so much as an inch. His diminutive frame had all the effect of a rotten tomato against a brick wall. Quaint meanwhile, had gone decidedly quiet, unnoticed under the noise that the Inuit was making. He rubbed furiously at his arms and upper body, in an attempt to get his blood flowing, but it almost seemed an impossible task.
‘Must…sit down for a little bit,’ said Quaint. Each word was a strain to speak, each breath a struggle to take as the coolant vapour burned his lungs. ‘Yes…that’s it. I just need…five minutes’…rest.’ He curled his body into a tight foetal position on the ice box’s freezing cold floor, desperate to keep warm, his teeth rattling in his gums.
Meanwhile, Butter continued his relentless assault upon the door’s frame with his hammering fists—oblivious to the slumped figure of an unmoving and unspeaking Cornelius Quaint, drifting a hair’s breadth from death’s embrace.
CHAPTER XXV
The Buried Secret
SEVERAL MILES AWAY, the moon reflected the slumbering sun’s glow like a golden teardrop suspended lazily in the starry sky. An off-kilter spire breached the diamond-speckled night, casting a long, crooked shadow across the muddy graveyard.
‘So this is Crawditch abbey, eh?’ said Mr Reynolds.
‘What’s left of it, yes,’ answered Bishop Courtney as he stood with his hands on his hips examining the church. ‘It’s hardly a functioning place of worship any longer, Mr Reynolds, not since the larger building was built over in Lambeth.’
Reynolds sucked on his cigar, and exhaled smoke rings into the sky. ‘I suppose the locals only use this place for weddings and funerals nowadays, Bishop, and there are precious few of both around here.’
The Bishop clutched a small carpetbag under one arm, and a lantern in the other, and he called over his shoulder to his coach driver, sitting high at the front of the carriage like a pensive vulture. ‘Melchin, old chap, keep an eye out for Mr Hawkspear, will you? Tell him we have pressed on ahead.’ Melchin puffed on his pipe, and grunted a reply. ‘Come, Mr Reynolds, the crypt is this way,’ and he led Reynolds to an arched wooden door set into the side of the church wall. He shone his lantern down the haphazard stone steps into the darkness below. ‘There is something of interest down here that I wish to show you.’
At the bottom of the steps the two men reached a wrought-iron gate. The Bishop pulled a small bronze key from a pouch affixed to his belt, and unlocked the gate with a jolting
snap. Once through, the crypt opened up a little more, and Bishop Courtney used the lantern to light a wall-mounted torch. It sprang into life immediately, bathing the enclosed space in yellowish-brown light. Reynolds’s eyes adjusted to the light, and he scoured every inch of the crypt like an automaton. It was difficult to see what could possibly be of interest to him in a chokingly dry cellar bereft of anything of value.
‘I take it there’s nothing left in this crypt worth stealing then?’ Reynolds asked, with a sardonic grin. ‘Otherwise, maybe I would’ve been here before, eh?’
‘Yes, well, that’s the trick isn’t it, Mr Reynolds, keeping the thieves out—or at the very least, dissuading them.’ Bishop Courtney swung his arm in an arc around the bare room. ‘Most common thieves presume this place was robbed of all its riches years ago. This is due largely to a rumour propagated by none other than the Anglican Church itself.’
‘They went to an awful lot of trouble for some poky old crypt, didn’t they? That infers that there is something to find here.’
‘Astute as always, Mr Reynolds.’
‘Right…so what’s here then? Treasure?’ asked Reynolds.
‘Of a sort,’ answered the Bishop, his eyes sparkling with something akin to gleeful pride. ‘But it isn’t gold, silver or jewels, my lad…it is of far, far greater value than that. Allow me to explain; buried in that cemetery out there is—’
The Bishop suddenly broke off mid-sentence as he heard several scuffling footsteps approaching down the stone steps towards them. The lithe form of a man in his early thirties appeared at the foot of the steps, pushing a second man in front of him, and the torchlight flickered in the breeze as he entered the crypt.
‘Ah, Mr Hawkspear,’ greeted the Bishop. ‘So glad you could join us…and you have brought company, I see.’
Hawkspear was a bedraggled young man with pinched features and eyes like azure pools of water. Beneath tendrils of greasy black hair was a low brow and thick, bushy eyebrows that gave him a constant scowl. Hawkspear pushed the bound, gagged and bloodied landlord of The Black Sheep tavern in front of him, and the man stumbled awkwardly on the uneven ground. Hawkspear shoved Peach roughly to his knees in front of Bishop Courtney’s portly frame.
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