The Equivoque Principle

by Darren Craske

  ‘Aye, this is the landlord as you ordered, Bishop,’ said Hawkspear, with a thick, Irish drawl. ‘Arthur Peach, his name is.’

  A spidery grin crept across Courtney’s fat face like a cracked window. ‘Splendid, Mr Hawkspear, simply splendid!’ The Bishop grasped Peach’s head, twisting it from side to side. His eyes noticed the assortment of fresh bruises littering the landlord’s face. ‘I see you had a little entertainment en route.’

  Hawkspear bowed. ‘Sorry, Bishop…he tried t’run. I had to convince him that it wasn’t a good idea. In me own special way, like.’

  The Bishop smiled—a full, blossoming smile this time—with eyes alight like burning coals in a fireplace. ‘Well, you had better hope he isn’t too badly damaged. I want him alive…before I kill him.’

  Peach moaned a mournful, sorrowful cry, and sniffed back petrified tears. His eyes bore into the Bishop, appealing for help.

  He would find none.

  The Bishop clenched his fist. ‘Stand him up! Now, you’re probably wondering why I dragged your carcass all the way across town, Mr Peach.’ The Bishop didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I have been given some disturbing news, you see. It seems that you had a visit from a man named Cornelius Quaint the other night, and like the gutless worm you are, you talked!’

  Peach whimpered again through his gagged mouth.

  ‘You informed him about Mr Hawkspear here,’ continued the Bishop. ‘A fact that led the man straight to the police. Luckily we have a man on the inside, and were able to contain that, but it has upset some carefully laid plans. Because of your slippage, I had to act quickly to secure the circus strongman’s release from his cell before he could be questioned fully. My thanks to Mr Hawkspear for a wonderful job with the acid…I hear it had the perfect effect.’

  ‘Indeed it did, Bishop. Aiden Miller is still at large, last I heard,’ said Hawkspear. ‘Crawditch police are chasin’ their tails as always.’

  ‘Splendid…the fool’s doing a wonderful job of spreading the fear for me,’ said the Bishop. ‘I almost wish I could employ him myself!’ Courtney suddenly bent closer to the landlord’s face. ‘I happen to be in the middle of a very sensitive project here, Mr Peach, and cannot allow anyone to bring trouble to my door. Because of your loose tongue the police now know that an Irishman named Hawkspear paid you to supply one of Quaint’s employees with a bottle of drugged whisky. You can understand why I’m a little upset, surely. And you—’ he said, jabbing the Irishman in the chest. ‘Next time use a bloody alias! Did they teach you nothing in prison?’

  Hawkspear lowered his clear blue eyes and stared down at his feet like an insolent child. ‘M’sorry, Bishop—I just wanted t’get it done, and get out. I didn’t know that Quaint bloke would be sniffin’ around.’

  Reynolds stepped forwards from the shadows. ‘Maybe we should remove the landlord’s gag, Bishop? You did say you wanted him alive, right?’ he offered, eying the landlord’s pale, sweaty face. ‘Look at him. He’s on the verge of collapse. It’s not like he’s going anywhere, is it?’

  ‘If you must,’ said the Bishop. ‘You’re right, Mr Reynolds, I don’t want the bastard passing out yet.’

  Reynolds grabbed the ragged gag, and pulled it free from Peach’s mouth. The landlord wheezed oxygen into his lungs, tasting the fresh air as if for the first time.

  The Bishop cleared his throat. ‘Mr Reynolds, would you be kind enough to hand me my bag?’

  Reynolds looked around, and spied the cloth carpetbag on the crypt’s stone floor. The Bishop snatched it from him and rummaged inside, pulling from it a pair of long-handled brass tongs and some squat, stub-bladed shears.

  ‘I found these items in Westminster Abbey’s archive room, Mr Peach. They’re from an age when peasants like you would be slaughtered for not obeying the word of the Lord. The Good Old Days, as I like to refer to them. Too bad it all had to end, eh?’ said an almost nostalgic Bishop Courtney. ‘This instrument was designed to purge the Devil from a man’s soul.’ He held the shears up for Peach to see them more clearly, taking pleasure from opening and closing the sharp, metal blades. ‘Shall we put them to the test?’ He held the tongs closer to Peach’s face, and a brief flicker of torchlight danced off the brassy metal of the tools.

  The landlord’s eyes glassed over with tears as he realised his fate. His hands bound behind his back, he begged for the Bishop’s mercy.

  ‘You don’t have much breath left, Mr Peach. I wouldn’t waste it if I were you.’

  ‘But…please! I had no choice!’ protested Peach.

  ‘You have a loose tongue, sir—and what do we do to people with loose tongues, Mr Hawkspear?’ asked the Bishop.

  Hawkspear cackled like an old crone. ‘We cut ’em off, my Lord.’

  ‘Indeed we do, Mr Hawkspear! Indeed we do,’ Bishop Courtney confirmed.

  Reynolds placed his hand on the Courtney’s shoulder, and the Bishop spun around, as if disturbed from a hypnotic trance.

  ‘Is this really necessary, Bishop? You have the man bound,’ he whispered.

  Courtney’s eyes flared. ‘Mister Reynolds, if you please!’ he seethed, as droplets of spittle formed on his bottom lip. ‘I will thank you to remember your place.’

  This had the desired affect on Reynolds, and he removed his hand quickly as ordered. ‘I apologise, Bishop, I didn’t mean to question you.’

  ‘This man must pay penance!’ squawked the Bishop.

  With Hawkspear holding his captive’s face firmly between his dirty, blood-stained fingers, the Bishop pushed the tongs towards his mouth, snapping the handles together. Peach tried to twist his face from the Irishman’s grasp; writhing like a fox caught in a trap, but Hawkspear was far too strong. The landlord was weeping freely now, begging for forgiveness, for release—but none came. Peach clamped his mouth shut, tears streaming down his sweaty face. The Bishop advanced with the snapping tongs.

  Again the Bishop pushed the tongs further into the man’s mouth, trying to force it open, scraping teeth and tearing gums as it went. A sickening crack suddenly echoed around the confines of the crypt. Several of Arthur Peach’s teeth snapped in half. The man himself was too stunned now to cry out, the pain too intense, as Courtney thrust the tools in further. The Bishop snapped with the tongs…and then slowly removed them from Arthur Peach’s terrified mouth, revealing the landlord’s tongue ensnared sharply between the brass pincers.

  ‘Now, Mr Peach,’ breathed the Bishop hoarsely, ‘we shall hear how you plead for mercy without a tongue. Mr Hawkspear…take these, and show him what I mean,’ he said, and handed Hawkspear the small, stub-bladed shears. The Irishman gladly held them tightly against the wrestling Peach’s cheek—and with one sharp snip—he severed the tip of the man’s tongue clean off. It fell to the floor with a wet thud.

  The sustained shock was too much for Peach, and he collapsed onto his knees, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. A spurt of dark red blood spilled from his mouth, coating his broken teeth and torn gums. The man coughed, tasting the blood that gushed down his throat. Suddenly, Peach began convulsing wildly on the crypt’s floor, his blood-stained hands flailing as if trying to snatch something in the air. He collapsed, shaking spasmodically, and spat a flurry of blood from his mouth, daubing his face in a crimson mask.

  Reynolds pushed past Hawkspear and bent down to investigate. ‘He’s choking, damn it!’ He searched Peach’s eyes for some sign of life, but it was too late…the man was balancing one step closer to death than he was to life, and the scales were tipped in death’s favour.

  The Bishop and Hawkspear watched in fascination at the macabre scene playing out before them and, with a final twitch of his body, Peach arched his back, stiffened his fingers and then suddenly relaxed. The landlord’s lungs exhaled like a bicycle with a slow, hissing puncture. The Bishop peered a little closer, rocking forward on the balls of his feet, risking a look into the dead man’s eyes.

  ‘The shock of it all was too much for him,’ said Reynolds, staring at the
body.

  ‘The Bishop did what had t’be done, so he did,’ snapped Hawkspear protectively.

  ‘Mr Hawkspear, take the landlord’s body up to the cemetery. Place it in the usual spot for the body-snatchers, as per our arrangement,’ said Courtney, wiping his bloodied hands on his robes.

  Hawkspear did as he was instructed. He bundled Peach’s body up over his shoulder, and carried it slowly up the stone steps to the outside night.

  ‘Arrangement?’ quizzed Reynolds. ‘You’ve got an arrangement with the body-snatchers now?’

  ‘That is correct, Mr Reynolds,’ Courtney said. ‘As long as Mr Hawkspear provides them with a regular supply of fresh bodies, they have agreed to leave the cemetery untouched. I can’t have those dreadful ghouls digging up the place looking for corpses now, can I?’

  ‘And…why is that then? What do you care if they dig the graveyard up?’

  ‘I was trying to tell you earlier, man, before we were rudely interrupted. It’s far too late now. Don’t worry, I’ll reveal all in time. Now, I must retire to Westminster…you should go back to Crawditch, keep an eye on things,’ the Bishop said, as he slapped Reynolds on the back like an old school chum. ‘The plan nears its fruition, my friend. Sooner than he thought, the residents will find the prospect of staying in that place extremely unappealing, and we can conclude our business. I told you all it would take would be a few dead bodies turning up.’

  ‘Yeah, but they’re not turning up, are they? Not if you’re selling them to the snatchers, at any rate. The folk of Crawditch are cowards, but all they’re doing is talking right now,’ said Reynolds. ‘Talking about curfews, talking about businesses shutting up, and that’s all. It’s not enough. If you want this place ready in time for the Queen’s orders, then we need to make a statement, Bishop! Something big.’

  The Bishop picked at his bottom teeth with his fingernail. ‘Now that’s what I admired about you in the first place, Mr Reynolds -you’ve got vision, and that is so hard to come by these days.’

  Reynolds slicked back a stray tail of hair from his forehead, and his penetrating eyes seemed to grow slightly darker, accentuating the thin scar that bisected his left cheek. ‘We need a big name, my Lord…we need to kill someone in whom the locals hold a great deal of faith, someone they look up to.’

  ‘I have the perfect target in mind,’ said Bishop Courtney as he forced a wan smile. ‘His name is Police Commissioner Oliver Dray.’

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The Prodigal

  IT IS OF NO use, boss, I cannot budge this from its frame,’ cried Butter, sliding his back against the door to the floor. He rubbed furiously at his eyes with the palms of his hands, frustrated at his lack of progress. ‘Would you like try?’

  Cornelius Quaint did not answer.

  ‘Perhaps you will fare better than I,’ called out Butter in the darkness of the ice box, crawling on his hands and knees. ‘Boss? Mr Quaint?’

  The Inuit patted his hands through the air around him, searching for Quaint, and suddenly they found purchase on the man’s shirt. Panting as if he’d just run a mile, Butter clamoured at Quaint’s chest. He laid his head down onto it, listening for the beat of the man’s heart.

  Nothing.

  Scratching along the cold, icy floor of the ice box in the complete blackness, Butter found Quaint’s arm. He wrenched the sleeve open at the cuff, and rushed to check the man’s pulse. It was incredibly slow, but just about there. The cold was slowing down Quaint’s body functions to a crawl.

  ‘Curse my stupidity,’ Butter yelled at the ceiling. ‘I should not have turned my back on you…now you suffer!’

  Again he clamoured at Quaint’s chest, and thumped his fists upon it. In truth this was more a way of him releasing his frustration than anything. To all intents and purposes, Butter was now alone in the ice box, and his curses fluttered in the air like confetti at a wedding. He had not realised just how much he relied on Quaint’s company for all these many years, and now it was being painfully driven home to him.

  Without Quaint, the tiny man would surely have died alongside his wife back in the icy wastes of Greenland ten long years before. Walrus poachers had encroached upon Butter’s land, and when he had tried to defend his family, they beat Butter to within an inch of his life, before brutalising and then murdering his wife. The poachers’ final act of evil was to kidnap his young daughter, and they stole her away from him aboard their icebreaker ship, mocking the injured Inuit as he clung onto his life in the snow. He very nearly died that day, and surely would have if Cornelius Quaint hadn’t stumbled across him and dragged him to safety. What on earth the conjuror was doing out in the middle of nowhere that day, Butter didn’t know and didn’t care. He was salvation.

  Quaint had promised to help Butter find his kidnapped daughter, and they became united in their dedication. But over the years, the world changed. Borders and countries expanded, empires were formed, and suddenly the globe seemed such a very large haystack within which to find his needle. Butter’s precious daughter had simply vanished off the face of the earth, and despite the best efforts of both men over some years; they eventually had to admit defeat. It was not long after that when Quaint adopted Butter into the circus, but still the Inuit refused to mourn his daughter. The fire still burned inside him to find her, and he had never given up on his hope. As he sat by Quaint’s side on the freezing floor of the wooden ice box, he realised that hope itself was fading fast.

  Lifting Quaint’s lifeless body up onto his lap, Butter wept openly, freely and loudly. The air was extremely thin now, and soon he would join Quaint in unconsciousness. He cursed at the door, finding the last, ethereal scrap of strength still left within him. He held onto it tightly within his clenched fists, nurturing its potency, cultivating it. Rocking his head back, Butter released his anger and bellowed with all his might. His tear-filled eyes were clamped tightly shut, and he prayed for a merciful release.

  Suddenly, a flurry of scuffling footsteps outside the ice box door distracted him from his silent wanderings. Had the Lord sent him help already? That was quick work, even for a God. Butter inched himself closer to the metal door, but recoiled instinctively as a thought struck him. Perhaps it was his captors, come to finish the job? Maybe that merciful release would come soon. He listened intently for more sounds with his ear to the metal door, and sure enough, in the warehouse something stirred. It hammered a succession of heavy blows upon the door from the other side, and Butter felt a further chill rip through his nerves. He moved nearer, and pressed his worn hands flat against the freezing cold metal.

  ‘Hello?’ he called weakly, forcing back his tears. ‘Please, you must help. My friend…he is near death! Release us…please!’

  ‘Stand away…from the…door, laddie,’ yelled a man’s voice from outside.

  The door shifted a little in its frame, accompanied by a rending scream of metal, as someone—or some thing—tore at the door’s hinges. A thin seam of moonlight was slowly visible all around the door’s edges. Butter felt his mouth quiver in anticipation. A sudden shock worked its way through his bloodstream as the door that he had spent nearly an hour hammering upon was forcibly ripped from its moorings and tossed aside as if it were made of balsa wood. Landing with a dull clang of metal against stone, it skidded across the warehouse floor. Heavy footsteps again pounded against the wet stone floor, drawing ever closer. Butter squinted through the onrush of sudden moonlight, trying to define what he saw.

  A silhouette of a great, towering man stood in the ice box doorway, almost filling the entire space. Bathed in wistful light as if surrounded by a ghostly aura, the voluminous figure stooped down and gathered up Quaint.

  His eyes still fighting to adjust to the light, Butter had no choice but to gawp at the large mountain of a man with Cornelius Quaint’s inert body in his enormous arms. He rose to his feet, and cautiously clambered from the ice box and followed the huge man, as he gently laid Quaint’s body down onto a nearby table. In a daze, he watched a
nxiously as the shadowed form of the man rubbed busily at Quaint’s chest.

  ‘Got here…just in time, lad,’ said the juggernaut.

  ‘Indeed,’ answered Butter automatically.

  ‘He’s…in a bad way. Need t’warm him…quick,’ said the bulky man in a thick, interrupted staccato drawl. Each word seemed to be a foreign language to him, and he fought to grasp each one clumsily between his huge fists. ‘Butter, are ye injured?’

  ‘How do you know of me?’ questioned Butter, squinting into the darkness. ‘Who are you?’

  The giant of a man smiled, his thick, bushy beard hiding much of his broad mouth. He stepped into the shafts of moonlight streaming into the market through a crack in the wall, and Butter instantly recognised the face illuminated before him.

  ‘Is it really you?’ he gasped.

  ‘Yes, lad…last time I checked,’ said Prometheus.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  The Reunion

  ‘BUT…BUT…BUT–’ stuttered a stupefied Butter, his mouth failing to respond to his brain’s commands to speak. His eyes and ears tried to grasp the sight and sound before him. ‘Butter?’ said Prometheus. ‘Calm…yerself, lad. Take a…deep breath.’

  ‘But, no! Is not possible!’

  ‘Look, if ye’ll just let me–’

  ‘But…but you are talking,’ Butter declared. ‘With a voice!’

  ‘Barely, but it ain’t easy,’ said Prometheus. ‘Words’re like soap…can’t hold onto ’em. Can see ’em in me head…but sayin’ ’ems a…dif’rent matter.’

  ‘But this is not so,’ cried Butter, scratching tufts of thick black hair.

  ‘Lad, that’s four…sentences you’ve started…with the word “But”.’ Prometheus wiped his hands down his face in frustration. ‘Now please…listen t’me! Cornelius is sick, we need–’