She had shared her thoughts with her best friend Ruby after she recovered from the antidote’s quelling of the deadly poison, receiving more than one quasi-sarcastic remark for her trouble. One of the first questions that the young knife-smith asked was: ‘How do you know you can live for ever?’, and, in truth, she had no answer. It was just something she knew to be true, as much as she knew she hated spinach, she knew she liked lavender perfume and she knew she preferred the colour green to the colour blue.
She knew that something inside her had changed irrevocably. Something great and something miraculous…and yet every time she tried to put it into words, she was lost. She needed Cornelius to help her discover why that was, to make sense of it all, and there was another tingle of a wish inside her mind also. If she felt the way she did—if she had these suspicions as to her fate—how did he feel? Was he sharing her delight at this sudden sense of rebirth?
Something caught Destine’s eye up on Stanhope Hill, and she knew it was him instantly, his dark cloak buffeted by the wind like a flag on a pole. He was standing alone, staring down at the festivities of the circus, detracted from it like an outsider. For a man surrounded by the comfort and warmth of his friends and adopted family, Cornelius Quaint felt like the loneliest man on earth…
CHAPTER LV
The Ending and Beginning
DESTINE MADE HER way to him, watching the man’s sullen expression gradually change to an altogether brighter one as she stepped into view up the small embankment. Despite the elixir healing his cuts and bruises while he had slept, Quaint’s face was as worn and weather-beaten as usual, a mainstay of his mature years that he would have to live with. Not that it bothered him, and Destine was used to the craggy rock-face, and had rather warmed to it over the years. She smiled as she approached him and noticed his mop of ivory curls, peeking from underneath his tophat.
‘I love your hair,’ she said.
‘Apparently it makes me look wise,’ replied Quaint.
‘Well…that is certainly a much needed improvement then.’
‘Et tu, Destine?’ asked Quaint.
She smiled, and wrapped her arms around him. ‘What on earth are you doing standing out here all alone, Cornelius?’
‘Oh, nothing really, Madame, I’m just pondering the meaning of existence. Would you care for a tot of brandy?’ he asked, offering Destine a small silver hip-flask.
‘Merci,’ Destine said, raising the flask to her lips. ‘So what have you learned?’
‘About what?’ asked Quaint.
‘About the meaning of existence…are you any the wiser?’
‘Not a jot.’
‘So what will you do? Continue as normal and hope to find the answers in time?’
Quaint looked at her and smiled, taking back his flask. ‘Madame, I doubt that I shall ever see “normal” again.’ He quaffed a hearty mouthful of brandy, and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. ‘No, I have made a decision. I have signed over the circus to Butter as caretaker owner whilst I take a little sabbatical. I know it’ll be in good hands whilst I’m gone.’
‘You’re giving up the circus?’ gasped Destine.
‘Temporarily, Madame…I care for those people down there too much to desert them for ever. I just need to stretch my wings for a few months. I’ll be back.’
‘My, you certainly have changed.’
‘I’m not so sure I have, Destine, and that’s the point,’ Quaint said.
‘How so?’ asled Destine.
‘I think that it is the world that has changed—and I have remained grounded. I have allowed the ghosts of my past to rule me for too long. It is high time that I concentrated on the here and now, and started to live again.’ A sudden wind whipped at Quaint’s clothes, as if trying to drag him away with its breeze. ‘The world is a big place, full of wonders, Madame, and now I feel as though I have a renewed lease of life with which to see it all.’
‘So, you feel it too?’ asked Destine.
‘Like warm water trickling through your veins? Yes, I feel it too, Madame,’ Quaint said with a roguish smile. ‘Something happened to me…to us, last night, something…almost miraculous.’
‘So says the conjuror?’
‘I am serious, Destine, think on it! I was shot only a few hours ago…but that wound has all but disappeared. You yourself were on death’s door…and now you look more than ten years younger. I ask myself how that can be possible.’
‘When my…when Renard gave me the poison, he said “a fool of a priest believed this to be an elixir of immortality”…apparently he assumed that it was not true.’ Madame Destine’s concerned expression bloomed into understanding. ‘But now, I find myself thinking perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps there was a spark of the elixir’s original purpose left dormant, and this was reignited somehow. It is obvious that the antidote reversed the poison’s effects just in time—but more than that is bordering on the fantastical!’
‘I agree,’ nodded Quaint. ‘Whatever befell us, I am just grateful we are still alive to ponder it, Madame.’
‘As am I. If you are to see the world, where will you go first, my sweet?’ asked Destine.
‘Egypt,’ answered Quaint without missing a beat.
‘I rather thought you might say that,’ Destine smiled.
‘Perhaps I need a holiday, Madame.’ Quaint turned to look at her, his jet-black eyes speaking more than his voice ever could. They held Destine’s attention like a lamp attracts a moth, and pulled her into their dark, enveloping void. ‘I haven’t set foot in Egypt for a long time, and you know how I have always wanted to return there.’
‘I seem to recall you mentioning it,’ Destine lied.
‘Sampling the local delicacies; boat trips down the Nile; maybe a little digging around near the pyramids of Giza,’ said Quaint, a vague smile resting on his lips. ‘I hear that all sorts of things can be uncovered if you look in the right places.’
Destine nodded in silent understanding. ‘And on this new adventure, my sweet…would you care for some company?’
‘Madame Destine,’ said Cornelius Quaint, offering the Frenchwoman the crook of his arm, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
The End
Cornelius Quaint’s quest continues in 2010 in
The Eleventh Plague
Acknowledgements
Iwould like to pay homage to those who have helped me in no small way to shape my literary meanderings into what you hold within your hands.
They know who they are, but just so there is no confusion:
For enriching my days and nights with an abundance of love, laughter and fun I would like to thank my wife Tracy, and my daughter Aimee.
For some priceless advice, support and input, I would like to thank Scott Pack, Heather Smith and all the crew at The Friday Project. A nicer bunch of truly passionate and professional publishers I challenge you to find.
For being an all-round good egg and great sounding board, I would like to thank my stalwart friend Karl Arlow.
For passing onto me his genetic talent for creativity I want to send my thanks to my late grandfather, Herbert Edward Craske.
And lastly, but by no means leastly, the person without whom this book would never have happened, I would like to thank myself for having the determined doggedness to keep writing no matter what hurdles life threw in my path.
You have not seen the last of me.
Darren Craske, October 2008
Copyright
The Friday Project
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Limited edition first published by The Friday Project in 2008
Copyright © Darren Craske 2008
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Darren Craske asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Bri
tish Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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EPub Edition © 2008 ISBN: 9780007328499
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