A Plague of Hearts

by Patrick Whittaker

  If you need anything, please let me know.

  Warm Regards,

  The letter was not signed. Also on the locker was an envelope which was addressed to:

  Mr. L. Testicle Esq.,

  Pickle Jar 23,

  Top Shelf,

  Organ Bank,

  Royal Prison Hospital,

  The Middle of Bloody Nowhere,

  Hearts,

  Wonderland, HS2 3BC.

  ‘I never was much of a letter writer,’ confessed the Knave as the March Hare placed the letter and its envelope back on the locker. ‘But I thought I ought to keep in touch. Old friendships mean a lot to me. Especially when it comes to bollocks.’

  ‘It’s all bollocks,’ said the man in the other bed. He was sitting up now, his back to the wall, his legs tucked as far under his arms as the straight jacket would allow. ‘Friendships mean nothing. We’re here. We live. We die.’

  The March Hare had forgotten that the room had a second occupant. Now he looked him over, tried to appraise something of his character. There was little to be gleaned from his face. It was blank and non-committal, with only the slightest hint of an angry crease along the forehead.

  ‘You sound like the Panda,’ said the March Hare, annoyed by the unsolicited interruption. ‘And what makes you such an expert on death anyway? You’ve never died and I strongly expect that you’ve never really lived. So how can you sit there and tell us that death is the end of everything?’

  ‘Because I have to,’ said the man. ‘I hope to say it often enough to convince myself that it’s so. I’ve been to war, and I’ve witnessed horrors that have no root in rationality. For six years, we and the Spadishers have been at each other’s throats, inventing new ways of killing, new ways of making each other suffer. And the only thing I’ve learnt from it is that there is no God, because if there was a God, everything I’ve seen out there would make some sort of sense. The pain would be smothered in nobility. We could charge the enemy lines in the hope of gaining glory, not just a few more yards of churned-up real estate.

  ‘I’ve seen too much, and now I don’t want to see any more. And I don’t want to live, and I don’t want to die if it just means going to some other world that’s anything like this one. How can Heaven be Heaven if it’s filled with people? Tell me that!’

  ‘Ignore him,’ said the Knave of Hearts. ‘He’s just feeling sorry for himself because he got into a nasty fix. They sent him here for deserting.’

  ‘I thought they shot deserters,’ said the March Hare.

  The Deserter laughed. ‘They do normally, but when they caught up with me, I begged them to do it. I said, "Please bind my wrists and put me against the nearest wall. You don’t even have to bother with a blindfold."

  And that really pissed them off. Army brass hats hate it when they’re told what to do by a private.

  ‘They think I’m mad, you know. They tried to get rid of me by sending me on a suicide mission, and do you know what I did? I completed the mission and came back alive. They didn’t like that one bit, but me - I just cracked-up! I laughed so loud and so long they thought I would never stop laughing. Which is why I’m here.

  ‘Even now, I’m laughing inside. I may look miserable and broken, but I promise you that my ribs ache with suppressed laughter. I’m just one big bundle of mirth.

  ‘Life is nothing but a sustained joke, and the longer it goes on, the more you realise that the punch line is going to be a real corker - a right old side-splitter. And I’m chuckling in anticipation of the final twist. Do you understand? Can you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘No,’ said the March Hare. ‘So shut up.’

  ‘I will,’ said the Deserter. ‘If that’s what you want. Live and let live - that’s what I say. Also, I think that sedative the Nurse gave me is beginning to work. Is it… ? Yes. I believe it is.’

  His eyes fluttered like a pair of badly-fitted blinds. Then he fell onto his side and was silent again.

  The Knave beckoned with his head for the March Hare to bend down so that he could whisper in his ear. ‘Do you know what I think?’ he asked in a muffled voice. ‘I think the bastards are out to get me.’

  ‘You’ve still got friends,’ said the March Hare, holding out the only grain of comfort he had to offer.

  ‘Did you see Doctor Ormus?’

  The March Hare nodded, conscious of the television camera hovering above his head like a bird of prey. He could not bring himself to tell the Knave that his friends had given him up for dead. ‘The Doctor’s very optimistic about your situation. He’s been in touch with his lawyers and they think they can get you off.’

  ‘You’re a lying bastard,’ said the Knave. ‘But thanks for trying. If Ormus has got any sense, he’ll forget about me and concentrate on putting TARTS out of action.’ The Knave groaned. ‘I wish that bitch, Nurse Jane, would stop giving me enemas.’

  ‘Do you want me to try to persuade her to leave off?’

  ‘You wouldn’t stand a chance. Besides which, I don’t want to hurt her feelings. She’s quite likable in a horrid sort of way.’

  ‘I suppose she is sweet.’

  ‘Sweet? She’s a bloody monster.’

  ‘I remember you once describing your ideal woman as being tall, blonde and threatening. I would say Jane fits that perfectly.’

  A key turned in the lock. Nurse Jane entered, followed by the tallest man the March Hare had ever seen. If he was less than seven feet tall, it could not have been by much. Perhaps by normal standards he was not particularly thin, but his height and the harsh angles of his face gave the impression of a man who was all skin and bone.

  With his hands in the pockets of his trousers, he ducked through the doorway, sidestepped the swiveling camera, then sat down on the edge of the Knave’s bed. He seemed about to speak, but Nurse Jane got in first. ‘It seems,’ she said to the Knave, ‘that you’ve been a very bad boy. I’ve just been down to the Therapy Unit and seen a video of you chatting with a rather large cat with a very irritating grin. We have rules here against bringing pets into the hospital, and I don’t like to see my patients breaking them.

  ‘We’ll go into how the moggy got in and out of your room later, but I just wanted you to know that your transgression has been duly noted and will - when the time comes - be dealt with.’

  As she spoke, her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. Whatever punishment she planned to mete out to the Knave, she was clearly looking forward to it. As for the Knave, the March Hare wondered how his employer felt about Jane. There was an ambivalence in their relationship that would take a lifetime to unravel.

  The tall man rubbed his hands together in a brisk, business-like manner. ‘Well,’ he said, cheerfully, ‘ this is cozy, isn’t it. My name’s Doctor Malpractice, and yours isn’t.’

  ‘My what isn’t what?’ asked the Knave.

  ‘Oh you can speak, can you?’ said Nurse Jane. ‘I was beginning to wonder.’

  ‘Your name isn’t Malpractice,’ said Malpractice. ‘I made sure of that before I operated on you. You may think me over-cautious, but I make it a rule to never operate on someone with the same surname as myself.’

  ‘That’s a safeguard,’ said Nurse Jane, beaming happily. ‘It prevents him from accidentally operating on his own body. Works quite well.’

  ‘One can never be too careful,’ added the Doctor. ‘I once knew this chap who mistakenly took out his own appendix. I had to pop it back in for him before the Medical Council found out. They’re very strict about these things.’

  ‘How is he?’ asked the March Hare.

  ‘Dead. Died a few days later in the middle of giving himself open-heart surgery.’

  ‘I meant the Knave.’

  ‘Oh him. He’s fine. Just fine. That hernia he’s got is just a bit worrying, but a hernia never killed anybody, did it?’

  ‘What about his jaw?’

  ‘Hardly worth mentioning. Fractures come and fractures go. They don’t bother me in the least. You’d be
amazed out how well the human body copes with such things. ‘Of course, his leg’s a different kettle of fish entirely. I’m afraid it just won’t straighten out, no matter what we do. Still, so long as he doesn’t wear tight trousers, I doubt that anyone will notice.’

  ‘We’ll soon have him on his feet,’ said Nurse Jane.

  ‘Foot,’ said Malpractice. ‘We had to chop off his left one in order to remove his trousers.’

  ‘You could have cut them,’ said the March Hare, appalled.

  ‘We thought about it, but we couldn’t find anything sharp enough. Besides, it was a nice pair of trousers. It would have been a shame to ruin them.’

  ‘I wasn’t wearing trousers,’ said the Knave. ‘I had stockings on.’

  Doctor Malpractice punched him playfully on the shoulder. ‘Only kidding. We surgeons have a great sense of humour, you know.’

  ‘I wish you could have saved my stockings,’ said the Knave plaintively. ‘If there’s one thing I’ll never forgive the Secret Police for, it’s the way they tore apart my beautiful fishnets. They were pure silk and had little pink teddy bears on the heels.’

  Nurse Jane clucked sympathetically. ‘I have a pair like that,’ she said. ‘You can have them when you leave.’

  ‘Thank you. That means a lot to me.’

  ‘Anything else we can do for you?’ asked Doctor Ormus. ‘We do like to keep our patients happy, you know.’

  ‘There is just one thing,’ said the Knave. ‘Perhaps you could have a look at my stomach sometime. It keeps rattling.’

  ‘Whoops,’ said Doctor Malpractice, reddening just a shade beyond pink. ‘Silly me. I never was one for scalpel counts.’

  ‘My stomach is full of scalpels?’

  ‘No more than two or three. It’s nothing to worry about. They’re quite blunt and I don’t need them right now. If you don’t pass them in the next few days, I’ll just dig them out during the postmortem.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m up to a postmortem. Couldn’t we just skip it?’

  ‘Afraid not. Hospital regulations and all that. Corpses have to be dissected and labeled. Can’t see the point myself, but rules are rules.’

  ‘Small point, Doc. But doesn’t one have to be dead to be a corpse?’

  ‘You’ve noticed that, have you? Yes, you’re quite right. That’s a very astute observation.’

  ‘So I’m going to die?’

  ‘Unless you’ve got yourself a red-hot lawyer.’

  The Knave looked to the March Hare, a desperate plea in his one good eye. ‘I don’t want to die,’ he said. ‘I kind of like me the way I am.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Nurse Jane. ‘At least you’ll never grow old. Die young, stay pretty - that’s what I always say.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ said the Knave, ‘looks aren’t everything. I don’t mind becoming all stooped and wrinkled. Really I don’t.’

  Jane shot him a look of reproach. ‘You’re not going to have one of your sulks, are you? Because you know what I’ll do if you are.’

  ‘Not another enema!’

  ‘I don’t know why you always have to make such a big fuss over a little thing like an enema. I’d have thought you’d be used to them by now.’

  ‘Maybe I would be if you didn’t keep using Big Bertha. Or if you at least lubricated the shower head properly.’

  ‘There’s a war on. Or had you forgotten? It’s just not that easy to get axle grease these days. Now it’s time for your afternoon nap. I want you asleep within five minutes - and you’d better not let me catch you snoring.’ She turned to the March Hare, treated him to a look of desire.

  ‘It’s been nice meeting you, Mister Rabbit. I do hope to see you again very soon.’

  ‘I’m a hare. Rabbits have shorter ears and wet noses.’

  ‘How interesting. You’ll have to tell me about it sometime.’

  The March Hare got up to leave, but had reached no further than the end of the bed when the door opened and the Penguin breezed in. He tipped his hat. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you good folks. Just popped-in for a quick chat with the patient.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Nurse Jane, pushing back her hair and pouting flirtatiously. ‘You know you’re always welcome here.’

  The Penguin nodded a stiff greeting at the March Hare. ‘And how’s our friend the mentally unstable Bunny then? I hear you’ve rejoined the King’s Staff. The old boy must have forgotten that you set fire to his bed. I wonder if he’s aware of your association with certain criminal elements.’

  ‘He knows of my relationship with the Knave of Hearts, if that’s what you mean.’

  The Penguin stepped over Doctor Malpractice’s legs and fixed his attention on the Knave. ‘Relationship, hey? Now there’s a word with interesting connotations.’

  ‘Screw you,’ said the Knave.

  ‘Succinctly put, my friend. But somehow rather cryptic.’

  ‘Screw you.’

  ‘Now you’re repeating yourself, and that’s always a bad sign. Still, I can understand that. I never did much like hospitals myself.’

  ‘Screw you.’

  ‘So you’ve said. Tell you what - if you should get bored of astounding us all with your extensive vocabulary, perhaps you’d care to chew over the fact that your trial has been set for tomorrow.’

  ‘Morning or afternoon?’ Nurse Jane demanded, anxiously.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  ‘Oh good. I’ll still have time to give him a few more enemas.’

  The Knave hid his head beneath the covers and groaned.

  Chapter 13

  The Flying Man

  When the Hatter got restless, he was inclined to take to his penny-farthing. The simple act of mounting this archaic bicycle invariably resulted in a change of perspective; his view of the world would become transformed by the simplest of all machines.

  The Mad Hatter loved his penny-farthing. It was one of the few things in his life that made sense.

  As the first shades of evening drew themselves together, he navigated through narrow and twisting lanes, pedaling furiously in an attempt to get everywhere and nowhere at once. On this occasion, he rode in his shirt sleeves and his finest black bowler, discarding the elegance of his topper in favour of reduced wind resistance.

  Past Hangman’s Drive, a farm labourer looked up from his toils to be startled by the sight of a man apparently flying. He could not know that it was the Mad Hatter; it had grown dark and a large hedgerow hid the bike from him. Nor could he know that the Hatter’s curious expression was a mixture of carefree abandonment and total absorption.

  Wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers, the labourer did not bother to search for a rational explanation. Here he was, witnessing a man rushing by at great speed - a man whose feet could not possibly be touching the ground. It had to be magic. What else could it be?

  The labourer licked his dry lips and pictured himself in the local inn, telling his fellow rustics of the Flying Man of Hangman’s Drive. They would, of course, laugh and sneer, tease him and call him mad, and he would smile back at them, the noble stoic beset by fools. And then one day, maybe years hence, someone else more respectable than he - perhaps a magistrate or a local squire - would come rushing into the inn to report that they too had observed the exact same phenomenon. From that moment on, skepticism would turn to respect, and every scoff and jibe could be returned in full. Maybe his picture would appear in the local paper…

  Unaware that he was destined to be the catalyst for a long-running controversy, the Mad Hatter rode on, caught in a high that was part adrenaline, part exhilaration; a high that was better than any drug.

  Up ahead, the Tired River cut across the landscape. It gleamed in the twilight like a vein of silver.

  The Hatter ceased pedaling, let momentum carry him forward. He steered the bike onto the footpath that followed the river. The stony, uneven surface made speed both hazardous and uncomfortable, so the Hatter brought the machine to a halt and dismounted with pr
acticed ease.

  Leaving the bicycle against a tree, he sat by the Tired River and watched its denizens perform their evening rituals.

  A pageant of swans drifted by. They looked neither left nor right; they did not wonder about their place in the scheme of things. They did not ask if life served any purpose. They had their river; they had each other. And for them, that was enough.

  A dragonfly hovered briefly above the Mad Hatter, and then darted away into the darkness. Elsewhere, bullfrogs called to each other. Crickets sang.

  There’s a pattern here, the Hatter told himself. The Red King dreams an ordered dream. But where do I fit in? What instrument am I meant to be playing in the Red King’s Orchestra? Am I a virtuoso or just a penny-whistle player with dreams of one day making it into the strings section?

  With a sigh, he turned to his penny-farthing and patted its over-sized front wheel. ‘It’s a weird and wonderful world,’ he announced. ‘And a fine life if you can work out how to live it.’

  The bullfrogs and crickets echoed his sentiments.

  *

  In a miserably cramped laboratory, Doctor Ormus contemplated a different sort of order. It had been a long day, not made any easier by being surrounded by buzzniks.

  As he’d expected, Peregrine Smith’s old secret lab had needed a lot of work to make it usable. The room had been full of dusty equipment, most of it rusted or broken beyond any hope of repair. At his direction, the room had been emptied. The tunnel outside was now lined with a bewildering array of technology, a monument to the warped genius of an alien geriatric.

  ‘I wish I knew what half of it is for,’ he told Julie. She had just returned from carrying out a sack of mouldy blueprints - the last of Smith’s junk.

  ‘Half of what?’ she asked.

  ‘That stuff outside,’ he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the door. They were alone now. Just the two of them and Shadrack, who was lying unconscious in a long, metal tank. ‘I worked with Smith for nearly five years, but I got nowhere near understanding most of the gadgets he used. Much as I hate Smith, I have a grudging respect for the man. If I had his intellect - ’