by Robin Jarvis
The aberrants stared at him dumbly and eyed the odd collection on those rails with dread. The hour of the broadcast was getting closer – the time when they were expected to ‘Flee the Beast’. But was that the only performance they were expected to give, or was there more to it?
“Here goes,” said Maggie, inspecting the lists. “Let’s see what tasteful number they’ve saddled me with. Hope it’s not too tarty, unless they’ve provided a good push-up bra as well. If it’s the back end of a horse, I will not be happy.”
“That’d be typecasting,” Esther said cattily.
“Drop dead,” Maggie answered under her breath. But, remembering Martin’s words, she turned and gave Esther a fixed, beaming smile, which the girl found unnerving and she moved closer to Nicholas.
Following Maggie’s lead, the others closed round the rails and began searching for the costumes they’d been allocated.
Tripping across to Martin, the Jockey wagged a scornful finger at him. “You will not find your vestments here,” he said. “Your special contribution to the night’s entertainment is quite separate. Trot along with me. I shall lead you to your new wardrobe. This way – this way.”
He shooed Martin from the gaol and the young aberrants watched him leave.
“Are you coming back?” Maggie called uncertainly.
Martin looked at the Jockey and that florid face moved from side to side.
“Alas and alack, no. Make your last farewell brief and swift.”
Martin turned to the children and raised his hand. He intended to merely wave and go, but they deserved more than that.
“Everyone,” he addressed them, “it looks like this is it. I won’t see you again, so I wanted to tell you… no, I have to tell you that you’ve been amazing. You’ve been so strong, so brave. You should be extremely proud of yourselves. You’re bloody fantastic. Whatever happens tonight, whatever you have to face, remember that. Remember how great you are. You’ve suffered more than most adults could ever cope with, endured the worst horrors this world, or any other, can throw at you, and yet you’re still here. You never gave in; you never forgot what it is to be human beings. Your world was smashed, but you’re not broken. Now I know I don’t have to tell the older ones to look out for the others, you’ve been doing that long enough already, but tonight will be the worst time yet, so you have to be stronger and tougher than ever. Keep fighting, keep looking out for each other and most of all… I want you to run as fast as you can. Whatever comes after you, get the hell out of its way and try and stay safe, try and stay alive. You’re phenomenal, you really are, and I’m so very proud to have known you. I just wish I could’ve got to know you better, but, if humankind makes it through somehow, future generations will know your names. I’m one hundred per cent sure of that – you’re heroes, each and every one of you.”
Tears were glistening in many eyes. Maggie wiped her nose and Charm’s girls held hands.
“Good luck,” he said warmly. There wasn’t anything more to add and the Jockey was chivvying him along. Martin followed him through the dungeon and up the steps, to whatever humiliating fate awaited.
“God bless you, Martin Baxter!” Lukas shouted.
“Martin!” Maggie yelled sorrowfully. “Take care, you bloody marvel – and thank you!”
Suddenly everyone started clapping and cheering. Crossing the courtyard, Martin could still hear their applause.
The Jockey halted in surprise.
“Such riotous acclaim,” he observed. “In truth, I do not see how it has been earned.”
Martin smiled. “Nor do I really,” he confessed. “But that’s one thing your Ismus can never take away from me – and he’ll never be treated to anything so spontaneous or freely given.”
The Jockey scowled and pushed him onwards.
Down in the gaol, the Punchinellos drew their swords and pounded their spears on the floor, squawking for silence.
“Put on clothes!” Captain Swazzle barked. “Or we put them on you.”
“Me likey do that,” Yikker cackled and Bezuel agreed.
The children ceased clapping and hurriedly returned their attention to the clothes rails.
The costumes were highly unusual. The fleeces were the most numerous and, when they were taken down, were found to be sheep suits and came with ingenious hats shaped like sheep’s heads. They were for the youngest children, which included Charm’s group of girls, who, in spite of everything, couldn’t stop giggling at each other as they put them on. Then there were two dozen red cassocks with white surplices for the boys. Maggie was nonplussed to discover she was supposed to wear a drab-coloured robe like a dressing gown that came with a headdress, sandals and a shepherd’s crook. Six of the other older children had the same outfit.
Esther sniggered. “Oh, dear,” she said sarcastically, “tough luck. You’re going to be the Bad Shepherd. They’ll have something really special lined up for you.”
Maggie did her best to ignore the urge to yell at her. Still, she wasn’t convinced Esther was right. Why would there be more than one costume for that character? Looking around, she saw Lukas and Drew clambering into what she had assumed was a pantomime horse. It wasn’t.
“That’s a camel!” Blueberry Muffin gurgled in recognition. “He’s gorgeous – awww.”
There were three camel outfits. Maggie’s eyes roamed from person to person and she began to understand. They weren’t dressing up as characters from Dancing Jax at all. Changing into her shepherd’s robes, she was relieved to find it had a pocket and surreptitiously transferred the sewing scissors she’d brought all the way from North Korea in her greatcoat into it.
“What are you?” Esther asked Nicholas.
The boy shrugged. “Another shepherd, I think,” he answered. “But I can’t find my stick thing. How about you?”
“I’ve got a frock,” Esther exclaimed happily, examining what was on her hanger. The long-sleeved dress was of creamy linen and there was also a deep blue veil. “Hang on, I think I’m a nun! There aren’t any nuns in the book, are there?”
Then she found a curious, padded square with Velcro straps and held it up, puzzled.
“What’s this then?”
“It’s to go round your middle,” Maggie told her. “It’s to make you look pregnant.”
Esther snorted. “You don’t get pregnant nuns, stupid.”
“You’re not a nun,” Maggie stated. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? Open your eyes. All we’re missing here are three wise men.”
It took some moments for Esther to grasp what she meant. Soon everyone realised what the theme of the entertainment was going to be.
“Big funny!” Swazzle crowed and the other Punchinellos grinned hideously.
“Away in a manger,” sang the St Paul’s Cathedral Choir over the speakers.
21
9pm, 24th December
THE SCREEN WAS BLACK. There was no sound. An expectant hush had fallen across the world. Everyone on the planet was tuned in, via satellite or live streaming, to their computers, tablets or phones.
Then, almost imperceptibly, the silken sound of violins began playing the same incessant four notes. The music swelled with extra strings, then choral voices and crashing cymbals. It was an intense, strident and frenetic rendition of the Ukrainian ‘Carol of the Bells’, charged with all the pressure and panic of a traditional Christmas Eve – the last-minute race around, before the shops closed, and the battle to get everything ready for the big day.
“Hark how the bells,
sweet silver bells,
all seem to say,
throw cares away
Christmas is here…”
The replica of the White Castle was in darkness. Suddenly arc lights snapped on and the Keep leaped starkly into being.
A noise like violent thunder drowned out the orchestra and choir as the uncounted millions of Jaxers surrounding the construction site roared and stamped their feet with unbridled ecstasy.
“Oh how
they pound,
raising the sound,
o’er hill and dale,
telling their tale…”
Then, in time to the relentless pace of the tune, the inner wall flashed on, out of the gloom, followed by the second and then the main outer wall. Gaudy coloured spotlights played over the Portland stone and the forest of steel cranes danced in and out of the garish hues, casting web-like shadows across the walls and grounds. Beside the Keep, rising high above the walls, a forty-metre-tall Norwegian spruce sparkled and glittered with thousands of fairy lights. Searchlights fanned the sky and floodlights blazed above the moat.
The establishing long shot cut to a bewildering barrage of different views and angles. In and around that site over seven hundred remote cameras had been installed, controlled from the mobile edit suite in the postern car park. The most dynamic views were from the camera mounted on a motorised trolley-like device attached to two overhead cables that ran from high on the Keep, right over the castle and out across the recreated village of Mooncot. The technicians had called it witchcam, because the sweeping aerial views were suggestive of Haxxentrot riding her hayfork above Mooncaster.
Hurtling from the keep, plunging between the towers, witchcam passed over the gatehouse in perfect time to capture the pair of large iron braziers, either side of the drawbridge, erupt with soaring flame. Then it sped over Mooncot, sailing first over The Silver Penny tavern. Strings of multicoloured bulbs popped on in sequence down the street and each little cottage was illuminated in turn, ending at the mill, where witchcam swivelled round and came flying back again.
“Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas,
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas.”
Inside the walls, ten industrial snow machines began spraying a blizzard high into the air and golden fireworks exploded around two of the towers, sending glittering spangles far over the castle. Then, from the archways in those towers, high-kicking in unison, streamed 200 leggy chorus girls in skimpy red velvet skirts, trimmed with Arctic fox fur, with matching, low-cut waistcoats, shoulder-length capes and adorable Santa hats.
The ‘Carol of the Bells’ continued and the two lines of dancers progressed round the sentry walks like a musical number from a Busby Berkeley routine of 1930s Hollywood. Smiling into the lenses of the cameras they passed, they converged at the front of the battlements, over the inner gatehouse, where their scarlet, sequined tap shoes contributed to the music’s urgent pulse.
Then a new tune started up, to disrupt and join with the first. It was the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns. The discord raged briefly, then blended into a new and chaotic, sinister rhythm. A further 200 figures, dressed as horned skeletons, went clambering up the scaffolding that covered the curtain wall, with pitchforks in their grasp. As the glamorous chorus girls continued, waving their arms, bobbing their heads and clattering their heels and toes, the skeletons leaped on to the parapet, grabbed each one by the throat and plunged the pitchfork into their back. Casting the bodies down, they began their own jerky choreography.
“throw cares away
Christmas is here…”
The squeal of an electric guitar suddenly blared over the battlements. A fountain of Roman candles whooshed up and rockets shrieked into the sky, exploding into gigantic, glimmering flowers that lit up the countryside. Spotlights swept upwards, picking out a solitary figure suspended from the jib of a crane, descending on a cable.
It was the Ismus.
Dressed in skintight, reindeer blood leather, with antler buttons and cream velvet trim at the cuffs and collar, the Holy Enchanter of Mooncaster came gliding through the winter night, silhouetted against snow and fireworks. There was a red velvet scabbard at his waist and a chaplet of holly leaves, with clusters of bright red berries, sat lightly upon his head. An electric guitar, shaped like an Ace of Spades, was slung low at his hip and he tortured it and made it scream.
The incalculable crowd went wild. Their fanatical shrieks obliterated every other sound and the Ismus alighted on the roof of the gatehouse, strutting left and right.
Throughout the pandemonium he continued to play and the ninety-piece orchestra that was concealed in an enclosure around the rear of the castle, by the car park, was his backing group. For twenty minutes the guitar screeched and blasted out the victory of Austerly Fellows, the ultimate conqueror of the human race. When the music reached a crescendo, around the ramparts fifty cannon fired, with one booming voice. Three hundred archers appeared on the inner curtain wall and fired flaming arrows into the night. Fiery streaks shot over the outer defences in unbroken formation and exquisite symmetry, plummeting down into the moat with a unified hiss. Then the Ismus hurled the guitar into the air, where it burst into flames and went spinning down into the water after them.
The skeleton dancers leaped around him and went jiggling off into the towers. The archers disappeared once more and the Ismus was alone on the roof of the main gatehouse. A large Bakelite console was behind him, its dials barely glowing.
Smiling raffishly, he stared into the nearest camera and opened his arms in welcome.
“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls – and everything in between!” he exulted. “A most heartfelt greeting to you all. Here we are – we made it: the night before Christmas when, all through the house, everyone will be reading Fighting Pax!”
He waited for the ensuing uproar to die down then continued. “But, before that glorious time when we depart this dungheap dream world forever, let’s paaaaarty!”
The audience’s appreciation shook the ground; the words Flee the Beast came blasting across the screen with a riot of computer-generated lens flare.
“All your favourite courtiers are here tonight!” the Ismus exclaimed as the cameras cut to the Great Hall inside the Keep where chandeliers were ablaze with candles. Under Kings and Queens, lords and ladies and knights in burnished armour were seated round the feasting tables, banging their fists, making the dishes jump, or inclining their heads in a stately fashion. The Limner was also there, making sketches of everyone on this most auspicious occasion.
“At the very top of the Keep – keeping a watchful eye over everything and stationed either side of the Waiting Throne – are the Harlequin Priests!”
Back outside, the picture panned up to the flat roof of the Keep where the two men in colourful, diamond-patterned robes pointed to the yellow patches with their iron pokers to show their pleasure and bowed.
“Over by the East Tower are the Dancing Jacks themselves. Let’s hear it for the Jill of Hearts, that lusty beauty!”
The spotlights went sweeping over to the inner curtain wall where a stage had been built in front of an incomplete tower. Sitting on carved and gilded chairs, behind a table draped with embroidered velvet, were the four Jacks and Jills, wearing their finest royal robes. At the mention of her name, the Jill of Hearts rose and blew a kiss to the camera.
CGI hearts bombarded the screen like fluttering rose petals and morphed into a romantic oil painting of her wearing a diaphanous gauzy gown and reclining among a bed of flowers, eating suggestively from a bowl of cherries.
“The Jack of Diamonds! Let’s hear it for Magpie Jack!”
The youngest of them stood and bowed, winking as he rubbed two gold pieces in his fingers. An avalanche of CGI diamonds obliterated the screen and an animated Magpie Jack was shown tiptoeing behind their distorting facets, carrying a bag of booty.
“Give me your jools!” he demanded into his microphone.
“Now here’s everyone’s champion! The dashing and courageous Jack of Clubs!”
The golden-haired lad sprang up, drew his sword and put his foot on the chair, striking a heroic pose. Shields bearing the badge of Clubs came spinning in. Interlocking, their dark outline transformed into rolling hills and then Jack was there, riding Ironheart into battle across them.
“Is it blood in her veins or water? Look out – it’s the Jill of Spades!”
The dark-haired girl at the end of the tab
le reared her head and her eyes flashed. Spades came slicing down the screen like daggers, razoring through the picture, revealing a portrait of her made entirely of intertwining vipers.
“Are you ready, Jacks?” the Ismus shouted.
They nodded or gave regal waves.
“Then let’s get in the xmassy mood,” the Ismus addressed the viewing billions. “Drape yourself in tinsel, settle down with your eggnog whilst your chestnuts pop on an open fire and roll Zsu Zsu’s petals in your Rizlas an’ smoke ’em. Feel the thrill and tingle of the holiday and I will tell you the greatest story ever told.”
His face grew serious and he bowed his head, putting his hands together before him as he composed himself.
“Noel, Noel,” he began gravely. “And it came to pass that on this most special night, many years ago, Bruce Willis was trapped in a tower, in a sweaty vest, shooting terrorists and throwing villains out of high windows on to the cars of fat policemen. Single-handedly, and without the aid of footwear, he saved Christmas and henceforth Ebenezer Scrooge was a changed man and made sure that the Cratchits were properly goosed in the morning. God bless us, every one.”
The Ismus broke into jeering laughter. He looked up and witchcam was directly above him. “That’s as believable as that other trite bilge they peddle at this time of year,” he declared. “But still, when in Rome… let us continue.”
He gave an elaborate wave of his hand to send the aerial camera on its way and it went whizzing down over the village once more.
“Imagine if you will,” his voice-over continued as the orchestra softly commenced playing ‘Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem’, “that our happy hamlet of Mooncot is a small area in the stony hills of Judea, two thousand years ago and about six miles outside Jerusalem, where two weary travellers are nearing the end of a long journey on a dusty road.”