Phyllis Wong and the Return of the Conjuror

by Geoffrey McSkimming

Vesta Colley untied the ribbon around the foul papers and dropped it to the floor. She carefully rolled the manuscript and put it in one of the outside pockets of her overcoat.

  ‘She’s gonna leave!’ Clement whispered.

  A rush of outrage filled Phyllis’s insides. ‘Not if I can help it,’ she declared. She handed Daisy to Clement and sprang to her feet. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she yelled, jumping out from behind the baskets and skips.

  Vesta Colley spun around. Phyllis stood before her, her fists clenched, her eyes shining with anger. ‘I said, where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Well,’ the thief snarled. ‘The little girl from the auction house. The little girl whose fleabag attacked me. The little girl who—’ Vesta’s eye gleamed hatefully, and her face contorted with rage—‘Transits!’

  She stopped as she noticed something about Phyllis. Something about her eyes, and the shape of her mouth and her chin. There was something . . . familiar . . . about this girl . . . something strangely familiar.

  ‘Those papers don’t belong to you!’ Phyllis warned.

  ‘They do now, little girl!’

  ‘They’re Shakespeare’s!’

  Vesta stared balefully at her.

  ‘They’re not yours to take,’ Phyllis went on, her voice rising. ‘You can’t just come back here and steal them. You’ve overstepped the mark, this time, and you’re through!’

  ‘No,’ the woman hissed, whipping out both pistols from her boots. ‘You’re through!’ She raised the guns’ barrels and aimed them straight at Phyllis’s head. ‘Your Transiting days are over, little girl! Never again will you thwart the Transits of another. You’re about to take your final journey!’

  With the pistols firmly aimed at the young conjuror, Vesta Colley curled her fingers around the triggers.

  And squeezed.

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  Like a blur of furry lightning, Daisy shot around the sides of the baskets, her protective instincts kicking in at the sound of Vesta’s threats, and her sense of smell alerted by Glory. The terrier rushed at the woman, leapt up and buried her sharp little teeth in the side of Vesta Colley’s leg, above her boot.

  The woman screamed and flailed her leg about, throwing Daisy off. Daisy flumped onto the floor, shook her head and was about to go for another bite, when Clement burst forth.

  ‘Phyll! I found ’em!’ The beaver-like teeth were sticking out of his mouth.

  ‘Yergh!’ gasped Vesta Colley, startled at the sudden sight of him.

  Daisy remained still, watching, her straight ear upright and the other, folded-over, ear alert.

  Clement shoved his fingers into his mouth and blew as hard as he could.

  This time it worked! The whistle screamed into the air, piercing through the whole of the Globe Theatre, long and loud and lingering.

  For a few seconds, the sounds on the stage stopped. Glory screeched into her mistress’s collar. Vesta Colley looked shaken—her leg hurt and her ears were ringing from Clement’s explosion. Her hands were trembling, but still she aimed the pistols straight at Phyllis’s head.

  Then the play resumed, but without two of its players: through the curtained doorway, Barry Inglis and William Shakespeare hurtled. They stopped when they saw that Phyllis was the target of Colley’s pistols.

  The Chief Inspector stood still, his hands by his sides.

  Shakespeare stayed next to him, also unmoving.

  ‘She’s got Cardenio,’ Phyllis told them, her voice quivering. ‘It’s in her pocket!’

  Vesta Colley looked Barry up and down. For a moment, the beard and moustache and the outfit confused her, but then she discerned his features and the way he was standing. ‘Ah-ha!’ she said, slowly, threateningly. ‘The man in the blue suit, out of his blue suit. So, a Transiter also?’

  ‘You’re under arrest,’ advised Barry Inglis. ‘You have the right to remain silent—’ ‘You remain silent!’ she hissed sharply, like a snake uncoiling. Her arms stopped trembling and she held them rigid, defiantly bringing her hands together so that the barrels of both pistols were almost side by side. ‘Otherwise, the little girl shall have her head blown to kingdom come!’

  Phyllis’s legs were shaking.

  Daisy looked at Phyllis, then at the pistols in Vesta Colley’s hands. The dog knew it would not be good to rush at the woman again. There was danger in the woman’s hands.

  ‘Give me my papers,’ Will said. ‘They are not thine for the taking, madam.’

  Vesta’s good eye sleered across to him. ‘They are yours for the losing, scribbler!’ she spat.

  Slowly, carefully, Barry pressed his right hand closer to the side of his pantaloons.

  ‘Give them back,’ Phyllis implored Vesta.

  ‘Please! Don’t do this!’

  Barry’s fingers disappeared smoothly into the folds of the red velvet against his hip.

  ‘Shut the door of thy mouth!’ Vesta Colley shouted at Phyllis.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Clement shouted back at her.

  Colley’s face turned white with anger. ‘One more sound from ANY of you and I shall let loose with my volleys!’

  The group fell silent, waiting.

  ‘Now,’ Colley said, her voice knifeblade-sharp, ‘I am going to walk away from this scene. I shall make my exit, untroubled and undisturbed. And if any of you try to follow me, to find me, to hinder me in the future and all of the futures to come, I shall finish you in ways you could never imagine!’

  The Chief Inspector felt the cold hard steel of his pistol, and his hand curled around it.

  ‘But first,’ hissed Colley, ‘before I leave, I shall take something more with me.’ She jerked the barrels of her guns at Phyllis. ‘You! Come here to me.’

  Phyllis’s eyes went wide. Her heart was hammering inside her. She couldn’t move.

  ‘Insolent child!’ Vesta Colley strode over to Phyllis and, slipping one of the guns into her boot, she grabbed Phyllis roughly, pinioning her arm sharply behind her back and holding the young magician closely in front of her. ‘You are going to serve me until your Time is done,’ she hissed loudly into Phyllis’s ear. ‘Our kind should always stick by each other!’

  ‘Let me go, please!’ Phyllis implored.

  Glory ran out of the fur collar and across Phyllis’s shoulders and back into the collar again.

  Daisy barked and barked as if she were about to burst. ‘Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  Colley had lowered her other arm—the one holding the pistol—momentarily when she had grabbed hold of Phyllis. That one moment was enough for the quick reflexes of a trained policeman. ‘Hold it right there, lady!’ shouted Chief Inspector Barry Inglis, his silver pistol gleaming and aimed at Vesta Colley’s arm.

  ‘What?’ spewed Colley, beginning to raise her gun at him.

  All it took was an instant—an instant where Phyllis was fractionally out of his range. Barry Inglis squeezed the trigger, and there was a mighty explosion, louder than a thunderclap. The bullet shot through the air, trailing a cascading shower of brilliant sparks, and embedding itself in the arm of Vesta Colley.

  She screamed, letting go of Phyllis and dropping her gun. She clutched at her arm. Her coat had caught fire from the flaming bullet.

  Phyllis jumped away, and her heart almost stopped.

  There, on the floor, lay Barry. His gun—his gun from the future—had exploded in his hand, and he had fallen, hitting his head hard.

  He was not moving.

  Taken by the blaze

  Phyllis rushed to her friend lying on the floor. Will Shakespeare fell to his knees and placed a hand gently to Barry’s heart.

  ‘Aaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!’ screamed Vesta Colley, trying to pat down the flames spreading on her coat as the pain from the bullet seared into her arm.

  ‘Skreeeeeeeeech!’ Glory flew from her collar, disappearing into a darkened corner.

  Daisy ran to Phyllis’s side and placed a paw on Barry’s still
leg.

  Clement also acted quickly. He saw Vesta Colley’s dropped weapon. He swooped on it and grabbed the heavy gun in both hands, aiming it at the burning woman.

  ‘Help me!’ she wailed. ‘I am aflame! Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhh!’ Her arms spun around as though she were a windmill. The fire had now caught in the fur collar. Frantically, she tore off the coat and dropped it to the floor. It fell close to the small cloth bag she had earlier put there.

  Inside this small cloth bag were enough reeds of high-explosive gunpowder to blow the roof clean off the Globe Theatre, along with most of the roofs of the surrounding neighbourhood.

  ‘My rings! My rings!’ Colley screamed wildly. ‘They melt into my fingers!’

  ‘Chief Inspector?’ Phyllis leant over Barry, but there was still no movement.

  Clement’s glasses had slid down his nose when he had stooped to grab the wheellock pistol. He pushed them back and, with trembling hands, he steadied his aim at the woman.

  And he gasped loudly.

  Despite the flames, Vesta Colley had whipped out her other pistol from her boot and was pointing it directly at Clement’s head. Her face was contorted into an agony that made her almost unrecognisable. ‘You wretched child,’ she spat at him. ‘You fool! You do not know how to fire such a weapon! I do!’

  She looked down the barrel of the gun at Clement. His face went white as he realised that what she said was true. This was no game-type gun. There was something about the trigger on the wheellock pistol that wouldn’t allow his finger to curl all the way around it.

  ‘Kingdom come, here you GO!’ shouted Colley. She took her final aim at Clement, her good eye wide with fury.

  Phyllis, still crouching by Barry, spun around. ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t do it!’

  ‘Have mercy!’ cried Shakespeare. ‘He’s only a lad!’

  With a fierce, malevolent cackle, Vesta Colley squeezed the trigger.

  BANG!

  What happened next was bright, quick, sudden—so sudden that it took everyone’s breath away.

  There was a blazing flash in front of Colley’s gun, and a huge puff of green smoke. The smoke billowed swiftly away to reveal a man . . .

  . . . A tall, slender man with dark, glossy-black hair and a thin, neat moustache. A man dressed in a midnight-blue tuxedo.

  ‘W.W.!’ exclaimed Phyllis, jumping to her feet.

  Wallace Wong, Conjuror of Wonder!, looked at his great-granddaughter, his eyes gleaming and throbbing with the green of the Transiter. ‘Phyllis,’ he greeted her quickly. He held out his closed hand and uncurled his fingers. The heavy bullet from Vesta Colley’s pistol dropped from his palm, clattering onto the floor.

  ‘The bullet catch!’ Phyllis gasped. She had never seen the legendary trick performed before.

  There was no time for proper greetings and introductions. Wallace Wong turned to Vesta Colley. ‘You and I, madam, have unfinished business!’

  ‘Wong!’ she spat. She looked at him, and then her eye fixed on Phyllis. ‘That’s why you look so familiar! You and he are—’

  ‘Look!’ shouted Clement. ‘The baskets!’

  The flames from the burning coat had spread along the floor and ignited the big pile of prop baskets that Phyllis, Daisy and Clement had been hiding behind. The fire had caught quickly, licking up all the way to the thatched ceiling of the backstage area, and crackling out across the dry under-roof of straw.

  The small cloth bag containing the gunpowder was in the line of the creeping spread of the fire.

  Daisy pawed Phyllis’s leg. Phyllis grabbed her and slipped her into the change bag.

  ‘Burn, house of dreams!’ hissed Vesta Colley, the pain from her burnt gold-melting fingers and her wounded arm surging through her body. ‘Burn and BLOW!’

  Out of the side of his mouth, Wallace asked Phyllis: ‘What date is it today, great-granddaughter?’

  ‘Twenty-ninth of June,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘And the year?’

  ‘Sixteen thirteen.’

  ‘Ah. The burning of the Globe,’ he said sadly.

  ‘It’s unavoidable,’ Phyllis said, and he nodded.

  ‘The burning, yes,’ said Wallace, ‘but not this!’ He’d seen, sticking out of the half-opened top of Vesta’s small bag, some of the reeds of gunpowder. Like a panther he crouched and leapt and swept up the cloth bag of explosives, away from the flames. He shoved it under his jacket and said, ‘At least we may be able to save some lives!’

  Smoke was already billowing down from the thatched roof, falling in heavy, dark grey shafts and spreading out onto the stage.

  A violent coughing came from the floor. Shakespeare looked up quickly. ‘The Chief Inspector! He breathes!’

  Barry Inglis was gasping and gagging, and his chest racked up and down as he tried to gulp in fresh oxygen.

  ‘Quick!’ cried Wallace Wong. ‘Get him out! Take him to the stairs in the north tower—it’s where I came from. And you too, Phyllis, and your friend here!’

  Shakespeare grabbed Barry under both arms and hoisted him up. The Chief Inspector leant groggily against the Bard, still coughing heavily and blinking dazedly through the thickening smoke. ‘What happened?’ he choked. He winced as he felt his burnt hand. ‘Oh, yeah, the pistol . . .’

  ‘C’mon,’ said Phyllis. ‘We’ve got to scram!’

  ‘Scram?’ Shakespeare echoed, making a mental note of the word. ‘Aye, let us scram with haste!’

  ‘Let me help,’ said Clement. He dropped the pistol, snatched up his backpack and ran over to Will and the Chief Inspector. Barry placed one arm heavily onto Clement’s shoulders, and the other around Will’s back. Together they dragged Barry away through the rear of the backstage area.

  Suddenly Phyllis realised something. ‘Colley! Where is she?’

  Wallace Wong wheeled around and peered through the smoke and flames. The woman had vanished. ‘The elusive larcenist!’ he cried. ‘She is as furtive as the eyebrow of the sloth . . .’ He blinked, and said quickly to Phyllis, ‘Oh, I know what I mean.’

  The actors from the green room had come rushing backstage, along with Ralph the ruddy-faced stage manager. John Heminges raced in from the stage. ‘Quickly!’ he cried to the company. ‘The fire is in the galleries outside, and the groundlings are rushing to escape! Go out and herd the audience safely away! Thou all know’st where the exits are better than they!’

  The players threw off their wigs and cloaks and skirts and ran out into the auditorium.

  Heminges caught sight of Wallace Wong. ‘Who, sir, are you?’

  ‘Do not mind me,’ Wallace said. ‘My visit will be brief. The people must be evacuated!’

  ‘This is a dire predicament!’ Heminges gushed, rushing to check that the green room was empty. ‘Make haste to safety, for the entire Globe will fast be ablaze!’ he shouted over his shoulder as he went.

  Phyllis hugged her great-grandfather and he held her close for an instant.

  ‘Why did you come?’ she asked him, batting away the thickening smoke.

  He put his hand on his white waistcoat, near where his heart was. ‘You needed me,’ he answered.

  ‘I felt it.’

  She looked into his glowing green eyes. ‘We stopped her,’ she told Wallace Wong. ‘She didn’t get what she came for, the foul papers of Cardenio.’ She pointed to the box. ‘They’re still—no!’

  As she spoke, she remembered that they weren’t in the box, but in the pocket of Colley’s coat, on the floor. The woollen coat was still burning, the flames bright and gold with dancing blue flickering edges, too intense to extinguish.

  ‘She didn’t get them,’ murmured Wallace, ‘but the conflagration did.’

  Phyllis shouted into the air, ‘You awful, awful—’

  ‘Go, my dear,’ Wallace urged, propelling her firmly to the door leading to the north tower’s stairs. ‘Before the smoke smothers the life from you!’

  Phyllis hurried into the dense smoke. Inside her bag, Daisy was barking; so
ft, pleading yelps full of desperate fear.

  Phyllis could feel her great-grandfather’s hands firmly, reassuringly, on the backs of her shoulders as she stumbled along, out onto the stage and down into the groundlings’ yard. She half-closed her eyes as they filled with stinging tears, and she started gasping for breath as the air became thinner and more burning in her throat.

  ‘Get down low!’ came W.W.’s voice beside her ear. ‘And go straight ahead! Your friends are there already!’

  She crouched and started running towards the doorway into the north tower. The flames out here had spread quickly, with lightning-like fury, along the dry under-roofs of the thatched galleries; the light rain that had fallen yesterday on the thatch above had not been enough to dampen the straw heavily, and the roof had no hope of dousing the fire.

  People were rushing frantically through the exits, down the stairs of the towers and out towards the Thames. The crescendo of the crackling, crashing, crushing flames was almost deafening, and the late afternoon was filled with this dreadful blazing noise and with the shouts and cries of thousands of theatre-goers.

  ‘Phyll!’ came Clement’s voice through the thick haze. ‘Over here!’

  She lurched onwards to the tower door, and he grabbed her and pulled her in.

  The smoke was still dense in here, but so far the flames had not infiltrated the tower. Phyllis saw, through the thick blanket of the smoke, Barry standing upright, a piece of linen wrapped around his burnt hand, speaking to Will. ‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘we’ll get ourselves away. You go and make sure everyone’s safe.’

  ‘That be all I can do,’ said the Bard. ‘We have surely lost the building.’

  On the other side of the theatre, the heavy oak beams holding up the three tiers of the galleries came crashing down. The screams of the evacuating people tore into the air.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Barry Inglis to Will.

  ‘Farewell, Chief Inspector. Thank you for saving my work.’

  Phyllis hadn’t the heart to tell Will that this wasn’t true.

  Will turned to her and Clement. ‘Farewell, young conjuror, and to you, brave one of a thousand faces. You played the red-bearded dwarf superbly.’