Pastworld Page 3

  The harlequin picked up the cloth, and twirled it in front of the crowd, front to back, back to front, nothing, it was empty.

  ‘The lady vanishes,’ he called out.

  It must have seemed to them that I had indeed simply vanished into thin air. The large crowd roared their approval. There was applause and laughter. Clearly for them my disappearance and the confusion of the ragged man all seemed to be part of the show.

  The beggar looked round him and then shouted out in a fury, ‘All right, that’s enough. Show’s over, now you give her back to me.’

  The harlequin cried, ‘Shh, the lady’s not for returning,’ pressed his finger to his lips and raised the blue cloth over his own head and held it there for a moment, then let it fall to cover himself completely.

  There was silence.

  The ragged man stared at the cloth, with a puzzled expression on his face. Then he reached forward and grabbed at the cloth, which spiralled to the ground, to reveal . . . again nothing, for the harlequin was gone too.

  By now the wagons were on the move. I saw the other two harlequins running away back into the crowd and heard the crowd roar their approval again. I watched as the ragged man kicked at the folds of the fine blue cloth, and then he picked it up, and shook it as if perhaps expecting either myself or the harlequin to fall out on to the ground. Then he began a furious pursuit, pushing through the edge of the crowd, elbowing people aside. He shoved his way through, and suddenly the ragged man was within grabbing distance of the tailboard of the wagon where I lay hidden. It was then that the dove that had been born fully grown from the egg flew past the beggar and, as it did so, pulled the fine floating length of blue cloth from his hand, in its beak and flew with it under the canvas cover of the wagon. The beggar, with an amazed expression on his face, tripped and fell headlong across the cobbles, into a puddle of filthy snow melt, and then we rattled fast out of the busy square and turned into the traffic.

  I was squashed down among deep piles of soft fabrics, folded costumes and rolls of velvet inside the wagon. I sat up as we turned the corner and sneezed in all the general dustiness, and the dark conjuring harlequin with the kind eyes popped his head through the canvas flap from the front of the wagon.

  ‘Are you all right? Sorry about grabbing you like that, only it looked to me like you needed it. Don’t worry – we’ll shake him off soon enough.’

  I felt dizzy, both from the motion of the wagon, and also from the sudden lurch in my circumstances. I crawled forward to the front so as to hear him better. The wagon was full of entertainers’ paraphernalia; piles of costumes, striped poles and ropes, glass globes and silver stars, and a giant cut-out pasteboard moon with a smiling face.

  ‘I should hold tight if I were you,’ he said. ‘Our horse may be skinny, but she’s fast. Why was the ragged man after you?’

  I looked at the narrow back of the harlequin blankly. I was unsure now of anything and anyone – I had been rescued, saved, but by who?

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘my guardian had warned me not to go out on my own. He said that someone meant me harm. I took no heed though and went out alone. The next thing I knew, that man had grabbed hold of me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with us,’ said the harlequin. ‘We know those ragged men, only too well. Why would anyone want to do you harm? I wonder. From your clothes you don’t look like a Gawker – you’re a cast native, a dweller?’

  ‘I’ve lived here all my life,’ I said, puzzled. What was a cast native?

  ‘A native then, just a bit off your usual beat,’ he said with a smile.

  I sat alone in the back of the wagon while it rattled away. When we finally came to a stop, it was already dark. There was an odd brackish smell, which, I discovered as I climbed warily out of the wagon, was from the river Thames. The horse was let out of its shafts and stood chewing out of a feed bag. We had fetched up under some trees, in what appeared to be an enclosed park. One or two simple tents and some other wagons were pitched around us under the wide branches. There was a small fire, which gave off more smoke than flames. A pot was hung over it, and I could smell something cooking and the smell reminded me of how hungry I was.

  Jago sat on the front step of the wagon. He seemed to be only a little older than myself, and he was petting the white dove, which shone bright next to his copper-coloured skin. He looked over and smiled at me. One of the other harlequins was standing a little way from the fire. He had a spoon balanced on his nose. He flipped his head up and the spoon suddenly twisted up in the air end over end, and then it landed back on his nose, balanced just as before. He extended his arm, dropped the spoon down into his hand and held it out to me.

  ‘Have something to eat,’ he said, and winked at me. I took the spoon warily, as if half expecting it to jump out of my hand and back up on to the harlequin’s nose.

  Jago smiled, stretched forward with the dove now sitting happily on his shoulder and ladled something out of the pot on to a plate and handed it to me. It was a kind of aromatic stew, with yellow rice; it smelled wonderful. There were pale shapes of what turned out to be chicken in the middle of it. I wolfed it down fast. It stung my tongue and there was heat in it from spices. Then he held out a mug of tea, and I went to drink it, but he thought better of it and he took the cup and threw the tea on to the fire so that the ashes hissed. Then he filled the mug again, this time from a dark bottle.

  ‘Try that instead,’ he said.

  ‘Mm, it’s bitter,’ I said, ‘sour too.’

  ‘It’s just beer, plain old English Ale.’

  I sipped at the liquid again. I had never tasted beer before. I sat down near the fire, which by now had faded down to a few wisps of smoke. Then Jago took the cup of beer back from me and drank down the rest himself.

  ‘I’m Jago,’ he said, and wiped his thin hand across his mouth.

  I nodded. ‘I thought you were. My name is Eve,’ and I took his hand in mine for a moment. I had never seen or touched skin so dark before.

  A passenger airship passed over the trees, low enough for the passenger gondola to almost touch the treetops. The wind from the propellers thrashed the leaves back and forth. The lights shone down across the tents that were pitched among the trees.

  ‘A lovely name, for a lovely girl,’ Jago said. He looked up at the airship. ‘And still they come,’ he added, watching the airship as it passed over us. His narrow face broke into a grin and I saw how neat and white his teeth were. ‘I wonder why you have been sent to me, Eve.’

  ‘I have run away to join your circus,’ I said.

  .

  * Ledger content. Unless otherwise stated the transcribed ledger/chronicle is in the original, all handwritten on antique wove paper in sepia-coloured ink.

  .

  Chapter 3

  OBSERVATION ROOM 1,

  BUCKLAND CORP. COMMS CENTRE 6.40 A.M.

  .

  Sgt Charles Catchpole was drinking a strong coffee, his first of the day, and looking at the image of Pastworld on the Comms screen. Dawn was breaking over the shadowy city. It was a view that never failed to engage him. The rows of yellow gaslights were softened, blurred by the machined fog. The muffled barges, and the haze of steam from the gasworks, all made a subtle picture, an aubade worthy of J. M. Whistler. Catchpole’s dreamy gaze was interrupted when the alarm signal lit up, a sudden flicker of light, and movement on the bank of screens at the workstation.

  He put his styrofoam cup down on the desk top, pressed the lid carefully back into place. He brought up the image, selected it as a central feature and ran it across six of the smaller screens. A pursuit spy, one of the newer Espion cameras, was transmitting a movement-triggered image, from a restricted zone.

  He reached forward for the alert signal tag. He checked the coordinates and zoomed in on the image. Immediately, Catchpole switched to a Code Orange. This would automatically trigger interest from DI Hudson in his cubicle down the corridor. He kept the live Espion feed up, minimised it and noted the
earlier mech circuit pattern as well. It wasn’t a minute before his partner, Hudson, appeared. The bright bank of screens reflected as intense blue squares across his wraparounds as he entered the room.

  ‘What you got?’ said Hudson as he eased his bulky frame into a chair by Catchpole’s desk. He sat with his arms folded in a ‘this had better be good’ stance.

  ‘Well, look at this.’ Catchpole tapped the central panel of screens with his coffee stirrer.

  ‘About fifteen minutes ago I noticed that one of the sentinel mechs had been activated on this circuit loop. I checked back on it and read the timeline, and it wasn’t a malfunction, it was an intruder. A minute later an Espion camera was triggered by exceptional movement, and this feed has been coming in ever since.’ Catchpole brought it up on to the main screen again. In green-tinted night vision, they watched the picture of the upper level of the old Tower 42 building. A figure in a billowing cloak stood still and high on the ruined top.

  Hudson said quietly, ‘Let’s get a closer shot and go for a match.’

  Catchpole moved his hand across the screen on the console and the image shifted, sparked for an instant with little flickers of white and then settled. A masked face with bright shining circles for eyes came into close view.

  ‘God it looks like him all right,’ Hudson said. ‘He’s back.’

  The image of the masked figure’s head froze onscreen. Catchpole shifted the still image away into a separate window.

  Hudson was right; it certainly looked like him.

  Catchpole shifted his hand again and focused in on the figure. On the closer image the ‘o’ shape of the mouth was clearly defined behind the thin mask as he calmly breathed in and out.

  ‘He’s holding something,’ said Hudson. ‘Check it.’

  Catchpole focused on what was held in the figure’s hands. While they watched, the figure placed the object very carefully on a flat iron protrusion, the top edge of a girder, just above his head.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Hudson.

  Then the figure vanished; he simply stepped off the edge of the building.

  ‘Now,’ Catchpole said, ‘who else would do that?’

  ‘Looks like he’s really back,’ Hudson said. ‘Better get hard copy of this. Print it all up and we’ll take it over to the Inspector on the next flight.’ At the mention of the Inspector, Catchpole’s spirits rose. If pursuit was back on, officially, that would mean a visit to Pastworld, and a change of outlook, a change of clothes of course, a change of era, and perhaps even a change of everything else as well . . .

  .

  Chapter 4

  The Fantom looked down at the rat. ‘Well, they know I’m here now all right,’ he said. He shone the lamp up through the ruined ceiling. The lamp light picked out a ladder. The Fantom tested it for weight, then climbed swiftly up. He pulled himself on to the remaining support beams into the windy darkness above. The pigeons flew through one of the great gaping holes into the sudden freedom of the open air.

  He continued up among the broken roof beams and the huge rivet-studded metal girders. He crossed a fragile timber platform that bowed and buckled under his weight.

  From his position he looked down from the full height of the tower. He stood uncertainly for a moment on the very edge of a steeply curved iron support. The sad moan of the foghorns rose again from the river somewhere below. The dawn breeze ruffled his cloak, so that it billowed out in a swirl. He removed the bag from his shoulders and placed it at his feet, then he pulled out a gold watch on a chain from his waistcoat pocket and checked the time. He waited, watching the second hand – waited for the artificial sun to rise behind the clouds.

  Far below him, under the cobbles and the stone, underneath the tangled map of streets, the city changed gear; the secret systems shifted and, perfectly on cue, a light grew in the sky.

  At the right moment he stood up tall and pulled something out of the bag at his feet. He held it very carefully in his hands and allowed time for it to be seen, for they would surely be watching now. Then he reached up and put the severed head on to the girder above him with its blood-shocked grin facing outwards. He slipped the bag back across his shoulders. Then, with his tall figure haloed by light, he climbed with care up the last few feet to the pinnacle of the ruined dome. He stood grudgingly admiring the beauty of the perfect sunrise. He looked across at the wheeling birds over the river, at the view of the whole city. He took it all in, his eyes aqua blue and sharp behind his mask. He raised his arms and held them out wide. He spoke out loud, ‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ and laughed, and after that he counted in perfectly measured seconds, ‘One, one thousand, two, one thousand, three, one thousand,’ and so on under his breath, as someone had once taught him. When he reached the number ten, his figure, perfectly silhouetted against the orb of the bright, newly risen electric sun, simply stepped off the skeleton dome, straight out into freefall through the cold morning air . . .

  .

  Chapter 5

  A circus wagon pulled away from one of the busy market squares and turned off into the thoroughfare. A ragged man, tubercular-looking, with a long neck and skinny limbs, picked himself up from a cold, wet puddle of snow melt. He had been close to his prize, close enough to touch her. He walked away like some dripping, bedraggled scarecrow, back through the crowd of warm, bundled-up and mostly indifferent Gawkers. Some of them laughed as he passed. One or two even tried to give him coins, they had enjoyed his performance as the patsy to the conjuror so much.

  The ragged man had no desire to end his life cut into pieces, with his heart removed like the others before him. He had a difficult decision to make. He had the choice of reporting his sighting of her now and letting the message travel up the chain of command or he could walk back to the place where he had first seen her. He knew that there was a good chance that there he might find the secondary prize, her guardian.

  It was a cold day and he shivered as he walked, his wet rags hanging heavy on his frame. He was lucky that at the moment his tattered boots were still just watertight. If he caught sight of the guardian too, it would surely mean a reward. Not the first prize but something substantial. She had been outside all on her own and that must mean that the guardian would be trying to find her, or at least have raised some sort of alarm. Better still, there was always the chance that she might come back. In which case, he would be able to take her and him together, there and then. Simple.

  The pie seller’s pitch was not far from the red postbox where he had first seen her. He made his way back there. He felt bitter at the way she had been taken from him after he had been so close, and by a dirty conjuring trick too. He would know that conjuror anywhere, and if he ever saw him again he would finish him. When he finally reached the postbox he saw that it was half hidden under a fall of fresh snow.

  Opposite was a row of dark shops, some with bowed window fronts, and all with beautifully lettered fascias in gold script, or decorated capitals. The row of shops offered everything from groceries and ironmongery to ladies’ fine hats. There were modest lodgings and rooms above the shops. Their hipped roofs and red chimney pots peeped out in patches under the settling snow. The street looked like a Christmas card, which is just how it had been planned. The beggar set himself to wait. He stood as still as he could, shivering. His feet were numb, and his hands looked blue-white under his half-mittens. He did not have to wait for very long.

  An agitated-looking man wearing spectacles and carrying a white stick soon appeared at the top of the short flight of steps from the lodgings entrance beside the grocer’s shop. The man was untidily dressed. He wore no overcoat, just a woollen scarf around his throat and a tweed jacket. The ragged man watched the figure struggle down the icy steps of the lodging house, one hand firmly on the iron rail, the other probing with the white stick. The man’s head jerked from side to side as he looked up and down the still busy street. The ragged man watched him until he had reached the middle of the pavement, then he moved away from the postbox and fell in
step, shuffling through the snow at a safe distance behind the blind man. The beggar watched as the blind man stopped people in the street, asked them something and then moved on. Finally the blind man reached the public house on the corner, the Buckland Arms, and went inside.

  The door of the public house was firmly closed. The ragged man could smell sour, vinegary beer fumes and the winter warmer, Buckland punch. The glass panel on the door had etched and engraved patterns all over it, protecting the privacy of the Gawkers. There were slivers and gaps in the pattern, little bevels and edges of clear glass. The ragged man put his reddened eye to one of the clear sections and looked in. The bar was crowded with Gawkers, men in bowler hats and checked tweed jackets, men in cloth caps and white muffler scarves, women sitting laughing together at round marble-topped tables, all red-faced and fiercely jolly in the warm amber-lit interior. The ragged man shivered, and pulled his dirty scarf tighter about his neck. The blind man went from person to person, from table to table, all along the side of the saloon bar, even talking through the little hinged and bevelled windows that opened into the public bar on the other side. He asked his question. With each answer came a shake of a head. Finally the blind man turned away from the bar, making as if to leave. The ragged man dodged back from the heavy doors. His excitement rising, he ran lightly ahead and waited in the middle of the pavement where he was sure to be accosted. A gust of warm air and a spiral cloud of fine sawdust from the floor billowed out with him as the blind man pushed through the door and retraced his steps.

  The blind man came up to the ragged man, the white stick held out in front of him prodding the skim of snow on the treacherous pavement. ‘Excuse me, friend,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for a girl.’