The Forever Man Page 11

  Isles nodded seriously. ‘Understood. Let’s do some banter later on, though. I got a feeling you have a talent for it.’

  Chevie smiled in spite of herself and remembered an old saying of her father’s, which went: Even the toughest shell has a sweet nut inside – his variation on Every cloud has a silver lining. Chevie’s dad generally trotted out this saying when they were down to their last nickel and the refrigerator had nothing in it but mould.

  Isles turned his attention to Professor Charles Smart. ‘And, Professor, if you wouldn’t mind dimming the lights as much as possible, in case I missed a crack in the walls.’

  ‘Of course, Special Agent,’ said Smart, and turned down his glow until he was no more than an outline of himself.

  ‘Anything in the vicinity I should be aware of?’ asked Isles.

  Smart floated round the desk to his computer, checking his scanner read-outs. ‘Nothing on the surface. But Rosa is due back in town.’

  ‘Rosa!’ said Isles. ‘You know, for once I hope she does show up. I would love to see Mister Almighty Witchfinder deal with that witch-born abomination.’ He chuckled, then settled on to a bench that seemed familiar to Chevie. It took her a moment to realize that there had been one just like it in the WARP pod that had taken her to Victorian London.

  ‘Might as well relax,’ said Isles, closing his eyes. ‘Best way to keep quiet.’

  Chevie could hardly believe it. ‘How can you relax at a time like this?’

  Isles opened one eye. ‘Because I’ve been in a time like this for quite a while now.’

  Fair enough, thought Chevie, and sat beside her fellow agent, but, even though she tried for several minutes to clear her mind, Riley kept popping up.

  Is he hurt?

  Is he dead already?

  Where would Garrick keep him?

  And one non-Riley-related thought:

  Who’s Rosa?

  Alleluia

  Mandrake. Huntingdonshire. 1647

  Riley slept as best he could, delicately tilting the Cat’s Collar so its left arm touched the stone floor, and in that diagonal slump he snatched short fits of slumber, swapping one nightmare for another. When he awoke, seized by a dreadful cramp in his calf, it was only his training as an escapologist and magician’s assistant that enabled him to completely relax his body in spite of the stabbing pain.

  The cramp had passed, though Riley could still feel the knot like a clenched fist in his calf, and he sat there on the cold stone, hunger like an empty cauldron in his belly.

  ‘Food,’ he said to the hard-faced men watching over him, for they had bread and ale laid out on the pews. ‘Water, at least.’

  Constable Cryer forbade it. ‘You shall have nothing, familiar. If I shall neither sup nor swallow on the Witchfinder’s orders, then neither shall you.’

  Riley grunted and rattled his chain. ‘Fool,’ he said. ‘You would follow Garrick to the gates of hell, and he would toss you into the flames without a thought.’

  They made for strange adversaries.

  Riley and Cryer did not have many things in common, apart from gender and current location, but they were both endeavouring to make the best of a bad situation and each would have proclaimed that their own circumstance was the worse of the two.

  Riley, most would accept, was probably right on that front – after all, he was chained to the floor, with steel bolts on delicate triggers pointed at his neck, and surrounded by hostile men wielding sharp tools. But Godfrey Cryer saw his wounded pride as a far greater injury than anything that could ever be visited upon a mere witch’s familiar, even unto death itself. For had he not been shamed in the eyes of his master and hero? And for this humiliation he blamed the familiar himself. The boy in the Cat’s Collar. The boy now chained before him. And he wondered if there was some way in which he could provoke the lad into tampering with the device and unleashing the bolts into his own throat, for Constable Cryer felt sure that this would improve his own mood. So every once in a while he would take a run at Riley and then pull himself up short, hoping to startle the boy into triggering the Cat’s Collar. Riley, being a smart lad, did not fall for such bully-boy tricks and held himself stock-still while he considered his predicament.

  Think, Riley, old son. Use the noggin.

  For Riley had a working theory and it unfurled as follows: Garrick has never trusted a soul on this earth besides his own self, and even as he constructed this contraption I know full well he would have imagined his neck by some reversal of fortune placed in it.

  For it is the nature of man that he will turn on his saviour, and Albert Garrick had surely styled himself the saviour of these gullible country folk. Even though they could not kill Garrick, they could certainly cause him considerable pain, no matter how many strings of coloured kerchiefs he pulled from his sleeves.

  And could Riley credit that Garrick would lumber himself with plucking out the entire Alleluia as an escape plan?

  No, it beggared belief that a master illusionist would not leave himself a way clear of this death trap.

  But if Garrick had constructed this collar with Riley in mind, then it would be a way that Riley would not be privy to.

  What could that be?

  Cryer made a sudden run towards Riley, brandishing a cudgel and howling like a loon, but Riley was as a statue and treated the constable to nothing more than a stony stare.

  ‘Bah,’ huffed Godfrey Cryer. He dared not nudge the boy or even verbally encourage him to fidget, for Albert Garrick had ordered him guarded, but still he coveted the boy’s death as though it were the throne of England.

  ‘You best be circumspect, Godfrey,’ advised Thomas Cutler, one of the guards, whose very life was built around circumspection. A boy who, it was said, would not risk so much as a single bun for a kiss from Lizzie Woulfe, surely the prettiest maid in Mandrake. ‘The Witchfinder wishes him alive for trial. To kill the lad without absolution would be to set him free.’

  To set me free? thought Riley. How were my own countrymen ever so gulpy?

  But Garrick had a most persuasive way about him. Had he not convinced Riley that he was the devil himself? How difficult would it be for a performer of his calibre to persuade a town under siege from Royalists, bandits and beasties that he was an agent of heaven come to save them?

  But to the nub of the problem: How would Albert Garrick free himself?

  It would be an escapologist’s trick, of that Riley was certain. But which one? The hidden button? A secret key? Or perhaps a simple manipulation of one’s own digits.

  Riley explored as far as his reach allowed, which was further than the average person’s, for as Garrick had often joked during his lessons: Manual dexterity is a trump card in the escapologist’s hand, if you will pardon my little joke, Riley my boy.

  Garrick had always loved his little jokes. Riley could not remember having laughed a single time.

  When they had lived in the Orient Theatre, Garrick’s instruction methods were all his own, for he believed himself something of an innovator. For manual dexterity he had fashioned a miniature iron maiden lined with dull tacks, which could be screwed into any of a dozen constellations that Riley learned by heart from a chart. Riley would insert his hand into the iron maiden and in the second before Garrick slammed the lid down he would name the tacks’ configuration and if Riley could not manipulate his fingers accordingly then his flesh would be pierced and pinched. And, even when he did manage to position his fingers in time, he would be forced to endure the awkward position for long periods, often while Garrick went off on a job.

  Well done, my boy, Garrick would say when he eventually unclamped Riley’s hand. Soon your hands will be as nimble as mine, and then no man will ever hold you captive. He would then wink merrily. Excepting, of course, my good self. You can never escape from me.

  Well, it appears that Albert Garrick was right on that score, thought Riley now with a certain glumness. Even time itself cannot set me free.

  He shook off the gl
umness with a mental shake and not an actual one and set his fingers a-roaming round the lip of the Cat’s Collar. It was slow labour with the constable and his comrades scrutinizing him, but even so Riley was able to give the implement a good poke and squint and there was nothing.

  Then the key is in the mechanism, he thought. Something in the strings themselves.

  This was no common-or-garden musical instrument, for the strings had a double purpose: to make music and to launch the cross bolts.

  Riley could see a complicated tumbler mechanism set into the wooden body, but there was no way to influence the rotations with his reach.

  Riley racked his brain for some form of clue.

  What has Garrick’s weakness always been? Historically, as it were.

  This was an easy question to answer.

  His vanity.

  Garrick had always believed himself the finest illusionist who ever lived and when he’d had a jug of red wine the self-pity would come tumbling out of him. He would forget his theatre vowels and speak in the accent of the rookeries where he’d grown up, in spite of cholera and near starvation.

  People ain’t got a notion, boy. People don’t know that among them, in their very midst, is living a man – nay, more than a man – who could wipe the stage with any of the so-called greats. Pinetti? Robert-Houdin? Amateurs, flashy hucksters. Albert Garrick could have the world in the palm of his hand. Kings, emperors, the lot.

  Garrick’s promising career had been literally cut short when he had sliced his beautiful assistant in half during a performance, on account of a perceived slight, and he dared not return to the stage for fear of being recognized.

  But give it another few years, he often said. And perhaps a nicely waxed set of whiskers, then I shall re-emerge from the shadows and you shall be my assistant, boy. And, oh, the wonders we shall see. No more skulking around this hellhole. And I shall have a black carriage drawn by plumed Arabian horses, with my initials in gold on each door. He would hold his hands high, imagining the scene. No fancy monikers for me. The world shall know my true name. Albert Garrick. He would close his eyes, then, seeing the gold initials: A … G.

  And then Riley had it.

  Of course.

  But he could be wrong.

  Even if he was right, though, that only gave him half a chance, for there were two sets of strings. And, even if Lady Luck smiled on him, there was still Cryer to be dispatched.

  Which is a task, Riley thought, that I shall relish.

  Did he have the gumption in him, he wondered, to take on such odds? To possibly unleash the bolts into himself and end his own life?

  Perhaps I am immortal now, like Garrick?

  But he knew that he was not, for he felt no different in himself than before.

  Except about Chevie. Except in that respect.

  As it turned out, Cryer made up Riley’s mind for him. First the dolt made another one of his dashes towards Riley, hoping to startle the boy with his stamping feet and zany hallooing, but when that did not produce the desired results he resorted to insults and threats.

  ‘You are hell spawn, boy. There is no creature on this earth lower than the familiar of a witch. Lower than a snake, you are. For at least the snake knows not its sins.’

  Riley was still pondering the risk and whether he would take it when Cryer squatted before him and said, ‘I promise you this, familiar. Your witch will scream when they burn her. And I shall see the flames are kept to a low flicker so that her hellish screams will echo long into this night. Then we shall see if you are ready to confess.’

  All doubt disappeared from Riley’s mind. Chevie would not be harmed by this fool’s hand, not while he drew breath.

  So he flexed his fingers and, upon hearing the knuckles crack, Cryer was surprised. ‘You would attempt the Alleluia?’

  ‘No, Constable,’ said Riley. ‘I believe I know a shorter tune.’

  Then without hesitation he plucked the right A string and left G string simultaneously.

  A. G. Albert Garrick.

  The world shall know my true name.

  ‘Hah!’ crowed Godfrey Cryer, as though his dreams had come to pass, but his celebration was short-lived as the Cat’s Collar tumblers tumbled and clicked.

  ‘Faith!’ he gasped, but for an officer of the law his reactions were slow and he merely watched slack-jawed as the hinges of the collar swung open, releasing Riley’s neck and hands. Hands that would, in the case of a normal prisoner, drop like heavy anchors from their positions of confinement – but these hands rested steady as those of a statue, fingers resting on the violin strings.

  Which control the cross bolts, thought Cryer. Which are no longer pointed at the familiar.

  ‘I think I’ll try the Alleluia now,’ said Riley, and twanged a random string.

  One bolt flew from its cradle like a streak of light and took Cryer high in the shoulder, driving him backwards into the front bench, which set off a domino effect of crashing pews.

  Riley lifted the second bolt from its groove and jammed the head into the padlock securing his shackles, into which it fitted perfectly, as he had suspected it would. One quick turn and his feet were free, after which he replaced the second bolt in the crossbow and sent it whistling past the earhole of Thomas Cutler, giving the man such a fright that he turned and left the building, almost outpacing the arrow such was his haste.

  The other guards were made of sterner stuff and hefted their cudgels, doubtless reasoning that although the familiar had perhaps some tricks up his sleeve he was still a boy and could be laid low with a knock to the bonce.

  While it was true that Riley was indeed a boy, he was no ordinary boy, having endured several years of rigorous training in stage magic, escapology and martial arts – and so was more than a match for two part-time members of a rural watch with no more qualification than a willingness to take a shilling and stand on a wall. It took Riley barely a half minute to relieve the first man of his cudgel and strike them both senseless with it. He felt a touch guilty for laying low two of his own countrymen in a chapel, of all places, but they would wake up in a short while with nothing to show for their assault but the flushes of bruises and shame. And there were lives in the balance.

  Chevie’s in particular.

  From the tumbled pews Cryer moaned, then called, ‘Demon! Devil! There is nowhere you can run that the master will not find you.’

  Riley ran down the aisle, grabbed his cape from where it was draped over a pew, and dashed out into the morning mist, thinking: For once Garrick ain’t trying to find me; I am trying to find him.

  Rosa

  The fens. Huntingdonshire. 1647

  Albert Garrick was not too far away as it happened, for progress through the diverse thicketry, woodlands and now boggy fens was proving slow. The would-be witch-hunters were hampered not only by the East Anglian landscape but also by the dense fog, which refused to disperse with the morning sun and seemed tinged with a sickly hue that had the men mumbling it was witch-summoned. A muttering that amused Albert Garrick no end.

  These fools, he thought, not without fondness, for after all they feared and adored the same Albert Garrick. These fools and dullards. Witch-summoned fog indeed.

  It seemed the hounds were just as dull as their masters, for they dithered from one tree trunk to the next, sniffing and slobbering, and if Chevron Savano had followed this hound-suggested path then she was indeed witless, as was her rescuer.

  No, he thought. We are being bamboozled here. Led astray by some means or other.

  Garrick was mildly surprised to find that the red mist of rage did not rise behind his eyeballs; in fact, the more twists and turns this tale took, the more it delighted him.

  You are amused, Alby, don’t you see? he told himself. For it had been so very long since this world had distracted him. Time had seemed to dissolve into a succession of blood-soaked trudges, with the faces of the dead blending into one.

  Riley’s face.

  And yet, when he ha
d Riley in his very grip, he had realized that this was no monstrous betrayer. He was a mere boy who’d had a lucky escape. And also Garrick caught a glimpse of what lay beyond Riley’s demise.

  Centuries of sameness.

  Nothing.

  He would kill Riley. Yes, he would. No doubt of that. It had crossed his mind to rehabilitate the boy, reinstate him as his assistant. But that would be folly. He’d taken many assistants over the decades. Assistants, sidekicks, wives, servants, pages, slaves. Albert Garrick had indulged them all and always with the same result: they died. Either by his own hand or from natural causes.

  So, yes, he would kill Riley and the girl Savano. They had wronged him and that could not be allowed to pass without vengeance, but he could not deny an unexpected twinge of regret that the great adventure was almost over.

  What then for Albert Garrick? What great magical destiny?

  Garrick almost smiled at the memory of his younger self. The naive assassin who had stumbled into the quantum elements with lofty ideas of magic and greatness. He’d even gone back on the stage for a few years but it all seemed so pointless now. Longevity was all there was. The rest was inside the wormhole, if he might call it that, and he would not allow himself to be dragged back inside.

  I could not resist her again, he thought. I would be consumed entirely.

  And, even though Garrick had tired of life, he did not yet crave death.

  Moreover it would not be true death, for the tunnel would spread me along its velvet length until Albert Garrick was nothing more than a paste of electrons.

  Garrick was pleased to have remembered the word ‘electrons’. Once upon a future time he knew much of the twenty-first century’s science, but, in truth, science bored him, beyond the trickery applied to his stage machinery, and much of his knowledge had faded. But he still held on to snatches and looked forward to aeroplanes and espresso machines.

  For I have tasted future coffee and it is wonderful.