BLACKDOWN (a thriller and murder mystery) (20 page)

Callisto averted his gaze.

‘What are you talking about, Lansdowne?’ Blackdown said, attempting to put a lid on his emotions so he could think clearly.

‘I’m going to show you something, Thomas, but you have to give me your promise you will behave, do not try anything foolish or cry out, otherwise you will stay here and I will let them cut out your tongue. The choice is yours.’

Blackdown gave a short nod, his mind already scouring the situation for any chance of escape. ‘As you will,’ he said compliantly, but feeling a rush of hatred for the man that leaked into his voice.

Lansdowne signalled for the men to return and unfasten Blackdown from the wall. ‘Keep his wrists manacled and his legs shackled,’ he ordered, ‘and if he tries anything at all you have my permission to beat him to the ground and take him back to the cell.’ He smiled warmly at Blackdown. ‘You’re an intelligent and learned man, Thomas, and I think you are desperate to learn what is going on here. I know you will not give me any trouble.’

‘Are you to gloat over me, is that it?’ His arms dropped loose with a clanking of chains and he flexed his fingers and wrists. But the freedom was short lived for the manacles around his wrists were fastened to each other by a padlock, locking his hands together again. The men helped him to his feet, which were shackled at the ankles, and he found he could hardly walk because the short length of chain that bound them together.

‘Gloat?’ said Lansdowne. ‘That is below me, Thomas. I merely thought you would like to look upon your fate.’ He walked briskly out of the cell. ‘Bring him,’ he ordered.

Blackdown hobbled after Lansdowne’s slender form, encouraged by the three men, two of whom stood on either side of him, with the other bringing up the rear. The lantern lit up a low-ceilinged, stone-lined corridor, arched at the top, but they all had to duck down for fear of cracking their heads on the rough-hewn stone blocks. They entered another door at the corridor’s end, which led into yet another short passage. They stood before a single door, liberally peppered with iron studs and supported by three massive, corroded iron hinges. Lansdowne asked for the lantern and told the men to wait outside in the other corridor, something that Blackdown noticed they were more than eager to do. Had he really seen fear on their faces as they retreated into the darkness and left the two men alone?

There was a window cut into the door, and another small opening covered by a bolted sliding door at its base through which Blackdown surmised food would be passed.

‘What is in here?’ Blackdown asked.

‘Hell,’ Lansdowne replied coldly.

He held up the lantern to the window and Blackdown, irresistibly drawn by his curiosity, moved closer so that he could take a look. At first he couldn’t see anything inside the room, the weak lantern light failing to properly penetrate the blackness beyond. He caught a glimpse of fresh straw spread on the stone floor, and what looked to be a white strip of discarded animal bone.

‘I can’t see a thing,’ Blackdown admitted quietly.

But at the sound of his voice he heard a rustling from the darkest recess of the cell, the movement of something large and cumbersome, the scratch of something on stone. And then a growl, so low and hellish it make the hairs on his arms stand on end. Held by morbid fascination Blackdown’s eyes strained to make out the shape that seemed to circle the puddle of light, as if afraid of entering it. A large, hairy hand, human but with long, black claw-like nails, crept into view, the extended muscular arm covered in a mass of thick, matted hair. Another growl, like that of a caged wild animal, seeped out of the blackness and caused Blackdown’s insides to freeze. It was the same unearthly growl he’d heard in Devilbowl Wood.

‘Come, don’t be afraid,’ Lansdowne whispered at the window, his breath briefly fogging up one of the metal bars. ‘Show yourself, my boy.’

Fascinated and appalled, Blackdown’s face pressed close to the window. He knew this to the same beast he had encountered in the wood. He felt the same prickling of fear and unease, the same sense that something was studying him closely, something black and foul staring into his very soul.

In an instant the creature sprang at the door and Blackdown a cried in alarm as a hairy, raging, wolf-like face snarled viciously at the window, its sharpened yellowed teeth gnashing, its wild eyes ablaze with primitive fury, clawed hands reaching through the bars and trying to strike his face.

Blackdown fell back at the nightmarish vision, a hand to his mouth in shock and horror.

Sir Peter Lansdowne laughed, the sound echoing down the corridor like the sound of a scampering, screeching demon.

‘What the devil is that?’ Blackdown gasped.

The beast continued to launch itself at the door, rattling it on its solid hinges, throwing its weight against it with such force that Blackdown, against his better judgement, felt it might actually give way at any moment.

‘Let me introduce you to my very own Blackdown Beast,’ Lansdowne said.

‘What manner of creature is that? It is neither man nor beast!’ he said. ‘I have never clapped eyes on the like before!’

‘And hardly likely to again, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Lansdowne. He leant closer to the door. ‘Calm down, boy,’ he said softly, as if speaking to a dog.

It did no such thing, and in fact became even more enraged.

‘Caldwell!’ Lansdowne shouted.

In an instant one of Blackdown’s guards, the one with the greasy long pigtail, stepped forward and moved to the window. ‘Get back there!’ he ordered. ‘Do as I say!’ The creature shrunk from the door, instantly falling quiet, its eyes supplicant. ‘There’s a good boy!’ said the man. ‘There’s a good boy!’ His job finished he turned to Lansdowne.

‘Robert Caldwell here is the only man capable of controlling our little treasure completely. He has a way with animals,’ said Lansdowne. ‘Thank you, Caldwell,’ he said, dismissing him. The man retreated to the shadows again.

Robert Caldwell! Sarah Jones’ disappeared husband-to-be, thought Blackdown…

With a scuffling sound the creature retreated over the straw to its corner. It sat there, only the whites of its eyes appearing to float in the blackness, caught by the light of the lamp. ‘He doesn’t like strangers, but with his handler he is as docile as a lamb.’

His composure recovered, Blackdown stepped up to the window again. The creature gave a grunt of disapproval at the sight of his face but stayed in its place. ‘Is it a man?’ he asked.

‘Of sorts,’ Lansdowne returned. ‘He was discovered running wild in the forests of Kashmir. An aberration abandoned and left for dead by his mother, no doubt. He was captured by soldiers out hunting, fell into one of their traps along with a huge and vicious she-dog. One can only suppose the boy had been discovered by, and thereafter raised by, a pack of feral dogs, of which there are many in the region. Took him and his physical deformities for one of their own. I have heard many similar tales, but I have never come across such an example.

‘The she-dog was shot immediately, and the young man would have been similarly put down, but the hand that held the firearm was stayed with the argument that there was a profit to be made from their unholy catch. They built a cage and took him back to a local village where they paid for him to be kept, fed and watered until they decided what they should do with him. When he was first captured I am told the young man could not stand upright, but instead ran about on all fours. To this day he cannot rise properly to stand on two feet. He could not speak a word of any language, but instead growls and barks and roars like a wild animal. Sadly, in spite of attempts to get him to speak, using both reward and beatings, he cannot utter one word and never will. He was living so long with the pack that he is all but an animal himself, any humanity having been driven forever from him. He knows nothing of the civilised world. He doesn’t even understand the word God, let alone its concept. He is lost to humanity, a soulless and brutal nonentity that God abandoned from the moment of his wretched birth. I know not why I still call him a man, for he is so far removed from the likes of you and me.’

‘So you would have me believe. But I know of many men who are little more than animals.’

‘Do I detect pity in your voice for this poor unfortunate deviation from God’s plan? I should warn you that it is wasted upon him. He would rip you apart with scarce a blink. See how muscular he has become? Those limbs have torn apart bone and sinew in the wild, those teeth have ripped into raw flesh, those limbs have run tirelessly for miles through dense vegetation. A combination of the defects of his birth – the shape of his deformed body, the inordinate amount of hair, the propensity towards an inordinately muscular frame, combined with his savage upbringing, have conspired to produce a killer of savage intensity.’

‘Is this the creature that murdered my brother?’ Blackdown said quietly.

‘Need you ask? I should think that was self evident.’

Blackdown’s jaw worked hard, but he restrained himself. He was in no position yet to seek his revenge. ‘So this is the connection to the ship
Parthenope
’, he said.

‘Well done, Thomas!’ enthused Lansdowne. ‘Yes, you are right.’

‘The creature somehow fell into the hands of Pettigrew’s brother, the ship’s captain, who secretly brought it over to England from India.’

Lansdowne nodded. ‘Commodore Pettigrew, as he calls himself – though a man as far from a commodore as a cockerel from an orator – was very excited about it, from all accounts, and bought the creature for use in his travelling freak show. But it was an ill-fated venture from the start. The man is too strong, for one thing, and his short and brutal time amongst men has made him distrustful of them. To keep him under control was very difficult. Only one man, Harvey Grey, who was taken on by Pettigrew as a dog handler, could exercise even a modicum of control over him. It is a fact that he was the only person he initially responded to, and ironically a man of such base character at that.’ He shook his head. ‘But such is the world. Caldwell here displayed a natural talent for controlling the beast, and became Grey’s helper. Callisto, being the strongest amongst Pettigrew’s men, was also put in charge of helping control the freak when transporting him, and, later, in the delivery to us of… shall we call them unwilling participants?

‘But to his consternation, Pettigrew soon found out that he could not show the wolf-boy, as he so named him, alongside his other exhibits. He would not make him the fortune he dreamt about. The audiences, inured even as they were to the grosser deviations thrown up by travelling freaks shows, nevertheless were mightily repulsed by this debased creature. And when a handler was unfortunately mauled to death by him that might have been the end of him. There were calls for his immediate destruction. But word came to me indirectly of Pettigrew’s wolf-boy, and I knew that I had to have him for my own devices. I parted with quite a small fortune to secure him and the services of Harvey Grey for a time. Unfortunately, Harvey Grey got a little too greedy, making too many demands, and I replaced him with Robert Caldwell, a far better appointment, as it turned out. But Grey would not keep quiet, though he was paid handsomely to do so. When it looked like his tongue would flap a little too loose I had Grey silenced.’ He turned to Blackdown. ‘But you are an intelligent man, Thomas. I am sure you have worked many things out for yourself. Tell me why I needed the creature so.’

Blackdown eyed the man, feeling his hackles rise at the man’s supreme self-confidence, but again tamped his anger down. He tightened his fists as he spoke.

‘Little more than to satisfy yours and your cronies’ bloodlust.’

Lansdowne frowned. ‘Come, Thomas, it would be too dismissive and low as to call it merely bloodlust.’

‘It is a cockfight and no more. Dress it up as you will, your game is no nobler than that those hungry fools indulge in at Pettigrew’s, placing bets on two birds fighting it out to the death in a sanded circle. Except here you use real men who fight for their lives in the arena that is Devilbowl Wood, pitted unarmed against a creature so strong, so foul and monstrous and suited to hunting in the forest that they can never hope to win.’

Lansdowne clapped his hands together softly. ‘Well done! You are indeed astute, as I have been informed. Yes, Devilbowl Wood has become the perfect arena, Romanesque, you might say, in its concept and grandeur. Gladiators pitted against the wild beast for the gratification of an appreciative audience.’

‘And in the place of gladiators you use soldiers…’

‘When we can get them. They do make the best opponents and prolong proceedings somewhat. And we do have a surfeit of them, over a quarter of a million ex-soldiers home from the wars.’

He knew the other man who had been in the cell with Callisto and himself had to be another unfortunate ex-soldier from Pettigrew’s retinue. ‘Pettigrew recruits them on his travels throughout England,’ he said, ‘and then when his travelling show reaches the town of Blackdown some of them inexplicably disappear.’

‘Only the most able and best amongst them,’ Lansdowne cut in, ‘for I have members who do not wish to be disappointed by a bad Meet.’

‘Yet no one can ever be allowed to live that takes part, can they?’ Blackdown said coldly. ‘Every year you encircle the bowl of the wood with mantraps and post sentries all around its perimeter. I have already explored this so-called arena for myself, Lansdowne. I have seen the trees cut down at regular intervals on the ridge in order to afford greater visibility by those that come to place bets on proceedings. I have seen how even if a man were to escape the creature you send after them, they have to avoid both the mantraps and your armed guards, who, I suspect are instructed to kill anyone who might emerge unscathed. Whoever enters the arena will die. This is one bird that will never live to fight another day.’

Lansdowne smiled broadly. ‘Again I am impressed by your agile mind, Blackdown. So different from those numbskulls your father looked after on your crumbling estate. They are so afraid of the legend of the Blackdown Beast, especially at this time of year, that no one dares enter or even come close to Devilbowl Wood. And we use this and the ludicrous burning of the effigy ceremony and its attendant fuss to cover our own sport. Of course, every now and again they need a gruesome reminder to stay clear.’

‘Like the murder of my brother,’ Blackdown mouthed, ‘who stumbled upon the purpose of your so-called club and had to be silenced.’

‘And the odd-slaughtered sheep, but a dead man, you have to admit, is a rather better deterrent.’

‘I’m going to kill you, Lansdowne,’ he said evenly, almost without emotion.

‘No you are not,’ he replied. ‘I hold all the cards. Cards which might yet fall in your favour.’ He nodded at the door. ‘You might not have to suffer the fate of your two companions if you agree to help us.’

‘Us? And who exactly is this us? The Lupercal Club?’

‘You speak of it with so little regard, Thomas, almost as if you want to roll it around your mouth and spit it out, but you do not know of its power, its potential, its future. The Meet – Devilbowl Wood – that is merely an annual distraction for some of its members. One reward among many. The promise of excitement, huge sums of money changing hands, fine wines and fine food, the lure of attractive female company willing to do anything they so desire. It is a promise of the riches to come for those who take part in the great and noble adventure that will release us from the shackles of tyranny which governs this blighted country.’

It was Blackdown’s turn to give a chuckle, though it was devoid of humour. ‘Are you talking about revolution?’

Lansdowne’s face was deadly serious. ‘Is that so unreasonable?’

‘Perhaps when the revolution in France took place we almost stumbled into it as a nation, but with Napoleon once more behind bars and the long a bloody war ended, it seems unlikely that the people have the stomach for it.’

‘You think so?’ said Lansdowne. ‘The country has never been more ready. The people are primed. We are led by a mad king and the repulsive Prince Regent, who squanders taxpayers’ money for his own ends. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, fears revolution more than any. The policies coming out of his Government are repressive because as a whole his ministers fear just such a revolution. The wealthy landed class dominate the Houses of Parliament, bolstering their own interests above those of the common man. They are the ones who secure their own interests by passing such as the Corn Laws that starve the people of this land and throw them into a rebellious state; they are the ones who come down with a heavy hand on anyone who cares to stand up for what they believe are their moral rights, who fight for a political voice; they are the ones who dominate political power, who continue to make the inequitable laws that govern this black-hearted country.’

‘I fought for this country,’ said Blackdown. ‘I fought for it because I believe in it. You are talking treason and will be hanged for it.’

‘I made my fortune out of industry. Out of mining. Yet my fortune matters not, for I still fight to be accepted as a gentleman in a country of aristocratic squires. Industry is the future, but our progress is being blockaded by a powerful minority that has its roots in a medieval past, whose grip it is time to loosen.’

Blackdown smiled wryly. ‘So this is about power and money – your power and your money – not the rights of the common man. You see an opportunity to make a considerable fortune, little more, replacing one set of soulless autocrats with another.’

‘It is true. Personally, I don’t care about the common man. In truth they are a means to an end. And do not be foolish enough to think I am alone in this affair. The Lupercal Club is made up of some of the most powerful men in the country and headed by a genius who will free us from the shackles of the current system and help us set up a new republic.’

‘Ravenbard,’ said Blackdown.

Lansdowne’s brow lifted fractionally. ‘So you have heard of him. Yes, Ravenbard.’