Hell Train (9 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE MONARCH

T
HE MAN IN
the brocade frock coat was waiting for them in the guard’s van.

Mr Scheffen was a mortician. Parchment-skinned and beetle-browed, his sparse oily hair was plastered over a dome that seemed too far forward on his shoulders, making him appear stooped even when he was standing tall. He had been brought aboard to supervise the loading of a magnificent coffin, but was anxious to be off before the stationmaster’s whistle sounded.

He looked from Reverend Thomas Wellesley to his wife in some amazement. In his striped blazer and cricket trousers, the vicar appeared to be dressed for a boating holiday somewhere in the Thames Valley. His wife sported a fine blue hat fixed with a feathered pin, and had massaged her plump frame into a tightly corseted green jacket. Why did the English abroad always dress as if they were asking to be shot at?

‘My dear Madam,’ said Scheffen. ‘Good sir.’ He wetly kissed Miranda’s hand, then raised his red eyes to hers. ‘Such fresh skin. A pity we all dry out in the end.’

Miranda snatched her hand away. ‘The Conductor tells me you are willing to help us earn our passage,’ she said, eager to arrange their business.

‘The matter is rather delicate. If I may be frank?’ Scheffen gave a mirthless smile. ‘Among its many duties, the
Arkangel
train delivers the deceased of this region for the Necropolis Company. You may be familiar with us? We have offices in London, at Waterloo Station. We specialise in the shipping of those who have passed over.’

‘I believe I have heard of such a thing,’ Miranda admitted. ‘I’ve heard it said that there are more dead in London than alive, and that it is little more than a giant grave.’

‘Indeed so, Madam. But that is nothing to be feared. The word ‘cemetery’ comes from the Greek,
koimeterion,
meaning a dormitory or garden of sleep. We all sleep in the end. This coffin is to be returned to its family. I cannot stay with it.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dear Mrs Wellesley, my place is here, for the war is sure to increase our business tenfold. Beyond this, I am not at liberty to explain.’

‘Miranda...’ Thomas touched his wife at the waist, but she pulled away. If it was left to her husband they would remain stranded here at this filthy station until the troops arrived to torch it.

Scheffen continued. ‘All I ask is that you accompany the coffin. Do not let it out of your sight. One hates to mention a subject so vulgar as money, but in addition to your passage, I can promise you will be most handsomely rewarded.’ He stepped aside to reveal the ornate closed mahogany casket with its lid in upper and lower sections.

‘A personage of quality and renown,’ he replied to Miranda’s unvoiced question. ‘He was a victim of this terrible war.’ He lowered his voice from respect. ‘A member of the Carpathian royal family.’

‘But where is his final resting place to be if not here?’ Miranda asked.

‘Miranda, do you really think—’

‘A fair question, my good lady, and one which deserves to be answered. The Prince has family far beyond the Carpathian mountains, in Romania, Latvia and Hungary, in Germany and even among your own great royal Hapsburg family in England.’

‘What happened to him? Was it an assassin’s bullet?’

‘No—a certain delicacy.’ His tone fell as he broke a confidence. ‘Such gentlemen have different constitutions to you or I. Their blood is of a separate composition. Their veins lie near the surface of their skin. They always feel cold. They are—prone, yes that is the word—to exhaustions of the spirit. They carry dormant illnesses deep within themselves that rise up in times of anxiety. The war was too much for him. A nervous disorder of persistent vigour brought about his collapse. It was felt best that he be returned to those who would care for him in a family vault befitting of his regal status.’

‘Miranda—’

‘I am getting us home!’ Miranda hissed at her husband, shaking free his hand.

Mr Scheffen ran his pale fingers along the polished fluting of the coffin lid. ‘A top of the line model. Nothing but the best, by royal decree. Crafted for him on the day he was born. Silk lining hand-stitched by nuns. Blinded themselves finishing that, they did.’

‘When I die, I should wish cremation,’ said Thomas, ‘it is the modern way.’

‘Forgive me for saying so, sir, but you won’t get a Christian send-off in a pot.’

‘My husband is a claustrophobe. He has a morbid fear of confined spaces, Mr Scheffen,’ Miranda explained.

‘Death is the final remover of earthly fears.’ He turned to Mrs Wellesley, who obviously took care of all financial affairs. He could see questions of money in her eyes. ‘You’ll be paid upon your safe arrival.’ The train’s whistle blew, ready for departure. ‘So long as the casket remains sealed, nothing... untoward can happen.’

‘Whatever do you mean?’

But Mr Scheffen had already donned his stovepipe hat once more, and flicked the black plume of its veil behind his bony neck. He hastened to the steps as the Conductor waited to pull them up. The wheels protested and the carriages began to roll.

‘Remember. Stay beside the casket at all times. If one of you has to leave, please ensure that the other remains. Never leave it unguarded, even for an instant. My office will wire your recompense in full upon your final disembarkation.’

And with that Mr Scheffen drifted back to the platform and was gone. The remaining rabble of travellers flapped their tickets, anxious to be allowed on board, but were ignored. With a sigh of steam and a groan of steel, the
Arkangel
had hoisted itself once more and began to move out of the station, the unaccepted walking beside it, then running and reaching out to touch the walls, as if they held some talismanic power.

And then the train was gathering speed again, its boiler hot, its smokestack belching cinders, heading from the station into the velvet night.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE GYPSY

S
OON THE
A
RKANGEL
was once more racing through countryside as black as tar. No lights showed in the splintered hills. There was only the faintest difference in hue between the treeline and the ragged sky.

Isabella sat beside the window, her hands pressed nervously against her thighs. Every click of the tracks bore her further away from the life she had known.

Nicholas looked at her and marvelled. The way a stray blonde curl fell forward across her right eye, the curve of her slender neck, even the smear of mud on her ankle seemed right. He would make a fine woman of her in London. There were jewels and dresses she could wear, left in his Mayfair rooms by that chorus girl from the Gaiety. ‘Please,’ he begged her, ‘don’t be afraid. I know this must all seem so strange, being torn from your home, your family and friends, but it was for your own good. One day, when this terrible war has ended, we’ll be able to go back and visit.’

‘I can never go back,’ said Isabella sadly. ‘My father would kill me. Josef would not take me now. In our town, feuds run in the blood and last for centuries. Josef’s family will demand retribution. Everything there is ruined for me.’

‘Then thank God I am leading you to a more civilized nation. We will find everything you need, food and clothing and the necessary papers—I have money—and we will board a ship across the channel to Dover, thence to London. You shall have dancing and joy, and no time for regret. There is nothing you need fear. I will protect you.’

‘There are things even you cannot protect me from,’ said Isabella darkly.

‘Such serious words from such a young lady.’ He reached across and stroked her chin. ‘Let me put a smile back on that delightful face.’

‘I don’t even know who you are.’

‘Then allow me to elucidate. I am an adventurer. I am two years shy of thirty, and have been from Siam to South America.’

‘A sailor, then?’

‘For a while, yes, in a way. I tired of my father’s beatings and ran off to Portsmouth, to board the first steam packet that would have me. I returned to find my uncle had died, and I was to inherit his fortune.’

‘How did he die?’

‘In the most mundane way possible, mown down by a Hackney Carriage on the Strand. When the war began I decided to play my part and took the King’s shilling, enlisting as a soldier, but destroying the lives of others proved not to my liking.’

‘What brought you to Carpathia?’

‘That is another long and dull story which I am sure to bore you with one wintry night in London, when we have little else to do but sit in front of the fire and yarn,’ he laughed. It was probably best to avoid the absolute truth about his past: the whoring, the fighting, the escapes and escapades. The pregnant girl in Nice he had abandoned all those years ago. That night in Constantinople with the belly-dancing twins, the robbery of the brothel and the flight in women’s clothes. He was ashamed of his past, but not enough to publicly recant it.

He saw her thaw a little, and the faintest smile began to play on her lips, but at that moment something slammed against the corridor window. Isabella started as a blemished, hairy face leered at them through the partly open glass.

The old woman wore her wealth about her. Gold teeth flashed, gold earrings shook, the necklaces of dead relatives hung about her sagging breasts. Fixing Isabella with a fierce green eye, she muttered something in old Carpathian, then raised the index finger of her left hand and ran it briskly along her right, before spitting hard at Isabella’s feet.

‘Get out of here, you filthy old crone!’ Nicholas rose and slammed the window shut. The old woman continued to shake her head and stare, but finally shuffled off along the corridor. ‘She must have come in from the Third Class carriage,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

Isabella was shaking. ‘The gypsy woman was warning me.’

‘You could understand her? What did she say?’

‘She was reciting what she had begun on the platform. It was part of an old poem, just a line or two repeated, something we used to say as children.’

‘Can you remember what it was?’

‘I can recall the verse as if I had heard it yesterday:

‘
What you see and what you hear

Upon the train may not be real.

Except to you, who on this night

Will face the test that must decide

Your fate, your life, your very soul,

Before you reach your journey’s end.’

Nicholas hated poetry, which seemed to be no more than arranged words. ‘That’s all very well, but what does it mean?’

‘A foolish playground curse, nothing more.’

‘And yet you remembered it.’

‘That’s because our town was built on—’ She suddenly stopped herself.

‘What?’

She looked back up at him, seeming to see him for the first time. ‘Superstition. It was built on superstition, Nicholas, nothing more. Take me to London.’

‘You’re lying to me. Holding something back.’

‘No, there’s nothing. In truth, I do not fully remember. But there is something in my childhood, just out of reach—’ She forced a smile that only made things worse. ‘I am not lying. If I do anything untoward, it is only to protect you. There are things here that it is better for you not to understand. There are—secrets. We are waiting for a sign that it has all begun.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘I think—there must be an act of self-harm, the taking of a life.’

‘I do not understand what you are saying.’

‘Somewhere on this train there is another like us. He is in grave danger.’

‘Another like us? Please, Isabella, I am trying to understand—’

‘I feel so tired suddenly. My head is swimming. As if I may not survive removal from my home.’

‘That is because you have never left before tonight.’

‘No, there is something more. The train.’

‘It is our fortune and your escape.’

‘But Nicholas, it is more than a train. It is a compendium of terrors that could unfold into infinity. We are running into terrible danger.’

‘Please, tell me what the gypsy woman meant.’

‘I cannot, for fear that I will make it true.’

‘But these are superstitions, don’t you see? Nothing more.’ He rose and sat beside her. ‘I will let no harm befall you, Isabella. I have not been true to women in the past, I have to admit, but a man can make changes in his life, just as you have made a change in yours. Now banish your fears and try to sleep for a while. I’ll find refreshment for us at the next station. In a few hours you’ll awaken in a new land, where it seems the very streets are built for your delight.’

‘You are so kind to me, Nicholas.’

‘You see, there is nothing to be afraid of.’

But as she set her head back on the antimacassar and fell into an uneasy slumber, lulled by the swaying of the train, he wondered what it was that had frightened her so much.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE CHAUFFEUR

I
N THEIR
F
IRST
Class compartment, Nicholas and Isabella dozed.

In the guard’s van, Thomas and Miranda commenced their vigil.

In his alcove, the Conductor set about his paperwork.

And in one of the second class carriages, a salesman who had boarded the train at Snerinska fidgeted nervously. He did not know it yet, but he was about to become a catalyst in the fates of those who had joined the train at Chelmsk.

Franz Urban had only been a salesman for three months, and hated the job. He had no proficiency in selling fishing rods and grousing rifles to the Eastern Europeans, firstly because he worked only to make a wage, and second, because right now the Eastern Europeans had more serious things on their mind than recreational sports.

Digging into his jacket, he found the vial of blue pills prescribed to him in Vienna and took two more, knowing that they would dull the pain in his calipered leg, but they would not be able to lift the terrible feeling of guilt that burdened him. Franz Urban knew there were doctors to whom he could talk about his state of mind, but they charged too much for sessions, and his own doctor was a kill-or-cure man who had no time for those of a delicate disposition. Indeed, he had heard it said that soldiers were returning from the battlefields with terrors in their heads that made them scream at night, but doctors merely thought them cowards.