Mortlock (8 page)

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Here’s a piece of good advice

I got from an old fishmonger:

‘If the food is scarce

And you see the hearse,

Then you know that you’ve died of hunger.’

‘Waxies’ Dargle’, traditional folk song

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CHAPTER TWELVE

The Stranger in theStreet

Wiggins insisted on bringing the funeral party back to his shop for ‘light refreshments’. Josie hadn’t felt hungry but Wiggins’s offer had touched her and so she and Gimlet agreed.

Now they stood in silence, chewing cuts of pork pie and sipping tea.

‘So,’ Mr Wiggins said at last. ‘In addition to making the odd casket, you work in the theatre, Mr Gimlet.’

‘I make stage props, sir. I believe my grand title is “engineer”, but I’m really a humble carpenter.’

‘Wasn’t the good Lord himself?’ Wiggins set his cup down and pulled off his glasses to polish them. ‘Where would we poor undertakers be if there was nobody to make our coffins for us?’

‘I’ve made a few caskets and coffins in my time,’ Gimlet said. ‘Sowerberry was always a good customer, sadly no more.’

‘You knew Sowerberry, then?’ Wiggins nodded with approval. ‘A fine undertaker, a fine fellow all round . . .’

Josie gave Alfie a despairing glance as Gimlet and Wiggins compared business contacts.

‘What’s up with you?’ Alfie said through a mouthful of pork pie. A shower of crumbs fell from his lips.

‘Weren’t you taught any manners?’ Josie hissed, flicking a piece of pastry from her shoulder. The image of the stranger still stuck in her mind. ‘I saw him . . . at the funeral. The stranger!’

‘It’s those Aunts of yours I’d be worried about.’ Alfie sprayed again.

‘Cardamom said to destroy the Amarant. If that man
is
Mortlock, we have to speak to him.’

‘Yeah, he also said to
beware
of Mortlock. Anyway, why don’t you just tell Wiggins we’ve got to go?’ Alfie said. ‘You’re too lah-di-dah with yer manners and affectations sometimes.’

‘Too what?’ Josie clenched her fists. ‘Anyway, who says
you’re
coming?’

‘I do,’ Alfie said. ‘I’m kind of involved, you bein’ my sister an’ all. You didn’t complain when I helped you last night. Besides, your uncle said I could help, remember?’

Josie narrowed her eyes at him. He was right. By coming to find him and telling him what had happened, she had dragged him into it. And he was right about Cardamom, too, but that didn’t make it any easier to accept this strange boy pushing his way into her life.

She turned to Mr Wiggins, who was still holding forth.

‘Of course, Mr Mould was a fine undertaker but always had a tendency to look a little self-satisfied . . .’

Josie put down her teacup and said, ‘Mr Wiggins, I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for us.’

‘The least I could do.’ Wiggins beamed. ‘Attention to detail, that’s the key. I’ve always believed that a good send-off is the last right of an Englishman. If you don’t mind, I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a headstone – a simple affair but dignified. The stonemason owed me a favour.’

‘Thank you, Mr Wiggins, you are too kind,’ Josie began. A dark figure scurried past the shop window, making Josie stop. ‘It’s him again,’ she gasped. ‘Mortlock.’

Knocking the tea tray from the table, Josie charged out of the shop into the cold, barging through the crowd as the man hurried ahead of her. She could see his head sailing away above the sea of tattered hats and bonnets.

‘Wait! I want to talk to you!’ she yelled, pushing and elbowing through the grumbling pedestrians. She was closing on him!

The stranger glanced back, wide-eyed, and broke into a clumsy jog. His coat-tails flickered inches from her grasp. Josie snatched at the velvet of his jacket pocket, her fingers gripping on something smooth, then she was suddenly thrown backwards on to the muddy street. A dull pain spread across her stomach and she gasped for breath. Apples, pears and a rather heavy cabbage bounced off her head. Dazed and winded, she looked up at a fruit and vegetable barrow blocking her view.

‘You all right, miss?’ a round, red-faced fruit seller said, peering down at her. ‘You wanna watch where yer goin’. Walked right into me barrow. Look at me lovely apples . . . ruined. Someone’ll ’ave to pay for them, y’know . . .’

But Josie had stopped listening. She grinned in triumph at the business card she’d snagged from the man’s pocket. A small crowd gathered around her as she sat up, muddy water oozing through her skirts, her breath returning. Dirt smeared the name at the top, but Josie could read the address quite clearly:

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The Emporium

of

Archaic Antiquities

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ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS

OBSCURE MAPS

ARCANE ARTEFACTS

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13 Jesmond Street

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Gimlet and Alfie appeared, panting and pushing their way through the onlookers. They helped Josie to her feet as Mr Wiggins came puffing into the circle.

‘Mr Gimlet, I’m quite happy to put the girl up for as long as you want, providing she doesn’t insist on making a habit of smashing my best china and sitting in puddles in the street,’ he said, sliding his spectacles up his nose. ‘But I will not have her under my roof if she utters that man’s name in my presence again!’

‘But I’m sure it was him –’ Josie began to protest.

Gimlet raised a hand, silencing her. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Wiggins, she can be quite . . .
high-spirited
. Come on, Josie,’ Gimlet muttered. ‘Let’s get you in and cleaned up.’

Back in Wiggins’s parlour, Josie dried herself off and changed her muddy clothes, then went down into the shop to the others. Wiggins had taken himself off to the back room to tidy up.

‘I presume there was a reason for that pantomime in the street,’ Gimlet murmured, raising one eyebrow at Josie.

‘It was the man who’s been watching me. I got this from him.’ Josie showed him the card. ‘We should pay this place a visit.’

‘Archaic . . . Anti . . . what?’ Alfie said, squinting at the card. ‘What kind of a place is that?’

‘The Emporium,’ Gimlet snorted, snatching the card. ‘Belongs to Evenyule Scrabsnitch, another charlatan. Sells “curiosities” to gullible country squires. So-called “ancient tomes” and stuffed “quirks of nature” – rabbits with six legs, two-headed piglets and the like. A total quack.’

‘Well, whoever that man was, he’s been there,’ Josie said. ‘Maybe this Scrabsnitch knows him. We need to start somewhere.’

‘Josie, Scrabsnitch is a crook. You can’t trust a word he says,’ Gimlet pleaded.

‘You seem very familiar with him.’ Alfie frowned, tucking his thumbs into his braces. Josie thought he looked a bit like Mr Wiggins.

‘I made some cabinets for him.’ Gimlet said, looking shamefaced. ‘A glass case that magnified some specimens, made them look more impressive than they were.’

‘Well, Mr Gimlet, it seems to me that you can’t go around callin’ people fake when it was you as helped them in the fakery!’ Alfie said, pointing an imperious finger.

Gimlet started to say something but then pursed his lips and folded his arms.

‘Very well,’ he said, the corners of his mouth turning down. ‘But take
anything
Mr Scrabsnitch says with a sackful of salt, that’s all. We’ll get the pony and trap though. It’s a fair way to his shop in Jesmond Street.’

A half-hour ride brought them near to their destination. Or as near as they could get to Jesmond Street. The busy day was in full swing now and carriages and carts clogged the roadway. Horses whinnied, stamping and kicking up mud. Drivers cursed each other, trying to back up so that others could pass. The steam from the horses and the breath of the drivers mingled with the light mist left from the previous night’s thick fog. A peddler’s cart and a grand coach had become entangled, their wheels buckled together. A constant swarm of pedestrians edged around the vehicles, weaving in and out, tiptoeing over horse droppings and worse.

‘The city gets more and more clogged up,’ Gimlet said, jumping down and backing the trap up before it became mired in the crush. They found a quiet side street and tied up the pony.

‘It’ll take some time to untangle that mess,’ Josie said as they entered Jesmond Street on foot.

‘Mr Wiggins says that one day we’ll all travel in tunnels under the streets. There’s a man in Parliament who wants to make underground railways,’ Alfie said.

‘I doubt that’ll happen,’ Gimlet called back. ‘The city would be choked with the smoke from the engines below.’

‘Something’s got to be done.’ Josie frowned as she forced herself between two portly gents. ‘Number thirteen, there it is.’

Scrabsnitch’s Emporium of Archaic Antiquities stood out of the row of shops like a tramp at a society wedding. The other shopfronts were polished and well kept, produce hanging in the windows in uniform rows. The emporium wedged itself between them, paint peeling from the window frames, the panes of glass grimed and opaque. Its pointed frontage poked up higher than the other buildings and leaned forward alarmingly, as if it might crash into the seething street below. Josie wrinkled her nose.

‘I told you,’ Gimlet said, rolling his eyes heavenward. ‘Don’t expect too much here.’

A dull metallic clank heralded their arrival as they heaved open the door. Josie looked up to see a rusty bell. She caught Alfie’s eye. It was a far cry from the polished professionalism of Wiggins the Undertaker.

The inside of the shop was vast; it reminded Josie of a church or maybe a library. Bookshelves lined the walls, disappearing up into the shadows near the ceiling. Display cases stood in rows and piles of books and papers, stuffed animals and various articles of junk cluttered every surface. Old chairs and dull suits of armour were dotted about the room. A thick layer of dust coated everything. A few dim gaslights illuminated parts of the space and a feeble light struggled through the begrimed windows.

‘There’s the old faker,’ Gimlet said, nodding across the cavernous room.

In a far corner, a high-backed armchair housed a grey old man. He was dressed in a silk smoking jacket and a matching pillbox hat. The gown had once been a deep crimson, Josie could tell, but it had faded with age. Blossoming trees swirled across the painted silk and colourful parrots sat on their branches. The old man’s face was shrouded in the frizzy grey beard and grey hair that exploded from under his hat. But Josie recognised his eyes. It was the watcher.

‘Mr Gimlet,’ he said, pointing at them with his long-stemmed pipe. ‘And the two youngsters. I’ve been expecting you.’

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Amarantus flos, sym’bolum est immortalitatis.

Clement of Alexandria

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Evenyule Scrabsnitch

Josie frowned at the stranger in the fancy smoking jacket. ‘You’re not Sebastian Mortlock?’ She couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. That would have been one piece of this puzzle in place. Now she had a new piece to fit.

He flinched at the name, looking nonplussed, then gave an embarrassed cough. ‘My name is Scrabsnitch, Evenyule Scrabsnitch, purveyor of mystery and antiquity –’

‘Give over, Ted,’ Gimlet snorted, but the man’s expression did not change.

‘Ted?’ Josie repeated, frowning.

‘Don’t be fooled by that Evenyule nonsense. He uses a false name to impress the village idiots who visit this place,’ Gimlet murmured. ‘His real name is Ted, Ted Oliver, and he wasn’t expecting us.’

‘Believe what you want, Gimlet.’ Scrabsnitch waved a bony hand. ‘I
was
expecting you, once I realised the young lady had snatched a card from my pocket.’

‘Hardly second sight, then, Ted,’ Gimlet said, folding his arms. ‘Now, perhaps you can explain why you’ve been following Josie all this time.’

‘I’ve been trying to pluck up the courage to approach you,’ Scrabsnitch said, peering up at her through bushy eyebrows, his shoulders slumping, ‘and your guardian before . . . he passed away. But I was wary of the company you’ve been keeping.’

Gimlet strode forward, grabbed the old man’s lapels and pulled him up out of the chair. Josie thought he was going to hit him. The old man hung from Gimlet’s powerful grasp, dropping his pipe.

‘What do you know about them?’ Gimlet snarled.

‘No more than I’ve observed! Put me down.’ Scrabsnitch waved his arms and kicked his feet in the air as Gimlet lowered him to the ground.

‘Gimlet! You’re too rough,’ Josie said and laid a reassuring hand on Scrabsnitch’s arm. ‘You must forgive my friend, Mr Scrabsnitch. He’s had a difficult time recently, as have we all.’

‘Here you are, mister.’ Alfie rescued the man’s pipe from the floor, while stamping out a smouldering fire that had struck up on the dry carpet.

‘I knew your guardian well, Josie Chrimes,’ Scrabsnitch said, his voice shaky as he settled himself back into the chair. ‘Besides, I used to visit the Erato every night. I loved your act and Cardamom was
such
a magician.’

Josie couldn’t help smiling. It seemed like an eternity since she’d last performed onstage. It had been in another world, another time.

‘He used to frequent my shop often in the old days, with Sebastian Mortlock.’ Scrabsnitch seemed to shiver. ‘Cardamom and Mortlock came here, spending Lord Corvis’s money.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I could never pass any fakes off on them. More recently, I received this from your guardian. He gave it to me for safe keeping, he said.’

Scrabsnitch swept aside piles of papers with his skinny arm, and a vase shattered on the floor as he thumped a large package down. Josie, Alfie and Gimlet coughed and spluttered on the dust that mushroomed up from the documents.

‘Gave it to
you
?’ Gimlet snorted.

‘
He
trusted me, Gimlet. Cardamom was never one to stand in judgement against people. He knew he could rely on me as serious scholar of the arcane. A kindred spirit almost.’

‘
Serious scholar
.’ Gimlet sneered once more.

‘Judge for yourself, Josie,’ Scrabsnitch said, ignoring Gimlet. ‘Is the packaging tampered with? Are any seals broken? Once he left the package, he stopped coming to the shop. I was worried about him but whenever I approached him, he had company . . .’

‘I saw you at the theatre.’ Josie nodded. ‘And then at the house.’

‘I didn’t know Edwin was in quite such mortal danger or I’d have acted differently. When I heard he had died, I knew I had to let you know about this parcel, but again, finding the right time was difficult.’ He looked over at Gimlet. ‘Some folk don’t trust me the way your guardian did.’

Gimlet gave another snort and sauntered over to the window to look out at the chaos in the street. ‘I’ll keep a close eye out here, Josie – watch out for any unwelcome visitors.’

Josie looked at the brown paper parcel. It seemed intact. She ripped into the packaging and drew a breath.

Letters, maps and charts spilled on to the table. Beneath them lay a leather-bound book. She picked it up and ran her finger across the gold lettering on the cover:
Sebastian Mortlock’s Journal
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‘They’ve all got Mortlock’s name on them,’ Josie said, her voice faint as she turned over envelopes and sheets of paper. ‘They must’ve belonged to him . . .’

‘Your guardian acquired these around the time of Mortlock’s disappearance, it seems. For some reason, he moved them here a matter of weeks ago,’ Scrabsnitch said. ‘He must have felt they were important.’

Josie sat down at the table and opened the book. Before she could start reading, Alfie unrolled a map, its corner poking over the book.

‘Do you mind?’ she hissed, flicking the map aside.

‘But look, it says AB-YSS-IN-IA . . . Abyssinia.’ Alfie’s eyes widened. ‘And look at that.’

Josie leaned over the hand-drawn map, scanning over the foreign names, the pale blue splodges for waterholes and confusing lines and numbers. But right in the centre lay a green mass and, at the heart of that, a red spot with the word
Amarant
printed in shaky script beside it.

‘Then they did find it,’ Josie whispered. It made sense. Why else would they have this map?

‘This Amarant, have you heard of it?’ Alfie said, perching himself on the edge of a rickety table and staring boldly at Scrabsnitch.

‘There
is
a plant called the Amarant. It exists. An ordinary flower, but the ancient Greeks believed it blossomed for ever.’ Evenyule Scrabsnitch ran bony fingers through his tangle of hair. ‘They associated it with Artemis and Diana, the Greek and Roman goddesses of the hunt.’

‘Artemis, that’s the stage name Cardamom gave me,’ Josie said.

‘Maybe the Amarant was in his mind, young lady. Your uncanny accuracy with all manner of missiles would make you a queen of the hunt. The link would not be lost on Cardamom, I assure you. Milton also mentions the Amarant in his epic poem
Paradise Lost
– a strange and dangerous bloom indeed.’

Josie sat forward and listened intently. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘The Flower of Life.’ Scrabsnitch’s voice had fallen to a whisper. ‘The first flower in the Garden of Eden, blessed by the Lord to give any who held it power over life and death. Many men have died searching for it.’

‘And because of it,’ Josie sighed, looking back to the journal.

It is agreed. We depart for Abyssinia on 20 July 1819. Corvis is generously funding the expedition. Chrimes complains about the heat before we have even embarked! Imagine: to find the Flower of Life. To have the power over life and death itself!

I am fortunate to have such good travelling companions. Corvis has a dark sense of humour but doesn’t let his wealth or high birth stop him from enjoying the company of commoners. Chrimes has been a dear friend for several years now . . .

Josie paused. They all sounded such good friends. What had gone wrong? She glanced down at an irregular-sized piece of paper. She pulled it out of the pile. It was a flyer advertising ‘Lorenzo’s Incredible Circus’. A tall ringmaster stood at one edge of the paper, half framing the list of acts. A lion pawed the air from a corner of the sheet.

‘Madame Lilly,’ she read aloud, ‘tells the fortunes of the brave. The Flying Gambinis, trapeze artists to royalty. Ulrico the Clown. Cardamom the Great, magician and conjurer . . .’

‘And Professor Necros,’ Alfie continued, ‘Communicator with the Spirit World, Master of the Ghostly . . .’

‘Uncle never told me he worked in a circus,’ Josie said, frowning. Part of his life had suddenly been revealed to her, a hidden part. She couldn’t understand why he had never told her about it. ‘Maybe that’s where he met Mother.’

‘Madame Lilly, this her, then?’ Alfie said. He sounded casual but Josie thought she caught a note of emotion in his voice. He touched the cameo picture of the fortune teller on the poster.

‘What d’you think?’

‘Dunno what to think really,’ he murmured. ‘Very beautiful . . .’

‘Cardamom didn’t tell me much about her. She was a fortune teller, a dancer, she loved life . . .’

‘There are many things that Cardamom didn’t tell anyone about,’ Gimlet said, drawn from the window by the conversation. ‘Many things he wanted to keep secret, buried. Too shameful to remember.’

‘Uncle would never do anything shameful,’ Josie said, folding her arms.

‘Not the Cardamom you knew, Josie, but he had his dark moments, his depressions when painful memories swamped him. From what I know, he started life humbly enough, trying to scrape a living in sideshows and funfairs. He was, by his own admission, a pretty poor conjurer.’

‘Well, he wasn’t when I knew him,’ muttered Josie, staring down at the journal again. How could Gimlet say such things? She’d known Cardamom most of her life, and, despite his moods, she’d loved him and trusted him. And he’d been the only family she had.

‘Blimey!’ Alfie said out loud, shoving a letter under Josie’s nose. She recognised the handwriting, and the address at the top.

Bluebell Terrace

7 July 1844

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Mortlock, my dearest friend,

I write to you one last time for the sake of our friendship and all the difficulties we have been through together. If it is true that you possess the Amarant then I beg of you, destroy it. No good can come of it. I know the ill will you bear towards me and can understand, but it is the cursed flower that has brought this upon you, not me. If you cannot bring yourself to destroy it, then let me help you. We agreed many years ago that bringing the Amarant here would result in disaster. Can you not see what is happening?

.

Your ever-faithful friend,

Edwin

‘Mortlock had the Amarant,’ Josie said. The letter at home had called Cardamom a thief. Had he managed to take the flower from Mortlock?

‘Looks like Mortlock was up to no good with it,’ Alfie said, whipping the letter back. Josie flicked through the journal, looking for the same date as the letter.

‘There’s something here, written a few days before Mortlock sent that letter to Uncle accusing him of theft,’ Josie said, dragging her finger down the page.

1 July

My research has confirmed my greatest hope: the Amarant gives great power. Of the three corpses I have had delivered, I was able to awaken one on my own but at great physical cost. I was exhausted. I’ve known of this ability since I returned from Abyssinia. A parlour trick. But, with the Amarant, I could animate all three, make them walk, carry out simple tasks, and with no strain to myself. Think of the possibilities of such power! How can this be a curse?

‘He could wake the dead,’ Alfie murmured, staring at Josie.

‘From my own research, I understand that the Amarant is said to give power to anyone who comes into contact with it,’ Scrabsnitch said, appearing at Josie’s shoulder. ‘But as well as leaving some vestige of power, the Amarant will curse the recipients.’

‘Curse?’ Alfie pulled a face.

‘In the hands of the divine, the Amarant could only do good. In the hands of flawed humanity, it draws on the darkness that lurks in us all. I watched Cardamom perform and his act baffled me. I’ve seen other conjurers and magicians and know a little about the mechanics of artifice. It is hard to fool me, but your guardian’s skills were of a different order. He foxed me every time. That is all I will say.’

‘I could never guess how he accomplished some of his tricks,’ Gimlet added, nodding slowly. ‘If he found the Amarant, do you think its power helped him?’

Scrabsnitch shrugged. ‘It’s possible if, as you say, he has been in the presence of the Amarant.’

‘Maybe Uncle took it from Mortlock and hid it,’ Josie said, ‘to stop him from doing any more bad things.’

‘That might explain why Mortlock’s not about now,’ Alfie added. ‘He could still be lookin’ for it.’

‘We’ve got to find a way to destroy it,’ Josie said, frowning at the journal. She turned the pages. ‘Sacrifice, he said to us, Alfie. That, and a tender heart.’

‘Got to find the bloomin’ thing ourselves first,’ Alfie muttered, shaking his head.

‘And you aren’t the only ones interested, by the way.’ Scrabsnitch glanced at them over the top of his spectacles. ‘Your three old ladies came in asking about Cardamom and the Amarant only last week . . .’

‘The Aunts,’ Josie spat. ‘They are searching for the Amarant, too.’

‘Aunts?’ Scrabsnitch looked from Alfie to Josie. ‘I wouldn’t be so happy to claim them as relatives.’

‘What d’yer mean by that?’ Alfie frowned.

‘I don’t know.’ Scrabsnitch shook his head. ‘Just something about them. They didn’t seem natural and when I saw them at your house . . . well, I was fearful of calling.’

‘Ghuls,’ Josie said. ‘They aren’t human.’