Harry Cavendish (13 page)

‘I will pluck it sweetly like a plum from a pie. They will not even notice.’

‘Here she comes now.’

Mrs. Bellingham, her silver hair tied up tight in a severe bun, strutting like a peacock in her soiled jodhpurs, led the Cramptonians on the field at a pace, oblivious to the crowd.

She, like the Emperor, was annoyed with the manner in which her team had performed. At the start of each match, she had prepared herself for her death. She had primed the mallet and pictured the Emperor above her, his arm raised to strike her. She had imagined the detonation and the bloody aftermath, the screams of disbelief from the crowd, the panicked stampede from the Circus, the cutaways to blank screens on the sports channels, the shock and fear that she would engender everywhere in the Empire.

She had played every game so badly, and impressed poor tactics and losing strategies on her teammates, and had even managed to score an own-goal, but still, with the unerring complicity of the spandrill, they had gone a goal up and to her disbelief had won each game. Afterwards she had had to stand on the touchline, too far from the Emperor to have harmed him, and watch her opponent, bent before him, die in her place.

But not today. Today they would lose and she would kill him.

‘Team Crampton,’ she said to her team huddled around her after the anthems had been played and before they mounted their ponies. ‘Let us try something different for today’s match. Frantic, I want you to switch with Canard in goal.’

‘But, I have never played in goal before…’

‘I’m concerned about the injury to your hand.’

‘I have no injury to my hand.’

‘Canard will be more use to us on the left wing.’

‘Canard has never played on the left wing before.’

‘Let us just try it and see how it works.’

There was a general muttering amongst the team. She could see they were worried, but they would have to do as she said. She was the captain.

Then they mounted their ponies and lined up for the throw-off. Canard positioned himself in between the goal posts. Frantic was on the left wing.

‘Canard, I told you to swap with Frantic,’ she said.

‘Yes, you did.’

‘So swap with Frantic.’

‘Captain, I cannot do that.’

‘I am your captain and you will obey me.’

‘Captain, I cannot. We have seen the way you have been playing. We are not stupid. It is as if you want us to lose.’

Mrs. Bellingham was shocked.

‘Why would I want us to lose?’

‘You are anxious that it be over. You know you are to die and you want it done quickly. It is understandable. But don’t you understand that we can win?’

‘We can win?’

‘We can win the whole tournament and you will not be killed. Those are the rules of Imperial and Ancient. And we are so close now.’

‘Get on the wing!’

‘We will not let you do it. We can win. We can bring glory to Crampton.’

Mrs. Bellingham remonstrated with him some more, and then shouted at Frantic, but it was no use. The team had stopped listening to her. She withdrew to the centre circle for the throw-off and within a minute they were up by a goal.

Proton and the Sibyl were waiting a few hundred yards downstream of the bottom of the waterfall. They had found the broken pieces of Cormack’s barrel, washed on the bank, and the Sibyl had begun to look for the body.

‘I’m most terribly sorry,’ said Bernard. Proton was staring in disbelief at the river. ‘But it often happens like that with the Candidates. Only a very few have survived the First Ordeal and then, of course, the ones that have, have all wished they hadn’t when they’ve had to participate in the Second.’

The Sibyl looked at Proton nervously and pulled at a pocket deep within his multi-coloured caftan.

‘Look, I do apologize for mentioning it at this difficult moment, but there is the small matter of the fees you would have paid to my brother, the soothsayer…’

He was interrupted by a piercing scream, wild and terrifying, and he and Proton both looked up, towards the top of the waterfall from where it seemed to have come, and they could see a human figure struggling in the river at the lip of the great cascade, and then the figure was over the edge and tumbling within the water, still screaming, and it seemed to fall forever until it hit the bottom with a flat plop, and was lost in the churning froth.

‘Was that him?’ said Proton.

‘Yes, I think it might have been,’ said the Sibyl.

‘Cormack, my boy, Cormack… what have you done?’ said Proton quietly.

‘Tremendous drop, and looked like a bit of a belly flop at the end,’ said the Sibyl but Proton wasn’t listening and began running towards the waterfall and calling out for Cormack.

He scrambled amongst the gravel close to the bank, scouring the river, and for a good while could see nothing except white water rushing in eddies over the hidden rocks. Then at last, far off, close to the other bank and a little way back from the waterfall, he spotted a small round thing bobbing above the surface and thought it might be a head, moving leisurely backwards, and he called out to it – ‘Cormack!

Cormack, mate!’

‘Proton!’ it called back.

‘Cormack, mate! Is it really you? You made it! You bloody made it!’

Proton laughed a mad laugh.

Cormack continued his languid backstroke, making directly for Proton now that he could see him.

When he was close enough to the bank, Proton paddled in, grabbed him from behind and pulled him from the river.

‘Cormack, mate! Cormack!’ said Proton. ‘You bloody did it!’

Cormack smiled back weakly.

‘He did it but he was supposed to do it in the barrel,’ said the Sibyl, who had rushed to join them.

‘Oh come on, Bernard!’ said Proton. ‘You think the Negus needs a barrel? Way to go, Cormack!’

‘The Shamanic Throat will have to be consulted.’

‘He isn’t even dazed. Are you Cormack?’

‘Not particularly, but I am very cold.’

‘Get the boy a blanket.’

They wrapped Cormack in the Sibyl’s caftan, and when he was able, he got to his feet, and they led him back, soaking and shivering, to the glade.

There they dried him with huge fluffy towels, and sat him on the grass in the sun, giving him Horlicks to drink. Cormack was surprised to see the cow there, lolling on her side, coyly chewing on a blade of kush-kush grass. She seemed pleased to see him.

‘Been for a swim, Cormack?’ she said and gave him a knowing wink.

Proton and the Sibyl moved away to talk in private.

‘When can we start on the next Ordeal?’ said Proton.

‘I have to consult with the Shamanic Throat.’

‘I told you that he was the real deal, Bernard! You saw him drop off the waterfall! Completely uninjured!’

‘Many have survived the First Ordeal, Captain. The Second Ordeal is quite a different matter.’

‘He’s your man, Bernard! I told you so! The wait is over! The Negus has returned to Shambalah! Get excited, Bernard! Get excited!’

The Sibyl smiled a vague, sphinx-like smile and said nothing.

While the Sibyl and Proton were talking, Cormack was conversing with the cow in a whisper.

‘How is Stanton Bosch?’ asked Cormack.

‘I really doesn’t know yet.’

‘It was a hell of a fall.’

‘He’s probably dead.’

‘Do you think they know it was him coming down the waterfall?’

‘They was only watching for you, Cormack. Not for Stanton Bosch.’

‘I hope he’s all right. Good of him to hurl himself over a waterfall on my behalf. I only got a few little scratches up in the brambles, scrambling down.’

‘You did play your part real sweet.’

‘Cow, does Proton really want to kill me?’

‘Hey, Cormack! Negus!’ Proton was calling at him, across the glade. ‘One down! Two to go!’ He was holding two fingers up in the air and grinning hugely. ‘Ready for the next one? You betcha!’

‘What is the next one, as matter of interest?’ said Cormack quietly to the cow.

‘Ordeal by Ingestion,’ said the cow.

‘Ordeal by what?’ said Cormack.

‘They’re going to win again, aren’t they?’ said the Emperor.

‘It seems so,’ said the hive-mind.

‘I’ve got to chop the head off that big insect thing?’

‘The one in the yellow jersey with the striped thorax and the wings like filigree.’

‘He will crunch like a cornflake and then drip on me.’

‘Most unfortunate.’

‘Well, the Shamanic Throat has been consulted and we’re good to go,’ said Bernard. ‘Seems I was worrying over nothing with the whole lack of barrel issue. I think, in fact, we’ve established a rather pleasing precedent.’

‘Jolly good,’ said Cormack.

‘Ordeal by Ingestion today. Looking forward to it?’

‘No.’

‘Probably wise. Here’s the form. Your legs will be chained and we will attach a long rope to them. Then we’re going to pull the rope up through a pulley so that you will be hauled within the branches of the Fractious Jub-Jub tree over there. You will be hanging upside down. You will need to take this penknife and make a small scar in the bark of the tree. I stress the word, small. The sap within the tree will begin to flow almost immediately. You must drink it. It is milky in colour and, as you would probably guess, tastes extremely foul, but it’s quite harmless when it is mixed with saliva. If you drink it immediately, it poses no danger and you will safely digest it. I believe it has a mild laxative effect, but that is nothing to worry about. If you don’t drink it, and allow it to drip, however, it will set and form a paste – a paste that has remarkable incendiary properties. It will catch fire at once and then explode, destroying the tree, the vegetation around it and, of course, you in it. As I have said, once you have made the incision with the penknife, it will be flowing quite freely so you must drink it all down, just so. Now, the statistic that I hear most often quoted is that a standard Fractious Jub-Jub tree contains twenty-seven gallons of sap…’

‘Twenty-seven gallons?’ said Cormack.

‘Be careful you drink it all. We will set two dogs at the foot of the tree to keep watch over you throughout the night and will return in the morning. Is everything quite understood?’

‘Yes,’ said Cormack.

‘Then we will begin.’

The Sibyl chained Cormack legs carefully, and he was raised in the Fractious Jub-Jub tree. It was a monstrous thing - its trunk alone must have been twenty feet in diameter - minutely corrugated and hung with creepers and vines.

‘Native to a ghastly little planet in Sector Seven,’ said Bernard. ‘Crumpton or something. Introduced to Foul Ball three hundred years ago, seeded by the Shamanic Throat himself.’

‘Are you set, Cormack?’ said Proton.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Cormack when he was hanging upside down.

‘Make the incision.’

‘What if I don’t?’

‘Fine by me,’ said the Sibyl.

‘Cormack, make the damn incision, will you?’ said Proton, fingering the laser gun round his belt.

‘I can’t drink twenty-seven gallons, Proton.’

‘Remember Pranzi, Cormack. Remember that she died that you might live. Don’t let her sacrifice be in vain. Don’t ever let that happen.’

Cormack looked at Proton hard and Proton looked back harder.

‘You probably, won’t have to drink it all. Bernard here is a reasonable man.’

‘Well, actually, he most definitely will have to drink it all because otherwise…,’ began Bernard, but had to stop because Proton had accidentally kicked him.

Cormack reviewed his options and felt them limited to either cutting at the tree or being shot to death by Proton, so, reluctantly, he began to cut at the tree with the penknife.

‘Good boy,’ said Proton.

The Sibyl was peering through a pair of binoculars from a safe distance.

‘The sap is flowing. I have confirmed it. Very good. Throw down the penknife. Thank you. Now make sure you drink the sap.’ Cormack put his lips to the incision as though he were kissing it. ‘That’s it. Suck it down.’

The Sibyl turned to Proton and said, ‘Jolly good. I think we’re set.’

‘Yes. He’s going at it hard.’

Cormack’s face was ashen.

‘Always a bit reluctant to leave them here like this. Inevitably what one finds of them in the morning is rather distressing.’

‘Don’t worry about Cormack. He’s the real deal.’

‘I think we should withdraw to a distance. It can be a little off-putting for the Candidates when they are closely observed.’

The dogs were set, and Proton and the Sibyl watched Cormack quiet in the canopy for a while before heading back to the glade. Night was falling.

‘We will know when he’s done,’ said the Sibyl as they walked away. ‘A whole section of the forest will get torched and it’ll light up like a funeral pyre. Should be able to see it from the glade.’

Later Cormack heard, ‘Psssst!’ from high in the branches.

He looked up, but was unable to speak because his lips were locked to the tree. So he blinked at Stanton Bosch in acknowledgement.

‘I did swing across them there treetops to be with you, see. As me and the cow told you we planned it.

Now, you’ve been here an hour, I reckon. Your belly must be getting quite full.’

Cormack nodded his head as best he could.

‘So you move across there and let me suck on this here tree awhile.’

Stanton Bosch swung down to be close by Cormack and settled himself on a nearby branch. Then he hooked his feet around a couple of twiggy knobs and fell forward so that he was hanging down right by him.

The effect on Cormack, who was only swallowing the horrible tasting Jub-Jub sap with extreme difficulty and now had Stanton Bosch so close that he could feel the man’s whiskers on his cheek, was overwhelming, and it was almost beyond his powers to stop himself from falling to the forest floor in a wave of nausea.

The Bosch moved closer to him, and grabbed at his head, pulled it towards him, and frenched him hard above the incision. Suction was thus transferred and Cormack was freed.