The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead (19 page)

“I’d prefer my uniform,” Charlotte said, gesturing to the aerial officer’s tunic and trousers hanging on the wardrobe handle.

“A dress for your wedding, my dear.”

“The men get to wear uniforms.”

Charlotte waited, but the old woman didn’t move. The dress was there, a light blue staid thing.

“Now!”

Under the gaze of the harridan, Charlotte took her beloved uniform and placed it back in the wardrobe and then, her back turned, stripped naked before dressing in a fresh shift. A maid appeared to tighten the bindings of her corset, a jerk forcing all the air from Charlotte’s lungs just as she was about to ask for it to be tied loose.

“Tighter!” the Gräfin commanded.

Suddenly there were tears in Charlotte’s eyes.

“Short breaths,” the maid whispered.

“Quiet!”

Charlotte panted like a dog as the blue creation was deposited over her, done up and fussed over. Soon, she was the picture of perfection and paraded before a standing mirror.

“You’ll do,” said the Gräfin, not unkindly.

Charlotte smiled.

The Gräfin clapped her hands: “Come!”

Charlotte was led in procession along the corridors of the castle. As they passed, servants and underlings bowed or curtsied as the Gräfin passed, deference shown at every stage, and then Charlotte, out of the corner of her eye, noticed their reaction to her own passing: they bowed and scraped too, but they looked away and some – too many – crossed themselves as Catholics do.

They were afraid!

Of her?

Surely they could not be frightened by a small girl like herself. It would be the Gräfin, but their fear of that old crone was manifest in their bowing. For Charlotte it was different… they were afraid
for her
.

When they reached a pair of large wooden doors, the Gräfin halted.

“I will see that everything is in order,” she said. “Wait here.”

Charlotte waited.

Left with her was a senior maid. Charlotte glared at her, moved slightly, forcing the woman to take more and more extreme measures to avoid eye contact, until finally it was impossible. The woman looked: she had brown, almost black eyes, wide, with the whites visible all the way around. She crossed herself, quickly, an impulsive protective gesture.

“Do you speak English?”

The woman nodded, desperately, twisting to avoid her.

“What is it?” she whispered.

The woman shook her head.

“What?”

“Poor child,” the maid whispered, “for you is a fate worse than death.”

The big doors opened.

The Gräfin clapped.

Charlotte went in to a small chapel, a wonderfully familiar sight with wooden pews, a font, pulpit and far ahead, an altar below a shining stained glass window depicting the last supper.

Everyone stood for her.

She walked down the aisle: she was so important, the centre of attention with servants and people bowing as she passed. If only her sisters could be there to see her, she thought, then they’d realise how mean and horrid they had been.

Ahead, on her right and facing the congregation, the Crown Prince – her Crown Prince – sat upon a throne on a raised dais surrounded by rings of functionaries. The outer circle consisted of uniformed military, then came the officials and finally the inner ring of family. Charlotte was led forward and, as she got closer to the great man, he seemed to shrink, his finery took on the air of costume and pretence, his bones were clear through his stretched skin and his eyes were yellow and watery. His head lolled to one side and he drooled.

“He’s really not well,” said Charlotte. “He needs medical help.”

“He has the best medical help in all of Europe,” said the Graf. “Can you not see the leeches all around?”

On both sides of the room, men in white coats stood waiting, their pockets bulging with stethoscopes and steel instruments. Doctor Mordant was there too.

Charlotte’s shoe caught on the top of the dais, her toe striking the stone and she nearly stumbled. The Graf caught her arm and lifted her onto the platform.

“I’m all right,” she said.

“May I present His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince,” the Vögte announced. “The King!”

Everyone dropped to one knee except Charlotte.

This was the man she was supposed to marry? He was at least a hundred and fifty, she thought, and…

She nearly gagged, the smell was vile.

“Come closer,” the Vögte whispered as oily as his slicked back hair.

The Graf, keeping Charlotte between him and his father, pushed her forward. She put her hand out to steady herself and brushed across the Crown Prince’s hand. He was cold, icy cold, absorbing the heat from her like metal on a winter’s night.

The Vögte gestured with his long, bony fingers and Charlotte leaned forward, turning her face away from the foul abomination when she saw things crawling through his scalp.

“This is the Princess,” the Vögte crowed. “Isn’t she lovely, a beauty, strong of limb and healthy? She will bear you many sons and daughters.”

Charlotte thought she was going to throw up.

“See, see,” the Vögte twittered excitedly, “His Royal Highness speaks.”

The old man’s mouth moved and spittle spilled forth to dampen the crusting that stained collar.

“The Crown Prince asks for your hand in marriage,” translated the Vögte for all. He gazed around the room to pass on this wonderful news and dare anyone to contradict.

Charlotte’s flesh seemed to shrink back, almost as if her vital organs were huddling together to create a space between her body and her corset.

The Vögte sneered: “Your Royal Highness, what is your gracious answer?”

Bile rose in Charlotte’s throat.

“Yes?” he asked again.

Charlotte voice seemed to come from nowhere: “Yes?”

The sigh of relief around the room was louder than the half–hearted cheer.

“Good, good,” said the Vögte. “We will have a quick wedding now, a service before God, and then you will consummate the marriage.”

“Wedding now?”

“Ja,” the dowager replied.

Charlotte pulled away and put the back of her hand against her mouth swallowing the taste of her recent meal back into her gullet. The ‘does anyone know just cause’ couldn’t come soon enough, she thought, and then she’d just tell them.

The priest spoke in German addressing the crowd and then paused: there was an agony of silence and then he carried on. He seemed to be deliberately stretching it out as a form of torture.

The Graf stepped forward with a gold ring, he gestured in front of the jerking form of his father and then grabbed Charlotte’s left hand. She pulled away as he twisted and screwed the band onto her third finger.

Oh Lord, she thought, I’ve missed the ‘just cause’. It was then, when the Priest had paused, when the dust had frozen in the pale light from the tall stained glass window. She was lost.

The Gräfin jabbed her in the small of her back: “Now!”

Charlotte cried out.

“I do,” said the Gräfin.

“I do?” said Charlotte.

“She does,” the crone cackled.

The Priest faced the congregation and announced something, words that flowed quickly and each syllable edged with relief. When he finished, he looked at the squirming bride.

“What?” Charlotte said.

“You may kiss your husband,” the Gräfin said, her spindly fingers gripped Charlotte’s hair as she yanked her head around and forced the young girl to bend towards the corruption of flesh that twitched in front of her. Charlotte’s hair was pulled at the roots drawing back her skin and her lips were forced into a rictus. The Crown Prince’s body below her went into spasms and still Charlotte was pushed closer.

A yard, a foot, an inch…

The Crown Prince spewed a mass of yellow bile, a splatter striking Charlotte in the face. She wrenched back, retching herself, as the monster contorted.

An orderly tried to hold him down, but the writhing creature found strength: it snapped up with its teeth and took a bite out of the man’s neck. Blood spurted, washing the vile puke from the ruined uniform. The man fell back, his hand over the gushing wound and he called for help, coughing blood across the stone floor.

More technicians entered the fray to hold their Crown Prince down. The struggle increased, full of kicks and jerks. Charlotte looked away: saw the horror on everyone’s faces, the shadows struggling and fighting on the wall, her own shaking hands.

Suddenly it stopped.

The technicians stepped away to reveal the Crown Prince: a corpse, ashen and grey, and the smell of death was upon the cadaver already.

Charlotte’s gasping drew in enough air and she opened her mouth to–

The dowager Gräfin struck her across the face, a sharp unbelievably sudden shock. Charlotte’s jaw was numb, her eyeballs felt loose in their sockets. By the time Charlotte recovered enough to look back, Doctor Mordant, complete with magnifying goggles swooped down to put her fingers to the corpse’s throat.

“The King is dead,” she said.

Charlotte’s surge of relief was so great and, in contrast to her former revulsion and horror, it felt like joy.

“The King is dead!” the Graf shouted. “The King is dead!!!”

The orderlies sprang into action and unceremoniously lifted the body as others brought a gurney forward. They dumped the dead King down and wheeled him away.

Charlotte went over to the Princes standing forlorn by the tapestry.

“I’m so sorry,” she began, “but–”

The Graf gripped her arm vice–like and pulled her away.

“Excuse me,” Charlotte managed.

“Ignore them,” the Graf said. “They are nothing.”

“Are you the new Crown Prince now?”

“Nein,” Zala replied.

“Your brother… surely younger.”

“Your wedding night is only delayed.”

“To whom am I to be married now?” Charlotte asked. “You or your brother, Pieter?”

“You are married already.”

“Only until death do us part.”

“Nein.”

The Graf marched out, his stride barely affected by the English girl he dragged in his wake. They went down a corridor with mirrored doors on all sides and then into a dungeon. That’s what it looked to Charlotte until her eyes became accustomed to the dark. The Crown Prince’s body had already been placed upon an altar at the far end and above, in some strange parody of a crucifix, a brass shape like a giant ‘V’ overshadowed everything.

A noise, unlike anything Charlotte had ever heard, sparked into being as lightning played between the two arms of the brass mechanism. This was a laboratory similar to Doctor Mordant’s high up in the tower. An iron taste dried Charlotte’s mouth and the hairs on her forearms tried to crawl.

The Graf came to a stop, far too close to this horror for Charlotte, but although she twisted and struggled, she couldn’t get free.

“Mordant!”

The Doctor didn’t move: “Turn away.”

“This is no time for secrets.”

“Graf.”

The Graf seethed, but he turned away, pulling Charlotte around as he did so. It was frightening, not knowing what was happening, and Charlotte could hear Doctor Mordant mixing chemicals behind them.

“You may look,” said the Doctor.

Everything seemed to be the same as before they turned away.

“Now,” said Doctor Mordant.

An operative by the side of the room adjusted a dial and then threw a huge switch. It sparked as it made the connection and then the lightning arced across the room blasting the colour from the scene.

The Crown Prince’s body, strapped to the table, convulsed, his entire form jerking in a parody of the life: once, twice and then again.

“Lights, lights,” Doctor Mordant instructed. Strange electric lights on cables were brought forward.

“Again,” Doctor Mordant shouted.

By the side of the table, Charlotte saw the Crown Prince’s dead hand twitch and move.

Doctor Mordant turned triumphantly to the assembly: “It’s alive!”

“Ja,” said the Graf.

The Crown Prince screamed: an awful noise conjured from some circle of hell. It was as if his human soul had a whole lifetime compressed into a single heartbeat, a brief knowledge before its gibbering, drooling mockery of existence took hold again.

“Long live the King,” said the Graf.

“Long live the King,” came a reply.

“Long live the King!”

“Long live the King,” came the response.

“Long live the King!!”

The chant was picked up by all: “Long live the King.”

The Graf let go and Charlotte, suddenly bereft of support, stumbled away to fall on the floor. In the flickering light, the Princes gazed upon their father, gibbering amongst the technicians, with expressions of disgust and anger, and with a terrible resigned despair. Charlotte crawled away on her knees, her hands to her ears trying to blot out the appalling, almost religious fervour.

“Long live the King!!!”

“Long live the King!!!”

“Long live the King!!!”

Chapter X

Miss Deering-Dolittle

Earnestine ran down a long path that zig-zagged to descend the steep gradient of the mountainside. At the end was a battery built from stone on a flat area and beyond the cliff dropped away. The buildings appeared deserted and the cannons were unmanned. The guns were old, there to fire warning shots to any incoming airships in case of fog as if this was some aerial lighthouse. Hurriedly, she completed a circuit of the two main buildings, which was enough for her to examine the circumference of the enclosure. It was a dead end. The path led to the battery and nowhere else, so she was trapped. The long back-and-forth walk, uphill this time, awaited her.

Still she was not a young lady to flinch at that.

She jumped – a noise came from the largest building, a clatter, something knocked over perhaps.

Flattened against the wall, she saw the castle towering above her, huge and impressive with numerous windows all of which gave an excellent view of her movements. If anyone had seen her, then soon enough soldiers would be descending, back and forth, back and forth, down the long path.