The Curse of Salamander Street Page 6

  ‘Then let us walk. Perhaps you will have news that interests me? Since the sky-quake and the comet, things have changed in this world. I passed many a bare hovel and shack. ’Tis as if the whole land has emptied itself for fear of another curse falling from the sky. Met a man the other day that said he would never venture forth from his house for fear of the whole sky falling upon him. He’s taken to wearing ladies’ clothes and painting his face – sadly he had not shaved the beard from his chin, which gave him a disturbing countenance.’ Barghast spoke slowly, his eyes glowing in the night.

  Ahead, by the crossroads, the sound of the inn grew closer. Glimmering flag-lights quickly came into view as the three walked silently on. There was something unnerving and yet comforting about Barghast. He reminded Beadle of a man he had once met after a shipwreck in Whitby. The man had travelled from the east of Europe and had been washed ashore during a squall that had sunk his vessel. He and a black dog had been the only creatures to survive the beating of the sea. Like Barghast, he had that gaunt look of one who neither slept nor ate. Also like Barghast he had the same penetrating eyes that shone like two full blue moons set within darkened rims.

  As they approached the inn they could see a pack of languid coach hounds sleeping by the stable door. The beasts crowded together to keep out the night cold. Behind them was a smouldering forge from which hot embers were lifted upwards by the breeze like fly-sparks. For the travellers, the scene murmured contentment and peace. A fat, drunken man belched merrily upon a milking stool by the doorway.

  ‘You will have a room for the night?’ Barghast enquired of them. Beadle noticed that beneath the long black cloak he carried a leather bag.

  ‘Barn will be good for us. Plenty of straw for a night’s sleep and why spoil yourself for a fleapit of a coaching inn?’ Beadle replied, as if a cantor.

  Barghast didn’t speak, his gaze drawn to the pack of dogs that now clambered up on his approach. Suddenly, the lead hound bolted to its feet and stared at Barghast, its legs trembling as if before some old adversary. The dog growled and rumbled as it bared its teeth and snarled. One by one its pack followed on, each hound arching its hackled back like a frightened cat and pacing away from the man.

  Barghast walked on, ignoring the beasts as their whining changed from snarls to baying howls. ‘Dogs,’ he muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Can’t see why such a fuss is made of them. Man’s best friend? Good eating, that’s what I say.’ He cackled, pulling the cloak tighter and lifting the bag he carried with his other hand.

  Raphah walked to the hounds and patted one gently upon its forehead. ‘If only you could speak,’ Raphah said to the hound under his breath as it licked his hand, shaking with excitement. ‘Perhaps you could tell us more of this man than we would want to know.’

  ‘Do you have rooms?’ Barghast shouted at the drunk as he kicked away his stool and watched him crash to the floor in an ungainly heap. ‘Rooms? For sleeping?’

  ‘Full,’ said the man awkwardly as he stared up from the ground at the black-clad figure that towered over him like a hawk. ‘To the brim. Three coaches from York and one from Peveril, can’t fit ’em all in.’

  ‘Then I suggest you go inside and turf someone from their bed so that I can have a night’s sleep,’ Barghast growled at the man, dropping his bag to the floor and taking off his cape.

  ‘Tell ’em yourself and not one will budge, not even for the devil himself,’ the man replied, awash with ale and ready to fight.

  Barghast knelt over the man and for several moments whispered in his ear as he held him by the scruff of his collar. Beadle watched as his lips moved and incanted the words and saw a change in the man’s face.

  ‘Very well,’ the man said feebly as Barghast lifted him to his feet. ‘That’ll be done.’

  It was as if the drink had suddenly left him. Gone was his gurgling of discontentment and venomous face. The man sucked in his guts and tightened his belt as he stepped across the threshold and into the inn. Barghast followed on, dragging his cape and bag behind him.

  ‘We have rooms – at my expense. You will be my guests,’ the man said as he waved for them to follow.

  ‘I have money for the both of us,’ Beadle protested.

  ‘But not enough when there is no room at the inn,’ Barghast insisted.

  Raphah nodded to go along with the man as he pushed Beadle forward. ‘Don’t worry, Beadle. This is no chance meeting. For now we do what he desires,’ Raphah whispered, stepping over the threshold.

  As they walked into the hallway they could hear the frantic conversations that filled the downstairs rooms. From the large front parlour with its raging fire and strong smell of burning pine needles came the hubble-bubble of a gathering of men who clustered together. They stilled their chatter to hushed voices as Barghast led Beadle and Raphah ever onwards. They traipsed behind the old drunk, slowly leaving behind the night chill as the house warmed them like a garment.

  To one side of the hallway was a large kitchen; the door was open and a black oven range steamed in the candlelight. Beadle looked in and saw a maid, who gave a soft smile as she hurriedly pulled a pair of jerkins from the drying rack and folded them neatly. The old drunk beckoned them on; he apologised under his breath for the lack of rooms and said that if he’d realised Barghast was in the district he would have made better the accommodation.

  They tramped up two flights of stairs and along another dark hallway until the man took a key from his belt and opened a door for Barghast.

  ‘Hope this’ll do, sir. I’ll have someone come and take the things away. I’ll double the man up in another room. Don’t think he’ll mind, not if he knows it’s you who has taken his room.’

  Barghast didn’t reply. His eyes scanned the room and then he turned to Raphah and Beadle. ‘Only one bed, sadly. I am sure our host will find you a soft resting place?’

  The man nodded as he tugged on his belt and pulled up his breeches over a large paunch that flopped like the rump of an elephant. ‘This way,’ he said as he pushed Raphah back along the way he had just come. ‘I’ll send up some food, Mister Barghast. We tend to turn in early. If it’s a coach for Peveril you want then it leaves at six. Breakfast at four. Three tickets?’

  Barghast nodded and smiled as he slid into the room and quickly shut the door.

  ‘Important friends,’ said the innkeeper as he hurried them along and pulled the hairs from the wart on his chin. ‘Without him you’d be in the barn, if you were lucky, and you’d be walking to Peveril.’ His mood had changed and he glared at Raphah.

  The innkeeper pushed them along the landing and down the stairs until they came to the kitchen door. Once again the gathering in the parlour hushed their voices to a mutter as Raphah and Beadle went by the open door.

  He took them into the kitchen. ‘In here and up there,’ he said, pointing to a double bed that was framed to the ceiling and hung across the room just below the roof. ‘It’s warm and too high for fleas, so think yourselves lucky. Eat, drink, sleep and make it quick – not good to be awake when it’s dark. Too much goes on that’s not the doing of men.’ The man gestured for the maid to leave the room. ‘All you can eat on the table, the oven’s stacked so will keep you warm. Important friends … Huh!’

  ‘What did he mean, Raphah?’ Beadle asked when he was certain they were alone.

  ‘He meant we take some bread and cheese and drink some ale and fall asleep.’

  ‘No, about the darkness and the goings on … And what about Barghast? Why did he follow us?’

  ‘It was only when I saw him in the light that I realised who he was. He is more than he says he is. I have heard of him. Cartaphilus Barghast is a collector of antiquities. He searches for that which he thinks has special powers. I was once told that he carried the finger of a saint and that all he desires to find is the Grail Cup,’ Raphah said. He picked at the meat that had been left on the table, pulled a chunk of bread from the loaf and filled his pockets with tiny apples that had been daintily
stacked upon a white plate. ‘I think he knows who we are. It was not a coincidence we met on the road.’

  ‘The Grail Cup? Demurral spoke of it often. So what’s Cartaphilus Barghast doing here and why does he travel with us?’ Beadle pleaded.

  ‘That we will discover my friend, that we will discover,’ Raphah said as he climbed the ladder to the high bed and looked down at Beadle from the ceiling. ‘This is a good place. A warm night’s sleep and then on to Peveril. Soon I’ll find Thomas and Kate.’

  ‘But who is he?’ moaned Beadle as he warmed his steaming backside against the oven. ‘Did you see the coach hounds? Every one of them terrified and he said he’d been with us whilst we walked. What is he – invisible?’

  ‘If Barghast is the one I was told of when I sailed to this land, then he will soon reveal himself and his purpose. Until then, let us keep close counsel.’ Raphah rolled himself into the blanket. The heat from the oven had warmed the bed, and it was as if he rested on hot buttered bread. Raphah smiled to himself as he looked down at Beadle, who shuffled and strutted up and down the kitchen angrily chuntering to himself. ‘Beadle, sleep.’

  ‘SLEEP?’ Beadle asked as he stepped too close to the oven and singed his rear upon the scalding door. ‘Sleep? How can I sleep when we have trouble with us? That’s what Barghast is – TROUBLE. I can smell it a mile off and it’ll follow us all the way to London.’

  ‘And all I can smell is a burning Beadle.’ Raphah laughed as Beadle wafted the smoke from his burnt trousers. ‘Whatever Barghast may be will not concern us. In the morning we will be gone to Peveril.’

  ‘But why does he follow?’

  ‘That we shall soon discover,’ Raphah replied calmly as he snuggled himself into the blanket and closed his eyes wearily.

  ‘Blast, bother, boiling blood.’ Beadle fussed as he pulled every item of flotsam from his coat pocket and burnt it in the stove fire. ‘Everyone sleeps and Beadle paces … Clock ticks on and I’m on my own.’ He reluctantly began to climb the ladder to the bed.

  Lying next to Raphah he gazed down to the wooden floor far below. With the coming of the night it was as if the house began to yawn and tremble. From all around came the sound of strange groaning. Footsteps beat wearily above his head; far away he could hear words spoken in whispers. The gnawing of rats echoed in the walls and as all in the house fell into dreams, Beadle stared about the room.

  In his mind he suddenly entertained the thought that he now missed life with Demurral. He had his place in the order of the world and had walked in the glow of being the master’s servant. Beadle felt quite alone as his thoughts raced. He wondered how circumstances had come and tattered his life like scoundrels and vagabonds stealing all he had.

  Late into the dark hours, Beadle twisted and turned in sleeplessness. He was hot and bothered in his high bed, and itched as if every crawling creature had taken to eating him alive. The house had fallen into silence as all the travellers slept. ‘Last to taste sleep,’ he muttered. ‘Hate it, hate it …’

  Wide awake, he looked on as a small mouse crawled from a cobwebbed corner of the scullery and climbed the carved table leg. It scurried in and out of the covered plates and every now and then took hold of a crumb in its claws and feasted merrily upon it. The creature then sat, rubbing its whiskers, looking at Beadle. The candles flickered against the whitewashed plaster. To hurry sleep, Beadle counted the slats of the wooden shutters again and again. Half-drowsy, he listened to another set of footsteps pounding the stairs, making their way to the outside privy. Something in their stealthy and somewhat sinister bearing made him listen more intently. It was as if they stopped at every doorway of the passageway above Beadle’s head. Time and twice time they walked quietly across the bare boards, stopping and starting and moving from door to door. At every doorway the footsteps entered the rooms above his head, then moments later shuffled their way along the passageway.

  He thought for a moment, knowing that this was not just the nocturnal wanderings of a weary traveller. ‘Can you hear it, Raphah?’ Beadle asked as he nudged his companion. There was no reply. Raphah slept soundly, wrapped in the quilted blanket.

  The sound of the footsteps carried on across the landing and then, slowly and carefully, began to descend the wide staircase that led into the hallway. From beneath the scullery door, Beadle could see the flickering of shadowy light. It moved with each pace taken, coming quietly closer by the second.

  ‘There’s someone coming,’ Beadle whispered as close to Raphah as he dared without being overheard from the hallway. ‘Outside – listen.’

  Raphah didn’t stir. He snored gently, a smile etched in his dreaming like a contented cat filled with cream. The footsteps stopped outside the door. Beadle could tell that whoever was walking the house did so with great ease, not fearing or showing concern that they would be discovered.

  The large brass door handle began to slowly turn. Beadle pulled the covers up about him and peered quietly from the bed as he pretended to sleep. Slowly and purposefully, the door opened. Beadle remained silent. He could feel a rising sense of panic begin to grip his throat. Inch by inch the door opened. A hand gripped the wood and gently eased the door wider and wider.

  From his vantage point, Beadle could see the bright glow of three candles. Covering his head, he peered below through his crooked elbow. The door opened wider – and it was then that he saw the Glory Hand. The fingers gripped the candles that burnt brightly. Beadle knew it well. It was like the one that his master Demurral had used several times before. It was the hand of a hanged man, severed at the wrist, dipped in saltpetre and wax, dried and charmed by a magical incantation. In its grip it held three candles. Once it was lit, all who slept could not wake and to put out the flame would take blood or the milk of a mothering cat.

  A cloaked figure held the Glory Hand before it. With a chank of bagged coins, the hand was wedged between two plates of cold meat and a moneybag emptied on the table. A living hand came from the shroud and began to count the money coin by coin. It stacked them in neat piles, gold to the left and silver to the right. But it was as if the robber searched the bag for something more and that the money was of no concern.

  Beadle could not see the figure’s face nor recognise by its dress who it was. He was certain it was neither Barghast nor Demurral. The figure was far too small and its hand far too delicate. All he could fearfully see was the thin white hand counting the money.

  ‘Money and nothing more,’ the soft voice said.

  On the table, the mouse hid beneath the rim of a pewter plate, its long tail trailing from its hiding place. The hand suddenly stopped its reckoning, darted to its left, snatched the mouse and in one loud gulp the tiny creature had vanished into the hooded fiend’s mouth. There was the crunching of bones and the satisfied chuckle of contentment.

  The coins were placed back in the bag and the hand taken from the table, and without any backward glance the figure left the room.

  Beadle counted the footsteps back up the stairs and along the corridor. Again, at every room they stopped until their sound faded into the still night. In the kitchen, Beadle sniffed the air that hung heavy with the fragrance of wild jasmine.

  Salamander Street

  CHARRED plaster walls rose up from the muddied lane that was Salamander Street. Thomas looked to the narrow gap between the buildings and the slither of sky that cut through the rooftops. He could see that the street ran out of sight towards the city. There was little light from the sun; even on this bright morning the oil lamps beckoned them as they walked slowly on through the shadows. With every yard, they picked their way in and out of the open sewer that ran its length.

  ‘Good place to stay,’ Crane joked as he pulled the scarf around his face like a mask. ‘I know a man here called Pallium … He’s a banker. We’ll take a room and see what is to be done.’

  ‘What about the Magenta?’ Thomas asked as his feet slipped from him, as if the slime beneath him was alive.

  ‘Never give in
to those who think they are your betters,’ Crane snarled suddenly. ‘Priests, kings and excise men, every one of them a rogue by another name. Give me a week and I’ll have it back and we’ll be away to France. I have a house in Calais away from the customs men. You can stay there and I will return. I have unfinished business with Parson Demurral.’

  His words put an end to the conversation. In the mean light they walked on silently. Thomas caught Kate’s glance and tried to smile. He could see she looked more and more concerned with every step as they walked forth into the looming cavern.

  Crane stopped by a flaking wooden door. The house that surrounded it was stacked against the sky like a rocky outcrop. It had once been painted white and had now dulled to a mouldy yellow. The thick and crumbling plaster was engrained with dirt and the taint of wood smoke. Nailed into the broad oak panel was a lion’s head that had once heralded the call of visitors but now its jaws were rusted shut.

  ‘This must be the place,’ Crane said as he rapped his fingers against the wood and pulled at a flake of paint. ‘Wonder if Gimcrack Pallium is here?’ There was unexpected warmth in Crane’s voice. His eyes glinted, suggesting he had shared much with Pallium and remembered him as an old friend. ‘The most generous man in the kingdom – he came here but a year ago and never a nicer man you would want to meet. If it is within Pallium’s power he will get it and if it’s in his benefit he will give it to you. But beware – he is the fattest and most gluttonous man in the kingdom. My own age but the size of a whale. Eats like several horses and will pinch the food from your plate.’

  Crane banged on the door again as he leant against the wall and looked back and forth along the empty street.

  ‘No people,’ Kate said as she followed his eyes. ‘Strange for the time of day, it’s morning and every house looks as if they still sleep.’

  There was no reply to Crane’s banging. He rapped again upon the door and, taking the dagger from his belt, punched the panel once more. ‘PALLIUM! PALLIUM!’ Crane shouted.