The musicians were ready. He was ready. Tonight would be a truly religious experience.
Chapter Thirteen, verse one of the Book of Revelation speaks of the Beast that will rise up from the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon the horns ten crowns, and upon the heads the name of blasphemy. What much of that means is naturally open to interpretation, but what is definitely certain is that there is a Beast and it does rise up from the sea.
As Princess Pamela’s palace rose from the Sea of Tranquillity, it did at least fulfil this particular piece of biblical prophecy.
‘Set a course for Earth, Mister Mate,’ said the princess in pink, upon high in the wheelhouse. ‘Take us to t’ Grand Exposition.’
‘Aye aye, Cap’n,’ replied Mister Mate. ‘We’ll have you there before the stroke of midnight.’
Lavinia Dharkstorrm paced about the bridge.
‘Be still, lass,’ said the Lady Beast. ‘Thou drivest me to the foot of our stairs. Whatever the ‘eck that meaneth.’
‘I am eager that we be done with them all,’ said Lavinia Dharkstorrm. ‘My sister, that detective, all of them.’
‘Not too keen on me own sister.’ Princess Pamela made a sour face. ‘Mark my words, I’ll ‘ave ‘er ‘ead upon a platter by morning.’
Mister Mate said, ‘Madam, might I speak?’
‘As thou wish,’ said the princess.
‘I just have a question regarding my status,’ said Mister Mate.
Princess Pamela shrugged. ‘Go on,’ said she.
‘As a “Mister Mate”, would I be regarded as a minion rather than a henchman?’
‘I carest nowt,’ said the princess in pink. ‘What of it?’
‘You see Herbert here?’ Mister Mate gestured towards Herbert, who fluttered his fingers at Princess Pamela and Lavinia Dharkstorrm. ‘Herbert is the cabin boy. So lowly a fellow, in fact, that had I not drawn your attention to his presence, you probably would not even have noticed him.’
‘‘Appen not,’ said Princess Pamela. Lavinia Dharkstorrm shrugged.
‘But I am several places up from him in the pecking order,’ said Mister Mate. ‘I have a special Mister Mate’s Certificate.’
‘Wouldn’t ‘ave ‘ired thee otherwise.’ Princess Pamela folded her arms.
‘So I think I should be classified as a henchman.’
Lavinia Dharkstorrm shook her head. ‘Your duties are not those of a henchman,’ she said. ‘Have you ever engaged in cold-blooded murder, the propagation of mayhem, the defilement of the innocent—’
‘The needless slaughter of small woodland creatures, ‘Princess Pamela suggested.
‘Never,’ said Mister Mate. ‘But I am anxious to give my all in such evil endeavours.’
‘If I might interject,’ said Herbert, ‘the Oxford English Dictionary defines a henchman as a faithful attendant or supporter. I suspect that you hanker more towards becoming a recidivist or scapegrace. Or indeed a tergiversant or malefactor.’
‘If I kill the cabin boy now and serve him up for dinner,’ said Mister Mate, ‘can I be raised in status to henchman?’
‘I’ll give thee the loan o’ me axe,’ said the princess. ‘And if thou doest well, I’ll make thee Prime Minister of England tomorrow.’
The present Prime Minister was having words with Mr Churchill. Snow was falling heavily down upon Old London Town. The two men stood together in the atrium of the Grand Exposition, watching as the white flakes slid from the arched roof high above to settle upon the ranks of soldiers standing stiffly to attention far below.
‘I require your assurance, Mr Churchill,’ said the Prime Minister, accepting an offered cigar, ‘that everything will go precisely as planned and that Her Majesty is in no danger from these fearful anarchists.’
Winston Churchill lit the Prime Minister’s cigar. ‘My Lord,’ said he, ‘you have my word. It would take Lucifer himself to puncture my ring of steel.’
The Prime Minister sucked hard upon Mr Churchill’s cigar.
‘As long as your ring goes unpunctured,’ he said, ‘we will all sleep well in our beds.’
Lord Brentford had his own bedroom at Claridge’s and he had booked a table for three in the restaurant.
At this table sat his lordship, with Leah to the left of him and Darwin to the right.
‘My boy,’ said Lord Brentford to his monkey butler as a waiter danced champagne into glasses, ‘Leah and I have something to tell you.
Leah smiled rather coyly. Darwin scratched at his head.
‘We are to be married,’ said Lord Brentford.
Darwin raised a mighty smile. ‘I am so happy for you,’ said his lordship’s ape.
‘And there is something that we would like to ask you.
Darwin tucked a napkin into his wing-collared shirt and prepared to make an assault upon a crusty roll.
‘We would like you to be our best man,’ said Lord Brentford. ‘Or in your case, best monkey-man.’
Darwin’s eyes grew wonderfully wide. ‘Ai, ai, ai. Oh, what an honour,’ he said.
‘Might have to be something of a private affair,’ said Lord Brentford, passing out the champagne. ‘Leah’s family not too keen on the idea. Might have to slip away somewhere. We thought perhaps Jupiter. They have a gambling city there where you can get married by a chap dressed up as Enrico Caruso. They even throw in something called a stretch-landau to take you to the ceremony.
‘All sounds rather fun,’ said Darwin. ‘Do pardon me while I behave badly with this roll.’
‘You’ve been behaving badly all afternoon,’ observed Lord Brentford. ‘Will you be doing the right and proper thing with that monkey maid?’
‘Alas, no,’ said Darwin, crunching messily and noisily upon his crusty roll. ‘We were but ships that passed in the night, never destined to share moorings in the harbour of love.’
Lord Brentford raised an eyebrow.
‘I could have put it differently,’ said Darwin, ‘but there is a lady present.’
Lord Brentford raised his champagne glass in toast. ‘To you, Leah, my love,’ said he. ‘And to Darwin, loyal servant and friend. No man is there more blessed than I to share such company.
Champagne glasses touched one to another and, within that candlelit room, Darwin felt both warm and happy. Perhaps, indeed, more happy than he had ever felt before. Because, after all, he had saved the Great Exposition, he had made love to a most attractive ape this afternoon, he was to be Lord Brentford’s best monkey-man, he was enjoying a champagne dinner at Claridge’s and would soon be going on to delight in the most lavish performance of Beethoven’s Ninth ever staged.
Things had not worked out too badly at all for Darwin. The monkey butler grinned and drank champagne.
A champagne reception awaited the favoured few thousand who would attend the concert and official opening of the Grand Exposition, and by eight o’clock the Mall began to fill with their conveyances.
There was a busyness of broughams and buckboards and britzkas,
A gathering of gharries and growlers and gigs,
A cavalcade of carriages and curricles and carioles,
Horse cabs and hansom cabs,
Landaus and landaulettes,
Four-in-hands and phaetons
And two enormous pigs.[24]
As the Poetry Columnist of The Times so pleasantly put it. Before hurrying off to the warmth of an alehouse as he had not been granted a concert ticket.
And so they came, these well-tailored men with their well-tended wives. These princes and potentates. These captains of industry. These builders of Empire. Lord Babbage and Lord Tesla were to be seen, and Ernest Rutherford, too, smiling hugely in the company of a veiled lady all in black. Flash pans flared with phosphorous as photographers of the nation’s press sought to capture this moment of moments for posterity.
A string quartet played within and the fountain gushed champagne. Jovian savouries were freighted around upon silver trays. Polite conversation fluttered as ladies peeped mo
destly from behind their winter fans. A monkey butler shared a joke with another of his kind. Neon lights illuminated a palace of wonders.
Lord Brentford greeted each and every guest.
The snow drifted down without.
And within, all appeared just as it should be with the noble British Empire.
53
rincess Pamela dined upon haunch of cabin boy and Mister Mate was elevated to the rank of henchman. There were many henchmen aboard the Lady Beast’s pink palace. Many troops, as it were, prepared to fight and die if necessary to protect their royal ruler. They were generally liveried in uniforms of pink, but upon this special occasion they had been informed that the dress code was pirate.
For, as the princess knew, as indeed do all women, every man yearns to dress sometimes as a pirate.
Planet Earth filled more and more of the Heavens. The palace with its pirate crew sailed on.
Time marched on in the palace of glass. Folk dilly-dallied and sauntered about, viewing the wonders, pointing and cooing, ladies svelte with fluttering fans and gentlemen with cigars.
Ernest Rutherford was conducting tours around his time-ship. The Jovian ambassador, his wife and large extended family waddled from exhibit to exhibit, chuckling merrily at all they beheld. Aloof effete Venusians talked amongst themselves and feigned uninterest in everything. Leah enjoined in their conversation, which dwelt upon lofty matters, but she was aware that a tension existed as the planets drew into their fateful alignment and the time of the prophesied tribulation drew ever closer.
At ten o’clock an announcement echoed from the brass bells of numerous electric speakers, to the effect that tonight’s performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, would shortly begin, so would the honoured guests kindly take their seats in the concert hall.
Lord Brentford had undoubtedly had a lot on his plate, with so very much to organise. The numbering of seats in the concert hall and the scrupulous allocation of tickets was something that had simply slipped his mind. This oversight on his part had not, however, gone unnoticed by the three thousand honoured guests who, at the clarion call to the concert hall, pressed forward in a most unruly mob, each determined to grab the finest seats.
There was some unpleasantness.
Order was finally restored when Lord Brentford summonsed the assistance of armed and snow-covered soldiers, who fixed bayonets and prepared to stick them into anyone who exhibited anything less than decorum.
When all were seated peaceably, a new announcement came through the brass—bell speakers that Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of both India and Mars, was about to take her seat in the royal box.
So, would they all stand up again?
Her Majesty tonight wore the very latest in blacks, the very chicest frock of black stuff and that jaunty crown. The crown, however, rested somewhat heavily upon the royal brow as it had most recently received the extra adornment of a diamond, from Africa, that was easily the size of a music hall performer’s head.
Her Majesty was accompanied by her monkey maid Emily, her augmented kiwi bird Caruthers, the designer of the royal frocks — Lady Elsie Grover — and a big-game-hunting friend of the royal household — Major Thadeus Tinker.
Respectful applause rippled up from the auditorium. Lord Brentford proposed three cheers for the regal lady and these in turn echoed about within the great concert hall.
Queen Victoria waved to the assembly, sat herself down, ordered champagne and petted her kiwi bird. All others present took their seats and whispered words of greatest expectation.
Upon the stage before them, the virtuoso musicians of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, in formal dress of white tie and tails, filed to their places and bowed their heads to the rapturous applause they received.
Then came the choir, two hundred strong, ladies in angelic white, gentlemen in black. The soloists took their special bows, then the heads of all upon the stage swung to the left to acknowledge the world-famous conductor Arturo Toscanini as he made his entrance. In truth, he looked a little tired, as if he had perhaps been overexerting himself during the afternoon. But he smiled warmly as the audience clapped their hands and rattled their jewellery and he did look very smart indeed.
He bowed to the audience, turned and bowed to the orchestra and choir, then raised his baton high and the Ninth began.
The music, swelling from the great glass-covered hall beneath, reached faintly to the ears of Winston Churchill. He stood upon the foredeck of the airship that swung in great arcs to and fro above the Grand Exposition, a cigar aglow between his teeth, an army greatcoat muffling his slender body from the cold winter’s night. Snow fluttered freely around and about and Mr Churchill’s mittened hands brought his field glasses once more to his eyes.
His youthful adjutant Pooley brought Mr Churchill a nice hot cup of cocoa.
‘This will keep the cold out, sir,’ said he. ‘Nothing like a nice hot cuppa to blow away the chills.’
‘You are a buffoon,’ said Mr Churchill, but he accepted the cuppa nonetheless.
‘Do you really think we’ll be in for trouble tonight, sir?’ Pooley asked. ‘I’d rather be in the pub, if truth be told.’
‘If there be anarchists,’ said Mr Churchill, sipping cocoa, ‘we will fight them in the pubs, and in the carriage parks, and in the tea rooms and on the Clapham omnibus. We shall never, ever give in.’
‘May I quote you on that, sir?’ asked the adjutant.
‘I am still working on it,’ said Mr Churchill. And then he flicked something from his mitten. ‘What is that?’ he asked.
The adjutant stared in what light there was. ‘Looks like a spot of blood,’ said he.
‘Do you have a nosebleed?’ asked Mr Winston Churchill.
‘Certainly not, sir. Not allowed on duty.’
‘Well, it certainly looks like— Damn me, there’s another one.
Another one there was indeed and then another and another.
‘It is the snow,’ the adjutant cried. ‘The snow is turning red.’
A cardinal dressed all in red sat to the rear of the concert hall beneath the royal box. He tapped his slippered feet in time to the music and occasionally patted his catamite upon the knee. Cardinal Cox, for it was he, was dressed tonight in his very finest vestments, hand-tailored by his personal Piccadilly fitter and sewn with many extra adornments. High at the collar, broad at the shoulder, pinched in tightly at the waist, he cut the most dapper of dashes. The cardinal drew out his pocket watch. Its face displayed a portrait of the Pope. The watch’s hands had been imaginatively fashioned to resemble the arms and hands of the pontiff At twelve o’clock he raised both hands in benediction, although at half-past six, he appeared to be engaged in something rather rude.
Mostly this watch made the cardinal smile. But he smiled not this evening. ‘The time draws near,’ he whispered to his catamite. ‘Evil comes amongst us.
Evil now fell into orbit around the planet named Earth. The flying palace, with its many pink turrets and spires, swung through space at a fair rate of knots, sailing high and mightily above the planet of blue that turned below.
‘Now what be those?’ asked Mister Mate, bedecked as a pirate with tricorn and britches and getting rather into the spirit of it.
‘What art what?’ replied the pinky princess.
‘There be ships a-sailing.’ Mister Mate did pointings with his cutlass.
Princess Pamela located a spyglass, bound elegantly in pink flamingo skin, and raised it to her favourite eye. Away into space white forms drifted, ghostlike fluttering forms.
‘Venusian aether ships,’ said Princess Pamela. ‘There art a veritable armada of ‘em out there.’
‘Should I put a couple of rounds across their bows?’ asked Mister Mate.
‘No.’ The princess shook her head. ‘When I take my place on t’ throne, they’ll bow their silly ‘eads same as all t’ rest, or blood’ll surely flow,’ said Princess Pamela.
‘Bl
ood! The snow has turned to blood!’ Mr Churchill’s adjutant began to flap his hands and spin around in small circles.
‘Cease your foolishness!’ Mr Churchill used his most commanding voice. ‘It will be sand from the Sahara or some such. Stay still, lad.’ Mr Churchill grabbed the spinning Pooley by the scruff of the neck. ‘You will behave yourself, or— Mr Churchill paused as the light shining up from the great halls below tinged the adjutant’s face a glowing pink. But Mr Churchill saw more than this. Boils were breaking out upon young Pooley’s forehead and cheeks. Boils that sprouted where the red snow had touched.
Cries and screams now came to Mr Churchill’s ears, rising from the Mall and streets below.
A shout of, ‘ ‘Tis the Pestilence!’ was loudly to be heard.
But not within the concert hall of the Grand Exposition, where the red snow touched not and only beauty was to be heard. The audience, enchanted by the glorious music, sighed in their comfortable seatings, their heads bobbing gently, their spirits drifting.
Cameron Bell sat three seats along from the cardinal. He too studied the face of his pocket watch and he too feared for what might lie ahead. The nineteenth century was drawing to a close and although he was here in this wondrous building listening to music that many, including himself considered to be amongst the highest of human achievements, the great detective felt a chill that pierced him to the bone. She was coming, he knew it, the monster, the Lady Beast. Coming to claim the throne of her sister. Coming to bring ruination to Mankind.
Could he prevent this from happening?
Would those he had urged to help fail him when he needed them the most?
Cameron’s head bobbed in time to the marvellous music. His hand gripped tightly around his pocket watch.