Pax Britannia: Human Nature (14 page)

"What'll 'e 'ave?" he asked, jerking his head towards Nimrod who stood impassively, and straight as a lamppost, at Ulysses' shoulder.

"Nimrod?"

"A glass of orange juice will suffice, sir."

"This. Is. A. Pub," the barkeep growled.

Ulysses looked at Nimrod and raised both eyebrows.

"A glass of tap water then."

The barkeep muttered something under his breath that sounded like it was along the lines of "Soft, southern poofs" and looked for another glass for Nimrod's water. It was then that Ulysses struck.

"I don't suppose you would have happened to have heard of a Mr Bellerophon, would you?"

"A who?"

"Bellerophon. Mr Bellerophon. After that chap from Greek myth."

"The what?"

"Greek myth," Ulysses persisted in the face of such over-bearing obstinacy and ignorance. "Bellerophon. Chap who Pegasus, the wing-horsed, and killed the Chi -"

Ulysses stopped abruptly, in mid-sentence, a split second before he felt the heavy hand come to rest on his arm, his whole body tensing, as his genetically-inherited fight or flight response prepared him for whatever might befall him next. He couldn't help noticing the change in the barkeep's expression either; sullen unhelpfulness had transformed into fearful uncertainty.

Ulysses looked down at the ham-sized hand, the fat, calloused fingers, the scar-tissue knotted knuckles, the doubloon-sized signet ring. He followed the large hand to a ragged coat-sleeve, tufts of wiry black hair sprouting from the wrist beneath, up past the well-worn coarse wool and eventually to the man's face.

To Ulysses he looked not unlike a Toby jug in terms of broadness and his stout shape. He was tall, taller than Ulysses, and broad; built like a brick shithouse would have been how he would have been described in the vernacular. His face was brown as a nut from exposure to the wind and weather, and he was ugly, although he smiled broadly through his Neanderthal features. His nose looked like it had been broken several times and was now a flattened pug-snout.

He was wearing a pork pie hat on top of a messy mop of matted grey tresses, and a bright mustard yellow neckerchief was tied in a knot at his neck. Under his coat he wore a tatty waistcoat that must once have been red and must also have once had more than the three brass buttons it sported now.

And the man smelt, although it wasn't of fish, like the Black Swan's other customers. He smelt of animals, musty and with an ever-present aroma of ammonia about him. And when he spoke Ulysses almost gagged at the rank smell of stale tobacco that was exhaled his way.

"I'd be careful what you say in here, sir," the man said in a harsh whisper.

Ulysses stared into the ivory whites of the other's eyes, his expression suddenly hard as stone. "And why might that be, I wonder?"

The large man smiled broadly through lumpen features that made him look like someone had beaten him about the head with a fence post. "What I mean, sir, is that if I were you, a stranger in town and all, I wouldn't be going about asking such questions so - 'ow shall I put it? - so brazenly. That's all."

"Is that right, Mr...?"

"Rudge, sir. Just call me Rudge," the man smiled, his expression as warm as a sunny autumn day, and released his grip on Ulysses' arm. "There are some - 'ow might I put it? - some dodgy characters about, sir. Untrustworthy types," he glowered at the barkeep as the fat man placed Ulysses' pint unceremoniously on the uneven counter, slopping the brown liquid over the bar top as he did so, "that's all."

Ulysses relaxed slightly, picked up his pint and took a sip. His mouth tensed again; the stuff tasted as bad as it looked. Bitter was obviously an acquired taste, and Ulysses didn't think he had the patience or the desire to acquire it.

"So, Mr Rudge, do you know of a Mr Bellerophon?"

The man grimaced, shoulders hunched, hands up in front of him as if to shush Ulysses' prattling mouth. "I told you, sir, not so bold, if you please."

"Then, I take it you do."

"It's not as simple as that, sir. Things are a little - 'ow shall I put it? - a little delicate in that regard."

"But you can help us, Mr Rudge?"

Rudge took up the pint of bitter that the barkeep had pulled for him, apparently without having to be asked, and took a careless gulp from the glass, rivulets of beer coursing down the sides of his chin and into the stubble at his neck, to eventually be soaked up by the neckerchief. Suddenly the pint glass appeared to be half empty.

"I can help you, Mr...?"

"Quicksilver," Ulysses replied.

"Mr Quicksilver. But not here, sir. Not here."

"Where then?"

Rudge shot the blubbery barkeep a look full of meaning and menace, given extra emphasis by his disenchanting features, and the piggy man found something else to do at the other end of the bar.

"Up on the moors, sir, up beyond the town. Follow the cliff path until you reach a lone standing stone of black granite. From there head west onto the moors. You'll find a tumbledown shepherd's shelter. You can't miss it. It's a few miles walk mind. I'll meet you there in a couple of hours. Something I've got to finish here in Whitby first. Then we can talk."

"Very well. Shall we say, three o'clock?"

"Three o'clock it is, sir."

With that, Rudge downed the rest of his pint with a few economical, if noisy, gulps, put the empty glass back on the counter and, with a tip of his hat to Ulysses, he walked out of the Black Swan.

Ulysses watched the large man as he squeezed his huge frame through the door of the pub and then turned to Nimrod, a wry smile on his face.

"We have a lead, Nimrod. A lead at last."

"Indeed, sir," his manservant replied unenthusiastically, taking a sip from his glass of none-too-clean-looking tap water.

"And we have an afternoon on the moors to look forward to. It's not such an awful day. An afternoon's stroll will be bracing. Maybe we'll be able to clear the stink of fish from our nostrils."

"If you say so, sir." Nimrod replied, still stubbornly unenthusiastic at the prospect.

"I do, old chap, I do." Forgetting himself for a moment, Ulysses took a swig of his own drink and instantly regretted it, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste the ale left in his mouth. What he wouldn't do for a decent glass of Rémy Martin right now.

"The game is afoot, Nimrod. The game is most definitely afoot."

Chapter Ten

The Circus of Wonders

The wind came down off the moors in fitful gusts, like the final breaths of a dying asthmatic, rippling the long grass of the cliff top meadow above the town. Ulysses Quicksilver tugged the deerstalker, that he had purchased in the town, down tight over his ears and pulled the tweed cape tighter about his shoulders. If Nimrod felt the cold underneath his funereal black coat, he wasn't showing it.

As the two men strode on their way Ulysses turned to the older man. "What did you make of our friend, Mr Rudge?"

Nimrod took a deep breath of the cold moorland air and, keeping his eyes on the grey horizon, even in the face of the biting breeze, said: "I think you should be careful, sir. I don't think we can trust him."

"Why ever not, Nimrod?" Ulysses asked jovially.

The older man gave him a withering look. "Do I really need to answer that question, sir?"

"I suppose not, old chap," Ulysses laughed.

"But we are obviously going to meet with him anyway."

"Absolutely," Ulysses grinned. "We all need a little risk in our lives to keep us on our toes, to keep us sharp - although possibly not quite as much risk as Barty seems to favour," he added, almost as an aside. "Besides, he's the only lead we've got as far as this Bellerophon fellow is concerned."

"You're certain it's an assumed name, sir?" Nimrod probed.

"Oh yes - a name like that? And, that aside, I don't think anyone who chooses to deal with a reprobate like Magpie, or Wraith, or whatever he wants to call himself, would risk divulging his true identity to a felon like that, in case the plan went tits up."

The initial climb up from the town and past the skeletal Abbey ruins had left the two of them a little puffed, but they were getting into their stride now.

Having left the Black Swan Inn and its curmudgeonly barkeep, the two men had crossed the river by the swing bridge that spanned the Esk, turned into Church Street and climbed the one hundred and ninety-nine well-worn steps of the Church Stair to the Abbey ruins at the top of the headland, where they stood like some silent sentinel, a stone bastion guarding the town from the predations of sea and sky. They then set off along the packed earth path that led past the grey-black ruins along the cliff path and to the blasted moors beyond.

"Bellerophon," Nimrod said after a moment, as if he had been pondering the name. "The prince of Corinth who slew the dread Chimera with the aid of Pegasus the winged horse."

"Yes, I've been wondering about the significance of that too," Ulysses admitted. "Bellerophon may well be an assumed name, but there may well be a subtle subconscious reasoning behind that particular choice, or even a significant overt one, which we merely aren't party to yet."

"Where there's a hero, there's usually a monster."

"Yes, there's usually a monster," Ulysses agreed, images of the tentacled Kraken, the serum-warped lizard man, and half a dozen other horrors suddenly surfacing from the dark depths of his memory.

The wind blew sour here over the scraggy grass, rank with the smell of petrochemical pollutants, and redolent with the stink of rotting peat bogs and bitter salt sea spray. As they came over the rise at the crest of the hill, St Hild's abbey now nothing more than a charcoal sketch against the sky behind them, they gained their first glimpse of the Circus of Wonders.

The main tent was a mildewed expanse of tarred canvas, stretched taut by thick, green guy-ropes. In places the faded and peeling remnants of brighter colours were just visible against the flapping fabric of the bedraggled Big Top.

That was the first thing Ulysses noticed. The second thing was the police presence.

"'Ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's going on 'ere then?" he asked with enthusiastic interest.

"It would appear to me that the circus folk are helping the police with their enquiries," his manservant replied.

"Come on, Nimrod," Ulysses went in the same vein of boyish delight. "Let's find out for ourselves!"

As they neared the conglomeration of tents and steam-wagons, Ulysses saw huddles of circus folk and policemen gathered between the sanctuary of the main tent and a cordon of police vehicles. The two groups couldn't be more different. There were the uniformed police officers - not an automaton-drone among them, Ulysses noted - notebooks out, licked pencil stubs scratching away, all with unimpressed, or uncomprehending, expressions on their faces. And then there were the circus folk.

To Ulysses it looked like they had stepped out of another time, and one that had never really existed. It was as if a band of medieval mummers had suddenly found themselves living in a Dickens' novel. They were all attired in a similar manner, in that none of them were wearing what could be described as new clothes. Every costume had been carefully created from an amalgam of hand-me-downs.

The circus performers' uniquely individual costumes actually gave them their own uniform, a sense of identity, marking them out as something not quite of this world; something out of kilter with the rest of the empire of Magna Britannia. It provided them with a sense of belonging. And for many of them, their bizarre costumes only served to enhance the other, more unusual, aspects that some of them possessed - the traits that marked them out as members of a freakshow.

Ulysses began to notice these just as he became aware of the signs and billboards littering the grounds around the main tent, all designed and arranged to lure a macabrely-fascinated public inside the 'Circus of Wonders.'

Without really being conscious of where they were going, the two men now found themselves beyond the ramshackle police cordon, treading between knotty tufts of grass, drawn by the lure of the scene.

Glancing at an anxious huddle of performers, who appeared to be trying to keep the police at arm's length, he saw a dwarf, wearing nothing but a leather waistcoat over his muscular, tattooed torso, his bulging biceps bare, a larger lady, her fuller figure squeezed into a lace and taffeta creation, the curled ringlets of her full beard carefully plaited, and a stick thin, pale-skinned man who was wearing nothing but what appeared to be a loin-cloth and ribboned top hat, despite the November chill, his exposed skin a painted canvas of intricate tattoos and body piercings, copious rings drawn through the scrawny, pinched flesh of his shoulders, arms, neck and knees, as well as having bones and feathers thrust through his ears, nose and eyebrows.

Close by them a tall man, with mantis-like limbs and a skeletally gaunt face - his eyes dramatic white orbs within the shadowed pits of their sockets - wearing scuffed top hat and tails, and wholly inappropriate skin-tight, black leggings, and long-toed pixie boots, giving the impression, once again, of a medieval antecedent - was talking animatedly with an unimaginative constable. Everything about his demeanour and the fact that he was the centre of the police's attention, suggested to Ulysses that this was the freakshow's master of ceremonies and
de facto
leader.