The Demi-Monde: Summer (45 page)

Odette’s plan proposed that the four of them hide in a couple of the empty crates which they had previously moved to the pile earmarked for delivery to the Castle. They would be taken to the Castle masquerading as pieces of equipment.

It was, as Burlesque quickly pointed out, a ‘fucking stupid idea’ and one fraught with danger. Unfortunately, after thirty minutes arguing the toss, he was unable to counter it with a better scheme and, equally unfortunately, as time was fast running out – Lammas Eve was looming – it was Odette’s idea or nothing.

Odette woke Burlesque an hour before dawn, and when he opened his eyes he hardly recognised her. Dressed in black
jiangs
and a padded jacket, with her pistol holstered at her side and a wicked knife thrust in her belt, she looked decidedly warlike, not a bit like the girl he had met in Paris.

‘’Ere, wot you abart, Odette?’ he stammered as he swung himself out of bed and searched for his strides. ‘No,
j’ai
decided …
tu ne
come
pas avec moi
… this is dangerous work.
Je
ain’t ‘aving
tu
shot or nuffink … not after … well,
tu
knows.’

His objections were interrupted by the arrival of Rivets and Dong E – the young girl clad in a martial style similar to that adopted by Odette. ‘Tell ‘em, Rivets, that this ain’t no job for birds. Blowing fings up and such is a bloke’s job. Go on, Rivets, tell ‘em yous an’ me ’ave decided to go on our ownsomes.’

Rivets didn’t have a chance to reply, being silenced by a glare from Odette who then yammered away in Frog, which, fortunately, Dong E was on hand to translate. ‘Odette says that
you
must appreciate, Burlesque, that being
intactus
– as you so ably
demonstrated last night – you are in the grip of MALEvolence and hence prone to acts of unthinking violence and stupidity. It is, therefore, essential that you are accompanied on this venture by women who, by expression of their superior intellect and greater maturity, will be able to provide the best direction and leadership. Therefore, Odette and myself must be on hand to manage this venture to ensure that it does not fail.’

And as though to emphasise this decision, Odette handed Burlesque a baguette larded with thick slices of cheese, the woman obviously of the opinion that invading castles was not something to be undertaken on an empty stomach. Burlesque looked imploringly to Rivets for support, but all the boy could do was look sheepish and gnaw at his own breakfast baguette. Protest, Burlesque decided, was hopeless: he could tell from the expressions on the girls’ faces that any further debate would be a waste of time so, with a disconsolate shrug, he contented himself with chomping down on his sandwich.

Breakfast over, the four of them slung the bags loaded with bombs over their shoulders and crept out into the night to make their way through the sleeping city to the post office.

It was then that Odette’s talent for organisation was really demonstrated. As far as Burlesque could make out, she had already been down to the post office sorting out the crates. With brisk efficiency she pointed to two large crates, and when Burlesque looked he found each of them had been lined with blankets and had had leather straps screwed to the inside. Odette had also fitted catches so that the tops of the crates could be locked down by those concealed within. As a final touch, each crate had been equipped with a number of empty bottles complete with corks: these for use, as Odette so delicately put it,
en cas d’urgence
.

Burlesque’s already elevated opinion of Odette rose. He had never realised that women could be so bloody clever.

‘Ca, c’est le cageot que nous occuperons
. Thees ees the crate we will occupy,’ advised Odette. ‘
Puisque tu et Rivets avez visité la maison de bain, votre odeur a éte réduite à un niveau qui n’est pas repoussant aux nez féminins, donc il n’y aura pas d’inconfort à propos de nos positions si intimes.’

Again Dong E translated. ‘Since you have both visited the bathhouse, your odour has been reduced to a level which is not offensive to the female nose, so there will be no awkwardness about our being so intimately positioned in the crate.’

With that Odette signalled her companions into their crates, then, confident that they were now safe and secure, she snuggled down next to Burlesque, pulled the top back down and locked it tight closed.

They waited.

They waited in their crates for six long, uncomfortable hours.

Burlesque had never thought that being confined in a box with a girl could be such torture, but a combination of sweltering heat, cramp and claustrophobia made the six-hour wait almost unendurable. It was a wait not helped by a bout of flatulence brought on by Odette’s baguette: he’d always had a problem digesting cheese. Of course, he had tried to leaven the boredom by getting jinky with his girl, but the slap she had given him had stilled his burgeoning ardour, leaving him with no option but to sit uncomfortably – and very stiffly – waiting for the arrival of the cart. Thankfully, just as he was starting to worry that perhaps the draymen wouldn’t be working that day, bang on the stroke of noon the cart creaked its way up to the post office.

If the careless way they winched the crates onto the cart was any indication, the draymen seemed to be in a bustle to get the delivery over and done with. Even the imprecations Dong E had stencilled on the side of the box, saying ‘Fragile’ and ‘This Way Up’ in Chink writing, did little to dissuade the wagoneers from
some very rough handling of the merchandise. But then they probably couldn’t read anyway.

Once the crates were loaded, the driver whipped the horse all the way back to Hereji-Jo Castle, introducing Burlesque to every rut and pothole they bounced over en route. It took about an hour for the cart to reach the Castle and, bashed and shaken, he had never been more grateful for a journey to end in all his life. But he wasn’t given a second’s respite; even before the wheels of the cart had stopped turning, the draymen were down, levering the crates unceremoniously off the back of the cart and then dragging them into a building that smelt like the inside of an old sock. They shoved the crates against a wall and then scuttled off, slamming the door behind them.

There was silence.

Burlesque checked his watch. It was a little after two o’clock in the afternoon, but as far as he could tell, the laboratory – and from the smell of the place and the scientific paraphernalia he could see through a crack in the side of the crate, it certainly had all the appearance of a laboratory – was deserted. Maybe, he surmised, it being a Saturday and all, the technicians and scientists had been given the day off, so he settled back down in his box, Odette having told him they should wait until it was dark before emerging. This he judged to be sound advice; he might be stiff and his back and arse might be aching like the very devil, but the thought of popping out into the loving arms of an Amazon persuaded him that it was better to be uncomfortable than to be sorry.

Sitting there in the darkness, all he could hear was the clicking of Odette’s knitting needles. This was one girl who had come prepared for a long wait. The clicking was bloody irritating, but he didn’t have the heart – or the courage – to tell her to stop.

*

Odette insisted they sit in their crates until an hour after nightfall, only then did she judge it was safe enough for them to leave their hiding place. Even so, she felt the need to take one final peek through the crack in the crate to make sure the coast was clear before she unlatched the top and wriggled her way out. She took a moment to gulp in some badly needed fresh air and to stretch her tortured muscles, then after taking an anxious look around the ink-black room to make sure they were alone, she beckoned to Burlesque.

‘Fuck me gently, Odette, I’ve got to have a jimmy. I couldn’t bring meself to ’ave a slash in front ov—’

‘
Fermes ta bouche
… silence!’ she whispered and placed a hand firmly over her lover’s mouth. Thankfully, for once he took the hint and shut up, though the sound of him peeing against the wall behind the crate would, she guessed, be loud enough to alert even the sleepiest of sentries. Fortunately, there seemed to be no sentries guarding the laboratory they had landed up in.

It was so dark in the laboratory that all she could make out was the vague outline of the glass tubes and other scientific paraphernalia decorating the benches that lined the stinking room. And it
did
stink. The smell that had been so unpleasant in the crate now assailed her even more potently; it was a revolting concoction of carbolic, neat alcohol and something vaguely human. The stench was obviously too much for even Burlesque’s stoic guts. The poor man vomited all over his boots.

‘Where
et nous
, Odette?’ he asked in a whisper as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. ‘It smells like
un
donkey’s arsehole in ‘ere.’

‘
Je ne suis pas sûre
… I’m mostly unsure,
mon cheri, mais
I theenk thees ees the laboratory of Docteur Ptah. Thees, in the greatest possibility, ees the place where that
fou
is making the brewing of her Plague formula. We ’ave been very mostly lucky.’
She tapped on the second crate and Dong E and Rivets shimmied their way out. ‘Dong E,’ she began, ‘
je proposerais que vous et Rivets fouillent ce laboratoire. C’est très important que tous les documents au sujet de la method de fabrication de la peste sont retrouvés et détruits. Et pendant que vous faite cette activité, mon cheri Burlesque et moi commencerons la perquisition de l’installation de fermentation.’

Dong E nodded. ‘Odette suggests that Rivets and I search this laboratory, find all the documents relating to the manufacture of the Plague and destroy them. And while we do this, she and Burlesque will go in search of the Fermentation Plant.’

Without waiting for a reply, Odette led Burlesque to the laboratory door and peeped through the keyhole out onto the rain-drenched courtyard beyond, orientating herself by the sketch map of the Castle provided by Su Xiaoxiao. She was half expecting to see a bunch of enraged LessBiens racing towards them but, fortunately, there wasn’t a sinner to be seen.

She was just weighing up the risk she and Burlesque would be running by scooting around the dark edge of the yard when she saw a door open in the building opposite, a phalanx of guardFemmes stream out into the moonlight and then march in lockstep in the direction of the Fermentation Plant. All she could think was that they were being sent to reinforce the guards already protecting the place.

Waiting until the guards had passed the laboratory block – and hence had their backs to them – she eased the door of the laboratory open and with Burlesque at her heels slid out into the night, careful to stay tight to the darkness-bedecked side of the building.

The rain was driving down, but it did at least give Imperial Administrator Lucrezia Borgia an excuse to raise her hood and this, she hoped, would ensure that no one recognised her as
she went on her way to betray the Coven. Indeed the rain was so hard that the grounds of the Castle were deserted and the few souls out and about hardly spared her a glance, but when engaged in treason it didn’t do to be less than careful.

In the rain-cloaked darkness finding Crowley’s postern gate became a feat of exploration and finally, in desperation, she had to throw caution to the wind and light her lantern. It was as well she did: when she finally stumbled upon the gate, it was barely visible beneath the camouflage of a thick overgrowth of ivy.

It took her over half an hour, much cursing, a pair of lacerated hands and a great deal of hacking with an axe before she was able to clear a way to the gate and even then the bloody thing was obdurate. The gate obviously hadn’t been used in an age and was a bastard to open. Almost sobbing with frustration and desperately keeping one eye out for patrolling guardFemmes, she had to struggle for almost five minutes with bolts that were heavily rusted and crying out for a dollop of grease. But finally, after the expenditure of a lot of sweat and effort, she managed to shoot them.

To her great relief, when the door reluctantly swung open, there, as Crowley had promised, standing waiting were the trio of men he had commissioned to assist her. The sight of them made her eyes widen, the three men being hugely tall and whipthin. Instinctively she stepped back in dread: there was something feral about them, something that warned her they were cruel and unpredictable. Maybe it was the eyes that snarled at her from under the brim of their hats that most unnerved her: they were yellow and slanting … more animal than human.

Grigori.

‘We are Baraqijal, Chazaqijal and Turel,’ the tallest of the three said in accented Anglo. It seemed that Grigori didn’t have any Chink. ‘We have been sent by His Holiness Aleister Crowley
to aid you in taking the documentation from the laboratory of Dr Merit Ptah.’ Without waiting for a reply, the man-thing called Baraqijal shimmied through the gate, waving his two companions into the Castle after him.

Borgia led them through the castle grounds, coming to the edge of the courtyard across from the laboratory just in time to see the rotund figure of a man and a taller and much bigger woman creeping out of the laboratory’s entrance. For a moment the rain eased and the moonlight illuminated the pair.

‘By ABBA, if I am not mistaken that’s Burlesque Bandstand and his Femme, Odette Aroca,’ snarled Borgia, ‘there can’t be another couple as mismatched as them in the whole of the Demi-Monde. They’re enemies of the Coven,’ and she made to unholster her pistol.

Baraqijal placed a restraining hand on her arm. ‘We were instructed, Femme Borgia, that our first priority is the securing of the secrets of the Plague formulation. Revenge must wait on that.’

With a reluctant nod Lucrezia Borgia stepped back into the shadows to wait until she was sure the courtyard was clear of Amazons and Normalists. Only then did she lead the three men to the door that barred entrance to the laboratory.

Once there, Baraqijal leant forward and twisted the door’s brass knob, but before he stepped inside, he turned to Lucrezia Borgia. ‘You have kept your side of the bargain, Femme Borgia, and I am told to inform you that the pictures will be destroyed. But if things go badly tonight, we are to meet at the postern gate. There are horses hidden in a copse just beyond the Castle’s walls.’ And with that he stepped into the darkness of the laboratory.