The Demi-Monde: Summer (50 page)

‘Fuck me from ‘ere to Fenchurch! As I live an’ breathe, it’s Burlesque-fucking-Bandstand. Gor, even wiv a broken wing, you’re still a fine figure ov a man.’ With that Sporting Chance took Burlesque in her powerful arms, dragged him towards her and buried his face in her bosom. ‘’Ave a nuzzle for old times’ sake, Burlesque. Way I remembers it, yous wos the best nuzzler in the ‘ole of the Rookeries, you wos.’ When a panting and very red-faced Burlesque finally tore himself free of the embrace, the girl took the opportunity to pat him affectionately on the crotch. ‘An’ I ‘ope the old ‘owitzer is still loaded an’ ready to go bang. Maybe you’ll give me a one-gun salute later on, eh?’

A spluttering Burlesque interrupted the girl’s reminiscences to make urgent introductions. ‘Sportin’, this ‘ere’s me
friend
,
Odette.’ The way he emphasised the word ‘friend’ was obviously intended to communicate to Sporting that Odette was more than a friend, though Norma suspected that the glowering look on the French girl’s face had already done this very effectively.

‘Odette, eh? So you shacked up wiv a Frog bint now, Burlesque? Oh la la!’ And before Odette could protest, Sporting had her in the same crushing embrace. ‘Well, bin sewer an’ pleased to meetcha, Odette. I feel like we’re sisters, both ov us ‘aving sampled the same piece of mutton an’ all.’

Such was the warmth of Sporting’s welcome that Odette was persuaded to stop glowering and to kiss the girl on the cheeks.

‘Trees beans,’ chortled Sporting as she kissed the French girl back. ‘You wanna be careful, Burlesque, or me an’ Odette might scarper over to the Coven and set up as LessBiens.’ She stepped back to take a better look at her new friend. ‘I approve, Burlesque: I like a bird that’s built for business.’ Her eye fell on Norma. ‘An’ ‘oo’s this handsome piece? Yous getting into threesomes, Burlesque, you ‘ankering after a bit ov the old tribalism?’

‘This is Norma Williams.’

The singer’s mood suddenly became frosty and she turned to all the other hangers-on and admirers crowding her dressing room. ‘Out! Out!’ she yelled and pushed and shoved them all towards the door. Only when the room was cleared and the door firmly locked did she turn back to Norma.

‘I’ve heard ov you; you’re bad news, yous is.’ She gave Burlesque a venomous scowl. ‘Wot’re yous abart, Burlesque? Wot’re yous doing bringing her ‘ere? There’s a price on this girl’s head. There’s reward posters for ‘er stuck up all over the Rookeries.’ She glared at Norma. ‘You’re the Normalist, ain’t ya? You’re the one who dropped the Awful Tower on top of that sack ov shit Beria.’

There was no point in denying it. ‘Yes, I’m Norma Williams and yes, I’m the leader of the Normalist movement.’

‘Well, I’ll be rogered by a rhino. But friend ov Burlesque’s or not, iffn you’s found ‘ere we’ll all be for the high jump. The Peelers ‘ave got it in for me already. Them bastards is watchin’ me like ‘awks. Chances are that the Checkya saw you comin’ ‘ere.’

Burlesque shook his head. ‘Don’t worry on that score, Sportin’, I’m too much ov an old ‘and to get me collar felt so easy. But we need to talk; there may be a way you can help us get rid ov the pack ov bastards that’s running the ForthRight.’

They repaired to the suite Sporting kept in the hotel around the corner from the theatre. By the size and the opulence of the rooms Norma judged that the girl’s career was going very, very well, which made her doubtful of being able to persuade her to help them. Sporting had a lot to lose.

‘So wot’s this plan ov yours, Burlesque?’ she said when she had provided them each with a glass of cognac.

‘It’s best Norma explains.’

Taking her cue, Norma stood up from her chair, opened her bag, took out a blonde wig and used it to replace the black one she was wearing. The transformation had the desired effect: Sporting Chance’s mouth dropped open.

‘I’ll be buggered on a bicycle: you look just like Aaliz Heydrich.’

‘Yeah, I’m her doppelgänger … her double. And I want Aaliz Heydrich to address all the troops when they gather in the Crystal Palace next Tuesday.’

‘An’ wot’s yous … wot’s she … wot’s yous gonna be saying?’

‘That violence is wrong. That Heydrich is leading the ForthRight to destruction. That too many young men have died for the senseless cause of UnFunDaMentalism. That what was done in Warsaw and in the Coven was evil. And that it is time for a new way that espouses peace and non-violence, the way called Normalism.’

‘Fuckin’ Hel, that’s really gonna put the cat amongst the pigeons an’ no mistake. And just ‘ow are you gonna be able to do that? Yous can’t just wander up to Heydrich and say “Excuse me, Comrade Leader, but can I speak for a few minutes an’ tell everybody wot a piece of shit you is?’”

Burlesque leant forward and gave Sporting a grin. ‘We were thinking ov ‘aving Norma ‘ere come on at the end ov your performance.’

The penny dropped.

‘Fuck me gently,’ Sporting spluttered.

‘We could make it look like we ambushed you, that we forced our way onto the stage. That way you wouldn’t be left in the shit like.’

The singer was less than impressed. ‘Bollocks, Burlesque: this little piece goes on in my place then I’m dead meat and you know it. Heydrich’ll go doolally.’

But the interesting thing was she hadn’t said no.

Sporting got up and poured herself another, longer drink. ‘Funny fing is, Burlesque, that I’m living on borrowed time any’ows. Heydrich’s gotten real bent outta shape about me act and they’re only ‘aving me perform at the Crystal Palace ‘cos I’m so popular wiv the soldier boys.’ She gave a wry little chuckle. ‘An’ I should be, ov cors, seeing as I’ve shagged most ov ‘em.’ She drained her drink. ‘I ‘ad a visit from that toerag Roman Ungern von Sternberg – the one that took over the Checkya when Beria copped it – an’ ‘e told me that iffn I so much as looked at Heydrich skew-whiff at the Palace ‘e’s gonna … well, I won’t tell you wot ‘e’s gonna do, but I won’t be pissin’ straight afterwards. An’ then there wos Bobby.’

‘Bobby?’ prompted Burlesque.

Sporting moved across to the grand piano in the corner of the room and picked up the silver-framed daguerreotype standing on it. The picture showed a rather chubby man dressed
in the uniform of an artillery officer. ‘This is Bobby. ‘E wos the love ov me life, my Bobby was. ‘E wos so big, an’ tall an’ ‘and-some an’ ‘ung like a stallion.’ She stopped in mid-eulogy to wipe a tear from her eye. ‘No disrespect, Burlesque, but ‘e gave me the best seein’-to I’ve ever ‘ad.’

Burlesque gave a philosophical shrug. ‘Wot ‘appened to ‘im?’ he asked.

‘’E wos arrested by the Checkya, ‘e wos, charged wiv being “an Enemy ov the People” or some such shit. They shot ‘im.’ Sporting gulped back more tears. ‘’Cors all that wos just a warning to me, wosn’t it, just von Sternberg’s way ov showing me wot would happen iffn I wosn’t a good girl. Bastards.’ She looked up and looked Norma straight in the eyes. ‘So the answer, Norma Williams, is yes I will ‘elp yous, I will ‘ave the greatest pleasure in ‘elping yous fuck Heydrich over.’

Kondratieff regarded himself as a pragmatist … as a RaTionalist. He had little time for superstition or religion, preferring to rely on the comforting assurance of mathematics and logic than a somewhat hysterical belief in the supernatural. But as he stepped through the Great Entrance that led into the Temple of Lilith, he found this pragmatism being tested to the very limit.

The malevolence that inhabited the Temple washed over him, enveloping him in its loathsome embrace. He knew instinctively that this was an evil place where the wickedness within seemed to leer out at him, daring him to enter.

Even though it was drenched in the midday sunshine, even though the beautiful girls who made up the Doge William’s Priestesshood were scurrying about the place doing the thousand and one things that needed to be done to get the Temple ready for the Lammas Eve celebrations, and even though musicians were rehearsing in the corner of the Temple filling it with music, the place still frightened Kondratieff. There was no warmth there; the Temple had a frosted, brittle feel as though all joy and happiness was being sucked out by it.

Indeed, the Temple exuded such wickedness that he was forced to stop to catch his breath, revolted by the echoes of the evil that had been done here. The forces that inhabited the Temple emitted a spine-chilling power that whispered of licentiousness and depravity. Here, he sensed, lurked something dark and wicked and in its name acts of terrible, unforgivable vileness had been performed.

Strange visions flickered through his mind – visions of the Spirit World – and he suddenly
knew
what perversions Lilith had committed here, knew of the hundreds – the thousands – of young lives that had been sacrificed to Lilith in this foul place. Now the Temple stood ready to be reborn, and the one who would do that was the Dark Charismatic, Doge William. Though Lilith had fallen there was Lucifer ready to take her place and if he was allowed to triumph, evil such as the Demi-Monde had never known would be loosed on the world. Yes, soon it would be Lammas Eve, the time when Lucifer would be ordained ruler of the Demi-Monde … and Kondratieff would sacrifice himself to ensure that this evil was defeated.

Distracted though he was by the baleful atmosphere of the
Temple, Kondratieff managed to push these feelings of unease to the back of his mind: he knew he had to concentrate on the task at hand. Maybe these morbid thoughts were the product of tiredness? After all, he had been working day and night for the past week. He’d had had to organise the transportation of the real Column from its home in the Galerie des Anciens to Rodin’s workshop in Murano and then manage its switch with the imitation Column; he’d had to supervise the loading of the fake into the pontoon and then suffer the bilious river journey to the wharf that serviced the Temple of Lilith.

But even then his task hadn’t been finished. Transporting the Column along the Divine Way had been a hazardous and nerve-shredding task. Summer was the breeding season for the nanoBites, when they were particularly frisky and very dangerous, and whilst the workmen had been safe when standing on the centre-most of the three Mantle-ite pathways, one false step could prove fatal. The narrowness of the Divine Way made this margin of error very small … too small for one careless navvy.

Indeed, the Way was so narrow that Kondratieff had been obliged to remodel the steamer-crawlers used to drag the dolly upon which the pontoon sat so that their tracks ran along the two outside paths and didn’t overlap onto the Hub itself. Fortunately, the Divine Way ran straight as a die from the jetty to the entrance of the Temple, so there were no bends to negotiate, but still only the best drivers had the skill to navigate the steamer-crawlers along the Mantle-ite track. It took the whole of a nail-biting, nerve-shredding day and much sweating, cursing, screaming and hair-pulling before the Column was dragged safe to the Great Entrance of the Temple of Lilith.

And this had been the easy part of the operation. The removal of the Column from the pontoon, the manoeuvring of it through the Great Gates and then suspending it over its plinth
beside the altar had been an even more formidable engineering task. Being so big and heavy, the Column was awkward to handle and the last thing Kondratieff wanted was the workmen to drop the bloody thing. At the core of the faux-Column were packed five tons of blasting gelatin into which had been mixed five thousand musket balls: drop the Column and the explosion that followed would reduce those doing the dropping to the consistency of jam.

But with the help of fifty navvies, a powerful steam hoist, seemingly endless lengths of rope and much shouting and swearing, the Column was hauled into the Temple. It was a task made more difficult by the attendance of Selim the Grim and a whole coterie of HimPerial priests, each of them determined that the Column would be handled ‘reverently’ and be erected in a ‘respectful’ manner. As this necessitated them standing around intoning prayers and waving incense burners, they managed to make a difficult task
very
difficult.

Finally the Column stood tall and proud in its resting place. It was the first time Kondratieff had had a chance to examine the hexagonal plinth closely and he had to admit to being fascinated by it. The Column was suspended so that it could be lowered onto the plinth by the use of a wheel – similar to the ship’s wheel he’d seen on some of the larger boats plying the rivers of the Demi-Monde – and once this was done the Column would be as one with the Temple, the Mantle-ite energy would flow and the Column would go
bang
.

‘You have done well, Kondratieff.’

The sudden appearance of Selim behind him made Kondratieff jump. Since the death of de Sade, the bastard had assumed responsibility for the Column and with him being such a
clever
bastard Kondratieff had to be continually on his guard.

‘I must admit that when I was told that de Sade had given
you the task of transporting it from Venice I was doubtful that even a scientist of your calibre would be able to accomplish it within such a tight timetable.’

Kondratieff bowed, not so much in veneration but rather in the hope that it would help mask the feeling of panic that had seized him. The way Selim was making such a close inspection of the Column was very, very worrying. ‘You are very generous, Your Excellency,’ he intoned, aghast to see Selim begin to walk around the Column, drifting his hand around words etched into its surface.