The Queen Must Die Page 12

  A sound from the stairs made both Fräulein Bauer and Katie start. The Fräulein spun around, jumping at the sight of Katie, but there wasn’t time for explanations. ‘Hide,’ Katie mouthed, diving into an empty wine cask. Fräulein Bauer was less agile. She shrank behind the door, barely escaping the notice of the three men entering MacKenzie’s room.

  MacKenzie made a clumsy attempt to hide the bottles under his coat, but the three men didn’t seem very interested. Two of them were dressed exactly like the figures in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace – the men who took the key from MacKenzie and tried to kidnap Princess Alice. This time Katie could see their faces. With their bristling black moustaches and fierce dark eyes, they had the look of men who would murder you rather than smile. And when they did smile, their sharp white teeth looked ready to tear you apart.

  The third man was new to Katie, and seemed to be their leader. At first sight, he was an attractive man, well dressed, in a blue velvet waistcoat and a long hooded silk cloak. But there was something about him… The closer Katie looked, the less attractive he became, until he was a source of revulsion. He was of medium height, with a slender frame, fair hair and pale blue eyes. His nose was rather large and beak-shaped, starting high in his forehead. It was oddly blunted, as if it had been moulded from wax and then left in the sun. His head met his neck at an awkward angle, and waved ever so slightly with a will of its own. His small close-set eyes glittered with wetness. He glanced at MacKenzie in sheer contempt but remained silent. One of his henchmen spoke up.

  ‘Yes, MacKenzie, you’ve seen the books, and yes, soon you will be a man of riches. But your presence here is as irritating as that corruption of your name over the shop door. We have a business that works, and we don’t want you bringing it down with your drunken babbling. Now try to sober up and be gone – we’ve called a hackney cab, you’ll find it through the back courtyard.’ MacKenzie was far gone, but not so far as to miss the scorn in the other man’s voice.

  ‘How dare you,’ he spluttered. ‘How dare you speak to a man of my position, my importance… you thugs, you…’

  The two henchmen moved forward, arms raised, but their leader stopped them. ‘If you care about the Black Tide, you will restrain yourselves.’ He murmured under his breath. ‘Mr MacKenzie is still of use, still providing the money that will bring you arms and ammunition, the very backbone of your revolutionary plot. Leave the room. I will take care of this.’

  Shaking their heads and grumbling, the two men went out of the back door, to the waiting hackney cab in the courtyard. Once they were out of sight, the fair-haired man approached MacKenzie, taking him by the arm. MacKenzie seemed to find his touch repugnant. He pulled away with a little shudder.

  ‘You do understand, MacKenzie, the store’s lease is in my name and the business contract as well,’ the fair gentleman softly explained. ‘Despite this, you take the lion’s share of the profit. Now the two gentlemen in the next room have a calling to change the world, revolutionary new ideas that need money to back them. That is why they do business with you.’

  ‘I don’t understand their plans, Belzen. Don’t want to know nothing.’ MacKenzie mumbled in the sullen tones of a drunkard.

  The other man sighed, and tried again, in his low soft voice. ‘Fair enough, Mr MacKenzie. But my dealings with you are far more reasonable – it will be easy for you to help me. I am no revolutionary, but a simple citizen, looking for something. Three children, not of royal blood – one, at least, I believe to be secreted within Buckingham Palace. All I ask of you is to keep an eye out, perhaps search a bit, and report back to me if you spy any strange child within the Palace walls.’

  MacKenzie’s dislike of the man increased. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, Belzen, but I am the Master of the Royal Household. I make my own decisions, go my own way.’ He picked up a bottle of wine by the neck, and throwing back his head, drank deeply. ‘You wouldn’t be in the Palace but for me. I’m not going to spy for the likes of you.’ Katie could only see Mr Belzen from the back, but that looked bad enough. The movement of his head became more exaggerated, writhing on his neck.

  ‘Careful, MacKenzie,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to make me angry.’ His voice had altered strangely; it had a moist and fleshy texture to it, like water sucked down a blocked drain. The room darkened and the air became dense and humid.

  There was a loud clank, and a cry, as a bottle rolled into the room. Fräulein Bauer had stumbled into the doorway. MacKenzie lurched from the table. ‘You little German witch,’ he roared. ‘What are you doing here?’

  The poor woman trembled and gibbered. ‘I do as the Baroness Lehzen does ask. She is worried. She does say “keep an eye on that man”. So I do follow you. To this place. I am not to know…’

  ‘MacKenzie,’ hissed Mr Belzen. ‘Have you been so stupid as to be followed? You are a bigger fool than I suspected.’ His voice sounded feral, inhuman. He pulled the hood of his cloak over his head.

  ‘I do only as my orders say, I…’ Fräulein Bauer turned to Mr Belzen, her voice trailing off, her eyes growing wide with terror. She could see what Katie could not.

  ‘My sweet Lord,’ she gasped. ‘What is this? What evil is before me? It is the snake in paradise. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, have pity on me. Have mercy…’ This was too much for Mr Belzen.

  ‘You do not like what you see?’ he spat in his wet, thick voice, encasing himself in his cloak. ‘Then I will make sure you see no more. Now watch, MacKenzie, watch the fate of those who thwart me.’ His body writhed like an angry eel caught in a net. His hooded head seemed to duck down and snap at Fräulein Bauer. A strange tendril-like limb – it couldn’t possibly be an arm – whipped out from beneath his cloak, wrapping around Fräulein Bauer’s neck.

  MacKenzie fell to his knees, covering his face. ‘Oh terror!’ he moaned, ‘such terror!’ The room went dark, rain pelted down from the ceiling and all Katie could hear was the woman’s shrieks, followed by a hissing, and a truly horrible slurping and glugging.

  And then a silence that seemed to go on for ever. The rain stopped. The room began to lighten. She could hear Mr Belzen gagging and breathing heavily. ‘Comrades,’ he called hoarsely to the courtyard. ‘I am bringing you MacKenzie. He has passed out – too much drink, I assume. No, do not come back into the room. Send him back to the Palace. I must have some air. I will return.’ Pulling his cloak close over his face, he heaved the unconscious MacKenzie through the back door and dumping him in the courtyard disappeared into the dark of the night.

  ‘Belzen might be gone, but he will be back,’ Katie thought, sweating profusely. She quickly climbed out of the cask and spied the hackney cab waiting outside. There was a space under the driver’s seat. Perfect for luggage – or a girl. With her back against the wall, she slid across the room, glancing briefly towards the limp pile of black cloth and grey braids in the corner. Fräulein Bauer, she knew, was beyond help. There was nothing she could do for her and Katie knew she couldn’t be there when Belzen returned. She did not intend to be his next victim.

  The bumping of the carriage was nothing to the shaking of Katie’s limbs. She was frightened in a way she had never been before. She was in terrible danger, and she was certain her friends were too. ‘I need to talk to Alice and James. We’ll have to stop MacKenzie and those men.’ But this was the tangible part. The human part. The rest was an unknown country. While she had set out, on purpose, to confront DuQuelle and discover why she was here, never in a million years had she expected to hear what she’d heard. Things had got decidedly worse, and she had no idea how to escape. No, this wasn’t a dream, but it was becoming a nightmare. She could hear MacKenzie’s inert body rolling in the carriage. The driver’s horse whip, dangling at his side, snapped back to give her a stinging slap. A drop of icy rain splashed against her cheek, and then another. Soon it was pouring down from the skies and splashing up from the streets. ‘Perfect,’ she thought, and was sick on the cobblestones.

  Chapter Ten
<
br />   The Three Time Travellers

  It must have been three a.m. Katie sat opposite Alice and watched her feed little Riordan, out on night patrol again, and wrapped in the royal shawl. ‘I just don’t think pork pie and port wine are the correct diet for a toddler,’ she commented, watching Riordan clutch a glass of ruby liquid in his two podgy hands and down it in big gulps.

  ‘He’s become so thin, though,’ said Alice, holding out a leg that looked humorously plump to Katie. ‘I don’t believe the Honourable Emma Twisted ever feeds this child.’

  ‘The Princess watered down the wine, Katie,’ said James impatiently. ‘Riordan isn’t going to stagger down the street, singing beer house songs. Now try to pay attention, both of you. Katie, you should never have gone off on your own like that – ever.’ He put out his hand to stop the tirade he knew was coming. ‘But at least you’ve come back with lots of information. Terrible information, but lots of it.’

  ‘Was there nothing you could do for Fräulein Bauer?’ Alice asked.

  A wave of remorse swept over Katie. ‘I should have tried to do something. But I was hiding, it all happened so fast.’

  James interrupted. ‘There wasn’t anything you could have done, Katie. If you’d tried, you wouldn’t be sitting here tonight.’

  ‘Poor Fräulein Bauer,’ Alice said. ‘She was a good woman, and would have been kind, but for her great love and fear of Baroness Lehzen.’

  ‘And this loyalty has killed her in the end,’ James added. All three were silent.

  Alice hugged Katie. ‘It sounds so horrible,’ she said. ‘I still think you should go right to bed, Katie. Such a terrible shock.’

  ‘I am still in shock,’ Katie replied. ‘My hair must have turned white with fright. I’d look in a mirror, but I never like what I see.’

  ‘No,’ James commented absently, ‘you wouldn’t like it very much. You’re a mess, Katie. Now, please let’s concentrate on the problems at hand. We just need to piece everything together logically, scientifically.’

  Striding over to the schoolroom blackboard, James took up a piece of chalk and began to write rapidly. ‘We’ll lay out the facts in diagram form, that way we can see the problems and solutions more clearly.’

  As the chalk dust flew, Katie muttered, ‘Solutions, good luck.’

  But James ignored her, covering the blackboard with names, interlocking circles and arrows.

  ‘I begin to see the connections now,’ he said, moving his index finger rapidly across the board. ‘Lucia belongs to this group, the Verus. She uses Bernardo DuQuelle as some kind of agent. She also knows, and fears, Mr Belzen. Now Belzen is using the Black Tide to gain whatever he is after. The Black Tide in turn is using Mr MacKenzie, who is the connection to the Royal Family. And then there’s DuQuelle to the Royal Family, Katie to Alice…’

  Alice strained with concentration. This was worse than the royal progenitors. Henry I through William Rufus was nothing to this.

  But James O’Reilly was excited. For some people, there’s nothing that clears the mind like a good diagram. ‘Lucia, that female who visited Bernardo DuQuelle, and the repellent man, Mr Belzen – they are both here on a mission, to capture Katie. That is one unifying feature,’ he explained.

  ‘Well, that’s just great,’ Katie said, biting off a piece of pork pie. ‘Glad I can be of help.’

  ‘The other common denominator is DuQuelle. He is working with Lucia – that we know – but he might be working with Mr Belzen as well, you can never tell with someone of DuQuelle’s dubious character,’ James said, writing rapidly on the blackboard. ‘They all want something. What is it?’

  ‘DuQuelle’s visitor, Lucia – doesn’t she want to save the world?’ Alice supplied helpfully.

  ‘Kind of,’ Katie said. ‘But only for her own good. I think we have something they need. And we’ll destroy this if we go to war. So they have to protect us. It might have something to do with books. Maybe paper, or ink, or print. I don’t know, but they are really weird about books.’

  ‘Books,’ James wrote on the black board. ‘Whatever it is they need,’ he said, ‘the three children they keep talking of are the key to success or failure. They are the ones who can save, or destroy this world, the three time travellers.’

  Alice wrapped Riordan’s feet more firmly in her shawl. ‘Three time travellers,’ she murmured in his baby ear, ‘the child who brings peace, the child who brings war and peace, and the child who brings the war to end the world.’ She repeated it again, rocking Riordan in her arms, like a strange lullaby. Somehow Alice’s innocent sing-song made it sound even more terrible. A child who brings peace would be a wonderful thing, a child who brings war and peace they could understand – it’s what had happened throughout all of history. But a child who brings the war that ends the world… all three shuddered and stared at the candle they’d placed between themselves. The rain thudded against the nursery window.

  Trying to speak casually, even affectionately, James looked to Katie. ‘You are obviously one of the three time travellers. So which one are you, Katie?’

  She looked at her friends and saw the doubt flicker across their faces. They were suddenly just that little bit afraid of her, and she was afraid of herself. ‘I don’t know,’ she stuttered. ‘I’m not sure. I think I might…’ Alice interrupted her.

  ‘Katie, you just can’t be the bad one. You’re not a bad person. I believe you are good, and will bring good. You were sent here as the child of peace. But whether Bernardo DuQuelle has enough goodness in himself to see this, I don’t know.’ The look of doubt was gone from Alice’s face, replaced by a radiant certainty.

  James’s face was still dark with doubt. ‘I think you are too quick to decide, Alice. We have to look at the facts. There is no way of knowing which of the children Katie is. She is in danger, which puts you in danger, and your safety must come first. I think if we could… erm… isolate Katie… keep her away from you… just until we can gather more facts…’

  As Alice interrupted, she lost her normal grave and gentle manner and began to resemble her mother, to throw the cloak of royalty around her small frame. ‘I have made our decision,’ she told James O’Reilly. ‘We must do everything we can to protect Katie. And being with me is the surest way to succeed in this. You heard what DuQuelle said. They dare not interfere with the Royal Family.’ Riordan, innocent of the crisis at hand, had fallen asleep. Cradling him in one arm, Alice put the other around Katie’s shoulders. ‘You will be safe here with me.’

  James was silent for a moment. Alice was not being logical. One couldn’t simply assume Katie was the child who brings peace. But to see her as anything else would be a betrayal of someone who had become… become… He blushed deep red as he realized: Katie had become his friend, a good one, an important one. And then there was Princess Alice. She had given her orders, and obedience to Queen and country ran deep in him.

  After a moment’s struggle he bowed his head to Alice. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you have made our decision, and I will abide by it. But in order to protect Katie, we must protect ourselves too. There is only a one in three chance that you are the child DuQuelle will save. It’s best to keep him guessing. The key to which child you are lies in your own history – the inventions, medical discoveries, famines, plagues, revolutions and wars that happened in your own time. These will reveal which child you are. DuQuelle is canny. He probably knows something of the future. Anything you say could be a clue. And if you tell us, then we are vulnerable, and could give you away. You mustn’t tell us anything else about your time’

  ‘But I know so much,’ Katie protested. ‘There are so many ways I can help.’ She thought about the simple way to prevent typhoid – clean water – and the thousands of lives she could save. She could warn Alice about her nephew, the Kaiser – not even born yet, but not to be trusted when he arrived. There were messages for future generations. ‘Don’t sail on the Titanic, I know a blimp looks fun but don’t fly on the Hindenburg, and whatever you do, st
ay out of San Francisco on 18th April 1906.’

  ‘Couldn’t I pass on information if it would make things better, save lives, change things?’

  ‘That’s just what you can’t do, Katie,’ James said firmly. ‘I’m desperate to learn these things from you, but you can’t change our time, or give your own time away. I think the Princess’s faith in you is a gamble. But I will take this gamble and do all I can to protect you. You in turn must be careful to protect yourself.’

  ‘And in protecting yourself you protect the future of the world,’ Alice added brightly. ‘This one in three notion is nonsense. You are going to bring us all peace…’

  Katie thought for a moment, listening to the rain. ‘James can draw and connect, diagram and dissect all he wants,’ she said, ‘but he can’t solve the real problem. This isn’t science. What’s going on is beyond reason. Lucia, Bernardo DuQuelle and – God help us – Mr Belzen, they do not belong to the natural world. They belong to the supernatural.’

  James put his chalk down quietly, and Alice held Riordan closer. The room suddenly seemed very cold, the light of the candle very small. James spoke up stubbornly, ‘I still think that science can be applied to the situation.’

  ‘Needs must,’ Alice added. ‘It’s all we have, along with our faith and our belief in each other.’

  Katie squeezed her friend’s hand. ‘That doesn’t really arm us against all the hocus-pocus I saw tonight. But there is something we can do, something where we are on equal footing. We can concentrate on the danger at hand; and that’s MacKenzie and his nasty little bunch of so-called shopkeepers. It’s pretty rotten, selling off the Queen’s teas, but I think that dark-eyed moustachioed duo are up to something a lot worse. DuQuelle talked of the Black Tide. Since I can’t tell you what I know, why don’t you tell me what you know?’

  ‘They are the most dangerous underground movement in existence,’ James explained. ‘The Black Tide’s mission is to create a world where all men are equal, where each man has the same rights as his brother. So far so good. But to achieve this, the Black Tide believes the world as it stands must be destroyed. Their credo is a system of total anarchy.’ He glanced nervously at Alice. ‘A class system, with an aristocracy, is repugnant to them. Social inequality must be annihilated, from the top down. Their primary target is the most important monarchy in existence today, the British Royal Family.’