Hell Train (12 page)

‘No, inside. You can’t hear that?’

She shook her head, genuinely perplexed. ‘No.’

Thomas’s raised finger tilted down and slowly came to a stop above the casket lid. ‘You must be able to.’ Back in Henley-Upon-Thames he had occasion to help himself to a nip of whisky, and she usually heard the top coming off the bottle from the floor above. ‘It’s coming from in there.’

‘Don’t be absurd. There is a corpse inside.’

‘What if he’s not dead?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Inside—I could hear him while you were asleep, scratching at the lid. What if he’s still alive?’

Miranda stared at her husband as if he had lost what little of his wits was left to him. ‘Don’t be so absurd.’

‘Listen, can you really hear nothing?’

‘No. You must try to set aside such fantasies.’

But Thomas watched the coffin in horror, listening for sounds from within. He imagined the casket’s silken interior being torn to shreds by broken fingers. Hands clawing away at the lid with cracked and bleeding nails.

Skritch—skritch.

‘There it is again!’ The sound was clearer this time. A definite double scratch, as if it were caused by fingernails snagging and dragging down the silken lining of the casket. Could Miranda really hear nothing at all?

Thomas stared at the coffin, then reached forward and ran his hands around its lid. The seal was tight, but he could not discover how the top had been locked.

‘I wonder what is in the paperwork Mr Scheffen gave you?’ he asked.

Miranda looked inside the folder the undertaker had left them. She took out a heavy vellum envelope and broke the seal, tearing it open, tipping out its contents.

‘Miranda!’ he cried, horrified. ‘I meant that there might be some kind of medical note. That is private and not for our eyes!’

‘We’ll say it was damaged in transit.’ She scanned the pages. ‘It contains details for a state funeral. Invitations to be edged with black silk. Incense burners and sobbing mourners. Laid to rest amid an angelic choir. The pecking order of the pallbearers. Contents of the casket. Gold chains and the royal Carpathian seal, inlaid with rubies and emeralds.’ She rubbed her forehead, overpowered by the images in her head. ‘I need to think.’

Thomas continued to stare at the casket. The noise of scratching filled his head. He imagined the inside of the coffin, an emaciated monarch gasping for air.

He clamped his hands over his ears. ‘Perhaps it is merely... a rat. That’s it, a rat. Or insects.’

As Thomas looked back at Miranda, the scratching suddenly stopped. Had it merely been his overworked imagination? The stress of the war, the disaster of the touring holiday, their escape? Thomas continued to stare at his wife. ‘You really cannot hear anything?’

‘No, Thomas, only the breathing of the train.’

‘Then I alone must suffer this sound.’

Miranda attempted sympathy. ‘Perhaps your mind is a little overexercised. Hardly surprising under the circumstances, having to earn our passage home like common travellers.’

But the scratching started up again.

Skritch-skritch.

Thomas watched his wife intently. It was clear she heard nothing at all unusual. He examined the coffin more carefully this time. Under the edge of the lid, a red wax seal ran unbroken.

He looked down at the contents of Mr Scheffen’s envelope and sorted through it, finding a second item his wife had missed. Splitting the seal of the tiny rectangular envelope, he tugging the card free and read through it.

‘What if he wasn’t dead, Miranda?’

‘What are you talking about?’

Thomas held up the note accompanying the body and displayed it to her.

‘The death certificate.’

‘You censured me for looking at the funeral seating plans, but now you examine his private medical records.’

‘It says the carrier suffered epileptic fits. Epilepsy! I’ve heard it can appear as a death-like trance. What if he’s still alive?’

‘He would have been pronounced deceased by doctors. The casket is tightly sealed.’

‘But they are the ones who sealed it.’

‘You heard our benefactor. The man inside this casket was declared dead, and the dead do not come back to life!’

Skritch-skritch-skritch-skritch
. Louder than ever before.

Thomas was a man possessed. He tried to tear open the lid of the coffin with his fingers, but could not manage it. Then he rose and began searching for something to open it with.

‘You are imposing your own fears on this, Thomas,’ his wife warned. ‘You are afraid that someone else might suffer the fate you dread! Can you not see that?’

‘Help me find something that can prise off the lid.’

‘What if he died of the plague? A terrible contagion? Perhaps the death certificate lies. Perhaps that is why the coffin had to be accompanied.’

‘The mortician knew about his epilepsy. He wanted to cover up the truth. Imagine; a crown prince dissents in time of war, and has to go. A conspiracy. This man died trying to get out. I know, because he is still clawing at the lid.’

Miranda looked at her husband in horror. ‘Thomas, this has gone quite far enough. We must do as we are told or we won’t be paid. You’ll take some hot tea and pull yourself together. I will find us some.’ And she rose to her feet, leaving the guard’s van.

Thomas sat miserably alone with the prince’s coffin. All was quiet. He tapped the side of his head experimentally, trying to find out what was wrong. Too many years spent in hushed cloisters, too much time passed in guilty denials, a marriage in haste that he now had leisure to regret—were these finally leaving the marks of madness upon him, as they had his poor father?
Is it me,
he asked himself,
or whatever’s inside that great mahogany thing?

And suddenly the terrible noise returned, the loudest yet. As if hypnotised, Thomas approached the coffin.

He saw that it had two slender locks built into the wood, one for each part of the lid, which was divided in two at chest height. He sought the envelope again and turned it out, but found no keys. How were those on the far side of the Channel meant to pay their final respects to their relative if they had not been provided with access? Slowly he bent down and peered through one of the keyholes.

A single red eye, as bloody as a sunset, suddenly appeared on the other side, staring furiously back at him.

Thomas leapt away in shock just as Miranda reappeared with a small tin urn of tea. Had he just imagined what he’d seen?

His wife had a look of steely slyness on her face that he saw whenever she was planning a stratagem. ‘I have been thinking,’ she said, seating herself beside him. ‘A member of the Carpathian royal family. You’re right. The royals are not like us. We should check inside, just to be sure. Try and find something to open it with.’

That’s the answer, let her see for herself, and then we shall know if I am mad,
he thought. They looked for something they could use to open the coffin. Thomas dug into his valise and produced a tiny pocket-knife, with which he tried to pick the lock.

‘Get out of my way, Thomas.’ Miranda had found a stoker’s coal shovel almost as big as herself. She raised the shovel and wedged the blade into the edge of the coffin lid, pushing with all her might. There was a hiss of air as the wax seal started to crack apart.

‘We’ll say this was damaged in transit as well, when the train braked suddenly,’ she told him, giving the spade another whack. ‘Say the casket was insecurely tethered.’ With the third blow, the top half of the lid splintered and broke open. ‘Come on then, don’t just stand there like a useless article, give me a hand.’

Thomas slammed back the lid and studied the interior silk lining. It was criss-crossed with bloody scratches and pieces of rotten fingernail. Miranda threw her hand across her mouth at the stench.

‘You see, Miranda? He was alive! He might still be saved...’

‘Can you not smell? That’s putrifaction! How could he still be alive?’ Miranda leaned forward and peered inside, but it was hard to see in the gloom of the guard’s van. ‘Pass me a lantern.’ She pointed to the oil lamp in the corner. ‘Do you have a Lucifer?’

‘Why would I have a match? You know I don’t indulge in tobacco.’

‘Thomas, this is no time for your lies. I know you creep into the garden for a pipe. Light the lantern.’

Thomas did as he was bidden and brought the lantern over. Miranda craned forward.

‘Well, is he wearing his ceremonial gold? Is that his royal seal?’

Thomas looked down at the body for the first time, raising the lamp and turning up the flame. He found himself standing before the open coffin, frozen, dumbfounded. His mouth dropped open.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE FOG

T
HE
A
RKANGEL
INCHED
along tracks rusted with disuse. The thick grey fog crept between the pines to the cut and tried each window of each carriage, like a swamp miasma seeking to infect all who passed. The Conductor solemnly walked ahead of the train, along the centre of the track, as if at the head of a funeral cortège. He raised a red flag before him, allowing the engine driver to set a pace. The carriages shone with a murky brilliance. There was hardly any sound now. Even the sodden birds had fallen silent.

Nicholas awoke and found Isabella alert, watching from the window.

‘How long was I asleep?’

‘I have only just awoken. I had the most terrible dream. I dreamed that someone jumped from the train and fell into the valley, to be torn apart by wolves.’

‘These are just anxieties that enter your slumber. You mustn’t worry so much.’ He stretched and looked about the carriage. ‘I’m cold and thirsty, and I have no luggage, no razor, no clothes to change into.’ He had always prided himself on his smart appearance. ‘I’ll have to buy supplies at the next stop.’ Then he remembered the sign warning passengers. ‘Except that we are not supposed to alight at the stations before our destination.’

‘The vendors come to the windows of the train. We used to have them at Chelmsk. Most of them were blind or maimed. Accidents were always happening in the foundry.’ Isabella watched the train’s slow progress from the window. ‘So thick and grey out there, as if the world has been wiped clean away.’

Nicholas checked his pocket map once more. ‘There’s no way of telling where we are,’ he muttered, ‘no way of knowing where we might be going.’

‘The fog is like a shroud. It frightens me.’ Isabella sat back, nervously chewing a nail, silenced by her anxiety. Nicholas knew it was important to keep her engaged, to stop her succumbing to flights of fancy. She was, after all, a peasant girl, and he knew they were prone to superstition.

‘The Conductor is walking in front of the engine,’ he said. ‘Did you get a good look at the soldiers who boarded at Snerinska?’

‘Yes, but I think they’re English.’

‘We won’t cross the border until after Zoribskia, but the last stop is obscured. All the maps have the same defect. A printing error, perhaps.’

‘No. Something is not right. They don’t want us to know where we are going.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because if we knew, we would leave the train by any means possible. We would throw ourselves from it if we could.’

‘I don’t understand. What is happening? Isabella, if you know anything more than what you have told me...’

‘You would not believe me if I did tell you. We are peasants who start at shadows and trust in fairytales. We make sacrifices to the spring and watch for omens in the fields. And you are a fine London gentleman.’

‘Stop that. Just tell me.’

‘It is in our legends, our stories, our nursery rhymes. Our elders spoke of a train that passed the town at midnight on the eighth full moon of each year. No-one ever saw it. We were not allowed to look. We just heard the whistle.’

Just then, as if it had been called upon to do so, the
Arkangel
’s mournful whistle sounded. Isabella glanced out of the window into the thickening fog. ‘Those who board the train must risk their souls. Each will find himself alone, and none can help any other through his ordeal.’

‘Isabella—’

‘We cannot get off, and we cannot stay on.’

‘My love, you are not making sense! Listen to yourself! What does any of this mean? You have never travelled before—’

Isabella would not be interrupted. ‘It’s just as the stories foretold. My father, my grandfather, all the men told of it. The women were never meant to know, and so we were shielded, but there are images in my head, if only I could order them.’

What unnerved Nicholas most was that Isabella seemed calm and rational. Instead of denying her fears, he tried to reason with her. ‘But why us, Isabella? We’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘It’s not you, Nicholas.’ She turned to look in his eyes, shame blanching her face. ‘It’s because of me.’

‘You? But what could you have done?’

‘I left the town of my birth.’

‘Do you not see that this is precisely what they tell you to keep you from leaving? Your elders need young breeding stock. Without you the town would grow old and die. So they invent these fables to frighten you and keep you prisoner.’

‘No, Nicholas,’ she said gravely. ‘There is something more. The further we travel, the more I remember. I think I first learned it from the game. My mother kept it hidden in the attic behind a locked door, but I knew where she kept the key. I played it, and I know what is in store.’

‘From a children’s game? You might as well play cards and believe that by turning over the Queen of Spades you are soon to die.’

‘The game was created by the foundry elders to pass the time while they waited for their metals to anneal. I remember the train now, growing as big as our house. The noise, the smoke. I remember how terrified I was. What I tell you is not fanciful, Nicholas, it is based on the truth.’

‘Please, Isabella, I believe you’re suffering from shock, after our flight from the town.’

‘I think you’re right. My poor Josef.’

‘I wish to God there had been no need to hurt your Josef, but it was him or me. You need to rest now. The journey will not be easy.’ He pressed a hand against her forehead. ‘Lie back and try to sleep some more.’