Retromancer (9 page)

The card I plucked was JUSTICE. But I confess that I did not simply pluck it at random. I plucked it out of sheer wilfulness, as I could see absolutely no connection whatsoever between JUSTICE and the Crown jewels. So, in my own small way, I was simply trying to be unhelpful.

‘Can I come along with you?’ asked Lord Jason Lark-Rising, the bounce once more returning to him. ‘I have all manner of skills that you might wish to put to good use.’

‘I think not,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Rizla and I work as a team. Although I appreciate your offer, I must decline it.’

And I appreciated that. Yes, we were indeed a team and it was a real joy to hear Mr Rune confirming this.

‘I could drive you in the Rolls,’ said the young aristo.

And so we two became three and I got a right old sulk on.

‘Perk up, Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune as he lolled in the back seat, window half-down, languidly waving to folk we passed by.

‘I am perked up,’ I said, but I was not.

Lord Jason lolled beside Hugo Rune.

I was doing the driving.

All right, I was driving a Rolls-Royce 1938 Phantom Fandango XR6, which is not something that you do every day and is really rather quite special. But it should not have been me doing the driving. I should have been sharing in the back-seat lolls. And Mr Rune made me wear a chauffeur’s cap!

‘I would have been quite happy to drive,’ I heard Lord Jason say to Hugo Rune. ‘I’m really becoming quite good at it. I hardly run over anyone much any more. Anyone important anyway.’

‘Rizla needs the practice,’ Mr Rune replied. ‘One day soon he might be driving a tank, so he needs to get his bearings.’

Driving a tank? I shook my head. But later I did not drive a tank!

‘I see you have a cocktail cabinet,’ Hugo Rune observed. ‘What say you knock us up a couple of Dive Bombers?’
[4]

‘Pip pip,’ went His Lordship. And I drove on in silence.

We certainly got some looks from the London populace. But not many of these encompassed admiration or respect. These wartime years saw the class system starting to erode. Those who had once bowed their heads and tugged at their forelocks were straightening up. Change as well as smoke was in the air.

I called back over my shoulder to my passengers, who now were growing somewhat rowdy in the back. ‘Will you please stop that raucous singing?’ I called. ‘And tell me, Mr Rune – should I be driving to the Tower of London, or are the Crown jewels kept somewhere safer from the bombs? The vaults of the Bank of England, or suchlike?’

‘They are still in the Tower,’ came the somewhat drunken reply. ‘As the Royal Family remain at Buck House, so the Crown jewels remain at the Tower. It’s a PR exercise really, something to lift the spirits of the masses. “We’re all in this together” and all that kind of guff.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ I was heard to say. But no one heard it but me.

It is a fair old journey from Brentford to the Tower of London and by the time I had reached my destination my passengers were in a state of advanced inebriation, giggling like girlies and falling about in laughter at the slightest no-good-reason-whatsoever. It was quite disgraceful behaviour and I was rightly appalled.

‘We are here,’ I said, as I drew the Roller to a very sudden halt outside the Tower, which dispatched Hugo Rune and Lord Jason into a giggling heap on the floor. ‘We have arrived.’ No yellow lines in the nineteen forties. You could park where you wished. ‘What exactly are we going to do now?’ I asked. ‘Neither of you is in any fit state to conduct any kind of investigation.’

‘You go by yourself, Rizla,’ called Hugo Rune, attempting without success to light a cigar whilst still on the floor and setting fire to Lord Jason instead. ‘Investigate away and return later to report your findings.’

‘While you get your head down for a little nap, I suppose.’

‘What a fine idea. Go on, now.’

And so I left the Rolls-Royce and its drunken cargo and traipsed over the drawbridge and into the Tower’s environs. I had never been to the Tower of London before and I was quite impressed by it. Impressed but not well favoured. As I had not taken to Lord Jason, I did not take to the Tower of London. It was leaden. Heavy. Grim. Foreboding. Its atmosphere weighed upon me. Many evil deeds had been committed there and you could almost feel them.

I did a little shiver and plodded into the central courtyard. To find my passage blocked by a beefeater.

And a great big beefeater too, he was. And one with a certain attitude.

He wore the traditional duds of the beefeater. Those of a meaty persuasion. The mutton-chop sideburns, the leg-of-lamb shoulder epaulettes, the ham-hock trouserettes, with their distinctive T-bone stripes. The porterhouse shoes and pig-knuckle anklets. Jugged-hare shirt and club-sandwich tie.

And not everyone can pull off a look like that. He regarded me as if I were a stain on his pork-sword cravat and asked just what I wanted.

‘I have come to see the Crown jewels,’ I replied, bringing my smile into play.

‘Well, you can’t,’ said he. Ignoring my smile and offering me a glare.

‘But surely the treasure house is open to the public.’

‘Not today it’s not.’

And I asked why this was.

And received in reply words to the effect that I should take myself away to a place far distant and engage in sexual intercourse.

‘I do not think you quite understand,’ I said. And I stood my ground. ‘I have reason to believe that an attempt will be made today to steal the Crown jewels. I have been sent to reconnoitre and report back to my superior.’

And would not you know it, or would not you not, the beefeater then told me that I was not a male person, as I had been given to believe throughout my life, but rather, indeed, the personification of female genitalia.

And this I found offensive.

‘Your social skills are somewhat lacking, my fine fellow,’ I said to him. ‘I demand to speak at once to your supervisor.’

Now this demand I knew usually puts the fear of God into any truculent minion of the service industry. And I folded my arms to show that I meant business. And would not be budged until I had found satisfaction.

And would not you know it, or would not you not, he now bawled that I was to ‘get out and ******* well stay out’, and he dragged me from the courtyard and he flung me out on my ear. And I bounced across the drawbridge and came to rest in a kind of twisted mess upon hard gravel, which really brought on a serious sulk.

I lurched to my feet and dusted down my tweeds. And pondered over just what I should do next. Return to the Rolls and bewail my lot to the probably-now-snoozing Hugo Rune? No, I would have none of that. I was not going to stand for being treated so shabbily. I would speak to that fellow’s supervisor. And I would-

And then I was all but run over by a horse-drawn brewer’s dray. ‘Out of the way!’ cried its driver, as big-hooved horses marched by.

They were magnificent beasts and exuded the smell of ‘horse’ to a degree that reached beyond ‘pungent’ into nasal realms that were best left unexplored.

I jumped back and covered my nose as the brewer’s dray rattled by.

They clearly drank a lot of beer at the Tower of London. One of those traditions or old charters or somethings that you read about, I supposed. Like boiling sparrows as a palliative against bicycle saddle sores only when the moon is in its final quarter and there are more blue tulips in the park than you can reasonably shake a stick at. Or was I thinking of something else entirely? Or had I perhaps suffered concussion and was not thinking clearly at all?

The dray rolled into the Tower of London.

And I, having surreptitiously shinnied on the back, rolled with it.

I covered myself up with horses’ nosebags and maintained the now legendary low profile. If I could sneak down from the dray and sneak past the foul-mouthed eater of beef then I might be able to sneak into the treasure house and see whether the Crown jewels were still secure or whether someone had sneaked them away.

And then something happened that was so utterly wonderful that I could scarce believe it to be true. It was something that schoolboys of my generation, when I was a schoolboy and it was my generation, dreamed above all other things would happen to them. It was a Boy’s Own Adventure thing. An Enid Blyton moment.

The driver brought the dray to a halt in the courtyard. He climbed down from his high seat and spoke in whispered words to the surly beefeater. And he spoke in the fashion that made my dreams come true.

As I heard: ‘Mumble mumble mumble secret plan. Mumble mumble steal the Crown jewels. Mumble international conspiracy. Mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble A Dawn of Gold shines from the darkness. Mumble mumble mumble.’

‘Well, that explains everything,’ I said to myself, but quietly. ‘I will follow these villains and see what is indeed what.’ And I peeped out from my hideaway beneath the nosebags and watched as the drayman and the beefeater sidled off across the courtyard and entered a great stone tower.

I then climbed from my hideaway and did certain things, which seemed appropriate to do. And then I followed the two would-be stealers of the nation’s treasure, in that ducking, diving, skulking, creeping-along fashion that is greatly favoured by the ninja.

And I did it with considerable style.

I crept into the mighty castle keep kind of jobbie and along stone corridors, my heart pounding fiercely and my head all swimming with fear. I did not know quite what would happen if I found myself in confrontation with these criminal types. But I supposed that it would be nothing nice for me.

And then I heard them once again.

‘Mumble mumble mumble,’ they went. ‘Drugged all the real beefeaters mumble mumble. And told the public to **** *** mumble mumble mumble. So let’s get this done and hump the jewels into the fake beer barrels on the dray. Mumble mumble mumble.’

‘They might think that they have all the loose ends tied up,’ I whispered to myself, ‘but they have not reckoned with Rizla.’

And then I felt something cold at the nape of my neck. And then I heard those words that I had no wish to hear.

And that something cold was the mouth of a pistol.

And those words were, ‘Put up your hands.’

At a gun-muzzle’s end I was urged along stone lanes.

The treasure house itself proved to be smaller than I had imagined. A simple circular room with an armoured showcase at its centre. Within this showcase treasure twinkled. And without, the bogus beefeater and the duplicitous drayman worried at the glasswork with big sledgehammers.

‘Comrades,’ called the scoundrel who muzzled me forwards. ‘See what I ’ave ’ere. A young toff who’s wandered far from ’is ’ampshire ’ome.’

The bogus eater of beef did growlings.

As did the dodgy driver of the dray.

‘I sent that young ***** packing!’ growled the beef-eating one. ‘But now as he’s back and smelling strongly of horses, we’d best slit his throat.’

‘No, hold on, hold on there,’ I said, raising my hands even higher than they were already. ‘There is no need for any throat-slitting. No need at all.’

‘And I’ll agree to that,’ said he that drove the dray.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I appreciate you doing so.’

‘And we’ll appreciate you. It’s a long haul to our destination by steamer. You’ll provide us with entertainment.’ And he winked most lewdly and licked at his lips. ‘And then you’ll be meat for our bellies.’

‘What?’ went I, in an outraged manner, and one not lacking for terror. ‘This is not the way things are done in Boy’s Own Adventure books. I recall no mentions of homosexual gang-rape and cannibalism.’

‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ said the villain with the gun at my neck. ‘It’s all bestiality and phlebotomy nowadays.’

‘And chezolagnia,’ said the drayman. ‘Not to mention emetophilia and coprolagnia.’

‘And hierophilia and mammagymnophilia,’ said the bad beefeater in a tone that suggested he actually knew what those words meant.

‘Hm,’ I went. And I took another tack. ‘I would not want to be remembered like that,’ I said. ‘Not if I were making history.’

The drayman gave me a bit of a stare. The beefeater just went, ‘Eh?’

‘You are revolutionaries, are you not?’ I said. ‘Your names will go down in history as the brave comrades who liberated the symbols of the monarcho-capitalist tyranny. I would not want my grandchildren to read that I had performed such noble deeds for the people, then rounded them off with a session of bum-banditry followed by a nosh-up of human hamburger.’

There was a pause, then a pause for thought. With each man alone with his own, as it were.

‘There’s truth in what ’e says,’ said the holder of the gun. And his comrades nodded their heads.

‘So we’d best not mention it when we get interviewed by the ’acks from the local newspaper.’

‘What?’ went I. And, ‘But,’ as well. But all to no avail.

‘Pick up an ’ammer,’ said the gun-toting anthrophagus pervert, ‘and get stuck in to the treasure case.’

And so, downcast and shoulders slumped, I slouched over to the treasure case, hauled up a spare sledgehammer and took to the swinging of it.

Which, as it happened, I rather enjoyed. But then, after all, who would not have? For it was also a childhood dream of boys of my generation to be involved in a really big crime. A Great Train Robbery. The snatching of gold from the Bank of England. The Kidnapping of Diana Dors. I was playing a part in the making of history here. If these monsters actually escaped with their booty and I did not wind up feeding their fetishistic fancies or their grumbling guts, then I would go down in the history books as one of the super-criminals.

But then another thought struck me and did so with some force. I had lived up until a month ago in the nineteen sixties. And although I had never been a particular fan of history, I had read about the Crown jewels. And I had not read that they had ever got stolen during the war, especially not by me as one of the robbers. They had not.

But then another thought struck me, which rubbished the former. The history that I had been taught did not record that America had been reduced to a nuclear desert and that Germany had won the war.

But-

And then I received a clip around the ear.

‘Stop standing there staring into space with your mouth open, you *** ****** *,’ shouted the beastly beefeater, ‘and get stuck into that showcase!’

And so I did and they did too and soon the glass was flying. And no alarms went off, for these were the days before pressure-sensitive pads and laser trips and all that kind of hi-tech security caper.

Soon we were all dipping in through the holes we had smashed and pulling out crowns and sceptres and orbs and things of a right royal nature. And the drayman placed Queen Victoria’s diamond crown upon his head and his comrades guffawed, and I found myself holding King Charles the Second’s Sceptre with the dove, which was originally made for his coronation in sixteen sixty-one. Which was rather special and I knew in my heart that this was all very wrong. Whatever one felt about the monarchy, stealing the Crown jewels was wrong. And surely it was heresy or treason, or something, and did they not hang you for that?

‘Give me George the Fourth’s State Diadem, once worn by Princess Alexandria,’ said the drayman to me. ‘And empty your pockets too. I saw you slip the One Ring of Power
^TM
, otherwise known as Isildur’s Bane
^TM
, into your trousers.’

‘I never did,’ I said. But I had.

They crammed the golden regalia into sacks. The drayman fetched a wheelbarrow from his dray and they had me load it up. ‘Now push it to the dray,’ he said and I did not have any choice.

The sun was already going down, which came as some surprise. I did not know that we had been in the treasure house for such a length of time. But darkness was falling and searchlights were windscreen-wiping the sky. I gazed up at the barrage balloons that hung above the Tower. What exactly was the purpose of those?

And I sniffed at the air of wartime London and that air smelled grim.

‘You will not get away with this,’ I told my captors. ‘You should just make good your escape and have done with it. I will put back the jewels and we can just pretend that none of this ever happened.’

And the wielder of the gun clipped me hard on the head with it and counselled speediness of action in favour of unrequested jaw-motion. ‘Move it and shut it,’ he told me.

‘But-’ But I was wasting my time.

But then I heard the air-raid sirens sound.

‘Aha!’ I went in an I-told-you-so fashion. ‘Now you will have to stay put. You cannot drive this dray through the streets during an air raid.’

And then the blighters laughed at me. And the drayman, who seemed now to be doing most of the talking, told me that brewers’ drays always had free passage during these otherwise publicly restricted periods.

‘I am appalled,’ I said and I truly was. But they hastened me onto the dray and the drayman whipped at his horses.

And then those certain things that I had done before I followed the drayman and beefeater became manifest. And the drayman suddenly flew from the dray and was dragged at the ends of his reins across the courtyard by his horses.

For I had disconnected them from the dray. Which I, at the time, had thought rather clever. Although not quite so much at this particular moment, because at this particular moment both the beefeater and the gun-wielder set about me something wicked. Reasoning, quite rightly, that I was to blame for the painful fate of their comrade.

And when, at length, they were done with venting their collective spleen upon my person, they left the dray, gathered up their fallen partner in crime, led back the horses and reconnected them to the dray.

Which left me thinking that amongst the certain things that I had done, telephoning for the police should have been included.

‘What else?’ demanded the scuffed-up drayman now looming over me. ‘What else did you do?’

‘I loosened all the barrels so they would fall off when you went over a bump,’ I managed to say, though it pained me in many ways to do so.

I received a bit more kicking while the drayman retightened the stays that held the barrels in place. And then we set off.

Which would have been nice, I suppose, a jaunt on a horse-drawn brewer’s dray. Had my own circumstances not been quite so dire at that particular moment. And had not this dray been conveying the stolen Crown jewels away through the streets of London.

The drayman and the gunman sat up front.

The bogus beefeater sat upon my head at the back.

And the horses all went clip-clop-clip.

And searchlights beamed in the sky.

Presently we reached the East India Dock Road. Which led to the East India Docks. And unmolested we travelled with naught to be seen of folk on the streets but for the occasional group of firefighters loading crates of beer onto their tenders, or members of the Home Guard stripping lead from the roof of St Stigmatophilia’s Church.

And I sighed beneath the big bum bearing down upon my head and I felt quite disillusioned about the Blitz Spirit and hands holding hands and a nation united in a time of crisis.

‘This is a rotten world and a rotten age,’ I mumbled, ‘filled with rotten people doing rotten things and I hate it.’

‘Shut up,’ said the sitter and he farted on my head.

London’s docks had taken a brutal pounding from the Luftwaffe bombs. How anything could function now was well beyond me, but somehow it did, and a small tramp steamer lay at anchor somewhat out from the shoreline.

The villains, myself and the stolen booty were soon in a rowing boat and this was soon out into the river and alongside the steamer. Then we were shortly up and aboard and off down the night-shrouded river. They tossed me through a hatchway into a stinking hold and locked that hatchway upon me.

Which left me alone, to muse upon matters generally and draw my own conclusions as to how I felt about them. Specifically.

But I did not have too long to dwell upon man’s inhumanity to man and the unfairness of it all, because the hatchway suddenly opened and I found myself being hauled forth onto the darkened deck. I was most saddened by this hauling forth, as I feared that the fate awaiting me was that fate which had befallen many a cabin boy aboard a pirate brig.

But not as yet, or so it seemed, because I then found myself in the company of a rather pretty lady, who held up a ship’s lantern before me and asked me politely whether I would care to join her in her stateroom.

Which I did.

It was a rather well-appointed stateroom as it happened, done up in a somewhat antique style that put me in mind of illustrations I had seen of Captain Nemo’s sitting room in the Nautilus.

The rather pretty lady sat me down in a leather-bound captain’s chair and poured me a glass of red wine from a ship’s decanter. I viewed her as she did this and I have to say that there was something not altogether right about this beautiful creature. Which is not to say that there was something wrong, just something different. She had an ethereal quality about her. An other-worldly quality. And had I believed in such things, which as a rationalist I naturally did not, I might well have supposed that she was one of the fairy folk.

‘I really must apologise for the behaviour of the beastly men who captured you,’ she said. ‘I had not given them my permission to do so. They were simply to retrieve what is ours and return it to me. They will be punished for their transgressions.’

‘Right,’ I said and I nodded my head. ‘I have no idea at all what you are talking about,’ I continued.

‘You held the ring in your own hand,’ she said to me. ‘You know exactly what I am talking about.’

‘The Ring of Power
^TM
?’ I asked. ‘Also known as Isildur’s Bane
^TM
?’

‘The very same. A great sorrow exists in the land from which I come. A sorrow that can only be lifted when that which was stolen from us is returned. The Ring of Power
^TM
.’

And I nodded once more, most thoughtfully. ‘I did think it was a little out of place amongst all the other jewels,’ I said, ‘them being real and it being the fictional creation of J. R. R. Tolkien
^TM
. But then what do I know? Because after all, there is a war on.’

‘I am Princess Roellen of Purple Fane,’ said this lady to me. ‘My realm extends from the Mountains of Ffafiod to the Sea of Garmillion, encompassing the forests of Caecomphap and Pemanythnod.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘and pardon me for mentioning it, but none of these names, including your own, would appear to be trademarked.’

‘The meaning of your words is lost to me,’ said Princess Roellen, without the trademark.

‘The Lord of the Rings™,’ I said. ‘Although, now that I come to think of it, I do not believe it was published until the nineteen fifties. But if push comes to shove, I can always blame it on the Chevalier Effect. Could I have some more wine, please?’

And the princess poured me more wine.

‘You understand,’ said she, ‘that now I have told you of these matters, I cannot allow you to return to London.’

‘Oh dear oh dear,’ I said. ‘And just when I thought that things were looking up. So the future that awaits me is that of the sex toy and the sandwich?’

And at this the princess grinned somewhat coyly. ‘We have only just been introduced,’ she said. ‘Such forwardness is not our natural way in Purple Fane. Although I am never averse to a bit of hobbitophilia. ’

‘I am now truly confused,’ I said. ‘Am I to be rogered and eaten by the jewel robbers, or not?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said the princess. ‘Unless that is what “tugs your elfin bell”, as it were.’

‘It is not,’ I said. ‘So what are you talking about?’

‘If you wish,’ said the princess, ‘you may return with me to Purple Fane, a land of great beauty untouched by war. Where our people exalt in their liberty. Where justice is the foundation upon which our society rests. And where women outnumber men by twenty to one. What say you to this prospect?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I will have to give the matter some thought.’