Read The Parliament of Blood Online
Authors: Justin Richards
The Parliament of Blood
BLOOD
JUSTIN RICHARDS
To Julian â blood relative
The carriage had been booked for over four thousand years, and the driver did not want to be late.
The photographer had no such worries. His name was Bernard Denning, and his breath smelled strongly of the cheap ale he'd been drinking. After his afternoon appointment, there was not enough time to get home to Ealing, so instead he spent the time in the Red Lion a few streets away. A pint and a meat pie was just the ticket.
He was supposed to be there ahead of the guests, but Denning didn't care that he was a little late. Let the guests and the academics mingle and chatter without him. Bernard Denning, Photographer, would be ready and waiting when it mattered.
That was one of the advantages of these new dry-plate methods â a smaller camera he could easily carry. Much faster exposure times, so you could just hold the camera and press the lever. Job done. And with a magazine camera already loaded with a dozen plates, he didn't even have to prepare for the next session.
The evening sounds of London were muffled by the cold, clammy fog. Denning pulled up the collar of his coat with his free hand, the other cradling his precious camera. He could feel the February chill seeping into his feet from the cobbled roadway. There was a carriage waiting at the side of the street, barely visible in the gloom â a pencil-sketch shape. Almost like an old, fuzzy photograph itself, the horses were so still and quiet. He could make out the dark profile of the Coachman â heavy, hooded cloak, poised whip. The shadows across the Coachman's face made his eyes seem deep and empty. Like a skull.
Denning shivered, and walked on.
Ahead of him, another shape coalesced out of the fog. A woman. She was standing at the corner of the street. She too wore a large cloak, and the deep red of the material bled into the misty air so it seemed to glow around her. Her face was almost white against the charcoal black of her hair. She turned as Denning approached, hearing the clip of his nailed boots on the cobbles.
The woman stretched out her arms, as if in greeting, and her cloak fell open. Beneath it she was wearing an evening dress that was as red as her cloak. It was cut low, and her neck was pale and slender. Denning's breath quickened as he saw how very beautiful the lady was. The mist from his breath joined the swirling fog around them. Had he been less distracted, he might have noticed that there was no breath from the woman's scarlet lips.
âYou must be the photographer,' the woman said. She smiled, her dark eyes widening. âThe late photographer.'
âDenning,' he said, assuming she had seen the camera under his arm. âBernard Denning. At your service.'
âReally? How kind.' She took a step towards him, reaching out a hand to touch his cheek.
It was cold. Even through the long, white glove, her touch was cold as death.
âAre you going to the Unwrapping?' Denning asked, his voice a nervous whisper. He stared into her deep, dark eyes, unable to move as the woman reached out her other hand, holding his head between her chill palms.
âIndeed I am.' She was tall â almost as tall as Denning himself. Leaning forward, smiling, lips parting. Her cold eyes seemed to burn into his.
A sharp intake of breath. Denning leaned away, his feet frozen in position. As he felt the cold of her lips on his neck, he experienced a sudden rush of fear and struggled to pull away. But he was unable to move.
Then there was a crack of sound, like a gunshot, and the spell was broken. Gasping, Denning took a step backwards. The woman was staring at him, her face twisted into a snarl of angry disappointment. All beauty gone.
The coach drew up slowly out of the fog, and Denning realised that the sound had been the Coachman's whip. The photographer looked up, trying to stammer a thank you. Shadowed by the hood of his cloak, the man's face still looked like a skull.
The woman stepped towards Denning again, teeth bared, hissing at him like an angry snake.
âNo,' the Coachman said. He pointed the whip at the woman, and she stopped.
Denning felt another rush of relief. But it was shortlived.
âIt must look like an accident, Clarissa.' The Coachman's voice was deep and dark and dry and brittle all at once. âA tragic accident.'
There was a sudden clatter of carriage wheels across the cobbles. The sound of hoofs. Denning turned in time to see the horses bearing down on him. Nostrils flaring as they snorted â but no mist. The skull-faced Coachman cracked the whip. And the faces of the horses were like skulls too â pale and angular. Denning could see the ribs poking out of their sides. He could see the symbol painted on the door of the carriage as it turned slightly to head straight for him. He could hear the woman laughing.
Clarissa.
Denning's last thought was that Clarissa was such a lovely name. The last things he heard were her laughter, and the crack of the whip, and the unholy snarl of the horses. And the click of the shutter as he clutched the camera tight.
Clarissa stared longingly at the dark pool growing from under the carriage. She licked her lips, sighed, and turned to go.
The carriage moved slowly away again, back to where the Coachman had been waiting. He had been waiting a very long time, but now the waiting was nearly over â¦
Professor Andrew Brinson
AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM,
EGYPTIAN ROOMS
THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY
1886
A MUMMY FROM SAQQARA
TO BE UNWRAPPED AT
HALF-PAST EIGHT
TO:
George Archer Esq
.
George Archer had forgotten about the invitation. He felt the stiff card in his inside pocket as he put his jacket on. He took out the invitation and read it again. Tapping it against his fingertips, he considered his options. It was the end of a long day and he had been looking forward to getting home. But now his priorities had altered.
For one thing, he could do with a change, a break, a distraction before setting off. For another, he had argued strongly with Eddie about the invitation. The two of them had met the previous year, when the boy stole George's wallet. George shook his head as he recalled the trouble and danger which had resulted from that.
Another result was that, after their initial distrust of each other, they had become friends and Eddie Hopkins was staying in the spare room of the house that George had inherited from his father. Now, George was pretty much Eddie's surrogate father â though in age he was more of an older brother.
Sir William Protheroe had arranged the invitations and had suggested Eddie come too. But George was adamant that he should not. It was too late for the boy, who had to be awake and alert for school the next day. And it was hardly the sort of event where a recently reformed pickpocket and street urchin would fit in. Eddie had insisted he would behave and that he was interested. George wasn't convinced of either, and had eventually pacified Eddie â slightly â by promising he would tell him all about the evening's events the next day.
So if he went back home now, and admitted he'd not
bothered even going to the Unwrapping, he would be in serious trouble with Eddie.
Not to mention Sir William, who must have gone to some trouble to secure the invitations. Egyptology was not an area that Sir William specialised in. He was a curator at the British Museum, but his department was not like Egyptology, or indeed any other. Sir William's department â the department where George worked as Sir William's assistant â did not officially exist.
At this moment, George was standing in the middle of an enormous storage area which very few people knew was hidden in the cellars of the Museum. The main room was under the Great Court and the circular Reading Room. The walls were the foundations of the main Museum buildings round the court â rough unfinished stone. Where there were doorways above, so there were below. Doors that led to more rooms, many of which George had yet to explore. But they were not filled with artefacts and relics belonging to the better-known departments of the Museum. This was not a staging area for treasures yet to be displayed or awaiting a suitable exhibition space.
The crates and boxes and cupboards and drawers in this huge area and the others were filled with things that â like Sir William's department â did not, officially, exist. That was what the Department of Unclassified Artefacts was for, what it did. It looked after, stored, preserved, and catalogued those items which did not fit into any of the other departments.
Sometimes that was because the object just didn't
match any of the criteria the other departments used for cataloguing. But more often it was because of the very nature of the artefact itself. Anything deemed too strange or unusual, or
dangerous
, anything that defied analysis or which went against modern science or thinking â or which simply could not be understood â was sent to Sir William's department.
When George first joined Sir William, it was as he was investigating a dead man whose skeleton seemed to be made of dinosaur bones â¦
