The Terror Time Spies (48 page)

“
Not even Skipper
…”

“Safely?” said Skipper though, looking at Wickham with a heavy frown, “when my pa finds that I’ve lost his blasted hat, I’m finished
.”

“In which … well, see for yourself, dear reader.  It’s a happy ...  beginning.”

Not even Skipper
Holmwood
paid the price for their great adventure, when, six days later, William Wickham brought them all safely back to his estate in Peckham, along with his second best carriage, collected in Dover. 

Charlotte and Simon were so relieved, after nearly two and a half months of terror, that they danced in the lodge sitting room together, just like they had at their engagement. 

The Comtesse St Honoré, who had heard of Juliette’s planned execution in the
noosepapers,
and gone into a virtual coma, if they had had the term back then, kept wringing her old hands and kissing both her children, promising her daughter that she would never, ever have to be a governess, like the Lower Orders, then bursting into tears of joy.

All the adults thought that they had Mr Wickham to thank for it, using his diplomatic contacts, and treated him with more gratitude and respect than ever. 

Late in September though, Charlotte and Simon Bonespair were sitting one afternoon in the lodge, having tea, and the Pimpernel Club sat around them, with Juliette and Armande, now beautifully dressed again, as Simon leafed through another noosepaper. 

A baby was lying fast asleep in a cot, and Charlotte looked as thin as a pole.  Spike kept glancing into the cot and shaking her head.  The birth of her little brother was more miraculous than anything that had happened so far. 

As the little girl looked into Marcus Bonespair’s dimly focusing eyes, Spike was convinced that there was far more intelligence glittering in them than there should normally be. 

Charlotte saw her gaze.

“And who shall we ask to be Godparents,” she said.  “For darling little Marcus?”  

Henry looked up and felt very strange.

“Listen to this, children,” cried Simon though, putting on a pair of spectacles, shaking out the London Times, and clearing his throat, “It should interest you all, after your mad little jaunt to Paris. 
By an express which arrived from Messrs Fector and Co at Dover, we learn the following particulars of the mysterious Affair of the Carnations
.”

The Pimpernels sat up, and even baby Marcus opened his eyes wide, as Henry remembered that flower in the candle and that hand reaching out to take it.

The feared Committee of Public Security recently uncovered a plot to rescue the Queen of France, who revolutionaries call prisoner 208, when the Marquise de Gonse Rougeville passed her a note in prison, talking of her impending rescue, hidden in the petal of a flower, a carnation.  The Queen’s reply however was that she was no longer interested in escape, and would accept her bitter fate.  The uncovered plot has increased the savagery with which the French authorities are turning to methods of Terror to enforce their Revolution.  Every day now there are calls for her majesty’s trial, with the fear of one certain result.

      Nellie drew a finger across her throat, but resisted gurgling, and Juliette looked desperately sad, as she wondered what would ever become of pretty Marie Therese.   

Henry somehow knew about the poor Queen, although it gave him a strange ache in his head, as if he was trying to remember something else.

“So it’s back to London, for you,” said Simon, snapping the newspaper shut, “and school.  High time you learnt something useful too.”

Spike looked jealously at the boys. 

She would be learning at home, like so many girls, if they learnt at all, but at least with
this
family she would be
learning many things, and after school she’d get a chance to join the boys and outsmart the Rovers too.

“And you’ll be staying on the Estate, to be tutored by Mr Penhaligon?” asked Charlotte, to the two French children, who both nodded politely.

“At least you’ll have Skipper,” said Nellie, looking rather mournful.

“Hal,” said Simon though, “what’s the time?”

“Twenty past eleven, Pa.  Precisely.  I wound it this morning.”

“Well, I think I’ll take your mother for a walk.”

“Watch Marcus, children,” said Charlotte, looking lovingly at the cot, as she gave the others a warning glance. 

The adults got up and went upstairs, as Spike leant into the cot and gave the baby a big wet kiss on his tiny nose.

“That’s for being an honory Pimple,” the little girl whispered lovingly.  “You look a bit like Granny’s mother, Marcus, Madame Guilteen’s ma.  Though they’ve both gone now.  Ghostied.”

Suddenly a dark shape jumped onto the cot and Malfort the cat’s eyes glittered. 

Spike glanced at the magic Nometer but lifted the pendant she had given her.

“It’s not a big pile of Huguenot gold, Marcus, but it’s better than nothing.”

“And I wish we did have a big pile of gold, Nel,” said Hal, wondering where the summer had gone to.  “Then we might really be able to do something important.  To create a league of daring Pimpernels everywhere.  You saw those children they were executing.  But in all that we’ve done, it seems to take so much money.”

The others nodded, thinking of that Money Order for Fifty Thousand Francs, but Spike had just decided to seek for the treasure down William Wickham’s well.

“Use the Nometer to get some, H,” she whispered though. “Just turn the dial to the Chest.  It’s magic.”

The others smiled indulgently.

“But don’t you see, Spike,” said Henry softly, “
We
did this, all on our own.  That’s what people
can
do, if they really decide to.”

“You’ll see, ninnee,” said the little girl.

“We will miss you, Hal,” said Juliette softly, “While you’re away at school.”

Henry almost blushed and held his nose, as Spike raised here eyebrows.

“We won’t be far, Juliette,” said Hal, “and you can come and visit, in London.  Now you’re both Pimpernels too.  We’re all sworn on the watch.”

“I wonder what the others will say though,” said Francis.

“They’d never believe us,” said Hal, with a sigh, “And besides, we can’t tell anyone, F.  But at least I’m never going to be a stupid vintner.”

The doorbell rang and Simon, just leading his wife out into the gentle September air, answered it, as they all heard a familiar voice.

“Simon, man, I were wondering if I might talk to yer children.”

Henry almost opened his mouth to protest, but decided against it.

“They’re in there, Mr Wickham, Sir,” he heard his father say and the burly Yorkshire man strode into the room, as Simon and Charlotte went outside.

“You’re all well, and recovered, I see,” cried the adult, looking at Juliette rather guiltily, “but off back to London tomorra, I hear?  Cholera’s over too.”

Hal, Spike and Francis Simpkins nodded and William Wickham noticed the object around Hal’s neck, with a sudden pang.

“My watch,” he whispered, and this time the spy almost blushed, “well, you must keep it, course, lad.  T’was a Birthday present, after all.  Though my father’s.”

Wickham gave a longing sigh.

“And it’s Switzerland for me,” he cried, “so no more plots, eh?  But I’ve come to ask you all again.  The identity of the leader of the Gloved Hand, you swear you do not …?”

“NO,” the Pimpernels all answered at once, though thinking of the Earl.

“And safer that ye don’t,” said Wickham, with relief, “if Couchonet or them Frenchies, forgive me Count, French, ever thought that you did, then your lives might be in very grave danger indeed, with the war.”

The Pimpernel Club looked far more animated than they had done at tea, but Hal was thinking not of Charles Couchonet, but his horrid nephew Alceste, and how much he’d like to outwit the nasty Little Spider again.

“And you must all give me yer words to forget everything you ever knew of The League.  Other lives may depend on it.  Adult lives.  I have it?”

“Our words of honour,” said Henry Bonespair, very coldly indeed.

“What’s really happening in France though, Mr Wickham?” asked Francis suddenly and the secret agent’s eyes grew grave.

“It’s bad, Snipkins.  A true Dictatorship now, and
Terror
everywhere.  They say executions don’t stop, day n night.  Sanson’s arm is seizing up and they have to douse the traces of the Guillotine, to stop her catching alight.”

William Wickham looked at them all sharply.

“But never again are yer to do
anything
so foolish as to go…”

“No,” said Henry, and he glanced at the others, “
never again
.”

“We’ve got our own club, anyway, ninnee,” said Spike, “and it’s far better than your stupid gloved League, or any silly Scarley Pimple either.”

The others looked at her in horror, but little Spike glared at Wickham.

“The Rat Catchers,” whispered Nellie, with a grin at the grown up.   Just then Henry Bonespair thought he heard a familiar voice, coming from inside the Grandmother clock and making it wobble:  Garimondo’s voice. 

“
Is Time, Bonespair, Time.  And the clock’s still ticking.
”

THE END

Fire Bringer
by David Clement-Davies

1 - Birth and Prophecy

‘When the Lore is bruised and broken, Shattered like a blasted tree, Then shall Herne be justly woken, Born to set the Herla free.’ Herla Prophecy

A lone red deer was grazing across the glen swaying through the deep tangle of heather which covered the hillside. The stag’s coat glinted russet and gold in the dying sunlight slanting down the valley and on its head a pair of ragged antlers reared into the sky, like coral or the branches of a winter oak.

The stag was a royal with twelve spikes, or tines, on its proud head and its antlers marked it out instantly as an animal of power and distinction. The antlers’ beams were covered in summer velvet, the downy grey coating that lines new antlers as they grow. From their base, the two sharp brow tines flayed out like curved daggers. Above them the bez tines were slightly smaller and, further up the beams, the trez tines rose larger again, before the antlers flowered into their high cups.

The stag’s fur was already thick but this could not hide a series of cuts and wounds on its sides and haunches, the marks of innumerable battles, and a livid scar that ran from the bottom of its neck clear to the base of its spine. The deer was not an unusual sight in the glen, for although this was long ago, in the days when the Great Land was still known to many men as Scotia, red deer were as plentiful then as they are in our own time. But it was unusual to see such a magnificent animal and such a splendid head of antlers.

Suddenly the stag flinched and swung its head towards the beech wood on the edge of the western slope. Its ears pressed forward, its muscles tensed and its nostrils began to flare, sending out wreaths of vapour that hung in the air. The stag’s huge eyes pierced the thickening twilight, casting restlessly along the shadow of the trees. But the scent it had caught on the breeze was lost and the deer’s head returned to its mossy pasture, nosing through the undergrowth, rooting out the juiciest of the summer stems.

As it went the deer’s legs carried it gently back and forth like rushes on a pond. Now and then its hoofs would slip into a crevice, hidden below the deepening covering of vegetation, but the stag never once lost its footing. Its great body would compensate instinctively, like some huge yet graceful cat, so that it seemed almost to be a part of the landscape around it, inseparable from the contours which made up its home.

All around the silence was deepening with the evening. The stillness was broken only by the distant cry of a goshawk glorying in the hunt, the lonely hallooing of a night owl or the cracking flurry of a pheasant as it broke cover and exploded into the gloom. But everyday sounds like these did not frighten such an experienced animal. The stag’s body might brace to deflect the sudden violence of the noise, but it went on feeding. A hind or a young buck might have been unnerved by these sounds. But not a beast that had spent so many years in the Corps. Not the veteran of countless battles. Not a deer whose sight, smell and sense had taken him so quickly up the ranks of the herd. Not Brechin, Captain of the Outriders.

Brechin had reached a rocky hillock, purple with vegetation, and he was just settling in to enjoy a thick sprig of gorse when he suddenly threw up his head again. Now his eyes shone with recognition at the scent he had just caught again. But this time Brechin snorted and stamped the ground angrily. He dropped his antlers, then, aiming his head towards the north-west corner of the wood, he raced off along the edge of the valley, tossing his head as he ran. As he neared the wood he began to swing his antlers right and left in a great arc and then, abruptly, no more than three branches’ length from the trees, he crashed to a halt and stamped the earth.