Wild Boy (7 page)

“So far so good,” he muttered.

He reached up and began to climb the beams. Between the audience’s backs, he could just see down into the sawdust ring, where Mary Everett stood in the spluttering glare of a gas chandelier. The ringmaster leaned on a wooden crutch, bellowing at the crowd like a mad pirate. “Here’s another act! Pay attention, will you!”

Before her husband ran off, Mary Everett had apparently been a beautiful woman. Wild Boy couldn’t imagine it now. She had the same fiery red hair as Clarissa, except it was greasy and straggly, hanging like wet straw beneath the brim of her battered top hat. Whether she also had Clarissa’s pale skin or freckles was impossible to say, for her face was covered with a thick layer of white makeup that fairground rumors said she hadn’t rubbed off since the day her husband disappeared.

Wild Boy perched on a beam, waiting for one particular act. He’d never actually seen the circus show before, and he couldn’t believe how bad it was. Each time Mary Everett banged her crutch against a gong, another act stumbled into the ring. Drunken clowns broke into fights, trick riders messed up their tricks, and knife-throwers missed their marks with rusty blades. The audience booed. Someone even burst into tears.

The crowd settled down as, high above, Clarissa strode along a tightrope. Sequins glimmered on her costume as she jumped into a somersault and landed again on the wire with barely a wobble.

For a moment Wild Boy forgot all about the letter, as he watched in amazement. Clarissa wasn’t just good — she was astounding. All of the anger had vanished from her face, and her eyes sparkled with delight. Wild Boy wondered if this was her escape. Did she feel the same way doing this as he did spying on crowds?

“She ain’t half bad,” he muttered.

He focused his thoughts back on the letter. Most of the acts were over, which meant the person he was waiting for was due on next. He brought the letter from his coat pocket and read it again.

So who was it written for? Obviously someone who lived at the fair in disguise, but that hardly narrowed the list. There were several people here whom Wild Boy suspected lived under false identities. A more helpful question was,
who wrote it?
He’d never received a letter in his life, but he assumed they were sent between people with shared interests. And on that subject, the letter presented several clues.

1) The writer was wealthy. That was obvious from the paper, which was thick and grainy and clearly of fine quality.

2) The writer was a heavy drinker. A red spot on the page smelled like wine, while variations in the shade of the ink showed he’d refreshed his quill three times — unnecessary for such a short note, unless he’d paused to drink his wine.

3) The letter had been written near an open window. The ink had dried in one direction, suggesting a slight but constant breeze.

4) The writer may have conducted scientific experiments. This much Wild Boy guessed from a tiny burn mark in the corner, which was too small and precise to have been made by a flame. It could have been a coal spark, but why light a fire near an open window? He wouldn’t have considered experiments as the cause, had it not been for an intriguing coincidence. . . .

A flash of light dazzled Wild Boy. Down in the ring, a new act had begun. A man with a shabby leather bag stood beside a table that was cluttered with scientific objects — pairs of zinc and copper plates half submerged in glasses of golden fluid, silver wires strung between copper coils, glass cylinders mounted on wooden frames. He was a crooked old man with a monk’s ring of gray hair and round shaded spectacles perched on a wine-red nose.

Professor Henry Wollstonecraft.

This was the man, Wild Boy was was certain, for whom the letter was meant. It had been written to someone in disguise, and he suspected that was true of the Professor. He could tell the man had been wealthy once. His suits, now worn and crumpled, had been tailored for him and he wore an expensive-looking ring — gold with a raised letter
G
on its surface. Wild Boy wondered if that was an initial of the old scientist’s
real
name. . . .

He watched as the Professor performed tricks with a mysterious new phenomenon called
electricity.
Sparks crackled along the wires and shot into the air like white-hot fireworks, reflecting off his dark spectacle lenses. The tricks were incredible, but the Professor’s act entirely lacked showmanship. When the old man finally looked up, he seemed almost surprised to see an audience, and utterly confused as to what he might say to them.

By then they’d had enough anyway, and another chorus of boos filled the big top. Still without a word, the Professor packed up his bag and shuffled away through a fading haze of smoke.

Wild Boy set off again through the scaffold. If he could climb close, he could drop the letter in the Professor’s path as he left the ring. But just as he got near, his coat snagged on one of the beams. He turned to tear it free, but he was already too late. Professor Wollstonecraft passed through a gap in the tent wall and out into the night.

Wild Boy cursed. What now? Could he sneak to the Professor’s caravan and leave the letter there? It was risky — if he was caught, the circus crew would think he was stealing. But this was not the sort of letter that could go undelivered. He ripped his coat from the beam, leaped from the scaffold, and rushed through the exit.

It didn’t take long to find the Professor’s van. Because of the fire risk from his experiments, Wollstonecraft’s was the only caravan at the fair that was made entirely of metal — a rusty corrugated-iron box parked among the sprawl of prop carts and dressing wagons behind the big top.

Tingling with fear and excitement, Wild Boy crept closer. He heard someone trudging along the path from the big top, and he quickly hid again behind one of the carts. Peeking around the side, he was surprised to see that it was Mary Everett. Why had the ringmaster left her own show? She looked even angrier than usual. Leaning heavily on her crutch, she swore and banged a fist against one of the vans.

Every instinct told Wild Boy to run. But again he felt the page in his coat pocket. Someone was out to murder the Professor. He couldn’t just let it happen.

All he needed to do was to get into that van and drop this letter. Just a few seconds, that was all — how much trouble could that cause?

As soon as the ringmaster was gone, he darted across the path, up the caravan steps, and he was inside.

W
ild Boy eased the door shut.

Moonlight streamed in silver shafts through joins in the caravan’s corrugated walls. Empty wine bottles littered the floor. The air was thick with the stench of booze.

He brought the letter from his coat pocket and laid it on the floor beside the door. He knew he should leave, but again his curiosity took control. Surely there was time to snoop around a little, to see if he could find out what the letter was all about.

The van was a mess. A clothes chest lay on its side, and books were scattered among the bottles on the floor. On a worktable against the wall was a jumble of scientific instruments — test tubes filled with golden fluid, coils of silver wire wrapped around copper rods, a rat cage with metal pegs attached to its sides — and piles of papers scribbled with notes.

Edging closer, Wild Boy flicked through a few of the pages. He saw anatomical drawings of body parts — twisting muscles in an arm, a diagram of a skull, a human head bisected to expose its cauliflower brain . . .

The hairs bristled on Wild Boy’s back.
Time to get out of here,
he decided.

He turned to leave, but stopped.

“The clothes chest,” he said.

There was something strange about it — his eyes were drawn there instinctively. And now, as he stepped nearer, he realized why. The chest lay on its side, and he could see the base within. But it didn’t look deep enough when compared to the panel outside.

Was it possible? His heart pounded faster as he crouched and slid a hand inside the chest. He groped the base until —
click
— one of the wooden panels hinged open.

A wide grin spread across his hairy face. There was a secret compartment.

He thought of pound notes, boxes of jewels . . . Whatever was in there, he’d just pinch enough to rent his own wagon, so he didn’t have to go back to Finch.

His heart sank as he slid the contents out. It was just another sheet of paper, with technical diagrams and instructions for some sort of scientific contraption — a tangled sphere of cogs and pipes skewered on an axle between two wheels. Several lines, wires he supposed, trailed from the bottom of the sphere and connected to . . .

Wild Boy leaned closer, hoping he’d seen it wrong. But he hadn’t. The wires were connected to human heads. They seemed to go
into
the heads.

THUD!

He jumped in fright, dropping the paper. Outside, something had crashed against the wall.

THUD! THUD!

Wild Boy stood very still, trying to listen over the manic thumping of his heart. He heard boots trudge through the mud. He crept to the wall and peered through one of the joins in the metal.

He couldn’t see much, but there was no mistaking the crooked figure of Professor Henry Wollstonecraft, with his blood-blistered nose and shaded spectacles. The old scientist leaned against the opposite van. His golden ring glinted in the moonlight as he drank from a bottle of wine, spilling half of its contents over his crumpled suit.

Old soak,
Wild Boy thought, letting himself relax. With the Professor so drunk, he could easily sneak from the van unseen. But then he heard something else.

“Henry,” a voice said.

He shot to another crack in the wall. Outside, a shadow stretched long and monstrous across the mud. It was the hooded man.

Wild Boy shifted to another crack. He still couldn’t see the face under the hood. He couldn’t see
anything
under that tattered leather cloak. The man moved fast, but with strange, awkward strides — loping and unbalanced, like a wounded creature. His voice was deep and vicious.

“I have come, Henry,” he said.

Before the Professor could reply, the hooded man attacked. A gloved hand shot from under the cloak. It grabbed the scientist by the neck and slammed him against the van.

Finally, Wild Boy saw beneath the hood, and he had to bite his lip to stop himself from crying out. It wasn’t a man that he saw, but a mask. It was one of the carnival masks that were sold around the fairgrounds — a white porcelain doll’s face, eerily featureless except for a long, hooked nose, like a bird’s beak, that protruded from the center. Those masks had given Wild Boy the creeps ever since he heard they were modeled on costumes worn by plague doctors centuries ago. Masks of death, some of the showmen called them.

Behind the mask, dark eyes glinted. The tip of the porcelain beak tapped the Professor’s spectacles as the hooded man leaned closer.

“Where is it?” he growled.

He struck the Professor around the face, shattering his lenses. With his other hand he lifted the old man clear off the ground. “Where is the machine?”

Blood trickled down the Professor’s forehead. He looked at his attacker through cracked black lenses. But it wasn’t fear that Wild Boy saw in the man’s eyes, it was sadness. Infinite sadness.

“I wish I had never built the thing,” the Professor said. “It is an unholy device. No one should have that power.”

“It is too late for that now, Henry,” replied the hooded man.

The Professor slid a shaky hand into his pocket. “No. Not too late. . . .”

He thrust a knife at his attacker. But he was too drunk, and too weak. The hooded man twisted his hand and rammed the blade into the Professor’s stomach.

Wild Boy reeled back in shock. He bashed against the workbench, and a copper rod rolled from the surface. “No!” he gasped.

The clatter of the rod echoed around the caravan.

Slowly he peered again through the wall.

The hooded man was gone.

He moved to another crack, then another. Where was he?
Where the hell was he?