Wild Boy and the Black Terror (8 page)

This case was his chance to make sure it never did. He was convinced that if he could solve it, they could stay in the palace as long as they wanted. Everything would be fine.

Then – a scream.

Wild Boy had never heard a scream like it; a cry of pure terror that came from everywhere at once, ringing around the mirrored walls. Several Gentlemen charged past the room.

In the corridor, Prendergast had begun to scream and thrash as if those invisible demons had suddenly attacked him. Dr Carew struggled to control him as Prendergast collapsed to the ground and convulsed like a fish plucked from the sea. Black froth bubbled from his mouth, but somehow he continued to scream. A single word rushed along the corridor and swept through Wild Boy like a wind, freezing his bones.

Malphas
.

The scream stopped.

Prendergast lay still.

Wild Boy edged closer. “Is he…?”

He didn’t need to ask. It was clear from the look on Dr Carew’s face that Prendergast was dead. Whatever had infected him had killed him.

Now this was a murder investigation.

7

T
he corpse was not easy to carry.

The moment Prendergast died, Lucien Grant ordered two Gentlemen into action. They were Black Hats – military men – and Wild Boy guessed that they had carried bodies before. But those were normal bodies; limp things thrown over a shoulder. Prendergast’s corpse was not limp. It was stiff as firewood, locked in the twisted, frenzied position in which he had died. The neck cords strained, and his hands were rigid and curled like cocks’ claws.

Only Prendergast’s head hung loose, lolling at the throat, so that his hair hung down and his eyes rolled to the limits of their sockets. Wild Boy tried not to look, but the dead man’s gaze followed him as the corpse swayed with the Gentlemen’s hurried march.

He tried to rush to the front, but one of the Gentlemen shoved him against the wall. He scrambled up and kept following, resisting the urge to kick the man in the legs. This was supposed to be
his
case. But Lucien had taken control, ordering Dr Carew to follow.

Dr Carew scurried alongside Wild Boy, his flushed face beaded with sweat. He nudged his spectacles up his nose, trying to gather his composure. “Mr Grant, I must protest. This patient was entrusted into my care.”

“He is no longer your patient, Dr Carew,” Lucien replied. “He is a corpse. The only reason you are here is because you are an expert in rare diseases. I assume that means you are qualified to conduct an autopsy?”

“Autopsy? That is quite out of the question. Any dissection of a body requires paperwork, an ordinance of medical—”

“Dr Carew.”

Lucien stopped by an open door. He held his candle high as the Black Hats carried the corpse through, manoeuvering its stiff limbs through the narrow entrance.

“You are new to our organization,” he continued. “Otherwise you would know one thing about the Gentlemen: we are not concerned with paperwork. Her Majesty has been threatened. We need to know what happened to this man, and we need to know now.”

“Even so, I must protest.”

“You have, doctor. Twice. Now get in this room.”

Dr Carew shot a panicked look over his shoulder, as if considering an escape. But with Marcus away, Lucien was in charge. Clutching his medical bag, Carew stepped into the room.

Lucien lowered his candle, dazzling Wild Boy with its glare. Wild Boy tried not to react, but couldn’t help shrinking from the flame that threatened to singe the hair on his cheek.

“This is my bloomin’ case,” he said.

“Your case?”

Wild Boy moved closer, letting the flame crackle his hair. “Unless you know something special about it?”

Lucien stepped back. “Not at all. We are all on the same side.”

Like bloomin’ blazes we are
. Wild Boy passed through the door and into a windowless room. The brick walls were black with soot, hooks hung on chains from the ceiling, and the fireplace was almost as large as the caravan that had once been Wild Boy’s home. The air was as sharp as pickle vinegar.

A waist-high wooden slab filled half of the room, lacerated with cuts and grooves. A smaller table was laid with a collection of medical instruments that gleamed in the candlelight: surgical knives, hacksaws, weighing scales and a copper microscope. They were spotlessly clean but, judging from the splatter marks Wild Boy spotted on the floor, the tools had been used.

“What is this place?” Dr Carew asked.

“Originally, one of the palace kitchens,” Lucien replied. “Now we use it for something else.”

The Black Hats dumped Prendergast’s corpse on the slab as if it were a sack of potatoes. One of them began to cut away its clothes with the surgical knife, revealing naked, twisted limbs. Prendergast’s whole body was black and white. Inky veins streaked across his arms and up his neck, shattering the poor man’s face.

Lucien reached over and closed Prendergast’s eyes. “Doctor,” he said, his voice rumbling around the room. “Tell us what happened to this man.”

The force of his order offered no possibility of resistance. Dr Carew sighed and set his medical bag on the table. “We shall begin with the heart.”

Prendergast’s ribs spread open with a wet crack. Dr Carew cranked the handle on the retractor, stifling a cough as a cloud of brown gas rose from inside the body.

Wild Boy wrapped an arm around his nose. He had seen dead bodies before, and body parts, but never watched one become the other. Sick rose up from his stomach but he swallowed it back down. He needed to stay focused, to search for anything that might help him with this case. Apart from the card with its strange name –
Malphas
– Prendergast’s twisted black and white corpse was the only clue he had.

Dr Carew took a surgical knife from the table and snipped something inside Prendergast’s chest. A spurt of green goo splattered across his spectacles.He wiped the glasses on his apron and continued his work.

Wild Boy was impressed. Dr Carew had seemed meek in front of Lucien, his gaze always darting over his shoulder in hope of escape. But now the eyes behind the doctor’s spectacles were needle sharp, totally focused. He was clearly in his element.

Dr Carew lifted a large, dripping organ from the body and laid it on the weighing scale.

“Well, doctor?”

Lucien stood on the other side of the kitchen slab, his deep breaths rustling his side-whiskers. His hand trembled as he held his candle closer to the corpse. “I trust you have discovered something we can tell the Queen?”

Dr Carew dipped a quill in an inkpot and made a note in a ledger. “That is a perfectly healthy heart,” he said. “Perhaps we will learn something from the other organs.”

For Wild Boy, the next hour was one long struggle not to throw up. He watched Dr Carew extract a sausage-string of intestines, then slice open Prendergast’s stomach and tip its contents into a bucket. Things got even worse when the doctor sawed off the top of the corpse’s head like a boiled egg and dissected his slimy brain. That was too much for Wild Boy, who grabbed the bucket and added the contents of his own stomach to Prendergast’s.

He rose, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. He expected to see a sneer on Lucien’s face, but the Gentleman just stared at the splayed open corpse. Lucien’s hands trembled harder as he opened his silver tin and snorted another pinch of snuff. Brown powder stained his nostril and caught in his grey whiskers. He noticed neither. Again, Wild Boy wondered if Lucien’s interest in this case went beyond his desire to impress the Queen. Was something else troubling him?

“Anything, doctor?” Lucien asked.

Dr Carew looked for a place to wipe his hands, but his apron was entirely smeared with gore. He held them dripping in the air. “Strange,” he said. “I see no indication whatsoever of disease.”

“So what done Prendergast in?” Wild Boy asked.

The doctor stared at him, translating the question in his head. “Ah! Cause of death.” He prodded part of the corpse’s brain with the end of his quill. “Well, from the inflammation of the
nucleus amygdala
in the temporal—”

“In English, doc,” Wild Boy said.

“Terror,” Dr Carew said.

He nudged his spectacles with a finger, leaving a red smear on his nose. “It seems that Prendergast was affected by something that left him in such a state of terror that, eventually, his body could not handle the strain.”

“He was scared … to death?” Wild Boy said.

“It is impressive that he survived so long,” Dr Carew continued. “The man’s mind must have been strong, able to cope with the fears. A weaker person would have died in seconds. Although that might have been a more desirable fate. This poor man suffered unlike any I have seen.”

Lucien snorted another pinch of snuff. He exhaled, filling the kitchen with a rush of stale breath. “Might he have been given a hallucinogenic?” he asked.

“A what?” Wild Boy asked.

“A hallucinogenic,” Dr Carew said. “A drug that affects the brain, causing visions that are not real. In this instance, terrifying visions. Prendergast saw his darkest memories. He was trapped in a nightmare.”

“He might have ingested or inhaled such a substance,” Lucien said.

Dr Carew glanced at Wild Boy. “Swallowed or smelled.”

Wild Boy knew what ingested and inhaled meant, but neither made sense. Prendergast had simply opened a parcel sent to the Queen. He hadn’t been drugged.

“So there could be a human agency behind this,” Lucien muttered.

“Human?” Dr Carew said. “What else might it be?”

Lucien cleared his throat, as if he’d accidentally coughed out the wrong words. “What
can
you tell me, doctor? We fear that whoever did this might have targeted the Queen. That means the killer could
still
be targeting the Queen. Can you formulate a cure?”

Dr Carew leaned over the microscope, studying a sliver of Prendergast’s brain. “Perhaps if I knew what he was exposed to I could develop a cure. There are tests I could conduct at the hospital. Consider this sample, for instance.”

Lucien set his candle beside the corpse and leaned over the microscope.

Wild Boy hung back, feeling sicker than ever. But it was no longer the corpse that turned his stomach. It was Dr Carew’s diagnosis.
Scared to death
.

For the second time that night he felt an urge to run as far away as possible from Prendergast. But, again, he forced himself to stay. He was convinced that Lucien knew something about this case. The man had obviously been waiting for Dr Carew’s results. So what would he do next?

Thinking fast, Wild Boy grabbed Lucien’s candle and bent the edge of its pewter tray so the wax dribbled over the side. He replaced it on the table just before Lucien turned, grabbed it and marched from the room. The Gentleman didn’t notice the wax drips that marked his path.

“Keep me informed of any developments,” he ordered.

“Go soak your head,” Dr Carew muttered.

Wild Boy looked at him, surprised.

The young doctor shrugged, putting his ink pot and quill back in his bag. “Lucien Grant is a bullying toad,” he said. “Now, I must prepare Prendergast’s body for transport to the hospital. Would you lend me a hand Mr … Master… What exactly should I call you?”