Banter unknown chapter number twenty-seven
[Sometime after uc26.]
The pony and trap rattled through the darkness. With the echoing and clattering, Emily found it was not possible to have a conversation with the driver. She did manage to get from him that the drains were Victorian.
After a long and bone-shaking ride, they arrived at a metal grille which blocked the passage completely.
“Lord …” Boiler Man shouted then seemed to have second thoughts. “The carriage of Lord Climactus.”
The grille slid down into the water. Boiler Man walked the pony on. Emily turned to see the grille rising from the water behind them. Dirty stuff hung from the crosspieces. Just another point of no return, she thought.
The trap turned a corner and Boiler Man whoa’d the animal to a halt.
“Are we there yet?” Emily looked about but could see nothing but a continuation of the wide passage.
Footsteps approached. What had been a dark alcove filled with flickering light. A man appeared, holding a lantern loft. He’s dressed for drama, thought Emily. Costume drama.
“Lord Climactus?” said Costume Man.
“Nay, not his lordship,” said Boiler Man. “But news of him, aye.”
“What news of his lordship, then?”
“His lordship is dead,” said Emily. “Long live … me.”
She clambered over Boiler Man to get out of the trap.
“That’s better,” Emily said once she was on the pavement. “Need to get the suspension looked at.”
“And you are?” Costume Man eyed the jacket Emily was wearing.
“I am aren’t I?” she said. “Where’s the boss?”
“Lord Odo?”
“Whatever.” Emily slung her bag on her back. “Take me to him.”
She turned back. Boiler Man still sat on the trap’s seat.
“Nice meeting you, although it was a bit of a bumpy ride” Emily said. “Hope to squeeze your thigh again some time.”
“Likewise, I’m sure miss,” said Boiler Man. “Oh, I didn’t mean about the squeezing … sorry.”
“Any reason we’re still down here?” Emily said to Costume Man. “I don’t see a Lord Oh No.”
“Odo, miss,” said Costume Man. “It’s Lord Odo. Oh dee oh.”
“Odo. Got it,” said Emily. “Now let’s-go.”
“Very good miss.”
The man and his torch led Emily up a spiral stone staircase.
“By the way, what are you here as?” she said.
“Beg pardon, Miss?”
“This get-up. Who are you supposed to be?”
“Do you mean my livery miss?”
“Livery,” said Emily. “That’s the word.”
“It is the livery of a footman of the Hellfire club.”
“Oh, I should’ve guessed.”
“Wait here, please miss.”
The staircase had ended in a candlelit room. Emily sat on a couch as the man proceeded out through a door at the opposite end of the room.
Tapestries hung on the walls. The one opposite Emily depicted a tall domed building in a rural setting. Emily looked at the next tapestry. Same sort of thing, she thought. Tall domed building in the countryside. Actually, it’s the same building from a different angle. Hey, all the tapestries show the same building from a different angle. Must be a stately home.
“What news of Lord Climactus?” A tall man burst into the room. “Another casualty in this damned war.”
“Crazy clothes.” Emily took in the man’s outfit from the toes of his shoes to the tips of his collar. “Are you in charge here?”
The toes of the shoes were made from wicked-looking curved beaks. The collar was made from a metal that was not bright but which had a sheen, each tip looked like the sharp end of a carving knife. Everything in between was equally bizarre.
“Lord Odo of Tartarus at your service.” The man bowed. “Welcome to the Hellfire Club. Miss?”
“Emily,” said Emily.
“Emily what?”
Should I tell him Emily Spence? Probably wouldn’t impress. New Emily? Emily Unlocked? No and no, too personal. I don’t need a name here, I need a brand.
“Emily Evil,” she said.
“Emily Evil,” said Odo. “Do I know you?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” said Emily. Unless you were there watching me in the pit? Although I think I’d remember you if your get-up had been anything like it is now.
“Very well then, Emily that I do not know, what news of Lord Climactus?”
“Dead, Lord Odo.”
“Ah! Another one gone,” said Odo. “By whose hand?”
“Not by anyone’s hand, as such,” said Emily.
“You intrigue me.” Odo sat down on the couch next to Emily.
There are rats sewn into his wig, Emily noticed.
“And you intrigue me, as did Lord what’s-his-name,” said Emily. “I wanted to find a way in to his world.”
“It would seem that you have,” Odo said. “His world is my world.”
“And here I am,” said Emily. “You see, when I first saw your world I thought … it seemed interesting. But then a few things happened, one in particular, and I realised that I belong there.”
“You were not reborn to us,” Odo said. “Thus you cannot pass the barrier between your world and mine.”
“I think I found out how to get through,” said Emily. “I bit a hole in the barrier. Lord Climax got in the way.”
“You bit a hole?” said Odo. “Emily Evil you speak in riddles.”
“You know where Lord Climber was?” she said.
“Lord Climactus was off about his evil pleasures, as a clubman of Hellfire is entitled, nay obliged to be.”
“His evil pleasures … involved me,” said Emily.
“That is not a riddle, Emily Evil. Your contour invites involvement.”
“That’s … refreshingly direct,” said Emily.
“’Tis the club’s way,” said Odo. “Let me see, what were Lord Climactus’s particular evil pleasures? Oh yes, I recall. He was a voyager, but not through physical terrain. No, the terrain psychical was where he found landscapes to his liking. And not for him the pleasant rolling hills or verdant fields of the healthy. Those held no fascination for our Lord Climactus. He sought out the wild forests, the jagged peaks, the crashing waterfalls that terrorise the diseased mind.”
“Very poetic -”
“I’m not finished,” said Odo. “But more than a sightseer was Lord Climactus. A landscaper and engineer he was also. Forever digging the twisted ravines deeper and darker he was, forever sharpening the dizzying heights, forever sewing the seeds of yet more exotic plants to choke the last scraps of normality from his subjects. Many’s the time he recounted whipping the giddy psyches on which he preyed to spin into higher and higher frenzy. Ah, what an artist he was.”
“An artist?” Emily said.
“Aye, an artist in the medium of evil,” said Odo. “How were you involved?”
“You might say I started as his subject.”
“So a disturbed mind animates that disturbing body?” Lord Odo looked at Emily.
“Careful, Lord Odo,” said Emily. “Climactus made a mistake trying to make me the subject of his art.”
“How?”
“I guess it turned out I was eviller than him,” said Emily. “And he died of it.”
“How?”
“He made me have … an episode,” said Emily. “During the episode I bit his throat out.”
Odo raised his eyebrows. He stood up and paced, looking at the tapestries.
“Your riddle is solved, then, Emily Evil,” he said. “But mine remains knotted.”
“Yours?” said Emily.
“If I understood you right then you wish to be a clubman of Hellfire.”
I didn’t say that, thought Emily. But Emily Evil of the Hellfire Club does have a certain ring to it.
“Let me say first that revenge is not in our articles,” said Odo. “We say our clubmen should be strong enough to withstand their own pleasures and whatever other devilry they choose to swim through.”
Revenge never occurred to me, thought Emily. Phew, anyway.
“But joining without being reborn is also not in our articles.”
“Could I be reborn?” said Emily.
“You are at least ten years too old,” said Odo.
“So you can only be reborn if you’re a child?” said Emily.
“That is the rule,” said Odo. “But then, rules eh? The rules themselves seem to be a casualty of this war.”
“What is this war you keep going on about?” said Emily.
“The war between the factions,” said Odo. “It seems to be as they say, our new era.”
“So you’re at war with, who, the Cheyenne?”
“Aye the Cat Totem, but also the Geeks, the Ninjas, the Cactus Fanciers,” said Odo. “All at war with us, and each other. ‘Tis the next step, or is it a misstep? A step off the path and not along it?”
Odo made a sweeping gesture.
“All this could be destroyed,” he said.
Does he mean the tapestries, Emily wondered.
“But, I cannot hesitate.”
“Who hesitates is lost,” said Emily. Where did I hear that? Some workshop or other.
“Aye, right enough, we are losing,” said Odo. “You seem to have apprehended this with great alacrity, Emily Evil.”
I have no idea what he just said, thought Emily. But he seems to be lapping up the whole carpe diem bit.
“Don’t think, blink,” she said.
Odo blinked.
“Welcome to the Hellfire Club,” he said.
“First trip out, Mil?”
Emily watched Lord Quint put his shirt on. The starch crackled as he pulled it across his chest.
“Kind of a shopping trip.” She lit a cigarette and reclined.
She looked up through a window. Red bricks with orange stalactites drifted past in the glow of the narrowboat’s lights.
“Shopping?” said Quint. “I think we’ll be about more than shopping, wench.”
“Don’t call me that,” said Emily.
Quint threw himself onto her.
“But a wench you are, Mil, and a fine evil one too.”
Emily blew smoke in Quint’s face and he closed his eyes and coughed. Silly boy, she thought as she kissed his forehead with the lit end of the cigarette.
“Yah,” Quint screamed and pushed himself off her.
Emily raised a bare leg outside the sheets and booted Quint’s chest. The clubman slid off the end of the bed and bumped to the floor. She laughed.
Bed clothes flew as Emily dived in pursuit, cigarette held aloft. She got a hand in his pubic hair and took hold of a pinch.
“Ow, Emily.”
“Am I a wench, Quint?” She twisted the pinch of hair she held in her fingertips.
“Come on, Mil. Ow.”
“Am I?”
“Only a wench cares what she’s called by a Lord,” said Quint.
“A Lord?” said Emily. “Or are you merely an ashtray?”
“Stub it out on my scrotum if you like, Mil, I’ve had worse.”
Emily thought about it. She put the unlit end of the cigarette to Quint’s lips. He licked her fingers then took a drag.
“I’m so lucky you’re here to teach me this stuff,” said Emily.
Quint sat up.
“Teaching?” he said. “Education? Qualification? What need have we of these things?”
Here we go, thought Emily.
“The Hellfire Club is the life lived to the full. Members change, the club remains. Were you taught to breathe? Then why be taught to live.”
“You’re so boring.” Emily took another puff.
“How wrong you are.” Quint kicked the bed clothes about, revealing his shiny black breeches. “The Hellfire Club is the enemy of boredom, or ennui, as we call it. To be bored is to feel nothing. We seek out every feeling, and magnify it like a cruel child with a magnifying glass torturing an ant.”
“Well, I’m feeling bored.”
“Then act, Emily Evil.” Quint pulled his breeches up and started on the buttons and buckles. “Attack your boredom.”
Emily flopped back on the mattress.
“You’re always telling me how to live,” she said.
“Because you seem not to know.” Quint tightened the last strap. “Or rather because your half-life outside has hidden the knowledge from you.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Emily said.
Lord Odo opened the door to the cabin. Emily lounged and blew smoke at him.
“Yes?” she said.
“Lord Odo.” Quint rose to his feet. “We were just -”
“I believe I might hazard a reasonable guess as to what you were just doing,” said Odo. “Unless you were about to say that you were just playing Scrabble, Quint?”
“No, Lord Odo.”
“Excellent.” Lord Odo reached for Emily’s cigarette and she let him take it. “I wanted to discuss the negotiations with the embroiderers.”
“Yes, Lord Odo.”
“Since we have their invitation, me having traded it for our prisoner Chris Allen, we will open the offers.”
Emily coughed out a lungful of smoke. Chris, she thought, prisoner of the Hellfire Club? She became aware of her nakedness in front of Odo and Quint. Be Emily Evil, she told herself. Chris was a prisoner, I am a member, kind of. I mean, it’s not like they treat me as an equal, like they should, but nevertheless I am a member.
Or am I, Emily wondered. Quint’s always lecturing me. I wish Odo hadn’t handed me over to him. He doesn’t lecture the others, just me. Then again the others are all men. Maybe that’s it? Big bunch of sexists, is that all they are?
She looked from Odo to Quint and back again. Odo sat on the bed. Since handing back the cigarette he hadn’t taken any notice of Emily. Quint was concerned with the state of the clothes he was putting on, with impressing Odo, and that was all.
“The embroiderers will have an arrangement,” Odo was saying. “We may be the lever, we may be the fulcrum, we may be the rock being toppled.”
Quint’ll suck up to him now, thought Emily.
“A very insightful metaphor, Lord Odo.” Quint brushed a spot from a sock.
Bingo, thought Emily.
“We can get them to throw in some clothes for Emily here.” Odo nodded in her direction.
“I am present, you know,” said Emily.
“Aye wench, we know,” said Quint.
Emily narrowed her eyes at Quint.
There was a splintering from the cabin door.
“What …” said Quint.
Odo snatched a dagger from his belt
Emily scuttled up the bed, away from the door.
“Arm yourself,” said Odo.
The door frame splintered again and the door fell into the room. A black-clad figure blurred into the cabin.
“Ninjas.” Odo cried.
He stabbed his dagger towards the figure’s midsection. The ninja dodged against the wall.
Emily heard a shing. Quint had found his sword amongst the mess on the floor and drawn the blade. I’ve got nothing, she thought, except this cigarette. I’ll let the boys handle it.
Another ninja flitted into the room. Quint levelled his sword.
“My sabre will taste your guts, sneak assassin,” he said.
The ninja crouched, hovering from left to right.
“Yah,” Odo thrust at the first ninja, forcing him back towards the door.
Emily tried to huddle further back but found herself at the top of the bed. She took a pillow and held it against her front.
There was a scratching noise coming from somewhere. Neither man had heard it, Emily could see. Each was worried about the ninja in front of them. The scratch continued, a single long scraping noise that set her teeth on edge, like metal on glass. Glass? There was only one piece of glass in the cabin.
Emily looked up to see shadows moving above the window in the roof. White lines had been drawn across the window. The glass disappeared, lifted out, and the shadows plunged in. Emily screamed.
Dark figures fluttered around her. The pillow was pulled away, she pulled back and it split. Feathers swirled in the chaos.
“Emily.” That was Quint. “Agh. Take that.”
“Your back Quint.” That was Odo. “Draw your dagger, man. You’ll never wield a sabre in here.”
Emily struck out at the flickering black figures around her. Her wrist was held. She kicked but hit nothing.
The lights went out.
“Quint, don’t move,” said Odo. “Nor will I.”
“Well,” said Quint. “Gives me slashing room.”
Emily heard a sword swipe the air, then swipe back and bite.
“Hah,” said Quint. “A palpable hit, I say.”
Emily felt her wrist being turned. A jolt of pain shot down her arm. She was forced down.
“Quint,” She managed to scream before her face was pushed into the mattress.
Something forced itself in between Emily’s face and the mattress. It was a piece of rough fabric, crumpled and drenched. Liquid evaporated off her face like wasted vodka. A penetrating vapour stung through her nose and swept through her mouth.
She remembered when she had been dancing and Matt had passed her a shot glass full of clear liquid. “Vodka,” he had shouted over the music. She had raised the glass and shouted “cheers.” Some of the alcohol spilled over the rim and splashed on her cheek. For a moment she’d has the same sensation as just now, liquid evaporating off her face. Then Mat had snaked his arm around her neck and licked her cheek with his big wet tongue. Then she had squealed.
