A Thursday Next Digital Collection: Novels 1-5 (26 page)

“Good evening, Miss Next. All well?”

“Not really.” I smiled. “But thanks for asking.”

“Your dodo arrived this evening,” announced Liz. “He's in kennel five. News travels fast; the Swindon Dodo Fanciers have been up already. They said he was a very rare Version one or something—they want you to call them.”

“He's a 1.2,” I murmured absently. Dodos weren't high on my list of priorities right now. I paused for a moment. Liz sensed my indecision.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Has, er, Mr. Parke-Laine called?”

“No. Were you expecting him to?”

“No—not really. If he calls, I'm in the Cheshire Cat if not my room. If you can't find me, can you ask him to call again in half an hour?”

“Why don't I just send a car to fetch him?”

“Oh God, is it that obvious?”

Liz nodded her head.

“He's getting married.”

“But not to you?”

“No.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Me too. Has anyone ever asked you to marry them?”

“Sure.”

“What did you say?”

“I said: ‘Ask me again when you get out.' ”

“Did he?”

“No.”

I checked in with Pickwick, who seemed to have settled in well. He made excited
plock plock
noises when he saw me. Contradicting the theories of experts, dodos had turned out to be surprisingly intelligent and quite agile—the ungainly bird of common legend was quite wrong. I gave him some peanuts and smuggled him up to my room under a coat. It wasn't that the kennels were dirty or anything; I just didn't want him to be alone. I put his favorite rug in the bath to give him somewhere to roost and laid out some paper. I told him I'd move him to my mother's the following day, then left him staring out of the window at the cars in the car park.

“Good evening, miss,” said the barman in the Cheshire Cat. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

“Because there is a ‘B' in ‘both'?”

“Very good. Half of Vorpal's special, was it?”

“You must be kidding. Gin and tonic. A double.”

He smiled and turned to the optics.

“Police?”

“SpecOps.”

“Litera Tec?”

“Yup.”

I took my drink.

“I trained to be a LiteraTec,” he said wistfully. “Made it to cadetship.”

“What happened?”

“My girlfriend was a militant Marlovian. She converted some Will-Speak machines to quote from
Tamburlaine
and I was implicated when she was nabbed. And that was that. Not even the military would take me.”

“What's your name?”

“Chris.”

“Thursday.”

We shook hands.

“I can only speak from experience, Chris, but I've been in the military
and
SpecOps and you should be thanking your girlfriend.”

“I do,” hastened Chris. “Every day. We're married now and have two kids. I do this bar job in the evenings and run the Swindon branch of the Kit Marlowe Society during the day. We have almost four thousand members. Not bad for an Elizabethan forger, murderer, gambler and atheist.”

“There are some who say he might have written the plays usually attributed to Shakespeare.”

Chris was taken aback. He was suspicious too.

“I'm not sure I should be discussing this with a Litera Tec.”

“There's no law against discussion, Chris. Who do you think we are, the thought police?”

“No, that's SO-2 isn't it?”

“But about Marlowe—?”

Chris lowered his voice.

“Okay. I think Marlowe
might
have written the plays. He was undoubtedly a brilliant playwright, as
Faust, Tamburlaine
and
Edward II
would attest. He was the only person of his age who could have actually done it. Forget Bacon and Oxford; Marlowe has to be the odds-on favorite.”

“But Marlowe was murdered in 1593,” I replied slowly. “Most of the plays were written
after
that.”

Chris looked at me and lowered his voice.

“Sure.
If
he died in the bar fight that day.”

“What are you saying?”

“It's possible his death was faked.”

“Why?”

Chris took a deep breath. This was a subject he knew something about.

“Remember that Elizabeth was a Protestant queen. Anything like atheism or papism would deny the authority of the Protestant Church and the queen as the head.”

“Treason,” I murmured. “A capital offense.”

“Exactly. In April 1593 the Privy Council arrested one Thomas Kyd in connection with some antigovernment pamphleteering. When his rooms were searched they revealed some atheistic writings.”

“So?”

“Kyd fingered Marlowe. Said Marlowe had written them two years ago when they were rooming together. Marlowe was arrested and questioned on May 18, 1593; he was freed on bail so presumably there wasn't enough evidence to commit him for trial.”

“What about his friendship with Walsingham?” I asked.

“I was coming to that. Walsingham had an influential position within the secret service; they had known each other for a number of years. With more evidence arriving daily against Marlowe, his arrest seemed inevitable. But on the morning of May 30, Marlowe is killed in a bar brawl, apparently over an unpaid bill.”

“Very convenient.”

“Very. It's my belief that Walsingham faked his friend's death. The three men in the tavern were all in his pay. He bribed the coroner and Marlowe set up Shakespeare as the front man. Will, an impoverished actor who knew Marlowe from his days at the Shoreditch Theater, probably leaped at the chance to make some money; his career seems to have taken off as Marlowe's ended.”

“It's an interesting theory. But wasn't
Venus and Adonis
published a couple of months before Marlowe's death? Earlier even than Kyd's arrest?”

Chris coughed.

“Good point. All I can say is that the plot must have been hatched somewhat ahead of time, or that records have been muddled.”

He paused for a moment, looked about and lowered his voice further.

“Don't tell the other Marlovians, but there is something else that points away from a faked death.”

“I'm all ears.”

“Marlowe was killed within the jurisdiction of the queen's coroner. There were sixteen jurors to view the
supposedly
switched body, and it is unlikely that the coroner could have been bribed. If I had been Walsingham I would have had Marlowe's death faked in the boonies where coroners were more easily bought. He could have gone farther and had the body disfigured in some way to make identification impossible.”

“What are you saying?”

“That an equally probable theory is that Walsingham
himself
had Marlowe killed to stop him talking. Men say anything when tortured, and it's likely that Marlowe had all kinds of dirt on Walsingham.”

“What then?” I asked. “How would you account for the lack of any firm evidence regarding Shakespeare's life, his curious double existence, the fact that no one seemed to know about his literary work in Stratford?”

Chris shrugged.

“I don't know, Thursday. Without Marlowe there is no one else in Elizabethan London even
able
to write the plays.”

“Any theories?”

“None at all. But the Elizabethans were a funny bunch. Court intrigue, the secret service . . .”

“The more things change—”

“My point entirely. Cheers.”

We clinked glasses and Chris wandered off to serve another customer. I played the piano for half an hour before retiring to bed. I checked with Liz but Landen hadn't called.

I had hoped that I would find a manuscript by Austen or Trollope, Thackeray, Fielding or Swift. Maybe Johnson, Wells or Conan Doyle. Defoe would have been fun. Imagine my delight when I discovered that Charlotte Brontë's masterpiece
Jane Eyre
was on show at her old home. How can fate be more fortuitous? . . .

ACHERON HADES
—
Degeneracy for Pleasure and Profit

O
UR SAFETY
recommendations had been passed to the Brontë museum and there were five armed security guards on duty that night. They were all burly Yorkshiremen, specially chosen for this most august of duties because of their strong sense of literary pride. One stayed in the room with the manuscript, another was on guard within the building, two patrolled outside, and the fifth was in a little room with six TV screens. The guard in front of the monitors ate an egg-and-onion sandwich and kept a diligent eye on the screens. He didn't see anything remiss on the monitors, but then Acheron's curious powers had never been declassified below SO-9.

It was easy for Hades to gain entry; he just slipped in through the kitchen door after forcing the lock with a crowbar. The guard patrolling inside didn't hear Acheron approach. His lifeless body
was later found wedged beneath the Belfast sink. Acheron carefully mounted the stairs, trying not to make any noise. In reality he could have made as much noise as he liked. He knew the guards' .38s couldn't harm him, but what was the fun of just walking in and helping himself? He padded slowly up the corridor to the room where the manuscript was displayed and peered in. The room was empty. For some reason the guard was not in attendance. He walked up to the armored glass case and placed his hand just above the book. The glass beneath his flattened palm started to ripple and soften; pretty soon it was pliable enough for Hades to push his fingers through and grasp the manuscript. The destabilized glass twisted and stretched like rubber as the book was pulled clear and then rapidly reformed itself back into solid glass; the only evidence that its molecules had been rearranged was a slight mottling on the surface. Hades smiled triumphantly as he read the front page:

Jane Eyre
An autobiography by
CURRER BELL
October 1847

Acheron meant to take the book straight away, but he had always liked the story. Succumbing to temptation, he started to read.

It was open at the section where Jane Eyre is in bed and hears a low cackle of demonic laughter outside her room. Glad that the laughter is not coming from
within
her room, she arises and throws the bolt on the door, crying out:

“Who is there?”

By way of an answer there is only a low gurgle and a moan, the sound of steps retreating and then the shutting of a door. Jane wraps a shawl around her shoulders and slowly pulls back the bolt, opening the door a crack and peering cautiously outside. Upon the matting she espies a single candle and also
notices that the corridor is full of smoke. The creak of Rochester's half-open door catches her attention, and then she notices the dim flicker of a fire within. Jane springs into action, forsaking all thoughts as she runs into Rochester's burning chamber and attempts to rouse the sleeping figure with the words:

“Wake! Wake!”

Rochester does not stir and Jane notices with growing alarm that the sheets of the bed are starting to turn brown and catch fire. She grasps the basin and ewer and throws water over him, running to her bedroom to fetch more to douse the curtains. After a struggle she extinguishes the fire and Rochester, cursing at finding himself waking in a pool of water, says to Jane:

“Is there a flood?”

“No, sir,” she replies, “but there has been a fire. Get up, do; you are quenched now. I will fetch you a candle.”

Rochester is not fully aware of what has happened.

“In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Jane Eyre?” he demands. “What have you done with me, witch, sorceress? Who is in the room besides you? Have you plotted to drown me?”

“Turn around
really
slowly.”

The last line belonged to the guard, whose own demand broke into Acheron's reading.

“I
hate
it when that happens!” he lamented, turning to face the officer, who had his gun trained on him. “
Just
when you get to a good bit!”

“Don't move and put the manuscript down.”

Acheron did as he was told. The guard unclipped his walkie-talkie and brought it up to his mouth.

“I shouldn't do that,” said Acheron softly.

“Oh yes?” retorted the guard confidently. “And why the hell not?”

“Because,” said Acheron slowly, catching the guard's eye and
looking deep inside him, “you will never find out why your wife left you.”

The guard lowered his walkie-talkie.

“What do you know about Denise?”

I was dreaming fitfully. It was the Crimea again; the
crump-crump-crump
of the guns and the metallic scream that an armored personnel carrier makes when hit. I could even taste the dust, the cordite and the amatol in the air, the muffled cries of my comrades, the directionless sound of the gunfire. The eighty-eight-caliber guns were so close they didn't need a trajectory. You never heard the one that hit you. I was back in the APC, returning to the fray despite orders to the contrary. I was driving across the grassland, past wreckage from previous battles. I felt something large pluck at my vehicle and the roof opened up, revealing a shaft of sunlight in the dust that was curiously beautiful. The same unseen hand picked up the carrier and threw it in the air. It ran along on one track for a few yards and then fell back upright. The engine was still functioning, the controls still felt right; I carried on, oblivious to the damage. It was only when I reached up for the wireless switch that I realized the roof had been blown off. It was a sobering discovery, but I had little time to muse. Ahead of me was the smoking wreckage of the pride of the Wessex Tank: the Light Armored Brigade. The Russian eighty-eights had fallen silent; the sound was now of small arms as the Russians and my comrades exchanged fire. I drove to the closest group of walking wounded and released the rear door. It was jammed but it didn't matter; the side door had vanished with the roof and I rapidly packed twenty-two wounded and dying soldiers into an APC designed to carry eight. Punctuating all this was the incessant ringing of a telephone. My brother, minus his helmet and with his face bloodied, was dealing with the wounded. He told me to come
back for him. As I drove off the
spang
of rifle fire ricocheted off the armor; the Russian infantry were approaching. The phone was still ringing. I fumbled in the darkness for the handset, dropped it and scrabbled on the floor, swearing as I did so. It was Bowden.

“Are you okay?” he asked, sensing something was not quite right.

“I'm fine,” I replied, by now well used to making everything appear normal. “What's the problem?” I looked across at my clock. It was 3
A
.
M
. I groaned.

“Another manuscript has been stolen. I just got it over the wire. Same MO as
Chuzzlewit.
They just walked in and took it. Two guards dead. One by his own gun.”

“Jane Eyre?”

“How the dickens did you know that?”

“Rochester told me.”

“What?—”

“Never mind. Haworth House?”

“An hour ago.”

“I'll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

Within the hour we were driving north to join the M1 at Rugby. The night was clear and cool, the roads almost deserted. The roof was up and the heating full on, but even so it was drafty as the gale outside tried to find a toehold in the hood. I shuddered to think what it might be like driving the car in winter. By 5
A
.
M
. we would make Rugby and it would be easier from there.

“I hope I shan't regret this,” murmured Bowden. “Braxton won't be terribly happy when he finds out.”

“Whenever people say: ‘I hope I won't regret this,' they do. So if you want me to let you out, I will. Stuff Braxton. Stuff Goliath and stuff Jack Schitt. Some things are more important than rules and regulations. Governments and fashions come and go
but
Jane Eyre
is for all time. I would give everything to ensure the novel's survival.”

Bowden said nothing. Working with me, I suspected, was the first time he had really started to enjoy being in SpecOps. I shifted down a gear to overtake a slow-moving lorry and then accelerated away.

“How did you know it was
Jane Eyre
when I rang?”

I thought for a minute. If I couldn't tell Bowden, I couldn't tell anyone. I pulled Rochester's handkerchief out of my pocket.

“Look at the monogram.”

“
EFR
?”

“It belongs to Edward Fairfax Rochester.”

Bowden looked at me doubtfully.

“Careful, Thursday. While I fully admit that I might not be the best Brontë scholar, even I know that these people aren't actually
real
.”

“Real or not, I've met him several times. I have his coat too.”

“Wait—I understand about Quaverley's extraction but what are you saying? That characters can jump spontaneously from the pages of novels?”

“I heartily agree that something odd is going on; something I can't possibly explain. The barrier between myself and Rochester has softened. It's not just him making the jump either; I once entered the book myself when I was a little girl. I arrived at the moment they met. Do you remember it?”

Bowden looked sheepish and stared out of the sidescreen at a passing petrol station.

“That's very cheap for unleaded.”

I guessed the reason.

“You've never read it, have you?”

“Well—” he stammered. “It's just that, er—”

I laughed.

“Well, well, a Litera Tec who hasn't read
Jane Eyre
?”

“Okay, okay, don't rub it in. I studied
Wuthering Heights
and
Villette
instead. I meant to give it my fullest attention but like many things it must have slipped my mind.”

“I had better run it by you.”

“Perhaps you should,” agreed Bowden grumpily.

I told him the story of
Jane Eyre
over the next hour, starting with the young orphan Jane, her childhood with Mrs. Reed and her cousins, her time at Lowood, a frightful charity school run by a cruel and hypocritical evangelist; then the outbreak of typhus and the death of her good friend Helen Burns; after that of how Jane rises to become a model pupil and eventually student teacher under the principal, Miss Temple.

“Jane leaves Lowood and moves to Thornfield, where she has one charge, Rochester's ward, Adele.”

“Ward?” asked Bowden. “What's that?”

“Well,” I replied, “I guess it's a polite way of saying that she is the product of a previous liaison. If Rochester lived today Adele would be splashed all over the front page of
The Toad
as a ‘love child.' ”

“But he did the decent thing?”

“Oh, yes. Anyhow, Thornfield is a pleasant place to live, if not slightly strange—Jane has the idea that there is something going on that no one is talking about. Rochester returns home after an absence of three months and turns out to be a sullen, dominating personality, but he is impressed by Jane's fortitude when she saves him from being burned by a mysterious fire in his bedroom. Jane falls in love with Rochester but has to witness his courtship of Blanche Ingram, a sort of nineteenth-century bimbo. Jane leaves to attend to Mrs. Reed, who is dying and when she returns, Rochester asks her to marry him; he has realized in her absence that the qualities of Jane's character far
outweigh those of Miss Ingram, despite the difference in their social status.”

“So far so good.”

“Don't count your chickens. A month later the wedding ceremony is interrupted by a lawyer who claims that Rochester is already married and his first wife—Bertha—is still living. He accuses Rochester of bigamy, which is found to be true. The mad Bertha Rochester lives in a room on the upper floor of Thornfield, attended to by the strange Grace Poole. It was she who had attempted to set fire to Rochester in his bed all those months ago. Jane is deeply shocked—as you can imagine—and Rochester tries to excuse his conduct, claiming that his love for her was real. He asks her to go away with him as his mistress, but she refuses. Still in love with him, Jane runs away and finds herself in the home of the Rivers, two sisters and a brother who turn out to be her first cousins.”

“Isn't that a bit unlikely?”

“Shh. Jane's uncle, who is also
their
uncle, has just died and leaves her all his money. She divides it among them all and settles down to an independent existence. The brother, St. John Rivers, decides to go to India as a missionary and wants Jane to marry him and serve the church. Jane is quite happy to serve him, but not to marry him. She believes that marriage is a union of love and mutual respect, not something that should be a duty. There is a long battle of wills and finally she agrees to go with him to India as his assistant. It is in India, with Jane building a new life, that the book ends.”