Mariah Mundi (3 page)

Mariah peeped from the side of the oilskin as cold drips like salt tears trickled down his back. He gasped – there before him stood the finest, most gracious building he had ever seen. The rain slowed to a trickle as the immense building shielded them from all but the finest drizzle that blew overhead, swirling like a rainbowed mist in the gaslight.

The hackney stopped, the horses slipping on the stone slabs that had been laid to form a long courtyard in front of the Prince Regent. Mariah slipped from the carriage, clutching his leather bag and pulling up his collar against the wind and chill of the night. His eyes were dragged upwards, on and on, almost to the pinnacle of the sky, searching out the high towers that perched on every corner of the building.

Glowing in the darkness like the gateway to some strange magic kingdom was a golden sign lit by bright limelight. Above the large doorway its letters were a yard in height and shone brighter than anything he had ever seen before, dazzling his eyes as he tried to read the words: PRINCE REGENT.

As Mariah stood in the drizzle Isambard Black stepped from the hackney, pulled a floppy felt hat from his pocket and squeezed it upon his head, tugging the brim over his eyes. He glanced at Mariah and grinned, his smoke-yellowed teeth illuminated by the phosphorescent glow of the limelight. ‘Be seeing you again,’ he said slowly, and he began to walk the twenty paces to the steps of the Prince Regent. ‘This is for guests. I’m sure you will find your way in somewhere. If not, there is always a park shelter.’

Black disappeared behind a large marble column that towered like the trunk of a giant tree. Mariah looked up: there in the domed vault of the entranceway, topping every column, was a tight growth of marble palm branches, dripping with gold leaf and pomegranates. Staring back at him was the face of a blue monkey, teeth bared and snarling, clutching on to the pillar as if for life itself.

‘You’ll be in the staff quarters, up there,’ said the cabby as he slammed the door to the carriage and pointed to the heights of a tower above them.

Mariah looked up, his eyes straining to see the pinnacle that touched the black, rain-filled sky above their heads. ‘I’ve never –’ He stopped in amazement.

‘They all say that when I drop them off, every one. The biggest pile of bricks in the known world,’ the man said as he steadied Mariah with a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘Just think of the view, almost in heaven. Twelve floors, three hundred and sixty-five rooms and four towers, one year old on Christmas Day and still standing.’ He spoke as if in awe of what stood before him. ‘Wait till you see it from the other side – makes a man know where he stands in the universe.’

‘Can you see the windmills of Holland?’ Mariah asked as the drizzle wet his face.

‘Some say you can, though I have never dared to go up that high. But watch the storms rolling in to the land. A thousand white horses chasing the ships as they run for harbour and then in an instant it’ll be flat like a millpond. Don’t let looks fool you, lad. All that glitters isn’t gold. Keep your wits sharp and watch out for Mister Luger. Been a lot of dying around here lately – some say it’s a curse from what was here before, the curse of the Prince Regent.’

Mariah turned, but the man was gone, nowhere to be seen. The horses stood stock still, braving the rain as the door swung
on the empty carriage. In the side of the wall below the high tower a door opened suddenly, slamming against bright red bricks. ‘You, boy!’ shouted a girl’s voice louder than the rain and wind. ‘Stand there and you’ll die of cold. Get yourself in.’

Mariah turned as behind him the hackney lurched away with the crack of a whip and the clatter of hooves on wet stone flags. He jumped to the pavement, startled by the carriage. The girl laughed, a bright smile gleaming across her face as her voice echoed from the terrace of large houses that lined the cliff-top square.

‘Colonial boy!’ she shouted again. ‘Told you were coming. Get in, you’ve work to do …’

T
HE door slammed behind Mariah and he was now alone. Whoever had called him from the dark doorway had gone. He stood dripping wet in a long corridor tiled with the darkest, greenest tiles he could have imagined. They stretched on into the distant shadow of the vast tunnel that seemed to stretch for miles ahead. A gas lamp was posted by the door, like a sentinel of light in a dark chamber. Mariah stood for several moments and listened, hoping to hear nothing and know he was truly alone. He shook the rain from his coat and folded it over his arm, pulling the long flaps from his wet shirt and allowing them to flop over his trousers. Professor Bilton would never have allowed this, he thought to himself as he walked slowly along the passageway towards the ever-darkening gloom ahead of him.

‘Colonial boy …’ The sharp voice came again from somewhere behind, rolling along the passage like a storm wave crashing to the beach. ‘Colonial boy!’ It came again, sharper than before and etched in anger. ‘This way, can’t you see?’

Mariah turned and saw the girl standing by the door. To her right was the outline of an entrance that had been hidden from view when he had stepped into the tunnel.

‘It’s this way,’ she said scornfully. ‘Never trust a boy when there’s work to be done.’ Her voice altered, sweetening until it became soft and warm. She had bushy dark hair that was pulled tightly back and tied in a strict knot at the back of her head. ‘I’ve been sent for you – we’re working together.’ She stopped and looked Mariah up and down. ‘First job, fresh out of Colonial School?’

At first Mariah couldn’t reply. He felt as if he was on public display and was being meticulously inspected by the girl. Her eyes searched every crease of his white shirt and focused upon the blue school tie that was tightly wrapped around his neck. She raised a long dark eyebrow in disdain at what she saw and a wry smile crept into the side of her mouth.

‘Do you get paid for wearing that outfit?’ she asked in a broad Irish accent. ‘Looks like you’ve stolen the pants from an old man.’

‘It’s a first-class suit. I earned it at the Colonial and don’t have to pay it back. It’s mine to keep,’ Mariah replied softly as he looked to the green tiles beneath his feet, not wanting to look at her eye to eye.

‘Well, you’ll get the pick of what you want here; the wardrobes are full of things to wear. One day a prince, the next a pauper. Look at me – today I was a housemaid.’ She smoothed the creases in the white pinny that covered her long black dress with its tidy cuffs and ruffled collar. ‘We’ll get you started in the morning and you’ll be ready for tomorrow night – better be quick, a steam elevator never waits …’

The girl turned and vanished through the narrow doorway that would have been invisible if Mariah had not seen the girl disappear before him. He quickly followed, turning sideways between two narrow walls of green tiles that opened out into a large room. The girl stood waiting at a tall metal gate covered in shiny brass rivets that held the pieces together. Behind the gate
was a deep shaft that sank into the depths below. From high above Mariah heard the sound of laughter and distant music echoing down the shaft.

There was a sudden, quick hissing of steam and the whirring of a large flywheel. The gate rattled as the sound got louder and louder, shuddering the floor beneath his feet.

‘Don’t worry. It’s only this loud here because we are next to the engine. When you get upstairs you can’t feel a thing.’

A bright light appeared in the shaft, coming closer, and billows of steam oozed from the blackness, filling the room like a thick London smog.

‘Only a minute and it’ll be here,’ the girl said loudly above the sound of the steam generator that rattled and clanked even louder. ‘It was built by Mister Luger – he’s an inventor, owns the Prince Regent, designed it with his own hand.’

‘I’ve never seen an elevator before,’ Mariah said nervously as swathes of thick steam swelled about his feet like a rising tide.

‘There’re many things I had never seen before until I came here. Now I don’t even turn an eye and just get on with it,’ she said as the elevator chugged from the bottom of the deep shaft, winched by a steel wire the thickness of a man’s arm that vanished upwards in the darkness of the shaft, pushed by a steel piston that powered it higher.

‘Is it … Is it safe?’ he asked as the sound got even louder and the shaking more intense.

‘Safe, no. Fast, yes.’ The girl peered down the shaft to the approaching elevator as the light grew brighter, illuminating the grease-covered walls. ‘Work or lodging? – what is it to be first?’

‘Lodgings?’ asked Mariah as the elevator ground to a sudden and noisy halt before them. The girl turned the brass handle and slid the metal gate open. She stepped into the elevator and beckoned Mariah to follow.

‘Thirteenth floor,’ she said out loud as she pressed the button. ‘That’s where you’re living. Nothing special but you can call it home.’

‘What will I do here?’ Mariah asked as the girl slid the door shut and pressed the button again.

‘Work in the theatre, general dogsbody … That’s until you learn the ropes and then like me you’ll walk the boards. Best job in the place. Lucky you came when you did. Felix had the job until he went …
missing
,’ she said, gripping the brass rail that was heavily bolted to the wall of the elevator as if she knew what was to come.

‘Lucky Felix,’ Mariah muttered. The lift was thrust up the shaft and the open wall sped by at speed, too quickly for him to count the floors. His ears popped as the steam elevator pushed them higher. ‘What happens when we stop?’

There was a ping of the bell as the lift hit the thirteenth floor as if it had crashed into a stone mountain. Mariah was lifted from his feet and into the air, his head banging on the wooden roof as he let go of his bag, then he smashed against the floor. The girl never moved, braced against the wall of the elevator, her foot hooked beneath a discreet handle in the corner. He stared at the polished black shoes with silver buckles that peeped like two mice from underneath her Bible-black dress.

‘Should have warned you,’ she said as she turned a key in the wall that appeared to shut off the surging steam spewing from the roof. ‘But I had to see the look on your face … priceless.’

‘Glad you think it so amusing,’ Mariah said as he got to his feet, picked up his bag and jacket and brushed the dirt from his damp shirt. ‘So that was a steam elevator.’

‘Not only that, but the fastest in Europe. Mister Luger told me and he should know, he built every one of them,’ she said as she pulled back the metal gate and stepped from the elevator
into a small corridor with three narrow wooden doors that formed a semicircle before the lift gate.

‘Lodgings?’ Mariah asked.

The girl pointed to the doors. ‘Mine, yours and the stairs. That one belonged to Felix – but I mustn’t go in, that’s what Mister Luger said.’

Mariah looked at the first door. There was a tiny scrap of paper that had the smallest handwriting etched in black ink. ‘Sacha,’ he said, reading the inscription from the paper. ‘Is that you?’

‘My short name. You’re English so you could never say what I’m really called, so you call me Sacha – do you have a name yourself?’ she asked without drawing a single breath.

‘Mariah –’ he said, unable to finish what he would say as she quickly interrupted.

‘Never tell your last name. I don’t want to know it and if I did, I would know you too well. Who’s to say you’ll be here in the morning? After all, you may run off and hide like Felix. Here three weeks, then goes off without telling anyone. So keep your name for yourself, Mariah will do for me and for old Bizmillah … You take over Felix’s job, so you’re his assistant.’ Sacha spurted out the words as if they were lines that she had learnt well. ‘There isn’t a lock so hide your things well. We clean them ourselves and get fresh sheets on the first Sunday. We eat where we work, and Mister Luger wants to see you first thing in the morning.’

‘What will I do for Bizmillah?’ Mariah asked as he pushed open the door and stepped into the darkened room.

‘A magician’s apprentice,’ she said excitedly. ‘Cleaning his illusions, polishing his boots and allowing him to cut you in half in the Sunday matinee. Better than scrubbing floors and doing dishes, but then again you did come from London in a
first-class
suit.’ Sacha laughed at him as she took a Lucifer from
her pocket and lit the mantle of the gas lamp that hung over the small fireplace. She saw Mariah look at the empty grate. ‘You’ll never be cold, not in this tower,’ she said as she brightened the room with a turn of her nimble fingers. ‘We have water heating, the finest in Europe –’

‘Mister Luger says,’ Mariah broke in, finishing her sentence.

‘It’s true,’ she protested. ‘Gurgles like a great dragon. Hot as Hades, winter and summer. Everything runs from steam, everything. The cooking, washing and even the harmonium in the theatre. There’s nothing better and thank the saints you’re not the one stoking the boiler.’ Sacha laughed.

Mariah looked about the room. It had a fusty smell like an old church he had once visited with his mother. He had gone for the funeral of a great aunt and was squashed in the pew next to an old stone font, as far to the front a man dressed like a pantomime dame had sprinkled water over her ebony sarcophagus. It had smelt of musty unopened books and damp old ladies who pressed against him with a heady odour of burnt toast. Yet even that gave the room a feeling of being known and familiar.

The chamber had a small bed with clean but tatty blankets folded back beneath two duck pillows whose feathers puffed with every movement. By the side was a small cupboard that looked out of sorts next to the fireplace. A fine wax candle was pressed neatly in an old brass holder by the bed, with two matches and a striking pad lying in the wax gutter.

Mariah could hear the howling of the wind that blew round the high turret of the tower. Above his head there was the cracking of the flag that festooned the tower. It carried the banner of an unknown land, trailing out more as a signal to the blowing of the gale than as reverence to the tattered state. The grey slate tiles creaked and moaned in the sea gale that beat against the side of the Prince Regent, as if it battered some ancient cliff. The windows rattled in their frames, shaking the
sashes, cords and weights that hung like dead men’s toes behind the thick green damask curtains.

‘You can take a look,’ Sacha said as she saw him gaze at the chink in the curtains. ‘You’ll not see much on a night like this, just black of night and a few lights from the harbour.’ She stopped and thought for a moment. ‘But you’ll see the lighthouse. Keeps me awake. Sends its beam out to sea time and again, never stops.’ Sacha seemed pleased by the thought, as if it was a reassuring presence in her life.

‘Can you see the windmills?’ he asked as he slumped on to the bed.

‘Never once. I was told that when I came here. I looked and looked but all I looked upon was the sea … and the castle.’ Sacha closed the door to the room quietly as if she wanted to speak to him privately. For a brief moment he glimpsed a look of discontent upon her face.

‘Do you like it here?’ he asked as she stared at the gas lamp and gently turned the knob to dim the light.

‘These are for you,’ she said, as if she hadn’t heard what he had asked, and she picked a suit of clothes from the door back. ‘Hope they fit. We wear black in the theatre so we cannot be seen as the scenes change. Bizmillah will give you something to wear when he cuts you in two – you’re the same size as Felix and his never got too … bloodstained.’ She laughed.

‘So I am to be cut in half every Sunday matinee?’ Mariah asked as he poured himself a small glass of water from the bedside jug.

‘Every Sunday, three o’clock. Cut in half for all to see. That’s after he has plunged five long daggers deep within you
and
put your head in an iron mask. All for a silver shilling and six pence in the balcony.’

‘Every Sunday?’ Mariah asked, unsure as to why this day would be so special. ‘Why the Sunday matinee?’

‘Monica won’t work Sunday,’ Sacha said as if Mariah should already understand. ‘She spends the time with Mister Luger, he says.’

‘So only young boys should be cut in half on Sundays – is that why Felix escaped?’

Sacha was silent. She laid the black coat upon the bed and stroked the sleeve dreamily. ‘The truth is, Mariah, no one knows what happened to him. The night before he went missing I had heard him arguing with Bizmillah. He shouted at him that he would tell Mister Luger what had happened, Bizmillah said that whatever went on he would take a pound of flesh from Felix as payment for his lies. Then he was gone. I came to the room the next morning and his bed was unruffled and not slept in. This suit of clothes hung behind the door and everything was as it was. There’s … there’s a rumour in the town that a Kraken has been taking the boys. Catching them when they’ve been out on their own.’ Sacha stopped and looked away.

‘You must go on,’ Mariah said as he reached to her and jabbed her arm.

Sacha looked back and forth from window to door and thought of running from the room. She grasped the bedpost, twisting the wood in the palm of her hand. ‘How do I know you haven’t been sent to catch me out?’

‘I’ve never met you before, never even heard of this place until Professor Bilton gave me a note saying I was being transferred.’ Mariah rummaged in his pocket for his writ of worthiness. ‘See this, it’ll tell you who I am and why I’m here. I don’t come to catch you out,’ he said as he handed her the folded vellum tied with a single red ribbon.

She held it in her hand unopened and looked at him. ‘Promise me one thing, Mariah. Whatever you hear tonight gets forgotten by the morning.’

Mariah nodded, hands in pockets, fingers secretly crossed. ‘Promise …’

‘When Felix vanished, he told me he had found something. It was more of a secret than something precious, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was or where he had discovered it. I asked him again and again, but the more I spoke to him the more silent he became. The only thing he said was that the secret was hidden in the Prince Regent, somewhere people would never think to look but see every day,’ she said quickly as she caught her breath. ‘The night he vanished I heard something at the door of my room. I lay in bed as the door opened slowly, it creaked an inch or two. It was thick black with no light. Whatever it was had come by the stair and turned off the gas lamp by the elevator. Not a single drop of light was to be seen.’ Sacha spoke slowly now, looking about her, keeping her voice to a whisper for fear of being overheard. ‘I pulled the covers over my head. I didn’t want to see it, whatever it was. I thought if I didn’t look it would go away and find someone else to torment …’ She gasped for breath, her hands feeling the ruffles of her collar, pulling them from her reddening skin. ‘I couldn’t move. I wanted to scream, but no one would have heard me. Whoever … whatever it was, came into my room and looked at me, I could feel their breath panting against the bedclothes over my head. Then slowly and carefully they walked back to the door. Whatever it was, I could smell it … It was like old mothballs and gin mixed together. I had to look, so I took a peek – I couldn’t help, it I had to see – and … there was nothing. I heard the door pull shut, but not a trace. There was a clang as the door to the steam lift shut and a whizzing of the engine and the next morning Felix was gone.’