Snuff the Magic Dragon (and other Bombay Family Bedtime Stories) (Greatest Hits Mysteries) (9 page)

“There is one guard, but he is only there to serve her food. He doesn’t stay between meals. I guess they figure since she’s completely bricked in with an iron door that she isn’t going anywhere,” Stephen said.

“How do we get into the castle unseen?” I asked the boy.

Stephen grinned mischievously. “I know a secret way. There’s an old, unused privy tower here.” He pointed to a spot on the wall. “It’s a short but easy climb to get up and through.”

He must have caught the look on my face and he laughed. “Don’t worry. I cleaned it while I was there. Not that there was much to clean. It hasn’t been used in years.”

My heart broke that very instant. He’d cleaned the old privy entrance for me. How was I going to kill him?

“And there’s a room here.” Stephen pointed to a small indentation inside the wall. “I think it used to be for storage or something, but the wall crumbled a bit, and they don’t use it anymore. We can hide there.”

“Brilliant,” I said without enthusiasm. “When is the best time to go see the Countess?”

Stephen sat back and frowned at this. “You’re not going to break her out, are you?” For the first time he realized there must be a reason for this trip.

“No,” I said softly. “I have no intention of setting that monster free.”

Stephen seemed to accept this as a cue for him to not ask any more questions. Instead, he shrugged and continued on. “I think the best time to go would be soon, since it will be a long time before the guard comes with breakfast. The light is low, but I think we can manage. They keep a torch burning overnight just outside her door.”

I nodded and organized my things. We would be taking a small pack with us and leaving the rest behind in the cave, hidden by rocks. Stephen wasn’t to speak unless we were confronted. At that point, he was to say that we were mere travelers, looking for a safe place to stop for the night. I didn’t think we’d be caught since it was the middle of the night, but you can never be too certain of these things.

Stephen led me to the castle wall. The darkness provided cover as we climbed the wall up to the privy hole and lifted ourselves through. I did everything the boy signaled, and we made our way to the stone stairs where the Countess’ prison was above.

The boy motioned for me to stay at the bottom of the staircase while he went up to make sure there was no guard. He re-emerged a moment later with a grin on his face.

“Stephen,” I whispered, holding the boy’s shoulders. “I need you to stay here. Do you understand?”

He frowned. “But I want to go with you. You’re going to kill her, aren’t you?”

Icy fear washed over me. He knew. The boy knew. He’d just sealed his fate and didn’t even know it.

“You need to stay here and keep a sharp eye out. If someone comes, you have to run up and let me know.”

Stephen nodded, and I patted him on the shoulder. He beamed with pride.
Good lad
, I thought sadly.

I slowly made my way up the stairs, careful not to make a sound. At the top of the stairs, a single torch illuminated the dead end. The iron door was on my left. Quickly I assembled my dart gun. After opening the jar of the poison paste, I generously ground the tip of the first dart into it. Carefully, I inserted the dart into the opposite end of the tube, backwards. The silk thread doubled up inside, dropping back out the front of the tube. The other end was tied to my belt.

“Elizabeth…” I called softly into the slot. “Elizabeth…” I repeated and was rewarded by the sound of rustling silk skirts.

“Who is there?” a bitter female voice demanded. Clearly she was not afraid. That was good.

“I’ve come to help you,” I lied. “But you need to come to the door.”

Dark eyes flashed in the slot, eyebrows arched into an evil grin. “I knew it! I knew someone would come to fetch me!” Arrogance seeped out of every pore. I’d have no problem dispatching her.

“Stand up and be ready to run out this door when I get it opened,” I said.

Elizabeth nodded and gave a sinister chuckle. She stood, and I found myself face to face with her neck. She was standing and waiting. The slot was the perfect height.

“Just a moment,” I said as I prepared the dart. “This will be a bit tricky…”

“Oh hurry up, damn you!” the monster howled.

I pressed my lips to the end of the tube and blew hard, launching the dart straight into her jugular vein. The point went deep, and I had no doubt the poison would work quickly.

Elizabeth choked and clutched at the dart before falling to the floor and clawing at her throat. A quick jerk of the thread and the dart was out. I pulled it through the slot and watched.

My victim writhed on the floor in painful spasms. It only took minutes, but as the paralysis kicked in, her breathing labored, and then her heart came to a complete stop.

I made it back down the stairs in a couple of leaps and grabbed Stephen. The boy nodded, and we raced back through the way we came, ending with a thud on the ground as we dropped through the old privy.

My heartbeat slowed as we made our way to the cave and collected our things. We were at the border of Turkey by morning, and we paused to eat and drink. Stephen grinned broadly at me. My heart sank. Every step closer to that border was one step closer to the boy’s impending death. I was completely miserable, but I had no choice. Anger flared inside me as I imagined Stephen’s face at the moment of his death… at my hands. I didn’t think it was possible to feel such torment and agony. He was only an innocent boy! He’d lost his parents and had a cruel master waiting for him.

“We make a good team!” Stephen grinned as he took a bite of an orange. “What you did back there, whatever it was, I’m sure it was amazing!”

He looked at me with pride and admiration. And I slipped into a deep, dark depression punctuated by an unending headache.

“We have to get going,” I said gruffly as I packed things back up. I lifted him roughly to his feet, refusing to look him in the eye. Stephen’s face was confused, and hurt. He was trying to imagine what he’d done or said to upset me. The figurative knife in my heart twisted cruelly. Was I really going to act like a bastard to this poor boy? Should his last thoughts be that I betrayed him? This was too painful. Why wasn’t there something I could do?

“Wait.” I held him back. If I was going to do this, I needed to do it now, before I lost all courage.

Stephen smiled hopefully. “You know, I wish you were my father.” His words hit their mark, a bullseye on my soul. I shrank away from him in horror. And then, the most amazing idea came into my mind…

* * *

A few months later, when Lord Allen returned, I visited him. He was very unpleasant, but agreed to my terms and the extremely generous amount of money I gave to him. Within a week I was heading back to England.

“So,” Stephen said from the back of his Arabian horse next to mine, “you’re my father now?”

I nodded. “You are now Stephen Bombay. And as my adopted son, we are heading back to see my family in England to begin your training.” I knew I’d have to change his first name to that of a geographic location, in keeping with tradition. I was thinking of calling him Mauritius, after the island where I got the Dodos. But that could wait. We had left that morning. Julian was staying behind to pack the belongings and sell the house. He would join us later in Oxford.

A large bag tied to the saddle next to Stephen’s thigh began to squirm and squawk before two Dodo heads popped out. They cawed at me irritably before nuzzling the boy’s leg. Tristan and Isolde were going too. There was no way they were going to be parted from Stephen after the fuss they made when we returned to Cairo. I was bitten several times, and they spent hours combing the lad’s hair for possible parasites that undoubtedly attached themselves under my
clearly
neglectful care.

Oddly enough, Stephen, the two Dodos and I were a family now. I would miss Egypt, but having a son seemed to be more of an adventure than just settling down in any old exotic place. Besides,
old Rolfie and his new bride, Pocahontas, would be home for a visit soon. Maybe it was time I started thinking about a visit to America. Yes…I thought that was just what we needed.

It was dark, like it was every night in this godforsaken colony where no civilized man such as myself should have to set foot. John Billington stumbled around the woods, drunk on beer (sadly, the only spirit we had here) and cursing at the branches. He cursed at people too, in fact, not any differently than he did inanimate objects. I once watched him spend half an hour cursing at a stone. It was quite a creative use of words. Not sure how you can call a rock a “bastard from the bowels of hell,” but he did, and he did it with flair.

It was my job to follow him. It was my job to kill him. And I still didn’t have any idea how I was going to do that. No matter—a contract was unbreakable. And I would be stuck here, on the other end of the world, until I accomplished it.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mind traveling for the day job. At the age of twenty-two, I still had all my teeth. That was something. And I’d yet to need a blood-let by leech. So I suppose the travel kept me young. It was just…well, this was way farther than any Bombay had traveled before. My Aunt Persia even offered me some amulet to protect against sea monsters. It looked like a regular stick. Aunt Persia wasn’t always right in the head. I took it anyway. Who knows? Maybe it was a magic stick.

I wasn’t one of the original pilgrims, or “strangers,” who came over on the Mayflower ten years ago. I came a couple of months ago as a laborer on an entirely different ship, bringing supplies to the colony and a secret assignment to carry out from my family back in England. London…what I wouldn’t give for those filthy, cobblestone streets right now.

I’d settled into the colony—a single man and laborer. I made sure that I didn’t stand out in any way. The rate at which these colonists died from various diseases meant men came and went constantly. The colony had grown in the last ten years. I was a nobody, and no one noticed me. My name was, for all intents and purposes, John Newcomen. I know the Governor thought himself pretty damned clever when he gave me that last name, ‘Newcomen.’ I didn’t complain. It was better than Stratford-Upon-Avon Bombay. Way better. Mum was a bit of a loony about Shakespeare.

I’d spent the last few weeks studying my victim. He was a real asshole before he left England and had made a lot of enemies, incurring a great deal of debt. He’d gotten worse since he arrived here. I guess his first idiot son, Francis, almost blew up the ship. The second one, John Jr., wandered off like a moron and had to be returned by Indians. Indians who laughed at us.

John argued with everyone. He was punished over and over for instigating trouble. His wife was even whipped for her sharp tongue. People avoided them like the plague. Which brings up an interesting point. Typhus tore through the colony the first year, and the Billington Family was one of a very few households that didn’t lose anyone to the deadly disease. Maybe assholes were immune, because no one wanted to spend enough time with them to spread the disease. That’s my personal theory anyway, and it very possibly could be true. Of course the prevailing theory was that the Billingtons practiced witchcraft. I didn’t really believe in witches, but what anyone here thought mattered little.

None of that was important to me. I had to make him pay for his sins in the motherland. John had made some serious mistakes back home, crossing all the wrong people. He owed money to most of them, and, in some cases, had stolen more than coins and more than just mistreated people. It didn’t really matter. He pissed off the people who give Bombays assignments. 

It wasn’t my job to question the assignments. I just had to do them.

So, for the past week, I had followed John around, under the cover of darkness as he stumbled and railed through the woods. He was an angry man. And angry men often died badly—something that was always good for business.

I just wanted to be rid of this contract. I was tired of living here. I should be back in the civilized half of the world, chasing women, sleeping in, and drinking something other than boiled water and stale, warm beer. Not here with a bunch of holier-than-thous taking care of their “problem.”

Oh sure, it’s considered
"glamorous" to be a colonist. Why in the bloody hell was that? The winters are harsh, disease is rampant, there are far too few women (and those who are here won’t play footsie in the haystack), and the Indians hate us. I can’t blame them. I hate us.

I only had about a week before the next ship sailed for home. And I still had no idea what to do. It’s not like you can get a ship out of the colonies anytime. Passages were few and far between. And I didn’t want to stay here one moment more than I had to.

There were times when I wished I was more like my godfather, Cairo Bombay. He was such an adventurer. But I hadn’t seen him in years—not since he left with his son and Dodo birds to sail to Asia. He’d hoped to find another way to the New World. I hoped he’d at least made it. Maybe they’d already heard from him back home. This was yet another reason for me to finish up the job and go back to England.

“Curse you, John Newcomen!” I froze. Did Billington see me? Could he see in the dark? Maybe I should’ve brought Aunt Persia’s stick.

No, he was just railing about like he always did. He’d been on my case lately over the idea that I’d crossed into his property line. This pissed me off, because he complained about it publicly. Sooner or later he’d file a complaint, and then my name would be on record here. I didn’t want that.

Don’t get me wrong—this Massachusetts Bay Colony was okay. I just didn’t fit in with the work-yourself-to-death-every-day mentality. I kind of enjoyed a little leisure now and then. But the only day of rest was Sunday, and we weren’t allowed to do anything but go to church all day, sitting on uncomfortable wooden benches, bored out of our minds, praying for something interesting. Like an ill-timed Indian attack.

And then there was the disease. People fell ill and died all the time. It was ridiculous. Because of my solitary nature and devotion to sanitation and hygiene, I was fine. But this was just silly. If your neighbor has the plague,
don't go visit to see
! But people always did, and they took the disease home with them, infecting everyone around them. I spent a lot of time on burial duty. A
lot
of time.

Of course, if you survived that, there were the Indians. Some were friendly. Most wanted to roast us on a spit and eat us. I was pretty sure I’d feel the same way if I was them. But they were basically screwed. Bows and arrows were nothing against guns. Still, they outnumbered us in ways that could make you lose sleep at night.

Being here was just plain crazy dangerous. I’d give it another ten years at best before everyone here packed it in and went back to England. This whole experiment was doomed to be nothing more than a failed footnote in English history.

I followed John Billington home along the path he always took. I’d have to be more careful. If he caught me following him, he’d really raise a racket—something, again, that I did not need.

As I lay on my straw bed later that night, I realized my risk was becoming greater the more my intended victim railed about me. The more he talked, the more likely I’d be the first suspect in his death. Maybe I could pay some Indians to kidnap him and take him away? Could I convince them that their gods demanded that John Billington should be sacrificed? Probably not. I wasn’t the most creative person in the family—in fact, they teased me all the time about being entirely too serious.

The Indians, even the friendly ones, didn’t really trust us. And I couldn’t guarantee they would kill him. That man weaseled out of everything. He’d been behind several mutinous plots—all of which he denied, and once got out of punishment by begging forgiveness on his knees. The punishment would’ve had him tied up, ankles to neck. I was kind of rooting for that one out of professional curiosity. You never know when you’ll pick up something you can use later.

I was running out of time. If John was calling my name out at night, he was close to saying it out loud in the daytime. And I couldn’t have that.

I was up before the rooster crowed. The plan came to me in a dream (and, sadly, not the one about the buxom widow down the lane who always winked at us lads). I now knew what to do.

And so it was that John Billington found me tearing out a tree on the disputed property line. Okay, I was a little more on his property than mine. And it was a tree he liked (I found it amusing he liked a tree, but not people). But I needed to step things up.

“What are you doing, man?” Billington thundered at me.

I gave my most innocent look. “Why, what do you mean, neighbor? I’m just getting rid of this pesky tree.”

Billington’s face turned purple with rage, and he hopped from one foot to the other, shaking his fists at me. “That tree is on
my
property! I planted it myself when we arrived, ten years ago!”

I knew this. I also knew the tree was the only reminder he had of home. It may have seemed cruel, but 1) I was out of time and 2) I didn’t really care.

I stood up and wiped my brow. It was warm for September yet.

“I don’t think so.” The tree was completely down, and the shattered trunk lay at my feet. “This is my tree, and it’s on my land. I want it down, so I can put in a potting shed.” Okay, it was a lame excuse, but it was all I had. Potting sheds are no joke in my family. Where else can you grow poisonous plants out of public view?

Billington stepped so close to me I could smell the stale beer on his breath. “I’m going to get you for that, you bastard!” He gathered up the wood in his arms and stormed off.

“Hey!” I called after him. “Where are you going with my wood?”

He did not stop.

With a sigh, I shouldered my axe and walked across the road to the governor’s house.

“I cut down that wood with my own two hands,” I protested to the governor of the colony. “It took me an hour, and then he took the wood!” I used my most innocent face as I sadly shook my head. “He reeked of beer, too, and threatened me.” This wasn’t much of an allegation. Everyone here drank beer. They thought it was safer than water. Schmucks.

Governor Bradford pushed back from his chair and let loose a long sigh. He nodded. “It’s John Newcomen, isn’t it?”

I nodded, pleased that he wasn’t entirely sure who I was, and didn’t even remember that he gave me that name. The goal was that when this was over, people might remember my name, but no one would be able to remember anything else about me.

The Governor shook his head. “John Billington has been a problem since we set sail.”

“I am sorry, Your Lordship.” I did not make direct eye contact, trying to make sure he remembered my story but not my face. “But I am frightened for my life.”

The official nodded and waved me away. “I’ll see what I can do.” And that was it. I left the room and made my way back to my one-room house.

Part one of my plan was initiated. Now came the trickier part. I tried to consider all angles as I boiled water in a cauldron in my fireplace. These people didn’t trust the water. I tried to explain about boiling out the impurities, but they looked at me like they might start screaming “witchcraft!” so I left it alone. I’m really not fond of being hanged, and slightly less so of being burned alive.

The Bombays have known how to make water safe for centuries. It’s just science. We just came through the Age of Reason! Helllloooooooooo! These people drove me crazy. If you tried to make your own soap or simply brush your teeth with a frayed twig, they’d start imagining that they saw you dancing naked in the woods with demons. No. England, even with its civil war, was much safer. I had to get back there.

I would have to be careful from here on out. In order to make this work, there could be no mistakes. Blowing out the candles, I slipped quietly out the door, bolting it behind me. Within moments, I was sitting behind a haystack outside of Billington’s home. Clouds shrouded the moon, making the light spotty at best. I waited. Depending on how early John started drinking, that’s when I could move again.

There was a slight breeze, lifting up the scents and sounds of the night. Livestock grunted here and there. A twig snapped in the distance every now and then. But no one came out of the Billington home.

Normally, this would be a good thing. The joke in the colony was no Billington was a good Billington. But I was getting worried. It was late and yet lights still burned through the oilskin windows. Sure, the haystack was comfortable, but I had a task undone. That drove me crazy.

The creak of wood caught my attention. Venturing a peek from behind the hay, I saw John Billington stagger out the door, cursing at someone inside the house. He was carrying his blunderbuss. Swaying violently back and forth, he lurched into the woods, leaning on his weapon for support. He was heading away from my home. Was he so drunk he thought he could hunt at this late hour?

I waited until he was out of sight before following him. It’s pretty easy to follow a stumbling drunk through an empty forest at night. People battened down the hatches, worried about getting lost or running into Indians.

Billington muttered to himself as he lurched around trees. I didn’t really think he was going anywhere in particular. During the day he was usually clearing his fields, starting fights with neighbors and yelling at his family. But it helped to know his movements.