The Book of Dead Days (7 page)

“Well,” said Boy, looking at the floor.

“Yes,” said Willow. “What do you think? Have you changed your mind?”

“No,” said Boy, looking up and into Willow’s eyes. “Let’s get it over with.”

They made their way up to the Tower room. After hours of hearing Valerian’s rage and curses earlier in the day, it was quiet. It seemed as good a time as any to dare to ask him for favors.

Boy knocked on the door. That in itself was strange. Normally he waited to be summoned.

“What is it?” came the voice from within.

“Valerian,” called Boy, “can we come in?”

There was a pause.

“We? Oh, very well.”

Inside Boy looked at Valerian, but not directly into his eyes. That was usually too much to take. Willow just stared openmouthed at what filled the room: the vials, the jars, the machines, the devices, the equipment, the drawings, the books, the glass things, the brass things, the wooden things. The camera obscura.

“Why is she still here?” Valerian asked.

“Please, Valerian, can she stay? The Watchmen will be after her.”

And me too,
he thought.

Valerian said nothing.

“And she can’t go back to Madame, because the theater will be shut and-Oh!”

Boy stopped. The theater.

“Yes,” said Valerian, “I expect it will.”

“But that means we’ll be out of work and-”

“I could not, at this moment, possibly care less,” said Valerian. “And the girl cannot stay here. We have too much to do. That is an end to it.”

“But Korp is dead,” Willow protested. “You’ll have nowhere for your act!”

Valerian stood up, and Boy and Willow cowered where they stood. He seemed to tower above them, taller than ever.

“Listen to me. I do not care about the theater, or the act. The only thing that concerns me at the moment is time. Do you see?”

They both shook their heads. Boy shrank back against the wall as Valerian leaned close.

“Listen to me! I am in trouble. Bigger trouble than failing theaters or dead directors. I now have four days left to save my life, and the only way I can do it is hidden from me! Green”-he waved the music box-“was supposed to give me a name-a name that could just possibly save my wretched, cursed skin, and yet I have been tricked! All I have is this worthless gimmick! How can this fairground rubbish give me a name?”

He threw it to the floor.

Willow stepped forward and picked it up. She held it to the light of the single lamp in the room and smiled. She turned the little metal crank and tinny notes rang out across the room.

“I know it does that,” snapped Valerian.

Willow ignored him, and played the music again. And again.

The tune was very simple, with only eight notes. A haunting refrain, and if Valerian had listened he might have heard in it the tone of hope. Willow played it a few times, then a few more.

“Valerian,” she said, “this is a name. This tune is a name, and the name you have been searching for is Gad Beebe.”

After Willow had explained for the fourth time how she knew what the name was, Valerian began to believe it himself.

“Music!” he exclaimed. “Hidden in the music! Before my very ears!”

He laughed.

“Kepler knew what he was doing after all-he must have sent this thing for me. Green decided to play difficult and then…” He laughed again.

This worried Boy. He had never heard Valerian laugh before. It worried him a lot.

“And you learned this from Madame?” Valerian asked Willow.

She nodded. “Yes, she taught me musical notation.” And more than that, Madame had grudgingly told Willow that she had “perfect pitch.” Willow could identify any note in isolation of any other note that might be used as a reference point-an ability Madame herself did not possess.

“And these notes-each one is a letter?”

Willow nodded again. “G-A-D-B-E-E-B-E.”

“By chance the name uses only letters from the first seven of the alphabet,” said Valerian. “Whoever made this thing, or had it made, was not only musical, but had spotted this curious fact about Mr. Beebe. Beebe…,” wondered Valerian aloud. “I’m sure I know the name.”

“So,” ventured Willow, “about me staying… just for a while…”

“Hmm?” said Valerian, his mind elsewhere. “Hmm? Yes, that’s-you might even be useful, unlike Boy.”

He held the music box mechanism in his hand, turning the handle, listening to the vital tune over and over again.

The many clocks in the house began to strike midnight.

It was December 28.

As the last chime died away, Valerian’s mood grew somber again.

“Come,” he said, gruffly. “We have much to do and time is shortening.”

Boy smiled a little. He knew where he was with this Valerian.

The three figures stole through the unusually silent city streets. It had not snowed, as Willow had thought it might. It was cold, however, and Boy was glad he had all his clothes on. Yet again he was out traipsing after Valerian. The only difference was that Willow was with him this time.

Willow and Boy lagged behind as Valerian strode rapidly down dark paths. The City was quiet, partly due to the sudden cold snap that had sent people to their beds early, but mostly because Valerian was heading into one of the few pockets of the City that were somewhat deserted: the Black Quarter, where the last outbreaks of plague had hit the City. As its inhabitants had fled the quarter it had been sealed off by a ring of burning buildings until everyone left inside had survived or died. Although that was many years ago, people had been slow to move back, and only a few of the very poorest citizens lived there now. The buildings were dark, convoluted, tangled mazes thrown together over the years-crooked houses with slanted windows and warped frames. Between them ran the usual gutterlike streets, reeking and heaving with piles of filth. The three hurried on.

“What are we doing?” Willow panted to Boy, struggling to keep up.

“It’s always like this,” Boy said. “I never know anything. You’d better get used to it.”

But it wasn’t always like this, Boy realized as soon as he said it. He was too out of breath to explain, but Valerian was different. Worse.

Boy was used to his moods, used to getting beaten, used to being ignored-but Valerian had definitely changed. Over the last few months he had become distracted. And now Boy knew why.

Four days to live.

Could that be true?

Why?

Boy wondered if Valerian was deluding himself. How could he know he had only four days to live? Maybe Valerian had gone a little crazy and was convinced by some make-believe of his own invention.

But no. That would not be like Valerian.

Four days… That would take him to New Year’s Eve, Boy realized. What could happen that Valerian could be so possessed by?

And what, then, would happen to Boy?

It was still the first hour of December 28. Valerian turned to wait. “Childermass,” he said quietly, when they reached him.

“Sorry?” Boy said.

Valerian glowered at them both.

“Childermass.” Valerian began to walk. He called over his shoulder without looking back, “Today is Childermass. The unluckiest day of the year.”

Boy looked at Willow, who opened her mouth to speak but said nothing.

They trotted after Valerian, who was twenty long paces away already.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Willow asked. Boy began to scratch his nose.

“Valerian!” she called.

Boy looked at her in alarm, for she still did not understand how to wait until Valerian spoke to you.

“Where are we going?”

He did not turn round.

“Valerian!” she called, louder. “Where are-”

And now Valerian loomed over them in the deserted street. His eyes burnt through the darkness at Willow, and she began to shake. It was as if she was standing naked in a snowstorm-she felt cold and small and fragile. Valerian held her gaze until she finally pulled her eyes away and stared at the ground.

“Be quiet, Girl,” he snarled, “or I’ll leave you to rot here.”

He turned and strode off again.

“I told you,” said Boy. “I told you. Don’t upset him.”

He looked at Willow, then saw Valerian about to disappear down yet another shabby alleyway. He looked back at Willow. Her face was drawn and pale.

Boy put his hand on her shoulder.

“Come on.”

“How does he do that?” she asked.

Valerian had vanished around the corner.

Boy tugged at her arm. “We’re better off with him.”

Willow still didn’t move.

“I know,” he said. “I know what it’s like. But really, it’s best if we keep going. Stay with him.”

Willow nodded slowly.

“Where’s he gone now?” he moaned. “Come on, Willow. Please?”

At last she began to walk. Boy pulled her sleeve to hurry her, but he knew that Valerian would be getting further ahead with every stride.

Valerian had gone down a small alley on the left, but now they were closer, Boy could see there were three of them leading off into even deeper darknesses, and he had no idea which one his master had taken. He scratched his nose.

The thought of being alone in the City at night worried him. It brought back memories of things he had half forgotten, of all the years he had lived alone on the streets.

Boy hesitated, and the longer he hesitated, the further away Valerian would be getting.

Grabbing Willow by the hand, he ran down the nearest alleyway, his boots plucking at the mud and filth underfoot.

“Valerian,” he called, but quietly. “Valerian?”

It was so dark in the passage that he could barely see.

“Where is he?” Willow asked, still sounding shaken.

Boy kept running.

Suddenly they came out into a torchlit square. It was vast and empty. Beautiful old buildings leant inward on all four sides, as if trying to get closer to each other across the cobbles that lay between them. Boy took in the square. Compared to the darkness of the alley, the light from the torches was amazingly bright.

There!

There was Valerian, unmistakeable, about to disappear down a street that led off the far corner of the square.

Boy and Willow raced across the open space, feeling vulnerable and watched as they went. The City was quiet, and there still seemed to be no one else around. The sound of their boots on the cobbles of the square rang out like pistol shots.

They made it across and turned into the street. Boy noticed its name: the Deadway. Another bad omen.

Valerian was waiting.

“You two make more noise than I care to hear,” he said as they arrived, panting heavily, but he waited for them to get their breath back.

“Right,” he said. “Nearly there. Then our work begins.”

The look on his face was deadly serious. There was no anger or intimidation this time, none of his tricks of scaring the hearts out of them.

Just
…, thought Boy,
just… fear?

Could Valerian be scared? It seemed unlikely.

Valerian set off.

Boy looked at Willow.

“Are you all right now?” he asked as they followed.

She nodded, forcing a smile.

“I know,” Boy whispered. “He’s… difficult. But better the devil you know.”

Though Boy said this quietly, Valerian had heard.

“What did you say, Boy?” he asked, though not angrily. “A fair quote from you for once. But do not mention his name here.”

They had come to the end of the Deadway, and stopped.

Before them stood a huge pair of ornate bronze gates set into a long, high stone wall. The gates were covered in iron pictures of confusing and frightening design. Human figures, mostly naked, writhed and hung in peculiar postures and agonizing angles from the bars of the gates. Here and there Boy and Willow could see less-than-human figures, but they were not in pain. They grinned demonically and held long sticks or spears, with which they were pricking and piercing the bodies.

“What is this place?” Willow whispered, but Boy had understood.

“Look,” he said.

His voice was deathly. He pointed through the bars of the gates to where, beyond the walls, stretched row after row of cold, gray gravestones.

Above the gates was an arch, upon which were carved some strange words.

“What does that say?” Boy asked Valerian quietly.

“Is your reading still so bad?” Valerian sniped, but merely from habit. There was no life in his voice.

“But it’s strange,” Boy protested.

“It’s Latin,” Valerian said, “and it’s high time you learnt some.
Mille habet mors portas quibus exeat vita. Unam inveniam.
It means, more or less, ‘Death has a thousand doors to let out life. I shall find one.’ ”

It was bitterly cold. Boy and Willow were shivering, but not just from the temperature. Row after row of lifeless stones faded away around them into the darkness of the cemetery. They had crept inside through the massive iron gates, which were not locked. They could just make shapes out from the moonlight that slanted low over the wall of the cemetery. The land sloped slightly from where they stood, so that even in the darkness they could see the stones rising away from them. There were thousands, some small and plain, some big, some carved with complex designs. Some were not mere markers at all but impressive tombs made of huge blocks of stone, surrounded by spiked railings. The railings were designed to keep people out, though Boy thought how strange they looked, like cages, as if they were actually meant to keep people
in
.

“What are we doing here?” Willow whispered.

Boy shook his head.