Читать книгу Palace of the Damned - Darren Shan - Страница 10

As the engine roared and the aircraft picked up speed and bounced over the grass, Larten glanced around and thought, This is never going to fly! The wings looked like six boxes, three on either side, a mix of bamboo and silk, joined by something that Alberto had called aluminium. How could a contraption like this ever leave the ground?

“Go on, Vur!” Alicia cried, shaking her fist in the light of the almost full moon. “You can do it!”

Alberto stood next to her, doubled over with laughter. He’d told Larten not to try – no amateur could fly his 14-bis, his beloved bird of prey – but Alicia had dared him and Larten never backed away from a dare.

“By the black blood of Harnon Oan!” Larten growled, then pulled on the lever that was meant to control the craft. To his astonishment – as well as Alicia’s and Alberto’s – the aircraft lifted a few feet. He flew for all of five seconds before the wheels hit the ground. He thought that would be the end of it, but the aircraft continued to power ahead, and when he tried the lever again he rose maybe nine feet in the air and flew for eighty or ninety feet before crashing back to earth.

One of the wings dipped and tipped towards the ground. Moments later the aircraft screeched to an abrupt halt and Larten was thrown forward to roll across the grass until he came to a painful stop.

“Vur!” Alicia yelled, racing after him. “Are you all right? Have you broken any bones, my darling?”

“I am intact,” Larten muttered, standing and wincing.

When Alicia saw that he hadn’t been seriously injured, she threw herself into his arms and knocked him down again. Larten was laughing by the time Alberto caught up with him, mock-wrestling with the beautiful Alicia.

“That was superb!” Alberto applauded. “It must have been a hundred feet at least.”

“I think slightly less,” Larten said.

“Even so… magnifique! I’ve managed no more than two hundred feet myself and I’m an expert.”

“You do not need to be an expert to fly one of these,” Larten sniffed. “Just insane.”

“Didn’t you enjoy it, darling?” Alicia asked.

“No,” he grunted. “Monsieur Santos-Dumont and the Wright Brothers can wage their war for the air without me. I have experienced all the joys of flight I ever intend to. It is a crazy form of transport, Alberto. If you heed my advice, you will get out of this business immediately. There is no future in aircrafts.”

With that, the smiling vampire turned his back on the shuddering machine and never stepped aboard an aeroplane again.

Paris in 1906 was a chic, vibrant, multi-layered wonder. The Eiffel Tower, still standing seventeen years after it had been erected as a temporary exhibit for the Universal Exposition, was the tallest building in the world. The métro had opened six years ago, providing Parisians with a fascinating ride deep beneath the streets. The city was flooded with artists, many hoping to improve on the advances made some years earlier by the Impressionists. It had the most acclaimed museums, the finest restaurants, the rowdiest nightlife. From the respectability of the Louvre to the seediness of the Moulin Rouge, Paris had something for everyone.

For Larten Crepsley, above all else it had Alicia Dunyck, a woman with whom he’d fallen in love.

They had met for the first time four years earlier, when Larten fetched up in Paris at random. He had been going by the name of Vur Horston, which was how Alicia still knew him. After what he had done on the ship to Greenland, he wanted to try and forget about Larten Crepsley, at least for a while, possibly forever.

Gavner brought the pair of them together. The baby had survived the trek back from the icy wastes and grown into a sturdy little boy. It would have been easy for Larten to rear him as his son, but he didn’t feel that he had the right. He had never lost sight of the fact that he had killed the boy’s parents. He believed it would be hypocrisy of the highest order if he took their place and let the boy love him as a father.

Although Larten fed and cared for Gavner on their way back, he was stern with the boy and refused to treat him with love. He believed a night would come when he and the adult Gavner Purl must address the nature of his foul crime. He didn’t want any sort of emotional attachment to confuse the orphan when that night came.

Larten tried to offload the boy a number of times, but nobody seemed to want him. He could have abandoned Gavner and left him to the workings of fate, but he needed to be sure that the boy would have a chance to prosper. So he kept Gavner by his side longer than he would have liked, crossing the world with no real plan, waiting for the right set of parents to accept the growing child.

In Paris he finally found a home for the boy. He had made money gambling, and attracted a wealthy circle of fair-weather friends. He had no interest in these vain, frivolous people except to find parents for Gavner. Wealth wasn’t important to Larten, but the rich had a much easier time in life than the poor, so he thought he might as well settle the boy with a prosperous couple.

He met Alicia by chance. She was the cousin of one of the men he gambled with. She came one night to experience a little of her cousin’s sordid world. Alicia stood out among the others in the saloon. She didn’t consider herself superior to the women of low class or the men of dark vices, or look upon them with disdain. But there was a sadness in her expression as she watched the lost creatures chase their petty pleasures. Larten, who knew much about sadness, was moved by it and made an excuse to talk with her and meet her again in a place more fitting than a den of wine, women and cards.

Alicia was suspicious of the pale, scarred, orange-haired man of mystery. There were many rumours about the strange Vur Horston, that he’d made his money from the illegal slave trade, that he was a highly paid assassin, that he avoided the sun because he had signed a contract with the devil and would burst into flame if exposed to the pure light of the day world.

“Nothing so dramatic,” Larten laughed when Alicia put this accusation to him. “I have a severe skin condition, that is all.”

She was wary of the stranger and didn’t encourage further visits, but Larten was persistent, popping up wherever she went, bending her ear, discussing art and dancing with her. (He had no great love of either, but made an effort to impress.) He realised that lavish presents wouldn’t impress her, so instead he scoured the markets for quirky, beautiful flowers or charming, cracked ornaments, which were worthless but came with an interesting story.

As she slowly warmed to him, Larten introduced her to Gavner, who was a sullen, quiet boy. Gavner knew Larten preferred silence and a sense of distance, so he was more withdrawn than most children. Like all young boys, he craved love, but having received none from the man who refused to act as his father, he hoped to earn Larten’s approval by behaving as coldly as the adult did.

Larten didn’t tell Alicia that he was hoping to give away the boy. Instead he told her that Gavner was the son of an old friend and that he’d vowed to look after the orphan when his parents died. He let her think it was his intention to bring up Gavner on his own.

“Why are you so hard on him?” Alicia asked not long after she got to know the child. “You’re kind and gentle with me. Why not with Gavner?”

“I raise him the way I was raised,” Larten answered stiffly. “Discipline is good for a growing boy.”

“But you push him away every time he tries to get close to you,” she said.

Larten grunted sourly, but inside he was smiling. As he had hoped, Alicia made even more of an effort with Gavner, encouraging him to smile, laugh, play and enjoy the world. A bond grew between them, and although Alicia was young and free, with hopes of having children of her own one day, she didn’t hesitate when Larten asked if she wished to take the boy and rear him as her son.

That should have been the end of the matter. Larten had finally rid himself of his charge and was free to search for a place in the wide, lonely world. But he had grown fond of Alicia, so he made one excuse after another to stay. Weeks became months, and months became years. He still occasionally spoke of leaving, but it had been a long time since he’d truly meant it. He had found unexpected peace in Paris, and while he refused to admit it, deep down he hoped to stay with Alicia to the end of her relatively short, normal life.

They returned home after Larten’s adventure in the aircraft, still laughing. Alberto Santos-Dumont was a good friend of Alicia’s. She couldn’t understand his obsession with building the first proper aircraft (“The Wrights use catapults to launch their clumsy contraptions! How can that be a real aircraft?” he would protest whenever the American pioneers were mentioned), but she enjoyed watching the machines that he built, especially when they got off the ground. Larten didn’t normally come with her when she visited Alberto – he preferred night pursuits to those of the day – but he was fascinated by her reports. When he’d casually declared that any fool could fly the simple aircraft, she put the challenge to Alberto and convinced him to let Larten try the 14-bis one bright, moonlit night.

“You could be an aircraft operator,” Alicia joked as they let themselves in. “Alberto says there will be large aircraft soon, with seats for passengers. You could get a job flying people from one town to another.”

“Alberto lives in a fantasy world,” Larten snorted. “Aircraft are a novelty. They will never replace trains or boats. Only a fool would think otherwise.”

“I don’t know,” Alicia sang, tweaking his nose, then went to check on Gavner. He was fast asleep and snoring heavily. She’d never known anyone who snored as loudly as Gavner Purl.

Larten was staring out of the window when she returned. He was thinking about Malora and the people on the ship, as he often did in quiet moments like this. No matter how much happiness he found with Alicia, the sorrows of the past were never far from his thoughts.

Alicia studied him, gazing at his troubled reflection in the glass, wishing she could do something to rid him of his grief. There was much about his life that was a secret. She knew he’d had an unhappy past, that he was hiding a lot from her. But that didn’t matter. She loved him and was sure he’d reveal the full truth to her in time. And no matter how disturbing it was, she would still love him and do what she could to help him deal with it.

After all, she thought as she slid forward and embraced Larten, bringing a smile to his thin lips, it can’t be that bad. No matter what life has thrown at him, regardless of what he did in his youth, he is a good man at heart. His dark deeds are probably nowhere near as grisly as he believes. And if they are? Well, I’ll forgive him. We all make mistakes. That’s simply the nature of what we are. I’ll confess mine and accept his. He has set his standards high, and that is admirable, but he should not be so hard on himself. After all, I will tell him, at the end of the day, like the rest of us, he’s only human…