Читать книгу Dancing Jax - Robin Jarvis - Страница 14

Chapter 8

And the Holy Enchanter had to prove himself worthy to rule whilst his Lord was in exile and so he suffered the Great Ordeal that no other had ever endured, save for the Dawn Prince himself. And thus was their contract made, writ large upon a page that could never be cast away, or misplaced, or stolen by the Jockey, for he could work much mischief with such a deed. And so the Holy Enchanter declared himself the Ismus and his reign in his Lord’s stead commenced, with neither challenge nor question, and the new order began.

INSIDE THE METAL container on the back of Tesco Charlie’s lorry, Jezza’s eyes roved round his disciples. The spectral light in there was courtesy of three cheap LED caravan lamps stuck to the cold, corrugated sides. Everyone had dutifully obeyed his summons.

Queenie and Manda, “the floating girlfriends”, as he termed them, were having a whale of a time. Queenie loved hanging with the group: it made her feel younger than her forty something years, but then so did the jet-black hair dye she anointed herself with – and the biker-chick outfits she wore. Pushing her hands up through her unnaturally raven hair, she gyrated when the container shook and made a stuttering dance of her attempts to keep from falling over. Manda was her plumper friend who had abandoned trying to keep up with Queenie’s skimpy dress sense and just as skimpy waistline long ago. Manda was currently spending much of her time with Miller and it was him she held on to when the container juddered. Richard Miller didn’t seem too happy about that because he wanted to look at his copy of Dancing Jacks, but she kept getting in the way.

Jezza looked from them to Dave. He was an unlikely member of their varied little band. He was an impressionable nineteen and looked up to Jezza in most things. Jezza in turn enjoyed the gradual kneading of his receptive, doughy mind, feeding it the yeast of new ideas that Dave had never dreamed of and couldn’t quite comprehend.

Howie and Tommo were sitting on some of the charcoal bags stacked at the end of the container. The tattooist was trying to read more of the strange children’s book by the ghostly light of one of the LED lamps. His head was nodding, partly from the motion of the container, but mainly from the rhythm of the words on the pages. He was lost in the world of Austerly Fellows.

At his side, the shaking and lurching about made Tommo feel nauseous. One of the bags had split and the disgorged briquettes were rolling up and down in front of him, making the sensation even worse. Close by were three large water carriers that Jezza had put on board and the sloshing noises they made didn’t help steady Tommo’s stomach either. At least he wasn’t anywhere near Miller’s backside though. He raised his eyes and stared at the other thing the others had brought back from the house.

Shiela was staring at it too. It dominated the centre of the container and it frightened her.

She had spent the better part of an hour waiting at the tattoo parlour alone and hated every minute. She wasn’t sure why, but those crates of books unsettled her so she took herself to the rear of the shop and reclined on the tattooist’s chair. Yet the thought of the books on the other side of the partition began to gnaw away at her mind and she couldn’t stop thinking about them. For reasons she was unable to explain to herself, Shiela began to wonder what they were doing. Were they still in the crates, or had they got out somehow? It was a ridiculous notion, but she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder more than once.

Eventually she could bear it no longer and had to return to the front of the shop to make sure they were still present in their big wooden boxes. What was it about these strange old books? Why did they fill her thoughts so much? Why did they make her so uneasy? What had happened earlier when Jezza had read from them? Why were the men behaving so weirdly?

Looking at the sofa on which she had flung her copy, Shiela’s eyelids drooped. The next thing she knew she was sitting there, the green and cream book in her hand, and she was turning to the first page. She experienced a rush of excitement and felt safe and content. The tatty sofa became a stone bench beneath a castle window, strewn with sumptuous velvet cushions. Golden wire was twisted in her braided hair, a tear-shaped piece of amethyst dangled at her brow and a heavy jewelled brooch was fastened to her bodice. Somewhere in the castle the minstrels were playing; she could hear strains of their music drifting through the galleries. She gazed out of the window that looked down on to the courtyard. The silver fountain was tinkling sweetly, the cascading crystal waters sparkling in the shafts of evening sunlight.

And there was the Queen of Spades, dressed richly in silks and velvets of the deepest midnight blue and studded with sapphire gemstones. Hurrying after was her dull-witted ally and confidante, the Queen of Hearts. As usual, the Queen of Spades was casting around, making sure no one was within earshot, and whispered something to her. The Under Queens were always full of intrigue, Shiela found herself thinking, and that wily one was the worst. What new conspiracies or gossip was she disseminating now? Shiela should speak to the Ismus about her, or maybe the Harlequin Priests could point to a sombre colour on their robes when they…

A car pulled up outside the window and Shiela jolted back on the sofa. Breathing hard, she looked down at the book in her hands and dropped it as if it had burned her. Then she jumped up and hurried to the door.

“All right, She-luv!” Queenie had greeted, carefully negotiating herself out of the car in her ultra skinny jeans. “You OK? You’re white as Manda’s bingo wings.”

“Where’s Miller?” Manda had asked, slamming the other door and looking round. “His bike’s here.”

Shiela had stared at them, speechless, trying to understand what had just happened.

Then there came the sound of a motorbike and Dave came roaring up on his Honda.

“Here’s Babyface!” Queenie had cried, throwing her arms wide in welcome and clattering her acrylic nails over his crash helmet before he had a chance to remove it.

The VW was not far behind. But… there was something tied to the roof rack. Something large and unfamiliar, Shiela could not make out what it was. A Gothic sledge? Before they could ask, Tesco Charlie’s lorry came lumbering along the road.

“Well met!” Jezza had greeted everyone with a flamboyant bow. “Now let’s get this into Charlie’s lovely truck.”

By the time Tommo had arrived in a borrowed estate car with everything he had been instructed to fetch, the ‘thing’ had been manoeuvred off the camper’s roof rack and into the huge metal container.

Now, in the phantom light of the white LEDs, Shiela stared at its skeletal frame and feared it.

They had been ordered to remain silent. Tesco Charlie was uncharacteristically forceful about that point. If he was going to smuggle them into the port undetected, they had to be quieter than mice doing a sponsored silence.

Queenie found this rule particularly hard to adhere to. She deplored the quiet and had to plug any silence with noise and even left her television on when she left her flat because she loathed coming back to a mausoleum.

Dancing to tunes in her head, she had wriggled and swayed all the way from the tattoo parlour towards the port entrance and had to be warned by Jezza when she got carried away and started drumming on the metal side. This was a great adventure for her and she was going to live it to the max.

“We must be nearly there,” Jezza said softly as they felt the lorry slow down and eventually stop.

They could not hear the bantering exchange between Charlie and the security guard at the gate, but it was soon over and the lorry was off again. It drove into the container port and continued going for what seemed an interminably long time before finally coming to rest. The engine stopped with a shudder and all eyes turned to Jezza.

“Now we wait for the signal,” he told them.

Dave looked at his watch. It was a few minutes past nine. They didn’t have long to wait. Even inside the container they heard the Fiesta exploding. Tesco Charlie left his cab and began unlocking the doors at the end of the container.

The cool night air blew in.

“How did you manage that?” the long-haired driver asked, peering in at them through his thick spectacles. “It was enormous – it…”

The second explosion drowned whatever he was about to say next. He ran around the side of the lorry and saw the fireball boiling up to the night clouds. Jezza sprang down and joined him. The fire danced in his eyes.

Charlie had driven his great lorry deep into the massive port. Huge containers just like the one that had smuggled them in were all around, stacked five high. Tommo clambered out next, glad to be back on solid ground, and he recovered rapidly.

“Like ants in a Lego set,” he chirped, gazing about him.

A streak of lightning ripped through the darkness and the thunder rolled. Then sirens started – lots of them. The port police were responding to the emergency outside the Landguard Fort. So too were the fire engines and the ambulances. In a matter of moments, they were all speeding through the gates.

“What’s going on out there?” Shiela asked as she drew alongside the others. “Is that screaming?”

Howie was holding the book to his chest. “The flock is bleating,” he muttered. “They are lost and abandoned and searching for the way. I shall paint this night, I shall paint…”

A savage crack of lightning directly overhead caused everyone to look up. There were sparks spitting from the lamp towers.

“They’re going to have to buy new cameras tomorrow,” Jezza said simply. “Let’s get on with what we came here for.”

Miller, Dave and Charlie heaved the great Gothic-looking object out of the container and set it down the right way up. A reverberating clang went echoing between the container canyons.

Shiela approached it warily. It was a great metal chair, no – it was more like a throne. She wandered around it, careful not to get too close. There was something unpleasant, almost malevolent, about it, not just because it was heavy and ugly or because it was too large for a normal-sized person to sit on comfortably. Crafted from fancy cast-iron work, with curling fronds and interlocking patterns, it seemed more than what it appeared to be, as though it had another purpose. Each arm was formed to be like a cage, so was the seat and the high back.

“It’s horrible,” she said.

Queenie had no such misgivings. She was already using it as a prop to dance suggestively around. Manda had found the beers and was necking her first while Tommo brandished a plastic bag and brought out a packet of burgers and some baps.

“Let’s get this party cooking!” he said.

“Don’t be a cretin all your life,” Jezza told him severely. “Chuck that crap away and get the coals.”

The lightning continued to crackle overhead.

“I’ve never seen an electrical storm like this,” Charlie declared. He lifted his hand and viewed it through his thick lenses. The hairs were standing on end. “The air is charged with static!”

“Gather around the Waiting Throne,” Jezza told everyone. “Not too close, and keep away from the containers. It might get a bit … frisky up there.”

“Ow!” Manda cried as a whisker of blue light leaped from the can to her lip. She dropped it and the beer went foaming over the floor.

“What’s going on?” Miller called.

“We’re just charging up,” Jezza answered. “This is the best place for it – all this wonderful metal, like a massive aerial.”

“Tuning into what?” Shiela asked.

The man smiled at her. “Whom,” he said.

“I love it!” Queenie shouted, tingling as she stroked the arm of the iron chair.

“Ow!” Manda cried again. This time her necklace was throwing out millipede legs of energy and she removed it hastily. It jumped and twitched on the ground.

“I advise you all to get rid of any jewellery now,” Jezza told them.

Bracelets and rings were hurriedly taken off and Charlie had to lose his glasses. Shiela could feel her hair lifting and there was an unpleasant tang in her mouth.

“Like licking a battery,” Tommo said, voicing her own thoughts.

He had been bringing out the bags of charcoal. Now Jezza ripped them open and, taking one to the chair, twisted one of the designs in the ironwork. The top of an arm hinged open. It took three bags to fill the space beneath. Then he went to the other arm and did the same there.

The lightning continued to flash and split the sky.

Shiela had been staring up at the giant cranes. The electricity was leaping between them, arcing across the port in a spectacular display.

She could not understand what was happening. Why were they really here? When she lowered her eyes, Jezza had filled the seat and the back of the chair, with only one bag to spare. The throne was now packed with charcoal.

“Get the water carriers,” he ordered Tommo. “I want them close.” Then he gestured for everyone to stand clear.

“I don’t like this,” Manda said. “I thought we were going to have a laugh. This isn’t a laugh. It’s mad.”

Miller reached to hold her hand. A spark flew across and they jumped apart.

“I want to go home!” she cried.

“Muzzle her,” Jezza snapped. “You should be grovelling on your faces to be here, to witness the contract.”

Shiela agreed with Manda, but Queenie’s eyes were sparkling. She felt more alive than she had in years; she didn’t want this to end. She lifted her hands in the air and dared the lightning to strike her, laughing hysterically.

Dave stared at her. Filaments of energy were branching off her body as she danced. He didn’t know whether to be terrified or surrender himself to the experience and see what happened. Tommo could feel his hair crackling with the static. It tickled him and he hopped about manically. Spiders of light came leaping from his arms and legs.

Tesco Charlie could barely make out what was happening. It was a blur of brilliant blue zigzags and shapes, but he thought it was amazing and threw back his head to yell out his delight.

“Begin,” Jezza said to Howie.

The tattooist had been very quiet and now, when they looked at him, they saw that his piercings were spitting with strands of flickering blue flame and yet he seemed oblivious to it.

“And so the Holy Enchanter dared what only the Dawn Prince before had done,” he said, reading out loud from the book. “For there was no other way to bring order to the warring Court. With great courage, he stepped up to the Waiting Throne and proved that only he was worthy of becoming the Ismus. Only he could rule in his Lord’s absence and so the pact was made and sealed with fire!”

On that last word there was a deafening clap of thunder and a bolt of lightning came shooting down. It slammed into the iron chair. There was a shrill, razoring chime and the coals within exploded in flames.

Everyone cried out and covered their faces. Shiela turned to run, but the alley between the containers was alive with electricity. The forking streaks were rebounding from wall to wall, forming an impassable and lethal fence.

Manda was sobbing into her hands, but Howie’s voice was louder.

“From that day the Holy Enchanter’s word was law,” he declaimed. The studs in his bottom lip were wreathed with cold fire that snaked throughout his gingery beard. “And none who beheld that contract dared conspire against him! His authority was absolute.”

The coals within the iron chair were blazing and beginning to glow a cherry red. Then Shiela realised what was about to happen.

“No,” she breathed in horror. But she couldn’t stop it. Though her mind told her it was insane, she knew this was meant to be. This was how it must be. Howie’s voice was fogging her judgement. She thought she was back in that castle, looking up at the throne, and the entire Court was gathered around them, holding their breath with fear and wonder.

Jezza removed his leather jacket and slipped off his boots. Howie continued reading from the book and still Queenie danced.

Then the rain began. The iron chair hissed and the flames died within the charcoal. The electric forces around them dimmed and were extinguished. Jezza was naked now. With his head bowed, he approached the Waiting Throne.

“Don’t!” Shiela begged, her reason struggling to the fore. “You’ll die!”

Her boyfriend did not respond, but Howie turned to her and in a solemn, commanding voice said, “Have faith, Labella.”

And then, as the rain teemed down, Miller stepped forward, all expression gone from his face. The burly man lifted Jezza by the waist and lowered him on to the scorching metal of the chair and Jezza pressed his bare back against it.

Shiela covered her ears. His shrieks were louder than the thunder that boomed across the harbour. She saw him clench his teeth so tightly that every vein stood out across his neck and chest and he placed his arms on those of the chair. Another howl of thunder – or was it merely him?

Miller bowed and walked backwards.

“Enough!” Shiela screamed, breaking through the enchantment that had smothered her. “That’s enough!”

Darting forward, she seized Jezza’s hands and pulled him clear. He went rolling on the ground, curled up in a ball, choking with his pain-filled cries.

When she saw the state of his back, she grabbed one of the water carriers and emptied it over him.

“Call an ambulance!” she shouted. “Hurry!”

“No!” Howie answered.

“He’ll die!” she yelled. “Look at him – look at that!”

“It’s beautiful,” the tattooist said admiringly. “Such exquisite work.”

The girl stared at him for an instant. Had everyone gone crazy? Howie was normally so level-headed and sensible. She reached for her phone and was about to dial 999 when a trembling hand knocked it from her grip.

“No hospitals!” Jezza struggled to say. “No doctors! I must… endure it alone.”

“Jezza!” she protested. “You need help.”

“There is no Jezza!” he screamed back at her. Then he collapsed and lay sprawled face down on the floor, the rain lashing across his body.

Shiela looked round at the others. They were staring at the man at her feet. The throne had seared strange symbols and ancient writing into his flesh.

“The contract is made,” Howie announced. “Lift the Ismus. We must bear him from this place.”

With the utmost reverence, Miller, Tommo and Dave approached the unconscious man. Tesco Charlie had put his glasses back on and brought a blanket from his cab. They covered the Ismus with it and gently carried him inside the container on the back of the lorry.

Shiela watched in disbelief. Even Manda and Queenie were playing along with it now, walking behind them like overawed worshippers.

Howie emptied the other two water carriers over the Waiting Throne and clouds of steam billowed upwards.

“Come, Labella,” he said, emerging from the white vapour with a beatific smile widening in his beard. “Rejoice. We have a Lord to rule over us and govern the Dancing Jacks. When the Ismus recovers from the Great Ordeal and arises, order shall be restored.”

Shiela could not comprehend what had happened that night. But she knew they had all taken a step towards something sinister and final and there was no going back.