The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

‘Lor’, I do look bad, don’t I?’ She pulled one bleary eyelid down, and examined the mottled orb thus revealed. She decided it was not a pretty sight, and turned away from the unpleasant reflection. ‘Only it’s not my fault. I was up till all hours with Lord Bywater… or was it Lord Byworth?’

‘Could it have been Lord Byron?’ Malinferno offered, not a modicum pleased with his ready wit so late at night. The thought of Doll cavorting with the mad, bad poet was a delectable picture.

‘Yeah, that’s it. Lord Byron.’

Malinferno hooted with laughter.

‘I think not, Doll. The audacious poet of that name has been abroad for a good few years. I believe he is now in Ravenna, not Bath, and good luck to him.’

Doll’s features flushed, giving her pale cheeks a more rosy hue.

‘The bastard. He said he was Lord Byron, and even dashed off a poem for me. I have it in my reticule.’

She dug around in her little bag for a while, finally giving up the hunt when the piece of paper refused to be found.

‘Sod it, I must have lost it. Well, if he wasn’t Byron, then the ode wasn’t worth the paper it was written on anyway.’

She hawked and coughed in a most unladylike manner, wiping her lips with the back of her hand.

‘Come to think of it, the wine he gave me was like sheep’s piss too. But the point of the story is that whoever he was, he skipped without paying while I was kipping. Result was, me getting back home with no money, and only your lovely self for company.’

She drew one slender finger seductively down the front of Malinferno’s partially undone, soiled linen shirt as she uttered these final words. The professor was unimpressed, and stopped her hand before it reached a region where his brain would cease to function.

‘Nice try, Doll. But I will have the scarab back.’

‘Damn you, Joe Malinferno.’

Doll stamped her pretty slippered foot, and dropped the ruby scarab she had purloined into Malinferno’s upturned palm. He closed his fist over it, and winked at Doll.

‘Anyway, I need to sell it, or you and I will not have any means of getting to Solsbury Hill after we do the unrolling for the duchess.’

Doll Pocket gave out a whoop. ‘Then we are off on the treasure hunt, after all?’

Malinferno grimaced. ‘Yes, if I can sell the scarab.’

As if deliberately trying to annoy him, Doll suddenly cackled like a demented hen, and grabbed Malinferno by the waist. She swung him round in a madcap dance that had the aged floorboards creaking under them.

‘Oh, we’ll have a real good time, won’t we, Joe?’

Her celebration was suddenly drowned out by the most hideous noise Malinferno had ever heard. It resembled the sound of a pedestrianist running the race of his life, gasping for each breath. It would have to be a giant of a man, though, for the breaths were ear-splitting hisses and snorts that rent the air with their exhalations. These frenetic gasps were accompanied by a veritable thrumming, like the parts of a weaving loom, or water pump in a flooded mine, with overtones of howling dogs. Doll pulled up the sash window, and thrust her head out.

‘Oh lawks, it’s the very devil come to carry us away.’

Malinferno peered over her shoulder, aware of the softness of her skin and the alluring scent that perfumed it. He realised her expostulation was not far from the truth. Slowly rolling to a halt in front of their lodgings was a shiny black four-wheeled coach. But the unnerving thing was that there were no horses attached to the front of it. Smoke and steam roiled around the rear of the coach, giving it the very appearance of some demon’s conveyance. The whole contraption vibrated like a living creature. On the driver’s seat perched a dwarfish figure wreathed in a dirty green coat, his face obscured by a heavy black mask. Malinferno realised that the sound that resembled howling dogs had in truth been howling dogs. Wherever this hellish coach had come from, it had been chased by a gathering pack of street curs, which yelped and barked at its passage, baring their teeth in fear and loathing. The pack now stood at a safe distance from the steaming rear of the coach, growling and circling. The dwarf rose from his seat, skipped down nimbly to the ground, and threw a stone at the dogs. They slinked away, apparently more scared of the little demon than his conveyance. He then turned towards Malinferno’s lodgings, and toiled one at a time up the steep steps to the front door. Doll squealed in a mixture of horror and delight.

‘Blimey, Joe, have you made a pact with the devil or something? Because I think he’s come to collect.’

It turned out that there was nothing demonic about the steam-shrouded carriage and its dwarfish driver. In fact, its appearance heralded another stroke of good fortune for Malinferno. For, when Joe descended to the front door to admit the little man, he discovered the conveyance had indeed come for him. But it was not sent by Satan. The owner of the new-fangled, steam-powered horseless carriage was none other than the niggardly Duchess of Avon. The dwarf, John Smallbone by name, pulled the leather mask with round glass portholes for each eye from his face, revealing a quite cherubic expression. He explained that his mistress had sent him to collect ‘the professor’ as the venue for the unrolling had been changed. Malinferno was intrigued, but pulled a face, jingling the coins in his pocket.

‘I am not sure I can afford to work for your mistress, John Smallbone.’

The dwarf cackled, his chubby face turning bright red with the effort.

‘The mistress is careful with her money, isn’t she?’ He tapped the side of his bulbous nose. ‘But I think you will find her more generous due to these changes in circumstance.’

‘What does the new commission entail?’

‘I cannot say, but I am told you are to come with your actress friend…’

Doll, who by now had come down to stand behind Joe, and was listening to the exchange, gave a cry of annoyance.

‘Watch it, titch. I ain’t no whore of an actress, but a lady.’

The dwarf refrained from adding the epithet ‘of the night’ to Doll’s self-description, contenting himself with a deep bow of insincere contrition.

‘My apologies, lady. I meant no offence.’ He turned back to Malinferno to continue his explanation. ‘As the journey is some distance, I have come in the Trevithick Flyer.’ He indicated the infernal conveyance. ‘It will easily carry yourselves and your Egyptian mummy to the rites and festivities the duchess has laid on for her special guests.’

Malinferno was not sure about venturing into the unknown. But the lure of further funds was sufficient to cause him to agree to the change in plans. He ushered Doll upstairs to begin packing their meagre belongings, before turning back to John Smallbone.

‘You said we had a journey ahead of us. Where are these festivities to be held?’

‘Oh, did I not say? The duchess plans a solemn ritual on an ancient and mysterious site some three miles outside Bath. They do say ghosts roam there at night.’ His little body shuddered. ‘I should not like to be there after dark. It is called Solsbury Hill.’

The journey to Solsbury Hill took longer than anticipated, so Malinferno and Doll Pocket’s arrival was closer to dusk than John Smallbone fancied, bearing in mind the ghostly associations he had mentioned. The problem was the Trevithick Flyer, which, it turned out, could not cope with the gradient up from the outskirts of Bath to the hill in question. The horseless carriage huffed and puffed merrily through Bath, drawing attention to its maniacal progress every yard it moved. Fingers pointed at this strange carriage that rolled along without horses, but with a great bubbling canister of steam lashed to its rear portion. And the sight of Smallbone, with his infernal mask once again on his face, was enough to cause many a sign against the devil to be cast his way. But as the ground began to change from level to a steady incline, the carriage rolled along more and more slowly. Malinferno’s scientific mind saw that this increased lack of propulsion was in inverse proportion to a growth in alarming sounds emanating from the boiler behind them. The wheezes and sighs that had marked their initial progress forward became louder and more stertorous. The engine was gasping like a labouring runner whose heart and lungs were about to burst. Doll clutched Malinferno’s arm in alarm.