The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

‘Lawks, what if the boiler explodes, Joe?’

Malinferno pasted a confident smile on his face. A smile that was more optimistic than he felt at heart.

‘Trust in science, Doll. Mr Trevithick is a great engineer…’

Before he could finish his speech lauding the skills of the masterful Cornishman, however, the boiler gave a great, despairing groan. Doll rose from her seat.

‘Bugger Mr Trevithick. I’m getting off before we are blown sky high.’

She jumped out of the carriage, and onto the side of the roadway. Malinferno was much pleased that the lightening of the load seemed to assist the labouring engine. The Flyer began to gain speed once more. He leaned out the window to express his sense of triumph. But he was exasperated to see that Doll, even hampered with her long skirts, was walking faster than the engine could propel the carriage. She was rapidly forging ahead, and Malinferno was too embarrassed to call out to her to wait. Finally, a steep hill was reached, and the not-so-winged Flyer gave up the ghost. With a piercing hiss, the steam pressure gave up and groaned out of the emergency release valve. The conveyance was no more, and Malinferno was left red-faced, staring out the carriage window. Doll sat down on a convenient milestone, her legs akimbo, and roared with laughter.

It took John Smallbone an hour to find a farmer who could bring a pair of heavy horses used for ploughing in order to pull the Flyer to its destination. The coach was exceptionally heavy with Trevithick’s engine stuck on the back, so eventually the passengers had to descend and walk beside their cumbersome conveyance. In fact, Malinferno was reduced to carrying both his and Doll’s baggage. So it was a sweating and purple-faced professor who arrived in the duchess’s encampment on Solsbury Hill, along with his prettily perspiring companion and a more conventionally powered carriage, pulled by horses. Doll’s muslin dress stuck to her curves, and several of the males in the crowd who had assembled at their arrival had eyes for her barely concealed bosom. Servants in knee-breeches and white powdered wigs scurried across the site, which, with its tents and men on horseback, resembled a grand hiring fair. Or maybe Mr Astley’s Amphitheatre of Performing Arts, which usually stood close by Westminster Bridge, for Doll heard a terrible animalistic roar, then spotted, not far away, the brown furry outline of a performing bear tethered to a post in the ground. She almost expected to see tumblers, and a girl standing by a board having knives thrown at her.

John Smallbone leaped from the driver’s box, and his dwarfish stature only added to the carnival atmosphere as he bustled across the site to find his mistress, the duchess.

Malinferno muttered in Doll’s ear, ‘See how the noble lords are looking at us. I think we are the freak show at this grand spectacle.’

Doll laughed, and passed her handkerchief over her brow.

‘I think they are looking at me, Joe. Not you. Though I think someone else has just distracted them.’

She pointed at another carriage, which had just arrived atop Solsbury Hill and debouched a woman dressed in what Doll could only have described as en Venus . That is, she was not dressed much further up than the waist, save for an outlandish peasant headdress ornamented with spangles and fluttering ribbons. Malinferno glanced over at her.

‘What a trollop. She has no doubt been brought in to entertain the gentlemen after we have played our part in this… ridiculous melodrama. Look how they crowd around her, simply because her bosoms are on show.’

Doll poked him in the ribs. ‘If her bosom troubles you, then take your eyes off it for a minute. We need to work out how we are going to set up the mummy so we can unroll him for the delectation of this crowd. And did you bring the spades? We have some digging to do when we have finished with the demonstration.’

Malinferno was irritated by Doll’s suggestion that he was leering over the middle-aged tart who seemed to have attracted everyone else’s attention. But he couldn’t help watching until she disappeared in the crowds making their way towards the duchess’s tent.

‘Yes, yes, of course I have them here. And the scarab and the papyrus, so we can salt the mummy with extra finds. What is more important is how on earth we are going to sneak away in order to dig where Bromhead’s map says the treasure is located.’

He fumbled in his greatcoat pocket for the precious piece of paper entrusted to him by his friend Augustus. He unfolded it and pressed the ancient map flat on top of the box that held the remains of the Egyptian mummy. He pointed a finger at the sketchy drawing. It was of the roughly triangular-shaped earthworks with one point of the equal-sided triangle at the bottom. This point was rounded, and to Doll’s eyes looked more like a naughty child’s sketch of a mound of Venus than anything geographical. She giggled, and Malinferno gave her a funny look before he carried on.

‘Look, we came up to the hill on this track running from the south-east, and Augustus’s notes suggest we should dig where he has put this cross. This means our site is…’ He looked up in order to orientate himself, and groaned. ‘… Exactly where the duchess has pitched her tent.’

Doll looked to where Malinferno was pointing. It was one of the more extravagant tents erected on the site, and was obviously the duchess’s. They could see her speaking to John Smallbone through the opening facing them. The interior was laid out with carpets and a bed, as if it were an Eastern harem. Or at least Malinferno’s image of such a location, though his idea was based only on his intimate knowledge of the rooms in Madame de Trou’s brothel in Petticoat Lane. The duchess peered out into the darkening sky, and waved a dismissive hand at Smallbone. The little dwarf bustled back over to Malinferno and Doll Pocket.

‘The duchess is annoyed that you are late. She says the banquet has finished, and the guests are awaiting the entertainment.’ He pulled a face. ‘I am sorry. It is my fault you missed all the food. Let me guide you to the tent where you can prepare for your show. You are on after the dancing bear. I will try to rustle up some cold meat and potatoes.’

He hurried off before Malinferno could explain he did not put on a ‘show’ like some circus entertainer. He gave his audience an educational experience. He turned to Doll to express his outrage to her, but she was already following Smallbone. She waved a hand at him.

‘Come on, Joe, or the show will be late.’

The whole of the southern end of the hill was littered with tents. It was as if an invading army led by Napoleon Bonaparte had landed close to Bath and was about to strike at the very heart of England. But of course rumours of the Emperor’s escape from St Helena had long been scotched. England’s firmest enemy seemed to be declining into comfortable old age on his tiny island empire.

After clambering over several guy ropes and almost pitching face down over a tent-peg, Malinferno grudgingly entered a small and stiflingly hot tent where Doll was already disrobing. His demeanour improved as he admired her curves, and the pinkness of her flesh. She flashed him a steely look, and threw the long white robe he wore as Anubis over his face.

‘Get dressed, you overgrown satyr.’

Doll’s vocabulary was improving in leaps and bounds in his company, as was her general education. Her voracious mind swallowed up every piece of history Malinferno could throw at her. She was an amazing autodidact, though often he teased her by describing her more as an idiot savant. She wasn’t in any way a fool, however, but rather a very able mind that had been in its raw state when Malinferno had met her. Soon she would be more knowledgeable than he was, if indeed she wasn’t already.