Return of the Emerald Skull (3 page)

‘Beautiful, are they not?’ Archimedes Barnett beamed.

‘Beautiful, are they not?’ Archimedes Barnett beamed.

I nodded.

‘But delicate, Mr Grimes, as I'm sure you now appreciate,’ he said, gathering his thoughts. ‘Bird collecting, as you can see, consumes me, body and soul. I am constantly adding to my collection, with birds being sent to me from my contacts all over the world. If you – as a tick-tock lad – could see your way to picking up these birds from the docks and bringing them safely back here to the school, I would be eternally grateful. And, of course, I should pay you most handsomely for your services.’

It seemed that these stuffed birds of his were even more important to him than the pupils in his charge. Still, it took all sorts. And anyway, who was I to judge?

‘Thank you, Headmaster,’ I said. ‘You can rest assured, not a feather on their delicate heads shall be ruffled.’

It was obviously what the headmaster wanted to hear, for he beamed back. ‘It is agreed then,’ he said. ‘This is most fortuitous, Mr Grimes, for I have a shipment arriving next week – a most unusual-sounding specimen, I'm sure you'll agree …’

‘Yes?’ I said, intrigued.

‘The catincatapetl,’ said the headmaster, ‘which, translated from the ancient Toltec, means’ – he paused, a dreamy smile playing across his mouth – ‘
the emerald messenger of darkness
.’

week later, I carried out the instructions the headmaster had given me. It was a Tuesday and I'd spent the morning doing my usual rounds – collecting receipts, delivering dockets, transferring forms safely from one address to another; highstacking over the sooty rooftops with hardly time to draw breath.

I set off after a spot of lunch: bread, cheese and an apple, which I ate while sitting on top of the dome of the Law Courts, leaning back against the golden statue of Justice, with her sword in one hand and scales in the other – scales which contained an apple core by the
time I'd finished. It was once more a bright sunny day, though with a crisp wind coming in from the east. The blanket of smoke which hovered constantly over the poorer areas of the city was, for once, being blown across the more wealthy quarters to the west.

I headed against the wind, to an area called Riverhythe, a strip of wharves and warehouses between the East Batavia Trading Company's timberyards and the squat Spruton Bill lighthouse, built to keep the incoming and outgoing vessels from running aground on the mudflats.

In the space of twelve short years Riverhythe had been transformed from a small fisherman's rest, where fishing boats would land their catches, into a great bustling port, its jetties packed with merchant ships, cargo boats, tea clippers and dhows from the four corners of the earth. The fishmarkets and riverside shops had given way to vast warehouses and stockyards, while the water
in the river itself, once sparkling, clear and teeming with fish, was now filthy, brown and utterly dead.

Yet I loved the place. I always had.

As a youngster I'd come here often to watch the ships docking to unload their cargoes and take on new ones. With its broad quays, huge jetties and great warehouses, the place was endlessly fascinating. I would sit for hours at the end of a creaking wooden jetty, just watching the endless comings and goings.

The arrival of the coal barges, for instance, was greeted by gangs of men in dirty smocks and women with baskets, who would ferry them to shore. Vast vessels, teeming with mariners and merchant seamen, would come and go, mooring side by side, the insistent cries of the dock-chiefs accompanying their movements. Clippers and cargo ships swarmed with stevedores, who shifted wares onto the barges and rowing boats moored alongside and transported them to quays and wharves
further upstream. Tall, spindly cranes would load and unload the ships, great packages of merchandise swinging precariously through the air on knotted ropes to the accompaniment of yet more bellowed shouts and commands.

Every so often, with a crack and a sigh, one of the ropes would break and the crate tumble to the dock below. There it would split open and spill its wares across the ground. Then, appearing out of nowhere like a colony of ants, women and children would scamper round, grabbing whatever they could find – be it mangoes or mantillas; buttons, books, boots or bolts of cotton cloth – secrete them inside the voluminous tattered rags they wore for the purpose, and scurry away.

As I arrived that day, I saw the great stone eagle which stood atop the East Batavia Trading Company's main warehouse. That, at least, had remained. As for the rest, well, few things survived from the days of my
childhood. The untidy jumble of fishermen's cottages had given way to huge fortress-like structures with iron gates and tall brick walls, while the river itself had been tamed and transformed, the mudflats largely drained and vast artificial lagoons created.

And ships! There were hundreds of them, packed into every spare inch. Barques and barges, wherries, ferries and tugs; while the biggest of them – the great clippers and traders – were so much larger than they had been in my childhood. These behemoths sported exotic names: the
Queen Mahavashti
; the
Golden Macaranda
; the
Transatalanta
. And my favourite, the
Pasacuda Princess
– a vast coal- and sail-driven vessel, sweet with the scent of the crates of exotic spices she transported from the distant islands of the Maccabees, far away in the eastern oceans.

I walked along the wharf, taking in the sights, sounds and smells, looking for the vessel the headmaster had told me would be
berthed and unloading its cargo. The
Ipanema
was its name, a twin-masted schooner out of Valdario, carrying a cargo of teak and coconut oil. Not that that was of any interest to the headmaster.

No, my instructions were to find the captain, who had a carefully crated specimen with Archimedes Barnett's name on it. Judging by the banknote I had in the third pocket of my poacher's waistcoat, this Captain Luis Fernandez was going to be paid handsomely for his trouble.

‘Catincatapetl,’ I mused as I passed a couple of large steam tugs called
Gargantua
and
Pantagruel
.

The word had barely passed my lips when the air seemed to turn icy and the sky cloud over. I peered across the harbour to see a great bank of fog rolling up the river, like an unfurling grey carpet.

In moments, the warehouses and wharves of Riverhythe were swathed in a dense
yellow mist. These sudden sea fogs – or ‘fish stews’, as they were called – were nothing new. Combining with the smoke from factory chimneys and thousands of domestic chimney stacks, they could be particularly thick and acrid on the dockside.

As a tick-tock lad, I hated ‘fish stews’. Even the most familiar trips became fraught with uncertainty when the fog was bad. One missed turning, one forgotten landmark, and the unwary traveller was lost in an instant and, once off the beaten track, could easily fall prey to thugs, thieves and pickpockets. What was worse, their cries for help – like the calls of the market sellers, the shouts of the carriage drivers, and the howls and yowls of the dogs and cats – were so muffled that no one ever heard them.

No, when the fog descended, the city became harsh and forbidding; a place of dark secrets, darker whispers and the sound of footsteps forever fading away. Even up on
the rooftops, the dense pall of stinking fog did not release its grip. And with each step a challenge and every journey a gamble, high-stacking was all but impossible, even for an expert tick-tock lad like yours truly.

Sometimes, though, far up at the top of the highest towers and steeples, the air would abruptly clear. And then, from those lofty vantage points, the yellow fog could be seen below, shifting and rolling like a filthy ocean, while sticking out of it all around – like the masts of grounded sail boats – were the tops of other buildings, each one acting as a landmark.

But down on the dockside I stood no chance. Pulling up my collar and pulling down my coalstack hat, I made my way carefully along the wooden boardwalk, tapping with my swordstick as I went.

A little way on I stopped next to a huge tea clipper, the
Oceania
. There were lights on the deck, fuzzy with the fog but bright
enough for me to see half a dozen or so crew members in silhouette, going about their business.

‘The
Ipanema
! I'm looking for the
Ipanema
!’ I shouted up to an old seaman in a waxed sou'wester.

‘Three vessels along, mate. You can't miss her!’ he replied with a cheery wave.

‘Thanks!’ I shouted back, and tapped my way past.

The fog was now so thick I found it difficult to see my own hand in front of my face, let alone read the names of the dark shapes I took to be ships ahead of me.

One, two … three, I counted, approaching a looming black bow.

‘
Ipanema
…’ A strange, disembodied voice – half cry, half whisper – sounded close to my ear.

I paused, a shiver of apprehension running down my spine. ‘Who's there?’ I called into the swirling fog.

There was no reply. Gripping my sword-stick, I approached the shadowy vessel and, by tapping the boards, found the edge of the boardwalk and the beginning of a gangplank. Carefully I climbed the swaying board and stepped onto an eerie, deserted deck.

‘Hello?’ I called into the muffling blanket of fog. ‘Is there anybody there?’

I made my way cautiously up onto the quarterdeck, and was about to push open the door to an unlit cabin when a figure loomed up at me out of the fog. I found myself staring into a pair of dead-looking eyes. In the gloom, I could just make out the tattered brocade on a brass-buttoned seaman's frock coat, and a battered cap with an ornate embroidered ‘I’ on its band.

‘Captain?’ I asked.

As if in answer, the figure thrust a small wooden crate, the size of a hatbox, into my hands. As I took it, I felt, with a flinch, the captain's ice-cold fingers brush mine.

I found myself staring into a pair of dead-looking eyes.

My fingers trembling, I fumbled with the pocket of my waistcoat for the banknote that the headmaster had given me, when the figure lurched back into the swirling mist and seemingly vanished.