The Parliament of Blood Read online

  THE PARLIAMENT OF

  BLOOD

  JUSTIN RICHARDS

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  Also by Justin Richards

  Imprint

  To Julian – blood relative

  PROLOGUE

  The carriage had been booked for over four thousand years, and the driver did not want to be late.

  The photographer had no such worries. His name was Bernard Denning, and his breath smelled strongly of the cheap ale he’d been drinking. After his afternoon appointment, there was not enough time to get home to Ealing, so instead he spent the time in the Red Lion a few streets away. A pint and a meat pie was just the ticket.

  He was supposed to be there ahead of the guests, but Denning didn’t care that he was a little late. Let the guests and the academics mingle and chatter without him. Bernard Denning, Photographer, would be ready and waiting when it mattered.

  That was one of the advantages of these new dry-plate methods – a smaller camera he could easily carry. Much faster exposure times, so you could just hold the camera and press the lever. Job done. And with a magazine camera already loaded with a dozen plates, he didn’t even have to prepare for the next session.

  The evening sounds of London were muffled by the cold, clammy fog. Denning pulled up the collar of his coat with his free hand, the other cradling his precious camera. He could feel the February chill seeping into his feet from the cobbled roadway. There was a carriage waiting at the side of the street, barely visible in the gloom – a pencil-sketch shape. Almost like an old, fuzzy photograph itself, the horses were so still and quiet. He could make out the dark profile of the Coachman – heavy, hooded cloak, poised whip. The shadows across the Coachman’s face made his eyes seem deep and empty. Like a skull.

  Denning shivered, and walked on.

  Ahead of him, another shape coalesced out of the fog. A woman. She was standing at the corner of the street. She too wore a large cloak, and the deep red of the material bled into the misty air so it seemed to glow around her. Her face was almost white against the charcoal black of her hair. She turned as Denning approached, hearing the clip of his nailed boots on the cobbles.

  The woman stretched out her arms, as if in greeting, and her cloak fell open. Beneath it she was wearing an evening dress that was as red as her cloak. It was cut low, and her neck was pale and slender. Denning’s breath quickened as he saw how very beautiful the lady was. The mist from his breath joined the swirling fog around them. Had he been less distracted, he might have noticed that there was no breath from the woman’s scarlet lips.

  ‘You must be the photographer,’ the woman said. She smiled, her dark eyes widening. ‘The late photographer.’

  ‘Denning,’ he said, assuming she had seen the camera under his arm. ‘Bernard Denning. At your service.’

  ‘Really? How kind.’ She took a step towards him, reaching out a hand to touch his cheek.

  It was cold. Even through the long, white glove, her touch was cold as death.

  ‘Are you going to the Unwrapping?’ Denning asked, his voice a nervous whisper. He stared into her deep, dark eyes, unable to move as the woman reached out her other hand, holding his head between her chill palms.

  ‘Indeed I am.’ She was tall – almost as tall as Denning himself. Leaning forward, smiling, lips parting. Her cold eyes seemed to burn into his.

  A sharp intake of breath. Denning leaned away, his feet frozen in position. As he felt the cold of her lips on his neck, he experienced a sudden rush of fear and struggled to pull away. But he was unable to move.

  Then there was a crack of sound, like a gunshot, and the spell was broken. Gasping, Denning took a step backwards. The woman was staring at him, her face twisted into a snarl of angry disappointment. All beauty gone.

  The coach drew up slowly out of the fog, and Denning realised that the sound had been the Coachman’s whip. The photographer looked up, trying to stammer a thank you. Shadowed by the hood of his cloak, the man’s face still looked like a skull.

  The woman stepped towards Denning again, teeth bared, hissing at him like an angry snake.

  ‘No,’ the Coachman said. He pointed the whip at the woman, and she stopped.

  Denning felt another rush of relief. But it was shortlived.

  ‘It must look like an accident, Clarissa.’ The Coachman’s voice was deep and dark and dry and brittle all at once. ‘A tragic accident.’

  There was a sudden clatter of carriage wheels across the cobbles. The sound of hoofs. Denning turned in time to see the horses bearing down on him. Nostrils flaring as they snorted – but no mist. The skull-faced Coachman cracked the whip. And the faces of the horses were like skulls too – pale and angular. Denning could see the ribs poking out of their sides. He could see the symbol painted on the door of the carriage as it turned slightly to head straight for him. He could hear the woman laughing.

  Clarissa.

  Denning’s last thought was that Clarissa was such a lovely name. The last things he heard were her laughter, and the crack of the whip, and the unholy snarl of the horses. And the click of the shutter as he clutched the camera tight.

  Clarissa stared longingly at the dark pool growing from under the carriage. She licked her lips, sighed, and turned to go.

  The carriage moved slowly away again, back to where the Coachman had been waiting. He had been waiting a very long time, but now the waiting was nearly over …

  CHAPTER 1

  Professor Andrew Brinson

  AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM,

  EGYPTIAN ROOMS

  THURSDAY, 11 FEBRUARY

  1886

  A MUMMY FROM SAQQARA

  TO BE UNWRAPPED AT

  HALF-PAST EIGHT

  TO: George Archer Esq.

  George Archer had forgotten about the invitation. He felt the stiff card in his inside pocket as he put his jacket on. He took out the invitation and read it again. Tapping it against his fingertips, he considered his options. It was the end of a long day and he had been looking forward to getting home. But now his priorities had altered.

  For one thing, he could do with a change, a break, a distraction before setting off. For another, he had argued strongly with Eddie about the invitation. The two of them had met the previous year, when the boy stole George’s wallet. George shook his head as he recalled the trouble and danger which had resulted from that.

  Another result was that, after their initial distrust of each other, they had become friends and Eddie Hopkins was staying in the spare room of the house that George had inherited from his father. Now, George was pretty much Eddie’s surrogate father – though in age he was more of an older brother.

  Sir William Protheroe had arranged the invitations and had suggested Eddie come too. But George was adamant that he should not. It was too late for the boy, who had to be awake and alert for
school the next day. And it was hardly the sort of event where a recently reformed pickpocket and street urchin would fit in. Eddie had insisted he would behave and that he was interested. George wasn’t convinced of either, and had eventually pacified Eddie – slightly – by promising he would tell him all about the evening’s events the next day.

  So if he went back home now, and admitted he’d not bothered even going to the Unwrapping, he would be in serious trouble with Eddie.

  Not to mention Sir William, who must have gone to some trouble to secure the invitations. Egyptology was not an area that Sir William specialised in. He was a curator at the British Museum, but his department was not like Egyptology, or indeed any other. Sir William’s department – the department where George worked as Sir William’s assistant – did not officially exist.

  At this moment, George was standing in the middle of an enormous storage area which very few people knew was hidden in the cellars of the Museum. The main room was under the Great Court and the circular Reading Room. The walls were the foundations of the main Museum buildings round the court – rough unfinished stone. Where there were doorways above, so there were below. Doors that led to more rooms, many of which George had yet to explore. But they were not filled with artefacts and relics belonging to the better-known departments of the Museum. This was not a staging area for treasures yet to be displayed or awaiting a suitable exhibition space.

  The crates and boxes and cupboards and drawers in this huge area and the others were filled with things that – like Sir William’s department – did not, officially, exist. That was what the Department of Unclassified Artefacts was for, what it did. It looked after, stored, preserved, and catalogued those items which did not fit into any of the other departments.

  Sometimes that was because the object just didn’t match any of the criteria the other departments used for cataloguing. But more often it was because of the very nature of the artefact itself. Anything deemed too strange or unusual, or dangerous, anything that defied analysis or which went against modern science or thinking – or which simply could not be understood – was sent to Sir William’s department.

  When George first joined Sir William, it was as he was investigating a dead man whose skeleton seemed to be made of dinosaur bones …

  Thoughts of Sir William reminded George that his superior was certainly expecting George to attend the Unwrapping. But the most compelling reason, George knew (though he scarcely even dared admit it to himself), was that Miss Elizabeth Oldfield would also be there. George had first met Liz when she returned his wallet – the wallet that Eddie had stolen. And before long they had all of them – George, Liz, Eddie and Sir William – been caught up in the devilish plans of a madman.

  ‘Are you ready for our evening’s entertainment, young man?’

  Sir William’s voice brought George back to the present with a jolt. The elderly man was standing beside him, his shock of white hair erupting enthusiastically from his head. He was vigorously polishing his spectacles on a handkerchief. George put the invitation card back into his pocket, and closed the large notebook where he had been describing and sketching several unidentified items in the archive.

  ‘Of course,’ George said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  As they made their way up the wide, stone staircase that led to the Egyptian Rooms, George realised that the invitation was considerably more of a privilege than he had imagined. Sir William seemed unperturbed by the number of people. Men in dark suits and women in long dresses and expensive jewellery conspired to make George feel rather under-dressed.

  He ran his hand through his tangle of curly brown hair and tried to look inconspicuous. A man with an impressive handlebar moustache pushed past impatiently, a stick-thin woman with pinched, angular features followed in his wake. She paused just long enough to smile an apology at George. Or perhaps it was sympathy.

  ‘Everyone is in such a rush these days,’ Sir William said. ‘But there’s really no need to hurry. Brinson won’t start without me.’

  ‘Is he a friend? A colleague?’

  ‘Good gracious no,’ the older man announced loudly. ‘Can’t stand the fellow.’

  ‘Then why would he wait for you?’

  They reached the top of the stairs, and found themselves at the back of a short queue of people waiting to move on. Sir William paused to take a deep breath before he answered. ‘Because it’s my mummy he’s unwrapping,’ he told George. ‘That’s why.’

  There were two men at the door checking invitations. Sir William produced his crumpled invitation and waved it at one of the men, barely turning to look. George showed his own invitation to the other man at the door.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the man said. ‘Professor Brinson will be starting very soon now, I believe.’

  Normally, there were display cases arranged down the middle of the large room where George found himself. For this evening, they had been moved to make space for a dais to be set up at the far end, and the guests to gather in the main part of the room. Being quite tall, George could see over the assembled guests that on the dais there was a sarcophagus. It was raised on trestles and George could see that the top of the gold, coffin-shaped box was sculpted into the form of a figure.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said out loud.

  Beside him, Sir William sniffed. ‘Rather indifferent, actually. But still a mistake. A violation.’

  ‘You don’t think Brinson should unwrap the mummy?’

  ‘I do not,’ Sir William said. ‘Mummies have been unwrapped before, and by better men than Brinson, though I would always dispute the science of destroying that which one is charged with preserving. The only thing Brinson hopes to achieve by this evening’s theatrics is his own aggrandisement.’ Sir William turned to smile at George. ‘But I have said my piece, for all the good it has done.’

  ‘You said it was your mummy,’ George reminded him.

  ‘From the Department,’ Sir William said. ‘Been in the collection almost since Xavier Hemming established it. One of our oldest unclassified artefacts.’

  ‘And why is it unclassified?’

  Sir William shrugged. ‘No idea. Perhaps Hemming just fancied having a mummy in the collection when he originally set it up. Who knows? Something he acquired perhaps and never passed on to another department. He was a formidable collector, you know. Maybe we should hunt around for another one after this evening’s over.’

  ‘Did you not give permission for it to be unwrapped?’ George wondered.

  ‘Overruled,’ Sir William said. ‘By some idiot from the Royal Society.’ He gave a heavy sigh. ‘At least I managed to persuade that fool Brinson to photograph … Ah,’ he broke off. ‘Here he is now.’

  An insincere smile appeared on Sir William’s face as a rather short, stout man pushed towards them through the mingling guests. He had a round red face, and dabbed at his damp forehead with a grubby handkerchief. In his other hand he held a glass of red wine.

  ‘Sir William, thank goodness.’ The man’s voice was nasal and almost squeaky with nerves. ‘Thank goodness,’ he said again.

  Sir William reached out for the wine glass. ‘For me? How very kind, Professor.’

  Professor Brinson hastily moved the glass out of Sir William’s reach. ‘Oh there is refreshment on the table over there.’ He nodded into the distance. ‘Have you seen Denning?’

  ‘Denning?’

  ‘Photographer. Dratted man’s not turned up. You spoke to him after this afternoon’s session. Did he say where he was off to? What his plans were? When he’d be back?’

  ‘He did mention something about visiting a public house,’ Sir William said. His mouth twitched slightly, and George guessed he was trying not to smile.

  ‘A public house!’ Brinson squeaked. His face seemed to grow even more red. ‘Oh good grief. He’s probably lying drunk in a gutter, or been arrested on a charge of being disorderly.’

  ‘I’m sure he will turn up in his own good time,’ Sir William said. �
��He seemed to know his business.’

  ‘Yes, well, I hope so.’ Brinson had his handkerchief out again. ‘Oh goodness, there’s Sir Harrison Judd, please excuse me.’ He thrust his way into a group of people nearby, and barrelled through towards a tall military-looking gentleman talking loudly in another part of the room.

  ‘We are not, it seems, as important to Professor Brinson as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police,’ Sir William said to George. ‘Perhaps we should be grateful for small mercies. Now then, let’s find that wine, shall we?’

  The flow of people into the room had all but stopped. George and Sir William helped themselves to a glass of red wine each from the table and made their way back through the assembled guests to a space close to the dais where they would have a good view. But George’s attention was focused on the door, waiting for Liz to arrive. Or perhaps she was already here. He looked round, hoping to catch sight of his friend.

  ‘That’s Lord Ruthven from the Royal Society,’ Sir William said, pointing out a pale, gaunt figure standing with a group of others nearby. ‘He’s the chap who eventually insisted I hand over the mummy. Why Brinson couldn’t use some minor character from the Egyptian Department’s own collection I don’t know.’ He took a sip of wine, looking round with interest. ‘And unless I’m mistaken, that’s the Prime Minister’s special adviser, what’s his name?’ Sir William’s forehead creased as he tried to remember. ‘Bradford? Barford? Something like that.’

  But George was not listening. His attention had been caught by another figure in the crowd. A woman. She was standing alone, close to the door, wearing a deep red velvet dress that seemed to cling to her body, the neck line plunging daringly low. Her black hair was tied up intricately and for a moment her dark eyes met George’s across the room.

  Then someone moved in between them, and he lost sight of her. ‘Who is that?’ he said out loud.

  ‘Someone important, I’ll be bound,’ Sir William said, glancing without interest in the direction in which George was still staring. ‘A gathering of the great and the good. Well,’ he sniffed, ‘the great anyway.’