Blood Fever Read online

  James had had a confusing time since starting at Eton. At Easter he had become entangled in the insane schemes of Lord Randolph Hellebore, the father of a fellow student. James had nearly been killed and had seen things he never wanted to see again. When he had at last recovered from it all he was left with the feeling that life sometimes seemed rather flat.

  He had tried to return to being just an ordinary schoolboy, but what he had experienced set him apart from all his friends and no matter how hard he tried to forget it all, he couldn’t.

  Apart from falling off the roof, this trip tonight could hardly be said to be truly dangerous, but it was better than lying in bed trying to sleep. His lessons tomorrow would suffer, of course. No matter; there was more to life than Latin grammar. If James worked hard later in the week he would probably catch up. Mr Merriot, his classical tutor, the man who looked after his schooling, often told him off for not working harder, but James was naturally bright and was keeping up with the other boys, so he didn’t worry too much.

  ‘Listen,’ said Perry. ‘I propose a jaunt in the m-motor, daft to leave it sitting there m-mouldering away. What say Andrew and I drive it up to London one night? That’d be something to talk about.’

  ‘Sounds risky,’ said James.

  ‘That’s what the society is all about,’ said Perry. ‘I don’t m-mind a spot of risk.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about you,’ said James. ‘I couldn’t care less what happened to you, Perry. I was thinking about the car.’

  One of the reasons James was popular with the Danger Society, despite being its youngest member, was that he owned a car. It had belonged to an uncle, who had taught him to drive in it, and when he’d died he’d left it to James. James had persuaded his guardian to let him bring it to Eton, telling her that it would be kept at the school and used by the boys to learn about mechanics, under the careful supervision of a master, of course.

  In reality it was kept hidden away in a garage in a backstreet in Windsor near the barracks. The garage belonged to Perry and he was always planning ways to use the car – a 1.5 litre Bamford and Martin roadster – but they had to be very careful. Not only was it against school rules to drive a car, it was also breaking the law.

  They were in the middle of arguing about Perry’s proposed trip when they heard hurried footsteps and Gordon Latimer flung himself over the top of the roof and rolled down towards them.

  ‘That’s the way to make an entrance!’ said Andrew, laughing.

  ‘Shhhh!’ said Gordon, twisting on to his knees and crouching low. He was desperately short of breath, his clothing ripped and untidy. ‘They’re on to us.’

  ‘Who are?’ said James, looking around.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Gordon, his voice high and strained. ‘I was spotted. They were looking for me.’

  ‘Who? The police?’ asked Andrew.

  ‘Beaks, I think,’ said Gordon. ‘I’ve been all over the place trying to shake them off. There’s a big search party heading this way. We’ve got to get out of here.’

  Even as Gordon said this, they heard shouts from the street below.

  ‘Split up,’ said Andrew and he was off.

  In a second all the other boys were up and running in different directions, each taking their own chosen route.

  James didn’t hesitate. He sprang to his feet, vaulted over the rooftop and was away, his heart hammering against his ribs.

  If he had wanted danger, he had it now.

  2

  Double M

  James tried not to think about what would happen if he were caught. He knew he would definitely be beaten, but worse than that, he would probably be expelled from Eton. He didn’t mind so much for himself, but he hated the idea of upsetting his guardian, Aunt Charmian.

  James’s parents had been killed in a climbing accident when he was eleven, and since then he had been brought up by Charmian. He didn’t want to do anything that might hurt her.

  He realised, of course, that he probably should have thought about that before he got himself into this mess.

  He intended to take his usual route, but halfway back he saw that his way was blocked. His pursuers had set a ladder against one of the buildings and a large, fat man was climbing it.

  Risking an unfamiliar path, James turned off to the side, sprinted over the top of a couple of rooftops, then shinned down a drainpipe. He found himself in a maze of low buildings and sheds. It was very dark here and he was soon lost. He was scurrying around trying to find a way back to more familiar territory when he heard a search party coming his way. He climbed up the side of a timber-framed house and hid himself behind a tall brick chimney stack until they had passed. He thought he recognised the nearby rooftops, so he scuttled along the side of the building and jumped across to the next roof. As he landed a tile slipped beneath him and crashed to the pavement. He heard pounding feet and someone yelled something very nearby; the sound echoed around the deserted night streets.

  He raced up the roof and over the other side, but his luck was fast running out. Two more tiles came loose and he found himself sliding uncontrollably down towards a drop into darkness.

  There was ivy on the roof and he grabbed hold of some, but it pulled away and he slithered over the edge, wildly scrabbling for a purchase. Thankfully the ivy growing up the wall below was dense and overgrown and he managed to get a grip and stop himself from falling any further. The two roof tiles continued to the ground, noisily shattering on the paving stones below. Then there was silence.

  James hung in the ivy and tried to slow his racing heart.

  The Danger Society was fun, but it wasn’t worth risking his life for.

  He took stock of his situation. He was badly scratched and bruised, but for the moment he was safe.

  He looked around. He was about 25 feet above a courtyard, nesting in gnarled tendrils as thick as the branches on a tree, but beyond that he had no idea where he was. The place looked uncared for and rundown and was so covered with ivy that it didn’t look like Eton at all, more like some abandoned jungle temple.

  James was just thinking about climbing down when a light showed in a ground-floor window and shortly afterwards a door opened and he heard voices.

  The dim light from the window wasn’t enough to show him what was going on, but the flare of a match revealed the dark shapes of two men. One of them was smoking a cigarette – James saw an occasional red glow and could smell the burning tobacco.

  The men looked around briefly and evidently spotted the broken tiles. James could just make out their pale faces as they looked up. Luckily they couldn’t see him as he was safely nestled in the thick, waxy leaves of the ivy, and his dark clothing helped to keep him hidden.

  One of the men must have picked up a piece of tile, because James heard it clatter to the ground as he dropped it. Then the second man, the one who was smoking, laughed.

  They stood for a while in the courtyard, talking, their voices low and muffled by the thick growth of ivy on the walls. James strained to hear what they were saying, but, try as he might, he couldn’t seem to focus on their words. It was only after a while that he realised that they were speaking a foreign language. He concentrated harder. Was it Spanish?

  No.

  Maybe Italian…?

  No.

  But there was definitely something familiar about it.

  James was good at languages. He had grown up in Switzerland and spoke fluent French and German. So why was he having so much trouble placing this language?

  And then it struck him. The two men were speaking Latin.

  The odd word and phrase jumped out at him… tutus est, it is safe; navis, boat; and sanguis, blood.

  James was amazed. Latin was a dead language. Nobody spoke it nowadays. Maybe it was the only common language these two men shared. That seemed unlikely, but it was a possibility. Or maybe they were two Latin masters practising their skills and showing off to one another. That seemed a more plausible explanation. Certainly one
of them had something of the air of a schoolmaster about him.

  Once again the smoker laughed. A harsh, brutal sound. He stubbed out his cigarette, and the two men went back inside. After a minute or two the light was switched off and the courtyard once more fell into darkness and silence. James waited, straining his ears, and eventually heard what he thought was the sound of the front door slamming in the street.

  He was now faced with a dilemma: to go back up and risk the rooftops again, or to climb down and try to escape through the building?

  Either way posed a risk.

  As he was wondering what to do, the decision was taken for him as, with a ripping sound, the ivy began to peel from the wall. Quick as he could he let himself down and managed to reach the ground without falling.

  He could make out more details of the courtyard now. Half of it was paved, and the other half was made up of ancient, tumbled-down masonry. There was a round construction that might have been a well, the remains of some stone pillars, a sunken pit and a section of wall that had damaged carvings on it. It was all so broken and covered in ivy that it was hard to tell just what had once been here, but James’s feeling that he might be in a temple of some sort might not have been that far wrong.

  He tried the doors and windows. They were all locked. He was considering whether to try climbing back up when he spotted another window by his feet, half hidden by ivy. It was open a crack and appeared to lead into a cellar. He crouched down and jiggled it with his knife and found that it was so decrepit he could quite easily force it up and squeeze through.

  He closed the window behind him and switched on his torch. He was indeed in a cellar. Propped against one wall were two or three large dark oil paintings and there were a couple of packing crates in the centre of the room, which somebody had been using as a makeshift table. In the gloom James could just make out a map of Italy and a pile of books laid out on top of them.

  Stencilled on the side of one of the crates were two large red letters, a double M, and James noticed that one of the books had the same double-M motif on the cover. He picked it up and opened it, but it was full of dense Latin text.

  He didn’t have time to be reading books. He had to get out of there.

  He put the book down, turned to leave and then jumped back in fright, swallowing the urge to cry out.

  There was a pale, ghostly figure standing in the darkness by the door, beckoning to him.

  A man, white as death. Staring and unmoving.

  It only took James a second to realise, however, that it was just another painting.

  He let out his breath. ‘You really shouldn’t do that,’ he said quietly, hoping to ease his tension. ‘You scared me half to death.’

  He rubbed the back of his neck, and when his heart had stopped hammering and his legs shaking he stepped forward for a closer look.

  It was a life-size painting of a man, wearing a Roman toga and standing imperiously with one arm resting on a marble column and the other stretching out towards the viewer.

  His close-cropped hair was white and his chalky skin almost luminous. James felt uneasy looking at him; the eyes were painted in such a way that they appeared to be looking straight back at you.

  At the bottom of the frame four letters were carved into the ornate wood – UCMM – but there were no other clues as to who the man might be.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ said James and he quickly opened the door.

  He found his way blocked by a heavy curtain. He pulled it aside and walked through. If the courtyard outside resembled a temple, this room appeared to be a chapel. There were bare walls and a plain wooden table set up like an altar at one end.

  But this was no Christian chapel.

  The painting above the table showed a man in Roman armour plunging a sword into a bull’s neck and sending a long spray of scarlet blood into the air.

  There were two bowls on the table, ordinary cooking bowls, but one contained the head of a cockerel and the other was half full of a thick brown liquid that was congealing around the edges.

  James sniffed it and remembered one of the Latin words he had recognised – sanguis, blood.

  This wasn’t right. He was suddenly very scared and knew he had to get out of there quickly. He hurried to the door at the other end of the chapel and opened it. It led to a short flight of stairs. He tiptoed up and found himself back at ground level. There was a short corridor here with a shuttered window. He swung the shutters back and peered out. The street looked empty. As soundlessly as possible, he opened the window and swung out on to the ledge, then dropped to the pavement.

  He was unsure of exactly where he was, so he went carefully, keeping to the shadows and heading in what he hoped was the general direction of Codrose’s. He was beginning to think that he was lost when he turned a corner and almost bumped into the ladder that the men had put up against the wall. There was still no sign of anyone, but, far off, he heard a shout and running feet and without a second’s thought he scaled the ladder two rungs at a time.

  In a minute he was back up on the roof peering down through the dome in Codrose’s ceiling and he realised he’d only just made it in time; the fat man from the search party was there, talking excitedly to Codrose, who stood up, pulled on his jacket and left the room.

  He was evidently going to check up on his boys.

  James cursed. It was a race now. He had to get back into his room before Codrose found it empty. He tore across the roof and threw himself in through the skylight. He pulled the floorboards out of his way and dived into the hole. He didn’t waste time putting them back behind him. He could return and do that later, for now the important thing was to get back into bed.

  He pictured Codrose and the fat man; they would start on the floors below and work their way up, opening all the boys’ doors on the way.

  How long did that give him?

  Not long enough.

  He squirmed back along the crawl space, up into the washroom. He checked the corridor. No sign of Codrose yet, thank God. He ducked back into the lavatory and quickly replaced the floorboards and tiles. Then he cautiously returned to the washroom door. This time he could hear voices outside and people moving around. He eased the door back a crack, just wide enough to look one way down the corridor. He saw Codrose with the fat man and the Dame, Miss Winfrith Drinkell.

  Miss Drinkell, who helped Codrose to run the house, was a tired-looking, middle-aged lady who always seemed disappointed by something. Probably by having to work with Cecil Codrose.

  The three of them were just entering one of the boys’ rooms. As soon as they were in, James shot out and managed to duck through his door a moment before he heard the search party emerging from the other room.

  James tore off his shirt, kicked it under the bed and dived under his covers just as he heard a short brisk knock and the click of the door as Codrose came in.

  The light snapped on and James stirred, blinking, trying to appear groggy and confused.

  ‘Sir?’ he said.

  ‘Have you heard anything tonight, Bond?’ asked Codrose, glancing suspiciously around the room. ‘Any boys up and about?’

  ‘No, sir. I’ve been asleep, sir.’

  The fat man waddled into the room and stared at James.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said James.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, James,’ said the Dame. ‘There’s been some trouble tonight.’

  Codrose sniffed, then turned out the light and slammed the door.

  James slumped back on to his pillow, exhausted and relieved.

  He’d got away with it, but he wondered if the other members of the Danger Society had been so lucky. And if one of them had been caught, would he keep his mouth shut?

  3

  The Fourth of June

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Last Thursday.’

  ‘And you’ve kept quiet about it all this time?’

  ‘I couldn’t r
isk talking about it. I didn’t want to involve anyone else. I had to be sure I was in the clear.’

  ‘And are you in the clear?’

  James shrugged. It was the fourth of June and he was in his room with his friend Pritpal Nandra. The morning had started like any other morning – early school, breakfast and then chapel – but now the boys had returned to their rooms to change because the rest of the day was a holiday.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Think so. All the others managed to escape, except for Gordon Latimer. His housemaster was waiting for him when he got back, worse luck. He was beaten, but he hasn’t squealed. How he avoided being thrown out of school I’ll never know.’

  ‘I think you will find,’ said Pritpal, ‘that his father is distantly related to the king.’

  Pritpal was one of the two boys James messed with. This meant that they took it in turns to cook their tea together in each other’s rooms and generally looked out for one another. Pritpal and Tommy Chong, his other messmate, were the only other people in the house who knew about James’s involvement with the Danger Society.

  Pritpal was a clever and slightly round Indian boy who loved to hear James’s tales of adventure, but would never have dreamed of joining him.

  ‘And where exactly was this mysterious building with the shadowy figures speaking in Latin?’ he asked, sitting down in a wicker armchair and rubbing a speck of dust from one of his highly polished shoes.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ James replied. ‘I’ve been back to try and find it a couple of times, but no luck. It was dark that night, and I was being chased, so I couldn’t say for certain exactly where it was.’

  Pritpal whistled. ‘You are one lucky boy, James,’ he said.

  ‘Am I?’ James laughed. ‘Maybe if I was lucky I wouldn’t have been chased in the first place.’

  James checked his appearance in the little mirror on his mantelpiece. He saw a slim boy with grey-blue eyes and an unruly lock of black hair that, no matter how hard he tried to keep it in place, always fell forward over his forehead. He licked a hand and pushed it back. It would have to do for now.