Blood Fever Page 8

  So another secret society was formed – the Millenaria – and they set about plotting and planning and scheming and spying.

  Come along, you old duffer, get on with it, I hear you cry! What has this to do with the two Ms? Well, the secret symbol of the Millenaria was a double M, standing for two thousand years. I have tried to drum some knowledge of Latin and Roman history into you, so perhaps you may recall that Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC. And Julius Caesar was, of course, the very first Roman emperor, and therefore a suitable figurehead for a cult dedicated to reminding the world of the glories of ancient Rome. MM. Two thousand years.

  Well, two thousand years after Caesar’s birth, 1900, was the year the Millenaria launched their campaign. Over the next few years there were some skirmishes, much shouting and waving of hands, but not a lot really happened. The one notable incident was when one of their number stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and tried to return it to Italian hands. Then war broke out and Italy was caught up in the monstrous events of 1914. After the war the Millenaria were all but forgotten, and Signor Mussolini and his fascists took control. Some say that remnants of the Millenaria helped him gain power; certainly some of his ideas and style were borrowed from them. However, if they did help him, Mussolini soon got rid of them. He would have had no desire to share his power with anyone else.

  And now Mussolini has declared himself a sort of Roman emperor and has designs on the rest of the world!

  I think your aunt was right, James. The ancient Romans are not a great role model. They had an unhealthy lust for power and glory and bloodshed.

  I hope this may be of some interest to you. As I say, please forgive the history lesson, but I thought it might answer your question…

  James had smiled when he’d first read the letter last night. It was kind of Mr Merriot to write to him, but there was little chance that an obscure Italian secret society that had died out twenty years ago could have anything to do with the nondescript house with the ivy-clad courtyard and the scarred man with an M tattooed on either hand.

  But on the back of the letter was a hastily scribbled addition:

  P.S. You might like to know that the Millenaria spoke Latin in all their secret meetings and proposed it as a new world language, hence Mr Cooper-ffrench’s interest in them. As you know, he would have us all speaking Latin!

  Now, sweltering under the sun that hammered down out of a clear blue sky, James was turning over in his mind the few parts of the puzzle that he had, seeing if they would fit together. He felt like an archaeologist trying to piece together some random bits of broken pottery.

  There were the two shadowy figures speaking Latin in the courtyard. The crates with the stencilled letters. The weird chapel with the bowl of blood and the cockerel’s head. The dropped bracelet. The scarred man talking to Mr Cooper-ffrench behind the shutters.

  The pieces didn’t fit together. James couldn’t make anything resembling a pot out of them. Why would a secret Italian society have a base in Eton? It didn’t make any sense.

  As the day wore on and the sun climbed higher in the sky James began to feel dizzy and overheated. There was no shade where they were digging and the dirt clung to the sweat on his body. He had unearthed nothing more interesting all morning than some sharp basalt rocks and an ants’ nest. He eventually stood up, removed the straw hat he had been given, shook a spray of sweat from his hair and chucked his trowel to the ground.

  ‘What’s up?’ said Perry. ‘Not enjoying being a road digger?’

  ‘This isn’t quite what I was expecting,’ said James. His mouth was full of sticky saliva and he realised he hadn’t had anything to drink since breakfast.

  He sat down and suddenly the sun was blotted out by a boy.

  James squinted up at the familiar silhouette of Tony Fitzpaine.

  ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you,’ said Fitzpaine sneeringly. ‘I’m just waiting for the right moment. I must say I’m very glad you came on this trip, Bond. Away from Eton and the beaks, you’ve nowhere to hide. You’d better watch your back, pleb.’

  ‘Go away, Fitzpaine,’ said James. ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘Don’t think you can speak to me like that,’ said Fitzpaine, and James laughed.

  ‘How do you want me to speak to you, your majesty?’ he said.

  ‘Your name is going to be mud at Eton,’ spluttered the older boy.

  ‘Is it really?’ said James. ‘Well, I shall have to live with that. But, as you say, we’re not at Eton now, Fitzpaine.’ James stood up and confronted the other boy. ‘We’re not even in England. Your name means nothing here. We’re just two boys in the middle of a very hot island in the Mediterranean… So maybe it’s you who should be watching his back.’

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ said Fitzpaine.

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘I think I probably am.’

  James smiled at Fitzpaine and strode off to look for something to drink.

  He found a big canteen under the canvas awning with some warm water in the bottom of it. He tipped some into his mouth and swilled it around before swallowing it.

  ‘Hot enough for you?’ Haight strolled into the shade from out of the harsh sunlight carrying his shoulder bag.

  ‘I had to get out of the sun,’ said James.

  ‘We’ll pack up for the day soon,’ said Haight, wiping his face with a handkerchief. ‘A couple of hours of this is about all anyone can take.’

  He put his bag down on the table. It went everywhere with him and contained everything needed on the trip: all the official documents, the first-aid kit, charts and plans of the different Nuraghic sites, and several rolled-up canvases for sketching on. Since leaving England he hadn’t let the bag out of his sight. He removed a map from it and unfolded it on the table.

  ‘This is wild country,’ he said. ‘Bandit country.’

  ‘Really?’ said James, looking at the map.

  ‘Yes,’ said Haight. ‘See these villages here?’ He showed James two or three villages on the map, and then pointed down the valley. James made out the shapes of distant stone buildings clinging to the sides of the surrounding mountains.

  ‘Those places are very difficult to get to and almost impossible to attack,’ said Haight. ‘The people up there have never really been tamed. Italy was united during the last century but the heart of Sardinia is a country unto itself.’

  ‘I was reading a bit about that last night, actually,’ said James, recalling Merriot’s letter. ‘I wonder, sir, have you ever heard of a secret Italian society called the Millenaria?’

  ‘Secret society, eh?’ said Haight. ‘Can’t say that I have. Why?’

  ‘It’s just… Do you remember that bracelet, sir?’

  ‘What bracelet?’ said Haight, frowning.

  ‘You remember, it was after your talk. I found it on the floor. You were going to ask Mr Cooper-ffrench if it belonged to him.’

  ‘My word, you’ve got a good memory. I must confess I’d forgotten all about it.’ Haight searched in his bag and took out another map. ‘I did get round to showing it to Cooper-ffrench,’ he went on, ‘and he said it was nothing to do with him. I put it in a drawer somewhere in my rooms. It’s probably still sitting there. I don’t think it’s valuable, James. I wouldn’t worry too much about it.’

  ‘No… It’s just the symbol on it,’ said James. ‘The double M.’

  ‘That’s right. I remember,’ said Haight. ‘I thought it might be someone’s initials. But I racked my brains to think of an MM. I came to the conclusion that it must have been lying there on the floor for some time before you spotted it. But you’ve lost me, I’m afraid. What’s this got to do with this secret society of yours?’

  ‘The double M, sir; that’s the sign of the Millenaria.’

  Haight laughed. ‘You’ll be telling me next that you think they’ve a hideout in Eton and they’re plotting to kidnap the new Head Master and set up Mussolini in his place!’

  James laughed too, now. The whole
idea did seem faintly ridiculous.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought anything of it,’ he said. ‘Except, one day in Eton I saw a man with an M tattooed on each hand.’

  ‘M for mother, probably,’ said Haight. ‘What did he look like? Was he a strange masked figure with an assassin’s dagger?’

  ‘No… But he was quite distinctive. He had scars on both his cheeks.’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Haight, rolling up his maps. ‘I never knew Eton was such an exciting place.’

  James picked up the canteen and put it to his lips, but only a tiny trickle of water came out and he put it down thirstier than before.

  ‘Here, have some of mine.’ Haight put his maps back in his bag and rummaged about for a moment before producing a water bottle.

  ‘You’ve got everything in there, haven’t you?’ said James.

  ‘It certainly feels that way when I have to lug it about the place,’ said Haight.

  James took a drink. The water was salty and bitter.

  ‘Don’t be put off by the taste,’ said Haight, smiling. ‘I always use water-purifying tablets. You can’t be too careful out here.’ He took the bottle from James and replaced the stopper. ‘Now then, if you’ve had enough of digging why don’t you take yourself off and explore the tower? It’ll be nice and cool in there.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said James. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘It was bashed about a bit by the Carthaginians in the fifth century BC,’ said Haight, ‘but I think it would have taken their whole army to knock it down. Quite extraordinary. You know, they didn’t use any cement or mortar to stick the stones together. They were simply cut to shape and placed one on top of the other. The builders must have known exactly what they were doing though, because it’s still here after all this time. Have a good look inside. And the view from the top is magnificent. I’ll see you when you get back down to terra firma.’

  James strolled back out into the sunlight and made his way across the site. As he neared the tower he saw that it was surrounded by a raised terrace supported by three lower towers in a triangular shape.

  He found the entrance in the massive outer wall and went inside to a courtyard with a ruined well in its centre. There were doors leading off from here into the various towers. He chose one at random and passed through a circular room into the darkness on the other side. He was momentarily blind as his eyes adjusted but eventually saw that he was in a long corridor of gigantic stones whose sloping sides met at the roof. He shuffled forward. The place was confusing and utterly unlike anywhere he had ever visited before. It seemed to have walls within walls. He groped his way along in the cool darkness until he found himself in a windowless domed chamber, some 20 feet wide by 20 feet tall. This must be the heart of the monument, the base of the main tower. There was a square of dazzling white light in the doorway but very little of it penetrated this deep. He could see, though, that the black volcanic rocks were tinged with red, almost like rust and he imagined for a moment that the tower was built of iron rather than stone. It was eerily quiet and he had the weird feeling that he had travelled back in time to somewhere truly prehistoric. He felt unnerved, as if these ancient stones held the ghosts of the long-dead people who had lived here. The outside world, the modern world, seemed a long way away. A wave of sickness struck him and the room started to spin. He thought he heard voices, but it could just have been the blood roaring in his ears. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against a wall to cool it.

  He had a sudden horrible image of blood congealing in a bowl and snapped his eyes open. The room was full of people. They were wearing primitive robes and had dark watchful faces. Some carried glinting knives. He shrank away from them and as he felt the stones press into his back he realised that it was an illusion and he was merely seeing shapes in the black walls of the chamber. He felt desperately tired and light-headed and wanted more than anything else to get back out into the fresh air, but he couldn’t face stepping into that square of harsh white light. The very thought gave him a headache.

  There were four other exits leading to a corridor that ran around the outside of the chamber, and a staircase spiralled up to the next floor. He climbed up it and found three smaller rooms. Then he carried on up to what was now the top of the tower and stepped, blinking, into the light.

  A vulture hung in the air overhead, the feathers in its wingtips like long black fingers against the sky. James watched as it wheeled and glided away towards the dusty blue hills at the horizon.

  He took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. The air burnt his lungs and he still felt woozy.

  He heard footsteps and walked to the edge to look down. Fifty feet below was the courtyard with the well and James had the weird sensation that he was staring into a bottomless black hole. He felt out of control, as if the floor might crumble beneath his feet, and he had a terrible urge to throw himself off. He fought it and swayed giddily, spots dancing before his eyes. His vision blurred and swam and there was a singing in his ears.

  He thought he might faint and for a moment didn’t know where he was.

  The feeling slowly passed, and, as his vision slid back into focus, he realised he was looking down at someone. They were staring back at him with red, angry, bloodshot eyes, a look of intense disgust on their features.

  James thought he must be imagining it. It was another illusion.

  The face belonged to Cooper-ffrench; the purple complexion and mean little moustache were unmistakable. But it couldn’t be…

  It wasn’t possible that he was here.

  James felt hypnotised by the man, as if he was willing him to jump. He felt like he was going to vomit and he staggered forward until he was right at the edge of the tower. The singing in his ears rose in pitch, up and up and up…

  He closed his eyes and sensed a movement behind him, something rushing towards him.

  Cooper-ffrench called out his name and the sound seemed to pop and spin off into space with a noise like a firework.

  James tipped forward.

  And he was falling, down, down, down into that black abyss…

  8

  Escape

  James woke to find the sun in his eyes and Peter Haight wiping his face with a damp handkerchief, a concerned look on his face.

  ‘Are you all right, old chap?’ he said, when he saw that James was conscious.

  ‘I think so,’ James croaked. His mouth and throat felt painfully dry, as if all the liquid had been drained out of him. He propped himself up on his elbows. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  He looked around. He was still at the top of the tower, lying on the stone floor.

  ‘It’s lucky I grabbed hold of you,’ said Haight, grimly. ‘You should be careful, standing so near to the edge; these old ruins aren’t at all safe.’

  ‘I know. I felt unwell for a moment,’ said James. ‘I still don’t feel quite right, sir.’

  Haight put his hand to James’s forehead.

  ‘You feel pretty hot, old chap.’

  James was just about to ask Haight for a drink when the beak splashed the remaining contents of his water bottle on to his face. ‘That should feel better,’ he said, helping James to his feet. ‘Now, let’s get you down, eh?’

  James was very wobbly and Haight had to stop him from falling over again. James shook his head and let Haight support him as they descended the winding staircase. Halfway down they met Cooper-ffrench coming up. He was sweating even more than he had been before and looked flustered.

  ‘Is he all right?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing damaged,’ said Haight, ‘but I want to get him down and into the shade. Touch of sunstroke I imagine.’

  Cooper-ffrench followed them outside and across the site to the canvas awning. A small group of curious boys clustered round asking questions, but Haight shooed them away. James sat down. He felt desperately tired and his stomach was light and fluttery. He thought that at any moment he might be sick.

&n
bsp; ‘You shouldn’t have been up there by yourself,’ said Cooper-ffrench.

  James remembered Cooper-ffrench’s angry look from the courtyard. ‘Why did you shout?’ he said. ‘You called out my name.’

  Cooper-ffrench glanced nervously at Peter Haight. ‘I was trying to warn you,’ he said. ‘You looked… you looked like you might fall.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘I felt giddy for a moment.’

  ‘The main thing is that you’re all right, old man,’ said Haight. ‘I wouldn’t want to lose one of my charges.’

  ‘The main thing is that it doesn’t happen again,’ said Cooper-ffrench, brusquely.

  ‘Leave him be, John,’ Haight snapped. ‘The boy’s had quite a scare.’

  ‘Yes, well…’ Cooper-ffrench muttered and walked off, mopping the back of his neck with a grubby cloth.

  That evening, back at Torralba, James was getting ready for bed in the school hall when Haight approached him with a cup of strong tea.

  ‘Feeling more yourself, now, James?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, sir,’ said James. ‘Much better.’

  ‘Care for a cuppa?’

  ‘No, thank you, sir, I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘Can I get you anything else?’

  ‘No, I’m really all right, sir. It’s passed. I don’t know what came over me. I think it was seeing Mister Cooper-ffrench like that; it gave me quite a shock.’

  ‘He does have that effect,’ said Haight and they both laughed. ‘Gave me quite a shock, too, as matter of fact. I didn’t know he’d arrived yet.’

  ‘But what’s he doing here?’ asked James.

  ‘Apparently Eton regulations state that you must have at least two staff members along on these jaunts. I had no idea. I’m still fairly new to the school, so I’m not quite on top of all the rules.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said James.

  ‘Just before we were due to leave he announced that he was going to come with us,’ said Haight. ‘But he could only get a later ticket. I can’t say I’m totally upset that he’s here. I thought I was going to have sole charge of you lot. It’s always useful to have another pair of hands to help out. His main interest is in the Roman history, of which there’s quite a lot on the island. The Sardinians speak a version of Italian that’s much closer to its Roman origins than what’s spoken in the rest of Italy. Domus for house, for instance, instead of the Italian casa.’