The Forever Man (W.A.R.P. 3)

Isles nodded seriously. ‘Understood. Let’s do some banter later on, though. I got a feeling you have a talent for it.’

Chevie smiled in spite of herself and remembered an old saying of her father’s, which went: Even the toughest shell has a sweet nut inside – his variation on Every cloud has a silver lining. Chevie’s dad generally trotted out this saying when they were down to their last nickel and the refrigerator had nothing in it but mould.

Isles turned his attention to Professor Charles Smart. ‘And, Professor, if you wouldn’t mind dimming the lights as much as possible, in case I missed a crack in the walls.’

‘Of course, Special Agent,’ said Smart, and turned down his glow until he was no more than an outline of himself.

‘Anything in the vicinity I should be aware of?’ asked Isles.

Smart floated round the desk to his computer, checking his scanner read-outs. ‘Nothing on the surface. But Rosa is due back in town.’

‘Rosa!’ said Isles. ‘You know, for once I hope she does show up. I would love to see Mister Almighty Witchfinder deal with that witch-born abomination.’ He chuckled, then settled on to a bench that seemed familiar to Chevie. It took her a moment to realize that there had been one just like it in the WARP pod that had taken her to Victorian London.

‘Might as well relax,’ said Isles, closing his eyes. ‘Best way to keep quiet.’

Chevie could hardly believe it. ‘How can you relax at a time like this?’

Isles opened one eye. ‘Because I’ve been in a time like this for quite a while now.’

Fair enough, thought Chevie, and sat beside her fellow agent, but, even though she tried for several minutes to clear her mind, Riley kept popping up.

Is he hurt?

Is he dead already?

Where would Garrick keep him?

And one non-Riley-related thought:

Who’s Rosa?

Alleluia

Mandrake. Huntingdonshire. 1647

Riley slept as best he could, delicately tilting the Cat’s Collar so its left arm touched the stone floor, and in that diagonal slump he snatched short fits of slumber, swapping one nightmare for another. When he awoke, seized by a dreadful cramp in his calf, it was only his training as an escapologist and magician’s assistant that enabled him to completely relax his body in spite of the stabbing pain.

The cramp had passed, though Riley could still feel the knot like a clenched fist in his calf, and he sat there on the cold stone, hunger like an empty cauldron in his belly.

‘Food,’ he said to the hard-faced men watching over him, for they had bread and ale laid out on the pews. ‘Water, at least.’

Constable Cryer forbade it. ‘You shall have nothing, familiar. If I shall neither sup nor swallow on the Witchfinder’s orders, then neither shall you.’

Riley grunted and rattled his chain. ‘Fool,’ he said. ‘You would follow Garrick to the gates of hell, and he would toss you into the flames without a thought.’

They made for strange adversaries.

Riley and Cryer did not have many things in common, apart from gender and current location, but they were both endeavouring to make the best of a bad situation and each would have proclaimed that their own circumstance was the worse of the two.

Riley, most would accept, was probably right on that front – after all, he was chained to the floor, with steel bolts on delicate triggers pointed at his neck, and surrounded by hostile men wielding sharp tools. But Godfrey Cryer saw his wounded pride as a far greater injury than anything that could ever be visited upon a mere witch’s familiar, even unto death itself. For had he not been shamed in the eyes of his master and hero? And for this humiliation he blamed the familiar himself. The boy in the Cat’s Collar. The boy now chained before him. And he wondered if there was some way in which he could provoke the lad into tampering with the device and unleashing the bolts into his own throat, for Constable Cryer felt sure that this would improve his own mood. So every once in a while he would take a run at Riley and then pull himself up short, hoping to startle the boy into triggering the Cat’s Collar. Riley, being a smart lad, did not fall for such bully-boy tricks and held himself stock-still while he considered his predicament.

Think, Riley, old son. Use the noggin.

For Riley had a working theory and it unfurled as follows: Garrick has never trusted a soul on this earth besides his own self, and even as he constructed this contraption I know full well he would have imagined his neck by some reversal of fortune placed in it.

For it is the nature of man that he will turn on his saviour, and Albert Garrick had surely styled himself the saviour of these gullible country folk. Even though they could not kill Garrick, they could certainly cause him considerable pain, no matter how many strings of coloured kerchiefs he pulled from his sleeves.

And could Riley credit that Garrick would lumber himself with plucking out the entire Alleluia as an escape plan?

No, it beggared belief that a master illusionist would not leave himself a way clear of this death trap.

But if Garrick had constructed this collar with Riley in mind, then it would be a way that Riley would not be privy to.

What could that be?

Cryer made a sudden run towards Riley, brandishing a cudgel and howling like a loon, but Riley was as a statue and treated the constable to nothing more than a stony stare.

‘Bah,’ huffed Godfrey Cryer. He dared not nudge the boy or even verbally encourage him to fidget, for Albert Garrick had ordered him guarded, but still he coveted the boy’s death as though it were the throne of England.

‘You best be circumspect, Godfrey,’ advised Thomas Cutler, one of the guards, whose very life was built around circumspection. A boy who, it was said, would not risk so much as a single bun for a kiss from Lizzie Woulfe, surely the prettiest maid in Mandrake. ‘The Witchfinder wishes him alive for trial. To kill the lad without absolution would be to set him free.’

To set me free? thought Riley. How were my own countrymen ever so gulpy?

But Garrick had a most persuasive way about him. Had he not convinced Riley that he was the devil himself? How difficult would it be for a performer of his calibre to persuade a town under siege from Royalists, bandits and beasties that he was an agent of heaven come to save them?

But to the nub of the problem: How would Albert Garrick free himself?

It would be an escapologist’s trick, of that Riley was certain. But which one? The hidden button? A secret key? Or perhaps a simple manipulation of one’s own digits.

Riley explored as far as his reach allowed, which was further than the average person’s, for as Garrick had often joked during his lessons: Manual dexterity is a trump card in the escapologist’s hand, if you will pardon my little joke, Riley my boy.

Garrick had always loved his little jokes. Riley could not remember having laughed a single time.

When they had lived in the Orient Theatre, Garrick’s instruction methods were all his own, for he believed himself something of an innovator. For manual dexterity he had fashioned a miniature iron maiden lined with dull tacks, which could be screwed into any of a dozen constellations that Riley learned by heart from a chart. Riley would insert his hand into the iron maiden and in the second before Garrick slammed the lid down he would name the tacks’ configuration and if Riley could not manipulate his fingers accordingly then his flesh would be pierced and pinched. And, even when he did manage to position his fingers in time, he would be forced to endure the awkward position for long periods, often while Garrick went off on a job.

Well done, my boy, Garrick would say when he eventually unclamped Riley’s hand. Soon your hands will be as nimble as mine, and then no man will ever hold you captive. He would then wink merrily. Excepting, of course, my good self. You can never escape from me.

Well, it appears that Albert Garrick was right on that score, thought Riley now with a certain glumness. Even time itself cannot set me free.

He shook off the gl

umness with a mental shake and not an actual one and set his fingers a-roaming round the lip of the Cat’s Collar. It was slow labour with the constable and his comrades scrutinizing him, but even so Riley was able to give the implement a good poke and squint and there was nothing.

Then the key is in the mechanism, he thought. Something in the strings themselves.

This was no common-or-garden musical instrument, for the strings had a double purpose: to make music and to launch the cross bolts.

Riley could see a complicated tumbler mechanism set into the wooden body, but there was no way to influence the rotations with his reach.

Riley racked his brain for some form of clue.

What has Garrick’s weakness always been? Historically, as it were.

This was an easy question to answer.

His vanity.

Garrick had always believed himself the finest illusionist who ever lived and when he’d had a jug of red wine the self-pity would come tumbling out of him. He would forget his theatre vowels and speak in the accent of the rookeries where he’d grown up, in spite of cholera and near starvation.