Part Sixteen: An Adventure Among the Scots!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less

Part Sixteen: An Adventure Among the Scots!

Taking a slightly circuitous route in my pursuit of the dastardly Reverend Moon, I reached Teviot Row House via a stop in Nicholson Square.

I knew a bar there, you see. Well, I say ‘bar’; perhaps I mean ‘dive’. Or possibly ‘flophouse’, ‘stew’ or ‘sump’. Saltbrine’s, its name was.

I knew the whisky to be good and the landlord, said Saltbrine, to be amenable, adaptable and, crucially, affable towards old Leinigen.

On my last visit to Edinburgh – the Canasta Affair, remember – I’d hidden out in his broom cupboard while a wound in my arm set and healed.

High-stakes canasta can get rather nasty. I’d exposed a particularly Japanese bit of practice and taken a shiv in the elbow for my pains.

The prince never did thank me. Typical. But Saltbrine, well, he’d done me proud. Sewed me up, boozed me up and then spirited me out of town.

Stout fellow, Saltbrine. A fixer, a doer – always on the fringes of things, ready to produce the goods. Met him in the Indian Army, in ’19.

On the trail of an evil reverend, his C of E goons and a captive adventuress and archbishop, I knew such an old mucker would come in handy.

Entering his bar,  I kicked a few loungers out of the way. The fellow practically kept a coterie of unsavoury types. Students and the like.

Saltbrine spat into a pint glass. ‘Leinigen, old pal,’ he growled. His voice had seen a few failed campaigns and the odd colonial atrocity.

I greeted him, slapped a coin on the bar and took a glass in return. Rich, peaty amber fluid leached warmth into the depths of my loins.

I told Saltbrine most of why I was in Edinburgh, leaving out, naturally, the bits about magic books and fine-art monsters run rampant.

At mention of the Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon, Saltbrine’s rather lowering brow lowered further. Beetle-browed, he growled an obscenity.

‘I’ve heard of the wee divot,’ he said, when I pressed him futher. ‘Church of England reborn in Scotland, all that.’ I nodded, carefully.

‘Moon’s caused a wee stink up here,’ Saltbrine said. ‘Chucking about braw words like ‘moral rearmament’ and ‘re-establishment’ and that.’

I nodded again. Saltbrine seemed to think – at least, his eyebrows knitted yet closer together. ‘But mostly he’s just a big English shite.’

Knowing the profane to be somewhat sacred to the average Scot, I did not complain, however my chaste English soul bucked at such language.

I do not employ swearwords. Even with wedding tackle in the mangle – literally, once, in a dungeon in Smolensk – I do not choose obscenity.

Still, Saltbrine did, years in the ranks not light on his rounded, hairy and tatooed shoulders. I forgave him when he gave me another drink.

There wasn’t much more to be had from him. He told me a little about Moon’s doings up here, about what the YMCE got up to at his command.

Punch-ups with Presbyterians. Potatoes studded with razor blades. Sharpened missals, hurled at the peelers when they attempted to intervene.

By the time I’d finished my drink I’d had enough. So I asked Saltbrine for directions to Teviot Row House, then pushed back my stool to go.

Saltbrine stopped me. ‘I’d hate you to go in underhanded,’ he said. I paused. Was he going to lend me a hanger-on? One of his flying squad?

He was not. Saltbrine’s posse of hangdog students, dropouts, panhandlers and actors stayed slumped as he handed a package over the bar. 

The offering was wrapped in heavy khaki sacking, which added to its ugly, dead weight. Folding back the hessian, I raised an eyebrow.

Good old Saltbrine. In folds of rough sisal sat a good old service revolver. It wasn’t mine – Simon of the YMCE had that – but it would do.

I pocketed the piece and the ammunition that lay alongside it, and thanked my host. He spat at another glass, missed, and explained himself.

‘You’ll need that where you’re ganging,’ he said, picaresquely. ‘Teviot Row isnae for the timorous.’ I said I knew that, and turned to go.

Saltbrine’s words followed me. ‘If you get past Moon’s goons you’ll still have to be careful,’ he said. ‘Why?’ I asked, at the door.

‘Och,’ said Saltbrine. ‘The Reverend Moon’s got a guest speaker. A heavy up from London, like yourself.’ I told him I fancied my chances.

‘Aye, well, so do I,’ said my old army mucker. ‘But mind the moniker. Holman-Hunt. Double-barrelled by name, double-barrelled by nature.’

I minded it. So Moon had conjured up a Pre-Raphaelite now, had he? Milksops, the lot of ’em. Hardly the act of a deadly villain. I laughed.

Saltbrine frowned, but I set out for Bristo Square. I did not expect many problems to come. I could not, of course, have been more wrong...

Part Fifteen: A Journey to the Frozen North!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Fifteen: A Journey to the Frozen North!

I passed some pleasant hours on the train north. Mostly, once past the soot-stacks and grime of the Midlands, I gazed out of the window.

At York, I purchased tea and cake from a cart. The hack Pengelly, bless him, had furnished me with a crisp fiver for ‘travelling expenses’.

No doubt it was one of those magic newspaper fivers, liable to turn from green to brown or even blue when given to the Guardian’s cashiers.

As we made Durham, that old drivel about ‘grey towers, half church of God half castle ’gainst the Scot’ leached into my lobes. Ah, prep.

Scott’s lines gave me pause. They also give me pause now, knowing what I know, now, of what then was still to come. Hope you followed that.

Scott, Sir Walter. Usual dry old vulture, bane of my schooldays, learnt by rote to avoid whacks with a collected works. Out of fashion now.

Which is just as well, but as I sped his fractured verses turned me to thinking thoughts as deep as the North Sea off Dunstanburgh point.

Scott was born in Edinburgh, in seventeen-seventy-something. Moon was now, in nineteen-twenty-thirty-forty-something, on his way there too.

He was travelling to Edinburgh, as dastardly Church of England hardliners in charge of neo-fascist goon platoons will, in a flatback truck.

On that flatback truck he carried a cage, which contained Vespa Cryptoides, my comrade in misadventure, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Somewhere about his person (or about his flatback truck, perhaps in the glove compartment with the mints), Moon toted the Lambeth Treasure.

The Taxus Brevifola. A medieval codex – or book – that had caused a Flea from William Blake’s imaginings to kill my friend Sam Phraxby.

The dratted tome had caused a few other things. An attack of The Gout. A ghostly stampede. An ugly brawl with a portrait of Cardinal Wolsey.

I remembered Moon’s words, spoken in his underground lair. He wanted to use the damn book to boost the Church of England. I didn’t see how.

But he knew best, or at least better (or worser, being a villain) than me. I also remembered mention of a megalomaniac Swiss industrialist.

Would I meet him in Scotland? It seemed more likely than meeting him (I assumed it was a him, Swiss women being retiring sorts) in Lambeth.

Train trips, you see, are ideal for consideration and cogitation, for recapping and analysing, for getting thoughts into some sort of order.

I learnt so on a scoot through the Old West, as Tolstoy palled, the heat hazed and I searched my soul for answers. Or at least a few jokes.

True, on that occasion a knife fight on the train roof with a gang of mescal-crazed Mimbreños had distracted me, but the principle stood.

It’s like the famous detective beak said: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Or, rather, in my rather odd case, once I had experienced the impossible, nothing remained, however improbable, that could not be the truth.

This was, definitively, a two-pipe problem. Or, rather, it was a two pipe, three coffee, sixteen Benzedrine and a very long snooze problem.

What I am trying to say is that as the train rolled past manor houses and curious Scotch cattle, I was stumped as to what would come next.

I did not know. Nor did I know how, once I had arrived in Edinburgh, which now loomed as close as the Bass Rock, I would or should proceed.

Fortunately, after the train wheezed its way into Waverley Station and I prised my aching limbs upright, providence was on the lookout.

It often is. Providence, I mean. On the lookout, whether for me individually or not I don’t know. But there it is. Providence. Looking out.

It’s a tricky thought, perilous close to the pious inanities of Moon and his lot, but I have often felt some protective force attending me.

I wouldn’t say it was a religious feeling. But across my adventures and misadventures, across all eight continents, I have flourished.

In tight scrapes, I have thrived. You might put this down to bravery, strength, British spirit and a brain the size of Bournemouth. I might.

If an ice field splinters my ship, I grab a team of huskies, hunt out a polar bear, shoot and skin it and turn it into a serviceable kayak.

If, as I paddle off the Siberian coast, a giant octopus attacks, I stroke and tease it into docility. And then feast off calamari for weeks. 

But sometimes, as the fire flickers low and ardent spirits seize me, I wonder if I am not aided in my quests and tests in the wildest wilds.

Like King’s Cross – at an ebb low enough to expose some decidedly unfortunate mental rock pools, who should show up but the hack Pengelly.

Thanks to him, my belly was full, my mind rested and my quest a going concern. Funny kind of Guardian angel, I thought. Or perhaps not.

He must still have been watching over me, anyway, for as I stepped on to the solid stones of old Edinburgh, a garish poster caught my eye.

‘Revivalist meeting!’ the poster shouted. I made to pass, knowing your average Scot for a dour, pious fruit. But the next line gave me pause.

‘The Church of England reborn in Scotland! Moral Rearmament! The Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon speaks!’ I checked place, time and date.

‘Teviot Row House, Bristo Square, tonight, eight.’ It was six. I had time for a dram with the last of Pengelly’s fiver. Adventure beckoned! 

 

 

Part Fourteen: A Passage Cunningly Forged

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less

Part Fourteen: A Passage Cunningly Forged

Edinburgh. My quarry was there, or at least on the way. Moon, the YMCE; Vespa and the Archbishop. And the damned book. The Taxus Brevifola.

I have never gone in for multiple narratives – you’ll notice, it follows, that this adventure is a splendidly linear, single-person affair.

So what Vespa thought and did as Moon sped her northwards, in company in her cage with the highest prelate in the land, I could not say.

For, dear reader, I was not there. I know now that the other folk in my tale travelled thus beyond the Wall, for I met them there later.

But then, in the continuous present that is forced upon any such hardy narrator, I knew not where they were, or how fast they travelled.

As I ran, as previously mentioned, to King’s Cross, I mulled such undergraduate problems. But I forced them from my mind. Edinburgh it was!

This presented problems, not least in Scotland being a place I find chill, haughty and insufficiently supplied with domestic conveniences.

Suffice to say, I arrived at King’s Cross – portal to northern adventure, gateway to romance in Grantham and Newark – in a spot of a fix.

I had not, for example, eaten since before Sam Phraxby and I set off on this ride into uncertainty, insanity and hideous subterranean death. 

This problem proved solvable – discovering a soft protuberance in my trousers, I fell on Sam’s oilskins of sandwiches with a happy yell.

Nor, however, had I drunk. I cursed my refusal of the Reverend Moon’s offer of tea, however filthy his sweepings would certainly have been. 

I resolved this. King’s Cross being a locale to make Lambeth look like Monte Carlo, I simply joined a line of tramps. Tea flowed as nectar.

Bucked by such a capital feed, I set about solving the final poser – how to board a steam train for chill Caledonia when I had no ticket.

This would be tough. Suffering a shortage of cash – I’d left my billfold of ooff in my other jacket, at Phraxby’s – I could not buy one.

Nor could I steal. Needs must in a tight spot, as a variety of encounters in the bush had taught me, but stealing? Never. A code is a code.

And so I stood on the forecourt, eyeing the train-company stooges who stood at the turnstiles like so many ill-qualified school leavers.

I had decided to ride to Scotland on a train roof when fortune, a mistress not blind to my charms, or at least my moustache, played me fair.

As my eye roamed the crowd, I spotted a familiar and, it had sadly to be said, entirely welcome phiz, lurking about near the arrivals board.

 

Chap called Pengelly. Martin. Writer, second class. Penned unlikely adventure stories and lurid sex-crime shockers for the penny dreadfuls.

Knew him at prep. Not trusted. Partial to fruit juice. He had now sprouted a beard; his fingers were stained with inky drips from pamphlets.

Last I heard he had a job at the Manchester Guardian. Headmaster mentioned it in the yearly round-robin, in something of a resigned tone.

The grubby swine would be what chaps in darker trades call my ‘mark’. I would still catch a train by stealth, but I would have a ticket.

I sidled up to the hack and, mastering the rising in my gorge, tapped him on a brown-corduroyed shoulder. He turned, grinning absently.

I introduced myself and, using the same technique as when hypnotising water buffalo in paddy fields for food, quickly won his confidence.

In no time we were sitting in a roundly ghastly canteen, sipping oily tea from chipped cups and munching on quite appalling jam donuts.

It took three cups of tea – ordered by Pengelly, greedily – two donuts and a promise of the ghosting rights to my memoirs before I had him.

Which was to say, desperate for a deal. Utter oiks, hacks. Pengelly cited Lawrence and Burton, but I knew he would sell my life to Tit-Bits.

Gamely, I told him the tale was as good as his. The only problem, I said, was that I had left the manuscript with my brother in Edinburgh.

I had no brother and no manuscript. I had not seen Edinburgh in years. But I had every faith in a journalist never, ever checking his facts.

I said I had to make it to Edinburgh, retrieve the papers and return. Unfortunately, as a gentleman of adventure, I had mislaid my ticket.

Within a minute I had accepted, with manly protestations followed by demonstrations of quite sickening gratitude, one ticket to Edinburgh.

I had to prise myself away at the gate – Pengelly pumped my hand and tried his best to look manfully glad to have helped an old school chum.

I knew he was really happy just to have secured a fat commission and, like as not, a plum byline or two in the dailies. Vainglorious oaf.

But, eventually, as I settled myself on a railway-carriage banquette and contemplated the long journey ahead, I softened towards the chump.

He’d write anyway, cook up some ludicrous escapade and sell it as a true-life tale, twittering to anyone who’d listen. Maybe self-publish.

‘Good luck to him,’ I thought. But further cogitation was muffled by the whistle of the train and the sweet arms of Morpheus. I slept. 

 

 

Part Thirteen: A Chilling Portrait Of Evil!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Thirteen: A Chilling Portrait of Evil!

The Homicidal Portrait of Cardinal Wolsey and I circled each other. I had, I reflected, no time to ponder the unusualness of the situation.

Wolsey, meatily three-dimensional despite his canvas origin, glared at me through eyes pursed in jowelly flesh, stevedores’ fists flexing.

Was it to be mano-a-mano? I had wrestled many creatures. Bears. Mexicans. Once, an irate Mother Superior. But a sixteenth-century portrait?

At least there would be no need for preparatory oiling. I chuckled to myself, only to be rudely interrupted by a swinging right. I ducked.

Fists? I thought back to that bare-knuckled night on a quay at Manaus, when Gentlemen Jim Splinty gave me six of the best. I gave him seven.

Wolsey threw again, a haymaker of agricultural origin. I swayed away, easily, then stepped sharply up to jab a cut at his bristly chin.

I gave thanks to my gym master, Knuckles Stibson, and the endless mills that had left me ring-sore but, an unusual tick apart, ring-savvy.

My punch connected, and for all the world the substance that gave, cut and hosed beneath my hand felt not like canvas or board, but flesh.

Cardinal Wolsey grunted and staggered, but came on. He threw another roundhouse heave, which I dodged, but he followed with a crafty jab.

 

The Cardinal’s fist, an array of ecclesiastic ruby rings making a splendid impromptu knuckleduster, connected with the point of my top rib.

I gasped in pain. Wolsey’s eye flashed with unseemly bloodlust and he came on, muttering oaths under his breath. I strained to hear. Latin!

In my bewilderment, The Homicidal Portrait of Cardinal Wolsey fetched me a sharp blow below the belt! I reeled and rocked. He came again!

The Tudor statesman showed remarkable agility as he attacked, a whir of scarlet sleeves and billowing robes. Terribly, he roared his intent! 

I swayed, delivered a sharp blow to his temple with my right and slammed my left into his crumpling gut. My hands sang with the force of it.

Wolsey seemed to hang still, rather, as if the air in the Palace Hall held him up. He appeared confused. I imagine Henry VIII knew the look.

And then, with an agonised bellow, Cardinal Wolsey crashed to the parquet floor. I stepped forward, and fetched him a kick in the head.

Not seemly, I know, but it pays to ensure a quarry’s incapacity. You learn that with any beast of the plains, from jerboa to grizzly bear.

Wolsey was out for a very long count, so I took the chance to get my breath back. Flexing my tingling gauntlets, I turned to look behind me.

The Clockwork Archbishop of Canterbury – I’d forgotten about him – sat motionless, slumped in his chair. Needed winding up, I supposed.

I wondered if his vicars and beadles would twig. Probably not. It would be safe to leave him. And the real Bish (and Vespa) needed saving.

Which would mean – as I remembered the Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon’s parting words, as he ran for his flatback truck – a trip to Scotland.

Edinburgh. I hadn’t been to Auld Reekie in an age, not since an unreported affair involving the heir to the throne and high-stakes canasta.

I didn’t fancy a return leg, but there it was and there was where the dastard Moon had dragged Vespa, the Bish and the Taxus Brevifola.

I turned to go, my mind racing to perils ahead. Fortunately, though, I am getting old. A laggardly bit of said mind loitered in the Hall.

I saw, therefore, The Homicidal Portrait of Cardinal Wolsey stir afresh from his apparent comatose stupour. I saw him rise to his knees.

And, from the corner of my eye, I saw him reach into his robes. Remembering Moon’s Mauser pistol, my brain chilled. The Cardinal’s Beretta! 

I threw myself to the floor as the Cardinal fired, the bullet giving my moustache a trim and smithereening a priceless vase behind me!

The next shot caromed off the Clockwork Archbishop’s throne as I skittered for safety behind it. Giggling insanely, Cardinal Wolsey came on!

That was his undoing. As Wolsey rushed on, his Beretta before him, I heaved with all my might and shoved throne, Bishop and all at his feet.

Wolsey went down, as they say in the fistic trade, like a holdall of ordure. His gun spiralled towards me. I dived, grasped it and fired!

Wolsey roared no more. I watched, horrified. As a noise akin to a thousand radios tuned to static filled the air, the Cardinal… disappeared.

And so did the gun. I stared, agog. But I pepped up. Leinigen, in the Hall, with the imaginary disappearing pistol. It would never stick.

And, what was more, nor would I. Mindful of the imminence of Lambeth Palace staff, I ran. I ran north, to adventure. I ran to King’s Cross!

 

 

Part Twelve: A Fight Develops... Entertainingly

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less

Part Twelve: A Fight Develops… Entertainingly

One of my strengths – even charms, if you will – is a predisposition to choose action over negotiation. War-war over jaw-jaw, if you like.

And so, at a sight to madden any Britisher – a captive Archbishop beset by Church of England ultras and deposed by a robot clone – I acted.

I did not gasp, or gawp, or look to Moon and demand to know what in the name of Beelzebub he meant by all this. Instead, I turned sharply.

Simon, the rubbery YMCE pasha, stood nearby. I roared, and as his eyes widened in surprise I drove the heel of my hand, hard, into his nose.

As an adventurer, such techniques come with the territory. Nothing to do with eastern teachings; Tai-Chi and I-Ching and wotsits like that.

No, the tactics I learned on the rugger pitch at prep have served me ever since. At my attack, Simon of the YMCE buckled like a satchel.

His nose retreated under my hand like a wet beanbag dropped on gravel. There was a spout of rich red blood, as from a stuck sperm whale.

Simon yelped, I span to face the rest of the YMCE and chaos reigned. I dove for the nearest youth and butted him in his cable-knit cardigan.

Exultant, sparks blazing in fierce eye, I met my next assailant with a straight left and a slightly bent right. He fell. Another came on!

‘Leinigen!’ Amidst whirling fists and boots I heard Vespa’s voice. Panicked. Pausing only to poke a finger into a passing eye, I looked up.

Vespa shrieked. The sight beggared belief: the Reverend Moon had my companion by the neck as he dragged her towards the Archbishop’s cage!

Moon was surprisingly strong; Vespa’s boots skittered on the parquet floor. ‘Hold on, old girl,’ I roared, flinging a YMCE chap at a table.

‘Sorry boys,’ I said. ‘Back in a mo.’ I sprinted towards Moon and Vespa. At which point Moon surprised me by pulling a gun from his cassock.

It was a snug and ugly piece. A Mauser, I guessed. I stopped, as such firearms make advisable, and shot Moon a suitably disdainful glance.

‘I didn’t know prelates carried,’ I said. ‘Oh yes,’ simpered the Reverend Moon, his aim unwavering. ‘In certain parishes it is necessary.’

Lambeth. It figured. The streets round Sam’s gaff were a little unsavoury. Loitering types, greengrocers. I’d put up with it, as was polite.

But we were off the point. The point was that Moon had a gun and I didn’t, my revolver having been taken in the anteroom. He also had Vespa.

Not removing his aim from me, and continuing to show unsuspected strength, Moon opened the door of the Archbishop’s cage with his foot.

He threw Vespa into the cage. As she fell with a thump on top of the bound and gagged Archbishop of Canterbury, I considered my position.

The YMCE, pleasingly beaten and bedraggled, milled about, staunching wounds and rubbing sore temples. I allowed myself a satisfied grunt.

But the Reverend Moon stood before me still, his ugly Mauser levelled, a mocking smile playing about his thin and bloodless lips. He spoke.

‘You still have it, Brother Leinigen.’ I wasn’t sure what ‘it’ was, unless the Nurse on the steamer home had been fibbing. ‘I am impressed.’

‘But I have the gun, which places you at a disadvantage.’ I glared at him and flicked out my boot to catch an importune YMCEr in the groin.

Moon glared at the youth, who lay foetal at my feet. ‘Nigel,’ he said. ‘Most rude, sneaking up so.’ Nigel writhed back into the YMCE ranks.

Moon continued. ‘Brother Leinigen, you and your concubine have shown considerable spunk. I congratulate you. But it will not be enough.’

I wasn’t sure about his calling Vespa my concubine. Not done before the ladies have retired and the cigars have come out. But I let it pass.

Moon kept his gun levelled while he turned away from Vespa and the Archbishop, and towards the Taxus Brevifola, which lay open on a table.

I didn’t like the look of that, so I spoke up. ‘Not that dratted book again, Moon old boy?’ The Reverend looked sideways at me, and smiled.

Turning the pages, he said: ‘I am afraid so, sir, yes. Shortly, I must leave you. The book will, ah, occupy you sufficiently in my absence.’

I racked my brain again for eighteenth-century art monsters; possible assailants and, thus, possible plans of defence or attack against ’em.

Moon reached his desired page. He called to the YMCE, who surrounded me. Simon, nose bloodied, produced my own revolver and levelled it.

‘I say,’ I said. ‘Bit off, ain’t it? Taking a chap’s shooting stick and pointing back at him?’ Simon, his eyes watering, tried to glare.

I was distracted from any response. At a strange mumbling from Moon, I turned. Bent over the Taxus Brevifola, he seemed to be… chanting.

‘Ames-Lewis, Hartt, Fried and Nochlin,’ Moon said. I puzzled. ‘Penrose, Richardson, Burckhardt, Nead.’ The penny dropped. Art historians.

Moon paused in his incantation. The air in the hall fell still. In the cage, Vespa got off the Archbishop and stood, staring. I waited.

Moon spoke again, pouring out a strange agglomeration of vowels. I flinched – it all sounded a little new-agey. Then Moon clapped, sharply.

‘It is done,’ he said. ‘Simon! Come.’ The YMCE, led by their snivelling kapo, circled warily round me and gathered behind Moon at the door.

‘Goodbye, Leinigen,’ said Moon. ‘I have business in… Edinburgh.’ Edinburgh? I tried to make sense of it. Not easy. Scotched, I stood silent.

Moon reached out an arm and flicked a switch on the wall. Before my eyes, the cage containing Vespa and the Bish dropped through the floor!

From below came a heavy thud and the grumble of a revving engine. Moon answered my look. ‘A flatback truck,’ he said. ‘Ugly, but necessary.’

More questions were impossible. Moon and his goons backed out of the hall, taking the Taxus Brevifola and covering me with raised pistolas.

The heavy oak door closed. Motes of dust glittered in shafts of light from the windows. I counted to ten, then made for the door in pursuit.

At a strange, dry, papery sound behind me, a kind of tearing, I stopped. The Taxus Brevifola. Moon’s incantation. This did not bode well.

As I turned, a chill fingered down my spine. It was incredible. Impossible. Maniacal. But it could not be denied, however I rubbed my eyes.

Cardinal Wolsey, a fierce glint in his portly eye, was climbing out of the portrait that hung on the wall. This was going to be difficult. 

 

Part Eleven: A Plot Spirals... Alarmingly

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less.

Part Eleven: A Plot Spirals… Alarmingly 

It isn’t every day one meets a clockwork Archbishop of Canterbury, placed on the throne by a mad Reverend and his crypto-fascist prelates.

Nor, every day, is one told that said automaton Archbish has been put on said throne because it is more reliable than the actual incumbent.

This day – which broke as Vespa and I were frogmarched into Lambeth Palace Hall, a deadly fountain pen at our backs – was not every day.

That much I had surmised as the Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon, Simon and the YMCE thugs dredged us from the depths of the Lambeth Labyrinth.

From Moon’s lair we had traversed a few tunnels, then squeezed into a rickety lift, the likes of which serve many a Parisian maison close.

I had indulged in happy reveries as said lift juddered through the Lambeth clay, Moon clasping the Taxus Brevifola to his cadaverous chest.

The lift spewed us out in an antechamber, in which the Reverend Moon indicated an urn and a set of puce cups. ‘Tea, Leinigen?’ he asked.

‘Clipstone’s?’ I asked, glaring fiercely. Moon looked puzzled. ‘Why, no,’ he said. I thought not. Phraxby, poor dead Sam, had the monopoly.

I refused refreshment, tincture or libation. I would not drink with the Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon. Even had he offered Clipstone’s.

‘No matter,’ said Moon, fluttering a sickly yellow hand. ‘I shall wake the Archbishop. Simon!’ The leader of the YMCE flopped to attention.

‘Look after our guests,’ said Moon, to which Simon simpered, nastily. Moon opened a door in the far wall of the antechamber, and oozed out.

Vespa and I waited in the antechamber with the paramilitary wing of the reborn Church of England for about five minutes. A clock ticked.

Then, from without, we heard a most curious sound. It was a winding, a sound of cogs grinding against other cogs. Then, a metallic whirring.

The metallic whirring seemed to grind into gear, and as it did, language formed. ‘zzzzzz….wwwww….fffff….female priests!’ Vespa smiled wryly.

‘Nnnnnn….never….sssss…sanctity…a kkkkk-kind of sharing.’ The voice from without was odd. Curious. Distant. Otherworldly, I might have said.

To be expected of an archbishop, I thought, otherworldliness being generally a boon in such lines of work. Then Moon’s voice sounded, sharp.

‘Simon!’ he called. ‘Our guests must meet his Grace!’ The YMCE, meandering like a threatening flock of sheep, herded us into the Hall.

The Hall of Lambeth Palace was hung with tapestries of damask and gold. Ingots – I supposed they were ingots – glinted from teak sideboards.

Morning light streamed in beams from high Tudor windows. Portraits gazed down. Wolsey, goggling. At the far end of the hall stood a throne.

The Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon stood beside the throne, looking like some medieval chamberlain or other. He smiled, ingratiatingly.

‘Come forth,’ he said. ‘Brother Leinigen and Sister Vespa, you have the honour of meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury.’ I supposed we did.

The Archbishop, his hands rigidly clasping the golden ecclesiastic boluses on the arms of his throne, gazed at us through pale blue eyes.

He was dressed in the usual purple cozzy, a cross like a radiator key round his neck and a gold and silver mitre balanced atop his scone.

‘Greetings,’ he said. ‘Friends.’ The Archbishop’s words came in an odd staccato, his jaw chomping on the syllables. ‘Peace. Be. With. You.’

I looked at Vespa. We both raised an eyebrow – my left, her right. The Archbishop looked at us. As his head moved, his neck seemed to click.

The Archbishop spoke. ‘It. Is. A. Pleasure. To. Welcome. You. Most. Pleasing.’ He blinked like a toy owl. I turned to the Reverend Moon.

‘All right, Moon,’ I said, wearily. ‘What new madness is this?’ Moon looked surprised. ‘Madness, Brother Leinigen?’ he asked. ‘Madness?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Madness. Obviously there’s something askew with the old Archbish here, and I dare say you and your goons are behind it.’

Moon chuckled. Simon tittered. My stomach turned. Vespa spoke. ‘What have you done to the Archbishop?’ she said. ‘He does not seem himself.’

‘No,’ said Moon. ‘He does not. But in fact, Sister Vespa, the Archbishop of Canterbury is not just not himself. He is also beside himself.’

At this, Simon the YMCE leader shrieked with laughter. His paramilitaries joined in as Vespa and I girded for some new and terrible lunacy.

‘You see,’ said Moon, ‘this –’ he indicated the figure on the throne, which had not moved again – ‘is the new Archbishop of Canterbury.’

I wasn’t aware that the office had been advertised. ‘No indeed,’ said Moon, with a smile. ‘This was an appointment made from… within.’

With that, he reached for a dangling cord. At his tug, a tapestry behind the holy throne fell away, revealing a cage of thick iron bars!

The cage held a man. Stripped of vestments, bound and gagged with tape, he seemed familiar. His pale blue eyes gazed at me, beseechingly.

‘Brother Leinigen,’ said Moon. ‘I introduce the former Archbishop of Canterbury, deposed by the clockwork automaton you see on the throne!’