Part Twenty-Five: A Prelate Proves His Mettle!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less

Part Twenty-Five: A Prelate Proves His Mettle

They threw me in a dank cell, hewn out of the rock and isolated from the buzzing military-industrial hub at the centre of Tavis Knoyle.

I landed on the rough stone floor with a thud; as I sprang back to my feet, the door of my oubliette clanged shut. Keys jangled in the lock.

I massaged my chafed wrist and pondered my options. Like pilchards in a fishmonger’s window at closing time they were few, and unappealing.

I rattled the door – no go. At the noise a YMCE goon stationed outside spat with practised accuracy through the bars of its small window. 

I wiped my cheek and snarled at the grille. I supposed a solution would present itself – they usually do – and, at least, I was still alive.

Galanthus might have killed me; it seemed she would have, had I not bluffed an apparent full knowledge of her plot, codename: ‘John Martin.’

Of course, that bluff had also succeeded in eliciting details of her machinations I could not otherwise have hoped to learn. Funny, that. 

Apocalyptic paintings brought to life by a medieval book and deployed in a Calvinist-Anglican plot for world or at least British domination.

It was mad but, as I have said before in telling this unlikely, not to say unusual tale, it was and had been proved to be horribly feasible.

I could feel the onset of another brown study, which would not be welcome. Brooding is no use to a man held captive. He might as well pray.

There was irony in that notion, as became apparent halfway through another – that a sachet of Bolivian mesa powder would have been handy.

The blessed stuff was cut from some leaf or other by those johnnies in bowler hats and knitwear and was the whizz for marching the Andes.

Brown studies require such colourful solutions, as the famous detective knew. I wondered how I would stave off the blues (or browns) now.

I sniffed, morosely. But then said irony hit me, square between eyes and schnozz. At a meek half-cough behind me, I turned. I was not alone!

Against the wall of the cell squatted a bearded, purple-cozzied chap, a battered mitre atop his head and dulled garnet rings on his fingers.

The Archbishop of Canterbury! Other than a nagging thought that Moon must have been keeping him alive for a reason, I’d forgotten about him.

‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘My dear fellow. I startled you.’ I allowed that he had. I’d been snuck up on by a primate before. In Tanganyika.

As then, if towards a silvery-haired ecclesiastical cove rather than a gigantic buck silverback, I made emollient noises. The Bish simpered.

‘My dear fellow,’ he said, rather spry considering his position and what I knew of his ordeal on the way to this prison. ‘My dear fellow.’

Ah, I thought. Wandering. I supposed it wasn’t a surprise, really. Gone in the scone, quite. ‘My dear fellow,’ he said. ‘My dear fellow.’

As the Archbishop scrabbled for what remained of his wits, out of which he had evidently been startled, I saw the devilry of Moon’s plot.

Who would suspect the automaton put in the real Archbishop’s place, that I had left behind, unwound but intact, in Lambeth Palace Hall?

No-one, I thought, or at least no one in the C of blessed E. Even though the Archbish had a reputation as a bit of an egg, intellectwise.

After all, he had a beard and wrote letters, and not just to the Times to complain about socialism and Gracie Fields. Books too. Dostoevsky.

But now, alas, he seemed quite enfeebled. I squatted, pensive, in the shadows of the cell. ‘My dear fellow, my dear fellow,’ he burbled.

On my haunches, I pondered my best plan of action. Escape was imperative, obviously. I’d have to take the Archbishop with me. Rescue him.

Foil Galanthus’s plot. Foil the Reverend Moon too, and Holman-Hunt (if that was his name…) and the YMCE and the whole damned lot of it.

It was a tall order, taller still if to be accomplished in the company of the gibbering wreck before me. Still, there it was. As usual.

So I fell to further thinking. Stirred from self-pity by my pitiable companion, this was less a brown study than one in ochre. Even puce.

Fortunately, inspiration did not lie particularly far off. After maybe five minutes' hard cogitation, a plan of action formed in my mind.

 

The Archbishop’s attire did it. I noticed the tarnished glint, in the last of the weak Highland light, of his heavy episcopal crucifix.

It hung from the Archbishop’s neck on a chain of dull brass. It was long, battered and strong and it tapered to a very intriguing point.

I saw immediately what I should do. The Archbishop protested only mildly as I slipped the cross over his head and weighed it in my palm.

I moved noiselessly to the cell door and applied keen ear to cold steel. From without, I heard a precious sound. Rhythmic, guttural snores.

My YMCE guard was, evidently, asleep. Thanking sweet Lady Luck – an old travelling companion, assiduously courted – I bent to the lock.

As a pick, the Archbishop’s crucifix worked a treat. The door eased open. Silently, before beckoning my companion, I removed my right boot.

The door swung inwards on noiseless and well-oiled hinges. I stepped out of the cell, coiled on my haunches like a cougar or mountain lion...

The YMCE guard snored, slumped forward on a small stool. I regarded the nape of his hirsute neck dispassionately. It would do very nicely.

I hit him with the boot. He knew nothing (I assume, for if not his dreams would have been very interesting) as he crumpled to the floor.

I took his sten gun, retreated, replaced my boot, took the Archbishop by the hand – ‘My dear fellow!’ he cried – and walked into the tunnel.

Torches flickered. Military noises echoed. I paused. From surprisingly nearby, I heard voices. Galanthus. Moon. A calming lilt: Holman-Hunt.

That way lay my goal; the conclusion to this mad caper. Salvation or perdition. Pulling the Archbishop with me, I crept towards my fate...

Part Twenty-Four: A Villain Makes Her Play!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

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

Part Twenty-Four: A Villain Makes Her Play!

You could, I’ll admit, have said I was ‘surprised’ when Vespa Cryptoides, co-adventurer, inamorata… chum, even… revealed her true identity.

‘Vespa’ was Max Galanthus. As in, Maxine. She had not disguised her gender – on certain points, as it were, that would have been impossible.

But she had disguised her identity. In all our knowing, from war in Athens to that yurt in Tashkent to Lambeth and here, she had hidden!

Max Galanthus. Swiss megalomaniac billionaire. Banker to terror gangs and Calvinist bible-study groups. Despotic tyrant, tyrannical despot!

… and, facing facts, my sometime bedfellow. I guessed, of course, her reasons for reappearing in my life. Or mine for reappearing in hers.

The Lambeth Treasure. The Taxus Brevifola. A book that could change realities, alter worlds. Precious to any common or garden megalomaniac.

Such as Moon. Galanthus was using him. I could see that. Galanthus had also used me. I did wonder briefly about the punishment she’d taken.

The manhandling by Moon and the YMCE, in Lambeth. Tied and handcuffed to me on a bumpy drive to the Highlands. But I supposed it figured.

Rum lot, the Swiss, prey to who knows what appetites and delights. The cold does it. Though I knew Galanthus’s blood ran hotter than most.

Now, in the depths of Tavis Knoyle, as awed YMCE members knelt and Moon’s arc light followed her every move, she walked slowly towards me.

I stiffened. Straightened my back. Raised a manly eyebrow, and found resolution. The reservoir was a tad low, but it was there. In the gut.

Galanthus – despite the blonde hair, blue eyes and strange paramilitary uniform she had revealed, I wanted still to call her Vespa – paused.

I raised my eyebrow further. She raised hers. I tried to counter, but had no room left on my forehead. I raised the other one instead.

‘There’s no need to look so surprised,’ she said. I couldn’t place her accent. French? Italian? German? Damned Swiss. Neither fish nor foul.

‘You must have had an inkling of my purpose,’ she said. It was true; I’d known she was out for herself. Or her other self. It was confusing.

I stayed silent. Galanthus smiled a smile that receded like a glacier. ‘No words, darling?’ None. At times, woman, false, commands muteness.

‘Very well,’ she said, before taking the rather surprising step of kissing me, lingeringly, on the lips. The YMCE gasped at the impropriety.

My knees buckled. There was no Greek fire; none of that aftertaste of raki, pine nuts and garlic that had driven me crazy years before.

Galanthus’s kiss was like ice. Cold. Hard. Translucent. I saw through it but it chilled me to the very bone. It was the kiss of Judas.

Or Judith, I supposed, or Jude. Judy? But while I cogitated such matters, Galanthus withdrew. The YMCE let out their collective breath... 

‘Farewell, Leinigen darling,’ said Galanthus. ‘You have served your purpose well. You have brought me very far, and I thank you for it.’

‘Thank me?’ Galanthus looked at me through eyes as blue and bottomless as a Swiss fjord. If there were Swiss fjords. Which I doubted.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘You have, in your inimitable swashbuckling style, led my friends and I to the Lambeth Treasure. I am grateful.’

I suppose I must have scowled at that. I made to remind her of Sam Phraxby, poor, dead Sam, my chum who had died in the Lambeth Labyrinth.

But what would she care of Sam? As little as she had at the time of his demise, stashing his cadaver behind a chaise longue and moving on.

So I kept Mum. Galanthus turned away. “Lights!’ she shouted: at her mittel-European command (always the best kind), Tavis Knoyle was lit!

The YMCE army stood to attention. Up on his balcony, the Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon surveyed the scene with smug satisfaction. I growled.

‘Shhhh,’ said Galanthus. I shhhhed. It pays to be obedient occasionally. One learns surprising things. Like, in this case, Galanthus’s plot.

‘Friends,’ she cried. ‘Prepare yourselves! Our immortal project, codename ‘John Martin’, begins at midnight! Our great moment is nigh!’

At this, hellish industry returned to the depths of Tavis Knoyle. Saws buzzed, engines revved and tank-tracks ground out a steady beat.

The YMCE Army was moving! I knew I had to act, and now, but my YMCE guard had me shackled fast. So as Galanthus walked away, I shouted:

‘I know your game, Galanthus!’ She turned. ‘Oh yes?’ she said. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And Moon’s too! I’m all over you two like a cheap suit!’

Galanthus raised a pretty eyebrow. ‘You know everything?’ ‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘You know about John Martin?’ ‘All about him,’ I said.

I am, as I have no doubted pointed out, a bluff and winning cove. I have a sort of manly authority that many find excellent persuasive.

So in this game of bluff, there could only be one winner. I held Galanthus’s gaze, icy and gimlet as it was, and, sure enough, she cracked.

‘You know John Martin? Painter of biblical, apocalyptic scenes? Vast canvases tens of feet across? Popular in the early nineteenth century?’

I nodded. ‘You know,’ Galanthus continued, ‘of his paintings of the Flood, and of Judgement Day, and of the damnation of all human souls?’

‘Yup,’ I said, lying happily. ‘You know,’ Galanthus continued, ‘that using the Taxus Brevifola I plan to inflict such scenes upon the world?

‘You know I will then ride to the rescue, using Moon and his army as ‘muscle’, and thereby assume the pitiless rule of the entire globe?’

It took the last of my reservoir of inner spiff not to blench at the mad, maniacal terror of it, but I managed. Galanthus seemed surprised.

‘Very well, then,’ she said. ‘Perhaps, inconveniently, I shall not kill you after all. Guards!’ Three YMCE men jumped. ‘Take him away!’

Part Twenty-Three: A Villain Makes His Play!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

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

Part Twenty-Three: A Villain Makes His Play!

I often pause to thank my extensive reading of adventure serials and detective novellas, both when young and when becalmed in doldrum seas.

Such revision proves its worth when dramatic moments choose to play themselves out. As now, in the hollowed-out volcanic plug, with Moon.

Suffice to say, thanks to such bountiful masters as McNeile, Buchan and De Mille, I felt right at home, even in such diabolical surrounds.

Moon appeared on his balcony, carved into the living (or dead, but not being a geologist, thank God, I wasn’t sure) rock of Tavis Knoyle.

‘Good lad,’ I thought. ‘Knows how to make an entrance. Now for the curious unspooling of his entire plot, to set up the tale’s climax.’

I was not to be disappointed – for the Reverend Francis Gibbous Moon is, or rather was, nothing if not a commendably orthodox supervillain.

He raised his hands – as indicated before, I know, but it pays to reiterate when speaking to the curiously part-literate masses – and spoke.

‘Brothers, Sisters,’ Moon brayed, his piping contralto pinging off the crater walls like a pea in a tin. ‘Friends! Our moment approaches!’

I grimaced with distaste. Moon, oblivious, continued. ‘For long years you have laboured, my children,’ he said. ‘For years you have toiled!’

‘But your moment is at hand. Oh, my children, the Church of England will rise again! The Church of England will be born again! In Scotland!’

Further reaction, ironic comment or biting satirical aside, was lost to me in an answering roar from the waiting YMCE throng. ‘Hallelujah!’

I don’t know if you can summon to mind your average Church of England shindig; if you know the general lack of vim and gusto in the hymning.

Put simply, if a massed cry of triumph from a gathered crypto-fascist horde could ever sound wan, unenthusiastic and dull, this one did.

‘Really,’ I thought. ‘This ain’t going to be a very bloodthirsty coup.’ But what did I expect from a gang of Grey Shirts, rather than Black?

Eventually the drear roar ebbed, and Moon spoke again. He detailed his plot (the replacement Archbishop, all that) to general approbation.

I stared at my boots, at my captors, at Vespa. My fellow prisoner, I thought, was rather quiet. I nudged her, whistled. She did not respond. 

‘I say, old girl,’ I said, although that was as far as I got before one of my guards whacked me over the bonce with the butt of his gun. 

I understood from this that Moon, on his balcony, was getting to the point. My eyes swimming a little, I looked up. Moon waxed lyrical. 

‘Children of the YMCE,’ said Moon. ‘In a moment I will reveal to you the author of our fate, the person behind my plan to take us to glory!’ 

‘Hullo,’ I thought. ‘Must be time for old Holman-Hunt to whip off his cloak and do a spot of magic with his celestial lamp.’ Moon continued. 

‘But first, dear Brothers and Sisters, I wish to introduce your…’ he paused, a rictus of divine unction playing around his chops… ‘sponsor!’

This was a turn up for the books, although it bore inspection. The whole volcanic plug crater set-up couldn’t have been cheap, after all. 

Moon gave his ‘sponsor’ chappie a reasonable preamble: it being our Swiss industrial megalomaniac chum, he started banging on about Calvin. 

I rather zoned out and, cursing my inability to listen in class, failed to notice the guard who reached for the cuffs that held me to Vespa. 

I did not notice the soft click as he released my companion from her shackle, or the second click that subsequently cuffed the guard to me.

Up on his balcony, Moon continued. ‘Children, none of this’ – he swept the crater, military hardware and all, with his hand – ‘came cheap.’

‘None of you’ – he indicated his sullen legions – ‘could be here without our sponsor. We could not march without Galanthus Industries!’

Of course! Galanthus! Swiss industrial cartel. Huge. Chemicals. Metals. Guns. Tanks. And the cuckoo clock, of course, as the fellow said.

Not widely known, true. But familiar to any who knew the world. No one who’d fought dirty war in African jungles could not know Galanthus.

Galanthus supplied industrial knowhow and hardware to anyone with a chequebook and impure intentions. Where evil lurked, Galanthus invested.

Their chief was one Max Galanthus. Shadowy, furtive. A recluse. Rumoured to live in a revolving restaurant on the Schilthorn. Face unknown.

I’d fought his lot before: defending trade concessions in Peru; hopping from junk to junk in Hong Kong harbour, torching contraband cheeses.

And I knew, from weary experience, the canard that went with ’em: that Switzerland was and ever would be a neutral, peaceful nation. Pah!

I didn’t like ’em. Not a bit. Couldn’t stomach Gruyere. I laughed, harshly. I should have known Galanthus Industries was behind Moon’s evil.

I supposed the Calvin stuff Moon was pouring out explained the ideological co-travelling. It didn’t bear close inspection, but it figured.

Once again, however, such close reasoning with myself blinded me to hideous and dread reality, and I almost missed Moon’s grand reveal.

But not quite. On his balcony, Moon shrieked loud enough to gain my attention. ‘Brothers and Sisters! Meet your sponsor! Max Galanthus!’

The electric lights in the crater of Tavis Knoyle clicked off, and then clicked on. The spotlight was no longer on Moon. It fell elsewhere.

It fell surprisingly close to me. It fell to my left. I turned. Vespa did not stand, shackled, next to me. A YMCE guard stood there instead.

Vespa stood further away. She stood oddly erect. As Moon’s arc lamps created an aureole of beauty about her, she reached up to her hair.

Vespa pulled off a long, dark wig. Vespa’s hair was ash-blonde. Vespa turned to look at me. Vespa’s eyes were no longer brown, but blue.

‘Vespa’, for the first time since disguising herself as William Blake’s charlady, acquired a set of quotation marks. My stomach pitched.

‘Vespa’, with Moon’s connivance, had been revealed to be Maxine Galanthus, Swiss industrial megalomaniac, sponsor of all the world’s evil!

Part Twenty-Two: An Army of Darkness Gathers!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

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

Part Twenty-Two: An Army of Darkness Gathers! 

From the mouth of the cave, Vespa and I, flanked by gun-toting YMCE goons, traversed a few short and rough-hewn passages into the rock. 

The tunnels reminded me of those I had found under Lambeth, what seemed like weeks before, if lined with dripping stone instead of brick. 

Moss, mud and other unmentionables clabbered under our skittering, slithering boots. Strange Highland insects scuttled from us as we walked. 

Torches, similar to those in the Lambeth Labyrinth, lit our flickering path. Shackled as well as mute, weary and appalled, we stumbled on. 

I missed the dread majesty of our destination – as the tunnel opened in a sort of awful mouth, I turned to a guard to voice an unpleasantry. 

Psychological warfare, see. Cuffed up and hemmed in as I was, I resolved to undermine my captors’ position by use of witticism or wisecrack. 

It works – even in frenzied political or philosophical debate, even with such as Mr Stanley Baldwin, recourse to creative abuse bears fruit. 

A chap has not lived, I find, until he has called the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain a big girl’s blouse. 

Did that at Oxford; the Union. Carried the motion, and not just thanks to some bad port. So, in my new scrape, I turned to trusted tactics. 

Fortunately, perhaps, I had stumbled but a few words into an intricate questioning of the nearest YMCE man’s paternity when Vespa gasped!

The light in the passage shifted, prey to an electronic glare from without. I turned. We stood on the very brink of an underground kingdom!

We were, I was later to deduce with aid of map and compass, inside one of those volcanic plugs for which Scotland is such an excellent plot.

You know: Arthur’s Seat and the like. This plug, which I later found to be named Tavis Knoyle, was very like that Edinburgh urban pimple.

Only hollow. As in, entirely. Mined, perhaps, though I wasn’t and am still not sure what one would ever mine in the Highlands, except mud.

Such musings occupy my mind now, of course. Then, they did not have chance to intrude, for the scene before me occupied all my thoughts.

In the chasmous void – and you have to admit, chasmous should really be a word – swarmed and teemed nothing less than a subterranean city.

The walls of the hollowed-out Tavis Knoyle rang with shouts, clangs, grindings and other industrial sounds. Hordes of YMCE men surged about.

They were accompanied, I could see, by what had to be YMCE women. Extraordinary creatures in thick spectacles and high-collared blouses.

Blondes, brunettes, redheads… all with hair tied back in sinister plain scrunchies, each toting bible and gun-metal thermos. I shuddered.

It was like looking upon an army of organised, productive ants. Aggressive ants, like the fire-eating blighters I once battled in the Congo.

Like ants, the YMCE men and women (as I decided to call them, YWCE not having quite the acronymical ring) expressed a loathsome purpose.

In the depths of Tavis Knoyle, as sparks arced from welding machinery and pulleys heaved metal parts about, I saw an army preparing for war.

Interrupting my dreadful reverie after a convenient pause, as they had proved was their convenient wont, my guards prodded me downwards...

Vespa and I stumbled down a narrow staircase that had been cut into the wall of the volcanic plug. A flimsy rope-rail guarded a sheer drop.

As we descended, the sound of the YMCE battalions below rose. Tavis Knoyle bustled like, well, an anthill. Preparations were being made.

YMCE men welded tanks and guns and jeeps; their women – God, were they breeding? – knitted jumpers and sewed ominous long canvas bags.

Our staircase passed chambers, cut into the living rock. An infirmary; a canteen. And yes, oh, Lord, yes: a crèche. YMCE babies bounced.

On the floor of the volcano, our guards forced a path. YMCE men and women turned as we went, curiosity flitting briefly across blank faces.

 

Brainwashed! By thunder, this was no ordinary army of ants. As when certain tropical parasites make themselves at home, these were zombies!

Mere walking shells, their brains scooped out like the lair in which they wriggled! What such an army could achieve did not bear scrutiny...

Fortunately, I was not given time to apply myself to the question at hand. As we reached the middle of the volcano’s floor, a siren sounded.

It was not unlike the whistle or hooter employed in unfortunate northern towns to summon ‘folk’ t’ ‘mill’. I believe. It was shrill, anyway.

The YMCE Army stilled, then snapped to attention with a shocking and heavy-booted ‘clomp’! Vespa and I stood still. The lights flicked out!

An arc lamp flicked on, illuminating the sheer cliffs of the volcano above us, on the opposite side of the cavern from which we had entered. 

The beam of light illuminated a balcony, hewn from the rock and strewn with red, white and black YMCE flags, bearing their runic symbol. 

Slowly, from the darkness at the back of the balcony, Moon appeared. Holman-Hunt too, and Simon the YMCE kapo. Raising his arms, Moon spoke… 

Part Twenty-One: A Foregathering of Fates...

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

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

Part Twenty-One: A Foregathering of Fates... 

We moved off at first light, which is the kind of thing one only ever reads in adventure stories but which was true on this day nonetheless.

As we struck camp (or, in fact, sloughed off the grisly sheets of Mother Dare’s lousiest bunk) the first glimmer of dawn flared in the east.

Or it did as much as it ever can in Scotland. In the chill, needling five-am soak, some of the rain looked less dark than the rest of it.

Still, there we were. Vespa and I were prodded upright from the bed, handcuffs chafing our wrists, before we were prodded rudely outside.

On the road, a jeep idled. Moon’s truck, with the caged Archbishop of Canterbury and lovelily malevolent picture of Jesus upon it, was gone.

Two of our YMCE guards, whose names I had not learned, hopped in the front of the jeep and other bundled us into the back. All held Stens. 

And, in short order and as Mother Dare snivelled at the hatch to her hovel, we set out once again on our journey to the farthest far north. 

Now, Vespa and I were not covered by blanket, tarpaulin or organic macramé throw. But for cuffs and guard, we were free to see our road. 

We were not free to talk, however – I tried asking our guard for a boiled travel sweet or a game of pub cricket, but he hit me with his gun. 

And so we travelled in silence and took a thorough soaking, for the delightful Scottish weather grew only more lovely the further we drove. 

We passed shaggy cattle and mossy crofts and mossy and shaggy crofters, the last lurking by the road and pointing with crooked sticks. 

The rain formed a kind of sharp mist that, after doing its job of soaking within seconds, prompted only a kind of weary and damp admiration. 

Vespa’s hair dripped; my moustache held droplets as a cobwebbed hedge in a winter morning’s dew. The YMCE pulled their berets tighter. 

It was a miserable, cramped drive, made worse as, eventually, our road narrowed and twisted and climbed as the Highlands rose around us. 

The sound of civilisation (or the vestiges of it, and a pretty mean civilisation at that) dropped away. No cattle or locals lowed us by now. 

Rocks fell from crags that reared in front and behind us; the lone cry of the curlew, I supposed, haunted from sheer scree and deep loch.

In a brown study, my brow furrowed to catch the rain and form a small lake for midges to drown in, I was put in mind of the Sierra Nevada. 

I realised that was a silly place to be put in mind of, given its extreme dryness next to the peat-splashed swamp through which we drove.

So I thought instead of Everest, of ice and snow and brute wind, and of my sherpa’s screaming face as he fell. No, that wouldn’t do either. 

Vespa was no help, as she huddled up to the metal door of the jeep, seeking what warmth she could find in a ball of damp and chilly misery.

So, in the way of things, as we drove on for long drear hours, upwards and northwards towards death and insanity, I took refuge in thought.

I was heading for the climax of my extraordinary adventure. I knew that. After my landing in Lambeth, after my discovery of the Labyrinth.

After poor Sam Phraxby’s death, in the tunnels. After Vespa’s appearance. After our discovery of Moon and the book. The Taxus Brevifola.

After Moon’s unveiling of the Clockwork Archbishop of Canterbury; after my death struggle with the Homicidal Portrait of Cardinal Wolsey.

After other unlikely events, including a brawl in an Edinburgh drill hall with a bunch of bully boys and a painting of Jesus made flesh.

Resolution approached. It had to. For one thing, I was running out of previous adventures to refer to, in order to prolong my unusual tale.

I thought of another time when such deep thought had saved me: when I’d played chess for my life in a White Russian jail in Archangelsk.

But that was forced. I struggled for clarity. As we drove, I searched my aching brain for answers. Possibilities, at least, began to form.

In the hall in Edinburgh, Moon had spoken of the end of the world, of Judgment Day, of Mr Holman-Hunt (if that was his name…) as a judge.

In the cisterns below Lambeth Palace, Moon had mentioned a megalomaniac Swiss industrial billionaire, and said we’d be meeting him soon.

The jeep creaked up on to a chill mountain plateau, around which Highland winds howled like the Furies. Swiss. Mountains. It made sense.

The end of the world… Judgment Day… I racked my brains for clues. The Taxus Brevifola… art made flesh… apocalyptic art? Bosch? I was close.

And what I was close to was not good. It could not be. I shuddered, even more than the plunging temperature and now sheeting rain demanded.

My thoughts were rudely interrupted. At the entrance to a ragged, unremarkable Highland cave, the jeep stopped. The YMCE guards leapt out.

Vespa and I, numbed to the edge of incoherence, were prodded from our seats by cold, chilled metal. Sten guns jutted. Our guards glared.

We were here. At the heart of the Reverend Moon’s madness. Our adventure had reached, literally, its apex. We entered the mountain cave…

Part Twenty: Another Journey, Further North!

LEINIGEN & THE LAMBETH TREASURE

A Twitter adventure told in portions of 140 characters or less

Part Twenty: Another Journey, Further North!

Of our journey north there is – conveniently for matters of pacing and fatal momentums towards a tale’s climax – relatively little to tell.

Vespa and I passed the first leg of the trip tied face to face, dumped in the Reverend Moon’s grimy truck. Matthew of the YMCE sat guard.

Eventually – around Dundee, my shaky Scottish geography suggested – he fell fitfully asleep. I took a chance to quiz Vespa about her trials.

In whispers, she told how she and the captive Archbishop of Canterbury, who now lay gagged and unconscious nearby, had been taken north.

They had travelled as we did: bound, in a cage on a truck, under a tarpaulin. Impressions of scenery and colourful locals were thus few.

In her scant whispered passages, Vespa had cause more than once to stop, in order to tell me not to wriggle about. We were tied too closely.

I tried not to, but being ‘en pointe’ with Vespa Cryptoides is not an experience a chap takes lightly. I had not done so before, in Athens.

Still, I struggled, manfully, not to impose my manhood too hard upon her. As our bonds chafed, I was chaste in thought and, sort of, deed.

It was rather like the temptation of St Anthony, only with a lusty call for a fall and submission after the first randy she-devil turned up.

Eventually, Vespa, silent, lay still. I lay still on top of her. The Archbishop of Canterbury lay still too. Matthew of the YMCE woke up.

The truck stopped. I heard other engines, in convoy, grumble to a halt. Military (or paramilitary, I supposed) boots jumped down to tarmac.

After a short pause, the tarpaulin was raised and a harsh torchlight shone upon us. The cage door was opened and two YMCE men leapt in.

Our bonds were loosened! But there was to be no room for rash or desperate manoeuvre. Matthew of the YMCE covered us with a jutting Sten.

Freed from rather agreeable bondage, I rubbed feeling and blood into wrists, ankles and breast. Vespa did likewise. I volunteered to help.

She shushed me and, shushing my protests, motioned with her eyes. I turned. Simon of the YMCE proffered a pair of stern steel handcuffs.

Understanding – and, curiously, not entirely averse – I turned to Vespa and cuffed her to me. Metal bonds clicked on wrists. Simon motioned.

Vespa and I dropped, gingerly, to the tarmac of a lonely Scottish country road. Mizzle misted the air. Shaggy cattle lowed in the gloom.

Around us stood a battalion or flotilla of gun-toting YMCE goons, their slacks crisp, their pomade newly-applied and their stares steely.

Moon and Mr Holman-Hunt (if that was his name, which it wasn’t) were nowhere to be seen. In the cab, perhaps. I arched a customary eyebrow.

Simon of the YMCE leapt from the truck and jabbed into my back what I could only assume was his weapon. ‘Let’s go,’ he barked. We went.

Where we went was a low-slung, turf-built hovel, set back fifty yards from the road. A light burned in a crevice that passed for a window.

We were accompanied down a rather swampy path by a platoon of YMCE types. There was no chance to cut and run for the dark country around us.

At the door of the hovel – emblazoned with the legend ‘Mother Dare’s Lowland B&B’, and rudimentary heather – Simon rapped on wooden slats.

Mother Dare (I presumed) answered shortly. About four-foot nothing, the proprietress of this desperate botlhole squinted up from her door.

Simon pushed past her. Mother Dare clucked, but did not protest. The other YMCE members pushed Vespa and I inside. Dare shut the door.

Inside, in peat-smoked miasma, I looked about. We were in a cross between some sort of turf-cutter’s cottage and, well, some sort of hotel.

It was hardly the Ritz. It was hardly the worst stew on the wrong end of Vancouver jetty, where Canadians go to die. But we were to stay.

Shortly, from without I heard the grumble of departing engines. It seemed Moon, Holman-Hunt and the Archbishop would travel on without us.

Simon of the YMCE and his cohorts did not seem in the mood to explain why, so as Mother Dare clucked about our dinner, I held my tongue.

We were served a thin, grey, sickly gruel that Vespa had to convince me was porridge. Accompanied by neat ewe’s milk, it slipped down.

After our meal, Mother Dare led the way to a back room. She motioned to a sagging, unhealthy trestle bed. Vespa and I were told to lie.

Our handcuffs stayed. The scene was familiar, but it missed a memory. Maybe it was the ewe’s milk. I took thirty-nine steps towards Simon.

I determined to tell him, with reference to our situation, that it simply Donat do to commit such unoriginalities on guests. Or such puns.

A raised firearm, however, quitened me. And so Vespa and I lay down to sleep, under a scratchy blanket and grimly guarded by three YMCE men.

Outside, on the high road to the Highlands, the dastard Moon, Holman-Hunt, the Taxus Brevifola and the Archbishop of Canterbury raced north.

Moon sped north with his vile caravanserai. He sped to rendezvous with the mastermind of his evil. He sped to prepare a welcome… for me!