A Plague of Hearts by Patrick Whittaker (best large ereader .TXT) 📖

out and found a mattress sitting in a cluster of nettles. She turned to the March Hare. ‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘am I right in thinking that you’re safe from the sting of these awful weeds?’
The March Hare nodded. ‘My fur protects me. It’s just my palms I have to watch out for.’
‘How perfectly convenient. Perhaps you would honour us by removing that mattress? I can assure you that to do so would further our cause no end.’
The mattress threatened to disintegrate in the March Hare’s paws. A foul-smelling concoction of rotten straw and fabric, it played host to a whole encyclopaedia of moulds and insects. A beetle flew straight at his face, skimmed the top of his head and then disappeared into the night. The March Hare took it in his stride.
He pushed the mattress to one side. It had been covering a sheet of corrugated iron. At the Duchess’s prompting, he lifted it up, expecting to find nothing but concrete and dirt. He was wrong.
‘Stairs,’ he muttered.
Beneath the sprawl of Enigma ran a maze of tunnels that had probably given the city its name. Many of the tunnels served as sewers. Some were wine cellars. Still others were unexplored or even forgotten. No-one in recent times could have said why they were built, or by who. The favoured theory - that they were the remains of a subterranean city - begged more questions than it answered.
‘The Rabbit Hole,’ said Lisa.
‘You’ve been here before,’ said the March Hare.
Lisa did not answer. Her face was raised in a kind of rapture to the sky. The March Hare could see in her eyes a strength he had never suspected. It was a strength tempered by determination, by pain and sorrow, a strength untainted by bitterness.
She should hate me for what I’ve done, thought the March Hare. When I brought her Shadrack, she should have slapped me and clawed at my face, called me every name under the sun. I thought I knew her almost as well as I know myself, but it seems I was wrong. Unless I don’t know myself either.
The night seemed to darken. Instinctively, the March Hare looked up at the sky, saw a shadow touch the moon.
‘An eclipse,’ he said.
The Duchess adjusted her spectacles. ‘How jolly fascinating.’
Only Shadrack was left unmoved by the phenomenon. He stood at Lisa’s side, gazing at the ground like a sinner confronted by an angel. For him there was no sky, no moon or stars. Only a dull ache, a vague comprehension of his own existence.
Far away, a church bell voiced its plaintive cry. Like a metal beast, it called ten times across the silence of the night.
Something inside Shadrack answered. It stirred in his mind, worried with sharp, insistent claws at the one small part of him that could still be called human.
For a moment, lucidity came. He remembered a night of thunder, of death falling from the sky, the ground seeming to open beneath his feet. A wash of napalm. His companions dissolving in flames. Fire stripping the flesh from his face. The awful certainty that he was about to die. Then there had been darkness and the darkness had suddenly exploded into blinding light. And after the light - a white room. A cage. A bird...
He felt betrayed. Nature had promised him the peace of Death and then failed to deliver. Like an animal caught in a snare, he was vaguely aware of the injustice of his situation. He’d had his share of pain. Now the Universe owed it to him to leave him be, to let him slip quietly away from this world.
Shadrack wanted to die.
The claws stopped scraping. The human in his mind went back to sleep and all that filled Shadrack was that same dull ache which seemed to have been with him forever.
Tiring of the eclipse, the March Hare probed the Rabbit Hole with the beam of his flashlight. Stone steps eased their way into the ground. He was still unable to fathom the Duchess’s reasons for wanting to bring Shadrack here. Surely there were better places to hide him than this unappealing hole in the ground.
It’s as if we’re out to bury him, he thought. Because he’s not really alive, we want him to be dead. We’re sending him underground to join the souls of the departed.
‘Oh my,’ said the Duchess of Langerhans, suddenly remembering both her business and the 2 a.m. curfew. ‘We had best be on our way.’
*
At the bottom of the stairs, a stone chamber arched protectively over a pool of stagnant water. A gentle draught seemed to ebb and flow around them as if the underground were a living, breathing thing. Damp brickwork and the constant drip-drip-dripping of water added to the impression of standing inside the windpipe of an immense organism.
The March Hare swept the walls with his flashlight, chasing shadows that grew, shrank and twisted grotesquely. Patches of purple moss gave an obvious clue to how the Velvet Underground had gotten its name.
‘Isn’t it warm?’ said Lisa. Holding Shadrack’s hand, she led the way forward, reinforcing the March Hare’s conviction that she was no stranger to the place.
Fifty yards ahead, a tall archway marked the end of the chamber. Passing through it, they came to a narrow tunnel.
To the March Hare, the way ahead seemed daunting. He wondered that the Duchess, for all her aristocratic bearing, did not mind setting her feet in mud or having to steady herself against walls thick with grime. Her dress was already mottled with filth; a line of dirt ran from her temple to her chins.
The March Hare did not suppose that he looked any better himself. But somehow that was different. He was working class. For him, getting dirty was a fact of life, a fitting consequence of the work ethic. The dignity of labour.
They came to a bridge. A long way below, a rivulet of black water flowed onwards and downwards, following a course mapped out for it by the engineers of a bygone age. Moonlight flooded through a grille in the roof, indicating that the eclipse was nearing its end. Here the moss was thicker, almost luxuriant.
The March Hare reached up to touch it. It felt like damp velvet.
Finally, they came to a huge, circular cavern from which several other tunnels radiated. Its gothic buttresses and mosaic floors spoke of a grander design than the rest of the Velvet Underground had so far suggested. Gargoyles grinned down from high up on the walls, petrified beasts smiling at some private joke. The floor was covered in runes and pentagrams.
Lisa placed her hand against one of the buttresses. Immediately, soft light poured into the chamber, bathing it in a twilight glow.
The sudden light startled the March Hare. It took him a moment to fathom its source - electric lamps placed in niches around the wall.
If all this was bizarre, it paled into mundanity against the sight of the figure sitting at a walnut desk on the far side of the chamber. The red and white patchwork of his jacket competed for attention with his purple sombrero. He was not particularly thin, not particularly stocky. Youngish but hardly a boy. In fact, apart from his clothes, his one distinguishing characteristic was the enormous sadness of his eyes.
‘My dear Mock Turtle,’ said the Duchess. ‘How nice to see you.’
The figure doffed his hat but did not rise. From his manner, it was clear he had been expecting them. ‘Likewise,’ he said in a graveside voice.
‘I’m so glad you could make it,’ the Duchess gushed. ‘These days one can rely on so very few people, but you, my dear Mock Turtle, never let me down.’
The Mock Turtle allowed the briefest of smiles to flicker across his lips. ‘You’re not alone I see.’
‘I have brought Lisa and Shadrack along with me. Also the March Hare.’
‘The dude who burnt the King’s bed?’
‘Amongst other things,’ said the March Hare. He felt an instinctive dislike for the Mock Turtle whose gaudy suit contrasted so markedly - so dishonestly - with his austere looks. ‘Why are you called the Mock Turtle?’
‘Because I’m not really a turtle,’ came the reply.
‘To business,’ said the Duchess, advancing towards the desk. ‘There’s much to be done and very little time in which to do it.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Ormus?’ asked the Mock Turtle, vacating his seat.
‘He’ll be here soon enough,’ said the Duchess. She eased herself into the chair and settled down behind the desk. Coming closer, the March Hare was able to make out the inscription on the plaque which dominated the front of the desk. It read:
Social Rehabilitation Scheme
Chief Welfare Officer
Her Grace, the Duchess of Langerhans
Once again the March Hare found himself wrong-footed by events. Though he knew well-enough that the Duchess involved herself with a great many charitable causes, this was one facet of her work he had never even suspected.
He turned to Lisa. She had detected his astonishment and seemed amused by it.
‘The Duchess and I,’ she said, ‘have a very long association with this place.’
‘But why? What possible good can you do down here?’
‘Let’s just say for now that the Duchess moves in mysterious ways. You’ll discover her purpose soon enough.’
‘Ah, my dear Doctor,’ said the Duchess. ‘How unusually punctual you are tonight!’
The March Hare turned to find Doctor Ormus and Julie framed by the archway through which he himself had just entered. They were both dressed in jeans and anoraks. Each carried a flashlight.
Doctor Ormus bowed. ‘May I say how charming Your Grace looks tonight? Truly a vision.’
‘That’s terribly kind of you, Doctor. Terribly kind.’
‘And may I introduce to you my companion and assistant, Julie?’
Julie approached the desk and curtsied. ‘Good evening, Your Grace.’
The Duchess peered at Julie over the horizon of her half-moon spectacles. ‘Oh, you delightful child. What very fine cheek bones you have, my dear. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you had aristocratic blood in you. Oh yes. In fact, you do rather remind me of my dear cousin, the Countess of Tibia. She was violated by a wereboar on her wedding night. Most unfortunate. ‘You’re not by any chance her daughter, are you?’
‘No, Your Grace.’
‘Just as well really. I understand the poor child is having the most ghastly adolescence imaginable. It seems she has a rather awkward habit of turning into a pig whenever there’s a full moon. Of course, one can imagine the frightful difficulties the poor child has courting young men.
‘You know, I’m a silly woman. I do appear to have left my cigarettes back at the house. You wouldn’t happen to have...?’
‘Afraid not, Your Grace.’
‘Anybody?’
There was a general shaking of heads. The Duchess sighed heavily. Reaching between her breasts, she produced a hand-rolled cigarette. ‘Just have to make do with something with a bit more zip then.’
Ormus stepped forward with a lighter in his hands. As he held it to the Duchess’s joint, its flame cast flickering shadows on the rolling flatlands of her jowls. It was reminiscent of wheat fields caught in an autumn breeze.
The Duchess drew thankfully on her joint. When she spoke, she spoke in clouds. ‘I regret that the circumstance under which we meet