The coffin lid was popped as soon as they got back to the parlour. The Alchemist, clad incongruously in the uniform of a yeoman warder, black soul piped in his preferred red, was still fast asleep.
“That was quick thinking, Jerry, I’ve got to hand it to you!” breathed Clive.
“Nah! You did the legwork – knocking out that guard!”
“The buboes were the masterstroke! Lucky you had your stage paints on you!”
“It’s all in the shading: that single sharp highlight is essential if you want to add shine and volume!”
“They looked so juicy, even I nearly gave them a squeeze! How long do you think before they realise he’s missing?”
“As far as they’re concerned – he isn’t! That guard we dressed up in his cassock won’t wake up for a few hours at least! If we’re lucky, they’ll be too busy quarantining themselves to listen to a madman in red proclaiming he’s actually one of the guards!”
“Father!” That was Isabella, squeaking with joy as she rushed into the room and to her father’s side, Milly close behind. Isabella threw her arms around her somnificent sire’s neck. “He’s alive! Clive! Jerry! How can we ever repay you?”
“Yes! We!” The Alchemist’s eyes shot open! “And Isabella!” He sat up, eyes darting... “I know this place!”
Jerry sighed. “Talk about absentee landlords...”
The Alchemist pointed! “And I know you! So! Anbury sends his dark goons224 to bring me to his lair!”
“That’s lackeys to you!” Jerry shot back.
The Alchemist fumbled for his flintlock. Sadly for him, it was back at the Tower.
But Jerry was taking no chances. He seized Clive from behind and held him before him as a human shield.
The Alchemist paused. “Who’s that?”
“The messenger!”
“Curses!”
“Quick thinking, Jerry!” said Clive.
“I thought so!”
“Father!” cried Isabella. “They just sprang you from the Tower! A little gratitude? Boys! Help him out of the coffin, will you?”
Jerry let go of Clive and grabbed one arm; Clive the other. They heaved!
The Alchemist was having none of it! “Unhand me, you cabaña boys of Satan!”225
Jerry abandoned his arm with a shove. “Fine! Stay in there, then! Clive, I vote we wheel him straight back to the Tower in a wheelbarrow, with a bottle of vinto and a note of apology for Bloodworth! I hear he’s quite partial...”
The Alchemist crossed his arms and planted himself. “Barrow?? How dare you! At the very least grant me a luche!226 I demand to see Anbury at once!”
Jerry guffawed! “You’re lousche227 if you think you are in any position to make demands!”
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Clive shook his head. “Actually, Phil’s indisposed.” He glanced sideways at Jerry. “Indisposed of.”
Jerry whimpered.
The Alchemist furrowed, and not just his brow. “What? You mean it wasn’t Anbury who swapped the Elixir?”
Milly piqued at that. “Swapped what?”
“The Elixir of Life!” The Alchemist agitated, rising swiftly now and climbing out of the coffin by himself. “It was supposed to make all mankind immortal, end death – and thereby Anbury’s career! It must have been replaced with a serum... the same serum that started the Plague! But then, if not Anbury, who…”
Suddenly, Isabella stood bolt upright. Her eyes were abnormally large (which, for her, was saying something). Then she sagged. Milly rushed to her side. “Can I go and lie down somewhere? I’m suddenly feeling rather faint!”
Milly nodded. “Too much excitement, I’m sure! Come on! You can have a lie down in Jerry’s bed. Mattress fit for a princess, ’e has! Soft as baby down! You’ll see!”
Jerry watched them go, then made to follow. “’Scuse us! I think I might go have a little lie down in Jerry’s bed too!”
Clive found himself suddenly alone with his thoughts, and the Alchemist. “Hmmm. I wonder what’s wrong with her?”
The Alchemist shrugged. “Fuddles me.”
Clive turned. There were more pressing matters to attend to than the curious faintings of a daft ex-girlfriend. Death’s command was still ringing in his ears, and he had the feeling that, if anyone could help him stop the Plague, the man before him was it. “I think I know who started the Plague...” He sidled up to the Alchemist, his voice low. “Now they wear hats... and suits!”
If Clive had had any doubt that the Alchemist would know exactly who he was talking about, the Alchemist’s aghast expression put pay. “No! It cannot be! The Lord Mayor was right! This IS all my fault!”
“I seriously doubt that.”
Clive’s ironic tone was quite lost on the Alchemist. The Alchemist was in an expository mood and he was pacing: “I entered my insidious profession with but one purpose: to discover a means of turning vermin into precious metal. But, after years of tinkering, I had achieved nothing more than a slightly yellow hue in the belly fur of some of the larger specimens. Or so I had thought...”
The links were snapping together fast now, and Clive was at least in the vicinity of the chain. “They revolved, didn’t they?”
The Alchemist nodded forlornly. “I should have taken the hint when I came down one morning and found them deep in a game of five card stud! But... they cut me in, so I turned a blind eye... However, when they rebuilt the organ into a giant fondu set, I knew I had to act!”
“You flushed them into the sewer!” Clive was on fire now!228
“Where else? I left them to perish in excrement and darkness! I never dreamt that they might prosper, that they might flourish, that they might... return!! Cursed colonial breeds! I had them shipped over specially from New York!229 Their hardiness was legendary! If you could survive passage aboard ship you could survive anything! If only I had stuck to local specimens instead... most English rats wouldn’t say boo to a mouse!”
So, the rats were the work of the Alchemist: an experiment gone so very wrong (or so very right)! His greatest creation, that had undone his greatest creation! Their vengeance upon their creator had been dire: they had swapped the Elixir for something else... something that had caused the very Plague that had so devastated London, framing the Alchemist for the death of thousands!230
And, somehow, Clive was increasingly certain that he himself had played an unwitting but crucial part in this Jacobean tragedy.231 Had not the Rat King promised Clive that he’d be rich? And rich he now was – in spades!232
Well, no-one pulled the wool over a Hucklefish’s eyes, kept all their promises, got them promoted, disposed of their enemies for them, and left them minted... and expected to get away with it! No, sir, sirrah!
Clive straightened his back. “Teach me how to fight them!”
The Alchemist looked at him, as if seeing him again for the first time. “Fight them? But I don’t even know who you are?”
Clive extended a hand. “I’m Clive Huc... just Clive.”233
The Alchemist reciprocated. “I see. Dave.”
They shook.
Suddenly, the Alchemist leapt back, both hands pointed as if to curse. “Cliff! Only one man can help you now! For years he has studied their kind, honing his body and mind in fanatical pursuit of their destruction! There is nowhere he won’t find them, no place he can’t go! And he absolutely will not stop until every last one of them is dead! Cliff! You must find Pee-Pee!”
Clive was studiously ignoring his botched name. But that last was a mystery... “Pee-Pee?!?” Some kind of exterminator? And then it clicked, and his face twisted in revulsion, not to mention marrow-deep jealousy. “Oh, no… you don’t mean–”