The Equivoque Principle (12 page)

C
ORNELIUS QUAINT WAS
totally oblivious to the gathering that had quietly and speedily accumulated outside the market’s main doors. Each of the men was armed with an assortment of knives, chains, metal poles and wooden truncheons, and their faces entertained expressions of people who enjoyed inflicting harm on others. They were not a highly polished mob, these men, hired more for their ferocity than their adeptness with skilled weaponry. They were a means to a very sticky end for Quaint. Grunting like pigs hunting truffles, they held their cauliflower ears and scarred cheeks up against the corrugated metal doors, desperately trying to learn more about their mysterious target.

The man in question was busy climbing down from the open window, inside the market onto the slatted, wooden roof and through a skylight into a dank and dreary office. Many small tables were arranged throughout the room, littered with seafaring charts, bills of sale, maps, scraps of paper and discarded rubbish, and three large cabinets lined up against the far wall. This was the main hub of the marketplace, the manager’s office. A small gas lamp had been left alight, giving Quaint and his associate Butter a faint sense of comfort.

‘It’s going to be murder getting the smell out of my clothes,’ said Quaint, giving the lapels of his long dark-grey coat a sniff. ‘I daresay Mae-Li at the Chinese laundry in Wapping will want extra for
this
stench!’

‘Boss, look-see here,’ exclaimed Butter, who had exited the small office and walked out onto a metal staircase that ran along the side of the office, leading down to the far corner of the building.

From their vantage point, they had a bird’s eye view of the whole place. The warehouse below was a vast, desolate area. Used primarily as a place for selling fish goods, it was basically just a skeleton of a building with weight-bearing metal struts placed at various intervals. Wooden beams formed the structure inside, looking just as randomly stitched together as the front of the market. Pools of water, a mixture of seawater and melted ice, covered most of the stone floor, but the warehouse was virtually empty, save a huge, iron container positioned at the far end of the room, and a couple of metal storage sheds, nestled into the shadows of the corners. Great wooden pillar supports were holding a patchwork tin roof upon the building, and a vague semblance of stilted early evening dusk-light seeped between the cracks and gaps of the misplaced wall panels.

The market was frenetic with life the moment the sun came up, with hundreds of tradesmen vying for the best deal on the best catch of the day. Now, it was silent, damp and dark, and the perfect place to disappear. There was an endless amount of hiding places in the vast warehouse, and Prometheus could theoretically be in any one of them, if indeed he was there at all. An incessant hum made itself evident from the dark centre of the room.

‘Boss, what is the noise I hear?’ asked Butter.

‘It’s coming from that metal container down there. Seeing as we’re in a fish market, it must be some kind of cold storage area;
it’s difficult to say from up here, but there do seem to be steam emissions spouting from the top.’

‘Hiding place?’ offered Butter.

‘Perhaps. Let me call out and see what happens.’ Quaint yelled through cupped hands, his booming voice echoing around the warehouse. ‘Prometheus, it’s me! It’s Cornelius! Are you in here?’

There was no sound, save a gentle drip falling from the roof onto the stone floor.

‘Prometheus, if you’re here, show yourself,’ Quaint tried again. ‘Damn it, Butter, I felt so sure he’d be here…Destine’s premonition
said
so.’

‘Perhaps he goes elsewhere?’ Butter asked Quaint, who was busy scouring the darkness seeking a sign that they were at least looking in the right place.

‘I just want some kind of noise, a tap, a rap, something along those lines,’ he said.

Down within the dark, prevalent shadows of the warehouse, a metallic clang suddenly resounded. A clear beat of metal against stone.

Quaint and Butter exchanged surprised looks.

‘Like
that?’
asked Butter.

‘Uncannily so, my friend…just like
that,’
answered Quaint.

They both raced as fast as they could to the rickety metal staircase that led from the small office on the second level, down to the ground floor. The darkness enclosed around them instantly, and Quaint suddenly wished that he’d brought the lantern down with him. Now they were on ground level the warehouse seemed to open up in size tenfold, and it was impossible to isolate where the noise had originated from.

‘Hello?’ Quaint called. ‘Prometheus, are you here? Is that you?’

The metal clang sounded out again, this time fainter, located behind Quaint.

‘Boss, you think we make better splitting up?’ whispered Butter.

‘Hmm. Maybe so. The darkness is blinding us. We need to distance ourselves from its grasp. Why don’t you take a look down that way,’ offered Quaint. ‘Go and check that large metal ice box door, see if it’s unlocked. It may just be the machinery making a noise, settling itself, for all we know. I’ll investigate these sheds at the back here. That’s where the noise just came from.’

‘No, boss, clang comes from this direction…ahead.’

‘You’re mistaken, Butter. I think you’ll find that it most definitely came from the area near those sheds over there.’

A faint clink of metal came from the direction that Butter was pointing in.

‘See, boss?’ said Butter. ‘It
is
this way!’

But then another clang reverberated around the warehouse’s ground floor, this time coming from the location of the metal sheds, directly behind Quaint.

‘These sounds are all around us,’ said Quaint bemusedly, squinting into the dark as he walked slowly into the shadowed corner of the warehouse. ‘I don’t know how that’s possible, but I
do
know it can’t be good news.’

‘Not for you, it ain’t,’ said a grizzled voice from the shadows, as its owner brought a heavy wooden stake down onto Quaint’s shoulder-blades. With a yell of pain, Quaint hit the ground like a ton of bricks. He rolled over onto his back, scowling into the shadows in the direction of his attacker.

‘Who the devil just hit me?’ he snarled, as Butter helped him to his feet.

‘That’d be me, mate,’ said the gruff voice from the darkness, as a man with a grubby face stepped forth into the hazy light. ‘My first blow might not ’ve done the trick—but I guarantee you, my second one will,’ the man roared, as he slashed at the air with his wooden pole.

It came down in an arc, narrowly missing Quaint, striking the stone ground. Quaint quickly stepped towards the man, and stamped all his weight upon the tip of the wooden pole pulling it from the man’s hand onto the ground. As the shadowed man tried in vain to wrest it from under Quaint’s heel, the conjuror kicked up with his boot as hard as he could, and the metal cap on his heel made contact with the man’s face. Quaint watched with a certain sense of satisfaction as the bridge of the man’s nose split in half, spraying a saturated curtain of bright red blood into the air. Quaint towered over the man, brandishing the wooden stave.

‘Now listen to me, my good man, I’m sorry about all that, but
you
attacked
me
first…I was merely defending myself,’ he said, apologetically. ‘We don’t wish for any trouble, we’re only searching for a friend of ours—a big, tall gentleman with a beard—about so high.’ Quaint held his hand about a foot above his head. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen him about anywhere have you?’

‘Course I ain’t!’ spat the bloodied man.

‘Worth a try, I suppose.’

‘I don’t give a rat’s arse
why
you’re here, mate,’ said the bull of a man. ‘You ain’t gonna be around for much longer—you’re dead meat!’

‘Be reasonable, there’s a good fellow. If we’ve stumbled upon your sleeping place, we apologise,’ exclaimed Quaint, holding his hands up in appeal. ‘We’ll just be on our way, and no harm done, eh?’

‘You ain’t goin’ nowhere—I ain’t finished with you yet,’ the bull yelled, as he pulled a small switchblade from his rear pocket. He cut the air, inches from Quaint’s face. ‘By the time I’m done with you, Quaint, you’ll be pickin’ up your teeth with broken fingers!’

‘I won’t, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Quaint.

‘Boss,’ said Butter into Quaint’s ear. ‘How does he know your name?’

Quaint froze. ‘That’s a thoroughly good question.’

‘All
you
need to know, old man, is that my boss has paid me to make sure you don’t walk out’ve this marketplace in one piece,’ the man brandished the knife menacingly. ‘And I’m going to make sure I earn every damn penny of it!’

‘Good for you. Although, I feel it only fair to warn you; I used to box at county level, and was unbeaten for eight consecutive years! If it’s a fight you’re looking for, then congratulations—you just found one,’ Quaint clenched his jaw, and pulled off his overcoat, throwing it aside onto the sodden floor. He pushed his curly, grey-brown fringe away from his eyes, and raised his fists. ‘You’ll last about three minutes by the looks of you.’

‘Yeah? Then you’ll have plenty of time to take on the rest of that lot then,’ said the rough-voiced man, pointing the far entrance as the main doors opened.

Quaint’s eyes were naturally drawn to the sight at the end of the market. Early evening moonlight flooded in through the open doors, framing the silhouettes of a large group of grunting men approaching him at pace. They sneered, they jeered, and they cursed—each one with a fixed intention—to exact violence upon their target.

Quaint eyed the grizzled bunch. ‘Brace yourself, Butter.’

Butter swallowed hard. ‘This is going to hurt, isn’t it, boss?’

‘Only if they hit you.’

‘What next we do then, boss? We run or we fight?’

‘Considering the numbers, not to mention the obvious disposition of those chaps, if we had a choice, I would have to say that perhaps discretion was the order of the day.’

‘Then we run?’

‘The problem is, Butter—we
don’t
have a choice. This place seems to have only one entrance…and one exit, and we have to get through that lot to reach it.’

‘Fight it is then?’

‘Afraid so, old chum,’ Quaint suddenly sprinted towards the oncoming rush of men, and launched himself upon the nearest one to him. His fists flailed wildly about. Within seconds, the pack of men was upon him, but Cornelius Quaint was not a man to go down without a fight. ‘Steel yourself, Butter!’ yelled Quaint, like a battle cry, as he left his Inuit companion behind him.

Butter shot a nervous glance from Quaint to the looming storm of men, and then back to Quaint again. ‘Boss, what do these men want with us?’

‘Who knows,’ replied Quaint, head-butting a man who’d just caught him a nasty blow on the jaw. ‘We’ll ask questions once we’re done.’

‘What shall I do, boss? I do not like to fight!’

‘It’s a simple theory, Butter—hit as many men as you can, as
hard
as you can—and don’t stop until you’re the only one left standing,’ shouted Quaint in reply as he jostled with a heavy-set foe. ‘If it makes it easier—imagine they’re a pack of walruses!’ He linked both his hands and smashed them down hard onto his foe’s back, bringing his knee up at the same time. The man hit the floor.

Butter gritted his teeth, and threw himself into the raging pack.

‘Good lad,’ said Quaint with a grin, but he couldn’t keep his eyes on Butter long—he had more pressing matters of his own to consider.

As Quaint was the first to attack, his group of opponents was quite a bit larger than Butter’s, and his furious fighting had to increase in ferocity also. No quarter could be spared, and he was damn sure none would be given. Drawing his fist back as far as he could, battling against grabbing hands from the rear, Quaint threw another punch at an assailant. The man tried to shrug it off, but the sheer force of will behind the showman’s blow had sent him staggering off balance, wheezing like a prize-fighting boxer
caught on the ropes. The man teetered, only his body’s reflexes keeping him standing, and then he crashed unconscious onto the wet stone floor.

Given a little respite from the grappling pack, Quaint quickly joined Butter’s side, just in time. ‘Keep your back to me!’ he commanded. ‘Get in as close as you can like a rugger scrum. Don’t let them land a solid shot. Got that?’

‘I will try my best, boss,’ said Butter, surveying the swathes of clenched fists, raised weapons and gritted teeth before him. ‘But these odds do not favour us.’

‘What have I told you before, my friend?’ said Quaint, snatching up his unconscious attacker’s wooden stave from the ground. ‘Always play
against
the odds—it makes things
far
more satisfying.’

‘Only if you win,’ whispered Butter to himself.

Quaint threw himself into the mass of men, and was doing his best to disarm as many as possible with a few well-placed jabs with the stave. Considering the odds were indeed stacked against him, he was doing rather well. Using the stave as a brace, Quaint threaded the wooden post behind an assailant’s arm, and wrenched it back as far as he could. The man screamed in agony as the bones in his forearm snapped. His metal staff fell to the ground with a heavy clang, and Quaint quickly snatched it up. Trading up on his weapons, he brought the metal pole into contact with as many heads as he could.

Quaint hated physical violence—but that wasn’t to say he was no good at it. Many decades before in his wild, impetuous youth, he had befriended a bamboo-seller whilst travelling through the Yahn province of Northern China. The man had taught Quaint some basic attack and defence techniques—most of them involving a sturdy three-foot bamboo cane. The young Cornelius Quaint was a hungry learner, and this was advantageous considering the
long metal pole that he now brandished between his hands. He jabbed frantically at the baying crowd, as sprays of blood smattered his hands and cuffs. Men were falling to the ground every second, clutching battered body parts, but still the combatants mindlessly continued their path, clambering over the bodies of the fallen to get at Quaint and his companion.