Yet this was just the diversion; the main event of the night was about to take place in the container port.
Lightning jagged across the black heavens.
And the Holy Enchanter had to prove himself worthy to rule whilst his Lord was in exile and so he suffered the Great Ordeal that no other had ever endured, save for the Dawn Prince himself. And thus was their contract made, writ large upon a page that could never be cast away, or misplaced, or stolen by the Jockey, for he could work much mischief with such a deed. And so the Holy Enchanter declared himself the Ismus and his reign in his Lord’s stead commenced, with neither challenge nor question, and the new order began.
INSIDE THE METAL container on the back of Tesco Charlie’s lorry, Jezza’s eyes roved round his disciples. The spectral light in there was courtesy of three cheap LED caravan lamps stuck to the cold, corrugated sides. Everyone had dutifully obeyed his summons.
Queenie and Manda, “the floating girlfriends”, as he termed them, were having a whale of a time. Queenie loved hanging with the group: it made her feel younger than her forty something years, but then so did the jet-black hair dye she anointed herself with – and the biker-chick outfits she wore. Pushing her hands up through her unnaturally raven hair, she gyrated when the container shook and made a stuttering dance of her attempts to keep from falling over. Manda was her plumper friend who had abandoned trying to keep up with Queenie’s skimpy dress sense and just as skimpy waistline long ago. Manda was currently spending much of her time with Miller and it was him she held on to when the container juddered. Richard Miller didn’t seem too happy about that because he wanted to look at his copy of Dancing Jacks, but she kept getting in the way.
Jezza looked from them to Dave. He was an unlikely member of their varied little band. He was an impressionable nineteen and looked up to Jezza in most things. Jezza in turn enjoyed the gradual kneading of his receptive, doughy mind, feeding it the yeast of new ideas that Dave had never dreamed of and couldn’t quite comprehend.
Howie and Tommo were sitting on some of the charcoal bags stacked at the end of the container. The tattooist was trying to read more of the strange children’s book by the ghostly light of one of the LED lamps. His head was nodding, partly from the motion of the container, but mainly from the rhythm of the words on the pages. He was lost in the world of Austerly Fellows.
At his side, the shaking and lurching about made Tommo feel nauseous. One of the bags had split and the disgorged briquettes were rolling up and down in front of him, making the sensation even worse. Close by were three large water carriers that Jezza had put on board and the sloshing noises they made didn’t help steady Tommo’s stomach either. At least he wasn’t anywhere near Miller’s backside though. He raised his eyes and stared at the other thing the others had brought back from the house.
Shiela was staring at it too. It dominated the centre of the container and it frightened her.
She had spent the better part of an hour waiting at the tattoo parlour alone and hated every minute. She wasn’t sure why, but those crates of books unsettled her so she took herself to the rear of the shop and reclined on the tattooist’s chair. Yet the thought of the books on the other side of the partition began to gnaw away at her mind and she couldn’t stop thinking about them. For reasons she was unable to explain to herself, Shiela began to wonder what they were doing. Were they still in the crates, or had they got out somehow? It was a ridiculous notion, but she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder more than once.
Eventually she could bear it no longer and had to return to the front of the shop to make sure they were still present in their big wooden boxes. What was it about these strange old books? Why did they fill her thoughts so much? Why did they make her so uneasy? What had happened earlier when Jezza had read from them? Why were the men behaving so weirdly?
Looking at the sofa on which she had flung her copy, Shiela’s eyelids drooped. The next thing she knew she was sitting there, the green and cream book in her hand, and she was turning to the first page. She experienced a rush of excitement and felt safe and content. The tatty sofa became a stone bench beneath a castle window, strewn with sumptuous velvet cushions. Golden wire was twisted in her braided hair, a tear-shaped piece of amethyst dangled at her brow and a heavy jewelled brooch was fastened to her bodice. Somewhere in the castle the minstrels were playing; she could hear strains of their music drifting through the galleries. She gazed out of the window that looked down on to the courtyard. The silver fountain was tinkling sweetly, the cascading crystal waters sparkling in the shafts of evening sunlight.
And there was the Queen of Spades, dressed richly in silks and velvets of the deepest midnight blue and studded with sapphire gemstones. Hurrying after was her dull-witted ally and confidante, the Queen of Hearts. As usual, the Queen of Spades was casting around, making sure no one was within earshot, and whispered something to her. The Under Queens were always full of intrigue, Shiela found herself thinking, and that wily one was the worst. What new conspiracies or gossip was she disseminating now? Shiela should speak to the Ismus about her, or maybe the Harlequin Priests could point to a sombre colour on their robes when they…
A car pulled up outside the window and Shiela jolted back on the sofa. Breathing hard, she looked down at the book in her hands and dropped it as if it had burned her. Then she jumped up and hurried to the door.
“All right, She-luv!” Queenie had greeted, carefully negotiating herself out of the car in her ultra skinny jeans. “You OK? You’re white as Manda’s bingo wings.”
“Where’s Miller?” Manda had asked, slamming the other door and looking round. “His bike’s here.”
Shiela had stared at them, speechless, trying to understand what had just happened.
Then there came the sound of a motorbike and Dave came roaring up on his Honda.
“Here’s Babyface!” Queenie had cried, throwing her arms wide in welcome and clattering her acrylic nails over his crash helmet before he had a chance to remove it.
The VW was not far behind. But… there was something tied to the roof rack. Something large and unfamiliar, Shiela could not make out what it was. A Gothic sledge? Before they could ask, Tesco Charlie’s lorry came lumbering along the road.
“Well met!” Jezza had greeted everyone with a flamboyant bow. “Now let’s get this into Charlie’s lovely truck.”
By the time Tommo had arrived in a borrowed estate car with everything he had been instructed to fetch, the ‘thing’ had been manoeuvred off the camper’s roof rack and into the huge metal container.
Now, in the phantom light of the white LEDs, Shiela stared at its skeletal frame and feared it.
They had been ordered to remain silent. Tesco Charlie was uncharacteristically forceful about that point. If he was going to smuggle them into the port undetected, they had to be quieter than mice doing a sponsored silence.
Queenie found this rule particularly hard to adhere to. She deplored the quiet and had to plug any silence with noise and even left her television on when she left her flat because she loathed coming back to a mausoleum.
Dancing to tunes in her head, she had wriggled and swayed all the way from the tattoo parlour towards the port entrance and had to be warned by Jezza when she got carried away and started drumming on the metal side. This was a great adventure for her and she was going to live it to the max.
“We must be nearly there,” Jezza said softly as they felt the lorry slow down and eventually stop.
They could not hear the bantering exchange between Charlie and the security guard at the gate, but it was soon over and the lorry was off again. It drove into the container