The Derring-Do Club and the Empire of the Dead Read online

  Volume One

  and the

  Empire of the Dead

  by

  David Wake

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  Watledge Books

  Copyright © 2012 David Wake

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of David Wake to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. This book may not be lent, hired out, resold or otherwise disposed of by any way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, without the prior consent of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Smuzz (www.smuzz.org.uk)

  For

  ArmadaCon

  This adventure of the Deering–Dolittle sisters takes place after they have been sent to the Eden College for Young Ladies, which is in Switzerland near the Austro–Hungarian border.

  Chapter I

  Miss Deering-Dolittle

  It was during Latin that the Austro-Hungarians arrived with their dogs and zombies to kill everyone at the Eden College for Young Ladies. As the lesson started with the conjugation of ‘amo’, Miss Earnestine Deering-Dolittle lifted her skirts and crossed the threshold into the East Wing. This forbidden zone was protected by a thick rope spanning the wide corridor, an ‘Out Of Bounds’ sign and - strongest of all - Miss Hardcastle’s long lecture during assembly about expulsion: the shame such a punishment would inflict upon their families and the commensurate decline in the marriage prospects of the disgraced young lady.

  “And, girls, I have turned off the heating.”

  Earnestine’s breath condensed in the still air. She longed to be expelled: she could bear the shame and didn’t give two hoots for marriage; after all, she’d read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. However, she would never be able to bring herself to explain such appalling disobedience to her two younger sisters, Georgina and Charlotte. Indeed, that very morning she had given her two siblings a very stern lecture about the necessity of controlling their curiosity: they were here to study and not to go exploring.

  It had been Earnestine’s burden as the eldest sister to cut the trail for them to follow. She knew she was well suited with her sharp, angular features and her pragmatic common sense. Georgina was the beautiful one, with a lovely round face that far was too trusting, and Charlotte was simply pretty and frivolous. They were both so naïve: their looks, or others’ reactions to their looks, insulated them from the ways of the world.

  So, she had raised her finger and had said, clearly and firmly: “No more adventures!”

  It was dark and mysterious in the East Wing, but Earnestine had come prepared with both a dark lantern and her trusty Misell Electric Device. The latter was known as a ‘flashlight’, which was both its name and its instructions. She flicked it on for a moment, and then let the yellow light go out. To keep it lit continuously would be to drain the battery. Her father had bought the almost magical object back from a visit to New York, where all the policemen had been given one by the American Electrical Novelty and Manufacturing Company.

  Once she felt she was deep enough in the forbidden zone, Earnestine used a Bryant and May safety match to light the dark lantern. As soon as it had flared into life, she slid the shutter down to create a narrow beam of illumination. Even so, she kept her lamp as carefully shielded as she could, so as not to be seen, but her hand could not contain the light any more than her mind could grasp her reasons for this reconnoitre.

  She was not, under any circumstances, going ‘up the river’, but her thoughts meandered, which would not do at all. Put simply, she was a Prefect investigating an incident before reporting it, that was all, and it mattered not a jot that it involved the new Gardener’s Hand, a mere youth, who would insist upon greeting her every morning as she crossed the quad.

  “Good morning, Miss Earnestine,” he said in his thick Germanic accent.

  It was intolerable. For goodness sake: she was the eldest, so the proper greeting was ‘Miss Deering–Dolittle’.

  And he was only a gardener, less than a proper gardener, and also a presumptuous oik. She wouldn’t even have known he’d been bundled towards the East Wing by his fellow gardeners, if she hadn’t been looking out for him. There seemed to have been a lot of gardeners hired recently. Hopefully, they’d give him the good thrashing he deserved for his attempts to consort with the girls; rightly so, for how irritatingly he murdered his vowels, how jolly grating was his endearing smile, how sparkling his bright blue eyes, how tousled his dark hair, how tall he stood and–

  Earnestine stopped still and, in a heartbeat, determined to do the right thing and go straight back to the Prefect’s Room.

  As Earnestine crept on, shafts of flickering yellow from her lamp played across the moulded plaster ceiling and along the oak panelling, chasing shadows as she went deeper into the maze of the East Wing.

  Her trail followed a sound long before Earnestine realised there was anything to hear. It was hard to make out: a distant choir perhaps, fractured and disjointed, sometimes silent, and beguiling. The damp brickwork funnelled the echoes up through the chimneys and dumb–waiters from below. She stopped and listened, heard nothing more; she shook her head to clear it of any wild imaginings.

  This was stupid: Miss Hardcastle would give her lines if she found out. I must not explore, a thousand times. I must not explore, she repeated to herself, a thousand times, I must not explore. It was a mantra now, something that had lost all meaning, for her footsteps took her further along the passageway to the stone steps that led to the basement as if drawn down by distant baritone sirens. She knew her way around the East Wing having explored (not ‘explored’, ‘wandered’, that was a better word)… wandered through every nook and cranny when she first arrived at the Eden College for Young Ladies. It had always been dark, even when the summer meant it was ‘in bounds’.

  Except there had been lights the other night as there had been for over a week at least, so the Family Curse had reared its head and up the river she went… no, no! She was stronger than that.

  I must not explore, I must not explore.

  She swapped the lamp to her left hand as her right cramped. Having exhausted the delights of English, French and Latin, she’d have to scrawl the repetitions in Greek next.

  At least Georgina and Charlotte weren’t affected. Earnestine was thankful for that. If she could keep them safe from the wanderlust, then she would consider she had done her job. Let Miss Hardcastle catch her, let her have five hundred lines – a thousand – just so long as her sisters didn’t find out. Any penance was worth that. She’d give herself lines when she returned to the school proper.

  Keep them safe, mother had said, no exploring, no trouble, no adventures.

  Voices, without question: still distorted by the echoes and full of hard, sharp consonants. There were Slavic, German or one of those other harsh Latin–less languages that grated as much as romantic French poetry when droned by girls who didn’t know the meaning of the stanzas.

  Earnestine froze: aware of her lamp swinging vast shadows across the wall and sending its beam forward.


  Closer now, she could distinguish more than one voice, each heavy, deep and jolly definitely male.

  “Es ist kalt.”

  “Ja.”

  Eden College for Young Ladies boasted three male members of staff: a Mathematics Professor, a Caretaker and a Gardener, but none of those doddery old gentlemen ever had a stamp as heavy or a voice as deep. They must be those extra Gardeners, all gathered together in the forbidden East Wing.

  I must not explore, thought Earnestine, craning her head around the corner.

  The room beyond had been emptied of all its academic trumpery and instead a card table and some chairs had been set up. Three men gathered around.

  The one facing her had buck teeth and his colleague was a small man, probably smaller than Earnestine herself. A third man, bulkily built and wearing a hat indoors, paced, stamping his feet again to keep his circulation going. For all the world, they looked like giant toy soldiers having a tea party while they waited for their tale of adventure to begin, and it reminded Earnestine of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: the March Hare, the Dormouse and the pacing Mad Hatter, except that instead of cucumber sandwiches, the table was covered in discarded playing cards from an abandoned hand of whist or bridge… or one of those salacious gambling games.

  Behind her: a cough.

  Earnestine spun round – a fourth man was so close that she had to step back. Chairs scrapped loudly as the other men stood.

  This new man in front of her was young, perhaps in his mid–twenties, with the beginnings of black stubble that shadowed his features and made his bright eyes sparkle. It was the Gardener’s Hand, cutting a dashing figure in a bizarre uniform.

  “Wer sind Sie?”

  “Was ist das?”

  “Mühe!”

  “Excuse me,” said Earnestine, “but I think you should explain yourselves – at once!”

  She stood her ground, chin up, shoulders back, defiant.

  “Es ist ein der Mädchen.”

  “I would trouble you not to speak in that appalling… whatever it is, and answer me directly.”

  “Was machen wir?”

  “Do any of you speak English?” Earnestine rounded on the company, taking them all in. “Do you speak English, Eng–lish! Parlez–vous français? Operor vos narro Latin?”

  “I speak the English,” said the Gardener’s Hand.

  Earnestine turned on him. He smiled – damned impertinence – and Earnestine felt her resolve softening inexplicably. Not that she intended to show that, of course: “Would you care to explain yourself, Sir.”

  “My… friends and I are playing a little card game to pass the time.”

  “I can see that! And clearly you thought dressing up in military costume was part of card playing. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear: what are you men doing in my girls’ school?”

  They honestly looked crestfallen.

  “You may well be the March Hare, Mad Hatter, Dormouse and the…” Earnestine ran out of characters around the table at the Tea Party and looked to the young man’s amused smile for inspiration: “Cheshire Cat, but–”

  Gunshots sounded from above, accompanied by barking dogs.

  “Was ist das?”

  “Ich erklärte Ihnen, dass ich etwas gehört habe.”

  “Wo ist Hans?”

  “English and answer the question.”

  The March Hare went over to the corner and pulled out some rifles wrapped in rags, which he handed to the others.

  “Haben Sie Ihren Revolver?”

  “Ja!” said the Gardener’s Hand. He took out a revolver from a holster hidden beneath his coat, flipped it open to check it was loaded, and then tucked it back beneath his layers.

  “Ich sollte das überprüfen.”

  “Konnten Sie gesehen werden?”

  “All this show… excuse me, I am speaking!”

  “Nein, aber wir müssen gehen.”

  “Und die Kinder?”

  “Wir können nichts anders; die Zukunft von Europa ist in Frage.”

  The Gardener’s Hand pointed at the glaring Earnestine: “Und sie?”

  “Was!?”

  “Wir nehmen sie mit uns.”

  “Wir können das nicht.”

  “Wir lassen sie nicht,” said the Gardener’s Hand standing directly in front of the tallest.

  “Wir können sie nicht mitnehmen. Gehen wir.”

  “Wir können sie nicht verlassen.”

  There was a stand–off now between the Gardener’s Hand and the others: the Cheshire Cat looking up to the bigger, older and well–built Mad Hatter, but the Cheshire Cat dominated.

  “This is all jolly fascinating, I’m sure, but–”

  “You are coming with us,” said the Gardener’s Hand.

  “I most certainly am not,” Earnestine said.

  “I am afraid you must.”

  “Who are you to be giving orders?”

  “I am…” He looked at the others briefly. “Pieter.”

  “Well, Mister, I don’t care if you are Peter the Great, I am not–”

  He looked over her shoulder: “Metz.”

  Earnestine was seized from behind, a greatcoat thrown over her, and they bundled her backwards. As she struggled defiantly, she lost her footing and dropped the lantern; it clattered away, its light useless in the enforced, suffocating darkness. Her boots struck it a few times. Her hand found her flashlight, which she held like a baton, but her arms were pinned so it too slipped from her fingers. She kicked out, some of her attacks found their mark, but the thick material was smothering, overpowering, all encompassing…

  …I must not explore, I must not explore…

  Miss Georgina

  Georgina could see distant figures moving towards the college in an arrow formation. They were dark shapes against the virgin snow like a daguerreotype negative of Miss Price’s screeched chalk didactics on the blackboard. She longed to be out there, or indeed anywhere, instead of being trapped in the airless sepia dungeon of Classroom 5.

  “Again!”

  Georgina joined in the monotone: “Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant…”

  It was a lovely day, or had been before the grey clouds rolled over the distant mountains, and the time should have been spent striking out amongst the peaks and valleys on a long, bracing walk, but the School Rules were very clear on the matter: girls were not to exert themselves. They had to stay indoors in an ever diminishing Bastille as the Principal, Miss Hardcastle, strove to save on heating. Everyone knew that Miss Hardcastle would rather squirrel away their fees in a local bank than stock up the coal bunker. Classes were now forced to cram together in one half of the sprawling building as the entire East Wing had been abandoned early.

  Through the ice crystal–etched window and across the quad, Georgina saw the supposedly dark windows of the forbidden wing. There had been a light, she was sure of it, just before that huge shadow had travelled over the school accompanied by the whirring sound of… who knew what? Certainly something like a firefly had flitted from window to window on the ground floor. The East Wing was occupied; she was sure of it. Before first bell, she and her sisters had gathered in the ski locker room and Georgina had told the others of her observations: the lights, the smoke and the ice melting from the eaves – all sure signs of occupation. All the girls had been in class, she’d pointed out, and all the teachers never left the roaring fire in the staff room.

  But Earnestine had told her not to be silly: Oh Georgina, how foolish, the caretaker must check for leaks in the roof and needs a light to see his way; he must check the chimneys, hence the smoke, and, finally, did she not realise that the sun does melt ice. The East Wing was ‘Out of Bounds’ and that’s all there was to it.

  Georgina had looked to Charlotte for support.

  Charlotte had beamed with pleasure at being included in the discussion and had said: “Do you think soldiers polish their buttons every day?”

  Charlotte – oh, honestly.

  If only she could get ou
t, Georgina thought: somewhere else, anywhere else, anywhere at all.

  Outside, the men were closer, tearing up the white landscape as if scrawling black marks across an empty page. They reached the border of the college and filed through the stone archway into the quad. Behind them, shambling through the snow, were numerous other figures like an approaching army.

  Miss Price thwacked Georgina on the back of her hand to snap her attention back to the lesson. The other girls giggled until Miss Price’s angry scowl raked the classroom.

  “Miss Georgina,” Miss Price said, “do pay attention.”

  “Miss?”

  “And?”

  Georgina panicked: “And, Miss?”

  “The third person second participle?”

  “The third person… of…”

  “Amo?”

  “Oh, yes, Miss, am, er…um?”

  Miss Price sucked on her teeth and then tutted, an angry explosive sound that was her habit.

  “Amerum, a novel conjugation, certainly,” said Miss Price. The rest of the class giggled at their teacher’s wit. “Honestly, Georgina, you are an utter disappointment. Your mind wanders like the tributaries of… what was that river your father and mother went up: the Nile, the Amazon?”

  “Miss, it was–”

  “I wish…” Miss Price searched her mind for the most cutting remark possible and, with an unerring accuracy, she found the most apposite phrase: “…you were more like your sister?”

  Georgina’s face burned more than the back of her hand. She wanted to see Miss Price dead. She knew to which sister the Latin harridan was referring and it wasn’t Charlotte. Charlotte was silly, Charlotte was foolish, Charlotte was… never even expected to emulate the oh–so–wonderful eldest. Everything Georgina did was measured against the yardstick of the perfect Miss Deering–Dolittle, Earnestine, who never did anything wrong; whereas Georgina was always considered lacking.

  “Julietta.”

  “Amazo, amazon… sorry Miss – I was a little lost. I mean, amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant.”