A Plague of Hearts, Patrick Whittaker [good books to read for 12 year olds TXT] 📗

/> ‘Is that it?’ asked the King.
The White Rabbit nodded. ‘In its entirety, sire.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘Well,’ said the Queen. ‘That is the most treasonous, seditious piece of writing I have ever heard. I shudder to think what effect that sort of thing could have on the young and impressionable.’
‘Actually,’ said Alice, ‘apart from the fact that it didn’t rhyme, I quite liked it.’
‘You would!’
‘All right,’ said the King. ‘I’ve heard all I want to hear. I have an ulcer that feels like a blow torch, the beginnings of a migraine and a thirty foot schoolgirl cramping up my courtroom. Therefore the jury will retire and consider its verdict.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Alice. ‘You haven’t heard the Knave’s defence yet!’
The King started to say something about there being no point, but he was drowned out by his wife.
‘We’ve heard all we want to hear!’ she thundered. ‘The confused stands condemned by his own demeanour. Pyjamas in court indeed!’
‘He’s not confused,’ Alice pointed out. ‘He’s accused.’
‘Actually,’ said the Knave, ‘you’re both right.’
‘Why do you let this fat bag bully you?’ Alice wanted to know. ‘She’s nothing but a puffed-up sack of lard!’
The Queen’s face underwent a dramatic transformation. Demons played in her eyes, infusing them with burning sulphur and the fury of Hell. A flush broke through her several layers of make-up. Muscles twitched around her lips, the side of her nose. Even her ears were trembling. ‘Insolent wretch! I will not be spoken to in this way!’
‘Oh yes you will,’ said Alice. ‘Bag! Fat, fat, fat bag!’
‘How dare you! You - you - ’
‘You are the ugliest, nastiest queen I’ve ever seen in my whole life,’ said Alice, reveling in her new-found power. ‘I’ve a good mind to tread on you.’
‘Guards! Guards! Off with her head!’
Nobody came forward. The two guards flanking the Knave of Hearts stepped back to hide behind their prisoner. It was no part of their job to take on giant schoolgirls.
‘Off with her head!’ screamed the Queen, turning an unwholesome shade of purple. ‘Do you hear? I want this monster destroyed. Why do you just stand there? Why won’t you come to the aid of your monarch?’
The Queen rose to her feet, slammed her fist against her thigh. ‘I want her flogged and then executed! I want her head on a platter! I want... I want...!’
The Queen clutched at her throat. Her eyes rolled up. She wheezed.
‘A doctor!’ cried the King. ‘Someone fetch a doctor!’
‘Oh dear,’ said the White Rabbit, close to tears. ‘That can’t be done, sire. Rule ninety-seven states quite clearly that no doctor may ever - ’
‘Bugger the rules! My wife is dying!’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ asked Alice.
The King raised a finger towards the rafters. ‘You! This is your fault! You’ll suffer for this! I’ll make you pay!’
Even as the King spoke, the Queen threw her arms out wide and went rigid. Then with a sigh like the creaking of old timbers, she drew a final breath, fell forward and died.
A dreadful silence followed.
The Knave spluttered. He tittered. He giggled. A guard slapped his face.
Silence again.
The King looked to the Knave. The Knave shrugged. A rivulet of blood rolled slowly from the corner of his mouth. The King rose to his feet, stepped down from the platform.
‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘Tell me this has not happened.’
‘In your dream or mine?’ said the Knave. ‘Or the Red King’s?’
‘What?’
‘Screw you, you old fart. You’ve got exactly what you deserve.
The King’s face twisted in anger. His breathing was ragged, tortured. ‘Why have you done this to me? I’ve tried to help you today. I tried to show everyone that your arrest and trial are travesties. I might even have been able to save you. And this is how you repay me?
‘Tell me, boy. Anybody! Just tell me what I’ve done to earn your contempt and your hatred. Have I really been that bad a Monarch?’
A tear as big as a tennis ball fell at the King’s feet. He looked up. Then screamed. ‘YOU! This is your doing! YOU... KILLED... MY... WIFE!’
Alice buried her face in her hands. It was like an aircraft hanger closing its doors. ‘I... I... I...’
‘Witch!’ cried the White Rabbit.
‘What?’ said Alice.
‘Who?’ said the King.
‘Witch!’ the Rabbit repeated. ‘I tell you the girl’s a witch!’
‘Oh no,’ said Alice. ‘I’m not. Honestly. I’m just a little girl who’s lost and confused and shouldn’t even be here. All I want is to go home...’
‘She looks like a witch to me,’ declared the Ostrich. ‘A giant witch!’
‘Of course she’s a bloody witch!’ said the Knave of Hearts. ‘And witches are for burning!’
A murmur of agreement rippled around the Court Room. In the jury box, the Field Mouse nudged excitedly at the Lizard.
The Lizard fell forward.
‘He’s dead!’ screamed the Field Mouse. ‘The witch has killed the Lizard! Don’t look at her. She’s got the Evil Eye!’
This was all that was needed to turn the near-hysterical jurors and attendees into a howling, blood-thirsty mob.
‘Burn her!’ they chanted. ‘Burn the witch! Burn! Burn! Burn!’
The March Hare stood in the midst of it all, looking on in numb horror. It went through his mind over and over again to leave immediately, before he was irretrievably caught up in the inevitable consequences of the mob’s frenzy. But he could not. A horrid fascination had him rooted to the spot.
‘Do you hear?’ the King shouted. ‘Do you hear what they’re saying? They want you to burn, little girl. They want to send you down to Hell!’
Alice put her hands over her ears. ‘I’ll wake up, she whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘I’ll wake up and it will all be just a dream and I’ll be sitting by the river and my sister will be teaching me history and none of this will have happened and it will be all right. I’ll be back home and there’s no place like home... There’s no place like home... There’s no place like home...’
‘Clear the Court!’ ordered the King. ‘She’s chanting a spell. Fetch paraffin! Fetch torches! Hurry!’
There was a general rush towards the exits. Benches were overturned as people fought to escape the nightmare they had helped create. Fur was lost in the stampede. Feathers went flying. Someone broke a rib.
Eventually only six remained. Of these, the Queen and the Lizard were both quite dead. Alice was terrified. The King and the Knave were probably insane. And the March Hare was searching for a reason for it all.
He did not try to get the Knave away. There was nothing he could do. The Knave had about him the aura of a doomed man, a man beyond hope.
Two guards returned. Each carried a bucket of paraffin which they emptied over Alice’s enormous red shoes. The pink liquid flowed around her silver buckles, soaked into her socks.
In a fit of desperation, Alice attempted to stamp on the guards, but they were too quick for her; without looking back, they sprinted out into the corridor.
Next came three ZOMOs. They had discarded their batons in favour of blazing torches. The flames danced wickedly, fueling Alice’s terror, the Hare’s dismay. One ZOMO was careless. He slipped; both he and his torch were extinguished beneath Alice’s shoe. The two remaining riot cops were more cautious. They threw their torches from a safe distance, then departed immediately.
As flames swept up Alice’s legs, the King clapped his hands in manic glee and began to dance a merry jig. Her frock ignited. The Knave laughed hysterically.
Sinking to his knees, the March Hare was held spellbound by Alice’s destruction. He took in every detail of her perdition - the flailing of her arms, the melting of her face. Black strands of carbonised hair drifted through the smoke; her clothes fell apart.
The Knave thrashed around in his chains. His every movement was made strobic by the wash of shadow and light. He was a flickering vision, a Jack O’Lantern dancing in and out of existence. ‘Roast beef!’ he cried, playing the fool one last time. ‘I smell roast beef! Pass the mustard!’
As if this was some pre-arranged signal, the girl stopped screaming, stopped pounding at the smoke-filled air
Realising his peril, the King ran out of the Court Room, .tearing his crown from his head and throwing it aside. His sobbing echoed down the corridor.
Like a penitent sinner, the Knave looked up at Alice and smiled serenely. Her right arm fell to the ground and shattered, showering the Knave with hot cinders, dark ashes. Then with a mighty whoosh, Alice toppled, broke apart into a dozen burning pieces.
Her right thigh landed on the Knave, killing him instantly.


15. Primal Screams

The Queen was dead.
In the Pleasure Garden, the snapdragons burned feebly. The March Hare sat on a toadstool watching wispy, swan-like clouds glide across the moon; some part of him was far away, drifting in a space of its own.
There was music. He had brought along his portable tape recorder. The Caterpillar bathed in the rolling melodies. The March Hare merely listened.
‘Imagine,’ said the Caterpillar, ‘drowning in an arpeggio.’
The March Hare breathed in a lungful of hashish. They smoked from opposite ends of the same hookah; each had his own tube through which to inhale the heavy blue smoke. A casual observer might have supposed a symbiosis, a self-contained ecology of Caterpillar, Hookah and Hare.
Nodding thoughtfully, the March Hare smacked his lips. ‘How about sailing on a sea of symphonies?’
‘Cool,’ said the Caterpillar. ‘I can see myself as Captain of the good ship Concerto.’
‘And I could be the angry wind whipping the sea to a crescendo. Driving all before me, I’d rejoice as notes crash against tall cliffs, broiling and bubbling in an orchestrated frenzy.’
‘Far out.’
A piano spiraled up a staircase of chord progressions, twisted around in tonic contortions.
Resting for a moment on a sustained harmonic, it suddenly tumbled three octaves to be caught in the sturdy arms of a bassoon.
The Knave was dead.
The March Hare could not focus on anything this side of eternity. Cannabis and music were taking him into uncharted territory. He was an astronaut, a dancer in a ballroom haunted by stars.
‘Sometimes it’s all just too beautiful,’ said the Caterpillar.
‘What is?’
‘Life. So exquisite and so delicate we seldom have the courage to grasp it. We think it’s going to fall apart in our hands. And then one day, it’s gone.’
The March Hare began to cry.
‘Why are you crying?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it because of what happened to the Queen?’
‘No. It’s not that.’
‘The Knave?’
‘Not that either. I think it’s because something’s happened to me and I really don’t know that I can handle it. I’ve suddenly grown up. I never thought I would, but I have. Life’s become so serious. I just don’t know who the hell I am any more.’
‘How old are we?’ said the Caterpillar. ‘We must be about thirty years old. Maybe it’s about time we did grow up. I can’t be