The Wreckers (12 page)

And behind me, I heard a squeaking of wheels.

I pulled at the knots. I grabbed them with my teeth. An inch of leather came slithering free.

The wheels chattered and creaked. And round a corner, onto the harborfront, came Stumps. He was leaning forward, his hands swinging back and forth, pushing him on. I attacked the knot with more frenzy than ever. Stumps’s cart came faster, and faster still. I tore at the leather. And when the knot was almost free, the pony whinnied and stomped away, and all the slack that I’d gained went tight as a bow.

I turned and ran.

Stumps came after me. His hands pushed and pushed. The cart flew along, bouncing over the cobblestones, right at my heels. I turned to my left, into the alley and down the stairs.

Stumps stopped his cart at the top of the steps. “You’re trapped,” he said, his voice ugly. He put his hands on the ground and raised himself from the cart. His trouser legs flapped loosely as he swung forward and dropped down a step. He grunted and came down another.

There was no sound but that: the thud of his body on the stone, the hush of his leather gloves. I looked down at the water, rippled by cat’s-paws, up at the bleak hint of dawn. The alley was too narrow for me to hope to pass him.

“You’re done for,” said Stumps. “You’re finished.”

I braced my shoulders against one wall, my feet against the other, and scrambled up like a chimney sweep. Stumps lunged at me, and his hand brushed my heel. But in a moment I was six feet above him, and he gazed at me with his head tilted back. I gloated down; I laughed. And then with dread I saw him stretch his huge arms and flatten one enormous hand on each wall. He came up, even faster than me, grunting with the effort as he shuffled each hand an inch at a time. He swung in the air like a great crawling spider. Bits of loose plaster showered down as his fingers clawed up the walls. And I gained the roof only a moment before him.

His hand gripped the eave. There was a jolt, a thud, as he swung across the space. His other hand clasped the edge of the roof, and he hauled himself up. He was grinning—an evil, grotesque smile.

I turned and raced to the north, over the brewery, over a tavern. He came after me, moving like an ape, swinging from his hands to his stumps. From roof to roof we bounded along, up steep-slanted shingles, past chimneys, round vents where the wind whistled and moaned.

I climbed from one roof to a higher one; I sprinted across a sagging ridge. I ran and jumped, and all the time I heard him coming, like a thumping, pounding engine.

And suddenly I reached the end. I tottered at the very edge of the last building, over a chasm that dropped straight to the ground.

With a grunt and an oath, Stumps came hurling up onto the roof behind me.

He paused there, his body shaking. Then, slowly, he
moved toward me, crawling along the ridge, dragging himself forward. In the shadows and the wind, he looked like a gargoyle come to life.

The roof sloped steeply, on one side to the harbor and on the other to the street, where the overhangs left a gap of six feet to the opposite buildings. Stumps came lurching, slithering closer.

“Got you now,” he said in that loathsome, creaky voice. “Going to give you a whipping, boy.” He slid forward. “Going to give you a good whipping.”

I turned and ran. I raced down the roof, gathering speed, feeling the wind and the salt air, and I launched myself over the gap. The cobblestones flashed by, and there was no sound at all. Then I landed on the other side, on a roof of rusted tin, and clambered up to the ridge. With a thud, Stumps came across the same way. But I wheeled around at the rooftop, went clattering down, and leapt across the gap for a second time.

He cursed me. He sat sprawled across the metal plates and hammered at them with his fist. But already I was moving back along the roofs, back toward the passageway. I was sure to find Mary there, waiting with the ponies.

I scrambled up and down and up again. Each time I rose to a new ridge, the wind pressed against me with a touch as cold and sharp as knives. In the lee of a chimney I took a moment to rest. Breathing hard, hands wrapped round the bricks, I looked back across the street. There was enough brightness in the sky that I could see every hump and break in the roofs. But there was no sign of the legless man.

I had led him farther than I thought. The roofs seemed endless as I plodded along, weary and sore, not once looking back, until I stood again over the tavern, the passageway open before me. The wind gusted and lulled. And in that moment of silence I heard a rasping of breath.

Stumps was behind me.

W
ith a cry, Stumps flung himself down to the tavern. His hand grabbed at my ankle, and I went sprawling across the slanted roof and tumbled over the edge.

I closed my eyes, waiting for the shock of cold water, for the blackness to close round me. But instead I fell less than a yard before I crashed into the roof of the brewery. And Stumps landed beside me.

He fastened onto my legs and then onto my arms. And we rolled together, over and over, until I lay on my back with my head hanging over the passageway. His hand clutched at my neck; his fingers almost circled my throat. I pushed against him, but I couldn’t move him. I gasped for breath as he raised himself to put his whole weight on me—and his nose disappeared. It simply vanished; one moment it was there, sharp as a beak, and the next there was
only a black hole in his face. And in the same instant I heard the crack of a pistol.

His hands flew to his face. Again a pistol cracked; the ball roared past my ear. Stumps reared, tumbling sideways and back, cartwheeling right down the roof and over the edge. The water seemed to open for him, to spread apart and drag him down with white-tipped fingers. He didn’t bob to the surface. He went into that water, and disappeared.

Below me, two people stepped down to the last stair. There was Mary, with her fists at her mouth. And beside her, hidden below the brim of his hat, with a pistol in each hand, stood Parson Tweed in his black cassock.

“That one won’t be rising,” he said. “The man had a stone for a heart.”

The parson dropped his pistols into his voluminous pockets and helped me down from the roof. He poked at me with his long fingers. “Are you hurt?”

“A bit,” I said, touching my neck.

Gently he pulled my hands away. “Nothing time won’t heal,” he said. “Though I’d venture a guess the bruises will fade before the memory does.”

“You saved my life,” I told him.

“You may thank Mary for that. It was she who sensed the danger and fetched me here.” He pushed back his hat, and his thin face was smiling. “However, we did arrive at a providential moment.”

I looked at Mary and tried to see in her eyes a message, a sign of what she’d told the parson. Did he know everything now, all about Stumps and my father?

Together the three of us walked up to the street. The parson’s cassock fluttered at his ankles. “And now, my boy,” he said, “have you anything you’d like to tell me?”

I shook my head. I would have liked to know how a parson had learned to shoot like a marksman. But I wouldn’t ask him that, nor anything else.

He nodded. “And you, Mary? Is there something you should tell me?”

“Nothing I can think of,” said she.

“Very well.” The parson smiled again and touched us both. “I shouldn’t trouble myself about that fellow if I were you. Spare him no pity, for wretches such as he always come to a nasty end.”

With that, Parson Tweed turned away. “You’ll be going home now, will you? To Galilee?”

“Yes,” said Mary.

“Ride carefully, child.” His robes whirled round his legs. “The moors may not be safe this morning.”

He pulled down the brim of his hat and walked away. The heavy pistols dragged at his cassock, stretching it across his shoulders. Under the robe, the parson was thin as a broomstick.

“Tell him,” said Mary. Her voice was a whisper, harsh and forceful. “Go. Ask him to help you.”

She pushed my arm, but I didn’t move.

“Can’t you believe me?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” said I.

Mary sighed. “You’ll have to see it for your own self,” she said. “But whoever works the puppets, it edn’t Parson Tweed.”

“I hope you’re right,” I told her.

We didn’t go back to see my father. He would have heard our voices and known we were safe, and it would only bring him despair, I thought, for us to arrive with no means or hope of setting him free. So we mounted the ponies and rode up to the high road. Dawn was coming fast, and the shadows seemed to run beside us as we cantered over the bridge. I paced my pony with Mary’s, skirting the moor on the road past the Tombstones.

The clouds of the gathering dawn swept above us in jagged rows. When we climbed through the cut I saw streaks of black rain out in the Channel and a feather of smoke from the villagers’ fire. They sat where we’d left them, on the point below the garden.

The Widow’s wagon was pulled up on the grass, the horses still in harness. The old woman stood by the seat, in a bonnet of wine-colored cloth. The villagers sat wrapped in tarpaulins, and behind them, on a churning dark sea, the ship glided through cloud banks. She was closer to shore, at times just a cable’s length from the surf; one way or the other, her struggle would end within the hour.

“I can’t go home,” said Mary. “No matter how my uncle reacts, I can’t go home just now.”

Nor could I. And Simon Mawgan wouldn’t be there while the ship was still embayed, I was sure of that. So we crossed the rise above the road and hobbled the ponies there, out of sight of the wreckers. And we lay in the sparse grass, watching the ship beating to windward. The sea was rougher, the waves higher. But she set her courses
as the day began to brighten, and churned off to the east, tossing up spray.

With dawn came a shift in the wind. It wasn’t much, less than a point, but the smoke of the wreckers’ fire no longer blew directly through the garden. It streamed to the west in bubbles black as molten tar.

The ship was at the far end of St. Elmo’s Bay when the wind shift nearly caught her aback. She gybed around, circled close to the surf, and came bounding along the shore toward us.

And with her came a horseman, riding like a Fury up the coast road. In a flurry of capes, he grew from a speck to a regal figure on a fine black horse. People turned their heads to watch him but didn’t move from their places. He rode up to the fire and, just as the man at the cromlech had done, stepped from the saddle as the horse reared.

“Uncle Simon,” said Mary. “What do you suppose he’s been doing all this night?”

“Waiting,” I said. He’d been huddled in a secret cove by the Northground cape, waiting there with a match and a beacon.

Mary pointed. “He has no lantern with him.”

“Then he’s hidden it,” I said.

“Why?” asked Mary.

I had no answer. Certainly he approached none of the wreckers, and none went to him. But they were too intent on the ship for that. First one, then another, then the whole lot stood up to watch her coming. With the shift in the wind, she was more likely than ever to clear Wrinkle Head.

The fire sputtered. Smoke backed on the flames, then hauled round in a coil before it settled again to its steady stream. Sweeping across the Channel was a line of ragged black clouds. Behind it, the sky was bright as gold.

“Wind’s changing,” I said.

Mary rose on her elbows, watching the ship. “This time she’s out,” she said. “This time she’s free.”

She was right, but only if the wind held steady. Decks streaming water, a silvery wake leaping behind, the ship buried her bow in the waves. I could just see the people on her deck, lines of sailors ready at braces and sheets.

Again the smoke wavered. The stream of it humped and twisted like a snake.

“What’s happening to the wind?” I asked.

“It’s not the wind,” said Mary. “It’s the Widow.”

The old woman had stepped up on her wagon seat. She straddled the driver, a foot on each side, and poor Simple Tom took hold of her ankles. She raised her hands. She held her palms toward the wind, then spread her arms wide, and wider, until she stood like a cross before the storm. A shriek of wind tore at her dress and her hair. The ship drove toward the point. Only five lengths to go, four lengths to go.

“Blow ’er down!” yelled Caleb Stratton.

The Widow chanted in a keening voice, and the wind came tearing over the sea, flattening the breakers, flinging spray high over the cliffs. It raged round her, taking her scarves and raising them straight above her head. It tore off her bonnet and carried it away in high, soaring circles.

The ship lay almost flat in the water, her courses rubbing the waves. A longboat snapped from its chocks and rolled over the side. Water barrels tumbled after it.

Along the cliff, the wreckers crouched on the ground. They put their hands on the earth; they lowered their heads and hunched their shoulders. And above them the Widow sang. She screeched like a flock of gulls.

The ship passed so close to the point that her main yard scraped on the rocks of Wrinkle Head. But she was past, and she was safe now, and on the instant the wind fell to a breeze. The ship sailed off with her canvas glowing, and a moment later the sounds reached us—the cheers of the men aboard.

It was Caleb Stratton who rose first from the ground. He cursed the ship. He picked up a stone and flung it after her.

“She’s out!” he cried. “Free and clear.”

The Widow lowered her arms. “It was that boy!” she shrieked. “It was him, the Devil in disguise.” She turned slowly around.

“You all knew the boy,” cried the Widow. “Once he lived among you.” Her gaze swept over the slope, over the garden, over the ground where I lay. She seemed to stare right at me. “And he’s here. He’s somewhere close by.”

I wanted to run then, to flee back to the ponies. But Mary held me down. The Widow made the sign of the evil eye. She spat on the ground between her spread fingers. “It’s him, I tell you,” she cried, her voice cracked and brittle. “Didn’t he come ashore in the very same spot where he drownded all these many years ago?”