Cold Shoulder Road (27 page)

She poured out a flood of rapid French explanation to her father, who bowed at once, most graciously, to Ruth, and offered her his arm, to lead her into the château.

“We have here a countryman of yours,” Arun heard him telling Ruth in polite, but halting English. “He was rescued from a small boat . . . very sick . . . starving. For days he knew not even his own name . . . would not speak to us when we questioned him, but my daughter, who is very sympathetic – she found out that his name is Micah . . . so, by degrees we find out what place he is from. And there are children also – they were thrown from the train – they were hurt, but they lived—”

“The Handsel Children!” cried Ruth.

“
Quoi?
You can, perhaps, help us to discover where they belong . . .”

T
HE NEXT DAY PASSED VERY SLOWLY IN
C
OLD
Shoulder Road.

Overnight they had written the letter to Sir David Greenaway.

Dere Podge
, Is wrote, her spelling here and there corrected by Penny,
do you remember me, Dido’s sister Is Twite. Well in fokston now things is turble bad. The mery gentry what smugles mamoth tusks is makin fokes lives a Mizry. Two many fokes getin kild. Too meny fokes scared to speke. An the 2 heds of the hole show is Admiril Fishkin an Dominik della Twite. Fishkin blew up the Throssle an Twite had mike Swanet drownded what was a Decint fella. They are a pare of Raskils. Tis time you shood do sumat about them Podge. Yours respecfly from Is Twite an my sister Peny Twite who sends her kind regards
.

The baker’s boy promised that it should reach Dover Castle by noon.

Pye spent the day playing the ocarina, reading
Snake Charming Without Tears
– it was the first book she had encountered, so she was quite absorbed by it – and, a large part of the time, doing something which she vaguely described as ‘sending off messages’.

“Messages to who, Pye?” Is asked her.

“I dunno exakly. Some are kids right here, in Folkestone. Some a lot farther off.”

It seemed plain that Pye’s ability to send and receive thought-talk was increasing almost hourly.

“I gotta boy, now, in Blastburn. Name of Coppy. He sends love to you, Is.”

“Oh, yes, little Coppy! He was a right decent little character.”

And, later in the day, “
I got Dido
! I got Dido, way off in Whale Island! She sends love to you and Penny and coming home soon.”

“Good heavens, Pye! Are you
sure?
”

“Course I’m sure,” said Pye, rather offended.

Halfway through the day, Penny went out for provisions. She came back only after so long a time that Is and even Pye had begun to grow deeply anxious. When Penny did turn up, it was from the wrong direction, down the brambly hill, and she had a cut and bleeding cheek and a black eye coming.

“Pen! What
happened
?”

“Two chaps recognised me. They must have seen me, long ago, with Ruth. I think they were Gentry fellows. They shouted ‘Witch, witch!’ and chased after me and threw stones. I managed to give them the slip, but it took hours of dodging, and I had to go all round the houses.”

Penny flopped crossly down on to a heap of wool, while Is carefully swabbed her cut cheek and anointed it with some of Ruth’s feverfew ointment.

“The nuisance of it is, that means we dassn’t stay much longer in Folkestone,” Penny said. “Not if we’re that liable to be spotted.”

Towards evening Penny’s eye swelled up, and her head began to ache badly. It was plain that she would not be able to come on the spying expedition to the Admiral’s house.

“Don’t you stay there too long, now,” she warned. “For I’ll be in a terrible worriment about ye till I see you back. In case he’s left a charley on the look-out.”

“No, we’ll be as careful as King Solomon’s cat,” Is promised. “We won’t even go near the place till we’ve seen old Fishskin off the premises. And then we’ll lurk around a whole lot longer till we’re sure it’s all rug.”

“What’ll I do if you don’t come back?” demanded Penny, thrown off her usual brisk competence by headache, pain and weakness.

“Wait till dawn and then send the baker’s boy to Dover Castle with a message,” Is was suggesting, though rather doubtfully, since that would mean Penny had to go into town, when Pye unexpectedly said, “A girl called Jen says she’s coming to Folkestone. Tomorrow morning early. With a whole lot of friends. I’ll ask her to come round by Cold Shoulder Road. Then they can take a message for you. If you want.”

“That sounds all right,” said Penny, somewhat relieved. “Now – will you please
watch out
!”

Dusk was falling and light was thickening as Pye and Is climbed up the chalky path that led to the East Cliff. The weather was cloudy and windy.

“Blowing up a gale, feels like,” said Is. “That ain’t a bad thing. It ain’t so easy to hear boards creaking and doors shoved open in a house if the wind’s wuthering outside.”

They found a good vantage point, a thick clump of laurustinus not far from the front door of East Cliff House, and settled down to watch and wait. Pye had brought her ocarina, but Is firmly forbade her even to
think
of playing on it. Pye therefore went back to her message-game, sitting cross-legged on the damp ground with a look of immense concentration on her face, like a cat collecting spit for washing.

Three-quarters of an hour passed. Then a carriage driven by (presumably) Mrs Boles’s cousin’s boy Alf drew up at the front door, which opened, letting out a pool of light. Out came the Admiral, dressed up to the nines – white silk stockings, diamond-buckled shoes, blue velvet jacket, gold lace, cocked hat, and gold-hilted sword. He looked like an inn sign, Is thought, or something off a wedding cake. Surprisingly, he had a lady with him: he led her out of the door and politely helped her into the coach.

“
Who’s that?
” muttered Is, and heard Pye, beside her, give a little hiss of horror.

“Miss Twite! Twite’s sister!”

Merlwyn Twite, too, was dressed very grand, in a stiff dress of yellow Tribute Silk, some large diamonds, and feathers in her grey hair.

The coach door slammed, the horses broke into a trot.

“Give ’em fifteen minutes,” said Is. “Just in case Miss Twite forgot her fan.”

They made it twenty minutes. The house was all dark, not a light to be seen anywhere, and not a sound to be heard.

“Now we’ll go round to the back,” breathed Is, who remembered the way in to the garden room where they had taken Ruth’s pictures. By now their eyes were well accustomed to the dark. Is had remembered that the door to the conservatory had a broken pane in it. Sure enough, there was not the least trouble in slipping a hand through the hole and pushing back the bolt. The door opened with a gentle scrunch and they tiptoed into the warm interior, which smelt of earth and geraniums.

“Shut the door behind you, Pye, but don’t bolt it. We may need to scarper fast. Now we’ll wait again till our eyes is used.”

When they had done this they went next door into the garden room where, Is remembered, there had been candles, matches and small oil-lamps on a shelf. Is lit a couple of lamps.

“Now we go into the kitchen,” she whispered, and opened the door at the back of the garden room.

The kitchen seemed exactly as Is remembered: cosy, stuffy and unbelievably untidy; musty with the smell, almost a taste, of many potatoes that had boiled dry, and many slices of bread fried in rancid lard.

“Now, keep your eyes peeled for Rosamund.”

They had not long to wait.

Down her silver thread, silent as shade, large as a black and eight-legged cushion, shot Rosamund, her brilliant little eyes fixed on the visitors in a very unwelcoming manner. She began to advance towards them.

“Oh, flame it,” muttered Is. “I really hate spiders.”

The fact that Rosamund was followed by two friends or sisters did not improve the moment. Is looked round for a rolling-pin or a fish-slice.

“Don’t do that,” said Pye. “It’ll only aggravate ’em. I can fix ’em.”

She pulled the ocarina from her pocket and played a gentle tune.

To the huge relief of Is, this had exactly the required effect. The spiders, lulled and charmed, sank together into a sooty, hairy, shaggy heap with eyes like diamonds gazing sleepily in every direction.

“Nice!” said Pye. “Cosy! Ain’t they?”

She seemed inclined to give them a pat.

“Never mind that, Pye, how long will they stay that way?”

“I dunno,” said Pye. “The book don’t say. But I can always play some more.”

“Well, let’s have a lookabout quick while they are dozing.”

Is and Pye went down the long passage that Is remembered, and she noticed with interest that a large number of Ruth’s pictures had been brought in from the cave and replaced the engravings of ships on the walls. On the floor were the same piles of books and papers. Open doors showed rooms filled with rusty machines, rolls of carpets, mouldy and blistered furniture, whole sets of chinaware.

“How the plague are we going to find anything in this clutteration?” said Is. “Let alone we don’t rightly know what we are looking for.”

By the front door they found twenty black cloaks and twenty black hoods hanging on pegs.

“But that,” Is pointed out, “don’t prove a thing. Old Fishskin ‘ud say he likes to have plenty of extras in case it rains. Let’s try upstairs. Maybe we’ll find a white hat.”

At the top of the stairs, unfortunately, they were faced by another group of spiders who advanced in a menacing, semicircular formation, waving legs, champing jaws. It took Pye longer, this time, to charm them to sleep with her music.

“Maybe we should call it a night,” said Is, drawing several deep, unhappy breaths as the spiders collapsed into a whiskery heap. “But I’ll just take a look in one or two bedrooms—”

She opened a door, and discovered a bedroom that was packed right up to the ceiling with large, buff-coloured smoothish pointed objects. They were about the size of double-basses. There appeared to be hundreds of them. Perhaps thousands.

“What the blue blazes are these?”

“Oh, I know,” said Pye. “I’ve seen lots of those taken on and off trains. Mammoths’ tusks, they are. They get made into sneezeboxes.”

“Ah hah! That really shows he’s a queer cove then – scaly as an old alligator! If we can get one of those out and take it away with us, we have him on toast.”

Is braced herself, put her arms round one of the tusks – which were packed together tight as sausages in a packet – and gave it a tug.

The result was disastrous.

The whole stack of carefully piled tusks, once disarranged, came crashing and tumbling out of the doorway. They started a domino effect. More and more tusks cascaded down. They bowled over Pye and Is. They went thundering from step to step down the staircase.

Worse: the collapse started up some kind of alarm mechanism which must have been cunningly set up by the Admiral. Bells rang. Gongs clanged. And a huge rusty cage, which had been suspended above the stairwell, came creaking out of the ceiling and locked itself into four slots in the floor.

Pye was caught inside the cage. Also, she had been hit on the back of the head by a falling tusk, and looked not a little dazed. She crouched in a nest of tusks, rubbing her head in a bewildered manner.

“Pye! Are you all right? Are you hurt bad?”

“I’ll havta see,” mumbled Pye after a moment. “Dunno yet.”

Is tugged and wrestled frantically with the bars of the cage. But, though rusty, they were strong and solid, locked firmly into place And they were set too close together for Pye to escape between them, small though she was.

“Like old times, eh?” she said vaguely. “Shut in a cage.”

“Oh,
Pye
!”

For a moment – no more – Is felt real despair.

Then she set her lamp on the floor – Pyre’s had gone out but mercifully hers had not – and carefully inspected the cage.

“There’s a keyhole here. So there’s gotta be a key.”

“Oh, aye?” muttered Pye, still dazed.

“Don’t you fret, Pye. I’ll find that key.”

But
where
? Is thought, in this rabshackle house? Perhaps in the Admiral’s bedroom?

But all the rooms on the upper floor were now inaccessible, barred off by the cage, which fitted across the head of the staircase.

The kitchen seemed the likeliest place. Practically everything was kept in the kitchen. But what about the spiders there? Might they have livened up again by now?

Is really hated the idea of hunting for a key through the chaos of the kitchen, hampered in her search by half a dozen spiders the size of terriers.

“Pye, lend us the ocarina.”

It took three or four minutes for Pye to comprehend what Is wanted. Then she pushed her hand into her pocket and brought out a broken earthenware mouthpiece.

“Oh,
frizzle
it,” said Is. “Musta been smashed by a tusk. Or by the cage.” Pye looked stricken – much more upset by this than by the previous mishaps.

“My pipe,” she said forlornly. “Busted.”

“Never mind it, Pye. Very likely Penny can fix it. Penny’s extra good at mending things.”

Anyway, Is thought, most like
I
couldn’t fix the spiders the way Pye can. I don’t have the gift.

Fortunately she remembered seeing a brass-hilted sword in the hall umbrella stand (the Admiral’s second-best, no doubt); armed with this she returned to the kitchen.

Here, the spiders were still piled up in a furry, drowsy heap. Sword in hand, Is skirted round them warily, hunting in all the places where a key might be kept; behind the clock on the mantelpiece, in the knife-and-fork drawer, in a bowl of coins, razors, and thimbles on the kitchen table, in a flowerpot, in a jug, in the soap container by the sink. She had almost reached the point of giving up when she lifted the lid of an earthenware crock which had once held Mrs MacBeavor’s Superior Potted Highland Grouse, and found that it contained a whole mass of keys, rusty and shining, large and small.