Jimmy the Hand (35 page)

Rip was moving
carefully so as not to put out the candle, their only source of
light. ‘Wait!’ he said to Neesa and his breath blew it
out.

Mandy gasped and
Kay cried out in fear.

‘Don’t
make noise!’ Rip admonished. ‘I’m in front of you.
Hold hands! We’ve got to stay together.’

‘It’s
your fault!’ Kay snapped.

‘It
doesn’t matter,’ Rip said tiredly, ‘it was going
out anyway. Be careful! Right, everybody here?’

‘Yeah,’
Kay muttered, fear reducing his voice to a hoarse whisper.

‘Then
let’s go,’ Rip said. ‘Every time Neesa’s had
this feeling it’s led us somewhere safe.’

‘I
wouldn’t call this safe,’ Kay sneered.

‘It’s
safer than the halls,’ Rip reminded him, ‘or the room we
were locked in.’

‘We can’t
get out!’ the other boy shouted.

‘Shhh!’
Mandy said. ‘We couldn’t get out before either. Unless
you’ve got a better idea put a stopper in it, Kay.’

They were silent
then, moving carefully in the pitch-darkness. They slipped down
corridors so narrow they had to turn sideways and went up and down
stairs both narrow and creaky until at last Neesa brought them to a
halt.

‘Here,’
she said softly.

The others stood
still and listened to the sound of her apparently patting the walls.
There was a muffled click and they all flinched as a narrow crack let
in a blinding light. Then Neesa impulsively pushed open the panel and
led them through. She squealed with delight at what she found.

Though
everything was covered with dust and the air was stale from long
disuse, the room was undeniably cosy, and well lit from a high
window.

‘We won’t
run out of candles here,’ Mandy said, smiling.

Everywhere they
looked there were candlestands with branches of candles in them.
There was a full scuttle of sea-coal as well. Plumply cushioned
chairs and sofas abounded and there was a feeling of peace about the
place.

‘Now all
we need is something to eat,’ Kay said. ‘And water. Got
any feelings about that?’

Rip raised one
eyebrow and was immediately pleased with himself for having done so
for the first time. So instead of getting annoyed at the other boy’s
attitude he thought about the question. ‘Yes,’ he
decided. He picked up the empty sack and looked at Kay. ‘Want
to come?’

For an answer
Kay plucked two candles from a stand and lit them from the strikebox.
He wasn’t about to refuse to do something the younger boy was
willing to try.

Rip peered out
through the hole in the carving.
This is fun!
he thought. His
young mind had a problem understanding all the terrors that were
around him since he had awakened in this place, but spying on people
from a hidden location was something he could finally grasp, and it
felt like a game to him.

The secret
passages turned out to have a lot of doors and peepholes. The narrow
corridors felt a lot safer than the old room had. He shuddered,
turned and put his finger to his lips, and then put his eye back to
the hole.

He saw a really
big room again; but then, most of the rooms were. This one had
windows open, and he spared them a longing look. There was a long
table set for a meal with fancy metal tableware, not wood and
crockery, not even pewter, but real silver. An old-looking man was
sitting at the head of the table, talking to two other men who stood
with their caps in their hands.

Rip’s lips
pursed. Those were the men who’d taken him and brought him
here. He could tell by their voices. They looked cruel, and scary,
too. A third man sat with his back to the hole, silent.

‘Take
this,’ he said, pushing something across the table at them.

One of the men
reached out, then pulled his hand back as if the little thing had
burned it. ‘Magic!’ he blurted.

‘Of course
it’s magic, you fool,’ the old man said. ‘The
needle points at the man you are to take for me.’

The other seated
man spoke, his voice smooth and soothing and somehow reminding Rip of
the stuff his mother sometimes smeared on burns, or when you got
stung by poison-oak or nettles. ‘It’s entirely harmless,
I assure you,’ he said. ‘You need merely follow the
needle’s point. It may lead you on a long chase—the man
in question may be as much as fifty miles away—but it shouldn’t
be too difficult.’

‘And the
pay is good,’ the older man snapped. ‘More than for all
the others.’

One of the
standing men nudged his companion; he picked up the small thing from
the table reluctantly and wrapped it in a rag, tucking it into his
belt.

‘It’s
a man this time?’ he asked. ‘Not a boy?’

‘He should
be just seventeen,’ the old man said, turning his head aside.
For a moment Rip saw how sad he looked, and felt a little sorry for
him. His voice sank, so that the boy could barely follow it. ‘Just
seventeen . . . he should be tall, perhaps fair-haired, perhaps
brown.’

‘We’re
yer men,’ the standing man said. ‘For six hundred, we’re
yer hands and fingers, m’lord.’

‘And when
you bring him in, put a bag over his head. I have no wish to see his
face. None!’

‘Then
how’ll ye know it’s ‘im, sir?’

The
smooth-talking man said, ‘That needle will only point at one
person in this entire world. That is who you will bring here. Now
go!’

They both bowed
low; after a moment the old man and his companion followed them,
talking.

‘Oh,
good,’ Rip whispered, and opened the door a crack. It was set
into the panelling, and even Mandy would have to stoop to get out of
it. ‘All right—come on—they’re all gone!’

The four
children scampered out into the room. Rip almost stopped as he felt
them again, the bad ones, but he was hungry. Mandy and Neesa ran
straight to the table and began to gather food up in handkerchiefs;
bread, cooked chicken, pastries stuffed with vegetables. Rip and Kay
didn’t stop for that, although it smelled very good; instead
they raced over to the door.

They cracked the
door and peered through, waiting while the girls grabbed up as much
food as they could carry. Rip wanted to stick his head out into the
hall, but resisted the urge.

Kay grabbed his
arm. ‘I can feel something coming,’ he whispered.

‘Me too,’
Rip said. He had a sick feeling in his stomach, as he had in the room
they’d been locked up in; and it was getting worse.

Without a word,
they stuffed the candles back in their pockets and bolted for the
secret door; the girls were already through, eyes wide, and all of
them gave a sigh of relief as the panel clicked closed.

Immediately they
all felt better too; the sense of peering malice went away as if the
stuffy darkness of the secret passage was part of another world.

I
wonder why
it’s always like this when we come out of the passageways?
Rip thought.

Then Mandy
started unfolding one of the napkins. ‘What did you get?’
he asked eagerly as they started their trek back to their safe room.

Jimmy reined in.

He’d
followed Jarvis Coe all the way around the lands belonging to the
great house they’d seen, from sea-cliff edge to sea-cliff edge,
a long ride in a rising wind that reminded you with every step that
spring was young.

A long trip and
an unpleasant one. The only way to find out if they’d gone
beyond that skin-crawling feeling was by testing; one step in—run
away!—one step back—perfectly normal.

‘What is
it?’ Jimmy asked, struggling to keep his old nag from bolting
like a racehorse.

‘Nothing
good,’ Coe answered.

Jimmy snorted.
Brilliant! How fortunate that he had someone along to tell him that.
The awful feeling seemed to have no end. He certainly wasn’t
going to try climbing up the cliff face to see if the way to the
manse was clear from that direction because it probably wasn’t.
He’d long ago learned not to squander his energy.

‘Ever felt
anything like it before?’ he asked.

Coe turned to
look at him. ‘Ever been in a haunted house?’

Jimmy grinned.
‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

‘Oh, you’d
notice,’ the older man said. ‘As I recall, it feels a
great deal like this.’

After a moment
of contemplating his companion’s broad back Jimmy asked, ‘When
were you in a haunted house?’

‘Long
story,’ Coe said without turning his head and then lapsed into
silence.

Jimmy grunted in
irritation. This seemed to him to be a perfect time for a long story.
Because, except for those soul-curdling moments when they went too
close to the manse, he was bored stiff. If they kept on like this he
was going to be grateful for the distraction of his aching arse.

They reached the
edge of the cliff and Coe sniffed the wind, looking out over the
white line of snarling surf where sea clashed white-green on rocks
and the blue-grey waves topped with foam beyond. ‘There’ll
be weather tonight,’ he said. ‘We need to find ourselves
some shelter.’

‘I guess
asking at the manse is out,’ the young thief muttered.

Coe gave him a
wry look and turned his horse, heading off across the ring of forest
and through it, into the cleared fields beyond. The line of . . .
unpleasantness . . . nowhere reached the cultivated land, but it had
little embayments well into the woods and rough moor kept as barrier
and hunting grounds for the manor.

Jimmy sighed and
followed, feeling the oppression on his spirits lift as they came
back into land that bore the sign of man, not to mention sheep, goats
and cattle. All he could see from this lane—it was too narrow
and irregular to be called a road—was a rising field of
something green, probably young grain, and a ridge lined with tall
trees.

‘I don’t
think that was even your typical haunted house,’ he muttered.

‘Not
quite,’ Jarvis Coe said grimly.

Even then, Jimmy
felt a little startled at his tone. Coe was looking back towards the
fortified manor, and his mouth was a hard line; his right hand kept
straying to his breast, and the young thief thought that there must
be something beneath the cloth—an amulet, perhaps.

‘In the
meantime, the day’s mostly gone and if we’re to find out
what’s happening, we need shelter,’ Coe said. He cocked
an eyebrow. ‘Unless you’d rather ride back to Land’s
End?’

‘If you’re
staying, I am,’ Jimmy said, flushing. ‘I gave my word.’

Coe smiled, then
more broadly at Jimmy’s scowl. ‘No, lad, I’m not
laughing at your keeping a debt of honour,’ he said. ‘I’m
just remembering some situations I got myself into with promises,
once. The more credit to you.’

He reined his
horse about and Jimmy followed. The setting sun made it hard to look
west—not something that was often a problem in Krondor, where
tall buildings were more common. Despite that, Coe led them to the
junction of two lanes in that direction, and cocked his head to one
side.

‘Ah, I
thought so,’ he said. ‘There’s a brook there. Hear
it?’

Jimmy tried; all
he could make out was rustling, whooshing, crackly sounds of wind
through vegetation, birdsong, and a lot of insects. But . . .

‘That
tinkling sound?’

‘You’ve
a good ear, Jimmy.’

‘Thank
you, Jarvis,’ he said.

‘Well, in
the country, where a road or path crosses water, chances are you’ll
find folk living,’ the older man said.

They rode down
the lane through a belt of trees that arched over the road; it
reminded Jimmy of an alleyway, in that you wanted to look seven ways
at once to make sure nobody was sneaking up on you. The trees all
seemed of the same size, and most were in rings around thicker
stumps.

‘Coppicing,’
Coe said, noticing his puzzlement. ‘If you cut an oak or beech,
a ring of saplings comes up from the stump. Leave them ten years, and
they’re good firewood, or the right size for charcoal, or for
poles, and when you cut them you get more coppice shoots—think
of it as farming trees. Another sign we’re near some
dwellings.’

Ah, rural
mysteries,
Jimmy thought a little snidely.

Jarvis pulled up
near the footpath that led to a small cottage. ‘That’s a
farmstead off that way,’ he said, pointing to a haze of smoke.
‘But we’ll stop here. A cottager will be more glad of a
few coins, and more likely to be gossipy.’

He rose in the
stirrups. ‘Hello the house!’ he called.

The cottage lay
a hundred yards or so to their right, in the direction of the manor;
a huge oak overshadowed it.

Which isn’t
hard,
Jimmy thought.
A small bush would overshadow it.

The building was
a single storey of wattle-and-daub, whitewashed mud plastered over
interlaced branches and poles; the steep roof was thatch, with an
unglazed dormer window coming through it above the doorway like a
nose. Smoke trickled out of a stone-and-mud chimney, and a shed of
the same construction stood not far off. The large vegetable garden
beside it was newly planted, the dark soil as neatly turned as a
snake’s scales, and a nanny-goat stood in a small rail-fenced
pasture beside a young sow; a few chickens scratched around the plank
door of the modest home.

‘Hello,
strangers,’ a man said, as he turned from latching the wicker
garden gate with a twist of willow-twig.

He had a spade
in his hand, oak with an iron rim; he smiled as he set it down
against the fence, but that put his hand within reach of a billhook
leaning against the same barrier. That was a six-foot hickory shaft
with a heavy hooked knife-blade socketed to the end, a common
countryman’s tool but also a weapon at need; some soldiers
carried them, although military models added a hook on the back of
the blade for pulling mounted men out of the saddle.