Pip and the Twilight Seekers (5 page)

Jarvis took a noisy slurp of the drink that he held with his right hand. The hook was curled around the mug handle, not holding it, just leaning on it.

“Are there children at the Deadman’s Hand?”

Captain Dooley spat out the words, “Three little birds at the Deadman’s Hand.” Once he’d said it, that was it. There was no going back. Those children would be hunted day and night.

And it was only then that the likeness became apparent to Jarvis.

“Of course, Esther, of course,” he said, rising to his feet and staring into the air as if lost in thought. “I have had a moment of clarity!” He smiled.

His mind went back to the portrait. It was the landlord’s face but younger. Of course it was. It was his son. And the three little birds were the two boys and the girl, all hiding together at the tavern!

The full realization made him momentarily happy but within a breath, happiness boiled into fury.

There are times when anger overtakes you. Destroys every piece of common sense you have and every piece of logic in your brain. That’s what happened to Jarvis when he heard the children were at the Deadman’s Hand. Why had he been so careful? Why had he trodden so lightly, with all those months of wondering suspiciously about the place? How dare they go behind his back? How could they lie to him so blatantly? How dare they ignore his importance!

He should have just done it there and then, he thought, and, of course, he hadn’t. But he was going to do it now. It was time to instill some fear into these people. Time to show them how ruthless he was and how far he was prepared to go to get what he wanted.

He left the house with the task burning away in his mind. He would do it whatever happened. Esther would have joined him but he slammed the door before she could glide out after him and she was left pecking at the window pane, only to be ignored. With the reigns held in his hooked hand he carried a flaming torch to light the way. Often the bay mare would bear the brunt of his anger—taking a scolding or pushed beyond her limits through his frustration.

They moved off, Jarvis shouting at the horse as they went. The carriage wound into action, the back wheel turning swiftly on the repaired axle, crunching and grinding through the packed snow. It plowed through the streets, slipping and sliding in and out of the corners, all the way to the Deadman’s Hand.

There is an old alley that runs down the back of the tavern and from there is the back door that leads inside. The barrels there are stacked high and low, so much so that it is difficult to pass at times.

Jarvis made one simple move that was to change everything in an instant. He took the burning torch and he held it to the barrels that lay stacked against the doorway. At first it didn’t catch. The wood was frosted and the flames licked and licked but they couldn’t take hold. And then he kicked one until the inside was shattered and exposed. That was all it took. The fire met the empty rum barrel and flames whooshed into the air, smothering the confined space with instant heat and combustion. Orange glowed and billowed and suddenly everything was being swallowed up. The fire spread to the doorframe and now it ate along the structural timbers that held the inn together.

It crackled and spat and roared. The external shutters collapsed in the heat, crashing inward, destroying the panes and taking flames with them. Jarvis just stood and watched as if in some kind of weird trance. Immediately, the fire spread across the kitchen and began to work its way through the house.

It was a crazy move. Without flinching, Jarvis walked down the alley out into the open street and watched as the tenants of the Deadman’s Hand awakened to the disaster. The whole city could have gone up, taking the forest with it. The orange flicker reflected in the evil of Jarvis’s eyes, the torch still held in his hand. When the children emerged he would take all three of them, and he would show no mercy.

It is true what they say: Fire is neither friend nor foe. It was the panes of glass smashing and not the fire itself that woke Frankie. But when she did wake she could hear the crackle and roar billowing through the building. She sneaked a look from the window. Glowing orange flecks danced and drifted and black smoke obscured the view. A peek along the corridor confirmed her suspicions. She couldn’t see anything but the noise was much louder and unmistakable.

She woke the boys with furious shakes. “Out, out! Get out! The inn is on fire!” she cried and the boys, half awake, half still sleeping, were thrown headlong into the action.

Sam was the same, snoring away like a rhino. She bashed at the door and screamed, running to his side and shaking it to wake him. He felt solid and soft at the same time, like a large lump of dough. Soon he was up and quickly away on his feet, taking her with him.

All those escape plans they had in place had taken no account of the fact that they all slept like babies and could barely be woken.

The four of them met on the corridor.

“To the cellar,” instructed Sam, still pulling on his clothes. He herded the children down the staircase before him, squeezing along behind, finding it difficult to get his huge frame moving quickly down the narrowness of the walkway.

“Faster!” cried Pip, who was pulling at Toad’s shirt and listening to his panting as he went.

“I can’t see!” yelled Frankie. She was at the front now and feeling her way along the walls in the dark. The heat was forcing its way through the partition and making her hands warm. Pip tugged at her clothing, sensing his way forward, and Toad continued to breathe down his ear. They fumbled at the corners and now they were only seconds away from the kitchen—but it was being swallowed up in the fire and so the way to the cellar was blocked.

That meant only one thing. There was no chance of an escape into the catacombs beneath. Their perfect route into the hollow was shut off. There would be no taking the boat through the bricked arches beneath the streets. No escape through the drain holes into the city above.

Sam’s instinct was to keep the children safe, but their home was burning. A thick fug of black smoke piped out through the closed kitchen door. The door blistered with the heat. It was about to give way.

Toad urged them down the passage toward the side door that lead down the alleyway to the street. There was no choice. “Don’t go yet, wait for my signal!” Sam shouted after them in panic. “Once you’re out, keep your heads down and stay safe. Get to the catacombs and find shelter. Don’t stay down there, it’s far too cold. Get to Finn Shaw’s or Ben Turnwheel’s or somewhere safe.”

Sam peeked out through the door and felt the icy temperature hit him like a wall. The hollow was colder now than it had ever been. Cold right through to the skin. With blankets and hoods wrapped around them the children stood back in the darkness of the porch. Sam looked down into the back alley. Black smoke was choking the passageway and obscuring the view momentarily. It was a good time to move.

He escorted the children toward the open road into the city and insisted they keep themselves tucked into the shadows of the tall buildings.

“Be safe,” cried Toad under the crackling sounds of the flames.

“I’ll be fine,” said Sam. “Go! And hurry.”

Moments later he was in the back street. He was joined by city folk. Out in their night clothes, smashing the frozen troughs to get to the water and half filling what was left of the discarded barrels, passing it along the line to Sam, who poured it in through the window. The stacks of barrels were pried and kicked apart and it helped to lessen the impact. Snow was hurled in heaps and handfuls.

Sam stopped to take a breath. He did not know that Jarvis preyed silently at the scene. Lurking in wait for the children emerging and not realizing that the black smoke his fire had created was the very thing that had allowed them to get away.

The distant cries of the firefighters were drifting. To avoid a clutch of witches circling overhead, Toad had brought the children almost full circle and now they were almost back where they started. But he would take them to a point where he knew there was a drain cover. From there they could escape into the catacombs below.

Not far to go. Except that when they reached the right point, something was parked over the wooden drain cover. Something squat and round and black with huge wheels and a fat body.

“Jarvis!” whispered Pip. “He’s waiting for us to emerge.” He was back in his carriage and poised for action.

“Crafty old snake,” said Toad. “I think we’ve found our fire starter.”

“How do we get to the drain?” asked Frankie. But the only way was to find another one nearby.

Captain Dooley was now sitting perched in Jarvis’s lap and he was beginning to feel that something was nearby. He felt the words coming from inside him.

“Three little birds, sitting on a log,” he sang, in his pathetic, scratchy little voice. But he was drowned out by the crackling and roaring of the fire and Jarvis’s trancelike state.

All the while the fire was raging and the city folk were throwing what they could find of water and snow onto the flames. It could have been a stroke of luck or it could have been pure magic but just at that moment a huge drift of snow broke from the roof and slid down, smothering the flames with soft white. Maybe the heat inside was rising up through the roof and had released it. Maybe the weight of the snowdrift had sent it sliding. Whatever caused it was a mystery, but it was enough to quell the fire outside and the folk went in to tackle the parlor where the stores were burning wildly.

Jarvis moved off, feeling impatient and somehow convincing himself that if he kept circling, perhaps he would come across the children.

Toad knew where every drain cover lay in the whole of the city. But the thick snow only served to confuse him. He couldn’t find a single one and they scrambled around in the dark, hiding among the piles of firewood and broken barrels to avoid being seen by Jarvis. Eventually, the one he had been seeking was right there, and he scratched away with cold hands. But the lid was frozen, stuck to the ground and refusing to budge. Pip tried to breathe on the seal of ice, as if to loosen the frozen grip, but it wasn’t going anywhere for the time being.

They slipped into shadows, making a quick succession of turns through a maze of houses, and suddenly they were at a low doorway. Who knew what was about to greet them—friend or foe?