Spring (47 page)

With much huffing and puffing Festoon raised a hand and tugged at the velvet bell-pull that hung ever-ready for his convenience. A short while later Parlance appeared. He was thin and tiny but made up for his minute stature by wearing built-up shoes and a very tall chef’s hat.

Parlance handed his lord the day’s menus and they were studied in reverential silence. There was considerable mutual respect between these two, and a strong sense that the gastronomic efforts of the day were an exciting joint enterprise.

Festoon gave his verdict at last. ‘More crayfish, Parlance, stewed in lime,’ he whispered weakly, ‘and we can never have enough of your slivered
Apfelkuchen
, but powdered today, I think, with grain of cinnamon.’

‘
Grain
, my lord?’ said Parlance in some surprise. This was indeed a departure from tradition.

‘Yes, I mean a grain. In the structural sense, as if it
were
a grain, which it is not, as I am perfectly well aware. Shall we say instead that it is cinnamon reduced to fragments which are smaller than granules, yet not so fine as powder?’

Parlance gazed at Festoon with admiration. No employer he had ever heard of had such startling originality as Festoon in matters of gourmandy, or was capable of such delicate precision in his instructions.

‘I fancy,’ said Festoon, after indulging in a sweetmeat or two and wiping his sugar-shiny lips with the damask that was his preferred material for napkins, ‘that those marinated bleakfish you roasted in mustard last week are a tad on the murky side for our guests today, though I myself prefer them thus served. Was it English or French, the mustard?’

‘French.’

‘A mistake perhaps. Try the more piquant English, and less of it, with a hint of vaporized lemon – lemon, I say, not lime, for we are using that already – which, I believe, will excite any hydden palate worthy of the name. Agreed?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Parlance most cheerfully, for great though his own skills were, he knew that Festoon’s instinct added a touch so complementary to his own that the result was, on occasion, near-genius.

‘And the wines, Parlance, what of them?’

They talked their way similarly through the wines, the beers, and small-beers, the fruit elixirs and the meads, adding and discarding until the balance was absolutely correct.

‘Our work is now done,’ said Festoon at last, ‘and I must away.’ Parlance discreetly withdrew and Festoon fell into a happy reverie about his special day.

I
t was only when Barklice called out for his boatman a third time into the gathering gloom by the West Gate that he got a response.

There was a sudden rustling in the vegetation further along the canal, the knock and rattle of wood on solid wood, and someone called out, ‘Ho there! Mister Barklice and party?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Barklice.

A figure then appeared along the bank, holding a lantern in one hand and clutching a sturdy oar in the other.

Jack gazed at the newcomer, mightily impressed. His face was in shadow but he seemed to be dark-skinned, and his garb looked vaguely Indian, with a touch of the far Orient. He wore only a dark vest and a loincloth, beneath which his muscular legs and feet were bare. He had thrown a thick red cloak over his shoulders, while round his head was rakishly swathed a band of material of the same colour.

He approached with a swagger and stopped directly before them, parking one end of his oar on the ground so that it towered above him vertically. His face opened up into a wide, white-toothed smile.

Jack stared at him in astonishment, for ‘Old Mallarkhi’ seemed a strange name to have given someone so young. Strong he might be, but this was a boy of no more than twelve.

Pike swore and growled, ‘There’s no way I get in any boat with a luggerbill boy in this foul weather!’

‘Where’s your grandfather, Arnold?’ asked Barklice uneasily.

‘Busy as a dozen rats, Mister Barklice. Our own patch was set to back up half an hour ago, and that’s got to take priority, so he left off waiting here and sent me up instead. The luggerbill’s waiting below in the dark, and it’s the best craft to use in these conditions.’

‘Most dangerous craft ever invented!’ snarled Pike, pushing past him through the bushes to the canal’s edge, from where came a horrible slurping sound as the water swelled and billowed against the bank.

He stared down and shook his head at the craft below. ‘He’s not old enough to have passed his apprenticeship, let alone handle one of the trickiest craft on the water. I tell you, Barklice—’

‘Tell him what you like, Mister Pike,’ reported Arnold Mallarkhi, ‘but if we don’t get off now, and that means
now
, we’ll not just be jiggered but we’ll be gargled as well. The back-up’s beginning to merge. I can feel it in my bones.’

Arnold, the most junior of the Mallarkhi boating clan, smiled again. Ignoring Pike he nodded respectfully at Brief, and then stuck a finger in Jack’s chest.

‘You ever been in a luggerbill?’

‘Well, I . . .’ For some reason Jack’s mouth went dry.

‘You paddled a canoe?’

‘Well, I did once. I . . .’

‘Good! Your name?’

‘Jack.’

‘Jackboy, jump in, helm end, and stay centred, help this cargo down one by one, do as I say, and
move it
! Minutes is turnin’ to seconds, and once seconds run out we’ll be worse than gargled – we’ll be spewed!’

‘By the Mirror, Barklice, I’ll—’ cried out Pike.

‘Shove ’im in, Jackboy!

Jack found himself obeying these sudden commands. He pushed past Pike and surveyed the craft below, which was long, narrow, clinker-built and very unstable-looking, rocking about on the troubled, nasty-looking water like a cork.

He eased a leg into it, towards its prow end, got himself central and without more ado, sensing that time was of the essence, pulled Pike in after him.

He stowed his portersac and stave, took Pike’s as he climbed aboard, and then reached a hand up for Barklice, the luggerbill now rocking around very dangerously. Barklice as good as fell into the small craft, as the young boatman helped Brief in at the stern end with a respectful, ‘That’s right, Master Brief, you just sit down and think nice thoughts!’

Stort got in last of all and clumsily, only saved from slipping into the water by Arnold reaching down and quickly grabbing the seat of his trews, then effortlessly heaving him in so that he lay, a jumbled heap of limbs and possessions, in the bilges.

The wind blew hard, spray spattering their faces, and Jack nearly slid into the water on the far side of the craft before he managed to squat tidily and regain his balance.

Somehow, such was Arnold’s ability to command them all, in no time at all they were huddled down ready for their boat trip.

Jack had always thought that canal water did not flow, but this particular waterway was flowing all right, first one way and then the other. Worse still, now they were all onboard, Jack could see why Arnold had earlier mentioned canoes. This vessel felt just like one, bobbing up and down, and side to side, with each wave that went under it and every little movement inside.

Worse still, their combined weight was such that the luggerbill’s sides were only inches above the water at their central point.

‘Jack, loose that lanyard!’ called out Arnold.

Jack guessed this must mean the rope which was precariously tied to the slender branch of an alder growing on the bank, which whipped back and forth and was slippery and hard to get hold of. His fingers were cold and they fumbled feebly to get the rope undone.

‘Jackboy, we’re out o’ time! Just snap the bugger off and be ready with your paddle.’

Finally freeing the lanyard, Jack stowed it under the prow, then scrabbled around till he found a wooden paddle. His knees were sticking painfully into something hard and knobbly, but he ignored that discomfort, such was his sense of imminent disaster.

The moment he released the rope, the canoe started bucking about, but was held fast to the bank at its other end by Arnold’s oar, whose handle end sported a hook which he had attached to a thick root protruding from the bank.

‘You others, get ready to bail. You’ll find
tamoons
stowed under the seats, and, lads, when I say bail I mean
bail
, ’cos our lives’ll depend on it. Ready, Jack?’

‘Ready,’ he said grimly, turning to face the watery darkness ahead.

Then they were off, Jack using his paddle instinctively on one side and then the other, exerting all his strength into the water, with no idea at all where they were heading.

Behind him, at the stern, Arnold Mallarkhi whistled cheerfully, and at one point called out, ‘Nice and easy, Jackboy, don’t overdo it. Save your strength till later. This is just the easy bit!’

Stort began humming in a very desperate way, his most recent experience of water not having been a good one.

Barklice stared goggled-eyed into the dark on one side of the canoe; Pike, swearing quietly under his breath, was staring out on the other side.

Beard ruffling in the wind and rain, Brief sat erect, his eyes firmly closed.

The only available light came from the wild sky above them, and occasionally the orange lights illuminating the bridges under which they passed.

Ahead lay only darkness.

But Arnold seemed to know exactly what he was doing, his cheerful whistling giving them confidence, but his occasional whooping and hollering, whenever the canoe banged and bucked, encouraged them rather less.

‘Jack, keep yer fingers well inside the boat, if yer after holding on to ’em! We’re about to start a jigger here.’

The sides of the canal narrowed to become vertical walls of slimy brick, and the water was suddenly so powerful in its surge that it lifted and banged them hard from side to side.

‘It’s jiggering!’ called out Arnold. ‘Get ready to bail, my boys! Jack, you got to lean harder into the paddle one way when she’s going the other, else you’ll sink us!’

It was just as well that Arnold had instructed them to be ready with the
tamoons
– which resembled small woks – because moments later a wall of water cascaded into the canoe from one side and then the other, and gradually they began to sink.

‘Backs into it now, including you, Master Brief! Jack, lean a bit harder, but yer doing good.’

For a few seconds which felt like hours, they battled to keep the craft afloat and even the right way up. Jack, who had turned his head just as the water gushed over him, faced forward over the prow again. To his horror all he could see there was a wall of dark brick, green with weed, and with a few rusting chains dangling down into the water.

He looked back at Arnold, who was leaning hard into his oar to bring the boat about – the vessel suddenly slow and still, while monstrous suckings and slurpings emerged from the darkness towards which they were steering.

‘Ready now, boys!’ shouted Arnold. ‘And listen good. We’re turning about and backing into the sewer, before it backs-up into us. Lie low, hold on, and hold yer breath. Jack, grab that lanyard and wrap it round yer wrist. If yer get swept off, just hold on till she’s through, and we’ll fish you out the other end!’

The walls he had seen with such alarm only moments before slid slowly past until, to Jack’s amazement, he saw that Arnold had somehow managed to bring the stern of the boat round to face a small arched tunnel that looked too low in the water for their craft to enter. Worse, they were going in backwards, and worse still they were being greedily sucked in.

It looked as if Arnold, and his oar, would be swept right off by the rim of the arch as the luggerbill shot into the tunnel beyond, but at the last moment he ducked down into the stern bilge and lowered the oar along the length of the craft.

As it gathered speed, Jack realized that he was confronting the same threat if he did not get down quickly. At that point he noticed that Pike, looking totally terrified, had clenched the fingers of both hands across the sides of the boat.

Jack dived forward to pull Pike’s hands out of harm’s way, before himself crouching down as low as he could.

Bang!
And they were in, the tunnel’s ceiling now just inches above their heads, jiggering from side to side, pitch blackness descending, water rushing at them from all directions. Jack’s right hand clung instinctively to the lanyard, and that was just as well, for several times, as the tunnel ceiling rose, he felt himself being pushed or even sucked out of the boat.

But he held fast, kept down, and hoped his friends had managed to do the same.

Then, as suddenly as it started, it all came to an end, and they were through the tunnel into a great and mysterious underground pool lit only by a solitary shaft of light angling down from some distant opening above.

Slowly their eyes adjusted to the murk and they saw that their craft was silently circling on some unseen current in the dark deep water immediately below them, with no apparent way out of the cavern they were in.

‘Well, that was a jigger and a half,’ crowed Arnold cheerfully, his voice echoing about that lofty, cathedral-like space from all sides of which came the constant whisper of wild water.