Tanglewreck (10 page)

‘Took ’em till 1884 to make up their minds on that one, but in my day what you did was choose your own central line and calculate from that to find out where you be. Trouble is, a man can’t find out where he be, unless he got his longitude, and that meant the devil of a calculation with the stars. My master John Harrison wanted to invent a clock –’

‘The Timekeeper!’ shouted Silver.

‘Nay, child, not that, but much to do with the story …’

Silver could hardly sit still for excitement.

‘We dwelled in his house, his son and myself, for I was his apprentice. I remember it, the day that he had made his Chronometer Number Four, and he had one of the clocks he made by a blazing fire in his study, and one outside in the snow, and he ran back and forth such as a fiend in hell will run back and forth, watching the measure of heat and cold on his mechanisms, to see if the hot or the cold made either run too fast or too slow – for no clock yet made had run right in too much of heat or cold.

‘He says to me, “Micah, take you one of these Chronometer Number Four on a voyage to Jamaica, and you fetch it home again, and keep you a record of all that happens
inside and outside of my clock.”

‘Now, in Jamaica, I was drunk like a sot one night, and a man wagered me all my pay on a last throw of the dice. Nay, I should have said nay, but yea, I did agree, and thanks that I be fortunate, for I won the dice, and I turns to him and asks him what he will give me for my winnings. He laughs like an open grate in the ground, and throws a rough bag at me.

‘I opens the bag, and in it there be a clock, yea, broken and beautiful, lost of many jewels, and with a double face, and strange pictures marking it. I took it back with me on the voyage, and I tried to mend it as I went, and mend it I did, but no matter what I did, it ticked awhile and stopped, ticked awhile and stopped, and there was nothing I could do.

‘One night, the waves like toppling towers, the wind like the wind at the ends of the earth, a cabin boy from Jamaica creeps up to me, his eyes wide as the road to damnation, and, says he, the clock be voodoo, only bring bad luck, says he. He says to throw it overboard, and he gives me a piece of paper, no, not paper it wasn’t, it was human skin dried like parchment, and on the paper was the writing, “The Child with the Golden Face shall bring the Clock to its Rightful Place”. Inside that piece of paper, that skin of paper, and wrapped up like swaddling babes, were two pictures belonging with the clock, and one was a road, and one was a child.

‘Well, I paid no attention to his fearful voodoo, but when our ship comes to port, a man be waiting for me on the dockside. Round-faced he be, and in a woollen cloak, and he offers me on the spot two hundred pound for the clock.
Nay
,
says I, I be taking the clock to my right master, John Harrison.

‘As I made journey up country, back to Yorkshire, I sees one following me, and following me, and following me as close as my own shadow but without speaking. I manages to give him the slip, one wild and lost night, and I finds myself at a great house in Cheshire, and it was there, to save myself and the clock, that I begged the master of that house to hold the clock for safekeeping, promising I would return with my own master as quick as one moon’s passing.

‘I never did return. The man following me was Abel Darkwater, and he caught me, and, with his men, had me slapped in Bedlam, for theft of a clock, he said, and many a night he had me read drawings for him, and explain how such a clock as he desired could be made.

‘I could have told him where the clock was hidden but something prevented me. I cannot even say what prevented me, for many a time I would have told him and been set free, and yet when I opened my mouth to speak, I swear honestly that I could not remember where I had taken it, and I swear honestly to this day that when you said the word, my tongue was loosed for the first time in all these hundred hundred years and more.’

‘What word?’ said Silver.

‘Tanglewreck,’ said Micah. ‘Thine own house be the place.’

Silver was very silent for a moment, then she burst out,
‘But the Timekeeper isn’t there any more. Nobody knows where it is!’

‘It must be found,’ said Micah. ‘The time has come. It must be found.’

‘But I don’t know where to look!’ Silver was beginning to cry with frustration.

‘Have you no clue, child? No clue whatever it be? Think with all thy might!’

Silver thought. But whenever she thought about the Timekeeper she could not imagine it at all. It was as though someone threw a cover over it, just as she was about to speak. But there was something …

‘I found a pin – I forgot that bit – it was in the coal dust. It was shiny and pointy and …’ And as she described the pin, Micah closed his eyes and began to describe it too.

‘… gold, three inches long, diamond-covered, with an emerald at the top and the bottom. Child, that is no pin nor jewel, it be the first hand of the Timekeeper!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Have I not seen it with mine own eyes and told it to you truly just now?’

He had. Silver’s face fell. ‘But I left it in Abel Darkwater’s house. It’s in my duffle-coat pocket in the house!’

‘We must haste there!’ said Micah. ‘He shall not have it!’

‘But I can’t go there again. He’ll capture me and put me in a cage!’

‘We will journey with thee, and enter with thee.’

‘But –’

‘Not as Updwellers do. There be a way. Come! Hurry! Make ready! Balthazar! Gabriel! The Petrol Ponies!’

The four of them set off through the Chamber, where most of the Throwbacks were now asleep on pallets covered in animal skins and blankets.

Silver was expecting another long walk through mud and water and disused tunnels, so imagine her surprise when Micah opened a door into a dry, warm, concrete vault, to reveal three neat lines of motorbikes.

‘Petrol Ponies,’ said Micah proudly. ‘Built in your world in your years 1930s.’

‘Where did you get them from?’ asked Silver, touching the soft polished leather seats and bright chrome lights.

‘Your world keeps not its possessions. When I be an Updweller, more than two hundred and fifty years ago, a man kept to him the same spoon and dish and coat and chair all his life. His boots wore out, his horse wore out, but whatever did not wear out, he kept to him. For a long time now, Updwellers have thrown away what they have so that they can have new things. I do not understand the wicked waste, but I have profited from it. These Petrol Ponies were saved by us and restored by us. They be called Enfields.’

‘I thought I could smell petrol,’ said Silver.

‘That be here,’ pointed Micah. ‘Above us now is a place where Updwellers take their wagons and carriages. There be plenty of petrol. Now come, ride behind me.’

Micah pulled out the biggest of the Enfields, and Silver
climbed on to the seat behind him. She had never seen a motorbike like this; instead of one long seat, it had two saddles, like old-fashioned bicycle saddles, resting on heavy coiled springs.

Micah steadied the bike upright with one short sturdy leg, and brought his other foot down hard on the kick-start. The bike roared to life, the headbeam lit up the tunnel ahead, and suddenly they were off, at what felt like breakneck speed, tearing through passages sometimes so narrow that Silver had to squeeze in her elbows to stop them scraping the walls.

The low roar of the bikes was amplified by the stone and brick. Silver wanted to cover her ears, but she was frightened to let go of Micah, in case she fell off.

‘Why do you call them Petrol Ponies?’ yelled Silver to Micah. ‘We call them motorbikes.’

‘Yea,’ said Micah, ‘but the Throwbacks have no use for your bicycles, with motors or without motors. We have always used ponies. When we first came here, one of our number brought bog ponies from Ireland, for they are small and light and can work underground. Then we found these Enfields, and we called them Petrol Ponies. You have one name for them, we have another. You have one world, we have another.’

He braked so hard that Silver nearly tumbled off. The bikes behind had to swerve and screech to avoid a collision. Micah switched off his engine. Now everything was dark and silent again.

‘Listen,’ said Micah. Silver strained her ears but she could
hear nothing. Micah turned to Balthazar. ‘Do you hear it, brother?’

‘Yea.’

‘What?’ whispered Silver, twisting round to talk to Gabriel.

‘Ticking,’ said Gabriel.

‘We be beneath the house of Abel Darkwater,’ said Micah.

Micah signalled to Balthazar to stoop so that he could stand on his shoulders. He balanced cleanly as a monkey, and worked with his square spade hands to free a rusty metal plate in the roof of the vaulted tunnel.

He pushed it to one side, and swung himself up, motioning for Silver to be passed up through the opening.

She found herself in the little courtyard behind the shop.

As Balthazar was pulling himself through in turn, Micah warned Silver not to speak until he gave her permission. ‘Throwbacks neither read nor write, they were not learned in Bedlam, though I be one who can read. In that place we learned each other to speak without words, so that our cruel Warders did not hear us. I will read Balthazar’s mind, and he mine.’

‘What about me?’ asked Silver, who had never been good at guessing games.

‘You must be quiet. We risk much to come here. Gabriel will wait for us, and bring us help, should we be catched like rabbits by him that is a living snare.’

Micah moved silently over to the door that led into the
shop and tried the handle. It opened. He frowned. He feared a trap. As he felt this fear, Silver saw a picture of a metal mantrap in her mind – the kind they used to hide in the woods to catch poachers, even though it tore off their legs. For the first time, she noticed that Micah had a limp. She shivered.

Now they were all in the shop and creeping past the watchful clocks out into the hall where Silver had made her escape. She suddenly wondered how much time had passed since then, and realised she had no idea whether it was hours or days.

The house was eerily silent. Micah led the way up the broad stairs and when they arrived at the first landing, Silver tugged at his sleeve. She wanted to warn him that this was Abel Darkwater’s study, so she thought it in her mind as fiercely as she could, and Micah nodded.

They crept past, and now they were on the second landing, where Mrs Rokabye slept. Silver paused at the closed door. Mrs Rokabye always snored, but there was no sound from her room.

They passed on, up to the set of rooms on the top floor where Silver had eaten and slept. Both of the doors from the landing were open.

Micah went inside, first one room and then the other. There was no one there.

The bed was neatly made up. Silver’s case was open on a chair where she had left it, her old duffle coat hung over the back.

She ran forward and grabbed the coat and turned the pockets inside out. Nothing! She scrabbled down on her hands and knees under the chair; nothing! She wriggled on her tummy under the bed; nothing!

Micah and Balthazar exchanged glances, then went to work searching the room. Silver knew the pin had been in her pocket. She knew that someone had taken it. Sniveller? Abel Darkwater? Not Mrs Rokabye, she was too stupid to know anything …

She put on her duffle coat, stuffing her trainers into her pockets. She left the case of clean clothes. Somehow they didn’t seem to matter any more.

Softly, the three of them retraced their steps downstairs towards Mrs Rokabye’s room. Impulsively, and before Micah could grab her arm as he read her thoughts, Silver opened the door.

The room was empty. Mrs Rokabye’s latest Murder Mystery and her pink earmuffs were on the bed, but she was not.

Micah and Balthazar glanced at each other uneasily. They would have to search the whole house, and that included Abel Darkwater’s study. If he had found the pin, he would certainly have taken it there to examine it.

The first floor of the house had three interconnecting rooms that Darkwater used as a bedroom, sitting room and study. Silver motioned to the Throwbacks to open the door into the bedroom and begin that way. No one wanted to go straight into the study.

Abel Darkwater’s four-poster bed was tidy and not slept in. Quietly, they opened the cupboards filled with clothes, and Silver noticed that his clothes were not from one century or one time, but a jumble of breeches, frock-coats, top hats and tweed suits, like a dressing-up box or costumes for a play.

In the sitting room were the remains of a meal on the table, and a candle that had recently burned out, spilling wax on the cloth.

Now they were outside the study door. It was a panelled door covered over with green baize, like the kind on a snooker table, and the green baize was held on the door with shiny brass tacks that caught the firelight and the candlelight and reflected your face like tiny distorting mirrors. Silver looked at herself and her new-found friends, and they all listened to the absolute silence.

There was nothing else to do; they had to open the study door.

Silver heard Micah breathe in as he stepped forward and walked firmly into the room.

Then she heard a low cry like a whipped animal.

Abel Darkwater was waiting for them.

‘You have not found what you were looking for, I think,’ he said to Micah, without smiling. ‘I sympathise. I am in the same sorry situation myself.’

Silver rushed into the room, forgetting what she had been told about keeping quiet.

‘You don’t know what we were looking for!’

‘Ah well, that tells me you were looking for something!’

Silver fell silent, caught in her own trap. Abel Darkwater smiled at her. ‘I wonder what it was?’

‘I’ll never tell you anything! Not ever never!’

She stepped forward, brave and defiant. Abel Darkwater raised his hand to slap her. Micah stepped in between the two of them. Darkwater looked surprised, and then angry.

‘So, John Harrison’s man, as you used to be known, would you stand against your Master?’

‘Thee be neither my Master nor my Better,’ said Micah.