The Book of Bones (7 page)

“Certainly not,” Cyril snapped. “That isn't how we operate. We aren't heartless. It wasn't
necessary
to poison you all.” He paused a moment, smiling. “We don't believe in taking a sledgehammer to a nut. As I said, just one of you has been given the fatal dose.”

“Who?” I asked. “Which one of us have you poisoned?”

“That would be telling!” Cecil said.

“Our cruelty is strictly scientific,” Cyril added.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we want to keep each and every one of you on tenterhooks, guessing, worrying, fearing. You'll pass sleepless nights, check each other for signs of illness. It will all be tremendously frightening,” Cecil replied.

“You're sick,” Waldo spat. “Twisted.”

“Perhaps,” Cecil shrugged. “It doesn't bother me.”

He got up and stretched his arms, as if rather bored. Then he leaned over the table and whipped off the checked cloth that hid the mound in the center, revealing
a wire cage. Lying at the bottom was a golden Labrador. Its coat was still glossy but everything else about the hound was badly wrong. Its eyes were open, blank and staring, covered with a film of white mucus. Poor beast, its jaw was badly contorted, teeth protruding. A pool of dribble lay under its muzzle. Everything about the creature spoke of a death in screaming agony.

“A nasty death,” Cecil said, looking down with something like regret. “Rather a shame, really. Still, Pippin
was
getting rather old.”

“Unless you want to die very unpleasantly,” Cyril said, “I suggest you follow our orders.”

“It's a trick,” Waldo replied faintly.

But I scarcely heard. I couldn't look at the animal. I was going to be sick.

“You are trying to trick us into doing your dirty work,” Waldo continued.

But his voice lacked conviction. I knew the Baker Brothers—they would have no qualms about a mere poisoning.

Cecil smiled and rang a bell. Another liveried minion appeared, carrying a silver platter. On it was a leather folder. Cecil took the folder and opening it drew out four slips of paper. The words Peninsular and Oriental were emblazoned on them. I knew instantly what they were—steamer tickets.

“Here are your tickets. You hardly need them, dear children, for of course my brother and I will be hiring the entire steamer. Still, we thought you'd appreciate the gesture.”

“Take a word of advice,” Cyril added. “I'd make damn sure
one of you
doesn't end up as dead as poor Pippin.”

I rose from the table and walked out, the others following my lead. I saw Waldo had taken the tickets, and although I wished he hadn't, I couldn't blame him. At the door I heard one of the Brothers call out to us:

“You'll need a guide, of course!”

“Don't worry Cy,” the other drawled. “They'll have plenty of time to work it out.”

We sailed to China on a ghost ship. The
Mandalay
was a modern and elegant steamer, but lifeless nonetheless. This was hardly surprising. Anything touched by the withered hand of the Baker Brothers lost its pulse. Rachel and I shared a cabin, the boys were next door. The rooms were large, luxurious. Ours was paneled in walnut, fitted with a thick maroon carpet and decked with wardrobes, leather armchairs, bookshelves and mirrors. One could have fancied oneself in a gentleman's club stuffed with old men smoking cigars—rather than aboard a floating prison.

The dining saloon where we had our meals was also lavish, with crystal chandeliers, steaming tea urns and the finest Chinese porcelain. It could have fitted a hundred or more people, but we were the only passengers, eating our lonely dinners in the midst of a vast empty space. I had detested the Memsahibs on our voyage to India, who were always criticizing my manners. Now I would have positively welcomed their company, our solitude was so
sinister. True, there were the mute Chinese waiters who brought us our food. I had spied Lascar sailors scrubbing down the decks. But no one would answer us if we said a friendly hello. Sometimes at night I would imagine that I heard the same haunting cry that had disturbed my sleep at Hadden Castle. A high-pitched wail, like a trapped fox, but so ghostly I put it down to bad dreams.

We had been sailing on like this, seeing hardly a soul except Mrs. Glee, who dropped in on us every day to continue our education. Mrs. Glee was positively shrinking, becoming more frail and breathless as each day passed. Sometimes she seemed on the brink of a confession, but then she would pull back. I realized that she felt guilty about the harm she was doing us, for she often left little treats on our pillows. Packets of candied peel or butterscotch. Jars of salted almonds. We ate the treats, of course. But they didn't make us like her, certainly not respect her. Luckily Mrs. Glee was often called away by a bell to some other mysterious task and we were left with free time.

Not that there was anything to do. True there were books, but we had soon read them all. We played games—hangman, noughts and crosses, cards, jacks with small stones. Mostly we just brooded. Little wonder that we all, individually, thought we were the one who had been poisoned. I was convinced my heart was burning, while
Isaac suffered from nausea and Rachel from headaches. Only Waldo seemed relatively unaffected, though he had nervous tremors in his hand. He'd lost a finger in the Himalayas to frostbite—now he claimed “the poison” was making his whole hand tremble.

I am making light of it now, but it was no easy thing that voyage. The aches, the foulness—each one of us certain we were going to die. I was the most downcast. At night I could barely sleep for the nausea in my throat. I woke up each morning weary to the bone, my neck stiff, and dreading the day ahead.

We had been sailing on like this past Italy, through the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Straits on to the South China Seas when one day at dinner Waldo threw down his spoon.

“This is hell,” he announced. “I can't stand it any more! Mrs. Glee's lessons! This disgusting food! We should make a raft and just jump overboard.”

“We'd make good shark bait,” I murmured.

“Waldo!” Rachel snapped. Her dark eyes had filled with tears and her voice had an edge of hysteria. “If you can't talk sense just keep your mouth closed.” With that she threw down her napkin and slammed out of the saloon.

“What did I do?” Waldo asked, bewildered.

Isaac shrugged. “
Girls
,” he explained, lifting an eyebrow. “They have these vapors. Nerves, they call them.”

“She's not the only one who is on edge,” I snapped. “It's hardly pleasant being a prisoner of this crew.”

“You can't call those two a crew,” Isaac said, gesturing to the captain, who was outside by the railings talking to Mrs. Glee. “They're more like characters from Frankenstein.”

The captain was our old friend Bert, aka “Lips,” who seemed to combine running a ship with a little kidnapping on the side. Whenever he was around, Mrs. Glee became even more timorous, like a spaniel beaten so many times that it cringes at the sight of its master. We saw her now, a nervous smile on her lips, positively shrinking while Lips puffed and preened. We saw them turn and watch Rachel. Since he had hijacked our coach, Bert had somehow acquired a scar which ran down the left side of his face and made his rosebud lips even more repulsive.

Watching him, I could only shudder. No wonder Mrs. Glee was so terrified.

Why, you might be wondering, did we agree to undertake the voyage to China at all? The answer is simple, we could see no other choice. Somehow it might have been easier if we had
all
been poisoned. But with a sword hanging over just
one
of our heads, we miserably gave in to their demands. Oh, it was a very ingenious plan those two Brothers came up with—inspired both in
its nastiness and in the ease with which it threw a noose around our necks. The Brothers had assured us, in the most honeyed tones, that there was no use trying to escape. There was no use consulting doctors. The poison was absolutely untraceable. It would not show up in tests at all, until it killed one of us as stone dead as Pippin.

All these threats didn't prevent us trying to find a way out. I was especially concerned to get news of our plight to the outside world. My father, Waldo's mother, Rachel and Isaac's guardians—so many people must have been frantic with worry. They probably believed us dead, murdered on that lonely Dartmoor road by highwaymen. I thought that if only I could somehow contact Aunt Hilda, she might have a plan. My aunt, as you know, is an intrepid explorer and spy. She had contacts at the highest level in her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service. She was actually present at that party in the castle, talking to the Prince of Wales. If she could whisper in the right ear, might she have the Baker Brothers investigated?

I could only hope.

Meanwhile, we were helpless. Lying in our bunks that night, staring at the oak-paneled ceiling which seemed to hang oppressively close, Rachel and I chatted.

“Have you thought how odd this steamer is?” she asked.

“Sinister, more like,” I replied.

“I mean, all we see is the captain and Mrs. Glee, but there must be others. Seamen who run the engines and stoke the boiler things.”

I nodded. “We're imprisoned up on the top deck. There's stuff going on in the ship that we know nothing about. For a start, what do you suppose our cargo is? We're clearly not a passenger ship.”

“Opium?” Rachel asked, the horror in her voice drifting up to me in the top bunk.

“No,” I replied quickly. I had thought of that possibility but did not want my sensitive friend to dwell on it. “There's no reason to think of opium.”

I was not telling the truth. There was every reason to think we might be on a steamer involved in the opium smuggling business. British merchants directed the trade, which was said to have infected the Chinese people with the evils of addiction to the poppy—but made merchants like Jardine Matheson very wealthy. Shanghai, Canton, these were ports grown fat on the profits of opium. Indeed, to the shame of many reformers, Britain had even recently fought two “opium wars” to demand access from the Imperial Chinese government to the drug. Critics of the war, such as our current Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who was then a young reformer, had roundly condemned the trade and the war. But it was a slippery business. Opium was not smuggled from England, but
from British India. Just a few days ago we had stopped in the Indian port of Calcutta. Had we picked up supplies of opium to sell for many taels of silver to Chinese drug smugglers?

I turned over irritably in the bunk; my sheets were sticky with sweat despite the cool air blowing in through the porthole. These were unprofitable thoughts.

“Kit … why don't we go and investigate?”

“It's the middle of the night.”

“We're not likely to get very far in daylight. Please.”

I was reluctant. Usually it was the other way round, me urging on a doubtful Rachel to adventure. Maybe it was the stiffness in my neck and back. The poison slowly working its evil magic on me. Perhaps it was because I was filled with dread, scared of what we would find aboard this steamship. Nevertheless I changed out of my nightgown and pulled on some clothes. Then we knocked on the next-door cabin. Waldo stuck his head out. It seemed that our friends were also kept awake by the muggy heat. They agreed to join us and soon we were creeping stealthily down the first-class deck.

There were no lights on anywhere. But the moon was bright, hanging low over the Indian Ocean. A thousand, a million, stars guided us. We had candles; we could light them in an emergency.

“Wait!” I suddenly stopped short and hissed. “How are
we going to get through the doors to the lower decks? You know Bert always keeps them locked.”

“I've thought of that.” Isaac grinned, his teeth glimmering white in the moonlight. He held something up, which looked like a scrap of wire.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I've not been idle, you know, cooped up on this hell-ship,” Isaac replied. “I call it my all-purpose lock-pick.”

“You really think it will work?” Rachel asked. The hope in her voice made me feel weak. Whatever we found at the bottom of this ship, it wasn't going to set us free.

Isaac shrugged. “Let's give it a try.”

We went as softly as we could down the deck. Past the cabins, where we knew the captain and Mrs. Glee slept. But where were the others? Where were the first mate, the stewards and all the other sailors needed to run a great steamship? Isaac reached the door before the rest of us and scratched away frantically with his lock-pick. We held our breath. Then with a loud creak the door swung open and Isaac stepped back with a triumphant air.

“Enter!” he proclaimed, holding the door open for us. As the smell hit him his expression changed. “What is that?” he blurted

It was hot and rancid, the stench of feces and decay. The kind of smell that instantly makes one run in the
other direction. But even though inside we probably all felt the same—desperate to turn tail and run—none of us wanted to look a coward in front of our friends.

So we made our way down the stairs. This was a different world to the gleaming, varnished one we inhabited above. The stairs were of rusting steel, the walls unpainted. The sudden heat was almost worse than the stink. It was muggy in our cabins, hot even on the deck outside. But here it was roasting.

“Kit?” Rachel whispered.

Silently I squeezed her hand.

Not one of us wanted to walk down those steps.

We climbed down the steps into the bowels of the great ship. At the bottom was a corridor running between iron walls as tall as houses. With mounting trepidation we entered the hold, past the deserted second- and third-class lounges. Every now and then came a great rattling thump, which Isaac said was made by the engines. It was noisy down here and steaming hot, with great hissing, banging crashes. So far we had clung to the shadows and not seen a soul. In front of us was a massive iron door painted with a white L. I heard a faint whine from within and looked at Waldo, who was just behind me, seeking reassurance that we should go in. He nodded, so cautiously I pushed down the handle and the door creaked open.