The Cockatrice Boys (5 page)

“No, sir, thank you, sir.”

*   *   *

At this time in Manchester Mrs. Florence Monsoon and her niece Sauna were, like the other inhabitants of the city, living on thistledown tea and (when they could get it) dandelion root porridge. And they were burning up Sauna's old schoolbooks for fuel.

“And it'll be those next,” said Aunt Floss, casting a covetous look at Sauna's twin teddybears.

“Oh, no! Please!”

“Well? What else have we got? You don't have any dolls—do you?”

“N-no,” said Sauna, trembling. “They got left behind in Newcastle—”

Aunt Floss compressed her lips and continued to eye the bears.

*   *   *

After two weeks of training it was announced to the Cockatrice Corps that the train would go out on a trial run the next day.

“Where are we going?” Dakin asked Corporal Dwindle, who was giving him instructions in how to clean his liquid-air pistol.

“Manchester.”

“Fancy!” said Dakin. “My Auntie Floss lives there. Or she did, before the Troubles began. O' course, I dunno if she's still alive now; she might have been et by a Hammerhead. After Dad died we stopped hearing from her. I went to Manchester once when I was a kid. It's a big place, ennit? I remember tall buildings and lots of buses.”

“No buses there now, I don't suppose. And the people are all starving. That's why we're going—to take them supplies. There's a big colony of Snarks all around Manchester—got the town surrounded. The people built a town wall and dug a moat, but they're trapped inside. Been radioing for help. When they could raise a signal, that is.”

“What provisions are we taking them?”

“Tinned carrots.”

“I think I'd just as soon starve,” said Dakin.

“I'd as soon starve as eat the muck they serve us in the mess,” muttered Private Quillroy, stropping away at his Kelpie knife.

Everybody was grumbling about the food served in the mess.

“How are we supposed to fight Hammerheads and Shovel-tuskers on watery mash and goat soup?”

“The bangers taste of minced mud.”

“The tapioca's nobbut ground up fibreglass.”

“The wads are made of plasterboard.”

“And lined with dental floss.”

Still, despite complaints about the food, the whole troop were in high spirits when, for the first time, on the first of December, the
Cockatrice Belle
huffed and chuffed slowly backwards up the long ramp that led from the pillared chamber under King's Cross. A military band on the platform played Tosti's
Goodbye.
The Prime Minister, the Minister of Defence, the Royal Family, and a large tearful crowd were left behind, waving flags made of old tea-cloths. Ensign-Driver Catchpole joyously tooted his whistle and the great glittering train crept gingerly into real daylight at last. It was all garlanded in tinsel and hung with small red and green glass bells, because Christmas was only a few weeks away.

“Coo!” breathed Dakin, blinking against the dazzle as he gazed out, but Sergeant Bellswinger roared over the intercom: “Snark glasses—at the double—in
position!
” and they all clapped their protective spectacles on their noses. Behind the train the defensive gate clanged down over the mouth of the tunnel; the engine unhitched and rolled up a side track to the front of the train. Then it rehitched itself, and the
Cockatrice Belle
was on her way.

At first the landscape north of King's Cross was a bit of a disappointment to Dakin. For sixty miles nothing could be seen but pink and yellow rubble, great dusty piles of smashed houses. Gradually these were replaced by snow-scattered country—very
wild
country, with clumps of scrubby trees and bramble thickets, and tangly three-metre hedges, and huge ragged weeds on the railway embankments. It was all quite silent, except for the mild regular noise of the train, chunketa-chunketa-chunk, chunk, manunka-chunk, as it ambled its way along the rusty rails.

Occasionally the shriek of a monster could be heard. And among the bushes monsters of every kind could be seen, lurking, prowling, flapping, fighting each other, or just staring at the train with huge glassy eyes as it slipped by.

“What about
bridges?
” General Grugg-Pennington had said to Lord Ealing, who replied peevishly, “How can we tell? Who knows what condition the bridges may be in? The men will have to survey and repair bridges when they come to them, if necessary under covering fire from the train.”

Luckily the bridges during the first part of the journey, as far as Oxford, were found to be in a fair condition; the
Cockatrice Belle
passed over them safely, gliding at a cautious twenty miles per hour.

Meanwhile the men of the troop had their hands full. Many monsters attacked the train. Flying Hammerheads swooped down from above, their ugly jaws snapping and scooping, and were fought off with flame-throwers and crossbows; great herds of Griffins, Footmonsters, Cocodrills, and Shovel-tuskers roamed beside the permanent way, often crossing the rails, snapping and slashing and clawing at the men as they battled to clear the track. Progress was often exasperatingly slow.

“Still,” as Corporal Dwindle said to Sergeant Bellswinger towards the evening of the first day, “every little helps, and we must have done in quite a few of the brutes. The men are getting used to 'em.”

“Pity Private Quillroy had to go and get swallowed by that Shovel-tusker. If only he'd studied his drill and remembered to hold his crossbow sideways on—”

“Ah well,” said Corporal Dwindle, “at least it's a lesson to the others. Now do you see,” he told Dakin, “why you got to keep those windows crystal clear? We need all the view we can get.”

“Beg parding, Sergeant!” exclaimed Private Bundly, coming into the men's mess, where Dakin was cleaning the windows and the two NCOs were taking a cup of tea. “Beg parding, but we've found a stowaway in the arsenal. Hid away at the back behind a stack of December guns, she was.”

“
She?
” demanded Bellswinger wrathfully. “And who the blazes may
she
be?”

“Here she be, Ser'nt,” said Private Bundly, and he pushed into the mess cabin a rather strange figure, at first hardly recognizable as a person, for it was all tied up in sacks. However when these were removed, they saw a lanky, melancholy-looking, grey-haired woman wearing a homespun skirt, leather kneeboots, and a man's forage jacket.

“Why the pize was she wearing all those sacks?”

“To make herself look like a bundle of hammunition, I reckon.”

“The colonel will have to see her. Come along, you!” Bellswinger roared at the woman, who seemed too alarmed to speak; and he led her to the cabin of the colonel, who was playing waltzes on his grand piano.

Dakin followed inquisitively. Dusk had fallen by now, and he didn't see the point of cleaning windows if you couldn't see out anyway. He stood in the cabin doorway looking in.

“A
stowaway?
A
female
stowaway? On my train?” The colonel was scandalized. “What's your name, woman? What d'you mean by it? Why in the name of blue ruin did you
do
it?”

The stowaway seemed to pick up a bit of courage in the colonel's presence. She looked at the grand piano and drew a disapproving finger over the dust on its lid.

“Oh, if you please, sir, my name's Mrs. Churt and I hid under all those pepper-grinders, or whatever they are, because I
did
so long to get a glimpse of anything green. I used to have a little garden, sir, before all these horrible Griffins and Footmonsters and Bonnacons come along. We lived out past Blackheath way, and I grew lettuce and Canterbury bells and radishes, and I can't
abide
living all my life in the dark like a blessed earwig, sir! That was why I done it!”

“Well, but, my good woman, other people have to put up with living underground; and so must you. There's no
room
for you on this train. We'll be obliged to stop, you know, and put you off.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” muttered Lieutenant Upfold in an undertone from the doorway. “Know it ain't my place to speak, but the old lady wouldn't last ten minutes if you put her out here. There's a deuce of a lot of Basilisks about. You can
smell
'em—like wet washing, don't you know?”

“I don't need
you
to teach me my business, thank you, Upfold,” snapped the colonel, but Mrs. Churt fell on her knees and clasped her hands and cried, “Oh, please, please, sir, don't put me off! I can cook—my old Churt, what was took by a Telepod, he used to say I was a real grade-one cook, the best in Kent—and I have useful Dreams, sir, often—and I can make drinks for the lads, and cakes and that, and give 'em little treats, like those Vivandeers used to in the Foreign Legiron. And I could make you a cross-stitch cover for your piano sir, to keep the dust off it.”

“Humph! What kind of Dreams?” demanded the Colonel, who had been attracted, though he would not admit it, by the offer of the cross-stitch cover.

“Dreams, like, that show which way to go, if there's a question about it.”

“Well, that's as may be. I'll think about it. Overnight. In the meantime,” Colonel Clipspeak told the sergeant, “you had best lock the woman in the broom cupboard. Is it true, Sergeant, that the men have been grumbling about the catering?”

“Can't say as to that, sir,” said the sergeant stiffly.

“That in the officers' mess leaves everything to be desired,” murmured Lieutenant Upfold.

Sergeant Bellswinger hustled Mrs. Churt away, but Dakin, lingering, whispered urgently, “Sir! The food's horrible! Soup made of melted boot polish. And the spuds are like summat that's been dug up.”

“Potatoes
are
dug up, you idiotic boy.”

“No, sir. I knows better than that. They comes out of tins.”

*   *   *

In two days Mrs. Churt was cooking for the entire troop, both officers and men. Her vegetable stews were mouthwatering, so were her steamed puddings, rich, crumbly, and wreathed in strawberry jam. Her doughnuts were light as thistledown, her raisin cake was satisfyingly stodgy.

Mess Orderly Widgery, who had been doing the cooking, was sent back to grease December guns in the arsenal, and Mrs. Churt presided over the galley. She had green fingers too: she started to grow little slips of parsley and chives in jam jars, she polished the colonel's potted palm with salad oil, and she rescued the drooping geraniums in the officers' parlour from an early death.

And her cross-stitch cover for the colonel's piano was immediately put in hand and grew inch by inch.

Dakin soon became very fond of Mrs. Churt. He would sit in the galley, sometimes of an evening, practising his drum-taps on a tea-cloth stretched over a sieve, while she did her cross-stitch and made a sassafras drink for the men and talked about the happy times before the monsters came.

“We used to go to Broadstairs for the summer. You ever been to the seaside, Dakin?” He shook his head. “Eh, poor little feller, fancy that! Deary me! Sometimes I wonder what we ever done to deserve having these monsters sent here.”

“Your reckon they was sent, Mrs. Churt?”

“Oh, they were sent all right. I did hear, in the old days, factories used to dump all their rubbish in a quarry or out to sea; or, later on, up in the high sky, where they reckoned it'd blow away. Maybe somebody did the same thing with this little lot; just dumped them on us like kittens in a rain barrel. Or, maybe it was done out of spite; somebody had it in for us.”

Corporal Bigtoe and a couple of privates came in asking if there was any chance of a hot drink. While Mrs. Churt served them, Dakin pondered over what she had suggested.

Could somebody have wanted to get rid of the monsters and just thought this was the best place to tip them?

Maybe there was something in what Mrs. Churt had said.

*   *   *

On the eighteenth day of travel they approached the outskirts of Manchester. Progress had been extremely slow for the last forty-eight hours. Several bridges had needed a lot of repair; and two of the men engaged on this work had been lost: Private Goodwillie was carried off by a Manticore, while Private Skulk had the misfortune to look at a Basilisk and of course died instantly.

“Didn't keep his Snark glasses properly greased,” grumbled Sergeant Bellswinger.

“Snark glasses won't help, not against a Basilisk,” said Corporal Enticknap. “In fact, if you ask me, Snark glasses aren't much good at all. What we need is a Snark mask, like what Driver Catchpole got issued.”

“If you know so much, why don't you go to the colonel and say so?”

“I've a good mind to do just that.”

“You go billocking to the colonel, I'll put you on wind-vane duty,” growled the sergeant.

Wind-vane duty was very risky. It meant crawling along the top of the train, often through driving snow, clearing out the vanes, which soon became choked with dust when the train was in motion, and wiping the stellar energy panels. The worst danger was from Flying Hammerheads, but also the train rolled from side to side as it travelled, so there was a fair chance of being flung off.

Enticknap scowled, but remained silent. But when Dakin took in the colonel's beautifully polished boots next morning, the latter demanded, “What's all this about Snark masks?”

“They're saying as how the men ought to be issued with them, sir.”

“Do you know how much a Snark mask costs, boy?” rapped the colonel.

“No, sir.”

“Lord Ealing told me I was only to use them in the last resort.”

“Where would the last resort be, sir?”

“Oh, go away!”

“Sir,” said Dakin.

“Well? Now what?”