The House with a Clock In Its Walls (8 page)

“Does that mean that you’re not coming over to my place for cider and doughnuts?” asked Mrs. Zimmermann. “Because if it does, I’ll show up at midnight at the foot of your bed in my role of Grinning Griselda, the resuscitated cadaver. It’s a horrible thing to see.”

Lewis looked up. There was a wild look on his face, but he managed to force his mouth into a smile.

“No, Mrs. Zimmermann,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss one of your cider-and-doughnut parties. Not for the world.
But right now I’ve got to go up to my room and finish one of John L. Stoddard’s books. I’ve gotten to the exciting part.” Whereupon he jumped up, excused himself, and ran upstairs.

Jonathan looked at Mrs. Zimmermann. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that something is up.”

“Hooray for your lightning-quick mind,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “Yes, something is up, and
I
have a feeling that we won’t know what it is till it’s over with.”

“Maybe not,” said Jonathan as he lit his pipe. “But I can’t believe that Lewis is mixed up in anything bad. And I’m certainly not going to grill him like a mean stepfather. Still, I’d like to know what he’s up to.”

“So would I,” said Mrs. Zimmermann thoughtfully. “Do you suppose it has anything to do with Tarby? The boy’s arm is healing, and he’ll probably be going back to play with the other boys soon. That leaves Lewis out.”

Jonathan scratched his chin. “Yes, maybe that’s it,” he said. “I’ll have to have a talk with him. Oh, by the way, have you noticed that the clock is louder now?” He was trying to sound nonchalant, but Mrs. Zimmermann could read the look in his eyes.

“Yes,” she said, trying hard to smile. “I’ve heard it too. And maybe if we ignore it, it’ll just die down. It has before, you know. One thing for sure: you’re not going to do any good by barging around the house with a crowbar, prying open the wainscot and peering between floorboards.”

“I suppose not,” said Jonathan, sighing. “Though I might come across the blasted thing by sheer persistence. On the other hand, that would mean wrecking the house, and I’m not quite ready to do that. Not until I have some clearer idea that the clock is something that can do us harm. And so far, I’m just guessing. I’m even guessing when I say it’s a real, physical clock, and not just some illusion left here by old Isaac Izard to drive people mad.”

“It’s best not to think about the thing,” said Mrs. Zimmermann. “Not until you have to, at any rate. You can’t prepare for all the disasters that might occur in this frightening world of ours. If the devil appears or if we find that the End of the World is at hand, we’ll do something.”

“Mm-hmmm. We’ll hide in the cellar. Come on. Let’s wash the dishes.”

Lewis came down from his room at ten o’clock and went next door to have cider and doughnuts. He found Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann waiting for him in the dining room. There was a big round oak table at one end of the long room, and it was covered with a clean checkered tablecloth. On the table stood a gallon jug of cider and a plate of powdered doughnuts, or “fried cakes,” as Mrs. Zimmermann called them. At the other end of the room, a violet fire crackled in the fireplace. Purple shadows rushed back and forth over the hearthrug and, over the mantelpiece, the purple dragon in the painting seemed to writhe and squirm. He looked very fierce indeed.

“Evening, Lewis,” said Jonathan. “Pull up a chair and dig in.”

After Lewis had eaten two or three doughnuts and downed four big glasses of cider, Jonathan announced that tonight’s entertainment would be Historical Illusions, or Famous Scenes From the Past. He asked Lewis what past scene he would most like to see.

Lewis answered immediately. “I want to see the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Not the battle scenes, because I’ve read all about them in John L. Stoddard. But he doesn’t tell what happened when they had to sail all the way around England and Scotland to get home. I want to see that part.”

“Very well,” said Jonathan. “Let’s go over and sit by the fire.”

They got up and walked over to the fireplace, where three big comfortable chairs waited for them. When they were all settled, Jonathan pointed his pipe at the two electric candles over the mantelpiece. Slowly the power began to drain from them. They flickered and went out. Then the bulbs in the chandelier over the table began to do the same thing. It was like watching the house lights dim in a theater. Lewis felt something tickling his nostrils and his tongue. It was the smell and taste of salt. Grainy blowing mists filled the room, and Lewis found himself standing on a grassy headland. Jonathan was on his left, and Mrs. Zimmermann was on his right. Before them a cold gray sea tumbled and tossed.

“Where are we?” asked Lewis.

“We are standing on John O’Groats,” said Jonathan. “It is the northernmost point in Scotland. The year is 1588, and out there is the Armada, or what is left of it. You’ll need the telescope to see them.”

“Telescope?” said Lewis, and then he realized that they were standing on a little stone platform behind a curving waist-high wall. It was the kind of wall you find on scenic lookout points in state parks. And mounted on the wall was a small pay telescope with a set of instructions under glass. Lewis bent over and peered at the little card, which said:

Jonathan fumbled in his vest and dug out two large silver coins. He handed them to Lewis. They were half crowns, and each one was worth two and a half shillings in old-fashioned British money. Lewis slid the coins into the slot. There was a whirring sound. He put his eye to the telescope and looked.

At first all he saw was a milky blur but, after he had fiddled with the adjusting wheel a bit, Lewis could see several big galleons ploughing sluggishly through the waves. Their sails were ripped and torn, and their tattered rigging flew about crazily in the wind. The long rows of gunports were closed tight against the battering sea, and Lewis could see patches on the sides of three or four ships. One lumbering hulk had a cable passed around its middle, presumably to hold it together.

As Lewis watched, the ships wallowed on. Now he could see their tall ornamented sterns. Saints and bishops and dragons supported gilded window frames or clung to scrolled corners. Lewis noticed that several statues had arms or hands or heads missing. One scowling bishop was wearing his miter at a rakish tilt.

Lewis turned the telescope. Now he was looking at a strange little man. The man was pacing the quarterdeck of the biggest, richest-looking, but most badly damaged ship of all. He wore a black cape that barely reached to his knees, and he was shivering. His whiskers were long and weepy, and he looked very worried.

“Who is the man on the biggest ship?” asked Lewis.

“That,” said Jonathan, “is the Duke of Medina-Sidonia. He is the Captain General of the ‘Ocean Sea,’ which means that he is the commander of the Armada. The whole, shot-riddled, sinking mess. I’ll bet he wishes he were at home right now.”

Lewis felt sorry for the poor Duke. When he was reading John L. Stoddard in bed the night before, he had wished that he could be there in the Narrow Seas, commanding a stout English galleon. He would have emptied broadside after broadside into the Duke’s flagship, until she sank. But now he wanted to help the man, if he could.

While Lewis stood thinking, Jonathan tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to something Lewis had not seen before. There, mounted on the wall, stood a cannon. A brass twenty-four pounder with a wooden, step-sided carriage and ropes running from rings in the base of the carriage to rings in the wall. The ropes were to keep the gun from rolling down the hill after it fired.

“Come on, Lewis,” said Jonathan, smiling. “Let’s have a shot at the Armada. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted to do? It’s all loaded and ready to fire. Come on!”

Lewis looked as if he were going to be sick. Tears came to his eyes. “Oh, no, Uncle Jonathan! I couldn’t! The poor Duke and his men. Can’t we do something for them?”

Jonathan stared at Lewis and rubbed his chin. “You know,” he said slowly, “for a boy who loves to play at sieges and war, you are remarkably peaceable. When confronted with the real thing, that is. Fortunately for you, however, this isn’t the real thing. It’s an illusion, as I may have said before. We’re really still in Mrs. Zimmermann’s dining room with the table at one end and the purple fire at the other. If you go feel that rock there, it will feel remarkably like an armchair. The Duke and his ships out there are less real than smoke and mist, and so is that cannon. Go on. Have a shot.”

Lewis brightened up now. This would be fun. A soldier appeared out of nowhere, dressed in the red costume of an English Beefeater. He handed Lewis a smoldering
wick on a long rod. Lewis applied it to the touchhole of the cannon.
Boom!
The cannon jerked back against its ropes. Bitter smoke drifted past. Jonathan, who was fighting with Mrs. Zimmermann for the use of the pay telescope, said, “I think that—oh, g’wan, Florence, find your own peephole—I think . . . yes, you have brought down his fore-topgallant spritsail.”

Lewis felt pleased, though he didn’t know what a fore-topgallant spritsail was. The soldier reloaded, and Lewis fired again. This time he knocked a wooden bishop off the heavily ornamented poop deck. He fired several more times, and then Jonathan gestured, and another Beefeater came running up the hill carrying a wooden bucket full of sizzling, red-hot cannon balls, or “hot potatoes,” as the Elizabethan sailors used to call them.

The two soldiers loaded the cannon. First they poured in a kegful of powder. Then they stuffed in wet wadding to keep the cannon ball from setting off the powder. Then came the cannon ball itself. It hissed and steamed when it touched the wadding. Lewis applied the lin-stock again, and the gun leaped backwards. He watched the cannon ball as it whizzed toward the Duke’s galleon. It looked to him like a tiny insane harvest moon. When the ball hit, the ship burst into flames. The weepy-bearded Duke sailed up toward heaven, playing a harp and sitting on a powdered doughnut. And now Lewis, Jonathan, and Mrs. Zimmermann were back in the dining room by the fire.

“Well!” said Jonathan, rubbing his hands. “And what would you like to see next?”

Lewis thought a bit. He was so excited and happy that he had almost forgotten about what he had to do later that night. “I’d like to see the Battle of Waterloo,” he said.

Jonathan waved his pipe and the lights went out again. Now they were standing on a muddy hillside in Belgium. The year was 1815. It was raining, a steady smoking drizzle that half hid the high hill opposite the one they were standing on. In the valley below were little red squares. As they watched, blue arrows crashed into these squares, dented them, turned them into parallelograms, trapezoids, and rhombuses, but did not break them. Little puffs of smoke sprang out on the opposite hillside. They reminded Lewis of mushrooms. Behind him he saw geysers of dirt and chipped rock fly up.

“Napoleon’s artillery,” said Jonathan calmly. More mushrooms sprang up on their hillside as Wellington answered with his own cannons. Rockets exploded overhead, green and blue and sizzling white, and, of course, lovely purple. Flags rose in the valley, dipped, rose, and fell again. Lewis, Jonathan, and Mrs. Zimmermann watched the whole thing from behind a low wall that looked a great deal like the wall on John O’Groats.

After what seemed like a long time, Lewis became aware of a figure standing off to their right. A tall skinny man in a cocked hat and a black cutaway coat.
Lewis recognized him immediately. It was Wellington. He looked exactly the way he did in John Clark Ridpath’s
History of the World
.

Wellington scanned the horizon with his telescope. Then he sadly clicked the telescope shut and took out his watch. The watch, which resembled the one Mrs. Zimmermann wore on a chain, dinged eight times. Wellington rolled his eyes toward the sky, put his hand on his heart, and said gravely, “Oh, that Blücher or night would come!”

“Why did he say that, Uncle Jonathan?” asked Lewis. He had looked at all the illustrations in Ridpath’s book, but he had never read the account of the battle.

“Blücher is a Prussian general who is coming to aid Wellington,” said Jonathan. “Napoleon has sent Grouchy off to keep Blücher busy.”

Lewis giggled. “Why is he called Grouchy?”

“Because that’s his name,” said Mrs. Zimmermann.

“Only it’s pronounced Groo-
shee
because it’s a French name. Fat Ears here knows that, but he’s trying to be funny. Well, Jonathan, do you think Wellington will win this time?”

“Dunno, Florence. Wait and see.”

Since it was Jonathan’s illusion and not the real battle, and since he was feeling silly that evening, he decided to let Napoleon win for a change. Night fell with a clunk like a book falling out of a bookcase, but Blücher did not come. The blue arrows sliced into the red squares, split
them up, tore them to pieces. Now the blue arrows turned into an army marching up the hill, an army of tall men wearing bearskin hats that made them even taller. They had long black moustaches and carried muskets with bayonets on the end. They were coming for Wellington, who now looked very red-faced and crabby. He tore off his hat and stomped on it. He threw his watch on the ground and stomped on it too.