The Three Thorns (6 page)

Peter swiftly handed each boy his ticket. “Keep this safe,” he reminded them.

Benjamin placed his ticket deep inside his left pocket. He let out a nervous laugh when his fingers frantically searched his inner coat. It only took him a few seconds to realize that he had been pickpocketed.

Without making it too noticeable, he stepped away from the group to double check all of his pockets, but it didn’t make any difference. The envelope was gone.

Fear of being disowned from the group prompted Benjamin to keep his silence about it until he was on the train, for at least he couldn’t be parted from them then.

A sudden commotion erupted ahead of the platform. Loud shouting and stomping feet echoed across the station.

“We have to get on the train. I think we’re in trouble,” Tommy said nervously once he saw Duncan trip over his bicycle to flee from several policemen.

Notes flew out of Duncan’s pockets as he made his way through the gathering crowd.

“You little weasels,” Benjamin said out loud to himself, realizing that Duncan and his friends had lingered around the station to pickpocket travelling passengers.

Peter pulled Benjamin out of the passenger line and led him to an unoccupied area behind the crowd.

“It’s about to get very busy,” he warned.

Other passengers whispered and gawked at the commotion as a large crowd gathered to get a better glimpse of the chase while unintentionally blocking George’s only path of escape.

“Push your way through,” Tommy called out to George as he tried maneuvering through passengers from the opposite side to reach his friend. Seconds after Tommy got within reaching distance of George, he accidentally bumped into a frail elderly lady. The old lady let out a gasp of shock and lost her balance, falling onto her hip. Just as Tommy turned back to apologize, a man and his wife pulled him away from the old lady.

“What the blazes are you playing at, Sonny?” yelled the man, tightening his grip.

“Let me go!” Tommy cried. The man and his wife looked down their nose at the young boy, curiously, before a cross expression spread over their faces. Tommy’s worst fears arose when the couple called to the policemen running toward them.

“Officers! We’ve got one! Hurry!”

Thinking on his feet, Tommy slammed his foot down upon the man’s toe as hard as he could. The businessman gave out a loud moan but remained holding fast to the boy.

Tommy was about to give up until Duncan desperately tried to run through the couple to evade the policemen. Tommy wriggled out of his coat to free himself from the distracted man’s clutch. It was the stroke of luck he had needed to make his daring break, leaving the nosey couple to capture Duncan instead.

Tommy crouched down and crawled through a row of legs to get behind the crowd.

When he finally broke through to stand up, he saw one policeman pulling at Duncan’s ear and leading him off the platform while George followed behind in handcuffs, escorted by another policeman.

“That’s four of them, Sir. We caught two more culprits pocketing wallets at the station’s entrance. Must be the Gatesville boys,” one policeman called out to his superior. Tommy silently backed away from the crowd.

“Time to go,” Peter whispered, appearing with Benjamin behind the boy as if by magic.

“What about George?” Benjamin muttered.

“He’s not coming this time,” Peter answered for Tommy as the boisterous bully looked to the ground to hide his sadness.

“There’s another way to get on the train without being spotted,” Peter informed, sneaking Tommy and Benjamin near the unoccupied area beside the back of the train. Peter climbed his way through the small black doorway at the end carriage followed by Benjamin.

Deafening sounds of the steam blasting into the air made Tommy jump. The train’s piercing horns alerted everyone on the platform of the boarding call.

Peter snuck to the front of the train, carefully crossing through the carriages to inspect the engine room ahead of him. Tommy took a seat next to Benjamin who nervously fiddled with his torn ticket between his fingers.

“Where is he off to, now?” Tommy tugged Benjamin to follow him as he led the way through several carriages toward the middle of the train. Both darted in opposite directions to hide behind seats when the fireman of the train forcefully rushed past them toward the engine room.

Slowly peering over the carriage seats, Benjamin and Tommy spotted Peter up ahead of them, inside the engine room.

“He’s not supposed to be in there. He’s going to get us caught,” whispered Benjamin.

“Shut up, pipsqueak, or you’ll get us caught,” Tommy threatened.

Tommy peeked through the divider door to the next carriage and saw a long row of empty seats ahead. Just then, the train driver burst through a divider door behind them.

“Make sure you’ve checked the regulator,” the driver yelled up to the fireman when Tommy and Benjamin froze directly in his path. The sweating man looked so anxious and troubled that his manners were very blunt.

“What are
you
doing here?” snapped the driver. Tommy raised his ticket in front of the driver’s face for inspection hoping the ticket would somehow shield him from any questioning. By a quick and rather rude snatch, the train driver read the date on the new stub and handed it back to him.

“Well, sit down lad. I need to get past, this train ain’t going to drive itself,” he insisted. Tommy nervously stepped aside to let the older man pass.

Benjamin and Tommy were too distracted to see Peter slip out of the engine room amidst the crowd of boarding passengers, leaving his two friends to journey unknowingly alone.

Unfolding his original copy of the map, Peter used his index finger to follow the trail from London’s central station to another ‘X’ mark that highlighted the name ‘Viktor’ placed on the west end of the city.

“We’re ready for departure,” called the driver to the train conductor.

“Good, we’re already behind schedule,” the train conductor hollered back while he ushered more passengers onto the train.

Most of the passengers took to their seats in a hurry to rest their feet when the mammoth train eased its way out of London’s central station.

Both boys leaned out of the window to wave a fond farewell to the city. That was when they spotted Peter waving back to them.

“What in the name of King Henry are you doing down there?” Tommy yelled in panic.

“No time to explain boys. Just follow that map!” Peter called back, just enough time before the train took Benjamin and Tommy from sight.

***

Silence filled the train when the passengers settled. The hypnotic rocking of the carriages had sent Benjamin off to sleep as the train sped through the countryside at a great pace.

Thoughts of Peter stranded back in London worried Tommy. He bore the guilt for leaving George. Now with Peter gone too, Tommy felt alone with the added pressure of Benjamin to look after.

“At least we have the map,” Benjamin mumbled in his sleep, as if he had read Tommy’s anxious thoughts.

Outside, trees and bushes flew past the train window, showing beautiful scenery and many fields in the distance. But Tommy’s troubled mind refused to give him any peace, making the entire train journey a strenuous one.

Another hour had gone past when he surrendered to his tiredness and drifted off, resting his head on Benjamin’s shoulder.

It felt like he’d just closed his eyes when the train conductor shook both of them out of their sleep.

“Your stop, young Sirs,” he chuckled lightly.

Yawning loudly, the boys jumped off the steps of the train and landed on a hoary platform overgrown with moss. They looked around, smelling the fresh air and enjoying their first taste of true freedom in the middle of the countryside. The woodland area ahead was calm and completely desolate, which suited both runaways fine.

Tommy exited Warwickshire Station first, shuffling inside his pockets for the map.

“Check your pockets Benjamin, do you have the map?” His voice sounded desperate.

Benjamin eagerly unfolded his own map, relieved that Tommy hadn’t mentioned the money yet. No one really knew where the money came from or whom it belonged to, but Benjamin suspected it had something to do with the shifty-eyed Mr. Jennings, an idea he didn’t like to entertain.

Tommy quickly snatched the map and studied its directions to the black ‘X’ mark with the name ‘Jacob’ on it. The instructions were surprisingly simple to follow, leading them to a narrow path at the bottom of a tall muddy hillside.

“Well, that was easy,” mentioned Tommy after he lined the map up with the hill in front of them.

“I wonder what’s up there?” muttered Benjamin.

“Follow me and don’t slip,” Tommy instructed as he led the way up the dark hillside. The road was bare and the hillsides lay empty, devoid of human life.

Poor Tommy felt just as scared as Benjamin but he had to ignore his fear and become the leader, since their group had been torn in half.

The night’s cold air settled over them unexpectedly, biting Benjamin’s ears and numbing his hands and toes. From a distance, the dark hill hadn’t looked steep, but now it seemed to tower above them menacingly. Benjamin kept slipping in the icy mud until he reached the top.

Tommy fuddled around the map and struggled to read the further they were from the station’s lamps. “This Jacob fellow shouldn’t be that hard to find. There’s only a stretch of countryside to get across before we reach our destination. How hard can it be?” Tommy chattered on to keep himself warm.

The woods around them were spooky. Howling winds brushed through the massive branches and blew against their frigid faces as the pair made their way toward the opposite side of the hill. A huge frost-covered field lay ahead of them.

“I-I think we should go back,” Benjamin suggested, raising his voice over the wind.

“Don’t chicken out now, Brannon,” snapped Tommy. “We stick with Peter’s plan until we find this farm.”

A second howl came from the woods ahead, only this time it didn’t sound like a gust of wind. It was more animal sounding.

Maybe it was a fox?
thought Benjamin. He could only hope.

“I’m going back to the station,” Benjamin said, turning around and running face-first into something sturdy and large. Benjamin bounced back to the ground before he gazed up at a large figure standing over him. The strange character firmly clutched a few dead rabbits in one hand and raised a lamp to his face with the other. The light of his lamp revealed a deep scar on the left side of his face, accompanied by a few smaller scars on his right ear and forehead.

Benjamin screamed in fear while Tommy ran to the nearest tree to break off a branch. Hurrying back to Benjamin’s aid, Tommy held the broken bough like a weapon and pointed it at the stranger’s chest.

“Keep away from us, or I’ll stick you and your rabbits, old man,” Tommy threatened.

The rabbit hunter hooted loudly. “You won’t do much damage with that thing, lad,” the man said smugly. The rabbit hunter fell silent shortly afterwards when he heard the same howling noise echo through the dark woods ahead.

“We’d best be on our way, gentlemen,” he whispered in his thick country accent. “Hold this for me,” he ordered, throwing Tommy a large bag of dead pheasants and rabbits. The rabbit hunter then helped Benjamin to his feet with a mighty tug.

The man was large but quite short for an adult.

“I don’t travel with adults,” snapped Tommy after he threw the bag back at the man’s feet.

“Neither do I,” the man replied, smiling back. “My name is O’Malley. I am a hunter of these fields and I have a permit, so you know…and you are?” he asked, eyeing both boys.

“Oh…my name is Benjamin, Benjamin B-Brannon, Mr. O’Malley.”

“O’Malley! What kind of a name is that for a hunter?” whispered Tommy to Benjamin, who was trying desperately to ignore his friend’s rudeness.

The countryman leaned in toward Tommy. “And what do they call you then, boy?” O’Malley asked with a mischievous grin.

Tommy looked up at the sturdy man and jerked when he heard another howl from the woods behind him. “T-Tommy’s the name, Tommy Joel.”

The large man took another step forward bending down slightly to look young Tommy in his fear-filled green eye.

“Indeed…do
you
have
your
permit, Thomas?” he whispered.

The boy could only muster a silent ‘no’ in reply, whilst shaking his head. O’Malley took another glance into the woods behind them and picked his bag of dead animals from the frosty grass.

“The look on yer face. I’m just joking with ya, lad,” he chuckled, as he began to walk away from the pair.

The two boys stood in the frost watching the stranger walk down the other side of the dark hill toward the massive open fields. O’Malley stopped a few feet ahead of them. “Well come on then,” he called back.

“We don’t
walk
with strangers neither,” Tommy shouted back stubbornly.

“Suit yourselves, I’ll walk home by myself then. I can’t wait to put my feet up by a nice warm fire and eat some of my homemade rabbit stew. Hmm, or maybe I’ll have some tomato and basil soup. It goes well with pheasant. Anyway, good luck with the storm, boys. Tomorrow’s the first day of winter.” He chuckled again and continued walking, whistling, without a care in the world. The beautiful glow of the full moon gleamed down on him, lighting up the rows of the fields in the distance.

O’Malley seemed a very odd character, which made Tommy extra cautious of him. The toughened orphan had never had any good experiences with adults or guardians before, much less a wild hunter from the country.

Benjamin also had little, if any, trust for adults, especially strangers. But O’Malley appeared a bit too jolly to fit into either category. It was a risk between joining this stranger or trekking through the bitter cold and possibly freezing to death.