Cold Shoulder Road (21 page)

“Where’s Pye all this while?”

“Gloating over her bread. Pye’s all right. What happened at Birketland?”

“All burned up. House, trees, the copse . . . and, and
people
, too.” Penny stared at Is in horror. “Liza from the farm went there with milk at daybreak and she said there’s naught but a big burned patch – and – and some feet and hands.”

“No!” whispered Is in horror. “Not . . . not Ruth?”

“No. This musta been last night, Liza said. It was the old woman, Mrs Dryhurst and some young ’uns from Seagate. And a paper was stuck on a tree. It said, ‘These were unfriends of the Merry Gentry’.”

“But they had nothing to
do
with the Merry Gentry.”

“Maybe not,” said Penny. “But something like that sure puts a fear in anybody else who might think of crying rope on the Gentry. And, Is, I’ll tell you a thing that puts
me
in a quake – as I came back here from the farm – and I can tell you, I came mighty mousey, not on any path, but keeping in the thick bushes—”

“Well?”

“—Well, I was waiting to cross the turnpike road, hid in a clump of holly, and who should ride by but the Admiral Fishskin, his own self, on that two-wheeled scooter-shay of his. He had a big red kite slung over his shoulder and he was smiling away to himself like the cat that’s swallowed a cock-robin.”

Is shivered at the picture Penny had called up.

“What’s
he
doing in these parts? Folkestone’s where he lives. He’s got to be part of it all, that old Admiral, no question. I don’t like his being so close.”

“No,” said Penny gloomily, “we gotta shift from here.”

“From the ship?”

Penny nodded.

“But what about R-Ruth? What about Arun? When they . . . when he comes back?”

“We better leave a message. Like we done for you. Mrs Nefertiti said the same. Said we’d best flit. Somebody – whoever shot that arrow – knows we’re here. ‘Sides, having us here makes a risk for them at the farm.”

Is sighed. She could see this was true.

“Maybe we should go
right
away – go up to London? See somebody . . . the King, like? Tell one of those high-up fellers about the horrible goings-on here.”

“The King? I don’t reckon much to kings,” said Penny with a curl of her lip.

“No, but, Pen, he’s a cove we know – that Simon feller, used to be Duke of Battersea. Not a bad cove.”

“Oh,
him.”
Penny’s tone expressed even more doubt. “I got to know
him
when he lodged with Mum and Dad in Rose Alley – I doubt he’d not be much use. Didn’t have two fardens to rub together in those days. Anyhow, we couldn’t go off to London now, not without any notion of what’s come to Ruth. Or Arun – we gotta wait for him.”

“No. That’s true. We couldn’t go. What did Mrs Nefertiti say?”

“She said a queer thing. Two queer things. She said, ‘Rest your head on a cold pillow’. And then she said, ‘Remember the tortoise.’”

“Tortoise?”

“Well I did have a tortoise once – when I was Pye’s age. Aunt Tinty – you’d not remember her, she used to have a vegetable stall at Covent Garden. And she found a tortoise amongst the greenstuff and she gave it to me. Diggory, I called him. But he wandered off . . .”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Blest if I know,” said Penny crossly.

“But ‘Rest your head on a cold pillow’. Now, that does make sense,” Is went on, considering. “I reckon the old gal must mean Cold Harbour. How about we up-sticks, do a moonlight, and hike off there tonight? Cold Harbour ain’t so far. Matter o’ four hours’ walking.”

“Ah,” Penny agreed thoughtfully. “That ain’t a bad notion. Arun or Ruth’d surely think of that place. If they come back and find us gone.”

Neither Is nor Penny could bear to suggest that Ruth might never come back.

How can we find her,
how
? wondered Is, and, my eye, Pye’s liable to cut up rough.

“How come Pye’s so quiet all this time?” Penny said, as if catching her thought. “It ain’t like her not to come bustling.”

The reason for this, they soon found, was that Pye had not been able to resist sampling the new loaf of hot bread. About one-third of it had been nibbled away, and Pye was lolling against a pile of sail-canvas in a sleepy stupor.

“She’ll never walk to Cold Harbour in that state,” said Is. “We’ll have to carry her in a sling.”

“And she’ll be a fair old weight with all that pannam inside her.”

They rigged up a carrying-sling with ropes and canvas, and each packed a small sack as well, of food and needments.

“Shame Ruth took the beads. We should ha’ guessed – for
who
could have known about them?”

Is privately hoped that, if as seemed probable, Ruth had been snatched by an enemy, she might use the necklace as a bargaining counter. But it was a faint hope.

“Where’s Figgin? Figs, Figs, Puss, Puss?”

But he was not to be found.

“He’s got sense enough,” sighed Penny. “He’ll follow in his own time. Pity about all those dolls of mine.” She looked at her orderly shelves. “Still – I can always make more. Come on – I’ve a powerful feeling it don’t do to dawdle about.”

“Me, too.” Is wriggled her neck as if at any moment an arrow might hurtle through the branches and lodge between her shoulders.

But she took time to find a piece of paper and make a drawing of three big stones and a fourth lying across their tops. This she folded and poked it right into the middle of Pye’s nibbled loaf, and left it on the galley table.

“Right? Let’s be off.”

Neither of them had the heart to eat any of the loaf. Food just then would have choked them.

They had to let Pye down in her hammock; she was fast asleep, sucking her thumb, bloated with bread. Then, slinging her between them – and Penny was right, Pye was no featherweight – they set off, as quietly as possible, between the trees, not following any path, but going south-west, keeping the setting sun on their right-hand quarter.

They passed through close-set patches of dense wood, climbed over ridges, crossed valleys, waded through brooks. When they came to an open patch of heath land, they circled carefully round it, keeping under cover.

Pye woke up as the light began to dim, and grumbled. “Where we going? Where Ruth? Where Arun?”

She wriggled about until they had to put her down; then she wept and grizzled. “Want Ruth! Want Figgin!”

“So do we!” said Penny crossly. “And Arun, too. Wanting’s not the same as having.”

“Why we here?” whined Pye. “Pye don’t like this place.”

It was a bad sign, thought Is, that she had gone back to saying ‘Pye’ instead of ‘I’. In a minute she might begin to scream, and that would be very bad indeed. The spot where they had set her down to rest was in a grove of yew trees, old and dark and close-set. But they grew on the edge of a broad expanse of bare moorland, with grassy patches, low-growing stretches of heather, and a wide bridle-way that ran across the centre, past a smooth bare rock. The trackway was well-used; three or four times, while Is, Pen and Pye had been cautiously skirting round the open area, they had seen horsemen or carriages or light farm vehicles pass along the track. It ran only a bowshot from where they were hiding; if Pye screamed she would certainly be heard. Is flogged her mind to remember one of Arun’s songs, about whales and snails, which he had sung at Cold Harbour, and poured it hastily into Pye’s mind. She had the tune more or less right, but some of the words arrived back to front.

“That’s
silly
,” said Pye peevishly. But she calmed down and seemed less likely to start screaming.

“You make a better one yourself, then,” said Is.

Penny hissed, “Quiet, both of you!” and grabbed Is by the arm. Her fingers dug in like iron pegs. With her other hand she pointed back along the track.

They shrank deeper into the shelter of the yew grove.

Far away down the grassy ride the Admiral could be seen, briskly spinning along on his two-wheeled runabout. And behind him was another man, wearing a black hood, riding a bay horse; the horse seemed extremely nervous of the Admiral’s riding-machine and kept its distance. But the two men were clearly together; when the Admiral reached the flat rock in the middle of the heath, he slowed down, alighted, and laid his machine on the ground. His companion also dismounted and tossed the reins over the horse’s head.

“They’re going to fly a kite?” breathed Is. “Why the plague do that, in the middle of nowhere? What a rare rum business!”

But this was certainly what the two men had come to do. They walked at first, then ran, back and forth along the bridle-way, tossing up the kite, which was scarlet, five-sided. At last a strong south-easterly breeze, which had risen as the sun declined, snatched and carried the kite up into the pale twilight sky.

As it sailed higher, the kite caught and shimmered in the last rays of the descending sun. Something had been attached to its tail, a small packet, and there seemed to be a hook on the tail also.

“Oooooo!” breathed Pye, full of wonder, watching as it climbed.

“
Hush
! Don’t make a
sound
!”

“Mysterious set-out, though . . . ain’t it?” whispered Is. “D’you reckon the old boy’s sending messages to the moon?”

“I’d not trust him to do anything so sensible. More likely dropping lighted matches on a neighbour’s hop-field.”

The kite had now caught a layer of high-level wind, and was hurrying northwards, far away, no larger than a scarlet speck in the sky, over the black outline of the forest beyond the heath. The Admiral paid out more and more line.

“He musta had a ball of twine the size of a millstone!”

At last the kite began to descend. The two men made no attempt to haul it in; seemingly their plan was to let it drop into the wood.

“Blest if I understand,” muttered Penny. “Wouldn’t you think they’d want to reel it in? Not lose it?”

But plainly the men’s intention was quite otherwise. Calmly abandoning the line, the Admiral climbed back on to his runabout and pedalled away southwards at a rapid pace; his companion gave him a short start and then followed at a canter. They had been in motion only a few minutes when a dull boom was heard, massively loud, a long way off to the north, at the point where the kite had last been seen. A brilliant V-shaped flash suddenly split the black outline of the forest. Flights of rooks and starlings shot up into the air, clattering and chattering. Then there was silence again.

“What did I say?” muttered Penny. “He
did
drop a lit match on someone’s hop-garden. Let’s just hope it wasn’t on Womenswold.”

“Oh, Pen!” Is clapped a hand over her mouth in horror.

A few minutes later it seemed as if something – some very large thing – went hurtling past overhead. They felt the wind of its passage. And, shortly afterwards, they heard a tremendous thumping crash to the south of them.

Again, flocks of birds flew upwards in loud-voiced dismay.

“Now
what?” Penny and Is stared at one another in the dusk.

Pye began to whimper. “Don’t like. Pye scared!”

“Hold your hush,” Penny said dourly. “We ain’t so sparkish ourselves. But let’s hope it was just a thunderbolt. They don’t often come in pairs.”

“We can’t be so very far from Cold Harbour now,” said Is, when they judged it safe to go on. They had watched the Admiral and his companion turn eastwards and disappear over the curve of the moor. Bearing steadily south-west, Is and Penny soon came to a spot that Is recognised, where – how many days ago now? – she had overheard that cryptic small-hours conversation about the
Gentian
.

“Now, it is just down this slope—”

But Is stopped short in total consternation.

The whole neighbourhood around Cold Harbour had been completely transformed. Shredded timber, snapped wood, crushed branches, scraps of rope, of metal, of canvas; glass, tools, weapons, chains, broken china, guns, even cannon-balls, were strewn as thickly as autumn leaves over the ground.

And – even more unbelievable – the three huge sarsen stones of the Cold Harbour refuge had been hurled outwards, knocked flat; hurled by the battered, almost unrecognisable object which had come to rest on top of them.

It was the frigate. It was the
Throstle
.

W
HEN
A
RUN NEXT THOUGHT OF SINGING AND
had a try, he found it much more difficult: his tongue had swelled up, all his teeth ached, and his head did, too. Also he was miserably thirsty, and yet his throat felt much too sore to make swallowing possible.

He found, after thinking about it for a while, that he was lying on his back. With a strong effort, he rolled over on to his side, and looked ahead. He could see very little. He seemed to be lying in a large, high, dimly lit place with nothing in it. In the distance he could hear faint, shrill cries which after a minute or two he identified as the voices of gulls; also, not far off, the sound of waves washing on the shore.

Am I in a ship? he wondered.

His hands, he now realised, were tied together behind his back, and because he had been lying on them, they had grown completely numb; but now that he was off them, the circulation began creeping back into them and the result was five minutes of excruciating agony. He lay sweating and gasping, and wished that he had never woken up, never moved; wished that all this was nothing but a dream. The trouble was that it all seemed only too disagreeably real; I couldn’t possibly imagine all this, he thought. I am lying on what feels like a pile of fishing-nets, the floor under them feels sandy and gritty, and I could never have invented the sound of the sea or the voices of the gulls.

Somebody – his mother? – had once told him that if you are thirsty and have nothing to drink you should think about lemons: imagine their shape, their pale colour, the shiny, firm texture of the lemon peel, and, last of all, the sharp pale-yellow juice; that will very soon quench your thirst.