Cold Shoulder Road (23 page)

“Twenty brown diamonds the size of olives! They are like a moorland river – a crystallized river,” he said fondly. “I could hardly have imagined such a masterpiece. Such
absolute
beauty . . . I am really very beholden to you, Mrs Twite, for having led me to this treasure.”

Ruth shrugged. She said, “Different people have different values. I wouldn’t give a plate of porridge for those stones – if I was hungry.”

Dominic de la Twite laughed and laughed.

“Dear lady! Such a sense of humour.” He tossed the chain from hand to hand, then, with a huge indrawn breath of triumph, fastened it round his neck. He was wearing a white ruffled shirt and high white stock; the brown glittering stones seemed to flow in and out among the snowy linen like a snake gliding among white rocks. Twite glanced down complacently; he could just catch a glimpse, a sparkle, from the corner of his eye.

“I wonder why I have come across no history of this necklace? It must be one of the most perfect pieces of jewellery ever made.”

“I recall my husband referring to it once,” Ruth remarked coldly. “He occasionally took an interest in such things. He had read about it in a history of King Charles’s lost treasure. It had a name, ‘The Living River’.”

She seemed about to say more, but checked herself, and, instead, gazed out at the dark landscape flowing past outside.

“The Living River – a perfect name for it! The stones do seem alive, as if they held a power of their own. But there, I sound positively fanciful!” Twite laughed again.

Once more, Ruth made as if to speak, then decided for silence.

De la Twite fell into a long reverie, evidently an agreeable one, for he smiled to himself several times. Then, as if shaking off day-dreams and getting back to business, he frowned at the woman sitting opposite him.

“Now, Mrs Twite, let us have no more prevarication, if you please.”

“I never prevaricate,” said Ruth.

He ignored that.

“It is plain, by the evidence of the necklace and those silver coins, that you and your son know where Charles’s treasure lies hidden. Listen to me, dear Mrs Twite, I am prepared to make a bargain with you. Pay attention, if you please! You know that my deepest wish is – ahem! – to provide the Silent Sect with the means to set sail and buy land in the New World, to establish their own settlement there.”

“Is that really so?”

Ruth’s voice was quiet, not sceptical, but Twite shot her a sharp look.

“Of course! Indeed it is! So, there is the treasure, hidden away, underground, of no use to
anybody
. Why not fetch it out and devote it to this excellent purpose? Listen, Mrs Twite, if you will only conduct me to where it lies, I will make a pact with you.
I
have the use of the treasure,
you
may keep the Handsel Child (why you should wish to do so, I cannot imagine, a most pestilential child, but it seems that you must, or you would not have been at such pains to remove the creature and keep it in concealment). Well? What do you say? Is it a bargain? Do we shake hands?”

“No,” said Ruth.

De la Twite began to grow angry. He remained quiet, but seemed to swell and become larger inside his clothes.

“No? And why not, pray?”

“Firstly,” said Ruth, “because I have no idea in the world where the treasure is buried. Oh, somewhere in this neighbourhood, perhaps; or perhaps not. It could equally well be in France. My son did not tell me where he found the treasure, nor did I ask him. I am not
interested
in the treasure, Mr Twite. Secondly, you have no right to use the child as a bargaining counter. She is not a piece of property, she is a human being, though you have not used her as such . . . So you may just as well stop the carriage and put me out in the road, for I am no use to you whatsoever.”

De la Twite exploded with fury.

Ruth was reminded of Pye, as his face darkened and his breath came in surges.

“No use to me, madam! But I’ll see that you
are
of use to me. If you won’t help me yourself, you shall be made the means of putting pressure on your son, who is back in Seagate with my sister at this time.”

Ruth turned a little pale.

“And as for the child,” Twite went on furiously, “since it seems that you have so little value for her, I may as well tell you that your charming establishment – your cosy home in the tree – is not in existence any more, but has been blown to Jericho! My colleague – ah, my colleagues – have contrived to drop a packet of highly explosive hop-manure – which is made from wool refuse, you may know! – on to the
Throstle
, and that, combined with the gunpowder stored in the ship’s hold, was quite sufficient to send the vessel sky-high!”

Ruth stared at him. Then she said slowly, “So you lied, when you offered to let me keep the child. Since she was already dead.” After a pause she added, “How do I know that you are not lying now?”

A few lights began to show on either side of the road.

They were entering Folkestone.

Arun lay tossing and twisting on the dusty floor of the loft. It is hard to sleep with your hands tied behind you; harder still if your teeth ache, and you are still painfully thirsty, and worried to death, besides, about what is happening to your mother, and have been told that you yourself are to be sent off on a slave ship to the plantations in the Tornado Islands.

Down below there was complete silence. He wondered if Miss Merlwyn Twite had gone to bed. Or was she sitting, bolt upright, with her big-knuckled hands in her lap, waiting for her brother to come home?

And where was her brother? In Folkestone, trying to extract directions from Ruth as to the whereabouts of King Charles’s treasure? Although he felt so miserable and frightened, Arun could not help a faint grin at the thought. First of all, she doesn’t
know
where it is, he told himself, and second of all, even if she did know, she wouldn’t tell Twite, not if the Queen of England was his aunt.

Arun was obliged to admit to himself that, aggravating and difficult though she might be in some respects, Ruth had plenty of grit in her; it was impossible to imagine that she would ever knuckle under to a tyrant.

Well, look at the way she took and pinched the Handsel kid, just because she thought it was right. And a plaguey lot of trouble that led to. But still, he might do the same himself. Or at least he hoped he would.

When he considered his own danger, and the unpleasant prospects that lay ahead, Arun shrank, and ached, and wished he could think himself back into being a cat instead of a boy, as he had been used to do. But now, when he thought about Ruth subject to similar dangers and despairs, he had not the heart to retreat into cathood. Besides, cats can’t sing. Cats don’t fight battles, either, he thought. (Well, perhaps Figgin might, but then, Figgin’s no common cat.)

What had been the meaning of that confused message from Is about the ship being smashed? Had Twite done that? Was Figgin all right? Were Is, Penny and Pye all right? Where were they?

Why was he lying here immersed in rambling miserable thoughts, when he ought to be sitting up and singing his head off – if that was what Dominic de la Twite particularly disliked?

He sat up and began to sing:

Pretty fair nonsense, but it kept up his heart.

To his amazement, his song was answered by a number of voices outside on the beach.

First in thought-speech;

“So that’s where you are! Jen told us that you had gone to the dentist’s house, but we never saw you come out . . .”

Then they all burst into song:

One of the voices out there, a girl’s, high and ringing, he recognised as that of Jen Braeburn, the girl in the red dress.

“Hello, boy! What are you doing up there?” she called.

“I’m shut in!” he called back. “My hands are tied and the trap is bolted.”

“Hold on, mate, we’ll just fetch a beam and break down the door. Keep your pecker up! They burned up some of us, but they haven’t got us all! Not by a long chalk! And there’s more on the way – they’ll
never
get us all!”

He heard the sound of many scampering feet.

But now, also, Arun heard the voice of Merlwyn Twite, and her rapid, angry footsteps on the stair below his trapdoor. The bolt slammed back, the trap shot open, her furious face came into view.

“What do you think you are up to, boy? You will please stop that disgusting noise immediately!”

Much worse, he heard horses’ hoofs and carriage-wheels on the landward side of the building. A shout went up:

“Miss Twite! We’ve come to fetch the boy! The Leader wants him in a hurry.”

“He’s here,” she called. “Come and get him.”

Three men – from the sound – tramped up to the first floor, two came on to the second. Arun was grabbed, unceremoniously dropped through the trap, caught down below, then the same speedy process was repeated on the lower flight of stairs; he was half-hauled, half-carried across the empty ground floor and bundled into a waiting carriage.

“The Leader wants you, too,” one of the men called to Miss Twite.

“Well, you can tell him it’s not convenient,” she grated. “I’ve had my rest disturbed quite enough for one night. I’ll come tomorrow, in my own good time, tell him. And I’ll thank you to leave me in peace now.”

She banged the outer door and bolted it just as Jen and her friends came running back with a tree-trunk they had taken from a builder’s shipyard farther along the beach.

“I’m in the coach. They are taking me to Folkestone!”
Arun called in thought language as the carriage sped past the hurrying group; but he could not tell if they heard him. His head had been tied inside a sack and he was thrown roughly on to the floor as the horses accelerated into a gallop.

Above his head the men in the carriage were talking casually.

“What’s to become of the
Gentian
, now? If more and more goods are to be carried by train?”

“She ain’t the Nob’s ship. She belongs to His Fish. And he don’t want to part with her, I’ve heard.”

“A ship’s allus handy, in case of trouble.”

“A fly card he is, that owd Admiral, with his contraptions and his kites; dang me if I’d ever a beleft he could shift that frigate out of that tree where she was perched so snug!”

“A right shame,
I
call it,” pronounced another voice. “The owd
Throstle
made a rare handy nest for any cove as wanted to lay low for a while.”

“Still, ’twas clever. That you can’t deny. His Fish has got more brains than the Nob.”

“Ah. But what about smashing up Pook’s Pantry? Knocked to blazes, so they do say, a place what had been a refuge for poor folks for dunnamany thousand year.
That
ain’t pound dealing.”

“Ah! That’s so,” they all agreed thoughtfully. One voice asked:

“Were there folks a-refuging in Cold Harbour when it was strook? Is that known?”

“If there were,” somebody said, “their own dearest wouldn’t know them now. You get a ten-ton hunk of rock atop of you,
and
a little owd majesty’s frigate on top of that, you ain’t going to be so handsome.”

Arun shivered, listening, curled on the coach floor among the feet. Oddly enough, he had no wish to turn into a cat.

P
ENNY SUDDENLY EXCLAIMED
, “
I REMEMBERED
about the tortoise!”

“What
do
you mean, Pen?” Is asked, rather crossly.

They had passed a most miserable night, under the great yew tree at Cold Harbour, having piled themselves damp, lumpy beds from all the debris that lay scattered thickly about.

It is dreadful to see a place that has been your comfortable home utterly smashed up and reduced to pieces no bigger than shoes. The arrival of daylight only made this scene more depressing, as a thin cold rain had begun to fall. Penny found some bits of her dolls strewn about, Is found the blue headscarf that Window Swannett had given her, wet and torn. Pye actually came across the remains of the loaf she had baked, and was furious that Is and Pen would not allow her to eat it.

“Why not
?
”

“Because it’s all full of broken glass, Pye, that’d cut your stomach to ribbons.”

Worse still was the unspoken question – which neither Is nor Pen dared put into words – as to whether there might have been any wayfarers taking refuge in Cold Harbour when the ship fell on it like a meteor and knocked over the great sarsen stones. If there had been anybody inside, no human hand could help them now.

“Reckon Mrs Nefertiti didn’t give us very good advice that time,” Is was remarking glumly, when Penny made her unexpected statement about the tortoise.

Is, who had found a few squashed turnips in a muddy sack, had been trying to persuade Pye that they would do for breakfast.

“I
know
you ain’t partial to turnips, Pye. But, honest, there ain’t anything else.”

“Mrs Nefertiti didn’t mean for us to come here,” Penny went on excitedly. “Now I remember what it was about Diggory. The tortoise. He used to eat woodlice. They were a big treat for him. Like strawberries ‘ud be for us.”

“Well,” snapped Is, “Pye and I ain’t a-going to eat
woodlice
for our breakfast. Nohow! And there
aren’t
any strawberries.”

“What made me think of him,” Pen went on, without paying heed to this, “one time Diggory was just going to munch up a woodlouse when it nipped right up to him and hid in his armpit, where he couldn’t find it.”