Cold Shoulder Road (24 page)

“What are you getting at, Pen?”

“Mrs Nefertiti meant for us to go back to Cold Shoulder Road. In Folkestone.
That
’s her cold pillow. Folkestone’s where the Merry Gentry have their main centre, you may lay; that’s where the Channel Tunnel comes out. And where the Admiral lives . . . And that’s just where they won’t be looking for us.”

“You ain’t so clung-headed, Pen,” said Is, after a moment’s pondering. “I reckon you may be on to something there. But how are we going to get back to Folkestone? It ain’t far, I reckon – not as the rook flies – but it’s all open country close around the town. We’re likely to be spotted.”

“We’ll have to wait till after dark.”

Accordingly, they spent a dismal day.

Arun was flung out of the coach and landed on rough ground. The sky was still dark, but there were lanterns round about, and a number of men busily at work. He had no trouble in recognising the place. It was the valley, the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, and members of the Gentry, all hooded, were bustling about with crates and bales and barrels, taking them from the goods wagons and piling them into the carrying-panniers of a line of ponies.

Just up above, in the thickety hillside, Arun realised, was the gully from which he and Is had looked down last time they watched this scene. And in behind, deep in that hill . . . Arun almost choked at the sudden realisation that the treasure which Dominic Twite was so urgently seeking lay less than half a mile from here, under a pile of rubble and sand.

“We brought the boy,” said a voice over his head.

“Good, Fobbing. Take him into the station.”

Arun was dragged over to the neat little rail station with its tarred platform and flint buildings. He was thrust through a doorway, under a sign that said
LADIES’ WAITING ROOM
and left on the floor, half-propped against a wall.

Facing him, to his horror and dismay, he discovered his mother, sitting on a wooden bench. Her hands and feet were tied, and she looked dusty, pale and tired. But she smiled at him and remarked in a matter-of-fact tone, “There you are, my dear! I hope you have your new teeth?”

Arun smiled back, in order to display them.

“All I need,” he said, “is something to bite with them. I haven’t tried that yet. Folk aren’t too free with their wittles around here.”

Dominic de la Twite strode into the small room, making it seem smaller. Arun noticed at once that he was wearing the chain of brown diamonds, twined amongst the folds of his high white neckcloth. He seemed angry and somewhat distracted.

“Now!” he snapped. “I’ve no time to waste. In a few moments I must travel to France on urgent business. Let us have no nonsense, pray!”

A voice called, “Sir? Only one-third of the tusks have come.”

“I know that!” he called back impatiently. “This time I am going to look into it myself. Now: you boy! I want you to tell me where these came from.” He tapped the chain of stones round his neck.

Arun stared at him without replying. De la Twite called, “Fobbing! Come in here! Bring a pitchfork!”

At this command, Ruth looked up sharply. One of the men came in; like the rest, he wore a black hood with slits for eyeholes. He carried a long-handled farm fork with three steel tines, tapered and shining and sharp.

“Push them against the boy’s throat and chest – yes, so.”

Fobbing stood stolidly as directed, holding the fork-handle level, so that all three points of the prongs pressed against Arun. The point against his throat felt as if it had pierced his skin. The cold bite of it made him cough.

“Now then, boy. Let’s have no foolishness. If you don’t tell me at once where these stones came from, Fobbing is going to spit you through.”

Arun’s eyes met those of Ruth. I wish I could talk to her in thought language. Just to pass the time of day. Just to say, hullo, Ma. That would have been nice.

He tried. He poured out a series of messages. He could tell they did not reach Ruth. But, strangely enough, Dominic de la Twite shook his head angrily, rubbed it, and looked discomposed, as if loud noises were distracting him, noises that he disliked, but could not understand.

Anyway, thought Arun, I don’t really
need
to talk to Ma in thought language. I know well enough what’s in her mind.

Don’t give in to them. Never mind what happens. Never give in to them.

As the steel tine sank a little deeper into his neck he said politely to Dominic de la Twite, “I think the stones come from High Brazil.”

“Not that, idiot! Where did
you
find them?”

“I didn’t find them.”

“Stop quibbling and paltering. I’m in a hurry. My patience is wearing very thin. Where did the necklace come from?”

“My cousin found them,” said Arun in a tone of mild surprise, as if, only now, did he grasp what Twite was getting at. “My cousin Is, she found the necklace. She never told me exactly where . . . But, when we were on the ship coming from France, I remember she did say something about diamonds . . .”

He tried to look vague and willing, as if he were being asked a question in a school test.

“Ship coming from France?
” Dominic de la Twite looked utterly taken aback.

Now, in the background, not too far away, but not too close either, Arun began to hear a number of thought-voices. Were they speaking to him? Or to each other? Was it because of the spike sticking into his neck that he heard them?

“
Who are you?
” he called urgently. “
Where are you?
”

And again, he noticed Dominic de la Twite wince and shake his head, then scrub at his forehead with impatient fingers as if trying to rub away a cloud of midges.

“Why yes,” Arun slowly answered Dominic’s question with an innocent air. “My cousin and I came here on a ship, the
Dark Diamond
– she often puts in at Calais before crossing to Folkestone—”

Ruth now entered the game. “In Calais,” she remarked thoughtfully, “there are many stories of King Charles’s treasure. Le Tresor du Roi Charlot, they call it. Queen Henrietta was bringing it on the HMS
Victory
, but some say it sank off Cap Gris Nez – the treasure may just as easily be on that side of the Channel . . .”

Dominic stared furiously from mother to son and back again.

“Where
were you and your cousin in France?” he asked Arun.

“I don’t know the names of French places,” Arun replied simply. “I don’t speak French.”

“Aha!” cried a lot of voices inside his head. “
Thought language needs no translation
!”

“Did you do any digging? Go into any caves? Did your cousin?”

If it were not for the steel prongs jammed against his neck and ribcage, Arun could have burst out laughing; and also if it were not for the frightening and sinister memory of the men’s talk in the carriage coming to Folkestone. For, so far as he could make out, the frigate
Throstle
had been blown up into the sky by some diabolical contrivance of the Admiral’s, had smashed the Cold Harbour refuge when it fell to earth again, and, for all he knew, his cousins and Pye were in one or the other place when this happened.

In which case, as Twite must very well know, any knowledge that Is might have as to the whereabouts of the treasure had been blown to smithereens along with her.

He’s going to get nothing more from
me
, resolved Arun, and received an approving glance from Ruth.

The voices in his head sounded louder and louder. “Where are you?” he called again.

At this moment there came an urgent voice from outside.

“Sir, Sir! The train is ready to start. We daren’t delay any longer.”

“Oh, devil take it!” De la Twite moved restlessly forward. He made a half-gesture towards Fobbing with the pitchfork, then restrained himself.

Coming to a sudden resolve, “We shall finish this talk in France!” he said with menace, and touched the brown jewels in his neckcloth as if to reassure himself. He called, “Niland! See that both prisoners are put on the train. In separate wagons. I will travel in the parlour coach. It is a
deuced
nuisance about those tusks. Fobbing, you may go in the tender with the fireman.”

Fobbing nodded without speaking – he did not seem particularly enthusiastic about this permission – then picked up Arun under one arm and carried him with ease out of the station and down to the track. Arun was hoisted up and flung into a wagon which was otherwise empty. A few minutes later the sound of a thump near at hand suggested that Ruth had received the same treatment.

The rain never let up all day. In one way that was useful, for it meant that fewer people were about and the misty drizzle cut visibility down to little more than a bowshot’s length. Pen, Is and Pye made their way by cautious stages from one patch of woodland to the next.

Pye grumbled a great deal, and asked why they could not go through villages and buy food.

“Because we’d be nabbed for sure,” Penny told her. “We can’t risk it, we don’t know who’d cry rope on us to the Gentry. You don’t want to go back to the Twites, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, then!”

Pye was silenced. She trudged along after them doggedly enough, but was plainly very miserable. Every now and then a tear slipped down her face. At dinner-time Penny produced a small supply of hard cheese and ship’s biscuit from her pack and said, “Here, little ’un. Have a bit o’ this.”

But Pye could not be comforted by food.

“Want Figgin,” she whispered dolefully.

Privately, both Is and Penny feared that Figgin had probably returned to the
Throstle
after the human inhabitants had left it, and been blown to atoms in the explosion. They did not say so aloud, but Pye caught the picture that Is had in her mind, and shouted, “No,
no
! Figgin’s not dead! No, he
isn’t
! I won’t
have
him dead.”

“Well, we certainly hope not, Pye,” Is said, trying to sound cheerful and encouraging. “We just have to wait and see.”

Is noticed that Pye’s ability to catch other people’s thought patterns appeared to have been sharpened and strengthened to a surprising degree by all the sad and worrying things that had been happening. All night Pye had been restless, calling out, sometimes aloud, sometimes in her head, to unseen people. And Is had to be very careful not to think gloomy or anxious thoughts, especially about Ruth or Arun, for Pye picked them up with lightning speed. “When are we going to see them? Where are they?” she repeated, over and over, and all Is and Penny could answer was, “We’re looking for them. We’re trying our best to find them.”

“I’ve thought of the name of a chap who might help us,” Penny said, as they sat shivering in Biggins Wood, near Folkestone, waiting for dusk to fall. “Ruth spoke of him, said he was the new Lord-Lieutenant of the county, was spoken of as a decent cove that wants to put an end to free trading and crime and rascality.”

“He’ll be a clever one if he can do that! What’s his name?”

“Sir David Greenaway.”

“Hey!” said Is. “I’ve met him, when I lived in Wapping. I know his brother Sam. Sam’s all right. So maybe this David feller
might
be some use. Where’s he hang out?”

“In Dover Castle, I reckon.”

“What we need,” said Is, “is some
proof
of who’s doing what’s being done. No use just telling him what we think.” She thought of the burned cottage at Birketland and shivered.

“
Who all burned up
?” said Pye at once.

“Never mind it, Pye . . . why don’t you make up another piece of your song?”

“Yes – I see what you mean,” Penny agreed with Is. “Maybe what we need to do is for one of us to creep into the old Admiral’s house after dark and do some snooping around there. Then we might find something that would fix him in the picture.”

“Ah . . . that’s not a bad notion.” But Is quailed at the thought of Rosamund. “Ugh! Spiders! I hate ’em!”

“Rosamund?” said Pye unexpectedly. “Is Rosamund a spider? Big spider? Pye don’t mind spiders. Pye likes spiders!”

“Good heavens, Pye! – But this spider’s as big as a cockerel.”

“Pye wouldn’t mind. Nice! Furry, like Figgin!”

“Croopus . . . You tend to your song, Pye.”

Instantly Pye recited:

“Well I’ll be hammered, Pye! You fairly take the cake!”

Pye looked smug. Is softly sang her verse to Arun’s ‘Whales and Snails’ tune, which it fitted quite well.

“I reckon you’ll be putting Arun out of business, Pye, at this rate.” Having said which words, Is felt a dreadful qualm, and heartily wished the words unsaid again. Pye, perhaps picking this up, remained silent for many minutes. Then, stumbling, faltering and hesitating, as if images were coming into her mind one by one, from a long way off, she slowly announced: “Arun’s in a train. He tells me to tell you that. (Tied up.) Arun’s going under the water. He says Ruth, too. In train. Can’t see Ruth. Arun got new teeth. Under water with new teeth. Arun going to France. Where is France?”

“Pye! Is that really, really so?”

Pye nodded solemnly, looking puzzled at her own vision. Is fairly hugged her. “Pye! If you’re right, that’s the cleverest thing you ever did. Is the train a whole row of wagons, going along clonky-clonk, in the tunnel?”

Pye nodded again. “Arun sick with toothache. Lying down. Very thirsty and sick.”

Suddenly she began to cry. Overstretched, from her poems and visions, she fairly howled. “Very sorry about poor Arun’s teeth,” she sobbed. “I won’t knock his teeth out, not ever any more.”

“Shush! Shush! No, no, of course you won’t,” Penny said soothingly. “But do keep quiet now, like a good girl, or folk will grab us.”