Tanglewreck (13 page)

When Fisty was free, he carefully put the remains of Elvis, including his ears, into the carrot sack and slung it over his shoulder. Then he followed Thugger round and round the cellar while they searched for a way out.

‘What’s this?’ said Thugger, feeling a metal plate under his fingers. ‘Shine my torch.’

The plate in the floor was rusty and worn, but very clearly written on it were the words

‘Forget it,’ said Fisty. ‘I’ve done rabbits, I’m not doing elves.’

But Thugger had already lifted the plate and was shining his torch down the hole.

‘There’s a ladder here, and if I’m not daft, which I’m not, but you are, I can hear running water.’

‘Water elves,’ said Fisty. ‘Bad news.’

‘Come on, Superman, we’re going down – you first.’

‘No, no, no!’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’

Terrified, Fisty slung his legs down the chute and felt his way down the slippy wooden ladder. For a fleeting moment he had a happy picture of himself back at home, eating an Indian takeaway and watching the boxing, with Elvis at his
feet chewing a clockwork mouse.

It was not to be. He was in a hole, all right, and Thugger’s legs were coming after him.

Down they went. Down and down. Above and above, watching watching, were the yellow sulphur eyes of Bigamist.

It was a grim night in the Chamber.

Everyone was silent when Gabriel and Silver returned, and Silver guessed that they had made a decision. She felt a strange tight feeling in her head, like before an exam.

Eden came forward and gave the children lentils with stewed apples and onions to eat. As usual there was thick heavy bread with the dish, and milk to drink.

When they had finished, Micah asked Silver to come and sit by him near the fire. He was kind but grave.

‘Silver, all be your friends here. I had thought to keep you here, so that the Timekeeper would be safe from Abel Darkwater, and you be safe too, but Eden has thrown the Oracle, and read the secrets therein, and now we know that you must find the Timekeeper, whether you will or no.’

‘But what will I do with it when I find it?’

‘That we do not know. The journey will unfold. Your destiny will unfold. But first you must begin.’

‘The Oracle speaks true, Silver,’ said Eden. ‘Here, see the runes – look.’

Eden had drawn a circle on the ground and cast into it thick gold coins and beads that formed a pattern through the smoky lights set round it.

As Silver squinted through the smoke she saw a face forming out of the pattern of coins and beads. She drew in her breath. The face was hers, her face. She looked round wildly at the others. Eden was nodding.

‘You be the Child with the Golden Face.’

‘But who is she? I mean, if she’s me, who is she? I mean, who am I?’

‘You be the one who must keep the clock. You be the one who holds Time.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Silver, very unhappy.

‘You are a Timekeeper.’

‘But that’s the clock!’

‘The clock belongs to you. It must find its rightful place.’ Micah paused, and, with some hesitation and very slowly, he untied a rough jute bag and emptied out two tiny paintings – like the size of something from a locket.

‘These be the last two paintings on the numbers of the Timekeeper,’ said Micah. ‘And this be your face.’

‘Where did you get these?’ asked Silver, turning them over in her hands – one was a road winding through the stars, and the other was a tiny child holding a clock.

‘The night I stowed the clock for safekeeping at thine own house, I carried these two away with me – I know not why. And I hid them down the centuries, even from Abel Darkwater – I know not how. I vowed never to show them to a soul. But show them to you I do, because they are your own.’

He put them back in the bag and gave the bag to Silver.

‘I could stay here. I’d like to stay here,’ said Silver desperately.

Micah shook his head.

‘Shall we go with her?’ said Gabriel.

Again Micah shook his head slowly and sadly. ‘Abel Darkwater shall destroy us if we journey with you. There are great powers at work. Abel Darkwater desires the Timekeeper above all things, yea, above life itself, and Maria Prophetessa will set out to defeat him, as she plotted to do in ages past. We cannot battle with these two by any means we possess. Only we can pray that they be defeated both together. Know you well that if we leave our home for too long, we shall die.’

‘But what about me?’ said Silver.

‘You shall journey to the Sands of Time.’

‘What? Why?’

‘The Oracle points there. It may be that the Timekeeper be hidden there.’

‘But my daddy had it on the train.’

‘It may be that thy father be there also.’

Silver’s heart leapt.

‘The prophecy speaks of the Sands of Time, and a hundred hundred and more years gone, when I won the clock at dice, this map be given to me also, and it is of the Sands of Time.’

‘Where are they?’

‘I know not, but we can feel the trembles in the Earth, as animals do, and this very night there will be a great
disturbance. You will go to Tower Bridge above the River Thames and when the moment comes you must trust your fate.’

Micah took out an ancient map in a leather folder. He passed it to Silver.

‘I’m not scared,’ said Silver, who was. Then she said, ‘Do I have to go?’

‘Yea.’

‘Micah …’ said Eden, her voice full of doubt. She was sending Micah a Mind Message, something she didn’t want Silver to hear. Micah nodded reluctantly.

‘Silver,’ he said. ‘The yea or the nay is for you to choose. You need not go. You be free to stay here, free to return to your own place, free to begin the quest that only you can complete. What be your answer?’

Silver looked into his kind troubled eyes. She had a few questions.

‘Do I have to go without Gabriel?’

‘Beyond the bridge, he may not go. At the bridge, you must travel alone.’

‘When must I go?’

‘This very moment. If you will.’

Silver looked down at the map. It was just squiggles. Her eyes were blurred with tears. She had never been any good at geography.

She remembered when she had sat in the high attic room at Tanglewreck, and although she had asked her beloved house to tell her what to do, in her heart she had known the
answer herself. It is easier when someone else can give you the answer, but when it comes to the really important things, no one else can.

She looked around the Chamber. Suddenly everyone had gone.

Silver began to pack some food into her bag. Then she put on her own shoes and her duffle coat. She stood up very straight, her little bag packed.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Micah was beside her again. He hugged her hard, and then he took her hand. He was pressing something into her palm.

‘You be not learned in telepathy and cannot send Mind Messages as do we, but hold this in thy small hands and say my name and I shall hear.’

It was the medallion he wore around his neck with his name on it. She nodded, too tearful to speak. Micah stepped back.

‘Three things have I given thee; the map, this medallion and the jewelled faces of the clock. The Timekeeper must thou find alone.’

Silver nodded, too upset to speak. Gabriel came out of the shadows leading two bog ponies. He gave Silver a leg up, and Micah slapped the back of her pony with the flat of his hand, and the little animal started forward.

‘Farewell, Child of Time!’

Riding slowly, Silver and Gabriel travelled without speaking through the passages and tunnels, for what might have been an hour, or might have been a day, until Gabriel halted and slid off his pony.

‘Here we be, Silver. I will take thee into the light, though I may not stay.’

Gabriel pushed back a wooden hatch and gave Silver a leg up on to a platform into what looked like a generator shed. She could hear cars whizzing along the road somewhere near.

Gabriel swung himself by her. ‘We must pass through this door into the Tower.’

‘What tower?’

‘The Tower of London. There be a secret passage from the Tower of London to the watchman’s room on the bridge.’

Gabriel led the way through a low oak door into a stone corridor. Dark figures stood in the shadows. Silver hesitated.

‘They be but armour,’ explained Gabriel, urging her on. ‘This be where they keep their armour and their weapons.’

Silver knew that all places like museums and castles keep a lot of their treasures hidden away in the cellars.

‘We must not take anything,’ said Gabriel, ‘that is the rule.’

Silver had stopped by a very small suit of armour that must have been made for a child. She badly wanted to put it on. It might protect her.

‘Make haste,’ said Gabriel, already ahead of her in the gloom.

Quickly Silver snatched up the pair of chain-mail gloves
lined in leather and fur, and put them in her duffle coat pocket. There was a small double-headed axe hanging on the wall near the armour, and, glancing guiltily at Gabriel’s retreating form, she shoved it into her duffle bag, and ran on past the maces and the pikestaffs and the balls on their chains, and the crossbows, and the swords, and caught up with Gabriel, who looked at her with a question in his eyes.

Cabbage
, thought Silver,
cabbage, cabbage cabbage
.

The rules were all very well, but she had nothing and no one to look after her, only her own wits and what she could steal.

‘
Roger Rover’s grandchild indeed!
’

‘What?’ said Silver, who was sure she had heard a voice, and once again, as she had done in the tunnel that had taken her to the Throwbacks, she looked round with the uneasy feeling that she was being followed.

‘Look, there be the Crown jewels,’ said Gabriel, trying to cheer her up, and sure enough, on red plush and ermine, locked in a glass box, was the Crown of England, that had been worn by so many kings and queens throughout history.

How strange
, thought Silver,
that you can wear Time on your head
.

Pearls the size of a baby’s head
–
that was what Roger Rover had given to Queen Elizabeth the First, and here was one left, in a special case of Elizabethan treasures.

As Silver looked at it through the darkened glass, she was sure she saw a face, yes, a face, a reflection, a man with a neat red beard. She spun round. There was no one behind her.
She looked again at the case. The pearl was opaque.

The castle was closed to visitors that day, and so Gabriel and Silver were able to make their journey like mice round the outskirts of the room.

‘Evil eye,’ said Gabriel, pointing upwards at the CCTV cameras. Deftly, he took a cloth weighted with lead at the corners and threw it over the face of the camera as they crossed the floor in front of it to another door.

‘Beefeaters,’ said Gabriel, pointing downwards at the men in red guarding the Tower. ‘And ravens. When the ravens no longer fly to the Tower, England will fall.’

Steadily, Gabriel led them on, dipping underground again, and emerging through a vent shaft to a rusty disused ladder.

‘This leads us unto the bridge,’ he said.

‘How do you know these ways?’ asked Silver.

‘We know all the ways,’ said Gabriel simply.

Tower Bridge stands high above the Thames. It is the only bridge over the Thames that can open to let through tall ships. Each half of the bridge is raised on a great winch, and the tall-masted ships sail on.

Abel Darkwater knew exactly where Silver was because he was following her progress with his Detector. He had a sock left behind by Silver, and he put this sock into the drawer of his Detector, and let the machine track down her imprint of atoms as she moved through the world.

‘We are all made of atoms,’ he said to Mrs Rokabye, ‘and
what are atoms but empty space and points of light? The alchemists understood this as fire, and learned that the fiery body can be consumed and made again, like the phoenix from the ashes. Oh yes, we can all be consumed and made again.’

Mrs Rokabye had no idea what Abel Darkwater was talking about and she didn’t care. She had a plan of her own, and now she was in league with Sniveller. They would soon outwit Abel Darkwater with his nonsense about atoms and fiery bodies, and then they would have the Timekeeper themselves, and sell it to the highest bidder.

Regalia Mason, the highest bidder of them all, was sitting quietly in her suite at the Savoy Hotel, overlooking the River Thames. Her white fur coat was on the bed. She wore her white lab coat over her white Armani dress, and she was busy tapping numbers into her computer. She too knew exactly where Silver was, because she was tracking her with GPS satellite.

‘A great improvement on the days of the crystal ball,’ she said, to no one in particular, and to anyone who might be listening.

As Gabriel and Silver climbed out on to the very top of Tower Bridge, Silver was amazed to see the cars zooming underneath her in miniature, and to hear the fierce roar of the city all about her. So many people, so many lives, and the river running through them all, as it always had.

She turned to Gabriel, and saw that he was terrified. He
was too high up. There was too much light, and it was too warm for him under the lamps that lit their tower. She had never seen him afraid. Now he was afraid.

‘I must go down quicker than a dropped stone.’

‘Don’t leave me, Gabriel. Please.’

‘I have come too far. I must say goodbye. Take food and blankets for you.’ He dropped his bag on to the platform where they stood. Silver picked it up, or tried to. ‘It’s too heavy for me, Gabriel. You’ll have to take it back.’

‘Time be a cold place.’

‘You don’t care about the cold.’

‘Updwellers care to be warm.’

‘I’ve got my duffle coat. I’ll be all right.’

It was nearly dark. The car lights, yellow at the front, and red at the rear, lit up the road under the bridge. Gabriel put his hands over his eyes. He was squinting.

‘What should I do now, Gabriel? Here on the bridge?’