The Castle (13 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he cell seemed empty.

‘Three?'

My voice hardly made it into a whisper. Nobody answered.

‘Hello?'

Had the guard opened the door to the right place? Had I misunderstood?

The bulb outside lit a narrow patch of ground through the open door, but beyond it was a jumbled mass of flickering shadows. This place wasn't so much a cell as a storeroom. I walked a few paces into the gloom and waited. Silence.

‘Mr Allud?' Hel-
lo
?'

Nothing happened.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, old pieces of furniture revealed themselves among the shadows: tables, chairs and even something that looked like a grand piano. It was a bit like being back in the furniture van, except this time the air smelled of filth, and worse. I spotted the outline of a dark figure hunched over in the corner, behind a leaning stack of broken chairs. He didn't look up – in fact, he made no indication of knowing I was there at all.

I moved in closer. All I could see was hair and bones. He sat huddled in the corner with his knees up near his head and his face resting against them.

‘Mr Allud? I bring food.' Nothing. Getting desperate now, I hummed the tune of ‘Walk Away' very quietly, but loudly enough, I thought, for him to hear. Roxanne Wills's biggest hit. My ringtone. Maybe Dad would remember it from the last day we'd spent together. He'd know it was me. And then . . .

There was no response.

He couldn't be asleep. He just couldn't! I'd pictured this moment for so long, and now I didn't know what to do. Outside, in the corridor, Karim was laughing and joking, putting on his gleeful voice for all to hear.

‘It was the five of diamonds! You see? I know it every time. It is an excellent trick, yes? Shall I try it again? Would you like to bet on it, Mister Gino?'

I didn't dare say the prisoner's real name. ‘It's me,' I muttered under my breath, trying to fight my growing sense of desperation. ‘I'm here. It's me.'

At this, he grunted. So he wasn't asleep! I rushed over, waiting for the recognition in his eyes. But he wouldn't look up. If anything, this was an angry grunt. A ‘go away',
practically inhuman noise.

‘I've come to help,' I whispered.

The figure shook its head and shrank further into the shadows. There was no recognition, only fear. Whoever he was, I was starting to wonder if he was mad.

Outside, the guards were laughing. Slowly, I held out the bowl in my shaking hand. Bony fingers grabbed it from me. I saw a quick flash of a thin, white wrist as he jammed the bowl between his knees and started to eat, head down, scoffing up rice and stew through his beard like a wild animal. It was disgusting.

‘Mr Allud?'

I tried to keep the tears from my voice. This wasn't Dad. This was hardly a person at all. Whatever they'd done to this man, it must have broken him.

Crouching as close as I dared, I couldn't help reaching out a hand to touch his arm. Instantly, a leg came flailing out to stop me. His ankle was chained to the wall and his body came to an abrupt halt, jerking the bowl he was holding and scattering the remains of the food over me and the floor. Even so, he managed to kick at me again, sending me flying.

‘Che succede qui?
What is happening, eh?' A guard put his head round the door. I nearly said something, before remembering at the last moment to keep silent. Instead, I jumped to my feet, bowed low and indicated the bowl.

‘Doesn't like the food, eh? Clean it up, girl.'

I was shaking, hard. Without even trying, I was giving the perfect impression of someone who'd just been beaten. The guard watched as I picked up all the rice and bits of vegetable I could find from the filthy floor, putting them back in the bowl with my hennaed hands. I wondered how the prisoner was going to cope without his meal tonight, whoever he was.

Whoever he was.

Maybe he was someone who'd known Dad once. Maybe I had simply made the worst mistake of my life. He wasn't my father, that's the only thing I knew.

‘Goodnight,' Karim was saying, through the door. ‘Good
night
.'

Oh hell, the signal. I clutched the half-empty bowl to me and hobbled for the door. The guard smacked me, hard, on the side of the head. The flash of pain was blinding.

‘Stupid girl. That beating made you slow tonight, eh? And your brother made me lose my money.'

The other guard laughed and patted his pocket.

‘Never make a bet, Gino. You know you always lose.'

I nodded and bowed, a pair of eyes peeping out from a scarf. A nobody. A girl. A slave.

Karim loaded the tray with the guards' empty plates and gave it to me. ‘We leave you now. Tomorrow I will show you a new trick.'

Down the corridor. Up the long and winding staircase. Away from the dank smell and the flickering light. My head ached. We didn't speak until we were back beside the sleeping body of Amina. Only then did Karim groan and roll his shoulders with the pain of his own beating.

‘And so?' he asked. ‘Mr Allud? It is your father, yes?'

I stared at him with hollow eyes and shook my head. My journey was over.

TWENTY-NINE

I
sat with Amina through the night. Nothing changed. She slept, moaning occasionally as she shifted to a new position. I stayed wide awake, not moving at all.

Who had that been, in the flicking shadows? Not long ago, he had given Karim my telephone number and my special message. How did he know me?

I remembered Dad reading me a story once, about one soldier who told another all his secrets.
The Return of Martin Guerre
, it was called. Maybe Dad had told this man about his goodbye message, before a battle perhaps, and when the man thought he was going to die – down here you would think that sort of thing – he passed it on anyway, even though he
didn't know me, and didn't care.

Maybe he was angry that Dad's child had come, and not his own. Maybe . . . whatever. It didn't matter any more. I couldn't help him. He didn't want me to.

The thoughts came at me like knives.

I'd pinned everything on six words:
Never forget, you have the power
.

I had assumed so much. I'd taken so many risks, and I was really bad at taking risks – that much was obvious. I didn't think about what I was doing, and other people got hurt because of my mistakes. I'd got myself into danger, and Karim and Amina too.

Mum would probably never see me again.

Nor would Luke.

Nor would Lacy, or Granny and Grandad. All there would be was that note for Mum on my computer: ‘This is not about you.'
Well, yeah – thanks for that, Peta. Thanks a lot.

The man in the cellar wasn't some great friend of Dad's, who wanted to save me on his behalf.

The man in the cellar wasn't Dad.

Dad wasn't here, he was dead. He'd been dead since the bomb, and I was the only one who was too stupid to admit it. Just because I couldn't
feel
that he was dead, just because I didn't want to believe he'd given up on us, got some dodgy job in a dangerous city and got himself blown up in a stupid car . . . Just because I didn't
want
him to be dead, it didn't mean he wasn't.

People die. They leave you. They don't always say goodbye. Other people come in the night and they tell you that it's happened and when they do, you'd better believe them. You'd better do it soon, because the thought will hit you eventually, and when it does it's like being walloped by a giant hammer
and left for dead yourself. That's why Mum's legs collapsed under her the night we got the news, while I just went around in denial, making cups of sugary tea and feeling pleased with myself for coping so well.

A stupid, pointless, crazy girl, being happy for no reason.

With a stupid cat.

I listened to Amina's shallow breathing beside me. She was so sweet and shy and strong, and every day people shouted at her and hit her or ignored her. She was treated worse than an animal. There must be thousands of children like her. Millions, maybe, and there was nothing I could do about it. Just like there was nothing I could do about those two starving ‘enemies of the state' down in the dungeons. A packet of pills was hardly going to save that young man's life. He probably wouldn't last very long if nobody came to rescue him. He would die and they would take him away in a bag and throw him in the sea. The girl would be all alone.

Just like me. I was a crazy, stupid teenager, who'd got herself stranded in a big, evil place where ‘bad things' happened, and soon they would find me too and nobody who cared about me would ever even know that I had been here.

And Dad was dead.

THIRTY

A
mina stirred soon after five a.m., just as the pink dawn lit up the small square of window above our heads. Karim arrived a few minutes later.

‘How are you feeling this morning, Peta Jones?'

‘Great. Wonderful,' I muttered.

‘I do not think so. I am sorry about your father.'

‘Yeah, well . . . anyway.'

‘And soon you must leave,' he added. ‘It is dangerous for you here.'

‘You think?'
I wasn't in the best of moods. He frowned at me, like something was wrong with me. Well, after the horrors of last night, everything was wrong. ‘Got any
furniture I can sneak away in?'

‘No,' he said, still frowning. ‘But there is a path I can show you, where the guards cannot follow. It will lead you to the shoreline. There you can hide on a boat or swim far away. Can you swim? It is not a perfect plan, but you are a brave girl, Peta Jones. Nobody is looking for you yet. I think you will escape.'

I stared at him. Was this his sick idea of a joke?

‘You know a
path
? Yeah, of course you do.'

He nodded. ‘I would have shown you before, but you wanted to see Mr Allud first . . .'

‘Seriously, a path?'

‘Not a good one. It is just some covered-over steps, built into the rock, going down to the sea. It was built for smugglers, like I told you before. The entrance is small and blocked with bushes. The guards think it is a ruin because I told them so. It is broken and weedy, but it is not a ruin.'

‘Just tell me now that you're joking.'

‘I am not joking, Peta Jones. It is what I use when I . . . when I need to imagine I am far from this place. I will guide you to it.'

‘What, now?'

‘No. In two days.'

I didn't ask him why ‘in two days'. There would be a reason, and knowing Karim, it would be a good one. But I couldn't really picture having the energy to leave the island, now or ever. Dad was gone and I couldn't really imagine two
hours
ahead, never mind two days.

I'd never felt like this before. Presumably this is how they wanted me to feel in Winchelsea churchyard, during the ashes ceremony. Why would anyone
want
you to feel like this?

Also . . . an
escape path
? Really?

‘So they trusted their slave boy to tell them if there was a working escape route, and you told them there wasn't, and that was it?'

Karim looked scornful. ‘They are too big to fit inside and check, with their muscles and jackets and boots. They think I am afraid of them, so they assume I will tell the truth.'

‘But you're not afraid?'

He shrugged. ‘I am very afraid. But I am not as stupid as they think I am.' He allowed the faintest shadow of a smile to steal across his face.

No, ‘stupid' was not a word I would use to describe this boy. ‘Extraordinary', possibly. Also, ‘odd': if Karim knew a way out of here, why wasn't he somewhere far away, like he said, and safe, instead of being trapped in this dingy cellar?

‘So why haven't
you
used it?'

He put his finger to his lips and indicated Amina, whose eyelids were fluttering, and motioned me outside. We sheltered in the room with the dripping tap, while he talked in a low voice.

‘I have thought about it, but my sister is too afraid. We have no papers, nowhere to go.'

‘You don't need papers,' I said. ‘Keeping you here is illegal. Nobody would force you back.'

He still looked troubled.

‘Also, Amina is afraid of the dark. In the castle tunnels she can use a torch, but to escape it must be totally black. It must be done on a night when there is no moon, so the guards cannot see the tunnel exit by the shore. Which is why you must leave in two days, Peta Jones, when there is no moon. We are lucky it comes so soon.'

Yeah, really lucky.
I was feeling so
lucky
right now.

I sensed that Karim was making lots of excuses for his sister staying here, but he was just as scared himself. There was one thing he
was
frightened of, it seemed: freedom.

‘Well, I'm not going without you,' I said.

He looked into my eyes and he seemed about to argue, but he could tell that I meant it. Knowing that Dad was gone, my lust for escape had dwindled anyway. Without Karim, I wouldn't make it. He was my only hope, this ragged, extra-ordinary boy. And if he needed help to get out of here, perhaps I could be his.

Our conversation was cut off by the sound of Amina groaning. We both rushed to be beside her. She opened her eyes and saw me, and even though it was my fault that she was in this state, she smiled when she saw me.

‘Mr Allud? You see him? Yes?'

‘Yes.'

Her eyelids flickered and she looked at me again, sadly.

‘Go now?'

Her voice was cracked and raspy. Karim gave her a plastic cup of water, lifting it carefully to her lips. She gulped it down.

‘Not yet,' I said. ‘When you are better.'

Outside, there was the sound of sandals slapping on the corridor floor. Karim nodded to the space behind the door and I sprang into it. A man shouted harshly at him for a minute or two.

‘We must go,' Karim said, glancing anxiously at his sister. ‘The young masters brought back some more friends last night. Things were broken. Everything must be made pristine again. Pristine – it is a word, yes?'

‘Yes,' I agreed. ‘I think so.'

His eyes lingered on Amina. ‘She is still not well,' he sighed.

I looked at her, huddled up under a thin piece of sacking. Her back was still hurting.

‘Karim, if no one's really watching, maybe I could help you,' I suggested. ‘I've got the hands now, look.'

Of course, a lot of things could go wrong, but then – everything had already gone wrong.

Karim smiled at me. ‘Perhaps. Then she could rest . . . Yes, yes. If you look down at the ground. Crouch, so you are smaller. Come with me, Peta Jones.'

He whispered tenderly into Amina's ear. I promised her we'd be back soon.

‘Are you ready?' he asked.

I wrapped my scarf around my face and hobbled to Karim's side. Slave girl. Head down. Look at no one. Done it before. Besides, what did I have to lose?

Watch me walk right under your noses, kidnapper dudes.