The Twyning (20 page)

“It’s a long way to carry a sack of rats.”

“Here’s what we shall do,” says Caz. “We shall go together.”

. . . on the bank of the river. My body ached and I breathed with difficulty. A winter sun was in the sky. The light around me was clear, dangerous. A vision of horror that had been the Great Hollow flashed before me.

And was gone.

Live. Survive. Through me, the kingdom. It is now that matters, not then.

I tried to stand but my legs were too weak to move.

Think.

— You are not as other rats.

It was Alpa — still alive, at least in my thoughts.

I am a hearer.

I lay, thinking not of my pain or of my fear, but of my power. A spark within me. A scratch of sound. I listened and it became clearer. I heard the groans and wheezes of a few citizens in the world below, not yet dead.

Other, stranger sounds, nearer to me, tried to break through. A small number of rats had lived. Or perhaps they were visitors from another kingdom, alerted by the scent of death.

There was an otter downstream. Two squirrels were squabbling in a tree. The trem of humans on a road nearby.

Breathing hard now, I closed the door on all these things.

Hear. I must hear to save my life.

It is a muscle like any other, the gift of hearing. I felt what little strength I had draining from my body. Noises grew quieter, the noise of the night, the noise of my own breath, of my heartbeat, until I was in a world of perfect silence.

Yet there, deep within me, I heard a distant whisper. I concentrated my whole being upon it.

Malaika.

I knew that sound. Where had I heard it? It warmed me. It made me feel stronger.

Tell me. Tell me again.

Malaika.

A face looking up at me. Behind it a mass of rats, trapped, starving, angry.

Malaika.

A fragile. The fragile. I had promised to see her again, and now that promise was calling out to me.

Malaika.

And I knew where I had to go.

. . . as we carry the sack full of dead rats through the streets the next morning. They look at us in our rags, with our dirty faces, and wonder if our heavy load has been stolen.

If only they knew.

As we approach the town hall, there are notices nailed on some of the trees. They read:

ONE O’CLOCK TODAY.  YOUR MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT,
MR. VALENTINE PETHERIDGE MP,  WILL SPEAK ON
A MATTER OF URGENT CONCERN TO LOCAL PEOPLE.

“They’re only animals,” Caz mutters as we continue on our way.

“They’re the enemy, the doctor says.”

“How can they be the enemy?”

“You’ll see.”

When we reach the town hall, a small wooden stage has been put up on a little green across the street. There is no sign of the doctor or the MP or anyone else.

I lug the sack under the stage. We wait, sitting together on the steps leading to the stage. Now and then passersby glance at us, as if even waiting in a public place on a cold winter’s morning is an act of sin.

“Ah, Mr. Smith.”

We must have been waiting an hour before I hear the doctor’s voice.

I stand up, and so does Caz.

The doctor wears a busy, distracted expression on his face and has a bundle of papers under his arm. I have noticed that since Mr. Petheridge has talked of him as a scientist, he has combed his hair less, and he mutters to himself a little bit more. I think he believes it is how scientists are supposed to behave.

“And where is the sack?”

I point under the stage.

“Excellent.” The doctor suddenly notices Caz and gives a little start, as if she has suddenly appeared out of nowhere. “You have company, Mr. Smith.”

Caz gives a little curtsy. “Catherine Lewis at your service, sir.”

There’s something twinkly and mocking in the way that she says this, and the doctor frowns.

“A friend, Mr. Smith? I never knew you had a friend.”

He turns to go, and at that moment Caz surprises me. She stands in front of him, a hard look in her eye.

“We’re hungry,” she says.

The doctor reaches into his waistcoat pocket and takes out two penny pieces. He hands the coins to Caz as if the merest touch of her might infect him with a disease.

There is a pie man on one of the side streets, and that twopence is well spent.

When we return, a small crowd has gathered a few yards in front of the stage. There are men and women of all ages, and children running around the green. If they have anything in common, it is that they have nothing else to do.

Caz and I sit down with our backs against the stage, facing the crowd. The grass is a bit damp but we don’t care. We are earning money today and we’re together.

The truth is, I feel stronger when Caz is there. Alone, I will do anything to avoid being noticed. With her, I don’t mind. The world can stare. I stare straight back at it the way that she does.

She starts to sing.

“Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow, bow-wow
,

Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow, bow-wow.”

I nudge her.

“Caz!”

“What? My mum used to sing it to me.”

She goes on with the song, louder this time.

“I’ve got a little cat

And I’m very fond of that

But I’d rather have a bow-wow-wow.”

An old couple, dressed in their Sunday best, is looking at her as if singing a song in a public place breaks some important law. She smiles at them and starts the song again.

Just to show I’m not ashamed of my Caz, I start singing along. We’re in the middle of a
bow-wow-wow
when the doors to the town hall open, and a group of men wearing dark suits and serious expressions walk down the steps.

I see Mr. Woodcock and Mr. Robinson from the council in the group. Following them is the doctor and Mr. Petheridge.

I nudge Caz, and reluctantly, she stops singing.

As the men approach, one of them sees us and makes an impatient sweeping gesture. We get up and move away.

Mr. Woodcock climbs the steps to the stage. As he starts to speak, the doctor edges his way toward us.

“When I need you, Mr. Smith, I shall nod my head. You come and do exactly what I say. Understood?”

Without waiting for my reply, he has gone.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Mr. Woodcock looks around as if there were a huge crowd here, rather than a few people who happened to be passing by.

“I am Joseph Woodcock. Many of you will know me. I am the public health officer for this borough council.”

No one seems to be listening. Mr. Woodcock puts his hands behind his back, which causes his stomach to stick out farther. He looks like a cockerel that is just about to crow.

“We face a very serious problem,” he shouts. “Something that will affect all of us. I have asked our local member of Parliament, Mr. Valentine Petheridge MP, to speak to you about an important public health campaign that your council will launch in the next few days. Pray silence for Mr. Petheridge.”

The MP climbs the steps. There is a strange look on his face, which I think is meant to be a smile.

“Oh, dear,” says Caz, beside me.

For some reason, her words set me giggling. The elderly couple glances in our direction, frowning fiercely.

Mr. Petheridge struts across the stage. When he starts speaking, it is difficult to hear his words above the chatter. There is something about health, I think. He mentions a “public menace” several times, but what little curiosity there was in the crowd seems to have disappeared. At the back, people are drifting away.

“I am talking”— the MP raises his voice — “about rats!”

A woman standing in front of the stage gives a little scream, and there is laughter. At first, Mr. Petheridge seems flustered, but then he realizes that at least people are listening now.

“You may laugh, but, ladies and gentlemen, what is it that spreads disease throughout this borough? What is it that invades your homes, raids your kitchens, skulks behind the walls, beneath the floors, in the drains and gutters?”

“Rats.” It is the woman who screamed, but no one is laughing now.

“Madam, do you know how much of this city’s food is eaten by rats every year?” The MP drops his voice. The chatter in the crowd has died down.

“No, sir,” says the woman.

“One-third. For every three loaves of bread you buy for your family, rats will take one.”

“Eh?” The woman looks around her, but all eyes are on the MP now.

“I shall make you all a promise.” He raises his voice and points a finger to the sky. “If we do nothing, the great rat invasion will grow worse. More of our children will be attacked in their cribs. There will be more disease. Rats are on the march, ladies and gentlemen. They are growing bolder by the day. They are among us.”

Beside me, Caz smiles. “I should have brought Malaika,” she whispers.

“And, ladies and gentlemen, I shall prove it.” Mr. Petheridge beckons to the doctor. “The world expert on rats, Dr. Henry Ross-Gibbon, will now reveal the full and terrifying danger that you and your families, especially your little kiddies, now face.”

The doctor looks in my direction. Leaving Caz, I reach under the stage and pull out the sack of dead beasts.

With some difficulty, I lug them up the steps onto the stage.

The doctor is there, standing beside Mr. Petheridge, as he addresses the silent crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen. They attack us. They bring disease into our midst. It is my belief that rats now pose the greatest danger to us all. And I can give you proof.” He points to the sack, stained with blood, which is at my feet at the back of the stage.

“Yesterday, the borough chief engineer, Mr. Petheridge, and myself accompanied Mr. Woodcock into the sewers beneath the streets of this borough. There we found millions of rodents, both alive and dying from the very diseases that they can communicate to humans.”

“What’s ’e on about?” a man near the back of the crowd asks.

“I shall tell you,” says the doctor. “The brown rat carries bacteria within its body, and on it there are even greater dangers. Lice. Mites. Fleas. Ticks. All of these things spread diseases among humans, particularly among our little ones. They bring germs from the sewers into our homes, our kitchens, our bedrooms.”

“Speak for yourself, mate,” a joker in the front row calls out, but nobody laughs.

The doctor turns toward me. “I shall ask my assistant, Mr. Smith, to help me reveal a tiny part of what we found.” He takes a pair of gloves out of his pocket and grips a bottom corner of the sack. I take hold of the other corner.

“If you believe that there is no rat problem in this town, I would ask you to look at this!”

With a sudden movement, he tips the sack. A deluge of rats’ bodies — dark, wet, many flecked with blood around their mouths — tumbles onto the stage, causing the MP to jump back in alarm.

There are screams, uproar, in the crowd.

“I . . .” The MP steps forward, looking with disgust at the pile of dead rodents. “I shall do something about this,” he cries. “Vote for me and you will be voting for a city free of the rat menace forever. The great rodent crusade starts here!”

. . . to my whole being. I could no longer feel my paws, although I could smell the blood on them.