The Black Joke

by David Bramhall

  Chapter 23

  And in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom (Psalm 51)

  I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me (Psalm 22)

  Next day, to take his mind off what he had to do that evening and reasonably certain that Rosella was safe where she was for now, Pert spent a pleasant enough morning with Walter Glibbery in Better Times, following a shoal of pilchard that had come too far inshore and attracted the attention of gulls and gannets, larger fish and fishermen alike. The waves were grey and wrinkled, heaving slowly, and a warm wind blew from the west. Walter said he didn't like the smell of it, and worse was to follow. Dull clouds extended to the horizon, and the town from a distance looked wan and desolate.

  The quayside had been a sullen place. No one was talking. There had been two dead bodies in the streets the night before, and a building burned to the ground, and the fishermen who had taken part in the fight were feeling defeated, ashamed at their own intemperance, and fearful of what might follow. Few thought that the pirates would be happy to let the matter rest.

  What the pirates themselves were thinking, no one could tell. The Black Joke was still and deserted, though it was certain that there would be unseen eyes trained on the harbour. The pirates knew very well how to organise a battle. The previous night they had been heavily outnumbered, but by an instant and deadly response with superior weapons had carried the night with ease.

  Pert and Walter were pleased to leave the harbour behind, and concentrate on casting and hauling their fine-meshed net, bringing in a leaping haul of silver fish to fill their baskets.

  “There'll be worse to come,” said Walter, “no question about it, young Pert. They fishers are backed into a corner. They can't jus' give up, but they don' know what to do for the best. Pirates are pinned down in one place, but they've knives and cutlasses and guns an' they knows 'ow to use 'em. An' they big cannon, they can lob a ball right into the Drop o' Dew if'n they please. That's a powerful argument, that is!”

  “It would help if we knew who was on which side,” said Pert. “I know the fishers hate the pirates, but what about all the rest of the town? And what about Mistress Grubb? Where does she stand? A lot of people in the town will just do what she says, but she isn't saying anything. I think she's in league with Captain Teague!”

  Walter reached under a thwart and drew out his black bottle. The baskets were full enough, and he put the helm up and turned for home, paying out the mainsheet. “Nay, she don't be in league with anyone, that woman. She be a league of 'er own! Whatever she does, it'll be to 'er profit and others' loss.”

  “But I saw her talking to Captain Teague days ago.”

  “No matter. When time's ripe she'll turn agin 'im, or back 'im up, or jus' keep out of it altogether, whatever suits 'er own purpose. You'll see.”

  Pert didn't answer. Walter probably had the right of it, but if there were a rift it was not certain who would prove the stronger. Grubb had the malice and cunning on her side, but Teague had weapons, and men prepared to use them. If only someone knew where the treasure was, Teague could take it and welcome, and the town would be safe again.

  He helped Walter complete his business at the quay, and walked home. He loved the way when you have been to sea, the smells of the land wrap you round the further inland you go. Smells of cooking food, of dung in the gutter, of flowers and plants, and the buzzing of insects all seem warm and vivid when you've been on the ocean which has almost no smell of its own, not out in the middle anyway. Harbours and seaweed and rotting fish smell, but the ocean itself is sterile.

  Not all the stalls in the market were open. Pert walked up between them, looking around. Only a few people were shopping. One woman walked by with her basket, and spat on the floor as she passed. She obviously blamed Pert for what had happened last night. How could he tell her it was nothing to do with him, that bearing the name of Potts didn't automatically make him a criminal and accessory to murder?

  “Take no notice, Master Pert,” called Mrs.Toogood. “She's two sons in the boats with not a lick o' sense between 'em, and that ain't your fault.”

  Pert saw Batty Bunt at the far end of the stalls, standing half hidden behind an awning and watching him. He walked toward the bully, feeling savage. Perhaps the one thing that might make him feel better today was to feel the bone crunch when he punched someone on the nose, but the fat boy melted away before he could come up with him. He stopped and looked round, but could see no more of them. He felt disappointed rather than relieved as he turned for home again.

  At home he collected together the things he thought he'd need for the tunnel – a small shovel from the woodshed, all the string he could find in case he needed to leave a trail to follow back, and some paper and a pencil in case he wanted to draw a plan. He would steal candles and matches from the vestry. No one would notice.

  In the kitchen Fenestra and Septimus were waiting. Fenestra looked excited. Septimus looked nervous. He had the accounts books tucked inside his jacket. They walked up to the church together, and after looking round to make sure they were unobserved, let themselves in. In the vestry Septimus tucked the accounts books away under a pile of debris in the cassock cupboard while Pert found candles and matches. Then the three of them moved the table and rolled back the carpet. Pert recovered his lever from its hiding place, and prised up the trap door.

  Fenestra quailed when she saw the steps down into the ground. “Spooky,” she breathed, and looked at him wide-eyed.

  He grinned, and stepped in. “Close it up tight,” he said to Septimus. “I won't knock when I want to come up. I'll just wait until you open.”

  With that he stepped down into the room and busied himself with the matches. Above his head he heard the soft thump as the hatch shut him in, and the shuffling sound as they put the room to rights ready for the catechism class.

  It was cool in the dark, and no more scary than it had been before. He spent some time looking round first one room, then the other, to be sure he had missed nothing last time. The rooms were dry, and the air not unfresh. With light and food and warm blankets one could hide down here for days quite comfortably.

  The tunnel felt narrower now he knew he couldn't run back so easily or so soon. The heavy stones of the walls and the curved arch of stones above his head seemed to press in, and he moved in a feeble circle of light. He found himself turning round, to see the dark close in behind him as he passed.

  “Shape up, Pert,” he muttered to himself, “you just walked there. You know there's nothing behind you!” All the same he felt better when he redistributed his string and his papers and candles to free his hands, slung the shovel round his neck with a piece of the string, and walked forward with a candle in one hand and in the other the last thing he had picked up in the kitchen, a long pointed kitchen knife. No sense in being unprepared, he thought. A weapon was comforting.

  The tunnel went down gently, and turned to the right. He judged that by now he must be under the Canonry. He wondered if he would come out in one of the houses that faced the church, some of the oldest in town. But the tunnel leveled off and kept going fairly straight.

  Why would anyone have built such a tunnel in the first place, he wondered? He knew it was traditional for smugglers to make tunnels to move their contraband, and there had certainly been plenty of smuggling here in the past, but why would they need a tunnel? This town was right out on the edge of nowhere. There can have been few revenue agents to worry about. Besides, cargoes could have been landed in all sorts of places, especially across the marshes that bordered the creek, and no one would be any the wiser. It made no sense.

  By now he thought he had probably reached the edge of the town, and to confirm his guess came to a flight of stairs that curved up and to his right. They were worn and crumbled and had obviously seen a good deal of traffic at some time in the past. He stopped, lit a second candle from the stub of the first, and began climbing.

  The stairs went on and on, always turning to
the right, and his legs felt on fire by the time he came to a small archway that opened into a much larger space. He held the candle up and looked around. The ceiling was high, and partly natural rock as though this were a cave, and partly dressed stone blocks. The floor was also uneven stone and mostly natural. He sat down to rest, and tried to sort out the geography in his head.

  There had been no side passages or junctions, of that he was sure, so he could not get lost. A cool, steady draught was in his face, so there was fresh air somewhere ahead. The stairs had curved always to his right, and he suspected he had been climbing a large spiral staircase in the rock, gaining a lot of height but not covering much ground. Behind the houses opposite the church the hill rose steeply, and then became a cliff, an outlier of Bodrach Nuwl though it faced south across the town rather than west like its parent. He must be somewhere inside that cliff. If there were more stairs he would eventually come out at the top, somewhere behind the precipice of the Old Man himself.

  Perhaps this was simply an easy way to reach the cliff? Perhaps people in the past had visited the cliff more often than now, to gather seabirds eggs or the like? But in that case, why start from the church?

  He crossed the cave to where the tunnel appeared to continue. If it went up, he was right. If it went on, he didn't know where he would end up – perhaps behind the great face of Bodrach Nuwl itself. That was an awesome thought.

  The doorway led, not into more tunnel, but into another, smaller chamber. Once again the floor was of stone, though it sloped away from him this time, and the walls of natural rock with only a few dressed stones in the flaws. On the far side the tunnel continued, but narrower and lower, with a rough floor and walls of natural rock. He bent and went on, and had traveled only a few paces before he came to a place where the walls and ceiling receded and he could stand up straight again.

  And where, lying against the bottom of the wall on his right hand side, he found a figure. It lay with its back to him, one arm over its head and the other straight out as though pointing further up the tunnel.

  His heart in his mouth, he inched closer holding the candle high and the knife in his hand. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, and he felt sick with fright. The figure was a man, and had been dressed in a long dark robe which had rotted and fallen away like cobwebs. There were shoes on the feet, but the legs that wore them were bones, yellow in the candlelight. This poor man had been here for a very long time.

  Holding his breath, he moved the candle slowly up towards the head. A fringe of hair still clung to the skin, but most of the skin had shrunk away from the skull, and the skull was smashed and shattered at the back. Someone had beaten this man's head with a hammer or a rock until he died.

  Pert staggered back and sat breathless against the opposite wall. Was this his father? Was this what happened to his poor father, an honest fisherman, a loving husband and father? Had he come to this place for some obscure purpose, lured to it perhaps, to meet this grisly end? And who had done it? Who hated his father enough, or feared him enough, to beat and beat his head until he died and lay there alone all these many years? Who had then crept back to the town with his guilt, and carried it around with him, and talked to people and gone about his business, and said nothing until he too died and took the secret with him?

  Pert sat in the darkness, cradling his pitiful candle, and fought back tears. Why did he have to find this? He was only a boy. He should be in school, not here in this dreadful darkness with the skeleton of his long-lost father. He should be sailing on the bright sea with Walter, or running in the sun with Seth and Solomon, or walking with his sister to school, or watching the turquoise flies on Rosella's hair in the trees, her feet in the water and her hand on his arm ...

  He shook himself. This was not good enough. Perhaps it wasn't his father anyway. Have another look, Pert, he told himself. Make sure. There must be some clue.

  There was. Round the bony neck was a ring, a circlet of decayed fabric that had once been white, and fallen in among the jumbled rib bones a little cross on a dull chain. This was not his father Obadiah, honest fisherman. This was a priest, with a dog collar round his neck. This might have been a curate like Septimus, or a vicar like Silas Tench, but it wasn't his father.

  With a lighter heart he gathered up his belongings and walked on. He still had a few minutes before he should turn back and be ready for Septimus and his sister to lift the trap door. And what a tale he would have to tell them! Maybe there would be another shock ahead, perhaps more bodies. Perhaps there had been a battle royal in this dark place. He thought that now he had recovered from the first shock, any future ones would be mild by comparison. But he held his sharp knife in front of him just in case.

  The tunnel wound onwards a little further. It seemed as though the men who had made it were following the line of least resistance, for it went up and down, and right and left, for no apparent reason. One thing became increasingly clear, however. The darkness in front of him was just a tiny shade of grey lighter. He was nearing the end.

  Lighter and lighter it grew, until he was able to blow out his candle. He felt a wind now, salty and electric, a sea breeze. And it was cold. He was high up. Finally he rounded a corner and there in front of him was the ocean, the grey ocean and a vault of air at his feet. The wind snatched at him, and whisked a paper out of his pocket and whirled it away in an instant. He put his hands on the rock and leaned forward. He was on a ledge, high up on the face not of Bodrach Nuwl himself but of his outlying left flank, the cliffs and broken precipices that gradually grew lower until they reached the narrow valley with the town at its foot. From his feet the ground sloped away sharply, then eased to a shallow meadow with storm-blown gorse and bushes. Sea birds were here, crying and landing and stalking about on the hillside, and there were rabbit droppings at his feet.

  To his right there was a narrow path of the kind that animals make for themselves, stony and treacherous. To his left there was only rock and air. In his face was the wind, and beyond that the sea. Far below, like toys in a fairy's bath, two fishing boats beat their way to the creek mouth before they could haul the wind aft and glide up to the town. He smiled. He probably knew the men in those boats, and they him, and here he was in another world they know nothing of.

  He knew it was time to make his return. It would take twenty-five minutes at least, though it would be downhill this time, and Septimus and Fenestra would be ready for him, eager to hear what he had found. Just as he was about to enter the tunnel again, he caught a movement in the corner of his eye, and turned. It was a small movement, and a very long way off, but he had seen something move that was not a rabbit or a seagull. He froze, and looked and waited. He didn't search around with his eyes, but unfocused and gazed at the hillside above him, relying on another movement to alert him.

  Ah! there it was. He kept close to the rock and watched. Further towards the sea and far, far above him, looking like an ant, or even smaller than an ant, moved a figure. It was on an area of sloping ground, green and partly wooded with small stunted trees, with sheer cliff above and sheer cliff below. One false step and one would roll head over heels down the grassy slope and out into the void, floating and falling until one hit the rocks below where the sea sucked and broke.

  The figure moved slowly, pausing from time to time, stooping. Pert thought it might have been gathering seabirds' eggs, or picking plants. At other times it faced the sea and made extravagant gestures, waving its arms and wagging its head as though declaiming poetry or preaching a sermon. He watched for a long time, but could see no reason for its behaviour, and no hint as to where it came from or where it was going. It strolled, bent, picked, straightened, walked on, paused, made a speech or sung a song, then strolled on again.

  He had to go. Someone was living up here in this wilderness, on this wild hillside, someone nobody knew about. He had to go now, but he knew he would not be able to rest until he had come back up the stairs and found out who this hermit was and why he
was here.

  Back down the tunnel, then, he thought. Past the cleric in his lonely bed, farewell, your reverence, sleep tight! It was all right if you didn't think about it too hard. He knew that once he had passed the spot, he would spend the rest of the journey in fear of the thing behind him, the bony fingers that would clamp around his throat, the bony legs that would wrap round his waist bearing him to the floor, the bony teeth whispering dead obscenities in his ears ...

  He was right, too, but a boy can run and has nimble feet that can probably outpace a priest who's been stiff and cold these tens of years. In any event, Pert reached the stairs to the trap door breathless but un-skeletoned, and praise be! the trap door was open. He ran up the stairs and collapsed at his sister's astonished feet, laughing and gasping with relief.

  On the way home Pert described his adventure, and told them of the crypt, and showed them the gold spoon, and described the tunnel and the stairs. When he got to the skeleton Fenestra looked frightened and had to hold his hand. And he spoke of the tiny figure he had seen in the distance, stooping and picking and declaiming to the void.

  "Who was he? Does he live up there?" she asked.

  "I think he must do. I suppose he's a hermit, and lives in a cave and eats berries and stuff."

  “Gosh,” said Fenestra dreamily, “that's really romantic! Living in a cave. Gosh!”

  She was even more excited when he got to the skeleton. “A skellington?” she squeaked, “a real live skellington?”

  “Not live, but real enough,” said Pert, “and it's skeleton, not skellington.”

  “I know. But skellington sounds nicer, an' it's what Billy says. I'd like to see a skellington.”

  Pert laughed. "I bet you wouldn't! I didn't, not at first."

  “How do you know it was a priest?” asked the curate.

  “Dog collar and a cross. And a cassock I think. Something long, anyway.”

  “Well, there aren't many people it could have been. There's the Vicar, and he's not dead. And there's me, and I'm not dead yet or I'd have noticed. And the last curate, I met him. He warned me not to come here, but I did anyway. And he wasn't at all dead. So who else?”

  “What about J.Tench, the last Vicar? What happened to him?”

  “I heard he retired and went to live in a Home for Ancient Clergymen at St.Portius.”

  “No, he didn't,” said Fenestra. “He's in the churchyard. I found him when I was reading the gravestones. He's got an angel on top, and he says “Jedediah Tench 1833 – 1887, Hide me under the shadow of thy wings, I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind.”

  “Hm. Psalms seventeen and thirty-one. Wouldn't have been my choice, but still.”

  “We could look in the Register of Deaths, but they were under the altar so I expect the Vicar's burned them by now,” said Pert.

  “I wish the skellington had been the Vicar,” Fenestra said. “Foul man!”

  “Now, now, young lady,” said Septimus. “Have you forgotten about forgiveness?”

  Fenestra thought for a moment. “But he wants to be nasty to Rosella. How can you forgive someone for stuff they haven't done yet?” she asked. “I know we're supposed to forgive people who've done wrong in the past, but what about things they're planning to do in future? Can you forgive them provided they stop, or do you have to forgive them and then they think it's all right to do it anyway?”

  “I don't know. It's an interesting theological point. I don't remember covering it at the seminary.”

  “Billy doesn't believe in forgiveness. He says he believes in giving them a smack in the mouth!”

  “It's a point of view,” said Septimus. “A lot of the things they taught us in the seminary seem a bit pointless after talking to you.”

  When they got home they found Mother sitting in the kitchen with Floris and a strange boy. He had fair hair brushed damply back, and a pug nose, and wore a grey suit which Pert recognised as one he had grown out of two years ago.

  “Oh crumbs!” said Fenestra, her hand over her mouth.

  “Who's this?” asked Pert.

  Mother and Floris were smiling.

  “It's me, guv! Billy Moon!” the boy said, and grinned.

  “Doesn't he scrub up well?” said Fenestra proudly, and took his hand.

  “Goodness gracious, what a transformation!” exclaimed Septimus, but he was looking at Floris, not at Billy.

  “I'm amazed,” said Pert. “You look almost like a normal person. And no smell!”

  Fenestra swelled with pride. “And he can nearly read, too!” she said, “I've been teaching him at playtimes, so he can read my stories instead of me telling them.”

  “I know P fer Princess already!” Billy said. “I'm good at P. I'm learnin' M next, fer Mouse. An' I know F ...” He glanced at Fenestra shyly, and she blushed.