The Crooked Sixpence

by Jennifer Bell

She rose slowly from the floor. Ethel took a step closer. ‘And ’oo might you be, then?’ she asked, in a thick Cockney accent.

  Granma Sylvie’s photo.

  Ivy couldn’t believe it: this was the woman in that picture – the one from Granma’s life before the accident; the one she kept in her handbag. Ivy had seen it hundreds of times; this woman looked older, but it was definitely her – the same jaw, the same angular cheekbones, and the same sharp gaze.

  When Ivy didn’t answer, Ethel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Whatcha doing ’ere?’ She reached over and pulled Ivy’s hood back. Her hair bounced out from beneath it.

  Ivy shot a look back at the silver coin. She hadn’t been able to grab it. ‘I, er—’

  ‘Left something down there, ’ave you?’ Ethel asked slowly. ‘How’s about I get it for you?’ She bent down and snatched the coin up with her thin fingers. Standing straight, she opened her palm to take a look at it.

  The bells started whispering as Ethel raised a hand to her chest and staggered away from Ivy. ‘Where did you find this?’ she hissed. ‘D’you know what it is? D’you know what would happen to me if someone found that ’ere, in my shop?’

  Ivy stumbled to find words, but no sounds came out. A cold, prickly feeling rose up through her chest and her throat tightened. ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ she squeaked finally. ‘Please, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be any trouble but I can’t leave now. You see, I’ve seen you before, in a photo with my granma.’ She scrabbled through Granma Sylvie’s handbag, catching sight of the photo tucked away in the corner. ‘Here . . .’ She held out the picture with a shaking hand.

  Ethel’s cheeks flushed as she saw it.

  It was exactly as Ivy remembered it from earlier that morning: the young Granma Sylvie standing with her arm round Ethel, both of them wearing fancy dr—

  Ivy blinked. She took the photo back and stared hard at the image. ‘Hang on . . . What was Granma Sylvie doing wearing Hobsmatch?’

  Ethel peered into Ivy’s face, a frown deepening across her forehead. After a moment’s consideration she flapped a hand towards the windows. ‘Shut the blinds,’ she ordered. ‘We’re closed.’ The bells hanging above the main window swung to the side, releasing a venetian blind that was fixed beneath them. It fell to the floor with a dusty thud. Ethel jabbed a finger towards the large silver bell on the desk. ‘You!’ she barked. ‘Let me know if anyone so much as thinks about coming in.’ She returned the silver coin to Ivy, looking at her anxiously. ‘You’d better take that out back,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘We’ll talk there.’

  The door at the rear of the shop opened into a dark storeroom. When Ethel switched on a lamp, Ivy saw that on one side were racks of bells padded with foam or cotton wool, while on the other were shelves of other objects – a trombone, an old-fashioned skipping rope, a set of skittles and a moth-eaten teddy bear. The place smelled like the inside of a rabbit hutch, and as Ivy crunched over the floor, she realized why: it was covered with a layer of pale golden straw.

  Ethel shut the door behind her. ‘You should sit,’ she said, pulling up a velvet-cushioned piano stool.

  Ivy took the seat gladly, her legs like jelly. Ethel drew up a wooden dining chair and plonked herself down. She nodded to the photo in Ivy’s hand. ‘Let me see it again.’

  Ivy handed it over. She couldn’t stop staring at Ethel’s face. The lines around her eyes were sadder than Granma Sylvie’s, but they were probably about the same age, Ivy thought. Ethel had slightly hunched shoulders, a wicked slash of a mouth and callouses on all her fingers. Her eyes were the colour of flint.

  ‘How do you know my granma?’ Ivy managed at last. She couldn’t believe it. Granma Sylvie’s mysterious past was sitting directly in front of her. This woman actually knew Granma Sylvie. Ivy wondered what her mum and dad would say.

  Ethel’s eyes were shining. ‘Is she alive?’

  The question felt like a punch in the chest. Ivy nodded.

  Ethel sighed and smiled. ‘That’s good to know. We was friends a long time ago.’ She reached across and picked up a steaming bowl of something from one of the shelves. ‘The best of friends.’ She slurped up a spoonful of whatever it was. The noise echoed in the small room.

  Ivy looked around at all the strange objects stored away in the semi-darkness. ‘Wait . . . Did she know about Lundinor?’

  ‘Know about it? Sylvie grew up in Lundinor, like me. Her family – the Wrenches – come from a long line of powerful uncommoners.’

  Ivy sat up straight. ‘But Granma Sylvie doesn’t have any family other than us. She’s never mentioned the Wrenches . . . She doesn’t know about uncommoners.’

  Ethel put down her spoon. ‘Look, your gran is an uncommoner and so are you. Ain’t she explained all this?’

  Ivy’s entire body went rigid. ‘I’m—’ She couldn’t finish the sentence aloud. I’m an uncommoner? After what Valian had said, it did make sense – the right to be an uncommoner ran in a family. But Ivy wasn’t . . . She couldn’t possibly be . . .

  She tried to clear her mind. This was too much to take in all at once. She looked back at the photo. Ethel had said that she and Granma Sylvie were friends once, but that was so long ago. ‘What happened?’

  Ethel stirred whatever was in her bowl, but she appeared to have lost her appetite. ‘Nobody knows.’ Her voice was cold. ‘Twelfth Night 1969, Sylvie disappeared, along with the rest of the Wrenches. The entire family – Sylvie, her three brothers and her mother – vanished in one night. The underguard searched for them all for years afterwards but never found any trace. It became one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in uncommon history.’

  ‘Twelfth Night 1969?’ Ivy repeated. She had never forgotten that date . . . the night of Granma’s accident. ‘There was a snowstorm that night,’ she recalled slowly. ‘Granma Sylvie had a car crash that gave her amnesia. She doesn’t remember anything about her life before the accident.’ She gestured around the storeroom. ‘She doesn’t know about any of this stuff.’

  Ethel’s eyes widened. Her spoon was shaking in her hand. ‘She don’t know?’ she whispered. ‘But . . . ?’ She looked down at the coin in Ivy’s hand. ‘Then whatcha doing ’ere, with that?’

  Ivy tucked the old photo back into the handbag and unfurled her fingers so that the silver coin was lying flat in her palm. The heat soaked into her skin, making her fingers twitch. She wondered if the sensations were connected to her being an uncommoner – maybe it happened to others as well.

  In the low light she could just about see the masked face on the coin. ‘We found it,’ she explained. ‘My brother and me. We were at Granma’s house this morning and there was this black feather writing on the wall.’ She swallowed as her mind took her back. ‘It said We can see you now.’

  Something flickered in Ethel’s stony eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Ivy could tell that the message meant something.

  Ethel’s jaw was tense. ‘There’s only one organization that uses black featherlights: the Dirge.’

  ‘The Dirge . . . ?’ Ivy’s skin prickled as she turned the coin over, remembering the creepy dust-puppets she’d seen in the arrivals chamber. The image on the other side of the coin changed to another hooded, masked face, this one with fangs. ‘I read that word on the coin. What does it mean?’

  Ethel turned away, staring into the lamplight. ‘It’s a long story; one that folk don’t talk about no more.’ She settled her bowl back on the shelf and sighed. ‘Uncommoners belong to guilds. Each guild ’as a particular responsibility and a particular coat of arms. I belong to the Right Honourable Guild of Bell Traders, for example. The Dirge was an ancient guild of scientists ’oo studied uncommon objects. Their coat of arms showed a coin – an old crooked sixpence.’

  Ivy looked down at the silver coin in her hand. When she’d first found it, she noticed that it was bent in the middle.

  ‘In the beginning,’ Ethel continued, ‘the Dirge’s research ’elped build Lundinor and many other undermarts
around the world. They discovered ’ow to use uncommon colanders to filter the air, ’ow to carry ’eavy loads on uncommon rugs – it made ’em famous. But they soon became obsessed with unlocking much darker secrets – things to do with controlling the very essence of uncommon objects: human souls.’

  Ivy had a sinking feeling. She didn’t like the sound of where this was going.

  ‘When everyone discovered what the Dirge ’ad been up to, a new GUT law was passed that forbade anyone from tampering with the uncommon part of an object. The Dirge were ordered to disband and, over time, their story became no more than a page in uncommon ’istory. Then, sixty years ago, when your gran and I were teenagers, they reappeared.’

  Ivy gasped. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It started with the disappearance of a child,’ Ethel told her. ’A young boy no older than you was kidnapped in the dead of night from ’is room above one of the shops on the Gauntlet. ’Is parents found a crooked sixpence resting on ’is pillow and a black featherlight from the Dirge ’overing above ’is bed. The message claimed that the boy had been taken for research. When the coin was examined, it showed six disguised faces – the new members of the guild.’ Ethel paused. Ivy could see the lines around her eyes more clearly than ever. ‘Within weeks, children were going missing from all quarters of Lundinor. The underguard could find no link between the victims and didn’t know where the Dirge would strike next. A campaign of other attacks followed – arson, theft and, finally, murder. A crooked sixpence was found at the scene of every crime. It became the Dirge’s calling card.’

  Ivy thought back to the black feather in Granma Sylvie’s house and her hands shook. It suddenly felt dangerous to hold the crooked sixpence. She flipped her palm over and watched it drop to the floor.

  ‘Nobody knew ’oo the six members of the Dirge were. They used code-names to keep their real identities a secret: Blackclaw, Ragwort, Wolfsbane, Monkshood, Nightshade and Hemlock; each named after a different poison.’

  Ivy shuddered as she remembered reading some of those names on the crooked sixpence.

  ‘The underguard ’ad difficulty finding ’em because it was said they met in a Hexroom – a chamber that can only be entered by uncommon means. Fear spread through the streets like a plague. In the end people were too scared to even say the Dirge’s name and they became referred to simply as the Fallen Guild.’

  ‘What happened to stop them?’ Ivy asked. Something must have put an end to it all.

  Ethel lowered her eyes. ‘Everything culminated in a huge battle on Twelfth Night – the night Sylv disappeared. The Dirge ’ad rallied certain . . . people around ’em. An army, of sorts. They very nearly won, but at the last minute the tables turned and they were pushed back. Five of the six members managed to flee, but one was caught and unmasked. After that, the other five were never seen or ’eard of again.’

  There was silence as Ivy allowed this information to wash over her. Ethel reached down and picked up the crooked sixpence, depositing it back in Ivy’s lap. ‘But if Sylv ’as been sent that coin, it can only mean one thing.’

  ‘The Dirge are back,’ Ivy finished with a gulp. ‘That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?’

  Before Ethel could respond, a high screech filled the air. ‘Ethel!?’

  Ivy flinched.

  ‘Underguard Sergeant to see you, Ethel! Ethel? Can you hear me?’

  The bell on the desk; Ivy recognized its voice.

  Ethel sprang out of her seat like a jack-in-the-box. ‘Put it away,’ she whispered, looking at the coin. ‘Find somewhere to hide.’ She laid a hand on Ivy’s shoulder. ‘I’ll do everything I can to ’elp you.’ She turned towards the shop. ‘I can always bloody ’ear you!’ she yelled. ‘And so can ’alf the street!’ She switched off the lamp, then marched through the door and slammed it shut behind her. For the second time that morning Ivy was plunged into darkness.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ivy dropped to the floor, feeling her way forward. Ethel’s story about the Dirge was still running though her head, but so was Ethel’s last instruction.

  Hide.

  She crawled past what she remembered was a row of bells and headed for the furthest corner, disturbing the dusty straw as she did so. She had to pinch her nose to stop herself from sneezing.

  Muffled voices came from the front of the shop; she could only make out the odd word.

  ‘Ms Dread . . .’

  There was a rustle and the screech of a chair being dragged across the floor.

  ‘. . . trespassers. Uncommoners . . . haven’t taken the glove. There is a warrant out for their arrest. A girl and a boy. Here are the details . . .’

  Ethel muttered a complaint.

  ‘We still need to search the premises. You never know who or what may stow away.’

  Ivy started. Search the premises? But . . . they’d find her. She was in total darkness; she had no idea if there was anywhere to hide, let alone how to get there. She shuffled forward as fast as she could. Her heart was pounding.

  The storeroom seemed to go on for ever. Eventually the underguard’s voice faded away. Ivy began to wonder if there was a back door to the room or a hatch in the wall.

  Ahead of her, she spotted a sliver of light coming up through the floor, illuminating a narrow shaft of dust. She inched towards it and rummaged around in the straw, to find that one of the floorboards had a hole in it about the width of her thumb. If there was light beneath her, she thought, there might also be a way out. She gave the floorboard a tug and felt it groan, but it seemed to be stuck.

  She reached into the darkness next to her and ran her hands over one of the shelves. She needed a tool to lever the floorboard up. Wave after wave of tingly heat flowed into her fingers as they touched a number of oddly shaped uncommon objects. Eventually her hands met something cool.

  Something common.

  It was long and heavy, with a scratchy fabric covering. Ivy pulled it down to examine it in the shaft of light. The fabric was an old stained piece of canvas tied with string; wrapped inside it was a small paintbrush and a rusty hammer. She ran her fingers across each one. The string felt uncommon, but the paintbrush and hammer were cool to the touch.

  She set to work wedging the hammer into the gap in the wood and pushing down on it with her foot, easing the floorboard away. There was a loud crunch and the board pulled free. Ivy hastily wrenched up the next board along, till the gap in the floor was just big enough for her to squeeze through. She swung her legs over the side, peering into the shadows below.

  She didn’t know for sure that it would be safer down there, but she didn’t fancy her chances with the underguard. She dropped Granma Sylvie’s bag and Valian’s jacket through first, before grabbing the canvas, string, hammer and paintbrush.

  I’ll return them, she decided as she tossed them down before jumping through the gap herself. She didn’t want evidence of her escape to be left behind.

  Her wellingtons thumped as she landed on a hard surface. She appeared to be in the foundations of the House of Bells – a concrete L-shape with bare bricks around it. In one corner, a wooden hatch swung from its hinges allowing a flicker of light through from the street outside.

  There it was: her way out. Ivy slid the floorboards back into place over her head. The space beneath the building was tight, but she was small. With Granma Sylvie’s bag over her shoulder, she wrapped the tools in the canvas, stuffed it into Valian’s jacket and shoved them both under her arm, then dropped onto her hands and knees and shimmied towards the exit.

  Before she had made it to the hatch, she heard a voice.

  ‘Helping, please!’ it whispered. ‘Dear oh. Helping, please!’ The voice was high pitched and muffled, with a distinctive lisp; it sounded like a little boy trapped somewhere.

  Ivy stopped and looked around.

  ‘Pleases me find you!’ the voice insisted, louder. ‘Mud in the stuck! Mud in the stuck!’

  Whoever it was, they didn’t seem to be talking in coh
erent sentences. Ivy scanned the ground, looking for mud. The concrete floor finished a short distance from the edge of the building, leaving a few inches of soil. Ivy crawled towards it.

  ‘Yes, am I here!’ The voice was so high now, it sounded like a whistle.

  Ivy glanced at the patch of earth. She couldn’t see anything trapped in it, but then she didn’t know what she was meant to be looking for. She pressed her fingertips into the nearest section. The soil was warm.

  Something uncommon? It must be buried, Ivy thought, prodding it experimentally.

  ‘Hee-hee! Tickles do you!’ the voice said.

  Ivy could feel the soil trembling as the voice spoke. She began digging. A metal object the size of a doughnut started to take shape in the earth.

  Carefully Ivy picked it up and tried to rub off the remaining mud with her sleeve. There was a small gash at the top and a lever sticking out at the side. She tugged it experimentally. The object vibrated.

  ‘Goodbye hello,’ said the voice.

  Ivy frowned and tugged the lever again. There was a giggle. Was she holding a bell? She ran her fingers round it once more. There was only one kind of bell she knew that was this shape. ‘You’re a bicycle bell . . .’ she realized.

  She heard a laugh. ‘Yes, yes, found you. Your name’s Scratch. What’s mine?’

  Ivy tried to make sense of what the bell was saying. ‘Um, my name’s Ivy. Do you mean that your name’s Scratch?’

  The bell tinkled. ‘I do not mean what I mean, of course. Scratch got a back-to-fronted problem. Nice to Ivy meet you.’

  A back-to-fronted problem? Ivy ran her thumb along the dent on Scratch’s top. Maybe the damage prevented him from speaking properly.

  Suddenly a creak sounded above her head: someone was walking about in the shop, directly above her. She turned towards the hatch.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she told Scratch. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Go, wait! Please Ivy take Scratch! Me don’t leavings here.’

  ‘Shh . . .’ Ivy didn’t want whoever was upstairs to hear her. She gazed down at Scratch; the warm, tingly sensation in her hand was stronger now, as if she could feel the bell’s desperation. ‘OK, fine, I’ll get you out of here,’ she decided, putting him in her pocket. ‘Just keep your voice down.’