Cold Shoulder Road

by Joan Aiken

  Am I in a ship? he wondered.

  His hands, he now realised, were tied together behind his back, and because he had been lying on them, they had grown completely numb; but now that he was off them, the circulation began creeping back into them and the result was five minutes of excruciating agony. He lay sweating and gasping, and wished that he had never woken up, never moved; wished that all this was nothing but a dream. The trouble was that it all seemed only too disagreeably real; I couldn’t possibly imagine all this, he thought. I am lying on what feels like a pile of fishing-nets, the floor under them feels sandy and gritty, and I could never have invented the sound of the sea or the voices of the gulls.

  Somebody – his mother? – had once told him that if you are thirsty and have nothing to drink you should think about lemons: imagine their shape, their pale colour, the shiny, firm texture of the lemon peel, and, last of all, the sharp pale-yellow juice; that will very soon quench your thirst.

  He tried it. The fierce taste of lemon juice was almost more than his sore throat could bear; but it did, he found, help a little. Then, having imagined lemons, he went on to other scents and flavours: the strong, aromatic whiff of feverfew with its green, delicate leaves; oranges, gentle and winy; mint, dark green and pungent; the dewy fragrance of primroses, and the mysterious fresh scent of violets, interchangeable with that of cucumber. Thinking about cucumber helped him to swallow a little more; in fact he found the cucumber more helpful than the lemons had been.

  After ten minutes or so he felt able to try singing.

  For why shouldn’t I sing? he thought. If there are people, and they can hear me, they’ll come to help – if they are friends. And if they are not friends they’ll know that I’m not scared.

  But I am scared. Will they drag me behind a cart? Put me in a boat and push it out to sea?

  Well, never mind that.

  He sang:

  “Whales and snails aren’t troubled by thunder

  Snails and whales make merry in gales

  Snails glide over and whales swim under

  Weather’s a pleasure to snails and whales . . .”

  His voice was somewhat hoarse and cracked, but the tune was a good, rolling, rousing one, and just the sound of it in his own ears helped to cheer him. Also it produced an almost immediate effect. He heard a step on a wooden stair, close at hand. It was a firm, sharp, decided step, somebody coming downstairs. Then a bolt rattled.

  A door opened. A voice said, “Stop that disgusting row, boy. At once!”

  “I’m thirsty,” Arun said. “I need a drink.”

  “You can’t have one. It’s not convenient.”

  “But I’m parched. I might die of thirst if I don’t get a drink.”

  “You’ll just have to wait.”

  “Then I’ll sing.”

  He started off again: “Whales and snails . . .”

  “Oh!” exclaimed the voice furiously. “You exigent boy! Why should I have been left with this nuisance on my hands?” And it muttered something under its breath about “pillar to post . . . obliged to leave a good, comfortable home in Nijmegen and end up in this rat’s nest . . .”

  “I need a drink badly!” shouted Arun.

  Shoving downwards with his hands, he managed to lever himself to a sitting position, and looked about him. He saw that he was in some kind of lofty warehouse, built from black, tarred timbers. The floor was merely rough sand and shingle, with nothing on it except the pile of tarry nets against which he had been lying. There was a cold, dank, salty smell; not unlike the smell of the house in Cold Shoulder Road.

  Standing by the half-open door was a tall woman, staring at him. She held a heavy, blackthorn club in her hand.

  “Well, you don’t look as if you’d be much trouble,” she said coldly. “And you had better not be, or I will knock out all those nice new teeth with this.” And she shook the club.

  “All I want is a drink of water,” Arun said.

  She thought about that. Then she said, “After all, you may as well come upstairs. If you try to make any commotion, you won’t be heard so easily up there. And it saves me bringing water down to you. So get up on your feet and walk, slowly, to the door.”

  She spoke carefully, one word at a time, as if, although she knew English very well, it was not her native language. She had a slightly guttural accent.

  Arun climbed on to his feet with caution and difficulty, and stood swaying. His head still felt muzzy and his legs weak.

  “No, you are not very big, are you?” said the woman in a tone of mild contempt. “To me, you seem of little value. Now, then. Walk that way, but slowly.”

  Arun could not in any case have walked fast. He made his shaky way towards the woman, and she backed carefully out of the door.

  “You need not think you can run anywhere,” she told him when he was through the door, and found himself in yet another large empty granary or boat-shed. “For the outer door is locked, and the key’s upstairs. Now, you walk up that stair, and if you try anything stupid, I shall break your ankle with this stick. So just climb up quietly.”

  Arun had no wish to try anything stupid. The stairs were a flight of unbalustraded wooden steps, set into the timber wall. Feeling weak and sick, he took them slowly, one step at a time, staying as close to the wall as possible. The flight was long and steep; he counted twenty-four steps. By the time he reached the top, which was a large trap-opening, he was close to fainting; he took half a dozen paces away from the top and sank down on to the floor. This, he was vaguely surprised to find, was thickly carpeted.

  Now the woman’s face rose up over the stair-top and he had time for a proper look at her. It was a long, flat, expressionless face, with no-colour hair, which was done very tidily in some kind of bun. She had a slight furry moustache and looked as if she might be about fifty years old. Her eyes and nose resembled those of Dominic de la Twite but (thank goodness, thought Arun) the eyes did not have that queer, luminous predatory look of Dominic’s, they did not bore into one like drills, they were just yellowish-grey opaque eyes, which turned to slits when she was angry.

  Still, she was a large, tall, strong-looking woman, with thick arms and legs; she behaved as if she were used to having her own way.

  “Good,” she said, seeing Arun on the floor. “Stay like that.” And she crossed the room, went through a door, and came back in a moment carrying a pewter beaker with water in it. “Here—”

  As Arun’s hands were fastened behind him, she held the cup for him, tilting it farther and farther forward as he drank. She did this without particular care, and the last couple of mouthfuls cascaded over his chin. He would have liked at least one more cupful, but something about her face told him there would be no point in asking for it. She put the cup away and sat down in an upright chair with padded arms, watching him as if he were a rabbit or a lizard that had been brought into the house.

  To escape her scrutiny, Arun looked round the room, and found it most unexpected. Though it was only the upper floor of a grain store or sail loft, it was furnished quite handsomely. On the walls hung woven tapestries with pictures of hunting scenes. A deer flashed through a thicket, men pulled fish from a tank of water. The floor was covered thick with rugs and carpets in gorgeous colours. The chairs and sofas were of polished and gilded wood, their backs and seats upholstered in satin and brocade.

  “You are surprised?” the woman said coldly, observing his look. “My brother . . . likes to be comfortable.”

  “Your brother, ma’am?”

  “My brother Dominic. My name is Merlwyn Tvijt. You may call me Mevrouw Twijt.” She pronounced the last word with a click. “So you are, perhaps, my young cousin – many times removed? Your name also is Twite?”

  “Yes . . . but I dare say we ain’t related, Mevrouw,” Arun said hastily.

  “Why should you think not?”

  I just hope we aren’t, was what Arun would have liked to say. Instead he asked, “Why are my hands tied?”

&
nbsp; “To stop you from running away,” she said with raised brows. “As you did once before. To my brother’s great inconvenience. He wishes to ask you questions. He will be back later. Just now, he was called off in a hurry. Would you like to know why?”

  From her tone of voice, Arun felt that he would not like to know, but, nonetheless, with a dry mouth, he could not help asking, “Why, then?”

  “He has gone to see your mother. To interrogate her. We had one of our people set to watch outside the farm at Womenswold.”

  Arun felt a sickening jolt of fright. Mechanically he repeated, “My mother?”

  “Dominic has been wishing to talk to your mother ever since she abducted the little child who was left in our charge – the Handsel Child.”

  Miss Twite took a pinch of snuff from a small ivory box, laid it carefully in a line along the back of her big, muscular, bony wrist, then sniffed it up. She did this twice more, and sneezed a couple of times, in a controlled manner, with a stiff, bristly noise. Then she said, “That was a remarkably foolish act of your mother’s. It has led to a great deal of trouble. My brother has been at great pains to find her; to find out why she did it.”

  “She did it because the kid was unhappy,” said Arun.

  Miss Twite said in a measured way, “Sometimes children need to suffer, for their own good. It is to be hoped that the child will soon be back with us, her proper guardians.”

  No it isn’t, thought Arun. This is a crazy conversation. Pye is an awkward little cuss, but she sure don’t deserve to be lodged with such a pair.

  “Now that Dominic has come up with your mother,” went on Dominic’s sister, “no doubt we shall soon have the child under our charge again. It is best so. The people are more quiet.”

  So at least you haven’t got Pye yet, thought Arun. But where did Dominic catch Ma? At the ship? If so, where are the others?

  He felt dreadfully anxious. If only I could talk to Ma in thought language . . . But it was no use. He probed and probed, called and called, but nothing came back. Then he tried to find Is – and got a queer, faint flash, a long way off: “Arun – where are you? The ship’s gone – smashed – we’re out in the cold . . . cold . . . cold . . .”

  “Where is my mother? Where is Mr Twite?” Arun asked the woman.

  “They are going to Folkestone. Mr Twite now has another very important question to ask your mother. For it seems that she knows the whereabouts of King Charles’s gold.”

  “Of Ki—?” Arun felt his mouth dry up again, his eyes almost shot from their sockets.

  “King Charles’s gold,” the woman repeated impatiently. “You know all about it – the treasure that Queen Henrietta brought in the ship Victory, that came from the Low Countries, that was lost, that was never recovered. The first founder of the Silent Sect, Brother Manoah Enticknap, he had the gift of prophecy. And he prophesied, thirty years ago, that the Sect, at this time, would be supplied with a great treasure from under the ground, which they would use to pay for their establishment in the New World. And of course it is quite obvious that your mother has found it and knows where it is.”

  “B-b-but she doesn’t know,” spluttered Arun.

  “Do not tell me stupid lies, boy. It is evident that your mother has access to the treasure. In the place where she was staying, in the wood, Dominic found a Charles the First sixpence. And, tied up in your handkerchief, a brown diamond of the very finest quality. Ah—!” as Arun’s hand flew to his neckerchief and found the knot untied, “—you see! It is no use trying to pretend ignorance.”

  “I found the necklace. My mother didn’t.”

  “The necklace?” she pounced. “Not just one stone? A whole necklace?”

  “My mother has no idea in the world where it came from. Why didn’t your brother ask me about it?”

  “All in good time. People are best interrogated singly, he says.”

  “But my mother doesn’t know.”

  “Stupid!” Mevrouw Twite irritably pulled her large fingers, with a sharp cracking noise. “Of course she must know, if you know. And of course Dominic will find out from her. He is very good at that. And she must immediately return the Handsel Child.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “That would be a pity,” said Miss Twite. She spoke in a cold, measured, angry voice that caused chilly shivers to run down Arun’s spine. He thought of Micah Swannett, put out to sea in an open boat, with his hands tied. Where was Micah now?’

  “And my brother’s plan for you,” Miss Twite went on, without going into particulars as to his plan for Ruth, “his plan for you, if necessary, is to send you over to France where, from Calais, a ship will shortly be setting sail for the slave plantations of the Tornado Islands. They take hundreds of boys your age . . . So you see, you had certainly better tell my brother all that he wants to know. Otherwise your future life will not be a very happy one, though it will be very hard-working. Now you had better go on up those stairs to the top floor. You may pass the rest of the night there.”

  A second flight of stairs, even steeper, even narrower, rose to an open trapdoor.

  “Can’t I have my hands untied?”

  “Certainly not. Go along. And no singing. My brother detests singing. And so do I.”

  Arun climbed the stairs. The room above was an empty loft, lit by an unglazed square hole in one wall, and a few panes of glass set into the roof in place of tiles. As soon as Arun was through it, Miss Twite slammed and bolted the trapdoor.

  Arun sank down on to the floor – there was no furniture of any kind – filled with miserable forebodings.

  Where can Ma be? What is happening to her? he wondered, over and over.

  After a while he curled up, like a cat.

  At that moment, as Miss Twite had said, Ruth and Dominic de la Twite were travelling together in a chaise along the road from Seagate to Folkestone.

  Ruth sat quietly. Her hands and feet were fastened with iron hand-cuffs, but she was not struggling. It was never her way to make a fuss, particularly when it would be quite useless to do so. She remained watchful and silent, studying the man who sat opposite her.

  He was in a high state of excitement, but the only sign of this was the extreme brilliance of his eyes, and a slight dew of sweat on his forehead.

  At the moment he was busily engaged in rejoining the single brown diamond, which he had taken from Arun’s knotted kerchief, to its nineteen companions on the plaited silk string. He did this with remarkable care and skill, despite the motion of the carriage. His large fingers had great dexterity. When the task was completed he gave a sigh of satisfaction, and sat for a moment or two in almost spellbound contemplation of the glittering pool of gemstones that he held in his hands.

  They flashed, even in the dim light of the horn carriage lantern.

  “Twenty brown diamonds the size of olives! They are like a moorland river – a crystallized river,” he said fondly. “I could hardly have imagined such a masterpiece. Such absolute beauty . . . I am really very beholden to you, Mrs Twite, for having led me to this treasure.”

  Ruth shrugged. She said, “Different people have different values. I wouldn’t give a plate of porridge for those stones – if I was hungry.”

  Dominic de la Twite laughed and laughed.

  “Dear lady! Such a sense of humour.” He tossed the chain from hand to hand, then, with a huge indrawn breath of triumph, fastened it round his neck. He was wearing a white ruffled shirt and high white stock; the brown glittering stones seemed to flow in and out among the snowy linen like a snake gliding among white rocks. Twite glanced down complacently; he could just catch a glimpse, a sparkle, from the corner of his eye.

  “I wonder why I have come across no history of this necklace? It must be one of the most perfect pieces of jewellery ever made.”

  “I recall my husband referring to it once,” Ruth remarked coldly. “He occasionally took an interest in such things. He had read about it in a history of King Charles’s lost treasure. It ha
d a name, ‘The Living River’.”

  She seemed about to say more, but checked herself, and, instead, gazed out at the dark landscape flowing past outside.

  “The Living River – a perfect name for it! The stones do seem alive, as if they held a power of their own. But there, I sound positively fanciful!” Twite laughed again.

  Once more, Ruth made as if to speak, then decided for silence.

  De la Twite fell into a long reverie, evidently an agreeable one, for he smiled to himself several times. Then, as if shaking off day-dreams and getting back to business, he frowned at the woman sitting opposite him.

  “Now, Mrs Twite, let us have no more prevarication, if you please.”

  “I never prevaricate,” said Ruth.

  He ignored that.

  “It is plain, by the evidence of the necklace and those silver coins, that you and your son know where Charles’s treasure lies hidden. Listen to me, dear Mrs Twite, I am prepared to make a bargain with you. Pay attention, if you please! You know that my deepest wish is – ahem! – to provide the Silent Sect with the means to set sail and buy land in the New World, to establish their own settlement there.”

  “Is that really so?”

  Ruth’s voice was quiet, not sceptical, but Twite shot her a sharp look.

  “Of course! Indeed it is! So, there is the treasure, hidden away, underground, of no use to anybody. Why not fetch it out and devote it to this excellent purpose? Listen, Mrs Twite, if you will only conduct me to where it lies, I will make a pact with you. I have the use of the treasure, you may keep the Handsel Child (why you should wish to do so, I cannot imagine, a most pestilential child, but it seems that you must, or you would not have been at such pains to remove the creature and keep it in concealment). Well? What do you say? Is it a bargain? Do we shake hands?”