by Joan Aiken
“Oh, really? Is that so? How do you know?” said Penny.
“Sure as you’re born! There’s the Admiral’s own schooner, the Merry Gentian, anchored out there in the offing, ready to take ’em, whenever they decide to flit.”
I lay they want to find the treasure first, though, thought Is, coming downstairs.
Mrs Boles said hopefully, “If you want up to call on the Admiral, friendly like, as you might, being wishful to see the pictures, you might notice summat in his house, to, well, to tie him in with the Gentry. So he’d get put away. So they couldn’t go to the Ay-zores.”
“What sort of a thing, Mrs Boles?”
“Like, maybe, those hoods they all wear. Or the white hat.”
“But, you see, we’ve no reason to go and see the Admiral. He’s no friend of ours.”
Mrs Boles said, “Tomorrow night he’s to go off to Dover. He’s been ast to a grand dinner, what’s being given for what’shisname, the new Lord Left-thingummy . . . Seems unfair, dunnit, that the Admiral gets to drink wine with the nobs when all the time he’s as wicked as they make ’em?”
“But how do you know he’s so wicked, Mrs Boles?”
“Ah,” said Mrs Boles darkly, “I know what I know.”
“And how do you know he’s going to Dover Castle?”
“Ah! My cousin’s boy Alf, he’s one of the gardeners in that-ar fancy high-footling garden of the Admiral that sticks out from the top o’ the cliff. (It’d serve him well, the old wretch, if the whole shevoo was to fall off into the sea, and him with it. That’s what I say!) My cousin’s boy Alf, he’s to drive the Admiral to Dover in his barouche, in style; for once he ain’t a-going on his two-wheeler.”
“Is that so?” said Penny thoughtfully, pouring more tea for Mrs Boles. “But of course we wouldn’t dream of going to a person’s house when they weren’t at home.”
Mrs Boles made a most peculiar grimace, laying her finger alongside her nose and squinting horribly.
“D’you reckon that woman’s telling the truth?” Is said to Penny later, when Mrs Boles, after a good deal more inquisitive peering about, had finally taken her way back along Cold Shoulder Road towards the centre of town.
“I don’t think the truth comes naturally to her,” said Penny. “She’s certainly out for Number One. But maybe it is so about the dinner at Dover. That might be a time for us to go and take a look at his place.”
“You don’t think it’s a take-in? A trap? That he might have sent her? The Admiral hisself?”
“Well,” said Penny, “I suppose we could go and skulk around in his garden, to see if he goes off in a barouche.”
“Ye-es,” agreed Is without noticeable enthusiasm. “We could do that . . .”
“Now we’d better write that letter to Greenaway,” Penny said. “The baker’s boy said he’d take it. They deliver bread to Dover Castle.”
Arun supposed that he must have fallen into a catnap. And it had done him good. Although he was still thirsty, the new teeth seemed to have settled into their places, and felt more as if they belonged in his mouth. He would have liked to tell Pye that; and, as the idea came into his head, he could have sworn that he heard Pye singing his ‘Whales and Snails’ song. Or rather, to the same tune, she was singing different words:
“ . . . Hold in a chain for the future’s sake
hold in a chain that man can’t break
hold till the world is wide awake . . .”
But that can’t be Pye singing, he thought, I must have dreamed it. Now she was playing the same tune on a soft, wheezy instrument that sounded like the wind blown through a crockery drainpipe.
Arun became aware that the train was slowing down.
Thud – thud – thud. Click – click – clickety click. Click.
He called softly, “Mum! Are you there? Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m here!” Ruth called back. “And right enough. Though I’d not say no to a plate of buttered eggs!”
The train crept to a stop. There was an immensely long pause. In the distance, Arun could hear people talking. But what they said was mostly incomprehensible. French, he supposed.
Then footsteps approached his wagon. A voice ordered, “Stand up.” Arun. stood, obediently, finding himself hungry, stiff and weak. He saw the tall bulky figure of Niland, who had now left off his black hood and revealed himself as grizzle-bearded, grey-haired and worried-looking. As he hauled Arun out of the truck, Niland hissed in his ear, “When I undoes yer hands, don’t let on! Keep holding them behind yer back. Then, when you gets the chance, scarper!”
Very much astonished, Arun nodded his head. He saw that Ruth had already been taken out of her truck, and was sitting quietly on yet another wooden bench. He wondered if her hands, too, had been undone. He certainly wasn’t going anywhere without Ruth.
They were – Arun assumed – in the French Channel Tunnel station, a neat little structure, identical to the English one, except that the signs said DAMES and MESSIEURS, and that from somewhere came a heart-rending smell of fresh coffee.
Arun looked about him carefully. The station was tucked into a green chalky dent in the hillside, which was not at all unlike the country around Folkestone. To the north lay level, marshy land, intersected by dykes and canals, and beyond the marshes extended a long, flat, glistening beach, tapering away to the distant horizon. A glimmer on the left of the hill behind the station showed where the sun would presently rise into the pale, empty sky. And, southwards, over the hill, a few trails of smoke suggested the whereabouts of a town; Calais perhaps.
Close at hand was a house – a large house, a mansion really, Arun supposed. It was built of brownish stone and had several turrets, each of them crowned with a little slatecapped cone.
“C’mon.” Niland gave Arun a prod and a wink. “The gaffer’s going to that house. Chatto, it’s called.”
He gestured Arun and Ruth to walk towards the mansion. There was a stone wall, a pair of iron gates, a gravel path. Not far ahead strolled a group of three or four people, including Dominic de la Twite, Fobbing, and a couple of strangers.
“I wonder why Niland’s so friendly?” Arun murmured to Ruth as they walked.
“I nursed his daughter through measles,” she murmured back.
“You an’ yer Ma’ll just have to watch for your chance,” hissed Niland in Arun’s ear. “Maybe when they’ve all gone inside.”
Niland’s kindness was welcome, of course, thought Arun, but the chances for escape just at present seemed fairly slender. The mansion was isolated, standing on its own, with a group of outbuildings to one side and, around the other sides, a large formal garden with paths and pools and fountains. There seemed no cover, no trees, bushes, shrubberies or hedges. Where could they hide? The outbuildings would be searched at once . . .
The group ahead turned aside from the front door of the mansion, and walked under an arch into a cobbled stable-yard. And then through a wide doorway into a great vaulted chamber which had perhaps once been a storeroom or granary. Now it seemed to have been furnished as an office, with long scrubbed tables and piles of paper and account books.
“Stand over there!” Dominic de la Twite ordered his prisoners sharply, and gestured towards a corner. Arun caught his mother’s eye, she shrugged. Niland jerked his head resignedly. Ruth and Arun moved to the corner. Now they were cut off from the entrance by a long table.
Dominic was involved in a long, acerbic discussion with a thin, white-haired elderly Frenchman, who wore a wig (his own scanty hair showed under it) and seemed, Arun thought, both terribly anxious to be polite, and as if he deeply disliked the whole conversation . . . He kept gesturing with his hands as if they were fishes’ gills, opening and closing them to let in badly needed air.
“But, Monsieur, I assure you, I absolutely guarantee—” he kept saying.
Arun caught the eye of a dark-haired girl, thin and worried-looking, who stood beside the elderly man and seemed to be giving him support. She resembled h
im – perhaps she was his daughter. Every now and then she would confirm what the older man said, nodding and frowning at Twite. “It is so, Monsieur. It is just as he says. Ask our steward, also.”
She doesn’t like Dominic, thought Arun. In fact, she detests him.
He cast a sideways glance at Ruth, who flicked him a wry grin and then slipped a hand under his arm, giving it a friendly, conspiratorial squeeze. Not much chance to escape, I fear, but isn’t this interesting! was what she conveyed, by the look, and the touch. Arun grinned back, cheered by her presence.
Then he suddenly realised that he was receiving a powerful thought-message from the dark-haired girl.
“Who are you? Why are you here?”
“My mother and I were brought here by Twite. We had no choice.” Arun sent back. “Who are you?”
“I am Annette de Puy. I live here. My father is the Comte de Puy.” Evidently the white-haired man.
“What are they arguing about?” Arun asked.
“That hateful man” – evidently she referred to Twite – “says that my father cheated him out of three loads of mammoth tusks. My father is a man of honour – he would never do such a thing!”
Arun wondered why a man of honour should be involved in a smuggler’s trade of mammoth tusks.
He had not particularly intended this thought to reach the girl, but it did. She flashed back indignantly: “We are very poor! My father is the last of his line, and he has the château to keep up, and all our people on the estate to look after. Times are hard.”
Now the Comte de Puy was saying, “But, Monsieur, I can readily prove the fact to you. Here, only see—” and he moved to open a massive ledger on one of the tables. Its pages were all covered with figures in columns, and were interleaved with other papers, presumably bills of lading, invoices and receipts. Even the smuggling of mammoth tusks, it seemed, was here carried on in a very efficient and businesslike way.
“Look, Monsieur!” the Comte announced triumphantly, producing a sheet of paper and flourishing it under Dominic de la Twite’s nose. “Your own sister’s signature! Instructing us that the three consignments were to be diverted to Zeebrugge and would not come to the Chateau de Puy or cross the Channel. We were sorry about it naturally . . . But in affairs of this kind one accepts the inevitable . . .”
The sight of the paper handed to him by the Comte de Puy plainly came as a shattering shock to Dominic. He was already pale; he now turned whiter than the paper he held, and stared at it with starting eyes. It shook in his hand.
Arun suddenly started to hear his thoughts, which went round and round in a frantic spiral.
“My own sister cheated me! How could she? What has she done with all those tusks? What is she planning to do with them? My own sister! How could she? Somebody must have suggested it – helped her. She would never be able to arrange such a fraud by herself. She is not clever enough for that. Who could have helped her? Who?”
And then, in a kind of scorching fury:
“It was Fishskin! The cunning, calculating rat! Now I see it all. He wanted us out of Folkestone so that he could load up the Gentian and be off to the Azores without me. But I will catch up with them. I will—”
He said to the Comte de Puy:
“That my own sister could put the double on me – I would not have believed it possible! But it is certainly her hand; no question of that. I regret, Monsieur, very much, that I should have questioned your word.”
“Doubtless it is some family misunderstanding that will soon be cleared up,” said the Comte graciously. “But you are ill, sir! You are suffering; my daughter will procure you a stimulant—”
Dominic de la Twite did look deathly ill. His colour had worsened from white to a kind of glazed green, his cheeks shone with perspiration.
“No . . . no—” he said hoarsely. “No, I thank you. But there was something else that I wish to ask; to find out—”
His gaze roamed round the vaulted chamber as if, almost unbalanced by this proof of his sister’s cheating, he could hardly command his own wits. But the sight of Ruth and Arun reminded him.
“Ah, yes. The treasure. King Charles’s treasure.”
The de Puys, father and daughter, looked at one another in total bewilderment. Twite went on hoarsely, “Brought by Queen Henrietta on the ship Victory to help her husband King Charles the First – sunk in the Channel. Thought to be hidden somewhere in this area—”
The de Puys still looked at him blankly.
“Non, Monsieur. We have not heard of any such treasure. Never!”
“Look!” screamed Twite hysterically, pulling his neckcloth so as to loosen it. “This necklace of brown diamonds – The Living River – this piece was part of the Victory’s cargo; where this came from, there must the rest be!”
“But truly we know nothing about it, sir,” said Annette de Puy pityingly. “Indeed we have no knowledge of any such a treasure having been deposited hereabouts.”
Her father was frowning.
“But I do have some knowledge of that necklace,” he said. “I have read about it in a history book. Brown diamonds are not natural. They acquire their colour from exposure to powerful rays which are transmitted through the rock in one especial region of Brazil. I recollect now. I would most strongly advise you not to wear that chain for too long, Monsieur Twite. For I have heard that another name given to that necklace was the River of D—”
But Dominic de la Twite was not listening to the Comte de Puy. He seemed to be choking, or unable to catch his breath. He gasped and gasped, grabbing at his own throat, dragging off the white neckcloth, snapping the chain of brown stones, which bounced and flashed all over the cobbled floor.
“Air!” he gasped. “1 must have more air!”
Tearing open his white ruffled shirt, he rushed out into the stable-yard.
“What is it? What can we do for him, Papa?” cried Annette, aghast.
“Very little, I fear,” her father said ominously. His eye lit on Ruth. “Would you, Madame, know, by any chance, how long has Monsieur been wearing the chain?”
“Twelve hours at least, Monsieur.”
“Then I fear there is no hope for him. He is done for,” said the Comte de Puy, who did not seem unduly distressed by the fact.
And, indeed, when Niland and Will Fobbing ran outside to help Dominic de la Twite, he had already fallen to the ground; his breath came slower and slower. In another couple of minutes it stopped altogether.
“I suppose,” said Annette thoughtfully, “the poisonous effect of the stones, coming just after the news of his sister’s double-dealing—”
“The necklace itself must in any case have killed him within twenty-four hours,” her father pronounced.
“Croopus,” thought Arun, “it was lucky for Is that she never put it on, only carried it in her breeches pocket.”
“Is? Who is she?” flashed Annette’s question in his mind’s ear.
“She’s my cousin . . .” Telling Annette the whole story of the Gentry, the Handsel Child, the Silent Sect, Admiral Fishskin, the treasure, was far quicker and easier in thought language than it would have been in plain speech. She listened absorbedly; meanwhile the body of Dominic de la Twite was wrapped in a piece of tapestry, placed on a stretcher, and carried by Fobbing and Niland to the Tunnel train.
“But this is wonderful – amazing!” Annette cried at the end of Arun’s story. She gave Ruth and Arun warm hugs. “Listen – I have much . . . much . . . much! to tell you both, about the man Micah Swannett, about a child we have here; but first, you poor things, you must come into the chateau and have some déjeuner. You must be fainting! Papa disliked Monsieur Twite so much that he would never ask him inside, but you, you are different—”
She poured out a flood of rapid French explanation to her father, who bowed at once, most graciously, to Ruth, and offered her his arm, to lead her into the château.
“We have here a countryman of yours,” Arun heard him telling Ruth in polite, but ha
lting English. “He was rescued from a small boat . . . very sick . . . starving. For days he knew not even his own name . . . would not speak to us when we questioned him, but my daughter, who is very sympathetic – she found out that his name is Micah . . . so, by degrees we find out what place he is from. And there are children also – they were thrown from the train – they were hurt, but they lived—”
“The Handsel Children!” cried Ruth.
“Quoi? You can, perhaps, help us to discover where they belong . . .”
Chapter Eleven
THE NEXT DAY PASSED VERY SLOWLY IN COLD Shoulder Road.
Overnight they had written the letter to Sir David Greenaway.
Dere Podge, Is wrote, her spelling here and there corrected by Penny, do you remember me, Dido’s sister Is Twite. Well in fokston now things is turble bad. The mery gentry what smugles mamoth tusks is makin fokes lives a Mizry. Two many fokes getin kild. Too meny fokes scared to speke. An the 2 heds of the hole show is Admiril Fishkin an Dominik della Twite. Fishkin blew up the Throssle an Twite had mike Swanet drownded what was a Decint fella. They are a pare of Raskils. Tis time you shood do sumat about them Podge. Yours respecfly from Is Twite an my sister Peny Twite who sends her kind regards.
The baker’s boy promised that it should reach Dover Castle by noon.
Pye spent the day playing the ocarina, reading Snake Charming Without Tears – it was the first book she had encountered, so she was quite absorbed by it – and, a large part of the time, doing something which she vaguely described as ‘sending off messages’.
“Messages to who, Pye?” Is asked her.
“I dunno exakly. Some are kids right here, in Folkestone. Some a lot farther off.”