The Cockatrice Boys

by Joan Aiken

  “Oh, it was just I remembered the baby Snark I found that last evening, sheltering by the dustbins, when I threw out the tea leaves. (Chopped grass they were, really, but Aunt Floss used them for telling futures.) The baby Snark looked so miserable and floppy I thought I’d bring it in for a warm-up. So I put it in the airing cupboard, and I was going to let it out first thing on Christmas morning before Aunt Floss came across it. Only I forgot. Now I do wonder…”

  “Well, let that be a lesson to you, dearie,” said Mrs. Churt. “Your auntie don’t sound no great loss from all that I heard. But there’s some things as oughtn’t to be brought inside. And we certainly don’t want no baby Snarks on this train.”

  Chapter three

  For various reasons, it was just as well that Sauna’s first few days aboard the Cockatrice Belle were passed in the shelter of Manchester’s underground railway station, to which roomy, if gloomy, refuge the train had been shifted under cover of dark.

  “Why don’t the train start off and go somewhere?” asked Sauna, puzzled and a touch dissatisfied, on the first morning. “I thought trains was supposed to go swizzing all over the country?”

  “We’re waiting for orders,” Dakin explained. “The Belle’s an army train, see. We got to get a message from the commander-in-chief up in London town afore we can take off.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “General Grugg-Pennington.”

  “So why the pize don’t he send off an order, ’stead of having the troops eating their heads off in Manchester?”

  Sauna was extremely anxious to get away from that city. Although no further news or information had been received regarding Aunt Floss, the time spent by Sauna in her stuffy flat had been so shadowy and horrible that even a mention of it was enough to cast her into depression. And the possibility of ever going back there was not to be thought of.

  “What did she do that was so awful?” Dakin asked once.

  “I don’t want to talk about her. And,” said Sauna, “I don’t believe the baby Snark did do for her. She’d soon send it packing. Anyway,” she asked, “why don’t General Grugg-Thingummy send the colonel an order, then?”

  “Colonel Clipspeak can’t get through to London. There’s too much cosmic dust interference over London.”

  Despite Sauna’s wish to get away, this had certain advantages. Just at present there was so much stored-up energy inside her, after years spent in her aunt’s tiny flat with hands tied behind her back, that she might have found the cramped quarters allotted to Assistant mess Orderly (Female) on the Cockatrice Belle no great improvement. But while the train was at a standstill military rules were somewhat relaxed. The troops could play table tennis and snooker on platform one, while Sauna and Dakin were permitted to race up and down platform two hundreds of times a day, until a bit of Sauna’s pent-up force had been dissipated.

  “Bless her liddle heart, I only wish we could send her out on useful errands for wild garlic roots and samphire,” remarked Mrs. Churt, glancing out of the window as she brought in Colonel Clipspeak’s mid-morning oatmeal muffin and cup of acorn coffee. “Look at them, how they do scamper! It’s a shame they can’t go outside, but I can see that wouldn’t do, not with all these boojums and Telepods a-fluttering around.”

  Then Colonel Clipspeak had a practical idea.

  “Issue the gal with a skipping-rope,” he told Sergeant Bellswinger.

  “A skipping-rope, sir?” The sergeant was taken aback. “I don’t reckon as there’s such an article on board, Colonel, sir.”

  “Well! Use your ingenuity, dammit, man! Make one! Find something in the stores that can be converted.”

  So a piece of cord was unwound from around a crate of Gorgon goggles, and handles were contrived from some as yet unused Hydra truncheons.

  “There you are, chick,” said Handyman-Corporal Nark, presenting Sauna with the finished article.

  “What’s it for? What do I do with it?” demanded Sauna, gazing in bemusement at the length of rope with a handle at each end.

  “You never used a skip-rope, you poor little commodity? Why, you skips with it. You does it like this. Come on to the platform.”

  He was about to demonstrate, when Sergeant Bellswinger ordered. “Here! You pass that to me. I’ll show her.”

  Tall, stringy, bony and red-faced, the sergeant had not manipulated a skipping-rope in over forty years. But the skill with which he had been accustomed to outskip his sister Lil on Stepney Green had not deserted him: he could perform on his right foot or his left, or both, double-through, pirouette, and even achieve two cuts-up and a polka, meanwhile whistling Suppé’s Light Cavalry overture. Sauna watched completely absorbed.

  “Coo!” she breathed. “It’ll take me years and years to do it as good as you, Ser’nt!”

  “Wants plenty o’ practice, that’s all,” said the sergeant, puffing modestly, handing back the rope. “Maybe, once we’re in motion, the colonel might give permission for you to use the observation platform.”

  In the meantime, all day and every day, Sauna practised on platform two, and in less than forty-eight hours fifty more hand-crafted skipping-ropes had made their appearance up and down the train; and half the Cockatrice Corps were out practising along with her.

  “Not very dignified, hey, Sergeant?” said the colonel.

  “Never mind, sir, it’ll do ’em no harm. Keeps ’em fit, and their mind off things,” said the sergeant. “Just till you gets that-ere message.”

  For the cosmic interference between London and Manchester had increased to such a degree that as yet no orders had come through from headquarters.

  But one morning Sauna carried the colonel’s breakfast plateful of bread and butter to this cabin. (He continued to prefer brewing his own tea with the electric kettle, for he said Mrs. Churt’s tea was like doormat clippings soaked in Worcestershire Sauce; but he did enjoy a piece of her fresh-baked carrot bread, thinly sliced and buttered, with his tea.)

  Sauna, laying the bone-china plate with its two paper-fine slices on the mahogany bedside shelf, suddenly cried out: “Oh, mercy me, sir, why your kettle’s a-talking to you—just like the one in my Auntie Floss’s place, that is … Well I never!”

  “I heard nothing?” said the colonel snappishly. (Sauna had woken him from an enjoyable dream of winning the regimental point-to-point on his grey charger Battleaxe, long since, alas, rendered down into soup and Snark masks.) “What, pray, child, did you understand the kettle to say?”

  “It said—half a mo, now, it’s talking again—it’s a-saying Leicester Square Command Post, Gladiolus, Gladiolus. Five two zero six three.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Cockatrice Belle, Cockatrice Belle,” went on Sauna. “Proceed south to Willoughby-on-the-Wolds via Lincoln, where you will pick up the Archbishop, Dr. Philip Wren.”

  “Good heavens. Go on. Via Lincoln, you said?”

  “At Willoughby-on-the-Wolds take on board consignment of special-trained German Gridelin hounds. Then reroute in a northerly direction, destination approximate locality of the Kingdom of Fife. More briefing for this mission will be supplied later. Do you receive me? Gladiolus, Gladiolus, over, over and out. Message ends.”

  “God bless my soul!” bellowed the colonel, shooting upright in bed and staring at Sauna. His eyeglass fell out into the bread and butter.

  “Can you repeat that?” he enquired more quietly in a minute, picking up one of the slices of bread and butter, removing his eyeglass from it, folding the slice into four, and demolishing it in one snap.

  “Oh yes, sir,” Sauna said. “I’m ever so good at learning by heart. Because of all the time I was tied up at Auntie’s. I used to learn the phone book, for that’s all there was.”

  And she repeated the message to the colonel twice more.

  “What was it saying at the start, when you first heard it?” demanded the colonel, beginning on his second slice of carrot bread.

  “Only the date,” said Sauna. “New Year’s Day.”
/>
  “But that isn’t today,” objected the colonel. “That’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Oh, I often gets a message two days ahead,” explained Sauna. “Auntie used to get real cross and upset, for I’d see the postman coming up the front steps on Monday, and then he wouldn’t ring the bell till Wednesday.”

  “Humph,” said the colonel. “Most remarkable. You can run along now, child. But send Major Scanty and Lieutenant Upfold to me.”

  By the time these officers had reached his walnut-panelled state-room the colonel was up and dressed and pacing about. He kept referring to a large relief map of the United Kingdom which occupied the whole of the end wall.

  “Ahem, gentlemen! It seems that the child Sauna, as well as being able to see through walls, has also a proclivity of precognition. She can receive a message from GHQ forty-eight hours before it is sent.”

  “Quite convenient that, sir,” remarked Lieutenant Upfold.

  “Most gratifying,” said Major Scanty.

  “Too bad they ain’t running the Derby these days,” went on the lieutenant thoughtfully. “We’d all stand to make our fortunes.”

  The colonel quelled him with a frown.

  “It appears probable,” he continued, “that the day after tomorrow we shall receive instructions to proceed to Willoughby-on-the-Wolds, via Lincoln, and then direct our course northwards once more, towards the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland.”

  “Scotland! Bless my soul! We should see some lively action up there, I fancy. Chimeras and Chichivaches they have in those parts, do they not?”

  “Lincoln,” murmured the Lieutenant. “Pity it ain’t the season for Lincoln races.”

  “The Kingdom of Fife, eh?” meditated Major Scanty. “I seem to recollect hearing about a great concentration of monsters in that region—as if some malign influence might be directing them from thereabouts. It has always been a queer cut-off region: the Firth of Forth below it, and the Firth of Tay above. And the Ochils to the west—those hills have always had a most sinister reputation. Six-legged beasts, you know, and queer things coming out of holes. Though I believe the Scots are not troubled by Snarks; the climate, fortunately, is too cold for them north of the Roman Wall.”

  Major Scanty was a thin, quiet, learned professor of zoology from Fishguard University who had been co-opted into the army because of his extensive knowledge of, and acquaintance with monsters.

  “What they do have in Scotland and the north of England,” he pursued, “is an abundance of Trolls and Kelpies. Trolls have become a large-scale pest. However, very fortunately, they are only active at night. Kelpies may be encountered at any time, but, on the whole, not beyond ten miles or so from the coast. (Or, of course, from lakes and rivers.) The impressions of their feet are to be found in the red sandstone of Forfarshire,” he told his colleagues.

  “Quite so! Quite so!” snapped the colonel. “No doubt we shall require different defences and methods of warfare against such beings from those required against monsters in the Midlands. That, however, can be discussed as we proceed on our way to Willoughby.”

  “Er?” enquired Lieutenant Upfold diffidently. “I suppose there is a station at Willoughby-on-the-Wolds?”

  The colonel threw him another quelling look from under bushy white eyebrows and had recourse to the wall map again.

  “Harrumph!” he remarked, after a few minutes’ intensive study. “It seems that there is not. But there appear to be stations at Old Dalby and Nether and Upper Broughton, not too far distant from Willoughby. No doubt an expeditionary force may be despatched from one of those. I ask myself why, of all locations in the kingdom, that obscure spot should have been chosen for the delivery of those animals.”

  “What animals, sir?”

  “Specially trained Gridelin hounds from Germany.”

  “Oh, gracious me, what a piece of good fortune!” exclaimed Major Scanty, his thin face alight with enthusiasm. “I have heard of those, yes, indeed I have! And always wished to make a study of them. I understand that they are sovereign in use against Telepods and Bycorns; also against that much more dangerous beast, the Mirkindole.”

  “Don’t know Mirkindoles,” remarked Lieutenant Upfold, studying the map. “Are they a northern special, like Trolls and Kelpies?”

  “Yes, indeed they are. The Mirkindole, you may know, a member of the Basilisk family, has a tiger’s body and the face of an elderly dyspeptic gentleman with long curling horns. It is particularly deadly, since the eyes have hypnotic power. But the Gridelin hounds, I have heard, are champions at running them down. What a superlatively lucky circumstance that we are to be equipped with some of these excellent and faithful canine quadrupeds. I believe I have heard that they are bred in Hanover. From where, I wonder, and from whom have they been sent?”

  “No idea at present,” said the colonel. “The message didn’t state. Now here’s a knotty question, and I’d like your views on it, gentlemen.”

  The two officers looked at him attentively.

  “The message, which the child Sauna passed to me, was dated New Year’s Day, two days ahead of where we are now. Ought I to act upon it immediately? Set out directly? Or—or not?”

  As the colonel put this question an extremely loud crash was heard overhead, and a few pieces of broken metal and glass were seen to fall past the windows on to the station platform. (Fortunately it happened to be the period of the crew’s mid-morning snack-break, and all the men, as well as Sauna and Dakin, were aboard the train, partaking of watery cocoa and turnip crackers.)

  “Bellswinger!” barked the colonel on the intercom. “What was that?”

  “It was a dive-bomb attack by half a dozen Snarks, sir,” came Bellswinger’s reply. “On the station roof at ground level. But they done themselves in, not one of ’em survived. We got all the bodies, and I’ve a party of men up there already, sir, repairing the hole with brown paper and filler-tape.”

  “Tape! That won’t hold them off for long, man.”

  “I know, sir, but it’s all we got left. Stores are running low.”

  “Humph! Very well, Thanks, Sergeant.”

  The colonel replaced the receiver of his house-phone. “I think that settles it, gentlemen. We can’t afford to remain here any longer. To keep on the move is our only hope of survival. And we can pick up some more stores at Lincoln.”

  “But can you get a message through to Leicester Square command post?” asked the major doubtfully. “To tell them your plans?”

  “That is what we now have to discover. Upfold, pray fill the kettle and switch it on.”

  The kettle, though convenient, was a chancy and unreliable instrument for transmitting and receiving messages. Sometimes, when boiling briskly, it would render loud and clear conversations between people or stations who were many thousands of miles apart.

  “South Pole, South Pole to Command Station Tasmania: we are running out of herrings. Over.”

  “Easter Island here, South Pole. I think we have a crossed line. No herrings in this area. Only heads. Over…”

  “Capricorn-Cancer Area Control speaking. We have no herrings. Could let you have a few goats or crabs…”

  “Perhaps the kettle might perform better if the child Sauna were present in the room?” diffidently suggested Lieutenant Upfold. “As a small radio, you know, often works better if somebody is holding it?”

  “Possibly so, possibly,” snapped the colonel, vexed that he had not thought of this himself. “Bellswinger!” he ordered on the intercom. “Let the child Sauna be sent here at once. On the double.”

  Sauna arrived on the double, out of breath, and with smudges of black on her face and the pillow-ticking apron she wore over her army issue dungarees. (During her sojourn on the Cockatrice Belle, brief as it had been, she had already grown out of the tattered clothes which had been big enough while she was surviving on a siege diet.)

  “Sir!” she panted, saluting smartly as Bellswinger had taught her.

  “Why is your face
black, child?”

  “Polishing buttons, sir.”

  “Oh, very well. Never mind it. Pray lay your hand over the handle of that kettle.”

  “Yessir…”

  * * *

  At the end of two hours all the persons in the colonel’s cabin were red-faced, wild-haired, and damp with perspiration. The room was full of steam. But a tolerably workable method had been evolved, by means of which, with Upfold using the colonel’s dress sabre as an aerial, holding its tip against the spout of the kettle and pointing the hilt in variations of three hundred and sixty degrees, contact with the Leicester Square headquarters was at last established.

  Not before some very odd conjunctions, however.

  A stream of spiky language issuing from the spout of the kettle threw Major Scanty into transports of excitement, and was identified by him as Hungarian. It seemed he had once spent time in that country and had friends there. Indeed he would have liked to prolong the conversation.

  “They tell me, colonel, that there are no monsters at all in their country; indeed the continent of Europe is at present free from such a plague as has infested this kingdom. Is not that very singular, sir?”

  “It would be if it were so, but I don’t for a moment believe it,” grunted the colonel, who wanted his lunch. “Why should this island be singled out for special misusage? A most improbable notion! Pray, Upfold, shift the blade and try to find us the correct station.”

  Upfold, frowning with the concentration required to shift the sword blade the infinitesimal fraction of a centimetre that would pick up a different wavelength, obeyed and a pale-blue flame ran, for a second, along the sabre to the kettle.

  A tiny, distant, but crystal-clear voice commanded: “Unloose the tempest.”

  “Master. It shall be done.”

  “Find the loose connection. Destroy it.”

  “To hear is to obey.”

  Lieutenant Upfold’s concentration slipped momentarily and a new voice took over.

  “Saturn, Saturn,” it was saying impatiently. “Ring five hundred and two. Five hundred and two. Please adjust your circumference. Adjust your circumference. We have crackle from cosmic dust.”