The Cockatrice Boys

by Joan Aiken

  He beamed at the colonel and took a large swig of seaweed toddy.

  “Sir,” said Major Scanty anxiously, “I think we should be embarking. We ought to leave before midnight and—ahem—I fancy that some of the men have already exceeded their two-glass ration.”

  “You are right, major. Bellswinger! Tell Catchpole to sound the recall.”

  Sad farewells were exchanged, and Dakin carried the archbishop’s luggage on board and deposited it in the cabin that Lieutenant Frisbeen had been obliged to vacate.

  “Thank you, thank you, my boy,” said Dr. Wren, following him. Dakin observed that the archbishop had a round domed head, mostly bald, except for a fringe of brown hair, and bright brown eyes, and walked with a decided limp. This, as he explained to Dakin, was due to the poisoned sting of a Basilisk, which had cornered him in the cathedral close.

  “How did you escape it, sir?” asked Dakin, dumping a heavy bag of books (all the archbishop’s luggage seemed to consist of books).

  “The very best way to elude the Basilisk, like the Mirkindole—they belong to the same family—is to turn round and stare hard at it over your shoulder. That generally does for them at once. It does require some resolution, however. And very often there isn’t time,” sighed the archbishop. “The Mirkindole of course is far more dangerous. Thank you, thank you, my boy.” He offered Dakin a coin, but Dakin said, “Thank you, sir; we don’t really have much use for money on the train. In fact, not at all. What I’d really like, sir—if it’s not an impertinence—”

  “What is that, then? Ask whatever you like?” said Dr. Wren kindly.

  “Might I have a read of some of your books?”

  “My dear boy! Of course you may,” said the archbishop, greatly touched. “I know how you feel, for I never travel anywhere without books. Here, have one now.” And he fished out The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. “There! That should keep you going till our next stop.”

  “Oh, sir! Thank you!”

  Dakin went bounding off down the corridor as if his heels were on springs.

  “Look what he’s lent me!” he said to Sauna in the galley. “You can have a read of it too!”

  “That’s funny,” said Sauna, looking at the title page. “Now it comes back to me that when I used to get glimpses of you at Auntie Floss’s place sometimes you were carrying a book like that under your arm.…”

  Chapter four

  When the Cockatrice Belle left Lincoln, snow was beginning to fall, wafted in over the Lincolnshire wolds by a bitter wind from eastern Siberia. Fierce little flakes stung and clung; they climbed and caked on the windows; and Dakin sighed as he thought of all the extra cleaning and polishing that would be necessary the next day.

  “But this weather should help to discourage the Snarks,” said Major Scanty, rubbing his hands together as he looked at the snow piling against the windows of the officers’ mess.

  “Just so long as we don’t get derailed or stuck in a drift on our way to Nether Broughton,” muttered the colonel pessimistically. “Or so long as the expeditionary force don’t get lost in the blizzard.”

  “Who are you thinking of sending out, sir?” enquired Lieutenant Upfold.

  “Well, let me see. Bellswinger had better be in charge of the main party. At least fifteen men will be needed; they can be in charge of two Gridelin hounds a piece. Bellswinger knows the country, apparently; he says he used to stay with cousins in Willoughby when he was a lad.”

  Upfold looked disappointed; he had hoped to be given command of the troop.

  “You can lead the relief force, Upfold, should one be needed,” the colonel told him kindly, and Upfold’s face brightened up.

  The monsters to be found on these uplands were unfamiliar to the men; they were mostly Sphynxes and Gorgons. Being of southern origin they were not very active or mobile in such wintry weather, and made no serious attacks on the train until it had crossed the River Trent and was climbing into hilly country again.

  But at Nether Broughton, where they stopped to refuel with cakes of condensed diesel, there was a sharp, pitched battle with Griffins and Hydras who came coiling up off the track as Lance-Corporal-Engineer Pitkin was performing the hazardous operation of sliding diesel bricks out of the aluminium containers slung under the officers’ mess truck. The monsters were finally routed by means of flame-throwers, but not without loss of life and a broken glass panel in the driver’s cab.

  “We’ll need to replace that before we can move, sir,” said Ensign Driver Catchpole. “Can’t drive ’er along with all the weather a-blowing into the cab.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “Matter of a couple of hours, sir.”

  “In that case,” said the colonel, “we had best send the expeditionary party to Willoughby from here, while the work is put in hand. What do you say, Bellswinger?”

  “I’d say yes, sir. It can’t be more than eight or nine miles to Willoughby from here. And the climatic conditions are helpful.”

  If helpful, the climatic conditions were not enjoyable. A zipping blizzard was sending horizontal skeins of snow like wire whiplashes into the men’s faces. While the expeditionary party were putting on waterproof boots and fur-lined mitts and Balaclavas under their Snark masks, Bellswinger said to the colonel, “Can I take drummer boy Dakin Prestwich along, sir?”

  “In heaven’s name, what for? You won’t be needing a drummer.”

  “No, sir, but it struck me—these hounds we’re a-going for to fetch have all been reared in Germany, right? And it’s all Nottinghamshire to a nutmeg that they won’t understand English words of command.”

  “Humph,” said the colonel after a pause. “I hadn’t thought of that. But what use will Prestwich be in the circumstances?”

  “The lad’s a fluent German speaker, sir. On account of how it seems he spent two years underground in the strong-room of Barclays Bank, Shepherd’s Bush. While he was there he learned German from two old lady schoolteachers who happened to be taking shelter there too.”

  “Oh, I see. Very well. You may take him along. Corporal Nark!”

  “Yessir!”

  “While the party are gone I want you to construct thirty strong, roomy dog kennels for the Gridelin hounds that we shall be taking on board.”

  “Er, yessir. How bit will the hounds be, sir?”

  “Major Scanty says they are about the size of an Irish wolf-hound—that is, about one metre high at the shoulder. And length in proportion, naturally.”

  “I see,” said Corporal Nark. He scratched his head. “And you want thirty kennels. And where are these kennels to be put, sir?”

  “Why,” said the colonel, “they will have to go in the men’s mess.”

  “I see, sir…”

  Meanwhile Dakin, interrupted in his eager perusal of chapter five of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was joyfully hauling on gloves and boots and Snark mask.

  “Oh, Dakin!” said Sauna, rather upset at his suddenly being whisked off like this on active service. “You will be careful, won’t you? Don’t forget that the baby Griffins are the nastiest. Their teeth are poisonous.”

  “Don’t you fret your head, I’ll be careful,” said Dakin, giving her a hasty hug. “And I’ll bring you back a Gridelin hound for your very own.” He seized his drum and bounded away. (“For you might as well bring the drum along,” Bellswinger had said. “The monsters don’t like the rat-a-tat one bit, and my guess is that it may be helpful to have covering sound while the hand-over is taking place.”)

  “You know your route, Bellswinger?” asked the colonel.

  “No problem, sir. We just follow the line of the Mink Canal. It runs due east from Nether Broughton to Willoughby.”

  “Why is it called the Mink Canal?” Dakin enquired, trotting along through the howling snowy dark between Bellswinger and the flat inky water of the Cut which kept swallowing the snow as if it were endlessly thirsty.

  “Why, matter o’ forty years ago, long before all thi
s hullabaloo with monsters, there used to be a big mink trade between the Norfolk Broads and Ireland—mink was the fashion just then in Dublin and Cork. As there was all those wild mink running loose down in Norfolk, they used to catch them and ship them by the Cut straight across to Portmadoc. And on to Ireland. Take that, you ugly brute!” he broke off to aim his Snark gun at a Wyvern which was stalking them.

  Croaking, transfixed, it splashed down into the canal.

  “So, no question, that’s the way they’ll have brought these-here hounds. Train from Germany, submarine to the Wash, canal boat on from Boston. Now you watch out, my boy, there’s a whole posse of Footmonsters ahead.”

  The Footmonsters were easy enough to tackle with electric prongs, which overthrew and unbalanced them in their flight; being such top-heavy creatures, once they had fallen into the water they almost inevitably drowned.

  So battling doggedly against intermittent opposition and dreadful weather—mixed monsters, wind, snow, and sleet—the party proceeded to Willoughby-on-the-Wolds, which had once been a handsome little town with a spacious view north, east, and west. Now it lay in ruins; shattered walls were crusted with snow, which also lay thick and untrodden along the approach roads; and the broken church tower rose up like an empty candlestick in the middle of the deserted churchyard.

  “But it’s Willoughby, all right,” said Bellswinger, when they reached the outskirts after a two-hour jog. “I remember it from when my dad’s cousin Samson used to live here. There was a fine old inn called the Drum and Gaiters; right by the canal, it used to be. Keep moving, lads; once we stop, the ’trices start to gather like wasps round a jam jar.”

  But as they approached the graveyard a troubling sound greeted them: a sad and eerie howling which seemed to issue from somewhere in the middle of the village.

  “Sounds as if it might be coming from the church,” muttered Bellswinger. “Look sharp, lads! The monsters are mustering thicker and thicker. Dakin, you best beat a rally. Ensign Noggs ’ull keep you covered. Seems there’s plenty of mischief ahead.”

  Indeed, when they rounded a corner and came within view of the churchyard, a terrible sight met their eyes—for just at that moment a large black snow cloud slipped away from in front of the moon, whose rays displayed everything in stark black and white. The churchyard was all scattered with corpses—Dakin wondered if there were not more bodies lying on the trampled snow than were buried in the graves beneath it. He gazed in fright and horror, still mechanically rattling away on his drum. Men, dogs, and monsters lay strewn all over such other in awful confusion.

  “Saints preserve us!” muttered Bellswinger, staring about him. “Look at them all! Looks like every single dog’s been done in. And all the folk, too.”

  “But I thought these dogs were champions at fighting Snarks?” said Dakin.

  “So they are. (Don’t stop your tattoo, boy; these pesky critters are mustering up above, like gulls to a shipwreck.) But there’s Basilisks, too, here; you can always tell; see, those are Basilisk prints in the snow.”

  He pointed to a huge three-toed print.

  “No dog—nothing—can stand up to them. Keep together, boys! Guard each others’ backs. Aim outwards! Make for the church. There’s still some Basilisks about—you can tell by the whistling.”

  Embattled, struggling, keeping close together, fighting for their lives, the group made for a door in the church tower and stood with their backs against it, Dakin all the time whacking away on his drum like a demented woodpecker, while the monsters swooped overhead, and dived, and pounced, and made racing attacks across the snow with outstretched wings and clashing beaks, but then paused and backed away, annoyed and alarmed by the staccato vibrations.

  “Help!” called a faint voice from inside the church door, and again they heard that lugubrious howl. Could there be a dog inside there? “Help…”

  “Let us in, then!” shouted Bellswinger, pounding on the door with the handle of his Hydra hammer.

  And the door at last swung open and they all tumbled through into darkness, one on top of another, with Dakin desperately wrapping himself round his drum in order to protect it from other people’s Snark prongs.

  “Who’s here?” called Bellswinger.

  The answer came in an exhausted feeble murmur from somewhere at floor level.

  “Tom Flint, Canine Rescue Mission.”

  It was followed by a series of weak, melancholy barks.

  “What’s been going on in this town?” demanded Bellswinger, as the troop gradually sorted themselves out, and somebody had the sense to fetch and light up a battle-flare, which illuminated the scene with a greenish glow.

  They found that they were in the vestry, at the west end of the church under the bell tower. It was an empty stony chamber. Everything portable had long ago been removed. A stone stair climbed the wall to a trapdoor hole, which presumably led to the belfry.

  “Bells!” said Sergeant Bellswinger, looking up. “Monsters can’t stand bells. Are there bells still in this tower, Tom Flint?”

  “How would I know?” mumbled the thin, tattered man who had let them in. “I only came to this place for the first time today. And I never want to see it again.”

  “Well, we better find out,” said Bellswinger. “You, Prestwich, you look good for a few pulls on a rope—Brag, Minch, Coldarm, Forby, Wintless—up those stairs at the double and let’s see if we can give the brutes a bit of a ding-dong.”

  The men, with Dakin, clattered up the stairs to the belfry above, and were relieved to find long, dusty, beaded bell-ropes dangling down through holes in the ceiling. The bells themselves must be in a yet higher loft, out of sight.

  “We better hope they’re still up there and no metal-eating monster’s munched ’em up,” said the sergeant, giving a tremendous heave on the rope nearest him. A solemn clang responded from above. “Right, boys! Give those critters out there a real concert. One, two, three—pull!”

  They pulled with a will. And the bells began to reply in a brassy, chaotic chorus. The men heaved, and dragged, and swung, and swore, and hauled, and jerked, until they were first hot, then dizzy with fatigue. Luckily there were only nine bells, and twenty men had managed to survive the trek along the canal and the skirmish in the churchyard. As one ringer grew too dizzy to go on, another climbed up, tapped him on the shoulder and took over his rope.

  The noise they made was tremendous.

  When somebody relieved Dakin of his rope he crept carefully down the stone stairway and sat wearily on the bottom step. His knees would only just hold him, and his head rang and sang with the row that was going on up above.

  Slowly he looked about him. A few of the men had lit a small fire. Dakin wondered where they had found the wood for it. Could they have used pews from the church? He did not like to ask. They had brought out carrots and parsnips and rolls spread with mushroom paste, which Mrs. Churt had supplied for the expedition, and were toasting these at the flames.

  Dakin looked about for the man who had let them in. Tom Flint. There he was being offered a toasted roll by Ensign Quickstep. He took it slowly and stared at it as if he were too tired to bite.

  Then Dakin’s eyes opened wide for, beyond Tom Flint, in the shadows, he noticed for the first time a great beast, the largest dog he had ever seen in his whole life.

  “Is that a Gridelin hound?” he asked Fred Coldarm, who sat on the floor beside him wearily chewing on a toasted carrot.

  “Reckon so. Couldn’t be owt else, could it? He’s a big feller, ain’t he? Pity there’s only one of ’em left—after we come all this way, and took all this trouble.”

  “Mind you,” put in Private Wintless, who sat beyond him, “if there’d a been thirty of those Gridelin hounds—like there was supposed to be—dear knows where we could find space for them on the old Belle. Ask me, it’s just as well there’s only one left.”

  “But what went wrong? I thought these dogs were supposed to be hot stuff against monsters?”

  “Tha
t feller there, Tom Flint, he said it was summat to do with the customs inspector at Boston. A man called Coaltar. Listen: he’s telling how it was that chap’s fault.”

  Dakin went over to squat by the fire and listen as he munched his roasted parsnip.

  “There was fifteen Hanoverian dog-handlers with the troop,” explained the doleful Tom Flint. “And they’d had instructions to come all the way on the canal boat and see the dog-pack handed over to your lot, and give proper directions for feeding and exercise and words of command and all that. But that Coaltar, the harbourmaster at Boston, he wouldn’t let the Hanoverians come ashore off their submarine. Very toploftical, he was. Said they’d got the wrong papers, or summat, and he couldn’t authorize ’em to go no further … One o’ those jumped-up nobs in office he is, acts as if his hair is hung with diamonds. So the poor German dog-handlers was real upset, for they said nobody would know how to give the dogs their orders, and the beasts wouldn’t understand owt that was told ’em in English. (And nor they could, as it turned out.) But that didn’t cut any ice with His Nibs Mr. Coaltar at Boston. All he would do was send for me and my six mates at the Boston Canine Rescue Mission and tell us we were to accompany the dogs in the canal boat. So the Hanoverians—real furious-mad, they were, I’ve never seen coves so upset—they give us some written notes on a bit o’ paper, diet rules and all that, words of command—and then back they had to go, back on their submarine.”

  “What happened to your six mates from the mission?” asked Bellswinger, who had come down the stairs at this moment, having been relieved by Ensign Priddy.

  The bellringing up above was slowing down and becoming more fragmented.

  Tom Flint gave a wretched glance towards the door.

  “Out there. All of ’em bought it,” he said simply. “I saw Ern munched up by a Bandersnatch. And Sam Todd was cut in half by a Hammerhead … And the poor dogs was just outnumbered and demolished and done for—without anybody to give ’em the proper orders—it was a right shambles, I can tell you. And some chaps from the village turned out to help us, but they was all cut down too—”