by G. P. Taylor
‘Draigorian fixed it with the Ministry of War. It’s because he owns the factory. He can get whatever he wants. If the war goes on, he’d do the same for you.’
‘I want to fight. I want to get the pilot of the plane that killed my mother,’ Jago shouted as he looked up to the clear and peaceful sky. ‘Doesn’t the war ever come here?’
‘Not a bomb or a plane, not since they opened the factory,’ Bia answered as she turned the corner of an alleyway between two alehouses. It was narrow, cold and smelt of fish. A trickle of water led from a pipe sticking out of a cottage wall and meandered around the pebbles that littered the ground. ‘It’s like they don’t come here for a reason. Not allowed to talk about it. Careless talk – you could be a spy.’
Bia found a ledge of rock just below the sea wall out of the wind. She opened up the bag and handed Jago some of the food. The breakers rolled in through the jaws of the harbour mouth and up on to the small beach beneath the houses. Looking up, he could see where the cliff had given way years before. Tufts of grass clung to fragile spurs of dark earth supported on broken pillars of rock. A gravestone perched on the edge as if it was soon to fall.
He looked at her. She seemed uncomfortable, despite her smile.
‘You haven’t asked about last night,’ Jago said as he chewed on the bread and sipped the tea she had poured from the flask.
‘What can I say? Jago Harker is a ghost boy? Not everyday someone appears in an empty room,’ Bia answered abruptly. ‘Then you tell me you were dreaming and Henson gives Mrs Macarty a button from your coat that had been in the hand of a woman attacked outside the bookshop …’
Bia gabbled her words hurriedly and looked out to sea.
‘I was dreaming,’ Jago answered as he watched a woman walking along the strand of the beach. She was picking sea coal and putting it into the sack she dragged behind her.
‘You weren’t there, Jago. The sheets on the bed were ruffled, but it was empty. When I turned around you had just appeared.’
He looked on as the woman picked up more coals.
‘Then I don’t know what to say. I thought it was a dream.’
‘Dreams don’t scream, dreams don’t make people vanish. What are you, Jago?’ Bia asked.
It was a question he couldn’t answer. The woman picking sea coal smiled at him as she walked by. She dragged the sack effortlessly even though it was half full of wet black rocks.
‘If it wasn’t a dream, then Henson can speak to the dead and Strackan is real,’ Jago replied.
‘Ebenezer Goode?’ Bia asked.
‘That was the man. I could see him.’
‘He was the first one to go missing when the comet came a hundred years ago. People say he walks in the graveyard. Haunts the place night after night. The legend was that he can’t get down any further than the thirteenth step. He’ll always have to stay to the churchyard and will never be free.’
‘Thirteenth step?’ Jago asked. ‘From the top or the bottom?’
‘Thirteen from the street. Each one is marked with a brass plate.’ Bia pointed to the steps. ‘But you should know that. You met him last night – that’s what Henson told Mrs Macarty.’
Jago looked away from her eyes. They seemed to peer inside him.
‘I wish it were a dream, but since my mother died, I have been hearing voices and seeing things. Now I think the dreaming is real.’
‘If you can see Ebenezer, you could find out where my mother is,’ Bia said hopefully.
‘You think she’s alive?’ Jago answered.
‘If the spirits say she is then all’s well. They should know if she’s dead.’ Bia got up and faced him as spirals of sand blew about her feet.
‘I don’t think I can trust what they say. They are all shadows, not like real people,’ Jago said as he turned to go.
‘Did you see Strackan? Is he real?’ Bia asked.
‘Yes,’ Jago said quickly.
‘Trouble is, Jago … I believe you,’ Bia answered as she followed him up the dark alleyway back to the street. ‘Changed my mind about many things since meeting you.’
‘I’m trouble, Bia. That’s what everyone in London always said about me. Think it must be true,’ Jago said. They turned the corner of the alley and joined the crowd that now filled Church Street.
‘What happened between you and Lorken?’ Bia asked as they pushed their way through the people.
‘Did he tell you?’ he asked. A knife grinder on the corner of the market square sang as he sparked blades against the stone.
‘I heard him talking to Staxley when I was making breakfast. He said he gave you a good hiding.’ Bia punched the air with her fist.
‘He can say what he likes,’ Jago was about to go on.
‘Trouble is, I heard him in his room last night. It’s the one next to mine. He was crying and moaning in his sleep. Not right for someone who has just won a fight.’
Jago shrugged his shoulders. It was enough to tell Bia he didn’t want to talk about Lorken any more.
‘I heard that Staxley knows who the Vampyre is,’ Jago said quietly as they huddled together by a shop window, waiting for a bread cart to squeeze by them.
‘That’s what he says. Told me that he would set the Vampyre on me and to watch my neck,’ she replied.
‘Do you think he does?’ Jago asked.
‘He’s a liar and a thief. Mrs Macarty can’t get him to do a job for longer than a day. Every time she sends him anywhere he always gets sacked – well, every time other than when he went to …’ She stopped talking – in the reflection of the shop window she saw Staxley, Lorken and Griffin standing behind them. Their images in the glass looked like three fading ghosts.
‘Heard you mention my name, scar-face,’ Staxley said as he prodded her with his stiff little finger.
‘Don’t, Staxley,’ Jago said as he stood between them, shielding her from Staxley’s narrow-eyed glare.
‘Thought you’d had enough and were going to obey now?’ Staxley asked.
Jago looked casually at the sky and then all around him before he replied.
‘Don’t think I will,’ he slowly mused as he stared Lorken eye to eye.
‘Do it, Lorken,’ Staxley muttered under his breath.
‘Not here, Stax – not now – too many people,’ Lorken stuttered.
‘Griff?’ Staxley asked wanting him to attack.
‘Lorken is right – too many people,’ Griffin answered as he stepped back.
‘Do it yourself, Staxley,’ Jago answered keenly, his hand clenched and ready to fight.
Staxley looked at each of his companions and saw their reluctance to fight.
‘Griff’s right – you’d only go running to Mrs Macarty and wailing. Lorken will sort you like he did last night.’ Staxley shrugged his shoulders like a trembling dog as he tried to keep his face steely thin.
‘Is that right, Lorken?’ Jago asked with a smile. ‘Just like last night?’
Lorken looked away and said nothing. Staxley knew what the gawping stare on his face really meant.
‘There’s more than one way to get you, Jago,’ Staxley said as he stepped back, pushing Lorken out of the way. ‘You will do what I say – just like everyone else. If not you are no use to me at all.’
Jago stood as tall as he could and stared at Staxley as he walked away.
‘You make it worse for yourself,’ Bia said as she stepped from his shadow. ‘If you just went with him it would be so easy for you.’
‘I wouldn’t do what he says, never. I don’t care what he does to me,’ Jago answered, never taking his eyes from the three as they walked into the crowd of people gathered around the market stalls.
‘Do you care what he will do to me?’ Bia asked softly, covering the scar on her lip with her hand.
‘I won’t let him,’ Jago answered. Without thinking he took hold of her hand and pulled it away from her face. ‘Friends don’t let that happen.’
‘Is that what we are, Jago Harker –
friends?’ Bia asked, hoping there would be more than just his words.
‘Friends,’ he said as he squeezed her hand.
Jago looked down the crowded street. Horses clattered over the cobbles, windows opened and woman at market stalls shouted out for what they had to sell. He had seen this so many times before in Brick Lane. It was both familiar and unfamiliar, the same and yet so different. Everyone went on as if the war was a memory or took place in a different world. Life had not changed; all was as it always had been. The air was clean and fresh. From somewhere nearby he could distinctly smell the aroma of cooked eggs.
The, without warning, his stomach suddenly churned and he shuddered and convulsed. He gripped the window ledge of the shop to stop himself falling over. Jago clutched his head as a searing, burning pain shot through his spine. A woman passing by stopped and looked at him, then another and another until a tightly knit group pressed in on them both.
‘What is it?’ Bia asked as she held him.
‘We have to run,’ Jago muttered. ‘Get out of here.’
‘Why?’ she asked, her voice tinged with fear as she gripped his hand.
‘They’re coming – enemy bombers,’ Jago said as he stumbled over the words that stuck in his throat.
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I just know, I can feel them.’ For a moment she did nothing. Jago tried to stand as the pain subsided. ‘They’re coming from over the sea – flying low – two of them. I can see them in my head.’
‘They don’t come here – never have – why should they now?’ she asked. All around them the crowd stared at Jago as he shook uncontrollably.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked a woman with a pushchair and screaming child.
‘Said the bombers were coming and that he could see them in his head,’ laughed the man sharpening knives on a gritstone.
‘It’s true – you’ve got to take cover, now!’ Jago shouted, knowing they didn’t believe him.
‘Don’t be stupid, lad – why should they come this far north when all the rich pickings are in London?’ the knife grinder asked mockingly as he tested the blade across his green and blistered tongue and then wiped the steel on the scarf around his neck.
‘I tell you, they’re coming. Two of them – here – now!’ Jago shouted to the crowd as the vision of two airplanes burnt painfully in his mind. ‘Run – hide – take cover.’
‘Are you stupid?’ the woman asked as she lifted her child from the pram and held him close.
‘It’s true,’ Jago said. He pulled Bia and began to run, pushing his way through the people. ‘They’re going to bomb the square – I can see it happening …’
‘Stupid boy,’ shouted the knife grinder as he spun the grit-stone with the long iron pedal tied to his shoe with raffia straps.
Far out to sea, shielded by the sun, two dark shapes sped low and fast across the water. With every passing second they got nearer the coast like dark avenging angels approaching with wings outstretched.
It was only when they were a mile out that the sound of their engines echoed against the cliffs. Everyone in the streets stopped and looked up to the sky. Bullets from the forward guns hit the harbour wall, cut across the bridge and then smashed into the town hall clock.
Bia stood at the street corner and looked up. The bomber banked to the north and as it did, the spinning casket fell from within it.
‘Bia, no!’ Jago shouted as he pulled her into the shop doorway.
The first bomb fell silently towards the marketplace as the other aircraft opened fire and smashed the grey slate tiles from the roof above their heads. Shards of stone fell all around them like splintered glass. They clattered against the cobbles, making the sound of a badly tuned piano played by a petulant child. Jago looked to the knife grinder – he had jumped from the grinding stool but could not get free from the bindings that held him to the machine.
The first explosion tore through the row of cottages that crowded against the quayside. People screamed as black acrid smoke billowed from the burning houses and the ground shook. The woman with the child pressed herself against the stone wall of the shop, holding her baby beneath her as she sobbed.
‘How did you know?’ Bia asked. She shielded her face as a crescendo of bullets smashed the windows along the street.
‘I could see it – feel it – burning in my head,’ Jago answered as he covered her with his coat.
There was another explosion, then another and another. The town shook and the screams of the people echoed through the narrow streets of the quayside. Smoke hung in the air and swirled in the morning breeze. The last aircraft banked steeply over the town and then turned back out to sea, the faint hum and drone of its baleful engines slowly fading.
Jago looked across the marketplace. The gritstone wheel of the knife grinder turned and turned. The foot pedal went back and forth. The leather shoe was still strapped in its place, but the man was gone.
‘Is it over?’ Bia asked as she looked up to the cloudless sky.
‘It has just started,’ Jago answered, looking around at the chaos of burning houses and blown out windows, his heart telling him what was to come.
[ 13 ]
The Labyrinth
THEY RAN AS HARD as they could, until their lungs felt as if they would burst. Bia never looked back to the town as they followed the road along the side of the estuary until it came to the factory and Hagg House above it. Jago had taken her by the hand and was urging her along. She tried to keep pace with him, knowing he wouldn’t stop until they were far away from the bombing.
It was only when they got to the narrow dirt road that led to the factory gates that Jago stopped running. He let go of her hand and slumped by the side of the road.
‘They’ll come back again,’ he said as he looked back to the town. ‘Not today, but they will be back. I can’t understand why they didn’t want to bomb the factory.’
Bia shrugged her shoulders. It was all she could do to stop herself from crying.
‘Never seen a bomber before, didn’t know they were so big,’ she said. She was lumbering up the hill, leaving Jago behind. ‘I just want to get inside, don’t feel safe with all that sky above me.’
‘I know when they are coming – I can see it in my head,’ Jago answered to try and calm her fear.
‘Doesn’t stop them bombing. That knife grinder just disappeared. It was as if he had never been.’ Bia waited for him to follow on.
Jago knew what she meant. His heart was burning for his mother – like the man in the marketplace, she too had just vanished.
‘Do you know Bradick – the man at the train station?’ Jago asked.
‘Why?’ she answered.
‘He seemed to know me. When I showed him a picture of my mother, he took it from me. It was as if it would do me no good if people found out who I was.’ Jago stood on the grass bank and looked back at the column of smoke that spewed from the bombed cottages on the quayside.
‘I know him, he was a friend of my father’s before the war,’ Bia answered as she stood in the shade of a tall chestnut tree and kicked the spiked fruit with her feet. ‘They were at school together.’
‘I wish I could show you the picture of my mother. It was taken here in Whitby. She lived here for a time,’ Jago said, trying to picture her living in such a place.
‘Lived here, in Whitby? Is it where she met your father?’ she asked, astonished that he had never mentioned this before.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know who he is. I was born in London. That’s where she went to when she left. She never spoke of anything and never of my father.’
Bia looked at him and tried to smile. ‘It’s a small place. Someone should know something about him.’
‘I don’t want to know,’ he replied. ‘What good is it now?’
Bia would have answered, but for a sharp voice coming from the garden.
‘Quickly! Quickly!’ a man screamed.
‘Draigorian – he’s outside – in
daylight.’ Bia ran towards the clumps of ornamental bamboo, where she had heard the voice coming from.
Jago gave chase and in three strides had caught her.
‘Thought he couldn’t stand the daylight?’ Jago asked as they jumped the steps to the ornamental Japanese garden that enclosed the lily pond.
‘He can’t. I have never known him to come out of the house, not in daylight,’ Bia said as she turned instinctively through a small archway made of cut stone.
‘Where is he?’ Jago asked as the garden returned to its silence once more.
‘There’s a place through here,’ Bia said, slowing to a walking pace. ‘It’s hard to find. He shouldn’t be outside.’
The dark path dropped through a slight ravine made of ornamental stones piled on top of one another. They were covered in thick moss with bursts of large, jagged ferns spilling in between.
‘Mr Draigorian!’ Jago shouted, hoping to hear the man’s voice.
‘This way, this way!’ came the reply from the far side of a tall stand of spiked dead flowers. They had dried on the stem to form a barricade of seeds pods and stalks in the overhang of a willow tree that stopped the light. ‘I can’t see, I can’t find my way back …’
It was then that Jago saw him in the shadow of a tall tree. Draigorian leant against a standing stone that had been placed in the ground. It looked as if it had been there for many years.
‘You all right?’ Bia asked as she saw him.
Draigorian nodded. His hat was tilted across his face to shade him from the light, and his eyes were covered by a thick black scarf. For a moment Jago thought of the night before.
‘Strackan …’ he whispered to himself.
‘Just a man, Jago. An ordinary man who came outside when he heard the bombing,’ he answered as if he had heard what Jago had whispered. ‘I thought I would be safe here, but I have lost the glasses that protect my eyes.’ Draigorian gestured with his gloved hand to the ground near his feet. ‘When they fell from my face, the light was so bright that I was blinded. I cannot see where they are.’
‘They’re here,’ Bia said. She picked up a pair of thick-lensed dark spectacles from the gravel path near to where he stood.