Moonlocket

by Peter Bunzl

  From somewhere deep in the cellar, they could hear voices. “Jack,” Lily whispered. She’d recognize his gravelly tone anywhere. She put a hand across Tolly’s chest to stop him going downstairs, and gave Malkin a warning look, to make sure he stayed quiet.

  She could just make out Robert’s voice. He sounded quiet and pleading, full of fear. Then there was the noise, of someone descending a ladder, and a clattering as if something heavy was being pulled closed across a gap.

  When it finally fell silent, they slipped down the stairs and found themselves in a long dark room. No one made a sound. In the centre of the floor was a round manhole cover, open a sliver. A crescent moon of light emanated from it, as if someone below was holding a flickering lantern.

  The light disappeared; Lily guessed they were walking away from the manhole. “We have to get this open,” she said, desperately pulling at the cover’s edge – but it was too heavy for her to move.

  Tolly and Malkin looked around the room for something to use as leverage.

  “Will this do?” Tolly pulled the wooden pole of a mop from a pile of junk.

  They wedged it under the edge of the cover and, with the three of them putting their weight on it, they managed to lever the grate aside.

  A rusted metal ladder led deep underground. The aroma that wafted up from it was like rotten vegetables mixed with rubbish left out for days.

  “Pooh-eee!” said Tolly, holding his nose.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” Lily said. “You can wait for the police.”

  “I want to.” He put a hand on her arm. “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about earlier, and you’re right – when you’re different, people don’t believe you’re as good as they are. I need to prove them wrong about that too. We can do this together, I know it. We can recapture Jack and the diamond, and rescue Robert!”

  He reached for the ladder and climbed into the hole. Soon only the top of his head was visible, lit by the lantern hooked over his arm, and then he disappeared into darkness altogether.

  “Come on, Malkin,” Lily said. “Us next.”

  “Oh no,” said Malkin. “I’ve already been dumped in a lake this week. I’m not setting paw in some rat-infested sewer, even if it is to save Robert. Water’s not good for me. Besides, what kind of person buries a diamond in a pipe full of sewage anyway?”

  “If you won’t set foot in there, then I’ll have to carry you.” Lily picked Malkin up and threw him over her shoulder.

  “This again! You make me feel like a fox-fur ruff!” Malkin complained. “And I wish you’d stop climbing up and down things! It’s getting to be rather a habit.”

  Lily ignored him and clasped the rungs of the ladder with her free hand. The metal hoops were crusty with rust and slippery with wet dirt and she could hear the chittering of bugs, cockroaches and spiders as she descended. Light thrown by Tolly’s lantern revealed their tiny dark shapes, crawling about the walls. He stood uneasily on a narrow promontory at the base of the ladder, barely as wide as his two feet.

  “I can’t see Jack,” he hissed up to her. Then, mumbling softly to himself, “This place reeks. Still, better out than in I say – though I’d rather it wasn’t wafting around us.”

  Malkin, round Lily’s neck, turned up his nose in disgust. “Ugh, you’re right,” he whispered. “It does smell awful!”

  The stench made Lily gag. She jumped down beside Tolly and lowered the fox to the ground.

  “I said I wouldn’t set foot in here!” Malkin groused, quietly.

  “You’re too heavy to ride on my shoulders,” Lily answered under her breath. “If you don’t like it you can climb back up.”

  Malkin looked up the rickety rungs. “You know that’s not possible!”

  “Then it looks like you’re coming with us.”

  “Goody!” The fox gave a disgusted sniff and delicately stepped over what looked like a dead rat. He prodded at it with his nose. “I’m sure we can make umpteen new friends in this underground hell.”

  Tolly lowered his lantern. On the wall at the edge of the tunnel, someone had made a small chalk mark at hip height: an arrow and an R.T.

  “Robert Townsend,” Lily said, rubbing at the goosebumps on her arms. “They did come this way, and he’s left us a trail. All we have to do to find them is follow his marks. Come on!”

  They set off walking along a shallow path which ran down the main tunnel, while a rushing torrent of water streamed alongside them – the Fleet River.

  Lily had no idea what they would do when they caught up with Jack. How she was going to capture him and find the diamond, or how she was going to rescue Robert. She would just have to work all that out when she got to it.

  Slushing gushes of rainwater and sewage spouted from the ceiling, spattering into the Fleet. As it ran down the central trough of the tunnel, Lily’s dread flowed with it. She closed her ears to the distant plops and drips, the chitters and squeaks of rats and insects, and attempted to ignore the things floating past.

  Tolly had spotted another chalk mark on the wall. A hastily scribbled arrow that pointed along the main tunnel. “They’ve gone this way,” he said.

  They turned a corner, and far ahead, in the murky distance, they could make out three silhouettes, one carrying a tiny flickering lantern. Their dim shapes, distorted in the viscous atmosphere, were each no bigger than burned matchsticks. Suddenly, the figures turned off the main drag and were gone in an instant.

  The tunnel undulated as Lily, Tolly and Malkin set off after them. It narrowed in places and widened in others. The rancid Fleet Sewer water gurgled over rocks and stones, pushing them along the trough, and making disgusting slurping noises as if it was being swallowed by some gulping gullet.

  “Current’s getting stronger,” Tolly said. “If you slipped and fell now, you’d be carried away and drowned, heaven help you!”

  “Or you’d inhale your own body weight in filth,” Malkin added, turning his nose up.

  Lily shuddered. She reached out carefully and brushed the side of the tunnel with her fingers, trying to steady herself. It was coated in a slimy thick mucous that sent a chill through her.

  More water poured from rust-encrusted pipes in the ceiling, throwing down fragments of rock, brown mould and soggy paper. The Fleet had started to slosh over the side of its trough. It frothed a dirty brown colour in the lamplight.

  Soon the route they were on ended abruptly in a weir. A metal handrail ran across its front to a footpath on the far side. Sewage flowed over its edge, pouring downwards in a scum-filled waterfall that was becoming stronger by the minute.

  Tolly went first, holding onto the railing and clambering across. Lily took Malkin on her shoulders once more and followed.

  The Fleet water rushed and bubbled along the weir in a strengthening torrent. Lily waded through it, the scum breaking across her legs. Her dress was soaked through, clinging to her skin like a shroud.

  Tolly had reached the weir’s far side. He held out a hand to her and she stepped forward to reach for it, but with a cry, she felt her feet slip from under her.

  Her arms failed to grab anything and she tipped back…

  Tolly snatched her hand just in time, and yanked her and Malkin to the other side. Malkin twisted on Lily’s shoulders, staring behind them. They’d been a hair’s breadth from tumbling over the weir and being swept away.

  Time passed; Lily couldn’t tell how much. She only knew she could no longer feel the occasional blast of wind on the back of her neck. The muggy sour air was making her feel sick. She tried to breathe in less, throwing a handkerchief across her face. In the gloom, all she had to guide her was the tick-tock of the Cogheart – a heart that ached for her friend Robert, and that Mama had told her to follow, always.

  Tolly was taking a turn carrying Malkin and had fallen a few feet behind. Lily heard voices echoing from a right-hand tunnel and paused at another chalk arrow on the wall. Should she wait for the others to catch her up, or investigate?
/>
  She inched down the side tunnel and was immediately engulfed in darkness. A shiver ran down her spine. She’d better wait for Tolly to catch her up. She could hear his heavy footsteps. He stepped from the tunnel mouth behind her. His breathing echoed off the walls.

  It was too deep and loud.

  A hand slapped hard over her mouth and a tall, broad figure grasped her. She swung at where she thought its face would be and knocked a bowler hat askew… Finlo Door!

  “This way,” he whispered. “Jack wants to see you.”

  They stumbled up a narrow set of stairs. Lily could feel rancid water frothing in a torrent over their feet. With Finlo just a step or two behind her, Lily had to pull herself physically upwards using the rusty handrail set in the wall, which shifted and creaked ominously each time she struggled onto a new step.

  Finally, as they reached the top, there was a faint light. In front of her was Jack Door. He stood on a rickety old platform holding a lantern over a square tank sunk into the floor level beneath them, like an empty swimming pool. Not that anyone would want to swim down here. Lily shivered at the thought of it.

  Robert stood in the tank’s base, up to his ankles in sewage. In front of him was a strange drawing and a nonsensical code scrawled on the wall, and beside that was the locked door of an ancient, rusty safe, embedded in the wall.

  Jack turned angrily to Finlo. “What happened to you? I thought you were right behind us?”

  “We were being followed,” Finlo said. “By this one.”

  “Another meddler.” Jack’s grey eyes glared at Lily, and then he smiled. “But this is even better. You can help Robert retrieve my diamond!”

  “Have you solved the code yet, boy?” Jack shouted down at Robert in the tank.

  “Not yet,” Robert called back, “but I’m working on it.”

  “You! Help him!” Jack thrust Lily down a metal staircase from the platform, holding up the lantern so she could see her way down to Robert.

  “Hurry,” he told her. “Time and tide wait for no man!”

  Lily staggered into the tank and splashed through the slurry, pulling Robert into an embrace, kissing his cheek in relief.

  “Thank goodness you’re fine,” she whispered. “Hold steady, help’s on the way.”

  She wondered where Tolly and Malkin had got to. And the police? Surely Anna had told them where to look? She should’ve waited for them to deal with Jack, she knew that now. She hoped she would live long enough not to regret her constant impulsiveness.

  Robert shivered in relief in Lily’s arms and hugged her back as hard as he could. He had chalk in his hand and his clothes were damp with the humid stink of the tunnels.

  “What have you been doing?” she asked.

  “Puzzles.”

  He let go of her and Lily rubbed her arm where Finlo had been grasping it. She stared about the tank, trying to figure out what he meant. The front of the safe was a circular dial filled with numbers. Beside it was etched a diagram of sorts. Lily peered closer at it and strange markings and inscriptions leaped out at her from the dark…

  It was a pictogram of a diamond divided into a quadrant of separate chambers, like a heart, or the quarter hours of a clock. Around this were images of a lunar eclipse, and beneath each of those was a different code word.

  “They’re numbers,” Robert whispered. “Because that’s what’s on the safe dial. You must have to read them clockwise, in the order of the eclipse.”

  Lily nodded. He had to be right… But what numbers? A date perhaps? Captain Springer had told them the Blood Moon Diamond was discovered during a lunar eclipse. Could it be that date? What had it been again? As she racked her brains, the water sloshed about her calves. With cold, creeping shock she realized it was rising. Jack was right – they had to solve this fast!

  She gazed at the diagram. It was more like four right-angled triangles than a diamond. Maybe Artemisia had used the same code as on the Moonlocket?

  “It’s like the locket puzzle,” she guessed. “Each word has a translation triangle.”

  “I started down that route,” Robert told her. “But it doesn’t work.”

  “What are you saying?” Jack shouted down at them from the platform.

  “Leave them be, Da,” Finlo said beside him. “They have to think.”

  “No,” Jack said. “No secrets, remember, Fin, dammit!”

  “It’s a similar code to the locket.” Lily’s words echoed round the tank, sounding more forceful than she felt inside. “It must mean the date of a lunar eclipse.”

  “Did I ask you what it means?” Jack paced up and down the platform. “I don’t care what it means! I just need you to find the numbers and dial them into the safe before high tide. So get on with it!”

  The water was at Lily’s shins now, soaking through the fringe of her already wet dress. She stared at Robert in alarm. His eyes were wide with alarm.

  “We should leave, before we’re trapped,” Lily called out to Jack. “The tide’ll cut off your exit through the tunnels.”

  Finlo turned to Jack. “She’s right, you know. If we stay too long we’ll drown.”

  “No one’s going anywhere!” Jack shouted. “Not until I get my diamond!”

  “Our diamond,” Finlo retorted. “And I don’t understand why we can’t come back another time?”

  “I told you why.” Jack bristled. “I want to stand on Tower Bridge today, with that diamond in my hand, and watch the Queen of England go by in her parade. I want everyone to know that I outwitted her. And the Crown Prosecution Service, the prison guards, the police inspectors, the bobbies; everyone. I shall stand there as they pass and my picture will make the front pages, alongside the Queen. It’ll be the greatest trick ever pulled, the ultimate revenge – reappearing in public at the Jubilee with the very thing I stole fifteen years ago! Then afterwards, when I’m sure everyone has seen me with my diamond, I shall disappear in a flash of smoke before their very eyes, and get the hell out of this forsaken country for ever!”

  “You don’t have to do those tricks, Da,” Finlo said. “They’re not important, they don’t matter. This isn’t a game. You’re not the world’s greatest showman any more. You’re a wanted criminal. What matters is getting the diamond out safely. We should go back into hiding and come for it another day, when things have quietened down.”

  Jack shook his head. “Don’t you understand, you idiot? It’ll be too late by then. The police are onto us – with the information they’ve got from Selena and these two here, how long d’you think they’ll take to figure out where the diamond is? Then the only thing stopping them recovering it will be this code.” He pointed at the marks on the wall. “These two obviously like cracking mysteries or they wouldn’t have kept coming after me. It won’t take them five minutes to work out the cypher.”

  While he’d been ranting, the water had risen above Lily and Robert’s knees. A dead mouse washed against the wall in the far corner, battering against a mess of leaves and twigs.

  “We haven’t got long,” Robert whispered to Lily.

  “Solve the code quicker or drown,” Jack shouted from above. “The choice is yours.”

  Lily felt sick with fear. She could barely think straight. She had to get a grip. The only way they were going to get out of this alive was if they did as Jack asked. She stared hard at the diagram and the code.

  “Wait,” she said. “I think I’ve got it! What if it’s the same system but reversed… The coded words go down the middle – along the straight edges of the diamond – then you fill the triangle with the preceding letters to get the translation along the slanted edge.”

  “How did you guess that?” Robert asked.

  “It’s the easiest possible variation on the cypher,” she replied. “Now hurry, we have to work it out.”

  The freezing water was lapping their thighs. Robert began to write on the wall, filling in the gaps as Lily suggested with the wet chalk. It left sludgy white lines. His fingers shook so much he
could barely write. After he’d done the first triangle, he passed the chalk to Lily and she took over, scrawling the other coded words down the straight sides of the triangles – and then adding the letters alphabetically before and after them to fill out each space.

  The water had risen to their hips now. Lily filled in the last few parts of the code, and then she was done.

  The pictogram diamond was a mess, but she read the words out clockwise from around its edges.

  “Twenty-one, June, Eighteen, Fifteen.”

  “Ha!” cried Jack. “That’s it! Open the safe, quick!”

  Lily waded through the water, which was now level with her waist.

  Robert held his arms out for balance and read the numbers aloud to Lily as she dialled them into the safe.

  “Twenty-one,” he said, “then June… June’s letters, not numbers.” Lily could hear the panic in his voice.

  “It’ll be six,” she said, “June is the sixth month.” And she turned the safe’s dial to six.

  “Then eighteen and fifteen,” Robert said.

  He felt himself shift along the floor as the current gambolled around his feet. He braced himself to stay upright.

  Lily spun in the last two last digits on the wheel and the safe gave a loud click!

  She hoped upon hope that the diamond was inside. Then they could get out of here before they drowned.

  The lever on the safe turned, and she tugged the door open.

  The shelves were scattered with old rings and trinkets…and in amongst them was a diamond bigger than all the rest. A perfectly cut red stone at least five times the size of all the others: the Blood Moon Diamond. It was the most impressive gemstone Lily had ever seen, red as wine and shifting in colour. In the feeble glow of the lantern it twinkled bright as a star, reflecting the light back at her in fizzing red droplets that sparkled across her face.