I found myself at the bottom of a staircase, and listened for any movement or sign that someone had noticed me coming in, but heard none. On the wall beside me I could see a board with all of the bedroom numbers, next to which the staff had written the guests’ names in chalk. I scanned it briefly, suddenly realizing I had no idea what room I was looking for. Then one name caught my eye. I repeated it in my head a few times, wondering why I knew it, before I realized. There it was. ROOM 3: RAMBULL – the policeman I had seen arresting a murderer in the market that morning.
I took the stairs carefully, trying to make no noise, until I was at the first-floor landing, with bedroom doors all along it. The nearest was Room 6, so I crept along the passageway with my breath caught in my throat, feeling by turns terrified and ridiculous, so nervous I nearly burst out laughing.
What happened next showed me I might as well have done, because having never stayed in an inn, and not knowing the custom of leaving your boots outside to be polished in the morning, I was more than a little surprised to find myself toppling forward and crashing to the floor. It felt like each knee and elbow (not to mention my head) smashed into it with a separate deafening blow and that I’d made just about as much noise as I could if I’d tried, so I wasn’t surprised to find the door nearest me opening and a great fat man lumbering out in his long johns.
‘Mind out, lad,’ he said, stepping over me. I stared after him as he clumped down the corridor towards the toilet, and saw the ‘3’ in the centre of his open door. Scrambling up, I darted inside and found only discarded clothes in a heap on the floor. I rushed to the bed and felt under the pillows, then the mattress. Nothing. There was a chest by the bed but it was locked, and I was getting frightened that Rambull would return when I swept a quick arm under the bed and my wrist made contact with a sharp edge. I pulled the object out with both hands and slid it inside my coat, not stopping to look at it. I slipped out of the bedroom as fast and silently as I could, taking refuge in another doorway with less than a second to spare before he came trudging back along the corridor. He was still more asleep than awake, and smelt heavily of beer. When he reached me, he stumbled and gripped my arm hard, as though steadying himself on a banister. His mouth ducked close to my ear, and at the same time he spoke.
‘There’s a storm coming,’ he said in a low, dirty growl, whether to me or to himself I couldn’t tell. I nodded, breathing evenly, desperately trying not to drop the box, and his arm released me. Then he was gone.
The second he closed his bedroom door, I fairly sprinted along the corridor and down the stairs, not caring how much noise I made. I swiped the door in one swift movement, feeling the sheer joy of using the spell.
The wind and rain came in through the door with a fierce noise, and I ran into them. With a childish fear I imagined someone roused by the noise running down the stairs behind me, reaching the door before it closed. When I was halfway down the street, I ducked round a corner and looked back: the little door was shut fast, so dark and tiny and far away I couldn’t believe I’d been on the other side of it a few seconds before. Everything was like a dream today. I pushed the silver box deep inside my shirt, pulled my coat round it and slipped back into the street.
I hadn’t walked two minutes before I saw that Rambull’s words about the storm were true. The rain lashed down more violently than before. Not heavy and concentrated, but in sudden unpredictable gusts as though the wind was taking its first deep breaths before a loud roar, as though there was a great temper in the sky about to be unleashed, and it buffeted against the low roofs around me.
I went slip-sliding through arches and down alleyways with no idea where I was going, but told myself it was in the general direction of Turvey House and I would see a landmark soon. Every window was shut up against the storm as if in dread. Then a strong gust picked me up and sent me slithering forward in the mud on my knees. For the first time my surge of confidence that I would be all right faltered, my joy at getting hold of the box began to melt away. A sliver of fear crept into me again as the wind rattled doors on my left and right.
I took a couple of turnings I was unsure about and began to doubt my direction too. I was at the top of a steep cobbled path that led down to a road bright with gaslight. Something told me not to go down there. Little rivulets ran between the cobbles, shimmering with some kind of warning I couldn’t understand. But I had to keep going, that was the most important thing, so I ran down and came out into the road. What I saw stopped me dead.
Ahead, half turned towards me and his whole figure frozen in fear, was a boy. He was about my age and height and similar in every respect to me. Behind him, crowded into the cobbled passage, were fifteen or twenty huge horses breathing steam. Mounted on them were fifteen or twenty policemen in uniform, their hats dripping with water, burning torches in some of their hands. And at their lead was the man from whom I had taken the silver box, Rambull, his face lit by the torch in a hungry leer.
For a moment we all paused, and the boys and men stared at each other.
‘Run!’ I shouted to the boy, and when he didn’t move screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘Come on! Run!’
He stumbled towards me as the first hoofs began to clatter behind him. I grabbed his outstretched arms and pulled him with me, but already the thunder of horseshoes had drowned out the storm, and above it all rose the angry shouting of the police as they goaded their horses like madmen.
The boy slipped and we both fell – he cried out in pain and I found my face pressed against the metal of a drain cover. I pulled him as tightly as I could against me, held him down as he wriggled to get free and swept my hand from one side to the other. The horses were so close the stones shook beneath us. As a hole appeared at our heads I pushed him down first and dived in after, and the dark throat of the drain swallowed us up.
There was a second of black nothingness as we fell, the sense of feeling weirdly weightless, and then a sudden hard smack of water as we crashed into the sewer below.
I surfaced, searching desperately inside my shirt to see if the silver box was there, and trying to breathe at the same time. Finally my hand found it, slipped all the way round to the small of my back, and I kicked hard to keep my head above water, looking for somewhere to climb out. After a few seconds I felt a ledge and pulled the boy towards it. He climbed up and pulled me after him. We leaned against the wall hearing nothing but our own panting, drops of water falling and the pounding of hoofs on the iron lid far above.
Without speaking, we both moved along the ledge as fast as we could, scared that the men above would prise open the lid and come looking for us. After a few minutes, the boy spoke.
‘I’m Benjamin,’ he said between breaths. ‘My name is Benjamin Bright.’
‘Daniel Dorey,’ I said. ‘Excuse me not shaking your hand, but I can’t see it.’ Neither of us had the wind to say anything else for a minute, until our lungs were working normally again, and the only sound around us was our own breathing. Either the horsemen had gone or we were out of earshot. I looked back along the tunnel to gauge the distance we had walked.
‘That thing with your hand – how did you do it?’ Benjamin asked.
‘Quiet a minute,’ I said.
‘But how did you do it?’
‘Shut up!’ I whispered – my hand covered his mouth and held it closed. My eyes had adapted to the darkness quicker than his, but now he began to see what I saw, and he became silent too.
We must have fallen a long way because the walls rose high around us, and tunnels fed in from both sides. Above us on the other side of the water was the circular mouth of one of these smaller tunnels. Inside it we could see a dark shape, totally still and silent and looking not unlike a kneeling man.
‘What is it?’ breathed Benjamin into my ear.
I shook my head. Carefully we started to walk away from it, nervously watching our steps on the narrow ledge. Looking back I saw the figure’s head move with us, as though watching us closely. Then Benjamin p
inched my side and whispered, ‘Look!’
He pointed up at another hole a little way ahead. There were two silent dark shapes in this one, huddled together and following our progress in the same way. Able to see further now, we saw more circular openings in the sewer walls regularly spaced all the way into the distance.
‘What the hell . . .’ I muttered.
We flinched as we heard the snap of a match being struck some way ahead and I had to grab Benjamin to stop him falling back into the water. The flare of light was intensely bright after the darkness and we shaded our eyes for a second before we could see properly.
Dozens of people looked down at us from their hiding places in the tunnels. Whole families were crouched together in the cramped space with their possessions piled up around them, looking poor and hungry and dirty. Yet they didn’t have the look of fugitives, but seemed defiant – more frightening than afraid. The man who leaned outwards holding the match over the water to look at us wore a wild beard. Weapons and climbing gear hung from his belt. He regarded us for a second and then pointed across to the wall near me. Not ten feet ahead a metal ladder rose up vertically into a hole in the ceiling, probably towards another drain cover. I nodded my thanks, but in his grim seriousness he was not impressed. I got the feeling he didn’t want to help us, he just wanted us to go. As I reached the ladder he took a shallow breath and blew out the match.
Benjamin and I climbed in silence until we had vanished into the ceiling and were out of earshot.
‘I’ve heard about them,’ said Benjamin below me, ‘but I never believed they existed. Apparently there are hundreds of them, never leaving the sewers . . .’
I was too disturbed to answer, and concentrated on finding the next rung above me in the darkness, until my hand rapped on the metal of a lid. I took a deep, deep breath and silently said a short prayer as I drew my hand across. The metal sprang back and we saw the street above. We climbed out, ran like rats to the nearest doorway and sat there, shivering. It was suddenly incredibly cold, and the storm had got worse while we were underground, but at least now there was not a horse or a horseman in sight.
Knowing we didn’t have the strength to face the cold and the storm, I reached up and took the risk of knocking on the door we sat against. For a minute we heard nothing, and as our hopes faded we felt the bite of the cold and damp even more bitterly. But then we heard a discussion going on behind us, two people arguing about whether to open the door or not. At last it was held open a crack, and a pair of worried eyes looked outwards – then downward – and saw the two scruffy little heaps of misery on their doorstep.
All at once the door was thrown open and we were dragged inside, placed in front of a small fire and interrogated by the house’s inhabitants, who were a lovely and doddery old couple. You could tell that the husband had poor vision partly because he wore half-moon spectacles, which slid continually down his nose and which he had to push back up (always sniffing as he did so), and partly because when either of us spoke he leaned in and peered closely at us, a habit which was luckily more funny than it was disconcerting.
‘You are in trouble, my lads?’ he asked. Benjamin and I exchanged a look, and nodded slowly. ‘We need to find a man named Uncle.’ At this the man’s face grew grave, and where before he had seemed kindly almost to the point of silliness, a firmness of purpose now entered his voice. ‘Yes, I know this Uncle,’ he said. ‘A very good man. He helped out a friend of mine once upon a time. Isn’t that right, old girl?’
His wife looked at him with fond impatience. ‘It wasn’t your friend, it was your brother!’
‘My WHAT?’ he bellowed, squinting as though that was going to help him catch the words.
‘It was your BROTHER!’ she replied.
‘Can’t hear a word she says. Say it again?’
But she only sighed, and took up her knitting again.
‘What did she say?’ he asked, turning to us. I didn’t want to get involved, so I smiled awkwardly, at which he seemed to remember what he had been saying. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That Uncle feller. Now I think about it I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my friend, but my brother he helped. Anyhow, I know someone who’ll be able to lay hands on him. You boys just wait here.’ He stood and pulled his coat on.
‘Please don’t go out there,’ I said. ‘I can’t let you go out in the storm. There are policemen on horseback, and they . . .’ I trailed off because both the man and his wife gave me a look of sweet, indulgent amusement, as if I’d said something charmingly naive.
‘Don’t you worry about me,’ the man said, still smiling. ‘We know all about the streets. We have other ways of getting around in Tumblewater.’ And then, going to the low table in one corner, he pulled it back and kicked the wall hard, twice. After a few seconds there came a clicking sound like the unlocking of a latch, and a diagonal section of the wall was pulled back, revealing a dark passage beyond.
‘Thank you,’ said the old man to someone inside the passage, and then he was gone, and the secret door replaced, its seams fitting perfectly so that the wall became whole again, and made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes.
‘He’ll be back soon,’ said his wife, pulling her chair a little closer. She regarded us with fond sympathy, and saw that as the fire began to warm us, our shivering became more violent (we had been past shivering when they let us in), and our faces became more pathetic and miserable as we tried to control it, both of us looking at the fire as though to suck in warmth faster by will-power alone.
‘Poor boys,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve nothing to offer you, it shames me to say. Nothing but a tale, although maybe if I tell it right it will distract from the cold as well as a bowl of soup would.’
I nodded vigorously and through chattering teeth assured her it would.
‘It’s not quite so horrible as the other tales people like to tell around here – or at least not at the start. But it’s my favourite, so I’ll tell it you – unless you’ve heard it before? Stop me if you have. It’s called . . .’
Once upon a time, there lived two men called Fabian and Freshpenny. They were bakers, and very fine ones – so fine, in fact, that almost every customer who came into their shop remarked that it was the finest bakery they had ever encountered, and Fabian and Freshpenny without question the greatest bakers.
As well as being brilliantly talented at bakery, both men were also exceptionally jolly and happy, so that people would not only step into their shop for the delicious cakes and pastries, but also for the cheery greetings and bright smiles they would receive. The people in the town grew slightly fatter than they would otherwise have been, but they did not blame the bakers, for they made such delightful things, and were such nice men.
As well as being excellent bakers and jolly people, Fabian and Freshpenny were the best of friends. They divided the work equally between them, Fabian making the dough, Freshpenny cutting it into shapes, Fabian baking it and Freshpenny laying it out on the shelves. As they closed the shop each day after selling their last loaf of bread, Fabian would say, ‘Another fine day over with, my old friend!’
And Freshpenny would reply, ‘Our best day yet!’
And then, because they had been up since so very early in the morning, they would retire with their hot-water bottles to their large double bed and sit there reading until one of them dozed off. Then the other would dutifully blow out the candle and go to sleep.
A few years after they first set up shop together, Fabian (who was thin, and of a more nervous disposition) began to notice that their bakery was not large enough for them to make all of the breads and biscuits that people wanted to buy from them. So Freshpenny (who was altogether rounder and more jovial) rode to the next town, which was bigger than the one they lived in, and found a larger shop for them to move to. Within a few months they were open for business in their new home.
Residents in the new town took to the merry bakers just as their old customers had. Fabian and Freshpenny soon found they were taki
ng more money each day than before, which meant that they were able to experiment with new things – bread stuffed with nuts and chocolate, or baked into extraordinary shapes such as a ship (Fabian’s greatest accomplishment) or a deer (Freshpenny’s crowning glory). They drove each other on to ever more impressive feats: Fabian repeated the deer-shaped bread of Freshpenny, but served it up to the mayor with a pound of venison stew concealed within its belly. Freshpenny responded by baking Fabian’s fantastical bread-ship but with a whole salmon, topped with potatoes, carrots, peas and a soft cheese sauce, laid along the boat’s insides. He served this to a party of visiting sailors in a local tavern to roars of approval and much drinking of ale.
Fabian saw his plump friend returning from the inn with such a proud, happy smile that he thought to himself how pleased he was for Freshpenny, and how lucky he was to be his partner. As he watched him bounding around the shop over the following weeks, however, and welcoming customers with his rather high-pitched voice which (he started to notice) he found rather annoying, Fabian decided that he would not be outdone. Sure enough, soon afterwards he was asked to bake a wedding cake, and he threw himself into the project with all his energy, fashioning a seventier masterpiece that rose taller than a Christmas tree. He fixed an ingenious piece of clockwork into the topmost layer so that, as long as it was wound up in advance, little wooden figures of a bride and groom leaned in to peck one another on the lips every few seconds.
On the day it was completed, Freshpenny watched this magisterial creation being carried away down the street, and he clapped his skinny friend on the back.
‘That truly is the most magnificent cake I have ever seen,’ he said. He saw a beam of satisfaction on Fabian’s face, and thought to himself, not for the first time, that Fabian’s moustache was more than a little unhygienic, and must surely be putting customers off.
Grisly Tales from Tumblewater Page 13