Light began to show on the river.
I walked through the south side of the district towards the corner I hadn’t yet seen. This close to the river it wasn’t quite raining, but water hung in the air in a dense yellow fog. With no one else to be seen or heard, and able to see just twenty yards ahead of me, I felt as though I was walking through a myth. Out of the fog came a wall, then some railings. Behind them, with a gentle wind swirling the cloud, I saw rows of gravestones. Each one was engraved simply with a name, and they leaned to and fro like drunkards – not from age, but as though they had been kicked over, or hastily put up. In the corners there were stacks of stones neatly piled, although whether these were stones waiting to be used, or old ones pulled up for lack of space, you couldn’t tell. The grass grew wild and thick with weeds, and garbage thrown over the fence lay on the nearby graves.
Who hates these people? I thought. Why do they disrespect these dead?
Then I realized I had come to Ditcher’s Fields, where Prye’s victims were hanged. I walked on with foreboding, feeling the disease of the place, as though the very air and earth were cursed and dying. A dry creaking sound came from a few feet away and a gust of wind burrowed a hole in the mist. I stopped, staring upward.
Above me hung the body of a boy, gently pushed by the breeze. He was no more than sixteen, a boy who looked so like me that for a second I was paralysed with the fear that I was trapped in some dream after death. Then I knew why no one had noticed me on the street, why no alarm had been made, why I had passed safely through the length and breadth of Tumblewater in every direction.
It was the body of Benjamin Bright.
Prye thought I was dead.
I was tiring as I came to the bottom of the hill, and nearly asleep on my feet. I came to the offices of Jaspers & Periwether before I knew where I was, and leaned exhaustedly on the door for a second. Then I stood back and swiped my hand across it. I was too tired to care about how I would explain how I had got in – I would simply have to come up with something when Jaspers arrived and found me inside.
Nothing happened.
Frowning, I did it again, and waited for the door to move. Then again, and again, looking over my shoulder in case anyone was watching me. But nothing happened – I was just making a fool of myself in front of anyone who happened to be passing.
That was when I realized that the witch was truly dead, and my power had gone with her. I crouched in the doorway, hugging my knees, and slept until someone arrived to let me in. Some time later I was woken by a nervous little laugh, and found myself looking up at the bespectacled Cravus.
‘You are early for your first day,’ he said. ‘Mr Jaspers will be impressed.’
‘And I’ve dressed up for it too,’ I said, gesturing down at my mud-spattered front as he unlocked the door. He gave his nervous little laugh again (it went on for several seconds this time) as I sat heavily in the chair that was to be mine, which was next to the one belonging to the unpleasant blond-haired boy. If that laugh was Cravus’s reaction to everything, I rather bad-temperedly thought, then I could almost imagine why Mr Jaspers treated him the way he did. As I thought this, Cravus bustled back into the room, hooking his coat with difficulty on the coat rack (which was rather too tall for him) and offering me a morning cup of tea.
‘Cravus,’ I said, ‘I have never admired a man more in my whole life than you for making that suggestion.’
‘So that’s a yes?’ he asked nervously. I nodded, and as he went out leaned back and put my feet up on my desk. Then I saw something on the other side of the room that caught my attention. It was behind the large waterlogged chest beside Mr Jaspers’s desk (from which I now noticed some plants seemed to grow), on top of the bookshelf made of books and crammed in underneath lots of papers: a dark bronze lamp, octagonal and with oriental-style designs running up its sides. I got up, stood on a chair and fished it out, causing a little landslide of paper down the back of the chest.
I took it back to my desk and looked at it until Cravus came in carrying a tray of tea things.
‘What sort of lamp is this?’ I asked.
‘It’s one of those candlestick-makers’ lamps.’
‘That’s what I thought. Thank you, Cravus,’ I said, taking my cup from him and sipping it.
He shrugged. ‘It’s nothing at all. Nice to be asked a question. No one ever listens to me around h—’
The door burst open and Mr Jaspers strode in, smiling.
‘Cravus, is it your birthday?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then what are you doing here? I’ve no present for you. You can retire to your hammock in the store cupboard until I poke you with my umbrella in three quarters of an hour’s time.’
Cravus began to speak, but Jaspers turned to me. ‘Mr Dorey, I’m pleased to see you prompt on your first day!’
‘As a matter of fact, I’ve been up all night on an assignment, Mr Jaspers, and have another to go to now, so you won’t see much of me.’
‘Good, good,’ he said, settling at his desk and opening the latest edition of Old Git magazine with relish, so that the pages made a snapping noise. ‘You carry on. I like half an hour’s quiet in the morning before I awake Cravus and his infernal questioning.’
I took the lamp from my desk, drank the last of my tea and walked out of the front door and up the hill. I was on my last legs and could hardly think of anything except the bed I would be in soon. But there was something I had to do first.
First I found the market, and then the street where the costermongers lived. Sitting on a doorstep near the corner I saw a little girl I recognized, who didn’t seem to notice the other children playing around the newly lit fire.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Are you Jenny?’
She nodded shyly up at me. I offered her my hand. ‘My name is Daniel,’ I said. I smiled encouragingly. She offered her hand and I shook it, and squatted down.
‘Now,’ I said, ‘you’ve been sitting here for a long time waiting for your father, is that right?’
She didn’t answer, because she had already seen the lamp in my hands and she was watching me solemnly.
‘Jenny,’ I said, ‘he asked me to come and visit you, and give you this, and tell you he’s sorry he can’t come himself. And I’m very sorry too.’ Her mother had appeared at the door and was looking down at us both. I said confidentially, ‘It’s not his fault. A very bad man has taken your dad away, and won’t let him come back. And you and I both hate that man and will do anything to make him pay, won’t we?’
She nodded.
‘Now, I’m giving you this lamp because your dad wants you to think of him as you light it each night. He wants you to stop watching for him to come round the corner, and play with the other children instead. Will you do that?’
She listened so hard and peered up at me so seriously that I had to struggle to overcome the tearing pain in my heart. I held her eye and she nodded. I took her hand again, as though sealing a formal agreement.
‘I’ll be back to see you,’ I said. And somehow I’m going to get revenge on the man who sent your dad away, and I’ll tell you how I’ve got on. Is that a deal?’
She nodded, and I got up and walked away, not wanting the tears in my eyes to show. At the corner I looked back and saw her already placing the lamp in the window, as her mother stood behind, holding out a match for her to light the flame.
More gruesome stories discovered by Daniel Dorey in the dark and twisting alleys of Tumblewater as he follows his own adventure towards its deadly conclusion . . .
THANKS
I find ‘acknowledgements’ a bit lofty. I don’t want to acknowledge anyone, but there are lots of people I’d like to thank. This is not in any order of importance, but roughly chronological:
Firstly to Jon Butler, who suggested and then encouraged these stories. I owe you an enormous debt in all sorts of ways. Next, and most of all, to Nicola Barr and Emma Young for both being really passionate and a great agent and edi
tor respectively. Then there are lots of people who were kind enough to read early versions and give feedback. I’m sincerely grateful to you all, and I really hope I haven’t left anyone out: Rebecca Saunders, Georgina Difford, Jane Cramb, Lucy Pessell, Anna Carmichael, Mark Searle, Catharine Vincent, Ben Vincent, Will Atkins, Matt Hayes, Catherine Richards, the Why family and Eli Dryden.
Thanks very much to Charlie Whiteside and Eden Lloyd for being a test audience. Your kind letters were really appreciated! And thanks to Georgina Ikin for ‘Slurgoggen’ – more suggestions, please . . .
And lastly to my mate Tom Wharton for his encouragement.
Grisly Tales from Tumblewater Page 21