I heard the men - my friends! - emerging from the back.
“What on Earth -?” It was Big Michel. There was a whoosh of air and a dull thud and I was suddenly confronted with his lifeless body glaring at me from the ground. There was an arrow between his eyes.
“I knew there’d be trouble!” This was Reynald. He jumped from the waggon and I watched his boots as he fought with a couple of the outlaws. He managed to despatch two of them with broad slashes. They landed near to Big Michel, their eyes as glassy and vacant as those of the fish Reynald had prepared for breakfast. And then the lugubrious, kindly man was felled by a coward’s blade in his back.
I was frozen to the spot. I knew if the time came I could be out of there like a rocket from a bottle but the Boy - I couldn’t leave the Boy!
It appeared I was not the only one to have this concern.
“Not him!” It was Geoffrey. “Leave him!”
Ah, good old Geoffrey, putting himself between the Boy and our attackers as a human shield. I ventured a glance from behind one of the front wheels. The scene was not as I imagined it.
Alfred was on his knees, held by two of the bandits, with a sword at his throat, but Geoffrey didn’t seem to be in distress of any kind. He wasn’t pleading with them to spare the Boy. He was giving them orders!
“Good stuff’s around the back.” He jerked his head towards the rear of the waggon. “Cloth of gold and velvets softer than your mother’s heart.”
The bandits grunted their approval.
“Traitor!” Alfred spat. I feared this outburst would cost him his life.
“And you’re a fool!” Geoffrey sneered. I’d never seen his face make that unpleasant expression before. It didn’t suit him. “Do you think old man Fitzwarren will pay us a fair wage for our efforts? Why not help ourselves and keep the profits?”
“Geoffrey!” the Boy gasped. His face was trying on several expressions for size: amazement, disappointment, anger and sadness all took their turn.
“Quiet, boy!” Geoffrey snapped. “Now you can make yourself useful and help us offload these wares or you can stay here with Big Michel and Reynald.”
The Boy turned as pale as milk. He didn’t lower his blade and continued to shake.
With Reynald and Big Michel murdered and Alfred captured, it looked like it fell to me to save the day. Well, the night. I slunk under the waggon until I reached the back. One nimble spring got me inside. I found what I needed and lay in wait.
I didn’t have to wait long.
I heard three of the louts climb up into the waggon and, even though I was concealed beneath fabric, I could smell them. It obviously never occurred to them in all their criminal exploits to steal something along the lines of soap or perfume.
“Coo, will you look at all this stuff!” exclaimed one, no doubt marvelling at the goods that filled every available space, apart from the narrow cots used for sleeping. Bolts of cloth, pelts of fur, garments, finery, jewellery, gloves... Well, enough of the inventory for now; back to the action!
“I am doing,” gasped another. “Like a treasure chest on wheels this is.”
“Hurry up, you cretins!” ordered Geoffrey from outside. I’ve gone right off him, I decided.
“What the hell’s that?” said a third voice, helping me to get their attention.
Concealed beneath Salome’s glittering veil, I emerged from under a cot.
“Get out!” I roared in my deepest, unearthly voice. “Repent and mend your ways!” Whatever else he may have been, Johan the actor had taught me a few things about declamation.
I sprang up onto the cot - luckily, the veil didn’t slip. I swayed like a charmed snake, repeating my words. The robbers were mesmerised - I could make out their shapes through the semi-translucent material.
“What’s the hold-up?” yelled Geoffrey with unconscious irony. The waggon shifted as he climbed on board. “What in hell’s name -”
He broke off as three arms with index fingers extended pointed at the swaying, glittery thing on the cot.
“Fools!” Geoffrey snarled. “It’s only the boy’s bloody cat!” He pushed his men aside and reached for the veil.
“Geoffrey!” I declaimed with a spooky intonation. “Repent, Geoffrey! Mend your evil ways!”
Geoffrey paused. “It’s a trick,” he scoffed, although I detected a touch of uncertainty in his voice. The others weren’t sticking around to find out. They darted from the waggon, gibbering and screaming, never to be seen again.
Geoffrey’s fingers twitched, inches from the cloth. I could smell the fresh wash of sweat that had broken out all over him. Yuck. To think I had once rubbed my face on that man.
“Geoffrey!” I repeated. “Get you gone! Leave the boy and be glad to escape with thy life.”
Geoffrey froze. He was thinking it over. I pounced at his outstretched hand and sank my teeth into the soft flesh between his forefinger and thumb - my favourite spot for attacking humans. Geoffrey screamed. I bounded away, bouncing off his shoulder and onto a high shelf where decorated pottery was strapped in for the ride. Geoffrey sucked at his injury and, swearing, glanced around the waggon.
“Demon!” he spat. “Hell cat!”
I don’t know whether the irony was unconscious that time.
“Geoffrey....” I murmured, creepily and low. He spun around on his heels. “I see into your very soul. What would your men say if they knew what I know? What if I were to tell them what I see?”
“You’re bluffing!” Geoffrey rotated on the spot, pointing his dagger to the ceiling. “This is a trick!”
“Oh really?” I refrained from adding a chuckle; I didn’t want to overdo it. “Just like the trick you have planned for your men?”
“I don’t know what you mean!” he growled, defiantly.
“Come now! Don’t play the innocent with me!”
“I wasn’t really going to kill him, I swear!” Geoffrey blurted out and before I could ask him what he meant by that exactly, our interview was curtailed by the sudden arrival of Alfred and the Boy. The former soon had the tip of his sword under Geoffrey’s chin. The latter was holding his dagger and shaking like a leaf on its first date, the poor thing.
“Traitorous wretch!” Alfred spat a huge glob of something in Geoffrey’s face. “I would slay you where you stand but I don’t wish to sully these commodities with the vile liquor of your blood.”
Not bad, Alfred, I thought. He should be an actor. Brom and Carac would kill for lines like that. Literally, I should think.
Slowly, Geoffrey raised his hands and let his knife drop to the floor. The Boy stooped and snatched it up. He now had two blades and was quivering like the world’s most nervous pair of scissors.
“Just save me from the demon!” Geoffrey quivered, his voice tremulous.
Alfred followed his captive’s gaze but I kept perfectly still. I was just another item on a shelf.
“Don’t know what you’re on about,” he said, giving Geoffrey’s belly a prod. “You killed my mates.”
“I’m sorry! My men - hotheads, every one! Things got a little out of hand is all.”
“Shut it!” Alfred gave him another prod. “Get your clothes off!”
Well! This was an unexpected turn of events. The Boy must have shared my opinion because Alfred felt it necessary to explain his demand.
“We’ll turn him loose, naked as the sorry day he was born. Let him beg for what he can get.”
“So you’re not going to kill me?” Geoffrey sounded relieved. He cast another nervous glance around the ceiling.
“Not this time,” said Alfred. “Now, get ’em off.”
Geoffrey disrobed, muttering his gratitude. When he was revealed, a pink blancmange on stubby legs, he was shoved out of the waggon to land with a squelch in a patch of mud and
horse droppings. Alfred stuck his head out. I heard him shout, “Now be off with you before I change my mind,” and Geoffrey’s bare feet pattering away.
Alfred turned to the Boy and breathed a sigh of relief. He put a hand on the Boy’s shoulder.
“Well done, lad!” he grinned. The Boy looked puzzled. He wasn’t the only one. “Throwing your voice like that!” Alfred continued. “It did the trick. I knew you’d been on the stage, lad, but I’d no idea you were that good.”
“But, I -” the Boy began. I decided to intervene before he could say any more. I dropped down from the shelf, shedding my shiny veil and sprang into the Boy’s arms.
“Clever kitty you’ve got there,” Alfred marvelled, tickling my ears. “Got him well trained.”
Clearly the man had never spent much time with cats. But if he was so keen to believe the Boy had employed ventriloquism to scare off the attackers, then I wasn’t going to burst his bubble. The more Alfred spoke of it, the more it seemed to me he was trying to convince himself and rationalise something he didn’t really believe. The ventriloquism story didn’t really hold water. Or drink water while reciting the alphabet. Unlike Geoffrey who, after initial resistance, allowed fear of the supernatural to get the better of him, Alfred was countering that fear with an explanation that was barely plausible. Humans don’t make things easy for themselves, do they?
We went outside and stood looking at the murdered men - our friends - and the Boy suggested we give them a decent burial.
“Nice sentiment,” said Alfred, “but I don’t fancy hanging around in this place a moment longer.”
It was decided we would take the bodies to London with us and let “old man Fitzwarren” deal with them. At least they wouldn’t be left to the predations of woodland beasts.
Alfred and the Boy lifted Reynald and, with greater difficulty, Big Michel into the waggon and laid them out on the cots. Alfred covered them with sheets of silk saying if Fitzwarren didn’t like it, he could hang himself.
They spent a moment in silence, looking at the shrouded men.
“Come on,” Alfred said quietly. “If we get a move on, we can be in London by nightfall.”
The Boy’s eyes widened. Alfred had said the magic word, the L word.
“Yes, sir!” he enthused, almost jumping in the air.
After a couple of minutes of preparation, the waggon was secured, the horses were hitched and we were on the road again. I rode up front. Not that I was afraid of being in the back with the dead ones, oh no! The Boy’s excitement as we neared the capital at last must have been contagious. I wanted to see this famous and marvellous city for myself.
London!
London!
There it lay before us in the setting sun. We were at the top of a place called Highgate Hill and the sun was behind us. The Boy was practically bouncing on his seat. Alfred, at the reins, gave him an indulgent look.
I was taken aback myself. I had seen London before, many times. I’d sort of half been expecting the huge sprawling mass it is in your time. I’d forgotten what day it was. The city before me was a sprawling mass but not as huge as it would become. Oh, it was still one of the largest gatherings of humans in the world - my nose alone told me that and we were upwind of the place.
“Wow!” the Boy breathed admiringly. “Will you look at that?”
Alfred chuckled. “Dick,” he said flatly. “This is suburbia. The real London’s through the gate.”
The Boy’s eyes grew wider still. He was bowled over by the sight of the ramshackle wooden dwellings that huddled together in the shade of the city wall, like frightened chicks clinging to Mother Hen. If this pathetic squalor was enough to knock his eyes out, how on Earth would he cope with the dim lights of the metropolis?
“Through that gate,” Alfred turned tour guide as our horses clopped slowly down the hill, “is the biggest collection of people since Lady Godiva did that promotional stunt for her range of invisible riding gear.”
The Boy’s lower jaw looked like it was about to drop off its hinge. I lifted a paw to his chin and closed his mouth.
The waggon crawled through the suburbs, along the Roman road. On each side, people swarmed around, beetles on a dunghill.
“There’s every danger,” Alfred whispered from the side of his mouth, “they might attack the waggon. I’ve told old Fitzwarren not to advertise so blatantly but he won’t listen. But then, of course, he doesn’t have to fight off the bandits, does he? But then again, I don’t know what I’m worried about. Not when there’s you and your talking cat there.”
I froze. I felt the Boy stiffen beneath me.
“Your ventriloquist act!” Alfred laughed. “Did the trick last time, didn’t it?” He laughed as though at some happy memory. The Boy glanced sadly over his shoulder to where Reynald and Big Michel were lying dead. I rubbed my head against his throat.
Our passage to the gate was uneventful. The thickening twilight must have helped. At the gate, the watchmen waved us through. They were accustomed to Fitzwarren’s waggons coming and going. Alfred implied they were on the payroll in an unofficial capacity because Fitzwarren’s waggons were never stopped or searched.
I craned my neck and looked up as the vast stone arch passed overhead. The sound of the horses’ hooves changed as the ancient flagstones gave way to cobbles. But above all, the stench was overwhelming. It was like walking into a giant’s lingering fart. But worse.
Night was drawing in above those dingy streets. Flickering lanterns and greasy candles cast yellow puddles of light behind leaded windows. People were everywhere - I know that’s no surprise but the sheer numbers were staggering. The crowds at Coventry cathedral were like drops of water in a bucket compared to this roiling sea of humanity.
The Boy gazed all around, drinking in the sights. With night congealing above us, the darkling sky lent the scene an almost cavernous aspect.
“You’ll see more come morning,” said Alfred, inured to the spectacle. He guided the waggon at a steady pace along the main thoroughfare. He didn’t want to slow down, he said, in case people tried to board the waggon and snaffle what they could.
The Boy paled. Were people really that criminal? Alfred anticipated this reaction. “People are hungry,” he explained, “and hunger can make the kindliest souls desperate.”
“Perhaps I should go to the back and keep watch?” the Boy offered, bravely.
“We’re nearly there,” Alfred shook his head. “And besides, anyone who pulls that silk off our departed colleagues will get quite a shock.”
He chuckled. Then he pulled back on the reins, slowing the horses so they would turn into a narrow archway within the wall of a long, broad building that seemed to occupy the whole side of a street. It was a tight fit, but Alfred, old hand at this, got the waggon through the arch with barely a knock or abrasion, and into a dirt-packed courtyard.
At once, many hands swarmed on the waggon. The Boy cried out and I felt my hackles rising, lest any of those grabbing hands tried to seize me.
Alfred was unconcerned. He even laughed.
“It’s all right,” he said. “They work here.”
I looked more closely. The men were indeed sporting some kind of uniform, a livery that bound them together. A large embroidered ‘F’ was on the back of their tunics. Within minutes they had emptied the waggon and, of course, discovered the bodies.
To my surprise, it was no big deal. The dead men were dealt with efficiently and without fuss. There was a protocol in place, it appeared, a contingency for such fatalities. Big Michel and Reynaud were carried inside, respectfully enough I suppose. What became of them after that, I don’t know.
A tubby fellow marked items on a list. Being literate, he was afforded a supervisory position. It fell to the others to do all the heavy lifting.
“Oh, Alfred,” he said, when the wa
ggon was totally empty and Alfred had stabled the horses, “the Old Man wants to see you.”
Alfred’s face fell. “It’s late. Can’t it wait until the morrow?”
The fat man arched an eyebrow in the most eloquent fashion. Apparently, you don’t keep the Old Man waiting.
Alfred resigned himself to his fate. With the loss of two men, he had a report to give, he explained to the Boy. “Wait here,” he said. He followed the chubby chap indoors but not before the latter had looked us up and down and found us wanting.
Charming.
I was glad of a moment alone with the Boy at last.
“Listen, kid,” I whispered when I was satisfied there was no one in earshot. “Now’s our chance. Let’s get out of here.” I cringed at the cliché but then I reminded myself the Boy hadn’t seen as many bad movies as I had - none, in fact. I threw in another. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
He didn’t appear to be listening. How do you like that? He had the only talking moggy in the universe sitting on his lap and he was daydreaming. Humans! No sense of perspective!
I followed his gaze, half expecting him to bay at the moon at any second but it was not Diana’s silvery orb (I’m trying to atone for my clichés with something a bit more poetic) that held his attention. Rather it was a window high above the courtyard, through which soft light was breaking. Now, this Boy is not a total bumpkin; he has seen windows before. Rather it was who was in the window that had caught his eye. Both of them, in fact.
Looking down at us, illuminated by candlelight that sent shadows dancing across her features was a female (a human female, I mean) about the same age. The same age as the Boy, I mean. No one is as old as I am - except my good-for-nothing brother, of course - and where was he? He had been noticeable by his absence lately...
A shiver ran through me. The Boy’s warm hand absently patted my fur but he didn’t take his eyes from her, the Girl, I suppose I should call her.
“Kid,” I hissed - no mean feat when the word has no sibilants. “Time to go! Come on!”
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