by Joan Aiken
‘Well, Yan?’ called the landlord, ‘Brought my drop of liquorice water, have ye? What makes ee so late?’
‘Hollo there, Bob. We had a bit o’ trouble in the night wi’ our paddlequacks.’ Then Yan saw Dido and the elephant. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘What’s amiss? I didn’t think to see you here, dearie.’
‘Oh, Yan! Am I pleased to see you!’ Dido was about to jump on board, but she thought better of it, and beckoned him to come round the corner into Allfarthing Lane.
‘Listen!’ she whispered urgently. ‘You’ve got a spy on board! Where’s the Dispatch?’
‘A spy? Nay, dearie, that just can’t be! All us chaps has worked together since we was lads at school.’
‘Just the same, there is one.’ Dido repeated what Mr Twite had said. ‘Is the Dispatch safe?’
‘Surely! I’ve got it packed in among the orris-root.’
‘What was that about trouble in the night?’
‘Our paddlequacks all swam away. We had the devil’s own job a-pacifying and a fetching them back – running up and down the banks, they was, roosting in trees, quacking and clacking and carrying on – took us hours to catch ’em all, and when we’d caught ’em there was nothing for it but to shut the lot of ’em in young Cris’s cabin – they takes kindly to her.’
‘What upset them?’
‘’Twas a black mystery – we never did find out. There was no stranger around. And the cargo was trig enough – not a corkscrew out o’ place. In the end we reckoned as it might a bin an outsize rat as scared the ducklings.’
‘A rat?’ Dido stared at Yan, her eyes big as saucers. ‘Here – come back on board, quick! Show us where you’ve got the Dispatch.’
She grabbed his hand and fairly raced him back to the barge. They picked their way hastily across the bushy deck while Tethera, Methera and Pimp, who were unloading kegs of liquorice spirit for the Rising Sun, gazed at them in astonishment.
‘Where’s Cris and Tobit?’ Dido panted, as they dropped down the hatch into the galley.
‘Playing cat’s-cradle, I reckon. They spends most o’ the day doing that, and hashing over old times,’ Yan said tolerantly. He led Dido through the spacious galley with its central stove, kitchen table and benches. Here, before continuing, he took a lantern from a hook, lit it, and gave it to Dido to carry. They crossed a series of communicating cabins filled with bales and crates which smelt strongly of lavender and liquorice, then came to a passageway leading between closed doors. Yan tapped on one of these and threw it open.
Inside, an extremely cosy scene was revealed. Cris and Tobit were sitting on the floor playing cat’s-cradle. Dido noticed at once that they had made great strides in this game since she had given them their basic instruction – when? Two days ago? Tobit held between his outspread fingers an immensely complicated network of string like the mesh of coloured ribbons round a maypole. Cris was carefully studying it from all angles.
Perched all round the cabin, and on Cris’s head and shoulders, were thirty or forty ducks and ducklings, also, it seemed, attentively watching the game.
However, when the door opened everybody looked round.
‘Why, it’s Dido!’ said Cris with mild surprise.
‘All right, everyone in here, are you?’ Yan asked.
‘Yes, why?’ Tobit said. ‘Look, Cris, take those two with your hands and those two with your teeth – ’ He pointed with his nose.
‘Ducks all right? No more upsets? We’re a-going down below to make sure the Dispatch is safe.’
‘We’ll come too,’ said Tobit jumping up, but carefully so as not to disturb any ducks, or his network, which he carried along with him.
Yan led the way down two more ladders and into a dark narrow region, even more strongly scented, where they had to scramble over and between large prickly sacks of corkscrews and tacky bales of liquorice.
‘Now – ’ Yan paused in front of a shut door and pulled out a bunch of keys – ‘I keeps the Dispatch in the lock-up – no one goes in here but me.’ He carefully inserted the largest key, turned it, and flung open the door. Dido, just behind him, held the lantern high.
There was a sudden scuffle and scurry. Something jumped off the wide shelf which ran round three sides of this hold, and dashed across the shadowy floor. But Tobit, acting with most unexpected dispatch and address, bounded forward past Yan, his hands held low and wide with the net stretched tight between them, and caught the thing on the floor, instantly twisting and gripping his net to prevent its escape.
‘Dang it, what’s that?’ exclaimed Yan. ‘Here Dido, bring the light closer!’
The creature in Tobit’s net struggled and screamed. The scream was a horrible sound – there was rage and defiance in it, no fear at all. It was like a human scream but higher and shriller. The net swung furiously to and fro.
‘Halloo, what’s amiss – what the devil’s going on below there?’ cried startled voices from the deck. Tan and Methera came clattering down.
‘Mercy sakes, what have you got hold of?’ Tan gasped. Dido held the lantern close and Tobit’s prisoner was revealed as an immense brindled rat, its eyes flashing, its whiskers bristling, its long yellow fangs bare in fury.
‘Don’t you let it bite you, boy,’ Yan warned. ‘I’ll lay every one o’ those grinders is as full o’ poison as a deadly adder’s tooth.’
As they stared at the beast Cris said rather shakily, ‘That’s Auntie Daisy’s rat.’
‘Are ye certain, gal?’
‘Yes, I reckon she’s right,’ Dido said. ‘It’s brindled just the same.’
Yan began to curse.
‘What a gurt mutton-headed fool I am. Why didn’t I think? Where the dickens did the brute get in?’
‘Never mind that, where’s the Dispatch?’
‘’Twas on the coaming yonder,’ said Yan with a groan. ‘In an oilskin packet – ’
‘Here’s a bit of it on the floor,’ Cris said, springing forward. ‘The rat must have knocked it off – ’
She picked it up gingerly. The red string and seals fell to the floor with a shower of leaf-sized bits of paper. Half the document had been gnawed away.
‘Let’s go up where it’s light and have a look at what’s left,’ Dido said. ‘Maybe we can make out what it’s about. Mind how you hold that monster. Tobit – don’t let him get away.’
‘Wait till I fetch my qualiver, I’ll blow him to forty bits,’ vowed Yan. The rat squealed angrily.
They went on deck. ‘All that cat’s-cradle’s come in handy, anyhows,’ muttered Tan to Tethera. ‘Which was more than I’d prognotified yesterday.’
Tobit was having great difficulty in keeping a grip on the struggling rat which darted its head this way and that, trying to squeeze through the meshes of the net. Nobody could take it from him because it snapped so savagely.
Just as Yan came back with his hand gun the rat finally succeded in thrusting its body through a gap and bounded on to the deck, screeching with triumph. Yan fired but missed. The rat scurried over the side and could be seen swimming across the river, dark V of water spreading away behind its pointed head.
‘Plague on it – ’ Yan hurriedly reloaded. But as he did so, Tobit sprang over the side and went after the rat.
‘Tobit! Come back boy! You’ll never catch it!’
‘Oh Tobit!’ wailed Cris. ‘Do be careful.’
But he did not answer. Hunter and quarry both disappeared into the dusk on the far side of the Wandle.
‘Well, here’s a right hugger-mugger!’ said Yan furiously.
Dido had spread the rest of the chewed Dispatch on the cabin roof and was poring over it, by the light of the lantern and the last rays of the setting sun.
To my Lord Forecastle Master of the
lace horse and Westminster Foxhou
First Lord of the Admiralty.
Sir: Whilst interrogating prisoner
captured French frigate Madame de Ma
I was lucky enough to discover detail
<
br /> laid and diabolical plot of assassina
well-beloved Prince of Wales on the oc
his Coronation. The details are as
Cathedral of St Paul’s has already be
mined & its foundations rest merely
At a given signal or impetus these rol
set in motion and the whole Sacred Edif
slid with uncontrollable speed in
River Thames. Proof of this can
visiting the Crypt. I there
it right to communicate the fright
tidings without delay. I remain
Your lordship’s
Charles Tran
Rear-Admi
Dido read through this very carefully three times.
‘Holy Peggotty!’ she said then. ‘What time’s the coronation tomorrow?’
‘Ten in the morning.’
‘Us has got to hustle,’ Dido said.
‘Why, what’s it about?’ Yan peered over her shoulder at the damaged Dispatch. But he said, ‘You’ve got more book-learning than I have, reckon, ducky; blest if I can make trotter nor tail of it. What’s it say?’
‘Why,’ said Dido, ‘near as I can reckon, some admiral is writing to this here Lord Forecastle about a plot to push St Paul’s Cathedral into the Thames, with the whole coronation a-going on inside it. That’s what they means when they keeps talking about the Wren’s Nest! Oh, the villains! Here, I’m off – where does Lord Forecastle live, Yan?’
‘House in the Strand. How’ll you get there?’
‘Lord Sope lent me his elephant.’
‘I was wondering where that came from,’ Tethera said.
‘Shall I come with ee, duck?’ said Yan. ‘Old Lord Forecastle is a tiddy bit slow and given to argufication. But he knows me, reckon I could help get the notion into his noddle as there’s need to hurry.’
‘That’d be prime, Yan. How about the ship?’
‘The others can bring her on the reg’lar way, and we’ll all meet at Aunt Grissie’s in Wardrobe Court.’
‘But Tobit!’ said Cris, half crying.
‘Look, gal, us simply can’t wait to hunt for him now,’ Dido said. ‘But he’s got sense. He can ask his way to Wardrobe Court – you told him where that is?’ Yan nodded.
‘He’ll be all right, I reckon. Besides, wouldn’t Aswell give you a warning if he was in any kind o’ trouble?’
‘Aswell?’ Cris looked vaguely puzzled.
Dido stared at her, equally astonished. Had she already forgotten about Aswell? But there was really not an instant to waste. Yan slipped what was left of the Dispatch into another oilskin case, and he and Dido jumped ashore and ran to where the elephant was patiently waiting.
11
STEERING RACHEL THROUGH the streets of London to Lord Forecastle’s residence proved considerably more difficult than letting her find her own way from Stopham Park to Wandsworth. In fact it proved impossible. Rachel had her own theories about the right route into London and whether they threatened, pleaded, thumped or tried to lead her, she pursued her own course, quite regardless of their wishes.
‘Oh well, let her take her own way,’ said Dido at length. ‘She seems to have a powerful strong notion o’ where she wants to go.’
She took them across Wandsworth Bridge and along the King’s Road, Chelsea.
‘Why,’ exclaimed Dido, ‘that’s Doc Furneaux’s Academy of Art! Hang on just a moment, Rachel, my ducky, I used to have a pal as learnt painting there. I’ll just nip in and ax if anyone knows where he is. I’ve been trying to get in touch with him – he’d be a right useful cove in a fussation like this – chap called Simon.’
And she slid down the rope-ladder like a powder monkey, muttering to herself,
‘Oh I does hope he’s still alive.’
But Dr Furneaux’s Academy of Art presented a very blank and silent aspect: in the wide forecourt, usually chock-a-block with students eating impromptu meals and doing their laundry in the fountain, no one was to be seen but an aged Chelsea Pensioner, who was slowly and thoughtfully trying to remove a Dutch cheese from the hole in the middle of a statue where someone had rammed it.
‘Where’s all the folk?’ Dido asked. The old man turned bleary eyes on her.
‘What folk?’
‘The students!’ Dido said impatiently. ‘And the teachers! And Doc Furneaux! Where are they?’
‘Gone for to put up the decorations in the Cathedral. And in Threadneedle Street and Paternoster Row and Cheapside. Fancy wasting a good bit o’ cheese like that,’ said the old man in disgust, giving it another vain poke.
Dido scurried back to the elephant.
‘No good . . . You can roll on, Rachel.’ So Rachel continued, looking neither to right nor left, along the King’s Road, across Sloane Square, through Belgravia, across Green Park, and presently drew up outside what was presumably Lord Sope’s club in St James’s. It was called Toffy’s and judging by the white steps, polished brass, window-boxes and the uniformed porter, was very grand indeed.
‘What’ll us do now?’ Dido said. ‘Leave Rachel here and call a cab?’
But Yan, all excited, exclaimed, ‘There! There he is!’
‘Who?’
‘Lord Forecastle. He just got out of that phaeton and went into the Club.’
‘Oh, well, that’s prime,’ Dido said. ‘We’ll go in too.’
But this was easier said than done.
The uniformed porter, who was about seven feet tall, said coldly, ‘Lord Sope’s elephant always gets taken round to the back.’
‘Well, you do that, will you?’ Dido said. ‘Us has an urgent errand with Lord Forecastle. Just ask him to step back and speak to us for a minute, can you?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ the porter said in frozen tones. ‘I fear that will be quite out of the question.’
‘Why?’ demanded Dido.
‘Gentlemen when availing themselves of the facilities of this establishment may not be disturbed for any reason whatsoever by anybody. It is the first Club rule. Why, when the Battle of Trafalgar was won, they had to wait for two days till Mr Pitt came out before they could tell him.’
‘What did he say? I’ll bet he was right vlothered that everyone else had known for two days before him.’
‘History does not relate,’ the porter said snubbingly. Then his tone changed to one of outrage and he exclaimed,
‘Where do you think you are going?’
‘In, to look for Lord Forecastle, if you won’t.’
‘Persons of the female sex are not on any account ever allowed into these premises.’
‘Yan, you better go,’ Dido said crossly.
Yan looked daunted.
‘When d’you reckon his lordship’s liable to come out?’ he asked the porter.
‘I cannot possibly undertake to say.’
‘Oh, drabbit!’ said Dido. She retired to the street, filled her lungs to their maximum capacity with air and bawled,
‘LORD FORECASTLE!’
Yan, approving of this tactic, joined her, filled his lungs and shouted even louder,
‘LORD FORECASTLE!’
Rachel, entering into the spirit of the enterprise, joyfully trumpeted. Windows were opened in clubs all up and down St James’s; about a hundred white-wigged heads and scandalized old faces poked out. ‘Like cheese-mites,’ Dido said.
The elderly gentleman who all this time had been slowly climbing the red-velvet-carpeted stairs of Toffy’s Club, slowly retraced his steps.
‘What is all the commotion about, Prothero?’ he demanded. ‘Pray cause it to cease.’
‘Begging your humble pardon, your lordship, but there is a – a person, and a – a young person that are desirous to have words with your lordship.’
‘Indeed? Where are they?’ inquired Lord Forecastle icily.
‘In the street, your lordship.’
‘I can hardly converse with them in the street, can I?’
‘The young person is of the female sex, your lordshi
p.’
This might have been insoluble, but luckily Lord Forecastle, peering through the entrance, observed,
‘Dear me, there is old Plantagenet Sope’s elephant. I’d no notion he was coming up for the crowning. Planty! Planty! D’you care to come and take a dish of tay with me?’
‘Lord Forecastle!’ said Yan, springing on him like an active thrush on a very ancient snail, before he could discover his mistake and retreat inside the Club again. ‘You knows me – Yan Wineberry, as delivers your corkscrews and Organ-grinder’s Oil.’
‘Good gracious, my good fellow – ’ Lord Forecastle was scandalized. ‘St James’s Street is not the place to allude to such commodities.’
‘Well, I ain’t a-going to,’ Yan said reasonably. ‘We bring you half a Dispatch from Rear-Admiral Charles Tran.’
‘Charles Tran? I have no acquaintance of that designation. And in any case, this is not a suitable place to bring me a dispatch, or half a dispatch. I am off duty, I am in mufti! Take it to the office – take it to the Admiralty. I will look at it on Friday. Or, no, on Friday I shoot partridge at Ravenscourt Park – Monday. Monday will be better. Charles Tran? Some impostor, I daresay – never heard of the fellow.’
‘Look, Lord Fo’c’stle, this is urgent,’ said Dido. ‘We borrowed Lord Sope’s elephant special to come and find you. Are you a-going to the coronation tomorrow?’
‘Of course I am, child. What has that to say to anything?’
‘Well then, you won’t be in the Admiralty on Monday, I can tell you that. You’ll be squished in sixteen feet o’ Thames mud under twenty thousand ton dead-weight o’ fancy stonework.’
‘My dear young person, are you raving? Shall I be obliged to call the Watch?’
‘See here,’ said Dido, and spread out the gnawed Dispatch under his eyes.
‘Tut! What is this rigmarole?’ he said peevishly. ‘French frigate Madame de Ma? There is no such vessel. Cathedral has been mined? Unthinkable rubbish. Why, the fellow who wrote this must have been drunk – half the sentences are incomplete. Either drunk or mad! Tush – take it away – I dare swear the whole thing is an arrant fraud.’
‘It ain’t!’ said Dido indignantly. ‘Captain Hughes o’ the Thrush asked us to bring it to you.’