Tregarthur's Crystal: Book 4 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  ‘Shut the window,’ came an urgent shout and all the other passengers leapt to their feet to slam shut any lowered windows.

  We were too slow. The train entered a tunnel, all the engine smoke blew back and filled our carriage; while still trying to close our window I was hit by a cloud of soot. Turning to the others as we came out into daylight again both Jenna and Demelza laughed at me.

  ‘What?’ I frowned.

  Jen pointed to the long mirrors that were fixed above some of the seats. My blackened face stared out at me.

  Unless the windows stayed open the stuffy air in the carriage was unbearable but we jumped when anyone else shouted to close them. I just had to wipe my face on my sleeve, which wasn’t much cleaner. It wasn’t just time tunnels that caused problems.

  After a while we started to see more houses; small and grubby buildings at the side of the track, blackened by soot. The bench seat was getting hard to sit on by the time we pulled into the station – end of the line, and the search for Miss Tregarthur.

  ‘Weird,’ Jenna said, looking around the station. ‘Looks like a normal place, you know, like station buildings in our time, just covered in soot.’

  ‘And the horses outside,’ I added as we walked out wondering which way to go.

  We weren’t going to take a horse and carriage because we had no idea where we would ask for and we had no money. No idea where we were going. We wandered up a steep hill into the town. The first thing we saw was a huge church.

  ‘The cathedral,’ Demelza said.

  ‘You’d know,’ Jenna shoved her.

  ‘What? Why?’ Demelza stumbled.

  ‘This was probably the place your priest came from,’ Jenna shoved her again and she fell.

  ‘Priest? What priest? I don’t know any pri …’ Demelza’s face showed she remembered.

  It had been Miss Tregarthur’s plan to have us killed in the time of the Black Death, but not by the disease. They had sent for a priest, to help them decide exactly when was the right time to burn us to death.

  Demelza’s sorrys didn’t work. Saying sorry for sending us to our death was never going to be enough. Jenna looked ready to carry out an execution of her own.

  ‘Alvin, stop her,’ Demelza looked up at me.

  Jenna huffed and turned away. Demelza struggled to her feet with a sly look on her face. A sly look and a pout in my direction which she made sure Jenna saw.

  ‘Are we really going to keep her with us?’ I said quickly, Jenna said nothing and Demelza managed yet another pout. Impossible. This was her game and I felt helpless, something Demelza obviously understood. Something I rather hoped Jenna didn’t understand.

  It wasn’t hard to find the trail of Miss Tregarthur. Even though this was quite a large town not a lot happened and anything different was noticed. People had noticed a wild looking woman arriving with someone called Masterson. Everyone seemed to know the name Masterson, a rich man who had another house and land just outside of the city.

  We knew what we had to do and spent the rest of the day shifting horse dung, cleaning rooms and begging for food, which earned a night in a stable. The next day we set off to find Mr Masterson who, of course, lived in Masterson Hall.

  We saw the Hall from perhaps more than a mile away as we trudged along a rutted gravel road, jumping out of the way of carriages which thundered down taking no notice of people trying to walk, and there were no pavements.

  We were told that this was the main road to London – it wasn’t a motorway. As we approached the Hall I can’t say I felt confident. It was like his last house, but much larger. The place was vast and set in a park of huge trees with cows and sheep grazing underneath and men working everywhere. Whoever Masterson was, he must have had piles of money. We came to another gate, opening into the parkland. Two men stepped out in front of us blocking the way. Both in the same sort of uniform that we’d seen on the man outside his other house.

  ‘No beggars,’ said one of them.

  The other was holding a pistol. He looked like he enjoyed turning people away.

  I couldn’t blame him, we looked really rough by now, three rough young kids, straw in my hair from the stables, the girls’ clothing ragged and dirty. Jenna looked at me and burst out laughing which definitely confused the two men.

  ‘Have you seen a crazy looking woman who looks like a witch with huge staring eyes and maybe screeches a bit?’ Jenna said to the men after she’d stopped laughing at me.

  It was obvious that the description fitted, they looked startled, a bit surprised but it was easy to see that they had seen Miss T – once seen never forgotten.

  ‘Not your business,’ the first one said, flustered by Jenna’s question.

  ‘Came to see your man Masterson didn’t she?’ Jenna added a bit of fierceness in her voice just in case she didn’t get her own way.

  ‘Gone to London,’ the second man blurted out.

  ‘Shut it John.’ His companion turned on him. ‘Just get these scum out of here or shoot them.’

  John looked nervous and jumpy. He was the man with the gun. I really didn’t like nervous jumpy men with guns. I’d seen men like that at home and Dad told me to watch out for them. ‘Never know what they might do next,’ he’d said, usually just before hitting them with his baseball bat. Mind you, he usually did that even if they weren’t nervous or holding a gun.

  That was Dad, a vicious drug runner now in jail – if ‘now’ meant the time we’d left home. As for the ‘now’ we were in, my dad hadn’t even been born. Difficult to get my mind to work that out – we might be in trouble here but thinking of Dad made me wonder if I could get to him before he started a business that would get him, and me, into so much trouble.

  A loud click brought me back to this particular present; John had readied his gun. I pulled Jenna and we turned away, Demelza followed quickly.

  ‘And don’t come back.’ The first man grabbed the gun from John and fired it over our heads.

  That made me stop. I could see that this gun had only one shot, it needed re-loading – John was fumbling with the barrel but it would take ages if they were going to shoot at us again.

  They might be two guard men but I had Dad’s temper in me and I didn’t like the way they had spoken to us – perhaps this was my ‘baseball bat’ moment even though I only had my fists.

  Jenna had hold of my arm and just shook her head saying: ‘Miss Tregarthur’s gone,’ as she pulled me away and we walked away down the track.

  ‘What now?’ Demelza stuck in her whine after we’d walked a little way.

  ‘Good question,’ I couldn’t see what we could do. Miss Tregarthur was just moving on, whatever she was doing we were just chasing her. Jenna didn’t see this as a problem – going after her was what we had to do.

  ‘We’ll need a lot more money,’ Jenna said, as we headed back towards the town. ‘A lot more money if we are going to follow them to London.’

  ‘Could use the …’ I nodded towards my arm, where I still had the gold belt. I didn’t want to let Demelza see it, no way I could trust her. She’d sell us out, probably find another ‘Zach-like’ person to steal the belt from me.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Jenna grabbed hold of Demelza and spun her round. ‘What have you got here?’

  Jenna grabbed hold of the necklace that Demelza had worn ever since we first set out on the moor, the necklace we had spotted when she’d been held captive in the caveman village, and somehow she still had it hidden under the neck of her tunic. The fabric came apart in Jenna’s grasp and the shivery metal shone in the sunlight.

  ‘Leave it,’ squealed Demelza and tears welled up in her eyes. ‘It was my gran’s.’ Demelza croaked.

  That stopped Jenna for maybe a second, before she undid the clasp and weighed the chain in her hand. Demelza sank to the ground, sobbing, ‘It’s all I have.’

  Even with all the awful things that had happened, all down to Zach and Demelza, even after all that I could feel her misery. I understood. I h
ad nothing from my family. If I ever did get home it looked like I’d have to live on the streets – with Dad in jail, Mum dead and the rest of the family not wanting me around.

  The misery seemed to hit Jenna too and she handed the necklace over with no words. Demelza grabbed for it, looking surprised and bewildered as she fastened it around her neck again. Standing up, she turned to Jenna, ‘Why?’

  Jenna just shrugged and we set off back to the city. Something had changed and I didn’t understand what had happened between the two of them. We still had work to do if we wanted our usual meal of bread and a night in a stinking hovel. Life as usual, that’s what it had become. We’d have to sell the belt. I knew that would be difficult – too valuable. We didn’t look like the legal owners of such a thing. Anyone would assume we’d stolen it and it would be difficult to find a king to back up our story. Trying to sell it would almost certainly see us end up in another jail.

  ‘Maybe chop it up?’ Jenna suggested, as we piled up some cleanish straw to make a sort of bed. Demelza had already slumped down in a corner.

  ‘Sleep on it,’ I murmured. I guessed that keeping it together made it a whole lot more valuable. Things changed after a restless, uncomfortable night.

  Necklace

  -3-

  ‘She’s gone.’ Jenna woke me in the earliest light of morning, her voice disturbed the horses.

  ‘Gone?’ I said sleepily. The straw bed might be uncomfortable but the work to earn the place to sleep had been exhausting. I’d have gone back to sleep except Jen poked me and you don’t sleep after her pokes.

  ‘Do I care?’ I muttered, and not just because I didn’t see any use in keeping Demelza with us. There were other reasons I really had to keep out of my head. ‘Has she taken anything?’ I added, but we didn’t have anything worth taking. Just another couple of coins from yesterday’s jobs. At least in this inn we were paid in money, although we had to sleep in the stable.

  Since we were awake, we made our way to the kitchen in the inn building, hoping to find more food. We just found more work.

  ‘Get their horses,’ the landlady called when she saw me and nodded towards two men who were eating an early breakfast. With a hungry sigh I did what she asked and brought the men’s two horses round to the front of the building and stood there waiting for the landlord to bring their saddles and help the men leave with their heavy bags slung over the horses.

  I went back into the inn for a crust before getting a list of jobs – nearly all involving horse dung – Jenna had more work since Demelza had left. We might be in the city but this place still didn’t provide enough wealth to keep people from heading to larger places, including London.

  Sleeping on the problem of selling the belt had made no difference. I was going to have to ask someone, to trust someone, perhaps the landlord. But looking at him I reckoned it would only be a minute or two after I told him before he found someone to take it from me. The idea was useless. We’d never get a good price for it. We might get enough money to get us to London, but not enough to survive when we got there. Working our way would take forever. We weren’t going to find out what Miss T was up to and that worried me, her messing around in time, what would that do to all our futures? Especially mine, because I was the one she wanted to kill. But if we couldn’t follow her, wasn’t our only choice to head back to the moor?

  I still thought Demelza knew more than she had told us. Something particular stuck in my head. Demelza had asked me if I knew Miss Tregarthur before we went with her on the first hike. I had no idea why she asked that. Something had happened such a long time ago. Hadn’t I seen Miss Tregarthur hanging around my aunt’s house? Perhaps I had been mistaken.

  No point in asking Jenna about that now. She was struggling out of the inn with foul smelling chamber pots to empty into the open drain. No toilets and the filth just trickled down the drain, it wouldn’t clear unless we had rain.

  Jenna looked up, ‘See the sign?’ she said, looking up at the street name. ‘Shitbrook.’

  ‘Good name,’ I wiped something off my boot.

  ‘Back to the moor,’ Jenna spat as she wiped her hand on her tunic, sniffed and pulled a face that would have exactly fitted her feelings and the smell.

  I nodded. No future in staying here, only the past. We would never discover what Miss Tregarthur was up to and probably wouldn’t even if we followed her to London. Just have to hope the tunnel would take us. If Demelza had left and she didn’t have any money she would probably go back to the moor as well. It was even possible Demelza knew a lot more, perhaps she had remembered some way of getting the tunnel to take her.

  Shouts came from inside the inn for us to get on with the work and we were about to walk away, when Demelza returned. More tears had streaked the dirt on her face. She said nothing and just handed Jenna a leather pouch which clinked of money.

  Staring in a puzzled way I saw the line around her neck where the necklace had been. Demelza had sold the necklace. I didn’t know how she’d done it but she’d got a good price. It wasn’t a tiny pouch. Working in the inn gave us only a few coins, now we were almost rich. Should we let her try and sell the gold belt?

  ‘Thanks, but why?’ Jenna frowned.

  Demelza just shook her head. Jen didn’t ask again but she took charge and suggested to the landlady what she might do with her dirty chamber pots.

  ‘Clothes,’ Jenna said. ‘We need to blend in.’

  At the time I did blend in quite well – dirt and smell were fashionable for boys looking after horses.

  ‘First a bath,’ Jenna led us off to another inn, not a great place – it still had chamber pots which Jenna kept on calling for someone to empty – but we got a bath, just one and I was the last in the water. In a cleaner and less disgusting state we went looking for new clothes. We weren’t after anything too posh, second hand stuff. I ended up with a black woollen jacket with a waistcoat and trousers. I’d seen old photographs of people looking like this. Along with a pair of heavy boots. Both the girls were in smock dresses. Jenna always looked great to me. Trouble was, Demelza didn’t look bad either, and she knew it, swirling around with a smile that suggested the necklace and her gran were probably forgotten.

  The new clothes we had were not something I would want to be seen in at home in our time.

  ‘Jen, you really do look great,’ Demelza said unexpectedly and I couldn’t understand why Jenna seemed to take it as an insult.

  I tried not to notice Demelza.

  I couldn’t understand why she’d sold her necklace. Why did she care if we went after Miss Tregarthur? If the crystal didn’t work anymore we were at the mercy of the time tunnel, it might help or more likely it wouldn’t.

  I could only guess Demelza thought finding Miss Tregarthur was the best way of getting home, not necessarily along with me and Jen. I didn’t feel that Demelza had suddenly turned into a good guy, selling her family necklace and giving us the money. Perhaps I was too harsh, perhaps we’d never know and at least we weren’t broke. Even so, if we went to London we’d still need more money. This gold belt around my arm felt definitely more of a problem than a solution.

  I still had a feeling I was missing out on information from both of the girls. When we had arrived at the moor this time and after we’d dumped Zach in the tunnel something had happened, Jenna knew more and hadn’t shared it. Same for Demelza and getting anything out of her was … well … difficult. If I went near her Jenna started bristling like one of Dad’s attack dogs.

  All I could guess was that Demelza must have had a good reason for selling her gran’s necklace and it would be for her benefit. Did the necklace ever really belong to her grandmother? Demelza looked at me as though she read my mind, and gave the sort of smile I was glad Jenna didn’t see.

  We had a real meal that night. It was so long since I had sat down with some real food in front of me – even though it wasn’t food I’d have eaten at home, not that I actually knew what we were eating – a lump of meat was t
he main thing we hacked at and ate with bread. Even Demelza chopped off a greasy hunk and sat back with a small dribble of fat running down her face. The sort of sequence you wouldn’t want anyone else to see – especially since Demelza had once been so careful with her appearance. Again she gave me a look that suggested she knew what I was thinking and slowly wiped her face keeping her eyes on me. Jenna grunted and she might have said something about my needing to shut my mouth.

  Being a more up-market place, this inn had a more up-market class of criminal. You could spot them at the bar, furtive, not the pickpockets that had been everywhere out on the streets. In here they were plotting and I had a feeling that we might be part of the plot. Being cleaner, we looked younger and like potential victims. We were out of place and certainly out of time.

  We went up to our room soon after the meal. Upstairs we had one bed for all three of us to stretch out on as best we could. Demelza winked at me and got into the middle. Jenna shoved her over to the side.

  The inn creaked with noise. People still drinking.

  ‘Eh?’ I said, as Jenna shoved past Demelza, got up and pulled a chair across the room to the door.

  ‘No lock,’ she said, in a loud whisper.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, as she jammed the chair under the door handle.

  We were too exhausted to worry any more. Demelza snored, not surprising after that meal, but soon I was asleep.

  Not for long – I woke to hear the door knob turn and rub against Jenna’s chair. The room was dark, just a flickering lamp outside in the street. I didn’t think the chair would stay in place so I jumped up and held it.

  ‘Smash it down,’ I heard a man’s voice.

  ‘Jonah said no noise,’ came another voice.

  ‘They’re only kids aren’t they?’ the other man said. ‘Give the door a hard push.’

  ‘Alvin,’ Jenna’s voice sounded loud in the dark. ‘Alvin, is the gun loaded?’