We went over to the men, planning to ask, but they soon shouted at us to get away. There was a sign on a nearby tree saying the ‘Masterson Tregarthur Company’ had bought it. The other thing the sign said was ‘Keep out’.
It looked like they were trying to buy land near to the Heath even if they couldn’t get the whole thing – why? It was a scrubby piece of land, nothing there. Maybe Jenna was right, it was the sort of place that would cost a fortune to buy in our real time. But there had to be more to this.
‘Whatever she wants it for, those men are trying to stop anyone finding out,’ Jenna said, as we turned away.
As we walked back down the hill there was a fantastic view of London stretching down to the river. A thick cloud of smog lay over the town but you could still make out some of the sights.
‘Isn’t that St Paul’s Cathedral?’ I said pointing. It was another part of London that Granddad had shown me.
Jenna shrugged. ‘Could be. You certainly can look down on the town from up here. Still no idea what she wants this place for except the view.’ Jenna took one more glance up the hill before we made for the coach.
We were still a way off when we saw the struggle. Demelza was trying to get out of the carriage. She gave a scream as the man pulled her back with his hand over her mouth.
‘RUN,’ shouted Jenna and she charged across the rough grass.
We both ran. The driver flicked his whip and the horse took off. Panting, we arrived at the empty road with the carriage disappearing, Demelza still struggling uselessly.
I wasn’t sure I really cared if Demelza had been kidnapped – if that’s what had happened, but I just knew Jenna wouldn’t see it that way.
I felt it couldn’t be a complete coincidence that we should be singled out. We might look like country people, that wasn’t enough, how would anyone know we were here? The only person who would take any notice was Miss Tregarthur, surely she couldn’t have spotted us or seen me – unless it was my asking around in the city. Had someone told her or told Masterson?
‘What do they want her for?’ I asked because Jenna wasn’t saying anything.
‘I don’t like to imagine that,’ Jenna said in the end. ‘Reminds me what happened on those convict boats to Australia.’
Another awful time in history that Miss Tregarthur had sent us to, along with me having to escape a sentence to hang.
‘But …’ I stammered, not wanting to ask anymore. I had never asked Jenna what she’d had to do to survive that journey, the time when Ivy ended up with a baby and we’d left them behind.
‘But what?’ Jenna snapped and I think she was just remembering what had happened.
‘But …’ I had nothing more to say.
‘But nothing,’ Jenna was going to say what I expected. ‘We’ve got to find her.’
Lost Girl
-5-
If finding Demelza was going to be difficult, so was getting back to the inn. We were not exactly on a bus route. Any horse drawn private carriages hurried past us taking passengers to the city. From the hill up on the Heath we’d been able to see over the town so we had a rough idea of which direction to take, but we hadn’t paid attention to the route before. We set off and we weren’t exactly in the middle of anything like a town, there was still a lot of countryside around here – in this part of the century.
After a while we were amongst the houses and couldn’t work out where we were going.
‘Make for the smell,’ Jenna sniffed. ‘The worst smell comes from the river, the inn’s not far from there.’
I wasn’t sure I could detect where the worst smell came from, but Jen was walking faster so I kept up and hoped she knew where to go. She didn’t. Ages later we stopped and asked someone. I’d thought that was useless, the inn was called the Red Lion, a common name. But asking worked, because people knew of the big landlord with a limp – big in terms of the size of his beer belly, limp in terms of when he decided to use it. The expression on their faces made me worry even more. Our landlord had a long history.
We made it back. It was clear that someone had been in our room and not just to empty the chamber pot. They must have been disappointed because we didn’t have anything to steal. Demelza had handed over the money from the sale of the necklace and Jen kept it with her and there wasn’t a lot of it left.
We went down to the bar to ask a few questions. The landlord seemed to be waiting for us. But he had no answers when we asked him about our room, he said it often happened.
‘There’s a lot of thieving people around, can’t keep them out,’ he sneered at us. This was going nowhere. The landlord was pretending to line up bottles, probably the most strenuous thing he’d done all day – relying on his wife and a young girl who was pushing a broom around the bar room without much effect, this inn really needed a team of contract cleaners with a power hose.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ said the fat limping man and it didn’t sound as though he’d forgotten anything. ‘Man dropped this off for you.’
He handed me a scrap of paper, the whole thing felt fake. The note was a demand for money if we wanted to see Demelza again. Actually I didn’t but that was never going to be Jenna’s reaction when I passed her the note.
‘What man?’ Jenna said loudly.
‘No idea,’ the landlord said again with his sneering voice.
Now Jen is a wonderful person, caring, loving but she hasn’t always been like that. Back at school she’d been as hard – harder – than anyone. No one messed with Jenna at home. This trip may have changed her, but not completely.
‘Last chance,’ Jenna said sweetly.
The landlord gave a jeering laugh and turned his back on her, but not for long. Jenna snatched the broom from the girl and with a yell started to smash anything in reach – bottles from the bar, kicking over the chairs and tables, and finally throwing one of the chairs through a window.
‘Hey,’ shouted the slowly moving man with his face an angry snarl, his fat arms making to grab my Jen.
I’m not so caring and loving. And I might still be quite young, even if I did feel older, but our last Tregarthur time trip on the boats had changed me. I’d been at sea for months, running up the rigging, hard physical work, better than a gym work out. So this man wasn’t as scary as he might have been. As he lumbered towards us I stuck a chair out in from of him. I don’t suppose he really saw it over his belly, but it was enough to trip him. And I followed Dad’s advice – never put a man on the ground and watch to see what he does next because you won’t like it, follow through. I grabbed one of the bottles Jenna had broken and jumped on top of him, squashing the final bits of puffing breath he had. And when he had stopped gasping for air I had the broken glass stuck firmly at his neck. There are some skills you might not want to learn from your dad, but this one turned out to be pretty handy.
Now the landlord’s reinforcements were arriving. Two big men were at the door, not the two from the carriage, these two were different and dangerous.
‘Fred,’ one of them called to the landlord and took a step towards us.
‘Alvin, cut his throat.’ Jenna stepped in front of the new man, who looked confused at being challenged by her. But I got the message and pushed the broken glass harder, blood trickled down the man’s neck.
‘No!’ squealed Fred, I hadn’t known his name before. ‘Stay back, stay back, they’ll kill me,’ he squealed again.
‘Not back,’ Jenna demanded, ‘OUT. Get out or we’ll do him.’
Jenna’s voice even frightened me.
‘Do what she says,’ Fred snivelled and the other two men left. I was sure I heard one of them give a laugh. I don’t think there was much friendship between this lot, probably they’d have been happy if I had killed Fred.
Left alone in the room I could see this wasn’t going to be easy, not easy to keep this big man under control.
‘Tell us what really happened,’ Jenna tried to sound firm, but I could hear uncertainty in her voice now, uncertainty and q
uite a bit of fear.
‘Sure,’ replied Fred gaining confidence and slyness sounding in his words. He might be fat and lazy but he must have dealt with many bar fights in this part of the town. ‘Just let me up and I’ll tell you all about it, sort things out,’ he said, and moved slightly as though he might get up.
I pushed harder with the broken bottle and he gave a cry.
‘No need for that,’ he cried. ‘I’ll help you.’
I cut off his words with another jab of the bottle and another trickle of blood.
‘Pull his trousers down,’ I called to Jenna, remembering another trick Dad had told me. Jenna did as I asked, despite the unwashed whiff and the lack of any underpants. A man with his trousers around his knees finds it hard to get away.
‘Give me his belt.’ I held one hand out behind me, still ready with the bottle in my other hand. But I needed Jen to fasten the belt around Fred’s neck. With that in place I could hold him and pull hard if he tried to escape. I pulled him up to his knees. His angry face stared at us, but he tried to cover his undressed state as Jenna stood over him.
‘We could have found our way back here by smelling him,’ Jenna said to me and I could tell she was rehearsing just to make sure the uncertainty wasn’t still in her voice. It wasn’t. ‘Now Fred,’ she went on. ‘Do tell us about this,’ she said, holding up the note.
Fred tried again to get himself up. I tightened the belt. His hands jerked to his neck but I had my foot on his back and he couldn’t fight me and sank down on his knees.
‘Don’t do that again,’ Jenna took another of the bottles she had smashed. ‘I’m not good with this, never know where to strike, especially with you down there and no pants.’
Fred gave a moan. ‘You’ve done this before,’ he choked.
‘Of course,’ Jenna said, convincingly enough for me to almost try and remember when we had done this before.
After a lot more choking, more blood, a bit more shouting and a lot of threats, we left the inn with the information he’d given us. I didn’t believe most of it, because it made Fred sound as though he’d been forced to help the others kidnap Demelza, but it was more likely he was involved from the start. And I could tell there was something he wasn’t going to tell us even if I had done more damage with the broken glass. We were going to have to find out for ourselves, if we could.
The only possibly useful thing Fred had told us was that the man who owned the carriage and his driver both drank at a tavern down by the river – a pub to me – called the Captain Kidd. I thought he had told the truth about that because it would be easy for Fred to sort things out if we turned up there. Probably the pub was run by someone he knew.
There was plenty of time for Fred to get a message to the other two. Everything felt just as dangerous as anything Miss Tregarthur had done to us. We had tied Fred’s belt to a rail on the bar before we left. It wouldn’t hold him for long.
Jenna stood over Fred. ‘You’ve been so helpful,’ she said, with her own sneer. ‘When we meet up with those other two we’ll have to tell them just how helpful, how you said this was all their idea. How you said you’d say that in a law court, all their fault.’
I could see that was working on the barman’s brain, he screwed up his eyes, so much hate on his face. But he could see that Jenna’s threat made sense. It wouldn’t do for him to be found to have grassed on the other men. It might not stop Fred in the end, but perhaps it would stop him for a while.
‘And we’ll tell them how a girl got the better of you and pulled down your pants.’
I joined Jenna with a laugh. What we really needed, and didn’t have, was a phone with a camera. The threat of posting his picture in that state would have been a better threat. But no phones around.
I held on to Fred while Jenna got the few things we had from our room. We left, taking a quick turn down an alleyway and looking back to see if we were followed. Even from a distance away we could hear Fred’s swearing and shouting. Time to run even if that made us look more suspicious. I didn’t know exactly where we were going but made sure we took lots of narrow turns trying to keep roughly in the direction I had taken in the morning. I hoped that would take us to a more expensive part of the city, less likely that Fred’s lot would follow us. I must have taken the wrong direction. We ended up near another station.
Eventually we found another inn that was a bit less rough. I could see they weren’t too happy to have us but I guess the place needed the business and they gave us a room. They wanted money up front. It might be expensive but maybe there was less chance of us getting robbed.
One night was going to take nearly all the rest of our money and I wasn’t certain we’d get the full use of the hotel. We were going to have to wait until night to meet up with the other men in the Captain Kidd.
‘Police?’ Jenna said, as we looked around the inn, checking for escape routes, just in case. ‘Are there any police?’ I hadn’t seen anyone who looked like the police in this part of town. There had been some in the City near the banks, but nothing here.
‘Maybe,’ I said, after a while in silence but we both knew that even if we did find the police we’d have to do a lot of explaining. What would we say about Demelza, who was Demelza? Lost schoolgirl? Demelza didn’t look like one, she’d looked a wreck even in the new clothes we’d bought.
‘Worse than a tramp,’ Jenna said, and I could see there was something else in her mind. Something she wasn’t going to tell me right then. At least we could laugh about Fred and the mess we’d left for him. Would future guests in his inn be in the same danger? I wanted to hope that we could have made a difference, frightened him a bit, but that was a ridiculous thought. I’m sure Dad would have felt the same.
‘So, we go down to the Captain Kidd, find these men and ask them nicely to hand over Demelza.’ Jenna slumped onto the bed and sunk into the tired mattress which gave up a cloud of dust. This inn might be better, but total comfort was not on offer. ‘That’s just not going to work,’ Jenna added.
‘No,’ I replied seeing that Jen expected me to come up with a better idea, any idea. ‘We go down there and watch.’
‘How?’ Jenna was sliding into a hopeless mood. It made me wonder if we should bother about Demelza or just leave her. But looking at Jen made me almost feel as though her words and her mood were just a trap for me. Jen was expecting me to say we should leave her, but that’s not what she wanted. And because of how I felt about Jenna I had to try harder. I also thought this whole thing might have been arranged for us and that meant arranged by Miss Tregarthur. Finding Demelza could lead us to her.
‘This place is all fog and smoke,’ I said. ‘If we get a carriage we can sit outside the Captain Kidd and wait for them. They won’t see us. We can follow them.’
Jenna wasn’t convinced. ‘Can we afford that? Another carriage?’
‘Ah, I may be able to help with that,’ I said, putting my hand into my breeches pocket. ‘I decided Fred owed us more than the lies he gave us. So I removed what he had in his own trousers before we left. He kept the inn’s takings on him – didn’t trust to put them anywhere else.’ I spread the coins on the bed beside her.
‘Should be enough for a little night time surveillance,’ I said. ‘At least we’ll be able to recognise one of them.’ I was thinking about his one arm.
‘Better make sure we know where we are now.’ Jenna looked out of the window. ‘The White Hart, we need to know where it is. Don’t want to get lost like last time.’
‘That’s if we do come back here,’ I said, imagining all the things that were likely to go wrong. Coming back with Demelza was one of them.
That night we did find another carriage. I spent a while talking to the driver. I didn’t entirely explain what had happened, just what we wanted to do. It took nearly all of Fred’s inn money to get an agreement with him. I gave him half and promised the rest if it all worked out.
‘Can we trust him?’ Jenna whispered after we climbed into the wooden co
ach and sat on the hard seats. This was a closed carriage, we needed to stay hidden.
‘Of course we can’t trust him,’ I replied and we bumped off along the rutted road heading for the river. ‘It’ll be a money thing. If the driver reckons he can get more by dumping us in it, then he will. We just have to hope.’
‘Do I get to pull down his trousers too?’ Jen tried to laugh but we were out of humour.
It was difficult to know we had arrived as the driver pulled his horse to a stop. Along the road gas lamps shone in hazy globes, hanging in the thick fog, but too weak to light the ground. Dark thick choking fog. The driver pointed out the Captain Kidd.
‘You want to go inside?’ he asked.
‘No, we’ll wait for them,’ Jenna called back.
The man shrugged and pulled a blanket round him. It felt cold in the damp air. We sat and waited. And waited. I could hear the driver was getting fed up, he kept asking if it wouldn’t be best for us to go inside. ‘Warmer in there,’ he said, and I could see he wanted to get off, no matter how much we’d paid him for the night.
The fog drifted past in sheets of white against the gas lights, hiding everything as it went by but clearing for some brief seconds to let us see down the cobbled lane. Jenna and I were huddled down inside the carriage and didn’t see the two men, but we heard them when they eventually left the inn.
‘Found him with his trousers down,’ was the first thing I heard.
I peered out but still couldn’t see anyone clearly, it was obviously our two men because they went on to tell more of the story than I would have expected Fred to have wanted them to know; about how we had run off with the money. As I listened the two men came briefly into sight as they walked past our carriage. I could see the man with one arm. Ours was not the only carriage waiting outside the Captain Kidd. Several had queued up, presumably to collect drinkers at the end of their session. But our two men crossed the road and made for their own carriage. The one in which we’d travelled to the Heath. I hadn’t recognised it, nothing to make it recognisable.
Tregarthur's Crystal: Book 4 (The Tregarthur's Series) Page 5