“Blimey!” he said. His eyes flicked to Cordelia’s full cup so she handed that to him as well.
“Try sipping it,” she suggested. But the boy had already swigged all the tea.
“MAAAAAAK-ING!” he bellowed, making her flinch.
A lady snatched a paper from the boy, tossed him a copper coin, and stalked away, frowning. Cordelia frowned too when she glanced at the printed black letters.
~ THE DAILY SLAPP ~
ANTICS IN HIS PANTS FROM HIS MAD-JESTY!
Under the headline was a collection of unkind comments about the king.
“How do they know he was only in his underpants?” Cordelia wondered.
“Oi!” said the boy. “If ya wanna read it, ya gotta pay!”
Cordelia blushed, but he winked at her, pushing his cap up an inch to scratch his forehead.
“Wouldn’t waste me money if I was you,” he said, grinning. “Every time a grown-up buys a paper, all they do’s frown at it. Why spend yer money on somefing makes ya miserable? I’d rather spend mine on a pet canary.”
“Do you have a pet canary?” Cordelia asked.
“No,” he said. “But I’m savin’ up for one.”
Cordelia felt she could definitely be friends with someone who wanted a pet canary. She held out her hand to the boy.
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Cordelia Hatmaker.”
“Cor,” said the boy. “A real Hatmaker?”
“Cordelia,” Cordelia corrected. “But you can call me Cor if you like.”
The boy rubbed his grubby hand on his grubby trouser leg. “Sam Lightfinger,” he said, shaking her hand vigorously, brown eyes bright as a sparrow’s.
“Nice to meet you, Sam.” Cordelia smiled.
“Miss Hatmaker! Come inside, please!”
It was Miss Starebottom, beckoning from the kitchen door. Miss Starebottom was Cordelia’s governess. She carried a thin cane, which (Cordelia thought) made her look like a spindle-legged heron. She had a laugh to match: long and pointy. She was exactly what a governess was expected to be: plain and serious. But Cordelia also knew that she kept a secret supply of sweets in the pockets of her cloud-gray dresses.
When Cordelia first met Miss Starebottom, three years earlier, she had looked her new governess up and down and eyed her cane sideways.
“What’s that for?” Cordelia had demanded.
Miss Starebottom studied her for a long moment.
“Pointing at things,” she eventually said.
“What kind of things?” Cordelia enquired.
“Algebra equations,” came the answer.
Cordelia wished she had not asked. But then Miss Starebottom had put her hand into her pocket and pulled out a bright, paper-wrapped sweet. The paper had crinkled when Cordelia unwrapped it and she decided, chewing the gooey caramel, that her new governess had potential.
Today the cane rapped importantly on the doorstep, so Cordelia said goodbye to Sam Lightfinger and ran inside with the empty cups.
“Don’t run, Cordelia!” Miss Starebottom exclaimed.
Cordelia slowed to a stately walk.
“That’s better,” Miss Starebottom said. “Remember, we are trying to be ladylike.”
The governess closed the door behind Cordelia, so she did not see Cordelia roll her eyes. But when she caught sight of Cordelia’s hands, Miss Starebottom gasped. “Your hands are filthy, child! You must never shake hands with a ragamuffin! Wash at once. It’s time for our morning walk.”
Her hands were, indeed, black and grimy. But she laughed as Cook passed her a bar of soap.
“He’s not a ragamuffin, Miss Starebottom!” she said. “He’s a newspaper seller, see? This on my hands is only newsprint.”
The soap turned black and the water blacker. When her hands were clean enough, even for her governess, Cordelia pilfered two pieces of toast, spread thickly with honey, from the kitchen table. On her way out, she slipped a slice to Sam Lightfinger, who whispered, “Cor—thanks, Cor!” as she and Miss Starebottom crossed the street.
By the time Cordelia and Miss Starebottom reached Hyde Park (promenading at a slow pace approved of by the governess), the toast was finished but the taste of honey lingered on Cordelia’s lips. They walked to the Serpentine, a ribbon of lake glimmering in the greenery.
A small, round boy with an unfortunate haircut stood by the water’s edge, holding a model boat under one arm.
“Goose!” Cordelia yelled, bounding over to him.
He grinned. “Hello, Cordelia!”
“Good morning, Master Bootmaker,” Miss Starebottom said gravely.
“Good morning, Miss Starebottom.” The boy bowed politely.
Miss Starebottom surveyed the park to make sure there was nobody watching them. It was highly irregular for a Hatmaker and a Bootmaker to be on speaking terms. In fact, a Hatmaker had not been friends with a Bootmaker for several generations. Miss Starebottom (not to mention the children) would be in a considerable amount of trouble if either of their families found out about Goose and Cordelia’s friendship. It would be almost as frowned-upon as a shoeless king.
Cordelia and Goose met secretly in Hyde Park several mornings a week. Miss Starebottom was also Goose’s governess, although she had conveniently forgotten to tell the Hatmaker and Bootmaker families that she was educating both children. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Miss Starebottom taught Cordelia at Hatmaker House. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, she went three streets over to Bootmaker Mansion, to instruct Goose in arithmetic, drawing, and letters. On Sundays she attended church and polished her pointy shoes.
Even though Miss Starebottom made them do algebra and walk everywhere much too slowly, Cordelia and Goose shared a kind of grudging affection for their governess. After all, she did have a pocketful of caramels. And she had introduced them to each other, when they had both, separately, been rather lonely children. Of course, Cordelia adored her family, and Cook and Jones and the Quest Pigeons, and the mice who lived behind the pantry skirting board at Hatmaker House. But there is nothing quite like having someone your own height to gallivant around with. Someone your own height always seems to see the world the same way you do.
But Miss Starebottom had not introduced Cordelia and Goose three years ago purely out of the goodness of her heart. In fact, this was another reason Cordelia and Goose secretly admired their governess. When the children met in the park, Miss Starebottom met a gentleman friend in the bushes. It was an arrangement that suited everybody involved.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Cordelia pointed at Goose’s wooden boat as Miss Starebottom sloped away into the undergrowth.
“It’s an exact replica of the Polished Boot,” Goose told Cordelia, his eyes shining. “See, it’s even got my brother Ignatius at the wheel!”
Goose held up the boat for Cordelia to see. Handkerchief-sized sails were hung between the spindles of masts, with thin string for the rigging. The hull and the balustrades were expertly carved, and at the tiny ship’s wheel stood a whittled captain.
“It’s brilliant!” Cordelia said.
Goose glowed with pride.
“Ignatius spent all voyage making it for me,” he said. “He gave it to me when he got home.”
Cordelia paused.
“Did your brother’s ship get through the storm safely?” she asked, a whirlpool twisting in her belly. “And past the rocks that guard Rivermouth?”
“Ignatius said it was plain sailing,” Goose replied. “And the lighthouse guided them around the Rivermouth rocks as usual.”
Cordelia blinked. Why had the lighthouse failed to guide the Jolly Bonnet and her crew past the rocks, too? It was a passage of water that every London sailor knew well. Her father had once told her: When you line up the figurehead on the prow with the glowing lighthouse lantern, the boat slips through the water like a dream. Captain Hatmaker had steered the ship past the jagged rocks a hundred times, using the lighthouse as his guide.
A frown creased Cordelia’s
face. Goose stopped tinkering with his model ship and said, “Why d’you ask?”
Cordelia wanted to make the awful words sound as small as possible but, whichever way she thought about saying it, they sounded huge.
“My father is lost at sea,” she blurted. “The Jolly Bonnet was wrecked on the Rivermouth rocks.”
Goose seemed to sink a little.
“Cordelia,” he breathed, “I’m so sor—”
“He’s not dead,” Cordelia insisted loudly. “He’s just lost. He’ll be found very soon.”
Goose nodded dumbly.
“Does it sail?” Cordelia asked, pointing at the model boat. She wanted him to stop looking at her with pity.
In answer, Goose knelt down and carefully placed the miniature galleon on the water. It bobbed and lilted on the lapping waves. He fiddled with the rigging and delicately turned the ship’s wheel.
“I think, if we put the wind behind her and give her a push—YES!”
The little boat was skimming out into the middle of the lake, the wind filling its tiny white sails. Cordelia clapped and whooped and Goose danced on the spot with his hands in the air.
“Look at her go!”
“Just like the real ship on the ocean!”
The Polished Boot was out in the middle of the Serpentine now. A couple in a row boat stopped to let it pass. Cordelia and Goose watched it get smaller and smaller.
“Goose …” said Cordelia, a thought occurring to her.
“Yes?”
“How will your boat sail back?”
Goose looked as though he had swallowed a lemon.
They took off around the lake, Cordelia’s hat ribbons flying out behind her and Goose’s boots pounding the ground. Cordelia hoped Miss Starebottom was nowhere nearby, so she would not see her running at a most unladylike pace.
But, as they rounded the bend at the end of the lake, a much bigger problem than an annoyed governess presented itself.
Cordelia skidded to a stop and Goose collided with her a second later. Four children stood blocking the path: a pair of identical twin boys and a pair of identical twin girls. They grinned down at Cordelia and Goose with identical, malicious grins.
The Glovemaker children.
CHAPTER 8
“WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE?” ONE GLOVEMAKER boy sneered. “A Hatmaker and a Bootmaker in cahoots?”
Cordelia raised her chin defiantly (also so she could look the Glovemaker in the eye, because he was a head taller than her).
“It’s none of your business!” she declared, hoping she sounded fiercer than she felt.
Behind her, Goose whimpered. The Glovemakers chuckled. One of the girls cracked her knuckles in her velvet gloves.
“Shouldn’t you be out collecting severed heads for your hats, Hatmaker?” she jeered.
“And guts for your bootlaces, Bootmaker?” her twin added gleefully.
“What are you talking about?” said Cordelia.
“Pa says you Hatmakers use the heads of criminals to mold your hats on,” one of the boys said.
“He says you wait outside the Tower of London for the heads of traitors to fall off the spikes,” his twin continued. “Then you put them in a bag and take them home.”
“That’s not true!” Cordelia shouted.
She twisted on the spot, trying to keep all four Glovemakers in her sights at the same time. Goose was not helping. He was trembling so violently that Cordelia could hear his teeth chattering.
“The Bootmaker doesn’t look brave enough to tie his own bootlaces, let alone pull the guts out of bodies to make new ones,” one of the girls taunted.
“What’s the matter, Bootmaker?” one of the boys scoffed. “Hatmaker got your tongue?”
His sisters giggled.
“She’s going to put it on a hat!” one of them shrieked.
“Eurgh!”
“A Tongue Hat!”
All four Glovemakers waggled their tongues ghoulishly at Cordelia and Goose.
“Tongue Hat! Tongue Hat!”
Goose panicked and tried to push past the nearest Glovemaker, but the boy shoved him back into the middle of the circle.
“Scared someone’ll scuff those shiny boots of yours?” he snarled.
He stamped hard on Goose’s toe. Goose yelped and clutched his foot.
“HEY!” Cordelia whirled around and one of the girls swatted at her hat, knocking it off her head. The other one stomped on it.
Cordelia snatched her crushed hat off the ground as the Glovemakers laughed. She scrunched up all her anger and disgust and fear and fury and funnelled it into her voice.
“Well, I heard,” she began, feeling for Goose’s hand and squeezing it very hard, “that the Glovemakers once Made a pair of gloves for Queen Elizabeth … THAT MADE HER SLAP HERSELF IN THE FACE CONTINUOUSLY FOR HALF AN HOUR IN FRONT OF THE SPANISH KING!”
The Glovemakers’ faces went slack with surprise.
“RUN, GOOSE!”
Cordelia used the moment of shock to her advantage. She dived between the Glovemaker sisters, towing Goose behind her. Hatmaker and Bootmaker hurtled along the path, hand in hand, Glovemakers bellowing behind them.
Cordelia was fast, and fear spurred Goose on. They tore along the shore of the lake. But the Glovemakers were charging after them.
“Goose, we have to hide!”
“Where?” Goose wailed.
Cordelia yanked Goose off the path, into the middle of a flock of ducks settled on the bank. The birds took to the air, quacking angrily, and flew right into a party of sedate ladies strolling along the shore toward them.
“Perfect!”
Cordelia pulled Goose through the confusion of flapping parasols and flapping ducks and flapping ladies. They dived between the green curtains of a weeping willow leaning over the water. The leaves closed behind them, completely hiding them from view.
Goose fell to his knees in the shallows, red-faced and shaking. Cordelia sank down on a tree root sticking out of the water. She put a finger to her lips to warn Goose to be silent, but she needn’t have worried: Goose looked as though he might never speak again.
They heard the ladies shriek as the Glovemakers shoved past them.
“Where are they?”
“We’ve lost them!”
To Cordelia’s immense relief, the Glovemakers rushed away down the path. She made a tiny hole in the curtain of leaves and watched them storm out of sight beyond the bulrushes.
“They’re gone,” she said, sighing.
Goose was goggling at his model boat, which was gently nudging his knee in the lapping shallows.
“Found it,” he murmured.
Cordelia grinned. “There’s the silver lining!”
Goose gave a wan smile.
“D’you think they’re going to tell someone that we’re friends?” he muttered.
Cordelia chewed her lip.
“If they do, they’ll only tell their parents. And Hatmakers haven’t spoken to Glovemakers for years anyway,” she reasoned.
“Same with the Bootmakers.”
“I think our secret’s safe,” Cordelia concluded.
“But we should be careful,” Goose added.
They decided to stay hidden under the weeping willow for a little while, to make sure the Glovemakers did not come back again. As Cordelia counted the distant gongs of St. Auspice’s Church bell sounding the quarter-hour, she heard the slick sound of oars cutting water and Miss Starebottom’s voice rang through the air, clear and close.
“Yes, Whitstable, but when?”
“I don’t know, Delilah,” came the somewhat sulky reply. “It takes some planning, hence the delay.”
Miss Starebottom was floating past, in a boat rowed by her mysterious gentleman friend.
“I am tired of waiting,” Miss Starebottom said with a sigh. “I’ve been waiting years.”
Cordelia and Goose stared at each other, horrified to hear a private conversation between their governess and her sweetheart. Cordelia wan
ted to stick her fingers in her ears and sing a loud song, but she thought that might not help the situation.
“Well, I am ready, even if you are not—” they heard Miss Starebottom say before her voice was lost beyond the sound of the lake kissing the shore.
Goose’s face was pink and Cordelia’s ears felt hot.
“Poor Miss Starebottom,” Cordelia whispered.
“She must have been waiting years for a proposal, Mother says,” Goose added.
Cordelia decided to be extra-good in her lessons later to try to make up for Miss Starebottom’s disappointing romantic attachment.
“What does ‘hence’ mean?” Goose asked, lifting his boat out of the water.
Cordelia shrugged. “Better not ask Miss Starebottom,” she advised. “But I think it’s safe to come out now.”
Miss Starebottom was rather subdued for the rest of the day. Back at Hatmaker House, she wrote out fifty algebra problems for Cordelia to solve, and sat eating her sweets and humming a sad song while Cordelia worked. When Cordelia finished the algebra, Miss Starebottom did not even bother to look at it. Instead, she instructed Cordelia to walk up and down the corridor outside the Library balancing a book on her head.
“But, Miss Starebottom,” Cordelia said, on her fifth lap of the corridor, “wouldn’t this book do me a lot more good if I was reading it? Not walking around with it on top of my head?”
“Unfortunately, Cordelia—” Miss Starebottom sniffed back a tear, tapping her cane moodily against her leg—“a lady who cannot walk elegantly is not considered worth listening to.”
Cordelia felt that this was distinctly untrue, but she did not want to argue with her governess when she was feeling so low. Cordelia gave Miss Starebottom her handkerchief to wipe her eyes and tried her best to glide elegantly down the corridor. The book fell off her head more than once.
Cordelia was very glad when Miss Starebottom had finished for the day. In fact, Cordelia was always glad when these classes finished because that was when her Hatmaking lessons began.
The Hatmakers Page 4