It was not the sort of thing Nathan had ever wanted in his life, but now he loved the sound of it. He almost hoped that Brewster had not yet come to take him home. He stared up into the thick clouds as the rain dripped down his shirt collar but no balloon sailed there and he saw nothing except clouds and rain. Alice stretched out her arms, palms up, and danced in a huge circle, laughing. So Peter joined in and ran around them both, jumping in the puddles so they splashed everyone.
The washhouse was on the banks of the Thames near the Bridge, and as they approached the low lime-washed building, with its bustling queues of women hauling great bundles of clothing and sheets with them, ready for the boiling tubs, Nathan took a long look at the Bridge. The only one over the river, it was the busiest street in all the city. The shops all along were doing a great business and folk were squeezing through the roadway, trying to cross to the other side. Beneath it, the river waters surged between the many pillars, and the boats were as busy below as the shops above.
Then, startled, Nathan noticed one boat in particular, rowed by a tall skinny man dressed all in black, with a long slim top hat tilted over one eye. Nathan stared. Surely it couldn’t be – but he was sure that it was. These were not the sort of clothes everyone else was wearing, and Brewster Hazlett was not someone you could easily mistake.
The man dropped one oar into the boat, and waved. Nathan stepped back, confused. Did he want to go home? He knew he didn’t, but he couldn’t risk being stuck in the past forever.
The smell of magic was very intense and it swirled from the little boat and around Nathan’s head so strongly that it almost shut out the rain, making him dizzy. Alice and Peter had skipped ahead and didn’t seem to have noticed that Nathan remained behind. He turned to run and catch them up, but the rowing boat sped towards him with a great churning wave of river spray, and bumped hard into the bank where Nathan stood.
“Well now,” said the man, with that same high squeaky voice that Nathan remembered, “how nice to meet you, Nat. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Nathan was even more mystified. “But we’ve met before,” he said. “It was you who brought me here.”
“No, no,” said the man with a gurgle of high pitched laughter. “That was my twin brother, Brewster. I’m Wagster Hazlett. Nice to meet you.” His large white teeth gleamed as the heavy rain bounced off his top hat and cascaded over his shoulders. And yet, as Nathan suddenly noticed, the man did not seem to get wet at all.
“Why are you here?” Nathan muttered. “And how can you take me home in that little rowing boat?”
“Oh dear, dear,” said Wagster with an annoying waggle of his long thin finger. “Who said anything about taking you home? You’ve got a lot of work to do first. Oh, yes, Bumble-Bee Head, starting tomorrow. You’ll see.”
Nathan wasn’t sure if he was pleased or not. “So why did you come?” he asked.
And then the laughter stopped.
For a moment the world turned to ice and a huge shadow loomed, blocking out everything else. Nathan couldn’t see the river or the boat, and not even the Bridge. All he could see was this growing darkness and the huge mountainous shape of Wagster Hazlett swallowing the light. The shadow darkened until it was blacker than night, and as tall as the disappearing sky. Two great thin legs, like stilts, towered up and then the body hunched over, peering downwards to where Nathan stood, stunned. Then within the shadow glowed two great piercing eyes, narrow and hooded, golden like the eyes of a snake.
Shivering and quickly hurrying backwards, Nathan shouted up,” What are you doing? That’s horrible. You’re not a wizard, you’re a monster. What do you want? If you’re not taking me home, then I need to go and catch up with my friends.”
“Friends?” And again, “Friends,” boomed the enormous shape of Wagster with a very different voice than the one he had used before. The word echoed and repeated, and then abruptly he squealed with laughter. “No grandson of Granny October can have real friends,” Wagster said.
Staring up and silent for a moment, Nathan wondered if he had heard right. “What has this to do with my grandmother?” he whispered.
“Everything, absolutely everything,” Wagster sneered, shrill-voiced again. “You’ll find out, stupid Bumble-Bee Head.”
Nathan could not look away. The serpent eyes seemed magnetic, and through the knife-like pupil, Nathan thought he could see wriggling maggots and tiny worms slithering away into the distance.
As Wagster began very slowly to shrink back to normal size, he finished speaking, his tongue flicked out, and Nathan saw it was dark red and forked. A cockroach, its antennae alert, walked the underside of the tongue, travelling back into the gaping slime of the throat. As he sighed with relief, thinking the wizard had gone, he heard one last hiss. “I’ll be back soon,” came the voice through the clouds. “Be ready for me, boy. You have no idea – no idea at all – what is coming.”
Nathan yelled out, not caring who else heard him, “You can’t threaten me. And you can’t say horrible things about my grandmother.”
“Save your courage, Bumble-Bee Head,” whispered the final distant murmur. “Danger, boy, beyond anything you can imagine.”
The last cackle echoed, then faded. And in a blink, he was gone. The light came back, the clouds began to clear, and the pouring rain began to ease. There was no sign at all of the little boat rowed by the tall skinny man, and life had returned to normal. Except that Nathan did not feel normal at all. His knees were weak and his head spun. Then unexpectedly Alice was facing him.
“Come on, snail.” She was still happy and laughing. “We’re waiting for you. Why did you stop?”
“Didn’t you see?” whispered Nathan, still not able to think clearly.
“No. Nothing. What? Was there an accident on the river?”
“Sort of.” He didn’t understand how she could have missed something so dreadful and so huge, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell her about it. “But it doesn’t matter,” he managed to say. “Let’s get into the bathhouse.”
Staggering to the bathhouse, although it was very close, seemed an agony to Nathan, but once sitting up to his chin in hot steamy water, he cheered up. It felt positively wonderful. All his aches, pains and problems seemed to drift away. He even began to wonder if the whole nightmare of Wagster Hazlett had occurred only in his imagination. All nightmares were dreams after all. He smiled to himself, leaned his head back on the rim of the tub, and closed his eyes.
There was one huge communal room for men and another for women, each with long rows of wooden barrels, bound in copper hoops, just like the old barrels of beer. These were cut in two, and set to stand close together, waiting until someone paid for a bath. Then the bathhouse staff would boil kettles over the fires and then pour the bubbling water into the tub. Although surprised at the way it was done, Nathan had immediately undressed and climbed in, sitting quickly with his knees bent up under his chin.
And it was after a little while that he remembered this was how Brewster Hazlett sat in the basket below the balloon, and also how Wagster had sat in the little rowing boat. But he brushed away the thought. He knew Brewster was real after all, because otherwise he would not have been there. True, he had not liked Brewster. In spite of the excitement and the adventure, Brewster had been rude and offered no choice. But his twin brother Wagster was far worse.
Once again pushing away such thoughts and smiling to himself, Nathan watched the dirt dissolve from his body, and rise to the top of the water in a muddy scum. He laughed softly. He had never before been so dirty, but it was most relaxing now to feel clean, warm and comfy.
When he clambered out, waving to Peter who was in another barrel tub nearby, he hoped to grab a clean towel and rub himself hard. Then, once dry he hurriedly dressed, and with Peter trotting behind he went outside to wait for Alice.
She came quickly, looking rather different, Nathan thought, than she had before the bath. Her face was shining and her skin was soft and pretty. Her long hai
r was not so dark anymore and it hung in long attractive blond curls down her back. It had stopped raining and the sky was bright. The streets sparkled with raindrops, each reflecting the sunlight. There was no more spicy perfume of magic, and instead there was a fresh smell of spring leaf and blossom on some of the little trees beside the river.
“We can buy hot pies,” said Alice, “at the Baker’s, and take some home to the others.” She was pointing her toes, dancing along the wet cobbles. Without shoes, she knew her woolly stockings would soon be damp again, but that would help keep her feet nice and clean after the bath.
“A hot pie.” Nathan suddenly felt his stomach growl with hunger. “That’s a brilliant idea. Yes please.” He hadn’t even realised he was starving until pies were mentioned.
“Not far,” and Alice led the way.
The shop was small with a big oven and glorious smells sweeping out into the bright air, far nicer than the smell of Hazlett magic.
It was on the way out, clutching the shopping basket crammed with six big fat pies oozing meat from crusty hot pastry, that everything changed again. First out of the shop, Alice bumped hard into a protruding stomach tightly wrapped in a blue satin doublet, sleeves slashed in turquoise velvet, and a coat of cerise brocade. Alice looked up, ready to apologise, and found herself staring into the bloated but widely smiling face of her guardian, Baron Cambridge.
Chapter Nine
First a frown, eyebrows connecting over his nose like two small ginger rabbits shaking paws, and then a smile as the eyebrows snapped apart. “Well, what a delightful coincidence,” said the baron, his fat hand clamped hard on Alice’s shoulder. “I was just thinking about you, my dear.”
But this was no delightful coincidence as far as the others were concerned. With a gulp, Alice struggled and turned to Nathan. “Help,” she called out. “Grab the basket and hit him.”
“Now, now, my dear,” said the baron with calculated friendliness. “I merely wished a small word with you. An invitation, in fact. I’ve no desire to hurt you, I assure you, and won’t insist that you come back to your home with me. You are quite free, my dear lady, to go where you wish.”
Standing stock still in surprise, Alice regarded her guardian with considerable doubt. “Then let me go now,” she said, ignoring the other shoppers who were crowding around. “I have to take these pies back to my friends and Mouse. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Not very polite, my dear,” said the baron, with the wide pink smile still stuck firm to his face. “And you have a pet mouse. How – sweet. Never been very fond of mice myself. But no matter. Keep pet rats and toads too if you wish.”
One woman shopper, her face partially disappearing into the hot pork pie she had bought, called out through drops of gravy, “Don’t you go making pets of them nasty little black rats, girl. Dirty, they are, and leave their poop all over my floors.”
“Mouse is just a cat,” explained Alice, but her voice was lost beneath the cackle and gossip. Everyone around started to argue with everyone else about the value of mice, rats and toads, and whether or not they should be kept as household companions.
“Vermin,” complained a young man. “Stick ‘em with a penknife.”
An elderly gentleman shook his fuzzy white head. “How would you like to be stuck with a knife, young man? Think of others. Do no harm to no man. That’s what they say in church.”
“But ‘tis the priests what does harm too, all them crusades and such,” muttered a woman wiping her hands on her apron.
As another man began to exclaim at length concerning the wickedness of toads, the baron moved quickly away, pulling Alice with him. Peter and Nathan followed closely. Nathan had already taken the basket as asked, and was ready to pummel the baron’s stomach with it, should that seem necessary. But the baron was saying, “My dear Alice, I simply wish to put a generous proposition to you. I suggest you come to the house for dinner at midday tomorrow, and I will explain. I swear I shall not keep you there after we have talked and eaten. You will be free to leave and go to your own friends, wherever you now live, and think over what I have said.” He patted her shoulder, even though he still kept a vice-hold on her other one. “So shall we say midday tomorrow at my house?”
“My house,” said Alice, with a scowl.
“Indeed, indeed,” chuckled the baron. “And you are free to return and live there whenever you wish. I did not force you to run away. That was most certainly your own idea, and definitely against my own wishes.”
“Can I bring my friends to this dinner?” Alice asked after a thoughtful pause.
“Ah, no,” the baron said at once. “My apologies, Alice, but what I have to say is private. But your friends may come and collect you afterwards by all means. Come at midday, and tell your friends to turn up and collect you at – let us say, two of the clock.”
Alice nodded, unsure and hesitant, but prepared to see what the baron would offer. “Yes, I’ll come,” she decided. “I promise. At midday.” He let her go at once and she walked quickly away.
The baron watched her go, and his smile widened until it almost cracked his face in two. This was exactly what he wanted.
Back at the cellar, this most unexpected invitation was discussed at length. Alfie was against the plan.
“But don’t you see,” Alice explained, “it’s all working in my favour. I can go to dinner tomorrow, and pretend that I really will agree to marry the baron’s vile brother. But only on condition that he moves out of the house, and gives me back control of my property. I’ll say it has to be that way, or his stupid brother will starve, because I’m fairly sure he hasn’t a penny. I want my house back. I want him to give up his guardianship, because that stops being legal; once I’m a married woman anyway. Then, when I’ve got everything back, I will go to the lawyers at St. Paul’s and say they have to help me keep what is mine, because I refuse to marry horrible Edmund Darling.”
“No. He won’t let you go.” Alfie was adamant.
“E’s still your guardian,” muttered John. “E’ can keep you there and make you marry the man.”
Alice looked worried. “But he said you could all come later and collect me from the house.”
“He’d set his dogs on us and never let us near you,” Alfie insisted, leaning forwards. “I reckon you don’t even realise just how cruel that pig-baron really is. He had this big cold table in the wine cellar, and he had his steward chain me to it, wrists and ankles. Then he leaned over me and punched me over and over in me face till I were sick. All I could do was squeeze me eyes shut and try not ta cry out. But then the steward turned me over, and started to whip me across the back. I yelled and yelled and cursed them all but the whip kept slashing. I could smell me own blood. Finally they unchained me and threw me on the ground. They locked the door and just left me there.”
Now Alice was crying and Sam looked very wet-eyed. John threw one of the pieces of broken brick against the far wall in frustration. “That’s terrible. That vile man ortta be executed.”
Nathan was shocked. Even though he already knew this had happened, the story was painful to hear. He began to wonder if he could get the monster Wagster Hazlett to do something awful to the baron and frighten him away. Nathan said, “Look, Alice needs to get her home back, and her money, and be free of the baron and his brother too. I think if she promises to marry this Edmund person, then they’ll be nice to her. They have to pretend to be nice in case she runs away again. They need that marriage.”
“Marriage,” mumbled John gloomily. “Must be a right horrible thing. Weddings and everything. And ta someone like that. Waking up and seeing that fat red face and stringy red hair staring back at you. Ugh. I wouldn’t be able to eat any breakfast. And now I can’t bear thinking about it so I’m going to sleep.”
Nathan, lying close to the hot brick wall, wondered desperately if he was making Alice do the wrong thing. Not that he was making her do anything really, but it had been his idea and if something terrible happene
d then he’d be to blame. He almost got up to go out into the street and call to Brewster Hazlett to come and help, but he didn’t. He knew the others would follow him and think he was even more crazy than they did already.
They all awoke the next morning, stiff and sore. Alice had made pottage from the leeks, onions and bacon they had bought, and now she built a little fire and heated the pot. No one was speaking very much and they shared the stew in silence.
Alice had no comb but she carefully pulled her fingers through her knotted and tousled hair, trying to make it look neater. Eventually she stared at the others sitting around the fire and watching her. “So what am I to do?” she demanded suddenly.
“Stay here,” said Alfie at once.
“Go buy a big carving knife and take it with you,” suggested John.
Sam hiccupped and grabbed at Mouse who was trying to wriggle away. “Be safe and stay with us,” he said.
But Peter stood up suddenly. “I think you ought to go,” he mumbled. “But we should all come too and hide in the garden till it’s time for you to leave.” And then he flopped down again, blushing slightly.
“Excellent,” said Nathan at once. “We’ll all go, and wait outside, but we don’t have to hide. If the baron is trying to be nice to Alice, he can’t be horrible to us. We won’t try to go in, but we won’t go away either.”
“First we go and get our shoes,” said Alfie. “I need shoes on when I kick that vile steward and the baron too.”
“Yes, shoes, and a comb as well,” agreed Alice. “I’ll feel less embarrassed if I don’t look like a beggar girl.”
It was a cold morning with a little frost in the air, as the sky was almost cloudless and the sunshine was bright for an early spring morning. The church bells had rung nine times for Prime when suddenly, as they all walked carefully through the lanes towards the cobbler’s shop, it became quite dark. They all stopped, staring up at the sky, and immediately Nathan thought it must be Brewster and the balloon blocking out the sun. But then he realised that everyone else in the street was standing still and staring up as well, and many were frightened, pointing and calling.
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