The Castaways Read online

  Yet, somehow, it all seemed long ago and far away. There was now only this one moment of grandeur, and I let myself imagine that the carriage and the horses were mine, that I had finally attained the things I’d only dreamed of.

  I sat high enough that I looked down on the crowds of people. We swept them aside as our horses cantered through the business district, our wheels spraying water from the puddles. Street sweepers bowed their heads as we passed; tradesmen touched their caps; gentlemen leapt like fleas as the water splashed on their trousers.

  It occurred to me that I could do this every day if I joined Mr. Goodfellow’s company. I could dash through the city and dine in the clubs. I could join the rich tide that flooded and ebbed through the doors of splendid theaters. What a flash fellow I would be! So young and so rich.

  “Do the handsome thing, my boy.” I heard the words as clearly as if my father had spoken them aloud. “Do what’s right by me, Tom,” he’d said. Well, I was doing it! My father had spent his every penny—he’d given his all—to see that I would one day go riding through London in a fancy carriage. Oh, he’d despised the toffs himself, mocking their manners and accents, and the only swells he’d cared about were the rolling waves on the ocean. But he had wanted so badly for me to be a gentleman.

  My mind suddenly leapt to the last moment I’d spent with him. I lived it again, with every sound and smell and image. I saw the cannibals surging toward us through the shallow water, saw Father put all his strength into the last push that sent the little steamboat sliding away to safety. I heard his final words: “Godspeed, Tom. You’ve done me proud, my son.” I saw the savages close around him and—

  I didn’t want to see any more. The pictures dissolved, leaving only the carriage window and the shapes flickering by in the fog.

  A terrible emptiness followed. I found myself missing my mother with an ache that was overwhelming, longing for someone to come and tell me: What’s the handsome thing to do? It was surely folly to think that Father still lived. Better to forget any hope of seeing him again, and to honor him instead. If I were rich, I could build a spectacular memorial, a tower in the middle of London, and carve his name two feet high on a tablet. Wouldn’t that do him proud?

  As these ideas tumbled through my mind, Mr. Goodfellow and I barreled along the streets. The carriage rocked and swayed to the surge of the horses, while a new scene appeared every moment before me. It was both grand and miserable. The fog swirled in its putrid curds, dusting the city and everything in it—from people to pigeons—with a fine coat of soot. The driver shouted; he cracked his whip. I looked out at rich and poor all squashed together, miserable beggars holding out their hands to gentlemen and ladies. Street sellers babbled about muffins and hot eels, and there was such a din of horses and crowds that I wondered if I could ever get used to it. Strange as it seemed, I missed the silence of the sea, and a fresh wind in the sails.

  Mr. Goodfellow misunderstood my interest in the passing scenes. “Yes, it’s all wonderful, isn’t it, Tom?” he said. “No place on earth like London. You should see the Exchange, my boy; money flowing like water. Lives bought and sold. I offered to make your father a part of it, Tom; did you know that? He turned me down; said it wasn’t to his liking. Well, there was never enough polish on that tin, if you know what I mean,” he said, and he chuckled.

  I didn’t even smile in return, but turned my head away. We were passing through ever poorer parts of the city, so the buildings were getting smaller, the streets more narrow, as though everything was shrinking. It seemed all sad and dreary, and I thought we’d come to a part of London I had never seen. But then out from the fog slid a big wooden boot, an enormous construction hanging above a cobbler’s door. I turned to watch it pass, and saw the sign of a publican that I remembered at once. Snatches of my little verses returned to my mind.

  “Turn left!” I shouted.

  Mr. Goodfellow nearly jumped from his seat. “Why?” he said.

  “I know where the Jolly Stone is.”

  For a moment he gaped. Then Mr. Goodfellow banged his stick on the roof and shouted up to the driver, and I heard the horses snort as their heads were dragged around. We went clopping to the north, from street to alley. “Now turn right,” I said.

  For half an hour we passed along the narrow streets where Worms had driven his three-legged horse. We saw not a soul, but heard on every side the howls of cats, the barks of dogs, the colicky cries of babies. Mr. Goodfellow grew ever more excited, his voice rising in pitch as he called up directions to the driver. When we came at last to the churchyard, and I told him we’d arrived at the place where the diamond was hidden, he sounded like a little girl.

  “Stop!” he cried to the driver. “Right now, do you hear? Stop!”

  He fairly hopped from the carriage, then dragged me out behind him. “Where is it, Tom?” he said. “Where’s the Jolly Stone?”

  I led him round the corner and through the iron gate, in among the headstones wrapped in fog. The yellow custard was now as thick as night, the stone wall of the church a mere shadow. I felt as though I was reliving the night that I’d found and lost the Jolly Stone. I walked directly to the grave we’d opened, where my dead twin had been put to rest six feet down.

  “Right here,” I said, stamping my foot. “The Stone’s below us.”

  Mr. Goodfellow went at the earth with his walking stick. He pried up the sod and the dirt. Half veiled as he was in the fog, he looked like a huge bird pecking at the graveyard grass. But his progress was slow, and his anger quick. “For heaven’s sake, make yourself useful,” he said. “Hurry! Go get a shovel.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Confound you, boy!” He bashed a tombstone with his stick. So hard did he strike it that his stick broke in two, and he whirled the handle into the fog, destroying in an instant what it would have taken my father months to earn. He cursed me. “Go tell the driver—Oh, never mind!” He cursed again. “The fellow’s as much a fool as you are. I’ll go with him, that’s what I’ll do!”

  His side whiskers were shaking. “Now you stay here. Don’t move from this place, do you hear me?”

  With that he went storming away into the fog. I heard him swear at the driver; he even swore at the horses. There was a squeal from the springs of his carriage, the slam of a door, and the horses clomped away down the street.

  It was an eerie place to be alone, a graveyard in the fog. Ravens clattered their claws on the church roof, crying out in their strange voices. Suddenly the figures on the tombstones looked more like birds of prey than angels and cherubs. For months I’d had people around me at every moment, and now I missed the closeness of the ship, the company of my friends. From there my thoughts wandered to Weedle and Boggis; were they already back on the hulks? And on to Midgely Poor little Midge. I hoped that Calliope had taken him somewhere comfortable, that Charlotte was with him. I hated to think that he might be alone and scared.

  I leapt up and paced round the graves. It was half in my mind to run from the place, and to keep running until I found Midgely. But there could be no peace for either of us without the pardons that would set us free. And for those I needed Mr. Goodfellow.

  Back and forth I went among the tombstones, my eyes smarting from the yellow fog. I heard two people passing on the street, coming up to the iron gate. A woman shrieked at the sight of a ghost in the graveyard, and the footfalls hurried away.

  I feared they would send a watchman, who might find me and call for the soldiers. There was probably not a Charlie brave enough to challenge spirits, but still I settled on the ground, hidden by a marble angel. I prodded at the grass, plucking worms that oozed from the gouges Mr. Goodfellow had made. Soon I found a small slab much covered with moss, and picked at it idly.

  A quotation appeared: “Every man is a piece of the continent.”

  I took this as a wry reminder that our bodies return to the mud. Curious to see who would put a jest on his tombstone, I bared more of the tablet. Dates appeared:
1814-1827. Then the name of Jacob Tin.

  I drew away from it quickly. The tablet had been shifted from its proper place, no doubt thrown aside by old Worms. It had marked the grave of the Smasher—my own twin brother—a boy I’d never known, but whose life had tangled so fully with mine.

  There was a cold chill in the air now, all of a sudden. I rubbed my arms, for they’d pimpled with gooseflesh. But I couldn’t look away from the stone.

  The words must have been chosen by the sisters of the charity who had buried Jacob Tin, a boy of the streets. They made me understand that we were all tangled together. Every person I’d met in the year gone by was now entwined with every other, like so many fish scooped up in a net. From the blind man and the body snatcher, to the yellow guard at Newgate; from the farm boy on the hulk, to Mr. Mullock on his little island, they had all been drawn together, all netted from the twisting river of my fate.

  I was still studying the stone when Mr. Goodfellow returned, bringing another of the familiar fish from my river. I recognized him at once as Dr. Kingsley, the buyer of corpses, for he looked no different than he had on the night old Worms had driven to his door with Jacob’s white body. He had the same pointed beard, black and sharp as the ace of spades, and the same unruly hair. Now he carried a shovel, and he trod right on the stone of Jacob Tin as he jabbed the blade into the ground.

  If I looked familiar, he didn’t say so. He went straight to work, and we took turns digging, he and I, as Mr. Goodfellow grew ever more distraught. The hole widened and deepened, the sound of the shovel clanging through the churchyard. Dr. Kingsley wiped his brow and said, “It’s like the old days, when I did everything myself. But I never thought I’d dig up an empty grave.”

  “It isn’t empty, you fool,” said Mr. Goodfellow. His hands were shaking. He kept looking into the fog, darting glances toward the hidden gate. “Dig, Kingsley, dig! There’s a thousand guineas in each strike of the shovel.”

  “Why don’t you sit down, Goods?” said the doctor, with quiet calm. “You’ll have a stroke if you carry on like that.”

  Mr. Goodfellow only snatched away the shovel and pushed it into my hands instead. “Hurry, Tom,” he said.

  The ground had settled. But still I could follow the same shaft that Worms had cleared, and soon I was deeper than my own height, with a ragged square of yellow sky above me.

  The shovel clinked against pebble and rock. I pushed and pried. Then I dug in the blade, but there was no sound at all. I reached down and felt the crumbling cloth of my father’s old coat.

  I remembered putting it on—so long ago, it seemed. There had been pencils in the pocket, pencils that he must have sold along the streets to pay for our food and rent. Now the coat was falling away at my touch, shredding apart as though woven from cobwebs.

  “I don’t hear any digging,” said Mr. Goodfellow.

  I groped through the soil, over the rotted cloth. Twice my heart leapt to my throat when I clutched on to something hard and sharp. But both times it was only a rock, and I began to wonder if Worms hadn’t kept the diamond after all. But at last I felt the huge hardness of the Jolly Stone, its edges unmistakable.

  I pulled it right through the cloth of my father’s coat, and saw how it glowed with the fog light. Even down there in the dark it was bright as a star. It was certainly not a doorknob; it was nothing like a doorknob. Again I could feel its heat, the burning power of all its wealth. I turned it round in my hand, marveling that I had gone so far to come back and reclaim it.

  “I have it,” I said.

  “Pass it up, then,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “Pass it up, Tom!”

  I would do no such thing. I suddenly realized that I was in a very dangerous place, as the hole was too deep for me to climb out by myself. I wondered if I wasn’t standing in my own grave.

  twenty-one

  MR. GOODFELLOW’S REVENGE

  Mr. Goodfellow was on his knees, reaching into the grave. There were sparkles of light gleaming from his cuff links and rings. A sprinkle of dirt came down from the edge.

  “The diamond, Tom! Give me the diamond,” he bellowed.

  I held the Jolly Stone in both hands, the riches of kings enclosed by my fingers. But I wasn’t about to give up my diamond as easily as that. “You’ll get it when you’ve kept the bargain,” I said. “Not before.”

  “I only want to see it!” he cried, as petulant as a child. “I want to touch it. How do I know it isn’t a piece of glass?”

  The doctor spoke calmly, but sharply. “Look here, Goods,” he said. “For the love of mercy, stop shouting at the boy. Step away, and I’ll help him up.”

  Mr. Goodfellow’s round face withdrew from the top of the hole, and in its place came the doctor’s, with that devilish beard pointing right at me. “Hand me the stone, Tom,” he said. “I’ll hold on to it myself.”

  “How do I know you’re not in league with him?” I asked, looking up.

  Mr. Goodfellow screeched. “He’s a bleeding doctor, you fool! Why do you think I dragged him along? For his health? You didn’t trust me; I thought you might trust a bleeding doctor!”

  “Be quiet, Goods,” said the doctor, sternly. “Sit down there and don’t say a word.”

  Another shower of dirt fell onto my shoulders. I squinted through a rain of fine dust.

  “I don’t blame you for being suspicious,” said the doctor. “In your place I’d be the same. But if I’d come here to cheat you, don’t you think I’d have done it already? Wouldn’t I have clobbered you with a tombstone by now?”

  Well, I could see he was right. But I dropped the Jolly Stone into my shirt before I reached for his outstretched hand. As he pulled, I scrambled to the surface, sprawling out on the grass.

  “The Stone! The Stone!” said Mr. Goodfellow.

  “Get ahold of yourself,” snapped the doctor. “I don’t want to be caught here in a graveyard, and nor do you. The boy’s got the diamond; he’s not running off with it.”

  We didn’t bother to fill in the hole. We didn’t even bother to fetch out the shovel. Thieves couldn’t have moved any more quickly than us, and soon we were seated, all three, in Mr. Goodfellow’s carriage, rumbling back toward London. I sat beside the doctor, facing forward, with Mr. Goodfellow across from us.

  His knees were grass-stained, as though little green saucers had been stuck to his trousers. I, on the other hand, was smeared with dirt from head to toe. The doctor made a little joke about it. “You look like you crawled from a grave,” he said, though no one laughed but he.

  Mr. Goodfellow was impatient. “The diamond,” he said, snapping his fingers at me. “Let’s see it, Tom.”

  It was clear to me then that I wasn’t about to be killed for the Jolly Stone. Perhaps even a snake like Mr. Goodfellow had honor inside him. Or perhaps he was happy with a thought that he was cheating me, paying a pittance for a fortune. I reached into my shirt. He leaned forward on his seat, breathing hard.

  The great diamond rested cold against my stomach. But I couldn’t resist pretending that I’d lost it. I groped here and there through my shirt as Mr. Goodfellow turned as white as his jacket.

  “No!” he said. “No, this can’t be true.”

  “Ho, ho!” laughed the doctor. “That’s enough now, boy. You’re a poor actor, and you’ll give him apoplexy.”

  Even he fell silent when I brought out the Stone. His mouth fell open, his pointed beard stabbing at his chest. “My word!” he breathed. “Oh, my, it’s fabulous.”

  Mr. Goodfellow was like a fat, purring cat. He actually drooled from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were round and enormous.

  In my palm the Jolly Stone glowed deep in its middle. Its hundred faces twinkled and shone. With the coach racing along, in and out of the shadows of buildings, the light played over the diamond in ever-changing ways. The Stone was now amber, now nearly purple, now red as blood through and through.

  “Please let me hold it,” said Mr. Goodfellow. He cupped his hands together. He reac
hed so far, so eagerly, that he slid from his seat and came to his knees on the carriage floor. Still he held up his hands, suddenly made a beggar by his craving for the diamond.

  This was the moment I’d been dreaming of and waiting for. As soon as he took the Jolly Stone he would take its curse as well. I would be freed of my worries, my bad luck outrun, and Mr. Goodfellow would begin a swift descent to ruin.

  So why did I hesitate?

  While I held the diamond, I was powerful and rich. I owned the wealth of kingdoms, the power to make even Mr. Goodfellow beg at my feet. But, even more, was a nagging question: Was the curse really true? Could the Jolly Stone actually wield such a force that it brought ruin to everyone who owned it?

  Suddenly, the driver shouted above us. I heard the squeal of his brake, and a shift in the pattern of the horses’ clattering hooves. The carriage rocked sideways and jolted to a stop.

  The Jolly Stone rolled from my hand. It was like a wheel of fire leaping from my palm to my fingers, over their tips and down.

  Mr. Goodfellow caught it. He snatched it to his breast and held it tight. Slowly he breathed a great breath, and lifted the Stone to his lips.

  Outside, there was shouting on the streets. I could see a costermonger’s cart overturned on its side, cabbages and apples spilled along the gutter. A black coach was stopped beside it, four horses in the harness. In their midst, between their hooves, lay a little girl in brown rags, and a crumpled basket of crumpled roses. There was a lot of redness on the ground, not all of it from petals.

  Mr. Goodfellow had no mind for anything but the Jolly Stone. He fondled it and kissed it as a gathering crowd grew larger.

  Dr. Kingsley reached across me and dropped the window open. “What’s all this, then?” he said. “You, boy! What’s happened?”