The Wreckers Read online

  “Help me.” With a rumble and clank of chain, he tried to reach me with his hand. I could see his fingers flexing, but I didn’t want to hold him. Not then.

  Father groaned. “Come at high tide. When he unchains me. Only chance.”

  We heard footsteps then, hurrying down the steps of the passageway. And Mary’s voice, in a hushed call: “John. Come on!”

  Father squirmed in the chains. His whole body arched, and fell back, and with white eyes he stared up at me. His hand groped like a claw. And I took it.

  “Who’s up there?” he asked.

  “A friend,” I told him. “Don’t worry.”

  He relaxed. He eased back on the dank brick. “You’ll come?” he asked.

  I squeezed his hand. “Yes.”

  “Before you go … move me to the wall.”

  I shifted him as best I could, prodding and pushing until he lay on his side with his mouth against the wall. Before I left, I tied the neckerchief back in place, though not as tightly as before. Then I felt for the trapdoor and pushed it open.

  It was almost as dark above as it was in the drain. But what little light filtered down was enough to show me a scene that I’ve tried ever since to forget. In the depths of the drain, in a black huddled mass, the rats were waiting. They’d been gnawing at my father’s boot, and the leather on one side was stripped away from heel to toe. And the flesh—it was ghastly pink; they’d started to eat his foot.

  Shaken, I lowered the trap. The door to the passageway locked with a simple crossbar. As soon as it opened, Mary was there.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “Where’s your father?”

  “He’s wrapped in chains,” I said. “We have to come back.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “For now,” I said, and pushed the door.

  Mary flung herself at it. “Wait!” she cried, and stopped it with her hands. “There must be a latch or something. Some way for Stumps to come and go.”

  She was right. He’d looped a bit of string around the crossbar and tied it to the bent-over end of a rusted nail set low to the ground. The nail fit loosely in its hole, and by pulling it out we could raise the crossbar.

  “It’s an old trick,” said Mary. “Half the houses in Pendennis use a latchstring.”

  Daylight was about two hours off when we closed the door and heard the crossbar thunk into place. Already there was a hint of gray in the sky across the harbor. And with the dawn would come Stumps.

  I pulled on my coat. We stood looking at the eastern sky when our passage suddenly brightened. I wheeled around. At the top of the steps, in the darkness of the chandlery, was a man with an opened lantern.

  Chapter 11

  A GARGOYLE COME TO LIFE

  Mary gasped. With the glare from the lantern, we couldn’t see the man behind it. He took a step toward us, and the lantern rose at the end of his arm. The light flared across the plastered wall on our left and turned the flight of steps into a grid of black bars.

  “Mary, my child?” asked the man.

  “Parson Tweed?” said Mary.

  “What a start you gave me. What a dreadful start.” The light wavered and lowered. “And mercy me, it’s Master John. Searching for your father, I daresay.”

  “Yes,” said I.

  The parson raised his lantern. The light shone down on his enormous hat, but all the rest of him was shadowed. “And was it a prosperous search?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  He clucked his tongue. “But you’ll keep looking, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As indeed will I. Godspeed, Master John.” Then he turned, and the lantern light glinted around the edges of his cassock. Like a figure lit by fire, he walked away from us to the street. “Bless you, my boy,” he said, and was gone.

  Mary touched my sleeve. “Why did you lie to him?” she whispered.

  “I don’t want anyone to know where my father is.”

  “But the parson—”

  “No one.” I took her hand and started up the stairs. Mary pulled back at first, then followed.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” she said, her voice low but urgent. “I’ve known Parson Tweed all my life. You can trust him. You have to trust someone.”

  “I do,” I said. “I trust you.”

  Mary had tethered the ponies to a post. They both nudged at her with their noses. “Where do we go?” she asked.

  “The blockhouse,” I said.

  “But that’s where Stumps lives.”

  “It’s where he’d keep the keys,” I told her.

  We left the ponies where they were—I thought of the clatter their hooves would make on the stones—and walked without speaking down the cobbled street. The wind moaned in eaves and chimneys. It gusted around us. I was afraid, and Mary must have felt this, for she took my hand for a moment, and squeezed it in hers. Then we reached the blockhouse and saw its gaping open doorway, and my memories of the place went spinning through my mind.

  For a time we only listened. But there were no sounds at all from the building, no movement or breaths. Before my courage could leave me completely, I crouched down and shuffled inside.

  Blind in the darkness, I went straight to his shelf. If he was there, it was now he would strike. I felt along the plank, knocking down shells and bits of wood, scattering his sad little treasures. I was in too much of a hurry; I felt the whole plank tip forward, and everything went flying to the floor.

  “Hurry,” said Mary from outside. “Hurry, John.”

  I picked things up and threw them aside. Rope quoits, bird feathers, wooden beads, and boat nails. I scrabbled in the loose straw and the dirt. And I found the keys against the wall—a hard ring of iron that felt cold in my fingers. I took it, and I ran, Mary right behind me. Down the street, past the ponies, down the stairs of the passageway. I fumbled for the latchstring. I wrenched open the door. And only when we were safe inside did I breathe again.

  Mary was shocked to see my father wedged down in that terrible place, his eyes goggling up at us in sudden fear. The rats squealed and went scurrying up into the elbow of the drain. And when I dropped down, Mary stayed above.

  I pulled down the neckerchief, and Father gasped, “John!”

  “Keys,” I cried, and rattled them. “I got the keys.”

  “Oh, John,” he said. Father was crying.

  I tried every key in every lock. Fumbling like a blind man, I pushed them in and turned them. But none opened the locks. And in frustration, I wrenched at those heavy chains.

  “No use,” said Father. “Only way … you have to come when he’s here.”

  I didn’t know whether I could bear it, struggling in the darkness with the legless man. I felt the links of chain, the ringbolts at their ends. “A file,” I said. “I can maybe get a file.”

  Father didn’t answer. I touched his shoulder and told him to wait, and Mary reached down a hand to help me up. When her face was close to mine, she whispered, “Look.” And she took my fingers; and touched them to the curve of the brick at the top of the drain.

  Barnacles. They grew in small clusters, rough as gems against my hand. A small shred of dried seaweed came away in my palm.

  I saw right away what it meant. Stumps had made sure that no one but he could find the smuggled gold. If he was kept away, if he was killed by the wreckers, the drain would flood on the highest tide—just after the moon. My father would drown, and the secret of the gold would be lost.

  I swallowed. “Father,” I said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Mary stepped aside as I lowered the trap. I did it slowly, but still it made a hollow, ringing thump like the closing of the door to a jail cell. And then we heard the horrible little squeaks—the rats going back to their work.

  “Please,” said Mary. “Let us get away from here.”

  The sky glowed with the faint hint of coming day when we climbed again the steps to the street. A few yards away, the ponies snorted and whinn
ied to see us, their manes tangled by the wind. Mary unhitched hers without a word and jumped up on its back. I could think of almost nothing but my father trapped there in the tunnel, watching the tide rise around him and not knowing when it would stop.

  “Please go ahead,” said I. “I want a moment to think.”

  “I understand,” said Mary. “I’ll wait for you on the high road.”

  She went off with a slow clop of hooves. I watched her, then pressed my face against the pony’s chest and found comfort in the beat of its blood, the rough warmth of its hair. I thought of my father laughing as we stepped from the carriage and saw our ship, the Isle of Skye, for the first time. He’d stood gazing at the figurehead, a beautiful woman. And he’d grown sad when I asked who it was. “Your mother,” he’d said. He’d hired the finest craftsmen in London to carve and paint it. “Is that what she looked like?” I’d asked. I thought of him walking proudly through his offices, men in cravats bobbing up to smile and wish him good morning. But it was no use; I kept seeing him tearing at the chains until his wrists were raw, fighting and kicking as the water rose inch by inch, up his shoulders and chest, creeping up the arch of his neck, pouring into his nose and his open, screaming mouth.

  He’d said he needed me. For the first time in my life, someone depended only on me. I chased away my thoughts and fumbled with the pony’s reins, the leather cinched into fist-sized knots.

  And behind me, I heard a squeaking of wheels.

  I pulled at the knots. I grabbed them with my teeth. An inch of leather came slithering free.

  The wheels chattered and creaked. And round a corner, onto the harborfront, came Stumps. He was leaning forward, his hands swinging back and forth, pushing him on. I attacked the knot with more frenzy than ever. Stumps’s cart came faster, and faster still. I tore at the leather. And when the knot was almost free, the pony whinnied and stomped away, and all the slack that I’d gained went tight as a bow.

  I turned and ran.

  Stumps came after me. His hands pushed and pushed. The cart flew along, bouncing over the cobblestones, right at my heels. I turned to my left, into the alley and down the stairs.

  Stumps stopped his cart at the top of the steps. “You’re trapped,” he said, his voice ugly. He put his hands on the ground and raised himself from the cart. His trouser legs flapped loosely as he swung forward and dropped down a step. He grunted and came down another.

  There was no sound but that: the thud of his body on the stone, the hush of his leather gloves. I looked down at the water, rippled by cat’s-paws, up at the bleak hint of dawn. The alley was too narrow for me to hope to pass him.

  “You’re done for,” said Stumps. “You’re finished.”

  I braced my shoulders against one wall, my feet against the other, and scrambled up like a chimney sweep. Stumps lunged at me, and his hand brushed my heel. But in a moment I was six feet above him, and he gazed at me with his head tilted back. I gloated down; I laughed. And then with dread I saw him stretch his huge arms and flatten one enormous hand on each wall. He came up, even faster than me, grunting with the effort as he shuffled each hand an inch at a time. He swung in the air like a great crawling spider. Bits of loose plaster showered down as his fingers clawed up the walls. And I gained the roof only a moment before him.

  His hand gripped the eave. There was a jolt, a thud, as he swung across the space. His other hand clasped the edge of the roof, and he hauled himself up. He was grinning—an evil, grotesque smile.

  I turned and raced to the north, over the brewery, over a tavern. He came after me, moving like an ape, swinging from his hands to his stumps. From roof to roof we bounded along, up steep-slanted shingles, past chimneys, round vents where the wind whistled and moaned.

  I climbed from one roof to a higher one; I sprinted across a sagging ridge. I ran and jumped, and all the time I heard him coming, like a thumping, pounding engine.

  And suddenly I reached the end. I tottered at the very edge of the last building, over a chasm that dropped straight to the ground.

  With a grunt and an oath, Stumps came hurling up onto the roof behind me.

  He paused there, his body shaking. Then, slowly, he moved toward me, crawling along the ridge, dragging himself forward. In the shadows and the wind, he looked like a gargoyle come to life.

  The roof sloped steeply, on one side to the harbor and on the other to the street, where the overhangs left a gap of six feet to the opposite buildings. Stumps came lurching, slithering closer.

  “Got you now,” he said in that loathsome, creaky voice. “Going to give you a whipping, boy.” He slid forward. “Going to give you a good whipping.”

  I turned and ran. I raced down the roof, gathering speed, feeling the wind and the salt air, and I launched myself over the gap. The cobblestones flashed by, and there was no sound at all. Then I landed on the other side, on a roof of rusted tin, and clambered up to the ridge. With a thud, Stumps came across the same way. But I wheeled around at the rooftop, went clattering down, and leapt across the gap for a second time.

  He cursed me. He sat sprawled across the metal plates and hammered at them with his fist. But already I was moving back along the roofs, back toward the passageway. I was sure to find Mary there, waiting with the ponies.

  I scrambled up and down and up again. Each time I rose to a new ridge, the wind pressed against me with a touch as cold and sharp as knives. In the lee of a chimney I took a moment to rest. Breathing hard, hands wrapped round the bricks, I looked back across the street. There was enough brightness in the sky that I could see every hump and break in the roofs. But there was no sign of the legless man.

  I had led him farther than I thought. The roofs seemed endless as I plodded along, weary and sore, not once looking back, until I stood again over the tavern, the passageway open before me. The wind gusted and lulled. And in that moment of silence I heard a rasping of breath.

  Stumps was behind me.

  Chapter 12

  A STONE FOR A HEART

  With a cry, Stumps flung himself down to the tavern. His hand grabbed at my ankle, and I went sprawling across the slanted roof and tumbled over the edge.

  I closed my eyes, waiting for the shock of cold water, for the blackness to close round me. But instead I fell less than a yard before I crashed into the roof of the brewery. And Stumps landed beside me.

  He fastened onto my legs and then onto my arms. And we rolled together, over and over, until I lay on my back with my head hanging over the passageway. His hand clutched at my neck; his fingers almost circled my throat. I pushed against him, but I couldn’t move him. I gasped for breath as he raised himself to put his whole weight on me—and his nose disappeared. It simply vanished; one moment it was there, sharp as a beak, and the next there was only a black hole in his face. And in the same instant I heard the crack of a pistol.

  His hands flew to his face. Again a pistol cracked; the ball roared past my ear. Stumps reared, tumbling sideways and back, cartwheeling right down the roof and over the edge. The water seemed to open for him, to spread apart and drag him down with white-tipped fingers. He didn’t bob to the surface. He went into that water, and disappeared.

  Below me, two people stepped down to the last stair. There was Mary, with her fists at her mouth. And beside her, hidden below the brim of his hat, with a pistol in each hand, stood Parson Tweed in his black cassock.

  “That one won’t be rising,” he said. “The man had a stone for a heart.”

  The parson dropped his pistols into his voluminous pockets and helped me down from the roof. He poked at me with his long fingers. “Are you hurt?”

  “A bit,” I said, touching my neck.

  Gently he pulled my hands away. “Nothing time won’t heal,” he said. “Though I’d venture a guess the bruises will fade before the memory does.”

  “You saved my life,” I told him.

  “You may thank Mary for that. It was she who sensed the danger and fetched me here.” He pushed back his h
at, and his thin face was smiling. “However, we did arrive at a providential moment.”

  I looked at Mary and tried to see in her eyes a message, a sign of what she’d told the parson. Did he know everything now, all about Stumps and my father?

  Together the three of us walked up to the street. The parson’s cassock fluttered at his ankles. “And now, my boy,” he said, “have you anything you’d like to tell me?”

  I shook my head. I would have liked to know how a parson had learned to shoot like a marksman. But I wouldn’t ask him that, nor anything else.

  He nodded. “And you, Mary? Is there something you should tell me?”

  “Nothing I can think of,” said she.

  “Very well.” The parson smiled again and touched us both. “I shouldn’t trouble myself about that fellow if I were you. Spare him no pity, for wretches such as he always come to a nasty end.”

  With that, Parson Tweed turned away. “You’ll be going home now, will you? To Galilee?”

  “Yes,” said Mary.

  “Ride carefully, child.” His robes whirled round his legs. “The moors may not be safe this morning.”

  He pulled down the brim of his hat and walked away. The heavy pistols dragged at his cassock, stretching it across his shoulders. Under the robe, the parson was thin as a broomstick.

  “Tell him,” said Mary. Her voice was a whisper, harsh and forceful. “Go. Ask him to help you.”

  She pushed my arm, but I didn’t move.

  “Can’t you believe me?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” said I.

  Mary sighed. “You’ll have to see it for your own self,” she said. “But whoever works the puppets, it edn’t Parson Tweed.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I told her.

  We didn’t go back to see my father. He would have heard our voices and known we were safe, and it would only bring him despair, I thought, for us to arrive with no means or hope of setting him free. So we mounted the ponies and rode up to the high road. Dawn was coming fast, and the shadows seemed to run beside us as we cantered over the bridge. I paced my pony with Mary’s, skirting the moor on the road past the Tombstones.