The Wreckers (11 page)

I pressed my ear to the wood and listened for the tapping. Looking up from the bottom, the alley was like a gun muzzle, a dark tunnel with a small, square slot for the
entrance. The tapping echoed through it, but I couldn’t hear it at the door.

“The harbor,” said Mary. She had her eyes closed. “It’s coming from the harbor.”

I moved to the bottom step, with the water at my feet. I poked my head out into the wind. A narrow wooden ledge jutted from the building, a tarred timber just four inches wide. Above it was a drain tunnel, an enormous pipe made of brick. Green water thick as paste oozed from its mouth. Things like soft icicles hung from the brick, swaying like pendulums. And the tapping came from there.

“Father!” I called. “Father, it’s John.”

His answer was a mumble, like the frantic sounds of old Eli, and my first thought was that Stumps had done the same thing to my father. And then I remembered.
His lips will look like splattered worms, and he’ll choke on his very own tongue
.

I pulled myself back into the passageway. “He’s in there,” I said. “In the drain.”

“Are you going in?”

“Yes.”

Mary touched the bolted door. “This building was once a brewery,” she said. “You should be able to come out this way.”

I took off my coat and spread it on the steps. “We’ll need the ponies, Mary. Could you get them?”

“All right.” She started to leave, then stopped. “Be careful,” she said, and went running up the steps.

The stone was broken at the corner. Clumps of grass and bushy plants grew in the chinks where mortar had
fallen away. As I felt for handholds huge pieces came loose in my hand. They clattered down and fell with a splash into the dark water of the harbor. I swung out and planted my feet on the narrow, slippery ledge.

The water was just a few feet below, an ebb tide swirling round the stone. I couldn’t swim. If I fell in there, I’d be swept out to sea like a bit of wood.

Spread-eagled, groping for holds, I inched along the wall like a fly. The water gurgled; the wind’s gusts tried to pluck me from the ledge. But I gritted my teeth and kept going. And before long, my hand closed on the lip of the drain tunnel. I slithered through, into a dank and fetid hole. A furtive rustle of rats preceded me.

The space was large enough that I could easily stand. I went only a few steps before I came upon Father. He lay on a ledge of brick, a foot above the slime of the open drain. He was on his back, with an old neckerchief knotted tight in his mouth. I tore it loose, and he gasped long breaths of that foul air.

“John,” he said. His voice was hoarse; even the sound was painful. “I can’t believe … it’s really you.”

I dipped my fingers in the mire and touched them to his lips. His tongue darted out, fat and pale like a garden slug. “Moved,” he said. “Used to lie … against the brick. Wet there.”

He was right. Water condensed on the walls of the drain—good, clear water that tasted of lime. I pressed my hand against it until a tiny pool filled my palm, then let it dribble into his mouth. He drank handful after handful as the muscles in his throat burbled and creaked. Then I
rubbed it on his eyes and his forehead, and in the thick bristles of his beard.

“Better,” he said. “Thank you.”

“There are ponies coming,” I told him. “We have to get you up to the street. Is there another way out?”

“Trapdoor,” he said. “Above you.”

“What’s up there?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Empty room.”

“Can you walk?”

He shook his head. “I’m changed,” is what I thought he said. But as I ran my hands along his legs, feeling for blood or broken bones, I found metal collars locked round his ankles, heavy chains padlocked to ringbolts in the brick. There were more collars at his wrists, another belt of chain around his waist. He was fettered like a dog to his narrow shelf. Even with a file it would take time to work him free; with a hammer and chisel, I would need hours. I had to get the key, and only one man would have it.

“Have you seen Stumps?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The man with no legs. They say he’s vanished. They say he’s—”

Father rattled the chains. “No!” he said. “Comes at dawn … at dark.”

“He came today?”

Father nodded.

“At dark he came?”

“Listen.” Father stretched his head toward me. “Tomorrow, on the night tide … taking me out.”

“Stumps?” I asked.

“Yes.” His voice hissed through the tunnel. “No … no moon … leaving by boat.”

“Where?”

“God knows,” said Father, with a dreadful shudder.

Smuggled gold had led us to this. Gold and greed had wrecked the
Isle of Skye
and killed its crew. In that instant, if it had been anyone but my father lying there, I could have hit him. Hit him and kicked him and punched him for all that he’d done. But I only glared at him in the darkness.

“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.

M
ary 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 whinnied 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.