Tanglewreck Read online

  Abel Darkwater began to pass his hands across the top of the canvas and directly over her feet.

  ‘You are going back in Time,’ he said, ‘back in Time, not far, not far at all, but a few years, oh yes, just a few, and your father and mother are still alive.’

  Silver lay absolutely still and rigid with terror. Then a very strange thing started to happen.

  As Abel Darkwater spoke on and on in the language she couldn’t understand, she felt herself slipping and shifting, like she was disappearing from her own body and going somewhere else. She felt very light. She was moving very fast. She was crossing time like it was a street. She was moving from Time Now into Time Then.

  Then she saw it. She saw it exactly as though someone was projecting it on to a wall. Behind Abel Darkwater was the face of her father. Her beloved father!

  Darkwater turned, and because Silver was lying the wrong way round, she risked raising her head on the pillow, hoping he wouldn’t see her under the canvas. They were back at Tanglewreck …

  It was a cold day and the bear in the garden was covered in snow. It was a hedge bear, made out of box plants and shaped and trimmed by their father. There were foxes too, and a deer standing with its face towards the forest.

  ‘Once,’ said her father, ‘these creatures lived here when the forest came as close as the edge of the garden. There were still bears in England when this house was new.’

  Her father was wearing a knitted tie and a thick wool shirt, and a big loose heavy jacket. He took something out of his pocket and the children looked at it in wonder.

  ‘This is the most beautiful object in the world,’ he said, ‘but I think it is alive too.’

  ‘Is it a watch or a clock?’ said Silver.

  ‘It’s called the Timekeeper,’ said her father. ‘Its mysteries are hard to understand. I don’t really understand it myself. I’m taking it to London tomorrow to show it to a man who will tell me everything about it. He wants me to sell it to him, but I won’t do that.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Not this time. Next time. This time we’ll take Buddleia because she needs to see a doctor about her leg.’

  Their father was gazing at the clock. ‘Our ancestors were given it to keep safe by someone who was very unsafe himself. It was a long time ago, and they looked after him, and he asked them to keep this for him. It’s been in the family for hundreds of years – nearly as long as the house – and now it’s my turn to look after it, and one day, it will be your turn.’

  ‘You never showed it to me before.’

  ‘No. I keep it hidden.’

  ‘Why do you hide it?’

  ‘Oh, just because I have a feeling that someone else might want it.’

  ‘Where do you hide it?’

  As she said that, the image of her father holding the clock became bigger and bigger, then it began to waver and fade. Abel Darkwater started shouting at the top of his voice, and the light in the room was so bright that Silver fell back and closed her eyes.

  Abel Darkwater was leaning over her feet. ‘He hid it somewhere, didn’t he? Where did he hide it? He hid it in the house or the garden, didn’t he? Take me there, follow the day that I have given you – follow your father. Where is it? Where is it?’

  Suddenly the room went dark. Abel Darkwater was breathing heavily. Silver felt in her body that whatever had happened to her was over.

  Sniveller and Abel Darkwater left the bedroom and went into the adjoining room where Silver had eaten her supper. She could hear them talking in low voices, but they had shut the door and she couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Without really planning it, Silver slid quickly out of bed and pulled on her jeans, fleece and socks over her pyjamas.

  She slipped out on to the landing and padded silently down the stairs. How dark it was! The stairs wound down and down like the spring of a clock, and as her fingers felt the walls to steady herself, her body made giant shadows thrown by the candlelight.

  She reached the wide hall. There was the telephone on the table. It was a funny-looking thing; upright, like a black candlestick, with a microphone at the top to speak into, and a listening tube hanging at the side, and a dial at the base that you had to spin round to get the numbers. She had seen Abel Darkwater using it that afternoon, so she knew what to do.

  Looking round nervously, she lifted the tube and dialled 999.

  A voice answered. ‘What number are you, caller?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Silver. ‘I want the police, please.’ ‘Yes, tell me your number, caller.’

  ‘It’s not my phone. I want someone to help me.’

  ‘Details, please. Name. Address.’

  Before Silver could say anything else, there was a great roar from upstairs, and she heard Abel Darkwater shouting at the top of his voice, ‘You snivelling idiot. Where is the child?’

  Silver dropped the phone and ran to the front door. It was locked and bolted. She slid back the big bolt at the bottom of the door, and turned the hoop-topped iron key in the boxy brass lock, but she couldn’t reach the top bolt, and Abel Darkwater was coming down the stairs. She turned away and frantically shook the door handle into the shop. It opened. She rushed inside and closed the door behind her. Was she trapped or was there another way out?

  In the shop there was no sound at all except for one ticking clock – just one. The time was five minutes to midnight.

  The display cabinets of watches and clocks were lit by dim red lights that made the gold and silver casings glow like the bodies of luminous insects, and the shiny glass faces of the watches were like great round eyes. Like Abel Darkwater’s eyes, she thought.

  Silver was too frightened to be frightened. Her whole body was numb but her mind was racing. She had seen that the door at the back of the shop led into a small courtyard. Perhaps there was a way out there.

  As she made her way towards the door, the one and only ticking clock suddenly paused, and then began to strike midnight. As it did so, every single clock and watch in the shop, all the ones that hadn’t been ticking at all, chimed and belled and rang the hour, MIDNIGHT, MIDNIGHT, MIDNIGHT.

  Silver put her hands over her ears. There were cuckoos flying out of wooden clocks on the wall, and brown-faced men wearing fezzes walking out of a clock shaped like a pyramid, and a dog that flew from its kennel barking the hour, and a woman banging a kettle with a stick, and a bell tolling from side to side in the steeple of a church, and over the top of all of them was Abel Darkwater’s voice coming from nowhere.

  ‘The universe was not born in Time but born with Time. Time and the Universe are twin souls birthed together. Whoever controls Time controls the Universe. Whoever has the Timekeeper controls Time.’

  Abel Darkwater was standing in the open shop doorway in a triangle of light. As he came towards Silver, she dashed between his legs, but he reached down and caught her, and picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.

  ‘Let me go! Let me go!’

  Laughing, Darkwater stepped slowly into the hall, and stood with his back towards the front door of the house, looking up the stairs as Sniveller came down with a steaming purple glass.

  ‘Drinking stops you thinking,’ he said. ‘Give her this and she’ll be asleep in no time, Master.’

  ‘You said that earlier and the child is wide awake, as you can see.’

  ‘I dosed the tomato sauce, yes I did,’ said Sniveller, cowering.

  ‘I hate tomato sauce!’ yelled Silver, her legs kicking, her head staring at the door. Then suddenly she saw what to do, yes, now that Abel Darkwater had lifted her up, she could pull back the top bolt, then if only she could just …

  She wriggled forward with such a thrust that Darkwater lost his balance, and Silver had the bolt in her hands before he stumbled and dropped her. Sniveller lunged forward to catch her but tripped over Darkwater, who was too heavy and slow to move quickly. Silver knew that the door was fully unlocked now and if only she could just turn the knob
…

  She was free! She was outside in the street! She had no shoes on her feet, but she could run, and run she did, she didn’t know where, until the lights of the city seemed far away and, breathless and sweating, she stood on one sore foot, on a bank by the River Thames.

  Rabbits!

  Midnight was chiming as Fisty and Elvis lay in the damp cellar, hands and feet tied.

  Bigamist was not the only rabbit in the house, and once he had his enemies safely dropped down the hole, he signalled to a few of his friends and relations, and they all came along with twine from their carrot sacks and ran round and round the unhappy pair until they were as tightly bound as wasps in a spider’s web.

  Fisty had tried kicking them at first, but they were all black, all identical, and if he sent one of them flying through the air, another one bit him. Elvis was no use at all. His KILL button had been disabled in the fall, and the rabbits had taken away his remote control. He was a dog without means or purpose.

  ‘What am I supposed to eat?’ demanded Fisty, wondering why he was talking to a rabbit, but Bigamist seemed to understand, and before long half a sack of soft mouldy carrots was pushed down into the cellar. With his hands and feet tied, the only way that Fisty could eat them was to lie on the floor and dig in the sack with his head.

  ‘Fur ’ats, every one of ’em,’ he said to himself between mouldy miserable bites. ‘I’ll make ’em all into ’ats and sell ’em on eBay.’

  But no one was listening, because Elvis had lost his ears, the rabbits had gone, and Thugger was in another part of the dungeon having some very unpleasant problems of his own.

  Midnight

  Everywhere

  The River Thames at Limehouse bows away from the City. The river glitters darkly. The river reflects the starless London sky. The river flows on to the sea. The river flows in one direction, but Time does not. Time’s river carries our spent days out to sea and sometimes those days come back to us, changed, strange, but still ours. Time’s flow is not even, and there are snags underwater, hesitations in Time where the clock sticks. A minute on Earth is not the same length as a minute on Jupiter. A minute on Earth is sometimes a different length all by itself.

  Big Ben was chiming midnight.

  When Silver heard the chime, she thought it was one o’clock in the morning and that she had been running for an hour. But then the clock went on chiming its grave and solemn toll, and she knew it was still midnight, or that midnight had come again.

  The city was still. Faint car noises came from the road behind the old warehouses and wharf buildings, but in front of her was the river, no ships, no barges, only the stretch of water from one side of the bank to the other.

  What should she do now?

  She sat down, her back against a stone wall, her knees drawn up to her chin, her arms round her knees. She wanted to cry, but she knew she mustn’t. She pictured Tanglewreck in her mind, solid and secure and waiting for her, and she had a feeling that the house was doing its best to help. Then she remembered why she had come to London in the first place; because there was something important to do. If it was important, it was bound to be difficult. She wouldn’t cry and she wouldn’t give up.

  Then, as these thoughts began to make her feel better, she sensed that the ground underneath her was shaking faintly, as though a big train was passing below.

  She had the feeling of something enormous, invisible, and very near. Her heart tightened.

  Gingerly, like a cat, she edged forward on all fours. How dark and quiet it was, the city breathing like a sleeping animal.

  Then, she saw it, head down, just underneath her on the bank, drinking from the river, the water pouring off its tusks as its head came out of the water. It looked like a cross between a bull and an elephant. It had dark curly hair all over its body, and huge thighs and shoulders, and legs that sunk into the mud as it walked.

  It took a lumbering step forward and the wall she sat on shook.

  It was a Woolly Mammoth.

  Silver didn’t know what Woolly Mammoths liked to eat but she wanted to make sure it wasn’t her, so she kept very still as its great head swung round to stare up the bank.

  Then she heard a voice, a boy’s voice, but high and piercing.

  ‘Get thee back into, Goliath! Get thee back into, afore thee be seen by Devils.’

  The Mammoth turned and shuffled off towards an open culvert in the bank. Silver couldn’t contain her curiosity. She stood up and looked down on to the muddy stretch where the river lapped, and the second she looked down, the boy looked up. He was the oddest-looking boy you ever saw.

  ‘Do you laugh at me?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said Silver, ‘course not.’

  But before either of them could say anything else, they heard a shrill whistle, like at the start of a football match, and then the sound of running feet.

  ‘Dive!’ shouted the boy, disappearing. ‘Devils!’

  Silver looked round, and saw that Abel Darkwater was behind her, with Sniveller dressed in a policeman’s uniform, but a very old-fashioned policeman’s uniform. His feet were still bare and he was carrying a cage with a blanket in it.

  ‘Put the child in the cage,’ commanded Darkwater, and before Silver could run or fight, she found herself upended by Sniveller’s wiry arms and thrust inside the metal bars.

  ‘Got her this time, Master, snug as a bug in a rug.’

  ‘Let me go!’

  Abel Darkwater laughed and put his face near the bars. His eyes were like two deep wells with faint lights at the bottom. Silver felt herself going dizzy.

  ‘I knew you would come here, to this very river, to this very spot. You can’t help yourself finding the way.’

  ‘I don’t know where I am,’ said Silver, weakly now.

  ‘Oh yes, Silver, yes you do, though you do not. The Thames is an old river, a dirty river, centuries have been pumped into it. The ancient Britons lived by its waters, and fought the Roman armies as they drew slowly up the river from Gravesend. Elizabeth the First sailed down this river to greet your ancestor Roger Rover at Deptford.

  ‘Now it is your turn, Silver. We are going on a boat journey together, and whether or not you ever return will depend on what you tell me about the Timekeeper.’

  ‘I haven’t got it!’ Silver jumped back to life, shaking the bars. ‘I keep telling you I haven’t got it. I don’t know where I am and I don’t know where it is.’

  ‘But you will lead me to it. I am certain, oh yes, very certain. Sniveller, pick up the cage and carry it down to the water, and signal for the boat.’

  ‘Help!’ shouted Silver. ‘Help!’

  ‘There is no one to hear you,’ said Abel Darkwater.

  But there was someone to hear her. Out of the darkness flew a figure of fury followed by half a dozen yapping dogs who set on Darkwater and Sniveller, biting and snapping, while the feet-flying, furious odd boy wrenched open the cage door and pulled Silver out.

  He grabbed her hand and together they ran over the rough ground until they came to a manhole with its cover half off.

  ‘Down!’ said the boy. ‘Fast as a flea.’

  Silver did as she was told and the boy followed her, pulling the lid over them.

  ‘My dogs will come down the Swan Hole,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ said Silver. ‘What swan hole? ‘Where are you? Where are we?’

  There was a groping noise, then a flaring sound, and suddenly Silver could see everything by the light of a makeshift torch that seemed to be rags wrapped round a pole and soaked in paraffin. They had plenty of paraffin heaters at Tanglewreck, so she knew the smell.

  There was the boy; about four and a half feet tall, heavily built, wearing a dirty blue coat fastened here and there by brass buttons, over a collarless shirt. His legs were in knee breeches, like the ones Sniveller wore, and he had no socks under his big heavy laced-up boots. His hands were like the front feet of a mole; spade-square with thick fingers. He had black hair, a ve
ry pale face, big moony eyes, and, this was it, this was the thing, he had the biggest ears on either side of his head that Silver had ever seen on a human being.

  If he was a human being …

  The boy watched her looking him up and down, and then he said again, ‘Do you laugh at me?’

  ‘No,’ said Silver. ‘You saved me. Thank you very much. My name is Silver. Who are you?’

  ‘I am called Gabriel,’ answered the boy. ‘A Throwback.’

  ‘A what?’ asked Silver.

  ‘A Throwback. That be my Clan and my Kind. We dwell under the earth, and we do not live as Updwellers do.’

  ‘What’s an Updweller?’

  ‘You be an Updweller.’

  Silver looked at the strange boy, with his strange speech and ragged clothes, and she felt two things simultaneously; two feelings so twinned together that she couldn’t separate them. She felt that she had known this boy all her life, which was silly because she had just met him, and she felt that she could trust him. Since her father had died, and Mrs Rokabye had come, and everything had gone wrong, this was the first time that Silver felt she had a friend. She didn’t think about what she felt, she just spoke straight away, without explaining.

  ‘I am in trouble. Will you help me?’

  The boy nodded. ‘Let us go together to the Chamber.’

  ‘The Chamber?’

  ‘Come,’ said Gabriel.

  Ghosts!

  Thugger was having an underground experience too.

  He had gone down the hidden flight of stairs into the cellars, and as soon as his feet had touched the bottom step, the opening to the reading room above had closed with a dreadful grinding noise. However he was going to get out would not be the way he had come in.

  He swallowed hard and decided to be brave. It was very dark so he got out his torch and flashed it around.

  Cobwebs everywhere, YUK! which meant spiders everywhere, big YUK! And the biggest YUK! of all was the slime. His fingers turned green from feeling their way along the walls. Suppose he was walking into a sewer?