Tregarthur's Prisoners: Book 3 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  The thought of Jenna being dragged off on a boat made things even worse. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more, but I still asked: ‘Where are they going?’

  ‘Australia,’ Hugh said now in more of a whisper. ‘Where they send all the convicts.’ He turned and hurried off, hissing, ‘Tomorrow,’ over his shoulder.

  The night felt as though it lasted forever, sleep broken by so many different sounds. A small barred window high up on the wall opened to the outside world letting in occasional flickers of light and noise from the street, nothing compared to the howls and cries from the other cells on death row. I filled Sam’s wakeful hours by telling him all about our time with the Black Death.

  ‘Why is Miss Tregarthur after us?’ he said in a calmer voice than before.

  ‘No idea, she’s using Zach and Demelza. I’ve no idea why she’s after us.’ I shifted on the stony floor. There was a mat in the corner, it looked soiled and I had the thought of fleas in my mind.

  We both tried to think of other things to talk about; anything other than hanging.

  ‘There was something strange about the tunnel, not like before.’ Sam looked as though memories were coming back to him. ‘Any idea what it was?’

  I didn’t answer at first because I didn’t understand. This was a battle with Miss Tregarthur. She wanted to stop us using the tunnel to escape the mob chasing us, but Sam and Ivy had changed everything.

  ‘Not sure it is a tunnel, in the usual way,’ I said after a while. ‘Almost as though it’s something under someone’s control – under Miss Tregarthur’s control.’

  ‘It didn’t feel like that when we came through.’ Sam hesitated. ‘As if whatever does this time travelling thing, it sort of … was it pushing us on to help you? Surely that wasn’t what Miss Tregarthur wanted to happen?’

  That made more sense although it wasn’t much of an explanation. Even if we escaped I felt that crazy woman would try and do something to make sure we didn’t survive.

  Sam agreed. ‘We could go back into it and end up somewhere even worse.’ He stopped as we both realised there wasn’t anywhere much worse than this death cell.

  All this talk made me think about Mum again. Was she dead or had we left her behind? There was no way that I would ever find out. She had said we’d get home if we took everyone. We’d scattered people and bodies all over the place, over the several different centuries we had been taken to by the tunnel. It didn’t seem possible that we could get everyone together. At least being dead would stop me worrying about all that. Not a comfortable thought. I lay down on the mat, worrying was too difficult.

  And despite the cries, screams, wails, shouts, banging and sounds of fighting I slept until, in the grey light, a guard threw in some more bread, foul comments and the day started again. It wasn’t long before the gawkers were back, perhaps a quick look at the condemned set them up for the day.

  I started itching. The mat had been a bad idea.

  ‘Are they going to hang them today?’ A small child had been brought to look at us by his father. ‘Please can I watch, please … please?’

  The father bent down and smiled at the boy, ‘Of course, I’ll put you on my shoulders. There’ll be a lot of folk wanting to watch this one.’

  ‘Are they very bad?’ he asked.

  ‘The worst.’ And they wandered away.

  There was no silence, just different voices.

  ‘What is it we are actually meant to have done?’ Sam had taken to pacing the cell. I thought that was probably a good idea and if you moved fast you could probably avoid the jumping fleas.

  ‘Stolen sheep, stolen other things and murdered a few people.’ I poked the mat and stood back.

  ‘But we didn’t. How could they make all that up?’

  I really could see the little creatures jumping up from the sleeping mat. I started stamping on them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Sam stopped pacing.

  ‘Killing fleas,’ I answered and he bent down to watch. ‘Don’t think it’s working,’ I said and we both backed off.

  I was thinking about Sam’s question. If we hadn’t done all those things how could they make it up? ‘I suppose sheep stealing and murder happen all the time round here.’ I took a bite from the stale loaf. ‘Swumon, mushed.’ I gave up trying to speak with my mouthful of the hard bread.

  ‘Someone must have decided to lump all the crimes into one,’ I said eventually.

  ‘And said it was down to the Carter gang.’ Sam almost gave a smile. ‘At least you’re famous.’

  ‘But only Miss Tregarthur knew we were here -’ I stopped; looking at the bread, there was something moving in it.

  ‘Or knew we were coming here,’ Sam filled in for me.

  ‘Her and Zach,’ I added, picking out a caterpillar, deciding not to throw the food away. They might be going to hang us and I didn’t want to starve as well.

  Sam was thinking. I could see that as I looked at him. Thinking wasn’t something he normally did a lot of. Usually he just blurted out something, often daft. When we’d been at school that would get him bullied, but that was a long time ago – probably several hundred years in the future actually.

  Sam’s thoughts ended. ‘That must mean she controls where we end up, and when. She must have set this up before we arrived.’

  ‘I guess if you mess around in time you can do anything.’ I couldn’t see that we were getting anywhere with this, too bizarre to get any grip on. There was a tunnel thing, there was Miss Tregarthur and we were going to die. I went over to the window. I leapt up and grabbed the bars, pulling myself up to look out. Just more of the same chaos that we’d seen outside the court. People and animals gathering in the early morning. It was obvious that the jail provided a living for many who sold things outside. I dropped back to the ground and we waited.

  And we waited some more and more, until we lost all sense of time, before the clank of keys brought back that awful fear. They’d come for us. I was rubbing my neck and snatched my hands away when I realised what I was doing. I couldn’t stop the thoughts, the scaffold, climbing up, the rope, the drop …

  ‘Leave us.’

  Hugh was back. Now he was trying to look more important. Wearing a dark thick jacket he pushed into our cell and stood looking at the guard, who shrugged, stepped back and locked us all in. I wondered how he had found this new confidence – had he been at the drink?

  ‘Shout for me when you’re done,’ the guard said with a sly nod. ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hugh who turned to me, saying: ‘Always the money.’

  The guard stamped away. Now there were few people outside. Hugh told me later that was about the money too. The men and women outside the cells had to pay the guards to get through. It was quieter today because someone had just ramped up the charges.

  Even so Hugh was only talking in a whisper and made us crouch down in a corner. ‘Not much time,’ he said and kept glancing over his shoulder. ‘That trial and your sentence, all false.’ He stopped and looked into my face. ‘I think we know who did it.’

  ‘Miss …’ started Sam.

  ‘Hush, don’t mention her name.’ Hugh held up a shaking hand, his new confidence starting to slip.

  If Hugh knew about Miss Tregarthur, who was he? Had she sent him? That seemed unlikely, we’d been sentenced to hang and wasn’t that what she wanted, why would this man save us?

  ‘How are you going to help us?’ I asked with an angry sneer, this man didn’t look able to help himself.

  ‘You’ve got something that someone wants.’ Hugh touched me on the arm, the arm on which I’d wrapped the gold chain, the king’s gold chain. I shrugged away, even more suspicious.

  ‘Can’t explain it all now. If you give it to me I can help.’

  I stared i
nto the distance, trying to think.

  ‘Give it to him,’ said Sam – he knew about the belt from our talk in the night. ‘Give it,’ he almost shrieked, as Hugh tried to stick his hand over Sam’s mouth and kept telling him to hush.

  ‘How do I know …’ I started.

  ‘You don’t and there isn’t time for you to find out that there is no other way. The hangman’s back in town, dawn tomorrow for you.’ Hugh was getting more agitated. I couldn’t see how we could trust him, but like he said there probably was no other way.

  I pulled back my tunic sleeve and unwound the belt. It sparkled in the dull light. I hadn’t really looked closely at it before. There was writing engraved into the gold. It wasn’t just the gold that sparkled. I could see the light in Hugh’s greedy eyes as well. Even if this wasn’t a bad idea I could see that Hugh was going to do well out of it. Or was he just going to give it to Miss Tregarthur? Was that the plan, get the gold and see that we hanged.

  ‘Right, I’ll be off,’ Hugh said, standing.

  ‘Now what?’ I wasn’t happy to let him just wander off with the only thing we had of value.

  ‘You wait,’ Hugh said and he shouted for the guard who came, unlocked the cell and Hugh almost ran. I looked up at the guard. His eyes were gleaming too, and not from gold, ‘Hangman will be along soon to measure you up.’

  I think the guard liked my puzzled look and he added, ‘Have to make sure the rope is just right to let you wriggle a bit for the crowd.’ He paused and sneered, ‘Crowd have to get their money’s worth.’ And he turned away, starting to whistle something that sounded like a marching tune, a tune to march us to our deaths.

  Turn of the Key

  -4-

  Sure enough our next visitor was a wiry little man. He looked like one of Zach’s relatives – that face of a rat.

  If we hadn’t guessed who he was, the gaoler let us know. ‘Hangman for you. Stand up.’

  Mr Wiry Rat didn’t come into the cell, he just looked us up and down. ‘Usual one,’ he said, pulling out a short length of rope from the sack he was carrying. ‘Like this.’ He showed us the specimen. ‘Only longer.’ He laughed at our open mouthed faces.

  I thought Sam would collapse again so I grabbed his arm. I didn’t need to worry, something had sparked inside him and he shouted, ‘You won’t laugh when I come back and haunt you.’

  I’ve no idea where he got that from, it made the hangman give a definite shiver, perhaps he’d killed so many that he was scared of ghosts, he shivered and walked off.

  The gaoler didn’t like the idea that we’d not been scared enough so he chipped in, ‘That’s no bread for you today.’ And he too walked away, pushing past the next band of faces that had come to stare at us.

  ‘It was Ivy,’ Sam said as we moved to the furthest corner of the small cell.

  ‘Ivy?’ I wondered what he would say. I did wonder how the two of them were together, they made a strange couple. Ivy was sometimes so miserable and Sam just put up with it. Sam, once the bullied victim, struggled all the time to show he wasn’t scared.

  ‘Ivy goes on about ghosts and things.’ Sam wanted to tell me about her.

  I suppose he’d been thinking about her as much as I thought about Jenna. I wondered if the girls had really set out on a boat for Australia like Hugh had said. Wherever they were we weren’t going to see them again.

  ‘You know, it was her mum.’ Sam looked at me and slowly I remembered. Ivy’s mum was some sort of white witch, she taught Ivy all about herbs and potions, drove Ivy mad with it all. But it sounded as though some of it had stuck.

  ‘Yeah, Ivy was great with the herbs and roots and stuff, back in the caveman world,’ Sam said and his eyes seemed to stare out blankly from thousands of miles away – and probably it was at least that many years ago.

  I’d heard most of the things that happened, how the cavemen battle had ended and how Ivy had been injured.

  ‘She was absolutely fine when we came out of the tunnel and arrived here.’ Sam came out of his trance. ‘Do you think that man – Hugh or whatever his real name is – do you think he’ll come back?’

  I just don’t know why, whoever I was with asked me questions like that. As if I knew the answers to anything. Of all the people that had set out with Miss Tregarthur on that school hike I was probably the least likely to know anything. I’d changed, I knew that, and I knew it was Jenna who had been the main cause of the change. Jenna wouldn’t have had the answer either but she’d have found someone who would help. Only there was no one to help, no one to find. I thought Hugh had probably just conned me out of the gold belt. I turned away and went back to waiting. Sam tried to cheer himself up by sometimes rushing towards anyone peering in through the cell bars and making weird noises. It scared some of them off, others just cheered.

  We didn’t get any bread.

  Later Sam went back to pacing up and down, just stopping with more unanswerable questions for me. At one point, ‘How did Hugh know about Miss Tregarthur?’

  That was a thought I’d been struggling with. How could a man here, and we didn’t know exactly what year it was, how could this man know anything about Miss Tregarthur? That teacher from back home, who seemed determined to kill us wherever she took us into this tunnel thing.

  ‘Maybe …’ I started to answer Sam’s last question. I stopped, not wanting to share some of the thoughts I’d had. If I was right maybe Hugh would come back, otherwise we had no chance.

  Our conversation was cut short by the gaoler reappearing. We shouldn’t have upset him.

  ‘Normally they give you a last meal on your last night,’ he said with a nasty grin. ‘Trouble is I was a bit hungry so I ate it instead, a pity to waste it on you two seeing as you’ll be dead in the morning.’ He rubbed his fat belly and smirked.

  I guess he liked to taunt his prisoners as much as he could. Sam and I glanced at each other and turned our backs on him. Eventually he walked away, trying unsuccessfully to whistle again.

  Daylight faded. We weren’t going to sleep. Even if this was to be our last night I didn’t fancy the fleas again. How could Hugh do anything? There were always people around. No way we could escape even if the cell hadn’t been locked.

  As my thoughts turned to more misery the sound of hurrying steps came towards us. A woman was at our cell door.

  ‘Ssshh,’ was all she said when I tried to ask her what was happening before she stuffed two bundles though the bars. ‘Get them on.’ After a quick look around she was off again.

  ‘What the …’ I said picking up one of the bundles.

  It was some sort of dress, a woman’s long dress with a cloak and hood.

  ‘Do we?’ Sam looked at me.

  ‘Might as well,’ I said, pulling the dress over my tunic. Sam did the same. The clothes were old, dirty and a bit torn but within a few minutes I guess we’d turned from two gangsters into looking like two old women. Sam looked quite convincing and he made to hit me when I told him that. I did just wonder if it was the gaoler having a laugh at us.

  A few minutes later there were more sounds outside. Something whizzed in through the barred widow, from the street side. It was a stone wrapped in a cloth bundle along with something else.

  ‘A key,’ I whispered, opening the bundle. Along with a note which said, ‘Make for the noise, as fast as you can.’

  With that a loud banging and shouting started from further away in the building.

  ‘Quick,’ I called, trying to fit the key into the lock, my hands shaking as I fed the key in from the opposite side. The door creaked open with a loud squeal, loud enough to be heard in the other cells, everyone started shouting, banging things against the bars.

  Sam and I ran. Hands reached out from the other prisoners, snatching at our clothes; so much harder to run in the dresses.

 
A thunderous explosion shook the building. We were blown to a halt by the wave of sound and down draft. We rushed on in air thick with dust.

  At the end of the corridor was total chaos. The explosion had blown away the main prison gate. There can’t have been many guards on duty that night because it became very quiet after whatever it was had blown up. Through the smoke I could see a man waving to us. We didn’t need any prompting and ran out, hoping we were running out into freedom. The shouts behind us soon started. It would only be seconds before they knew who had escaped. Shouts were followed by loud whistles. Soon they would be after us.

  We ran, following Hugh and he wasn’t a very agile runner. We followed as fast as we could, tripping frequently over the hems of our strange clothes.

  We turned into a narrow alley. Hugh held up his hand, breathing hard, ‘Stop. We need to slow down. Have to hope your clothes hide you well enough, but two women sprinting through the night streets won’t work. You’ll have to walk more slowly.’

  I thought it was more for his sake that we had to slow down.

  ‘What if we’re stopped?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Just pretend you’re drunk, most are round here. In fact stagger a bit, that’ll keep people away.’

  We walked, we staggered. We heard the shouts of our pursuers.

  ‘This way,’ Hugh shouted, leading us into a stinking alley. Whoever owned these clothes wasn’t going to want them back in a hurry, the alley seemed to be the main sewer. Sam skidded and slipped down a flight of steps, squidging into a puddle. I grabbed his arm, pulled him and we were off again.

  Ahead I thought I could see water, with lights bobbing on the waves. With a rush our alley ended at the docks. I saw tall ships, barely lit, moored out from the quayside across the bay. Hugh pulled us to a stop and pushed us through a slightly open door. Inside a woman waved her arms frantically at us, sending us across the tiny room before she took a hurried glance outside.