She looks fearfully at Bill.
“Have you got shoes?” he asks. “A coat?”
She stares at him, saying nothing, almost as if she is unable to understand the question. We hear a thump from downstairs, and she starts.
It’s no time for conversation. Bill pulls a blanket from the bed and puts it around Caz’s shoulders.
“Time to go, children,” he says. “Follow me.”
He goes down the stairs slowly, carrying Caz. When we reach the landing below, it is surprisingly still, with not a sound issuing from the closet where we left Knightley in the company of a hundred or so rats.
“Had we better check he’s all right?” I ask.
“Don’t be soft, boy.” Bill continues his way downstairs.
I put my ear to the closet door. It seems to me that I can hear a low moan. Without making a sound, I gently slide the walking stick that is holding the door firm through the ring latch. At least, when we have gone, and when he dares, Knightley will be able to free himself from his prison.
We descend to the next floor, and Bill puts Caz down. She looks around her. Then, slowly, like someone in a dream, she walks toward a closed door. She opens it.
I see the piano, the candle, the little stage. It is the room where she danced for Champagne Charlie.
Caz’s shoulders are shaking. I look at her and see the tears on her cheeks.
“Dogboy!” Bill has gone ahead of us and is downstairs. His voice is urgent. “Let’s go!”
I take Caz’s hand. I shut the door to the room and we make our way downstairs.
. . . and a stirring in the blood, which every rat understood.
The kingdom was coming to life again.
I remained in the Great Hollow. The time for revelation was past. It was not for me to search for citizens and bring them to this place. They must come here under their own will. Each would decide in his or her heart whether to be part of the kingdom or to seek a future elsewhere.
Yet ours was a kingdom without a king. Citizens looked up at me, alone on the Rock of State, and there was often a furtive questioning in the air around them.
Who was this citizen who had appeared from the world above? Was he king now? There had been no fights, no ceremonies, no great gatherings of citizens. It seemed if not wrong, then unusual.
I gazed at them with what I hoped seemed like calmness. King Efren? I had no wish for that. I was a citizen, one who had seen what the enemy could do to our kingdom. I knew that the kingdom must survive and that, just possibly, I could help it to grow stronger. There was part of me that longed to be among them, just another citizen doing his duty, but I knew now that I had no choice.
Someone had to be there on that Rock of State, and I knew in my heart that that someone could only be me. I, too, would need help. I looked down to the citizens who were gathering in the hollow. There were, I knew, leaders and fighters among them. But how was I to find them?
A ratling from the Court of Translation brought some food, a morsel of meat found in the world above, but, having laid it at my feet, he scurried away before I could thank him.
It was the end of the night when I stepped down from the Rock of State and moved through the hollow. As I went, citizens moved aside. Some looked at me suspiciously. Once they had trusted leaders. Jeniel and Swylar had changed all that.
— We need courtiers.
My revelation was quiet. It took in one group at a time. There was no reply.
— The last Court of Governance has died. No one knows where they have scattered to. Who wishes to be a courtier?
They avoided my eyes. I heard a snicker sometimes. An older rat, a historian, revealed quietly as I passed.
— And who, tell us, shall they be following?
I turned to him.
— My name is Efren. If you wish for another leader, then say so.
He skulked away, teeth chattering mutinously.
I left the hollow, climbed toward the world above. I took the trail to the network of runs below an ancient tree where the Court of Tasting used to stay. The touch-path was familiar, yet now everything was different. There was a scent of tell, but it led away from the runs and paths. I listened for the woodnote, the sound of all nature that reveals danger or safety. It was quiet. Citizens everywhere were lying low, looking after themselves.
I stood in the place that I knew from my younger days. Now it was deserted. I waited there for a moment. Citizens are more at ease when surrounded by others, but my stay in the world above had changed me. I liked to be alone, and other citizens sensed that within me. It set me apart.
Everything here, I knew now, had changed. Fear was at every turn. No one was trusted. I wondered what hope there was to unite citizens again after the terrible events in the world above. The strongest had surely been killed in the battle. Some warriors had survived — I had seen their mighty leap to freedom — but I had no idea where they were now, or whether they would have the stomach for another fight.
It was while I waited there that I sensed the presence of another rat. It shuffled slowly across the hollow. She: I smelled, while she was several lengths away from me, that it was a doe; still young, but a mother.
She approached me, with neither fear nor curiosity. When I greeted her, she looked at me for a moment, then revealed.
— Efren?
She moved closer, whiffling as she approached. A rat’s instinct is to assert itself, but I let her smell me. She revealed again.
— It is Efren. We thought you were dead.
— I was trapped in the world above. I didn’t fight. I saw the battle.
The doe looked at me, as if to decide whether she was in the company of a coward.
Let her decide. It was no time to tell my story. Instead, I asked her where her ratlings were.
She sniffed sharply, and the sour smell of grief was in the air.
— They were taken. By other rats. They were my first. Staying with them saved my life. Now they’re gone.
— It is not citizens who are to blame.
— The enemy did this?
— In a way, it did.
— We must fight.
I sensed defiance in her now. I asked her name.
— Driva.
— I remember you now, from the days when Alpa was captain.
— Poor Alpa.
— The kingdom is not finished, Driva. We can bring it back, the true, good kingdom.
There was no hesitation from her.
— Of course we must. For my ratlings, and those of the future.
— You and me? Then we find others.
— We should start now. — She nudged me with her nose, and I felt stronger, less alone. — You and me, Efren.
So it was that Driva became the first member of the new Court of Governance.
. . . even though Bill offers to look after us. I can see from Caz’s eyes that she needs to be alone and safe with me and Malaika.
The next day I talk a lot. Caz sits, Malaika slumbering in her lap, her eyes empty. Maybe she is listening; probably she is not. I tell her about how Bill helped me, about the hunt by the river, about the war on rats. I decide not to ask anything about Champagne Charlie.
We have no money, and Caz seems hungrier than before. I have no choice but to go back to work, leaving her in the company of her pet rat.
The doctor is excited when I arrive. It is the day of the public meeting. Another battle in the great war is being planned. He is a man who sees his great mission in life happening before his eyes.
As we make our way by carriage to the meeting, he gazes out the window. Then, as if the thought has just occurred to him, he says casually, “Your job will be to take charge of the rats’ tails.”
I must have looked puzzled or displeased, because he speaks impatiently.
“I know, Mr. Smith,” he says. “It’s not a wonderful job, but it’s necessary. The war on rats”— he drops his voice, as if a rat hiding in the carriage might overhear him — “is
about to enter a new phase.”
“Dr. Henry Ross-Gibbon,” he says to the clerk behind the desk when we arrive at the town hall. “I am to see Mr. Woodcock of the Public Health Department. My colleague here will be collecting an item from the basement.”
The clerk smiles at the doctor. “Of course, sir.” Without so much as a glance in my direction, he walks to a small door at the back of the hall and opens it.
“Down the stairs, follow the corridor to the end. You’ll see them,” he says.
I look down the dark stairs.
“I’ll need a candle.”
Sighing like a man forever having to deal with unnecessary requests, the man goes to a cupboard behind his desk and takes out a lantern. He lights it and gives it to me with a hard look in his eye.
I hesitate. “How long shall I wait there, Doctor?” I ask.
The doctor is gazing out the window across the hall. “Someone will collect you when you are needed,” he says.
I descend the wooden stairs, the lamp before me, and reach a stone-floored corridor. Along the entire length of one wall there are piles of ledgers and boxes of papers. It is chilly, damp, and moldy down here, and a trace of something rotting and unpleasant hangs in the air. At the end of the corridor, I see a door. I push it open and walk in. The foul smell of putrefying flesh makes me cough and gag. I am in a large cavernous basement, which seems at first to be empty.
I hold up the lamp and peer into the gloom. Against the far wall is a heap of earth and a few sacks. When I move closer, I see that there are thousands of rats’ tails, only some of which have been put into sacks.
I back toward the door. There is a loathsome taste in my mouth. I lay the candle on the damp stone and cover my mouth and nose with my hand.
Time passes slowly when you are in a cellar with only rats’ tails for company. I close my eyes and try to force the filth and evil — Champagne Charlie, the hunting of beasts, the stink of their tails — from my mind. In the lobby of the town hall there are pictures of men on horses hunting foxes. I think not of the men in the pink coats or their hounds and horses but of what surrounds them. The trees, the fields, the hedges, the streams. One day I will take Caz away from the town and its cruelty into the green of the country.
I am deadly cold by the time I hear the sound of steps on the stairs. The door opens. It is the clerk.
“You’re wanted in the chamber,” he says. “Bring one of the sacks.”
“But —”
“Just do it, boy. And don’t come too close to me.”
I cross the room, and trying to ignore the smell, I heave a sack onto my shoulder.
I follow the clerk up the stairs, into the light of the entrance hall and up some wider stairs. Halfway down a corridor, there is a small door, beyond which I can hear the sounds of a meeting.
As I approach, the clerk winces with distaste.
“Wait near the door until you are called.”
Quietly he opens it and stands back for me to enter with my sack of tails.
I am in the biggest room I have ever seen, and it is full of people, standing in silence, their eyes fixed on the stage. A few of those close to the door catch the smell of the sack and, casting reproachful looks in my direction, move away.
Mr. Petheridge is making one of his speeches. It is the usual stuff — “war,” “health,” “danger to our children,” “the great challenge of our age”— but I am too amazed by what I am seeing in that hall to pay much heed. Everything has changed. The last time I saw the MP making a speech, there was laughter and chat. Now it is as if he has some great secret to impart, something that will affect each of them, and which they have never heard before.
He is talking about what he calls “the great extermination campaign” when he glances in my direction.
“This borough has shown the world that the rat can be defeated,” he declares, holding a finger in the air. “My esteemed colleague Dr. Ross-Gibbon”— he gestures to where the doctor is standing toward the back of the stage — “has shown us how to destroy the beasts. And you, the people of this great borough, have shown that each of us can help.”
He beckons to me.
“Mr. Smith,” he calls out. “Kindly join me on the stage.”
I am about to put down the sack when he adds, “No, bring your booty with you, my boy.”
With some difficulty, I drag the sack of tails across the hall and up the few steps that lead to the stage. There is alarm in the audience as they notice that the sack is leaving a trail of dark blood on the floor.
“Thus far”— the MP raises his voice — “our people’s campaign has resulted in more than twenty thousand beasts being exterminated from our streets. And we have the proof.”
I look down on the crowded hall. No one is looking at Mr. Petheridge now, nor at me. Their eyes are on the bulging, bloodstained sack that is beside me on the stage.
“Show them, Mr. Smith.”
I reach for the bottom of the sack. Those nearest the stage back away hurriedly.
“No, I don’t think we need to see all the contents of the sack, Mr. Smith.” Mr. Petheridge gives a nervous laugh. “Just show us a sample.” He made a scooping gesture with his hand.
For a moment I stare at him in disbelief.
His look becomes more threatening.
“Show us a sample, Mr. Smith, please.”
I take a deep breath, reach into the sack, grab a slimy handful of tails, and hold them aloft. There are screams and shouts and pandemonium from the audience.
“Calm down, everyone,” Mr. Petheridge says, nodding eagerly in my direction. “They are safely dead and can now be returned to the sack.”
I do as I am told and return the tails to the sack.
“There are many sacks like that, and we need more,” the MP continues. He pauses for a moment, as if a sudden thought has just occurred to him. “We should, though, be on our guard. The enemy is now on the attack.”
At this point, the doctor moves to the front of the stage. He is carrying a newspaper.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he says. “I believe that I have explained in the past how my research has shown the rat to be a cunning and vicious creature. Its instinct is to fight and destroy any species that competes with it. That is, us.”
He unfolds the paper slowly until he finds what he is looking for.
“We are engaged in a war, and we now know that the war has entered a new and dangerous phase. The rat is desperate, and it is fighting back. We know already that it likes to attack babies in their cribs. Now it is going further.”
He flourishes the newspaper before him. “Some of you may have read yesterday’s newspapers. They made shocking reading. The headline here says it all — MAN EATEN ALIVE BY RATS.”
He holds up the newspaper, showing everyone in the hall the headline.
“We have the first known adult victim in the war against rats, ladies and gentlemen,” the doctor continues. “His name”— he glances at the paper — “is Mr. Ralph Knightley.”
. . . but citizens who could lead. Driva and I knew it was not enough to believe in the kingdom. Every rat believes in the kingdom. We needed courtiers who would show citizens that if they believed in something, they should be prepared to fight for it.
It was to be a Court of Governance unlike any other in the history of the kingdom. Those who would be part of it would not have fame or reputation or great heroic deeds to offer. They would simply have the hearts of ordinary citizens, and a determination that we should not be defeated by the enemy.
When Driva set out alone in search of leaders, she faced a harsh struggle. She was a doe, and the only member of her sex who had been a courtier was Jeniel, whose name was now never mentioned in the kingdom.
Her revelation was weak. Why, rats would ask, should we follow a doe who reveals no more clearly than an ordinary mother of ratlings?
Yet we had no choice. It was to be a court of ordinary citizens. That would be our strength.
We agreed to meet on the Rock of State at the end of the night. By then, we would know if the kingdom had a new court.
I sensed Driva’s doubts as we said farewell.
— Strength is what we need, sister. Others like you.
She looked at me, communicating her feelings as only a doe can, and for the briefest of instants I thought of Malaika. It was like a sharp jab of pain within me.
Driva left, and I headed for a small wood near the river where, I knew, rats foraged for food during the night.
It was strange, emerging once more from the drain into the world above but not turning toward the home I had made with Malaika and her humans. I wondered about them for a moment. Had Malaika found her human? Were they safe? Did she ever think of me, back in the kingdom?
I moved toward the trees. I needed warriors, and I knew that some had survived the battle. But where were they? If their captain was alive, they would be together somewhere. If he had died, they would have dispersed and would be causing trouble somewhere.
I listened. From across the town, human sounds reached my ears. They meant no more to me than the rustling of the wind through dried leaves on the forest floor.
Advancing slowly, I made my way into thickets of brambles. There were rabbits here, mice and hedgehogs, but little sign of citizens of the kingdom.
It was as I crossed a clearing that I smelled that I was not alone. Something was tracking me. I froze for a moment, my senses alert.
It was a rat, and not a cunning one. It was making too much noise, not listening for danger. Only a warrior would be that clumsy.
I backed into a rabbit’s burrow and waited as he followed the touch-path. When he appeared through the undergrowth, I saw that although he was strong like all warriors, his coat was dull and matted.
Head down, in a world of his own, the warrior followed my trail until it turned toward the burrow. There was something wrong. No warrior would be that unguarded. I looked around, suddenly aware of the scent of other rats, but it was too late.
Several heavy bodies were upon me. For a few seconds, the rats nipped and nosed me. Even as I was attacked, I knew that I should not offer or even humble. I stood my ground as their teeth cut into my flesh. Only when they sensed that I was not fighting them did they release me and shuffle backward, eyeing me all the while, their teeth bared.
The Twyning Page 22
