The Changes Trilogy

by Peter Dickinson

  “What’s what?” quavered Margaret—no matter how scared she sounded, because she would have been scared even if she’d known nothing.

  “A letter!” he shouted. “A letter to your aunt! Jo wrote it. Says he rescued that witch and he’s going to get him away from Gloucester Docks in a filthy wicked boat! What d’you know about it, my girl?”

  “Where did you find it?” asked Margaret in a wobbly voice.

  “Rosie brought it to me,” he growled. Rosie’s acid tones took over.

  “I was leaning on my sill,” she said, “looking out at the night, when I saw Master Jonathan ride away into the dark of the lane. So I puzzled what he might be about, and went along to his room to see if there was nothing there to tell, and sure enough I found this letter, so I took it to the master. No more than my duty, was it?”

  “No,” said Margaret. “I’m sure you did right. Have you told Aunt Anne, Uncle Peter?”

  “None of your business!” he shouted, so she knew he hadn’t. “He talks about we—we did this, we’re planning that. You’re in it!”

  “Oh, no, Uncle Peter! You can’t think that. I don’t know anything about machines—I hate them and I wouldn’t understand them anyway. Don’t you think he might mean Lucy and Tim?”

  Uncle Peter peered for a moment at the paper, too dazed with anger to read or think. Then he shoved his face close against Margaret’s, so that she could smell his cabbagy breath, and stared into her eyes.

  “Maybe,” he growled deep in his throat, “maybe not—we’ll know the morning. He says he’s not planning to be off these two days, so likely he’ll be back by dawn. Till then I’ll just lock you in while I go and rout Davey Gordon out. Rosie can watch out of the parlor window, so there’ll be no nonsense like you tying your sheets together and climbing down, see!”

  “Of course not!” said Margaret.

  He took his face away and stood brooding for a moment at the lantern.

  “Dear Lord in Heaven,” he said softly, “have I not been tried enough?”

  When he’d gone, followed by Rosie, she sat in the dark pierced through and through with pure despair. First she thought, if I stay where I am it’ll look as though I had nothing to do with it. Second, and much stronger, came the thought, I must warn them—if I dress I might just be able to get down from the window and run to Scrub before Rosie catches me. I’ll have to ride him bareback, because there’ll be no time to harness him, and I doubt if he’ll like that, but it’s the only chance.

  She was putting a big jersey on and still trying to think of a way to distract Rosie from the parlor window when the door scraped faintly—the bolt was being drawn back. Margaret stiffened at the creak of the hinges; now she was going to be caught fully dressed, with no possible lie to account for it.

  “Marge, Marge,” whispered Aunt Anne’s voice, “get dressed as quick as you can.”

  “I am dressed.”

  “Oh, thank heavens. He was too angry to think of locking your pony up. You’ve just time to saddle up and ride to warn Jo. I’ll keep Rosie busy while you get through the kitchen.”

  “No,” said Margaret, “I’ll climb down from Jo’s window—she can’t see that side of the house. Then you can bolt the door after me and go back to bed and seem too sick to move, and they won’t know what’s happened.”

  “Marge, please, Marge,” said Aunt Anne, “if the Changes ever end, bring him home.”

  “He’ll come anyway,” said Margaret. “I’m sure.”

  “And Marge, remember Pete’s a good man, really. A very good man.”

  “I know. I like him too.”

  As she tiptoed down the passage she heard a noise like sobbing, but so faint that the grate of the closing bolt drowned it.

  Scrub was waiting for her at the paddock gate, as if there was nothing he wanted more than a midnight gallop. As she tightened the girth of the heavy sidesaddle she heard a new noise in the night—men’s excited voices. That meant the lane was blocked, so she swung herself into the saddle and set Scrub’s head to the low place in the far wall, which she’d often eyed as a possible jump if it hadn’t meant going over into Farmer Boothroyd’s land. But tonight she didn’t care a straw for old and foolish feuds.

  Scrub must have thought about the jump too, for he took it with a clean swoop, like a rook in the wind. Then came a good furlong down across soft and silent turf to the far gate; then the muddy footpath along the bottom of Squire’s Park; a steep track up, and they were out in Edge Lane.

  Potholed tarmac, unmended through five destroying winters, is a poor surface for a horse to hurry over in the dark, especially when it tilts down like a slate roof between tall hedges. In places Margaret could risk a trot, for they both knew the road well by now, but mostly there was nothing for it but a walk. Luckily Scrub had sensed the excitement and urgency of the journey, so he didn’t loiter; but the dip to the stream was agonizingly slow and the climb beyond slower still. Then they could canter along the old main road—though they nearly fell from overconfidence in the pitchy blackness beneath the trees; the descent to the Vale was slow again, before they could hit a really fast clip along the bottom.

  Margaret did sums. Caesar was a slower pony, and Jonathan wouldn’t be hurrying as much as she was. But he’d left at least an hour before she had—probably two hours. Suppose he spent half an hour at the docks, making arrangements (he’d have thought it all out in his head on the way down, and would know exactly what he wanted)—she’d gain at least half an hour on him on the journey, almost a whole hour; so they’d meet on the big road at the bottom, or the bridge, or the towpath if he’d dallied. She began to strain her ears for distant hooves. The far cry of a dog made her shiver with sudden terror, but it might have been miles away.

  The iron bridge rang beneath Scrub’s shoes, but that was the only sound in the wide night. She must have missed him; he’d found some clever way home, across fields. Desperately she hurried Scrub along the matted grass of the towpath, leaning low over his neck and peering forward for the place where they turned up past the deserted house into the road.

  “Marge!” called a voice out of the shadows behind her. She reined back; hooves scuffled, and a small shape led a larger shape out into the unshadowed path behind her.

  “I thought it must be you,” said Jonathan. “What’s happened?”

  “Rosie found your letter and took it to Uncle Peter.”

  “But I hid … Oh, never mind. It all depends what they do. We’d best go back to the tug and talk to the others.”

  They led the ponies through the ruined garden.

  “If they come down here and find us,” mused Jonathan, “we’ll be done. We could run away, but we’d have to leave Otto, and Tim will be hard to hide. We could turn the horses loose and all hide in the city, but then we’d be worse off than before. But if we can start the engine, and if the canal is deep all the way down, we can get clear away, provided they don’t try to cut us off. In a chase we’ll go faster than they do, and keep going, and that should give us about two hours at Sharpness. That would be enough if the tide’s right, and Otto’s worked a tide table out. We’ll have to see.”

  “Couldn’t we start to tow her down while you’re working on the engines?” said Margaret. “That would save time.”

  “Not worth it. We’ve got to run the auxiliary for at least an hour before we can start the main engine, and if we try to do that while we’re towing through the countryside people will come swarming out and catch us helpless. Once we go, we must go fast, because of the noise. But you’ll still be useful, you two.”

  She could hear from his voice that he was grinning in the dark.

  “You’ll have to ride ahead and open the bridges,” he said.

  “Yes, I think I can do that; nobody lives near them, except for the two at that village down at the far end.”

  “It’s called Purton on the map. We might be able to stop and tow her past there. You’re going to have to ride fast, Marge—she does nearly ten mil
es an hour, flat out, Otto thinks.”

  “That’s too fast. We could do it for a bit, but we’d never keep it up.”

  “I’ll talk to Otto,” said Jonathan.

  The tug lay still and lightless, a dull black blob on the shiny black water, but Davey yapped once, sharply, as they came along the quay. They heard a quick scuffle as Jonathan crossed the ladder—Tim, presumably holding the muzzle of a struggling pup.

  “It’s all right,” said Jonathan’s cheerful voice, pitched just right for everyone to hear, “it’s me again.”

  The scuffling started again, then stopped with the ludicrous gargle of a dog who has been all set to bark and finds there is no need. The hatch from the cabin, where Lucy slept amid Jonathan’s loot, rose.

  “Forgotten summat, Master Jonathan?” said her soft purr. “Why, you’ve a body with you, Miss Margaret is it? There’s trouble, then?”

  “I think it’ll be all right, Lucy, provided we start tonight. Father found the letter I wrote to Mother.”

  Lucy came swiftly out of the hatch and looked into his face.

  “And I’ll lay he took it straight up to Mus’ Gordon,” she said.

  “Yes, he did,” said Margaret.

  “I must take Tim away, then,” said Lucy.

  “You can if you want to,” said Jonathan, “but I’m going to try and start the engines and run down to Sharpness. It’s sixteen miles, so we should do it in three hours. If we get the engines going just before dawn I’ll be able to see to steer, and Marge can ride ahead and scout and open the bridges. You’ll be no worse off if you have to run from Sharpness than from Gloucester.”

  “I’ve been looking at them maps,” said Lucy. “If they’ve a morsel of sense they’ll head to one of the bridges halfway down and catch us there.”

  “Yes, I’ve thought of that,” said Jonathan, “but it’s not their style. I said in my letter we weren’t going for two days, so they’ll wait for us to come home tonight, and when we don’t they’ll come blinding down here in the morning. If we get a start we’ll be far away by the time they reach here. You think it out while I talk to Otto; if you still want to leave us, you should go at once, but we won’t need to start the auxiliary for another two hours.”

  “I don’t like it, neither way,” whispered Lucy, and settled chin in hand on the bulwarks.

  “You go and lie in her bed, Marge,” said Jonathan. “I shan’t need you until dawn.”

  “What about the ponies?”

  “Tie them up on the quay. I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  “Scrub’s all taut inside—he knows something’s up. He needs a roll.”

  “Oh, goodness!” said Jonathan angrily. “He’ll have to roll on cobbles, then.”

  Margaret scrambled across the bridge, thinking so that’s why Caesar is such a broody and difficult character—Jo’s never understood him. All horses get tense, after any sort of expedition, and need to work it off, to unwind. She tethered them side by side to a rusty ring set in the quay, fetched Tim’s bailing pan and a bucket, and dredged up nasty oily water from the dock for them to drink. She fondled Scrub’s neck for a while to calm him, tried to be nice to Caesar (who sneered sulkily back) and crossed the ladder again. The blankets were warm and Lucy-smelling, but the boards beneath them were so hard that they seemed to gnaw at her hip—small chance of going to sleep; but in a minute she was in the middle of a busy dream, senseless with shifting scenes and people who changed into other people, all hurrying for an urgent reason which was never explained to her.

  She was woken by clamor for the second time that night. But now it was not Uncle Peter roaring up the stairs, but a noise which England hadn’t heard for five years, fuel exploding inside cylinders to bang the pistons up and send the crankshaft whanging around—the auxiliary engine pumping air into the big storage bottles, to provide the pressure which would start the main diesel.

  On deck, light glimmered through the glass roof over the engine, a new light whose nature she didn’t remember. She knelt at the hatch and peered in: on top of each of the tall cylinders a roaring flame spread across the metal; the auxiliary clattered away; Jonathan was walking down the narrow gangway by the engine peering at the blowlamps—in their light she could see a smear of oil down both his cheeks, like war paint. He must have felt the cold air when she raised the hatch, for he glanced up and gestured to show that he was coming out in a moment. She still felt the repugnance against engines which had been half her thinking life, so she moved away and sat on the bulwarks, looking at the clifflike warehouses which at this chill hour loomed so black that even the night sky seemed pale. It was pale, too. The stars were fewer and smaller. Soon they would fade, and the tug would rumble out through that strange interworld between dark and day.

  Jonathan, reeking of engines, came and plumped himself down beside her. She could feel his nerves humming with the happiness of action.

  “All set,” he said. “Tim and Lucy are staying. They’ve brought a load of cans out of the warehouse, and a couple of sacks of corn for the ponies. Scrub won’t mind canal water, will he? It’s less oily outside the docks. And I’ve found four drums which we can fill for the sea journey—it oughtn’t to be more than a day to Ireland.”

  “What do you want me to do?” said Margaret.

  “Two things, one easy and one difficult. The easy one is help start the engines. The difficult one is scout ahead and get the bridges open. That could be tricky. You see—”

  “Must I help with the engines?” said Margaret.

  There was just enough light flickering through the engine room roof to show how he looked at her, sideways and amused, but kind.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” he said. “But we won’t be able to manage if you don’t do the bridges. I’ve just done the first one—it was different from the others—hydraulic—but I managed.”

  “I’ll do the bridges.”

  “I’ve got two good maps of the whole canal—they were pinned up in offices—so we can each have one. Otto and I are going to aim for about six knots—nearly seven miles an hour—because you won’t be able to keep ahead if we try to do more. That means we’ll have something to spare if we’re chased, provided we don’t pile up a wave in front of us down the canal. You’ll have to average a fast trot.”

  “The towpath’s quite flat, except for one bit,” said Margaret. “We should be able to do that.”

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds, because you’ll be stopping at the bridges. And you’ll have to go carefully around the bends, especially the ones just before the bridges, in case you gallop into trouble. I found a bolt of red flannel which I’ve cut some squares off for you to take. If there’s something wrong you can go back a bit and tie a square to a bush by the bank, so that we’ve time to stop. If it’s something serious, Caesar will have to tow us through.”

  “He’ll get terribly sore. He hasn’t worn a collar for years.”

  “Poor old Caesar,” said Jonathan, as though it didn’t matter. “He’ll have to put up with it. I think that story will work, provided they haven’t spotted the smoke.”

  “Smoke?”

  “You’ll see. I want to start in quarter of an hour. You could go on now and get well ahead, if you like.”

  “I’d better wait and help you get Caesar aboard. He won’t fancy it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Like you know about engines.”

  “Well, let’s try now.”

  Margaret was right. They climbed ashore, took the ladder away and slowly pulled Heartsease toward the quay until she lay flush against the stonework, her deck about two feet below the level where they were standing. Jonathan untied Caesar’s reins and led him toward the boat, but one pace from the edge of the quay the pony jibbed and hoicked backward, so that Jonathan almost fell over. Then Margaret tried, more gently, with much coaxing and many words; she got him right to the brim before he shied away.

  “I hate horses,” said Jonathan.

  “Let’
s see if Scrub will do it,” said Margaret. She crossed to her own pony, untied him, pulled his ears, slapped his shoulders and led him toward the boat. He, too, stopped at the very verge. Then, with a resigned waggle of his head and a you-know-best snort, he stepped down onto the ironwork deck. Caesar lumbered down at once, determined not to be left alone in this stone desert. Margaret tied his reins to an iron ring in the deck, poured out a generous feed of corn for him and led Scrub ashore. Before she could mount there came a thin cry from the engine room.

  “They’re ready!” cried Jonathan. “Come and see!”

  He scuttled down the ladder. Margaret knelt by the hatch and peered down to where the weird lamps flared with a steady roaring, while the auxiliary battered away at the night. Lucy was standing down at the far end, by the two further cylinders, her hands on a pair of cast-iron turncocks just above shoulder level. Margaret could see two nearer ones—she ought to have been standing there. Otto lay in the corner directly below her, and Jonathan made signs to him through the racket, meaning that he would do Margaret’s job as well as his own. He pulled briefly at a lever beside the nearest cylinder, and a spout of oily black smoke issued from the four cylinders, just below the turncocks. He glanced around at Otto, who raised the thumb of his left hand. Jonathan pulled hard down on the lever and left it down. There was a deep, groaning thud, followed at once by another, and another, and the whole tug began to vibrate as though two giants were stumping up and down on its deck. Lucy was already twisting her turncocks when Jonathan pranced around beside her and started twisting his. The beat of the heavy pistons steadied; the roaring flames at their heads died away. Margaret straightened up from the clamorous pit and saw a slow cloud of greasy blackness boiling up from the funnel. When she looked back, Jonathan was already halfway up the iron ladder; she made way for him.

  “Like a dream!” he shouted.

  “What now?” said Margaret. She wanted to get off the boat as soon as she could.