‘And the Professor?’ Stella asked.
‘Gone. Drowned,’ said Gert. ‘That’s his horse there.’ She pointed.
‘Not drowned,’ said Ben definitely. ‘Ate up.’
Stella remembered the enormous serpent sweeping down and swallowing the Professor. ‘Yes. I saw it,’ she said, nodding. ‘I saw it eat him.’ She looked out at the pale sunlight sparkling on the little waves and shuddered. ‘It was terrible.’ After a moment, she said to Ben, ‘Well. He can’t make you scry any more.’
‘Nope. That’s gone. Thank cripes.’ Ben rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘He pricked my finger and got some blood and he put it in that ring. So I had to do what he said. He was right there in my head, making me do things. I could feel him here.’ He pointed at his forehead. ‘It was horrible.’ Ben looked at her. Stella noticed again his peculiar pale grey eyes.
‘You’ve changed,’ she said.
He nodded and grinned. ‘Reckon. When you smashed the ring, I felt him let go of me. It was good, that.’ He said awkwardly, ‘Thank you.’
Stella felt her cheeks redden. She looked at the fire. ‘And Mr Filbert’s bottle?’ she asked.
‘It is safe. It is here,’ said Mr Capelli, nodding vigorously. He climbed into the wagon and appeared a moment later holding something in both hands, gingerly as if it might explode. He passed it to Stella. It was wrapped in a teacloth. She unfolded it. The silver bottle glinted in the sunlight. She picked it up and peered into it. Inside, something small and pale seemed to twist and uncurl. She shook the bottle gently. There was a faint whispering sound, like a distant trickle of water.
‘There’s still something in here,’ she said. She pushed the cork in more firmly with her thumb.
Ben nodded. ‘Part of the serpent. It didn’t all get out. That’s why it was still just smoke, I reckon. Not real. If you ain’t shoved the cork in like that, it would’ve got right out, and it would be swimming around now, making storms and eating people.’
Stella shivered, remembering the monstrous ghostly serpent. She wrapped the cloth carefully around the bottle again.
‘It stayed long enough to eat the Professor,’ said Ben. ‘Then it just blew away. Professor thought when he opened the bottle, the sorcerer would hop out and reward him. But it was the serpent instead.’
Stella said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘It was the Grimpen Sorcerer. Professor was always on about the story.’
‘So, who was the Grimpen Sorcerer?’ asked Stella.
‘What story? Tell us the story,’ said Gert.
Mr Capelli moved closer. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. His cats sat up straight and looked attentive.
‘Well,’ said Ben, looking around at them. ‘It’s from long ago. Ages ago. The Grimpen Sorcerer. He built that castle.’ He pointed out to sea, to the island. ‘It’s ruined now, but before, it had turrets and a sea wall and that. Professor showed me a picture of it. It was much bigger then. A proper castle. And the Grimpen Sorcerer lived there. He could do magic, all kinds. Change into a bird or a fish, and make the weather. That was proper magic, in the old days. Real magic.’
He paused and looked doubtfully at them, as if unsure of their interest. They all nodded, and Gert said, ‘Go on.’
Ben continued, with more confidence, ‘Well, at first, he helped people. Making it rain for the farmers, finding sheep and that. But it wasn’t enough for him, he was full of magic and very proud. And he wanted gold. But the people were skint, living on the marsh there, and they couldn’t pay him. They only had seaweed and fish guts, I reckon. And so he got angry, and then he turned into a serpent and he raised a storm and a huge big wave flooded the marsh. And one village went right under and people drowned.
‘And so then the villagers wanted to kill the serpent. But when they chopped a bit off him, it just grew back. And even more angry than before. And so they tricked him. They tricked him into changing shape. Into a bear, and then a wolf and then an eagle. And then they said, what about a tiny creature? Reckon you can’t do that. And he changed into a worm. And they trapped the worm in the little bottle. And then they buried the bottle under the magic tree, so it would be safe hidden. They reckoned that was the end of him.’
‘But that’s just a story people tell little kids. A fairy tale,’ said Gert, after a moment. ‘It’s not real.’
Ben nodded. ‘That’s what everyone reckons. But the Professor thought different. So he read that old book and he found where the bottle was hidden. He thought he’d open the bottle, and the Grimpen Sorcerer would just hop out and give him a reward. Teach him some magic, maybe. That’s what he wanted. But the sorcerer came out as the serpent. And even more angry, being stuck in that bottle so long. And so the Professor got ate up.’
There was quiet for a few moments. Stella watched the blue flames flicker and crackle on the driftwood. She thought about the Professor. He had done some terrible things, and he had killed poor Mr Filbert. But she remembered his face, alight with hope, as he opened the bottle. And then terrified, clinging to the causeway as the serpent swept down on him. It must have been horrible to be eaten like that.
‘I do feel sorry for him,’ she said.
‘I don’t,’ said Ben.
‘Me neither,’ said Gert definitely. She rubbed her bandaged shoulder. ‘Serve him flipping well right.’
The fire crackled, the cats sang and the clothes on the line flapped in the breeze. On Ben’s shoulder, Shadow was alert, watching the other cats with her head on one side. She made some piercing squeaks. Ben grinned and stroked her.
Stella put down her bowl and wrapped her arms around herself, listening to the music and watching the seagulls sailing past on the wind. Sunshine sparkled on the sea. White-capped waves broke around the island.
All at once, she remembered that moment when she had tried to hide, crouched behind the cabinet, and the Professor had reached out towards her and his fingers had passed right through her, as if she were not there at all. She shivered, remembering the confusing, dizzy feeling of fading and falling away. Like a lump of sugar dissolving in a cup of tea.
Under the blanket, she squeezed the bones in her elbows. They felt reassuringly solid and familiar. Surely it was not possible to disappear like that? Could she have imagined it? She wanted to ask Ben or Gert or Mr Capelli about it, but she was not sure she wanted to hear the answer. What if she were something horrible, like the worm in Mr Filbert’s bottle? Or like the serpent, fading, turning into smoke and blowing away.
She swallowed and shook her head, trying to lose the disconcerting feeling that she was no longer exactly herself.
The music ended. Mr Capelli laid his violin down and stroked his cats, saying something to each of them. To Shadow, he said, ‘Very good, little one, you have talent.’
Ben grinned. Shadow bit him on his ear.
‘So you are recovered? You are all quite well now?’ said Mr Capelli.
They all nodded.
‘You will return to your Aunts?’ Mr Capelli asked Stella. ‘They will be most frightfully deranged. And the police are searching for you.’
‘Yes,’ she said with a sinking feeling in her insides. The Aunts would be extremely angry. But surely, even at their most furious, they could not be more frightening than the Professor and the Grimpen Serpent. She straightened her shoulders and said, ‘Yes. I will go back to my Aunts.’
Mr Capelli turned to Gert. ‘And you will return to Mrs MacTaggerty?’
Gert nodded. ‘Of course. She’ll be having flipping kittens.’
‘What about you?’ Mr Capelli asked Ben. ‘Where will you go?’
Ben shrugged. He stroked Shadow and said, ‘We’ll be all right.’
‘You will perhaps come and work with me? As my apprentice? My cats like you. The little one has most splendid talent, and we are in need of a soprano voice.’
Ben looked at him for a moment.
‘That’s a prime offer,’ said Gert professionally.
Ben hesitated
, and then nodded and said, ‘Yes. Yes, please.’
Mr Capelli beamed. He leaned down and shook Ben’s hand. ‘That is most splendid,’ he said. ‘We will work together. My cats will become even more famous. We will travel the world.’
Ben grinned and stroked Shadow. She bit his hand hard and then made a noise like a whistling kettle.
Mr Capelli felt the clothes on the line. ‘They are almost dry. Good. Because we must go, right now, straight away. We must cross the marsh before dark.’
‘How far is it to Withering-by-Sea?’ asked Stella.
‘Ten miles, perhaps more.’
Stella and Gert dressed inside the wagon. Gert’s yellow dancing dress was limp and torn and most of the spangles were gone.
‘Mrs Mac’ll have a crabbing fit when she sees this,’ said Gert with a giggle. Her dancing shoes had been lost in the sea, and so she had borrowed an old pair of Mr Capelli’s boots. They were much too large for her. She did a couple of comical, clumping dance steps in them and twirled around.
Stella pulled on her shirt and coat and trousers. They were even more ragged than before and stiff with salt. Gert helped comb her hair. It was so knotted and tangled that it broke several teeth on Mr Capelli’s comb. Gert tied it back with a piece of string. Then Stella combed Gert’s hair as well as she could.
‘Your ringlets are all gone,’ she said.
‘They ain’t natural, girl,’ said Gert. ‘Mrs Mac does ’em with a hot poker.’
Stella picked up the silver bottle and tucked it into the pocket of her coat.
‘What are you going to do with that?’ asked Gert, as she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
‘I don’t know,’ said Stella. She remembered Mr Filbert. Keep it safe, he had said. She buttoned the flap of the pocket.
Mr Capelli took the cats’ cages from the wagon. The cats were very reluctant to be caught. When they saw the cages, they hissed, puffed up their tails, arched their backs and dashed about. Mr Capelli flapped his arms and called encouragingly to them in several languages.
Ben tucked Shadow safely away into the neck of his coat and caught Georgio and Flora and Alfredo, one by one. He stroked them and spoke softly to them to calm them. As he put them in their cages, Mr Capelli said, ‘Yes, my cats like you. That is splendid.’
Gert caught Gastone. Stella managed to corner Annina beneath the wagon, clasp her around her middle and drag her out. Giuseppe and Violetta climbed up onto the roof of the wagon and had to be tempted down with the remains of the fish soup.
At last, when all seven cats were in their cages, inside the wagon (and Stella, Ben and Gert were covered with cat fur and Stella had been scratched several times), Mr Capelli harnessed his shaggy carthorse to the wagon, hitched the Professor’s horse behind, then climbed up and took the reins.
Ben helped Gert and Stella to scramble up onto the wide bench at the front of the wagon beside Mr Capelli. He began to follow them, then gave a start and clapped his hand to his head.
‘I forgot,’ he said, and jumped back to the ground.
‘What?’
He didn’t answer. He dashed over to where his canvas bag was lying on the shingle. He picked it up and hurried back to the wagon.
‘I forgot,’ he said again, and he stopped and rummaged inside. ‘Here it is.’ He pulled something out of the bag and handed it up to Stella.
She gasped. It was the Atlas. Wet, salt-stained and battered. She took it from him with trembling hands.
‘Saw you drop it in the theatre,’ he said. ‘So I nabbed it for you.’
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. She felt her eyes prickle with tears. She had thought she would never see it again. She stroked its familiar cover and hugged it to her chest. Ben climbed up beside her. Mr Capelli clicked his tongue to the horse and the wagon began to move.
‘Thank you,’ Stella said again to Ben, as the wagon jolted over the sand and shingle towards the road.
‘That’s all right,’ he said.
The road curved away from the coast. They soon left the sound of the sea behind. The marsh stretched away to the horizon. The road was on an embankment, several feet above the boggy ground. Pools of water reflected the hazy sky and little birds twittered, unseen, in the tall reeds. Mr Capelli hummed to himself and occasionally sang a snatch of something. Gert’s boots thumped on the footboard in time to the music. Shadow purred and made little chirruping noises through the open window to the other cats inside the wagon.
Stella laid the Atlas on her lap and patted it. The little twig was still in place. She took it carefully out from under the ribbon. The tiny leaves were limp and battered, but still green.
‘What’s that?’ asked Ben.
Stella showed him the twig. ‘I think —’ she started to say. ‘I mean — it’s a bit of Mr Filbert.’ She looked into Ben’s puzzled face. ‘The gentleman at the hotel. The one that the Professor stabbed.’
Ben gently touched the tiny green leaves. He said, ‘A bit of him?’
Stella told him how Mr Filbert had turned into sticks and how she had found the little twig in his hand.
‘Nobble me granny,’ said Gert.
Ben said slowly, ‘When we was digging up that old tree, here on the marsh, he come out of nowhere, in the dark, and grabbed that bottle and scarpered.’
‘He was the spirit of the tree. A dryad. That’s why they buried the bottle there,’ said Stella. ‘Because they knew he would protect it. And he woke up when you cut the tree down. He only wanted to keep the bottle safe.’
Gert said, ‘He must’ve been very old, if he was as old as a tree.’
Stella remembered Mr Filbert and how ancient he had seemed. ‘Perhaps that’s why he went to the hotel. To drink the water. It’s healthy for old people. It’s famous.’
She untied the ribbon from the Atlas, using her fingers and then her teeth to loosen the knot. She opened it and peeled apart the damp pages. It was lovely to see the familiar pictures again. An elephant with an elaborate, canopied tent on its back, a curved iron bridge carrying a train over a canyon, an enormous, many-toothed crocodile lying half-submerged in a swamp.
At last, she found the page she was looking for. A long, curving coastline sprinkled with towns. She showed Ben with her finger. ‘Look. Here we are.’
In the Atlas, the marsh that stretched away on all sides of the wagon was no bigger than a visiting card.
‘Here’s the island.’ She pointed. The causeway was a tiny dotted line jutting out into the sea. The island was a green speck the size of a pinhead. ‘This is Withering-by-Sea, here.’ She pointed to a dot at the edge of the marsh and read out, ‘The healthful mineral waters of the area have been known since ancient times, and are beneficial to all Rheumatic, Gouty and Hysterical Afflictions and every Disease accompanied by Debility or Great Age.’
Ben looked at the map with interest. He said, ‘It’s everything, isn’t it? Just small.’
Stella nodded. ‘It’s got the whole world in it.’ She passed the Atlas over to him. He laid it on his lap and traced the road through the marsh with his finger.
‘Look,’ he said, pointing.
The map was blotched with mildew and saltwater, but Stella could just see an indistinct, winding line leading from the road and ending at a tiny dot, somewhere in the middle of the marsh.
‘I reckon it’s that village that got drowned,’ said Ben. ‘Where we cut down that tree.’
‘Is it?’ asked Stella doubtfully.
He looked at her with his serious grey eyes and nodded.
Stella turned the little twig over between her fingers. ‘Could we plant it there, do you think, Mr Capelli? Where Mr Filbert lived?’
Ben traced his finger along the map. ‘It’s not too far from the road,’ he said. ‘I remember this track. It’s hard to see, but with the map, I reckon I can find it again.’
Mr Capelli looked at the map and then at the sun, which was sinking slowly in the sky, and said, ‘Yes, yes. If there is time. That is most splend
id.’
Stella put the little twig into her pocket with the silver bottle and carefully buttoned the flap.
The wagon rolled on through the marsh. Here and there were rocky outcrops and groups of wintry trees. Low hills rose like islands above the pools of water.
Ben watched the marsh intently, his finger on the map. Tendrils of mist drifted across the road. The horizon was lost in a greyish haze. He said, ‘It’s not far now, I reckon,’ and a few minutes later he said, ‘There,’ and pointed. A faint track snaked away from the road and disappeared into the mist. It was winding, overgrown and half-submerged in the marsh.
Mr Capelli asked doubtfully, ‘You are sure? It would be most dreadful if we become lost.’
‘I’m dead sure,’ said Ben. ‘I remember it.’
Mr Capelli glanced at him for a moment, then nodded, flicked the reins and turned the wagon. They jolted down the embankment. The narrow track wound away from the road, uneven and boggy. The wagon lurched as it splashed through puddles. Stella braced her boots against the footboard.
Mist was coming in from the sea. The air tasted like salt. The wagon continued on slowly. They passed a group of stunted trees. Their bare branches made a jagged pattern against the hazy sky, fading into the mist like a wet ink drawing.
Stella remembered a frightening story Polly had told her, of a coach and four horses that had left the road through the marsh, had driven into a slough, and had been sucked down under and never seen again.
It was very cold. She pulled the blanket more tightly around her shoulders as the wagon trundled further away from the road and into the mist.
The wagon jolted along through the marsh. The track curved around the side of a low hill and then down between tall reeds and through shallow, muddy puddles. The drifting mist made it difficult to see far ahead. Sometimes the path seemed to disappear altogether, and Mr Capelli slowed the horse, and they went on cautiously through the reeds until they found their way again.
Stella stared into the swirling mist, watching indistinct shapes emerge and then vanish again. A pile of stones covered with moss. A fallen branch sprouting lichen and fungus, orange and yellow and white. Twisted, wintry trees wound around with ivy and mistletoe.
Withering-by-Sea Page 14
