As soon as he finished, his hands dropped and he froze again. The only sign that he had come to life was the red cherry filling smeared across his golden face and the fallen pie tin slowly revolving on the pavement.
With a rumble we could hear all the way across the street, the inscribed stone under the statue swung open. Lady Roslyn stepped inside and vanished, and JB followed her.
The stone started to rumble shut.
CHAPTER 29
I ran.
As I crossed the pavement, I knocked over a tourist, sending his burrito flying under the wheel of a passing car.
I sprinted across the street. I could hear the cars screeching to a stop moments before they squashed me as flat as the burrito, but I didn’t bother looking at them. I kept my eyes on that closing stone door.
I made it across the street, but the stone door was almost shut and it was a good ten feet away, and I had just realized I wasn’t going to make it when Oaroboarus did a kind of scooping leap that hoisted me onto his back next to Little Ben, and the three of us flew through the air.
We shot through the door, and Little Ben and I tumbled off as Oaroboarus landed. The door clicked shut behind us, locking out the daylight.
A dim light flickered on – along with everything else in his carpetbag, Little Ben had a flashlight. He shined it on a ramp that curved down into the darkness. There was no sign of Lady Roslyn or backwards-headed JB or anybody else.
We crept downwards along the ramp.
As Little Ben’s light skimmed along it, I noticed that the bottom of the wall had been worn smooth in a groove that spiralled the whole way down the ramp. “What do you think made that?” I asked.
“Maybe people’s feet, wearing it down over the centuries?”
“But it’s on the wall. Your feet don’t scrape the wall as you walk. Mine don’t. Why would anybody else’s? Unless this was a secret lair for people wearing clown shoes.”
We reached the bottom, and in the dim light of the flashlight’s beam, I could see a long brick vault lined with small, arched side rooms. “Oooh, I know where we are,” Little Ben whispered. “I’ve seen a picture of this. It’s the basement of the Fortune of War.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an old pub that used to be here. It was right next to a graveyard and across the street from the hospital, and the traffic between those two places went through here.”
“You mean people who died in the hospital, getting taken to the graveyard?”
“No!” Little Ben said. “The other way around. Doctors needed bodies to practice doing surgery. They’d buy them from people called Resurrection Men, which was just a fancy way of saying grave robber. They’d store the bodies in those nooks on the wall, then they’d meet the doctors upstairs in the pub to negotiate a price.”
It made sense, in a grim, people-used-to-be-pretty-sick kind of way. “That’s why there are those grooves in the wall on the ramp down,” I said, “It was people’s feet. But it was the feet of corpses, scraping the wall as they got dragged up and down. Which is almost as creepy as clowns.”
Oaroboarus grunted quietly, bringing my attention back to the task at hand. We had reached the end of the vault, where a rusty metal door hung open on its hinges. Through it, we could hear echoing footsteps. We stopped and held our breaths. The footsteps got quieter – Lady Roslyn and JB were headed away from us. We slipped through the door.
We were in another long vault, but instead of little brick cubbies, this one was lined with narrow brick rooms, each one covered by an iron grating and a locked door.
“Are those jail cells?” I asked.
Little Ben nodded. “Yup. In addition to the hospital, the pub, and the graveyard, there was a jail on this street – a famous one called Newgate Prison. It was all part of the same cycle. They’d be locked up here while they were waiting to be hanged. Then they’d be buried in the graveyard, and then they’d get dug up and sold to the hospital.”
“The whole industry was in one place,” I said. “Nice. It was like Silicon Valley for sickos.”
Little Ben looked confused. “What’s Silicon Valley?”
“Seriously?”
“If it’s not in my dad’s files, I don’t know anything about it.”
I didn’t get a chance to respond. A voice whispered, “Hurry!” in my ear, and I jumped, because I recognized it immediately. It was Lady Roslyn.
CHAPTER 30
My pulse racing, I looked frantically around, but she was nowhere to be seen.
I nodded silently and held a finger up to my lips to show I understood: if we could hear her, she could hear us. Fortunately, if I was only just hearing her now, we must have only just reached the echo-y bit, and she wouldn’t have heard Little Ben and me whispering.
I hoped.
We tiptoed forwards.
Her words reached me again, echoing from somewhere ahead in the darkness: “What is taking you so long?”
There was a muffled sound, as if somebody was responding but happened to be standing in slightly the wrong place for the echo to bring his words to me.
Whatever he said, Lady Roslyn didn’t sound happy as she hissed, “Then you should have brought a mirror, you fool.”
Ahead, through another iron doorway, we could see someone else’s flashlight in the darkness. Little Ben turned his off, and we crept onwards.
As we got closer, we could make out Lady Roslyn standing impatiently while JB tried to pick the lock of a big iron cage. I could see why he was having a hard time, with his wrong-way face pressed into a brick corner and his arms pointing the other way.
“Almost got it,” JB said as clearly as he could with his lips mushed up against the brick.
If they almost had whatever they were looking for, that meant they’d soon be turning around and heading back our way. I touched Little Ben’s sleeve and pointed at one of the cells next to us. Its bars had rusted off, making a hole that even Oaroboarus could squeeze through. We slid in, just as we heard JB say “Ah-haha!” triumphantly.
The cage door he had been picking swung open. As he stepped aside, I got a glimpse of what was in it. It looked like somebody had made a beehive out of clay, then dripped splotches of red paint on it.
Whatever it was, Lady Roslyn was really happy to see it. She let out a cackle and reached out to touch it, but then she shrieked in pain and jumped back.
“Remarkable,” she said. “Still hot after all these years.”
She fished in her pocket and pulled out a thick, elaborately embroidered cloth and a rag. She held out the rag to JB, but since his face was pointed the other way, he didn’t notice. She sighed and thrust it into his hand.
With Lady Roslyn using her embroidered cloth like a pot holder and JB using the rag, they hoisted the beehive thingy up and staggered off.
“Watch it!” Lady Roslyn yelled. “Careful! Say, do you suppose the one of us who has her head facing in the right direction ought to lead? You do? Splendid. That’s better. Now, let us hurry, before the Bunny Tears come.”
Bunny Tears? She sounded as if it was something pretty frightening, but I couldn’t see being scared of bunny tears.
There wasn’t time to think about it much. As they staggered closer, I shrank back as far into the darkness as I could – but that wasn’t very far, given how shallow the cell was. I held my breath.
Lady Roslyn and JB passed by, grunting and muttering. I could feel the heat coming off the beehive, and I could somehow feel the power of it, too. But I couldn’t figure out what it actually was until I had to take in a little breath, and I smelled something surprisingly nice: freshly baked bread.
She was carrying the oven that had started the Great Fire.
No wonder the thing radiated power. With that, and the Fire Hook, and the charged drop of water, she could… Well, actually, I had no idea what she could do. But I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to use the oven to make cupcakes for my mother. I had a sudden urge to tackle her, but I held myself back.
Even if we managed to subdue her and JB, she’d never tell us where she had stashed Mom, and I might never get her back.
I watched Lady Roslyn and JB vanish into the darkness. Even when they were gone, the delicious bread smell lingered. And I wasn’t the only one who smelled it, because Little Ben let out a loud, moaning “Mmmmmmmmmmm.”
I turned to him and held my finger to my lips – and discovered he was doing the same to me. He wasn’t the one who’d made the noise.
We looked at Oaroboarus, who shook his head.
“Mmmmmmmmmmm,” moaned the voice again. “Mmmm… Mmmm…”
That’s when I realized it wasn’t one voice – it was many.
Coming from the darkness of the cells all around us.
Darkness that was beginning to glow faintly.
In the glow of our own cell, I could see a dim face beginning to form.
No, that wasn’t right – the face was the glow.
It solidified, from a faint face-shaped mist to something so clear, I could see the dry cracks in the parched lips, and the greying stubble on the chin, and the desperate look in the eyes. “Guv’nor,” whispered the lips. “Is that … buns I smell?”
The rest of the mist was taking shape, too, into a gaunt, glowing body, hung with rags. It stepped towards me – no, it glided towards me – and I backed away on trembling legs. I couldn’t take my eyes off the glowing face, but in the corner of my vision, I could see Little Ben and Oaroboarus backing away, too.
“Buns, guv’nor?” the glowing face pleaded. “Buns for me, and sixpence for my widow?”
It wasn’t the Bunny Tears Lady Roslyn was afraid of, I realized. It was the Bun Eaters.
“I’m very sorry,” I told him as clearly as I could, although my voice was shaking and my mouth suddenly felt as dry as his looked. “I don’t have any food or any money.”
“But I smell buns,” the Bun Eater said. “And I’m hungry. So hungry.” And from the cells around us, I heard murmured voices joining him: So hungry. So very hungry.
He took a deep breath, as if inhaling the bread smell that lingered from the oven. And then he took an even deeper breath, and I could feel scents swirling off me. From my skin wafted the salty smell of the tuna I had eaten, and the yeasty smell of the bread that had held it, and the sweetcorn that had been mixed with it. And not just my most recent meal. I suddenly knew that to a dead man, I must smell like cookies and fruit, and sodas that hadn’t even been invented when he had died.
He licked his lips and stretched out a glowing hand towards me.
From the cells around us, more glowing figures were gliding out of the shadows.
If you’re wondering why I didn’t climb onto Oaroboarus and let him whisk me out of there, well, you try looking into the hungry eyes of a dozen starving ghosts sliding towards you, and see how rationally you plan your exit strategy.
Me? I turned around and ran.
I didn’t scream, which I’d like to say was because I had enough presence of mind to realize that Lady Roslyn might hear me. But really, I was just too terrified to force out any noise.
Oaroboarus ran right past me without trying to scoop me up, and I could hear Little Ben puffing behind me, so I’m guessing neither of them was carefully plotting out the calmest response, either.
We ran through the first iron door and into the room with the corpse cubbies, which were glowing with the same eerie light. In the cubbies, Bun Eaters stirred, sat upright, sniffed, and began to moan.
I kept running.
We ran up the spiral ramp, and when we got to the stone door onto the street, Oaroboarus smashed right into it without stopping. It flew open, and we sprinted into the sunlight.
We could still hear the moaning from inside, but it didn’t get any closer. Whatever Bun Eaters were, I guess they didn’t come into the light.
For a moment, we stood there, hunched over and panting, ignoring the stares from the passersby who had just seen a giant pig smash through a stone door.
Then we heard car tyres screeching. We looked up and saw JB’s taxi zooming away from us, backwards.
CHAPTER 31
By now, Little Ben and I had calmed down enough to do the smart thing. We leapt onto Oaroboarus’s back, and we were off.
Ahead of us, the taxi drove wildly, screeching back and forth, just barely avoiding cars going in both directions.
That wasn’t exactly good for public safety, but it did make it easy to follow the cab. At least, until Lady Roslyn spotted us.
She was sitting in the backseat of a turned-around taxi, so she had a great view of everything behind her, and she would probably have seen us sooner if she hadn’t been so busy yelling at JB. But finally, she had to stop for breath. That’s when she glanced out her windscreen and found herself looking right at us. Her face turned bright red. She yelled something new at JB, and he floored it.
The taxi shot forwards – erm, backwards, I mean – not even bothering to dodge other cars, which forced the drivers around it to skid madly. A fancy SUV screeched to the right to avoid the taxi, then screeched back to the left so it didn’t crash into an oncoming car, but that took it straight into our path.
Oaroboarus leapt over it.
I looked down at the SUV as we sailed above it, right into the eyes of the astonished driver. His jaw was hanging open, like he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. I knew how he felt.
We slammed back down onto the ground, cars careening around us, and JB swerved to the left.
That happened to be the wrong direction down a one-way street.
Oaroboarus leapt over another oncoming car, then another, but this time, he misjudged the landing a little and went crashing into a huge flowerpot on the pavement, shattering it and sending a shower of dirt and azaleas onto the terrified patrons of an outdoor café.
“Sorry!” I yelled.
Oaroboarus jumped back into the road, dodged a truck, hurdled over a motorcycle, and then, as the road became a two-way street again, merged back into the correct lane. This was the responsible driving choice (or, I guess, the responsible pigging choice), but the problem was, JB was still driving in the wrong lane, which meant other cars had to keep skidding into our lane to dodge him, which meant Oaroboarus had to veer back into the wrong lane to dodge them, which put him right in the path of a car that was bouncing down off the pavement where it had driven to avoid JB’s taxi, so the only place for Oaroboarus to jump was onto the pavement where the car had come from.
And that would have been fine, except that when the car was on the pavement, it had sideswiped a row of red telephone boxes and almost knocked them over, leaving them just barely balanced on one side, so when Oaroboarus’s hooves pounded the ground next to them, they tipped over completely.
They came toppling down towards us.
Little Ben and I ducked, which only bought us about a tenth of a second, but fortunately in that tenth of a second, Oaroboarus tilted back towards the road, and the crashing phone boxes missed us.
At this point, Oaroboarus must have had enough of dodging cars, because he jumped on top of a bus, his hooves thundering along the metal roof, then jumped straight onto the top of a fast-moving van, bounding briefly down to the ground before leaping up onto a row of parked cars and running along atop them.
I thought this was a pretty good approach, since it put us in the path of a lot fewer oncoming cars. Of course, the people who owned the parked cars we were denting probably wouldn’t have agreed with me.
Throughout most of this crazy chase, the white dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral had loomed above the buildings we passed, getting closer and closer all the time. Now we were nearly there. Of course, I thought. Lady Roslyn is collecting magical items for some sort of uncanny ritual. It makes sense that she’d want to do it in the most impressive sacred building in town.
But instead of turning right towards St. Paul’s, JB’s taxi took a sudden left and smashed through a metal barricade with NO VEHICLES written on it.
&n
bsp; On the other side of the barrier was a pedestrian street filled with market stalls and shoppers, all screaming and diving for cover as the taxi smashed through.
Oaroboarus leapt off the roof of a parked car and onto the roof of one of the market stalls. It turns out that market stalls are not quite as solid as cars. This one collapsed under us, smashing everything in it.
That included a lot of umbrellas, but not any people, since the umbrella-seller had dived for cover just in time. Still, it was way too close. It looked like we had two choices. We could smash on through the crowd like JB, not caring who got hurt – or we could just watch helplessly as the taxi vanished.
Oaroboarus chose an option I hadn’t considered: he barrelled right through the stalls, swerving every once in a while to dodge the occasional foolish seller who hadn’t jumped out of the way. As Oaroboarus’s hooves shattered the display tables into wooden mush, Little Ben and I found ourselves riding through a blizzard of off-brand batteries, tie-dyed shawls, and Union Jack underpants.
Finally, we emerged from the market right behind the taxi. Oaroboarus stayed close behind it as we zoomed past the Tower of London and onto Tower Bridge.
The bridge was jammed with cars, so JB drove up onto the wide pavement, which didn’t leave any room for the group of tourists who had been walking there, forcing them to jump into the road, where, fortunately, traffic was at a standstill. The tourists were safe …
… except for one grey-haired woman who froze, panicked, and then stumbled the wrong way, toppling over the side of the bridge and plunging into the river Thames. She spun as she fell, and I thought for sure the impact would kill her, but she somehow entered the water cleanly. For several terrifying seconds, she stayed below, and then she fought her way to the surface.
The City of Secret Rivers Page 15
