by W E. Mann
I brushed off as much dirt as I could. “Do you think it’s safe to go out there yet?”
“I think so. Come on. I’ll be glad to get out of here!”
twenty six
“Who’s the Duty Master tonight?” asked Samson as Reggie closed the Dungeon door delicately behind him and let out a profound sigh of relief.
“Pretty sure it’s Caratacus tonight,” I replied, “which is lucky really. We’ve got to show him this place. This time he’ll have to believe us.”
“Come on then. We need to find him right away.”
***
Well this was a very unfortunate situation. Samson was late to start helping the Cook prepare Wilbraham’s dinner and thought it would be quickest if he dashed across the Front Hall instead of using the servants’ passages. We had hoped that nobody would be there. But we were out of luck. Samson should not have been with us when we burst out of the door that led from the Spiral Staircase to the First Floor corridor and stopped dead in our tracks.
Just to our left was the Front Hall and, standing in the middle of it, deep in discussion, were Mr. Caratacus, Mr. English, Doctor Boateng, Colonel Barrington and Mr. Wilbraham. Doctor Saracen was looming in the background, studying the newspaper.
Wilbraham at first frowned, surveying us scornfully. But then, when he noticed Samson cowering behind us, his scorn mutated into an expression of abject disgust. In the pompous tone that always made him sound like you had interrupted his dinner, he said, “What is the meaning of this? You two know perfectly well you should be outside. You’ll be reporting to my study at six o’clock tomorrow morning for Hard Labour. And you,” he said, wagging a disdainful finger and scarcely able to bring himself to look at Samson, “you can wait there for me to fetch my cane. I clearly haven’t beaten you for some time.”
Reggie pretended to smoothe down his hair so that he could whisper to me behind his hand, “Let’s wait on the Veranda for Caratacus to stop talking to Barrington”.
Reggie and I shuffled past them apologetically. We didn’t dare to look at Samson. That might get him into more trouble. But, just as we reached the open double doors to the Main Hall, Mr. English shouted, “Hoy, Turnpike, stop right where you are, boy!”
We froze.
“Turn around, both of you. You too, Akwasi.” We obeyed. “For Heaven’s sake, look at you all! You are covered from head to toe in mud. Especially you, Turnpike. What the devil have you been doing?”
Watching Barrington carefully, I noticed that when he saw the mud that caked the front of my trousers and shirt, his brow furrowed with an expression that seemed like a combination of anger and puzzlement. I cursed Mr. English under my breath. Colonel Barrington must have realised where we had been. I could actually see him thinking it through. This was it. We were done for.
“Answer me, damn it!” shouted Mr. English, his eggy head immediately switching chameleon-like to a terrible deep puce.
“Well, Sir, I... that is to say, Sir, we...” I spluttered.
“Sir,” interrupted Reggie in a tone of sense and authority. “We’re terribly sorry, Sir, but we’ve been out in the Forest without our boiler suits on.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said, taking up Reggie’s theme. “We know we shouldn’t have and we will wash our clothes ourselves.”
But Mr. English’s rage was beyond the point of no return. “For goodness sake, boys! You display a flagrant disregard for the school rules and a surprising lack of respect for the matrons, who work tirelessly to ensure that you can turn up to lessons every day not looking like vagrants. And let’s not forget that this is not the first of your misdemeanours of late, is it Pickering? Oh no...”
During Mr. English’s ear-bashing rant, I watched as Colonel Barrington studied my facial expressions, looking for a chink in my armour, a weakness to exploit. I looked pleadingly towards Mr. Caratacus.
But Barrington must have noticed. “Mr. English,” he interrupted, “I think I’d like to deal with this matter, if you wouldn’t object.”
Mr. English’s anger abated as quickly as it had brewed. “Well,” he said calmly, “I don’t see why not, Colonel Barrington.”
Oh dear no! This just would not do. I had a very strong notion of just how Colonel Barrington would go about “dealing with the matter” were he to be given the opportunity. I looked imploringly at Mr. Caratacus. I had one slim chance at getting us out of this predicament.
“Mr. Caratacus, Sir,” I said. “I wondered whether I could talk to you about that Ockham’s Razor thing...”
Wilbraham interrupted irately. “What on Earth are you talking about, dammit? Is this some new insolence, boy? I’ve a good mind to give you a thrashing right now!”
He was furious and Barrington looked at Caratacus, angry and affronted. Caratacus then looked at me, but not with his usual smiling eyes. He sighed and rubbed his right hand down his face with exhausted submission. “Colonel Barrington,” he said finally, “if you wouldn’t mind awfully, I think I would like to deal with these three... ragamuffins.” Barrington began to protest, but Caratacus continued, “After all, these two are Swallows, so I see it as within my purview as their Housemaster to deal with such disciplinary matters.”
I waited, with relief daring to flower within me, for Barrington to raise any sustained protest. But Wilbraham settled the matter.
“Well,” he said in a deep tone, making it seem like a full-stop at the end of a paragraph, “that must be right. Mr. Caratacus, I trust that you will deal with these three juvenile delinquents in a fitting manner. Thank you. Now then, Doctor Boateng, where were we?”
“Follow me please, boys,” said Caratacus.
As we left the Front Hall back towards the Spiral Staircase, quiet and chastised, as I cast a glance back over my shoulder to where English, Wilbraham, Barrington and Boateng remained, I noticed Barrington staring back at me, shaking his head very faintly, and Doctor Saracen creeping over to whisper to him. They must have worked it out. This was our last chance to convince Caratacus.
twenty seven
Caratacus slammed the door to his Private Room shut after ushering us in.
“Sit!” he barked, pointing towards the dilapidated sofa. We shuffled and squeezed onto it, sinking uncomfortably in.
“Sir...” I began urgently.
“Turnpike, enough!” he interjected. “As you well know, I am a tolerant and reasonable man. But my tolerance and reasonableness will not be pushed beyond their limits. That is to say that you cannot take advantage of my good nature. Understood? Now then,” he said more softly, “you will each speak only when I ask you a question and what you say will be the whole truth and nothing besides. So, Turnpike, you first. Where have you three been?”
“Sir,” I said anxiously, “we’ve been down in the Basement, in the Dungeons, Sir. Sir, we had very good reasons...”
“Thank you, Turnpike. You have answered that question. But do not think that I am going to give you the opportunity to produce a coherent fabrication, which I know to be something for which you and Strange have a particular talent. So now I will speak to Akwasi. Tell me, Akwasi, what reasons am I to ascribe to your being down in the Dungeons, out-of-bounds when you should have been going about your duties?”
“Sir, we had compelling reasons to believe,” started Samson (a very good start, I thought, using words like a detective). He cleared his throat, “Excuse me. We had compelling reasons to believe that Colonel Barrington is using a particular room in the Dungeons as a place to store all of the boys who have fallen ill in the last couple of weeks...”
“Oh, I see,” said Caratacus sarcastically, shaking his head and laughing, but without a smile. “And might I ask, Akwasi, who introduced you to the notion that Colonel Barrington might do such a thing?”
Akwasi looked at me apologetically.
“Quite,” said Caratacus. “You need not answer that question. Turnpike, back to you I think. You say you would like to talk to me about Ockham’s Razor, eh? Well then, tell me what
happened after our last discussion on this matter to make you think that your explanation, rather than mine, was the simplest one.”
“Well, Sir, it was last night, you see. I was awake in bed and I saw Colonel Barrington come into our dorm with Head Matron. I saw them drug Strange and then carry him away. I followed them and they went up towards the Sick Bay.”
Caratacus scoffed, “And you think that a plan to abduct boys and turn them into zombies is the clearest explanation for this? I would have thought the most obvious explanation to be that you were dreaming, wouldn’t you?”
“Well I suppose so, Sir. But Freddie was gone the next morning and...”
“Well it sounds pretty clear to me,” said Caratacus. “And then I would have thought that the next most obvious explanation would be that the boy really was taken ill and had to be carried to the Sick Bay for his own good. Surely it is not such a strange thing that the Head Matron should administer medicines to an ailing child.”
“Well no, Sir, but it was...”
“No. Quite. I think we might just be getting somewhere.” I hated it so much when teachers interrupted like this and pretended only to hear the first few words of every answer, ignoring especially everything that comes after the word “but”.
“Sir,” I blurted in frustration. “The Sick Bay is empty. There’s nobody there!”
“Turnpike, calm yourself! As I said, speak when spoken to.” This was driving me crazy. All I had to do was take him down to the Dungeon with a torch and show him inside the Crypt. And we were wasting so much time. “Pickering,” he continued, “now tell me what you found when you went down to the Dungeon on Turnpike’s goose-chase. That it was empty, I presume?” Caratacus removed his glasses and began to wipe them with a cloth.
“It wasn’t, Sir,” said Reggie. “There was a room down there and in it were loads and loads of coffin-like boxes with all of the sick boys inside them, covered in mud like they were dead and...”
“Pickering, for Heaven’s sake,” he said. “You’re gabbling, boy. What a load of rot!”
“It’s true, Sir,” I pleaded.
He replaced his spectacles and rolled his eyes, sighing. “Akwasi, will you also vouch for this outlandish tripe?”
“I will, Sir.”
“Okay, okay, you three. I give up.” He got up from his chair to rummage for something under his bed. I couldn’t catch sight of what it was before he slipped it into the pocket of his tweed jacket. “Let’s see... Pickering, perhaps you would take me downstairs to the Dungeon. Show me this room you are all rabbitting on about and I will show you that there is nothing in it. Then we can all just get on with our lives. You two, Turnpike and Akwasi, will not move from this room until I return. You are welcome to pop the kettle on. Come on, Pickering.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The door scraped slowly shut behind them as they left. I stood up and paced nervously with my hands on my hips.
“Relax, Tom,” said Samson. “It’s out of our hands now. Caratacus will sort it all out when Reggie shows him inside the Crypt.”
“I suppose you’re right. I don’t know how he’s going to cure Freddie and the others though. Maybe he’ll think of something,” I said, thrusting my hands into my pockets and realising, as I did so, that I still had the Crypt key. “Oh look! I’ve still got this.”
“You’d better get after them then.”
I hurried to the door and turned the knob to pull it open.
“Oh, that’s odd,” I said. “It’s locked.”
“Hmm,” said Samson, after trying the doorknob for himself. “Well I suppose he did that because he thought we might run off. Let’s put the kettle on and wait.”
“I suppose. They’ll come back when they realise they forgot it.”
“Or else Caratacus has one on the Duty Master’s key chain.”
I filled the kettle and switched it on. While I waited for the water to boil, I tried to distract myself and calm my nerves by strolling around the room and having a closer look at Caratacus’ collection of trinkets and mementos. On the wall behind the bed was a small wooden crucifix with an effigy of Jesus, crowned with thorns. It was so intricately carved that you could see the detail of the wound in his abdomen and the blood encrusted on his brow. I didn’t remember this from the last time I was here and noticed on Caratacus’ bedside table that there were three small chisels with blades of differing shapes, two uncarved blocks and some wood shavings, and realised that Caratacus must have carved the miniature Jesus himself.
On the wall next to that was an old school photograph. It must have been taken a number of years ago – the colours were all starting to fade towards a brassy hew of orange, giving the picture the quality of an obscure memory of a hot day. I peered closer to see if I could recognise any of the faces. Of course, none of the boys was recognisable to me. These boys would have left the school years ago. I looked at one standing in the middle of the back row. He looked quite like me, but with bushier hair. He was squinting awkwardly and pouting slightly, like the photographer had taken the photo while this boy was trying to decide between two facial expressions. I wondered what he was doing right now. Maybe he was nuclear scientist, or perhaps he was fighting out in Russia. Maybe he was in Strangeways Prison, protesting about the poor quality of the food. Maybe he was dead.
Looking along the front row, where the teachers were seated, I recognised about half of them, though their features were quite difficult to make out. Mrs. Stowaway was here at one end, stately, clutching a cigarette. There was Head Matron, wooden and upright on her seat, but looking no different at all. Next to her was Caratacus, smiling broadly, with a straw boater resting upon his lap. Wilbraham was in the middle, colossal and puffed up with authority, a hint of calculating menace staring beneath his brow. As I looked along the row of men and women I did and didn’t know, I noted that Colonel Barrington was absent. I wondered whether he had not by then returned from Africa. But it seemed odd to me that Head Matron should be here without him. It put me in mind of the letters I had found in his room and the “coincidences” which Doctor Boateng had mentioned that Barrington had spoken of.
I gasped with a sudden fright. “Look at this, Samson.”
Looming at the end of the row of teachers, but standing up with arms folded was a man in a monk’s cowl. His hood was down. He had shabby, thin white hair, reaching his shoulders and his thin face was haggard with age and exertion. And sitting next to him was a black labrador, panting and staring directly at me out of the picture. I felt a chill. It was as if they were watching me.
“The Wandering Monk,” whispered Samson with reverent amazement, and then jumped when the kettle clicked behind him.
I went over to pour the hot water into two cups and, as I did so, I looked at the three mediæval pictures of saints, whose saints’ names were embossed on the picture frames. Saint Peter, Saint Patrick and, at the top, Saint Sebastian. I dunked a teabag into each mug and then reached down into the fridge for a bottle of milk.
Something was bothering me and I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.
“Hmm, that’s interesting,” said Samson as I took a cup of tea to him. He was looking closely at the crucifix that hung on the back of the door. “It says Societas Missionum ad Afros on this cross.”
“Society of African Missions or something. What’s interesting about that?” I asked, still distracted by trying to work out what it was that was troubling me.
“Well I remember them from back in the Gold Coast. They’re a group of people who spread Christianity in Africa.” He turned the crucifix around. “And it says Dahomey on the back. I suppose he must have spent some time working in Africa.”
“Must have been a long time ago. He’s been here for years,” I said. “Maybe he never even went there. Maybe someone gave it to him.”
“Bit odd though, isn’t it?”
He was right. It was odd. It must have been a peculiar coincidence, but it was jolly unsettling. And then I realised what it w
as that was niggling at my mind. It was the saints on the wall. Didn’t my Germanic Studies textbook say that they were associated with Voodoo Loas? Maybe not.
But I couldn’t suppress a feeling of panic. I opened the top drawer of Caratacus’ desk.
“What are you doing?” asked Samson.
“I just need to check something,” I replied.
“What? He’ll kill you if he catches you.”
“We’ll hear the door unlock before he can catch me. I’m just worried about something.”
I opened each of the other drawers. They were full of papers: old pay slips, expired ration books, bank statements and so on. Grown-up stuff. Nothing to cause any alarm. I took a big glug of tea and began to flick through some of the letters from the bottom drawer. Samson got up and stalked around the floor in agitation.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “These letters look really important... Oh wow! Can you believe this? This telegram has got the Führer’s personal seal on it!” German was certainly not my best subject, but I read out what I could understand: “...congratulations on your valuable work in Poland... important to the... something of the New European Order and advancement of the Volksdeutsche... Please proceed with Stage Three... Signed, Adolf Hitler. I can’t believe it...”
“Whoa, look at these!” interrupted Samson, getting down onto his knees and dragging a cardboard box out from under Caratacus’ bed. “They look kind of like the ones downstairs, don’t you think?”
He obviously hadn’t been listening to me and as I turned to look at what it was that had caught his attention, his face morphed like putty from scowling curiosity, via surprised realisation, to settle upon abject terror.
“Oh God, no!” he whispered.
Innocuous in Samson’s hand sat a lump of very dark wood, only roughly carved here and there, but enough to give shape to the intention. It was a boy, and so were all of the others.
“Fetishes,” I said, pointing to the chisels and realising that the wood shavings on the desk had nothing to do with the effigy of Jesus over the bed. “Caratacus has been making them. Look, what does it say underneath?”
