The Kidnap Plot (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  “You all know me,” the scarred rat continued. “And you know how much I love our friends the bugs.”

  A very loud chittering burst from the crowd. It sounded a lot like laughter. They understood what he was saying. The Almanack was wrong. Dust sifted down from the ceiling, shaken free by the noise.

  “Today we have a special guest,” the rat went on. “My favorite bug—my very favorite fairy, that is—has come to visit. She has a few words to share with us.”

  The scarred rat scraped backward out of the way, making room for someone else to join him on the platform. That second person flew up in a snap of bright butterfly wings.

  It was Elisabel de Minimis, the Baroness of Underthames.

  Charlie tried very hard to hold still. Gnat had told him that pixies saw perfectly even in complete darkness, and Elisabel was looking more or less straight at Charlie. If she recognized Charlie and shouted a warning, the rats would finish him off in seconds.

  “Thank you, Scabies,” Elisabel said. She was graceful and calm, even though she was surrounded by rats. This was why the scarred rat was speaking in English. Rats must not speak Pixie, and pixies must not speak Rat, so they spoke to each other in the language of the uplanders. In English, he corrected himself. “And thank you all, too, my handsome sisters and brothers,” she added, speaking to the crowd.

  The rats hunched and trembled.

  “You’ve done everything I asked,” Elisabel went on, “and I thank you.”

  Murmurs.

  “Mind you, I’ve let you kill some people you’d been wanting to kill for a good long time.” Elisabel said this as if it were a funny joke. Charlie remembered Seamus saying that when the rats had attacked Underthames, they had killed the old baroness. Elisabel must be talking about her own aunt’s death. Charlie was sick to his stomach.

  Chittering. It sounded like approval.

  “Now, I’ve got to ask you to be patient for a wee bit yet. For a while, Scabies’ll lead you against my people, and there’ll be fighting, and it may get to feeling like you’re not making the progress you expected. I’ve come today as a sign of good faith, and to warn you that’s how it’ll go. I don’t want you to be surprised.”

  The scarred rat, the one Elisabel had called Scabies, nodded and snarled. The other rats fidgeted, scratching the ground and each other. Elisabel seemed to be building up to something.

  “On the other hand, my fine furry brothers, I also don’t want you to be bored.” Elisabel de Minimis raised one hand and waved.

  Rats at the back rushed to a wall and dragged several wide boards out of the way. Behind the wood gaped a ragged hole in the crumbling brick, and out of the hole advanced several ranks of pixies, four at a time, with spears in their hands.

  A great shriek rose from the throng. “Wait!” Scabies barked. “Shut up and wait, all of you!”

  The rat hubbub calmed down, but the rats still hissed and hopped from one foot to the other and shook their claws. They looked and sounded like water skittering around on a hot frying pan.

  The pixies moved forward, spears raised. More pixies followed, some with spears and some holding the ends of fine chains. Charlie realized that the troop was leading prisoners of some kind. This might be his chance to escape. The rats were distracted. He looked at the space separating him from the ladder down into the sewer and got ready to run.

  The first of the prisoners came into view.

  It was Heaven-Bound Bob.

  Charlie’s chimney sweep aeronaut friend had chains around his neck and hands and he stumbled, pulled along by the pixies.

  Behind him, all in chains, came Ollie, Mr. Clockswain, Grim (hunched over to fit beneath the ceiling), and finally Natalie de Minimis.

  “You see?” Elisabel smiled at the crowd. “I’ve brought you a little gift. I do hope you’re hungry.”

  The rats went berserk.

  They slipped over and under each other; they scratched; they barked like dogs and yowled like cats. Grim Grumblesson balled his fists and hunched even lower as he walked. Charlie’s other friends stuck close to the big hulder. Ollie and Mr. Clockswain looked worried; Bob looked defiant; Gnat looked angry. The pixie spearmen gripped their trembling spears, but the rats held their position.

  Charlie tightened his grasp on his metal pipe.

  The room spun about him. He’d been hit more than a few times in his life, by Mickey and Skip and the Bruiser, but he’d never hit back, not unless you counted throwing dirty laundry. He wasn’t a fighter. Bap didn’t want him to fight.

  He peeped out of his furnace hiding place at the wall of howling rat flesh. Even though he had a weapon of sorts, he was outnumbered a hundred to one. The rats would tear him apart if he tried anything.

  “Shut up!” Scabies roared. “Silence!”

  The rats continued to rage.

  “Shut up!” Scabies howled again.

  Grim stared down at the rats. He slowly shook his head and then spat.

  On the stand, Elisabel waved her hands gently. She wanted the crowd to be quiet, but they were having none of it.

  Scabies was not as patient.

  “Shut…up!” the rat leader bellowed a final time, and shoved his spear through the nearest rat.

  The sudden spurt of blood and the death squeak of the impaled rat hushed the room. The rats’ eyes bulged, and some of them foamed at the muzzle.

  They were on the brink of madness, and only fear held them back.

  The pixies were on edge, too. Charlie could see their hands shaking.

  “That’s better.” Scabies sniffed, and jerked his spear out of the dead rat.

  Everyone was silent and still, and everyone was also ready to jump.

  This was Charlie’s moment. He raised the pipe over his head and slammed it against the wall of the furnace.

  Bong!

  The mound of rats erupted like a volcano, spewing at the pixies. The pixies yelled and charged the rats. Spears and teeth flashed. Charlie’s own head nearly burst. The ringing of the furnace was immense inside the hall, but it was loudest of all for Charlie, who was standing inside the furnace itself.

  “No!” Scabies hollered.

  Charlie struck again.

  Bong-ng-ng!

  “De Minimis!” he heard Gnat shout. “De Minimis and Underthames!” The words sounded far away, and in between him and the voice was a vast gulf full of crying seabirds and crashing thunder.

  Bong!

  Charlie struck a third time. His head spun. Trying not to lose his grip on the pipe, he staggered out of the furnace.

  Chaos.

  Pixies and rats stabbed and bit each other in a frenzy of blood. Scabies and Elisabel de Minimis shouted at their followers, but Charlie couldn’t hear them anymore. The noise was too loud, or his ears were ringing too much; he couldn’t tell the difference.

  Grim Grumblesson charged. His pixie keepers fell away, turning to fight against the rampaging rats. With a single yank, Grim ripped from their grasp the chains that held him. As Charlie watched, he wound them around his hands like big silver knuckle-dusters, and then he laid about him with fists the size of hams. Each blow pounded a rat flat into the ground or threw a pixie across the hall.

  Suddenly Charlie’s friends were free and moving.

  Gnat fought at Grim’s back with a spear, and Ollie and Bob fought with sticks. Mr. Clockswain cringed in Grim’s shadow. The hulder plowed through the battle with purpose in his eyes.

  He was coming for Charlie.

  Charlie waved and almost fell over. He was dizzy, but he wasn’t afraid.

  Three rats jumped on Grim from one side. He bellowed and snapped his arm, throwing two of them against the wall. He grabbed the third in his fist.

  Three more rats rushed at Grim from the opposite direction while he struggled. Gnat impaled one with her spear through its chest and then flipped through the air to kick a second in its teeth. With her red-and-gold skirt and green wings flashing in the dim light, she looked like a kite in a hurricane.<
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  Ollie kicked the third rat away and hit it with his stick until it ran.

  “Everything all right, mate?” Bob yelled.

  Charlie nodded and smiled to show he was fine. He almost fell over, and Bob steadied him. “I don’t want to die,” Charlie said. He meant to say it in a brave way, to show his friends that he was determined to live. He was embarrassed when it came out sounding frightened.

  “Don’t worry,” Grim Grumblesson bellowed. He butted the squirming rat in his fist with both horns, then tossed the limp creature to the floor. “We’re leaving now.”

  The hulder bent at the knees and looked up at the ceiling. Dust and speckled light sifted down through the boards just over his head.

  “Rrraarraaagh!” Grim roared. He kicked up to his full height and punched both his fists through the ceiling.

  Wood fragments and dust rained down around Charlie.

  “You first!” Grim yelled. He tossed two more rats aside and grabbed Bob, then threw him up through the hole. The room above was light in a grayish, rainy sort of way.

  “Stop them!” Charlie heard through the ringing of his ears. He looked across the surging tide of rats and saw Scabies and Elisabel de Minimis, both dodging fighters and headed his direction.

  “And now you!” Grim bent and grabbed the kobold. Mr. Clockswain yelped but didn’t resist, and Grim tossed him up through the ceiling, too.

  Gnat pulled her spear out of a rat and cast the crumpled furry body aside. She fluttered her wings and rose into the air to meet her cousin’s charge.

  “Here comes the boy!” the hulder yelled over his shoulder. He seized Charlie.

  Charlie got a good close-up view of the dust and splinters in the troll’s matted hair, and smelled Grim’s sweaty-animal musk, and then the dark confusion of the basement hall disappeared.

  He vaulted up into a new space and landed hard, but on his feet. He staggered a few steps to one side, and then Bob and Henry Clockswain caught him.

  “Easy, Charlie,” Bob murmured.

  The noise below still rioted in Charlie’s ears. Without warning, Ollie the Snake hurtled up through the hole. “Aaagh!” He hit the floor hard and rolled.

  Charlie tried to look around, but Bob was already dragging him away. They were in another big room, this one with a high ceiling and tall windows. The light through the windows was pale, and outside, Charlie heard the thump of rain. Long benches filled most of the room. At one end the floor was raised and there was a lectern. Behind the lectern sat a piano, and on the wall hung a large, plain cross.

  It must be a church.

  “Come on, Ollie!” Bob called. “Catch up!” Charlie’s hearing was still deadened, but his vision had almost stopped spinning. Bob dragged him toward the back of the church, where Charlie could see big wooden doors out to the street on the right-hand side and a staircase on the left.

  Stairs that went up and also stairs that went down.

  “I was helping!” Charlie yelled, but Bob kept dragging him. “I hit the furnace! I could have helped more! I could have bit someone!”

  “You still can,” Bob said, and he stopped suddenly. “You might ’ave to.”

  Charlie looked where Bob was looking and saw what Bob saw.

  Rats.

  Rats spilling up the stairs and onto this floor. Lots of them.

  They were between him and the door.

  “Windows!” Henry Clockswain yelled. “Quick!”

  Bob was fast, but Ollie was faster. He sprinted to the wall, where a dark wooden cabinet stood under the windows. The bottom of the windows was seven or eight feet off the floor, but if the boys could get on top of the cabinet, they could get at the glass.

  Ollie squatted and made a stirrup with his hands. “Go, Charlie!” he shouted. When Charlie put his foot into Ollie’s hands, the other boy grunted. He almost slipped, but then managed to hoist Charlie up. Charlie landed at the same time as the kobold, pushed by Heaven-Bound Bob. A cloud of dust erupted around them, and Mr. Clockswain sneezed.

  The rats rushed their way, shrieking.

  Charlie looked down at his chimney-sweep friends. Ollie crouched. “Off my back, Bob!”

  Bob took two running steps and planted his foot on Ollie’s shoulders. He jumped, and the other boy stood at the same time, and Bob sprang through the air and landed on top of the cabinet.

  Creak! The cabinet shifted unnervingly but Bob didn’t stop. He let his momentum carry him forward; he raised his arms to cover his face with his elbows—and crashed through a window, out into the rain and onto the street.

  “What about Ollie?” Charlie yelled, and he looked down again.

  Ollie was gone.

  In his place was a long, yellowish snake, coiled and rearing. A hood of scaly skin flared out to either side of its head, with dark dots on it. Charlie recognized it as a cobra. His father had told him stories about cobras in the Punjab. Cobras were very dangerous.

  The rats recognized it, too. They bounced to a stop, howling and baffled. The cobra snapped at them, scaring them back, but didn’t bite.

  Charlie thought he smelled the sweet stink of rotten eggs.

  “Go!” Henry Clockswain yelled. He didn’t sound fussy at all. He pushed Charlie through the window.

  Bob helped his landing with both hands, steadying him so he kept his feet. A moment later the kobold plunked to the cobblestones beside them. The rain beat down on them heavily. Charlie’s ears still rang. He saw the church, and something big and foul-smelling that might have been a tannery, and a pub. The street wasn’t crowded, but the faces he did see looked startled.

  Bob started pulling him quickly away from the building.

  “The others!” Charlie objected. He looked back at the shattered window he’d jumped from.

  “We can’t help them!” Henry Clockswain cried.

  “Ollie’ll be right along,” Bob said. “An’ there’s nothing we can do for the rest.”

  Even as Bob spoke, Ollie appeared in the window. He hit the ground running and sprinted after them.

  “Ollie!” Charlie shouted. Bob pulled him faster.

  “Run!” Ollie shouted back.

  Behind Ollie the big wooden doors exploded. Splinters and dust blew out in a cloud, and Grim Grumblesson punched through like a runaway train. He was covered in rats. He ran, batting them away with his fists. When one leaped from his thigh to his chest, snapping with its teeth at his throat, Grim snatched it and squashed it flat against the red brick side of a building.

  The people on the street who had been staring at Charlie screamed and ran.

  Behind and above Grim flew Gnat. She was still holding on to her spear, but only barely. There was blood on her dress, and one of her wings beat more slowly than the other. Still, she flew, and she pried rats by their tails off the hulder and tossed them into the street.

  More rats, a wave of them, rushed up to the empty door—but there they stopped. They gnashed their big teeth, they shrieked and howled, but they didn’t follow their prey outside.

  Tired and beaten and bloody, Charlie and his friends ran through the cooling rain. They were much the worse for wear, but they were free.

  “Didn’t go quite like I expected,” Grim Grumblesson observed.

  “Ouch.” Gnat tried to straighten her left wing, and couldn’t do it.

  “Broken?” Ollie asked.

  “Sprained a flying muscle in my back,” the pixie said. “I expect it’ll still work, more or less, but it hurts like Mab’s own blisters.”

  They sat in the Port Royal Coffeehouse, all dark wood and smoke-greased glass. Outside hung a signboard with the portrait of a privateer. Charlie recognized him by his twirled mustachios, second chin, and bulging eyes as the famous Henry Morgan. Inside, china teacups and old belt buckles hung from hooks set into the ceiling beams and high on the walls. Charlie sipped a hot cocoa; his friends had tea or coffee. Grim’s mug was the size of Charlie’s head and had a pint of honey in it, stirred into coffee the color of boot polish. Crum
bs on a tray were all that remained of what had started as a heaping pile of buttered scones.

  Their chains were gone; once there weren’t pixies pointing spears at him anymore, Grim had torn them off like thread. Charlie again wore his John Bull hat, which Grim had produced out of his pocket at the coffeehouse door. Grim’s own hat had disappeared somewhere underground.

  In the center of the table lay a copy of the Daily Telegraph. The newspaper was folded and untouched, but Charlie could still see the front-page photograph of liveried steam-carriages arriving at Buckingham Palace and the headline DIGNITARIES ARRIVE FOR THE GARDEN PARTY. A column below the main story and to the right was headed TENSIONS MOUNT OVER CUBA, BOERS.

  When he wasn’t actually drinking, Charlie left his mug resting on a brass disk sunk into the wood of the table in front of them. Though the wood was cool to the touch, the plate was hot.

  Bob nudged Charlie in the shoulder and pointed at the brass plate. “ ’Ot water,” he said. “Pipes ’idden inside the table, I reckon.”

  “Could be a spell,” said Ollie.

  “Bah.” Bob shook his head. “Isambard Brunel, I reckon. That bloke made all the best things.”

  Charlie tried not to stare at Ollie the Snake. Charlie found that he felt strangely envious. The chimney sweep had a special talent, and he had secrets. Ollie caught Charlie not staring and gave him a hard look back that seemed to say don’t tell.

  Charlie nodded and sipped his chocolate.

  Ollie’s look softened, and he squeezed Charlie’s hand as he leaned in to whisper. “Thanks, mate. I thought I was rat food there for a minute.”

  “Charlie,” Grim said, “I’m sorry.”

  Charlie remembered the troll hurling him up out of the rats’ lair to save his life. “What for?”

  “For the delay.” The troll hung his head. “I thought our trip to Underthames would be a short one, and that we’d soon be out and on the trail of your father’s kidnappers.”

  Charlie nodded. “I know you didn’t expect to get captured…and the rats.”

  “True.” Grim’s voice was a solemn rumble. “But I regret it.”