Tregarthur's Crystal: Book 4 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  She sounded so serious that I almost believed her and half turned to see if she did have a gun. Difficult not to laugh when I realised what she meant. I made some noises which I hoped sounded gun like.

  ‘Pass me the shot,’ I called.

  There was silence outside the door, the sound of footsteps leaving. We took it in turns to keep watch after that, but we weren’t disturbed again. We left the inn early next morning – the landlord’s name was Jonah so he must have known about the men who tried to get into our room. I suspected he wouldn’t care how much noise they made in the day if they were going to rob us – or worse.

  We set off down to the train station to travel to London. If we had no idea what this man Masterson and Miss T were up to, would we ever find them? I didn’t think it would be so easy in the city. We had to hope Mr Masterson was famous enough for us to find him. What were we going to do if we did catch up with them? Jenna seemed more certain but I wasn’t sure what she was certain about.

  Demelza had done well selling the necklace so we bought tickets for second class. Might even have enough to get us back. We had time to talk as we waited on the platform.

  ‘If Miss Tregarthur believes the tunnel has taken her to the wrong time, what is she going to do?’ I looked to Jenna for an answer although I actually believed Demelza might have a better idea.

  ‘Maybe she’s worked out an idea about getting the crystal to work again.’ Jenna turned to Demelza. ‘You got any idea?’

  Demelza words were not loud enough to overcome the steam and hooting noise of our train arriving. The whole station filled with steam.

  We took the train on a warm morning, in July 1883 as I found out. The journey took us from the countryside to the town, almost a time travel journey itself, moving past villages and towns that were so different to those we had seen around the moor. Time didn’t change but the world appeared more modern as we headed for the capital.

  On the journey there was time to think and talk again, even if we did have to shut the windows at each tunnel – this train hooted every time to give a warning. I was trying to decide how to ask my questions. I had the feeling that neither of the girls wanted to share things. So much thinking soon made me drift off, this second class carriage was quite comfortable. We had a small compartment with a corridor outside running along the train. Room for six people but the train wasn’t full so we had the space to ourselves.

  It looked like pictures you see of old trains – well, of course it was an old train, actually a new old train – changing time is impossible. What was it that had brought us here? We had called it a tunnel, although it was nothing like these soot filled railway tunnels. It changed, at first part of the rock, and we’d had to move piles of stones to find it, then it became more like a gas that swirled around and drew us in. The last time there were spaces – maybe caves or something – inside it.

  ‘What is this tunnel?’ Demelza said suddenly. Maybe I had been mumbling my thoughts aloud.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jenna snapped.

  ‘This time travel thing, it’s alive, ok?’

  I said nothing, hoping Demelza would give us some more information. She’d been with Alice Tregarthur for … well it could be thousands of years if you started in the time of mammoths like we did.

  ‘But what does that mean, what sort of thing is it?’ Demelza was fishing for information.

  Jenna looked away but I felt she did know more.

  It was my time for a, ‘What?’ and that had lots of question marks with it.

  ‘COME ON, tell me,’ I shouted when neither of them said any more.

  Jenna gave a huff: ‘The crystal Miss Tregarthur uses to control the tunnel. I told you, we have to get it back, it’s part of whatever it is.’

  ‘You found out more when we carried Zach into it?’ I had to know even if Demelza was going to find out.

  ‘Yeah.’ Jenna paused. ‘It was sort of speaking to me but without words, just sounds in my head. Made me feel I was going crazy, still does, but …’

  ‘But what?’ I said quickly as we slowed for another station.

  Jenna was struggling with her words but went on: ‘It feels as though there is something inside the rocks. I don’t know what it is. It almost feels like a person. This crystal is part of its heart. It cannot live without it.’

  ‘A real person? Stuck inside?’ I said, with a shiver.

  ‘I don’t know, I just don’t know,’ Jenna winced. ‘I could feel the pain and anger coming from the rock. Each time Miss Tregarthur hit the crystal the pain got worse.’

  Jenna’s face told me how hard this had been and I waited to see if she was going to put that into words.

  ‘I couldn’t take it,’ Jen blurted. ‘I couldn’t stand to hear, to feel, that pain. We just have to get this crystal back.’

  ‘But the crystal is dead, it’s dead, isn’t it?’ Demelza looked at me, at Jen and back. ‘Isn’t it? Why would it want a dead crystal? It’s hopeless, we’re stuck here forever. I’m stuck here forever with you two.’ She buried her head in her hands, very dramatically; Demelza was good at drama.

  Did it matter what state the crystal was in, as Demelza had said? Jenna didn’t know the answer. I couldn’t cope with the idea of a dead or alive piece of stone.

  Demelza’s drama seemed even more false than usual. Did Miss Tregarthur know another way to get the crystal to work again? If she did, then Demelza might know the same thing. Was that what Miss Tregarthur was doing?

  Questions, no answers.

  The train stopped and more people got on. Two men came into our compartment and sat talking about machines and whether there would be a war. I was going to ask more questions but Jen shook her head and we stayed quiet until we reached the end of this journey. London arrived with smoke and a smell worse than ever. The train pulled into Waterloo. I’d been there, Waterloo, London. I’d gone on a visit with Mum as a young kid.

  London

  -4-

  The noise of London hit us as we left the station. Streets packed with horse drawn carriages, rumbling and rattling over cobbles. Horses pulling everything from buses to overloaded carts, their drivers standing up to shout and wave their fists as they tried to push through impossibly small spaces. Carts carrying fruit, some stacked high with furniture, many with large signs advertising impossible claims: medicines that cured everything; lotion to restore bald hair, milk that made babies more perfect.

  Piles of fresh and steaming horse dung littering the road. This was a town of horses. The air a haze of soot and smoke. An overwhelming smell of overloaded drains.

  Once we saw a car – broken down. A car that looked ancient.

  ‘Like … from a museum,’ Jenna said.

  ‘Looks like it’s headed to one now,’ I said, seeing the steam coming from the bonnet. People had gathered around to stare, the men on horses to shout insults.

  On the pavements, business men hurried in dark suits and round topped hats, women in long dresses and always hats and bonnets, even the working men wore jackets and flat caps. Boys selling fruit, girls selling flowers, women selling baskets, men looking shifty.

  Finding an inn in this mess of noise and smell was difficult. Near the station we found more than one hotel much too big and a bit scary for us. We headed to the river, crossing a bridge with the stench rising from the brown scummed water, busy with barges and boats. We walked for ages to a cheaper part of town with narrower and dirtier streets, buildings crowded together bulging over the roads. Eventually we found an inn that would take us, not necessarily the safest place. The large fat landlord took our money and called for a girl to show us the room.

  ‘Can’t do the stairs,’ he pointed at his leg and limped away.

  No one at the inn had heard of a Mr Masterson or seen anyone like Miss T – although there were pretty strange people all around. Asking questions made us stand out. We definitely weren’t in a posh part of town. I said Masterson was loaded – or at least Jenna translated ‘loaded’
into words the men in the inn understood. They laughed at us and said the place to find him would be in the expensive business area called the City, even though I thought that meant the whole of London. But the City was a small area of London where all the money dealings went on. Not the sort of place the three of us would belong.

  ‘It’ll all be men,’ Jenna suggested the next day and so I went off alone and left the other two behind.

  My clothes gave me away as someone from the country and people kept shouting insults at me. That made me feel like a target for anyone who might rip me off. I had to ask directions but I kept moving when they tried to stop me and ask questions. I had nothing I wanted to explain.

  As I neared the City area the shops looked old and quaint and more expensive, some sold jewellery. Maybe it would be easier to sell the gold belt here. But only easier for someone who didn’t feel so out of place, vulnerable. Selling gold could really land me in trouble here. I walked on. Wondering what to do. How to find one man in this city? Simple in the end.

  I wandered about for ages, walking quickly to pretend I had somewhere to go. The roads dotted with horse manure made it easy for someone to put a foot wrong, which was something for everyone to stop and laugh at.

  The city buildings were huge grand places – they looked like buildings I had seen in my own time when I’d been to London. But the smell of soot lingered everywhere, even here where the streets were cleaner.

  Around me everyone looked busy, smartly dressed money men going in and out of the buildings, talking to each other, it was all about money. Despite my hurrying, I soon felt everyone was staring at me.

  I asked a few people about Masterson but no one took me seriously, they just laughed at me, told me to ‘go home, country boy’. I decided to leave, go back and get Jenna, we’d be better wandering around together. Although the people looking busy were all men there were couples walking together. Women with parasols even though the sun only shone faintly. Long dresses which looked really impractical with all the horse dung about.

  I really did not fit in. I could have done better if I had a barrow selling something – hot chestnuts seemed to be doing well. I thought Jenna would do better at asking questions. Most women didn’t go into the buildings but there were working women on the street gathered around stalls selling flowers, and fruit and more baskets. Men dressed in working clothes flitted between the stalls; dodgy looking men. This looked like a great place for pickpockets.

  A man came out onto the street. Striding out with purpose he put up a stall and shouted something over and over. He wasn’t one of the money men, he was selling newspapers. I went closer to try and hear what he was shouting, a crowd was gathering near him, anxious people wanting to buy his papers. I caught his words:

  ‘Masterson to buy the Heath. Masterson to buy Hampstead Heath.’

  I was jostled out of the way by people rushing for papers and talking about this piece of news. Hampstead Heath, I knew that was some park in London. I’d been there with Granddad, so many years ago, before the worst of the trouble at home. Although years ago still meant years ahead of the time I was in. Hampstead Heath was a big green space, we’d kicked a ball around, walked up some hill, he’d bought me a cake in a café there. What on earth did anyone want to buy the place for? This had to be due to Miss Tregarthur, but what would she want with this park? I wasn’t the only one asking that question. All the money men were puzzled and there was soon a loud noise of arguing voices:

  ‘Will they let him?’

  ‘Can’t do it, public park, he can’t do it.’

  ‘It’s ours, stop him.’

  ‘Money will do anything,’ one man said loudly and that caused a pause in the chatter but it soon took up again with voices becoming angrier. I wandered away still hearing some of the conversation:

  ‘He’ll lose all his money,’ I heard one smart suited man say to another. ‘Nothing he can do with it. Messy place, lot of swamps aren’t there?’

  That was odd because when I went there with Granddad it had been surrounded by houses, part of London. Perhaps London was a lot smaller. I needed to get back to the others.

  ‘Worthless now,’ said Jenna, when I told her about the Heath. ‘But worth a fortune in our time. Maybe that’s what she’s doing, trying to make a pile of money for the future.’

  ‘Got to be an easier way to do that with time travel,’ Demelza joined in; I supposed making money was something she and Zach had planned.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘Find out the result of the lottery, then go back and win it.’ Demelza certainly had this idea sorted. I thought there might be problems with getting back to the exact right time. There could be loads of things to bet on here but we had no idea of the results.

  ‘Has to be more than just making money,’ Jenna said. ‘What do they use this Heath place for in our time?’

  ‘It’s just a park,’ I told them about the time I’d been there with my grandfather. It was hard for me to talk about him, to talk about anything good in my family. I noticed Demelza rub her neck as I talked – must have been remembering her gran and the necklace. Had it been worth selling that? Jenna said Demelza was like a toy that had lost its stuffing or lost any connection with our world and her own family. Did I care? Demelza had it coming. She had changed since selling it, at least she had stopped pretending to flirt with me, made my time much easier.

  We carried on talking about what Miss Tregarthur might have been up to and got nowhere.

  ‘Did you think I knew Miss Tregarthur before this all started?’ It seemed the right time for me to ask Demelza.

  ‘Must have?’ she stopped.

  ‘Why?’ There was more to this. I looked at Jenna. Did she know more?

  ‘Tell me,’ I shouted.

  ‘We don’t know for certain.’ Jenna bit her lip.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Miss T might have said you were part of her family,’ Demelza said slowly.

  My mouth opened without words.

  ‘Her family is tied up with this time tunnel thing, this crystal.’ Demelza stopped again.

  ‘Do you remember where you lived when you were younger?’ Jenna sounded scared to ask.

  ‘No, not really, moved about a lot,’ I stuttered. Did I remember? A sort of flashback came into my head; that moor again. Had I been there before? I hadn’t felt that I recognised anything when we first went out on the moor.

  ‘You found the time tunnel,’ Demelza said, meaning the first time at the start of this disastrous trip, starting with the storm and the ground shaking.

  ‘I …’ I thought I’d just stumbled in the earthquake. Stumbled into the cave with that light.

  ‘And led us all through?’ Jenna said it as though it was a question.

  ‘All my fault?’ This was making me angry.

  ‘No, but you may be more linked to this mess than you know.’ Jenna tried to calm me down, before changing the subject: ‘We’ve got to go and take a look at this park. There has to be more to this than just the land. Time to go.’

  ‘Got a bus map?’ I snapped. I could see that Jenna and Demelza might not know a lot more, but I felt that they had guessed more and probably talked about it without me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know if I was part of that awful woman and her family. We’d met some of them and they weren’t people I wanted to meet again. Except Mum. How had she really got mixed up with this? She was dead now, surely? Was there more history about Mum and the Tregarthurs?

  While I was tossing ideas around in my head we waited in the road. I’d asked the landlord at the inn how we might find a carriage.

  ‘Did you find your Masterson?’ he had asked me.

  I shook my head, surprising that he should remember the name. He knew nothing about Masterson when I asked him before. Asking questions wasn’t always a great idea.

  ‘Just wait by the road outside, carriage should come along before long.’ He turned to his bar, he was a man who did more drinking than work. His limp b
ecame more obvious whenever he was called to do something.

  He was right. Soon a horse drawn open carriage pulled up. Jenna negotiated a price to take us to Hampstead Heath.

  ‘Long way,’ said a one-armed man, who sat up by the driver, the one doing the negotiating and a man I wouldn’t trust, but Jenna climbed up to the carriage and the three of us were soon bouncing along the streets. I wondered if the landlord had fixed this particular carriage for us.

  Much later, we were out of the city into woodland, a sign said Camden which was near where Granddad had lived. Few houses here now. Eventually we came out into a clearing; we’d passed a sign saying Hampstead village. Further on, a wooded hill stretched out in front of us, this had to be the Heath.

  ‘Not a lot of swamp,’ I said.

  ‘That’s over the hill,’ called the driver’s mate. Again I had a bad feeling about him but he went on. ‘Walk up there and you can see the whole of London.’ He pointed to a large notice nailed to one of the trees up the hill out on the Heath, near it a group of men were working. ‘That’ll tell you all about the Heath.’

  We climbed down to the road.

  ‘Don’t all have to go,’ the man called from his seat. ‘Let the girls stay here if you want.’

  I felt uneasy, the driver and his mate didn’t feel right.

  But Jen was saying, ‘Come on,’ and took off towards the sign.

  Demelza hung back. She didn’t fancy the walk, too muddy.

  ‘Ok love,’ the man said. ‘You can stay in the carriage and wait for them. Won’t take long.’

  Did I worry about what could happen to Demelza? I set off after Jenna. I didn’t think Jenna wanted me to be too concerned about Demelza.

  The park sign just told us a bit about the park and loads of rules. Apparently thousands of people came up here, there’d been parties and all sorts of problems with the crowds. Didn’t say anything about it being for sale.

  Over at one side there were a group of workmen building a fence. It wasn’t on the main part of the Heath.