As he watched them, Jack was reminded of his mom and dad. Mom was the one with the ideas, but Dad went ahead and did what he wanted anyway. Where were they now, he wondered. He held onto the strap and looked out of the side window at the countryside rushing by—the fields and trees and walls and fences and the woods drenched in the early morning light, the grass sparkling with dew … and then he drifted off to sleep again.
“Jack!” Lord Henry shook him awake. Polly and Lady Marchwell had their eyes closed. They were asleep now. Only Henry was excited. He leaned forward and took Jack’s hands in his. He spoke over the noise of the carriage. “I must thank you,” he said, “for winning over Lady Marchwell. For your angelic work. You are my mascot, Jack, my lucky charm.”
“That’s okay,” said Jack sleepily. “It’s been fun. I like it here, but I really have to get back.”
“Of course, Jack, of course. But listen to me: I have an idea. A very fine and interesting idea. I should like to propose a business partnership between you and me.”
“A business partnership?”
“Indeed.” He glanced at the others to make sure they weren’t listening. “You remember that Dick sold a shilling for seventy-five pounds? Well, he told me there was all manner of old things in the ‘antiques’ shop. There were pistols and glasses and plates and chairs and … and even bed-warming pans! Ha! Things that I could get here and—what do you think?—I could bring them over to your time and sell them. Think of the money! And there are things in your time that would be very useful here: like … blow-dryers. And that nice flashlight that the constable had. And the yummy chocolate bars. We could be ‘time traders’! Vane and Bolt! What do you think, eh?”
Jack stared at Lord Henry. How changed he was. And suddenly Jack thought—what a brilliant idea!
“We could do time tours!” cried Henry. “Tours of London in the twenty-first century! Even the king would come! Come and see Granny Bolt’s house! And the future. Come and see the future! What fun! A guinea a visit.”
“I could bring my class,” Jack told him. “And all the newspapers and TV. And we could bring you electricity so your lives would be better. And food—we could bring you better food. And medicine—our medicine is much better than yours. And cars and trains and planes—they are all so much better. And better roads. And what would your king say about a computer? It would knock his socks off!”
“Eh?” Henry looked puzzled. “Of course it would all be better, wouldn’t it? I suppose you have better pistols too?”
“Pistols?” Jack laughed. “We’ve got an atomic bomb! We can destroy the world with that! It’s huge.”
“Goodness,” said Henry, his brows knitted together.
“And you could go to the moon.”
“The moon?”
“Yup. Humans have been to the moon. Soon anyone will be able to go to the moon.”
“But what for?” asked Henry.
“For the experience,” said Jack. “To experience life. That’s what we’re here for.”
“Are we? Henry stroked the carriage seat as he digested the implications of his business proposal. He imagined bringing a car through the little hole in Jack’s bedroom. Or a road. It all looked extremely complicated. “I quite like carriages, you know. And horses. I like beautiful, strong horses like Red Ruby. I like them much more than cars. Maybe we should take it … you know … step-by-step?”
“Okay,” said Jack.
Five minutes later he leaned forward again. “You know, Jack, I think it most interesting that the only building in Wittlesham to have survived two hundred and fifty years is the Cap and Stockings!”
Jack smiled. There were other buildings too, but Henry was right. People always needed a pub.
“To be an innkeeper,” continued Henry, “must be a fine way to earn money. For it is work that will never go out of fashion!”
“Indeed,” agreed Jack, still thinking of all the advances he could bring to Henry’s world.
“You know, I noticed that the beams in the Cap and Stockings are exactly the same in your time as in our time. They lasted unchanged for two hundred and fifty years! I wonder what would happen if we carved our names on the beams in the Cap and Stockings? Maybe they would suddenly appear over in your time. We should try that! It would be most interesting. Indeed, things we change here could have very strange consequences over two hundred and fifty years. All your cars and computers. The whole of history could change,” he mused, and he fell into a thoughtful silence.
As they passed over the common, Jack suddenly recognized the road into Wittlesham. He marveled again at how changed it was. How sleepy and quiet, how rural. A man was driving two horses and a plow across a field. A boy began running alongside the carriage, barefoot, in dirty clothes, waving excitedly to them. Jack saw apples on the trees and haystacks in the fields and huge flocks of birds gathering to migrate.
As they entered the village, there was a lot of activity—cows in the road and people running here and there carrying tubs and buckets. The carriage slowed to a crawl.
“There’s a fire in the village,” Tom Drum called down to them.
Polly leaped out of her seat. “Where?” she cried.
“Make way. Make way!” cried Tom Drum.
“Where is it?” cried Polly.
“’Tis the house—’tis Nanny Manners’s house!” cried Tom Drum. “Make way! Make way!”
Jack felt his head swim. He suddenly knew he had to get back. He had to get back quickly. He looked at Polly and at Lord Henry. Lord Henry realized too.
“Jack—we have to get you back,” Henry said urgently.
“We’ve got to help!” cried Polly.
The carriage was crawling. Outside, cows brushed past, mooing and lowing. Polly pushed down the window and craned her neck. Men and women with pails of water were rushing along the road. “I can see the smoke,” she cried.
“Stay calm,” said Lady Marchwell.
But Lord Henry flung open the door, pushing against the cattle that were in the way. “Quick, Jack, quick, boy,” he shouted, grabbing Jack’s hand and pulling him out into the melee. Glancing back, Jack saw Polly climbing out too.
“Be careful,” cried Tom Drum from the top of the stationary carriage.
Smoke swirled through the autumn air. They could see the house at the end of the road. Smoke was sliding out of the kitchen window and was then swept up in the wind. A brisk wind would fan the flames, thought Jack. Men and women with buckets were dashing in with their full pails and then coming out again, coughing and choking. The pigs had been released and were squealing and screaming as they ran around the square.
“It’s got ahold,” shouted one man as Jack and Henry ran toward the house.
“Get back!” cried a woman. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Come on,” cried Henry as they came to the door. Inside, the house was full of smoke, yellow flames licking the wooden frame.
But Jack held back. “You never go into a fire,” he shouted.
Lord Henry shook Jack by the arm. “You must go in, to go back,” he said urgently. “If the thatch catches, then you will be stuck. You might be stuck forever. You may never go back to your time, where you belong. There is still a way in. You must go.”
“But I cannot go in.”
“You must.”
“You never, ever go back into a fire. That is the rule. You stay away from it. Even if you’ve left a pet behind.”
“You have to go back,” shouted Lord Henry, pulling him toward the house. “Who knows what may happen if you do not go back?”
“But what about you?”
“I will stay. I belong here. And what will be, will be.”
“Try, Jack, you must try,” cried Polly.
Grabbing a bucket of water from a man, Lord Henry threw it over Jack and, wrapping his cloak around Jack’s shoulders, he pulled him in.
Together they charged through the smoke and up the rickety stairs. Lord Henry kicked open the door in
to the small bedroom. Jack’s eyes were stinging and weeping, and his throat was in pain. The small room had less smoke in it, as the fire was below. Coughing violently, Lord Henry paused and embraced Jack. He struggled with something on his finger and suddenly pressed a ring into Jack’s hand.
“I had it from my mother. It is for you now,” he told him. “Now quick—go back where you belong.” Jack ducked down and found the metal plate that covered the hole through to his bedroom. He pulled it open and saw his room on the other side.
“Good-bye, Jack,” called Lord Henry. “Good-bye! Remember me.”
The cupboard door closed, as a plume of smoke blossomed into Granny’s guest bedroom. Jack lay sprawled on the floor, spewed out of the eighteenth century like a fish upon the shore.
Chapter Twenty
Wittlesham
Jack lay there panting, listening to the now-muffled cries coming from the time of the highwaymen. He staggered over to the window and looked out. It was morning. Cars were in the street. The Cap and Stockings was still there, all quiet now, with its neat paintwork and hanging baskets. The fire was out. Or more accurately, he thought, there was no fire in his time.
He went back to the hole in the wall and listened. The cries were still there on the other side; people were calling for more water. Only then he heard a crash. It was followed by a crackle that made his skin prickle with fear. The fire had spread up to the first floor. He felt the iron door. It was hot.
He waited. Was he safe here? He glimpsed himself in the mirror and stared.
His face was black. His eyes were red. His hair was sticking up. His clothes—well, sacking, really—were grimy and wet. He looked as if he had been dragged backward through all the hedges between here and London.
And his room. What a catastrophic mess.
The clock said 8:33. Granny would be up soon.
He listened intently to the wall, imagining the fire on the other side. Slowly he became aware of a silence. He imagined the house burned to the ground. Would the hole into Nanny Manners’s house now open into thin air?
It was still early, so he went to the bathroom and ran himself a bath. He scrubbed himself and washed in the warm water and felt refreshed by the luxury of it. On his way out, he came face-to-face with Granny in her robe.
She gave him a strange look.
“Feeling better?” she asked slowly.
“A bit tired,” Jack mumbled.
“Speak up!”
“TIRED,” he said.
“I should think you are, all that coming and going in the night. Halloween? More like the twelve dancing princesses here! All in army boots! Back to bed. I’m going to bring you breakfast in half an hour.”
Jack opened his mouth to object.
“BED!” she boomed.
Jack returned to his room. He looked around. Mud, smoke, soot, candle grease, and pieces of plaster lay everywhere. There were footprints and hand marks all over the wallpaper by the hole in the wall. What could he do? Face the music. It was the only way. He would have to tell Granny. He would start by apologizing. Later, he might be able to show her the way through to the eighteenth century.
Granny came up the stairs and walked into his room. His room. There was no need to tell her now. She stopped in the doorway and blinked. Jack waited for the breakfast tray to crash to the floor. Granny seemed frozen. Astonished, amazed, horrified.
But she managed to hold on to the tray. She picked her way over to his bed, avoiding the blankets, pieces of broken chair, and the dirty footprints, and placed the tray of breakfast on Jack’s lap.
“Golly,” she said finally.
Jack waited for the explosion. But grannies are stalwart and strong. They’ve seen more of life and its strange twists and ups and downs than children ever give them credit for. She sighed deeply and surprised him.
“What an irresponsible old fool I am,” she said, “letting you run about on an adventure. At least you’re in one piece. That’s the important thing.” She shook her head and turned to go.
“Granny.” Jack called her back. “I am sorry—and I’ll pay for all the damage.” His eyes fell on the ring Lord Henry had given him.
“We’ll talk about it later,” said Granny briskly.
“Now sleep.”
Later in the afternoon, as dusk was falling, Jack woke up. He got out of the noisy bed with a loud boinggggg! and, ignoring the ruined room, went straight to the hole in the wall. He felt it.
It was cool. The fire must be out. He peeled back the wallpaper and looked.
The iron door had gone. There was only brick. Solid, immovable brick.
And he realized the eighteenth century had gone too. Suddenly it was as far out of reach as it ever had been. Gone. And with it his friends, and their lives—all on the edge of change. But he wanted to know how they had lived. Did Lord Henry stop robbing and marry Lady Marchwell? Did Polly become a farmer? Did the highwaymen give up robbery?
He felt as if a book had closed and good friends had been lost, and now he must return to his life.
Downstairs, the night was closing in. He went to the kitchen and found Granny there surrounded by donation boxes for the blind. She smiled at him.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“Much better, thanks,” Jack replied. He looked out at a group of people standing outside the Cap and Stockings. They were talking animatedly. Granny followed his eyes.
“Something strange has happened at the Cap and Stockings,” she said. “Mr. Harrison is very angry. It seems that someone has carved something in the beams, some message or something, and it looks like it is as old as the pub itself yet no one has ever noticed it. It is quite incredible. A superb example of eighteenth-century graffiti. He said it would specially interest us. I said we’d go over later. Jack? Jack!”
Jack had run out of the kitchen. Dodging deftly past the group standing outside, past the man with the camera and the guy with the notebook, he slipped into the pub and looked up at the beams.
First he saw the words “Marchwell” and “Bernard” and then “Henry Vane” and “1753” and then “1770.” They were etched into the old oak beams in letters of different sizes—some big, some small. The carvings were dark brown and hardened with time. A woman took him by the arm.
“Come to see the carvings, have you, love? Look, it starts over here.” It was the landlady. “We can’t think how we’ve missed it! It’s like all this stuff just popped up overnight. The local TV station might be coming later.”
Jack read:
To Jack Bolt. No more robbin’, no more card games, no more pistols. Henry Vane is my name, being a good husband is my game. Married to Emily Marchwell Nov. 17, 1753. Maid of honor Polly Carter. Celebrated this day in the Cap and Stockings Inn, proprietors Peter Purkins, Bernard Belch, Dick Willowherb.
On another beam was written:
We miss you, Jack Bolt. And we think of you oftentimes. Wondering what happened to you. Polly Swann, 17 heifers, 14 acres, 3 babies. 1770.
Jack read the carvings three times. Now he knew. Lives summed up in a few sentences. The door into Nanny Manners’s house had never opened again. Not in their lifetimes. They were long gone now. They were long dead and buried.
Yet only yesterday …
He left the pub as more people were coming in. But instead of going home he went over to the churchyard. He could picture the highwaymen still, standing idly over the gravestones. The graveyard was changed, he thought. There was an old headstone that tilted beside the path. He could have sworn it wasn’t there the day before when they had all been eating breakfast here. Yet there it was, now covered with moss and lichen. He bent down to read the inscription:
Also by Richard Hamilton and Sam Hearn
Cal and the Amazing Anti-Gravity Machine
Violet and the Mean and Rotten Pirates
Copyright © 2007 by Richard Hamilton
Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Sam Hearn
All rights reserved. You may not copy,
distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published in Great Britain in July 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published in the United States in November 2007 by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children's Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Electronic edition published in January 2013
www.bloomsburykids.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from his book, write to Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hamilton, Richard.
Jack Bolt and the highwaymen’s hideout / by Richard Hamilton.—illustrations by Sam Hearn.—1st U.S. ed.
p.cm.
Summary: While staying at his grandmother’s home, Jack finds a hole into the eighteenth century when a band of highwaymen tumble into his bedroom.
[1.Time travel—Fiction. 2. Robbers and outlaws—Fiction. 3. Grandmothers—Fiction.] I. Hearn, Sam, ill. II.Title.
PZ7.H182658Jac 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006027977
ISBN 978-1-61963-003-1 (e-book)
Jack Bolt and the Highwaymen's Hideout Page 10
