Lionboy (12 page)

“The cats at home,” he said, “my friends, told me that I should ask a cat, if in doubt . . . My parents, you see, have been stolen away, though I don’t know exactly why, or where they are being taken, but the river cats said they were on a ship going out to sea, to France, and I wonder—have you heard anything?”

The oldest lion half-smiled again, in such a sad way that Charlie felt a tweak in his heart.

“I hear nothing, boy,” said the lion. “I live in the dark, I go nowhere, I see no one. My wives live in the dark, they go nowhere, they see no one. We eat dead meat; we stay still. From time to time we are taken out by that human and made to do tricks, like a monkey begging for a nut. We are made to pretend to fight. We pretend to fight. We are made to pretend to beg. We pretend to beg. We don’t hear anything. Who would tell us anything? We used to be lions, boy. We used to know things. We know nothing now.” He gave a soft shivering snort at the end of this speech, and Charlie felt its sadness cold and deep within him. That so beautiful, powerful, and magnificent a creature could say such despondent things—it seemed so wrong. A lion should not be like this.

The young lion hung his head, but there was an angry energy coming off him that he seemed to be trying to squash. The lionesses licked their paws quietly, perhaps pretending not to hear, perhaps too sad to do anything else. The young girl cub had her mouth folded tight, as if she were trying hard not to say anything.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Oh, we’re not upset,” said the oldest lion. “That’s the problem. We should be—we should be very upset indeed. We should be raging and roaring and plotting and scheming and
escaping
. But we’re not. We’re just lying about . . .” And at this he rolled over, hiding his face, and the other lions all looked away in shame and embarrassment. Charlie too felt embarrassed.

The sound of Maccomo humming one of his tuneless tunes flickered from the doorway. The lions looked up, and away. The oldest lion turned his back, and went to lie by the wall.

The young lion leaned forward and touched his nose to Charlie’s hand. “Come back later,” he whispered, just as Maccomo’s shadow fell across the doorway. The young lion looked as if he had made up his mind about something. “Come back later and I’ll tell you everything.”

CHAPTER 10

F
or the rest of that morning Maccomo kept Charlie busy explaining to him the workings of the equipment in the ring, the ring cage (as the chain-mail tent was called), the lionpassage from the cages to the ring, and the various other bits and pieces involved in the act.

“It is an act
en férocité,
” he explained, smoking another of his smelly little cigarettes and looking at Charlie out of the corners of his eyes as he demonstrated the workings of the lionpassage gate. “The lions appear to be ferocious with me, and I with them. But in fact we love each other.”

Love? thought Charlie. Hmmm. Not sure about that.

Then it was time to feed them. The meat was kept in the enormous galley fridge, as big as a room, along with the food for the sailors and circus people, and Charlie had to fetch it every couple of days. The lions didn’t eat every day. In addition, they had their water, which had to be kept fresh and clean, and their medicine, which they took every day in their water. This Maccomo saw to himself. After they had their medicine, Maccomo went and lay on the floor in the lionchamber, outside the cages, wrapped in his crimson cloth against the cold, and smoked and sang in a peculiar language that Charlie had never heard before.

Every now and then during the morning Charlie and the young lion looked meaningfully at each other, but with Maccomo having his rest, there was no chance to talk. It would have to be later. Charlie was desperately impatient.

The singing put Charlie in mind of the strange, exciting music he had heard the first time he saw the circus ship. As Maccomo was settled in the lionchamber, giving Charlie no opportunity to be alone with the young lion, Charlie decided to go and find Pirouette or Madame Barbue and ask them about the music to take his mind off it. But Madame Barbue was shaving her legs, and told him, from behind the bathroom door, that Pirouette was rehearsing in the big top and mustn’t be disturbed. So Charlie wandered back to the ropelocker in search of Julius, but Julius’s father had fallen off a stepladder practicing one of the clowns’ knockabout scenes with the monkeys, and Julius had to hold ice on his father’s leg, otherwise it would never be better by the time they got to Paris.

“So when are we getting there?” asked Charlie, surprised, because as far as he could tell they were miles from land and hadn’t even seen France yet. Which was, come to think of it, odd, after three days at sea.

“Oh, that’s because we strike a course down the middle of the channel,” said Julius. “If we go too close to shore, people yell for us to come in and do the show, and then the monkeys get overexcited and make so much noise whooping and chattering that all the other animals get worked up, so the skipper keeps out to sea. France is just over there to port. We’ll be coming in this afternoon, in time to restock in Le Havre and then head up the Seine with the tide tomorrow. We’ll make Rouen by tomorrow night, probably. You should talk to the sailorguys, then you’d know what’s going on.”

As Julius was stuck with his dad’s ice pack, he was not available to show Charlie where the music had come from. “Ask Hans,” he said. “He’ll take you down there.”

Charlie found Hans covered in mud as usual, sitting in the Learned Pig’s pigsty. He was eating cake and playing with a kitten and looking sad.

“What’s the matter?” asked Charlie.

“The Learned Pig is not learned enough,” said Hans. “There is a Learned Little Horse in France who is doing algebra, but the Learned Pig only does addition and subtraction and multiplication and division.”

“But how can a pig possibly do that?” Charlie burst out. “Or a horse, I mean . . . it’s hard enough for human kids. How can animals do it?”

Hans looked up, and for once he seemed happy. He was delighted that Charlie didn’t know. “Oh,” he said mysteriously. “I can’t possibly tell you. Couldn’t possibly. You’ll have to wait and see—see the show, I mean, and then you’ll see that he just is very learned.”

Charlie looked at the big, solid, tubular pig that lay snoozing at Hans’s feet, his white eyelashes resting on his hairy pink cheek. He looked about as clever as a piece of lard: i.e., about as dumb as a dumb animal can get.

But then, most people don’t know that cats talk.

Charlie wondered about the pig. Could he talk? He really didn’t look as if he would have anything very interesting to say. Hans leaned forward and scratched him between the ears and he snuffled in his sleep, in a rather endearing way.

Charlie sighed.

“Tell me about the music, Hans,” he said. “When I was brought on board there was the most wonderful music going on. Sort of wheezing and droning and pumping and singing, all at once. Like an accordion, only not.”

“Ah,” said Hans. “That’s the Calliope.”

“Ca-what-appy?” said Charlie.

“Calliope,” said Hans.

“Ah,” said Charlie, none the wiser.

“She’s a sort of organ,” said Hans. “She’s fantastic. Do you want to see her? Let’s go and look.” And in a second, both boys were off down the deck, Hans still clutching the kitten and Charlie hurtling behind, not wanting to lose him.

“Steady on, you two,” cried a sailor as they skidded past him, not quite knocking over the elegant coils of rope that he had been laying out.

“Sorreee!”
they shouted, and dipped down a hatch on the other side of the stern.

This companionway was not like the others Charlie had seen so far. It was not wide and paneled and elegant, for members of the public to come down on their way to the big top. It was not dark and cramped like the low passages leading to the storage areas in the hold, nor slightly smelly of warmth and hay like the ones leading to the animals’ quarters. It was quite narrow all right, but it smelled of coal and engine oil, and it was getting noisier and hotter with every step.

“We’re right above the engines,” said Hans, shouting to make himself heard above the rushing hiss and roar of engine noise, clanging beams and thumping steam.

“Why?” yelled Charlie. “How can they hear the music with all this racket?”

“The music is part of the racket!” shouted Hans, and stopping quickly in the passageway, he banged on a small door, as loudly as so small a boy could. There was no reply, and Hans flung open the door and hauled Charlie inside, slamming the door closed again behind him.

Inside was just as hot but only about half as noisy—which was still, Charlie thought, noisy enough. The room was long but narrow, and the whole length of the long wall was taken up with three great keyboards—like a piano, but longer, and deeper, and colored green and pink instead of the normal black and white. Below were three great pedals of polished iron; above, and in little sections to the side, were a number of curious pegs and handles, each with a label written in old-fashioned writing on a piece of what looked like ivory. Rising above the whole setup were rows of what looked like metal tubes or pipes; the bases visible and the rest disappearing up through the ceiling and goodness knows where.

“What on earth is it?” cried Charlie.

“She’s a kind of organ,” said Hans. “Those tubes”—he pointed upward—“are her pipes—like whistles—and the steam from the steam engine plays her. Like when a kettle whistles. Then all these handles and pedals make different kinds of noise come out, and the keyboard is for playing the tune.”

“Can I try it?” cried Charlie, who quite enjoyed playing the piano, and had once seen a church organ when a cousin got married.

“No way,” said Hans. “Major Tib would kill you. It’s the loudest thing you ever heard. You’ll see when we get to Paris. We always play it so that people can hear that we’ve arrived—like an ice cream truck. The sound goes for miles. But you know what? It’s a horrible noise.”

“I heard it on the river,” said Charlie. “I remember it.” He didn’t think it was a horrible noise. He thought it was incredibly exciting. He longed to hear it again.

 

When Maccomo went to bathe after lunch, Charlie was finally able to speak to the young lion. He pulled up a bale of hay close to the side of the young lion’s cage, and they spoke quietly and intently.

“So,” said Charlie, “tell me everything.”

“There’s two things,” said the young lion, his yellow eyes aglow. “First, what you want to hear. At Greenwich, before we set sail, one of the dockyard cats came sniffing around and ended up in here. He was looking for you. I didn’t realize because I hadn’t met you then—but he was talking about the Cat-speaking boy and the missing parents whom all cats love, and saying they were being taken to Paris and the boy must be told. So that’s great for you because we
are
going to Paris. So you’re on track. Are you pleased?”

Charlie had such a smile on his face. The lion could see that his news had made Charlie so happy that he needed a moment to let it sink in.

“They’re on board the
SharkHawk,
” he continued. “The
SharkHawk
cat was telling everybody, apparently—he was desperate for the news to get through. His girlfriend’s cousin is a Ruins Cat, and was very firm that these humans shouldn’t be lost.”

Charlie smiled. Good for the Ruins Cats.

“So they’re probably just ahead of us,” he said. “Do you think?”

“Yes,” said the lion. “They can’t be far ahead.”

“So if I keep my eyes open,” said Charlie, “I might see the ship! The
SharkHawk!
Then in Paris will we—”

But the young lion interrupted. “You won’t see her,” he said.

“Why not?” said Charlie.

“The
SharkHawk
is a submarine.”

A submarine! Charlie felt his stomach wobble for a moment. Knowing that his mum and dad were going to the same place as he was great. Knowing they were going by a submarine, under water, with the entire cold, dark sea echoing around them and tons of water on top of them, and perhaps strange pale sea creatures staring in through the submarine’s portholes at them with baleful, scary eyes . . . that was . . . not great. But they were nearby: That was good. And they were going to Paris and so was Charlie, and that was the best news in days.

The young lion asked, “Why were they taken, Charlie? Do you know who has them?” He had a warm sympathy in his eyes, and in a rush of understanding Charlie knew why: Because the lions too had been stolen away from their liberty, from their families, from their own lives.

“I believe they were taken because they know something,” said Charlie simply. “They are scientists. I think they must have made a discovery, and somebody else wants it, or . . . I don’t know. But it must be something like that.”

“And what is the discovery?”