The Castaways (17 page)

I was still studying the stone when Mr. Goodfellow returned, bringing another of the familiar fish from my river. I recognized him at once as Dr. Kingsley, the buyer of corpses, for he looked no different than he had on the night old Worms had driven to his door with Jacob’s white body. He had the same pointed beard, black and sharp as the ace of spades, and the same unruly hair. Now he carried a shovel, and he trod right on the stone of Jacob Tin as he jabbed the blade into the ground.

If I looked familiar, he didn’t say so. He went straight to work, and we took turns digging, he and I, as Mr. Goodfellow grew ever more distraught. The hole widened and deepened, the sound of the shovel clanging through the churchyard. Dr. Kingsley wiped his brow and said, “It’s like the old days, when I did everything myself. But I never thought I’d dig up an
empty
grave.”

“It isn’t empty, you fool,” said Mr. Goodfellow. His hands were shaking. He kept looking into the fog, darting glances toward the hidden gate. “Dig, Kingsley, dig! There’s a thousand guineas in each strike of the shovel.”

“Why don’t you sit down, Goods?” said the doctor, with quiet calm. “You’ll have a stroke if you carry on like that.”

Mr. Goodfellow only snatched away the shovel and pushed it into
my
hands instead. “Hurry, Tom,” he said.

The ground had settled. But still I could follow the same shaft that Worms had cleared, and soon I was deeper than my own height, with a ragged square of yellow sky above me.

The shovel clinked against pebble and rock. I pushed and
pried. Then I dug in the blade, but there was no sound at all. I reached down and felt the crumbling cloth of my father’s old coat.

I remembered putting it on—so long ago, it seemed. There had been pencils in the pocket, pencils that he must have sold along the streets to pay for our food and rent. Now the coat was falling away at my touch, shredding apart as though woven from cobwebs.

“I don’t hear any digging,” said Mr. Goodfellow.

I groped through the soil, over the rotted cloth. Twice my heart leapt to my throat when I clutched on to something hard and sharp. But both times it was only a rock, and I began to wonder if Worms hadn’t kept the diamond after all. But at last I felt the huge hardness of the Jolly Stone, its edges unmistakable.

I pulled it right through the cloth of my father’s coat, and saw how it glowed with the fog light. Even down there in the dark it was bright as a star. It was certainly not a doorknob; it was nothing like a doorknob. Again I could feel its heat, the burning power of all its wealth. I turned it round in my hand, marveling that I had gone so far to come back and reclaim it.

“I have it,” I said.

“Pass it up, then,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “Pass it up, Tom!”

I would do no such thing. I suddenly realized that I was in a very dangerous place, as the hole was too deep for me to climb out by myself. I wondered if I wasn’t standing in my own grave.

Mr. Goodfellow was on his knees, reaching into the grave. There were sparkles of light gleaming from his cuff links and rings. A sprinkle of dirt came down from the edge.

“The diamond, Tom! Give me the diamond,” he bellowed.

I held the Jolly Stone in both hands, the riches of kings enclosed by my fingers. But I wasn’t about to give up my diamond as easily as that. “You’ll get it when you’ve kept the bargain,” I said. “Not before.”

“I only want to see it!” he cried, as petulant as a child. “I want to touch it. How do I know it isn’t a piece of glass?”

The doctor spoke calmly, but sharply. “Look here, Goods,” he said. “For the love of mercy, stop shouting at the boy. Step away, and I’ll help him up.”

Mr. Goodfellow’s round face withdrew from the top of the hole, and in its place came the doctor’s, with that devilish beard pointing right at me. “Hand me the stone, Tom,” he said. “I’ll hold on to it myself.”

“How do I know you’re not in league with him?” I asked, looking up.

Mr. Goodfellow screeched. “He’s a bleeding doctor, you fool! Why do you think I dragged him along? For his health? You didn’t trust
me;
I thought you might trust a bleeding
doctor!”

“Be quiet, Goods,” said the doctor, sternly. “Sit down there and don’t say a word.”

Another shower of dirt fell onto my shoulders. I squinted through a rain of fine dust.

“I don’t blame you for being suspicious,” said the doctor. “In your place I’d be the same. But if I’d come here to cheat you, don’t you think I’d have done it already? Wouldn’t I have clobbered you with a tombstone by now?”

Well, I could see he was right. But I dropped the Jolly Stone into my shirt before I reached for his outstretched hand. As he pulled, I scrambled to the surface, sprawling out on the grass.

“The Stone! The Stone!” said Mr. Goodfellow.

“Get ahold of yourself,” snapped the doctor. “I don’t want to be caught here in a graveyard, and nor do you. The boy’s got the diamond; he’s not running off with it.”

We didn’t bother to fill in the hole. We didn’t even bother to fetch out the shovel. Thieves couldn’t have moved any more quickly than us, and soon we were seated, all three, in Mr. Goodfellow’s carriage, rumbling back toward London. I
sat beside the doctor, facing forward, with Mr. Goodfellow across from us.

His knees were grass-stained, as though little green saucers had been stuck to his trousers. I, on the other hand, was smeared with dirt from head to toe. The doctor made a little joke about it. “You look like you crawled from a grave,” he said, though no one laughed but he.

Mr. Goodfellow was impatient. “The diamond,” he said, snapping his fingers at me. “Let’s see it, Tom.”

It was clear to me then that I wasn’t about to be killed for the Jolly Stone. Perhaps even a snake like Mr. Goodfellow had honor inside him. Or perhaps he was happy with a thought that he was cheating me, paying a pittance for a fortune. I reached into my shirt. He leaned forward on his seat, breathing hard.

The great diamond rested cold against my stomach. But I couldn’t resist pretending that I’d lost it. I groped here and there through my shirt as Mr. Goodfellow turned as white as his jacket.

“No!” he said. “No, this can’t be true.”

“Ho, ho!” laughed the doctor. “That’s enough now, boy. You’re a poor actor, and you’ll give him apoplexy.”

Even he fell silent when I brought out the Stone. His mouth fell open, his pointed beard stabbing at his chest. “My word!” he breathed. “Oh, my, it’s fabulous.”

Mr. Goodfellow was like a fat, purring cat. He actually drooled from the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were round and enormous.

In my palm the Jolly Stone glowed deep in its middle. Its hundred faces twinkled and shone. With the coach racing
along, in and out of the shadows of buildings, the light played over the diamond in ever-changing ways. The Stone was now amber, now nearly purple, now red as blood through and through.

“Please let me hold it,” said Mr. Goodfellow. He cupped his hands together. He reached so far, so eagerly, that he slid from his seat and came to his knees on the carriage floor. Still he held up his hands, suddenly made a beggar by his craving for the diamond.

This was the moment I’d been dreaming of and waiting for. As soon as he took the Jolly Stone he would take its curse as well. I would be freed of my worries, my bad luck outrun, and Mr. Goodfellow would begin a swift descent to ruin.

So why did I hesitate?

While I held the diamond, I was powerful and rich. I owned the wealth of kingdoms, the power to make even Mr. Goodfellow beg at my feet. But, even more, was a nagging question: Was the curse really true? Could the Jolly Stone actually wield such a force that it brought ruin to everyone who owned it?

Suddenly, the driver shouted above us. I heard the squeal of his brake, and a shift in the pattern of the horses’ clattering hooves. The carriage rocked sideways and jolted to a stop.

The Jolly Stone rolled from my hand. It was like a wheel of fire leaping from my palm to my fingers, over their tips and down.

Mr. Goodfellow caught it. He snatched it to his breast and held it tight. Slowly he breathed a great breath, and lifted the Stone to his lips.

Outside, there was shouting on the streets. I could see a costermonger’s cart overturned on its side, cabbages and apples spilled along the gutter. A black coach was stopped beside it, four horses in the harness. In their midst, between their hooves, lay a little girl in brown rags, and a crumpled basket of crumpled roses. There was a lot of redness on the ground, not all of it from petals.

Mr. Goodfellow had no mind for anything but the Jolly Stone. He fondled it and kissed it as a gathering crowd grew larger.

Dr. Kingsley reached across me and dropped the window open. “What’s all this, then?” he said. “You, boy! What’s happened?”

The boy who answered might have been any of those from the Darkey’s gang. He wore a filthy jacket frayed from the cuffs to the elbows, a hat with more holes than cloth, nearly legless trousers held up with bits of string. “The toff run her over, governor,” he said, touching his pathetic hat. “She didn’t see him coming, she didn’t.”

“Wasn’t she looking?” asked the doctor.

“She’s blind, sir,” said the boy. He pointed to the curb. “She was with that costermonger, sir.”

I saw a small, burly man at the side of the road. He was trying to guard his poor cabbages, shouting at the children—the men and women—who were trying to pilfer them. He scurried back and forth, snatching them up. But they tumbled from his arms as quickly as he collected them.

“That’s her father,” said the boy.

The carriage had thrown a wheel. Even as the flower girl
lay between the horses, men were trying to jack it up, to fit a new wheel on the hub. A man still sat inside, staring bleakly from a window.

Dr. Kingsley opened his door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” said Mr. Goodfellow

“To help that girl,” said he.

Mr. Goodfellow took his first look through the window. All he said was, “What a bother!”

We didn’t wait for the doctor. Mr. Goodfellow hammered at the roof, and the driver worked our carriage through the crowd. People moved aside to let us by, and the last I saw was Dr. Kingsley stooping down between the horses.

We coached directly to Mr. Goodfellow’s office. He never let go of the diamond, and I never asked him to. He carried it up to the third floor, down the row of clerks. He shouted, “Silbury!” Then he climbed up behind his desk, opened a drawer, and locked the Jolly Stone inside it.

Silbury came into the office. He glanced at me, but spoke to Mr. Goodfellow. “The pardons have arrived, sir. They’re in that yellow folder on your—”

“Yes, yes. Very well,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “Go down and find Mr. Roberts, will you?”

“Mr. Roberts, sir?”

“Have you gone deaf, Silbury? Find him and bring him here.”

“Yes, sir.”

I walked up to the desk, feeling ridiculously small behind it. “I’ve decided,” I said, “that I don’t want to join your company.”

Mr. Goodfellow raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you don’t?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I don’t want any of the things you offered me. I don’t want to be a gentleman.”

It seemed he couldn’t look in my eyes. He kept watching the door instead. “Well, what
do
you want, Tom? The Jolly Stone, I suppose; is that it?”

“No. The ship,” said I. “Give me the ship that I brought to the Pool. In exchange for the diamond, give me the ship.”

He stared at me for a moment, then answered with one short word. “Done.”

“And provisions for a voyage.”

“Done,” he said.

“And a captain and crew paid off for two years.”

“Done. What else?”

“That’s all,” I said.

“It’s nothing.” He drew a pad toward himself and scribbled a few lines. With that—a bit of ink and an instant of his time—he gave me all that I wished, and it seemed like untold riches to me. I didn’t want to live in a place where a blind girl was of less importance than a carriage wheel, of less value than cabbages. I couldn’t wait to be away from London, away from the fog and the crowds and the people like Mr. Goodfellow. I would go back to the southern seas and search for my father. I would “do him proud,” in the way that he must really have hoped that I would.

Mr. Goodfellow slid the paper toward me. He did it slowly, as though he had second thoughts about the whole business. I could hear Silbury coming back through the halls, now with a second set of shoes tapping along with his.

“Well, Tom,” said Mr. Goodfellow. “A year ago I would
have signed over the ship, and taken the diamond, and that would have been the end of it. But now …” He spread his hands apart. “Well, I confess to a worry about this. You’ve grown wiser and stronger, and one day you might come back and claim the Jolly Stone. You might say you weren’t fully paid, or that I cheated it from you.”

“I won’t do that,” I said. “You have my word.”

He laughed. “Your
word
! You wouldn’t take mine, would you? Well, my boy, I trust no one. Especially a Tin.”

The footfalls were louder, the men very close. Mr. Goodfellow wore his look of smug pleasure. “You’re already like your father,” he said. “You’ll come to the same miserable end, I’m sure. Do you know he stood where you’re standing now, a pigeon waiting for crumbs to be tossed in his direction?”

“My father never begged from you, and nor will I.” We glared at each other across that huge desk. “Give me the paper, Mr. Goodfellow, if you have any honor left at all.”

Silbury and his companion entered the office, their footfalls suddenly stopping. Mr. Goodfellow put his fat palm on the paper and drew it back toward himself. In a voice that was deep and loud he said, “Mr. Roberts!”

The man answered from behind me. “Yes, sir. Here, sir.”

I turned to see a very hairy fellow in a very shiny uniform. He must have fancied himself as a king’s guard, judging by all the gold tape he’d sewn to his clothes. He looked like a drum major, but he was no more than a policeman of sorts.

“Look at this boy!” intoned Mr. Goodfellow. “He’s trying to rob me!”