The Castaways (21 page)

The pigeons whirred through the air, veering away from the dangling nets and the ropes. They rose in spirals from the floor to the rafters, and settled there with a mad cooing and muttering that slowly faded.

The room was so quiet then that I could hear the birds’ tiny claws shuffling on the wooden beams. I smelled tarry rope and tallow, pigeons and rats and rotted wood. I heard a shuffle and rustle of some sort of animal.

The warehouse was long abandoned. The nets were so stiff with age that they might have been standing upright on their swirls and folds. They were like black columns made of rope and ancient mud, decorated with brittle shells of crab and mussel.

I took a few steps into the building. My feet slid away from me before I looked down to see the layer of bird droppings on the floor. Stamped into them was a double line of footprints, one leading away from the door, one leading back, and both vanishing into the murky gloom of the old warehouse.

I followed them warily, turning at every creak and flutter, looking all around with every step. They led me round the nets and ropes, past the mountain of cork, to the ladder that rose to the loft. Then they turned behind a stack of wooden crates, and ended at a door that was latched with a heavy bolt.

The metal screeched as I drew the bolt. The hinges must not have been oiled since Nelson’s days.

Behind the door was a flight of stairs, descending to a darkness so deep that it might have had no bottom.

I stood at the top and called down, in little more than a whisper. “Midgely?”

My echo might have been someone else’s voice, it sounded so timid and wary. I tried again, more forcefully. “Midge! Are you there?”

An answer came, but not in words. There was a strangled sort of groan, and a series of taps—three in a row, and three again. It stirred the pigeons on their high rafters.

I wasn’t eager to go down into the darkness, but knew that I had to. I fetched a fishing cork from the big pile—it was nearly the size of a football—and used it to wedge the door open. Then I looked for a lantern, certain I would find one. Only a blind man, I thought, would use those stairs without a light.

With that, a sudden terror leapt to my mind. Down in the darkness there was not Calliope, but the old mud lark who’d wrestled me for the Jolly Stone! I was certain of it. That wordless cry had been his croaking voice. He was there in his filthy clothes, listening for me now, turning his head with that black bandage wrapped round his eyes.

The stairs trembled. My fear doubled in an instant. I imagined him crawling toward me, creeping up the stairs like a bat.

More frantic now, I searched for a lantern hung at the top of the stairs. I found a shelf—a nook—and then a candle and an old tinderbox. And I crouched on the floor, striking sparks from the flint, until the tinder glowed. I blew up a flame and got the candle going.

Its light seemed to bound down the stairs. I could see four or five steps, and not a blind man upon them. I started down, and with each stair I descended, another appeared. I tensed every muscle, expecting any instant that the blind man—or Calliope King—would come flying up at me.

Again the staircase shook. I nearly tumbled over the edge, for there was no banister to stop me. But I managed to keep my balance, and as I descended again I saw—between the steps—a person’s hand holding on to the wood.

What a start that gave me! The fingers reaching from the blackness beneath the stairs, the arm stretching into it, might have belonged to a creature from my childhood nightmares. Gingerly, I crouched down and held out the candle.

A face appeared in the flickering light. It was smeared with dirt. There was a bandage covering half of it, filling the mouth. But I could see the nose and the eyes and the hair, and I knew at once I’d found Midgely

“Oh, Midge!” I said.

I ran the rest of the way, down the stairs and around behind them. The cellar had an even greater stench of cats and rats and waste, but I paid no mind to anything except Midgely. He was tied to a post, and his hands were tied to
the stairs above him. He could neither stand straight nor sit down.

How I cursed Calliope King! I couldn’t believe she was as cruel as that, to leave a boy who adored her tied and gagged in a cellar. I had misjudged others, but none so badly as Calliope.

I balanced my candle on the bare earth and tore the bandage from Midgely’s face. I put my arms around him and held him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Midge, I’m so sorry. I was taken away to the hulks, and—”

“It’s all right. It don’t matter now,” said Midge. “I knew you’d come for me, Tom.”

I started on the ropes that bound his hands, and all the time he kept talking.

“I’ve been waiting ages, ain’t I Tom? But I never gave up hope. And you know something, Tom? I think you’ve come in the nick of time. I really do.”

“Where’s Calliope?” I asked as I struggled with the knots. They were good and strong; they were sailors’ knots.

“I don’t know where she is,” said Midgely. “Did she come looking for me, Tom?”

I thought he’d gone stupid. “She snatched you from the ship. She brought you here, didn’t she?”

“No,” he said, in the most puzzled way.

“Then who?”

“Mr. Horrible.”

The imaginary man? Now I was certain that Midge had gone off his head.

“But you know who he is, Tom?” Midgely shook his hands as they came free from the rope. He touched my
shoulders and my arms. “Mr. Moyle, that’s who. It was Mr. Moyle in that box the King brought aboard.”

“But he drowned,” I said. “How did that castaway—”

“He crawled himself to shore. That’s what he told me, Tom.” Midge held on to my sleeve. “He got under the dock and pulled himself along. The King and Calliope brought him aboard in that coffin.”

I remembered how we’d all lent a hand to carry that thing. Calliope had persuaded us to leave it unopened.

“The King told Mr. Moyle to take me away,” said Midge. “ ‘Hide him and wait for my word,’ that’s what he told him. But Mr. Moyle’s tired of waiting now. He’s gone to fetch his cleaver, and then he’s coming back. He’s going to butcher me, Tom.”

“Mr. Moyle eats children.”
So Mr. Beezley had said. But I hadn’t believed it then, and I didn’t believe it now. “He wouldn’t really do it,” I said.

“Oh, yes, he would, Tom,” said Midge. “We have to clear out before he comes back.”

I wasn’t going to argue with
that
. I thought I’d left Mr. Moyle lying drowned in a tangle of chain, and the last thing I wanted was to face him again. I went at the next set of knots in a great hurry, but Midge wasn’t merely
tied
to the post; he was seized there, like a nipper to an anchor line.

I picked up the candle and started to burn through the rope. It was the old, tarry hemp from the floor above us, and a black smoke—and a smoldering flame—soon appeared. Brighter than my candle, it pushed away the blackness, and I could look farther into the cellar than I’d seen before.

In the shadows on the floor I made out the ring of a fire
pit, a circle of brick and stone. Beside it, in a little brown heap, was a frayed jacket and the sort of cloth cap that a boy might have worn. There were other things there—a black pot and white bones, and still others that didn’t bear to be thought about. They made it clear to me that Mr. Beezley had spoken the truth long ago. Mr. Moyle really did eat children.

I turned away from the gruesome sights and attacked the rope with a new urgency. I twisted and pulled at the charred strands. Two of them popped apart, and a third soon after, but Midge seemed to be bound to the post as tightly as ever.

There was a burst of noise above us. In the huge room, the pigeons took flight. We heard their wings and their cooing cries, then the sound of footfalls on the floor.

“Holy jumping mother of Moses! Here he comes,” said Midge.

We listened to the thumps of shoes and the creaks of wood as whoever was up there came closer. I prayed that it would be a lazy navvy shirking his job, or even a thief come prowling through the warehouse. I couldn’t shake away the
thought that I’d left Mr. Moyle for dead, and that if he was coming back now it would be as one of the shambling dead men who had haunted my dreams of the sea.

I turned my head to follow the sounds. The person came steadily, unerringly, toward the door at the top of the steps. I bent down and blew out my candle.

The cellar went utterly black. There was only a red glow from each parted strand of rope—six little eyes smoldering up from the ground.

“I’m coming, boy.” It was Mr. Moyle. “I’ve brought the cleaver now.”

My heart shuddered. Of all the people I’d met along my journey, Mr. Moyle was the one I feared the most. I would never forget the yellow man from Newgate, or the dying convict on Mr. Mullock’s island, not the blind beggar or the bone grubber or anyone else. But Mr. Moyle was the worst.

“The little King, he played me for a fool,” said Mr. Moyle in his growling voice. “Well, I’m done with waiting; it’s the end for you, boy.”

I held Midgely “Don’t say a word,” I told him. “Don’t make a sound.”

The footfalls ended. There was a squelching noise from the cork I’d used to wedge the door. Then the hinges squealed, and Mr. Moyle stood at the very top of the stairs, with his shadow lying in zigzags on the steps. I listened with dread to the sound of him breathing.

“Now who is it can’t close a door behind him?” he said. “Who’s down there with you, boy?”

His voice was enough to give me the shivers. But his next words sent my heart leaping to my throat.

“Must be Tom Tin,” he said. “Good old Tom Tin. Who else would bother with a blind boy?”

I felt Midgely tremble. I held him by the shoulders, and we waited in the darkness.

“Speak up, Tom,” said Mr. Moyle. “Sing out, lad.”

I peered up between the stairs. The pigeons had settled again, leaving a swirl of dust in the air. I couldn’t quite see Mr. Moyle, but I could hear him breathing at the top of the steps. I saw flickers of light darting along the wall, yellow spots that flared and dimmed.

I couldn’t make sense of those at first. But when I heard the sound of metal striking wood I knew what he was up to. I could see him in my mind’s eye, turning and twisting the cleaver, using the blade as a reflector to light up the nooks and crannies.

I called out boldly. “Are you looking for your candle, Mr. Moyle? I’ve got it here.”

He drew a startled breath. It pleased me that I’d surprised him.

“Blast you, boy,” he said. “Well, never mind; you’re no match for me.”

Mr. Moyle started down the steps. The soles of his boots came into my view, then his barrel chest and the shining cleaver. Before I could move, his piglike face was there, and he saw me looking, and he laughed. “Why, there you are. Like a frightened little mouse,” he said.

With that, Mr. Moyle reached back. The cork squelched, the hinges screeched, and the door slammed shut behind him. The darkness was absolute.

“We’re all in the same boat now,” said Mr. Moyle.

Down he came, step by step.

The only light in the whole cellar came from the glowing rope ends at my feet. They didn’t cast enough glow that I could see my own shoes, let alone Midgely or Mr. Moyle. The idea that I would have to wrestle with the man in such blackness was almost more than I could bear.

The staircase was shaking. Each step took his weight with a creak and a groan.

Midgely struggled in my arms. The rope pulled and stretched, and he tried to twist away. I took a firmer hold on his shoulders, but he shouted at me. “Don’t!”

Mr. Moyle stopped. “Now, now,” he said. “Shouting won’t do you no good. It’ll all be over soon enough.”

He came down another step, but where he was I didn’t know. Each time he moved, a gritty shower of dust and dirt fell around me.

Midgely kept struggling. I thought he was terrified, and held him closer. In a loud whisper he said, “Let me go!”

His hands came loose. I felt him stretching the ropes, reaching toward the staircase.

Suddenly, Mr. Moyle screamed.

There was a dim, red streak as his cleaver went flying. Then he toppled forward and crashed onto the steps. He tumbled to the bottom, landing in the dirt with a thud.

“I did it, Tom,” cried Midgely. “I grabbed him by his ankles, Tom.”

The sounds had frightened the pigeons. I could hear nothing but the whirl of their flying. They took a long minute or more to settle again, and then the silence in the cellar was
as thick as the darkness. I listened so hard that I could hear the faraway hammering from Fishmongers’ Hall, and the first sad howl of a foghorn.

“He ain’t moving,” said Midgely. “I think he’s hopped the twig.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“You’ll have to go and look, Tom.”

It scared me to leave our little hole beneath the steps. What if Mr. Moyle had crawled away while the birds were flying, and was even now creeping toward us? I picked up two of the glowing bits of rope and tried to breathe flames into the ends of them. But one went out, and then the other, the little red eyes closing, as though a small creature had just died in my hands.

“Go and look, Tom,” said Midge again.

I felt my way from underneath the stairs, and down their length, until I found Mr. Moyle. My hand fell upon his trousered leg. I pushed and pulled, and it was like shaking a fat sausage. There was not a twitch of muscles, not a sign of life.

“Tom?” said Midgely.

“It’s all right,” I told him. “I think he’s dead.”

I went to the top of the stairs and opened the door. As the light spilled in, I saw Mr. Moyle crumpled in the dirt. He was sideways and crooked, lying on his chest and cheek. Scattered round his head were a few brown beads. Or so I thought at first; they were really his rotted teeth, knocked from his head by his fall.

I saw the cleaver gleaming beside the stairs. I wedged the
door again, went down and fetched it, and chopped away the ropes at Midgely’s back. He nearly fell forward, but I caught him, and helped him out from under the stairs.

He said he could stand on his own. “I’m right as rain,” he told me. So I let him go, rather gingerly. He went straight to Mr. Moyle, bent down, and touched the man as I had done. Then he kicked him. And he punched him. And he kicked and punched and started weeping.