The Story of Cirrus Flux (2 page)

The Gallows Tree

F
or as long as anyone could remember, the children had been drawn to the Gallows Tree. The black twisted oak stood on the outskirts of the city, in the corner of a field not far from the dirt road leading to the hills of Hampstead and Highgate, several miles to the north. The oak was clearly visible from the upper windows of the Foundling Hospital, and the children liked nothing more than to gather under the spell of moonlight and whisper strange stories about the tree.

“Do you see that shadow in the topmost branches?” said Jonas one night as the boys prepared for bed. “Do you know what it is?”

The boys pressed closer to the window, ghosting the glass with their breath. They nodded as a small round shape detached itself from the gloom.

“What is it, Jonas?”

“Tell us.”

Jonas’s voice was dark and menacing. “Why, ’tis only Aaron’s head,” he said. “The boy who used to sleep in
that
bed.”

He pointed to a narrow cot, one of many that filled the room, causing the little boy who now owned it to cry out in fear. Barely five years old, the new boy had just left his wet nurse in the country and wasn’t yet used to life in the boys’ dormitory. His eyes widened in fright and large tears splotched the front of his nightshirt.

Voices circled the room.

“What happened, Jonas?”

“Go on. Pray tell.”

Jonas stood for a moment in front of his captive audience and then, like the Reverend Fairweather at the start of one of his sermons, raised a forefinger in the air. “Promise not to repeat a word I say. Not to the Governor, the Reverend, nor the Lord above. Do you promise?”

“We promise, Jonas.”

“We swear.”

The vow passed from mouth to mouth like a secret. Even Tobias, the new boy, managed to murmur his assent.

When at last the room was quiet, Jonas spoke. A thin, pale-faced boy, he had a shock of dark hair and rings of shadow, like bruises, round his eyes.

“Aaron took it upon himself to leave the hospital,” he said. “Tired of being a foundling, he was. Wanted to make his own way in the world.”

His gaze settled briefly on Bottle Top, who was stretched
out on his bed, pretending not to listen, and then traveled back to the other boys, who were sitting, cross-legged, on the floor.

“But all he met was Billy Shrike.”

“Billy Shrike?” asked the new boy uneasily.

“A cutthroat,” one of the others whispered.

The older boys knew that Jonas was lying—Aaron had been apprenticed to a wigmaker in the city—but Jonas was the most senior boy among them, one of the few who could read and write, and his mind was a gruesome compendium of details he had scavenged from the handbills and ballad sheets visitors sometimes left behind in the stalls of the chapel. He could tell you everything, from the names of the criminals in Newgate Prison to the lives of those condemned to hang. Billy Shrike was his most fearsome creation yet: a footpad who liked to stalk the fields by night and snatch young foundlings from their beds.

Jonas swept the hair out of his eyes and leaned toward Tobias. “The felon was waiting for Aaron near Black Mary’s Hole,” he said, “and slit his throat with a smile … and a rusty knife.”

The boy who had inherited Aaron’s bed now streaked to the chamber pot in the corner.

Jonas’s voice pursued him. “Billy put his head in the Gallows Tree to keep an eye on you, Tobias. To warn us not to let you escape. For, if you do, he’ll hunt you down and—”

“Stop it! You’re frightening him!”

Heads turned to find Bottle Top standing on his bed.
Dressed in a rumpled white nightshirt that came down to his knees, he looked like an enraged angel—except that his ankles were smeared with dirt and his wild flaxen hair shone messily in the moonlight. The air made a slight whistling noise as it passed between his teeth, which were chipped and cracked.

Jonas stepped toward him and, for a moment, the two boys glared at each other, face to face; then Jonas glanced at the new boy in the corner.

“Have we frightened you, Tobias?” he asked, with false kindness.

Tobias, crouched near the floor, looked from one boy to the other. Then he noticed the small gang slowly crowding round its leader and sniffed back his tears.

“No,” he mumbled. “I’m not frightened.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Bottle Top, throwing himself back on his bed and rolling over to face the wall, defeated. “The devil take you all!”

“Shhh! Someone’s coming,” said a voice from the opposite end of the room. Cirrus had pressed his ear closer to the door and was listening for any trace of movement. He backed away as he heard the first heavy footfall of the Governor on the stairs.

Quickly and quietly, the boys returned to their beds, while Cirrus rushed from window to window, closing the tall wooden shutters, which had been folded back to reveal the moonlit night outside. He gazed into the dark stretch of fields—at the wide expanse of grass and the huddled hills
beyond. Then, as he came to the last window, he noticed the Gallows Tree.

Sure enough, exactly as Jonas had said, there was a head-shaped shadow in the topmost branches; but now, standing beside the tree, there was also the unmistakable figure of a man. Cirrus could not distinguish him clearly, but the man appeared to be wearing a long black coat—just like a highwayman—and a three-cornered hat that obscured part of his brow. His hands were cupped round a flickering flame that cast an uncertain glow on what was exposed of his face. At first, Cirrus thought it might be a lantern, but, as he watched, the flame slowly escaped from the man’s fingers and rose in the air.

A key scraped in the lock.

Cirrus spun round and saw a thin wedge of light slide under the door. Immediately, he closed the wooden shutters, ran across to his bed and leapt under the covers. He lay perfectly still, hoping that his racing heart would not betray him.

Light seeped into the room and the short, stubby figure of Mr. Chalfont, the Governor, appeared. Carrying a candle, he trod up and down the dormitory, in between the rows of beds, checking on the boys, who all seemed to be sleeping peacefully, snoring at intervals.

Cirrus watched the steady advance of candlelight from under his blanket and sucked in his breath as it paused briefly above his head. He could smell the Governor’s familiar aroma of pipe smoke and brandy, and was reminded of those nights, many years ago, when Mr. Chalfont had taken him aside and
shown him the treasures in his study. He had been just a small boy then, no older than four or five, and more interested in the private stash of ginger, which the Governor kept in a tin in his desk, than the dramatic seascapes on the walls.

“Good night, lads,” said Mr. Chalfont at last, breaking into Cirrus’s thoughts. “Sleep tight.”

He made his way across the room, closed the door behind him and locked it.

Instantly, Cirrus was back at the window, peering outside. The figure with the lantern—if it had been a lantern—had gone and the tree was a stark silhouette, a solitary shadow by the side of the road. Cirrus quickly scanned the fields, but they were empty also. There was no sign of the mysterious stranger.

“What’re you looking at?” asked a timid voice from behind him. Tobias was sitting up, watching him with moist eyes. “Is it Aaron’s ghost?”

The other boys began to laugh, moaning and groaning like phantoms beneath their sheets, but Cirrus ignored them and padded over to the young boy’s bed.

“It’s nothing,” he said gently, tucking him in. “You’re safe here. Now go to sleep.”

Shivering slightly, he stepped back to the window, looked out once more and then, when he was absolutely certain no one was there, returned to his bed, near the unlit fireplace in the corner. Beside him, Bottle Top was muttering something under his breath, something to do with Jonas and the Gallows Tree.

“How about you and me sneak off tomorrow and show him, eh, Cirrus?” he said.

But Cirrus wasn’t listening. He was thinking of other things: of the strange figure beneath the tree and the ball of flame that had hovered momentarily in the air.

The Girl Behind the Curtain

T
he following morning Pandora was cleaning one of the upstairs windows when she noticed the two boys sneaking away from the hospital. They climbed the apple tree near the back of the garden, tied a rope to one of its overhanging branches and jumped over the surrounding wall, disappearing from view.

She watched for a while, then caught sight of her reflection imprisoned in the glass. A girl with a mutinous expression and ghastly hair—the victim of another of Mrs. Kickshaw’s haircuts—stared back. Pandora glowered in response. Why did she have to look like this, dress like this and do the same tedious housekeeping, day in and day out, while the boys were free to roam outside? It wasn’t fair.

She picked at the scarlet ribbon on her coarse brown uniform and found the answers lining up in her head like obedient schoolchildren:
because she was a girl; because she was a
foundling; because the Governor had kindly taken her in, fed her and clothed her since the week she was born; and because she had nowhere else in the world to go …

A small sigh escaped her and she watched as her doppelganger faded in the dull glass. Then, remembering the cloth in her hand, she halfheartedly began to wipe her sigh away.

Without warning, footsteps approached and the door opened. Instinctively, Pandora backed into the folds of the heavy, half-drawn curtain and made herself invisible. She grasped the keys in her apron pocket to keep them from jangling and peered cautiously round the edge of the curtain.

Mr. Chalfont, the Governor, looked in. A portly gentleman with spools of woolly white hair, he swept his eyes round the dimly lit chamber, misjudged it to be empty and stepped aside to admit the most breathtaking person Pandora had ever seen.

A tall, graceful woman, dressed entirely in silvery blue, strode into the room. A thousand tiny frost flowers seemed to shift and shimmer across the surface of her gown as she moved, and Pandora longed to stroke the fabric, wondering whether it would sting her fingers with cold. Then, with a shock, she drew back. The woman’s hair was coiled in an intricate system of loops and curls that stayed in place on their own; it was the most extraordinary thing she had ever seen.

Pandora blushed, touching her own scrub of curls, and felt the damp rag brush against her skin. There was no time now to dash the duster round the room, pretending to look busy. Nor could she politely excuse herself and leave. Mr. Chalfont
would surely suspect that she had been up to no good: napping, thieving or, worse, evading her chores … when all she had been doing,
really
, was gazing out of the window, wishing she could be somewhere, anywhere, else.

Yet here she was. Trapped.

Fortunately, neither Mr. Chalfont nor his visitor appeared to have noticed the gently swaying curtain or the hyperventilating girl now safely concealed behind it. There was only one thing for her to do: remain hidden.

Hitching up her skirts, Pandora climbed onto the window seat behind her and knelt on the plump velvet cushions. She pressed her eye to the partition in the fabric, curious to see what would happen.

“The boy,” said the woman presently, as Mr. Chalfont drew the dark wooden door shut behind them. It closed with a soft, furtive click. “Is he here?”

“Cirrus Flux?”

“You know very well the boy I mean. You received my letter, did you not?”

Mr. Chalfont moved toward the fire, though the day was neither wet nor cold—merely overcast and murky. Embers snoozed in the blackened hearth, but, brandishing a brass poker, he managed to prod them into life. Shadows began to prowl.

For a dreadful moment Pandora feared the Governor might open the curtain to let in more light, but he appeared to have other things on his mind. He kept his voice to a whisper and his motives to himself.

“I fear, dear lady, that we cannot oblige you,” he said, removing a letter from his frock-coat pocket and unfolding it in his hands. “Cirrus is but a child, and not the most agreeable child at that.”

His eyes drifted toward the window and Pandora cringed in her hiding place.