The Terror Time Spies (4 page)

As the Bonespair children walked on down towards the lodge, at the bottom of the long drive, with its homely plume of smoke rising from a little stone chimney, from the big house not even the vigilant English secret agents noticed a shadowy figure beginning to follow them through the long avenue of trees. 

The stranger was in an austere black coat, and he had arrived in England just a day earlier, on the express orders of the terrible Committee of Public Security.

“Peurette,” hissed another Frenchman, stepping up too, and also dressed in a long frock coat and tight black leather gloves:  Frenchie gloves. 

The first stranger squeezed his left wrist with his right hand, as if strangling something.

“Yes Deforlage,” he acknowledged, with a sinister smile.

“You think it’s
them
, Peurette - the children?

“In which we learn of an Itinerary, false starts, a kidnapping and the Club forms.”

The great morning
was here
at last and now the excitement in leafy Peckham was unbearable for the Rat Catchers. 

Nellie and Henry Bonespair had hardly got any sleep at all, dreaming of their great adventure, of guillotines, revolutionaries and terrible Paris, giving Eleanor a horrible nightmare but making Henry’s ache to get going even more painful.

Now their mother Charlotte Bonespair was ringing her hands desperately in the little lodge house kitchen.  

The woman was in her mid thirties, with soft green eyes and a kindly smile.  Her tummy was very big indeed, nearing the end of her new pregnancy, which made Spike look at her a little nervously, sitting at the kitchen table now, kicking her heels.

She was dressed in a neat little floral dress that the tom-boy loathed.  Spike suddenly wanted to dive under the table and hide.  Her brother sat opposite Eleanor, the Chronometer strung proudly around his neck.   

At 7am that same morning Hal had carefully wound the delicate little gold winding screw and set it precisely by their Grandmother clock in the hall.  He was so proud of his present, he even wanted to show it to pretty Juliette St Honoré. 

Henry blushed as he thought of it and felt very strange.  Just the week before the pretty French aristocrat had come on his gang, while Henry was inventing another story about the Scarlet Pimpernel, and threatening loudly to bash some more Frenchies on the nose.    

Rather than enjoying the joke though, the serious minded French teenager had ticked them off for playing anything at all, when
real
families were dying abroad, and real children too.    

Henry Bonespair had reddened and insisted that he and Spike were only trying to help.

   “
’elp?! And how could a game ‘elp, Monsieur? This Pampernelle’s a fable, but if real, an aristocrat, and a MAN, not a silly Land Agent’s boy.  Grow up.”

Monsieur!  Henry was only fourteen.  Even worse though, that afternoon Juliette St Honoré had then seen him and Spike trying to avoid a group of local roughs and called Henry a coward, to his face.

“
Havagal
,” whispered Nellie suddenly. 

It was the most secret language of the Rat Catchers, called
Avagum. 
To speak it meant you stuck an ‘
avaga
’ in the middle of words and hoped no one unwanted understood you.  Especially not the enemy adults. 

Henry heard it, but felt water in his ear still and tried to ring it out with a finger.  It irritated him as much as the scratchy rash on his neck.

“
Yavagess, Spavagike?”

“Skavagip-avager.”

Charlotte Bonespair had turned away to boil some water though and Spike resorted to plain English now. 

“Skipper,” she hissed, “When we get back again, Hal, can Skipper join too...take the ‘nitiation, I mean?  Pleeease.  Or we can ask him on the road.  He’ll be a great Rat Catcher.”

Henry Bonespair frowned, because he had not told Nellie that he thought it was time they formed a rather different gang. 

Besides, the boys had fought last summer, when he and Skipper had first met and big Skipper had made a joke about the size of Henry’s nose.  He was a little jealous of this newly flourishing friendship with his sister too. 

“Not now, Spike.  We’re about to leave.  I can’t wait any longer.”

Across the kitchen their mother was thinking grimly of their terrifying journey. 

At first Charlotte had opposed it frantically, but then, when she realised her complaints were useless, she had insisted that her husband draw up a very exact itinerary, that was sitting on the kitchen table now:

Days One to Three
– Coach from Peckham to Dover.  First Eve Staying at
NightWatch Inn
.  Next day, pick up Francis Simpkins.  Second Night -
King’s Head
.  Rooms Prepaid.  Third Night.  Dover –
The Eagle
.  Payment owing.  Day Four.  Packet from Dover Docks. 
Spirit of Endeavour
…

So the carefully planned journey went on, all the way to revolting Paris and back again. 

Everything seemed set, but poor Charlotte was very flustered indeed now.  It was already half past ten, but there was no sign of her husband Simon at all. 

“Francis,” she said suddenly, “I hope his aunt will have the poor boy ready.  There must be no hiccups at all.”

Henry suddenly looked delighted.  Francis Simpkins was his best friend from their London school and the 2
^nd
Rat Catcher too, but with the sickness in London, his nervous Quaker parents had sent Francis to stay with his aunt, in her home on the Dover road, in a village called Fule. 

Hal couldn’t wait to see him again and show Francis his new watch too.  They were rather unlikely friends, Henry so confident and adventurous, Francis so shy and meticulous, but they shared a certain sensitivity and an interest in everything around them.

“Ma,” said Spike though, “Inside your tummy, ma….  Do you think our new Bonespair will be a…”

“Boy,” said Henry sharply and with that they heard hooves outside.   

Little Spike sprang up first and raced to the door, and outside came Mr Wickham’s second best coach, its great round wheels spinning beautifully, spitting out shards of mud and gravel.  They were about to get underway.

Arthur Holmwood and his son Horace, known as Skipper, were sitting on the pillion.  Skipper was a huge lad, with large, flapping ears, almost as big as his father, a body too big for him, and a great mop of greasy brown hair tumbling about his ruddy face.  He was the sort of boy who looks perpetually awkward.

         Skip was not too bright either and often jealous of the Bonespair children, running about the Master’s estate as freely as wild little hooligans. 

Well, he was jealous of Henry Bonespair, at least, although secretly Skipper wished that they could make friends too.  Spike and he had met the summer before, but only this year become firm friends.

Mr Wickham’s second coachman, Arthur Holmwood, was totally bald and with a neck like the bull. He reigned in the animals with a loud ‘WOW THERE’ then jumped down onto the gravel, giving a little bow to Mrs Bonespair.   

“Hello Skip,” cried Spike, who reached into his pocket and threw something down. 

“For you, Spikey,” he called,  “Made it, meself, for the road.”

“A catapult,” cried the little girl delightedly, “Wow, Skip.  Thanks ever so.”

Skipper beamed but Charlotte Bonespair looked at her daughter in horror.

“All set then?” asked Skipper’s father, “We must be leaving soon, Maam.”

Henry wanted to explode with excitement now.

 “Don’t I know it, Mr Holmwood?” sighed Charlotte, wondering if she should try to comb Spike’s messy hair, “but my husband rode off at dawn and he isn’t back yet.”  

The coachman frowned, as Skipper looked down at Henry loftily from his vantage point and raised an eyebrow.  He suddenly hated being a servant.

“Well, I’ll put the bags aboard, Maam? Come help your pa, Skip lad.”

Skipper Holmwood jumped down too, heavily, and found himself right in front of Hal, rather smaller than Holmwood, but baring the way.  The two boys glared, but Henry blushed slightly and stepped aside and Skipper followed his father into the house. 

“I wish I was coming with you, my terrors,” said Charlotte hotly, wishing no such thing, “as least to Dover.  Children need their mother.  Oh, heavens.”

“Don’t call us children, mother,” said Henry sharply though, “I’m fourteen now, and we’ll be safe in Paris, with Granny and Pa.”

“NON, Henri,” cried a sharp voice. 

They all swung round to see the old Comtesse St Honoré, a shaking, bird-like lady, in a deal of lavender finery, who had just appeared beside the carriage, in a billowing taffeta dress.  Behind her stood her sixteen year old daughter Juliette St Honoré, in a plain cotton frock. 

Henry Bonespair blushed immediately and held his large nose.  Juliette looked so charming, her straw blonde hair in a neat bob, on her high, intelligent forehead.  She was looking rather suspiciously at the carriage though, because Juliette adored the open air and the countryside and it all looked horribly cramped and uncomfortable.

“Madame Bonespair,” said the Constance St Honoré loftily, “We ‘ave stopped to plead with you NOT to take your poor children to murderous Paris, for however short a time.”

Charlotte felt a sharp pain in her back, as Constance eyed her rather simple clothes, wondering if she should ask the Countess inside and thinking better of it. 

“Thank you, Countess,” said the English woman, agreeing completely, yet not wanting to frighten her children either, “But I don’t think it’s as bad as all…”

“Bad?” snapped the Comtesse, “It is
far
worse.  Peasants, murderers and thieves, woman, talking lies.  ‘Liberté and Egalité’? As if such a thing could ever be as Equality, and now those murderers even abolish God!  The Devil himself is loose in Paris, Madame, and all the evils of the world.”

A little curl of wind seemed to breathe past the carriage, catching the gravel and licking it up into a swirl, that swept around Henry Bonespair and made him shiver furiously. 

Charlotte felt an awful lump in her throat. 

To the workaday, middle class Bonespairs, the Revolutionaries in France had at least opposed the tyranny of the old French monarchy.  The aspiring couple had thought it all rather wonderful -
at first.

Now Charlotte and Simon Bonespair weren’t so sure at all, with everything that was happening there and a war looming too.   

“I assure you, Madame” said the Comtesse, “Paris is a city
no one
should wish to see now, with this
TERREUR
.  A city I and my chicks shall never see again.  Banished, while we rely on charity from Monsieur Weeck-ham.  Sacré Bleu.”

The old Comtesse burst into tears, giving Juliette St Honoré the impression she had just been orphaned, though only her poor father was gone.  It was a terrible situation for such grand people to be in. 

“Now, Mamman, please don’t upset yourself again,” said Juliette consolingly, wondering what it was like to be a humble governess.

“
Hevagen-Revagy,”
hissed Spike, wondering what all the fuss was about,
“Stavagop Stavagare-avaging.”

Henry Bonespair blushed and dropped his eyes.

“Eleanor,” snapped Charlotte though, “please stop using that silly language now, and try to be a grown up, today at least.  You’ll need your best French soon, and you have to be responsible.”

Spike nearly stuck out her tongue at the enemy adult, as Juliette tried to console her own mother still. 

“It will be all right now, Mamman, I promise.”

The poor Comtesse fumbled at her neck though and lifting a silver rosary, put it over Juliette’s own, as little Spike thought of how often she had knelt to say her prayers at her bed side, always wondering if someone was really
up above
, watching her. 

“No, ma Cherie.  No one is safe now, not any of our dear friends.  There, ma Cherie, that shall protect you from the Devil.  We must have faith and be humble, and pray for our friends in France too.  Though so many are lost.”

As he stood there, thinking how frank Juliette’s large, blue eyes were, Henry felt a sharp pang for these Frenchie immigrants and stepped forwards warmly. 

“But people are working for them,” he cried, “Brave people.”

“What
people,
Henry dear?” asked Charlotte in surprise and Hal straightened nobly.

“The Scarlet Pimpernel, mother!”

Henry Bonespair felt a noble glow in his cheeks, but Juliette St Honoré cast him such a withering look that he blanched immediately, as her own mother almost laughed in his face. 

“Absurde, Henri!,” she cried, “There’s no such man, mon pauvre innocent.  Les fables.  For les enfants.”

Henry Bonespair suddenly felt awful and Charlotte tried to calm the situation, although upset enough herself.