“There!” the curate beamed, “my dear old tutor remembers me and sends me the most kind regards. How gratifying that is! And he has been able to shed a little light on the alleged treasure. We may not know where it went to, but we now have an idea where it may have come from. And it never belonged to the town or the church, but was simply sent here for safe keeping.”
“That's good to know,” said Pert, “but it really doesn't move us forward at all. I'm sorry to say ...” he added, looking anxiously at the curate in case he was disappointing him.
“No, no, that's quite correct,” said Septimus. “I understand your reservations entirely. It was just a case of leaving no stone unturned, you know. If the information was to be had, it was only right that we should seek it.”
“Speaking of seeking, and stones unturned, there is one stone we haven't tried to turn yet, and that's the floor of the vestry,” Pert said.
“But I understand that you are no longer a bona fide servant of the church. I hope you aren't suggesting that I should dig up the vestry floor while the Vicar's back is turned? I don't think I'd be very good at that.”
“No, not at all. I may have been sacked, but I still know how to get into the church, don't I? Today's Tuesday, so the Vicar will be celebrating spoken Evensong this evening. And he's usually fairly drunk by the end of the service, so with a bit of luck he'll lurch off home to sleep it off. That'll be my chance!”
He spent the afternoon with his mind whirling with plans for the evening's escapade. Should he take a shovel? Might he need rope? Was he indeed getting his hopes up for nothing? – there had only been that one little indication that anything at all lay under the vestry floor, the phrase “ye crypte under ye vestrie”. It might just have been careless writing, and he might be reading more into it that he should.
Because he was so preoccupied, the dreadful news was all the more shocking when it came. Fenestra burst into the house with Billy in tow, and thrust a crumpled note into his hand.
Rosela hav been sent away
a new gurl as come to look after
us she is nice but can you get
Rosela bak plees
April Prettyfoot (miss)
Pert felt his face grow pale, and he sat down hard at the foot of the stairs. What had they done with Rosella? Where had they taken her? Indeed, who was “they”? Was it her father? Or ... dreadful thought but all the more likely, was Urethra Grubb involved?
“Oh Pert,” his sister said almost in tears, “what's going on? She only ran away with you for an afternoon, it's not as if she killed anyone! I think I'm going to cry, sorry. Sorry, Billy, thank you for bringing me home, but I have to go now ...” and she ran upstairs.
“I know how she feels,” said Pert. Billy said nothing. It was incredible, but he managed to grin and look sad at the same time.
“Guv, I'll go an' sneak around an' see if I can find out anyfink,” he said. “There's places I can creep an' conversashuns I can 'ear, an' people speak unguarded when they don' think Billy's anywhere near. You leave it ter me!” and he disappeared out of the back door.
Pert sat for a moment, feeling desperate, but he knew Billy was right. Billy was far better placed to get information than he was. It was odd how you trusted Billy. He was the most unlikely person, dirty, ignorant, smelly and completely disreputable, but somehow you knew you could leave things to him and they'd get done.
Meanwhile, he had his own job to do. Later would be a time to act on Rosella, once Billy had learned what there was to learn. Now, it was time to go to church.
He hid in the churchyard until he judged the service was nearly over, and then ran round to the vestry door, keeping low behind the yew trees. He heard voices at the west end as the congregation left – only a few people at this time, he knew. Soon the vestry door opened and the Vicar came out. Pert watched from his hiding place as the Vicar stooped and locked the door behind him, then walked round the end of the church towards the Vicarage. He walked slowly, his long limbs like the stilts of a wading bird, lifting his feet high. His sharp nose moved from side to side as though seeking prey between the tombstones. Seeking whom he might devour, thought Pert, remembering the scriptures in school.
When the Vicar was safely out of sight Pert walked to the west door and found the great key in its hiding place under a flagstone. He opened the church, slipped inside and locked the door behind him so he could not be disturbed. The tall darkness waited for him, the saints and angels gazing down, wondering what this sinner was doing here. The silence and the damp hymnbook smell were familiar yet strange, no longer belonging to him, nor he to them.
In the vestry the cassocks and surplices hung on their hooks as always. He dragged the big table from the centre of the room, and then with difficulty turned it on its side. Beneath it lay a large rug of something coarse and prickly, coconut matting, he thought. It had lain there as long as he could remember, and when he grasped it by one end and started rolling it along the floor it left thick dust on the floor in a herring-bone pattern.
There in the middle of the floor, scarcely distinguishable from the stone flags under the dust, was a square shape of a different texture. He swept the dust aside with his hand, and found planks of wood, knotted and dry and old. It was a trap door. The wood was a tight fit against the stone, and had clearly been so for many years. Pert looked in the cassock cupboard for a tool of some sort, and found the broken end of a candle-snuffer. The conical snuffer had come off, leaving only the flat end of metal to which it had been soldered. He used this to scrape around the edges of the trap door, and then tried inserting it in the gap he had created, but when he levered upwards it bent. He needed something more substantial. Taking a stub of altar candle from the shelf and a box of matches, he opened the door to the crypt stairs and let himself down between the stone walls.
In the crypt he ignored the flickering shadows, stubbornly not thinking about what else might lie down here in the darkness, and rummaged in the piles of broken furniture until he found the massive iron leaf of an old door-hinge. The end looked thin enough to fit in the crack.
It proved to be the right size, and the iron strong enough to be a lever. Several minutes of desperate, sweaty work round the edges of the trap, and he found which was the right side to lift. With a creak the door surrendered and lifted an inch or two. A little gust of cold air came up, bringing a smell of damp stone and earth and darkness long confined. He propped the door up with a hymnbook, and levered again, gaining another two inches. Another hymnbook, and he was getting somewhere at last. With a crash the door came up and fell back on itself, and there at his feet was a stone stairway leading down into the shadows.
He waited a while to be sure the noise hadn't alarmed anyone, lit the candle again and began to go down the stairs. He felt very frightened, but thought of Rosella. She must be even more scared than he was. He thought of Billy, too. Billy was never scared. Billy would just grin and get on with it, and so must he.
His feet reached earth at the bottom, after a dozen or so high steps, and he felt rather than saw a wider space around him. He stood at one side of a room, and in the flickering candle light he could see a flat, beaten earth floor, some wooden shelves, and a wall on the other side of great worked stones. These must be the very foundation stones of the church, and that was the outside wall of the nave. There was very little litter. The room had clearly not been used, like the crypt, for general storage. One or two items lay forgotten on the shelves, and he went to examine them. A roll of cloth, that fell apart with a musty smell as he lifted it. Some pieces of paper with writing so faded it was indecipherable. And a little bundle wrapped in what felt like soft leather. It had an oily texture, so perhaps it had been greased once upon a time to make it last. He laid it on the floor and unwrapped it. Something small winked at him in the folds of leather. It was a spoon, a pretty little spoon no longer than his hand, made of yellow metal with chasing on the handle and elegant curlicues of the same metal extending onto the back of the bowl. Was this gol
d? It felt heavy for something so small, heavy and old and somehow warm, as though it wanted to be found and taken into the light, away from this eternal darkness. It was not a creature of the cold shadows, but yearned for the sun. He slipped it into his pocket.
At the far end of the room was a doorway. A single step led into another room, completely bare, again with stone walls and an earthen floor. For the first time he looked up at the ceiling, and saw curved stone vaulting, carefully shaped to support the weight of the earth and stone flags and pews above it. The air was cool and damp but not musty, and he thought that there must be some outlet that let the outside atmosphere in.
There was yet another doorway ahead of him. He judged that he must by now be halfway down the nave of the church, but right at the northern edge of the nave against the foundations of the north wall. On his left must lie the main crypt, behind stone and earth and then more stone. He walked to the new doorway and looked in, holding the candle high.
This was not a third room, but a passageway, a tunnel with stone sides and roof. It sloped sharply downward and away to the right. It must pass under or through the church foundations, under the yew trees and down towards the Market Square. He walked cautiously on, and presently found tangled roots that had eased their way down between the stones, looking for moisture. When they had failed to find it, they had died and hung there. They were probably the roots of the yew trees, he thought.
His candle was guttering now, so there must be a tiny breeze coming up the tunnel towards him, but it had burned very low and was starting to hurt his fingers. Time to go back, and come again another day, better prepared. Also, he had left the vestry quite long enough with the table and carpet pushed aside. He needed to cover his tracks.
Back in the vestry he closed the door quietly, then put the candle and the matches back on the shelf and hid the tool he had found. Then he rolled the carpet back over the door, and manhandled the table. This took a long time as he had to lift one corner of the table at a time, move it a little way, then do the other side, so as not to ruck up the carpet.
He was just looking round one more time to check that he had left everything tidy and normal, when he heard the scrape of a footfall on the path outside the vestry door. Someone was coming. He ran to the door into the church, but there was no time to make his escape that way – the west door of the church was big and heavy and the latch always clanked. It could not be unlocked and opened and then closed again without making a noise.
He scampered to the cassock cupboard and climbed inside, then sank down in the corner and pulled the cassocks over and round him with a wildly beating heart. He felt scared, not so much of the Vicar – he thought he could probably manage the Vicar provided he was alone – but of being found out so that he would not be able to come here again and pursue this mystery. A tunnel, a tunnel from the church, secret rooms and a tunnel. This was a puzzle that needed exploration. And in his pocket was the gold spoon, so if he was caught he'd be stealing again.
“Why do we have to come here?” grumbled the Vicar's voice, and the key rattled in the lock. “If you want to talk, why can't we do it at the Vicarage?”
“Because of ears,” was the gruff reply. Pert stiffened. It was the voice of Mistress Grubb. “I don't trust your servants. You don't have them scared enough, you weak fool. I'm not running the risk that one of them might have a sneaky ear glued to your keyhole. And there's something here we need to find.”
Heavy feet stamped at the door and shuffled into the room. The door closed behind them.
“Very well, Mistress, what is so important that it must be said now and must be said in such privacy?” grumbled the Vicar.
“You can stop the sarcasm,” Grubb replied. “Don't you sarcasm me, you weasel! I'll have your hide if you sarcasm me! I'll beat your scrawny body, and I'll expose your filthy soul, and I'll have you dragged through the streets for a thief and a drunkard and a lecher! I know your secrets, right enough, don't I, vicar? How's that for sarcasm?”
The Vicar said nothing.
“Now. With that blackguard Teague sitting in the harbour and his men swarming all over the place, we need to do a bit of house-keeping. I can control him for the moment, because he thinks I'm helping him get his hands on the man Potts, if he still lives which I doubt, and the treasure, if such a thing exists which I also doubt. But it won't last. There'll be trouble sooner or later, and I have to make sure it goes my way and not his.”
“Madam, I see your point, but what has this to do with a humble clergyman?”
“Humble clergyman my eye! Dirty old lecher with his brains in a bottle, more like! What this has to do with you, is that I need to be sure there's no record of our financial dealings. Prettyfoot's taken care of, but I'm not taking any chances. What records are there still?”
“I don't know. I never look at them. There are some boxes under the altar, but I don't know what's in them.”
“Get them out. Get them out and destroy them, do you understand? I'll send two of my girls up here in one hour's time, and they can carry the stuff out into the churchyard and you'll have a bonfire, is that clear? And keep your hands off my girls while you're at it! You can give 'em a kick if they slack, but that's all, d'you hear?”
“Madam, I ...”
“Shut up! Now what else is there?”
“I think there used to be some books in the cupboard behind you.”
“Books? What sort of books?”
“I don't know, thin books, handwritten. Old. I need a drink.”
“You can wait. Get these books out!”
There was the sound of the key in the lock, and the squeak as the cupboard opened. Pert tensed. This could be very awkward.
There was a scuffling sound. “Madam, I can't ... they don't seem to be here.”
Suddenly there was a crashing sound, and a gasping, and the Vicar cried out in pain.
“You bloody idiot!” shouted Grubb. It sounded as though she had him by the throat. “You pathetic, addle-brained, perverted old Bible-thumper! Have you nothing in your worm-riddled head but whisky and looking up young girls' skirts? What have you done with them? You'll find them, you'll lay your hands on 'em or I'll lay my hands on you! I'll throttle you till you're dead, and then I'll wake you up and throttle you some more! Then I'll tear bits off and stuff them down your throat, so help me!”
The Vicar was whimpering and kicking, but evidently couldn't escape. “Madam ... please!” he whispered, his voice strangled in his throat, “I don't ... what's so important about them?”
“They're probably the accounts, you idiot! If anyone got hold of them, they might be able to figure out where all the church funds have gone, and the Town Levy. If they've got any brains, that is, which isn't likely round here.”
“I didn't realise it was written down anywhere,” said the Vicar sheepishly.
“That fool Prettyfoot was so proud of himself, with his weasel words and his subterfuges. I told him to just stop keeping accounts, I told him as soon as I found out what he was doing, but he thought he was so clever ... well, he soon found out just how clever he was, didn't he, sitting up in that nice house with his nice family. Oh, I squeezed him dry, I did! I squeezed on his neck until his eyes popped! I throttled him until he was offering me anything I wanted. And I took it, too – money, his business, his house is mine now, the deeds all tucked safely away in my drawer ...”
She chuckled. It was a horrible sound to hear, full of ancient malice. “And now I got his daughter! Stroppy little madam, but I'll break her, you see if I don't. I'll whip her legs and make her howl! I'll give her stripes and make her sing!” and she broke into song herself, a terrible sound, grating and foul and frightening ...
“Smile, my pretty, laugh and flirt,” she sang,
“Beguile the men with all your art;
I’ll drag you back into the dirt,
and make your pretty bottom smart!”
“... and then ...” she continued in a dreadful whisper, “then, wh
en I've finished with her, I'll send her up to you. You could do with a new scullery maid, couldn't you? The old one's just about used up by now, I should think. I'll send her up to the Vicarage.”
“You will?” The Vicar's voice sounded thick and hot, somehow.
“Yes, I said, didn't I? No one cares what happens to the miserable little slut, and her father's in no position to complain. Take my advice – give her a damn good whipping first, and she'll be no trouble. It works for my girls at the shop. But remember this, my friend ...” Her voice sunk even lower. “You only get her if you find those accounts for me. You find those accounts, Tench, or I'll Tench your gullet and I'll Tench your liver and I'll Tench your lights out, and you'll get no little pretty to wash your dishes and play your games with!”
“Madam, I'll ... do my best ...” but Grubb was gone with a stamp of her big boots and a slam of the door. Pert could hear her heavy tread all the way to the west door.
He listened while the Vicar, from the sound of it, made another desperate search for the missing accounts books. Pert grinned, knowing they were safely hidden in his chimney breast. It didn't sound as though Tench were going to get his hands on Rosella in a hurry, which was a relief.
Then the cupboard door was locked, and the the vestry door banged, and the Vicar was gone too. But he would be back in an hour, to sort out the boxes under the altar, so Pert must be quick. He emerged from the cassock cupboard, slipped out of the vestry and down the length of the church, and locked the great door behind him. Then he sauntered casually back to the Canonry.
For all his desperation for Rosella, he felt strangely satisfied. All his fear of the Vicar had vanished. How could you take anyone seriously when you'd heard him being throttled against the wall, whimpering while a woman told him how she was going to tear bits of him off and feed them to him?
Night had fallen while he was under the ground, and the lights in the Market Square were going out as the stall holders packed up for the day. He kept a weather eye open for bullies or pirates, but it was Billy he found at the bottom of the Bearward.
“What ho, guv!” said the boy cheerfully. “I found 'er, I knows where she is, all right. Grubb's got this boy, see. Everyone thinks it's just the shop girls, but she's got this little lad as well, weedy little streak o' wind, 'e is, wouldn't say boo to a goose an mortal scared o' Grubb! But I talks to 'im sometimes, see? I climbs up on the fence when 'e's out in the yard doin' the dustbins an' that, an' I talks to 'im over the wall!”
“What did he tell you?”
“She's in the cellar, locked up. An' she's been kickin' up a terrible rumpus, shoutin' and yellin' an' bangin' the door, an' all the other girls is runnin' roun' scared out of their wits in case Grubb might take it out on them. Grubb went in there to give 'er what for, and Rosella attacked 'er with a chair an' smashed it over 'er back, so now she's locked the door and says she'll see what 'unger an' thirst'll do.”
Pert laughed. “That sounds like Rosella, all right,” he said. “I wonder if there's any way we could get to her? Either get her out, or at least bring her some food and water?”
“Prob'ly is, guv. I'll nip back an' recco ... rec ... you know, that word ... 'ave a look round!” And Billy was gone.
He returned after supper, and was invited in and sat, legs swinging, at the kitchen table and ate a bowl of Mother's broth. Mother looked a bit askance at the smell whenever she got near him, but seemed to accept him. He had earned her trust by looking after Fenestra so faithfully, turning up every morning early, waiting in the street and grinning as she appeared.
“I tell him my stories,” Fenestra had explained. “I tell him the first bit on the way to school, and then a bit more at playtime and a bit at lunchtime and a bit more in the afternoon, and then I try and spin it out so we get to the end on the way home. And Mother, could I take two sandwiches, so I can give one to him and still have one myself?”
“It's incredibly patient of him,” said Mother, “to listen to your stories every day all the way through.”
“He likes it. He thinks my stories are good. He says he wants me to write one that has him in it.”
“That seems only fair,” agreed Mother. “I'll make two sandwiches tomorrow.”
Billy finished his broth and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Nice, mum, thanking you,” he said. “I found out, guv, what we was talkin' about. We can't do the one, but we can do the other.”
“What's he talking about?” asked Fenestra. Pert wondered whether they ought to have this conversation in private, but decided it was too serious not to share.
“Grubb's got Rosella locked up in her cellar,” he said. Mother gasped and put her hand to her mouth, and Fenestra paled.
“Why?” she said.
“Don't know. Because she can. Her father let it happen. And Rosella's been shouting and carrying on, so they've locked her up and they're starving her.”
“I bin down there,” put in Billy. “I sneaked all aroun', an' I can't see no way we can get 'er out, not unless we 'ad someone on the inside, so ter speak. But I foun' something else.”
“Go on,” said Pert.
“There's this grating thing, see, in the pavement down the alley on the far side. Tiny little alley it is, no one don't 'ardly use it. An' the gratin' leads into 'er cellar where she is. It sort of curves, it don't go straight in. I fink they used ter tip coal down it.”
“Could we lift the grating and get her out that way?”
“No, I tried. It's stuck fast. Two or three big men might do it, but not any of us. But we could speak to 'er through it, an' we could put food an' drink down it, and she could climb up an' snag it an' pull it down. It would have to be thin food an' drink, though, mum, 'cos the 'oles in the gratin' isn't very wide.”
“Slices of bread?” asked Mother.
“Yes'm, they'd go.”
But drink's a problem. Let me think ...”
“Balloons!” said Fenestra. “We could use balloons! Fill them half full with water so they're floppy, and push them through the grating. Then she could just pinch the corner out and drink it!”
“Brilliant! Have we got any?” said Pert.
“I think we have, but not many,” said Mother. She searched in the kitchen drawers, and found five balloons left over from Christmas. They experimented, and found that it worked much better if you blew the balloon up first, and then let it down again and poured water in. Only one balloon burst, so they filled four and knotted the necks. Mother sliced bread thinly, spread it with butter and wrapped each slice in kitchen paper.
“Right!” said Billy. “I'll do the first lot. I'll do it now. But four little mouthfuls of water and a few slices of bread aren't goin' ter last very long. We'll 'ave to do it again tomorrow night.”
“Mrs.Toogood will have balloons, I'm sure. I'll buy some in the morning,” Pert said. “And I'm coming with you now. I can't not speak to Rosella.”
Fenestra rolled her eyes at her mother, but Mother said “Of course you must. Just take care you're not caught, either of you. And you're both to come back here so I know you're safe. What will you use for money tomorrow? We're getting very short this week, and I've Septimus's suppers to think of.”
“I've got something,” said Pert. “Leave it to me.”
It was exciting, slipping down Bearward as quietly as they could, carrying their little cargo of contraband, and it was exciting that they were going to speak to Rosella, too. They flitted from shadow to shadow, Pert following Billy's lead, then sprinted across the Square and into the narrow alley mouth.
“'Ere it is,” whispered Billy. “This is the gratin' wot I said.”
It was indeed an insignificant thing, set into the cobbles and slightly overgrown with moss and weeds round the edges. It clearly hadn't been lifted for many years, but Pert wondered what a lever and fulcrum might do. He'd been pretty successful with the trap door in the church.
He put his head down to the grating and whispered “Rosella?”, and listened.
; “Rosella?” he said a little louder. Billy crouched above him, looking up and down the alley.
There was a little sound, and then a tiny voice. “Pert? Where are you?”
“Rosella, I'm up here in the alley!”
“Your voice is coming from a hole in the ceiling, but I can't see anything!”
She sounded hoarse, and weak, and not happy at all.
“We can't get you out yet, but we've got some food and drink for you,” he whispered. “I'm posting it through a grating. You need to get up to the hole and feel around in it.”
“There's a chair, I can stand on that. I broke the other one, hitting Grubb, so she locked me in and left me!”
Pert began posting the little parcels between the slats of the gratings, and heard them fall with a soft “plop!”. There was a scrabbling sound, and a flash of white fingers at the bottom of the hole.
“Got one!” she whispered. “Oh, Pert, you're a genius, thank you so much!”
“There's four balloons and five bits of bread. We'll be back with more tomorrow night.”
“Pert, Pert? Listen, I need my boots. I have to have my boots! I can put up with anything if I have my boots, but without them I feel so defenceless!”
“I don't know how I'll get them past the grating,” he said, “but I'll try and find a way. I've got to get them out of your house first.”
“Thank you, Pert. Who's that with you?”
“Billy Moon.”
“Coo, who'd have thought? Thank you Billy!”
“'S'all right, miss! We got ter scarper now, 'case someone comes. No point pushin' our luck, like.”
Reluctantly Pert tore himself away, and they crept up to the top of the alley and out into the street. Billy led the way past the front of the Emporium and then paused at the top of the next alley, the one with the window where Pert had listened and first seen Trinity Teague.
“Jus' a quick look,” hissed Billy. “You stay 'ere an' give a little whistle, quiet-like, if anyone's comin'.”
He was back in a moment. “Come on,” he said, sounding serious.
They ran over the road and up the Bearward. When they reached Pert's gate, Billy stopped.
“'Ere's a turn-up an' no mistake!” he said. “There's pirates in there!”
“What, in Grubb's cellar?”
“Yeah, in that room where the window onto the alley is, an' you can see in. There's those two from the Drop o' Dew, Shattock and Smy, sat there at the table bold as brass! They's got pistols on the table, an' their knives out, an' they're sittin' there in Grubb's basement smokin' their pipes.”
Pert thought. This was, indeed, a turn of events. Were the pirates there to guard Rosella and make sure she didn't escape? Or were they there because Teague didn't trust Grubb and wanted to keep an eye on her? It was a mystery. Poor Rosella, things just kept getting worse and worse for her, and he was further and further from saving her.
“We'd better get in the house,” he said, “Mother will be worrying.”
Billy left shortly after, taking a great hunk of bread and butter with him. Pert drank some milk and went up to bed. An alarming idea had just come to him, and he needed to think it through. If they couldn't rescue Rosella from the cellar of the Emporium, perhaps they could rescue her from somewhere else. If Grubb got the accounts books back, she'd promised to send Rosella to Vicar Tench. It would be a lot easier to rescue someone from a vicarage, with ordinary doors and windows and servants coming and going, than it would be from a cellar guarded by pirates. But that meant in the first place giving the accounts back, and more importantly delivering Rosella into the hands of a cruel, deeply unpleasant man who might have sinister plans for her. Any rescue would have to be quick, and it would have to be successful.