‘And no one went to find out?’
‘Never do.’ It was a statement and a warning, rolled into one. Either muster on the beach at the time of departure, or don’t, but there’ll be no waiting around.
Dalip and Mama contemplated the idea for a moment before moving to sit on the deck with the open chest in front of them. It looked like it had been sorted through already, and what was left was mostly threadbare rags. A couple of shirts, holed woollen stockings, a pair of long shorts which had gone at the seams, and something flat, wrapped up in waxy cloth.
‘This is slim pickings,’ said Mama.
‘It’s a pirate ship. What did you expect? A casket full of doubloons?’
Mama held up the stockings to the light. They would have functioned better as fishing nets. ‘Do people not make anything here?’
‘Grog. The biscuits we break our teeth on. There may have been looms at Bell’s castle, but I never saw any.’ He pulled a face and stared into the distance. ‘Do you remember when Mary needed something to wear, and there were all those boxes of clothes?’
‘Sure.’
‘Every single thing in them had been worn by someone coming to Down. Every single one of those women were dead by the time Mary picked that red dress out.’
Mama inspected the stockings again, and folded them back into the sea-chest. ‘Well, isn’t that depressing.’
‘At least we’ve worked out where everyone is.’ Dalip picked up the wax-clothed bundle, and noticed that there was a corroded pen and a small, squat glass bottle nestling with it. ‘They’re all captured or dead, and we’re the survivors.’
‘We’ve been here a month, Dalip. Maybe two. We’ve survived so far, but I don’t think that makes us survivors.’ Mama sucked her cheeks in. ‘I want to go home. More than ever.’
He unwrapped the little bundle. Inside was a little hardback book with black leather-covered boards and raggedly cut pages. Although it looked old, it smelled new, and when he cracked it open, the paper was still white and crisp.
The writing was in a small, neat hand, the script flowing and steady.
‘I can’t read it,’ said Dalip, and showed it to Mama.
‘So what language is it?’
‘I’m going to guess at Latin, or…’ He squinted at the page. ‘Hang on. That’s English.’
‘That’s no English I’ve ever seen.’
‘They made me do Chaucer at school. Middle English. Medieval.’ Sucking at his teeth, he tried a few words, running his finger beneath the letters as he stuttered his way through. ‘Wol◦– will I turn to London again.’ He leafed to the start. ‘This is someone’s diary, I think.’
‘Then perhaps you shouldn’t be reading it.’
‘The owner will be past caring by now.’ He moved to the last entry, but didn’t try and decipher its meaning. ‘This stuff always gave me a headache. It’s like trying to read Punjabi.’
‘Can’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘A bit. Everything was in English, and I was… lazy. I can speak it better, though that’s not saying much. I know some prayers, some of the Guru Granth Sahib. I couldn’t hold a conversation in Punjabi, though. My grandfather would have hated that thought.’
‘He would have been very proud of his grandson.’
‘Maybe. He would have still told me off for not learning the language of our ancestors. But he would have blamed his son for not teaching me properly. And my mother.’ He lapsed into silence, turning the book over in his hands.
‘We’ll make it back,’ said Mama.
‘The man who wrote this didn’t. If we want to go home, we have to make it happen. No one’s going to open a door and offer it to us.’ He placed the book back in its wrapper, and returned it to the chest. Then he took out his machete and tested its edge with his thumb.
‘We’re going to fight, then?’
‘We’re pirates,’ he said. ‘It’s what we do.’
17
It wasn’t what she expected. Even though she realised it was never going to be the city of her imagination, with palaces carved from marble, crowded streets teeming with busy people, the noise of markets and the call of traders, while kings and queens were carried aloft in curtained chairs borne by muscled, silent servants, it still should have been grand. The White City was man’s only mark on Down, the only place where buildings had both a history and a future.
After leaving the ferryman’s shack, she’d picked her way up the stony path and into a steep-sided ravine. The river ran below her between rock walls, and the path grew perilously narrow. Then it widened, and the valley with it.
The path became a road, and bowed down to run at the same level as the river. The cliffs to her right poured cones of broken taluses at their feet, and produced a series of slopes that led to the valley floor. Ahead, the valley closed up again as tightly as it was behind her. Here, then, in front of her.
This was no city. It was a collection of high stone walls◦– compounds◦– and in each, a few unimpressive buildings, sometimes set away from the walls, sometimes incorporating them in their structure. One or two seemed to have taken over the whole of their compounds, hollowing out in the middle to leave courtyards. There were no trees, and the only vegetation was down on the lowest slopes by the river.
Even at night, the place seemed thin and mean and dusty. There were lights at some of the windows, but behind their walls they were cold and aloof, not warm and welcoming. The sound of water thrummed off the stone, an unsettling bass hum that hurt her teeth and made her empty guts ache.
The buildings and the walls were cut from white stone. That, at least, was as advertised. Nothing else was. It looked a cross between a desert village and a town from the Wild West.
She had no idea where she was supposed to go next, or where she was supposed to stay. She had unimaginable wealth in her hands, yet it was only hers if she could hold on to it. Crows would be here by morning, so she had to be ready.
She walked slowly past the terraced fields that lay between the road and the river, towards the compounds, which clustered as if thrown down at the bottom of the widest part of the valley. Every single door was closed and barred and silent. If they knew she was coming, then this was a strange kind of welcome.
She knew cities. She was the street kid, wise to every scam and every opportunity. This? This was the Kensington and Chelsea end, private houses with private security, and blank-faced embassies with brass plaques by the doors. Without a doubt, she was being watched, both coming in and going out again, back up the road to the opening into the valley.
She hoped it would be different in the morning, but for now, everything was shut tight and locked down, and she was so, so weary, her bones ached. It was only when she’d gone back as far as the beginning of the narrow ravine that she spotted several blank cubes set into the rock debris. At first sight, they’d looked like random blocks of fallen stone, but with a second look, they were too regular and sharp for that. The stones she picked a path across were also sharp. Her lack of shoes was telling here in a way it wasn’t when it was sand or leaf litter, and the soles of her feet, though hard, felt every corner of the scree. She swore almost every step, and decided that she wouldn’t mind paying for a decent pair of boots.
She’d trudged her way up to the nearest. It was made of the same pale stone as the bigger buildings, broken pieces laid like little bricks in courses to make walls, larger and longer chunks to form the frame of a door.
The door had had a big iron key in a rough keyhole, and when she’d pushed on the wooden planks, the door had creaked open. Inside, it was dry, and she found that she could take the key out and lock it from the inside. There was no one else present, and she’d felt all the way around the floor and the ceiling to check before hunching up in a corner and falling instantly asleep.