James Blaylock - The Aylesford Skull

“You’re main anxious to save the boy. Why? Perhaps he’s kin?” He looked from one to the other of them.

“No, sir, nothing like that. I could have stopped him being taken by the Doctor in the first place, but I didn’t do it. I’m trying to put it right.”

George nodded. “I thought maybe you had scruples.”

“What of you, sir?” Finn asked boldly. “You’re in a right mess now.”

“Not if they don’t know it’s me that’s helped you. I’ll think of something.”

He glanced back at the door, and it seemed to Finn that the contrary was true. It had been George that Narbondo sent to fetch them. They would know it was George who helped them escape.

“You listen to what I tell you,” George said. “There’s tunnels beneath this inn. I’ll show you to them, but you’ll have to find your way through. This here’s a bag with candles and matches. I keep it at the ready.” He held out a leathern bag, and Finn took it. “If there’s water running along the floor of the tunnel, follow it. You’ll be descending, north toward the river. There’ll come a time when there’s a passage that leads up again, a dry passage. If you follow to the left, always to the left, mind, you’ll come out near the bay. Take to the wood or whatever cover you can find, and make your way topside to the river. Do you ken what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” Finn said. “Water flows downward while we’re getting clear, not when we’re getting out, which is always to the left.”

“That’s it. If you take the wrong turning, then you might come out anywhere, so you follow a handy trail till you find yourself somewhere and know where you are. Do you have money?”

“In my shoe,” Finn said.

“Good lad. Now, if it goes bad, and they catch you, you haven’t seen old George and you don’t know me. It was you who took the food and the candles out of the kitchen when McFee wasn’t watching. Do you hear? It was you who barred the door, you who found your way to the tunnel. If they knew I was soft, they’d do for me. There’ll be a hue and cry, and I’ll be coming for you along with the rest. I doubt I can save you then without copping it.”

“Yes, sir, and thank you, sir. We’re grateful.”

“Don’t be grateful yet. You aren’t clear of this place. Come.”

He opened a door onto an empty closet – a strange thing in a storeroom. The entire floor, however, was cleverly hinged, which was evident only when George lifted it back. He nodded Eddie and Finn in before him, where a set of stairs led downward into the darkness. It came to Finn that everything had turned around on the instant. There had been no hope for escape from the room upstairs, and now the empty darkness before them was full of promise. The business of the tunnels was a mystery, but then everything in the world was a mystery until the mysteries were understood. A lucifer match and a candle would show them the way.

They found themselves in a dark, circular excavation now, roofed with timbers, a tiny stream flowing away downwards in the center of the dirty chalk floor, water seeping through the timbers above. The only light came from the open trap above them; the tunnel leading away was black and cool.

“Bon voyage, as the Frenchman would say. Light your candle.” George tipped his hat, ascended the stairs, waited till the candle was lit, and then lowered the trap.

Finn took Eddie’s hand and set out, hearing almost at once a scuffling noise above and behind them. He stopped and turned, supposing that George was coming back down through the trap, but no light appeared, and all was abruptly silent. They turned again into the tunnel and hurried onward, the candle throwing a very small circle of light around their feet and illuminating the flowing water, just as George had told them. It was dank, the air close and fetid, and the candle guttered, although there was no evident breeze. Eddie pressed close to Finn, but the boy was game enough. Finn considered the distance to the bay – not far, given what he’d seen from the coach earlier. But as soon as it entered his mind to be hopeful, a disembodied voice spoke out of the darkness somewhere in front of them.

“Hello, chicklets,” it said. “Stop a moment.”

The speaker opened the door of a dark-lantern. Finn looked at him in horror: the Crumpet, oily and grinning, dressed in the swank clothes that he had been wearing last night in the rookery, a blue waistcoat and black-and-white shoes with narrow toes. Chalk discolored the polished leather of his shoes. He wasn’t much taller than Finn, now, but he was no less demonic than he had been that night under the bridge. He stood beaming at them, as if he were both pleased and surprised.

“Well, well, here we are,” he said, winking at Finn. “Dame Fortune has smiled upon us, putting us in each other’s company once again.” His smile disappeared then, and he said, “Don’t give it another thought, dearie, if it’s your knife you’re contemplating. I have one of my own, you see.” He drew a long, narrow blade from under his coat. “Imagine my surprise when you cut me, boy, my guts pouring out through my belly. Before the sun sets today, we’ll see what your own innards are made of; you have my word on it. The Doctor has promised you to me. The squeaker, however, is required upstairs, where his head is to be turned into a table ornament.”

Finn flung the candle into the Crumpet’s face and then turned and ran, hauling Eddie bodily along through the darkness, back toward the inn, splashing through the water, dragging his free hand along the wall and trying to calculate how far they had to run before slamming into the unseen stairway. It was close ahead, for certain. If the trap weren’t locked…

“Help!” he shouted. “Christ! Help!” Hoping against all odds that George might still be somewhere above and hear the cries.

And then they were there, and light appeared above, to his great relief, broadening as the trap was swung open. But it wasn’t George who peered down at them and then descended the stairs. It was the dwarf from the rookery. He held a twin of the Crumpet’s knife in his hand, the blade bloody brown and dripping in the half-light. They were trapped, fore and aft and walled in by the chalk walls on either side. Finn thought of his oyster knife, but skewering the Crumpet last time had been a matter of surprise as well as skill. There would be no surprising anyone now, and there was Eddie to think of.

“What of our good friend George, Sneed? Will he join us?” the Crumpet asked the dwarf.

“He run off.”

“Then whose blood, I might ask, did you spill? Your dirk is awash with it.”

“ George , you mortal idiot. An awkward bastard, George, but I done him.”

“You done him, Sneed? Do you mean you cut him, but you didn’t kill him?”

“That’s right, you bleeding sod,” said the dwarf. “Under his rib, I cut him. Deep. He’s bleeding like a hog to slaughter. He won’t get far. McFee’s after him.”

The Crumpet nodded theatrically. “Very well. We’ve come to the bottom of it. Do you see what comes of what they call compassion?” he asked Finn, reaching forward and snatching the bag out of his hand. “A knife between the ribs. It’s a difficult lesson, surely. I learned a similar lesson at your own hand – oh, yes, I remember it well. And many’s the night I lay awake featuring how I’d teach it to you, turn and turn about, if I was lucky. And now here we are talking away like old friends, my luck come in at last. I’ll be a mortally thorough teacher, young scamp. I promise you that. You’ll sing before I’m through with the lesson.”

He turned and set out back down the tunnel, and the dwarf pushed Finn, holding the knife up in his face as a warning. Finn thought unhappily of George, and the kindness that he’d done them. Kindness had meant the end of him. He held tightly to Eddie’s hand, walking two steps behind the Crumpet. His oyster knife lay in its sheath in his coat pocket, and he had the urge to touch it, to make sure it was there, but he didn’t dare. Instead he pictured how he would reach for it when the time came, unsheathe it, and strike with the curved blade, playing it over in his mind so that he would get it quick and right.