Brian Jacques - [Flying Dutchman 01] - Castaways of the Flying Dutchman

He was putting the kettle on for tea and cutting some bread and cheese, when Ben’s face showed at the window. “Morning, mate. Is it all right to come in? I’ve brought my friends along.”

Jon straightened up, one hand on the small of his back. “Bring ’em in, lad, by all means!”

Amy and Ned climbed through the windowspace with Ben. Alex followed behind, a touch hesitant. When they were introduced, the old seaman cut up the cheese rinds with his clasp knife, feeding them to the black Labrador and scratching vigorously behind the dog’s ears. “This dog o’ yours, Ben, he’s a fine animal. Aren’t you, boy?”

Ned gazed adoringly at the old carpenter, passing a thought to Ben. “What a nice old cove. He certainly knows how to treat a dog. Mmmmmm! Carry on, sir, more to the left, ah, that’s it. Best ear scratcher I’ve met in many a year. Mmmmmm!”

Ben nudged the dog with his foot. “Move over a bit, Ned, you’re beating me to death with that tail of yours!” He pointed to the rejoined paper on the table. “You’ve done a good job there, old friend. Found any more clues or bits of information?”

Jon shook his head. “Nothing, lad, though I was just going to give this place a good cleanup to see what I might come across. Would you and your pals like t’help me?”

Amy rolled up her sleeves. “Right, tell us what to do!”

Sweeping the floor was out of the question. It raised too much dust, but there was lots of old timber needed stacking outside. Ben and Amy passed it out through the window, and Alex and Jon stacked it up against the outside wall. They worked right through until midday, when they stopped to have a small lunch of the old seaman’s bread and cheese and a cup of tea. All four sat on the window ledge, surrounded by dust motes, which swirled in the air like tiny golden specks. Jon appeared well satisfied with the job they had done thus far.

“Looks a lot better, don’t it. Now that old floorboard plankin’ is out of the way, I’ll be able to move my table into the corner.”

The younger boy had lost his initial shyness about Jon and pointed to the table. “Look at that table’s far leg. You’ll either have to fix it or find another one.”

Jon stared at the leg in question, which up until then had been hidden behind a stack of wood. “Aye, so I will, mate—there’s a piece of it missin’, see. ’Tis balanced on that tin biscuit box. Must’ve been like that since I arrived here an’ I’ve never noticed it. Let me see, now.”

The old man took the two bricks he had used as weights. Standing on edge atop of one another they were the depth of the tin. “Ben, Alex, hold that table up an’ I’ll wedge these under.”

It was a heavy table, and the two boys gasped as they held it up. Amy pushed the tin out of the way whilst Jon stuck the bricks in position. “All right, you two, let it down easy, careful now!”

Jon tested the table, it was solid and unmoving. “That’s shipshape! Let’s take a look at that rusty, old tin box, Amy.”

Amy placed the box on the table. “Feels like there’s stuff inside!”

Jon traced the lip of the tin lid. “Rusted tight, hah! Villier’s Afternoon Tea Wafers. Some years since I set eyes on them. Only one way to find out what’s inside, mates!” Jon had a useful-looking can opener on his clasp knife. He punched it through the corroded metal and began vigorously working it along the edge. The tin was not as weak as it first appeared to be, and the old seaman’s opener caused a skreeking noise that made the three young people wince. He stopped only when he had cut down three edges. “Papers!”

Covering his palm with the sleeve edge of his jersey, he wrenched the flap of tin back and shook out the contents onto the table. Immediately the four began sorting through the papers. They were yellowed with age. Amy studied one.

“Old back issues of the Chapelvale Chronicle ! Look at this one, it’s dated 1783. ‘Pitt the Younger becomes British Prime Minister.’ ‘American Independence to be recognized. ’ ‘Monsieur Montgolfier is to fly in a balloon.’ I’ll bet Mr. Braithwaite would be interested in these.”

Jon piled them in a stack. He seemed disappointed. “Well, they’re of little use to anyone else. Come on, lass, let’s take them over to him.”

Being a historian, Mr. Braithwaite was delighted with the find. So eager was he to have the papers that he made a grab at them, knocked them off the library desk, and sent them in a cascade across the parquet floor. “Er, oh dear, er, I do beg your pardon, Mr. Preston. Very, er, clumsy of me, I’m sure!”

But the old carpenter was not listening, he was holding up a square of material which had fallen out from between the folds of one edition of the Chronicle. “Look what I’ve found.”

Alex recognized the thing instantly. “That’s a needle-work sampler, like children used to embroider their alphabets on. What does it say?”

Amy knelt by Jon and read aloud the bit she could understand. “ ‘Evelyn De Winn. 1673.’ Ben, it was sewn by one of Winnie’s family!” The embroidered writing was extremely neat, showing what a clever needlewoman Evelyn De Winn had been, though it was hard to make out the rest of the letters, as a lot of them were strangely archaic, each letter S being shaped like an f.

Mr. Braithwaite was suddenly transformed from a bumbling librarian into a scholar of Old English text. He took up pen and paper excitedly. “Give it here, I’ll translate for you. Amelia, sit there and write this down, please!”

There were no “ers,” “ahs,” or other hesitations from Mr. Braithwaite as he dictated in a clear, slow voice to her:

“Take the Commandments paces west,

away from the bless’d naming place,

to where the heavenly twins stand ever

gazing at Sol’s dying face.

Turn as a third Gospelmaker would

to the house named for the rock,

’twixt here and there you must stop to drink,

your first reward to unlock.”

Mr. Braithwaite scratched his fuzzy mane. “Hmm, 1670, a time of persecution for British Catholics and nonconformists. That was when the almshouse ceased to be St. Peter’s and the new church was built on the hilltop. They called it the Chapelvale Church, though secretly it was still known to the local Catholics as St. Peter’s, hence its present name.”

Jon indicated the sampler. “Thankee, sir, you can keep this for your library archives, we’ll make do with Amy’s translation.”

The librarian was once again his former self. “Er, quite, er, that is, thank you, Mr., er, yes, very good!”

25

BACK AT THE ALMSHOUSE ALL TIDYingup was forgotten as they sat around the big oblong table and studied the poem from the sampler and Amy read out the first line slowly. “ ‘Take the Commandments paces west.’ ”

Jon shrugged his shoulders. “What’s a Commandments pace?”

Ben had guessed, but he let Alex answer. “Must mean ten paces, because . . . there’s ten Commandments!”

“True, true.” The old man nodded approvingly.

Ben winked at Alex. “Well done, pal.”

“ ‘Away from the bless’d naming place,’ ” Amy went on.

Alex looked disappointed. “That’s not so easy.”

Amy reasoned, “Whatever a bless’d naming place is, we’ve got to take ten paces away from it. Naming place, naming place. Any ideas, Ben?”

Ben looked stumped. “Naming place, let me see. . . . Does it mean the name of a place, or a name like mine and yours, Amy, Alex, Jon—”