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

High-noon sunlight streamed into the farmhouse kitchen. Will’s ma shaded her eyes against it, peering out across the yard. “Here they come, Winnie. Put the kettle on to boil again, Eileen.”

Little Willum toddled out, holding Winnie’s hand. “Daddeeeee!”

The dairyman swung his son up onto his broad shoulders. “I hope you ain’t ate all our lunch, Willum, I’m starvin’!”

But food was out of the question once Eileen spotted the bundle.

“You found it, good men!”

Amy took little Willum from his father. “What about me?”

Will’s ma wiped flour from both hands upon her apron. “An’ you, too, m’dear, good work. Now, let’s see what you got, my meat an’ potato pie’ll be ready directly.”

Ben placed the bundle on the table. “D’you think we’ll need more hot water to melt the tallow, Jon?”

Taking out his ever-useful clasp knife, the ex-ship’s carpenter set to work, slicing through the greased string around the tallowed hide. “With any luck it’ll just peel off.”

Mr. Braithwaite was permitted to undo it. Finding an edge of the skin, he drew it back, exposing gold. In less than a minute he had stripped sheepskin and tallow away completely.

It was a crucifix, complete with a tiny monstrance chamber for displaying the host. The top and ends of both arms had pigeon-egg rubies set into the metal, identical to the ones on the chalice. At its base a marvelously graven gold bird supported the cross on semi-spread wings, its talons gripping a half-orb of solid gold. The old scholar’s hands trembled as he held the object. He gazed at the embossed figure of Christ upon it, surmounted by the letters INRI . “Crucifixus anticus! Wrought by the same Byzantine hand that fashioned the chalice. Do you realize, we are the first ones to behold it since the seventeenth century!”

Jon and Ben were inspecting the tallow-bound sheepskin minutely when Will’s ma wrinkled her nose in disdain. “What’re you messin’ with that ole sheep ’ide for?”

The strange boy replied without looking up. “For the next clue, but it doesn’t seem to be here. Can you find anything, Jon?”

The carpenter’s strong, tattooed hands delved through the tallowed skin. “Nothing, lad. The chest was empty once we took the cross out. I was hopin’ we’d find something in this wrapping, but no.”

Alex sat at the table, his chin cupped in both hands, downcast. “We’ve missed the next clue somewhere.”

The black Lab’s tail swished to and fro as he raised his eyes to Ben. “Tell them it’s carved on the bottom of that half-dome the bird is standing on, I can see it from here. So could you if you were lying on the floor. Good job old Braithwaite held the cross up. What would you do without me, eh, mate?”

Ben sat down on the floor by the Labrador and patted him fondly. “You’re the best dog in the world, Ned. Excuse me while I break the good news to them.”

Ben squinted up at the underside of the crucifix, then raised his voice in excitement. “Look, there’s carving underneath that dome the bird is standing on. I can see it!”

Mr. Braithwaite harrumphed. “Bird, young man? That’s the eagle of St. John the Evangelist you’re talking about. Let’s see!” He turned the cross upside down. With Mr. Mackay leaning over his shoulder, checking, he read aloud.

“ ’Twould seem at the wicked’s fate

that bell ne’er made a sound,

yet the death knell tolled aloud

for those who danced around.

The carrion crow doth perch above,

light bearers ’neath the ground.”

Mrs. Winn looked around. “Well, what do you make of that?”

The lawyer meticulously copied the words onto a piece of paper, before taking charge of the cross.

“I’d better get this locked away in my office safe with all dispatch. Will, could you run me down there in your gig, please?”

“You ’ave some lunch first, sir,” Eileen chimed in. “Then my Will can drop you all off.”

Over hot meat and potato pie, Mr. Braithwaite made out another copy of the words for his own use. “Hmm, very good, very good. Must, er, get back to the, er, library, of course. I’ll, ah, er, study this and let you know my findings, yes, very good!”

Amy made more copies in her fine, neat hand and distributed them to everybody, keeping one for herself and her brother. After lunch it was decided that they would spend the rest of the day each trying to solve the riddle. They had the time.

Will delivered Mrs. Winn to her house first. Ben stayed in the gig, alighting in the village square with the others. Mr. Mackay read the notice tacked to the board on the post not far from his office. He turned to them, his face grave. “Two days from today the clearances start. That means Smithers and his partners will be here with the county official and the bailiffs. Payments will be made to the evacuating tenants, the land will be cleared, and, unfortunately, Chapelvale will cease to exist as a village community and become a limestone quarry and a cement factory. Those are the facts, my friends.”

Ben’s blue eyes grew hard. “Not if we can help it!”

33

SMITHERS TAPPED LIGHTLY ON MAUD Bowe’s bedroom door, and he called out as gently as his gruff, demanding voice would allow. “Are you in there, Miss Bowe, I’d like a word with you in the sitting room, if possible.”

Maud opened the door a crack and was confronted by Smithers’s rather worried-looking face. “I think you owe me an apology first, for the way you insulted me this morning, Mr. Smithers.”

It galled him to do it, but there was no other way. “Well, er, I was a bit, hasty shall we say. Forgive me, I’m a gruff fellow sometimes. Comes of doin’ business among men all the time. I shouldn’t have raised my voice to you, young lady. I mean, Miss Bowe.”

She stared at him, enjoying her moment of triumph, then shut the door in his face. “I’ll be down presently.”

Obadiah Smithers drew in a deep breath, clenched his fists, and strode purposefully along the corridor to his son’s room. Flinging the door wide, he marched in without a word and dragged the coverlet off Wilf, who lay huddled, still covered in breakfast mess. Smithers curled his lip in disgust as his son sniffed and sobbed.

“It wasn’t me, he went in there on his own, I had nothing to do with it, honestly, I never!”

His father towered over him, ignoring his pleas.

“Enough, sir, no more lies! I saw Regina’s father in the village this morning. He caught her sneaking in, long after midnight. So you can stop your sniveling lies. I know exactly what went on around the old almshouse last night!”

Wilf cowered on the bed, his face ashen. “Regina’s the liar, it was her who got Alex murdered, not me. I swear!”

His father’s voice was like thunder. “What nonsense is this, eh? Murder indeed, I saw the very boy you’re talking of, the animal vet’s young son. He was alive and well, sitting in a dairy cart with his friends. So you can stop your lying about murder!”

Wilf was temporarily lost for words. He sat openmouthed as reality flooded in on him. Alex was alive, there would be no policemen calling on him. No judges, court, or prison.

His father ranted on furiously. “A disappointment to me, that’s what you’ve been, lad, a thorough disappointment! Letting y’self get beaten by a boy half your size, then thinking up stupid murder plots. Still, I blame m’self in ways—you’re not half the young fellow I was at your age, no backbone! Mollycoddled, that’s what you’ve been, spoiled rotten! But all that stops right here and now, sir, d’you hear me? No more being waited on by a maid an’ hiding behind y’mother’s skirts. Oh no, m’lad, it’s boarding school for you. They’ll straighten you out, an’ no mistake!”