Lionboy (5 page)

He hadn’t caught up with him! He really hadn’t! Yet . . .

He wondered for a moment how much effort Rafi would put into pursuing him.

He couldn’t imagine why Rafi would bother with him. But then he couldn’t imagine how Rafi could be involved with his parents’ disappearance. Rafi was just a kid in the neighborhood—older, and cool, but still just a kid. Kind of. He was still a teenager.

But he could certainly see that someone like Rafi would be annoyed at a younger kid like Charlie getting the better of him.

He didn’t like the idea of an angry Rafi.

Then he smiled. “But I’m angry too,” he whispered.

 

Several miles downstream, Aneba was saying: “Who are you and where are you taking us?” It was the seventeenth time he had said it. And for the seventeenth time Winner was sneering and smiling nastily and replying: “You don’t want to know, sunshine. You don’t want to know.” And Aneba’s heart constricted—his child, his wife, his wife, his child.

But he wanted to know very much. When they knew, they would be able to work out what to do about it.

He sat back, closed his eyes, and thought. If he thought enough, he might be able to work it out for himself.

CHAPTER 5

T
here are worse ways to spend a day than chugging down the river, even if you are curled up on an anchor chain, stowing away on a police launch. After his early start and long walk that morning Charlie was tired, so he ate an apple, peered out at the view of the city as it floated past, and dropped off to sleep on a canvas sack. Unfortunately, Charlie was asleep when the riverpoliceguy docked at Greenwich, and asleep when he went for his lunch
and
when he came back, and still asleep when he pulled away and headed his boat down the river to Silvertown.

Charlie was awakened by the shuddering of the boat starting off, and a scrabbly scratchy thing running over his foot.

“Yow!” he yelped, sitting up hurriedly, before remembering that he was in a low locker in the bow and the ceiling was about two feet high. He hit his head sharply.

“Yow!” he yelped again, tears springing to his eyes, and he lay back down, awkwardly. A sneaky-looking black rat, presumably the scratchy scrabbly thing that had just run over his foot, was looking at him with an expression of disdain. The cabin was dim. What light there was, was coming in from the west. The position of the sun and his own growling stomach told him it was certainly past lunchtime.

“Oh, no!” Charlie whispered, remembering now not to yelp, as the policeguy would still be in the boat. “Where are we? What am I going to do, rat?”

The rat gave him a look that said clearly “Waddo I care?” and slipped out through the anchor hole and down into the murky water below.

“Oh!” said Charlie. “I thought you were nice. Well, there you go.” He lay on the knobbly anchor chain, being as quiet as he could, wondering if anything good would ever happen to him.

Well, he thought, we’re still heading east, i.e., out to sea, and that’s where the cats said Mum and Dad were being taken, so that’s all right. But now I’ve missed the chance to meet the Greenwich cats, and hear if they have any more news. He wondered if he should try to slip overboard like the rat and swim ashore . . . Or if he should push the riverpoliceguy overboard and steer the boat back to Greenwich . . . No. Stupid ideas. He had to be sensible.

The problem with having to be sensible is that if you think about it too much, soon nothing seems sensible, and this is what happened to Charlie now. Within a few minutes it seemed to him that he had been foolish to leave Rafi’s, half-witted to take the cat’s advice, stupid to sleep all day, idiotic to think he could just set off “to sea” and expect to find his parents. The sea is huge. The brown cat had said France. France is huge. How many ports are there on the channel coast? Hundreds. Why on earth had he thought this was a good way to try and find them?

Charlie was a boy who liked to do things, to act. Stuck in that anchor-chain locker, unable to do anything, his misery seemed about to overwhelm him. But then he heard a most peculiar noise.

It was music—loud and raucous music, but not ugly. No, it was wild and exciting, pulsing like drums and wailing like violins, though it wasn’t either of those. There was a sound that he half-recognized but couldn’t put a name to—a whistling, pumping sound with a swirling melody, like all the things he’d ever wanted to do but couldn’t, like adventure and danger and strange, interesting people, like long ago and far away. His heart immediately began to beat faster, and he slid out of the locker into the boat’s little cabin without even thinking of the riverpoliceguy.

As it turned out, it didn’t matter whether Charlie thought about him or not because the riverpoliceguy was busy doing his job: He was up against the railings of his little boat with a megaphone, addressing the ship alongside them, saying: “You are breaking the rules. You are causing a nuisance. Under Waterway Bylaw 1783 zx (1), you are not permitted to play music on a public waterway without a license. Unless you produce a valid license within five minutes, I am obliged to board your vessel and prevent further nuisance being caused. You are under a warning. You are breaking the rules . . .” and so on. But Charlie took no notice of all that. He was too busy gazing at the extraordinary ship before him.

For a start, the ship was huge: a great, tall, wide, old-fashioned steamer. And not only was she huge, she was crimson. Not a soppy dolly pink, but crimson like blood, like the sun going down on a burning African night, like blood oranges and garnets and pomegranate seeds. Where she wasn’t crimson she was gold: the hair of her gorgeous carved figurehead, for example, with its green eyes and sidelong inviting smile, and the sculpted rims of her many portholes, and the curled leaves and vines carved all over her magnificent stern. She had three masts, a bowsprit, cannons and life-boats along the decks, and two fine smokestacks amidship. In front of the smokestacks was a low circular canvas awning in crimson and white stripes like seaside rock, and gay flags fluttered in her rigging. She was heading out to sea under power, catching the ebb tide, but her sails were not yet up. Charlie suddenly wanted, more than anything, to see this amazing craft under canvas, bowling along on the high seas.

The wild music was coming from this ship, and it seemed that neither the ship nor her music cared about the pesky riverpoliceguy any more than an elephant cares about a fly on its bottom: He kept on bawling through his megaphone, the ship kept on moving downstream.

And then suddenly a figure appeared on the deck, and seemed to notice the policeguy, for it leaned over the side as if listening to hear what he was saying, and then disappeared for a moment, and then reappeared, casting down a rope ladder from the deck and making beckoning noises. The ship slowed a little to stabilize in the flowing stream of the river, and the policeguy maneuvered his little boat up to the great crimson hull. He made fast to the bottom of the ladder and began to climb up.

Charlie, watching for his opportunity, knew exactly what he was going to do. The moment the coast was clear, he was going to board this ship. It was so beautiful, so exciting. What kind of people could be on board? Who would own such a vessel? He had never seen anything so tempting in his life, and he had to find out about it.

Something was going on up on the deck. He couldn’t see clearly because the little riverboat was tied up against the ship’s crimson side and the deck was way above him, but he could hear shouting, and scuffling, and suddenly—a great splash.

He looked to where the sound had been.

There was the riverpoliceguy, closer to the river than he would have cared to be: i.e., in it. He was splashing and struggling and trying to catch his breath, which is hard with your boots on when you’ve been thrown overboard.

“Sorry, fella!” came a hoarse cry from overhead, and then the tempo of the ship picked up, the music suddenly stopped, and the ship began to cruise swiftly, like a fighting swan, on down the river—leaving the riverpoliceguy in its wake, and pulling his little boat along beside her almost as if it had been completely forgotten. Which perhaps it had.

Charlie, sitting alone in the little boat’s cabin, being dragged at considerable speed to who knows where, couldn’t say a word.

 

Several miles upstream, Rafi and Troy were standing by Mr. Ubsworth’s stall on the riverside. Troy was panting and drooling. He’d run all the way, following Charlie’s scent. Rafi had followed him in the long silver car, and was looking cool and pale. He was staring at Troy, his lip twisted.

“You stupid animal,” he said, quite calmly to start with. “You
stuuuupid
animal. This is not the kid, it’s a fish-stall. Didn’t you get a decent sniff of him yesterday in the car? What do you think I feed you for, you plackett! It’s not for the charm of your company, it’s for your nose! And if your nose can’t tell the difference between a boy and a plate of fish, you’re not worth your keep! Are you? So pig off! Go on!” He picked up a stick and jerked it in Troy’s face.

Troy, whining, his tongue flobbering, went to the edge of the water and ran up and down.

Mr. Ubsworth observed and said nothing.

“You been here all morning?” Rafi said to him.

“Aye,” said Mr. Ubsworth, rinsing a sparrowfish in his bucket.

“Did you see a boy? Brown boy, shavehead, about so high, with a bag?”

Mr. Ubsworth looked up. “No,” he said mildly. “You the first boy I seen today.”

Rafi stared at him. He didn’t like being called a boy. “If he comes back this way . . .” he said.

Mr. Ubsworth was back to his fishes’ bellies, cleaning out red and blue innards from silvery streaks of eel in the cold water. The heat from his grill shimmered on the air. “Grilled eel sandwich?” he said.

“Of course not,” said Rafi. “If he comes back—”

“Ain’t been no boy here,” said Mr. Ubsworth again.

Rafi stood for a moment, his head down. He was angry.

Suddenly he threw the stick viciously at his dog, then turned on his heel, his jacket flying. He jumped in the car and went home.

Troy lollopped tiredly after the car, his tail down. It was a long way home.

Mr. Ubsworth looked up. He liked lads to have better manners.

CHAPTER 6

C
harlie wasn’t worried at all about leaving the riverpoliceguy in the middle of the river. Surely riverpoliceguys could swim. He was, however, hungry. He opened each of the two little lockers in the cabin: a half-eaten box of crackers and some tea and sugar cubes and chocolate. He ate three crackers and put the rest in his bag. He pocketed the tea and the chocolate and the box of sugar cubes too—well, the policeguy wouldn’t need them now.

Then Charlie settled down in the cabin. He didn’t want anyone on the ship to notice him, so he’d stay put until dark, and then make his way up the ladder. He lay back and gazed up at the great crimson hull to which he was tethered, wondering again who would have a ship like that, and where it was going. He could see the ship’s name,
Circe,
painted in gold on the curve of her great bow. Circe—he’d heard that name before . . . pronounced Sirky . . . now what was it . . . After a while he recalled that it was the name of the witch who enchanted Odysseus on his way back from the Trojan War. His dad had read it to him. She’d turned all his sailors into pigs and kept Odysseus for a whole year, making him forget his wife and his son at home in Ithaca. Circe. Odd name for a ship, when the Circe in the story had disrupted Odysseus’s sea voyage so effectively.