Soul Splinter (8 page)

Siddy took his flat cap off and punched his fist inside it. ‘That’s the last time I bother being brave.’

T
he paint on the hull of the boat Moll and Siddy crouched behind was weathered and chipped and all around them lay old crates and heaps of rope. Moll poked her head round the stern of the boat.

‘We’ll run round the length of the harbour, just like Oak said, until the wall starts peeling out to sea. Then we’ll hide again before The Crumpled Way; we don’t know what we might find out there.’

‘Shouldn’t we walk?’ Siddy asked, fiddling nervously with his neckerchief. ‘Might look less suspicious if we’re seen strolling through the village rather than charging at it full pelt . . .’

Moll wrinkled her nose. ‘Charging is more efficient.’

The sea lapped against the harbour wall and Moll took a step out from behind the boat. Siddy clutched her arm and yanked her backwards. There were footsteps clacking over the cobbles – and they were getting louder. Through a crack in the boat’s stern, Moll and Siddy watched, their breath hemmed inside them.

First they saw the boots: two pairs – long, black and leather.

Moll gripped Siddy’s arm. ‘
They’re bootleggers
,’ she mouthed. ‘
Smugglers!
’

Siddy turned a shade of green and hunkered down with Moll. Two boys, much older than Moll and Siddy, were talking in low voices on the other side of the boat. They wore long-sleeved white shirts, dark waistcoats and trousers, but, where one was tall and wiry, like a straightened-out coat hanger, the other was squat and fat, as if he’d been poured into his leather boots. Both boys had long hair though, knotted and backcombed into wild-looking dreadlocks.

‘Grudge told me we can expect a big haul tonight,’ the skinny boy said.

His friend smirked. ‘Drinks on the Dreads in The Gloomy Tap afterwards then?’

The skinny boy nodded, then he reached into his waistcoat and turned a sheathed knife over in his hands. He slipped the blade out and held it up towards the sea, smiling as the sun surfaced from the horizon and flashed off the metal. ‘We’ve got Inchgrundle eating out of the palms of our hands now; we’ll be rich before we know it.’

The low grunt of a laugh sounded from somewhere near by.

Moll’s hand slid to her catapult and Siddy’s wound tightly round his knife.

‘When fishing’s scat, when farming’s poor, there’s always smuggling, boys.’

The voice was a growl and Moll and Siddy’s eyes widened as an enormous man stepped forward to join the boys, his legs as thick as the boughs of a very large tree. He held a crowbar in his hand as casually as a gentleman might hold a walking stick and hanging down all around his face were dark dreadlocks as thick and matted as sailor’s rope.

‘Didn’t expect to see you until later, Grudge,’ the lanky boy said.

Barbarous Grudge chewed on a small bone and Moll glimpsed eight gold teeth glinting in the sunlight against his black skin. She turned a pale face to Siddy who nodded. The stories Hard-Times Bob had told them about Grudge had been true: he really had melted down stolen coins to cap his teeth and he really did chew on a finger bone.

Grudge grinned. ‘Thought I’d recruit a few more locals; the ship we’re planning to raid tonight is big – packed high with kegs of gin, brandy and tobacco – and we’ll need all the hands we can get to load the goods into the rowing boat, then haul it out to the harbour wall and away to the bigger towns to sell.’

The squat boy laughed. ‘Gin, brandy, tobacco – that’ll line our pockets for weeks!’

Grudge pointed his crowbar halfway round the harbour. ‘I’ve got us a room at The Gloomy Tap; if I can count on you boys back there with me now to help plan the raid slick, I’ll see you a bigger cut of the booty.’

He turned and left the yard, weaving his way between the lobster pots and boats. The boys grinned at each other, then hurried out of the shipyard.

Siddy stared after them, wide-eyed with fear, and Moll thought of Gryff and Oak suddenly, wishing that they were there beside her. Surely they’d beaten back the owls by now? Oak was quick as lightning with his pistol and Gryff was as fierce an animal as she’d come across. Why weren’t they here already?

Moll shook herself; she couldn’t let Siddy know how scared she was. ‘He’s a smuggler, that’s all. We’ve faced much worse than him.’

Siddy looked down. ‘When Gryff was with us – and Alfie.’ He paused. ‘I wish I’d brought Hermit.’

Moll tightened the laces on her boots. ‘Well, we haven’t got Gryff – or Hermit thankfully.’ She glossed over Alfie’s name completely, as if Siddy hadn’t even mentioned him. ‘We’re going to have to make do with each other.’

‘The Gloomy Tap sounds like an inn – or a pub,’ Siddy mumbled.

‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ Moll said, which was a lie. She’d been thinking about boiling Hermit up in a very large pan. ‘We’ll creep to the edge of the shipyard, then, once we’re sure Grudge and his bootlegger friends are inside The Gloomy Tap, we’ll nip out and run across the harbour. Then we’ll go up The Crumpled Way and look for the amulet.’

Siddy nodded. ‘Do you think this amulet will be like the first one?’

Moll considered this. ‘Dunno. Maybe. Though I’m not sure magic happens the same way twice.’ She thought back to the sparkling blue jewel they’d found inside a hollowed tree in Tanglefern Forest and grinned. ‘And the Dreads thought
they
were dealing with valuable goods on their smuggling raid! They should have seen the size of the jewel we found in the forest . . .’

Moll crept out from behind the boat, glanced left and right, then tiptoed forward. Siddy followed.

Neither of them noticed the figure crouching behind a barrel a few metres away. He lay low for several minutes, thinking, then he smiled to himself and disappeared from the shipyard without a sound.

Moll and Siddy peered out from behind the last of the boats in the shipyard to see a cobbled road running between a row of houses and the harbour wall. The sky was overcast now and villagers were starting to wake. An old man opened his front door, let his dog scamper over the cobbles, then picked up some firewood from a stash beneath his porch and hobbled inside again with his dog. Moll scanned down the row of houses until she came to a weather-beaten sign hanging from a building over the street:
The Gloomy Tap
. And, to Moll’s relief, there was no one outside it.

She turned to Siddy. ‘If we wait any longer, the whole village will be up.’

Siddy nodded, clutched his talisman hard, a smoothed stone with a hole in the middle, then shot out from the shipyard and ran over the cobbles after Moll. They raced past the first few houses, holding their breath as they pelted by The Gloomy Tap, but when they were halfway down the street the commotion began.

‘Stop, thief!’ a voice screamed from somewhere behind them. ‘Two children stealing firewood from old Mr Weaver!’

Siddy shot a sideways glance at Moll. ‘What?’

Moll grabbed his arm. ‘Just run!’

A shuttered window above them burst open. ‘Thieves!’ a woman shrieked. ‘Down by the harbour wall!’

More shutters clattered open as men, women and children caught on and leant out of windows, hollering abuse.

‘They were trying to take Mr Weaver’s firewood!’ a man bellowed. ‘Somebody stop them!’

The village was suddenly alive with hysterical villagers screaming from their windows and, in minutes, the inhabitants had stormed downstairs and were pouring out of their front doors into the street. Moll and Siddy charged over the cobbles, tearing past the houses.

‘They’ve got rolling pins and kitchen knives!’ Siddy cried, snatching a glance behind him.

Moll kept her head down. ‘Ignore it! Just keep running! If we follow the harbour round, they’ll chase us on to the pier so we’ll need to turn up a side road and lose them in the backstreets!’

Siddy nodded, swerving left up a narrow lane behind Moll. They took a right down an alleyway, twisted left up a flight of steps, taking them two at a time, then darted down another street lined with shops. A grocer was laying out vegetables under his shop awning and beside him a baker was arranging loaves. They looked up, startled, then, when they heard the commotion hurrying closer, they stepped forward with fists raised. Moll grabbed Siddy by the arm and they dashed into a side street which climbed steeply uphill. Muscles burning, they burst out on to another road lined with houses. The shrieks of angry villagers rang louder and they dashed down the street. Moll slowed.

‘It’s a dead end, isn’t it?’ Siddy panted.

Moll nodded.

There was a shout behind them. ‘Oi!’

Moll and Siddy spun round.

Standing in the middle of the street was a boy – small, scrawny and covered in dirt, like something forgotten about wrapped in rags. And yet his face was sharp: two eyes set wide apart flitting from Moll to Siddy.

Moll glanced around for a stone to lodge into her catapult, but, on seeing none, she raised her fists. Siddy drew out his knife.

The boy took a step towards them and from somewhere nearby, the shouts of the villagers loomed closer. But the boy didn’t raise his fists, as Moll had expected.

‘You got money?’ he said. His voice was thin and watery.

Moll squinted. She could have sworn she recognised that voice. But from where?

The boy worked up a gob of phlegm, then spat it out on to the street. ‘I said, have you got money? Cos if you have,’ he muttered, ‘I can get you out of this mess.’

Moll looked to Siddy and nodded. He fumbled for the leather pouch Mooshie had given him, then he held out a couple of coins.

The boy came closer, inspected his payment and made to snatch it.

Siddy yanked his hand back and closed his fist. ‘A way out first.’

The boy sniffed, allowed the din to come closer still, then said, ‘Where d’you wanna go?’

‘The Crumpled Way,’ Moll said firmly.

The boy raised one eyebrow, then shrugged. ‘Come on then.’

He darted back along the street and slipped down a shadowy alleyway Moll and Siddy had missed before. At the end was a padlocked gate, but the boy launched himself at it, clambered up, then flipped his body over the other side.

Siddy turned to Moll. ‘Scrawny little kid, but he’s handy on his feet.’

Moll grunted. ‘He’s got eyes on the side of his head; looks like his grandmother knitted him wrong.’

They followed the boy over the gate and found themselves in a yard full of junk: ripped tyres, scraps of rusted metal and rolls of tangled wire. But the shouts of the villagers were almost muted in here – and, as they bounded over piles of discarded junk, the boy turned to them and grinned.

‘Smog Sprockett,’ he said. ‘Street urchin most of the time – but I’m the eyes and the ears of this place. There isn’t anything I don’t see.’

Moll couldn’t quite find it in her to smile back. Making friends with a street urchin called Smog Sprockett hadn’t been part of the brief from Oak. She kept her head down, as did Siddy, and ran on.

At the far end of the yard was a stone wall. Smog was up it in a flash, chasing off the seagull perched on top. Moll and Siddy followed. They jumped down into another alleyway, dark and closed off, despite the morning light. But they were careering downhill again, which meant they were heading back towards the harbour. Towards The Crumpled Way.

Smog looked back at them as he ran and Moll could tell what he was thinking. His eyes scanned their traveller clothes – Siddy’s spotted neckerchief, her colourful dress – and their dark features. ‘So what are a pair of gypsies doing in Inchgrundle then? Thought your lot were up in Tanglefern Forest.’

Moll ran alongside him, remembering what Mooshie had said about keeping a low profile in the villages beyond the forest:
Don’t go shouting about being a gypsy; the villagers are a suspicious bunch – they think we’re all nasty curses and thieving silver
.

‘Oh, we’re not gypsies,’ Moll panted, thinking fast. ‘Sidney and me, we’re – we’re shepherds from the farm before Inchgrundle.’

Smog snorted. ‘Pull the other leg, Bo Peep.’

Moll hung back from Smog and Siddy shot her a look. ‘I got the name change,’ he whispered, ‘makes us less like gypsies and all that – but
shepherds
?’

Moll scowled. ‘Meant to stop after “Sidney”, but the words just tumbled out.’

Houses rose up either side of them, but lace curtains were drawn across most of the windows and the only inhabitant they could see was a stray cat slinking behind a dustbin.

Without warning, Smog screeched to a halt.

‘What is it?’ Moll whispered.

Three figures detached themselves from the shadows in front of them. They wore long black boots and the largest of them carried a crowbar in a clenched fist.

Moll and Siddy staggered backwards, but Smog only smiled and dipped his head at the smugglers. ‘Morning, Grudge.’ He jerked his thumb towards Moll and Siddy. ‘As I promised – the gypsies.’

Moll’s stomach dropped as she realised why she’d recognised Smog’s voice. ‘It was
you
!’ she hissed at him. ‘
Stop thief
. . . You called the villagers after us even though we’d done nothing wrong!’

Smog blinked large, flickering eyes. ‘Shouldn’t go boasting about enormous jewels you’ve found in the forest then, should you?’ He smiled as Grudge dropped several coins into his grubby palm.