The Devil and His Boy (3 page)

Henrietta nodded. “I think this is one for Ratsey,” she muttered.

“Yes,” Sebastian said. “Ratsey will like this one. You’d better call the boy.”

But at that very moment the outer door opened and Tom came back into the kitchen. It had begun to rain more heavily and water dripped out of his hair, running down the side of his neck. He was carrying the bucket, full now and heavy.

“Where have you been?” Sebastian swung a lazy arm and slapped the back of his hand across Tom’s head.

“Lazing again, I’ll be bound!” Henrietta did the same, only harder.

“I’m sorry!” Tom cried out. “A gentleman came. He told me to see to his horse.”

“Yes.” Sebastian leaned closer. Tom cowered away but the landlord was smiling. “What sort of a horse does he ride?”

“A stallion. Black with a white mark.”

“Valuable?”

Tom hesitated. He knew what was about to happen and thought about lying but it was no good. The Slopes would know. They always did. “Yes,” he said.

Sebastian grabbed him by the collar and drew him so close that his lips almost touched the boy’s ear. “You’re to go into the wood,” he whispered. “Find Ratsey. Tell him we have a mark. The London road. Tomorrow…”

“But it’s dark. It’s raining…”

“Are you arguing with me?” Sebastian hadn’t raised his voice but his grip had tightened and his eyes, dark to begin with, had gone almost black.

“No.”

“Then be off with you. To the burnt oak. And if he isn’t there, wait for him to come.”

Tom ran out, slamming the door behind him. Sebastian and Henrietta Slope watched him go.

“You’re too good to that child,” Henrietta sighed.

“I’m too soft-hearted, I know it,” Sebastian agreed.

“I wonder why our guest was so interested in him?” Henrietta scratched her head and sighed as a lump of hair fell into the soup. Her disease was definitely getting worse.

Sebastian considered for a moment. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know,” he replied.

Husband and wife kissed each other, grey lipless teeth on to grey pock-marked flesh. Then they left the kitchen and went back into the inn.

After
he had left The Pig’s Head, Tom climbed up the hill and back into the town centre. It had stopped raining and the clouds had parted enough to allow a slice of moonlight to cut through. Tom was grateful for it. Without the moon he would have had to make the journey in almost pitch blackness for the only other light came from the candles burning behind the windows of the houses and – with the high price of wax – there were few enough of them.

He passed through the market square, skirting an old, crooked building that stood in the middle. This was called the Market Cross and Tom knew that there was a schoolroom on the upper floor. Not that he had ever been inside it. He had never been to school, not even for a day. He had never learned to read or write anything more than the three letters of his own name.

Tom was an orphan who had never known his parents. He was beaten and bullied every day. He was half starved and owned nothing more than the rags he was wearing. And yet despite all this he wouldn’t have described himself as unhappy. For a start he had never once been outside Framlingham so he had nothing with which to compare his own life. At the same time, he had listened to travellers staying at the inn and knew that there were poor people and hungry people all over England – so why should things be any different for him? At least he had a roof over his head – even if it was only a stable roof which leaked in the rain. He had plenty of scraps and leftovers to eat. The Slopes might beat him but so far they hadn’t broken anything. All in all, things could be worse.

Ahead of him, Framlingham Castle loomed up, its walls dark and ancient against the night sky. Tom had heard about the great banquets and tournaments that had taken place there years ago. But that was all in the past. Now the castle was crumbling. Cracks had appeared in the brickwork and weeds had quickly sprouted in the cracks. The ridiculous, twisting chimneys which had been added to the battlements were just its final humiliation.

Tom hurried round it, keeping the town ditch on his left. The town seemed to end very suddenly. The road became a track. The track grew more and more uneven. And then he was walking across a bumpy field with a black, skeletal forest springing up ahead.

Most of the trees had lost their leaves. The forest in winter was a cold, forbidding place. As Tom continued, branches twisted and interlocked above his head while roots formed tangled knots beneath him. The glistening tree trunks were like huge bars. With every step he took he felt himself being swallowed up by a vast, living cage.

Somewhere, far away, an animal howled in the darkness. One of the dogs from the village? Or something worse? Tom knew that it was unlikely that wolves would come so far south at this time of year – but even so he found himself quickening his pace.

He had been this way many times and soon found what he was looking for. A tree shaped like a Y, a rough slope covered in white pebbles, a circular clearing and there on the far side, an old oak tree that had been hit by lightning, split in half and burned coal black. This was the burnt oak that Sebastian Slope had referred to. This was where Ratsey would be found.

Ratsey.

Tom realized that he was shivering and wondered if it was entirely due to the cold. He drew two fingers into his mouth and whistled a high-pitched note, then a lower one. It was a signal he had used often although he still had no idea how Ratsey heard it, where he came from, how he knew when someone was about to arrive. The sound should have echoed through the trees but on this damp, dreary night the whistle sounded very small. Tom lifted his fingers again, then hesitated as a second terrible howl ripped through the dark sky. It was a wolf. It couldn’t be anything else.

“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son…”

The voice was hushed, singing the words with a soft laugh. Tom turned round and almost cried out. A moment ago there had been no one there but now there was a man, dressed in a long leather coat with a sword at his waist. At least, he was man up to the neck. He had the head of some sort of horrible monster with bloodshot eyes that bulged out of their sockets, yellow teeth as thick as piano keys, swollen cheeks like over-ripe melons and a chin that curved round until it almost touched his nose.

The man finished his song. “Tom, Tom, the piper’s son. Will he stay or will he run?”

Tom relaxed, recognizing the voice. “Ratsey!” he exclaimed.

“Did I scare you, Tom?”

“No…”

“A shame. I meant to.”

Ratsey laughed, then reached up and grabbed hold of his chin. He pulled and his entire face came away – it was nothing more than an elaborate mask. The face underneath it was an unusually handsome one with black hair sweeping over the forehead and almost touching the man’s shoulders. His eyes, alight with humour, were pale blue and the more he smiled, the brighter they seemed to shine. But for his sword, his leather coat (patched in so many places that there must have been very little of the original coat left) and his mud-spattered boots, you might have taken him for a priest or a choirboy. But then, if you had looked deeper into those eyes, you might have noticed how very black his pupils were and if at that moment he were to stop smiling you would realize that this was a man who would never come near a church – unless it was to burn it down.

“What do you think of the new mask?” he demanded. He held it up so that its pointed nose almost touched his own.

“It’s horrible,” Tom replied.

“Thank you.” He set the mask down. “And now, I wonder what brings you out on this wet and wicked night?”

Tom swallowed. “There’s a man,” he said. “A traveller.”

“Is he rich?”

“Master Slope says he might be.”

“Might be?” Ratsey laughed and pulled a metal bottle from somewhere inside his coat. He unscrewed the lid, raised it to his lips and swallowed. “Tell me what you think, Tom-Tom! Is he rich?”

“I don’t know, Ratsey.”

Ratsey considered this statement for a moment. He lowered the bottle and smacked his lips. He sighed. He sucked his teeth. And then, before Tom could move, he lashed out, grabbing hold of the boy’s ear and dragging him towards him with such force that Tom cried out with pain.

“I asked you a question,” he said in a reasonable tone of voice. “When I ask a question I expect an answer. That’s the whole point.”

“He’s rich!” Tom shouted. He could feel his ear coming away from his head. “He’s got a good horse. Black, with white markings. His clothes are smart. He has money.”

“Which way is he coming?”

“The London road!”

“Excellent!” Ratsey let go and Tom reeled back, clutching his ear. Ratsey gazed at him apologetically, then handed him the bottle. “Here you go, old chap,” he said. “Have a swig of that. It’ll take away some of the cold.”

Tom hesitated but Ratsey gestured and he raised the bottle to his lips. It contained some sort of brandy.

“In a strange way, you remind me of me when I was young,” Ratsey said. “Not of course that I was as scrawny and ragged as you. As a matter of fact, my father was a duke.” He winked. “Strange to think that when I was your age I ate off gold plates and had servants to do everything for me.”

“So what happened, Ratsey?”

Ratsey smiled. “I got bored and I ran away. I went to war.” He reached out, took the bottle and drank. For a long moment he stared into the distance and Tom could see the moon reflected in his eyes. “Captain Ratsey – that was me. I fought for the Queen in Ireland. Good old Queeny! I saw her once, you know, Tom-Tom. She was as close to me as that tree over there.” He nodded at the oak. “Glorious days! But then times got hard. No money. No food. No fun…” He jerked his head to one side as if shaking off the memory and suddenly he was business-like again. “Tell Slope that I’ll be waiting,” he said.

“Yes, Ratsey.”

Ratsey gestured with his head and Tom set off at once, scrabbling across the clearing and back up the slope. When he reached the top, he stopped and turned round. But the clearing was already empty. Ratsey had vanished as quickly and quietly as he had appeared and the burnt oak stood solitary, dead in the pale glow of the moon.

It was still dark when Tom opened his eyes the following morning. In the summer months he would be woken by the sun breaking through the cracks in the walls of the stable where he slept but in the winter it was always the cold that did it.

As he set to work, Tom thought about Ratsey and about the traveller who would be leaving for London that day. He knew what was going to happen. The same thing had been going on for as long as he could remember. But there was nothing he could do about it. It was no business of his.

Tom had just finished cleaning out the hearth – the ashes thick with fat and grease – when he became aware of voices in the main room. The first, high-pitched in anger and indignation, he knew at once. It was Sebastian Slope.

“You can’t take him!” he was saying. “I won’t let you!”

“You’ll hang if you try to stop me.”

A moment later the door opened and the traveller stormed in, already dressed in his cloak and with his sword buckled at his waist. Sebastian Slope was right behind him. The innkeeper had obviously got up in a hurry. He was wearing a dirty vest, hanging outside his trousers. His eyes were bleary and his orange hair was even more dishevelled than usual.

The traveller ignored him. His attention was fixed on Tom, kneeling by the hearth. “Tom,” he said, “do you have any possessions? Anything you call your own?”

“No, sir.” Tom was too dazed to understand what was happening.

“Then you have nothing to pack. Come with me. We’re leaving now.”

“But … my lord!” Slope’s blustering hadn’t worked so now he began to whine. “My wife and I … where would we be without the boy? We’ve treated him like a son…”

“You’ve treated him like a slave and believe me, you will hear more of it.”

“You don’t want him, my lord!” Slope was actually crying but – rather repulsively – the tears were coming out of what was left of his nose. “He’s no good to you. He’s a sneak. He’s a sniveller. If it wasn’t for Mrs S and me he’d have been hanged years ago.”

“Tell me, boy…” he said – the traveller was standing firmly between Tom and the innkeeper – “do you want to stay with this man and his wife?”

Tom wasn’t sure what to say. He certainly had no love for either of the Slopes, but to leave…? To step outside the small world of Framlingham? It was something he had never even for a minute considered.

“He wants to stay!” Sebastian Slope exclaimed. “He loves Mrs S and me. Like we was his own parents.”

“No!” Tom was amazed to find himself saying it. “I don’t want to stay.”

“Then let’s go.”

With his back turned to him, the traveller didn’t see the landlord snatch up a knife that had been lying on a table. Tom opened his mouth to call out a warning – but the traveller had no need of it. He must have heard something, for in less than a second his sword was out of its sheath. He spun round and slashed down twice. The first stroke gashed Slope’s arm, drawing a thin line of blood. The second sliced across his stomach and for a horrible moment Tom was sure it had killed him. But the blade had only cut through the waistband of his trousers. As Sebastian Slope howled in pain, they slid down to his ankles, exposing a pair of knees like over-sized conkers.

“This way, Tom.”

Not sure if he was awake or asleep, Tom followed the traveller out into the yard and watched as he saddled and made ready his horse. It didn’t take him very long. As he led the animal out of the stable, he smiled at Tom for the first time. “You’ve never ridden a horse,” he said.

“No, sir.”

“It’s not difficult. You’ll sit behind me and hold on to me. You’ll soon get used to it.”

“Where are you taking me, sir?”

“To London.”

London!

London was a four-day ride away but for Tom it could have been on the other side of the planet … on the other side of the moon even. London was a city, he knew, with a tower and a river and a cathedral so great that the church at Framlingham could fit inside it. He had heard it said that crowds of people lived there; not just dozens of people but hundreds, maybe even a thousand.