The Elfin Ship (38 page)

Everyone dashed to the wardrobe in time to see a tiny pink mouse scuttling through a hole gnawed through the back panel. After Gosset’s tale of the fork wielding moths, Jonathan wouldn’t have been half surprised to see that the mouse wore an overcoat and carried a whangee. But of course it didn’t. It was just an ordinary mouse, not at all unlike the mice that frequented the bookstore in Seaside. Since he’d discovered that mice are so terribly fond of books, Jonathan had developed a curious liking for the beasts. Ahab apparently had similar feelings, for when the mouse poked a tentative snout out from behind the wardrobe and twitched his nose and whiskers about, Ahab sniffed at him a bit and wagged his tail as a sign of friendship. Like all universal signs and symbols, tail-wagging is apparently well understood by mice, for this one squeaked out a mouse hello and dashed away through a hole in the baseboard.

They rooted through the wardrobe, suspecting that something other than the obviously friendly mouse must have caused Gosset to take such fits. He was still unconscious, laying there in a pile, breathing heavily. There was nothing else, however, in the wardrobe save a few pairs of tolerably well-worn shoes, and a tweed coat.

The Professor loosened Gosset’s shirt, and the four of them dragged him up onto the bed where he began snoring in a healthy way. The rafters retired to the library, slumping about on the couch and easy chairs. Escargot pointed out the fact that it was past noon and high time to eat. So they broke into the knapsacks and lunched on bread and cheese and jerky. After lunch the Professor dozed off lying on his back on the floor with his hand clasped on his chest. It wasn’t more than a moment before he began to snore. It seemed to Jonathan that if a man wants to snore when he sleeps, he would do well to lie on his back – somehow that seemed to promote snoring. He no sooner considered that he, under normal circumstances, couldn’t fall asleep while someone in the room snored, when he began to get drowsy and do just that. They had, after all, had a restless night, so it wasn’t at all strange that an afternoon nap would seem so irresistible.

In fact they spent the entire afternoon dozing and poking through Gosset’s books. Along near nightfall, though, all of them began to grow restless. Escargot’s step could be heard first in one corner of the room and then in another. Several times Jonathan could hear him clumping into the bedroom to have a peek at Gosset, who still snored away. By mutual, unspoken agreement none of them made much noise. When they spoke, they did so in whispers, for they all hoped that Gosset would remain asleep until darkness fell so that they could slip away without him.

In low voices they boiled up a plan or two, or at least Escargot did. Jonathan and the Professor, never having been within shouting distance of the tower on the ridge much less inside it, found it difficult to offer either a plan of their own or reasons why Escargot’s plan wouldn’t work. In the end they resigned themselves to the fact that Escargot was the general of the campaign. It was his idea that he lay low, as he put it, in the woods until the other rafters had made their presence known. They would lead Selznak to believe that Jonathan and the Professor were the usurpers, as it were, and when the Dwarf was confident that he had them in his power, Escargot would spring his trap. He didn’t elaborate on the trap idea, even though the Professor pressed him for details. Escargot said finally that the less they knew about his own plans, the less likely they’d be to upset them. If Jonathan and the Professor knew about this secret plan, then they’d have to act as if they didn’t, which, of course, would be a dangerous thing. Jonathan rather suspected that there wasn’t any plan. But he had a certain trust in Escargot, who, after all, could have turned round and sailed across the seas anytime he chose over the past weeks. All things considered, it seemed likely that Escargot had more motive than merely ridding the valley of goblins and such.

The sun seemed intolerably slow in setting. At about seven o’clock it hung in the western sky as if regretting having to settle down for the night. But when it finally touched the tops of the White Mountains, it sank like an agate marble in a bucket of water. The rafters stood in Gosset’s high window and watched it slip away. The fog that had sprung up around the Dwarf had crept away just as mysteriously, and it was a fine evening. Or at least it would have been a fine evening to do something sensible or do nothing at all.

Twilight hung about for a half hour or so, the sky darkening by degrees. When the first star appeared away down toward Seaside, the rafters decided it was time to go. They were dismayed to see, after the sunset held so much promise, that wisping tendrils of fog seemed to be creeping in off the swamps, shuffling along close to the ground. The Professor pointed out that swamps could often be counted on to contribute that sort of thing. But aside from the fact that the night would be a bit shadier and more frightening for the fog, it would, after all, serve to hide them somewhat.

So they set out.

Gosset showed no signs of stirring. He seemed to be making up for lost time in the sleep category. The rafters tiptoed off down the stairs, Ahab leading the way, and passed through his open front door into the night. The air was wet with the promise of fog and the night roundabout was silent as if already muted by it. There was no moon yet, and wouldn’t be for another hour, so the forest encircling Gosset’s house was a black wall, broken by nothing but an occasional pair of yellow eyes.

As they had agreed, Escargot carried nothing and had left Gosset’s hat behind in the library. He was to walk along behind Jonathan, Dooly, and the Professor and whisper directions if it became necessary. Otherwise he would speak only in an emergency and then as little as possible. None of the rafters were to speak to Escargot at all.

There was little choice but to sneak into the town of Hightower by simply slipping along up the river road. The chance of meeting anyone else out on the road after dark was unlikely, unless, of course, they happened upon a band of goblins. But bands of goblins almost always caper along amid a flurry of cackle and uproar, so they determined to hide themselves in the edge of the forest at the slightest hint of trouble.

Dooly tripped over a root before he had gotten beyond the perimeter of Gosset’s front yard, and he went tumbling with a shout into the bushes, snapping branches and making a grand row. There was no use arguing about it or warning him to be careful; they simply picked Dooly up, dusted him off and listened for a moment for changes in the night sounds surrounding them. There were none, so they popped out of the brush onto the river road and snaked away toward town in the darkness. They’d gotten about one hundred yards when, from behind them, they heard a bang and a shout, and then silence. It seemed certain that either Lonny Gosset had awakened and set out to search for them, or that goblins were having a go at his house again. Given the mysterious visit of Selznak the Dwarf that afternoon, it wasn’t at all unlikely that the latter were the case. One way or another, there was nothing to do but go on, the quicker the better.

It wasn’t such a long way into town; in fact before they had traveled more than a hundred yards or so they spied the eaves of a house through the trees. The house – more of a cottage actually – was dark and silent and overgrown with ivy, the huge trefoil leaves as big around as plates. More cottages appeared, and a little path wandered off to their left in between two rows of them. The river road slanted away right toward the Oriel.

They followed the path on instructions from Escargot, and found themselves creeping along a dim avenue between shuttered houses. There was no ruin, as there had been in Willowood or Stooton, but here and there a shutter had been pried from a window and the pane of glass broken. Either marauding goblins had idly vandalized the homes and pitched rocks through the windows, or something was living within, creeping in and out of the window for some odd reason rather than using the door.

There were no signs of any human inhabitants. The little winding street of cottages led, finally, to the center of the village and a cluster of shops and pubs and the Hightower Hotel. Most were boarded up. The same signs hung in the windows of some of the shops that Jonathan and the Professor had remarked on weeks earlier. The pub with the wire-gummed proprietor was locked securely and on the door hung one square sign that read simply ‘Out’. They slid past Gosset’s Millinery and angled across the road to Hobbs’ General Merchandise, one of the few stores along the road that seemed still in business. A light glowed in the rear of the store, and through an open doorway within Jonathan could just make out the top of Hobbs’ head, sort of bobbing there as if he were nodding over a book. Despite what the Moon Man had said about the townspeople having run mad, Jonathan was happy to see Old Hobbs going about his business. No good, after all, could come from giving up and running off.

‘There’s Hobbs,’ Jonathan told the Professor. ‘Do you see him there in back?’

‘Yes,’ said the Professor. ‘He looks as if he’s fairly active. Engaged in some business pursuits I don’t doubt. Working on his ledger book. Perhaps we should approach him.’

‘What for?’ asked Escargot. ‘If he’s as much help as that bloody Gosset we’ll have to throttle him and lock him in a closet. We don’t need anymore help from crazy men.’

‘You’ll find that Mr Hobbs is of sterner stuff than Lonny Gosset,’ said the Professor. ‘We might need an ally yet. At least we should alert him to the fact that we have a plan afoot. We needn’t reveal its nature.’

Escargot grunted, but didn’t argue. The four of them went creeping back along the side of the building, Ahab brushing along beside them. Lamplight glowed through a rear window, and the rafters edged up to it, not wanting to reveal their presence until they’d had a good look inside. They were doubly cautious as they approached, for from within they heard the sound of voices – two voices it seemed, or perhaps three.

When he peered up over the sill, Jonathan half expected to see a band of gophers dressed up in bits of Hobbs’ clothing. But much to his relief, old Hobbs sat placidly before a burned-down fire counting little piles of copper coin. The Professor smiled as if to say, ‘I told you so,’ and they all watched for a moment.

Hobbs seemed to count out about ten copper coins and stack them in a neat pile an inch or so high. He counted ten more and stacked them alongside. Then he added up another pile and another and finally, when he had a dozen neat inch-high stacks of coin he layed a straight-edge across the top, bent down, and eyeballed the whole thing as if checking to see whether all were level and true. All in all he had about a hundred of the stacks balanced about the table, and he nodded and smiled at the things as if they were school children all waiting at attention to file out on to a playground. It might have been evidence of Hobbs’ ‘bearing up’ or it might have been something else altogether. They decided to watch for a moment before beating on the window to get Hobbs’ attention – and it was a good thing they did. For as he measured away at the piles, he began to speak to himself, and then to answer himself, and then to break in and interrupt his own conversation. Finally he shouted at himself to be quiet, stopped speaking abruptly, and exclaimed, ‘So there!’ very loud.

He piled up a last tower of copper coins then began sorting through a mess of small white buttons and dried lima beans. When he’d fingered out fifty or sixty of each, he took his ruler and hashed about in the pile, scrambling everything, buttons, beans, and coins, into an odd salad. He picked up a double-handful of the mix and poured it over his head in a slow stream, shouting to himself all the while. The only words of the bunch that Jonathan could plainly make out were the words ‘Wealth! Wealth!’ which were run together with who knows what all sorts of other sounds. It was a sad pass. Hobbs rose from his chair and scooped the remains of his wealth into a flour sack, at which point Dooly pointed involuntarily toward him, clattering against the closed window. To everyone’s amazement, Hobbs wore an enormous pair of checked shorts, cinched at the waist with a length of red ribbon. Below that were pale bare legs ending in mukluk clad feet. The rafters dropped as one when Dooly’s hand hit the window, but a few moments later when they dared to look in once again, Hobbs was going about his business in an industrious but inexplicable way.

The rafters sought the road once again and hastened on through town out toward the swamp and the ridge. It wasn’t until they passed along above Hightower harbor that they stopped to rest for a moment. Escargot observed that he was glad to see that Hobbs was indeed at work at his ledger book, then laughed in a low down way, indicating that he’d likely seen funnier things in his time. Dooly wanted to know why Hobbs wore those incredible shorts, and the Professor said that it was doubtless some goblin prank – that he was put up to it and forced to wear them. Jonathan hoped so. He liked to think that Hobbs wasn’t wearing them by choice.

There above the harbor, Hightower could be seen atop the ridge, all in all about a mile or so away as the crow flies. Its walls rose dark and solid against the night sky. Between lay the swampy lowlands, dotted with stilted shanties and bulbous moss-covered trees. Occasional lights glowed in the swamp huts through windows that, in the distance, seemed to be the eyes of wild beasts in the swamp. The night was full of noises. The screech of bats could be heard off among the trees, and away above in the rocks of the ridge, the baying of wolves rose on the dark air. Fog lay over the swamp, eerily hovering a foot or two above the ground like a misty gray blanket. The path lay, finally, straight away into the swamp, and there was nothing to do but push along. According to Escargot there was but one trail across the swamp and up the ridge. If they wandered from the path they’d end, likely, in a quicksand bog or in the lair of some swamp devil or viper. There was little hope of secrecy for any of them other than Escargot, but then that seemed to be part of the general plan. When the moon was tilting up over the trees and peeping out from among scattered clouds, the four of them and Ahab plunged off, the great hulking trees roundabout completing the evening gloom. It was likely coming on toward midnight.