The Kneebone Boy (9 page)

Still, they did mutter to each other as they walked along (Otto often had to repeat himself since it was hard for Lucia to see his hands in the darkness):

“This is taking things pretty far, I’d say,” said Otto, gazing at the black stretch of fields all around them. “Sometimes I think Max is quite mental.”

“It’s just that Dad always indulges him. Because he’s the youngest, of course. He ought to be more strict with him. I think I’ll have a chat with Dad when he gets back.”

And the two continued this “older brother-and-sister conversation” because it made them feel a little less nervous about travelling to who-knew-where in the middle of the night.

Soon a lone farmhouse appeared, with a tumbledown barn behind it. A low groaning sound made Otto and Lucia stop short and stare at each other, their eyes wide.

“Cows,” Max called back, without turning or slowing his pace.

Lucia forced her nostrils to flare but it was too dark for anyone to notice. Otto yanked on the end of his scarf so that it was wrapped tight around his neck, and they continued on.

More and more houses began to appear until they came to the heart of a small town. It looked so similar to Little Tunks—the small tidy shops, now closed of course, and the rows of brick houses with their scrappy little front yards—that it made Otto and Lucia relax a bit. They even
began to peer at the shop windows, most of which were too dark to see into. But there was one towards the edge of the town, where the shops began to dwindle, that had a single light on towards the back, enough to illuminate a front window and the sign above it—
SAINT GEORGE’S TAXIDERMY & CURIOSITIES
. The window display had a spooky-looking collection: stuffed rabbits frozen in mid-hop, stuffed foxes frozen in mid-leap, and a miniature zebra that looked out quizzically at them with glinting black eyes. There were several cylindrical-shaped glass containers that imprisoned stuffed ducks and owls, and various horns were scattered all about. The centerpiece, however, was a wild boar. The beast was standing with its huge snout pointing upwards. Its mouth was open in a snarl, baring its white curving tusks. Someone had painted the tips of the lower tusks bright red as though it had recently gored someone.

“It’s hideous,” Lucia said quietly, unable to tear her eyes away from the beast’s face.

“It’s fake,” Max said. “That’s just a very large pig with tusks stuck into its jaws.”

“How do you know?” Lucia asked.

“For one thing, only male wild boars have tusks. That one is a girl.”

“Really?”

Lucia and Otto both ducked their heads and tipped them to one side to have a better look.

“You’re right,” Lucia said, then suddenly cried, “Oh!” and drew back.

“What?” Otto asked.

“There. Look on the floor, right by the boar’s hind legs,” she said.

“Pig,” Max corrected, but he crouched down along with Otto and they saw a stuffed black cat, curled in a sleek ball on the floor.

“It’s one thing to stuff a rabbit,” Lucia cried. “But a cat! That’s barbaric!”

“Look at his toes!” Otto said. “On his right front. He’s got”—he squinted to see if he was correct—“yes, he’s got eight of them!”

“He can’t have,” Max said. “The most they can have is seven.”

“Look!” Otto said, tapping on the window.

At that moment two things happened. The cat looked up, and a voice from within the store called out, “Have you brought me a body? If not, go away!”

The children stared at one another in silence, eyes wide. In a moment they heard a scuffling from within, then the
thunk
of something hitting the floor.

“I think we should leave,” Max whispered.

“Nonsense,” Lucia said, her voice full of excitement. “He asked about a body. Here’s murder at least!”

“He’s a taxidermist. He meant an animal’s body, I’m sure,” Max said.

There was the sharp snap of a lock being turned, and the door was yanked open by a great boulder of a man holding a knife with a long leather strap on the bottom. The front of his body was covered with a slick black apron,
and his hair, which was a strawberry blond color, was tied back in a tight braid that reached his shoulder blades. He had a powerful nose and a chin that looked like it could hammer a nail into concrete. If he were wearing an iron helmet, Lucia mused, he would look just like a Viking.

“Well, what do you want?” He swung his knife by its leather strap and tucked it in his back pocket, which thrilled Lucia, since it made him look more like a Viking than ever. Otto and Max, however, had stepped back a pace when he swung the knife.

“My brother was just admiring your cat,” Lucia said, nodding toward Otto.

“My cat?” he said, perplexed.

“The one in the window,” Lucia said.

The man looked. “Oh, him.” His expression softened a little, which only meant that he looked slightly less likely to smash someone on the head with a crowbar. “You in the market for a cat, mate?” he asked Otto.

Otto blinked and looked away.

“Doesn’t he talk?” the man asked Lucia.

“No,” Lucia said.

“Good. I reckon most people have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”

“He was admiring his toes, really,” Lucia said.

“Yeah? Well, he ought to!” the man nodded. “He’s got twenty-five of them.”

“Twenty-one,” Max corrected.

The man cocked his massive head to one side and surveyed Max contemptuously. “What are you, an accountant?”

“Eight on the right front, five on the left, and four each on the back. That’s twenty-one,” Max said.

“Yeah? And what about the fifth leg?” the man said.

The Hardscrabbles eyed the man with disappointment. They never enjoyed it when adults playfully lied to them. The adults always think they’re being amusing and imaginative, just like children. But kids never lie playfully. They lie as if their lives depended on it.

“Thank you, good night,” Lucia said, and they began to turn away.

“Hang on,” the man said, and he ducked back into the store. They watched as he reached into the window and roughly scooped up the cat, who responded to the treatment with a yowl of reproach. The man reappeared at the door and held the cat out, one thick butcher hand cupping the cat’s armpits.

“What do you call this then?” He flicked two fingers at a strange appendage hanging off of the cat’s left hind leg. The children stepped in closer for a better look. Indeed, it did appear to be the bottom portion of a cat’s leg, claws and all. A price tag had been ignominiously attached to the thing by a string, with twenty pounds scrawled on it.

Lucia snorted, her nostrils flaring out especially wide. “It’s a trick,” she said. “You’ve attached it.”

“Damn you for saying so!!” he cried (in your head, those words sounded very fierce, didn’t they? On account of the double exclamation points and the “damn.” But really, he said them with less anger than you just imagined).

“Actually, Lucia, it’s real,” Max said, his fingers examining the cat’s appendage.

“Of course it’s real! Why wouldn’t it be?” the man said.

“The wild boar’s tusks aren’t,” Lucia said.

Here, the man (his name is Saint George, so let’s just call him that. I don’t want to keep saying “the man” when I know he will be in this book for a while). Here, Saint George realized he was dealing with some shrewd children. He didn’t bother denying the wild boar’s tusks. Instead, he pointed up at the sign in front of the store.

“It says taxidermy and curiosities, doesn’t it?” he said. “Well, that’s one of the curiosities. This here cat with five legs is another.” He turned his attention to Otto who was staring at the cat’s fifth leg with particular interest.

“A connoisseur of the curious, are you?” Saint George nodded approvingly. “Tell you what. Ten pounds and she’s yours. I’ll even throw in the collar.”

“We’ve got dozens of cats at home,” Max said very sensibly.

“But they don’t have five legs,” Otto said dreamily.

“I said no,” Max stated firmly, just as though he were the boss of Otto.

This annoyed Lucia, who was the actual boss of Otto, so she said to Saint George, “Five pounds, we don’t care about the collar. Plus you tell us how to get to Haddie Piggit’s house.”

“Haddie Piggit? What do you want with her?” Saint George said. There was something about the way he said “Haddie Piggit” that interested Lucia. There was a hint of
nervousness. What sort of old lady could make a Viking nervous? Lucia wondered.

“We’ve come to visit her,” Max said to Saint George, and to Lucia he said, “Five pounds? We’re not wasting what little money we have on a cat.”

“You’ve come to visit and she hasn’t told you where she lives?” Saint George said.

“It’s a surprise visit,” Max said truthfully.

“Do you know her well?” Lucia said.

“No,” Saint George said. “She hasn’t lived here very long. Came in my shop to ask for some marshmallow rubbish. To spread on bread. Fluffie-something. Said she thought it might count as a curiosity, since no one in this bloody country seems to eat it.” Saint George shook his head for a moment, a half smirk on his face. Then his face grew severe again. “You sure she’ll want to see you lot?”

“Of course she will,” Max said. “She’s our great-aunt.”

“Really?” He looked at them with confusion. Then he shrugged his enormous shoulders. “All right, if you say so. Let’s see the seven pounds—”

“Five,” Lucia corrected.

“Seven, and I’ll haul you over to her place myself.”

“Deal,” Lucia said.

Otto dug the notes out of his wallet and handed them to Saint George. Saint George put the notes in his apron pocket, then handed the cat over to Otto.

“Wait here,” he ordered them.

The cat adjusted himself in Otto’s arms, settling in as though he were curling into a favorite spot on the sofa. His
fifth leg draped over the crook of Otto’s arm in such a limp, trusting way that Otto made a humming sound, not unlike the satisfied purr of a mother cat.

They waited and waited for Saint George to reappear. While they waited, they listened to the sound of bugs plinking against the streetlight. Then they shared a stick of Such Fun Peppermint gum that Max found in the back pocket of his jeans. Then they spit the gum out because a stick of gum split three ways is worse than no gum at all. They waited and waited, until it became clear that they had been tricked in some way. Saint George must have had a good laugh at their expense and gone to bed. They were just beginning to feel awkward and stupid, which made them cross their arms over their chests, when they heard a
tip-top-tip-top
coupled with a fearsome metallic rattle. They kept very still, listening, and wondering that the entire town hadn’t jumped out of their beds and into the street to see what was happening. In a minute, two small, stout white ponies appeared on the side street, pulling a peculiar long rectangular carriage. The carriage was so low to the ground that it almost looked like an elaborate play carriage. It had long panes of glass on either side, on which was painted, in gold letters,
SAINT GEORGE’S TAXIDERMY & CURIOSITIES
, along with an address and phone number, and below that the words
GET STUFFED!

Perched on the driver’s box seat and holding the reins was Saint George himself. He halted the ponies with a flick of his wrist and ordered the Hardscrabbles to “Pile in the back and be quick.” So the children opened a small
door in the back of the carriage and scrambled in. There were no seats in the little carriage. They had to sit on the floor, their backs against the long glass panes. They had barely settled in when the carriage lurched forward and the ponies set off at a frantic trot. They passed through the streets, clattering and tip-topping, and in a few minutes they had left the town entirely and were once again on a country road. The moon had slid out from beneath the clouds, casting gloomy shadows across the fields.

“Strange that there are no seats in this old thing, don’t you think?” Lucia said.

“It’s not meant for people to sit in,” Max said. “It’s meant for people to lie down in.”

“Nonsense,” Lucia said.

“
You’re
nonsense,” Max said.

“That’s a stupid thing to say! Sometimes you act like such an infant.” She snorted and things might have gotten ugly but Otto’s hands were moving, so Lucia and Max stopped arguing to see what he was saying.

“Who would want to
lie down
in a carriage?” Otto asked.

“Yes, that’s what I’d like to know,” Lucia said, looking back at Max.

“A dead person would,” Max said.

There was a long pause during which Lucia and Otto took in this information. They gazed around at the low-ceilinged carriage and at the heavy black drapes on the two side windowpanes. Max waited.

“It’s a funeral carriage?” Lucia said.

“Obviously,” Max said, which was obnoxious and he knew it.

You would think that since Lucia loved adventures and Otto loved curiosities, riding in a funeral carriage would have made them ecstatic. But actually it made them very squeamish. To make matters worse, the carriage suddenly picked up speed and they were all violently jostled in a very humiliating way.