The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School (40 page)

‘Should we go to the ship?’ Amy asked. ‘It sounds like a place a person might hide if they weren’t too fussy about getting their stockings wet.’

‘The underground seaside,’ repeated Paule. ‘There’s a Flute.’

‘Are we to expect jolly sea shanties?’ asked Frecks. ‘Ralph knows all the rude verses of “What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?” and “Off to Philadelphia in the Morn-Eye-Ing”. Most of them have to do with bottoms.’

‘Paule doesn’t mean a musical flute,’ said Amy. ‘She’s talking about the hole at the middle of all those spirals the Black Skirts make. The holes they’re all drawn to. The entire pattern is called The Runnel and the Flute.’

Frecks and Gould – the ex-Black Skirts in the party – looked at each other and shivered. Amy didn’t point it out to the others. In this case, knowing more wasn’t helpful. She didn’t want everyone to be like Laurence faced with a pole and a drop into darkness.

Paule picked herself up and kept hold of the axe.

Frecks had her cricket bat. Amy took up the sword from the pile of armour. The blade was rusted to the scabbard, but it could fetch a nasty slosh. She still felt a need not to do too many permanent injuries. Most Black Skirts would wake up eventually and be sorry for being Soldier Ants, she believed.

They followed Knowles along the passage.

‘I can smell the sea,’ said Laurence.

The air down here had a damp, salt quality.

They were walking on sand. The tunnel expanded to be more like a natural cave. Torchlight flashed off shallow pools. Crustacean eyes blinked back on stalks. Seashells glistened.

‘Did you memorise a tide-table?’ Amy asked Knowles.

‘No. Why?’

‘Because when the tide comes in this tunnel fills up with water,’ said Amy.

There was an obvious tide-line on the rock wall.

‘Ah,’ said Knowles. ‘Could be tricky. There are steps ahead. Probably best if we hurry up them.’

Amy agreed.

They quick-marched the rest of the way, bunching up a bit. Only Marsh was casual about the prospect of a dip in the drink. Amy suspected she’d be least likely to drown. Stretch admitted she couldn’t swim, but experimentally extended her neck like a sinewy eel to see if she could keep her head above water. Her crown brushed the passage ceiling. Her head bobbed from side to side.

‘Has anyone ever told you how unnerving that is?’ said Frecks.

‘Not really. It’s just my bones.’

‘Upstairs, in bright light and good company, having a four-foot neck is a party trick. Down here in the dark and damp, it’s flesh-creeping. I’m only telling you so you know.’

Hurt, Devlin pulled herself back in shape. Marsh’s pop eyes rolled sideways at Frecks. She wasn’t directly included, but knew she fell into the flesh-creeping category.

Amy worried they’d fall out with each other before they could take on the Black Skirts. It wasn’t even that Rayne was a master tactician. The Remove could divide themselves and become conquerable without any outside influence.

‘Frecks, in the Purple I have moth wings and antennae,’ she admitted. ‘You might find that “flesh-creeping” to behold. You’re wearing an enchanted hat which only works if your cause is
Just and True
. Remember Sir Percy and take care not to tick off the Lady of the Lake by letting a stray unjust or false thought sneak through. We’re all flukes here. We all make flesh creep.’

In the dark, Light Fingers took Amy’s hand and squeezed.

‘Swipe me but you’re right,’ said Frecks, rattling her chainmail. ‘Stretch, apols… you’re all right in my books, and always have been. I spoke out of turn and – as is tragically my wont – without thinking. Pals and quits?’

She stuck her hand out and Stretch extended her arm, kinking around Larry who was between them, to shake.

‘Quits and pals,’ said Devlin.

Amy trusted that was settled.

An iron door in the side of the tunnel opened with a wrench. A dazzling light was aimed into Amy’s eyes.

They were found out and caught!

‘Time to make a fight of it, Remove,’ she shouted.

Her invisible feelers extended. She rose a little off the ground and tensed for an attack.

‘What ho, girls,’ came a voice.

It was Lamarcroft, longbow and a quiver full of arrows slung over her shoulder.

She’d brought the rest of the Remove – Harper, Paquignet, Thorn, Frost, even Palgraive, who smiled and ambled along as usual.

‘Lungs led the way,’ said Harper, the one with the torch. ‘She was in a trance or something.’

‘No one showed up for our fair copies,’ said Thorn.

Light Fingers pouted – hacked off to have wasted the effort on forgery. She’d been fagged out ever since.

‘School is deserted,’ said Frost. ‘The Black Skirts have gone to ground. The air’s heavy and tangy, as if a storm was coming… or some other big event. We thought Lungs might be leading us to her last battle.’

‘I’ve trod these passages in dreams,’ said Lamarcroft, who didn’t seem in a trance to Amy. ‘There’s a ship here.’

‘Know-It-All said that too,’ said Devlin. ‘We think Cap’n Belzybub’s Hidden Harbour is just ahead.’

‘Cap’n Who’s-a-my-flip?’ asked Frost.

‘A former squire of Drearcliff who turned to piracy,’ explained Amy.

‘Sea-raiding,’ corrected Know-It-All and Devlin together.

‘You don’t need to know the difference,’ Amy said.

The pedants didn’t give her argument. Amy didn’t need a tide-table to know second high tide of the day was due around teatime, and the afternoon was nearly over. She heard water trickling in and the sand under her shoes was soggy.

She suggested they get a move on.

‘I say, it’s jolly good we’re all together again,’ said Shrimp. ‘When we were split, I felt weaker.’

Thorn’s eyes fluttered. Harper was next to her.

‘Cut the breathing in, Shrimp,’ said Amy. ‘We need everyone at their best.’

Harper
let go
somehow and Thorn shuddered to wakefulness. She made a puff of flame.

By the light of the fire, they saw the steps Knowles had expected. They led up to a dock, hacked out of stone. Iron posts were hammered in at regular intervals. Their torch-beams were too feeble to illuminate the whole cavern, but Amy had an impression of rocky roof a hundred feet above them. Thorn sent up puffs of fireball, which gave a better view. A body of black water rippled below the dock.

Dying flames from Thorn’s conjurings plummeted past rotten sails.

‘Here’s the Good Ship
Jo Pike
,’ said Stretch. ‘Though, all things considered, it might be classed as a Bad Ship.’

Amy didn’t know enough about ships to say how old the
Johanna Pike
was or what kind of a vessel it had been in its prime. Devlin had said it was a frigate from the 1750s. Two masts still stood, but the third had fallen like a tree and lay broken on the dock. The black snouts of cannons poked out of gunports.

‘Drearcliff has its own fighting ship!’ exclaimed Devlin. ‘I was impressed the school had a fives court! I claim right of salvage.’

‘You can only claim salvage if nobody alive’s aboard,’ said Marsh, darkly. ‘It’s why wreckers killed shipwreck survivors.’

Amy remembered Marsh’s fishy family were sailors. She was up on the law of the sea.

The hulk sat low in the water and listed, probably holed in the hull and resting on the bottom.
Johanna Pike
was written in flaky gilt on the side. A figurehead might once have represented a fickle Bristol lass. Seaweed had swarmed up over the bows and taken hold, turning her into a frond-frilled, bladder-benighted grotesque. No bard of Pontypool would be composing verses about her rosy cheeks these days.

‘The harbour entrance was over there,’ said Knowles, gesturing with her torch at a fall of rocks. ‘It collapsed hundreds of years ago. I doubt even a submarine could get in and out nowadays.’

‘I can’t see how a ship could have sailed from here, even with an opening,’ said Frecks.

‘They hauled down the masts and rowed,’ said Marsh. ‘Then put the masts up again, like a ship in a bottle.’

‘Very ingenious,’ said Frecks. ‘Hats off to Cap’n Belzybub.’

‘You don’t suppose there’s treasure down here?’ asked Frost. ‘Spoils of sea raids and such?’

‘The harbour and the ship are in the big book,’ said Knowles. ‘Headmistress knows about the cavern. She’ll probably have had any treasure away.’

Amy thought another mystery solved.

‘That explains how she came by funds to found Drearcliff. Welsh doubloons, if they made any.’

‘Belzybub mostly stole sheep, I understand,’ said Devlin. ‘But he must have had
some
treasure.’

‘Rustling’s a decent crime,’ said Light Fingers. ‘If the plods get close to feeling your collar, you can cook and eat the evidence.’

The ragged remains of human skeletons hung in iron cages from the masts, two still aloft and one spilled on the dock. A grinning skull with a three-cornered hat lay nearby.

‘Is this the two-faced Cap’n?’ Gould asked.

‘That’s not real,’ said Light Fingers. ‘The skeleton is plaster and the hat’s from the Drearcliff Playhouse. They were in
The Flying Dutchman
last year. I reckon the Viola Black Skirts have tarted up the cave to make it more picturesque. The original raiders wouldn’t have put the masts up inside the harbour. This has all the hallmarks of being a lair of villains. Real villains usually take trouble to live in places that look misleadingly innocent. Like a school.’

Devlin was disappointed, but strode towards the ship. A gangplank led from dock to deck. Amy wouldn’t have trusted anything wooden which had been down here in the wet for two hundred years, but supposed Stretch could bounce back.

‘I still claim salvage,’ said Devlin.

‘You can’t,’ said Gould, sniffing the air. ‘There’s somebody alive aboard. I
smell
them.’

‘Dr Swan,’ said Amy, excited.

‘No,’ said Gould. ‘Not Headmistress.
Rayne!
’

There was a fizzing and a sudden stink of sulphur… and a cannon discharged with a mighty roar and a flash of blinding flame.

Something black and round flew straight at them.

‘
P
OCKET
,’
SHOUTED
L
IGHT
Fingers.

Laurence – smack in the path of the onrushing cannonball! – swiftly pulled her hands apart as if drawing out a cat’s cradle. A purple gap opened in front of her midriff… a pinafore pocket!

The projectile disappeared into the rip.

With an audible plop, the cannonball was
pocketed
. Larry immediately pressed the seams closed. The missile hadn’t torn through her middle, but she was unsteady on her feet…

Speed into weight, Light Fingers had said.

‘Quick thinking, Light Fingers,’ said Amy.

She’d noticed Light Fingers gaining confidence with a newish Application. She could literally
think quick…
forming logic strings as deftly and speedily as she stitched a hem. She’d seen
all in a rush
that Laurence’s Ability had a uniquely useful Application when a cannonball was zooming at her.

Larry sat down with a bump, holding her tummy as if she’d eaten a bowl of green apples.

Long unmaintained, the cannon had rolled back as it went off and done damage inside the ship. Cries and complaints issued through the gunport. People were in there.

Girls
.

Amy rose. She hung in the air, ten feet above the jetty. From this vantage, she could look down through decks of the
Johanna Pike
. The planking was badly warped by time and water, and much had fallen in. There was movement in the ship’s insides. A
lot
of movement. Churning and chewing and grinding.

Then…
they
swarmed out through the gunports and hatches, over the bows and across the gangplank.

At first, Amy wasn’t sure what
they
were.

They slithered on four limbs, but had the faces of girls. Some even still wore Drearcliff boaters. Black, naturally. Spines kinked alarmingly as if hinges had been fitted. They crab-walked on elbows and knees, chittering and keening as they came. Wave after wave of Black Ants.

It was hard to take in.

She recognised faces… Beauty Rose, Prompt Rintoul, Pest Merrilees, Damaris Gideon. Their crawling bodies were bent out of true, but they still wore their skins. Their eyes were black and their bodies aswarm with ants. But they were still girls she knew, some her friends. Surrendered completely to the Ant Queen, they were just a mass of bugs.

Amy was consumed by horror and pity. And was angry.

If it weren’t for Larry’s pocket, she’d be dead… and so would most of the Remove, caught in the blast.

Instead, the Remove met the Black Skirts with defiance. Numbers might tell in the end, but the Unusuals would go down fighting.

Frecks fetched mighty whacks with her cricket bat and the others fought the horde with scavenged weapons or teeth and claws. Gould twisted around, throwing off half a dozen girl-bugs. She met chittering with war-howls.

Devlin pounded heads with ham hands and caught four or five throats with an outstretched arm slam. Light Fingers had altered her blouse, adding in pleats and folds which gave her the freedom to exercise her Ability to its limits without compromise.

Light Fingers’ gentlest taps,
repeated swiftly
, were hammerstrikes. Speed into mass.

Marsh dived off the jetty and slid into the water, floundering Black Skirts on her tail. She turned and dragged them under one by one, letting them go only when they passed out. Most floated face up.

Had this been a trap?

Or had Paule brought the Remove here because here was where they needed to be?

Amy was twenty feet in the air now, steadying herself with her arms.

There were bursts of flame and blasts of cold icy air as Thorn and Frost put up a spirited defence. Spars of ice crashed through the rotten wood of the
Johanna Pike
and cobwebby sails caught fire.

Lamarcroft was in a battle now, even if it wasn’t
her
battle. Her arrows fixed Black Skirts to the timbers, spearing through clothes and soft flesh. She was accurate enough to immobilise rather than kill, but there would be painful unpinning to do before her targets were freed.