The fire worm, p.10
The Fire Worm, page 10
“Not at all, sir. Only a few people know that the legend has tangible substance. The fewer the better.”
Harry scratched his head. Wey, he thought to himself, there were legends aboot the Castle rock an’ Priory ruins. Owld hinnies said as the place was haunted, an’ fairies used to live there. But he’d never seen any. When he was a bairn he recalled his Mam tellin’ him a tale by candlelight at bedtime aboot a brave young knight who fought his way into one o’ the caves in the rock as was guarded by monsters. … That was just a story from the olden days. What Shanky was sayin’ was eyewash an’ baloney. Soldiers guarded the rock an’ the harbour mouth. Mind, they was aal up top — an’ not even concerned wi’ smugglers who could aalways sneak in, of a dark neet, doon below. But that the British Army was axually campin’ on top of a supernatural beast, unawares … !
“Besides,” continued Elwes, “I believe there may be a treasure-trove deep in that cave. In the event of publicity the Crown would show a legitimate interest, this being so close to the shore. We should agree to divide any treasure between us. That is why we must shun notoriety and go there alone, the two of us.”
“First, Sir William, youthreaten me with publicity — and now you counsel the very opposite. It occurs to me that a venturesome blackguard might lure a man of note to a lonely spot, to have him waylaid and held to ransom.”
“You hurt my feelings, sir. I’m a man of distinction in this town.”
Van Amburgh laughed. “You’re a rogue. I see right through you.”
“In that case, bring a trusted companion. Let him be armed to the teeth! One pistol shot and the whole garrison would be roused, I assure you.”
“Like all good rogues, you win in either event. You either gain a hundred sovereigns in wager and as sweetener to keep your mouth shut, not least regarding attempted fraud against the British Crown; or, you reap half share in a treasure for the puny outlay of twenty pounds! Hmm, but you claim to have witnessed this supernatural beast? So what does it resemble?”
“That’s hard to say,” replied Elwes.
“And now I do begin to believe you.”
“No, listen. It appeared to change shape. At times it was like an octopus … at times like a giant white coily worm, with legs. It can … touch themind , sir.”
“Oh … indeed?”
“Yes. To resist it and bring it to heel and enter its den would call for all the will-power of such a man as you. I swear this is so! Is there a Bible handy? Well, no matter. Let me tell you how I found out about it … ”
Harry listened, enthralled.
Chapter Twelve
Elwes and Van Amburgh had finally made their wager the previous evening. The beast-charmer’s curiosity was piqued by the account of the fearful, slithery, mind-touching creature.
“If no crittur shows, all bets are off,” the American had insisted.
“It’ll show,” Shanky had promised. “I’ve met it, so it’ll smell my thoughts. Not in its nose — if you follow me — but in its mind. That’s why it came out the first time, because it smelled the fisherman. Now it knows me too. You have a mind for beasts’ thoughts, don’t you?”
Van Amburgh had allowed that he did.
The menagerie was due to stay at Chirton Green for two days of performances before heading for Blyth. So the next evening Van Amburgh and a companion would ride down to Tynemouth to meet Shanky at the Salutation Inn in Front Street. Hearing that, Harry had rubbed his hands. Shanky was going to give him an opening — for a lever to prise that rogue away from the affairs of Jane’s beloved Miss Martineau.
Now, next morning, as Harry sat over his bowl of crowdy pudding, he said to his Mam, “Dee ye recall tellin’ me aboot some lad in armour as went into Jinglin’ Geordie’s Hole an’ fought monsters for a treasure?”
“Aye, Aa does.” And Mrs Bell reminisced: “WhenAa was a bairn, me own Mam had a long poem by heart aboot the Hole, as she recited to me. The poem was published too, ye knaa? Shortly after yor Dad an’ I got married, Robert Owen wrote it aal doon. Mr Owen was forever traipsin’ roond collectin’ owld nonsense.”
“That’s the Robert Owen as caused the riot in Newcastle wi’ his lecturin’?”
“Na, ye daft booger. This Robert Owen lived in Shields twenty years ago. He used to gan aal over the Borders, until his health gave way. That’s when he handed his collection over to Willy Hone, as was publishin’ a table book in monthly parts. That’s hoo the poem saw print.”
Harry spooned up the last of his scalded oatmeal and milk, warm from the cow. Mrs Bell removed the bowl.
“Aa’ll fetch yor kipper, son.” She headed for the kitchen. Soon pungent fish smells were drifting through.
Harry sat contemplating the scale model of theAmphitrite on the chiffonier and thinking about his father, imagining a model Dad bellowing orders on deck.
Captain Bell had carved and rigged that ship during voyages carrying coal to the capital. TheAmphitrite had been built at Shields in the same year as the Americans declared their independence. She was a twin-mast brig of the type called a “snow,” with her spanker set on a small mast close to the mainmast. His Dad had explained all of this in great detail to Harry, who knew the snow-brig’s history by heart.
Originally she was a single-decker displacing 221 tons. In 1802 she was outfitted with a new bottom, new deck, and uppers. Five years later, after a close encounter with rocks in a storm, she needed another new bottom as well as extensive damage repairs. In 1820 she was part doubled and lengthened; and recently she had undergone another refit that included a new deck. Nowadays theAmphitrite displaced 305 tons, and was Class AE 1 in the London transport service. Mr. Laing of Dockwray Square owned her. Crew of eighteen. She was named after the Greek sea god’s wife.
Harry would be joining another of Mr. Laing’s ships as an apprentice. He would study for his papers and become a skipper himself one fine day — even a skipper to foreign parts, not that London itself wasn’t fairly foreign according to his Dad. That was the way Captain Cook had started his career, on the Tyne-to-London coal haul.
If Dad was at home right now, should Harry confide in him? Ask the Captain to accompany him when he trailed Shanky that night? Supposing there was a rough house, his Dad would put up with no nonsense. But Dad might tell him to keep out of it, keep his nose clean. The Captain didn’t regard his son’s affection for orphan Jane, who was no Greek goddess, with the same equanimity as did Mrs. Bell.
Dad wasn’t due home for another two days. Till then Harry was man of the house.
“What are ye gawpin’ at the shefferneer for?” Mrs. Bell placed a plate with a juicy golden kipper in front of him.
“Nowt, Mam. Ye was sayin’ aboot the Hole an’ the monsters. What sort ‘o monsters? Aa’ve forgotten.”
Mrs. Bell smiled, and sat down opposite him.
“Wey, this is the story. Young Walter was the son of a famous knight who fought on the Borders. Walter wanted to dee somethin’ famous too. So his Mam telt him aboot this huge store o’ wealth in the goaf under Tynemouth Priory, guarded by infernal spirits set there by a powerful sorcerer.”
“Was it a genuine goaf?”
“Na. It waslike the void that’s left in a mine after the coal’s taken oot. Well, various other knights had tried to break the spell, but none ever came back into the light o’ day. They was aal doomed to remain in the rock forever.
“So one midnight durin’ a fearful thunderstorm young Walter gans doon to the shore. He’s wearin’ a coat o’ mail, an’ a helmet shaped like a basin that’s called a basnet, with a barred visor. He has his shield an’ a sword an’ a burnin’ brand.”
“Didn’t the storm extinguish his brand?”
“Ye used to ask that when ye was a bairn! Not in the story it didn’t, son … ”
With a single leap Walter gained the entrance to the dismal tunnel. As he proceeded inward, goblins yelled louder and louder.
(“That could be the sound o’ the thunder reverberatin’,” said Harry.)
Of a sudden these goblins were all around him, dancing wildly, blue flames darting out of their eyes.
(“That’s reflections of his torch on the damp walls?”)
However, the young man slashed these goblins out of the way. Next, fierce scaly dragons threatened him. These dragons had great sharp teeth and forked tongues; and fire belched from their throats. But when Walter rushed to hack at them, they vanished.
(“Oh aye.”)
Hell hounds raced toward him, baying furiously. Their breath stank of sulphur fit to suffocate him. These also vanished as soon as he attacked.
(“If there’s enough foul air in there to dizzy him, he might imagine anythin’!”)
Inward went Walter, and inward. Far off in the murk he spied the glimmer of a lamp. He hurried toward the light — and stopped short just in time. He was on the brink of a wide chasm! Impossible to tell how deep it was. While he halted, demons clustered round him invisibly, gibbering and jeering.
To rid himself of excess weight, Walter tore off his basnet and his coat of mail. Then he backed up and sprinted and launched himself over the chasm. No sooner had he landed safely than other phantoms assailed him. Indescribable snaky monstrosities were twisting among his feet, coiling round his limbs. By now he realized that all these monsters were shadowy things such as dreams are made of. They were images in his mind. They could only destroy a man who allowed them power over him through faint-heartedness.
Walter prayed silently to his patron saint, John the Baptist. It was the eve of St. John’s nativity. He forged on into the shrieking, slithery gloom. Not even the crash of a rockfall deterred him. That too was an illusion.
At last Walter reached the lamp. This hung above a closed door, in between a golden cockerel and a bugle hanging from a golden chain. He seized the bugle — and it became a writhing serpent. The mouthpiece was full of poison fangs. This too must be an illusion, so Walter blew one blast then another. And at the third blast the golden cockerel awoke and flapped its wings and crowed. Immediately all phantoms vanished, and the door before him crashed open. Beyond stretched a huge hall lit by golden lamps. Chests of treasure stood all around: mounds of emeralds and diamonds and opals, heaps of gold.
Young Walter gathered up as many of the jewels as he could carry.
(“That couldn’t have been too many — not when he’d left his basket hat, an’ had a chasm to leap back over!”)
Well, he certainly took enough to buy himself a splendid domain of forests and meadows and cornfields and several castles. Thus he was able to wed a beautiful, clever wife who brought him handsome, loving children. At the end of a highly satisfactory life, Walter founded a monastery on the rock above the cavern, right where the ruins of Tynemouth Priory now stood.
Harry had finished his fishy on a dishy, and was mopping up the juice with a crust.
“Mind ye,” concluded Mrs. Bell, “it’s aal tommy-rot since ye didn’t have any knights in armour back when the Priory was built. That wasn’t lang after the Romans left. An’ even though the Vikings burnt it doon, it was aalways a sacred place — Priory Chorch o’ St. Oswin, eh? — not somethin’ built over a den o’ magician’s monsters; which were aal imaginary, as the story tells us.”
“So who was Jinglin’ Geordie? Dee ye knaa that, Mam?”
“Oh, he’d be some daft destitute as lived in the cave. Like that heathen Lascar, as gave his name to Spotty’s Hole at Roker. He’d be a sailor as skipped ship an’ couldn’t even speak English. Or maybe he was an escaped convict wi’ his chains still on him, so when he skulked roond at neet foragin’ he’d clank and jingle. So much for yor phantom monsters.”
Phantom? Was Elwes hoping tofool the American? Maybe there would be an accomplice hidden in the cave dressed up as a white monster … or some hideously crippled child hired for the occasion … Maybe there’d be clouds of opium smoke.
And yet Elwes had sounded so utterly convincing the evening before.
A canny swindler would, wouldn’t he?
“Aal tell ye why else it’s tommy-rot,” said Mrs. Bell. “Mister Owen telt me mam there’s exackly the same sort o’ tale aboot Dunstanborough Castle up the coast. Mister Owen even wrote his own poem about it, though it never got printed.”
“Why not?” asked Harry, who was somewhat interested in the world of letters thanks to Jane’s account of Miss Martineau’s career.
“Accordin’ to Mister Owen, that scandalous fella Lewis — him as wroteThe Monk — had aalready publishedhis own poem on the subject. Lewis’s poem went into aal sorts o’ foreign languages, such as Danish an’ Jorman. Maybe Mister Owen was daft to write the same poem!
“Anyhow, there was supposed to be a goaf under Dunstanborough with an enchanted maiden sleepin’ there in a crystal coffin. Merlin the magician had mesmerized hor. This goaf was guarded by serpents an’ ban-dogs an’ fiends an’ phantoms just like here at Tynemouth.
“One neet, durin’ a wild storm, a knight called Sir Guy took shelter. At midneet a door in the rock flew open. Sir Guy braved aal manner o’ fiends till he reached a hall ablaze wi’ lamps. There he saw the gorgeous maiden. Her crystal coffin lay in between two giant skelingtons. One of these held a sword in its bony fingers — an’ the other held a bugle.
“So what should Sir Guy dee? Should he grab the sword an’ smash the case? Or should be blow the bugle, like wor Walter did?
“He chose to blow the bugle. Instantly aal the lights went oot, an’ voices from aal sides was mockin’ him cause he’d called for assistance instead o’ bein’ bold, an’ his own man.”
“How was he to knaa, Mam? He might have hurt hor, smashin’ the crystal aal over hor.”
“He made the wrong choice, an’ that’s that. Poisonous gases knocked him senseless, an’ he woke up in the mornin’ ootside on the grass. He tried for the rest o’ his life to find that door; an’ afterward too as a ghost.
“So it’s the same story, with a bit of a twist. What’s aal this aboot then, Harry? Ye aren’t plannin’ to impress Jane wi’ some scary nonsense, are ye? She doesn’t need that! Aa’m thinkin’ yor aalready hor shinin’ young Walter.”
But Harry thought about how the unfortunate Sir Guy had blown the bugle to bring help instead of taking matters into his own hands.
He shook his head. “That was a smashin’ kipper, Mam.”
Chapter Thirteen
Harry hung about in Front Street as dusk thickened. From under the wrought-iron portico of the Bath Hotel assembly rooms, he kept an eye on the front door of the Sal and on the archway into the adjacent stables.
First, Shanky Elwes strode toward the inn from the eastward. He wore boots and a long black greatcoat. On his head, a puffy-crowned black cap of the sort favoured by workmen and raffish sportsmen. Its stiff peak gleamed in the gaslight. Into the pub he went, perhaps to see whether he could con a free drink.
The town still talked of Shanky’s cheek at Mr. Haswell’s alehouse. The baronet had asked Mr. Haswell, “Would you be kind enough to give me a glass of brandy?” and on receiving and draining same had promptly stepped toward the street. “You have forgotten to pay,” cried out Mr. Haswell. “I beg your pardon,” came the reply, “but I asked you togive me a glass of brandy. Good-day, sir!”
Before long, Van Amburgh and another fellow rode past Harry on ordinary hacks. Both men were wrapped in cloaks, and the former’s riding crop looked excessive till Harry realized that it was the beast-taming whip. The men stabled their mounts and entered the Sal, but they did not remain any longer than the last trace of daylight lingered in the sky. Within ten minutes, the trio were heading down Front Street, shadowed at a distance by Harry. Soon they were beyond the reach of the street lamps.
He had expected them to choose the gentler route down into Prior’s Haven, thus on to the rocks that skirted the cliffs. Instead, they turned northward, passing the Gibraltar Arms which was rowdy with soldiery. They began to descend the steep grassy slope into Percy Bay.
Harry threw himself prone, up top. No moon stood in the star-studded, cloud-smudged sky, but still that bank and the wide sands below were exposed to view, should anyone glance back. The darkness wasn’t quite sufficient cloak.
The tide was out, uncovering broad riven plateaux of black rock and tumbles of boulders which led out from those sands. The sea looked calm. On the tip of Pen Bal Crag the tiered lighthouse flashed as the revolving mechanism reflected the oil lamp.
Quitting his vantage point, he raced back along the road, passing the Gib and the Castle. He headed down the track into the Haven. Breath ragged, he reached the southern thrust of cliffs under the Priory. Scrambling on to the steep shingle beach he crunched across the scree till he reached slabs. He stepped in one rock pool, soaking his shoe. Skidding on slithery bladder-wrack, he almost wrenched his ankle.
Then he froze. A bobbing of lanterns, ahead.
Using the great boulders to hide his approach, he sneaked closer.
“So there’s our cave, Mr. Van Amburgh!” A lantern beam shone up the cliff face, directed at a modest cleft. “The beast’s lair. I can sense it faintly.”
“Can you indeed?” Van Amburgh sniffed the weed-tangy, ozone-laden air.
“It’s squirming and writhing — in my brain. It doesn’t want me, any more than it wanted that smuggler. I want it, though! There’s gold behind it. Golden treasure. More than gold.”
The tamer extended his whip. “Let’s mount, and see.”
Once the men had vanished inside, Harry also climbed, and peered. The lantern-lit trio were advancing along the rough tunnel in Indian file, Van Amburgh in the lead. He was whistling, a teeth-on-edge sound which was at once teasing and sinister like whining wind. Harry slid inside, to crouch.
“Ah! Halt. I can detect something … vibrations.” Van Amburgh held the whip out in the manner of a fencer on guard. Softly he sang or chanted heathen syllables.
Inside Harry’s skull there was also singing. The noise dazed him. When he thrust out a hand to support himself, the muscles of his arm were jelly. The rock he touched felt soft and squashy as if curtained in weed (which it certainly wasn’t). Mesmerized by the song in his mind, Harry had shut his eyes. Now he snapped them open in panic.
