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  Suddenly there was the clatter of a footstep, and a bright lamp swung deliberately around the corner and exposed us as we stood in the passage. For the first time I heard Nick swear, in the language he’d picked up from sailors. We couldn’t see who was carrying the light because its sudden glare dazzled us — but whoever it was evidently wasn’t interested in us, because after inspecting us briefly, they moved on and we were left in shadow again.

  “This isn’t very safe, is it?” I said.

  “Come back in the tunnel a bit further,” Nick whispered.

  Now the darkness was virtually complete. Nick was nothing but a low voice and a hint of warm breath on my face. He spoke quickly.

  “What are we going to do then? How do we get the camel down, and where do we take it? Anyone watching the place will see us making off with it, and murder us.”

  “I thought you’d have a suggestion,” I said. “You’re the thief, after all.” I could tell he was losing interest in this adventure. His father’s violence had seen to that.

  “Look,” he said, “I know what my Pa’s like. This isn’t the first time people have been out to get him and it won’t be the last. I was minding my own business till you suddenly popped up, and within five minutes of meeting you I was getting a beating. Now it looks like you want to get me in even more trouble.”

  But I was too excited to think about what he was saying. “Nick, I can’t just leave them to it,” I said. “I can’t really explain it, but — I feel sure all of this means something.”

  Nick said nothing. He didn’t understand, and I didn’t blame him. But my mind was racing. I’d remembered something he’d told me earlier.

  “You said today,” I whispered, “you often write your Pa false notes, pretending they’re from other people.”

  “Sometimes,” he said, a bit sullenly.

  “Well! You can make it look like someone else took the camel, by writing him a note from someone else!”

  “Mog,” he said, “you don’t get it, do you? This isn’t a game. The sort of people my Pa’s mixed up with don’t play games. They harbor grudges while they’re at sea, and then when they come ashore, people they don’t like just — disappear. They settle scores, Mog, years later if need be. People who cross my Pa might think they’re safe the moment he sails out of the river mouth, and so they might be till he comes home again. But one day they go missing and end up being fished out of the river, all green, half-eaten up by worms. If they’re ever found at all.”

  He’d finally made me listen to him. We stood in the dark, saying nothing. I was terrified: even now my heart was pounding; but something inside me was still desperate to work out what on earth was going on.

  “You don’t need to get mixed up in this, then,” I said eventually. “Just go back and get the camel from upstairs, and I’ll hide it. You needn’t get in trouble. Just let me take it, Nick. I’ll do it myself. I’ll write the note. I can’t just give up now.”

  I heard him draw in his breath, and there was another long silence before he said anything.

  “You know something?” he finally said. “I think you might be the stubbornest boy I’ve ever met.”

  It was the dead of night when Nick went camel-hunting.

  I stood watch in the pitch-dark yard while he moved like a cat over the walls and low roofs of Lion’s Mane Court, seeking a way in to burgle his own house. A quick listen at the scullery door was enough to assure us that Mrs. Muggerage was still snoring: all Nick had to do was find an upstairs window he could creep in through. As the formidable woman snored purposefully downstairs, dreaming no doubt of winning a famous victory in the All-England Cleaver-Throwing Championships and being congratulated by a whole navy of amorous bosuns, Nick’s light feet moved on the floorboards above her head, and his fingers felt softly for the neck of the brass camel in the darkness.

  I revolved, slowly, trying to keep an eye on all angles at once. I was paying particular attention to the corner of the stable, where I knew it was only too easy for an observer to lurk, completely unseen, behind the flimsy wall. Were murderer’s eyes even now fixed firmly on me? Was someone waiting to pounce? Was there a —

  A hand closed over my mouth. I almost died of shock.

  Nick’s voice hissed into my ear. “What kind of lookout are you? I could’ve been anybody.” He’d been so stealthy I hadn’t realized he’d emerged from the house.

  “Have you got it?” I asked.

  “Sh! Keep your voice down! Yes, here it is — and I brought you a cloth to wrap it in.”

  With trembling hands I took the shapeless bundle he passed me, feeling the awkward contours of the camel inside the cloth.

  “The note,” I whispered.

  “I’ll leave it under the scullery door,” Nick said. “Just get lost before Pa comes back.”

  “Or anybody else,” I said. I squinted at his face in the dark, trying to make out his expression, thrilled that he’d decided to give me so much help after all.

  “Well?” he said, after a pause. “What you waiting for?”

  “Thank you, Nick,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me! Just buzz off!”

  Clutching the bundle close to my chest, I tiptoed the length of the stable wall and scuttled through the passageway into the inn yard. After casting a careful eye in either direction, I began to run through the dark, whispering streets towards Clerkenwell.

  There was no sound at Cramplock’s as I let myself in, except for the hum of the gas lamps in the square outside, and the familiar snuffle of Lash greeting me as I slipped through the heavy door. Once I was inside, his muzzle filled my palm, and I went to fetch a pitcher of milk from the cupboard to give him something to drink. I’d been gone a long time, and he was whimpering.

  “Hang on,” I said, “it’s coming, it’s coming!”

  Then, before going upstairs to bed, I turned up the lamp on the table, the better to inspect the bundle in which the camel was wrapped. Lash’s nose appeared at the table edge, sniffing inquisitively at the old cloth as I unwrapped it.

  I held the camel in my hands. It really was most unimpressive: tarnished and scaly, about the size of a hen. Why on Earth was half the criminal population of London running around after this?

  Lash was jumping up and scrabbling with his front paws at my shirt in his curiosity, and I held the camel out for him to sniff. “What’s up, boy?” I asked him. “It’s a camel. Seen a camel before? Mmm? It’s a funny old thing, isn’t it?”

  He seemed to be trying to gnaw its head off.

  “Stop it,” I said impatiently, pulling it from him, “get down, you silly dog.”

  He’d left its head smeared with his saliva. I dried it off with the old cloth I’d wrapped it in, and then folded the cloth back over it.

  Lash was still looking up, alert and expectant, his eyes following every movement of my hands. I bent down and hugged his shaggy head close.

  “Well, what a day,” I said to him. “Quite a lot’s happened, hasn’t it, boy?”

  As I held his head tight against mine, he was trying to stick his tongue out of the side of his mouth to lick my face. I took hold of his muzzle and looked at him square on.

  “Did you like Nick? You did, didn’t you? Do you think he’ll be our — friend?”

  I hesitated a little before I uttered the word; and when I did, it sounded strange on my lips. Since I’d left the orphanage, I’d learned to look after myself, really. There hadn’t been many people my own age whom I trusted enough to call “friends.” It was me and Lash — and it had been, for almost as long as I could remember. But something about Nick had made me feel different: I had the unfamiliar sense that I’d discovered somebody I really wanted to spend time with. And it was more than this, too: as I’d tried to say to Nick, this adventure we were now both involved in somehow felt important, for a reason I couldn’t begin to explain.

  I thought about the note we’d forged for the bosun; and I couldn’t help grinning in satisfaction as I imagine
d him finding it, and barging up the stairs to find his precious camel missing.

  DEAR

  DIDNT WATCH CLOSE ENOHG DID YOU

  I was rather proud of our imitation of the villains’ dreadful spelling. What made me smile especially broadly was the thought of Mrs. Muggerage trying to explain to a furious bosun how the thief had managed to remove the treasure from under her nose while she’d been on guard downstairs. What kicks might she sustain to her vast rump? I pictured him chasing her around Lion’s Mane Court, making the buildings shake, like a couple of trumpeting elephants.

  I got up to climb the stairs to bed, picking up the lamp and the camel from the table. I expected Lash to scamper up after me; but when I was nearly at the top of the stairs I realized he was still sitting at the bottom.

  “Come on,” I said, impatiently.

  But he just stayed there, his head on one side, and gave another small pathetic whimper.

  “Come on!” I said again, more encouragingly this time. But he wouldn’t budge. Something was wrong. For some reason he was refusing to come upstairs. Had he hurt himself? Had something frightened him while I was out?

  I suddenly felt uneasy. Pushing open the door of the upstairs room, I stood for a moment peering inside. Was there something up here that was frightening him? I lifted the lamp to light up the room in front of me, but everything seemed to be in its place, just as I’d left it this morning. Lash was just being silly. Yawning, I put the camel down on the bed and pulled my grubby clothes off, briefly splashing some chilly water onto my face and forearms from the bowl on the low bedside table. I realized I was utterly exhausted. Shivering slightly, shaking my hands to dry them off, I reached for my nightshirt; and before sinking into bed I picked up the camel again and opened the cupboard to put it away.

  Suddenly I leapt back in alarm. There in the cupboard, something was moving. Crawling about among the old ink bottles in the bottom, making them chink against one another unmusically. Was it a rat?

  I couldn’t see the inside of the cupboard properly and I reached over for the lamp. My shadow loomed huge on the wall beside me. Now I could see right to the back of the cupboard, and when I saw what had been making the noise I thought at first I was hallucinating and had to rub my eyes.

  Curled up on the shelf, at my eye level, was a snake.

  Its scales shone like polished metal in the lamplight. It lifted its tiny head, as though it were suspended from an invisible cord fixed to the ceiling. In a flash, a tongue appeared and disappeared, like another snake, blacker and more slender, trapped inside the body of this one.

  I was dimly aware of Lash still whimpering down below. I simply couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and I stood transfixed, watching the coiled creature wavering in the light of the lamp, reflecting deep golden light back at me. Slowly, it moved over the shelf, crossing its coils over itself, creating intricate knots and sliding powerfully out of them. All of a sudden the head seemed to swell, big flaps like a black hood bristling outward at either side as the head rose, silently, up into the air, the lithe body dangling beneath it like the string of a kite. It seemed to have brought a mysterious scent into the room, like incense, making my brain swim and my own towering shadow on the far wall grow and diminish with every beat of my heart.

  I realized I was still holding the camel. With all my force I hurled it at the shelf, into the mass of sliding snake, wanting it smashed in all directions.

  The camel crashed among the boxes and bottles, scattering the contents of the cupboard and sending things cascading off the shelves and onto the floorboards with a clatter loud enough to wake everyone in the square. The camel lay in the bottom, on its side, its head facing me, its glazed expression illuminated by the lamp. There was no sign of the snake.

  I hadn’t seen it move: one second it was there, the next it wasn’t. I wheeled around to try and work out where in the room it had gone. The room swam before my tired eyes. There was no snake to be seen, anywhere. I even put the lamp on the floor and got nervously down on my hands and knees to peer under the bed; but I could see no sign of it. There was virtually nowhere else for it to hide.

  Could it have gone down the stairs? Looking down, I was greeted with the sight of Lash sitting exactly where I’d left him, gazing anxiously up at me from under his eyebrows. He gave a little bark. No snake had come slithering past him, that much was clear — or he certainly wouldn’t still have been sitting there. Might it have disappeared into a crack in the rotten skirting board? I was trembling. Maybe it really had been a hallucination. I went over to the little window and grasped the splintered wooden sash. It was shut tight: the snake couldn’t possibly have come in or out that way.

  I was about to move away from the window when I noticed someone outside. Down below, moving in and out of the light cast by the street lamp, was a man: tall, his head covered by a black hat, casting frequent glances up and down the street, wary of being seen. And as he turned to look upwards, the sudden sight of a familiar face made goose bumps stand up all over me. I knew this night-watcher, this tall and alert figure, all too well.

  It was the man from Calcutta.

  7

  FLOUR AND ASHES

  The night was full of strange dreams.

  The faces in the fog had returned. Cramplock was one of them, roaring at me in rage, hurtling away from me as he shouted, but coming back several times to remind me of my negligence. Some of the figures who ballooned up out of the mist held up lanterns, as though to peer into my face, and I had to squint and screw up my eyes to stop the light from dazzling me as they drifted off. Mrs. Muggerage had appeared, cleaver in hand, roaring silently into the murk, and the image of Nick’s anxious little face with his shock of black hair swam around her, dodging the cleaver as she swung it mercilessly from side to side.

  And I’d dreamed of the man from Calcutta, too, though he hadn’t been one of the faces in the mist. This time not just his head but his whole body had become that of a crow, sleek and shining, his eyes glinting jewels which darted and pierced; and he was sitting on the edge of my bed, in the dream, watching me. But instead of feeling frightened of him, I felt as though he were guarding me. Perched on my bedpost, alert but protective, his presence seemed somehow important and comforting, like the ravens at the Tower.

  I woke in a sweat, with Lash licking the salt from my temples. Light was flooding in through the window and I could hear the sounds of morning activity outside. The first thing I did was sit up and check that the camel was still there — and, sure enough, it was still in its raggy bundle in the bottom of the cupboard.

  Cramplock was already at work. His hands and face were black and smeared with ink.

  “Strange letter arrived this morning,” was the first thing he said to me.

  “Who from?”

  “Can’t say.” He reached for a stiff piece of paper. “Make any sense to you, Mog?”

  I scanned it quickly. “Where was it?” I asked him, uncomfortably.

  “Nailed,” he said, dramatically, “to the door.”

  I swallowed.

  CLEAVER BOY,

  SO CLEAVER FIND HIS CAMEL.

  I SHOW HIM DEATH SOON.

  And beneath this extraordinary message, the strange letters again:

  It had obviously been left last night by the man from Calcutta, and there wasn’t much doubt about what it was getting at. The way he’d misspelled “clever” was rather unsettling, I thought, under the circumstances.

  “I can’t make head or tail of it,” Cramplock said, “some sort of joke I suppose — from a friend of yours, is it?”

  “Mm,” I said.

  I SHOW HIM DEATH SOON.

  Not an especially funny joke, I was thinking — and my face must have made it clear I wasn’t amused. The man from Calcutta had had a good try at “showing me death” the night before. It was clearer than ever that, after he’d failed to find the camel that evening at Coben’s hideout, when I threatened him with the sword, he had become convinced I w
as working for Coben and Jiggs, and was hiding the camel for them. He must have seen me bringing home a bundle last night, and guessed straightaway what it was.

  It was absolutely vital to find another hiding place for the camel — and I had to do it today. I was beginning to wish I’d taken Nick’s advice and left it where it was in the first place.

  “Mr. Cramplock,” I said, “has, er — has somebody come to live next door?”

  He stared at me. “Not as far as I know,” he said. “Nobody’s lived there for ages. It caught fire years ago — and it’s been empty ever since, I think.”

  “Only — I thought I could hear someone moving about in there,” I said cautiously.

  Cramplock shrugged. “Probably some poor old soul who’s broken in, using it as a place to sleep. But it’s not safe. As far as I know there are no floors in there.”

  I said nothing.

  “Is something wrong, Mog?” Cramplock asked. “You’ve been acting a bit strange lately, as if there’s something on your mind.”

  “Nothing much,” I said vaguely, not wanting him involved.

  But for the whole of the day I was miles away, pondering over the man from Calcutta and the house next door and the whole camel affair. The more I thought about it, the surer I was that someone had been moving about next door the other night, and that it had probably been the man from Calcutta. He was hiding in the house next door, to spy on me. I was so preoccupied I couldn’t concentrate on my work, and Cramplock had to tell me several times to stop daydreaming. At one point when I’d been told to pull out a long length from a roll of paper, I was particularly careless and managed to tear a huge gash right up it; and this time he shouted at me.

  “Wake up, can’t you?” he barked. “Did you knock your brain out when you hit your head the other day? Just pay attention to what you’re doing or you’ll get another knock you won’t forget.”

  He took me by the arm and dragged me through into the filthy little storeroom where he kept most of his paper and old woodblocks. “You can scrub the floor and the cupboards in here,” he said, “seeing as you don’t seem to be able to do anything more complicated. This has needed doing for months.”