‘So Flinthead said nothing about the money,’ he said.
Napoleon blinked and said, ‘That’s right. I didn’t tell him about it, did I?’ He tried to roll over on his shoulder but Knocker stopped him.
Bingo came over and joined them. Since the Battersea Borrible had saved Napoleon’s life and escaped with him from the library he had got closer to the Wendle than any of the others, and he wanted to get between Knocker and Napoleon if trouble started. Knocker spoke again, and everyone listened. ‘I don’t believe you. I think we ought to go home some other way.’
The silence deepened a notch or two. Napoleon sat up brusquely and grasped Knocker’s arm.
‘I’ve told you—you’ve got no bloody option,’ he said between his teeth. ‘You’re stuck, all of you. There’s Wendles all round. There’s only one way out, and that’s down the Wandle, the way we came.’
Knocker was not put off. The others waited for the outcome, holding their breath.
‘When you say we’re stuck,’ he said to Napoleon, ‘does that include you in or out?’
Napoleon did not answer. A great struggle was going on in his mind and he could not speak while it continued. Lights came on in the building opposite and the sky was grey now. Soon they would have to make a move, one way or the other.
‘Tell us what really happened,’ insisted Knocker. ‘Come on, straight up.’
‘You owe us the truth,’ said Bingo.
Napoleon got up and stepped over to the railings and looked at the
surface of the Wandle as it floated by under its quilt of rubbish. Bingo thought for a second that the Wendle was going to run away.
At last Napoleon turned and spoke to them all, in a low voice so he wouldn’t be overheard beyond the group. His words came all in a rush.
‘I am telling the truth. I know you do not trust Flinthead, Halfabar or Tron, or even me,’ he began. ‘I know you do not like the Wendles, even though they are Borribles like yourselves, but remember the threat we have always lived under. I swear that Flinthead will ask only to hear your stories, will see that you get rest and food. He will take nothing from you; he is proud of us. After all, he’s out of danger from the Rumbles for years to come. He told me how … how grateful he was … really.’
There was silence and the others watched as Bingo walked over to the box and said, ‘Wish we’d never set eyes on the thing. Been a good adventure apart from that.’
Knocker spat. ‘My job is to take the box back and I’ll do it even if I die.’
‘Even if we all die,’ said Chalotte.
‘The trick,’ said Torreycanyon, ‘is to get it back without dying.’
‘They won’t take it from us,’ insisted Napoleon. ‘They will wait to get their share. I’ll be coming back to Battersea with you so that I can bring the Wendle share back to Wandsworth.’
‘We shouldn’t touch it at all,’ said Chalotte. ‘It’s money, and money isn’t Borrible.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Vulge. ‘Chalotte’s right, but any road they won’t attack us. It would be Borrible against Borrible.’
‘It’s happened before,’ said Orococco. ‘Money brings trouble.’
Napoleon raised his head. The blood had gone from his face and there were mauve patches under his eyes. He shook his head sadly at his companions. ‘If they wanted to take it, they would have taken it already … but you won’t listen. They don’t want it. Everything will be all right.’
‘Come on,’ said Chalotte. ‘Have we journeyed so far and survived so much that we are now going to jump at our own shadows?’
No one answered the question and Knocker shook his head, quoting a
dark proverb, ‘“the shadow cast by a Wendle is twice as long as his body.”’ He stared hard at Napoleon and tried to read the truth in the Wendle’s eyes, but Napoleon’s eyes wandered and looked elsewhere.
‘We shall have to move soon,’ he said. ‘I can hear the early buses in the streets and it is nearly daylight.’
Within a few minutes the Adventurers were ready to set out once more, and they filed past Sam to give him a last stroke and a word of farewell. The uncertainty that stretched before and the sadness that lay behind had made them despondent. There was something else too: they hated themselves for deserting the horse who had helped them through so many dangers, who had risked his own life, time and time again, to save theirs. Sydney was distraught, weeping with grief, and was the last to squeeze through the gap in the railings that led to the river. She had lingered to gather a handful of fresh grass for Sam; she wanted to wish him farewell alone.
‘Goodbye, old Sam,’ she said. ‘I’ll never forget you, never. We can’t take you any further because of the river, because we have to go underground, but I tell you, Sam, if I ever get out of this adventure alive I’ll find out where you are and I’ll come back for you, however far it is . . and that’s a promise. And I’ll steal you away one night and you’ll come back to Neasden with me and you won’t work again, Sam, ever.’ And Sydney put her arms around the horse’s neck and kissed the side of his face.
When she had gone Sam ambled over to the railings and stuck his head over them to watch the tiny figures of his friends marching along the towpath, towards the dark semicircular hole where the Wandle disappeared under the streets of Wandsworth; and Sam shed bitter tears.
Napoleon led the way but his step was not springy or light. He looked unhappy, not at all like a Borrible returning home covered in glory. Knocker and Torreycanyon followed along with the treasure chest, and the others came behind, all of them still weary despite their night’s rest.
The silence along the towpath was uncanny and the adventurers saw not a soul, at least to begin with. It was only when they glanced over their shoulders that they saw how the path had become crowded with heavily armed warriors who had materialized from the very bankside.
Across the river they could see more Wendles rising mysteriously from the mud to stand watching as the Borribles marched by.
Bingo, who felt that his companions were allowing themselves to be overawed by the Wendles, raised his voice in song, and that London voice, bright and defiant, rang out over the river:
‘Hurrah! Hurrah! The Battle’s won!
The victors are marching from Rumbledom!
We smashed the evil furry crew,
We finished the job we went to do.
Let our great deeds and high renown
Spread to the ends of London Town.
Brave though bloody, here we come!
The victors returning from Rumbledom!
‘Rejoice! The foe is overcome!
The victors are marching from Rumbledom!
We trounced the enemy through and through,
We finished the job we went to do.
Nothing can frighten us again,
We fear no monsters, fear no men.
Brave though bloody, here we come!
The victors returning from Rumbledom!’
With Bingo’s example before them, the Adventurers determined to show the Wendles that they were not downcast, and each of them sang loudly of his London borough: songs that told of fine abandoned houses and good days of thieving and food.
Knocker laughed at the songs. He felt happier now they had committed themselves to a course of action. There was no going back, so they might as well make the best of it.
All too soon the Adventurers came up with Halfabar at the mouth of the sewer where the Wandle went underground. He smiled and inclined his head; the light of winter gleamed on his helmet.
‘Welcome, brother Borribles,’ he said. ‘Napoleon has told us a little of your great adventure. Your names were well won. Flinthead is impatient to hear your stories from your own lips. A great feast awaits you.’
‘There,’ said Napoleon to Knocker. ‘What did I tell you?’
They followed Halfabar and his men underground, and found their way by the light of torches as they had done on their previous visit. Again the Adventurers smelt the smell of the River Wandle, penned and confined in its narrow tunnels, and the stench of it rose and stung their nostrils. Even Napoleon wrinkled his nose in disgust, so many months had he spent in the fresh air.
After walking a few hundred yards they left the river and Halfabar led them directly to the great hall. There, as before, sat Flinthead, his eyes opaque. The hall was not crowded this time; only the bodyguard stood by, heavily armed and numerous, their faces unsmiling beneath their helmets. In a line before Flinthead’s stage were nine armchairs, and in front of them was a long table loaded with all kinds of food from the Wendles’ store.
The Adventurers filed across the hall, members of the bodyguard at their side. They were directed to the armchairs and their knapsacks taken and stacked behind them. Torreycanyon and Knocker dropped the burnt and valuable box in front of their seats, and when, on a gesture from Flinthead, they sat, they each put a foot on the Rumble treasure. Flinthead saw the movement and smiled indulgently. When all was quiet he spoke, and his voice was the same as ever: kind, warm and solicitous.
‘Welcome back,’ he said, and smiled again. ‘Your adventure has been successful and we are proud, and not a little envious of it, though we grieve at your loss. If you are not too weary, I would like to hear of your exploits, in detail, for all we Borribles love a story of the winning of a name, and I think that there have never been names won like yours. Napoleon Boot has told me something, but I wish to hear it all from your own lips. There is food before you. Tell me your stories one by one, the rest may eat until it is their turn to tell.’ He pointed a finger at the end of the line away from Knocker. ‘You,’ he ordered, ‘begin.’
So, Stonks it was, began. He told how he and Torreycanyon took the Great Door, how he defended it and how later he took the Rumble skin, and what a fright it caused. The others ate, or aided the story with comments, correcting and enlarging the thread of the tale as it went along. Then it was the turn of Vulge, and Flinthead leant forward in his chair with great interest as he heard how the chief Rumble had met his end. Sydney and Chalotte told of the assault on the kitchens and the subsequent
retreat; then came Orococco, followed by Bingo, who told how he met Napoleon in the great library and how he had fought in single combat with the greatest warrior in Rumbledom. Napoleon took up the story and told how he had shaken his namesake from the ladder and how Bingo had saved his life, and how, sorely wounded, they had squirmed and crawled their way to safety, to find Torreycanyon, who then must tell of his lonely fight in the garage and how he caused the great explosion which had put paid to the whole bunker.
After that, Flinthead asked of Adolf and what he had done, so Knocker related how the German and he had found Vulge, surrounded by the bodies of his enemies, and how the safe had been opened and the box discovered. And the Wendle bodyguard leant on their spears and everyone relaxed, except Knocker; and Torreycanyon whispered that everyone seemed friendly and happy and that things would turn out fine in the end. But Knocker scowled and whispered back that things that happened could only be judged after they had happened, and then not always correctly.
But Flinthead turned his bland face to Knocker again and said, ‘And now you must speak further and tell us your own story—one full of colour, I am sure, and one for which I have been waiting with great interest—for are you not the writer, the Historian, and will you not have seen and known things that the others did not know?’
Knocker looked along the line of his companions. They were sprawling in the comfortable armchairs, their faces flushed with food and drink. They were too relaxed, too easeful, unable to defend themselves if the need arose. Knocker himself sat nervously on the edge of his seat, his feet tucked under him, ready to leap at the slightest hint of danger.
‘My part was, in fact, small,’ he heard himself saying. ‘Adolf and I followed the others and discovered Vulge only after he had fought his great battle alone. Later it was a question of retreating slowly, grouping together and fighting our way along the tunnels to the Great Door where Adolf was killed, but if it hadn’t been for Sam, the horse, none of us would be sitting here now.’ And Knocker went on to praise the horse and tell of their imprisonment by Dewdrop and his son, how they had escaped and taken Sam with them.
Flinthead cupped his chin in his right hand and rested the elbow on
his knee. He swayed forward, listening with an attention that did not waver for a second. He was fixing every detail of the story in his mind. When the tale was finished he leant back in his chair, clasped his hands in his lap and beamed a cold smile at everybody, a brittle smile that was simply a movement of facial muscle with no breath of warmth in it.
‘I hope, Knocker,’ he said, ‘that you will write down this adventure as soon as you have time. There are so few good stories left. I look forward to reading it.’ He paused and looked round the hall at the bodyguard, then looked at Knocker and flicked his finger against his thumb, just once. There was a clash of armour and members of the bodyguard moved behind the Adventurers to hold them fast, deep in the soft armchairs, knives at their throats. Held all that is save Knocker; he had been ready, perched on the edge of his chair. He jumped forward, butted a warrior in the stomach and snatched his lance.