The Jade Boy Page 5

  As the boy stared at Malfurneaux Place it seemed to shift and move. When he blinked, it was as if the building had subtly rearranged itself, so that what he thought was there was gone – or had changed.

  “Don’t look at it. Keep your eyes on the ground and follow me. The house is playing with you.”

  Tolly’s voice sounded sharp and nervous.

  Jem took a step forward, uncomfortably aware that dozens of arched blank windows ahead of him seemed to be watching his progress.

  Tolly’s voice came again, “Whatever happens, remember that we are here too, Jem. You are not alone.”

  A man’s voice rang out through the stone courtyard.

  “You are late, Ptolemy.”

  Jem looked up to see a small hump-backed figure standing at the top of a flight of steps leading to a wide, open doorway. The man scuttled down the steps towards them. He was dressed in a tattered black frock coat that made him look like a crow, his skin was wax-yellow and his blind eyes were white as milk. He was bent and bony and his head jutted forward and skewed to the right so that he appeared to squint permanently sideways from beneath a pair of alarmingly springy eyebrows. He was wearing a matted grey wig that kept slipping to the right, causing him to repeatedly jerk his head like a bird to flick it back into place.

  The little man sniffed deeply and spoke again. “You’ve got the lad, then.”

  It was not a question. He clutched a spindly stick, which he scraped back and forth in the gravel.

  “Inside.”

  He turned and led the way up the steps into the shadowy hallway and the boys followed. The doors clanged shut behind them and the room was instantly plunged into total darkness.

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting a candle?” came the man’s voice. “Don’t need one myself. Old Tapwick knows all the ways here.”

  A candle flame flared and Jem jumped back in alarm as a skull seemed to float in the air just beneath his chin.

  But no, it was Tapwick, and he appeared to be staring up at him. He was so close that Jem could see the hairs sprouting out of his nose. The nostrils flared and the man inhaled deeply.

  “Ah, I’ve got you now,” he said, adding, after a few seconds, “I never forget a smell.”

  The man’s breath stank of sour milk. Revolted, Jem took another step back.

  Tapwick gave a wheezy laugh and pushed the boy towards a staircase that reared up into blackness from the centre of the hall.

  “Master’s been waiting for you this last hour. And he’s not one to be kept waiting.”

  The man turned to Tolly. “And you, you black devil, you are to wait here until I say so. Come.”

  Jem followed as the old man moved easily towards the staircase, taking the thin light from the single candle stub with him. Although Tapwick used his stick as a guide, he hardly needed it – he moved like one who could see.

  Just before Tolly was swallowed by the blackness, he smiled encouragingly at Jem, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes.

  Jem gulped and felt horribly alone. Nervously he started to turn the loose coins over and over in his pocket.

  “Stop that clinking. Can’t hear myself see,” said Tapwick irritably.

  At the second landing they came to, Tapwick turned left into a passageway lined with what seemed to be colossal statues. Jem looked at the first of these as they passed, but was so frightened by the dimly lit form captured in stone that he decided to concentrate on the little light moving just ahead of him. He was almost sure that the statue had opened its eyes and stared at him.

  They came to a door midway down the passage and Tapwick stopped.

  “You are so late that you will have to wait in here while I check that the master is still ready to receive,” he said, handing the candle stub to the boy. “Don’t touch anything,” he warned as he pushed Jem into the room and shut the door.

  Jem listened as Tapwick’s footsteps and the scraping of his stick faded down the corridor. He stood at the threshold to the gloomy room, his heart pounding away so heavily under his ribs that he imagined he could almost hear it. The air was foul – it smelled as if something old and sick was rotting here. Jem took a deep breath and raised the candle.

  He was in a long, narrow gallery, much like the room at Ludlow House where the duke displayed his latest treasures – only, this room had no windows.

  The weak light from the little flame picked out several large, oddly shaped objects standing in the corners. They were all smothered under grey dusty cloths.

  Feeling uncomfortably aware that he was being watched from above, he jangled the coins in his pocket and raised the candle higher.

  Jem gasped and shrank back against the door.

  A gigantic, snarling black cat loomed over him. The animal’s huge eyes glowed with blank ferocity and its unsheathed claws seemed unnaturally long and sharp. The creature seemed to be about to spring, but Jem realised with a surge of relief that it was long dead and was actually suspended from wires on the ceiling. A skilful hand had frozen the animal’s body in an eternal, deadly pounce.

  He breathed deeply and stumbled to the side to get away from the horrible thing above him. As he did so his boot caught in a heap of fabric spooling on the floor from the largest of the odd covered objects standing about the room. The object began to rock and the cloth covering slumped heavily to the floor.

  Jem coughed as a rancid smell suddenly hit his nostrils, then blinked as he tried to make sense of the sight before him. It was another animal, and at first, it appeared to Jem to be a crouching lion. But, instead of snarling jaws, the creature had the open beak of an enormous bird, like an eagle. A pair of vast golden wings sprouted from the lion’s back and Jem shuddered as he saw the cruel jagged stitches punched into the animal’s skin, where the wings were attached with splints of wood and thick black thread. This work was done by a far less skilful hand, and the creature smelled as if it were rotting from the inside out.

  It’s a gryphon, he thought, remembering a picture he’d seen in one of the duke’s books.

  In the far corner, beyond the gryphon, Jem’s candle revealed another draped form. He hesitated for just a moment, then stepped forward. He had to know… He raised the candle and tugged at the musty cloth covering. As it fell, he found himself standing beneath the hooves of a rearing horse. Jem gagged. The terrible smell was even worse now.

  This animal had once been a noble stallion, but now it was dirty and grey.

  As he looked at the horse, Jem felt tears prickle in his eyes and bile rise in his throat.

  But worst of all was the twisted, bony horn that grew from the centre of the stallion’s head, just above the sightless eyes. Jem could see immediately this wasn’t a real unicorn – the ivory horn was clamped into place by four metal bolts hammered into the animal’s skull. He felt blind fury that someone could do such a thing to a beautiful animal.

  This sad, dead creature in its forgotten corner was slowly rotting away, just like all of the other monstrosities that were no doubt hiding beneath the other cloth shrouds in the room.

  Jem shuddered and hastily backed away. This was horrible, the work of a madman. He felt disgust, and pity for the unnatural creatures around him.

  Ann’s words suddenly came to him. “My guardian is a collector. His house is full of the most hideous and unnatural things.”

  He wondered how his friends could survive here surrounded by such… evil. Yes! That’s what he felt. This place was truly evil.

  “Enjoying the master’s toys, are we?”

  Tapwick’s question sounded more like a sneer. The bent little man was standing at the entrance to the room staring sightlessly at Jem.

  “Master’s ready for you now.”

  Jem’s breathing became fast and shallow, he could feel the muscles in his legs twitching and little spurts of white-hot energy cramped his stomach.

  If Cazalon could do all this to these poor animals, what might he want to do to him?

  Every fibre of his being tol
d Jem to run, but something else told him that escape would be impossible.

  “He is waiting. Come!”

  Jem followed Tapwick deeper into Malfurneaux Place through a maze of passages and stairs. He wondered if he would ever be able to find his way out.

  “Nearly there.”

  Tapwick held back a thick velvet curtain and ushered Jem into an arched corridor.

  After the brooding silence of the rest of the house, Jem suddenly found himself deafened by the ticking sounds of hundreds of clocks and ancient timepieces. How had he not heard them on his approach? Jem shook his head in amazement.

  Some were beautiful golden treasures, others were dark metallic contraptions with their open workings twitching and moving. They seemed oddly alive.

  “Master calls this the passage of time.” Tapwick sniggered as he brushed past Jem. “Keep up.”

  At the far end of the corridor, where it turned off to the left, Jem made out a greyish column propped against the wall. As he got closer, the weak light from his little candle showed that the object was in fact a grotesquely delicate clock constructed entirely from bones.

  Small bones, large bones, grey bones, yellow bones – they were stacked together to create a hideous filigree box topped by a smooth ivory dial.

  Fascinated and repelled in equal measure, Jem saw that the broad dial was covered in writing and strange symbols. Instead of showing the time, the single hand – formed from what looked like a small human arm, hand and fingers – seemed to point at dates and years.

  He heard a scuffling noise near his feet and looked down. At the base of the clock, nestled among the bones, Jem saw a bird. The little creature blinked its black eyes and cheeped. Despite himself, Jem smiled and bent closer.

  The bird ruffled its feathers… and scuttled off into the darkness on what looked like the four, pink hairless feet of a rat.

  Jem brought his hand to his mouth to muffle a yelp of horror.

  Tapwick laughed and started to scratch his stick backwards and forwards on the floorboards.

  As the scraping sound echoed around the corridor, the ticking of the clocks grew louder and louder. Jem brought his hands to his ears to block the painful noise.

  Then all the sounds stopped at once, as a door at the far end of the lefthand passage clicked ajar. A dull pulse of red-gold light spilled out through the crack in the door and across the bare boards.

  “I’m to leave you here,” said Tapwick, snatching the candle stub.

  He shoved the boy towards the door and then turned back into the clock-lined passage, disappearing into the blackness.

  Jem stood alone. The tips of his boots glowed dully in the faint light from the door. He looked closer. Next to his foot there was a pile of white crystals. In fact, now that he was becoming accustomed to the gloom, he could see that instead of a pile of crystals, it was actually part of a semi-circle of small white granules running across the floorboards, arcing from one side of the door to the other.

  Jem bent down to touch it. Salt. Pig Face would never allow such extravagance, he thought. Salt was expensive and hard to come by. He took a pinch between his thumb and forefinger and as he did so, the door opened wider and a wave of tremendous heat rolled into the passage.

  For a moment Jem found it difficult to breathe – but it wasn’t just the heat that caught at his throat. The air was filled with the tang of something sweaty, old, musty, decayed and horribly sweet.

  “Master Green, you are sinfully late.”

  Cazalon’s weirdly accented, sing-song voice sounded from the depths of the room. “But as we are destined to become so very close, I will forgive you. Come here, boy, where I can look at you.”

  Jem swallowed hard, stood up and stepped over the semi-circle of salt and into the room.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Jem found himself in a long, wide chamber with a vast painted ceiling. The only source of light came from a fire crackling in the hearth of a magnificent carved chimney breast halfway down the room. In the gloom he couldn’t quite make out what the painting high overhead represented, but he was aware of hundreds of glittering eyes staring down at him.

  “Come, warm yourself, Master Green. You must be chilled to the marrow.”

  The lazy hissing voice was unmistakably Cazalon’s, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Jem began to walk nervously towards the hearth. Even though the fire was at least thirty paces from the door he could feel intense heat from the dancing flames on his face. With every step, his eyes grew more accustomed to the dimness.

  Like the room where Tapwick had left him earlier, Cazalon’s chamber had no windows. On the left, the wall was hung from floor to ceiling with a series of tapestries. Jem recognised the dark woven forms of centaurs and goat-legged satyrs from the duke’s books of Greek myths.

  On the right, the room was lined with a row of squat black chests. Standing on the top of the first chest was a large plaster model that appeared to show a ring of tumbled stones set in a field. On the next, Jem saw something that looked like a Roman temple, with rows of horizontal steps and vertical columns.

  Finally, he recognised the building displayed on the last chest – it was a model of St Paul’s Cathedral.

  “I see you are admiring my playthings, Master Green.”

  As Jem turned towards the voice, every fibre of his being was strung tight as a viol.

  Cazalon was seated in a tall-backed chair beside the fire. The chair’s back was to the door, which was why Jem hadn’t noticed him.

  A gloved hand pointed to a spot in front of the fire.

  “Stand there. I want to look at you.”

  Jem noticed that Cazalon’s hand trembled. As he turned to face the count, Jem saw that he was wearing a long red gown that spooled out across the floor. A black curly wig hung from one of the carved points at the top of the chair and his head was close-shaven, apart from a single plait that snaked from the top of his crown and was draped over his right shoulder. In the firelight the plait appeared to be blue.

  Cazalon didn’t move. He was slumped oddly in the chair and his painted face looked gaunt and tired. But his slanted, mirror-like eyes glinted with dangerous energy as they flickered over the boy’s face. At last, the count spoke.

  “So very like your father.”

  Jem was startled. Despite his fear, he couldn’t stop himself from blurting out eagerly, “You knew my father, sir?”

  Cazalon smiled slowly. “Well, you are nothing like your small, fine-boned, golden-haired mother – Sarah isn’t it? Companion to the duchess?

  “You, on the other hand, are olive-skinned, blackhaired and tall for your twelve years. So I conclude, Master Green, that you must look like your father. It is a simple deduction.”

  Suddenly Jem was angry. Everyone seemed to have something to say about his father – except him. Forgetting his fear he took a step forward.

  “My father died before I was born. I don’t know what he looked like… sir.”

  He scowled and fell silent. How dare this strange man speak of his mother, let alone his father. He had no right.

  Cazalon leaned forward to poke at the fire with his knobbled staff and the flames danced and crackled.

  “I seem to have upset you, Master Green, and I am sorry. Perhaps we can begin again?”

  Jem shifted uncomfortably. All he wanted to do was hand over the duchess’s note, collect her package and get away from Malfurneaux Place as quickly as possible.

  Cazalon stared at him. After a moment the man tapped the tip of his staff lightly on the floor and the crystal bird’s head sparked with firelight.

  “I enjoy games, Master Green, they help to pass the time. I hope you enjoy games too. Can you guess from what this staff is made?”

  He twirled it slowly on the spot so that the odd twisted knobbles seemed to move up and down its length like snakes around a branch. Jem found himself mesmerised, unable to look away.

  “It is the petrified backbone of a shark. Do you know what
a shark is?”

  Jem shook his head.

  “Then I shall tell you. A shark is a fish – a most dangerous specimen, the sharp-toothed wolf of the sea. I trust you will remember that useful fact. Do you like quizzes, boy?”

  Jem looked at his feet. He didn’t want to talk to this man. He just wanted to leave.

  “Sometimes, sir. It depends on the subject.”

  Cazalon leaned forward in the chair and smiled.

  “Good, then let us start with observation. What have you noticed about my house?”

  Jem was silent. He had noticed so many revolting, unsettling and frankly terrifying things about Malfurneaux Place. What answer did Cazalon expect?

  “Well… Jeremy? I think I shall call you that.”

  Jem replied warily, “It’s… it’s very dark, sir.”

  “And what else? What about the people here?”

  Jem considered the only people he had encountered inside Malfurneaux Place, before replying uncertainly. “Er… your page cannot speak and your steward cannot see?”

  “Good, Jeremy. Good. We spoke earlier about deduction. What do you deduce from your last statement?”

  Jem was lost. He looked around the room trying to find inspiration in the models and tapestries. At the far end of the room there was a huge black shape in the shadows. Jem realised it was a vast canopied bed topped with a crest of dark feathers and gilded with figures. The thick velvet curtains were pulled shut around it.

  Cazalon coughed.

  “I would appreciate it if you would concentrate on my question, Jeremy. Think.”

  Jem thought very hard, before stammering, “It tells me that you are a good master to employ those who are so afflicted.”

  Cazalon coughed again and then began to laugh. This wasn’t the thin metallic laugh Jem had heard before. This was a laugh that grew to a deep, wild howl that seemed to wrack Cazalon’s body so violently that the man had to cling to one of the chair arms to steady himself.