Ladies and gentlemen, humans and creatures, monsters and men: what follows is another sad story about an orphan, one of the many left behind in the wake of Sea Fever. The unfortunate boy’s name was Master Most Violent Cartwright.
Young Cartwright, eight years old, was shipped off to his uncle’s oyster farm with a suitcase containing a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and a packet of biscuits. He was bedraggled, upset, and pitiful, but really quite handsome. Now that I think about it, it’s a shame he wasted his childhood on that dismal island when the world could have known his uniquely dazzling personality. Are you laughing? Don’t laugh. Now, where was I?
His new home was haunted by his vicious cousins, Ralf and Gail, who spent their time playing cruel but uninventive tricks on him—flushing his head down the toilet, stealing his books, hiding fish under his pillow, and so on. Cartwright would have thought of more original pranks himself, but he was better than that, obviously. And he wasn’t the only one subjected to this terror. His uncle, Laurel, an inventor of the highest order, was also tormented by his sons. Laurel’s wife, Agatha, directed the twins toward him like a hunter with a pack of dogs, furious that her husband wasn’t, in fact, interested in her.
Here our story intersects with another; let us go sideways, like a boat slipping gently into a current, to the story of Agatha Fischer, a woman who married Laurel for his oysters. Having brought up twin sons with a penchant for making others miserable, she was more than slightly regretful when her husband was driven to an early grave and the torturers turned their attention on her. Her three emotions are consequently guilt, loneliness, and stone-shattering fury. But Agatha would do anything to protect Catacomb Hill, as it’s the only thing she has left, though secretly she hates it so much she wants to see it destroyed.
But let us veer back to the dazzling Cartwright and his similarly tortured uncle as they bond over their shared passion for hiding from the twins. Laurel told Cartwright stories about the stars and planets, about all the different countries, about the sea and the things that lived in it. That’s how Cartwright heard about the New Continent. The boy was hooked on the posters and maps Laurel brought back from the mainland. He’d never seen anything so full of promise. When his uncle, who was already pretty old, started going a bit—How should I put it? Crackers?—it seemed like the stories of the New Continent kept him going.
But let’s not forget about the twin monsters living in the house. They hunted Cartwright with a passion, and they started to sabotage Laurel’s inventions in the middle of the night. They put a hole in the boat and pushed it out to sea. Laurel started to go madder than before, and Cartwright suspected that he had finally succumbed to Sea Fever. One day, Laurel locked himself in his study and didn’t emerge for two months. All he told Cartwright was that he had found the cure, and it was his duty to see it made reality.
Laurel created the Monster Box and left it to Cartwright. It was obviously Cartwright’s destiny: he would travel to the New Continent and give his uncle’s legacy—most certainly a cure for Sea Fever—to the world. Everything would be all right again, and our dazzling orphan Cartwright would be a hero.
The rest, dear audience, you know. The twins became jealous. They stole the box, and Cartwright, in the throes of grief, took the key and fled the island.
Cartwright knew he needed to get himself on a boat and to the New Continent, but despite his most admirable talents, he had no way to buy passage across the sea.
Now twelve years old, he joined the army. They were only too glad to recruit him on account of his obvious talent and maturity, although many have said that they were also desperate for men. Because he was quick and clever, and because the others had either gone mad or fled, he was soon promoted to captain. He rescued a manic horse from a burning tar pit, and became known as the most unpredictable, intimidating man in the force. Soon he had enough money to get tickets—two of them, in fact—one for himself, and another in case he ever needed a bribe.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about the Monster Box. He got angrier and angrier at the twins. They had cheated the world out of a cure for its malady, and they had taken something that was rightfully his. He wanted that box.
He took off in the middle of the night. Tickets in hand, he reached the coast and rode across to the derelict oyster farm.
The only thing that had changed in the house was the addition of a servant who helped Scree with the Bone Snatching. He asked for the girl’s help, and in return promised her passage to the New Continent with him. She accepted, but just a week later she disappeared, leaving a note to say that she had run away for London. Cartwright, feeling claustrophobic, left the island again. He traveled up and down the country, doing circus tricks for peanuts. The tickets were always in his pocket, but every time he determined to board a ship and leave the country, the itch to take back what was rightfully his made him step back.
So he returned to the house. There was a new servant by now, who also agreed to the deal, but the same thing happened again. He left, and a few weeks later he was back, and there was another Bone Snatcher.
He was exhausted and obsessed. He tried to grow a fashionable beard several times. And he was beginning to really worry about the twins. He wondered what they had to do with his uncle’s death. He wondered what they had to do with the disappearing Bone Snatchers. He wondered if he was lying to himself. He vowed to go back one last time, to confront the twins and his aunt himself, if not to find the box then to say good-bye to the island and his uncle’s memory. This time he meant it.
There was a new servant, a girl with white hair and a pointy face. She looked about as abandoned and hateful as he felt. At dinner, he turned to the girl. Old habits die hard, and the great pretender Master Most Violent Cartwright struck again.