Chapter 15

‘Fitzy and the Maharaja are already riding down the coast road,’ Hari said. ‘They’ll catch him for sure.’

‘No they won’t.’ Lizzie knew it for certain. ‘They haven’t gone down the coast road. I know exactly where they’ve gone.’ She ran to her caravan to fetch a lantern, with Hari tagging behind looking confused.

‘But the only other road runs towards the moors,’ he said. ‘They can’t have gone over open ground, surely? They’d be seen!’

Lizzie lit her lantern. ‘They went underground. The old smugglers’ tunnel.’

Hari’s mouth fell open. ‘How do you know?’

‘The vision. Lady Susannah had cobwebs in her hair. And how else could they get down to the harbour quickly without being seen? Come on!’

From inside the show tent, the band struck up an opening fanfare. Lizzie could hear Malachy shouting, sounding clear and confident above the music. He was introducing Mario the Mighty, and the crowd applauded loudly.

Good luck, mate, she thought. You can do this. It’s in your blood.

Lizzie and Hari ran from the warmth and festivity of the castle grounds out into the growing darkness of evening. The wind tasted of rain, and distant thunder trembled across the moors. The weather was hot, humid and close, and a storm was brewing to blow the lid off it all. From the way the goose pimples rose on Lizzie’s arms, she knew it was coming soon.

They ran past the gates and down the road to the waiting clump of trees, which held shadows in amongst their boughs like thick webs. Lizzie had to use the lantern to find the old brick-lined opening.

‘Here it is,’ she told Hari. ‘The Rum Road.’

‘Look!’ Hari pointed at a torn scrap of lace from Lady Susannah’s shawl, caught on a low-hanging branch. ‘You were right.’

Lizzie led the way down, holding the lantern high, while Hari nervously followed. Tree roots had come down through the roof of the tunnel and encircled it like tentacles. In the unsteady light, they seemed to move, as if they were about to stir into life and grab the children.

‘Can you smell that?’ Hari whispered.

Lizzie could smell lots of things down here – earth, old dead leaves, the damp musty smell that long-abandoned things have. Then she caught a trace of what Hari was talking about. A bitter, sulphurous smell.

‘Gunpowder,’ she realized, then added, ‘Malachy smelled it before.’

‘Maybe someone’s planning to blow something up. Like Guy Fawkes.’

‘It better not be this tunnel. One good sneeze would bring this lot down on our heads.’

Hurrying down the tunnel wasn’t easy. Lizzie knew they were racing against time, but she didn’t dare rush. Horrible fates kept arising in her mind. She saw herself stumbling, falling and smashing the lantern, leaving the two of them trapped in never-ending darkness. Or blundering into a support beam and bringing the ceiling crashing down on them with a roar and a rattle of falling earth.

‘How long is this tunnel?’ Hari asked in awe, when the exit was still far ahead.

‘Half a mile, Malachy reckoned.’

Lizzie reached a turning she remembered, where Erin had pretended to be an undead smuggler chasing them through the musty dark. It was hard to believe this tunnel had echoed with happy laughter only a day before. Now it felt more haunted than ever.

‘It is fascinating,’ Hari marvelled, ‘to think there is a secret path, hidden in plain sight.’

Something was nagging Lizzie, and she had to get it off her chest. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were going to come.’

‘Why? I’m not frightened of cramped spaces.’

‘But you don’t like the Maharaja much, do you? Yet here you are, helping him get Lady Susannah back. And his jewel too.’

Hari stepped carefully over an ancient shard of wood with a rusty nail in it, lying on the tunnel floor. ‘I don’t want Lady Susannah to get hurt,’ he said quietly. ‘Keeping her safe is what’s important. What I think of Gurinder Bhatti doesn’t matter.’

When they finally reached the end of the tunnel and opened the outhouse door leading into the yard of the Whitby Oyster, silence greeted them. No noise came from the pub, nor from the streets beyond.

The two of them made their way down into the town. All around them, windows were dark and doors were shut. Traces of mist hovered in the air and Lizzie glanced in at silent parlours and empty sitting rooms where no fires burned in the grates. It was as if the whole town had been spirited away, its inhabitants turned to wisps of fog that dispersed on the sea breeze.

‘They’re all watching the circus,’ Hari said.

‘None of them have a clue what’s going on,’ Lizzie agreed. As she listened, she was sure she could hear distant music and cheering carrying on the night air. Then a rumble of thunder drowned it out. The storm was coming closer.

They hurried through the streets, past shuttered shops and shadowed back alleys where anything might be lurking, down towards the harbour. Boats were moored along the quayside at the river mouth, but nobody seemed to be on them. Lizzie’s chest hurt with the effort of running, and Hari gasped as he ran alongside her.

Finally they reached the path above the beach. Lizzie collapsed against the railing and looked out over the waves. There, looming out of a bank of mist, was the sinister shape of the ghost ship – green light shining from its bow, casting an uncanny glow over the water.

Lizzie narrowed her eyes. There was a second light alongside the first. It danced and swayed – a hand-held lantern, it could be nothing else.

‘He’s got her!’ she yelled. ‘Hari, he’s taken her out to the boat!’

‘We have to reach them,’ Hari said. ‘Maybe I could swim? They aren’t too far out yet.’

Lizzie had a better idea. She pointed at Elsie’s boat, tied up on the beach. But Elsie was at the circus, with the rest of the town, and they couldn’t ask her permission. ‘We’ll just have to borrow it,’ she said. Her legs ached from running, but she forced herself to dash down the stone steps, across the shingle beach and up to the boat.

Together, she and Hari pushed the little rowboat into the foaming surf, wading up to their knees, and climbed in. There was a tangle of netting in the boat’s bottom, along with a couple of woven wicker pots. ‘Sorry, Elsie,’ Lizzie whispered as she trod on the net. ‘Wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t life or death!’

Hari took the oars and looked over his shoulder. ‘That’s the famous ghost ship, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

He sniffed. ‘There’s that smell again. Gunpowder. And something else, something sharp…’

‘Never mind that, just row!’

Hari rowed hard. The little boat sloshed away from the beach and quickly closed in on the green light shining from the fog.

The closer they got, the clearer Lizzie could see the ghost ship … and in a sudden flash she realized the fog wasn’t fog at all. It was a thick white smoke, and it was pouring from the ghost ship itself.

In that moment, she knew for certain it wasn’t a ghost ship and whoever was at the helm was flesh and blood. The green light, the smoke, the smell of gunpowder … everything made sense in the same moment.

‘Hari, he’s using some sort of fireworks! It ain’t a real ghost ship at all!’ That explained why they’d smelled gunpowder in the tunnel, she thought. Someone had been storing fireworks there. But who?

A blue blink of lightning lit up the sky. Seconds later, the growl of thunder rolled out across the land and sea. The storm was even closer now. If it caught them on the open sea, the little boat would be helpless.

They had almost caught up with the other vessel. Lizzie could see the green flare burning and a figure standing behind it, dressed in a hooded robe. The light flashed off a pair of dark glasses.

That explains what I saw, Lizzie thought. He’s wearing dark glasses to protect his eyes from the light of the fireworks. This whole ghost ship was just a hoax … a piece of trickery, like a stage effect. But why?

Someone on the ‘ghost ship’ swore as he saw Lizzie’s boat drawing closer. The green light suddenly went out, though the swirling fog-like smoke remained. The lantern light vanished a second later.

‘Stop where you are!’ Lizzie yelled.

The rowboat shuddered as it struck the side of the ‘ghost ship’. Lizzie stood up, the boat wobbling beneath her feet, and peered through the smoke. It was bitter and seared the back of her throat. She could just make out two figures on the deck above, one holding onto the other.

She turned up the flame on her own lantern and held it up high. What she saw made her gasp in shock.

‘You!?’ she said. ‘I don’t believe it!’

Billy, the charming confidence trickster from the beach, stood laughing at her. His hood was drawn back now, and Lizzie could see it was no more than a costume. He had his arms around Lady Susannah.

Lizzie’s thoughts rushed back to the day of the circus parade. Poor Lady Susannah had needed Lizzie’s help to rescue her from Billy and his oily advances. Clearly, whispering in her ear had only been the start. He was determined to make off with her.

‘That’s your plan, is it?’ she snarled. ‘Kidnap the lady, but make everyone think she’d been taken by the ghost ship, so she’d never be seen again?’

‘You’d be amazed what the people around here would believe,’ Billy sneered. ‘Superstitious bunch of chumps.’

‘Let her go!’ Lizzie yelled.

Billy laughed. ‘As you wish.’ He unfolded his arms from around her waist. ‘Your ladyship, do you want to leave with these children?’ There was a nasty smirk on his face that Lizzie wanted to smack right off.

‘Come on, quickly,’ she urged Lady Susannah. ‘Don’t be scared.’

Lady Susannah took a hesitant step forwards. There was still a good three feet of water between the two boats. Lizzie held one of the oars out to her, so she could take it and pull them closer. Lady Susannah grabbed the oar, but to Lizzie’s amazement she tugged it right out of her grip and gave a strange, harsh laugh. As Lizzie stared in surprise, the lady swung the oar like a club.

The paddle caught Lizzie in the face. Blinding pain made her eyes water and her teeth rattle. ‘Ow!’ she cried, her hand to her cheek. Black fireworks were going off in her head. She hadn’t been belted in the face like that since escaping from Rat’s Castle and her father’s fists. Pain, betrayal and fear swamped her like a wave. She fought the urge to curl up in a ball.

Lady Susannah yelled at her – and her voice wasn’t the posh, clipped tones of a highborn lady any more. It was a West Country burr. ‘That’ll teach you to stop meddling, you little freak!’

As Lizzie staggered in pain, the taste of blood filling her mouth, a vision rushed into her mind. She was powerless to prevent it. It was as if the blow from the oar had cracked her skull open.

Lady Susannah, in a spangled mask, was lying in a box done up like a Chinese cabinet. Only her head and feet could be seen, poking out of the ends.

Above her loomed Billy in a magician’s costume, his drooping fake moustache held on with spirit gum. He was brandishing a long, curved sword that shone brightly in the strange light from the coloured torches burning on the stage.

As the lady screamed theatrically and struggled, Billy raised the sword. ‘Time to die, my pretty!’ he laughed, and plunged the sword into the box right in the middle section. The audience gasped and applauded. Then he plunged two more swords in, while the lady kept up the screaming.

With a flourish, Billy whipped the swords out and opened the box to reveal Lady Susannah alive and unharmed. They took their bows to a storm of applause. A master of ceremonies came on stage, shook Billy’s hand and called out:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, give a big hand for Mister Marvel the Modern Merlin, and his assistant – the beautiful Scheherazade!’