Chapter 8

Images flashed before Lizzie’s eyes. So, she thought distantly, it’s true what they say about drowning. You really do see your whole life unfolding in front of you.

She saw her brother sitting up in bed, coughing blood into a handkerchief. Other memories followed, blindingly fast: her mother hugging her from behind when she was only three, her father roaring drunk and smacking her hard in the face, the Penny Gaff Gang gathered in the tea tent and laughing together.

‘Lizzie!’

The voice calling her name seemed to come from far away, a place of dancing light and blue skies. Lizzie thought it might be her mother, calling her to join her in Heaven. Blurry white shapes soared past above her head, above the waves. Were they angels? Next moment, a shadow moved into view.

‘Lizzie, come on!’

Sorry, Mum. I’m not ready for Heaven just yet.

She kicked hard, remembering everything Hari had told her, and tore at the water with her arms. Her chest felt like it would explode, but she fought and fought, heaving herself up until with a spluttering gasp she broke the surface.

Only feet away from her, Elsie the fishergirl was holding out her hand. She was hanging over the edge of a small boat. That was what had made the shadow.

‘Take my hand, Lizzie. I won’t let you go.’

Lizzie clutched for Elsie’s hand, held it tight and let the girl haul her on board. The fishergirl had strong brown arms, more powerful than they looked. A lifetime of hauling up fishing nets must have given her those muscles.

Lizzie spat salt water over the side of the boat, coughed and slumped in the seat. The wood below her was hot from the sun. ‘Thanks,’ she managed to gasp.

All around the boat, the rest of the Penny Gaff Gang gathered. They clung onto the side and looked at her. ‘Is she OK?’ Dru demanded.

‘I’m fine,’ Lizzie said weakly. That’ll teach me, she thought. Try to show off in front of a boy and see where it gets you.

‘Climb aboard, you lot,’ Elsie said. ‘Let’s get her back to the shore.’

‘Yer an angel,’ Lizzie groaned. ‘I had a vision…’

Elsie paused, her hands on the oars. ‘What’s she saying?’

‘Elsie, can you show us to a tea shop or something?’ Malachy said, giving the others a you-know-what-I-mean look. ‘If Lizzie’s had one of her funny turns, she needs a sit down and a nice hot brew, somewhere people can’t listen in.’

Elsie looked puzzled, but curious. ‘Let’s go and fetch your clothes off the beach. Then I’ll take you back to our cottage. I knew there was more to you lot than meets the eye.’

Not long after, they were all crowded around the table in a tiny kitchen cluttered with fishing nets and lobster pots. Elsie’s cottage was right beside the harbour, so close that you could look out across the sea through the diamond-leaded windows. A cat lounged there, basking in the sun, so peaceful Lizzie wondered if it had been stuffed.

Lizzie held her mug of tea in both hands as if it were the Holy Grail and breathed in the steam. She was still shaking and felt deep-down cold despite the fire Elsie had built from what little coal she had.

‘You swam out too far,’ Dru scolded her. ‘That is how people drown, ma cherie. One strong cramp and – boum! Under the waves they go.’

‘I told you, I didn’t get no cramp. I had a vision!’

‘I thought that’s what you said!’ Elsie burst out. ‘You see things, don’t you? Yesterday, when I was telling you about how Whitby’s haunted, I thought you was laughing at me. But you’re like my auntie, aren’t you? She had the sight.’

‘That’s about the strength of it,’ Lizzie said, grateful she wouldn’t have to explain everything all over again. ‘I tell fortunes at the circus. Only they’re real fortunes, not made-up ones.’

‘So what did you see?’ Nora seemed keen and excited. ‘Was it something about what happened at the castle?’

Oh, why did you have to say that, Lizzie thought. I’m trying not to think of you as a suspect as it is!

‘It was a ship,’ she said. ‘With a green light coming off it, and all this fog rolling around it like a ruddy great cloud.’

She heard Elsie suck in a sharp breath. She wondered if she should go on. After all, she didn’t want to scare the girl.

Deciding Elsie had a right to know what was going on in her town, Lizzie continued. ‘There was a figure at the tiller. It was horrible – it had this long black robe, and a hood, and these two shining spots inside, like a cat’s eyes.’

A frightened silence settled on the group around the table. By the window the cat stretched, yawned, got up and trotted away. The sun had gone dim, and dark clouds were rolling in from the east.

‘You saw the ghost ship!’ Elsie said. ‘That’s what I see, night after night. I never saw the thing at the helm, though.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘Do you think it were a ghost?’

‘I don’t know what it was.’ Lizzie shuddered. She couldn’t get the memory out of her head. The way that hooded form had turned to the left and right, as if it were searching the sea … maybe Elsie’s legend was true and it was hunting for a living soul to snatch away.

‘Sounds like it was wearing a shroud,’ Erin said. ‘In County Mayo, where my gran lives, there’s a man who lived by the churchyard. Every night a lady came to visit him in a long white gown. But when he finally plucked up the courage to kiss her, he saw that her gown was really a shroud! She’d been dead for over a hundred years!’

‘That’s nothing,’ Malachy said. ‘A knife-thrower who used to be with Fitzy’s circus was haunted by the ghost of a man missing both his hands. It made him so scared of making a mistake he quit the circus and became a butcher!’

Soon they were all trading ghost stories around the table. It was funny, Lizzie thought, how frightening each other on purpose was better than being frightened by something from outside.

The minutes ticked by. Outside the window the sky grew steadily darker. Something covered in fur pressed up against Lizzie’s ankles and she started, then realized it was only Elsie’s cat. A mew came from beneath the table.

‘Sorry about this,’ Elsie said. ‘Horatio wants feeding.’

‘Horatio?’ Lizzie laughed.

‘Named him after Admiral Nelson, we did. I usually give him a bit of mackerel around three.’

‘What? It’s never three o’clock already?’ Erin sprang out of her seat. ‘We’re going to be late for rehearsal!’

As they barged out of the little cottage and into the street, the first wet drops began to fall. The sky was completely clouded over now and the people going by hurried their steps.

Elsie stared up. ‘Would you look at that sky! It’s black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat.’

‘So much for our lovely day out at the beach,’ said Erin.

‘We’re going to get soaked,’ Lizzie said miserably. ‘And I only just dried off properly too.’

Dru sighed. ‘Well, we can’t get there any faster by crying about it. Perhaps we should send for a carriage?’

Elsie laughed sharply. ‘Are you made of money, Mister Frenchie?’ Then, as if she regretted the jibe, she gave them a sly smile and ushered them back indoors. ‘There’s a way you could stay mostly dry, and it’s better than any old carriage. But you’d have to promise not to tell.’

‘I promise,’ Lizzie said right away.

Elsie smiled to see her solemn face. ‘It’s not that grave a business. Not nowadays. But in my grandad’s day, people round here would’ve cut your throat if you blabbed about the Rum Road.’

Now Lizzie was completely confused. ‘What’s a rum road?’

Nobody seemed to have any idea – except Malachy, who was suddenly grinning like a loon. ‘If it’s what I think it is,’ he whispered to Lizzie, ‘I’ve wanted to see one all my life.’

His excitement grew – and the others only became more confused – when Elsie fetched a candle and led them through the rainy streets to a nearby pub, the Whitby Oyster. But instead of going inside to the inviting warmth, she took them round the back to the yard.

Lizzie couldn’t see any roads leading out of here. There was just a little cobbled area with some stalls for horses and a shabby wooden outhouse set against the side of the hill. To her amazement, Elsie opened the outhouse door, sparked the candle alight and beckoned them all to come and see.

Lizzie came closer and her jaw fell open. Instead of a nasty-smelling space with a plank over a hole, she saw a rough tunnel leading all the way into the hillside. The candle cast its unsteady light over the crude timbers propping the roof up and the ragged spider webs in their corners. It didn’t look safe at all. In fact, it looked like something desperate men had hacked out of the earth in a hurry.

‘I knew it!’ Malachy crowed. ‘It’s a smugglers’ tunnel, isn’t it?’

Elsie held a finger to her lips and winked. ‘Hush, lad. There’s many folk gone missing and never seen again, just for blurting out our secrets.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Follow it all the way to the end. It comes out in a thicket not far from Dunsley Castle, within spitting distance of the road. That’s where the wagons used to wait.’

‘It goes that far?’ Malachy peered into the darkness. ‘That’s over half a mile. Fantastic!’

Elsie passed Lizzie the candle. Lizzie cupped her hand around the fitful light, wishing they had a proper lantern to keep it safe. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You will come and see the circus, won’t you?’

‘Course I will!’ the local girl paused. ‘Did you really mean it about being a proper fortune-teller?’

Lizzie nodded.

‘There’s summat I need to know for sure,’ Elsie said. ‘I’ll come and ask you. And you lot? Be careful in that tunnel.’

‘It does look a bit unsteady,’ Nora said. ‘Should have got some honest Irish navvies on the job. It’d stand till Doomsday then.’

‘I don’t mean that. Whitby’s a haunted place. You have to watch out if you’re going into the dark. You never know what’s waiting there.’

They realized she wasn’t joking any more. Then, just as suddenly as the first time they’d met, she bade them goodbye and was out of sight in a second. Lizzie had the queerest feeling that Elsie might be a ghost herself.

The Penny Gaff Gang moved into the tunnel, looking around at the crumbling, cobwebbed walls and the few signs of people who’d been there before them: broken bottles, a smashed wooden cask, and a couple of old bones.

Dru poked at the bones with his foot. ‘These are chewed, see?’

‘Smugglers probably had dogs,’ Malachy said. ‘To keep watch.’ He sniffed. ‘That’s funny. I could swear I can smell gunpowder.’

‘Gunpowder?’ Erin and Nora said, amazed.

‘Remember that routine the clowns did last year, with the firecrackers? That’s how they smelled. The smugglers must have kept a stash of powder here.’

‘Last one in close the door behind you,’ Lizzie murmured. She held the candle up and edged her way forward, the darkness opening up before her and returning silently in her wake. The rest of the gang followed, marvelling at the spooky atmosphere.

‘We must be right under the town!’ Erin said. ‘Imagine if we were going under a graveyard right now. And a skeleton put its foot through the roof.’

‘Oh, hush up,’ Lizzie said. The air down here was musty and damp and it was all too easy to imagine ghosts up ahead, rushing towards them out of the black, their bony arms clawing. She tried to think of the living people who’d used this tunnel, not the ghosts who might be haunting it. ‘Why’s it called a Rum Road?’

‘Because this is how they brought the rum inland,’ Malachy explained. ‘Tobacco too, and fancy lace. Stuff like that. But mostly rum.’

‘I still don’t get it.’

‘Lizzie, if you bring rum into the country on a ship, you have to pay a special tax. It’s called the excise. But they can’t make you pay it unless they catch you with the goods. So they have special patrols looking out for anyone trying to smuggle it in.’

Suddenly it made sense. ‘So this tunnel is for dodging the patrols!’

‘Exactly.’ Malachy ducked under an enormous spider dangling from a glistening thread. ‘The smugglers could bring the rum ashore, right under the noses of the excise men.’

‘What do you think, Lizzie?’ asked Dru. ‘Are the tunnels really haunted?’

‘Elsie thinks so. I ain’t about to argue with her.’

‘Whoooo!’ Erin hooted, wiggling her fingers in the candlelight to make long guttering shadows. ‘Beware the ghost pirate of Whitby!’

‘Who’s walking down my old tunnel?’ Nora croaked. ‘Who wants their throat cut, eh?’ She grabbed Malachy round the neck and he pretended she was strangling him.

Soon they were all laughing, trying to scare one another. Only Lizzie remained silent as they walked deeper and deeper into the dark. There might not be ghosts, but there was definitely something strange about this place.

Just as Elsie had said, the tunnel’s other end was right by the road. Everybody ran the rest of the way, past the gates of the Dunsley estate and onto the lawns where the circus was pitched.

A stern-looking figure was waiting for them, looking at his watch. Fitzy. ‘It’s nice of you all to show up. Do you think this is a holiday?’ he demanded.

‘Sorry, Pop,’ Malachy said. Nobody wanted to look Fitzy in the eye.

‘It just won’t do. Nora, Erin, Dru: you all need to be on top form for the show,’ Fitzy said. ‘I want you to give your very best performance for the people of Whitby. That’s what the Maharaja is paying to see. So get rehearsing, or so help me I’ll take my whip to you!’

As the three cast members ran off to rehearse, Fitzy turned his gaze on Malachy and Lizzie. ‘Malachy, come with me. We need to work out the parade route. And you, Lizzie, can go and help Hari exercise the elephants, now he’s decided to show his face again.’

Stranger and stranger, Lizzie thought as she walked over to the tents where the animal cages were kept. So it had been Hari she’d seen heading out to the moors, and by the sound of it, he’d been out there all day.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘Thought you had chores?’

‘I did some exploring,’ Hari said with a vague wave of his hand. ‘You lead Akula if you like. I’ll guide Sashi. We can take the others later. There’s an ornamental lake down by the ice house where they can drink some water and cool off.’

Be like that then, Lizzie thought. Looks like everyone’s got secrets around here. She giggled as Akula’s tickly trunk nuzzled her under the arm. ‘Come on then, girl. You need to stretch your legs, don’t you?’

She kept a careful eye out for old Johnson as they led the two elephants down the gravel path towards the lake. If he saw that the elephants were out of their cages, he’d probably burst a blood vessel. But the gardener was nowhere to be seen.

The lake was broad and still, with a duck house on the far side and a marble statue of the Greek god Pan on a tiny island in the middle. Soon the elephants were wading gratefully into the water, splashing one another with their trunks.

‘We do have permission to do this, don’t we?’ Lizzie asked doubtfully as they turned the huge animals loose.

‘Johnson didn’t say we couldn’t,’ Hari said with a grin.

‘Make sure the elephants don’t knock the statue over then,’ she said. ‘Fitzy would have to pay for a new one…’ She checked over her shoulder one last time, but as there was no sign of the cantankerous groundskeeper she stretched out in the grass and closed her eyes. For the first time since this morning, when she’d nearly drowned, she felt like she could relax.

Was it only last night that she and Dru had gone dancing across these lawns? She remembered the flickering candles still burning on the banquet table, the smell of the night flowers and the gentle pressure of his arm around her waist. It was so easy to return there in her imagination. Back to the laughter and the starlight…

The sound of shouting roused her from her daydream.

The elephants were still there, sloshing around in the lake, but Hari was gone. And now she heard what the angry voice was shouting.

‘Thief! Don’t you try to run, you little devil. I saw what you did!’