On Friday morning Hathaway’s men woke them all at dawn again, drilling a large ditch all the way along the front of the house. The Goon groaned, clutched the pillow tied around his head, and rolled over, so that his legs overflowed from filling Howard’s floor onto the landing outside. Fifi hopped over them as she went downstairs, singing.
Fifi must have come in very late the night before, but she was as bright as a button. When Howard stumbled down to breakfast, she was bustling about, looking pink and pretty. “Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea!” she caroled. She always sang hymns when she was happy.
“Oh, don’t you start!” Quentin grumbled. “Torquil’s quite enough.”
The Goon sighed, hard enough to blow cornflakes about.
When Howard and Awful left to go to school, they found they had to do a long jump in order to leave the house. Hathaway’s ditch began at the bottom of the front doorstep. It was rather longer than the width of the house, and it was about seven feet wide. All of Hathaway’s men were down in it, drilling and digging busily through layers of tar and yellow mud.
Howard wondered how Mum had managed to get out. He himself leaped across, using his violin for balance. Awful’s legs were too short for her to jump. But the Goon solved that by grasping both of Awful’s elbows and striding across with her dangling in front of him. The Goon’s legs were the only ones in the neighborhood long enough to step over the ditch. The postman solved the matter another way. He borrowed a fishing rod from number 11. As Howard picked himself and his violin out of the road, the postman was standing beside him, dangling a packet of letters toward the front door.
“Post!” he shouted, unreeling the line.
Quentin came to the front door in his dressing gown to get the letters. “They say an Englishman’s home is his castle!” he bawled above the drilling. “Now we have a moat to prove it!”
As Quentin went in and the postman went back to number 11 to return the fishing rod, one of the men in the moat beckoned to Howard. “I remembered,” he shouted. “Hathaway. Shakespeare’s wife. She was called Anne Hathaway.”
“Thanks,” yelled Howard. He was acutely disappointed. He realized, as he and Awful set off to school with the Goon, that he had really been hoping the man knew about Hathaway.
Hind’s gang was loitering in Park Street. They followed behind at a very safe distance from the Goon. To Awful’s delight, the ginger-haired boy had a black eye. But Howard was not sure he liked the venomous way that eye looked at him. Shine was obviously still after them, but it rather looked as if Ginger Hind were after Howard on his own account, too.
Howard did not let that bother him. He spent most of that day thinking about how to find Hathaway. He was determined to find him. Or her. It was always possible that Hathaway would turn out to be another sister, like Shine. Anyway, Hathaway was the one who could solve all their problems. Since Hathaway was the one Dad had been sending the words to, then Hathaway knew a way to get rid of the other brothers and sisters. So the thing to do was to find him (or her) and get around her (or him). It might not be easy. The others were not easy to get around. On the other hand, Howard thought, he hadn’t really made an effort to be nice to any of them so far.
At lunchtime Howard’s thoughts carried him to the school library, where the second year had set up a project on the town. There was a map, and models, and drawings, and careful pages of history. And more careful pages about industry and new buildings. Howard looked at it all. It was the first time he had found the project remotely interesting. Someone had even done a drawing of what the new building at the Poly would be like. An Egyptian temple, Howard thought, and he grinned, thinking of Torquil.
He looked most carefully at the map. Pleasant Hill and all those parts to the west must belong to Dillian. Torquil must begin at the shopping precinct and stretch eastward to the disco, down and then up again to the cathedral. Archer must have the center of town, the High Street, the Town Hall, and out as far as Upper Park Street to the west. In fact, Archer had to have most of the middle, except for the old bit by the cathedral where Shine and Torquil seemed to overlap. Give Shine everything southeast from there, and where did that leave Venturus? Erskine had to have out to the east, where the sewage farm was. So that left Venturus with the new housing estate to the south. But Venturus must have all the schools and the Poly as well. And Erskine’s drains and Archer’s power must crisscross the whole town. In fact, they seemed to overlap everywhere, particularly in the center, leaving nowhere at all for Hathaway.
Howard gave that up and looked for the sewage farm instead. There it was, right at the eastern edge of the map, beyond the part marked “Industry.” Who ran industry? Beside the sewage farm, Howard read “Site of old Castle.” That was a disappointment. Howard remembered Archer’s saying that only Erskine could go out that far. So even if Hathaway had wanted to live beside a sewage plant, he probably couldn’t. Howard gave up that idea and turned his attention back inside the black line of “Old City Boundary” and to the center, where the whole family overlapped.
Here there was an irregular shape which said “Site of Old Abbey.” It took in some of the park, a piece of the Poly, the library, the museum, and the cathedral. But to Howard’s relief, it stopped short of the winding lanes of Shine Town. It looked as if he would not need to go there again. “Somewhere there, I bet,” he said, and went off to orchestra practice, rather pleased with himself.
Somehow Howard had half expected Torquil to turn up again. But there was no sign of him. Howard scraped and sawed, more or less along with the rest of the orchestra and almost in time to Mr. Caldwick’s baton, and went on thinking how to find Hathaway. Torquil had to farm the cathedral, of course, because of the organ and the choir. Count that out. Even so, the rest of the “Site of Old Abbey” was awfully near Torquil and Shine and not so far away from Archer’s bank. Would Hathaway want that if he were a recluse?
But there was this about families, Howard thought, obediently turning to the orchestra’s next piece of music. Families might hate one another, but something nevertheless made them stick together. Look at the things Dad always said about Auntie Mildred. Yet Auntie Mildred always came for Christmas. Mum would say dryly, “Well, blood is thicker than water.”
That made Howard think about yesterday. Had Torquil really winked at Awful, as Awful swore he had? The way Torquil’s eyes had been marked out in paint, Awful could hardly have made a mistake. And there had been first Dillian, then Torquil, and then the Goon had turned up. And the Goon was from Archer. Torquil had just met Archer. What was going on? Oh, I give up! Howard thought, and tried to take off instead in his favorite spaceship for Proxima Centauri. But even there he had no peace. He found he was wondering irritably why Archer didn’t build a spaceship instead of spying on Dad. It was such a waste of all that technology.
The end of school put an end to Howard’s thoughts. The Goon was waiting outside, looming beside Awful. Ginger Hind was waiting, too, across the street, all on his own, glaring at Howard from his black eye and his good one. Hind was getting to be a real problem, Howard thought, though at least he was on his own now. He followed them all the way back home, watched them jump Hathaway’s moat, and went on standing there, glowering. But Upper Park Street looked unusually empty all the same. There was no one there from Dillian. Torquil had not sent any kind of band today. And Ginger Hind seemed to have been deserted by the rest of his gang. Could it be, Howard wondered, that some of them were getting tired of pestering them?
In the kitchen Quentin sat staring. A letter lay in front of him, on the purple heart on the table.
“Been like that all day,” said the Goon.
“Take a look at that letter!” said Fifi. She was making tea, all dressed up as if she were going to a party. “Mr. Sykes wouldn’t go to the Poly. I had to ring up and say he was ill.”
Howard picked up the letter which seemed to have had such a startling effect on his father. Quentin did not seem to notice. The letter was from the city treasurer. Howard read it.
Dear Mr. Sykes,
It has come to our attention that we have not been in receipt of any remittance from you in respect of taxes since April 1970. The sum at present outstanding, with due allowance for the various increases in the city tax and for the compound interest charged on all sums overdue over the thirteen-year period, is now £23,000.56 ½. We hope you will see your way to an early remittance of the said sum before we are forced to put the matter in legal hands.
Yrs. faithfully,
C. Wiggins
City Treasurer
“Dad!” Howard exclaimed. “You never owe twenty-three thousand pounds!”
“Plus fifty-six and a half pence,” Quentin said. “Don’t forget that.” He turned around and looked guiltily up at Howard. “Don’t tell your mother. That was why I was doing the words all these years. Mountjoy said they would be instead of paying taxes. I was a fool to believe him, wasn’t I?”
“How will you pay?” said Howard.
“Sell this house,” said his father. “Go away. Leave me. I’m a broken man.”
Howard took the borrowed peanut butter sandwich Fifi handed him and went into the hall. He paused there to find some shredded old tissues in his pockets and stuff some in both ears. Then he went into the front room. The television was thundering out olde tyme dance music today. Howard could feel the Gay Gordons vibrating the floor and see the blankets over it quivering. He moved the blankets and had a careful look at Hathaway’s letter.
It was real parchment. When Howard touched it, he knew it was a kind of leather, not plastic or paper. The red wax looked old and cracked. And the writing had faded a lot, even under the blankets, to a dark brown. It could have been written with one of those square pens used at school in art for lettering. But it could just as possibly have been done with a quill pen. Howard nodded. He put back the blanket and went out into the hall again.
The Goon was standing dejectedly in the middle of it. “Archer’s come for Fifi,” he said dismally.
Howard took the tissue out of his ears and opened the kitchen door. Archer was standing behind Quentin’s chair, reading the letter. He was wearing a suit for once and looked as smart as Fifi did. “Did Shine rob one of your banks last night?” Howard asked him.
Archer turned around, laughing. No one could have looked nicer. “No way!” he said. “The vaults are all booby-trapped. The boys who tried are in hospital.” Then he turned to Quentin. “This letter has absolutely nothing to do with me,” he said. “I swear.” Howard thought Archer was telling the truth. He was quite serious and not trying to seem nice. Quentin groaned. Archer said, thinking, “Hathaway farms records and archives. It could be him.”
“Or it could even be C. Wiggins on his own,” Quentin said miserably.
Catriona came in through the back door as he said it. “What’s happened now?” she said. She gave Archer a weary, freezing look.
Howard shut the door hastily. It made him feel bad to see how thin and pale Mum had got this last week. And there was going to be another row. His parents would wait till Archer was gone, and then they would start shouting again. He could see it in both their faces. He turned to the Goon. “Will you come with me to the museum?”
“Archer settled in?” the Goon asked morbidly.
“There’s going to be another row,” said Howard.
The Goon blenched. “Front door then,” he said.
But no one sneaked off that easily with Awful in the house. As the Goon tore open the front door and they stood on the brink of Hathaway’s moat, with Archer’s Rolls parked on the other side of it, the back door slammed, and Awful whizzed down the passage to the moat. “You’re not going without me,” she said. Howard supposed he should be thankful that she only said it, instead of yelling it.
“Come on then,” said the Goon. He slid himself along the front of the house and picked Awful up by her elbows as before. Because Archer’s Rolls was parked exactly at the edge of the moat, even the Goon had to jump down into the moat first in order to get around it. Howard waded through the yellow mud at the bottom and climbed out beyond the car. Ginger Hind began to lope meaningfully toward him across the tarry heaps and holes. Howard leaned on the hood of the Rolls. Come on then, he thought. There’s only one of you.
The Goon stood in the moat, dangling Awful, and looked up at the car. “Let his tires down?” he suggested.
“No,” said Awful. “Hurry up before Ginger Hind gets Howard.”
The Goon dumped Awful on the road and climbed out, sighing. Ginger Hind, when he saw the Goon rising length by length out of the moat, stopped in his tracks and kicked a red cone over in annoyance.
Howard was annoyed, too. He had lost a chance to get rid of Ginger Hind. “Don’t you even go home to eat?” he said to him. All he got was a black-eyed glare. Ginger Hind stuffed his hands into his pockets and followed them, down Zed Alley and across the Poly forecourt. Here Howard saw that the skeleton building of girders was now in scaffolding, making an outline sketch of the Egyptian temple building he had seen in the drawing at lunchtime.
Ginger Hind prowled after them all the way to the museum yard. There he stared in surprise as Howard actually turned toward the door marked “Entrance.” To most people, Howard included, the museum yard was just a way through to the lanes below the cathedral.
The Goon hung back. “Want to go in?” he said. He seemed as surprised as Ginger Hind.
“I need to for a school project,” Howard said, for Ginger Hind’s benefit. He did not want Shine to know he was looking for Hathaway.
Ginger Hind gave him a look of deep contempt. The Goon hitched himself against one of the stone lions outside the museum and folded his long arms. “Don’t like museums,” he said. “Old stuff. Bones and bits of jug. Too clean. Should all be on a rubbish heap.”
So they went in without the Goon and also, to Howard’s relief, without Ginger Hind, who either shared the Goon’s opinion of museums or, more likely, did not dare go past the Goon to follow Howard and Awful. Howard thought: I shall have to get that Hind menace on his own again before long. Awful laughed, much too loud for the hushed, bricky atmosphere of the museum. “The Goon hates museums!” she said. “He said such a lot. Shall we go to the Egypt bit and look at Torquils?”
“We’ll see.” Howard went up to the attendant standing under a notice saying “SAXON EXHIBITION THIS WAY.”
Awful skipped along behind him. “Saxons are boring,” she said. “They burned cakes and talked about Jesus.”
“Excuse me,” Howard said to the attendant. “Could I speak to Mr. Hathaway, please?”
The attendant looked at his watch. He did not seem to be in the least surprised to be asked. Howard’s heart began bumping. “Yes, I think so,” the attendant said. “He usually arranges to see people around now. Is it both of you?”
“Yes, please,” said Howard. His heart seemed to beat in his ears as loud as Torquil’s drums because he had got it right!
The attendant said, “This way then,” and took them around the corner, through the dark canvas corridors of the Saxon exhibition. They passed beautifully lighted displays of coins and buckles and pieces of jug, which made Howard think of the Goon, and some skeletons that had been dug up under the Town Hall, which Awful spared a moment to look at. One had an old spear shaft sticking through its ribs, which impressed her rather. They turned right past a Saxon king in full dress, looking very magnificent and lofty as if he had not known the first thing about burning cakes, and came out around the back into a dusty space full of cases of dead butterflies. The attendant pointed to a white door beyond the butterflies. “In there. Give three knocks, and go through.” And he went away and left them to do it.
The door was marked “CURATOR” in plain black letters. Howard and Awful tiptoed past the cases of butterflies. Howard raised his hand to knock.
“Are you scared?” asked Awful.
“No,” lied Howard.
“Nor am I then,” said Awful.
Howard knocked. Three times. Then he turned the handle and opened the door. There was a dreadful, birdlike, squawking noise and a lot of flapping. He nearly shut it again.
“Funny,” said Awful. “That sounded like a chicken.” She pushed the door open out of Howard’s hands and went in to see. Howard followed.