Children's Fiction 2
Excerpts from HARRY BONE-THIEF by JAN SHIRLEY
From Chapter One - Danger
It was a dangerous time in Canterbury, that hot summer of 1538, but I was very young and didn’t properly take it in, not at first. I remember sitting under the kitchen table and people were talking, just the usual mutter mutter going on somewhere, but I was miles away inside my head, sailing a warship across towards the French coast. Find the French, find the French, kill them! She was a three-master, I remember that, and I had to make sure all the crew were in their right places, sheets taut and sails pulling, the guns ready to be run out. We were running before a fair wind, white horses were dancing and the ship lifted and smacked down again, lifted and smacked. I eased my grip on the tiller.
Then I caught sight of my sister Ellie’s bare feet dangling close by my nose and saw a brown hen’s feather lying on the floor near my hand. I picked it up and was just going to draw it across the sole of her foot when someone shouted. Shouted out.
It was Peter, my more or less grown up brother, yelling at our dad. He doesn’t often yell, but there he went, ‘Father, no!’ Then nothing. Then Peter again, and you could hear him trying to sound reasonable – ‘Father, the danger. To all of us. Even little Lucy. You will die, and so shall I, the king will have us both hanged, and Clare and the little ones will die of hunger.’
Hanged? Die of hunger? What would my dad say? No, all I heard was my uncle, Brother Joshua from the Priory, really angry. He and Peter are nearly the same age, nineteen or so that summer, and they never agreed about anything. They still don’t. One wants the new religion from Germany, the other would fight to hell and back for the old one in Rome. Now Joshua was telling Peter what a fool he was.
‘Can’t you see it?’ he said. ‘The king’s men are coming! King Harry’s men! They’re on their way, you know they are, and we’ve got to save the Saint!’
Well, I’d heard enough, that was nonsense. Everyone knew that Saint Thomas was the one who did the saving, he didn’t need it. He was up there in heaven, great and glorious, could go anywhere, do anything. You had a broken leg? Ask the Saint. A bad fever? Ask the Saint. Your aunt has gone mad? Ask the Saint. Pigs and chickens and cattle too. Cats? Don’t know, maybe not. But what rubbish Uncle Josh was talking, ‘save the Saint’ indeed! I stopped listening and drew the feather across the sole of Ellie’s foot. She yelled and jumped up...
From Chapter Two
‘About those bones?’ said my mum. ‘Here, have some sausage and cheer up. Leave it to Thomas. If he says he’ll do it, then he will. You ought to know that by now.’
‘Bones?’ said my silly young uncle in horror. ‘Clare, don’t say it! I promised! You don’t know anything about it, no one does! I promised!’
I saw Great Aunt Rose collecting up the last little bits of pie on her plate and putting them in her mouth.
‘Everybody knows everything,’ she said through a shower of crumbs. ‘You were going on and on at Peter about it just the other day, remember?’
Uncle Joshua gulped, nodded, muttered something about getting back, and vanished.
‘Why do bones matter?’ I asked Mum. I knew they did, but didn’t know why. She was collecting plates and dishes together from the table, but now she stopped and thought.
‘It’s the resurrection isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Yes, that’s right. On Judgement Day, when Christ comes in glory and the world ends, and we all rise up out of our graves and come before the great Judge and he sorts us out into sheep and goats.’
‘And the good ones go to sit beside him in heaven for all eternity and the bad ones are dragged off to hell and the everlasting fire,’ said Great Aunt Rose cheerfully. ‘And if you haven’t got the bones, you can’t rise up. You be sure and bury me carefully when my time comes.’
‘Deep as deep,’ said Mum, laughing. ‘Don’t you worry!’
‘What about drowned sailors?’ I asked.
‘Oh they’ll come dancing up, whales and sharks and whatnot all spitting them out,’ said my mother. ‘What a sight it will be!’
‘Smelly,’ I said. ‘Stinking! Hundreds of years some of them, rotting away, all foul and fishy.’
‘No no,’ said Mum. ‘Just nice clean shiny bones.’
So that was all right.
From Chapter Three
I settled myself comfortably on the shingle. A vessel was just coming in on the tide, the Merry Lass from Dover. She danced a good bit, making her entrance, but no harm done and I watched them bring her alongside and tie her up. She’s a neat little ship, carvel-built of course, and I wouldn’t mind signing on there.
Then, switching away from the Lass, I caught sight of something strange under a breakwater quite near me. I saw, I thought I saw, two eyes, just that. Deep in a dark corner under the breakwater and staring straight at me. I leant forward and stared back. Animal or human? Then a face came into view around the eyes, a small, pale, miserable face, and the eyes were all wet – with tears? I opened my mouth to speak but shut it again. Was this a goblin? Some sea monster? A boy?
There was still half a slice of pie in my hand. I held it out towards the creature and kept very still.
It crept out on all fours, almost like a dog, but put its hand out. It was a child, very young. It held out a hand for the food and I put the pie into it and watched. He – it was a boy – took it quite gently, bent his head and sniffed at it, then crossed himself and began to eat. It was gone in moments. Then I gave him the bread and he ate that too.
So young, so little and shivering! And dumb I thought at first, absolutely dumb, couldn’t speak, but then I realised he was just plain terrified. Frozen up with fear. Not dumb, because he did speak once, told me his name. Lipperty Jack, that’s who he was, he said so, but that was all he did say. ‘Lipperty Jack’, once, and then nothing more. I told him I was Harry Wright, I chattered on about Rye and Canterbury and riding here on Cobby and my mother and – oh, it was all getting nowhere, and he just seemed to shrink, get smaller and smaller and still kept shivering.
From Chapter Twelve
This one huge fact sat in my mind like a toad and laughed at me. I knew where the Saint’s bones were. Ha ha, all you idiots, I can tell you a thing or two.
Tell no one, no one, don’t be a fool.
Bit by bit I wrapped that toad up in a bundle of common sense and forced it to the back of my mind, put it in a cupboard there and turned the key in the door.
Done, safe.
But I still needed to find the king and explain to him that his officials had made a mistake, they had put a good man in jail. Uncle Joshua too, he was only stupid, not bad. The king would order Secretary Cromwell to have both of them set free as soon as he understood that, I was sure he would.
