Journey to the River Sea

‘You see,’ said Clovis. ‘If you go to the window twice, the third time people will always follow you. It’s the same when you’re pretending to give someone the slip, but really you want them to come after you. Don’t pause and look round furtively – just keep changing your pace. Sometimes dawdle, sometimes run . . .’

So while Finn checked the list of things that Clovis would need for his night in the museum, Clovis coached Maia in how to act the part of someone with a guilty secret. ‘Because they mustn’t think I want to betray Finn,’ she said. ‘They know I wouldn’t do that. They must think I’ve done it by mistake.’

Just before Furo came to fetch Maia, Finn took her aside and took something out of the pocket of his trousers.

‘Look,’ he said, and held out to her a beautiful silver pocket watch on a long chain. He clicked it open and showed her the initials BT engraved inside.

‘Your father’s?’

‘Yes. He gave it to me on my last birthday. It was the only thing he brought from Westwood. I feel I ought to give it to Clovis – it would make them absolutely certain he was me.’

‘But your father wanted you to have it.’

‘Yes,’ said Finn, looking stricken. ‘But if it would help . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Never mind, it’s for me to decide.’

Then Furo’s canoe came through the reeds and Maia hugged Clovis and said goodbye. If everything went according to plan, Clovis would be on the boat the day after tomorrow, and it was hard leaving him.

‘But I expect you’ll come to England, won’t you?’ Clovis said. He had given her the address of his foster mother. ‘I wish you were coming now,’ he said and his eyes filled with tears.

As Finn helped Maia into the boat, he leant forward and whispered in her ear. ‘Don’t worry about Clovis,’ he said. ‘I’ll see he’s all right. I won’t let him get too scared, I promise.’

And Maia nodded and got into the canoe and was paddled away.

‘That settles it,’ said Mr Trapwood. ‘We’re going back to the pension. We’re going to pack. We’re going to be on the Bishop first thing tomorrow. Sir Aubrey will have to send someone else out. Nothing is worth another day in this hell-hole.’

Mr Low did not answer. He had caught a fever and was lying in the bottom of a large canoe owned by the Brothers of the Sao Gabriel mission, who had arranged for the crows to be taken back to Manaus. His eyes were closed and he was wandering a little in his mind, mumbling about a boy with hair the colour of the belly of the golden toad which squatted on the lily leaves of the Mamari river.

There had, of course, been no golden-haired boys, there hadn’t been any boys at all. What there had been was a leper colony, run by the Brothers of St Patrick, a group of Irish missionaries to whom the crows had been sent.

‘They’re good men, the Brothers,’ a man on the docks had told them as they set off on their last search for Taverner’s son. ‘They take in all sorts of strays – orphans, boys with no homes. If anyone knows where Taverner’s lad might be, it’ll be them.’

Then he had spat cheerfully into the river because he was a crony of the chief of police and liked the idea of Mr Low and Mr Trapwood spending time with the Brothers, who were very holy men indeed and slept on the hard ground, and ate porridge made from manioc roots, and got up four times in the night to pray.

The Brothers’ mission was on a swampy part of the river and very unhealthy, but the Brothers only thought about God and helping their fellow men. They welcomed Mr Trapwood and Mr Low and said they could look over the leper colony to see if they could find anyone who might turn out to be the boy they were looking for.

‘They’re a jolly lot, the lepers,’ said Father Liam. ‘People who’ve suffered don’t have time to grumble.’

But the crows, turning green, thought there wouldn’t be much point. Even if there was a boy there the right age, Sir Aubrey probably wouldn’t think that a boy who was a leper could manage Westwood.

Later, a group of pilgrims arrived who had been walking on foot from the Andes and were on their way to a shrine on the Madeira river, and the Brothers knelt and washed their feet.

‘We know you’ll be proud to share the sleeping hut with our friends here,’ they said to Mr Low and Mr Trapwood, and the crows spent the night on the floor with twelve snoring, grunting men – and woke to find two large and hungry-looking vultures squatting in the doorway.

By the time they returned to Manaus the crows were beaten men. They didn’t care any longer about Taverner’s son or Sir Aubrey, or even the hundred pound bonus they had lost. All they cared about was getting onto the Bishop and steaming away as fast as it could be done.

Chapter Twelve

‘Stay!’ said Finn to his dog. ‘Stay and guard the hut.’

The dog looked at him with despairing eyes and howled briefly.

‘You heard me,’ said Finn. ‘Stay!’

Another howl; then the dog turned and threw himself down in front of the hut.

‘Will he really stay?’ asked Clovis.