Word Hunters Read online

  She folded her arms and scowled at him. ‘We’ve got two more steps after this one. You’re going to score some leggings before we’re home.’

  The peg confirmed their guess about the place and the people, but neither Will nor Al could pin anything specific down to 1664. Something was about to happen, though. Everyone in the crowd was looking out to sea at the four ships coming in.

  Almost everyone. Not far from where the word hunters had landed an argument was going on. One man was ramming a stick down the barrel of a cannon that was pointing at the ships and two others were trying to stop him.

  ‘There’s no point, Petrus,’ an older man in a black coat like Will’s said to the man standing next to him. ‘It will only do more harm.’

  The crew on the gun was waiting for orders from Petrus. He had long black hair, a huge white collar and a wooden right leg with ornamental silverwork. People were clustered around him, waiting for his decision.

  ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘And you know how many petitions I’ve sent to head office, demanding soldiers and more cannon. They chose to build a fort and put almost nothing in it. We’re lucky this took so long to happen.’ He turned to the cannon crew, specifically to the man with a burning torch. ‘Hold your fire.’

  ‘Hey, it’s literal,’ Al said, more to himself than anyone else. ‘“Hold your fire.” As in, hold on to your torch and don’t light the—’

  ‘Focus.’ Lexi elbowed him in the arm. ‘I know the past can be chock-full of history sometimes, but maybe save it for later?’

  With the aid of his cane, Petrus walked over to the edge of the dock, where he was helped to stand on a wooden trunk. From there he could see everyone who had gathered around – all the colonists and traders and local Lenape trappers who had come with beaver pelts. There was timber piled on the dock and there were bales of dried tobacco leaf from the West Indies.

  ‘Be proud of what you’ve done,’ Petrus said. ‘You are people with differences, who have lived and traded peacefully. Some of you would fight today; many of you would seek a peace. A negotiated peace is our only option. Each of the British ships has twice the cannon of our colony and each has at least 100 men aboard. We are not an army. I will not see lives wasted. We will stand back from our cannon, look stronger than we are and make the best peace we can.’

  The cannon crew moved back, and ground the burning torch out on the stones of the dock. The British took this as the signal it was, and moved closer.

  ‘Looks like the end of the Dutch dollar, then,’ Will said. ‘The British’ll want any money that’s here, but the Dutch’ll want to keep it. Either way the currency’ll change. At least officially. They’ll talk about money when they negotiate. Which means sticking close to the man with the fancy leg. He’ll be the one handling the Dutch end of it.’

  As the British ships closed in, the crews stood at their cannons, ready for any sign of attack. Ropes were thrown from both ends of the first ship and the Dutch secured it to the dock. A wide plank was pushed from the deck until it reached the stone wharf.

  The tension in the crowd rose as two unarmed British officers stepped ashore, along with a man who had high curly hair, a long deep-red leather coat and a scarf.

  ‘Director-General Stuyvesant,’ he said to Petrus, having recognised him by the silver on his leg, ‘I am Richard Nicolls, come with a commission from His Royal Highness the Duke of York to take control of territories granted to him by the King of England, and which are currently called, by your company, New Netherland.’

  He took a document from a pocket in his coat and opened it. Even from a distance, a large red wax seal could be seen at the bottom. He offered it to Petrus Stuyvesant, who didn’t move.

  ‘Mr Nicolls,’ he said. ‘Your ships are welcome to dock while we discuss this. I would ask that your men come ashore only to buy provisions, should your crews require them. Our troops shall also remain in their quarters. I will have three of my own horses brought to take your delegation to my farm.’

  ‘Sir,’ Richard Nicolls said, loud enough for everyone to hear it, ‘I am commissioned to make a peace that promises life, estate and liberty to all who would submit to the king’s authority.’

  Some people in the crowd nodded. It was what they’d hoped to hear.

  ‘We will do this peacefully, then,’ Petrus Stuyvesant said, ‘if by liberty you include the liberty to worship in the way we see fit and not exactly as your king does.’ He paused and this time the crowd cheered. ‘And if by estate you mean that every person here can keep their house, lands, goods and every daalder in their possession, and be subjected to no future unfair taxes.’

  Another cheer rose and a glow came from one of Petrus Stuyvesant’s pockets. Al saw it first and pointed it out to the others.

  ‘It’s money,’ Lexi said. ‘The daalder is the Dutch dollar. It’s a coin in his pocket – a daalder in his possession.’

  ‘This one doesn’t look so easy.’ Al couldn’t see Petrus Stuyvesant taking his coat off anywhere between here and his farm.

  ‘You’ve never picked a pocket before?’ Will was smiling. ‘I just have to get close enough.’

  Lexi wasn’t sure they’d ever know all of Will’s past. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe being a word hunter changed you, but there were things she didn’t want to change. She’d stolen food, but that was because she needed to eat. They’d taken things from a library, but the library was burning down. And now the new portal was a dollar in someone’s pocket. His dollar, but their portal.

  The chance to take it came when the horses arrived. There were two for the British officers, one for Richard Nicolls and Petrus Stuyvesant’s own favourite horse. One handler looked after all of them, while the terms for the meeting were discussed. The horses looked skittish, with the street full of people and the noise of rumours and defiance and fear. Businesses were closing as quickly as they could, the owners dragging their wares inside and bolting their doors.

  ‘This is it,’ Will said. ‘You two skirt around the horses and, as soon as you’re past them, give a loud blast on your whistles. Then duck into the crowd and make your way back.’

  ‘That’s not a whole plan.’ Al wanted to have his say. ‘What are we whistling for? How is that going to—’

  ‘I’ll have the daalder by the time Stuyvesant’s on his horse. That’s the plan. You’re the distraction, and I get the coin. He won’t even know.’ Will could see that Petrus Stuyvesant and the Englishmen were ready to leave. ‘We have to move right now or we miss our chance.’

  ‘Let’s go.’ Lexi took Al by the arm and turned him away from Will. ‘Get your whistle out.’

  Al had no better plan and there was no time to argue. He swung his duffel bag down from his shoulder and reached into it for his whistle.

  With Lexi, he made his way through the crowd, keeping the horses in the corner of his vision and making every move look as though it was about something else. He hoped Will was good at picking pockets. If he got caught …

  It was better not to think about that. He felt the whistle pressing into the palm of his closed hand. Lexi was keeping her eyes down, but she glanced his way as they passed the horses. She nodded. They brought their hands to their mouths.

  The noise of the two whistles was shrill and piercing – way louder than when they’d tested them in the park at home. An old man next to them dropped his walking stick and fell to his knees. A woman spilt bread from her basket. Three of the four horses panicked and one stood still.

  And Doug shrieked as if the end of the world had come, burst from the top of Al’s duffel bag and leapt into the crowd.

  ‘Doug!’ Al turned, but Lexi grabbed his arm.

  ‘He’ll find us. Hide your whistle.’ She pulled him back into the crowd.

  Doug scrambled across the cobbles, dodging around people’s feet. The whistles were still sc
reeching in his head.

  Ahead of him, the handler almost had the horses back under control when Doug burst from the crowd and ran up the still horse’s leg. The horse bucked, yanked the handler’s arm and set the other three off again.

  ‘Let me help.’ Will stepped forward and grabbed at the reins, making sure he took the two biggest, fittest horses. Petrus Stuyvesant wouldn’t be letting the British ride higher in the saddle.

  The handler wrapped the reins of the other two around the wrist of his good arm and let his injured arm fall by his side. ‘I think he’s dislocated my shoulder.’ His face was scrunched up with pain. ‘He’s deaf, this one. Don’t know what set him off.’

  Will spoke to the two horses to calm them. They were still fidgety, so he took both sets of reins in one hand, swung his duffel bag from his shoulder and dug around in it until he found a muesli bar. He held pieces of it out on his flat palm, and the horses ate them and settled.

  Petrus Stuyvesant gave Richard Nicolls the second biggest horse and turned to Will to help him onto the biggest. Will took his cane and, as the director-general swung his wooden leg over the horse, Will’s hand seemed to touch his coat to steady him.

  Even though she was watching closely, Lexi saw nothing.

  Al was kneeling, clicking his fingers, searching the world at rat height, peering among all the pale stockings and bulky dresses in the hope of seeing Doug.

  Will patted the flank of the horse, Petrus Stuyvesant flicked the reins and the horse moved forward, leading the other three behind it. The crowd watched as the negotiators rode past the fortress and up Broadway, towards the director-general’s farm.

  ‘They’re getting away,’ Al said as Will came over to them. ‘And I can’t find Doug. I can’t find him anywhere. I don’t know where—’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Will opened a pocket in his coat and Doug poked his head out. ‘Who do you think scared the deaf horse? It might have been a lot harder without this little fellow. In the end, it wasn’t hard at all.’

  He opened another pocket and the golden glow from the coin lit up his hand.

  ‘How did you—’ Lexi leant over to take a closer look.

  ‘I’ll teach you, if you really want to know.’ He swung his duffel bag down and got out his picture of Grandad Al. ‘All right. Let’s check this crowd.’

  Al took Doug in his hand and opened his own bag. As he reached in for the picture, he touched something moist and pellety.

  He groaned. ‘Rat poo. I just touched poo!’ Doug looked at him and blinked. ‘I know the whistle scared you, but did you have to?’

  Will laughed at him. ‘It’s the 17th century. People touch poo all the time. Toughen up. And get your photo out while we’ve still got a crowd to show it to.’

  Al lifted the coiled rope from his bag and tipped the poo onto the cobblestones. He hoped he’d got all of it. He scraped his hand across the cobbles in case there was still poo on it. In the future they would bring wet wipes, since that was what 21st-century non-poo-touching people did.

  They got nowhere with the picture. No one could place Grandad Al. No one noticed their key badges.

  ‘No initials, either,’ Will said when they got together again at the end of the dock, close to where they’d arrived. ‘Maybe we’re the first here.’

  He crouched down, wrote ‘WH’ in pencil on a pale stone and left a rubber band beside it.

  Across the water, beyond the trading ships and the ships of the British navy, Lexi could see the mainland. She swapped her basket from her right hand to her left. It was getting heavy. The dictionary included thousands of words, each with a past. Any one of them might hold Grandad Al. And all the rest might send them into danger on the edge of wild country, hundreds of years before their own time.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Will said. ‘We can tick this one off. Let’s try the next one.’

  He took the daalder from his pocket, rubbed it with his thumb and the portal opened up.

  They fell at a comfortable speed before hitting a bump as they left cloud. Al felt the dense air punch into his chest. And then stop punching, as if it had never started. As if there had been no bump at all.

  He remembered a bump below Doctor Johnson’s dictionary on Caractacus’s timeline. It was Shakespeare. They were falling exactly into the middle of the Shakespeare bump, falling towards a wide, grey crowded city that could only be London.

  ‘This way,’ Will said and he banked to lead them south of the river, towards a large thatched letter ‘O’.

  They dropped through the centre of it, clear of the rectangular roof that jutted in from the edge, and slowed to a soft landing on ground covered by straw, nutshells and bottle stoppers. They were in a stadium or an arena, with wide timber posts holding up three levels of seating. There was room for thousands of people, though no one was there at the moment. No one other than the men on stage.

  ‘William Shakespeare,’ Will whispered, pointing to one with a high forehead and a neat moustache and beard. ‘I’m called Will after him. This is the Globe Theatre. My parents were introduced at Romeo and Juliet in the ’90s. The 1890s. You’d have your own ’90s, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, not personally. We just missed the ’90s. We’ll try to catch them next time around.’ Lexi wanted to say something smart about Romeo and Juliet. The Shakespeare connection seemed to mean a lot to Will. She and Al hadn’t done Shakespeare yet.

  Al opened his sack and started looking for the peg. He had crumpled yellow pants that went down to his calves and a rough brown coat with a rope belt.

  Lexi laughed. ‘You look like a weedy banana.’ She and Will both had the same clothes as Al, but in off-white. Somehow she was suggesting that was better.

  ‘And you look like you’re going to a judo class.’ He pulled out the peg.

  Doug blinked at him. He smelt hazelnuts and spilt beer and people were talking about bananas. This place could be good.

  ‘I told you,’ Will said when he saw the peg. ‘It’s Shakespeare.’

  Lexi looked towards the stage. ‘Shouldn’t we move before they see us?’

  ‘They’re actors.’ Al watched one of them take a step forward, then make a mark on the floor with his toe. ‘They won’t see us. They’d only notice us if we could get them a bigger part.’

  Shakespeare was holding some pages in one hand and a quill pen in the other. He wasn’t looking happy. The actors were standing in their positions on the stage, but no one seemed to be acting.

  ‘But I’ve read Holinshed’s Chronicles,’ one of them said, as if it made him the best informed. ‘Holinshed says Banquo was in on the murder of King Duncan and that it happened by ambush on the way to Inverness.’

  Shakespeare looked annoyed. ‘I’ve read Holinshed too, Richard. You can’t write a draft of “Macbeth” without reading Holinshed. Everyone’s read Holinshed. The king’s bath cleaner’s mother’s read Holinshed.’

  The other actors laughed.

  ‘I didn’t know she was writing a “Macbeth”,’ Richard said, making the others laugh again.

  ‘Yes, “The King’s Bath Cleaner’s Mother’s Macbeth”.’ Shakespeare used his hands to suggest it was written on a banner above the stage. ‘Starring Richard Burbage as the man who couldn’t get past Holinshed.’ He folded his pages. ‘There’s a key piece of information Holinshed didn’t know. It turns out that the king believes he is descended from Banquo and, since he’s our patron and pays the bills, I thought the clever thing to do might be to back one of the versions of the story that doesn’t say his ancestor was a murderer.’

  ‘Hope you enjoy the new play, Your Majesty,’ one of the others said in a grovelling crawly voice, bending over in an exaggerated bow and tugging at the front of his hair. ‘We owe it all to you and your ancestors. Thank you so much for your money and your murdering.’

  Ever
yone except Richard laughed at that. Shakespeare tried not to, but couldn’t hold it in. He held up his hand to make another point.

  ‘It’s also more dramatic and all the more foul if Macbeth has it done in his own castle.’

  Richard nodded. ‘Of course. I can see that. And I’m all for drama. The play’s the thing.’

  He looked down at his pages and found the line he was up to.

  He was about to deliver it when one of the other actors raised a finger and said, ‘Just a small point, William.’

  ‘Oh, you too, Robert.’ Shakespeare gave him a look that suggested points of any size might not be very welcome. ‘A point small enough that it’ll still let me finish this play within, say, the 17th century?’

  Robert faked an apologetic look. ‘I just thought I’d bring it up now, while we’re on a break from the lines.’

  ‘We’re not on a break from the lines.’ Shakespeare jabbed his quill at the pages in his hand. ‘This is us doing the lines.’

  ‘Oh, I thought since we were talking about Holinshed – which I haven’t read yet, by the way – and the king being from murderers and all—’ He stopped. ‘Perhaps I should get to my small point.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Shakespeare maintained his glare.

  Down on the straw, Will turned to Lexi and Al. ‘Isn’t this great? I love coming here. This is my fifth time, I think. That’s almost as many times as I’ve seen Caractacus. I’ve wanted to ask Shakespeare why he hasn’t written about those days – Arthur and all that lot. It’d get right up Caractacus’s nose.’ He laughed. ‘Have you seen Shakespeare? One of his plays, I mean. They’re good, but this is a lot better, watching them get written.’

  ‘You’ll thank me for this later,’ Robert was saying on stage – though, from Shakespeare’s look, it didn’t seem likely. ‘Some people are sticklers for detail, and you know they’ll make a fuss. In act I, scene 3—’