The Ickabog(63)

Lord Spittleworth was therefore left to jog alone down the country lanes toward his country estate, holding up his Chief Advisor’s robes lest he trip over them, and looking over his shoulder every few yards for fear that he was being followed. He knew perfectly well that his life in Cornucopia was over, but he still had that mountain of gold hidden in his wine cellar, and he intended to load up his carriage with as many ducats as would fit, then sneak over the border into Pluritania.

Night had fallen by the time Spittleworth reached his mansion, and his feet were terribly sore. Hobbling inside, he bellowed for his butler, Scrumble, who so long ago had pretended to be Nobby Buttons’s mother and Professor Fraudysham.

“Down here, my lord!” called a voice from the cellar.

“Why haven’t you lit the lamps, Scrumble?” bellowed Spittleworth, feeling his way downstairs.

“Thought it best not to look like anyone was home, sir!” called Scrumble.

“Ah,” said Spittleworth, wincing as he limped downstairs. “So you’ve heard, have you?”

“Yes, sir,” said the echoing voice. “I imagined you’d be wanting to clear out, my lord?”

“Yes, Scrumble,” said Lord Spittleworth, limping toward the distant light of a single candle, “I most certainly do.”

He pushed open the door to the cellar where he’d been storing his gold all these years. The butler, whom Spittleworth could only make out dimly in the candlelight, was once again wearing Professor Fraudysham’s costume: the white wig and the thick glasses that shrank his eyes to almost nothing.

“Thought it might be best if we travel in disguise, sir,” said Scrumble, holding up old Widow Buttons’s black dress and ginger wig.

“Good idea,” said Spittleworth, hastily pulling off his robes and pulling on the costume. “Do you have a cold, Scrumble? Your voice sounds strange.”

“It’s just the dust down here, sir,” said the butler, moving farther from the candlelight. “And what will Your Lordship be wanting to do with Lady Eslanda? She’s still locked in the library.”

“Leave her,” said Spittleworth, after a moment’s consideration. “And serve her right for not marrying me when she had the chance.”

“Very good, my lord. I’ve loaded up the carriage and a couple of horses with most of the gold. Perhaps Your Lordship could help carry this last trunk?”

“I hope you weren’t thinking of leaving without me, Scrumble,” said Spittleworth suspiciously, wondering whether, if he’d arrived ten minutes later, he might have found Scrumble gone.

“Oh no, my lord,” Scrumble assured him. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving without Your Lordship. Withers the groom will be driving us, sir. He’s ready and waiting in the courtyard.”

“Excellent,” said Spittleworth, and together they heaved the last trunk of gold upstairs, through the deserted house, and out into the courtyard behind, where Spittleworth’s carriage stood waiting in the darkness. Even the horses had sacks of gold slung over their backs. More gold had been strapped onto the top of the carriage, in cases.

As he and Scrumble heaved the last trunk onto the roof, Spittleworth said:

“What is that peculiar noise?”

“I hear nothing, my lord,” said Scrumble.

“It is an odd sort of grunting,” said Spittleworth.

A memory came back to Spittleworth as he stood here in the dark: that of standing in the icy-white fog on the marsh all those years before, and the whimpers of the dog struggling against the brambles in which it was tangled. This was a similar noise, as though some creature were trapped and unable to free itself, and it made Lord Spittleworth quite as nervous as it had last time when, of course, it had been followed by Flapoon firing his blunderbuss and starting both of them onto the path to riches, and the country down the road to ruin.

“Scrumble, I don’t like that noise.”

“I don’t expect you do, my lord.”

The moon slid out from behind a cloud and Lord Spittleworth, turning quickly toward his butler, whose voice sounded very different all of a sudden, found himself staring down the barrel of one of his own guns. Scrumble had removed Professor Fraudysham’s wig and glasses, to reveal that he wasn’t the butler at all, but Bert Beamish. And for just a moment, seen by moonlight, the boy looked so like his father that Spittleworth had the crazy notion that Major Beamish had risen from the dead to punish him.

Then he looked wildly around him and saw, through the open door of the carriage, the real Scrumble, gagged and tied up on the floor, which was where the odd whimpering was coming from — and Lady Eslanda sitting there, smiling and holding a second gun. Opening his mouth to ask Withers the groom why he didn’t do something, Spittleworth realized that this wasn’t Withers, but Roderick Roach. (When he’d spotted the two boys galloping up the drive, the real groom had quite rightly sensed trouble, and stealing his favorite of Lord Spittleworth’s horses, had ridden off into the night.)

“How did you get here so fast?” was all Spittleworth could think to say.

“We borrowed some horses from a farmer,” said Bert.

In fact, Bert and Roderick were much better riders than Spittleworth, so their horses hadn’t gone lame. They’d managed to overtake him and had arrived in plenty of time to free Lady Eslanda, find out where the gold was, tie up Scrumble the butler, and force him to tell them the full story of how Spittleworth had fooled the country, including his own impersonation of Professor Fraudysham and Widow Buttons.