Fizzlebert Stump and the Bearded Boy Read online

  Chapter Nine

  In which a caravan is searched and in which a conversation is overheard

  Fizzlebert Stump was creeping. On tiptoe. With his shoulders down as low as they could go and with his hands held up like little paws. (No one knows why tiptoeing people hold their hands up like little paws, but it always seems to work better that way.)

  He was edging round the corner of the Barboozuls’ caravan.

  Dr Surprise’s quavering voice was coming from the other side.

  ‘Um,’ it said. ‘Lady Barboozul? Your Lordship? I’ve got a note for you.’

  ‘A note?’

  That was Lady Barboozul’s voice.

  ‘Er, yes, Your Ladyship,’ Dr Surprise said before quickly walking off.

  Fizz listened closely as one of the Barboozuls opened the envelope the Doctor had delivered.

  ‘What is it?’ said Lord Barboozul.

  ‘The Ringmaster,’ said his wife. ‘He wants to speak to us in his office.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The silly man doesn’t say. Still, we’d better go see what this is all about.’

  Fizz heard the two Barboozuls walk off into the maze of tents and caravans. The Ringmaster’s office was right over the other side of the circus. With any luck he’d have at least ten minutes before they came back.

  He crept round to the front, went up the steps, looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, and tried the door.

  It was unlocked and he slipped inside.

  The Barboozuls’ caravan was bigger than the one he lived in with his parents. It was neater too.

  The front door opened into a little passage. On one side was the kitchen and dining room, on the other side were a pair of bedrooms. Opposite him another door opened into a little toilet and shower room.

  He left the bedrooms for later and crept mouse-like into the kitchen.

  Plates were neatly stacked on the draining board and there were flowers in a vase on the table. He had been hoping to see a pile of clowns’ noses and a pair of large false teeth, with a note attached saying, ‘We done it, guv. It’s a fair cop!’ but he wasn’t so lucky.

  The first thing he did was open the kitchen drawers and rummage through them. He had to be as neat as he could, but still be quick about it, while all the time keeping an ear open for the Barboozuls coming back, and an eye open for clues. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

  In the bottom drawer were tea towels. In the top drawer were, as is normal, the knives and forks, but in the middle one was a whole stack of letters and bits of paperwork.

  After a quick glance out the window to make sure no one was coming (they had net curtains up, which made it easier to not be noticed inside, but also made it harder to notice what was going on outside, since you had to either squint to see through one of the lacy holes, or lift up the corner and have a look), Fizz heaved the pile of papers onto the kitchen table.

  They were bills and letters and boring bits and bobs that didn’t interest him.

  As far as he could see none of them said, ‘This is why we’ve got it in for the circus, signed Lord & Lady Barboozul’. It was getting annoying. He’d wasted a good few minutes rooting through that heap.

  He put the letters back as neatly as he could and continued looking round the room.

  The cupboards were filled with saucepans and tins cans and crockery and all the usual stuff you find in a kitchen, none of which was of any use to him. That was more time wasted. He looked at the clock above the sink. The hands had moved round faster than he expected. He’d have to be even quicker now, searching the rest of the caravan.

  The last place to look, in the kitchen, was a big old trunk pushed up against the far wall. When Fizz managed to get the heavy lid up he found it empty except for some old black rag rugs.

  Or at least that’s what Fizz thought they were at first.

  When he looked closer and lifted one of the ‘rugs’ up it seemed to be made of long black thick hairs, like a wig.

  Growing up in the circus he had seen plenty of wigs, but never one quite like this.

  For one thing it was long and pretty raggedy, but odder than that was the fact that there didn’t seem to be any way to put it on your head. Normally the top of a wig is a bit like an elastic shower cap: it goes on your head like a hat and the hair hangs down. But this wig didn’t have anything like that. Instead all the hair was threaded onto a sort of semi-circle of thin material, which had a hole in it. How was that supposed to stay on? he thought.

  And then slowly his brain caught up. The semi-circle was a little tacky to the touch. Not sticky now, but it gave him the idea that it had been sticky before, and then it all fell into place. This wasn’t a wig of head hair, or not the head hair you normally found on a wig. It was a beard. A fake beard that someone stuck on their chin. The hole was obviously for the mouth.

  Of all the things Fizz had thought about them, he’d never suspected that the Barboozuls weren’t actual bearded people. Never mind all the robbing and breaking and poisoning he reckoned they’d done, which was bad enough, of course, but pretending to have beards . . . Why, that really was the last straw. (No wonder Wystan insisted they eat on their own, if their beards might fall off at any moment.)

  With that he decided once and for all that he really didn’t like these people. (A trick is one thing, but lying is something quite different.)

  As he stood there looking at the beard he heard the door to the caravan open.

  He’d been so involved with his thoughts that he hadn’t remembered to keep an eye out. His search of the caravan had really only just begun and they were back already.

  For a moment Fizz froze.

  There is almost absolutely no way you can sensibly explain to someone why you’re in their house when they come back unexpectedly. Especially if you’re going through their stuff at the time (even if you are doing it for good reasons). So Fizz did the only thing he could think of, which was to hide.

  He jumped into the trunk and gently lowered the lid.

  ‘What a stupid little man,’ said a voice that was clearly Lady Barboozul’s.

  Although she wasn’t actually shouting, it sounded to Fizz, even through the wooden sides of the trunk, as if she were angry.

  Lord Barboozul said something back, but Fizz couldn’t make out the words.

  ‘Quite so,’ she replied. ‘Writing notes one moment and forgetting about them the next. His brain is addled. And to think he’s in charge of the whole show. It’s amazing it runs at all.’

  Again Lord Barboozul mumbled something back.

  ‘Oh, ha, ha,’ Lady Barboozul said. ‘Well, after today there won’t be much of a circus left. The ring will be practically empty tonight. The audience will be bored. And we’ll be able to write it all off. Job done!’

  Wow. This was exactly what Fizz needed to hear. If he could get all this down on tape, then he’d have the evidence he needed to show the Ringmaster that his new star act wasn’t all they were cracked up to be.

  If only he had a tape recorder.

  And wasn’t trapped in a trunk with a bunch of dusty beard-wigs.

  Lord Barboozul muttered something and his wife laughed again. It was a cruel laugh, Fizz thought, the sort that suggested she’d just seen a puppy fall off a skateboard and injure itself quite badly, not the sort of laugh you gave when you were hugged by someone with such a fluffy jumper that it tickled your nose.

  Then he heard another voice.

  ‘Hello? Anyone here?’

  Fizz recognised it immediately, (a) because it was Wystan, and (b) because Fizz wasn’t stupid.

  ‘Oh,’ said Lady Barboozul, no longer laughing. ‘You’re back, are you? Gildas was worried.’ Gildas was Lord Barboozul’s first name, Fizz remembered. ‘Where have you been all morning?’

  ‘Just out walking,’ the boy said.

  ‘Walking?’

  ‘Yeah, just walking. You know, round the park. That sort of thing.’

  ‘You
’ve been playing football with that horrid little red-haired brat!’

  ‘No, I never.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Wystan,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve seen you. Remember we’re here to do a job and then we’re gone. There’s no point getting soft and sentimental and actually making friends.’ (She almost spat the word out.) ‘You’re just an actor. You’re my innocent little information gatherer.’ She paused, possibly to ruffle his hair annoyingly. Possibly not. ‘We’ll be gone in the morning. We’re booked in at Frobisher’s Freak-O-Rama-Land all next week. I thought we might go as clowns. How’s your juggling? What do you think?’

  (Fizz had heard of Frobisher’s Freak-O-Rama-Land. They were another circus. He’d never actually seen them himself, though. There was only one fact about them that stuck in his mind: Frobisher’s had the oldest high-wire act in the whole country. Not, to be clear, the act that was established furthest back in the past (it was actually a new act they got just last year), but the chap who did it was one hundred and six years old. It had to be seen to be believed, they said. He walked out on the high wire and, balancing a full sixty feet above the ring, forgot what he was there for and went back again. Fizz hoped that sometime he’d get to see the act himself, but not today, since he was still stuck in a trunk listening to someone else’s conversation.)

  He was just hoping nobody needed one of these beards.

  ‘We had a fight,’ Wystan said, his words tugging Fizz’s ears back into concentration.

  ‘A fight?’ Lady Barboozul asked. ‘With that boy? Make a note, Gildas.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I hope you won.’

  Lord Barboozul said something. Fizz could tell because there was a silence exactly the same length as a sentence.

  ‘No. It wasn’t like that. We just argued,’ Wystan said. ‘He didn’t want to play football – ’

  ‘Oh, you stupid children,’ Lady Barboozul butted in. ‘Always arguing about something. It’s an age of tantrums. The sooner you grow up the better. I’ve always said that.’

  Wystan was quiet.

  It was a different quiet to when Lord Barboozul spoke. It was quieter and more sullen. And then the bearded boy spoke again.

  ‘He’s onto us,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Lady Barboozul snapped.

  ‘Yeah,’ Wystan went on, ‘he says you’re trying to break his circus. He says you want to smash it up.’

  ‘What did you tell him? How did he find out? What did he say? Speak up. Spit it out.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him nothing. He’s worked it out for himself, hasn’t he? He’s not as stupid as you reckon he looks. I mean, he was bound to cotton on, wasn’t he? You’ve not exactly been subtle here, have you?’

  She just laughed, and Fizz shivered.

  If only he’d been able to record all this. If only he’d planned better. And then an even worse thought occurred to him.

  He couldn’t feel his leg.

  He had jumped into the trunk as quick as he could and had been sitting awkwardly when he shut the lid, and he was stuck that way, and now one of his legs had gone to sleep. And the only thing that’s worse, as you probably know, than a leg that goes to sleep is a leg that starts to wake up again. And Fizz’s leg was beginning to do that just about now.

  There was a tingling, numb, buzzing feeling all along his muscles and nothing would make it go away. He tried stretching as much as he could and he tried squeezing as much as he could, but it wasn’t helping with the pain. And now it was going through that bit when the pins and needles feel like they’re on fire and after that it sort of settled down to a dull numb throb, before it finally felt like a real leg again.

  Fizz managed to not go, ‘Ow!’ or to moan or to make any noise at all. He did really well, right up until the point when his leg had finally woken up.

  It was then that he shifted to get more comfortable. He only moved an inch or two, but in the pitch darkness his shoe banged quietly against the side of the trunk, just gently, but enough that . . .

  ‘What was that?’ said Lady Barboozul.

  ‘What was what?’ said Wystan.

  There was a pause as the three bearded saboteurs listened.

  Then there was a Lord Barboozul-shaped silence.

  ‘Well, I don’t care what you think. I definitely heard something,’ his wife barked.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ Wystan muttered.

  ‘Hmm,’ Lady Barboozul said. It was the noise someone makes when they don’t agree with what you’ve just said, but can’t be bothered to argue the point. ‘Very well.’

  Fizz heard the noise of chairs scraping on the floor and Lord Barboozul said something. Plates were put on table. Wystan groaned.

  ‘Tuna sandwiches again?’ he said.

  They were having lunch. It surprised Fizz that even amongst all the planning and scheming and plotting and arguing that wicked people do, they still had to sit down at the table with sandwiches and lemonade (this was a guess from the fizz of the bottle opening, it might well have been cola or ginger beer, but it didn’t matter) and just . . . well . . . have lunch.

  And then Fizz sneezed.

  It was a dusty trunk, after all, and those old beard-wigs were all hairy. It was bound to happen. And of course, when a boy sneezes loudly in a trunk in the kitchen of his enemies while they’re having their lunch, it can only mean one thing.

  The end of the chapter.

  Chapter Ten

  In which questions are asked and in which a boy is dangled

  As soon as the sneeze was out Fizz clamped his hands over his nose.

  Fizz wasn’t a stupid boy and knew he should have done it before the sneeze escaped, but this one hadn’t given him any warning.

  (Some sneezes creep around for a bit first, have a little tickle, have a little sit down, have a little think, while others just jump out feet first without even waving. It is these sneezes, I have had occasion to note, that make the most mess and the loudest noise and require the most apologies.)

  As soon as he sneezed a silence fell outside the trunk.

  Fizz could imagine the sight. The bearded Lady Barboozul holding a long slim finger up to her fur-framed lips (a flake of tuna caught in the bristling blue-black hair) to tell her two men to keep quiet. And the three of them tiptoeing soft-footed over to where the trunk sat, squat and impossible to ignore against the caravan wall. They’d bend over, wouldn’t they, and slowly open the lid. (Did it squeak? Fizz couldn’t remember, but knew he’d soon find out.)

  It didn’t.

  The crack of light appeared as he’d feared and was brighter than he expected.

  After so long in the pitch dark the light hurt his eyes. For a moment he couldn’t see anything but a pair of dark shapes looming above him, and then there were claws round his neck and he was being picked up, lifted into the air.

  ‘You!’ hissed Lady Barboozul.

  As his vision de-blurred and slowly returned to normal, her beautiful ice cold eyes drilled into him, and her black-blue beard tickled his hands, dangling limply in front of him.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, leaning so close to his face he could smell her beard, ‘that you heard our little . . . discussion just then?’

  Fizz gulped and nodded and gulped and shook his head and looked around, trying to see an escape route, to find an escape plan.

  Lord Barboozul was stood further down the kitchen in the direction of the door.

  Wystan was behind the bearded man, half looking at Fizz and half trying not to. He looked embarrassed and was twirling his beard between his fingers.

  ‘Fizzlebert Stump,’ the bearded lady said. ‘Spying, are we?’

  Fizz had read lots of adventure stories where the hero got into exactly this sort of sticky situation, captured by the villain and interrogated while dangling over the shark pit or vat of acid. And the hero would always be brave and amazingly cool and wouldn’t gibber or jabber or gabble or stutter or stammer or wet themselves when faced with the prospect of certai
n death. Instead they’d say something sharp and witty and funny (and never give any secrets away) and the villain would get angry and careless and drop the hero into the pit or vat, but in such a careless angry way that the hero would somehow be able to escape. And it was all because of the cool collected calm words he used.

  So when Lady Barboozul dangled Fizz in her claw of a hand, accusing him of doing exactly what it was he’d been doing, he thought of these books and summoned his strength and spirit up and answered in the only way he knew how.

  ‘Um,’ he said.

  Lady Barboozul dropped Fizz (aha! the plan had worked, sort of) and turned her head to look at her husband.

  ‘I told you to be careful,’ she snapped. ‘You and your big mouth, blabbing everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry, my sweet,’ said Lord Barboozul. He coughed softly, and a tendril of beard lifted itself and pointed at the clock. ‘But dear,’ he went on, ‘look at the time. The show is about to begin. What are we going to do about this little Stump?’

  She held her beard against her chest as she bent down to look at him.

  (Fizz was surprised to see he’d been right about the tuna. There was a flake of it caught in the hairs by the side of her mouth.)

  ‘Well,’ she said, her eyes glinting cruelly, ‘we’ll have to keep him here for now. He’s not due in the ring this afternoon. Boo hoo. Do you remember, Gildas? His shabby old lion’s lost its teeth, and the good Captain never thought of buying a spare pair. No one’s going to notice if he’s not there. Then, later, after the show, we’ll have to make a . . . more permanent decision.’

  ‘So? Back in the trunk?’ asked Lord Barboozul.

  ‘Yes. I suppose that will have to do for now.’