The Metropolitans Read online

  “Water,” Kiku said. “It’s got to be the water system. But how would they get the poison into it? They’d have to go to the one place where all the water came from. . . .” And then she knew.

  “We’re looking at it,” Kiku said. She pointed to the southeast. Across a stretch of buildings was a tall tower standing on the edge of the Harlem River. Her father had pointed it out to her once on a trip to Fort Tryon Park. A marvel of American engineering, he had called it. “The High Bridge Water Tower. Water passes through it into the city. It would be one of the places where they could poison the water system.”

  “The poison must be what was in the bag, and now Walt has it,” Joe said.

  “Walt would never do that!” Madge cried. “Not even to save his family.”

  “We have to get to the tower and find out,” Kiku said. “It could be where they’re hiding Dr. Bean and Miss Lake and my father, too.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said, getting to his feet. “We have to get out of here anyway.”

  He pointed to the path beneath the rampart, where two police officers had just come into view. One of them looked up and then shouted, “There they are!”

  “We gotta scram!” Madge cried. She looked back at the box, but Kiku grabbed her hand. “You can’t carry it,” she said.

  “That’s all right,” Madge said, rolling up the pages and sticking them into her coat pocket. “This is what’s important. Come on. Let’s get your dad.” She grinned, and Kiku felt herself grinning back. This was their fight; this was what they always did, the only thing they could do, even if what Moth told her was true and the price of victory was their lives.

  25

  THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROAD

  IT WAS HIS worst nightmare: being chased by the police. As they left the flagpole circle and ran south, Joe saw there were two more policemen waiting at the exit.

  “Quick, I know another way out!” Kiku cried.

  Joe followed Kiku into a terraced rock garden, down narrow paths between stunted shrubs, Madge right behind him. They came out at a little cottage. The tramp whom Madge had given the nickel to was squatting on the ground, warming his hands over a fire inside a small tin can. He looked up as they came crashing down the path.

  “You’re back, my lord,” he said to Madge. Why is he calling Madge “my lord”? The guy must be cracked. A lot of the tramps he’d met were—done in by drink and loss and the loneliness of the road. Joe hated looking in their eyes because he was afraid he’d see his own future there. But when he looked into this man’s eyes, he was surprised to see that they were clear and sharp.

  “Behind the eight ball, eh, brother?” he asked Joe.

  “What the heck does that mean?” Madge asked.

  Joe knew because he’d listened to the hoboes in the park. “He’s asking if I’m in a tight spot,” he explained to Madge.

  “We sure are!” Madge replied. “We’ve got the coppers on our tail.”

  “John Law,” the tramp said, nodding. Then to Joe he said, “Follow the signs. They’ll take you all the way to Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

  “What signs?” Madge asked.

  “The ones shared by the knights of the road,” the man said, bowing to Madge. “Your knight here knows.”

  Joe did know, only he didn’t see how hobo signs were going to do them any good. “Thanks, brother,” he said, giving the term of address he’d heard the tramps use for one another. Then he was running out of the park. He saw the subway station at 190th Street and wondered if they should head for it, but there would be police on the platforms and in the trains. Ahead of them stretched a wide avenue where it would be easy for the cops to see them. They should get onto the side streets, but Joe didn’t know this neighborhood and he might lead them into a dead end. They were on a high ridge above a valley, and they had to cross that valley to get to the tower, but the land was too steep for the streets to run in grids like downtown. How would they ever find their way?

  Then, halfway down the block, Joe saw a sign scrawled on the trunk of a tree. It was a circle with an arrow pointing east. Joe had seen other signs like it when he made his way down from Canada and knew it showed a good route that was free of policemen and bullies. But would it help them now? The tramp had said to follow the signs. What else could they do?

  “This way,” he told Kiku and Madge with more confidence than he felt. When they reached the tree, Joe saw that the arrow pointed to a flight of steps that descended between two buildings. With the sun setting behind him, it was like he was staring down into a black cavern. If he led his friends here and it was the wrong way, they’d be trapped.

  He wiped the sweat from his face and something got in his eye—a piece of grit. He tried to blink it away—he couldn’t cry in front of Kiku and Madge!—and when he opened his eyes, the stairs in front of him were sparkling as if the speck of grit was a prism refracting light, only instead of a rainbow, what he saw was a path outlined in gold. All along it he saw signs painted in gold: a curve with a dot above it that Joe knew meant “no cops here” and a circle with a diagonal line through it that meant “good road to follow.”

  Suddenly Joe heard shouts behind them. “This way!” he shouted. “Follow me!”

  They ran down the steps. He could hear the policeman shouting behind them. “Where’d they go? I could swear I saw those kids duck down these stairs.”

  “Aw, you’re seeing things again, Harvey. Better lay off the sauce.”

  The gold dust had never made him or Madge invisible before without Kiku’s help. It must have something to do with being on this path—a path laid out by the knights of the road. They had to stay on it. He only hoped it went as far as the tower. He could see the gold trail stretching out in front of him, but it grew faint at times. He had to concentrate to find where it picked up again. He was so focused on the trail that the rest of the world fell away. He wasn’t aware of the buildings anymore, or the cars—

  “Watch it, fella!” A yellow taxi nearly ran into him. Joe dodged around it and noticed that there was another sign on the corner: a circle with a little tail pointing south onto an avenue called St. Nicholas.

  “This way!” Joe called to the others. He followed the signs through the city streets. Twice he saw policemen, but they didn’t seem to see them. He saw other people following the signs—men and women in tattered clothing, wrapped against the cold in shawls and scarves. The lost, Joe heard the voice inside his head say, men and women who have lost everything but who have found kinship with one another. The Brethren of the Road, the old hoboes called it, or the knights of the road. That’s what he and Kiku and Madge were; they had all lost something, but they had found one another.

  He saw another sign, pointing toward 171st Street. As they turned the corner, Joe saw the High Bridge Tower in front of them. The last light from the west hit it and it seemed to glow like it was made of rock sugar, like the Big Rock Candy Mountains the hoboes sang about, where the farmers’ trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay, where there ain’t no snow, where the rain don’t fall, and the wind don’t blow.

  As they got closer, Joe felt his eyes stinging. He realized he was tired of running. He just wanted to go home. If only he knew where that was.

  “We made it!” Madge cried when they reached the base of the tower. She ran through the door, holding her dagger up. “For Arthur! Rex quondam, Rexque futurus!” she shouted. “And for the good old US of A!”

  “She’s fearless,” Kiku said. “I wish I were more like her.”

  Joe looked at her, surprised. “You’re every bit as brave. You jumped right off that wall! You’re just a little . . . quieter.”

  Kiku smiled back at him as they went through the door and then up an iron spiral staircase that wound around massive steel pipes. They could see the glow of Madge’s dagger as she ran up the steps in front of them.

  “Hey!” Madge’s voice
came from above. “There’s a locked door but the key’s in the lock. I’m going in.”

  “We’d better hurry,” Kiku said, “in case it’s a trap.”

  Joe raced up the stairs after her, impressed with how nimbly and quickly she was taking the steps, and only caught up with her on the top landing, where Madge was still fidgeting with the key. “Maybe it’s a trick,” she said. “I can’t seem to . . .”

  But then the key clicked in the lock, and the door swung open onto an octagonal room with narrow slit windows, in the center of which were two men tied together back to back.

  “Otousan!” Kiku cried, running toward her father. She knelt down and threw her arms around him. The other man was Dashwood Bean. The old guy’s hair was standing up, and his spectacles sat crookedly on his face, but otherwise he and Mr. Akiyama looked unharmed. Madge used her dagger to cut the ropes while Joe helped take their gags off. Kiku and her father were talking rapidly in Japanese. Dashwood Bean was blinking as if he couldn’t quite make out who they were. Joe noticed an oil lamp and matches and bent to light it. Then he looked around the octagonal room.

  “Where’s Miss Lake?” he asked.

  “Vivian?” Dr. Bean asked, blinking in the flare of the lamp. “Didn’t she send you here?”

  “No,” Madge said, “we’ve been all on our own.”

  “Oh my goodness,” Dr. Bean said. “I should have had more faith in you. But where’s young Walt?”

  “I’m afraid Walt’s gone over to the other side, sir,” Joe said. He knew Madge wouldn’t want to be the one to say it.

  “Walt? I cannot believe it!”

  “I didn’t want to either,” Madge said, “but we think Mr. January got to him and offered him a deal.”

  “Oh my!” Dr. Bean said, his usually benevolent face furrowing and turning purple. “Mr. January must have threatened Walt’s family. That . . . that fiend! Taking advantage of a young boy’s loyalty! I’ll have a thing or two to say to him if he has the nerve to show himself here!”

  “Will you?”

  The voice came from the doorway, where Mr. January stood. “So you want me to show myself, do you? How’s this?” He dug his fingers into his scalp and under his jaw and then pulled, peeling away his face, revealing the bloody skull beneath. “How’s that for showing myself?”

  Then he stepped back out of the room, drew the door shut, and locked them inside.

  26

  THE HIGH TOWER

  “HOLY MOLY!” MADGE cried. “Did you all see that? Mr. January—”

  “Just took his face off,” Kiku said, still staring at the door as if she could rearrange what she had just seen there. It was like the horrible nightmare they had all had, only worse because there was no waking up from this.

  “And locked us in,” Joe said.

  “We gotta find a way outta here,” Madge said. Kiku watched as she rattled the door and then followed her to a narrow slit window. There weren’t any buildings nearby. No one would hear them if they called out. “We could drop a note, I suppose,” she suggested. “But who would see it or believe it? Who’s even out there to help us?”

  “Vivian is still out there,” Dr. Bean said. “And Walt.”

  Madge looked at Kiku with tears in her eyes, clearly thinking the same thing she was. Dr. Bean couldn’t face the thought that Walt was a traitor.

  “Miss Lake would have gotten in touch with us if she was still out there,” Kiku said. “I think we’re on our own.”

  As you’ve always been, the voice in her head said.

  She sighed—and then heard an echoing sigh from the window, as if the city was commiserating with her . . . or . . .

  “Boris!” Madge cried.

  Hearing his name, the pigeon flew through the window and landed on Madge’s shoulder.

  “Is that the thirteenth-century Eucharistic dove from the medieval collection?” Dr. Bean asked. “How did it come to life?”

  “We’re not sure,” Kiku said. “I think it has to do with Madge—”

  “But I haven’t been able to make anything else come to life,” she said, stroking Boris’s long neck.

  “Hm . . .” Mr. Akiyama said. “He found you, though. He must have navigational abilities. Perhaps we could use that.”

  “You mean to send a message?” Kiku asked.

  “But to whom?” Joe asked. “Who’s out there to help us? We don’t know where Miss Lake is, and Walt’s gone over to the other side.”

  “Vivian’s apartment is in Castle Village in Washington Heights, not far from here,” Dr. Bean said. “Do you think Boris can follow a map if I draw one for him?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Madge said. “He’s one smart bird, aren’t you, Boris?”

  The pigeon cooed and bobbed his head up and down as if in agreement.

  “See?” Madge said.

  “Good bird,” Dr. Bean said. “We need some paper—and something to use as a carrier.”

  “I know,” Madge said. “I’ve got a lipstick case.”

  “And we can use the netting from my hat to make a carrier,” Kiku said, taking off her hat, although it gave her a pang to dismantle it.

  “And we can tear off a bit of paper from the end of the chapter,” Joe suggested.

  “And that way Miss Lake will know it’s really from us.” Madge took the chapter from her pocket and spread out the pages on the floor while Kiku fashioned a miniature vest from the veil on her hat, using the little sewing kit her mother had given her and which she always carried with her.

  “Here,” Joe said, leafing through the chapter, “this last page is almost blank.” He tore off a bit of paper. “Does anyone have a pen?”

  “That man took our pens from us,” Mr. Akiyama complained. “He was afraid we’d fashion a weapon from them.”

  In the end, they used Madge’s lipstick—Coty’s Magnet Red, which Madge informed them had cost a whole dollar but “Heck,” she said, “we’re gonna have to take it out of the tube anyway to send the message.”

  SOS, Madge wrote in bright red lipstick. TRAPPED IN HIGH BRIDGE TOWER.

  Dr. Bean used the rest of the lipstick to draw a map on the floor showing Boris how to get to apartment 9B in Castle Village, which Boris pecked at in a way that seemed to indicate that he understood. They rolled the message up, slipped it into the lipstick tube, and slid it into the little net vest Kiku had made and put on Boris.

  “Aw,” Madge said when Boris was all outfitted and ready to go. “He looks very handsome. Like a soldier going off to war.”

  “Well,” Dr. Bean said, “a homing pigeon was awarded the Croix de Guerre in the last war. We will all have our part to play in this one.”

  “I wish Walt were here,” Madge said. “He’d know the right thing to say to send him off.”

  It hurts her the worst that Walt has abandoned us, Kiku thought, putting her arm around Madge’s shoulder. “I think he’d say what you said when you charged up the stairs.”

  Madge grinned and took out the dagger she’d taken from the Cloisters.

  “For Arthur. Rex quondam, Rexque futurus,” they all said together. And then Madge added: “And for the good old US of A.”

  Boris seemed to understand. He bowed his head once, trilled a long rousing note that sounded like a call to battle, and then spread his wings. They gleamed in the light of the oil lamp, like the bronze and enamel he’d been made of, and then he took to the sky. As he sailed west, he seemed to carry that glow with him, and Kiku realized that some of the gold dust from the pages had gotten onto his wings. He looked like a meteor trailing a fiery tail as he flew, like the rockets’ red glare and the twilight’s last gleaming from the song they’d all sung today in Grand Central Terminal. She felt Madge and Joe standing beside her and realized that she wasn’t on her own. And she never would be, as long as she had something this important to fight fo
r.

  “He’ll be okay,” Madge said, handing Kiku her handkerchief.

  “I know,” she said, wiping her eyes, “it’s just going to be hard waiting. . . .”

  “Well,” Joe said, “there is something we can do while we wait.” Kiku turned and saw that Joe had gathered the pages off the floor. “We can read the last chapter.”

  * * *

  They sat in a circle on the floor with the lamp in the center, and Joe read aloud by its light.

  THE MAIDEN CASTLE

  Our heroes met once more in front of the Maiden Castle, but they were not the same as when they had set out on the edge of the forest. The journey had changed them, as journeys will, but they came together, for no one is ever truly alone when united in a quest.

  Joe paused and looked up at Kiku and Madge, his eyes gleaming. Dr. Bean nodded at Mr. Akiyama, who bowed back to him, and Joe continued.

  The sorcerer Merlin met them at the drawbridge that went over a deep moat and said to them: “You have all done well to have come so far, but there is one quest left for you to accomplish. The Lady of the Lake is held prisoner in the high tower, guarded by a horrible beast. You must slay the beast and free her. Then she will tell you how you can save your land, and give you the power to do so.”

  “Why couldn’t Merlin just tell them?” Madge asked.

  “Maybe he didn’t know,” Kiku suggested.

  “Or maybe,” Mr. Akiyama said, “they would not have been prepared to hear what he had to tell them until after they had gone through the castle.”

  “Or,” Dr. Bean said, “perhaps the poor woman had been imprisoned in the tower by an evil witch and she needed rescuing. Go on, Joe.”

  The four crossed the bridge to the tower, but halfway across a knight charged them on horseback. He wore the same boar helmet as the two-headed knight whom Lancelot had beheaded.