The Door in the Moon Read Online Free PDF

pulled it out; the black wood cracked loudly and she froze, listening, and thought she caught some other noise, a rumble deep in the bowels of the building.
    Suddenly scared, she made her way down, telling herself not to be stupid, that all anyone would see was a broken stick moving by itself in thin air.
    Then, halfway along a landing she heard a bang somewhere below, a loud shout that might have been her name.
    Abandoning caution she turned into the corridor and raced along it.
    But the door to the waxwork room was wide open.
    And Jake was gone.

    He had meant to be ready for them, to hide among the waxwork figures, but they had obviously expected that and been almost silent; they’d come in fast, at least five big men all with flaring torches, and grabbed him before he could even scramble up. A black cloak was flung around him, the hood pulled firmly up and over his face.
    He squirmed, took a breath, and yelled, “Get your hands off me!”
    One of the men snorted a laugh.
    Jake was bundled out. It was hard to see anything; he smelled the outside before the warm air hit him. The stench of the cities of the past was something he was becoming used to, but this was more pungent even than plague-ridden Florence—rotting vegetables, dung, the sour acrid sting of some leather or tanning works that started his eyes watering. And the brilliant unmistakeable heat of the sun.
    They pushed him up into something that swayed like a carriage; he felt a grimy velvet bench, then men squeezed in beside him on each side. The door was slammed, horses were whipped up.
    As the vehicle moved, he was flung against the man to his left, who swore at him.
    Jake went very still.
    He thought fast. First, Sarah must have been left behind. She could hardly have climbed on the coach, and though it was traveling slowly, she could never have followed it through the crowded streets.
    Because he could hear a crowd out there now, a babble of voices, the coachmen yelling at people to get out of the way, the slap of hands against the paintwork, angry cries in French—
French?
—against the window.
    He managed to throw the hood back from his eyes.
    There were five men in the coach with him, all huge, all armed. Three sat opposite, cudgels on their knees. One held a pistol, cocked, near the window.
    For a moment Jake was flattered; then he realized the weapons were not for dealing with him.
    There was a riot going on out there.
    The streets were alive with a raging mob. He saw snatches of faces, stalls turned over, shops being stripped of food. Women struggled away with trailing armfuls of cloth, an old man staggered under a cask of wine. There were barricades of heaped furniture; twice the coach had to back up in front of them. And he could smell the tension, the wild unleashed anger out there in the city, smell it in the billows of smoke from burning houses, in the crackle of flames, the spilled fruit and cabbages squashed under the wheels of the carriage.
    â€œLiberté!”
he heard. And then, clearly,
“Vive la Révolution!”
    â€œBloody French lunatics,” one of the men beside him muttered. Another, the one with the pistol, said, “Shut up,” and rapped the ceiling hard with one fist. The carriage speeded up, turned a corner, throwing Jake back in his seat. The window blinds were yanked firmly down and fastened.
    But he had seen enough.
    This was Paris, surely, sometime during the Revolution, a time of riot and anarchy. They’d called it the Terror. And he had managed to lose Sarah in it.
    He spoke up. “Where are we going?”
    Silence.
    â€œWhy have you brought me here? Who sent you? Is it money? For a ransom?”
    No one answered, so he said, “Venn will never pay it. He wouldn’t care . . .”
    One of them snorted. “No one wants your money, boy.”
    A thought struck Jake like a joyful blow. “Is my father behind this? Dr. David Wilde? Did he—”
    A