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16.1: RUPERT GETS STUFFED (part 1)

In which Harriet does not get much sleep.

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Harriet could not sleep. This was odd, since she was cleaner than she'd been in days and tucked up in the most comfortable bed she'd ever been in, even more comfortable than her huge four-poster back at Winkton Manor. Harriet had on a nightgown whose neckline was adorned with lace that somehow also managed to be soft rather than scratchy. The bed even smelled of comfort-which, if you didn't know, smells of violets, cherry blossom, and summer pudding.

Nevertheless, Harriet could not sleep. A bright moon illuminated the room through the prison-slit of a window (which was, unnervingly, still barred). Harriet lay on her back staring at the ceiling, which was covered with intertwining vines and little white flowers in the shape of stars. When she got tired of this, she turned on her left side and stared at the bedside table, upon which was a candle, a box of matches, and a small standing clock with a shepherdess painted on its face. Boring of this view, she shifted onto her right side to find herself staring at-

"Albert?"

Miniature eyes-the stitches ever so small-stared back at her.

"How by Day's rays did you get here?"

Harriet sat up and plucked the doll from her pillow. Yes, it certainly was Albert, the very same doll she had found lying on the kitchen floor earlier that evening. There were his little green trousers, white shirt and brown waistcoat, complete with tiny buttons. But there was something else. A scrap of paper was pinned to the doll's breast. Harriet squinted at it. The writing was very small, but neat and legible. FIRST FLOOR. SEVENTH DOOR ON THE LEFT. GO NOW.

Harriet blinked. She looked at the doll. It looked back blankly. She wondered if this was a trick, some scheme Minola Caw had dreamt up to make Harriet look silly. She wouldn't have put it past her, even if she had given her a lacy nightgown that didn't itch.

But the note did seem very insistent. And the tiny writing...

"Hello?" Harriet whispered to the doll. Albert evidently didn't feel like talking much, because he continued to stare at her in a woolly way that only a woollen doll could. And perhaps a sheep.

"Oh, fine then. Fine." It wasn't as though she had anything better to do.

Harriet got out of bed, took the candle from the bedside table and lit it. She found some terribly soft and terribly comfortable slippers at the foot of the bed. She put them on. There was a downy white robe hanging on the back of the door. Harriet put that on too. Then, swathed in fluffiness, she ventured out into the gaolhouse, tucking Albert securely in a pocket.

Minola Caw had put Rupert and Harriet in rooms on the ground floor of the building. In the darkness, the flower-clad corridors felt far more creepy than they had in the light. Foliage formed shadowy shapes that dangled overhead and brushed Harriet's hair as she padded down the passage. But it was not far to the stairway, where the roses twined their way up the prison bars towards the gloomy recesses of the upper floors. Harriet held her breath as she took the stairs, listening out, but there was no sound from anywhere else in the gaolhouse.

On the floor above, she turned down the left-hand corridor. The flowery foliage here was, if anything, thicker than downstairs. Stray roots and tendrils were hidden in the darkness, and several times she tripped and almost fell. But she firmed her jaw and kept on. The walls were studded at regular intervals with closed doors, which must once have been the cells. Harriet regarded them uneasily; even framed by luxuriant growths of primroses and forget-me-nots, they still retained an air of menace.

Finally she reached the seventh door. Holding up her candle, she saw it was relatively clear of plant growth, but also looked rather heavier than the other doors. An extremely large bolt held it shut. It must just have been a cell for more... difficult prisoners.

This thought was not exactly comforting. Harriet pulled Albert from her pocket. "This had better not be a trick," she whispered to the doll.

The doll's woollen face did not betray an opinion one way or another.

"All right." Harriet took a deep breath, pulled the bolt aside and opened the door.

Fortunately, there was nothing inside that seemed to merit the extra security. A large spinning wheel took up most of the small room. Clustered around its foot were bulging bags of both spun and unspun wool. A pair of knitting needles were sticking out of the topmost one. Against the wall in the far corner were stacked some wooden crates. Harriet hazarded a guess that they contained yet more wool.

Harriet felt a little foolish. But she was here now, so she might as well take a look. Harriet held the candle over the spinning wheel and found... that it looked like an ordinary spinning wheel. The bags of wool looked like ordinary bags of wool, the knitting needles ordinary knitting needles.

With a sigh, Harriet fished Albert out of her pocket again. "Well, that was a waste of time. Thank you so much for getting me out of bed for nothi-" She stopped. She looked at the note. It had changed. It now read: LOOK IN THE BOXES.

Harriet frowned. Moving to the crates, she set the candle down and levered the top off one of the boxes. When she peered inside, she almost jumped back in shock as a crowd of tiny faces stared back at her.

Harriet put a hand to her chest. "Dolls," she whispered to herself. "Just dolls."

Still, it was unnerving to have all those tiny knitted eyes staring up at her. Harriet moved the candle higher over the crate and tried to count how many dolls were inside, but she gave up after about thirty. Each of them was as exquisitely fashioned as Albert. There were dolls in tiny overalls, dolls in top hats, dolls in flowery skirts, dolls in the ragged costumes of beggars. There was even, Harriet noticed at the back of the crate, a minuscule knitted baby in the arms of its woollen mother.

Minola Caw really must have a lot of time on her hands, Harriet thought, looking at the other boxes. There must be hundreds of them here.

A shiver ran up her spine.

Slowly, she moved back to the spinning wheel and, holding out her candle, took another, closer look.

The whole thing was caked with dust. It was indeed an ordinary spinning wheel, but it had certainly not been used in years. She moved the the candle over the bags of wool. Those, too, were covered with a layer of dust.

Harriet's mind raced. She looked at the boxes piled up against the walls. She remembered the strange quietness of the town. The detail of the dolls.

"Oh my goodness..." Harriet breathed. "This is horrible." A part of her was aghast as she realised that the majority of the town of Pinwick was now stacked in boxes in the gaolhouse. Another part of her was triumphant. Minola Caw was not so perfect after all. In fact, she had one of the biggest flaws a person could have: she was an evil mastermind.

Holding Albert between her thumb and forefinger, Harriet raised him to her eye level. "What can I do to help?" she whispered.

Albert looked woollenly at her.

"Oh, come on, Albert!" Harriet hissed. "You wanted me to see this, didn't you? What are you afraid of?"

A sound somewhere along the corridors almost made her drop the doll in fright. A soft step and a whisper of silk. It was far off, but it could only be Minola Caw.

"Albert! Help-" She stopped. Another doll had appeared, drooped over the side of one of the boxes. There was another note pinned to its breast. Harriet snatched it up, quite forgetting the etiquette of handling-another-person-in-doll-form in her agitation. The note read: LEAVE NOW. DO NOT EAT ANYTHING.