Bookweirder (28 page)

The door opened just a little. From his hiding place in the tangled mound of blankets, Malcolm could make out the shape of Norman’s mother. He knew that human eyes were not as sharp as
stoat eyes, but surely she must see him there. How well camouflaged was he?

“Norman, darling?”

Malcolm’s muscles were tensed, ready to leap, but he remained perfectly still.

“Norman, I know you’re awake,” Meg whispered. “I saw your light on.” She opened the door a little more.

If she took one step in, Malcolm promised himself he would bolt. She watched silently for a long while but came no farther.

“Norman,” she began with a sigh, “I just want you to know that I know about … about the bookweird.” She paused before continuing. “You have to trust me when I tell you that it’s dangerous.” She waited for a response.

Malcolm coughed and mumbled at the same time. It was as close as he could come to making a human sound.

“Sometimes when people fall into the bookweird,” Meg whispered, “sometimes they don’t come back.” Her voice wavered a little, as if she was remembering something painful now. “Sometimes they come back changed.”

What was she saying? Who had she lost? Who had been changed? Norman would know. When he didn’t respond, Meg finally gave up and started to close the door again, slowly.

Malcolm didn’t relax. He wasn’t going to be tricked. Outside the door he could still see Meg Jespers-Vilnius’s bare, furless feet. He could even hear her deep human breathing.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I lost you that way, too,” she said finally.

Malcolm heard her hand brush across the door as she moved away. He let out a small, stoat-sized breath of relief. That had been too close. He had to do what Norman had told him and return the book. If he kept this up, he was going to get caught. But what about Norman? Norman was about to get caught, too. He had no idea that Black John and his knights were just around the corner.

Malcolm didn’t need the night light to read. Now that the moon was up, that was enough light for him. He slid the book from
under the pillow and flipped hurriedly to the place he’d left off. Norman was about to turn the corner into another of St. Savino’s long corridors, unaware that Black John’s knights were marching the other way.

Malcolm didn’t have time to read this through. He needed to figure out how it ended. He skipped forward a few pages to see how bad things got. What he saw made him very, very nervous. The pages weren’t blank. But they weren’t readable, either. The letters blurred as if viewed through rippled water. He flipped the pages to the end of the book. They were all like that. It was as if the book had unwritten itself.

He returned to his spot in the book. The first unread words were fine. Norman was just about to step around the corner. The sentence finished on the next page. Malcolm flipped the page to see that this one was ready to read. The book was rewriting itself, but only as fast as he read it.

The stoat stopped himself, looked down at the page again and blinked his shiny black eyes once before closing the book. This was no good at all. The more he read, the worse he made it. He had to stop. But now, of course, there was no way he could return the book to Meg’s bedside table. Norman was going to have to sort this out from the inside, hopefully before his mother woke up.

N
orman could hear voices echoing from somewhere, but the twists of the fortress corridors made it impossible to tell from which direction. It was like being in the coils of a giant conch shell. The sound of boots on stone thumped in and out. There could be a whole army marching around these corridors. They could be coming up behind him now, or they could be just around the corner.

Norman sprinted down the passageway, glad of the rubber-soled sneakers that scuffed the floor silently. At each bend and twist of the mazy fortress he stopped to peer around. He had seen no one yet, but those voices and those footsteps did not seem to get any closer or any farther away.

All of a sudden they were on top of him. A loud conversation in an unknown language burst down the corridor behind him. He couldn’t help looking back. Turning the corner were three men. Norman immediately noticed the black surcoats they wore over their chain mail and the white arms of Nantes on their chests. Even if he hadn’t read the opening chapters of
A Secret in the Library
he would have known that these were not the good guys. This was exactly the sort of book where the bad guys wore black.

And now the black knights had seen Norman. Nantes’s men
paused for a moment, confused perhaps by Norman’s strange clothes and sudden appearance. But their hesitation was momentary. The lead knight tapped his companion’s arm and pointed at Norman.

“C’est lui! C’est le garçon que nous cherchons!”
he cried in a surprised, creaky voice.

Norman turned and ran.

They launched after him with hoarse shouts in a jangle of chain mail. He had no idea what they were saying, but it didn’t sound very friendly. He took off down the hallway, skidding around the corner and flailing his arms to keep his balance, then careened down the next hallway. At the next turn he grabbed the iron torch stand that jutted out of the wall to catapult himself around. Behind him the black knights struggled to keep up with him in their heavy armour. He could hear them scrambling behind him, but after five or six turns they were out of sight. Now he needed a hiding place.

He tried every door that he came to, jiggling each handle hurriedly. Not a single door was unlocked. He cast about for curtains, boxes, furniture—something to hide behind or inside—but St. Savino was a remarkably empty fortress. Where was he supposed to hide? The best hiding place in St. Savino was the library, but he wasn’t about to lead Black John’s men to Jerome’s hideout.

Suddenly the clank of their armour and the thud of footsteps came closer again, ahead of him in the hall now. Had he gone round in a circle? He turned in the other direction, ready to double back on himself, but no … he heard the rising shouts of another party of knights coming the other way.

He was caught. They were closing in on him from both sides. Soon, both chase parties would be in the corridor. There was nowhere to run. This was a corridor like all the rest—plain stone walls, iron torch stands, just a single door that would inevitably be locked like all the others. Norman pushed on it in desperation. He was more surprised than relieved when it gave way. He fell into the room, his weight on the door carrying him through as he stumbled
in. He had just enough sense and just enough time to push the door closed behind him.

Voices argued in the hall outside. Norman stood still and strained to listen, but again they spoke a language he could not understand. Any moment he expected to hear the clank of swords. He had better hide.

He surveyed the room he’d taken refuge in. The chamber was furnished like an office, with a long table surrounded by eight weighty chairs and a massive wooden desk covered with letters and scrolls. A tall wardrobe stood behind the desk. It would easily conceal him. Norman started towards it but was distracted by what he saw on the desk—a small stack of papers beside a quill and an ink pot, just what he needed. He snatched the quill and the inkpot and riffled through the papers for the one that looked most edible. The crest on the topmost letter caught his attention: three lions. He had seen that same crest all over England. It had something to do with Jerome’s trip to England, perhaps. Norman was about to put it down when he heard the door creaking. It opened just a crack.

A large man stood in the doorway with his back to the room. His arms spanned the open space as if barring the way. His broad back was covered in a dull grey jerkin. A sword was belted to his side, but he wore no armour, and no helmet covered the grey hairs of his head. Norman knew, as if he had read it somewhere, that this was Hugh Montclair. Had Montclair been alone, Norman might have stayed and tried to talk his way out, but the men whose way he barred wore the black uniform of Nantes’s men.

Norman’s eyes darted around the room. There was no time to jump in the wardrobe. Too noisy. The desk was no good. Nor was the table. It would have to be the curtains.

He had just managed to pull the curtain back in front of him when the voices filled the room. Black John’s knights piled into the room after Sir Hugh.

It was a cacophony of noises that Norman struggled to interpret by sound and intonation. There were perhaps three or four voices, most of them indistinguishably gruff and aggressive, like a pack of
barking dogs. One voice stood out, measured, even, but strong, arguing back against the dogs. That would be Hugh Montclair’s. They were arguing about him, Norman guessed. Black John’s men would be insisting that they had chased a boy down this hall. Montclair would know that this was impossible. Jerome would never have left his hiding place in the library.

There were more men now in Hugh’s chambers. Norman heard the jangle of their chain mail as they circulated, mumbling to each other. As they passed by his hiding spot the motion of their bodies rippled the curtains, wafting them against Norman’s trembling hands, but he stayed rooted to his spot. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was back home, sneaking down on Christmas morning to shake presents, nothing more daring or dangerous than that.

But he was not at home, and this was not Christmas morning. He was in the chamber of Hugh Montclair, governor of St. Savino. He heard the squeak and click of a key being turned and the creak of an opening door. Somebody had opened the wardrobe. The door slammed shut again, and Hugh Montclair’s voice rose up in protest. Norman still couldn’t understand a word, but something about the tone made him feel that he understood the governor’s speech. The intruders went silent and stood still while he lectured them and then commanded them to leave. He punctuated his command with a shout and let it echo around the empty room.

There was no reply from Nantes’s men. In fact, once Montclair had finished speaking the room was unnaturally quiet. Norman held his breath and waited for them to leave. He willed them to leave. Instead there was an eerie stillness. Then came the sound of a single set of boots. One man moved, while all the others stayed silent. Likely they all watched him as he strode confidently, not to the door but to the curtains where Norman hid.

For some reason Norman glanced down at his feet. His blue sneakers stuck out beneath the edge of the curtain. He inhaled sharply as the footsteps on the other side of the curtain stopped. Then there was a cry. It did not sound like his voice. It sounded like
an animal screaming in pain. He never knew if it was him. It was all a mess of sound and sensation.

The curtains pressed hard against him. A sharp pain shot through his ribs, like a stitch when running. Something cold trickled down his hip. He felt his feet give way beneath him and his stomach roll. His hands grasped at the mud wall behind him, but there was no strength in his fingers. He felt the grit of the baked mud wall slip along his wet palms. The edges of his vision went grey, and then suddenly black and gone.

T
he howl of some desert animal woke him. He shivered and clutched his knees to his chest. Since Undergrowth, Norman had been terrified of wolves. The thought of being outdoors at night surrounded by desert predators filled him with an awful panic.

There was another long, desperate wail. It was answered by the high-pitched yaps and barks of nearby companions. What would they be—hyenas or wild dogs? Fear sharpened Norman’s senses and made him fully awake. It was late in the day. He could see the sun hovering over the dunes through the open flap of a tent. The sand glowed under the sunbeams, a deep, incandescent yellow. Norman blinked and saw purple spots from staring at it.

He was alone in the tent. Whoever had taken him clearly didn’t think he needed to be guarded very closely. He made to rise and had got halfway up when something yanked at his feet, sending him diving forward. He winced as he hit the ground. A sharp pain stabbed in his side and he started to remember.