Bookweirder (34 page)

“No worries, old chap. The secret’s safe with me. There’s no such thing as a talking stoat. It was a ventriloquist’s trick.” He
winked egregiously. “Nobody believes our tales anyway. We’re like that mad old poacher chap with his time machine story.”

Norman allowed himself a weak smile. What more could he do? When you started to patch up books that you’d broken, you could never be perfect. You just had to do your best.

“Will we see you again?” Pippa asked, her voice thin with hope.

“Oh, I wouldn’t doubt it,” the stoat answered with a reassuring smile.

“Stranger things have happened,” Norman added. It was true. He had never thought that he’d see Malcolm again, but here they were together on a steam train in England. The train whistle sounded twice, as if to underline the strangeness of it all.

They stood at the window and waved till George and the Cooks were nothing but dots on the platform at Kestleton. Alone in the compartment, Norman and Malcolm found themselves strangely quieted. It wasn’t like the old days back in Undergrowth, when a victory was a victory. Boy and stoat could only think of everything they had left to do.

Norman rested his head against the train window, listening to the steel wheels clacking along the track. The rhythm began to make him drowsy. His eyes fell shut slowly, but he snapped them open before sleep took over completely.

“Okay,” he declared finally, as much to himself as to the stoat sitting across from him, “time to get to work.”

The stoat nodded solemnly. While Norman arranged the pens and paper, Malcolm changed out of his English gentleman’s costume into his more comfortable fighting clothes.

Norman stared at him in his cloak, his sword belted around his waist, and wondered if he’d made a mistake agreeing to let Malcolm join him.

“You’ll stay out of sight, right?” Norman asked again.

Malcolm winked. “Sure as stoats,” he replied firmly.

A boy raised by medieval monks might find a talking stoat perfectly believable, but Norman would prefer not to have to find out. He wondered once more if he shouldn’t just send Malcolm
back. They had his map. That would sort out at least one book.

The stoat eyed him suspiciously, perhaps guessing what he was thinking.

“I’m not letting you go back there alone, Strong Arm,” Malcolm insisted. “You’ll want someone who knows his way around a siege.” He paused, as if waiting for Norman to protest. “You’ll want someone with a sharp eye and a quiver full of arrows, too, I’ll bet.”

Norman couldn’t suppress a smile. That was the heart of it. It was easier to face danger with a friend.

Malcolm unfurled a stack of papers from their hiding place inside his quiver. Norman separated the blank sheets from the Undergrowth map and the tattered scroll that was the remains of the king’s letter to Sir Hugh. He handed these treasures back to Malcolm to conceal again. From his own blazer pocket he removed George Kelmsworth’s copy of
A Secret in the Library.

“There’s a description of Jerome’s library in chapter 2. The second paragraph here should do it.”

A breeze through the window lifted the pages of the open book, revealing the blurred pages at the end. Reminded of what was at stake, Malcolm and Norman exchanged a determined glance.

The stoat paused for a second. There was something he’d meant to tell Norman about the book, something he had read that night while Norman was away, something about Jerome’s father.

Norman interrupted his thoughts. “Let’s get at it, then,” he said.

Malcolm decided it could wait. They both took up their pens and started the tedious work of Malcolm’s scriptorium
ingresso
.

With their heads bent copying, they did not notice the landscape go by. They didn’t even glance up as trains whooshed in the other direction, even when they carried carriages full of American infantrymen going off to their debarkation points and on to join their war. Malcolm and Norman were focused on their own debarkation and the war that loomed for them outside a desert fortress in a nearly forgotten book.