Black Queen (9 page)

“She certainly was a strange one,” my mother said. And that’s what everyone thought. I “kept mum”, as they say, and said nothing. It was our secret, Greg McInley’s and mine; and besides, I knew they wouldn’t believe me, not in a million years. Why should they? I had no proof.

A week later I answered the door to the postman. He had a parcel for us, he said. It was addressed to me. Somehow I knew at once that it was from
him
. I took it up to my room to unwrap it in private. It was his cardboard chess set. “
For my good friend Billy, with love from Greg McInley (and Rambo)
.” That was all it said, but it was enough. I was bursting to tell them. I came charging down the staircase and into the kitchen. I opened up the box and showed them. “That,” I declared proudly, “is Greg McInley’s chess set. He gave it to me.”

They laughed at me, of course. So I showed them the letter, and then told them the whole crazy story. From beginning to end. No-one said a word the whole way through, and after I’d finished they just gawped.

THE END

About the Author

Michael Morpurgo is one of Britain’s best-loved writers for children and has won many prizes, including the Whitbread Prize, the Red House Children’s Book Award and the Blue Peter Book Award. From 2003 to 2005 he was the Children’s Laureate, a role which took him all over the UK to promote literacy and reading, and in 2005 he was named the Booksellers Association Author of the Year. In 2007 he was writer in residence at the Savoy Hotel in London.

Also by Michael Morpurgo:

Tom’s Sausage Lion

The Last Wolf

Illustrated by Michael Foreman

The Silver Swan

Illustrated by Christian Birmingham

BLACK QUEEN
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 02574 0

Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company

This ebook edition published 2012

Copyright © Michael Morpurgo, 2000
Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross, 2000

First Published in Great Britain

Young Corgi 9780552546454 2000

The right of Michael Morpurgo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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