Lionboy (30 page)

King Boris seemed to understand. “Let’s have a look at the menu for lunch,” he said, and called Edward.

The menu was on thick white card, printed in gold lettering: oysters and turtle soup, capons and saddle of venison, lobsters in aspic, ice cream served in miniature railway cars made of marzipan and nougat. Charlie stared. He didn’t want to eat a saddle, didn’t know what a capon or aspic was, wasn’t at all sure about turtle soup . . .

“I’ll order all of it, and you can try what you like,” said King Boris kindly. “And saddle doesn’t mean the saddle, it means the bit that the saddle would go on.”

Charlie didn’t know what a venison was either.

“Deer,” said King Boris.

Oh dear. “What’s a capon then?”

“A kind of chicken,” said the king.

Then, as Charlie was thinking that a kind of chicken was better than saddles and deer, he noticed that, though it was snug and warm within—with the fireplace and the backgammon and the promise of an exotic lunch—outside it had begun to snow.

The lions! He had forgotten all about the lions! In a moment, his sluggish mood of comfort slid off him. How could he have been so selfish?

CHAPTER 20

A
aahhhh,” Charlie said. “I should stretch my legs a bit.”

“Good idea,” said the king. “Stretch mine while you’re at it! Lunch won’t be for a while anyway. Don’t go beyond my cars, will you? See you later.”

The king took up his newspaper again, and Charlie scurried back to the second car, with its little corridor off of which were the bathroom, his little compartment, and the others. (The king had a grand bedroom at the other end of the main car.)

How could he get out onto the roof? Those poor creatures. But he wasn’t going to waste time feeling bad. He must take them water, food, and blankets. Swiftly he stripped his bed and grabbed the towels, and put them in a pile so they would be handy when he had found a way up. Then he put on all of the clothes he had with him, including his gloves, and tied his scarf around his face.

He thought hard.

Maintenance ladders! The luggage car had one, so maybe the other cars would too. He went to the far end, to the door connecting the king’s car to the rest of the train. The guard wasn’t there at the moment, but the door was locked. It was very thoroughly locked, actually. Against assassins, Charlie supposed.

How about the other end then? The luggage car was the next along, toward the head of the train. But that was through King Boris’s bedroom . . .

So how else might one get onto a roof?

Trapdoors? He surveyed the ceilings of the corridor and his own compartment looking for one. He dared not look in any of the other compartments—the huge man must be somewhere, and Charlie didn’t like the idea of disturbing him. Or Edward.

At first Charlie thought he was having no luck, but then, in the bathroom, he realized that the ornamental panel above the tiny bathtub was, in fact, on hinges, and that—yes!—those were bolts along the side. He clambered into the bath, and by standing carefully on the edges, he was able to reach. He pulled the bolts back—they slid easily—and pushed hard to lift the trapdoor, which was extremely heavy.

Trapdoors in train roofs are not designed to be opened while the train is racing along through a snowstorm. Charlie had to push hard, banging and straining. But he was a strong boy, made stronger by his time with the circus. Finally he managed to get the door to lift—then the wind rushed in through the gap, and violently, suddenly, lifted the trapdoor and slammed it open.

First, a pile of cold, wet snow fell in on Charlie’s head. The wind hurtled around the bathroom like a tornado, flapping the curtains and throwing the towels on the floor. Charlie hissed through his teeth, put one hand on each side of the trapdoor’s frame, and pulled himself up. In a moment he was lying half in and half out, his legs dangling and his face burning from the bite of the wind.

Outside was like a different world. The cold nearly took his head off. He had to lie as flat as he could because of the speed of the train. Holding on tight and sheltering his eyes, he could see that there was a sort of channel down the middle of the train’s roof that was slightly sheltered. That’s where the lions would be. But he couldn’t see them.

Oh well, of course he couldn’t see them! They weren’t on this roof, they were on the next but one, the luggage car. He was going to have to go and fetch them—traveling against the wind rushing over the train. Narrowing his eyes, Charlie looked up ahead, and he didn’t like the look of this challenge at all.

Pulling his jacket around him, trying to tuck his pants farther into his boots, he lay along the top of the train and wriggled himself into the channel. It was better in there—quieter for one thing, and with less wind against him for another—but it was still extremely uncomfortable. He’d heard tales of how flesh can stick to freezing metal. He hoped it wasn’t that cold.

Flat on his stomach against the cold metal, Charlie shimmied himself along the train. As he went, he began to get scared. Physical discomfort can do that sometimes—the worse your body feels, the worse your mind feels. It’s hard to be brave when you’re cold or hungry or tired. But Charlie, though cold, had slept the previous night in a cozy bed, and he was full of toast and strawberry jam. So as he pushed through the wildly eddying snowflakes, working his way along, he was thinking only about his friends, and how to help them.

When he found them, he was horribly afraid it might be too late. They were lying in a pile, bedraggled and shivering. They were wet, and if a lion could look pale, they looked pale. Their ears were down flat, their whiskers limp. The snowflakes falling onto their golden sides weren’t even melting. They looked terrible. Charlie was furious with himself, and his fury gave him energy.

How could he have left them out there all night? They relied on him and he had let them down. How stupid. How stupid of him.

One of them seemed to be better off than the others. It was the new creature who had joined them last night in Paris. He was talking to the lions in a low voice, and though Charlie couldn’t work out what he was saying, it sounded comforting and strong. He was in the middle of them all, so that the smaller creatures were sharing the warmth of his bigger body.

Charlie crawled over to them, cursing himself, and gently called out to them, but they couldn’t hear him over the sound of the train. He stretched out his arm and stroked the nearest flank—one of the lionesses, he thought.

“Lions, lions!” he called. “Come on! I’m here! Come with me, we’ll warm you up, come on, we can go inside the train! Come on! Come on! Young lion! Elsina! Come on!”

He patted desperately at the flank, and even thought about taking hold of the beautiful paw, and pulling it, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to. Instead he clambered farther along, and sort of lay among them, wriggling and stroking and patting and talking. “Come on, come on!” he said.

The new creature joined in, and gradually the lions came to themselves and realized that Charlie was with them. They began to move.

Getting the poor creatures back along the train’s rooftop to safety and warmth was one of the worst experiences of Charlie’s life. He was so scared that they had become too weak, that they might lose their footing and roll off the train to the speeding land below. He was scared they might stick to the metal or slip on the snow. He was terrified when they had to pass over the gap between one rattling car and another, scarier than the gap between the circus ship and the shore when they had fled the
Circe
. He was scared as well that even if he got them back to the bathroom, they would be so ill that he might not be able to make them better. And even if he did make them better, how could he possibly keep them from the King of Bulgaria?

“One thing at a time,” he said sensibly, and he repeated it over and over. “Just let’s get them inside. Let’s get you inside.” He sounded like a mother. That idea cheered him up just a little bit, because it was so absurd: him being mother to all these lions. He laughed, and the laughter made him feel a tiny bit warmer. Jokes at the worst moment are good. Even feeble jokes like that.

The snow swirled and danced furiously around them, whooshing over their heads as the train snaked through the storm and the wind whistled past.

“One thing at a time,” he murmured. At least they were going with the wind now.

There was the trapdoor ahead of him.

He almost pushed the lions through, and they landed in a big pile, filling up first the bathtub and then the whole room. Charlie clambered through last, pulling the trapdoor behind him—and that wasn’t easy either. While he’d been out on the roof the bathroom had been filling up with cold, crunchy snow that had whistled in, and was now starting to melt in drips and lumps. Outside, the snow was beginning to cover the low slopes of the Alpine foothills.

Charlie was more relieved than he had ever been in his life to have everybody in out of the storm.

But there was work to be done. As quietly as he could, he swept the melting snow into the sink, and ran warm water on top of it so the steam would warm up the room even more. He rubbed the lions down with the towels, and checked their paws and ears for signs of frostbite.

“Don’t go to sleep!” he said, and set them to examining each other to keep them busy. He’d read somewhere that if you go to sleep when you’re that cold, you can die. “Keep moving around! Don’t go to sleep till you’re warm!” he hissed. “And keep quiet!”

He gave them some meat. That perked them up a bit. What else could he do for them?

Mum’s Improve Everything Lotion! He still had it in his bag, from the day he had left home. During his time with the circus he hadn’t ever had to use it. He knew it was just for emergencies—but this, for sure, was an emergency.

He gave them each a couple of drops: more than a person would have, because lions are much bigger than people. More for the huge new creature and the oldest lion, less for the young lion, the lionesses, and Elsina.

“That’ll help,” he murmured to himself. “They’ll feel better soon.” The strange new creature looked at Charlie with his large, sad eyes, as if taking him in.

They were all more or less all right—cold and tired, stiff and hungry, but they would be all right.

Oh lord, thought Charlie. What on earth am I going to do now?

 

What happened next was not up to Charlie.

The Orient Express suddenly stopped rattling. It drew to a halt. Charlie and the lions looked at one another, looked around, shrugged, and the lions continued to rasp at the meat with their hungry, sharp-surfaced tongues.

Charlie went to the window, clambering over the lions, and peered out. Snow everywhere—soft and white and beautiful, swirling and circling and filling up all the space beyond the glass. How calm it looked in its silent dance. How different watching it through glass was to being out in it! After a while the lions began to snooze and Charlie, sitting in the steamy bathroom with their breath adding a musky scent to the steaminess, realized that the snow level was beginning to creep up the sides of the train. Ice half-covered the windows the way the water had half-covered the portholes on the middle deck of the
Circe
. With the engine no longer chuntering and the wheels no longer rattling and singing beneath them, it was extraordinarily quiet. Snow muffles sound, Charlie knew. And things always sound quieter when a loud noise has stopped. But even so—it was extraordinarily quiet.

He supposed they were stuck. Too much snow on the tracks or something.

How long could he keep the lions concealed? How much more of a problem was this going to be?

One of the lionesses snuffled. The young lion, piled in the tub with Elsina, opened an eye, and looked at Charlie.

“Thank you, friend,” he said in a very low voice roughened by his hard cold night on the roof.

Charlie wondered for a moment if he was being sarcastic. He must have realized that Charlie had neglected them for hours and hours. But he wasn’t—he was genuinely grateful.

“It turned cold very quickly,” said the lion. “It is good that you came when you did. If it hadn’t been for”—here he gestured at the creature—“I don’t know what would have happened. Thank you for not forgetting us.”

Charlie felt awful because he had forgotten them. Blinking, he flung his arms around the lion’s neck. “I am so glad you’re safe,” he said. “Safe for now.”

“Why only for now?” asked the young lion, fear coming into his eyes. “Is there more danger here? Should we—”

Charlie calmed him. “No immediate danger,” he said. “But this bathroom belongs to somebody who may want to use it . . . We must be very quiet.”

He had locked the door, but who knows how long it would be before Edward or one of the guards would want to use the room. Should he try to move the lions to the cabin where he had slept? No—he couldn’t risk their being seen.