The Kneebone Boy (24 page)

“Yeah, quite a bit. My parents never knew. They didn’t like us to see him. At first I used to go there with my brother and sister, but after a while I started to go on my own. They always stirred him up too much. He could stay calm and quiet if you knew how to talk to him. And since I was the only one who could get past the dragon, I snuck in pretty often. He liked to hear about the clever things Beezy did.”

“Was he really a monster?” Lucia blurted out.

“Do you mean was he covered with hair and did he have claws and bat ears?” Saint George responded drily.
He shook his head. “Charlie was no monster. He was just put together all wrong, poor sod. I reckon he looked very peculiar, but I never noticed much. He was good company.”

“Could he talk?” Lucia asked.

“Talk? No. Not like a regular person. He made sounds, the way an animal does, but we found a way to understand each other. Like the way you understand your brother here. He knew how to laugh though. I always wondered how he’d learned that. He didn’t ever have much to laugh about, spending his life hidden away so that the rest of us Kneebones could live as though everything were just fine. I only wish I’d taken him out to the woods. I always promised him I would one day.”

“Why didn’t you?” Lucia asked.

“The arrow suddenly went missing and I couldn’t get back into the passageway.” Saint George’s voice turned bitter. “I always suspected it was my brother and sister that did it out of spite. Threw it in the Abyss, did they? They were always jealous that I could get in on my own and they couldn’t.”

“What happened to Charlie?” Otto asked.

“He says, ‘What happened to Charlie?’ ” Lucia translated.

“Died,” Saint George answered simply. “At bloody seventeen years old. They all die young . . . The Kneebone Boys.”

“We’re sorry,” Lucia said.

“Ah,” he shrugged. “What can you do?” He adjusted
Twinkle’s breast collar. “Strange thing happened a few months ago though. When I was out hunting, I saw this little twist of fog. It was hovering, like, between the trees. When I moved, it followed me. It seemed as if it were trying to play a game with me, hiding behind trees then sweeping around rocks and flying up into the branches. It followed me for a good half hour. If I believed in ghosts, I would have sworn it was Charlie himself, finally free and doing just as he pleased.”

He scratched Twinkle’s neck beneath her mane. “Anyway, I still have old Beezy. She dresses up the shop window nicely. And at Christmas I put a crown on her head and string her full of lights.”

The Hardscrabbles nodded and pretended they didn’t find that at all creepy.

The ponies were ready and Saint George started for the funeral carriage, but Lucia said, “Do you think we might go in one of the other carriages?”

There was a brief argument among the Hardscrabbles over which carriage to take until Saint George told them to shut their gobs or he’d make them walk while he took the carriage himself. Then he hitched the ponies to the handsome black one with the blue velvet seats, which incidentally was the one Lucia had wanted in the first place. Saint George even dug out a plaid wool blanket from an old chest to put over their laps. It smelled a little like mouse droppings but never mind.

It was heaven to ride in the carriage! The sultan’s awful circumstances were not forgotten, but it was hard to feel
weepy while racing through the woods in the middle of the night, your legs warm, if itchy, from the wool blanket and the wind trying to force your eyelids shut. Lucia’s fingers traced the tiny square pillows quilted into the blue velvet seat and listened to the
creak-creak-creak
of the springs beneath. In a carriage, the night air feels exhilarating rather than just chilly, as it did when they were on foot, and the path was not long and dreary but breathtaking, especially as the carriage began to go downhill. Up front in the child-size driver’s seat, Saint George hulked low, putting so much weight at the head of the carriage that when the road started to dip, the carriage seemed on the verge of flipping over itself. The Hardscrabbles had to brace their backs against the seat to keep from slipping forward until Saint George finally reined in the ponies and they slowed to a walk.

“Saint George,” Lucia said, leaning forward when she suddenly thought of something. “Why did you tell me that it was The Kneebone Boy in the woods when you knew very well it wasn’t?”

There was a long pause, so long that Lucia thought he didn’t hear her. She was about to ask again, when he said, “Let’s just say there aren’t a lot of places in Snoring for wild critters to live, and a taxidermist needs wild critters.”

“Needs to slaughter them, you mean,” she said sharply.

“Whatever you like.” Saint George shrugged. “Unfortunately, these woods don’t belong to Kneebones anymore.”

“Oh. So you were poaching then?”

Saint George didn’t bother to answer her.

“Did you think telling us about The Kneebone Boy would scare us enough to keep out of your way?” Lucia asked.

“It would have if you lot were normal,” he said.

“Well, we’re not,” Lucia said and sat back against the seat. “Not at all.” It felt really good to say that, especially when other people had been saying that about them for so long.

The horses pulled into the clearing and Saint George brought them to a halt and jumped off the driver’s seat.

“Right,” he said. “Everyone out. If you don’t want to wake up the neighbourhood, we’d better leave the carriage here and walk the rest of the way.”

The horses were tied to a tree. Saint George and the Hardscrabbles cut across the stretch of meadow between Kneebone Castle and the folly. From their vantage point, they could only see the castle’s uppermost windows, all of which were black except for one in the northern corner. Lucia thought it might be the one in which she had spotted a man at his desk while she stood on the siege tower, but she couldn’t be sure. The ugly, misshapen castle had pulled up its drawbridge, like a great mouth that had slammed shut.
We have the sultan,
it seemed to say.
He’s in here, in us.

They crossed the folly’s drawbridge, noting with relief that Haddie’s bedroom light was still out. They slipped across the courtyard and into the folly as silently as possible. Max and Lucia went to the Great Hall with Saint George while Otto went down to the dungeon to fetch the arrow.

“So she’s kept the heads up, has she?” Saint George said, nodding at the mounted deer heads approvingly. “That’s my own handiwork.”

“She’s kept everything, I think,” Max said. “She makes us toasted cheese sandwiches in the pink toy oven.”

“Crazy American,” he said, shaking his head. But still he looked pleased. He walked up to the grandfather clock, wrapped his arms around it, and moved it easily off to the side, exposing the little door behind it. Just the sight of it made Lucia and Max take a step backwards. Kneeling down, Saint George rapped on the door lightly with his fingertips. “Remember me, old mate?” he said quietly.

The Great Hall door opened and Otto appeared clutching the arrow in one hand with Chester at his heels. At the sight of the arrow, Saint George stood up slowly. He held out his hand, his fingers beckoning impatiently. Otto handed the arrow to him. Saint George turned it in his hands, examining its white feather fletches and its golden tip.

“That’s her,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Good,” Lucia said. “Now we should get on with it, don’t you think? It’s nearly one o’clock.”

“Right,” Saint George said distractedly. Above the grandfather clock was the collection of archery bows. Reaching up, Saint George took one off its hook. He studied it, running his hand across the bow string, then put it back on the wall. He picked up another one and did the same thing. This one seemed like it would do. He walked back to the little door and crouched down.

“Stand back.”

He didn’t need to tell them that, incidentally.

He pressed the bone button and leapt backwards. The door flew open and instantly the dragon’s head emerged, whipping its neck round and spraying out flames. They missed Saint George by a finger’s width, he was that close. He must have known the exact limits of the dragon’s reach because he stood his ground unflinchingly. Lifting his bow, he pulled the arrow back, his body still and his eyes following the wild movements of the dragon’s head. But he didn’t shoot. He stood like this for a very long time, poised to release the arrow without actually releasing it.

Lucia bent her head toward Max and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. He just needs to wait for the right moment,” Max whispered back.

The very next second, the arrow was launched. It sliced through the air and pierced the dragon’s left eye with a sharp
tink
sound. The dragon shrieked. His head stopped whipping. It tipped up and its mouth belched a blast of fire before collapsing to the stone floor with a metallic crash.

“Oh, well done!” Lucia cried.

The Hardscrabbles walked up to the dragon and knelt beside it for a better look. It was made of thousands of tiny enameled metal scales, layered so that the head could bend easily. They pried open the jaws and saw a tiny metal pipe through which the fire had shot out. Its eyes, which had looked so alive and menacing just moments before,
were now still and blank. Doll’s eyes. The arrow was lodged snugly in its pupil, and as Max pulled it out, Lucia noticed a curious thing. The dragon’s pupils were jagged, like the tip of the arrow. Max saw it too, and he moved the arrow in and out of the eye a few times, studying how they fit together.

“It’s a key,” Max said.

Saint George was watching them, and now he stuck out his hand out. “Give it here.”

“Who made it?” Max asked, handing the arrow to him.

“My grandfather. Put in the dragon and built the secret passageway too. The man liked to make a game of everything. Came from growing up in the castle folly himself, I guess. Our father didn’t want us to have the arrow. He knew it was the key to the passageway, and to The Kneebone Boy’s room, and he didn’t like us to have anything to do with Charlie. But our grandfather slipped the arrow to us anyway.” He blew on the fletches. “Good to have it back.”

“So can we go now?” Lucia asked eagerly.

Saint George stared at them all very seriously.

“Yes, yes, we know. It’s no romp in a theme park,” Lucia said.

“You’ll manage the first part all right,” he said. “A straight shot down the tunnel, then across a bridge. You’ll have to be careful enough on the bridge, but the worst bit is after that. You’ve got to cross a ledge. You can’t walk it. It’s too narrow. You’ve got to cross it sideways, back to the wall. It’s a long drop to the bottom so don’t muck about.
You’ll come to an opening in the cliff. Go inside and you’ll find the stairs. Follow them up till you can’t go any further—”

“And that’s where you go through the fireplace,” Lucia interrupted impatiently. “We know. Mr. Pickering told us.”

“I still don’t like it,” Saint George said. “Your aunt should know what you’re going to do.”

“Maybe we
should
tell her,” Max said.

Otto said something. He had to repeat it, because no one had been looking at him.

“She already knows,” he said.

He pointed up at the coffered ceiling. Above their heads, streaming out of the helmet visor of a carved knight on horseback, was a shaft of light. Suddenly the light vanished and helmet visor went dark again.

“A spy hole,” Lucia said.

“Brilliant!” Max said.

“I always wondered how our tutor knew we stuffed his car keys in the stag’s ears,” Saint George said, staring up at the ceiling.

They heard soft footsteps above their heads, and when they died away with no sign of Haddie appearing, Lucia shrugged and said to Saint George, “There. You see. She knows, and she doesn’t mind.”

Saint George grabbed the dragon’s head and yanked it hard. Behind it, attached to the base of its neck, was yet another door, a bit smaller than the first one. It swung open revealing only a rectangle of blackness. The opening was so small that the Hardscrabbles had to get down on their hands
and knees to crawl in. Once they were through, though, they could stand up very comfortably. Otto switched on the torch and they found that they were indeed in a narrow tunnel made of rough-hewn stones that arced low, just a little above Otto’s head. It was chilly in the tunnel and the air smelled like no one had sniffed it in a very long time. Chester poked his head through the door, sneezed, and backed out into the Great Hall again. Maybe they should have taken that as a sign.

Otto shined the torch down the passage. It illuminated a long tunnel that gradually sloped downwards, stretching out so far that the beam of light faded before it could find a hint of an end. Lucia felt her heart beating in nervous little knocks. Since she was feeling fairly brave at the moment, she knew it was Otto’s fear that was doing the knocking.

“All right?” she said to him.

“I wish I were back in Little Tunks now,” he said.

“We’ll be there tomorrow,” Lucia replied, keeping her voice kind but firm. “And Little Tunks will be exactly the same as it was when we left it, and so will all the people there, but we won’t be. We’ll have done something heroic. We’ll have rescued a sultan. Think, Otto. We may never get the chance to do something heroic again.”