The Kneebone Boy (22 page)

“All right, fun’s over. Off to bed,” she said. They weren’t sorry to go. They were fairly bursting to talk to one another in the privacy of the dungeon about what they had learned. Lucia turned back once, only to see Haddie pacing the battlement, her hands shoved in the pockets of her jeans and her eyes fixed on the ground below. Much like a sentry who suspects that a siege is imminent.

“Do you think it could be the same Dr. Azziz who murdered the sultan’s family?” Otto asked once they were in the dungeon.

“I think it is
exactly
the same Dr. Azziz,” Lucia replied fiercely. She was walking around the perimeter of the dungeon wall, while her brothers were sitting on Otto’s bed. She couldn’t remain still; her thoughts were tumbling over themselves. Every so often the rat popped out of the wall and skittered across the floor, but Lucia stepped over it and kept walking.

“It might just be a coincidence,” Max said. “And another thing . . . we must have been wrong about The Kneebone Boy. He wouldn’t still be here if all the Kneebones left years ago.”

“We
were
totally wrong about The Kneebone Boy,” Lucia said, stopping and facing her brothers.

Now she could tell her story. Timing is everything, as they say.

Instead of making fun of her for having seen the sultan, Otto and Max listened carefully. After she had finished they said nothing for a good three minutes as they tried to imagine what it all meant.

“Then you think Dr. Azziz has been keeping the sultan in the tower?” Max asked Lucia.

“I’m one hundred percent sure of it,” Lucia replied.

Actually, she was only about 87 percent sure of it, but try saying you are 87 percent sure of something with conviction. You can’t.

Max nodded. “That’s quite a common strategy, the most famous of course being Richard the Third, who imprisoned the two young heirs to the throne in the Tower of London and then had them murdered.”

“Imagine what might have happened if we hadn’t—”

“Think what Dad will say when he sees him—”

They each climbed into bed and said good night to one another, and pretended to be falling sleep. Instead, they were all busy thinking.

Here is some of what Otto thought:

I wonder what happened to The Kneebone Boy.

The sultan can take my bed and I’ll bring up the spare mattress from the basement.

I once read about an albino peacock.

My neck itches.

I hear those dogs barking again.

Now Max:

I wonder if the sultan likes rooftops. I know he likes treetops. He’ll probably like rooftops.

I wonder if Haddie likes rooftops. Will Haddie come home with us as well? She will. She has to.

She doesn’t smell of mountain mint gum. She smells of peanut butter.

I shouldn’t have called Otto a monster. Now I feel especially rotten after what he said about Mum and the scarf. Not that I ever believed the story about him strangling her with it. Not really.

Funny thing about the Abyss . . . (he is thinking deeply and importantly about something now, but I won’t tell you what it is because it will spoil things later.)

Why are those dogs barking like that?

And finally Lucia:

If the sultan sees the sketch of himself on my bedroom wall, will he think I fancy him? I mean I do, but not like I fancy Mr. Dupuis.

I can’t believe I said that.

No, I don’t.

Yes, I do.

It’s different with the sultan though.

Otto is scratching at something. He probably got a rash from the woods.

How strange about the scarf! Why didn’t Mum leave a scarf for me as well?

When Dad comes here, I’ll investigate his face at the very moment he sets eyes on Haddie. That will show whether or not she is Mum. If she is, he’ll smile from the right side of his mouth. His left side is for when he thinks you’re being ridiculous.

Oh, for heaven’s sake, when will those dogs shut up?

The barking had become increasingly frantic, rising and falling in pitch but never ceasing. Chester leapt off Otto’s bed and sat below the window far above, his silky black ears tuning this way and that.

“Cor, it sounds like there’s a dozen of them!” Max said out loud.

“It sounds like they’ve caught something,” Lucia said. Then a second later she sat up in bed and cried out, “No!”

Jumping out of bed, she began to pull on her trainers. “The sultan! They must have sent dogs after him! Come on, come on, we can’t let them catch him!”

Otto and Max leapt out of bed and in no time the Hardscrabbles had jammed on their trainers, not bothering with socks, and straightaway rushed out of the dungeon, still dressed in their Snoring-by-the-Sea pyjamas. Well, not
perfectly straightaway. There was a hasty discussion about bringing Chester, but they decided it was too risky because of the dogs, so they shut him in the dungeon, though they hated to do it. They ran up the stairs and wound their way around the hallways, backtracking once to grab a torch that hung on a hook, and finally emerged outside in the courtyard. A brisk wind fluttered their pyjama tops and crept up underneath, chilling them to their armpits. Outside, the noise of the dogs baying sounded closer than before. They could hear voices as well—too distant to make out the words, but the voices sounded urgent and excited. It made the Hardscrabbles’ hearts quicken and they ran even faster, across the grassy courtyard and over the drawbridge, which thankfully was already lowered.

The moment they entered the woods, instinct made them slow down. The night was so black it was almost shadowless. They picked their way along carefully, shining the torch on the ground and heading in the direction of the twin birches. They hadn’t gone far when the barking tapered off, then stopped altogether. In its place came a cry that brought them to a standstill—a human cry so full of anguish that all the Hardscrabbles clamped their hands over their mouths, as though they were trying to stop that horrible sound from entering their own bodies.

“They caught him,” Otto said. Although his hands were barely visible in the darkness, Lucia and Max understood.

Soon there was the sound of approaching voices and the loud, brash footsteps of people who didn’t care if they
were heard. The Hardscrabbles ducked behind a thicket and crouched low. They watched in silence, holding their breaths when they saw the black outline of dogs attached to leads. To be honest, there weren’t a dozen dogs, as they’d imagined. There were only two. But they were really large. Then came the men holding the leads, and two others. In the midst of them, surrounded on all sides, was the small, slender figure of the sultan.

One of the dogs lifted his nose in the Hardscrabbles’ direction and let out a sharp bark, but the man who held his lead yanked it hard to quiet him.

If you’re expecting the Hardscrabbles to do something brave at this point, you’ll be disappointed. Remember that this is a true story with true kids who would no more have ambushed those men than you would. Anyway, it would have been a silly thing to do. They would have been instantly clobbered and we would never get to the most exciting bits that are coming quite soon.

(Mr. Dupuis says it is a cheap trick for an author to promise that exciting things are about to happen. He says it is the mark of an insecure writer who is afraid that readers might put the book down. He’s wrong in this case though. I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I’m dead positive that you won’t put this book down now, since you’ve read through some boring parts during which you might have, and anyway you’re not stupid enough to stop reading right when we are about to sneak into Kneebone Castle.)

(Mr. Dupuis says I shouldn’t bully readers by calling them stupid.)

(I’m not saying you
are
stupid though. Just if you put the book down.)

“I’ve been thinking,” Max said when the men disappeared once again into the darkness.

Lucia and Otto turned to him eagerly. They had not been thinking. They had only been feeling awful.

“I’ve been thinking about the dragon in the Great Hall,” Max said.

“Well, that’s useless,” Lucia said.

“And how, in stories, dragons are always guarding something important,” Max continued, ignoring her. “Like piles of gold or a kidnapped princess. I’ll bet that door behind the grandfather clock is the secret passageway—the one that the Dusty Old Children used in order to visit The Kneebone Boy—and that’s why the dragon is guarding it.”

Lucia and Otto considered this.

“Still perfectly useless,” Lucia decided, “unless you want to barbeque yourself.”

“But the Dusty Old Children got in,” Otto said to her.

“Exactly,” said Max. “And I think I know how they did it.”

They waited for to him to tell them.

“Are you going to tell us?” Lucia said after a few moments.

“It’s just an educated guess. I’ll tell you when I’m sure.”

“That’s not fair,” Lucia said.

“You did the same thing when you thought you saw the sultan,” Max said. He stood up and wiped soil off his shins. “Right. I’m going to town.”

“What? Now?” Lucia said.

“Has to be now. We’re leaving tomorrow so we have to rescue the sultan tonight.” He started walking. “You two go back to the folly. I’ll be there later.”

“You’re going to walk through the woods in the middle of the night by yourself?” Lucia said.

“I don’t mind,” Max said.

So Lucia and Otto were forced to not mind either. That was how they found themselves picking their way through the woods, going who knows where, to do who knows what, dressed in pyjamas with lavender hippos on their bums.

If there are illustrations in this book, I’d prefer that this last part not be shown.

In which Max’s educated guess had better be right or else Lucia and Otto are going to throttle him

The whole way to town, the Hardscrabbles’ arms and legs were tortured by thistles and scratched by bushes and poked in rude places by branches. There were many outbursts of “Ouch bloody ouch!” and “That nearly took out my eye!” and once, “A snake went down my shirt . . . a snake went down my shirt . . .
a snake went down my shirt!!
”

I won’t tell you who screamed that last thing.

But you’d think someone who was supposedly so intelligent could tell the difference between a snake and an acorn.

By the time they arrived in town, they had leaves in their hair and scratches all over their legs, some of which were bleeding. They walked down the streets hoping no one would be out, but wouldn’t you know it, a car suddenly pulled up to the curb just ahead of them, its radio pounding
out music. The engine and the music stopped. The doors were flung open and six loud teenagers piled out.

“Oh crap,” Lucia whispered. The last people you want to run into when you are walking around in public dressed in matching pyjamas are teenagers. The Hardscrabbles looked around for a hiding place and saw a chunky hedge that might do, but before they could duck behind it, the teenagers spotted them.

“Hello, what’s this?” one of them said. “The plonker triplets?”

They all found this hysterically funny, slapping one another on the backs and saying, “Good one, yeah?” They hooted and laughed and staggered around like a pack of drunken idiots as the Hardscrabbles walked by.

If I ever become like this when I am a teenager, I hope someone smothers me in my sleep.

Eventually, the Hardscrabbles came to Saint George’s Taxidermy & Curiosities shop. Much to Lucia’s horror, Max went right up to the door and knocked on it.

“You can’t be serious?” she cried.

He ignored her as he stood on tiptoes and tried to peer through the window on the door. “I think I see him way in the back.” He knocked again more loudly.

“What’s he doing? Torturing hamsters?” Lucia asked.

Max suddenly took a few steps back from the door, clasped his hands behind his back, and waited at attention.

A lock clicked and the door opened. Lucia had the distinct impression that Saint George may have heard that last part. He appeared at the doorway, black apron on, and
half a dozen marbles cupped in one hand. His face was pinched with annoyance as he looked them over, taking in their state of dress and the snaky dried trickles of blood on their legs.