Alex Bell - Fighting with fire

I, Nathaniel East, here doth claim,

That all who try to slur my mortal name,

Will fail and fail, again, again,

For I have not hidden it in vain.

The second read:

Time will tell, as time does well,

What will change, what stays the same,

Who will triumph, who will fall,

For I have seen it all before.

And, finally, the third:

Plantagenet shall guard the sword in a fond embrace,

Until the cowboy king shall take it from its rightful place.

For noble cause in a heroic race.

Much danger, peril, death, all else do risk,

If they wouldst try and take it with the kitchen whisk.

Lex had heard of the windows before. Most people thought they were a riddle, telling where the sword was hidden. Lex accepted it looked that way but, after all, Nathaniel East had only hidden the sword once he realised his house was being ambushed by a gang of outlaws. If these windows had been put in when the house was originally being built, then he couldn’t possibly have known that was going to happen. Some sources suggested that Nathaniel East had believed he could see the future. But, just because the nut believed it, it didn’t mean it was true.

Even so, there was no denying that the poems on the window certainly seemed to point towards the hiding place of the sword. Lex wrote the verses down in his notebook next to the map he was sketching. There had been various different interpretations of the riddle. The obvious one for the ‘cowboy king’ was a cowboy who was tougher, meaner and stronger than all the rest, which didn’t hold well for Lex if Nathaniel’s prediction was true since he was, in fact, a completely fake cowboy. Underneath the act, he was no more a real cowboy than he was a duck-billed platypus.

But he noted the riddle down, anyway. He already knew who Plantagenet was, for the book had stated that this was the name of the giant fox. Unfortunately, knowing this did not help Lex much, for the simple fact that the fox motif was literally everywhere in the house. Finding the right fox did not narrow down potential hiding places by much, if at all.

Lex opened the book again, hoping for more information that might furnish some further clue. He skimmed through the relevant section and learnt that Nathaniel had believed this Plantagenet to be what he called a ‘dream-fox’. Lex rolled his eyes, for doubtless this meant that Nathaniel had only ever seen Plantagenet when he’d been asleep, and yet the mad old fool hadn’t had the sense to realise that this meant the giant fox wasn’t real at all, but merely a product of his own loopy mind. In addition, Nathaniel noted how Plantagenet always came to see him at the same time: thirteen o’clock. Lex narrowed his eyes at this. Thirteen o’clock? the witching hour. If there ever were such a thing as a dream-fox, then thirteen o’clock would be the time it would come. It certainly explained why the number thirteen appeared so often within the house. Could it actually be that a giant fox really had -

Lex shook his head, impatient with himself. If he didn’t watch out, he’d end up as nutty as Nathaniel. He’d never heard of a dream-fox before? never in all the books he’d read. And Lex was very well read.

He went on, past staircases that led up into ceilings and windows set into the floor. At one point, the entire floor was made out of glass. It looked directly down on to the umbrella room. Lex could tell because he could see the umbrellas? all of different colours? opened out beneath his feet.

He spent a few minutes in the entrance hall examining the paintings there. He noted that the one with Nathaniel having tea with a giant fox was entitled, Taking Tea With Plantagenet. Not only that, but the fox appeared in several other paintings, too, usually in the background and sometimes partially obscured. One painting of Nathaniel showed him serenely strolling, stick in hand, through a battlefield. An ancient battlefield from the looks of things because the warriors all seemed to be half naked, and wielding bows and arrows. Indeed, even Nathaniel’s top hat had an arrow sticking through it. And there, at the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, was a fox’s tail, only just visible.

In another painting, Nathaniel stood, balancing on one leg, in a river, surrounded by pink flamingos. He had his umbrella up, despite the fact that it wasn’t raining. And on the nearby bank, peering through a bush, was what looked suspiciously like a giant fox in a waistcoat.

Lex spotted the fox in a few more paintings but it was always partially hidden or obscure. The teatime one was the only one that showed him clearly. Clear enough to see that he couldn’t possibly be real.

Lex moved on to the fourth floor. At one point, he opened a door and almost went through it before realising? just in time? that there was no floor beyond? just a sheer drop to the courtyard below. Later on, he came across a sort of games room that might have been fun were it not for the fact that all the balls on the snooker table, and all the chessmen on the chess table, were nailed firmly in place.

He did not come across another person during his explorations. The cowboys staying in the house were all either asleep or still down in the bar. But, in actual fact, Lex could have easily got away with wandering about the house, even as Sid the Kid, for it was just so easy to get lost, which was probably why the other cowboys stuck to the bar and the bedrooms rather than attempting to navigate the rest of this madhouse.

As Lex went on, he began to feel a little disheartened, for the house was just so big. It had taken years to build and it would take years to search. Jesse had been here on four separate occasions looking for the sword and had no luck. Hundreds had attempted the task before him but with no success. Lex had only four days before the third round began. Four days to do what everyone before him had failed to do.

He had an excellent sense of direction but, when he started trying to make his way back to his bedroom, he found it extremely difficult, even with the map he’d drawn. The problem was that most of the rooms had doors leading to several other rooms. It was not simply a case of one room following on from another in a logical order.

At one point, he came across a room that was full of doors. There was a grand total of twenty, set around the walls. Lex opened every single one of them, sure that many must lead to the same room. One door led nowhere: when Lex opened it, there was just a brick wall behind it. And another led to a room so small there was no way any human would ever be able to get into it. But the other eighteen doors all led to different rooms. How was that even possible? Surely there should not be enough space for them all. Granted, they were all narrow rooms but even so…

Lex felt a mounting sense of frustration. The house was too big and there was no logic to it. He could be the cleverest person in the world and still be unable to crack the riddle on the stained-glass windows. Trying to unravel the messed-up mind of a madman was like trying to untangle a never-ending ball of string.

Still, there was nothing for it but to forge on. Lex spent most of that night exploring the house. In fact, due to the fact that he got hopelessly lost, he was later back to his room than he’d intended, and only fell into his hammock a bare hour before the sun began to rise.

The next two days were a tiresome, irksome business for Lex. His time was split between playing Jesse’s pet monkey for the entertainment of the other cowboys down in the bar, and searching for the sword at night. It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. If Lex had had a proper riddle to work with, he would have cracked it already by now, but all he had to go on was a madman’s drivel that might not even hold the answer at all.