Jenny Nimmo - Charlie Bone and the Red Knight

‘The window. Close the window.’ This time the voice was louder. The seaweedy smell from outside mingled with the fishy stench that Dagbert sometimes gave off.

Charlie held his nose and lay still.

‘CLOSE THE WINDOW!’

The shout woke half the dormitory. Some of the boys yawned sleepily and turned over, but Bragger Braine, the bully of the second year, sat up and grunted, ‘Who said that?’

‘I did,’ Dagbert answered in an aggrieved tone. ‘Charlie opened the window and he won’t close it.’

‘Close the window, Charlie Bone,’ Bragger commanded.

His ardent follower, Rupert Small, echoed his words in a thin reedy voice. ‘Close the window, Charlie Bone.’

Charlie held his breath. He was determined not to obey Bragger Braine or his pathetic crony.

‘CLOSE THE WINDOW!’ shouted Dagbert.

This shout woke Fidelio Gunn in the bed next to Charlie. ‘Stop bellowing, Fish-boy!’ he cried, punching his pillow into shape. ‘Let normal people get some sleep.’

For a few seconds silence reigned. Charlie smiled to himself in the dark and whispered, ‘Well done, Fido!’

The whisper irritated Bragger. If his bed had been beside Charlie’s he would have thumped him. But they were half a dormitory apart and a day of thumping other people and starring on the football pitch had exhausted Bragger. He just wanted to go to sleep. The next time Dagbert repeated his demand, Bragger said, ‘Close it yourself, Fish-boy!’

Charlie waited for Dagbert to slip out of bed and close the window, but the fish-boy didn’t move. Soon the room was filled with the soft rhythmic breathing of heavy sleepers. Charlie turned over and closed his eyes.

Minutes passed. Try as he might, Charlie couldn’t sleep. A soft light insisted on creeping through his eyelids. He half-opened one eye. A bluish glow was spreading across the walls; a luminous rippling gleam, like the water in a swimming pool. Charlie screwed his eyes tight shut, trying to wish away the eerie light. This was what happened when Dagbert was nervous or excited. Perhaps he sensed Lord Grimwald’s arrival. Charlie knew that Dagbert was afraid of his father; they seldom saw each other, for Lord Grimwald rarely left his gloomy castle in the Northern Isles.

At the far end of Charlie’s row a bed creaked, and he heard quick footfalls on the bare floorboards. Someone slammed the window shut but no one woke up. Charlie curled himself up and began to drift into sleep. And then something heavy sank on to his bed, just below his knees, and a voice whispered, ‘Charlie, are you awake?’

No. I am asleep, Charlie told himself. He didn’t stir.

‘Charlie, wake up.’

He could have remained as he was, motionless, his eyes closed, but sudden anger made Charlie sit up and whisper harshly, ‘What is it?’

‘My father’s here,’ said Dagbert, his quiet voice husky and urgent. ‘I can smell him.’

‘And I can smell you,’ Charlie grunted. ‘Get off my bed.’

‘Charlie, I think I might need your help.’

‘What?’ Charlie exclaimed. ‘ Me help you , after you drowned my friend?’

‘It was an accident.’ Dagbert’s whisper became a low whine. ‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Oh, you meant to, all right,’ Charlie growled. ‘Emma Tolly saw everything. Now get off my bed.’ He kicked Dagbert in the back.

Dagbert stood up, but he didn’t move from Charlie’s side. Charlie could see his rigid form silhouetted against the glimmering blue-green wall. At last a soft grumble of words came tumbling from Dagbert. ‘You know our secret, our family curse. You know that my destiny is to die in my thirteenth year – unless my father dies before me. It has to be one of us, and now he’s here, unexpectedly, in the night, and I am twelve, Charlie. So what’s going to happen? Find out for me, please. No one else is like you, Charlie. No one else would do it.’

‘Do it yourself,’ muttered Charlie. Turning his back on Dagbert, he wriggled under the bedclothes.

Seconds passed before Dagbert said dully, ‘I’m afraid.’

‘Too bad,’ Charlie replied.

‘But I want to know why my father’s here.’

‘Well, I don’t. Not interested.’ Charlie pulled the bedclothes over his head. He waited for Dagbert’s response, but none came. Before falling asleep, Charlie opened his eyes briefly and found that the dormitory was in darkness again. Hopefully Dagbert had gone back to bed.

Charlie hadn’t been quite truthful with Dagbert. He was interested in Lord Grimwald’s arrival. In fact, he was very curious about everything that he had seen from the window that night. He just wasn’t quite curious enough to risk being caught by some of the school’s unpleasant-looking visitors.

In a dark passage leading off the great hall, two highly polished ancient doors opened into a magnificent, but seldom used, ballroom. Tonight the ballroom had been filled with chairs, and Ezekiel Bloor’s visitors sat in rows beneath four glittering chandeliers. The brilliant light reflected in the crystals was rather disconcerting to some of Ezekiel’s unwholesome-looking guests. They were people who were happier in shadow: thieves, poisoners, fraudsters, kidnappers, swindlers and even murderers. Most of them lived in Piminy Street, a narrow road in the ancient part of the city. Once it had been inhabited by magicians, sorcerers, warlocks and the like. Indeed, among the villains seated in the ballroom that night, there were those who had inherited the talents of their notorious ancestors. Prominent among them was a clairvoyant named Dolores Slingshot, so named because of her deadly accuracy with a catapult. Dolores was eighty years old and wore a wig of claret-coloured ringlets.

In a corner at the back of the room stood a huge white cube. Even in a corner it seemed to dominate the room. Everyone who entered eyed the cube with surprise and curiosity. As well they might, for it was hard to understand how the great white square had managed to get itself down the narrow passage outside. In fact, it hadn’t. Weedon had been forced to open up the disused doors at the side of the ballroom and push the cube (with the help of four removal men) through the garden and into the room. The whole process had been extremely difficult and exhausting. Even Weedon didn’t know what lay beneath the cladding. The visitors wondered if they were about to find out.

The last person but two to arrive was a sickly-looking arsonist called Amos Byrne. When he had taken his place, Weedon closed the doors and all eyes turned to the stage.

The grand piano had been pushed to the back and in its place stood an oval table covered with a purple cloth. At one end of the table an ancient man in a wheelchair sat grinning at the audience. Ezekiel Bloor’s white, waxy hair framed a face so gaunt and bony it looked more like a skull than the face of a living person. Next to him, and not smiling at all, his great-grandson, Manfred, sat slightly turned from his neighbour, an ashen-faced woman with strands of grey hair and a nose as blue as a bruise.

At the other end of the table, the headmaster, Dr Harold Bloor, was in the middle of a long, extremely boring speech when another guest arrived. He was a well-muscled man wearing only a string vest and camouflage trousers. He took a chair at the back, twirled it in one hand and brought it to rest with a loud bang. The headmaster glared at the latecomer and then resumed his speech. It went on for another ten minutes before grinding to a halt, and those of the audience who hadn’t fallen asleep were able to applaud.

The applause didn’t go on for as long as the headmaster would have liked, however, because the doors suddenly crashed open and a strong salty smell wafted into the room, followed by a large man.