Charlie Bone and the Hidden King (Children of the Red King)

  ‘I heard police sirens,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Yes. Someone tried to break into Ingledew’s. They were after the diaries. We think it was the shadow.’

  ‘Oh, wow! Was anyone hurt? Is Emma OK? Are you . . .?’

  ‘Charlie,’ Paton said solemnly. ‘Bartholomew was there. He wants you to take the diaries into the past.’

  ‘The past?’ Charlie didn’t understand.

  ‘I’m sorry I have to ask you to do this now. You’re tired and it’s very late. But Bartholomew was most insistent, and I think he’s right. You can travel into paintings, photographs, pictures. Is there anywhere you can think of, where the diaries would be safe? Where the shadow couldn’t find them.’

  Charlie scratched his head. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I could take them to Skarpo.’

  ‘The sorcerer? A dangerous journey, Charlie. But if the old man could be persuaded to guard them, the diaries would certainly be safe.’

  Olivia betrays herself

  Charlie picked up the diaries and followed his uncle upstairs. The candle Paton held aloft flickered and smoked in the draughty stairwell, and Charlie had to tread carefully in order to avoid missing a step.

  When he got to his room Charlie put the books on his side table and pulled a small painting out from under the bed.

  ‘I imagine you will need a good light, Charlie.’ Uncle Paton hovered by the door.

  In the meagre light from the candle, Charlie could hardly see the painting. ‘It’d probably be better if I put my bedside light on,’ he agreed.

  ‘I’ll leave you, then,’ said his uncle. ‘But, Charlie, how will you get back? Do you need my help?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘I’ll take her with me.’ He nodded at the white moth resting on his bed. ‘She’ll help me back. She’s done it before, you know.’

  ‘I see. Well . . . I wish you luck.’ Paton shifted his feet uncertainly and then retreated.

  Charlie switched on his light and closed the door. He put the painting on his pillow and sat beside it on the bed. In his arms he held Bartholomew’s ten leather-bound books.

  The small painting was centuries old. The paint had darkened and cracked, and its very age added menace to an already sinister scene. The title ‘The Sorcerer’ had been scrawled in black paint at the bottom. And there he stood, the black-robed sorcerer in his cell-like room, with magical effects strewn across the table behind him. The sorcerer’s dark hair and beard were threaded with silver and his eyes held a yellowish gleam. It was the eyes that Charlie focused on.

  He had visited Skarpo the sorcerer several times before. Once, he had been afraid of the old man, but not any more. He had become accustomed to the fiery eyes and deep, lilting speech.

  ‘Charlie Bone?’

  Although Charlie had expected it, the voice still took him by surprise and a shiver ran down his spine. The white moth flew on to his shoulder, prepared for the journey ahead.

  As the familiar objects in his room began to fade, Charlie caught a whiff of the sorcerer’s damp cell, mixed with the scent of burning herbs and candle grease. His head whirled and his feet became as light as air. Clutching the books even tighter, he fixed his gaze on Skarpo’s burning yellow eyes. Now he could hear the drag of the sorcerer’s robes, the rattle of iron and the hiss of flames. Charlie felt himself tumbling through the centuries, his body buffeted like paper in the wind.

  When his feet hit cold stone he opened his eyes. The sorcerer stood before him.

  ‘What’s this? I see Charlie Bone entirely.’ Skarpo rubbed his hairy chin. ‘Time was when only your head appeared. Your power has strengthened.’

  ‘Has it?’ Charlie looked at his arms, clasped round the diaries. ‘Oh.’

  ‘You have a gift for me?’ The sorcerer eyed the leather-bound books.

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve come to ask you a favour.’

  ‘Ah!’ The sorcerer rubbed his bony hands together. ‘I like favours. It means I can ask one of you.’

  ‘I suppose it does,’ said Charlie nervously.

  ‘Let us be seated.’ Lifting the red cloth that hung over his table, Skarpo drew out two rough wooden stools. One he pushed towards Charlie, the other he placed behind him, pulling his heavy robes to one side as he sat upon it. ‘Are you going to tell me about those books?’

  Charlie placed the ten books in the sorcerer’s outstretched arms. ‘They’re diaries, sir, Very special diaries. They were written by a man called Bartholomew Bloor, a distant relative of mine. He’s been all over the world and whenever he heard a story about the Red King, he wrote it down. They’re precious because they’ve got secrets in them – things about the Red King that we’ve never known before.’

  ‘If they’re precious why give them to me?’ Skarpo gave a light chuckle. ‘Do you trust me, Charlie Bone?’

  ‘I have to,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s a man – a thing – that people call the shadow. He’s in the Red King’s portrait and he . . .’

  ‘The shadow?’ Skarpo stood up, his swirling black robes sending an icy draught across Charlie’s slippered feet. ‘Say no more. I know of this shadow. Magicians try not to speak of him, for he brought our powers into great disrepute. A fleeting whisper of his name and my brother sorcerers will raise their hands in protest.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to have to say a bit more about him,’ said Charlie, ‘because he’s the reason for me bringing those diaries to you.’

  ‘Ah, now we have it.’ Skarpo turned and put the books in two neat piles on his table. ‘Tell me, then.’ With a swish of his robes, he sat down.

  The sorcerer’s cave-like room was a fitting place for Charlie’s story. He told Skarpo all that had happened since the snowy night when the animals had left the city. He told him about frozen Maisie and his mother’s ring, about Miss Chrystal and the Mirror of Amoret. And, as he spoke, the five candles in their tall iron holder burnt lower and lower, and soon the only light in the room seemed to come from the sorcerer’s yellow eyes.

  When Charlie had said all there was to say, Skarpo got to his feet again and went to the table. He lit a thick candle in the centre and by the light of its leaping flame, he began to leaf through each book. Charlie watched him, hoping for a remark or a word of advice, but the sorcerer said nothing until he had scanned every page. When he had replaced the last book he turned to Charlie and said, ‘Fine stories, my boy. Revelations! I’ll keep them safe, but the spell, the Welsh spell, you must take that back with you. I’ll translate it, for I have the Welsh, you know, and you’ll need it.’

  Charlie waited, wondering if this was the spell Bartholomew had mentioned. The sorcerer snatched a scrap of parchment from a leather folder and, dipping a fancy-looking quill into a jar of ink, he began to scratch across the surface of the parchment. Now and again he would glance at one of the diaries lying open on his table, scratch his head, look into the distance, smile and then continue writing.

  When the last line had been scrawled, Skarpo laid down his quill and looked at Charlie with a grin of triumph. ‘A wonderful spell,’ he declared. ‘Not mine, oh no. Your relative must have got it from one of Mathonwy’s descendants, Mathonwy being the friend of your Red King, of course.’ He gave another of his light chuckles. ‘It was from him that I stole that wand of yours, Charlie Bone. Not stole, no – he was old then, and would have given it to me before he died. How they love to pass on their names, those Welsh.’ He paused and cocked his head. ‘Speaking of wands, where is it?’

  ‘As a matter of fact it’s a moth now,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Ah, that moth. I see it.’ Skarpo put out his hand to catch the white moth that was fluttering between them.

  ‘DON’T!’ shouted Charlie. ‘She’s mine!’

  ‘Just a joke, Charlie Bone! I’ll not hurt your wee moth.’ The sorcerer blew on the parchment and held it out. ‘Take your spell and leave this place. It doesn’t do to linger in distant worlds.’

  ‘Yes, I’d better go,’ said Charlie, taking the spel
l, ‘and thank you. You will keep the diaries safe, won’t you?’

  ‘Do you doubt it?’ The sorcerer tilted his head and gave a crooked smile.

  ‘No. No, of course not.’ Charlie held out his free hand and the moth flew on to his finger. ‘She helps me to travel,’ he explained.

  The sorcerer nodded. ‘Ah.’

  Before Charlie left, he glanced through a small window at the back of the shadowy room. A dark forest could be seen, fringing a sea of glittering moonlit water. Once, Charlie had accidentally made a visit to that forest, and it had always lain at the back of his mind, a memory that puzzled and yet comforted him. ‘Sir, did the Red King ever live near here?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, he did that,’ said Skarpo, turning to the window. ‘And when the king was gone, Mathonwy, the magician, came to live here. He took me in when I was very young; a homeless orphan, my people murdered by the soldiers of the English king. He was a great magician and he taught me much, but I was never as good as he, in any sense of the word.’ A shadow crossed the sorcerer’s face, a fleeting hint of regret, and then the wicked grin returned and he waved his hand at Charlie. ‘Go, boy, go. And may luck accompany you.’

  ‘Goodbye then, sir, and thank you.’ Charlie looked at the moth and gently asked, ‘Can we go now, Claerwen?’

  The sorcerer’s face was the last thing Charlie saw before the mist of time drifted between them and he began to travel home. Skarpo’s yellow eyes were wide with surprise, for Charlie had spoken in Welsh. The unfamiliar word had come to him out of the blue, and yet he knew that it belonged to the moth. Claerwen – Snow-white.

  A moment later he was sitting on his bed with the painting beside him and the moth on his arm. Charlie yawned and kicked off his slippers. He had never felt so drowsy. In a few hours he would have to get up and pack his bag, ready for school. But not yet. He put the painting under his bed, lay back on the pillow and fell asleep.

  He awoke to find his uncle anxiously peering at him from the doorway.

  ‘Far be it from me to remind you of school,’ said Uncle Paton, ‘but I thought I should at least alert you to the time. No one else seems to be awake.’

  As Charlie rolled out of bed a scrap of stiff, yellowish paper floated to the floor. Frowning, Uncle Paton stepped into the room and picked it up. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ mumbled Charlie, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘A poem? No, more a . . . a sort of charm.’ Paton turned the paper and studied the large, slanting script. ‘Good Lord, where did you get this, Charlie?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot. From Skarpo.’ Charlie brushed past his uncle on the way to the bathroom.

  ‘From Skarpo?’ called his uncle in astonishment. ‘Charlie, I’m going to keep this in my room. It’s quite remarkable. It could change everything.’

  Charlie wasn’t paying attention to his uncle. Once again he had to brush his teeth while Maisie lay frozen in the bath beside him. There she was, the one person in the whole house who might have been able to keep his mother safe from Count Harken.

  By the time Charlie had washed his face, Uncle Paton had disappeared into his own room and all Charlie could hear was a low, foreign-sounding mumble.

  Charlie dressed, packed his bags and went down to the kitchen. The stove was out and the table was bare. There was no evidence that anyone else had eaten breakfast. Where was his mother? Out or asleep? Charlie was afraid to find out. The house smelt of a cold slumbering emptiness. He quickly made himself a piece of toast and left.

  Bloor’s Academy had still not recovered from the weekend festivities. The staff were, if anything, even more bad-tempered than they had been before the hundred heads’ arrival. Pine needles, tinsel, broken plastic and bits of food littered the hall floor. Items of clothing were missing from the cloakrooms and it was no use complaining.

  ‘You shouldn’t have left it there,’ was Manfred Bloor’s surly response to any timid suggestion that a visiting headmaster might have stolen a scarf, or a shoe, or a fur-lined glove.

  Manfred himself looked a real mess; his face was pitted with tiny wounds which could only have been made by splinters of glass. There was no doubt in Emma Tolly’s mind that Manfred had been with the shadow, banging on the bookshop door the previous night.

  Fidelio was due to have a violin lesson after Assembly, but he wasn’t inclined to see Miss Chrystal. ‘I don’t see how I can pretend I don’t know what she is,’ he whispered to Charlie as they left Assembly. ‘I mean, I’m not an actor like Liv.’

  ‘You’ve got to,’ said Charlie. ‘If she even guesses that we know, her claws will really be out.’

  ‘I’ll say I’m feeling –’

  ‘Fidelio Gunn,’ said Dr Saltweather, emerging from Assembly, ‘remember the rules.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Fidelio, grateful that it wasn’t Manfred who had caught him.

  Charlie rushed off to a Maths lesson, leaving Fidelio to get in the right frame of mind for his dreaded visit to Miss Chrystal.

  At first break there was no sign of Fidelio. Charlie wondered what had happened to him. The school grounds were cold and misty. Children huddled together in little groups, stamping their feet and muttering disconsolately. Charlie had to peer at each group as he searched for Fidelio’s familiar curly head. But none of his friends appeared to be outside.

  As he wandered up to the castle, Charlie was vaguely aware that a crowd of children were following him. Rather than be trapped in the ruin, he turned off into the woods. The crowd drew closer. Charlie began to run. And then, suddenly, he was surrounded. Every tree was veiled in mist, and he could no longer distinguish their thin trunks from the drifting forms of his pursuers.

  ‘What do you want?’ cried Charlie. ‘Why are you following me?’

  One of the children stepped closer. Charlie might have guessed it would be Joshua Tilpin.

  ‘Your friends are pretty useless, Charlie Bone,’ sneered Joshua. ‘You might as well give them up.’

  ‘What are you talking about? Why should I?’ Charlie said defiantly.

  Joshua gave his cold, crooked smile. ‘We’ve come to teach you a lesson, Charlie. We’ll teach you over and over again, won’t we, guys?’

  ‘YESSSS!’ roared the crowd.

  And now it was Dorcas Loom’s turn to slink out from behind a tree and jeer at Charlie. ‘You’re pathetic, Bone. You don’t stand a chance. You’ve lost your father, and now your mother. You can’t keep anything, can you? If you join us we can help you. We’re so-o-o much stronger than your miserable friends.’

  Charlie had been steadily retreating from the crowd, and now his back was against part of the ancient wall. Without thinking, he turned and found a foothold. He pulled himself up, higher and higher, reaching for gaps in the stones, while his feet desperately sought another foothold. At last he was standing twelve feet above the crowd.

  They laughed at him.

  And then the Branko twins appeared. Standing close together, they stared at the stones in the wall, stared and stared. A huge boulder dropped out and the whole wall shuddered.

  Can they do that? thought Charlie. Can they bring down a wall that’s lasted nine hundred years?

  They could. Two huge stones tumbled from the top of the wall, and then one of the twins began to talk. They so rarely spoke it was quite a shock.

  ‘What a tragic accident,’ said the black-haired, doll-faced girl. ‘Charlie Bone climbed an old wall, and down it came, rumble, tumble, with Charlie on top . . .’

  ‘And then underneath,’ continued the other twin in a deeper, more sinister tone.

  With a jarring thud another huge stone hit the hard earth, and this time the wall trembled so violently, Charlie fell to his knees. He clung to the mossy surface as it rocked and shook, trying to imagine what it would be like to be buried alive.

  When the sound came, Charlie thought it was from another part of the wall. But then it grew louder – an angry, swelling buzz.

  The children on the ground were looking up. They be
gan to back away. Some of them screamed. Following their gaze, Charlie saw a black cloud falling through the trees. The buzz became a roar and the whole crowd scattered, howling and screaming. Joshua Tilpin was the last to go. ‘You’re going to be stung to death, Charlie Bone,’ he shouted as he ran off.

  Bees? Swarming in winter? Who had sent them? The shadow? Charlie closed his eyes. Which was worse, he wondered, being stung to death or buried by a wall?

  The buzzing stopped. Charlie kept his eyes closed, waiting for the tickle of bees’ feet on his bare face and hands. Waiting for the first angry sting. Nothing happened. Charlie opened one eye. Nothing on the wall. Nothing in the air.

  ‘Charlie!’

  Charlie opened his other eye. He saw Emma and Olivia looking up at him from the base of the wall. They were both smiling.

  ‘What on earth . . .?’ said Charlie.

  ‘An illusion!’ cried Olivia, leaping in the air. ‘It was a good one, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly was.’ Charlie gingerly let himself down from the wall.

  None of them noticed a woman approaching through the mist. She stopped a few metres away from them, and hid behind a tree.

  ‘We saw them following you,’ said Emma, ‘so we followed them, but we didn’t know what to do. There were so many of them. Joshua’s magnetism is definitely having an effect.’

  ‘And then I thought of bees.’ Olivia gave another joyful leap. ‘I’m so proud of myself.’

  ‘You saved me!’ Charlie gave her a hug. ‘Phew! I’m so glad to be . . .’

  There was a sudden rustle in the trees behind them, and they all turned to see a figure making off, rather fast, into the mist. There was no mistaking the neat grey suit and short trim haircut.

  ‘Mrs Brown,’ Charlie whispered. ‘She must have heard you, Liv.’

  ‘And now she knows about your endowment. Oh, no!’ Emma wrung her hands. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ said Charlie. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.’