The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict

  Not expecting to find anything, Nicholas nonetheless took a close look at all the furniture he came upon. A canopy bed, nothing beneath it. The piano, nothing inside it but hammers and wires. A grandfather clock, nothing in its cabinet. A few chests and end tables and armoires, all empty. A handsome mahogany desk with empty drawers.

  On his way out of the room with the desk in it, Nicholas stopped and looked back. The desk was facing the wall. He glanced around. The far wall contained a built-in bookcase, empty of books. An armchair stood in the corner. With some surprise, Nicholas realized that this room had quite possibly been Mr. Rothschild’s study. He had always imagined Mr. Collum’s office to have been Mr. Rothschild’s—but without good reason; he saw that now. It made more sense for that office in the entranceway to have belonged to some member of the Manor staff, most likely the butler.

  Nicholas wondered about that butler. Was he the one Mr. Rothschild called Stubby—the man who had worked so hard that Mr. Rothschild felt compelled to move his desk? Nicholas walked about the study, keeping his eye on the door. He had envisioned another room opposite this one, some sort of workroom or office, which, if the door was open, Mr. Rothschild might have seen from his desk. But no matter where he stood, he could see nothing beyond the doorway except the empty passage.

  Nicholas went to the window and drew back the curtain, releasing a shower of dust. He coughed, covered his nose and mouth, and looked out. The window overlooked the park. The schoolhouse—which once had been a stable—was plainly visible among the trees. Had Stubby been a stable groom? Possibly. There was nothing else to see. The woods to the east. The wooded hill to the north, its summit (and the observatory) well out of view. To the west, the stand of hickories that separated the farm from the park. From this vantage point, the rooftop of Mr. Furrow’s barn could just be seen behind the hickories, as well as a broad swath of fenced pasture beyond it.

  A picture of Mr. Furrow swam up in Nicholas’s mind. The gruff old man with his leathery skin, his constant cigar. Not always a lit cigar, either. Often merely the stump of one. The stub.

  Stubby.

  Nicholas stared at those hickory trees, which were noticeably younger than the park’s towering oaks. How old were they, exactly? How long ago had they been planted? Stubby had asked for privacy. Mr. Rothschild had intended to do something about it. He had planted those trees.

  Nicholas couldn’t believe it. He had imagined Mr. Rothschild’s “Stubby” to be a man with very short, stubby legs—a man long since departed from the estate. Hadn’t Mrs. Brindle said that all of the original Manor staff had been replaced? Either she had been wrong, or else she did not think of Mr. Furrow, set apart on his farm, as a true member of the orphanage staff.

  Nicholas laughed aloud. He couldn’t help himself. He was delighted by his discovery—delighted, amused, and excited. So Mr. Furrow had known the Rothschilds! What might he be able to tell about them? What had he seen? All this time, and a personal acquaintance of the Rothschilds had been right here. Why—

  Nicholas blinked, staggered, and realized—too late—that his excitement had brought him perilously close to the edge of sleep. He dropped to his knees, fumbled around for the blanket beneath his arm, tried to remember what he had done with his candle. The fact was that he had left it standing on Mr. Rothschild’s old desk, but before Nicholas could remember this, a flash of horror, an imagined picture of the curtains going up in flames, finished the job that his excitement had begun, and sent him straight to sleep.

  Nicholas awoke to the final, gasping clings and clangs of his alarm clock’s bell. It fell silent, having fully unwound, even as he opened his eyes and sat up. So it had been ringing and ringing. He was lucky he had brought it with him, lucky it had awakened him. He remembered that he had left it set for half an hour before sunrise. He had wanted to be dressed and ready when Mr. Pileus came up to fetch him. That meant he had been asleep in this room for a few hours. His fatigue had gotten the better of him.

  Nicholas rubbed his eyes and yawned. He felt good, even somewhat rested. And even in his sleep, which had been blessedly free of nightmares, he had retained a sense of excitement, of expectation. Nicholas bundled his matchbox and alarm clock into the blanket and got to his feet. It was time to be moving. The candle on Mr. Rothschild’s desk was smoky and sputtering, close to guttering out.

  Nicholas smiled to himself. “I enjoy muttering ‘sputtering’ and ‘guttering,’ ” he muttered (he made a special point of muttering it) and was wondering whether smoke might accurately be described as fluttering—he thought it might—when the candle went out for good, leaving him in darkness.

  Nicholas remained calm. His memory and sense of bearings were such that he could find his way back to his room even in total blackness, but he wouldn’t have to do that. He had his matches, and the larger candle back at his candle corner was probably still burning; its glow would lead him down the last passage or two.

  He was kneeling to unbundle his blanket when he heard a floorboard creak. He froze, listening. Had it been his imagination? No, it had not. The sound had come from somewhere down the passageway, and—much to his alarm—his eyes now confirmed what his ears had suggested: A telltale flicker of candlelight shone in the passage beyond the open door. Shadows moved across the passage walls. Nicholas’s good feeling guttered out as completely as his candle had. Should he risk movement, try to hide behind the armchair? Oh, why had he left the study door open? It would be the only open doorway along the entire passage. He knelt there, petrified, his heart galloping.

  Then he heard whispers. His hair rose on the back of his neck. He experienced a flash of déjà vu—the eeriness of the scene, the rising sense of dread, was very much like what he had experienced in many a nightmare, and Nicholas found himself almost hoping that this was a hallucination, that he hadn’t truly, fully awoken after all.

  But it wasn’t the Old Hag who appeared in the doorway. It was the Spiders. Smiling a three-headed smile.

  Nicholas rose shakily to his feet, searching for a clever word of greeting as the other boys stepped into the room, taking care not to leave open a path to the door. He had not prepared for such a meeting in such a place. “Why, howdy, strangers,” he managed. “What brings you to these parts?” He offered a welcoming smile, though inwardly he grimaced, for his greeting had been anything but clever.

  “Well, well, well,” Moray said, grinning back. And Iggy and Breaker, flanking him, grinned and repeated his words: “Well, well, well. Well, well, well.” They were all in their pajamas, which might have made them seem less threatening if their expressions had not been so full of menace. “We came looking for you, Fat Nose. We wanted a private word with you. Wanted to give you a special farewell before your special trip.”

  “Yeah, because you’re so special,” sneered Iggy, who was holding the candle. Nicholas recognized it as the one from his candle corner. “And you get to go on special—”

  “Shut up, Iggy!” Moray snapped, and Iggy shut up. “You’ve been doing a good job avoiding us, Benedict. We decided we needed to take extra trouble to get you alone. So we stayed awake all night—”

  “All night,” Breaker growled.

  “—waiting for Mr. Collum to go to sleep so we could get this.” Moray held up Mr. Collum’s skeleton key, dangling on its familiar black ribbon. “He tossed and turned forever, and I was starting to get worried we wouldn’t have a chance to visit you, but then the thunder finally stopped, and he went to sleep, and we got our chance, after all.”

  “But you weren’t in your room, Stupid Nose!” Breaker grumbled.

  “No, you weren’t,” Moray said, giving Nicholas a suspicious look. “I wonder how you managed that.”

  “Oh, you know me, Moray,” Nicholas said lightly, wondering if the Spiders had locked his door again. His own key was in his pocket. “I’m full of magic, remember? I knew you were coming, so I took special measures.”

  “Is that a fact?” Moray said. “If you knew we were comin
g, why did you make all that racket, then? We were all set to go back down. We thought you and old Pileus must have left early. But then what did we hear?”

  “It sounded like an alarm clock,” Iggy said. “That’s what it sounded like, Moray.”

  Moray rolled his eyes. “I know what it sounded like, Iggy! I was talking to Dumb Nose here. But I don’t see no alarm clock. What was that sound, Dumb Nose? Was it your teeth chattering? Did you know we were coming to find you, after all?”

  “Yeah, were your teeth chattering because you were so scared?” Iggy said with a laugh. “Were you—” He checked himself, feeling the heat of Moray’s glare on him.

  “Put that candle on that desk,” Moray said to Iggy. “Then you and Breaker hold his arms.” To Nicholas he said, “Here’s how it will be. If you run around or fight back, I’m going to sock you in the face ten times. If you don’t, I’m only going to sock you in the face five times. You have my word on that, so now you know where we stand.”

  Nicholas clutched his blanket firmly against his chest. “Because you’re so honorable? Because of your code?”

  “Exactly,” Moray said as Iggy and Breaker took up their positions. Nicholas stood where he was, hugging his blanket tightly, and the bullies grinned at each other as they clenched his arms with powerful, two-handed grips.

  Nicholas’s heart raced even faster than before. “I’ll report this, you know,” he ventured, though he knew that the Spiders must have considered that. “You’re going to be in huge trouble.”

  “Report what?” Moray asked. “You’re going to fall out of bed, that’s all. A lot. And we’re going to lock you back in your room and put Mr. Collum’s key back inside his suit coat on the chair, and if you say anything, it’ll be your word against ours, and where’s your evidence?”

  Iggy and Breaker laughed.

  “So tell me,” Moray said, squaring off to throw his first punch. “Did you see this coming?”

  “See what?” Nicholas asked, somehow managing to keep the tremble out of his voice. “You mean, that you’re going to try to hit me on the left side of my cheek with your right fist? Yes, I saw it, Moray. Really, it wasn’t difficult, because you’re so predictable.”

  Iggy and Breaker stopped laughing. Moray’s smile faded, then slowly returned as he made up his mind about something. Nicholas watched it happen. And he saw Moray’s muscles tense. And when, a split second later, Moray lashed out as hard as he could with his left hand, Nicholas was already moving. He had been ready for it.

  Breaker and Iggy, however, were not ready at all. They had not had time to consider that Moray, who always socked his victims with his right hand, would hate to prove Nicholas correct and so would switch to the left. Nor had they expected Nicholas to duck, and at the same time to lift his feet from the floor, so that suddenly they were supporting the entire weight of his body, and as a result were pulled off balance—were pulled toward each other, in fact, and into the path of Moray’s wild swing.

  Moray, too, was surprised, as his fist glanced off the tip of Iggy’s chin before smacking into Breaker’s ear. And as all three boys cried out in pain and confusion, Nicholas broke free and ran from the room, pausing only to blow out the candle on the desk.

  The darkness would buy him some time, he thought, and so would locking his door. But not much. Already he could hear the Spiders cursing and hurrying after him, following the sound of his footsteps. He ran as softly as he could, and he might have gotten a better lead if he had not stumbled, almost falling and causing enough noise to keep the Spiders on his trail. By memory he made his desperate way through the darkness, turning corner after corner. Right, then right again, then left—and then he was at his door, which, to his relief, the Spiders had left unlocked. He darted inside, locked the door behind him, and considered what to do next.

  The Spiders had Mr. Collum’s key and a whole lot of fury.

  Nicholas had a few seconds and very few options.

  He was going to have to make a sacrifice. But he was going to make it worth it.

  When the Spiders unlocked Nicholas’s door and stormed into the room, they were expecting to fumble around blindly in the dark until they laid hands on him, at which point they intended to wreak a terrible vengeance. They could scarcely contain their rage. Moray was hissing, “Not this time! Not this time!” and Iggy and Breaker were almost foaming at the mouth. And so they had no idea what to do with themselves when they perceived the room to be empty.

  For empty it clearly was. Three walls were lined with boxes. The fourth, bizarrely, had a square hole in it—a window without glass—and through this hole the weak gray light of dawn shone into the room. Just below the hole an empty cot trembled and jerked like a thing alive. It squeaked and groaned noisily as it moved, and the Spiders all had the fleeting, frightening impression that it was occupied by a restless ghost. Then it sank into their spinning minds that a rope had been tied around one of the cot’s legs, and that the other end of the rope had been tossed out the window—and that Nicholas Benedict must be climbing down the rope even as they stood there gawking.

  In unison they jumped and ran to the window, climbing onto the cot to look out. Sure enough, Nicholas had just reached the ground below.

  “He’s getting away!” Iggy shouted, quite forgetting to whisper.

  “Let’s follow him!” Breaker cried, doing the same.

  Moray looked dubiously at the rope. It was made out of strips of old sheets that had been knotted together. “I don’t know if this would hold us,” he muttered. And then as an afterthought he said, “Must have taken a while to make this. He must’ve already done it….” And Moray shivered at the possibility that Nicholas Benedict truly had foreseen all the events of this morning and had prepared his escape ahead of time.

  Meanwhile, in the side yard below, Nicholas was looking up at them, grinning so widely that even in the dim light they could see his teeth. “I left a present for you!” he called up. “Or at any rate, it’s on its way!” And throwing the Spiders a carefree salute, he ran off through the wet grass, disappearing around the corner of the Manor.

  “What did he say?” Breaker asked as they stepped down from the cot. “Did he say something about a present?”

  Iggy brightened. “Really? An actual present? Why would he have done that?”

  Moray shoved him. “Of course not an actual present, you dimwit! He probably meant… well, I don’t know what he meant. He said it was on its way, didn’t he?” He hesitated, considering, then punched his fists together. “Forget it! He was just trying to distract us! He still has to sneak back inside, doesn’t he? So let’s go find him!”

  But even as the Spiders turned to make their hasty exit, they heard the thumping, heavy steps of a man running up the servants’ stairs. And not knowing what else to do, they stood there, horrified, as an equally horrified Mr. Pileus burst through the door. He was wearing a knee-length nightgown, and curly strands of red hair poked out from beneath his nightcap. The lamp in his hand burned brightly, illuminating his anxious face from below. He looked quite stricken.

  “What on earth?” Mr. Pileus cried, turning this way and that with his lamp. “What are you boys doing in here? Where’s Nicholas? He pulled the emergency rope! And what—the window? What happened? My word, what’s going on!” These words, taken together, were more than Mr. Pileus had spoken in several days, and as his eyes moved back to the boys, and his expression shifted slowly from fright to outrage, he added to them one final, fateful question: “And you, Moray—what are you hiding behind your back?”

  Not one egg! Not one decent egg in weeks!”

  The stationmaster was complaining to the train conductor again. They stood on the platform just outside Nicholas’s open compartment window.

  “The word’s gotten out! Every egg thief in the county makes special trips out to my place now! They know what a heavy sleeper I am! They know I don’t have a dog!”

  “Why not get a dog?” the train conductor asked, checking
his watch.

  “My wife hates dogs! She’s terrified of them! A dog bit her on the bottom when she was a baby or something! I told her, I said, ‘Why not be afraid of cats instead? Why not snakes? Snakes are terrifying!’ But no, it’s only dogs with her! Nothing else scares her! She loves animals—just not dogs!”

  “Well, there are worse problems to have,” said the train conductor.

  “For you, maybe! I can’t do without my eggs! Eggs are almost all I eat! I haven’t even been able to buy them here in Pebbleton! Nancy Ovum used to sell ’em in the market every morning—she had a brisk business, too!—but last month she moved away and took her chickens with her! You know what I think? I think that’s why these people have been stealing my eggs! Because they can’t buy them from Nancy Ovum anymore!”

  “Nice work, Detective,” the train conductor said, putting away his watch. “Now I have to go. Good luck with your eggs.”

  “I don’t have any eggs!” cried the stationmaster, now red in the face. “This is my point!”

  Nicholas smiled as he listened to all this. Nice work, Detective. Couldn’t those same words be said to him? He hadn’t solved his mystery yet, but at least he was still on the trail of clues, which was an achievement in itself. And now the train was whistling, pulling away from the station, and Nicholas was headed for Stonetown. The sun still hung low in the east, yet what a morning it had been already!

  Mr. Pileus opened a sack of egg sandwiches that Mr. Griese had prepared for them and handed one to Nicholas. He did not take one for himself but put a hand on his belly and looked nervously out the window.

  Happily munching his own sandwich, Nicholas also gazed out the window, watching the farm country slide past as he reflected on his morning’s tricky accomplishments. Mere hours ago, he’d had every reason to fear that Mr. Collum would change his mind and forbid him to go on this trip. That papier-mâché window was a serious violation, after all, and Nicholas had been forced to reveal it. But he had handled the situation perfectly by summoning Mr. Pileus. In doing so, he’d proved that he had a good excuse for using that window—he was being attacked!—and had gotten the Spiders punished besides.