The Secret of Zanzibar, page 15
He gazed around him. They were standing in a grove of trees halfway down the slope of a steep hill; at the top he could just see the towers of a palace partly obscured by a high stone wall. They had left the palace grounds, he realised with the sense of a weight being lifted from his shoulders – but the shouts and cries drifting down from the turreted building reminded him that they were far from safe.
‘Is that Grouch?’ he asked in a low voice, gesturing to the city streets which were laid out in a neat grid below them.
‘That’s right,’ said his uncle, glancing at him. He frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ He peered into Alistair’s eyes. ‘You don’t look well.’
‘I’m fine,’ Alistair said, though his head still hurt and he was feeling hungry once again.
Timmy the Winns nodded. ‘Okay. We’re going to head for a safe house on the edge of town. We can have a rest and something to eat there.’
A safe house in Grouch? Alistair looked at his uncle, who gave him a small smile.
‘There’s a reason I’ve been able to travel around Souris for so long without being captured,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of friends.’ And he set off down the hill.
Near the bottom of the hill, just before they would step out from the cover of the trees, he stopped in front of a row of flowering bushes. As Alistair watched, puzzled, Timmy crouched down and rummaged among the bright red blooms. ‘Ah, here we go. Good old Winklepicker.’
‘What is it?’ asked Alistair.
‘A guard’s uniform,’ said Timmy, pulling a swathe of stiff fabric from the thicket of leaves. ‘There should be a pair of boots too.’
Alistair dropped to his knees and stuck an arm into the bush. ‘Here’s one,’ he said, extracting a boot from a tangle of twigs and branches just as Timmy pulled a second boot free.
The midnight blue mouse quickly shrugged into the red coat and tugged on the boots.
‘We’d better get a move on; the guards will have realised that we’re no longer in the palace by now. Try to look like my captive as we walk through the city.’
‘Do you think anyone will really believe that a blue mouse can be a Queen’s Guard?’ Alistair asked doubtfully.
‘Blue fur might be unusual, but at least it doesn’t make me an enemy,’ Timmy said, looking meaningfully at Alistair’s own fur.
Alistair held his wrists together behind his back as if they were tied and they set off down the hill. They entered the city streets and marched past rows of buildings, all of a regular height and appearance. As with the other parts of Souris Alistair had seen, the capital city was neat and orderly and uniform. They received many curious looks, but the Sourians on the streets stepped aside politely to let them pass without comment. As they walked further and further from the palace, though, they encountered fewer and fewer other mice. Eventually the buildings became houses, and then the houses too grew fewer and fewer, until the street they were walking down was not so much a city street as a country lane, with the houses few and far between. Fields of grain separated the houses now, and they entered a field in which the grain grew higher than their heads. Although Alistair could discern no path, Timmy seemed completely certain of his whereabouts as he led the way unerringly to the safe house, which, it turned out, was actually a barn.
The barn was empty and cavernous, with straw on the floor. Timmy walked straight to a pile of hay bales at the far end, and returned a minute later bearing a cloth-covered basket. He unpacked it, muttering to himself, ‘Freshly baked bread? Thank you very much.’ He passed it to Alistair along with a knife that had been folded in a napkin. ‘Cut us some slices, would you? Ah, and farmhouse cheese.’ He sniffed the hunk of waxy yellow cheese appreciatively, then passed it, too, to Alistair. ‘And a couple of pears. Nice.’ He cocked an eyebrow at his nephew, who was ravenous by now. ‘Hungry? We’ll have some cheese sandwiches for you in a jiffy.’
Alistair ate two sandwiches before he was able to voice the questions which had been crowding his mind.
‘How did you know about the tunnel?’ he asked.
Timmy smiled mysteriously. ‘Ah, you’re not the only one to know a few secret paths, little brother,’ he said, tapping the side of his blue nose. ‘There’s usually a way for the king or queen to flee the palace in times of trouble. I did my research before I came looking for you.’
‘How did you know I was at the palace?’ Alistair wanted to know.
Timmy the Winns speared a slice of pear on the knife he was cutting it with and said, ‘A friend.’ He offered the knife with the pear to Alistair. ‘What I don’t know is how you got there.’
Alistair closed his eyes, remembering the splash of water in the fountain and the silky voice murmuring his name. ‘Keaters,’ he said. ‘He was waiting in Templeton.’ Then his eyes snapped open. ‘What about Tibby Rose?’ he said. ‘Did she and Granville complete the mission? Have you heard anything about our pamphlet? It was meant to be published …’ He screwed up his face in thought, trying to count the days. ‘What day is it?’
‘Saturday,’ said Timmy.
‘Then it should have come out today.’
Timmy shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard anything.’
Alistair felt a pang of disappointment. ‘What could have happened?’ he wondered aloud. ‘I’m sure Granville said it would be today.’ He frowned. ‘So where’s Tibby now?’
‘In Templeton, isn’t she?’ his uncle said.
‘Still in Templeton?’ Alistair exclaimed, jumping to his feet. ‘Are you sure? She’s not safe there. The Queen was asking a lot of questions about Templeton and another ginger mouse. I left my scarf by the fountain where I was caught, hoping Tibby would guess what had happened and leave Souris.’ He began to pace. ‘We have to go to her.’
‘Alistair.’ Timmy stood too and placed a hand on his arm. ‘We don’t know for sure whether she’s in Templeton or not. I’ve had no word either way. But the Queen has no reason to seek Tibby Rose, does she?’ His voice was serious, as if he was intent on the answer. ‘Surely she doesn’t think Tibby’s an heir of Cornolius too.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Alistair. ‘The Queen seems certain that there’s another heir of Cornolius out there. Yet how can there be? And she was trying to tell me that Mum and Dad aren’t really my parents and Alex and Alice aren’t my brother and sister, but I knew she was lying. Because that would mean I wasn’t an heir of Cornolius, and if I wasn’t there’d have been no reason for Keaters to kidnap me.’
Alistair was quite pleased with this piece of reasoning, but when he looked up at his uncle he caught a strange expression pass fleetingly across his face. A curious look? An uncertain look? He couldn’t quite read it, and all the confusion and bewilderment evoked by the Queen’s cryptic statements began to well in him once more.
‘What is it?’ Alistair demanded. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’
Timmy the Winns, most uncharacteristically, appeared lost for words. He opened his mouth then closed it again, then rubbed the fur on top of his head. Finally, he laid a hand on Alistair’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. ‘Alistair,’ he said, ‘whatever the Queen told you, she is not in possession of all the facts.’
She is not in possession of all the facts. What did that mean exactly? It was hardly an answer to his question. Alistair had tried to find out more, but Timmy the Winns refused to answer his questions, saying only, ‘It’s not my story to tell, little brother.’
And so Alistair had had to drop the subject, though all through the long journey back to Templeton – for his uncle had agreed that they should find Tibby Rose – he could think of nothing else. They travelled all day and through the night with barely a pause. On leaving the barn, they had skirted the foothills to the west of the Eugenian Range, then a taciturn mouse with a small sailing boat ferried them across Lake Eugenia to the north-eastern corner. From there they followed the path Alistair had so recently travelled with Slippers Pink, Feast Thompson and Tibby Rose.
What story was his uncle talking about, Alistair wondered, and whose was it? Unbidden, the Queen’s words came back to him. Your whole life has been a lie.
When at last Templeton came into view, Alistair led Timmy the Winns along the now-familiar route. Despite his fatigue, he ran up the lane leading to the big old white house on the hill, half expecting to hear Tibby Rose calling to him from her treehouse, even though dawn hadn’t yet broken. But there was not a sound, and when he stepped onto the front porch something in him knew already that the house was deserted. He knocked on the door, softly at first and then louder. It should have been enough to cause cries of alarm, for lights to go on in the bedrooms upstairs, but the house remained stubbornly dark and silent.
Turning away he saw Timmy watching him.
‘No one’s home,’ he said, not bothering to disguise his anxiety.
‘Maybe Slippers and Feast came back for Tibby,’ his uncle suggested.
‘Then where are Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet?’ asked Alistair. ‘We should go to Granville’s office. He might know something.’
They started back down the hill, Alistair aware only of a heavy sense of dread filling his chest. Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet had barely stirred from the house for years, he knew. So where could they be? Had Tibby and her relatives run away when Alistair was captured? Or – Alistair’s chest clenched in apprehension – had they all been captured too? No, he reminded himself. If the Sourians had captured Tibby Rose, they wouldn’t have been asking him all those questions. He had to assume Tibby was safe. The thought calmed him, and as they retraced their steps into the darkened town he became convinced that he would find Tibby herself at Granville’s office, just as he had left her, poring over the reference books, eyes narrowed in concentration as she made notes on her pad, a smudge of ink on the pink-tinged fur of her cheek.
When they reached the newspaper offices, Alistair rapped on the door.
‘Now who’d be knocking on the door of the Templeton Times in the wee small hours of the morning?’ said a voice behind him.
Alistair started and spun around as he heard a match strike and then a hiss of flame.
‘Watson,’ said Alistair eagerly, recognising the piebald mouse who was holding up a lantern in front of the newspaper kiosk.
‘Who’s that?’ said the piebald mouse, squinting in Alistair’s direction.
Alistair stepped forward, flanked by Timmy the Winns. ‘You probably don’t remember me,’ he told the newspaper seller, ‘but you once hid me and my friend from the Queen’s Guards when we –’
‘I did nothing of the sort,’ broke in the piebald mouse. ‘You must be thinking of some other mouse, you must.’
‘No, it was you,’ Alistair insisted. ‘We’d been following Grandpa Nelson – that’s Dr Nelson – and when you heard the guards coming you –’
‘I don’t know who you are, coming along in the dark hours and making up stories about me,’ Watson interrupted, a quiver of alarm in his voice. Seeing the way the piebald mouse’s eyes darted anxious glances at Timmy the Winns’ red coat, Alistair suddenly understood.
‘You don’t have to worry,’ he reassured Watson. He lowered his voice. ‘He’s not a real Queen’s Guard. This is my uncle. Tell him, Timmy. It’s okay. Watson saved me and Tibby; he said that he didn’t believe ginger mice were the enemies of Souris. He saved our lives!’
‘In that case, we are in your debt,’ said Timmy the Winns, stepping forward with his hand outstretched.
Watson shook Timmy’s hand, ducking his head shyly. ‘Ah, well now, I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘I just did what any right-thinking mouse would do in those circumstances. Or should do, anyways. Seems to me the colour of his fur is no measure of a mouse. Why, you could be …’ He paused, as if just now becoming aware of the vision in front of him. ‘Is my lantern there giving off a strange light, or … Excuse me, sir –’ he gave Timmy a hard look ‘– but you appear to be, er, blue.’
‘Aye,’ said Timmy, ‘that I am. But as you so rightly pointed out, the colour of one’s fur is no measure of a mouse.’
‘Watson, we’re looking for Granville.’
‘Granville?’ The piebald mouse raised his eyebrows. ‘I reckon you won’t find him here at this hour.’
‘Of course,’ said Alistair, ‘but do you know where –?’
‘And I reckon you won’t find him here at any other hour neither,’ the newspaper seller continued.
‘Why … why not?’ Alistair asked, with a terrible sense of foreboding.
‘He’s gone, isn’t he?’ Watson said simply.
‘Gone?’ Alistair repeated, a hollow feeling in his chest.
Watson clicked his fingers. ‘Like that,’ he said. ‘Vanished. After forty-gazillion years as the editor of the Templeton Times, he disappears without a trace.’
Alistair stared at the newspaper seller, dumbfounded, as his mind tried to process what he had just heard.
‘Ah,’ said Timmy the Winns. ‘Without a trace to others, perhaps, but I think I’d be right in suggesting that a mouse such as yourself would have his ear to the ground. In your position, you would hear things … see things … that another mouse might miss.’
‘Now that you mention it,’ said Watson with an appreciative nod, ‘I does hear things, with my ear to the ground, as you say. And I’ve heard tell …’ He glanced quickly from side to side, then whispered, ‘Granville had a secret project. Something dangerous.’ He whistled through his teeth. ‘Something that’s going to rock Souris to the core.’ Then, as if embarrassed at having said too much, the piebald mouse turned away abruptly, picked up a knife, and began to cut the cords on bundles of newspapers. ‘Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’d best be getting back to work.’
‘If Granville had been arrested by the Queen’s Guards, surely Watson would have heard, so I think we can assume that he’s going ahead with the mission as planned,’ said Timmy the Winns as they walked away.
‘But that doesn’t tell us where Tibby is,’ Alistair pointed out. ‘Or Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Timmy agreed. ‘But Alistair, I don’t think we can afford to spend any more time looking for them. Our first priority has to be reaching Cornoliana in time for the protest.’
Alistair was just opening his mouth to disagree when he heard a shout; he turned to see Watson waving a slim page of newsprint.
‘It’s Granville,’ the piebald mouse called. Then he bent his head to study the headline. ‘I never seen the like. Not in all me born days.’
Alistair hurried back to the kiosk, his uncle close on his heels.
‘What is it, Watson?’ he asked.
Watson didn’t even look up; he was sucking his teeth and shaking his head slowly as he stared at the headline. Then he held it up for the others to read:
SOURIANS SAY: JUSTICE FOR GERANDER.
‘They did it,’ Alistair breathed. Then, with a burst of joy at seeing his own words – JUSTICE FOR GERANDER – splashed across the page: ‘We did it.’
‘What was that?’ asked Watson.
‘Nothing,’ said Alistair quickly. ‘Um, what makes you think Granville was involved?’
‘Look here,’ said the newspaper seller, pointing to the by-line.
Alistair squinted at the small type. Brought to you by the Templeton Times, the Grouch Guardian, the Crossin Chronicle, the Sadiz Star … The list went on and on.
‘It looks like every newspaper in the country has got behind this,’ Watson remarked. ‘It came as an insert in this morning’s issue of the Templeton Times –’ he opened a copy of the Templeton newspaper ‘– and there was another stack delivered to be handed out free to any customer who doesn’t buy the Times.’ He patted a pile of pamphlets.
‘We’d better get going,’ Timmy said. ‘The sun will be up soon.’
‘Where will it lead I wonder?’ the piebald mouse was saying as they once again bade him farewell.
‘Where indeed?’ said Timmy the Winns as they set off up the road.
‘Where should we look next?’ Alistair asked. ‘Perhaps we could find out where Granville lives and –’
‘Alistair,’ his uncle broke in quietly, ‘we really do need to get to Cornoliana.’
‘But Tibby …’
‘Tibby’s as smart as they come. It sounds like she, her grandfather, great-aunt and Granville have gone into hiding, which is the most sensible thing they could have done.’
Alistair knew his uncle was right, though he still wished they could have found his friend.
They walked in silence, passing the fountain where Alistair had encountered Keaters. There was no sign of his scarf, he noted. They crossed the square and went through an archway that Alistair recognised as the one he and Tibby had passed through at the very beginning of their journey together. It seemed odd, and lonely, to be travelling without her now. A pale light was creeping up the sky as the two mice followed a dirt path down to a pebbly beach by the river. As they walked beneath an apricot tree Timmy stretched out a long arm and plucked one, two, three pale orange fruits.
‘Let’s sit here a minute,’ he said.
‘How are we going to get to Gerander?’ Alistair asked. He caught the apricot his uncle tossed him and lowered himself onto the pebbles. He bit into the fruit, savouring its sweetness as a stream of sticky juice soaked into the fur on his chin.
His uncle pointed across the river to a hazy mountain range, shimmering in the early morning light. ‘From here, the quickest way is to go over the Crankens,’ he said.
‘Not the Crankens,’ said Alistair, aghast. The memory of how close he and Tibby had come to being lost in that remote alpine wilderness still filled him with terror. ‘It’ll take too long – and what about the Queen’s Guards? There’s masses of them all along the border.’
‘That won’t be a problem,’ Timmy the Winns said calmly. ‘You’re going to find us a secret path.’
Alistair almost choked on his apricot. He coughed, then swallowed. ‘I’m what?’ he said, when he could speak again.
