“I looked back and caught his eye,” Nathan said. “Green eyes like the Hazletts. And dark curved fingernails like long sharp claws.”
“When Ferdinand mentioned the black palace,” Messina said, “I began to wonder. What rich and important man would live in such a tiny and ordinary village?”
“But Ninester has come here.”
“And that’s who we’re going to visit first,” Messina said. “There, that pretty cottage on the crest of the hill.”
Nathan was dragging behind. “I feel sick,” he said under his breath. “Actually, I feel quite ill ever since I looked into that horrid old man’s eyes.”
Stopping at once to gaze at her son, Messina frowned, saying, “Then at Ninester’s cottage you can sit and rest. He and his mother both understand dark magic, perhaps better than most.”
“I just want to sleep,” whispered Nathan. “It was Yaark or Clebbster, I know it was.”
“Just a few more steps,” Messina told him, and when they arrived at the small cottage with its roses around the door and the glass windows well-polished, she helped him inside as Ninester’s mother opened the door, and he collapsed in a large armchair.
Dancing in from the small garden, Ninester was excited. He was followed by a small brown puppy with huge brown eyes, ears alert, tail constantly wagging, and leaping like a duck trying to fly. “You came,” Ninester shouted, hugging everyone in turn including his mother and the puppy and his cuddly llama too. “Mother said you would, but I thought you’d all be too busy. Now you’re here, but I haven’t any cake. I don’t know how to bake one. Granny never taught me.”
“I shall bustle off and bake one now,” said his mother, smiling in delight. “I worked in the palace kitchens for years. I’m not as good as your granny but I can make a nice blackberry cake, as the blackberries are in season.” She bustled off, and Messina was left with Ninester and all the others.
First Messina bent over Nathan, as his eyes were closed and his face had gone pale. She wiped the palm of her hand across his face and kissed his forehead. “Come back,” she ordered. “There is no other power stronger than mine, and I order you to return in full health.” Standing back, she seemed worried for just a moment, and then smiled as Nathan suddenly opened his eyes, sat up straight, and said, “Did someone mention cake?”
Messina turned to Ninester. “There is an old man who walks your streets, and I believe he must live in one of the grand houses I have heard about here. He wears all black and is very bent over, but he has wicked eyes, and a beautiful peacock walking stick.”
“Oh, him,” said Ninester, picking up the puppy onto his lap as it persisted in licking his fingers. “Yes, we all see him often enough. No one likes him, and he won’t talk to anyone less he wants something. Nasty old twaddle-man. My mummy doesn’t like him either. The shop keepers don’t like him even though he’s rich and has lots of gold. The fishermen don’t like him -,”
“Yes, yes, we get the point,” said Messina. “Where does he live? In the black palace?”
“No. The big house beside the port,” Ninester said, tickling Little Smudge’s tummy. “It’s ever so big but you can’t see it properly because it’s hidden by lots of trees.”
“And his name?”
“Oh we don’t know that,” Ninester said. “We call him Mister Mean-Eyes. If he looks at you hard with those cold eyes, you get sick for two days and you can’t even eat cake. It happened to me once. I was quite upset.”
Finally Messina asked one more question. “And the black palace, and the other great big grand house. Who lives in them?”
“Dunno,” said Ninester. “No one ever goes in or out of the black palace tower. It’s scary. No one likes it. The other rich house, well it big and white and a bit glittery with pillars and things and lots of people go in and out all the time. But I don’t know names. After all, none of this has been here very long. It was your friends Zakmeister and Sherdam who built Pickles Village back to being so nice. While all the folk were pretending to be frogs and beetles and things, their houses fell down. So they came along and made it good again. And Granny too. She did most of all. I love Granny.”
“So do we all,” grinned Poppy. “But I think you should stay away from that wicked old man. He’s bad magic, I’m sure of it. He looked at Nat and Nat got sick too.”
“But Granny never made those big houses or the black palace,” Ninester added. “I don’t know who made them. They just came.”
Nearly an hour later when they had all changed the subject and were chatting happily, Ninester’s mother Irima carried in a very fluffy cake with cream in the middle and lots of big blackberries all the way through and lots more sitting on top,
“Oh, yummy,” squeaked Ninester, clapping his hands. Irima put the large plate on the table and trotted back to the kitchen to bring small plates for each of her guests, and cake forks as well. Ninester stood, let the puppy slide to the floor, and approached the cake. “I’ll be good,” he assured everybody. “I won’t put my fingers in before my mother comes and shares it all around. But I want a piece for Little Smudge too.”
And then, in front of everybody, his knees seemed to turn inwards, and like a crumpled paper doll, Ninester toppled to the floor, bent in strange twists as though his bones were all water. Nathan and Messina were the first to race beside him, leaning over to see what was wrong. Messina started to say the words to bring him back, but then in exactly the same way, she fell on top of him, folding into peculiar shapes. Nathan, frightened now, leaned over to wake his mother, and began to reach for the Knife of Clarr. But before he could touch it, he too had collapsed on top of his mother, his head buried under his arm.
Poppy stood uncertainly as if she had no idea what was happening, her knees also gave way and she fell head first onto the rug at her feet. Alice had already fainted in her chair, her head slumped forwards. Alfie had tried to help her but had immediately toppled over onto her lap. Within one moment’s blink, Sam and Peter were on the floor having slipped unconscious from their chairs and were lying on their faces. Hearing the noise, Irima, holding a fistful of tiny forks, ran back into the room, staring around in amazement, before then she too fell to the ground and the forks scattered across the rugs.
John was the last to crumble. Yet he found he could not move and he could not even look to the side or wriggle his ten toes. He felt paralysed. But he could still think. He was thinking in circles when he saw one last and terrible thing. Through the open window stretched a long dark arm, seemingly longer than any arm should be. It was covered in a dusty black silk sleeve, with tiny gold snakes embroidered around the cuffs. From the cuff came a bony wrist, and then a hand that John found utterly disgusting. Thin and mottled, it seemed to smell of disease and rotting food. The fingers were curled over like claws, and the fingernails were even more claw-like being extremely long, curled, sharp and pointed. But one finger in the middle of the hand was so much longer than the others, it appeared deformed, stretching out and out with the nail in the form of a large sharp hook.
First it reached for Messina. She saw nothing and did not move.
John watched, eyes wide, and saw Little Smudge, seeing everyone else asleep, bouncing up to reach on top of the low coffee table, and start to gobble down the cake all by himself.
But Messina carried some form of protection, for as the foul fingers crept towards her, they stopped, pushing, yet could move no closer. Irritated and determined, they scratched their claws against something invisible, but could not get past. They turned into a furious fist and pulled back.
Then instead they began to crawl towards Nathan. Desperately John tried to move, to get up and hit the hand or kick it aside and shout, waking everyone from their strange trance. But he could not. He felt he was not even breathing. The fingers hovered over Nathan’s face, but once again seemed unable to touch him. The filthy nails clawed closer but were stopped from touching. So the hand drew back once more, angry and shaking.
Finally, in
one last attempt, the hand moved slowly forwards once more, approaching Nathan’s chest. No longer his face, it came to rest on the side of his coat, which had fallen open as he fell. There, in full view, was the large pocket with the handle of the Knife of Clarr jutting out, and easy to grab.
The fingers grabbed. Clearly the fingers burned, just as had always been proclaimed. Only the Lord of Clarr could use the Knife of Clarr, otherwise the hilt would burn, and the wrong hand would be badly injured. But it seemed that this hand did not object to being hurt, for it gripped the knife’s hilt, pulled it out, and began to creep back towards the window. The blade of the knife shone red. John had never seen that before. It had always glowed gold and silver, but now it was shooting scarlet sparks. But the hand did not hesitate, and withdrew back through the window, taking the Knife of Clarr with it.
For a little while nothing happened. There was the unnatural silence of the bodies all collapsed and unmoving. John, wrestling with his feet, eventually found he could move just a little, and then a little more. Messina was the next to open her eyes, and sat up, pushing at Poppy and Nathan, and stretching. “What on earth -,” she demanded.
Nathan woke with a start. “What happened?” he said, staring around.
“Something yuk,” groaned Poppy.
“I have a splitting headache,” moaned Sam, as he, Alice and Alfie all managed to stand, stretching and shaking their heads.
“Something stinks,” said Alice. “I don’t want to be rude, but that smell wasn’t here before.”
Peter managed to sit, rubbing his eyes, and stuttered, “All that loud music was horrible where did it come from?”
Irima woke and ran straight to Ninester who said in a mumbly voice, “Sorry. Did I fall asleep?”
“Someone ate the cake,” said Poppy.
Then Irima saw what had happened to her cake, shooed away the puppy, and promptly burst into tears. “But what happened?” said Messina, getting up to put her arms around Irima’s shoulders.
John took a deep breath. “It’s bad,” he muttered. “Very bad indeed. If everyone can sit, I’ll try and explain what happened. But be ready, because either Yaark is back, or Clebbster has decided to take over.” He paused, looked around at the shocked faces, gulped, and said, “I think it was – Clebbster. Fingers. And we’ve been thinking all the time that it was Yaark that destroyed Peganda. But now I think that was Clebbster too.” Then, horribly frustrated and utterly miserable, John also burst into tears.
Who has the knife of Clarr? Is it Yaark or Clebbster? And who is living in the new black palace?
Nathan can’t win the war without the knife, but can he get it back? Join Nathan, Poppy and their friends to find out what happens next in ‘Leapfrog’, the next instalment of Bannister’s Muster.
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed reading this instalment of Nathan’s adventures. I would love to hear your thoughts on anything to do with Nathan and his friends.
You can contact me through either the Bannister’s Muster website at https://bannistersmuster.com. or the Bannister’s Muster facebook page.
If you could leave a review on Amazon, that would be wonderful and so very helpful.
See you soon in the next instalment…
Also by Barbara Gaskell Denvil
Bannister’s Muster
Book One: Snap
Book Two: Snakes & Ladders
Book 3: Blind Man’s Buff
Book 4: Dominoes
Book 5: Leapfrog
Book 6: Hide & Seek
Also available in Audio
and Coming Soon in Spanish edition.
Dominoes Page 32