by Mark Evans
‘Oh, dear brother Pip! Wah-blarrfggggh!!!!!!!!!’1 She started crying again with what I assumed was gladness. Baffled by her emotional fluidity, I decided to introduce her to my companions.
‘The rescue is all thanks to this woman here.’ I motioned to the servant standing behind me.
‘Pleased to meet you, young Pippa.’
‘The pleasure is all mine, hideous bearded crone.’
‘And this is my new best friend, Harry Biscuit.’
‘Hello!’ Harry said, a little too loudly, blushing as he did so. ‘Sorry, bit nervous. Don’t get to talk to girls much. Or ever.’ His cheeks bright red, he moved awkwardly away, as if he had slightly forgotten how to walk; I think he was quite taken with her.
‘We must get you out of this bath, dear sister.’ I offered a hand to help her from the tub.
‘Bath? But this is no bath.’
I was baffled. It certainly looked like a bath. It was the right shape. It held liquid, and a person, like other baths I had seen, apart from the empty ones. And down the side was written the word ‘bath’.
‘Then what is it?’
‘As you know, today I am supposed to be burned as Joan of Arc.’
A shudder ran through me at the idea of my sister being tied to a stake and burned, like a fifteenth-century French martyr.
‘And to celebrate that, the nunnery will have a feast.’
Now a different shudder ran through me as I realized I was actually a bit cold.
‘So this is not bathwater. This is a marinade. I am in a flavour-bath.2 To make me a tender and tasty steak from a stake.’
‘No! My own sister! Destined to be eaten!’ The two different shudders now combined into one gigantic tremor of fearful, chilly fury.
‘But no longer, dear brother, for you have come to rescue me!’
She reached her arms from the tub, and we hugged as only a brother and sister can, meaning I could not resist pulling her hair to annoy her and she could not resist straightening my collar and cleaning an imaginary stain from my cheek.
Our hug was interrupted by a slurping sound, and I looked up to see Harry licking a finger that he had just dipped into Pippa’s bath. Fortunately, it was his own finger.
‘Mmm, rosemary, garlic and olive oil. I reckon you’d have been a tasty feast, Miss Bin.’
‘Why, thank you, Harry Biscuit.’ Pippa smiled at the compliment.
‘Hurr-hurr,’ Harry stammered. ‘I feel a bit giddy.’ He blushed like an embarrassed tomato.
‘You have come in the nick of time, for shortly Sister Cookswell is to come and squeeze lemon juice over me, then stud me with peppercorns.’
‘Then we must leave at once.’ The servant came over from the door where she had been checking lest anyone approach. ‘It is now daytime, however, and the nuns are up and about. As a servant, they will not notice me, but you three will be more conspicuous. To that end, I have brought disguises for you, taken from the St Bastard’s school-play costume cupboard.’
She rummaged beneath her dirt-encrusted skirts, then withdrew piles of clothing from within, distributing an outfit to each of us. Quickly, we dressed.
I knew that the St Bastard’s school play was traditionally an incredibly violent and unusual production, but even so, the results were surprising. ‘Are you sure about these disguises?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Why? Aren’t you?’ The servant bristled defensively, like an offended hedgehog.
‘It’s just . . . well . . .’ I motioned at Harry and myself.
‘Well what?’
I decided to beat about the bush of politeness no more. ‘Harry is dressed as Admiral Nelson.’ For indeed he was, in a blood-stained costume left over from that term’s production of the Battle of Trafalgar in which the headmaster had shot a boy a night for a week.
‘So?’
‘But Nelson has been dead these past eighteen years! And now he will be discovered wandering round a nunnery.’
‘Exactly. Everyone will be delighted to see him again. And who would challenge such a fine figure of authority and heroism?’ The servant stared at me through her warty beardedness. ‘I suppose you’re not happy with your disguise either?’
‘I’m dressed as a rabbit!’ I blurted, for indeed I was, it being a pointy-eared, fluffy tailed costume from the headmaster’s Easter production in which the boy playing the Easter bunny had been torn apart by a pack of live foxes.
At my objecting tone, the servant stared angrily at me through her warts. It was like being hated by a currant bun.
‘Um . . .’ Now Pippa, too, had objections. ‘Perhaps I should just wear my regular nun’s outfit instead of this disguise.’
The servant sighed. ‘No. For there is nothing as suspicious in a nunnery as a nun.’
‘Do we really think that’s true?’
‘If you’re trying to escape, yes.’ The servant sounded as steadfast and resolute as a British polar explorer determined to leave a tent against the advice of everyone else.
‘So you’re saying it’s less suspicious if I look like a grandfather clock?’ Pippa held up her disguise, which was indeed a grandfather clock, a costume left over from a production before my time at St Bastard’s, but one that had gone down in school folklore, a musical written by Headmaster Hardthrasher himself called The Beating, Shooting and Hanging of Big Ben.
‘Look, I promised to get Pip out of here. I didn’t know there would be three of you and when I found out I did the best I could. You’re lucky I could find any disguises at all in the middle of the night while trapped in an evil boarding-school!’
Again, as she ranted and raved, her accent mutated into something higher-born and familiar, but again as before I could not identify it. Truly, this woman was a mystery; if she helped us escape, would we ever solve her? Or like a fiendishly difficult Sudoku would she be thrown angrily away unsolved?3
‘All I’m saying is, please trust me. The disguises will work.’
What choice did we have? Other than all the choices that involved not wearing her ridiculous disguises. Nevertheless, there was something persuasive about her tone and Pippa donned her clock, I tried a tentative bunny hop or two and Harry completed his disguise by stuffing an arm inside his jacket and placing a patch over his eye.
‘Actually, pretending to be Nelson is brilliant! Look at me, I’m Nelson!’
Harry’s enthusiasm melted the icy atmosphere, and even the mysterious, roving-accented servant’s mouth twitched upwards at the corners in a vague signal of amusement, dislodging a wart, which fell to the ground with a plink.
‘Good. Now we must leave.’ The servant headed for the door.
‘Not without my anvil!’ Pippa fondly stroked her paternally gifted anvil.
‘Such an item is too heavy. It will slow us down.’ There was a hint of annoyance in the servant’s voice now.
‘But it reminds me of our late father!’ she pleaded. ‘And it’s not as heavy as it looks.’ She lifted the anvil to prove her point, managing to hold it for a full no seconds before it plunged clangily and point-disprovingly to the floor.
‘Do you not have a lighter reminder?’ To the hint of annoyance was now added a pinch of peevishness.
‘Well . . . there is this one-page letter he wrote me.’ She held it up but, as if to prove its lightness, a breezy gust snatched it from her hands and wafted it out of the window. ‘Then there is this feather. Or this paper bag full of his breath.’
‘Bring those, then.’ The annoyed peevishness lifted slightly.
‘But only the anvil really reminds me of him. I must bring it.’
The servant now responded in a tone that could only be described as blinking cross. ‘No, I forbid it.’
‘But . . .’ And the angry, stub-toed, pickpocketed banshee was back. ‘Waarrfgggh-spphhllrrggh-wah!!!’
Why this should make Pippa glad, I did not know.
‘I am so sad!!!’
Ah. It hadn’t.
‘Miss Bin. I shall help you carr
y it.’ Harry stepped forward to help, thereby silencing the banshee.
‘Oh, what a gentleman you are, Harry Biscuit.’ Pippa leaned over and kissed Harry on the cheek.
‘Hurr-hurr, girl. Kissed by a girl. And not a pretend one.’ If before Harry had blushed like an embarrassed tomato, he now looked like a shy strawberry that had just fallen naked into a pot of red paint.
The blushing finally eased, and he attempted to pick up the anvil. It seemed far too heavy for a boy who had placed one arm inside his jacket to pretend to be Nelson, but Harry was committed to both disguise and anvil-carrying and, arm straining, eyes bulging and trousers ripping with effort, he somehow lifted the immense metallic block and quickly staggered incredibly slowly towards the door.
‘Good. Now follow me and act just like any normal dead admiral, giant rabbit and grandfather clock.’
The servant led us out into the corridor – and immediately I saw heading towards us a group of four nuns, who were having a heated discussion in song regarding the solution to a problem with a young nun named Maria.
Was the servant right? Would our bizarre disguises work? Or was our escape over almost before it had begun?
Yet no alarm seemed to register on their nunny faces as they approached us. Indeed, they made conversation.
‘Ah, good morning, the late Admiral Nelson. How nice to see you alive again,’ remarked one to Harry.
‘Um, yes . . . Er, Trafalgar, bloody good battle, what?’ replied Harry.
To my amazement, the nuns giggled in response. ‘Oh, Admiral, you’re so witty.’
‘Am I?’ asked a bemused Biscuit.
Harry’s disguise worked! They were convinced he was Nelson and were actively flirting with him, as was the law with all military heroes back then.4
Unfortunately, now their gaze turned to my own rabbity self. Surely I would be revealed as the fraudulent escapee I was.
‘And good morning to you, Mr Rabbit.’
I struggled for a response, then remembered the servant’s instructions and tried to respond as any normal rabbit would. ‘Er . . . ttt-ttt-ttt?’
The nuns stared at me silently. I had ruined everything. But then: ‘You’re absolutely right. What an astute observation.’
Whatever astute rabbity observation I had made eluded me, but it had satisfied the nuns; I clearly spoke fluent Rabbit. Now there was only Pippa to pass the test. Without waiting to be spoken to, she boldly stepped forward and spoke: ‘Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong,’ she clockily ad-libbed, and the response could not have been more unexpected or welcome.
‘Oh! Six o’clock already! We are late for our early morning guilt-grating!5 We must hurry.’
And with a tip of the wimple, they scuttled nunnily away. We had got past them: perhaps the servant’s disguises were not as strange and wrong as I had suspected.
Or nuns are very, very stupid.
‘Back through here.’ Now the servant led us through the dormitory via which we had entered. We had to stop briefly for Harry to sign autographs as Nelson, but soon we were at the door that led back to St Bastard’s. ‘Once on the other side of this door, we are but a short walk from freedom, for I know a secret exit through the school salt-mines.’
Could it be true? Was freedom really so close at hand? Could that salty place of punishment provide our route to safety? As we passed through the door back into St Bastard’s, my heart soared with optimism and hope swelled inside me like a large benign cyst.
Alas, when we re-entered the school, that hope-cyst burst, spilling forth the pus of despair, as I beheld a sight that chilled me to my very marrow. I forget why I was carrying such a large vegetable. Perhaps it was part of the rabbit costume, though a carrot would have been more convincing and a lettuce leaf lighter.
There, in front of us, loomed the towering, terrifying figure of Headmaster Hardthrasher, a cane in his hand and a small, deadly-looking cannon by his side. I had a fleeting hope that we could bluff our way through in our disguises, but his words instantly destroyed that illusion.
‘Pip Bin. Harry Biscuit. I’ve been expecting you.’
At that moment I knew only two things: first, that I was
going to die, and second, that I had been right, and that nuns were very, very stupid.
1 The author was the single greatest user of the exclamation point in nineteenth-century literature. It was the most expensive item of punctuation to print and publishers often charged its costs to the author – Sir Philip here is indicating he is so rich and successful he simply doesn’t care how many he uses.
2 Flavour-baths came in many different sizes, from tiny for marinading mice to ones big enough for an entire live cow, a size known as ‘moossive’.
3 In the nineteenth century a Sudoku was not the number puzzle we know today. It was in fact a shortening of the phrase ‘Super Dog Knot Undoing’, a popular sport of the time where competitors would attempt to disentangle complicated knots made out of greyhounds and dachshunds.
4 The Flirtius Militaris Act of 1807 made it compulsory for women to flirt when they met a decorated military man. It also compelled men to speak to them in an awestruck, slightly higher-pitched-than-normal voice, before thinking less of themselves for not being as brave and virile.
5 Penance in the form of a vicious scraping up and down a human-sized cheese grater.
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
Of chases and escapes and fruit1
We froze in our tracks, like an Eskimo with no shoes or a frightened train. So this was it: my last day on earth.
Harry’s last day.
And, once the headmaster had returned her to the nunnery to be Joan of Arc, then roasted and eaten as the Joan of Arc Day feast, Pippa’s last day.
‘Harry Biscuit. The ingratitude. Trying to escape when I’ve gone to all the trouble of getting you these lovely eighteenth-birthday presents?’ The headmaster stepped aside, revealing a table stacked high with neatly wrapped gifts. ‘Don’t you want to open them?’
‘Ooh, presents. I do love presents.’
Harry put down Pippa’s anvil and headed for the present-laden table.
‘No, Harry! They are almost certainly lethal!’ I shouted, remembering the long roll-call of birthday deaths at St Bastard’s.
Harry turned to me with desperation in his eyes. ‘I know! But I just can’t help myself.’ He reached for the nearest present and gave it a shake. ‘Ooh, is it a book?’ He unwrapped it. ‘No, it’s a grenade. Now, what is this one?’ said Harry, shaking another. ‘Chocolates, maybe?’ He opened it. ‘No, it’s some unstable nitroglycerine. How thoughtful.’
‘And after you’ve opened your presents, you can light the candle on your cake.’ The headmaster grinned murderously as he pointed to a distinctly untasty-looking cake.
‘Ooh, is that dynamite cake? My favourite.’
Though Harry was my best friend, I am not ashamed to admit that at this moment in time I began to believe he might be . . . How shall I put this? A sandwich short of a full-house in picnic-poker? One colony short of an empire? A bit thick? Yes, that’s the one.
‘As for you, Pip Bin, don’t you want the delicious soup Mr Benevolent left you?’ The headmaster held up the tin and poured the contents into a bowl, which immediately started to melt and dissolve. ‘It looks nice and spicy. Do you want me to feed you?’
He advanced on me wielding the deadly bowl and a distinctly threatening spoon. I backed away, terrified.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the servant rummaging yet again in her manure-stained yet capacious skirts; suddenly she produced a sword and, more surprising yet, a cold, hard voice of upper-class command, which I really very nearly could identify. ‘Leave the boy alone, Hardthrasher.’
The headmaster stopped in his tracks and turned to her. ‘Or what?’
‘Or this.’ She poked him hard in the ribs with the sword – once, twice, thrice, even fourice.
He clutched at where she had struck him, his hands coming away covered with b
lood, or possibly some other red substance, such as ketchup, though blood seemed the likeliest, what with a sword being involved and everything.
‘Ha! I have drawn blood,’ the servant crowed, in her now clearly natural voice, which I really was incredibly close to being able to pin down.
‘Maybe. But does not medical science tell us that drawing blood from a patient strengthens them?’2 He licked his ichorous fingers and raised himself threateningly back up to his full height.
The servant drew herself up too, sword defiantly pointed forward. My heart beat faster: if she lost we were doomed, but on the other hand . . . sword-fight. Cool.3 But it turned out there was to be no fight for she now yelled, ‘Run! Everyone, run!’
With a final jab at the headmaster, the servant spun round and ran for the door.
‘But my presents!’ cried Harry.
‘Leave them!’
‘And my anvil!’ cried Pippa.
‘Leave it!’
‘Never!’
‘Your anvil must come even before my presents, Miss Bin!’ Harry cried, as he abandoned the gifty table, heaved the anvil into his solitary Nelsonian arm and ran at less than walking pace through the door, which the servant immediately slammed behind us.
‘There! That will hold him for a while.’
She was wrong. Unless by ‘a while’ she had meant less than a second and a half, for within that time the headmaster had crashed through the wood as if it was the paper it might have become had it not chosen to be a door as its timbery career, and he stood in the corridor, face studded with splinters like a man with a porcupine for a head.
‘You will never escape St Bastard’s!’ he shouted, and advanced on us.
There were two doors nearby. Above one was written ‘No Exit’ and above the other ‘Dangerous Exit’. The servant wrenched open the latter, revealing steps leading down into a scary darkness. Salt-tanged air rolled up from below, and not in a good way, like that from a jolly seaside, but in a bad way, like that from a deadly salt-mine, which this was: the school salt-mine.