The door opened. Some kind of giant, wearing an executioner’s hood, filled the doorway. Its arms were bulky and muscled: filthy with scars and dirt.
“Put her to death,” Macbeth told the giant, pushing past him.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” nodded the beast.
As soon as his master had left, the giant closed the door and walked into the room towards Leana.
20
What You Seek Is Seeking You
Snow was falling from a slate-grey sky as the children walked past the Main Building and up to the Quad for double geography.
Most filed into their warm rooms as the nine o’clock bell rang but Sam and his classmates remained outside, shivering, until the petite, smiling figure of Mr Yogananda came bounding up the steps ten minutes later waving his hands in apology. His car had slipped off the road that morning, he explained, but there was no damage done.
“Lawrence! Sam Lawrence, my boy. Take this sheet to the staff room and make twenty-two copies, will you? As quick as you like, lad. Thank you, thank you!”
Holding the paper in his numb fingers, Sam went straight back out into the cold. Despite the weather it was always good to be let out of class, for whatever reason. It was like being freed. Is every snowflake really different? he wondered, as he walked through the growing flurries. How can we know that for sure? How can people say that as a fact?
The Main Building was gorgeously warm but Sam avoided the hall for fear of crossing Mrs Waters on the stairs. He waited patiently outside the staffroom, as he knew he was supposed to – knocking was forbidden – and when a teacher finally appeared, going in, not coming out, Sam asked them for his copies.
Waiting, he looked down the corridor. There was only one other room here: The Eleusinian Room, headquarters of The Magistrate. As he stared at the closed door, Sam thought, now that would be a wonderful place to hide something like Mr Chipping’s secret book. Or a tunnel entrance! He remembered, too, his conversation with Eddie Burroughs during their weather station walk.
At that instant the door of The Eleusinian Room opened and a swarthy, bald, puffing man in dirty white overalls squeezed out. Sam pretended to be reading the notices pinned behind the glass panels outside the staff room but he could watch what was going on in the reflection in their glass. The cleaner dragged a trolley out of the room and locked the door three times. The old trolley wheels squeaked as the man passed by and Sam concentrated hard on the girl’s first-eleven hockey report.
“Here you go, Lawrence. For Mr Yogananda are they, you said?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Heard he had a spot of bother with the weather this morning?”
“He did, sir, but he says it’s fine now.”
“Very good. Off you go then.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Sam didn’t notice the snow as he walked up to the Quad. By the time he was back in the geography room with Mr Yogananda he’d formulated a plan for how he might get into The Eleusinian Room and have a little look about. It would take a spot of planning and some good luck but it was feasible.
After geography came English – they had to draw and label a replica of the Globe Theatre in preparation for a school trip to London in the New Year – but then came break-time. Sam ran ahead of the others to St Nick’s and dumped his books and bag in his locker. The dorms were out of bounds but the common room and matron’s room were both busy.
Sam pushed through the huddle of queuing, sickly children clogging the corridor outside the matron’s room and, his eyes on matron the whole time (she was working opposite, overwhelmed with snivelling patients), tried the handle of the small storeroom he was leaning against. It gave and Sam slipped inside and grabbed what he needed. He repeated the procedure to get out, locking eyes with matron right as the door clicked back into place.
“Away from that bloomin’ door, Lawrence, you pest! We’ve already had to replace the hinges twice and Mr Dahl will have your guts for garters if your leaning on it means he has to do it again.”
“Yes, miss, sorry, miss.”
Sam walked back down towards the locker room with his booty hidden under his arm.
He spent the rest of the day waiting for lights out. For the first time in many months he thought, I really want to wake up here tomorrow.
And he did.
Sam had never been so happy to hear that clanging bell or get up and hop about on the chilly floor. He fairly danced through the snowy morning run and had to control himself when Walt and Femi asked what was up with him. He found it difficult to act normal during assembly but forced himself to listen and participate in the dirge-like hymns.
Back in the locker room at St Nick’s he suffered a heart-stopping moment as the rumour went around that classes were going to be cancelled because of the snow. “The roofs’ll cave in, they’re so badly made,” snotty Mark Smith assured them. But finally groups of boys began drifting up towards the Quad and Sam ducked his head against the blizzard with the rest of them.
First period was religious studies. The class was known among the students as a “doss” and Sam had no problem excusing himself at the start of the lesson as planned. “Sir, Mr Lonigan, sir? Might I run back to the house, sir? I’ve left my homework diary.”
“Go on, then. Be quick about it,” the teacher replied, without looking up.
Sam was out of the room in a shot, before anyone could object or say anything which might delay him. He threaded through the lines filing into classrooms and skipped down the gritted steps. This was the nerviest part of the journey, for he was effectively standing out from the crowd, but if anyone stopped him now he was prepared to lie and say he was being sent again for photocopies. But nobody saw him. Nobody stopped him. And as soon as he was inside the Main Building he knew he was in with a chance of success – but he also knew he had to be quick; time was short.
Straining his ears for squeaking floorboards or squealing hinges, Sam took off his own jumper to reveal the one he’d stolen from matron’s storeroom which belonged to Eddie Burroughs. Balling his own and leaving it hidden on the top of the glass cases outside the staffroom, Sam wandered down to the closed door of The Eleusinian Room and pressed his ear to the oak door.
Yes!
There were noises inside. That meant the cleaner was in there and, Sam hoped, it also meant he was about to come out just as he had done the day before.
Sam busied himself again in front of the boards. He nodded at the drama teacher, Mrs Donelley, who seemed to burst through the back door in her hurry to get into the staffroom. Although she’d only spied him momentarily through her red-framed crazy glasses, Sam knew she’d start asking questions if she saw him again when she came out, so he hid around the corner by the open fire and prayed she’d go straight back out the way she’d come.
She did.
As the staffroom door swung closed Sam heard a raspy, phlegmy cough from the same corridor and slid around the polished corner to call out, “Just a minute, please, sir!”
The cleaner, unshaven and grumpy-looking, kicked his dirty mop bucket out of The Eleusinian Room. “Whaddya want?”
Sam arrived, puffing. “Sorry, sir. It’s just that Mrs Bainbridge said one of the girls has been sick on the carpet outside Mrs Water’s office, sir. It’s the Governor’s meeting today and Mrs Waters asked if you could go up there now and do whatever you could. She said it’s a bit of an emergency, sir.”
The cleaner was obviously torn between being offended at having to actually do something and being flattered that the Headmistress had asked for him. He forced a tired-sounding sigh from his dry lips and took out his key chain. “No rest for the wicked, I see.”
“Ah, could I just nip in there?” Sam tried, pointing at the crack in the door behind the man’s back. “I left my tie in there yesterday, sir. During The Magistrate’s meeting. I’ve been sent to get it.”
The cleaner’s eyes, as Sam knew they would, flickered down to the badge sewn into the jumper he was wearing. “Quick as
you can, then.”
“Thing is –” Sam shrugged – “I’m not a hundred per cent sure where I left it.” Sam pulled an apologetic face. “I might be a couple of minutes.”
“Well, make sure you close the bleeding door over when you leave,” the cleaner growled, already moving off. “I’ll lock it proper when I come back.” He shook his head as he walked away. “Knew it was going to be one of those days today.”
Sam let the door of The Eleusinian Room close behind himself and felt for a light. Something flickered high up in the ceiling and the room lit up. The parquet floor was gleaming with mop whorls and smelled intoxicatingly clean.
Sam walked across to the nearest wall and pulled back the thin, linen curtain which hung from ceiling to floor. This revealed a series of plaques and a quantity of stacked books, mostly old ledgers, whose leather spines poked out towards him. Each was embossed with a date. 1878, 1879, 1880…
In the middle of the same wall, so high up that Sam had to take a squelching step backwards on the parquet to see it, there was an inlaid altar with a large book set on a golden stand.
That has to be a reproduction of The Book, Sam thought.
On either side of the golden stand, just as Eddie Burroughs had described it during their walk, there were two small, dusty blue bottles. The ashes of the other two books the old lady wanted to sell! Above these was the school shield and higher yet, folded against the wall, the Union Jack and the school flag.
Sam turned to the remainder of the room. There was a raised stage, a lectern and some stacked chairs but his eyes were drawn to the library which spiralled up into the ceiling above his head. The lowest shelves, packed with books, hung just out of reach and wound upwards over three floors to a small dome where lime-green light streamed in through a circle of stained-glass windows.
Sam walked across the slightly giving floor until he stood right underneath a steel walkway which he could touch if he jumped and stretched his arm. He could see the shelves and books twirling upwards and knew he had to somehow get up into the cage-like structure and have a look at what there was.
The stage was empty but for a chair and some cables but Sam noticed there was a grate near the other wall which he knew would contain either a storage space or pipes. Kneeling on the floor, peering down through the brass holes, he made out the glinting outline of some sort of music instrument and, tugging the grate up, quickly saw what he was looking for: the long, hook-ended rod he needed to pull down the bottom set of stairs which would give him access to the secret Magistrate-controlled library.
Sam had to climb into the hole under the grate to get the rod. There was an odd smell in the air, of burning or charring, and when he climbed back out into the room he found his shoes and fingertips were sooty. He set to work on hooking down the staircase unaware that he had just been inside the school’s book-burning pit. This was where, during meetings of the High Magistrate, banned books were deposited and destroyed.
The staircase swung down as he pulled it with the rod and Sam quickly clanged up the rungs to the first floor. The tightly packed books on the shelves were modern here and there were even catalogues listing books available in electronic formats. Sam looked up – there were two more floors – before glancing back to the main door.
How long do I have?
He ran up a narrow, twirling set of steel steps to the next floor and began again quickly scanning the shelves. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the order of the books stored here and Sam thought, I’ll start at the top, with the old ones, and work my way down. So he went up again, puffing as he turned and twisted on the steel rungs until he finally came out on a small platform where the stained glass windows surrounded him and cast his skin green. Crouching, he could see the glow of the snow without, and some cars, but the old glass was too thick and the windows too dirty to see more.
Keep your mind on the books.
The tomes whose spines he ran his fingers along now were ancient: battered red and bruised brown. There were rolled maps and yellowing scrolls laid on top of the volumes themselves and in some places the books seemed to have been shovelled into the shelves two and three deep. Sam didn’t know where to start. He read the titles with mounting anxiety, not sure what he was looking for, when his eyes were drawn to a familiar name. Leana: The Lost Princess, the spine read. “Leana?”
Sam pulled out the thin but stocky volume. The sheets were thick, crisp, pungent and yellow.
O’ hurry hard, O’ hurry see
She fades as fast as night
To where o’ where the dreamer’s dream
To where the sleepers sigh.
Sam closed the book.
Is this about my Leana? No, of course not. Why would it be?
He thought about tucking the book inside his jumper but decided it would be too risky.
I need to come back here. With more time.
He looked down and knew he had to go. Perhaps he would try to be elected into The Magistrate, like Eddie. Then perhaps he could come in here whenever he wanted? And wasn’t there an activity, Rectification or Rehabilitation or something like that, where you actually came and took care of the books? He’d heard something about it.
Sam couldn’t get the Leana poems back into their space and bent to see why. A folded paper had fallen across the space the volume had occupied. Sam plucked it out and the other book slid straight in. Despite the screaming in his head telling him to escape while the coast was clear, Sam couldn’t resist unfolding the paper.
It was a hand-drawn map.
It was difficult to see what it was showing at first but Sam picked out a cross with SC inked beside it which he took to be St Catherine’s Church. From the cross there was a dotted line which read ‘route’. This snaked its way across the paper to an ‘x’ and beside the ‘x’ were shapes indicating, Sam thought, a plan of a room. Almost immediately it became obvious to him that he was looking at was a plan of Mrs Water’s office. The windows were marked, as were the fireplace, the door and the secretary’s office. The only other mark on the map was a small diagram of a book and a scrawl: Sybil’s Tome.
Folding the paper and threading it in beside the Leana book, Sam thought, This is the route of a tunnel or a path which goes from the church to the school – to Water’s office. The tunnel joins the chimney somewhere under the school. That must be the way in. His eyes stared down at the grate on the floor of The Eleusinian Room. The book Mr Chipping told us about must be up there. Sybil’s book. The School Book! In Water’s office!
With a jarring squeal the main wooden door of The Eleusinian Room creaked open. Sam ducked and saw the cleaner’s bald head through the steel bars. He was with someone Sam couldn’t see. There were two pairs of footsteps.
The had cleaner run into the centre of the room and now, spying Sam on the highest landing, he pointed up and screamed, “There he is! I’ve got him! He’s still here! He’s up there, caught like a rat! I see him!”
21
Extract from Leana: The Lost Princess
Between the worlds of peace and war
Love and hate
A queen to be
Huddles, waits
The church doors close
The heath in rain
A baby lain
Wrapped in Hope
and Fate
Destined for worlds of war and peace
Love and hate
A witch’s gift
Time’s portal wide
The future waits
The past behind
A prince is born
A curse waylaid
Good and Evil
Thrice betrayed
Above and beyond war and peace
Sublimity
And life’s a dream
A princess cries a salty stream
Innocence wrapped in meaning
Finders keepers
Love and belief
The moon’s baleful eye
The princess dreams
The pa
st alive
A king’s last cry
The basic law
Which underlies
Power, Magic, Destiny
Truth and Lies
Right Mind
Right Mind
Right Action sends
A sign.
The princess made of stars and dust
Rises like her mother sun
Drinks the water which took her blood
And sings a song that lover’s love.
22
Knowledge Is Power
Sam was walking into Mrs Water’s office again, the same fire roaring in the grate, watching Mrs Waters standing up and smiling and nodding at him just like the last time. Behind her the curtains were drawn: purple velvet, roof to floor, strangling all the light to death. Did she know he knew who she was?
“Well, well, Mr Lawrence. What are we going to do with you?”
Sam felt light-headed. He wasn’t sure what had happened. The clock on the wall showed it was late afternoon. “Did I faint?”
“Yes. But you have been revived. You were in The Eleusinian Room.” Mrs Waters unscrewed a fat fountain pen and beginning to fill in the blanks on the form she had in front of her. Sam couldn’t help noticing the graphic in the bottom right corner of the page. A full moon.
Of course. This is the day. Today is the full moon. The last blink of Selene’s eye. Today, when I fall asleep, I shall see Leana again. All this will be resolved.
“Are you not even going to try and explain yourself?” Waters asked, disgusted.
“I can’t remember anything, miss,” Sam began. “Maybe the cleaner? Perhaps I tripped over his bucket? Or maybe the fumes of that stuff he uses overwhelmed me and I fainted? I really couldn’t say.”
“Fumes? Overwhelmed?” Mrs Waters shook her head and tutted. “Mr Lawrence, perhaps I should tell you that how you came to be in The Eleusinian Room is the least of your problems. No, no. Theft! Yes, the theft of a jersey belonging to an invested Quaestor, is the truly shocking part of all this. That and subterfuge! The use of this stolen property to facilitate your entrance into a…”
The Invisible Hand Page 12