The Song of Seven

by Tonke Dragt

  “Is your sister Miss Rosemary?” asked Frans.

  “Yes, she’s the youngest of the three of us, and she was always the most beautiful, but she never married. I’m the eldest, and my other sister, Cornelia, is Roberto’s mother. Would you like me to heat something up for you?”

  “No… yes, no, thank you,” said Frans. “But is all of this for real? Why is everything so strange and complicated, with all these prophecies and family secrets?”

  “Well, that’s the fault of the dear departed Count Gregorius,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “I mean Gregorius the Mad. He’s the one who started setting all those riddles. And Jan Thomtidom isn’t much better.” She pronounced the name correctly too. “I think all that magic business is very dangerous indeed. You’re better off sticking to reality.”

  “Did Mr Thomtidom write that letter?” asked Frans. “I mean the reply to the advert, the one Count Grisenstein answered.”

  “What are you talking about now?” his landlady asked.

  “Aunt Wilhelmina, please don’t pretend you know nothing about it! You told the President of the Conspiracy that I was the right person to infiltrate the House of Stairs as the tutor of Count Grisenstein’s nephew. So you must know all about the letter.”

  “Oh, you mean the letter you were waiting for on Thursday. Well, Frans, you must know more about that than I do, because you knew it was coming before it even got here.”

  “Aunt Wilhelmina!” cried Frans. “I also told you that I made that story up!”

  His landlady turned to him and put her hands on her hips. “Young man,” she said sternly, “if you want to go making up events and incidents and presenting them to other people as if they’re true, you’ll have to bear in mind that they may well indeed come true! Perhaps this will teach you to keep fantasy and reality apart.”

  “But you’re turning things all around,” Frans began, feeling rather flustered.

  “How about you turn around?” his landlady said. “And go and put the lights on, as I asked, and get the cups out. Then I’ll bring the tea through.”

  Soon after that, they were sitting at the dining table. Aunt Wilhelmina poured the tea and put a plate of thick buttered slices of fruitcake in front of Frans.

  Frans thanked her and started eating. Between bites of cake, he muttered, “Roberto and his aunts make three, and Mr Magician, that’s four, and Jan Tooreloor, that’s five…”

  “Are you singing the Song of Seven?” his landlady asked.

  “I’m counting the members of the conspiracy,” said Frans. “There should be seven of them, and if I include myself, I get six. So who’s number seven? I mean the other spy – Roberto said there were two.”

  “I still don’t like to think of myself as a spy,” said Aunt Wilhelmina.

  “Oh, but you’re perfectly suited to it,” said Frans. “No one would ever suspect you, and that’s just how it should be in a good mystery. But who’s the other one?”

  Aunt Wilhelmina put on a thoughtful expression. Then she chuckled and said, “That’s just typical of Rob. He insisted there should be seven members of the conspiracy. The second spy is already at the House of Stairs.”

  “At the House of Stairs? I’ve already counted Jan Tooreloor.”

  “Jan the coachman? Oh, he’s not a spy.”

  “No, that’s true, he’s a liaison officer… and what a good job he does! But then who’s the spy?”

  “You’ll have to find that out for yourself,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “Like me, he’s someone you’d never suspect.”

  Frans pushed his plate away. “But then why do I have to get inside the House of Stairs if a spy’s already there?”

  Aunt Wilhelmina gave him a mysterious look.

  “Ivan can’t do what you can do,” she said, “and you can’t do what Ivan can.”

  “Ivan? His name is Ivan?”

  “That’s right. You’re sure to meet him if you get into the House of Stairs.”

  “Ivan…” murmured Frans. “Ivan the Spy… He certainly sounds like a character from a spy movie. I don’t suppose he’s Russian, is he?”

  “As far as I know, his parents are local,” his landlady said.

  “Please tell me more,” asked Frans.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I think these spies are there just to spy on me!” said Frans, banging the table with his fist. “Well, I won’t put up with it! I’m not going to be part of this ridiculous conspiracy.”

  “Don’t get so upset,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “You know, there’s some truth to what they say about redheads being short-tempered. Ivan is dark and silent, and he’s good at sneaking around.”

  “A sneaky spy. Of course,” said Frans. “And Ivan isn’t his real name, is it? That’s just an alias, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not telling you anything else,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “You’ll have to talk to my sister. Rosemary holds nearly all the strings, even though Jan Thomtidom thinks he does.”

  “To the Herb Garden,” said Frans. “The sixth path from Sevenways, and the last. But why are there six paths and not seven? Go on, Aunt Wilhelmina, tell me now that there’s a seventh path, all invisible and forgotten.”

  “Your imagination is truly astounding,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. She stood up and rummaged around in one of the drawers of the sideboard. “Look,” she said, “here’s a map of the local area. Sevenways is on it too.”

  Frans looked at the map. “Six paths,” he said, “and not a single one more.”

  “Someone once wrote a book about the area,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “It explains what it used to be like here and what it’s like now, and why it was different back then and why it’s as it is now. I believe Jan Thomtidom has a copy.”

  “The book!” said Frans. “I forgot Mr Thomtidom’s book, and my own books are still there too.”

  “Oh, you might as well just leave them there,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “Jan Thomtidom won’t notice a few extra books.”

  “But I need them for my studies!” said Frans.

  “You have better things to do,” his landlady replied.

  “Running up and down stairs, I’m sure,” muttered Frans, looking at the map. “Yes, there it is. The House of Stairs, close to Langelaan. I don’t understand why Jan Tooreloor went via Sevenways – it takes longer that way. Aunt Wilhelmina, what secret does Sevenways hide?”

  “Now don’t get yourself all entangled in mysteries,” said his landlady. “That will make you easy prey for Count Gradus Grisenstein.”

  Frans sighed and said in a grave voice, “Count Grisenstein, the Fiendish Foe, the Dragon, the grim grizzly bear…” He pictured some kind of wild man, even more terrifying than the Abominable Snowman.

  “He’s a villain all right,” said Aunt Wilhelmina, “but he’s also a gentleman, that has to be said.”

  In his mind’s eye, the wild man transformed into a gentleman in a dinner suit. He had raven-black hair, a dark expression and a gleaming smile in a shadowy face. A blood-red cape was wrapped around his shoulders and a sword flashed in his hand.

  “He’s as cold as ice,” his landlady said. “Would you like another cup of tea?”

  The cruel face of Frans’s imaginary count grew colder and colder, and the red cape was replaced by a fur coat.

  “If you don’t want any more tea, you’d better go to bed,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “It’s Monday tomorrow, a tiring day.”

  “I’ve already slept enough today,” said Frans. “But fine, I’ll follow your advice. I could do with a few dreams to take me back to reality. Could I borrow this map?”

  “You can keep it,” said Aunt Wilhelmina. “Please don’t spend too much time pondering it though. Think about that poor, innocent child instead. Good night.”

  As Frans reached the door, she called out to him. “Oh, in case I forget to mention it tomorrow,” she said. “When you go to Rosemary’s, would you bring my umbrella back with you?”

  “If I go, I’ll bring it back,” Frans replied. “And
I shall go. It seems there’s no getting out of it. Good night, Aunt Wilhelmina.”

  He didn’t go straight to bed though, but first looked again at the map and added a few notes himself, including Roberto’s tent and Mr Thomtidom’s house, “Appearance and Reality”. “Once upon a time, there were seven paths,” he mumbled, drawing a dotted line from Sevenways to the House of Stairs. And then the map looked like this:

  And now even the children get involved

  THIS IS FOUR

  That Monday, Frans woke earlier than usual, and he was in his classroom long before school began. As he was writing sums on the board, Marian came in, with her friend Jo. They said they were there to water the geraniums.

  The two girls set to work with the watering can, but Frans was sure they had another reason for coming in early. After a while, he turned his back on the sums and said, “So, Marian, have you found out who Gr… Gr… is yet?”

  “N…no, sir,” she said, blushing.

  “Well, I have!”

  “Have you, sir? Really?” Marian exclaimed.

  Jo didn’t say anything, but she was so excited that she splashed water all over the floor.

  “So who is he?” asked Marian.

  Frans crossed his arms and said seriously, “You know very well!”

  Marian went even redder. “Y… Yes, sir,” she confessed. “But I wasn’t allowed to tell. I…”

  “Aha!” said Frans. “So you weren’t allowed to tell! And who was it who told you that?”

  “A man with a beard – he came up to the playground, on Saturday morning, before school. Didn’t he, Jo?”

  Jo nodded. “A man with a grey beard,” she added in a quiet voice.

  “He said you might ask us something about a letter,” Marian continued. “And that we weren’t to tell you anything, even if we knew, sir. He said you had to find out for yourself. We thought it was a bit strange, but we promised, all of us. But we didn’t know who the letter was from…”

  “You just said that you did know!”

  “Only after you showed us the letter,” said Marian. “At least I did, and Maarten. The coat of arms was on the letter…”

  “Coat of arms?”

  “The stairs and the cat’s head… Count Grisenstein’s count of arms.”

  “I see,” said Frans. “Everyone around here seems to know more about that gentleman than I do… Count Gradus Grisenstein. And the man with the grey beard was, of course, also a friend of yours!”

  Marian and Jo shook their heads.

  Maarten’s voice suddenly echoed around the classroom: “He’s a magician.”

  “My goodness, Maarten, you made me jump!” said Frans. “You sneaked in here just as silently as if you were Ivan himself.”

  “Who’s Ivan?” Maarten immediately replied.

  “Do you know Mr Thomtidom?” asked Frans, ignoring his question.

  “Thomtidom? Is that his name?” said Maarten. “I didn’t know that. But he came to school once and did some magic for us. He can do these great tricks with cards.”

  “He has some even better tricks up his sleeve,” said Frans. “So you all knew Gr… Gr… was Count Grisenstein, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “Not all of us knew,” said Maarten. “Kai and Arie know, of course, and Marian, and Jo.”

  “I told Chris and Lisbeth too,” whispered Marian.

  “And Kai must have told Hanna and Hans,” said Maarten.

  “In secret, of course,” said Marian.

  “In other words,” said Frans, “the whole class knows now.”

  “But how did you find out, sir?” asked Marian.

  “Oh, that’s a long story,” said Frans.

  “Will you tell it to us?” pleaded Maarten.

  “I’m not sure,” replied Frans. “You haven’t told me anything yet, have you?”

  “Oh, that’s so mea- um, I mean, oh, that’s not fair,” said Maarten, and then he fell silent because the bell rang.

  Soon after that, all the children were sitting in their seats. They knew they had maths, because they always did on Monday mornings, but they were looking at Frans as if they were expecting something completely different. Maarten put his hand up and asked, “Sir, who’s Ivan?”

  “That question, Maarten, has nothing to do with our lesson,” said Frans.

  “But you said I was like him, sir!”

  “You’re nothing at all like him,” said Frans. “It’s just that you crept into the classroom as silently as he would. Ivan is a spy. He’s dark and clever, cunning and crafty… Sometimes they call him Ivan the Terrible,” he added, “and no one suspects he’s a spy, which is, of course, very dangerous for his enemies.”

  “Who are his enemies?” asked Maarten in a whisper.

  “I don’t know for sure yet,” replied Frans. “And now we’re going to do some sums.”

  Ignoring the disappointed whispers, he told the children to open up their maths books. Then he said in an almost threatening tone that they had three quarters of an hour – and not a second longer – to finish all the sums, without making a mess or any mistakes.

  While the children were working, Frans thought about the magician and his peculiar views on arithmetic. He smiled to himself as he wondered what his students would say if he gave them a question about a six-way crossroads that had the same number of paths as a seven-way crossroads.

  He didn’t mention Mr Thomtidom though, and tried not to think about what had happened to him. And that was probably why he was so strict with the class that Monday morning. He made the children work, work, work! After sums, he gave them a dictation, and then some reading-comprehension exercises, and he yelled at anyone who stopped paying attention for just a moment. After the break, he went on in the same way, ignoring the dirty looks his students were giving him (no one dared to say anything). He made them do mental arithmetic so quickly that they could barely keep up, and when they’d finished that, he announced that they were going to study some grammar.

  Frans wrote on the board the first sentence that came to him:

  The wicked uncle held the innocent child captive in his house.

  When he saw the words written there, in white on black, he already regretted it, but he said calmly, “Kai, please analyse the grammatical structure of this sentence.”

  Kai stuck out his bottom lip and, after some serious pondering, he said, “Well, held is the verb, and the wicked uncle is the subject…” Then he fell silent; grammar wasn’t really his strongest point.

  Kai bit his lip and fidgeted in his seat, but his teacher pressed on. “And what’s the object?”

  Kai didn’t say anything. He was listening carefully to a quiet murmur behind him.

  “Maarten!” roared the teacher. “If you’re so sure of the answer, then say it out loud!”

  “The ch… child… The innocent child is the object, sir,” replied Maarten.

  As Frans looked at the board, he realized for the first time that the innocent child was so much more important than the wicked uncle. Geert-Jan was just an innocent little boy, not some object – and he was a prisoner. If Count Gradus Grisenstein was truly that dangerous, someone needed to put a stop to the situation – and soon!

  “No,” he said slowly. “Geert-Jan is not an object.”

  He turned to the class and saw curious astonishment on all their faces. “Geert-Jan…” he repeated.

  And then he forgot all about grammar and nouns and verbs. He had to tell them what had happened to him.

  There was one problem with this story though. Were they the adventures of Frans the Red or of Mr Van der Steg, the schoolteacher?

  Frans the Red had claimed he was waiting for an important letter, but then Mr Van der Steg had been amazed to receive that letter. Frans the Red had said he knew nothing about Gr… Gr…, a gruesome gremlin who lived in the wood. But Mr Van der Steg knew that he was called Gradus Grisenstein, a man whose name was familiar to all the locals.

  All the children in the class had hear
d of the House of Stairs before, and even the story about the treasure wasn’t news to them. They didn’t know anything about the conspiracy though (or they pretended not to), and none of them were aware of any other mysteries surrounding Count Grisenstein’s home. Was a child really imprisoned there? Was a Sealed Parchment hidden there as well as the treasure? Was there some dark spy creeping up and down the stairs of the house?

  Frans told them the story, and not even the bell at twelve o’clock stopped him. Fifteen minutes later, he solemnly swore to his class that he’d given them a true account of all his experiences. And then it took a little while for them all to leave the classroom, whispering excitedly, and go outside.

  “Ah, I see you all had to stay behind, did you?” said the headmaster, who was standing outside the door. “Most disappointing. Mr Van der Steg is doing his utmost to get you youngsters to learn something.”

  Frans felt guilty when he heard those words. Instead of teaching the children, he’d been telling them stories for three quarters of an hour, and it wasn’t even Saturday.

  But his class didn’t give him away; they pulled faces as if all they’d been doing, all that time, was analysing sentences. They were good children and he knew the secrets of the conspiracy were safe with them.

  *

  At twenty-five past three that Monday afternoon, half the class put up their hands at the same time, and the other half began to whisper.

  “I know what time it is,” said Frans, who was looking out of the window, with his hands in his pockets. “And you can go on working until half past three.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Maarten. “But you… Can’t you just quickly write that letter? That’s what you were planning to do, isn’t it? The letter to…” And he lowered his voice… “Count Grisenstein.”