Bookweirder

by Paul Glennon

  At that moment there was a sound outside his own door. Malcolm was startled to attention, closing the book reflexively and pricking up his ears to listen. Yes, that was a footstep outside on the creaking floorboards of the corridor. This was embarrassing, to let a creature as big as a human sneak up on him. He clicked the switch of the bedside light, but his woodland eyes were still sharp enough to see the giant bare feet beneath the door.

  He tensed his muscles as the doorknob turned. He would have to make a dash for it. The window was still gapped, so he could escape, but he couldn’t take the book. It would slow him down. He slid it under the covers and crouched, ready to leap for the window ledge.

  The door opened just a little. From his hiding place in the tangled mound of blankets, Malcolm could make out the shape of Norman’s mother. He knew that human eyes were not as sharp as stoat eyes, but surely she must see him there. How well camouflaged was he?

  “Norman, darling?”

  Malcolm’s muscles were tensed, ready to leap, but he remained perfectly still.

  “Norman, I know you’re awake,” Meg whispered. “I saw your light on.” She opened the door a little more.

  If she took one step in, Malcolm promised himself he would bolt. She watched silently for a long while but came no farther.

  “Norman,” she began with a sigh, “I just want you to know that I know about … about the bookweird.” She paused before continuing. “You have to trust me when I tell you that it’s dangerous.” She waited for a response.

  Malcolm coughed and mumbled at the same time. It was as close as he could come to making a human sound.

  “Sometimes when people fall into the bookweird,” Meg whispered, “sometimes they don’t come back.” Her voice wavered a little, as if she was remembering something painful now. “Sometimes they come back changed.”

  What was she saying? Who had she lost? Who had been changed? Norman would know. When he didn’t respond, Meg finally gave up and started to close the door again, slowly.

  Malcolm didn’t relax. He wasn’t going to be tricked. Outside the door he could still see Meg Jespers-Vilnius’s bare, furless feet. He could even hear her deep human breathing.

  “I couldn’t live with myself if I lost you that way, too,” she said finally.

  Malcolm heard her hand brush across the door as she moved away. He let out a small, stoat-sized breath of relief. That had been too close. He had to do what Norman had told him and return the book. If he kept this up, he was going to get caught. But what about Norman? Norman was about to get caught, too. He had no idea that Black John and his knights were just around the corner.

  Malcolm didn’t need the night light to read. Now that the moon was up, that was enough light for him. He slid the book from under the pillow and flipped hurriedly to the place he’d left off. Norman was about to turn the corner into another of St. Savino’s long corridors, unaware that Black John’s knights were marching the other way.

  Malcolm didn’t have time to read this through. He needed to figure out how it ended. He skipped forward a few pages to see how bad things got. What he saw made him very, very nervous. The pages weren’t blank. But they weren’t readable, either. The letters blurred as if viewed through rippled water. He flipped the pages to the end of the book. They were all like that. It was as if the book had unwritten itself.

  He returned to his spot in the book. The first unread words were fine. Norman was just about to step around the corner. The sentence finished on the next page. Malcolm flipped the page to see that this one was ready to read. The book was rewriting itself, but only as fast as he read it.

  The stoat stopped himself, looked down at the page again and blinked his shiny black eyes once before closing the book. This was no good at all. The more he read, the worse he made it. He had to stop. But now, of course, there was no way he could return the book to Meg’s bedside table. Norman was going to have to sort this out from the inside, hopefully before his mother woke up.

  The Chambers of Hugh Montclair

  Norman could hear voices echoing from somewhere, but the twists of the fortress corridors made it impossible to tell from which direction. It was like being in the coils of a giant conch shell. The sound of boots on stone thumped in and out. There could be a whole army marching around these corridors. They could be coming up behind him now, or they could be just around the corner.

  Norman sprinted down the passageway, glad of the rubber-soled sneakers that scuffed the floor silently. At each bend and twist of the mazy fortress he stopped to peer around. He had seen no one yet, but those voices and those footsteps did not seem to get any closer or any farther away.

  All of a sudden they were on top of him. A loud conversation in an unknown language burst down the corridor behind him. He couldn’t help looking back. Turning the corner were three men. Norman immediately noticed the black surcoats they wore over their chain mail and the white arms of Nantes on their chests. Even if he hadn’t read the opening chapters of A Secret in the Library he would have known that these were not the good guys. This was exactly the sort of book where the bad guys wore black.

  And now the black knights had seen Norman. Nantes’s men paused for a moment, confused perhaps by Norman’s strange clothes and sudden appearance. But their hesitation was momentary. The lead knight tapped his companion’s arm and pointed at Norman.

  “C’est lui! C’est le garçon que nous cherchons!” he cried in a surprised, creaky voice.

  Norman turned and ran.

  They launched after him with hoarse shouts in a jangle of chain mail. He had no idea what they were saying, but it didn’t sound very friendly. He took off down the hallway, skidding around the corner and flailing his arms to keep his balance, then careened down the next hallway. At the next turn he grabbed the iron torch stand that jutted out of the wall to catapult himself around. Behind him the black knights struggled to keep up with him in their heavy armour. He could hear them scrambling behind him, but after five or six turns they were out of sight. Now he needed a hiding place.

  He tried every door that he came to, jiggling each handle hurriedly. Not a single door was unlocked. He cast about for curtains, boxes, furniture—something to hide behind or inside—but St. Savino was a remarkably empty fortress. Where was he supposed to hide? The best hiding place in St. Savino was the library, but he wasn’t about to lead Black John’s men to Jerome’s hideout.

  Suddenly the clank of their armour and the thud of footsteps came closer again, ahead of him in the hall now. Had he gone round in a circle? He turned in the other direction, ready to double back on himself, but no … he heard the rising shouts of another party of knights coming the other way.

  He was caught. They were closing in on him from both sides. Soon, both chase parties would be in the corridor. There was nowhere to run. This was a corridor like all the rest—plain stone walls, iron torch stands, just a single door that would inevitably be locked like all the others. Norman pushed on it in desperation. He was more surprised than relieved when it gave way. He fell into the room, his weight on the door carrying him through as he stumbled in. He had just enough sense and just enough time to push the door closed behind him.

  Voices argued in the hall outside. Norman stood still and strained to listen, but again they spoke a language he could not understand. Any moment he expected to hear the clank of swords. He had better hide.

  He surveyed the room he’d taken refuge in. The chamber was furnished like an office, with a long table surrounded by eight weighty chairs and a massive wooden desk covered with letters and scrolls. A tall wardrobe stood behind the desk. It would easily conceal him. Norman started towards it but was distracted by what he saw on the desk—a small stack of papers beside a quill and an ink pot, just what he needed. He snatched the quill and the inkpot and riffled through the papers for the one that looked most edible. The crest on the topmost letter caught his attention: three lions. He had seen that same crest all over England. It had something to do with Jer
ome’s trip to England, perhaps. Norman was about to put it down when he heard the door creaking. It opened just a crack.

  A large man stood in the doorway with his back to the room. His arms spanned the open space as if barring the way. His broad back was covered in a dull grey jerkin. A sword was belted to his side, but he wore no armour, and no helmet covered the grey hairs of his head. Norman knew, as if he had read it somewhere, that this was Hugh Montclair. Had Montclair been alone, Norman might have stayed and tried to talk his way out, but the men whose way he barred wore the black uniform of Nantes’s men.

  Norman’s eyes darted around the room. There was no time to jump in the wardrobe. Too noisy. The desk was no good. Nor was the table. It would have to be the curtains.

  He had just managed to pull the curtain back in front of him when the voices filled the room. Black John’s knights piled into the room after Sir Hugh.

  It was a cacophony of noises that Norman struggled to interpret by sound and intonation. There were perhaps three or four voices, most of them indistinguishably gruff and aggressive, like a pack of barking dogs. One voice stood out, measured, even, but strong, arguing back against the dogs. That would be Hugh Montclair’s. They were arguing about him, Norman guessed. Black John’s men would be insisting that they had chased a boy down this hall. Montclair would know that this was impossible. Jerome would never have left his hiding place in the library.

  There were more men now in Hugh’s chambers. Norman heard the jangle of their chain mail as they circulated, mumbling to each other. As they passed by his hiding spot the motion of their bodies rippled the curtains, wafting them against Norman’s trembling hands, but he stayed rooted to his spot. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was back home, sneaking down on Christmas morning to shake presents, nothing more daring or dangerous than that.

  But he was not at home, and this was not Christmas morning. He was in the chamber of Hugh Montclair, governor of St. Savino. He heard the squeak and click of a key being turned and the creak of an opening door. Somebody had opened the wardrobe. The door slammed shut again, and Hugh Montclair’s voice rose up in protest. Norman still couldn’t understand a word, but something about the tone made him feel that he understood the governor’s speech. The intruders went silent and stood still while he lectured them and then commanded them to leave. He punctuated his command with a shout and let it echo around the empty room.

  There was no reply from Nantes’s men. In fact, once Montclair had finished speaking the room was unnaturally quiet. Norman held his breath and waited for them to leave. He willed them to leave. Instead there was an eerie stillness. Then came the sound of a single set of boots. One man moved, while all the others stayed silent. Likely they all watched him as he strode confidently, not to the door but to the curtains where Norman hid.

  For some reason Norman glanced down at his feet. His blue sneakers stuck out beneath the edge of the curtain. He inhaled sharply as the footsteps on the other side of the curtain stopped. Then there was a cry. It did not sound like his voice. It sounded like an animal screaming in pain. He never knew if it was him. It was all a mess of sound and sensation.

  The curtains pressed hard against him. A sharp pain shot through his ribs, like a stitch when running. Something cold trickled down his hip. He felt his feet give way beneath him and his stomach roll. His hands grasped at the mud wall behind him, but there was no strength in his fingers. He felt the grit of the baked mud wall slip along his wet palms. The edges of his vision went grey, and then suddenly black and gone.

  Escape from the Crusades

  The howl of some desert animal woke him. He shivered and clutched his knees to his chest. Since Undergrowth, Norman had been terrified of wolves. The thought of being outdoors at night surrounded by desert predators filled him with an awful panic.

  There was another long, desperate wail. It was answered by the high-pitched yaps and barks of nearby companions. What would they be—hyenas or wild dogs? Fear sharpened Norman’s senses and made him fully awake. It was late in the day. He could see the sun hovering over the dunes through the open flap of a tent. The sand glowed under the sunbeams, a deep, incandescent yellow. Norman blinked and saw purple spots from staring at it.

  He was alone in the tent. Whoever had taken him clearly didn’t think he needed to be guarded very closely. He made to rise and had got halfway up when something yanked at his feet, sending him diving forward. He winced as he hit the ground. A sharp pain stabbed in his side and he started to remember.

  He had been caught in Montclair’s chamber. John of Nantes’s men had found him. There had been a blade thrust through the curtain. He’d heard it hack through the thick tapestry, and he’d felt blood dripping down his side. He prodded the side of his ribs gently, his fingers seeking out the centre of the injury. His skin seemed intact. There was no gash where he’d expected one. It felt more like a bruise than a cut. Where was the wound? Where had the blood come from?

  Slowly he ran his fingers over his body, starting at his ankles. There was a sharp pain there, too. His fingers grasped the band that encircled the pain. A thick leather manacle was strapped tightly to his ankle. The manacle was attached to a chain that ran to a small chest. This was what had pulled at him and brought him to the ground with such a jolt.

  Norman continued searching for the source of the blood. He rubbed his fingers along his calves and up his legs to his hips. His jeans felt stiff near the belt line and were coated in a flaky substance where the blood had dried, but still no wound. Confused, he frisked himself more vigorously. How was it possible that there was blood and no cut?

  In the front pocket of his jeans he found the answer. The sharp edge of broken glass grazed his fingertip. He removed it carefully and placed it on the ground beside him. It was a piece of the ink pot.

  His first thought, as he gingerly picked out the rest of the glass shards, was relief. He wasn’t cut. He wasn’t going to bleed to death in the desert and be left to feed the desert dogs. A second thought cut his relief short.

  “Please,” he whispered to himself, “let there be some ink left.” He turned his pocket inside out and removed the last splinters of glass. One large, curved piece, the thick base of the broken vial, was still sticky with ink. There might still be a way out of this.

  Had he managed to keep the quill and paper, or had he dropped them when they’d brought him here? He reached into his back pocket and withdrew the pieces of the quill. He was rifling through the folds of his sweatshirt when a shadow passing across the flap of the tent alerted him.

  Norman curled up again on the ground, keeping as still as he could. Through the slit of one barely opened eye he saw the dark silhouette of a man lean into the tent and peer down at him for a moment. Norman lay as still as he could, counting the seconds. The figure loomed silently for what felt like an eternity but came no closer. Finally he closed the flap and turned away with a snort.

  Norman was not left alone for long. Within moments the tent flaps were thrown open wide and an armoured figure appeared in the triangle of light. He was smaller than Norman had imagined, his face wrinkled and tanned by the sun. The black hair that gave him his name curled around his ears, nearly touching the gleaming epaulettes of his armour. He snarled as he entered, flaring his nostrils as he spat out an order in a language Norman couldn’t understand.

  Two men-at-arms trundled over to Norman and lifted him roughly by the arms. Norman winced as they hoisted him up, but he tried to keep his eyes on the dark knight in front of him.

  Black John stared over the hump of his crooked nose, taking the measure of his captive. He looked disappointed. Norman guessed that he didn’t look like much of a prize.

  The knight barked a question at him. At least Norman thought it was a question. Norman didn’t understand a word. He guessed it was French.

  When Norman didn’t answer, Black John stepped forward, shaking the metal gauntlet he held in his hand, and repeated his question more loudly and more harshly.


  Norman felt his hands trembling at his sides. “I don’t understand,” he said meekly.

  His captor’s dark eyes flashed from Norman to the men-at-arms at either side of him. There was a short, muttered conversation that served only to stoke Black John’s fury. Norman looked down, unwilling to meet the French knight’s glinting eyes. The Frenchman lifted his chin so Norman could not look away.

  “Please …” Norman began, but Black John’s tightening grip on his chin stopped him.

  “So you play a game wiz us?” He sneered. “You think to fool us by talking only the Anglais?”

  Norman shook his head slowly.

  “The petit Vilnius is afraid.” He let out a short, cruel laugh.

  Confused, Norman blinked and narrowed his eyes, surprised to hear his name.

  “No need to be afraid, little desert rat,” Black John mocked. “The worst has happened. But I won’t harm you. John of Nantes does not harm children, even the children of his enemies.”

  The vicious gleam in his eye told Norman otherwise. If he thought he had to, Black John would hurt anyone.

  “You look like your father, you know,” Black John said. “How sad that he cannot be here to see how you’ve grown.”

  So they thought he was Jerome. Black John thought he had captured his enemy’s son. Norman wasn’t sure whether to correct him.

  “Now tell me about your protector, the stubborn Hugh. Why won’t he give up the fortress? Why does he insist on provoking me?”

  “I …” Norman stammered, “I don’t know.”

  “Has he told you about his letter from the English king?”

  Norman started involuntarily.

  “He has spoken of it,” Black John concluded ruefully, seeing the answer in Norman’s face. He turned and muttered something to the henchman behind him.

  John turned back to Norman, his face taking on a forced calmness. “It is not true. It is a ruse,” he said. “Have you seen such a letter?” he asked, daring Norman to contradict him.