Undercover Angel Strikes Again

by Dyan Sheldon

  “I wouldn’t start congratulating yourself too soon,” said Kuba at supper that night. “They’re probably just biding their time.”

  “She’s right,” said Archie morosely. “They’re waiting until they get us alone.”

  “So what?” I asked with slightly more confidence than I felt. Now that we were back in civilization I was feeling less like a soldier and more like a twelve-year-old boy with a dark past again. “They’re not going to beat us up, are they?”

  “In room 3B, no one can hear you scream…” whispered Kuba.

  I knew she was joking, but I didn’t feel like laughing. I wished I hadn’t said anything about not interfering. She could interfere all she wanted – it seemed likely that we’d need the help.

  Kuba laughed. “You know, Elmo,” she said. “There’s another old saying in English that it might be good for you to know.”

  Archie blinked, obviously surprised that she was saying to me exactly what I had said to him, but I just stared back at her blankly.

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “God helps those who help themselves,” said Kuba.

  As soon as the door of our room shut behind us that night, Eddie and Mark put an end to the awful suspense of wondering what they would do next.

  They’d obviously made a full recovery from their bewilderment of the afternoon.

  “Hey, Elmo!” Eddie blocked me as I tried to get to my bed. “Just what do you think you were doing today? Who told you to mess around in our business?”

  “Yeah,” said Mark. “Who told you to mess around in our business?”

  Archie stepped up beside me. Like most people, he’s a lot taller than I am, which was something of a comfort. “Leave Elmo alone,” he ordered. “He hasn’t done anything to you.”

  “Well, maybe I think he has.” Eddie leered. “But don’t feel left out, Spongo, ’cause we’ll deal with you later.”

  I pulled myself up to my full height, which just about reached the shoulders of the others.

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” I smiled calmly. “Archie and I went exploring after lunch, just like you two. Remember?”

  But Mr Palfry wasn’t with us now.

  “No,” said Eddie. “I don’t remember. What I remember is you and Kuba being miles behind us, and the next thing I know you’re skipping back with Spongo here, yammering about finding some plant.”

  I squeezed past him. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go to bed now.” I threw myself on my bunk.

  “Why didn’t you two squeal to Mr Palfry?” asked Mark. He gave Archie a disdainful look. “And why aren’t you crying like you usually do?”

  Archie didn’t flinch. “Crying?” he said. “What have I got to cry about?”

  Mark took a step towards him. “I’ll give you something to cry about,” he promised.

  Eddie laughed. “Just wait till tomorrow. Both of you will be crying. And you won’t be crying tears, you’ll be crying waterfalls.”

  “That’s right,” chimed in Mark. “We’ve got some great things planned for you two.”

  “We cannot wait,” said Archie. “Can we, Elmo?”

  I started pulling down my covers. “No,” I agreed. “I’m quivering with anticipation.”

  “That’s not anticipation,” said Mark. “That’s fear. Cluckcluckcluckcluckcluck…”

  Eddie leaned over me so that I could feel his hot breath on my ear. “This isn’t over yet, you know,” he informed me in the calm and pleasant voice of a serial killer. “It’s just begun.”

  I sat up, my back against the wall. Archie had started to get into his own bunk, but he changed his mind and stood by mine. He was looking a bit nervous. I forced myself to stay cool and calm.

  “If I were you I’d call my mummy now and ask her to come and take me home,” said Mark. “Before you embarrass yourselves in front of everybody.”

  “You mean like waking up in the girls’ lodge in my pyjamas?” asked Archie.

  “Oooh…” shrieked Eddie. “Look who found a brain.”

  I smiled coldly. “Well, it wasn’t either of you, that’s for certain.”

  That cracked them up. They punched each other and honked with glee.

  Archie had to get up on the ladder to avoid being trampled on.

  Which is why I saw the soldiers first. I was watching Eddie and Mark dancing around like Rumpelstiltskin when he thinks the Queen can’t guess his name, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shimmer near the foot of my bed.

  I glanced over. Six small but sturdy men were coming through the outside wall.

  “Archie!” I hissed. “Archie! Look!”

  Archie leaned down to peer into my bunk. I pointed towards the wall. “There!” I whispered. “Look there!”

  We both turned our heads for a clearer view. The six soldiers wore helmets and breastplates and what looked like grubby skirts. Two of them had shields, and all of them had knives and spears. The one in the lead was the same man I’d seen in the woods that afternoon. They came to a halt at the foot of the beds and closed ranks. Except for the leader, they looked a bit confused.

  “I don’t know what you two think you’re up to,” Eddie was saying. “But if you want a war, we’ll be happy to give you one.”

  It wasn’t easy to concentrate with the soldiers hovering at the foot of the bunk, but I managed to answer. “We don’t want a war,” I said. “We just want you two to stop acting like geeks.”

  “Don’t you ever look in the mirror?” sneered Eddie. “You’re the geek.”

  “I think there is something you should look at,” said Archie.

  Eddie put on a horrified face. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “There’s one of Ariel’s ghosts behind me.”

  “Is it wearing pink ribbons?” asked Mark.

  “No,” I said, “they’re not. They’re armed.”

  “I believe they must belong to the Roman army,” put in Archie.

  This was almost too funny for our roommates to bear. They clutched at each other, helpless with hilarity.

  The soldiers marched forward, spears held straight. They kept marching when they got to Eddie and Mark, and went right through them like a cloud. Then they turned round and went back to where they’d been. One of the soldiers passed a hand through Eddie’s head while his comrades watched with worried expressions. They obviously weren’t expecting us any more than we were expecting them. Except for the leader, that was. He’d picked up my trainers from the floor and was studying them intently.

  “Roman soldiers!” gasped Eddie, oblivious to the men hulking around him. “Don’t you ever give up, Elmo?”

  I was pretty chuffed to be able to say, “No, I suppose I don’t.”

  Unafraid of Eddie and Mark choking and spluttering in their T-shirts and shorts, the soldiers made a circle around them and studied them with curiosity and concern.

  “We’re telling you, there are six Roman soldiers standing round you,” said Archie. “I really think you should take a look.”

  One of the soldiers broke away from the others and went over to the chest of drawers.

  “Oh, right,” Eddie chortled. “We’re really scared.” He pretended to shake with fear. “What are we going to do, Mark? Six big, tough Roman soldiers—”

  “They’re not that big,” I corrected. “But they do look tough. Only now it isn’t six, it’s five.”

  “Oh, now it’s five,” Eddie mimicked.

  “What he means,” cut in Archie, “is that there are six altogether, but one of them is over by the chest of drawers now.”

  “Why?” joked Mark. “Did he forget his socks?”

  I was about to say that it looked as if he was going to borrow some when one of the drawers suddenly slid open. The soldier slowly reached in and pulled out Eddie’s discman. You could tell that he was saying something because his lips moved as he glanced over his shoulder, but he didn’t make a sound. The other soldiers all looked at him, their lips
moving, but they made no sound either. The soldier turned the discman this way and that, while his comrades watched. He shook it. He tapped it. He looked over at his mates again and shrugged. He couldn’t make out what it was. Advanced technology for him was the wheel.

  I smiled at Mark. “No, he didn’t forget his socks. I think he’s interested in your music.”

  Mark rubbed the tears from his eyes with his T-shirt. “I don’t care if Mr Palfry gives me detentions for the rest of my life,” he said. “I’ve got to tell everybody. They’re not going to believe this one.”

  It didn’t seem that Roman soldiers were chosen for their patience. Giving up on his efforts to make out what it was he was holding, the soldier said something and tossed the discman to another soldier, who raised a hand to catch it. Unlike the soldiers themselves, however, the discman didn’t go through Eddie. It hit him on the shoulder.

  That caught his attention. It caught Mark’s attention too.

  The two of them finally looked round.

  The soldiers stared back. They were a long way from Rome, and had seen many strange things, but their expressions suggested that we were the strangest.

  Eddie’s eyes shifted warily, but otherwise he was as motionless as a mountain. “What is this?” he asked. I’d never heard his voice so soft. “Some kind of joke?”

  Mark was looking pretty wary too. “I know what it is,” he said, his eyes on the spear of the soldier who was sniffing at him now. “They’re projecting a film into the room from outside.”

  “Of course we are,” said Archie. “We’ve plugged it into a tree.”

  I laughed. I’d never realized what a good sense of humour Archie had before.

  Archie laughed too, but Mark flinched as one of the soldiers moved closer to inspect his earring.

  “Eddie…” said Mark. “Eddie… If it isn’t a trick, what do you think it is?”

  Eddie licked his lips, but he didn’t say anything. I could understand why. One of the soldiers was trying to unlace his trainers with the tip of a spear. It was a pretty gripping sight.

  “Well, we know they can’t be ghosts, right?” whispered Mark.

  Eddie made a rattling sound, which I took to be his new way of laughing.

  “Of course they’re not ghosts.” He was trying to bluster, but it came out more like a bleat. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Maybe you should get Mr Palfry,” suggested Archie.

  If Eddie or Mark found anything ironic in that suggestion, they didn’t show it. They acted as if getting Mr Palfry was the best idea they’d ever heard. Only neither of them moved. They couldn’t without walking through a man with a shield.

  “I’ll get him,” I volunteered. I looked up at Archie. “D’you want to come with me?”

  Archie grinned. “Yes. I know the way well.”

  I was just getting out of my bunk when the stillness of the mountain night was smashed into about a zillion pieces by a shrill, almost unearthly shrieking.

  Mark and Eddie grabbed hold of one another, as though a mob of banshees might be running about outside.

  “Now what?” one of them whispered.

  The lights went on in the porch of the lodge across the way. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside our door.

  The soldiers were distracted by the wailing too. They moved their mouths at one another and then, raising their shields and their swords, they ran to the window.

  “Hey, hang on a minute!” I shouted. The lead soldier had my new trainers on his feet. “My shoes!”

  He turned round and pointed to the floor at the side of the bed. I looked down. There was a small plant in a handmade pot sitting where my trainers used to be.

  I looked back at the soldier, but he was following the others through the wall and out into the night.

  By now it sounded like we really were in a disaster film. All the outside lights had been turned on and the shrieking was out of control. I could hear the teachers shouting, “Calm down! Calm down!”

  Mark and Eddie were too traumatized to do more than stand there, staring, but Archie was already climbing down to the floor.

  “Come on,” said Archie. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

  Kuba was sitting on the steps of the boys’ lodge, watching the chaos only a few metres away as though she was watching television.

  Archie ran straight down the stairs, but I sat down beside her. I reckoned she already knew about the soldiers in our room, so I didn’t start in about that. I gestured towards the girls’ lodge. Mrs Smiley and Ms Kaye had all the girls in the main room. I could see them through the window. Mr Palfry and Mr Lewis, each armed with a torch, were creeping around outside, looking for intruders.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Ariel found a centurion trying on her Calvin Klein dressing gown,” said Kuba. “It really upset her. How did your lot take the Roman legions?”

  I laughed. “Pretty much as you’d expect.” I wasn’t sure if I should thank her or not. “So,” I said. “You’re not going to get in more trouble for this, are you?”

  Kuba’s eyes were the eyes of the just-born. “In trouble for what?”

  “You know,” I said. “For raising the dead again.”

  “Of course not.” Kuba winked. “I didn’t raise the dead.”

  “You didn’t?”

  Kuba shook her head. “Mr Palfry said there’d been a Roman fort here once.” She shrugged. “I suppose we were caught in a time warp.”

  “A time warp…” I gave her an enquiring look. “So you had nothing to do with it?”

  Kuba jumped to her feet. “I’d better get back. Mrs Smiley will think I’ve been kidnapped or something.”

  I repeated, “So you had nothing to do with it?”

  Kuba stared across the way. Just past the lodge I could make out several short, sturdy men marching towards the woods. One of them was wearing Reebok trainers that glowed in the dark. He turned and waved at Kuba. She waved back.

  “What am I supposed to do with the plant he left?” I asked.

  “Give it to your mother,” said Kuba. “She’ll love it. It’s been extinct for two hundred years.”

  Books by the same author

  The Difficult Job of Keeping Time

  Elena the Frog

  He’s Not My Dog

  Leon Loves Bugs

  Lizzie and Charley Go Shopping

  Lizzie and Charley Go to the Movies

  Lizzie and Charley Go Away for the Weekend

  Ride On, Sister Vincent

  Undercover Angel

  Vampire Across the Way

  What Mona Wants, Mona Gets

  For older readers

  And Baby Makes Two

  The Boy of My Dreams

  Confessions of a Hollywood Star

  Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen

  I Conquer Britain

  My Perfect Life

  Planet Janet

  Planet Janet in Orbit

  Sophie Pitt-Turnbull Discovers America

  Tall, Thin and Blonde

  UNDERCOVER ANGEL STRIKES AGAIN

  Dyan Sheldon is a children’s author, adult novelist and humorist. Her books include the novels And Baby Makes Two; Tall, Thin and Blonde; Ride On, Sister Vincent; The Boy of My Dreams; Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen; and Undercover Angel, prequel to Undercover Angel Strikes Again. She has also written stories about Harry and Chicken, Leon Loves Bugs, Lizzie and Charley Go Shopping and several picture books including The Whales’ Song (Winner of the 1991 Kate Greenaway Medal). American by birth, Dyan Sheldon lives in north London.

  First published 2001

  This edition published 2012 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2001 Dyan Sheldon

  Cover illustration © 2001 Spike Gerrell

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,

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any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, taping and recording, without

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  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

  a catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-4243-7 (epub)

  walker.co.uk