by C. J. Busby
Snotty gave a small, secret smile. But Sir Richard eased his finger round the collar of his tunic and swallowed. He really couldn’t get used to all this talk of getting rid of people. He was all for Lady Morgana being Queen, of course, and rather fancied himself as her trusty second-in-command. But he did wish it could be done without actually… well… killing anyone. His eye was caught by a gleam in the wall next to him. Was that a rat, poking its nose out of the wall? He leant forward to peer more closely… but the beast had vanished. Trick of the light, most likely, he thought. Trick of the light.
***
“Well!” said Olivia, when they were all back in their room. “That stinking rotten slimy two-faced traitorous rat, Caradoc!”
“Er – hmm,” said Ferocious. “That stinking rotten slimy two-faced traitorous human, Caradoc, I think you’ll find.”
Max was rubbing his leg where it had gone numb, and yawning. They’d been squashed inside the walls of Lady Morgana’s chambers for hours, waiting for the private party to end and the various knights and ladies to retire. Only at midnight, when most of them had gone, had the secret discussions started.
“I thought he was a friend!” went on Olivia, fuming. “I shared a horse with him! He kissed me! Urghh! And all the time he was coming here to help Morgana.”
Max shook his head, trying to get the sleepiness out of it. There was something about the scene they’d just witnessed that bothered him. Something they weren’t getting, something he needed to remember. But he was just too tired to think.
“We need to go to bed,” he said at last. “We’ll decide what to do in the morning.”
***
The next morning they gathered, still yawning, in the castle stables. Olivia was on mucking-out duty and Max had the day off.
“So, what are we going to do?” said Olivia, forking bundles of mucky straw into the stable yard. “Should we send that swift to Merlin, do you think?”
Max was leaning against one of the stable partitions, trying to keep out of the way of flying horse manure, and Adolphus was scampering around the stable pouncing on dopey insects who’d just lost their cosy hideaway.
“I don’t know,” said Max. “I don’t think we know enough yet.”
“We know Caradoc’s a dirty stinking rotten—”
“Yes, yes, I know, that’s one thing. But we have no idea what the plot actually is. And there’s something funny about the whole thing.”
Max closed his eyes and put his finger in his ear. Sometimes it helped him think. Olivia stopped forking straw and watched him. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and frowned.
“They said Arthur would take the bait – it was a chivalrous quest or some such. And then there was all that stuff Caradoc was spouting about… about the Nine Maidens and the Brindled Ox and what have you. And the Hounds of Annwn.”
“Yes, what was all that about?”
“I’m not sure,” said Max. “But I know Annwn is the place where magic comes from. It’s a kind of Otherworld, supposed to be full of strange magic creatures and tricks and amazing food and drink and music…”
“Doesn’t sound too dangerous.”
“But I don’t think they let humans go there, generally. And I’m pretty sure if they go there they never come back.”
“But Caradoc said something about coming back – he said you could come back, if you had payment. That was when they started talking about the Treasure of Annwn. It’s what Snotty was supposed to have found.”
“Yes,” said Max. “And that’s it! That’s the bit that’s been bothering me. He said that to get back from this quest, Arthur would need the Treasure of Annwn as payment. But they don’t want Arthur to get back. So why are they bothering to look for this treasure?”
Ferocious, who’d been burrowing about in the straw after a few tasty bits of breakfast, jumped up onto the edge of the drinking trough and nodded.“It’s a good point. You’re definitely improving, Max. The king needs the treasure to get back. But they don’t want him to get back. So Snotty’s busy looking for the treasure. Doesn’t make any sense to me, either.”
Olivia shrugged. “Maybe they need it for some other reason. Maybe it’s worth loads of money.”
“I don’t know,” said Max. “But I know we need to find out. We’ve got two more weeks before Merlin and Arthur get here. We need to start doing some serious spying. We need to be in the castle walls, listening out for anything we can.”
The Treasure of Annwn
For the rest of that week Max and Olivia spent every minute they could spare from lessons as rats, sneaking around the castle walls. Meanwhile Ferocious spent every minute they were in lessons as himself, also sneaking around the castle walls. Between them they discovered any number of secrets. Secrets about who was in love with Lady Marianne the Fair (everyone between the ages of fifteen and fifty), secrets about how the castle cook got the mutton to taste so good (boiling it with dried toad skin), and secrets about how Sir Uriel always managed to win at card games (he had an enchanted cheating pack). But none of these secrets got them anywhere near finding out what Lady Morgana was up to.
By the end of the week they were falling asleep in lessons and thoroughly fed up with crawling through small cracks in the castle walls discovering nothing. Even worse, the frogspell bottle was looking distinctly empty. There was probably only enough for one or two more transformations before Max would have to try and steal enough ingredients from the castle spell store to make some more.
“I ache all over,” complained Olivia, stretching out on the grass by the moat. It was a thoroughly hot day, the sun reflecting off the castle walls and the air shimmering. The squires and apprentices had been given the afternoon off, and most of them were splashing around in the moat, but Max and Olivia were too tired even to swim. They were sprawled on the grass with Adolphus laid out next to them, basking in the sun like a lizard.
Max was chewing a piece of grass and looking thoughtful.
“There’s something wrong with what we’re doing,” he said. “We’ve spent ages sneaking around but we haven’t really found out anything.”
“I know,” groaned Olivia. “If I hear one more person professing undying love to Lady Marianne I’m going to be sick.”
“I don’t think the interesting stuff is happening in the castle at all at the moment – maybe they’re up to something somewhere else. Snotty is out every day – he leaves early in the morning and doesn’t get back till late at night. What’s he up to?”
“Well, perhaps if someone followed him, we might find out,” suggested Ferocious.
“But we’ll miss lessons,” objected Olivia. “And I really need to be there tomorrow. We’re practising disarming manoeuvres and I’ve beaten everyone so far except Eric. If I beat him tomorrow I’ll be Squire of the Week.”
Max looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “Oh, well then, of course you’d better stay. I’ll just have to miss learning how to make a swamp solid instead. And when I’m sucked down to a muddy death in the Great Grimpen Mire, I’m sure it’ll be a great comfort to me that you were once Squire of the Week.”
“Oh stop griping!” said Ferocious. “You can both go to your ever-so-important lessons. Adolphus and I will do it.”
“Oh, yes please!” said Adolphus, lifting his head eagerly. “I’ll sneak after Snotty! Very, very quietly. I know I can do it!”
Max looked doubtful – but he did really want to go to tomorrow’s lesson. It was the last one with Aleric. The following day they started a week with Lady Morgana herself, and that was not going to be half as much fun.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Ferocious, you’re in charge. And make sure he doesn’t see you.”
Ferocious rolled his eyes. “Of course,” he said scornfully. “He won’t suspect a thing.”
***
Snotty Hogsbottom was in an extremely bad mood. He and Jerome had spent nearly a week searching the dragon’s hoard – pulling out bits of treasure, stacking piles of cauldro
ns, rearranging gold and silver and precious ornaments – and he still hadn’t found what he was looking for. Worse, today they had been ordered to take Caradoc the Bard along with them to help. Snotty was not happy about having anyone else there to share the glory if they found the Treasure of Annwn. Jerome didn’t count, but Caradoc had already wormed his way into Morgana’s good books with his knowledge of ancient lore and his silvery spells. Snotty would happily have turned him into a snail if he’d known how.
At the cavern entrance, Snotty grumpily indicated the ropes they had put in place to help with the climb down.
“After you,” he said, with exaggerated politeness, and Caradoc nodded and lowered himself carefully down. Snotty considered cutting the rope with his hunting knife, but then shrugged and headed down after him. Morgana would have words to say if he came back without the bard, and Morgana’s words generally had the effect of leaving you upside down in a pile of steaming horse manure.
When they reached the dragon’s cavern, Caradoc stopped, and whistled.
“No wonder it’s taken a week,” he said, surveying the vast pile of gold and a slightly smaller pile of other stuff that had been sorted and stacked. “How many cauldrons did she have?”
“We’re not sure,” said Jerome with an apologetic glance at Snotty, who had stalked off to start pulling things out of the remaining pile. “It’s rumoured as many as two thousand.”
“My word,” said Caradoc in admiration. “What an obsession! Makes our job difficult, eh?”
By mid-afternoon, Snotty was feeling more well-disposed towards Caradoc. He was a willing worker and had pulled out, sorted and discarded at least fifty cauldrons. Best of all, none of them had been the Treasure of Annwn. Not that Snotty had found it either, but at least Caradoc hadn’t beaten him to it.
It was while they were resting, backs against the huge pile of as-yet unsorted gold, chewing bread and cold meat, that Snotty thought he heard something. He held his hand up for silence and they all listened. There was definitely a flapping sound high in the roof of the cavern. And a squeaking. They had hardly had time to exchange glances when the squeaking rose to a crescendo and hundreds of bats suddenly dived from the roof and started swirling around the cavern like a writhing mass of black smoke. In their midst, looking rather disoriented, was a small blue-green dragon, flapping its wings to try to drive the bats away and looking like it might crash into the cavern wall at any minute. Which, after a few more bats had flown into its ears, was exactly what it did. It hit the rocky wall with a thump and slid down to the sandy floor, dazed and confused.
Snotty was on his feet in an instant and had the dragon by the throat.
“Right! Got you, you stupid dozy interfering beast,” he snarled. “Did Max send you spying, eh? Didn’t he know better than to send such a brainless waste of space? Well, now you’ve had it, dragon. Now you’re dead meat.”
***
The sun was setting to the west of Castle Gore and shadows were stretching out across the courtyard. Max and Olivia were taking it in turns to peer anxiously out of the narrow arched window of their room hoping to catch a flash of blue-green flying over the castle walls, but so far they’d seen nothing.
“Do you think they’re all right?” asked Olivia, again. She was frantic with worry about Adolphus and would have given her newly acquired Squire of the Week certificate ten times over just for news that he was safe.
Max was trying not to show it, but he was equally worried. Adolphus and Ferocious should have been back ages ago. Most of the castle had retired to their chambers, and they had seen Snotty return hours before. As he took his turn at the window, Max fingered the swift, still in his belt pouch, and wondered if he should have sent it off when they first heard of Morgana’s plans. He had wanted to have more to tell, to have learnt the whole plot, to have earned Merlin’s admiration and gratitude. And now Adolphus and Ferocious were in trouble, and it was all his fault. He nearly groaned – and then he suddenly sat up straight, widened his eyes and shouted in glee.
“They’re back! Olivia – they’re back! There they are!”
Adolphus came swooping in over the battlements straight towards the window, and Max only just got out of the way before he hurtled in through it and came to a skittering halt in the middle of the floor, panting.
“Is it gone? Is it gone? Did we get away?”
Ferocious dropped off his neck and said soothingly, “It’s okay, Adolphus, you managed to leave the nasty scary owl behind ages ago! We’re safe.”
Adolphus breathed a mighty sigh of relief and flopped down sideways with his eyes rolled up into his head and his tongue stuck out. Olivia threw herself at him and hauled him onto her lap, stroking his scaly back and tickling him under his chin.
“Adolphus, I’m so glad you’re back. We were really worried!”
Ferocious had leapt up onto Max’s shoulder and was nibbling his ear affectionately.
“Well, yes, you should have been. He was very nearly put in a pie. If it hadn’t been for Caradoc, he would have been.”
“Caradoc?” said Olivia with distaste. “That traitor?”
“Yes. He might be working for Morgana, but he’s still a friend of dragons,” said Ferocious. “We followed Snotty and Caradoc to Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s cavern, but then we got caught. Snotty was all for chopping Adolphus into little bite-sized morsels but Caradoc wouldn’t hear of it. Bad luck to eat dragons, he said. So they just left us in the cave and rolled a stone across the entrance.”
“Then how did you get out?” asked Max.
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Ferocious, puzzled. “About an hour ago, someone came and rolled the stone away again. We heard them shift it, but when we got up there, we couldn’t see a thing. So we just headed back to the castle. And here we are. And we’ve discovered something.”
Ferocious paused for effect as Olivia and Max both looked at him, expectantly.
“It’s a cauldron,” he said, at last, meaningfully.
“What?”
“The Treasure of Annwn,” said the rat, looking round at them all. “It’s part of Great-Aunt Wilhelmina’s hoard. It’s a cauldron.”
There was silence as they all digested this. Then Olivia looked up at Max, open-mouthed.
“But Max…”
“Yes,” said Ferocious. “I think it’s definitely possible.”
Max shook his head. “My cauldron? The one she gave me? But she wouldn’t have given me a really precious one! Anyway, it doesn’t look like anything special. It’s really old and dull.”
“But it’s very magical,” observed Ferocious. “Or were you just thinking it was you, Max? Getting so much better at this spell business?”
Max frowned. It was true his spells had been spectacularly better since he’d got the new cauldron – but then the old one had been so totally ruined by Adolphus that it could just have been having a decent, working cauldron that had done it. He shook his head.
“No, I’m sure it’s just ordinary. Maybe a bit better than your average apprentice’s cauldron – but I’m sure it can’t be the one they’re looking for.”
“But Max,” said Olivia, “you’ve got lessons with Morgana tomorrow. Don’t you think you’d better take your old one, in case? Until we find out more?”
Max looked stubborn. He really didn’t want to make an idiot of himself in front of Morgana le Fay. He couldn’t face another disaster like the ones in his first week. Besides, Great-Aunt Wilhelmina had had thousands of cauldrons and she’d known exactly where each one had come from. She’d never have given him such an important one.
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m taking that one. It’s just an old cauldron from some wizard or other she met on her travels. It’ll be fine.”
Spells and Cauldrons
The next morning, Olivia left Max snoring and crept out clutching the bottle of frogspell, with Ferocious on her shoulder. Max, having had one scare already, had expressly forbidden any further spying till he had contacted
Merlin – but Olivia couldn’t resist. Morgana le Fay would be teaching at the Spell School all morning – so she wouldn’t be in her chambers. What better time to search them and see if there were any clues about what she was up to? Ferocious had already promised to keep Max company for his lessons, so it was up to her. She rapidly turned herself into a frog, and Ferocious, wrinkling up his nose, gave her a whiskery rat kiss before scampering back to Max with the potion bottle.
Now, after crawling her way slowly through to Morgana’s part of the castle, Olivia was beginning to wish she’d listened to Max and just gone off to squire lessons as usual. The walls of Morgana’s chambers had an odd, spicy smell that Olivia remembered from the last time she had been there. It made her rat nose tickle and her eyes water. She tried to find the gap they’d peeped through last time, but the walls were a maze of little crooked spaces between stones and it was hard to work out where she was. She seemed to have reached a dead end and, as she tried to turn round, whacked her head painfully on a protruding bit of stone. Trolls’ toenails! Maybe this had not been such a good idea after all.
Suddenly there was a crash. Olivia stiffened. There was a long silence, and then the sound of someone moving around furtively in the room beyond. Olivia crept forward, using the sounds to guide her, until she was peering between two stones directly into Morgana’s chamber. The morning light streamed in through the tall arched windows and dust motes whirled in the sunbeams. Dust motes that were being scattered and disturbed by a tall figure striding through the room, upturning objects and pulling back velvet draperies, quietly and methodically searching every corner. It was Caradoc.
Olivia drew in a breath. What was he doing here? Had Morgana sent him to get something? But then why was he searching so thoroughly – surely she’d have told him where to look? Was he here in secret? He started to look carefully at a large cupboard on the other side of the room. Her rat nose twitched as she poked it out of the gap in the stones. She couldn’t see what he was doing, but if she jumped down, she could hide behind a tapestry and watch him more closely.