Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail

by Sam Llewellyn

‘Uk,’ said Onyx. ‘Look, you can take his queen.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Rosetti.

  And Onyx thought: that is so unfair because I wanted to be a credit to the Head but now I haven’t been but maybe it has all been a terrible mistake and actually everything is all right.

  But she knew it wasn’t.

  And so the long day wore on, and became the long evening, and started to be the long night. Finally the cell door clattered and Miss Davies came in.

  ‘Children, you have let me down,’ she said.

  ‘Unfair,’ said Rosetti. ‘I was merely honest.’

  ‘And I was diligent,’ said Owen.

  ‘And I was keen,’ said Onyx.

  ‘How they hate all those things!’ sighed Miss Davies. ‘And how they hate the Headmaster! Let us go back to the Skolary.’

  Owls hooted in the Quad, and the darkness pressed in on the candlelit corridors. In the Study there were no lamps, and only the firelight illuminated a dark, huddled form in a chair. ‘Headmaster!’ cried Onyx.

  ‘Mm, yes, I suppose so,’ said the Headmaster.

  Rosetti lit a couple of lamps. ‘We didn’t do it,’ he said, using the total denial technique that had led him to be hated by so many headmasters. ‘We were framed. It was all a –’

  ‘What?’ said the Headmaster.

  ‘We let you down,’ said Rosetti. ‘Like you said.’

  ‘Me? Down?’ said the Head, sounding dazed. ‘Bless your hearts of course you didn’t. I just wanted you to vow a bit of secrecy.’

  ‘Wha,’ said Rosetti, dazed himself.

  ‘Never to reveal to any person alive half alive dead or undead what I am about to tell you.’

  ‘We do! We do!’ cried Onyx.

  ‘You do what?’

  ‘We were vowing, Headmaster,’ said Miss Davies.

  ‘Ah. Silly me. By, er, frog and stone, dog and bone, and, er, all that.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Skolars, meaning, get on with it.

  The Head spread his hands and began to speak. ‘Ahem,’ said Rosetti after half a minute. ‘I don’t think we speak that language.’

  ‘I do!’ said Onyx. ‘It’s Hittite!’

  ‘But the rest of you don’t,’ said the Head, flapping his long white hands. ‘Not yet, no, no. Well. All that stuff today, disobedience, naughtiness. It didn’t help, you know. So. The Cup. You must win it, or I shall lose my job, and Dr Cosm will be made Headmaster and there will be wall-to-wall Tests and life will be mere suffering for one and all.’

  Miss Davies cleared her throat. ‘Perhaps, Headmaster, it would be wise to start from the beginning. Like, what cup are you talking about?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the Headmaster. ‘If you think so. The Greyte Cup, obviously. A trophy awarded every Founder’s Day for Running, Hard Sums and Lovely Writing. If you don’t win it, everyone will say this is proof that Polymathic Scholars are useless. Dr Cosm, that is, and the Security Masters, and Matron, and most of the Governors. And I will lose my job and they will make Dr Cosm Headmaster.’ He buried his face in his hands.

  To his great amazement, Rosetti found himself patting a headmaster on the back. ‘There, there,’ he said.

  ‘Poor you,’ said Onyx. ‘Dr Cosm can’t be that bad. There is good in everyone.’

  ‘Not in him,’ said the Head. ‘Ever since he turned up at the beginning of last year he has schemed against me. First he turned the Governors against me by saying I was inefficient. Then he won their confidence by testing everyone all the time. He says, if you can’t count it, it doesn’t exist. And now it is clear that he wants my job, and he is so keen on the Cup that I think that one of the reasons is to get it in his hands. Though I do not understand what is so special about it. It is only a cup, after all. Alack, woe, he is a schemer, and his spies are everywhere, and he sits like an octopus at the centre of his web.’

  ‘Spider, surely,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Whatever. He seeks to destroy me.’

  ‘How can we fix him?’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Why spider?’ said Owen.

  ‘Just win the Cup,’ said the Head.

  ‘We will,’ said Owen.

  ‘Easily,’ said Onyx.

  ‘Relax,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Really?’ said the Headmaster, his careworn features transformed by hope. ‘Well, then, come, and I will show it to you!’

  ‘Hooray!’ shouted everyone. Which was odd, for the Skolars were by no means in the habit of cheering headmasters. But then Solomon Temple was obviously a far-better-than-normal sort of headmaster.

  Or anyway much, much nicer than awful Dr Cosm.

  Dr Cosm’s room in the Duggan Cube looked like the control cabin of an executive spacecraft. One wall was entirely covered in Certificates of Toil. Another was a window looking down on a maths class battering away at hard sums.

  Dr Cosm’s curranty eyes swept the third wall, which was entirely covered in CCTV screens linked to the cameras that poked their little wheezing lenses into almost every corner of the Academy. His grey tongue ran round his blubbery lips. ‘Otto!’ he cried.

  ‘Yes, Herr Doktor,’ said the tiny Control Cabin Assistant, peering at a console through glasses like bottle-bottoms.

  ‘Bring in number twenty-five!’ snapped the Doctor.

  ‘Ja, Herr Doktor! Initiating sequence! Preparing Plasma Generator! Engaging –’

  ‘Just do it!’ barked the Doctor.

  The fourth wall of the room became a gigantic screen. The Skolars walked across it in line ahead, Miss Davies bringing up the rear. ‘Sss,’ said Dr Cosm through his smelly brown teeth. ‘What a surprise you are going to get, nyahaha.’

  ‘Nyahaha,’ said Otto.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Dr Cosm.

  The Head led the way into a maze of staircases. The earlier stairs were wood, the later ones stone. From time to time little windows showed tiny pupils toiling across games pitches far below.

  Finally, they arrived at a stone wall on which was carved a coat of arms topped with a monk’s head holding a knife in its teeth. ‘Abbot Dagger,’ said Miss Davies.

  ‘An abbot!’ cried Onyx. ‘And a dagger!’

  ‘How clever,’ said Rosetti politely.

  ‘Why not a spider?’ said Owen.

  ‘Mm,’ said the Head, apparently to himself. ‘Dagger out of teeth, stuff up monk’s right nostril, half a turn… ah. Mouth falls open. Grasp tongue, move it to the right.’ The wall moved back with a grinding noise. ‘There,’ said the Head. ‘The way I did that was secret. Oh. What language was I speaking?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘Bother. Ah, well. As I was saying, lo, the portal to the chamber of the Greyte Cup.’ He waved a hand at the ancient door revealed by the moving of the wall.

  ‘Can I open it?’ said Onyx, bouncing again. ‘Please? Me? Please? Me? Please? Me?’ She grasped the door handle in both hands and shoved. A draught swirled through, raising a cloud of dust that hung in the air like a fog.

  ‘Well?’ said the Head, through a sneezing fit.

  ‘Dust,’ said Owen.

  ‘And a sort of glass case,’ said Onyx.

  ‘Nobody’s been in here for ages,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Well of course not, it’s the safest place in the Academy, which is itself the safest place in the country, which is frankly why you are here,’ said Miss Davies, from the middle of a coughing fit. ‘So open the case and let’s have the Cup; it’ll need a polish. Carefully, mind.’

  ‘Well…’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Wha,’ said Owen.

  ‘What they mean,’ said Onyx impatiently, ‘is, “what cup?”’

  ‘The one in the glass case,’ said the Head.

  A new draught swirled the dust. The squarish lines of a glass case revealed themselves.

  An empty glass case.

  The Greyte Cup for Achievement was gone.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Onyx brightly, ‘it’s not the end of the world.’

  The Headmaster was still sneezing, but now appeare
d to be weeping at the same time. So it was Miss Davies who spoke.

  ‘My poor dear child,’ she said, ‘there you are wrong. The end of the world may very well be exactly what it is.’

  To: All Governors

  From: Abenazar Cosm, Ph.D.

  It has come to my attention that the Greyte Cup for Achievement may be missing. Nobody is to blame, of course, and nothing is yet proved. And many would say that if it was true it would not be the fault of the Headmaster. Though the Cup was in his care. If I was made Head, nothing of the kind would be allowed to happen. Oh no.

  To: All Governors

  From: Solomon Temple, Headmaster

  Missing? The Cup? Piffle. Hogwash. Codswallop. It will be on the Cup Stand at Founder’s Day.

  To: The Polymathic Skolars

  From: The Headmaster

  Help!

  ‘What are we going to do?’ said Onyx next morning in the Study. ‘Poor Headmaster!’

  ‘We’ll find it,’ said Owen.

  ‘Then win it,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Goodee!’ cried Onyx, bouncing.

  ‘But how?’ said Owen.

  ‘We’ll have a Club!’ cried Onyx. ‘The Pink Kitten Cup-finding Club! We’ll ask all our friends –’

  ‘Pardon me while I puke,’ said Rosetti. ‘No clubs. We will use the skills that got us here in the first place.’

  ‘Being really excited!’ cried Onyx. ‘And reading everything!’

  ‘Thinking about things and then doing them,’ said Owen.

  ‘Being keen on sabotage,’ said Rosetti. ‘And rather devious.’

  ‘What does devious mean?’

  ‘Being totally straightforward at all times,’ said Rosetti, with a very insincere smile.

  ‘No it doesn’t!’ cried Onyx.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Rosetti. He was gazing out of the window. A figure caught his eye, small and upright: the figure of their form teacher. She marched down the Cloister and opened a door. As she passed through it she looked around quickly, as if (Rosetti thought) she was checking she was not being followed. ‘There’s Miss Davies!’ he said. ‘We must tell her what we’ve decided and see if she’s got any suggestions about how to do it. Come on!’

  The Skolars ran downstairs and through the third door in the Cloister. In the distance, Miss Davies was walking across a bed of cabbages towards a tumbledown barnyard. ‘After her!’ said Rosetti.

  They tiptoed into the barnyard in time to see Miss Davies open the door of a small round building with a cone-shaped roof. She propped the door open and walked away, as if she was going to fetch something.

  ‘Come on!’ said Rosetti. ‘We’ll get in there and surprise her. She’ll be really impressed.’

  ‘Hee hee,’ said Onyx.

  It was dark inside the building, except for a shaft of light from a hole in the middle of the roof. The air was smelly, and full of a low, happy cooing.

  ‘It’s a dovecote,’ said Onyx.

  ‘A wha?’ said Owen.

  ‘A house for keeping pigeons in.’

  ‘Ssh!’ said Rosetti.

  For Miss Davies’s footsteps were coming back across the yard. Rosetti suddenly had the strong feeling that she was not going to be impressed at all and that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Hide!’

  ‘Why?’ said Onyx.

  ‘Where?’ said Owen.

  ‘Just hide!’

  A peculiar object stood in the middle of the dovecote floor. It seemed to be a vast and ancient armchair, elaborately decorated with carvings of clocks, arrows and hourglasses, mounted on a box.

  ‘In the box!’ hissed Onyx.

  In they dived.

  It was dark and smelly in the box, but there was plenty of room for three. The footsteps came across the floor. The flap on the box lifted, and the Skolars braced themselves for discovery. But instead of the beautiful face of their form teacher, what appeared in the box was a basket the size and shape of a large picnic hamper. The flap closed. Above their heads the chair creaked, as if someone had climbed into it and sat down. Then a pole came down through a hole in the top of the box and began to bang up and down on the picnic hamper. From the picnic hamper there came squawks and flappings. The world became huge and dark and full of wings. Then the flapping stopped, and the chair was creaking as someone climbed off it, and the dovecote door slammed.

  ‘Funny,’ said Owen. ‘I thought we went somewhere. But we’re still here.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Onyx. ‘Somewhere that smelled like dove muck but it was like dove muck was the nicest smell in the whole world.’

  ‘It is,’ said Rosetti in a faraway voice. ‘To homing pigeons.’

  ‘Wha.’

  ‘So what happened?’ said Onyx.

  Rosetti pushed open the box. The Skolars crawled out. Things felt… different. Rosetti went and opened the dovecote door – only a crack at first to see if the coast was clear, then all the way. The Skolars stepped out of the door.

  And stopped.

  The world had changed.

  Ten minutes ago, the farmyard had been floored with piles of rusty iron and clumps of nettles. Now it was neatly cobbled, with a pond in one corner. The tumbledown barn was not tumbledown any more. It was twice its former length and made of gleaming new oak beams with bright yellow ochre infill. There were pigsties, in which pigs grunted.

  ‘It’s so pretty!’ cried Onyx, bouncing. ‘Look at those sweet ducks!’

  The kitchen garden had gone. In its place was a rough field. Beyond the field were the Academy buildings – but changed, changed. The Duggan Cube was absent, and so was the Hall of Session. All that remained was the Tower of Flight, with next to it a big house that had a fortified look. Both the Tower and the manor house were brilliantly painted in red and yellow stripes. The sky was bright blue, far brighter than any sky the Skolars had ever seen. Against it there soared flights of doves. The doves went in and out of holes in the Tower. Rosetti watched one rise, clap its wings, glide downwards and…

  disappear into thin air…

  Rosetti blinked. Owen was standing on the grass, mouth open, head shaking. Onyx was bearing down on the house like a human pogo stick.

  Rosetti blinked again. Then he started across the field. Owen trudged after him.

  While Owen was trudging, Onyx had bounced all the way to the front door of the house, where the boys caught up. Rosetti pushed the door open and stuck his head in. There was a funny smell. Part of it might be coming from the enormous stuffed crocodile hanging up by the ceiling, and another part from the dried human hand with a candle on the end of each finger that stood on the hall table. The rest of it was dried herbs and bad drains, or perhaps no drains at all. From deep in the house came the murmur of voices.

  Onyx said in a very small whisper, ‘We should go back.’

  ‘Back where?’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Wrwrwr,’ said Owen. This was no place for a logical person. His eyes had crossed and would not come uncrossed.

  ‘Noe!’ cried a man’s voice, huge and hollow. ‘Ytt cannot bee!’

  ‘Thou hast stole ye Cupp!’ shrieked the voice of Miss Davies.

  ‘Speak soft to thy Father,’ said the hollow voice.

  Father? thought Rosetti, edging closer to the room from which the voices were coming.

  The man said, ‘Another had done thys thyng. Fynde him!’

  ‘Aye, we must. Or…’

  ‘The Dread Thyng will come. Daughter, I yield unto thee the Doves of Time.’

  (‘Dread thing?’ hissed Onyx.

  ‘Ssh!’ hissed Rosetti.)

  ‘Father, I thanke thee.’

  ‘Curse!’

  ‘Wott?’

  ‘I have trod in my Chamber Pott!’

  ‘Not agayne. Wait, I wyll help thee.’

  There was the noise of breaking china. Onyx jumped, cannoning into Rosetti, who fell on Owen, so all the Skolars rolled down the stairs in a lump, bounced off a stuffed bear and fou
nd themselves sprawled on the front doorstep.

  ‘Run!’ cried Onyx. ‘They’re coming!’

  But Rosetti was staring at a carving in the arch above the front door: new-carved, heavily gilded, a monk’s head with a dagger between its teeth. A carving so new you could see the chisel marks on it –

  Onyx grabbed his hand and heaved. ‘Run!’ she said.

  They ran across the field, into the barnyard, into the dovecote and into the box. Five minutes later, footsteps sounded outside. The dovecote door opened. The chair creaked. The pole came down through the hole in the box lid and made its squashing movements on the hamper. Doves squawked and fluttered, the Skolars’ minds filled with ideas of lovely warm nests…

  The chair creaked. The flap opened. ‘Well,’ said the voice of Miss Davies. ‘I think you’d all better come out now.’

  The Skolars stiffened.

  ‘I won’t eat you,’ said Miss Davies.

  The Skolars crawled out of the box and stood in front of their teacher.

  ‘We will go to your Study,’ she said in a low, grim voice.

  Oh, goodness, thought Onyx, she’s cross and we’ve been bad! She opened her mouth to say how sorry she was and how she would never do it again ever. Then she realized that Rosetti was already speaking.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he was saying. ‘Your secret is safe with us, Miss Davies.’ And Onyx was astonished to see a look of actual relief cross Miss Davies’s face. ‘As long,’ said Rosetti, ‘as you tell us everything.’

  ‘Everything,’ said Owen, the little robot.

  ‘Everything,’ said Onyx, trying not to faint.

  ‘Very well,’ said Miss Davies, pale, but sticking out a small, brave chin. ‘Then follow me.’ She marched out of the dovecote.

  The world was normal again; the Duggan Cube was back, and the buildings that had been brand new during their visit to the past were once again blackened and mouldy. Miss Davies ploughed through the milling Skoolies in the Common Room and into the Polymathic Study.

  The room was cold, the fire unlit. Miss Davies made a throwing gesture at it. The pile of sticks burst into flames and became a fire, warm and roaring.

  ‘Magic!’ gasped Onyx. ‘You’re a witch!’

  Miss Davies flopped down in a chair. ‘Like I told you, there is more than one explanation for everything. I flicked a match into it without your seeing. There’s no such thing as magic, as in, ninky pinky hixy mixy be a toad. It is just that my father showed me how to practise hard.’