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

by Sam Llewellyn

  ‘And how to travel through time,’ said Rosetti.

  There was a short silence. Then Miss Davies said, ‘It’s not difficult. You need the right pigeons, that’s all.’

  ‘But science,’ said Owen. ‘Quantum mechanics. All that.’

  ‘Tell me again. What’s the motto of the Polymathic Skolars?’

  ‘There is always more than one explanation for everything,’ chorused the Skolars.

  ‘Good. Well, it applies to Time Travel as much as everything else. There are various methods. Some end in destroying the Universe. Others are just boring. The way I use is gentle, holistic and produces very little carbon dioxide.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ said Owen, not out of rudeness but out of interest.

  ‘It’s not complicated,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Point one, all animals have different ideas of time. Fast to a tortoise looks slow to a hummingbird. Point two, birds that travel long distances are very good at working out where they’re going. Take homing pigeons. Some people think that this is because they’ve got special eyes or little magnetic bits in their beaks. Well, maybe. But mostly it’s because a homing pigeon has a time sense that lets it see Time backwards as well as forwards. Which means that the reason it can always find its way home is that as far as it is concerned it arrived before it left. Clear?’

  Onyx said, ‘Er…’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Point three, flock instinct keeps birds together. Once Abbot Dagger had discovered this, the rest was easy.’

  Owen said, ‘Wha…’

  ‘Hush. He selected pigeons from all eras, with powerful flock instinct and powerful homing instinct. The flock instinct is a sort of mind-reading that keeps a group together over long distances, even in the dark. He and his assistant, Trym, bred them, first in the dovecote, then in the Tower of Flight. Selective breeding, to make the instincts more powerful. A really powerful flock instinct affects humans too. When you were in the box you found yourselves thinking about nests, am I right? And you probably saw pigeons vanishing into thin air around the Tower. Well, they were flying around in Time.’

  ‘But –’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Later,’ said Miss Davies. ‘And the flock instinct plus the homing instinct strengthened by selective breeding makes the pigeons go exactly where we want in Time, and take us with them. But there are problems. Can you think of one?’

  ‘Paradoxes,’ said Owen.

  ‘Caramba!’ cried Miss Davies. ‘Bingo! Genius! Yes! Tell me a paradox, someone!’

  Owen said, ‘If someone had killed my great-grandfather, I would not be here. So if you go back in Time to kill him, I vanish. But the things I did today have already happened.’

  ‘Excellent example!’ cried Miss Davies. ‘Think of Time as a river flowing from the past into the future. A small disturbance in the current makes a little eddy, which disappears. So if you eat a little slice of bread in the Middle Ages, it doesn’t matter. But if you steal, say, a royal crown in the Middle Ages and bring it back to the present, you’ve got one stream of Time in which the crown exists and is important, and another in which it doesn’t and isn’t. Some silly old scientists say you can have parallel Universes, but they’re wrong. A person or a thing can’t exist in two Time streams at once. A paradox can only exist by stretching Time. But Time is one of those basic unstretchable universal things, like atoms. If you break up an atom, you get a huge release of energy. If you split a Time stream, you get something worse: a release of historical energy called a Dread Thing, when History more or less blows up and starts again.’

  There was a silence. Then a hand went up. Obviously, it was Onyx’s.

  ‘Miss miss please miss,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Onyx?’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  Miss Davies gave her a charming smile. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘Abbot Dagger is my father, and I keep an eye on things for him in future Time. I talk to him across Time, when he is listening. It’s a knack.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Onyx, and thought for a bit.

  Owen had no time for all this vague stuff. He said, ‘What has this got to do with the Greyte Cup being stolen?’

  ‘Much better question than usual,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Ideas, anyone? Given that the Greyte Cup has been stolen from a locked room that no one has visited since last year?’

  ‘Tell us,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Well,’ said Miss Davies, ‘if you wanted to hide something, where would you put it?’

  ‘In a hole,’ said Owen.

  ‘Or?’

  ‘In a cupboard,’ said Onyx.

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Somewhere else in Time,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Correct, said Miss Davies. ‘Well done. I’ve got a feeling that this is where we should look first.’

  ‘Feeling?’ said Owen, who did not understand the term.

  ‘Hunch.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Owen, still baffled.

  There was a short but very deep silence. Then Onyx put her hand up so hard that all her bones cracked.

  ‘Onyx?’ said Miss Davies.

  ‘So all we’ve got to do,’ said Onyx, ‘is get some pigeons and go back and find the Cup in Time and bring it back for Founder’s Day or the Headmaster will lose his job and Dr Cosm will become Headmaster and make the Skool even worse than it already is and the world may end because of a Dread Thing happening. And it’s only four and a half weeks till Founder’s Day so we’d better get going.’

  ‘Spot on,’ said Miss Davies. ‘We’ve already got the pigeons.’

  ‘Hooray!’ said Onyx. ‘Come on, everyone!’

  Five days later, on Monday of the following week, at the end of a Lovely Writing lesson, Miss Davies clapped her hands. ‘Dismiss!’ she cried. Then, over the thunder of boots on floorboards, ‘Polymathic Skolars, to me!’ She waited till the rest of the class had left the room. ‘Now!’ she cried. ‘Great news! We’re off! Wear games kit! Meet at the dovecote after lunch!’

  But it was not as easy as that. For after lunch the Prefects herded the pupils into the Hall of Session, where Nurse Drax and Corporal Prang were standing on the stage.

  ‘Cleanliness Test!’ bawled a great voice.

  ‘But we have to go back to –’ said Onyx.

  ‘Oh, no,’ snarled a voice from on high. She looked up. Far above her, Slee Duggan grinned evilly. ‘There is no going back.’

  ‘Y-yes, sir,’ said Onyx.

  Slee bent towards her. ‘Good luck,’ he said, and she felt something wipe her legs.

  ‘Th-thanks,’ she said. Looking down, she saw her knees had turned black.

  ‘Pork-fat soot,’ said Slee. ‘Hyeugh hyeugh.’

  ‘Hyeugh hyeugh,’ said Elphine the Match Girl admiringly.

  Oo, you creep! thought Onyx.

  Ahead, pupils were stepping on to the dais, where Nurse Drax was examining their faces and knees with a cracked magnifying glass. Ooer, thought Onyx, scrubbing at her knee with her sleeve. Her sleeve got filthy and her knees got no cleaner. Then she was going up the steps, and Nurse Drax’s breath was all around her like a sickly fog. And an awful silence fell.

  ‘Look at you!’ hissed the voice. ‘Look at the state of you!’ Onyx’s eyes began to prickle. ‘You will learn not to trifle with the Cleanliness Tests!’ hissed the voice. ‘And the way you will learn it is to write a thousand times “I must be more cleanerer”.’

  ‘Do you mean “cleaner”?’

  ‘No good trying to make ’em shorter! Write two thousand!’

  Onyx said in a tiny voice, ‘Yes, Mato,’ and shuffled out of the breath fog.

  ‘Next reptile!’ snarled Matron.

  The next reptile was actually Owen, whose hyper-logical mind could not tolerate anything random like dirt. So he passed the test and went on to Corporal Prang.

  ‘’Shun!’ cried a Security Master.

  Owen sprang to attention.

  ‘March!’ cried a Security Master.

  Owen began to march.

&n
bsp; Rosetti approached the steps of the dais. As he raised his foot for the first step, Damage Duggan pushed him from behind, causing him to trip over the bottom step and bash his knee quite severely.

  ‘Hyeugh hyeugh,’ said Damage.

  Rosetti tried not to be angry. But he did not quite succeed, and the anger touched another mind, a small, hot mind, sloshing with blood; the mind of the woewolf he had befriended. Woewolves have special talents, chief of which is coming when called and vanishing when not needed. In a split second a green-toothed grey creature had materialized at the foot of the steps and leaped at Flanker Duggan’s throat –

  Ooer, thought Rosetti. Begone, woewolf.

  The teeth clashed six inches under Damage’s chin, and the woewolf vanished. And there was Rosetti limping past the black-clad Security Masters and on to the stage, and Matron and the whole Skool staring at Damage, who was strangling the air in front of his face and howling…

  Not actually the whole Skool. Three people were not looking. One of them was Owen, because he was marching and nobody had told him to stop. Another was Onyx, because she had got tangled up with Owen and was being marched herself. And the other was Rosetti, because he had noticed the narrow but useful hole in the crowd made by his fellow Skolars, and was pounding down it as fast as he could go. He overtook Owen just as he was about to crash into the wall.

  ‘Right turn!’ he hissed, running ahead to open the door. ‘Left turn! Halt! Act normal!’

  ‘What do you mean, normal?’ said Owen.

  ‘I’ve got all these lines!’ wailed Onyx, with the true grief of the affronted keenie.

  ‘Never mind the lines,’ said Rosetti. ‘Run! To the Study!’

  They ran.

  Miss Davies was sitting with her feet on the desk painting a fingernail. ‘Where have you been?’ she said.

  They told her, panting. ‘And,’ said Rosetti, ‘I’m afraid we’ve let the Headmaster down again.’

  ‘And I’ve got all these lines!’ wailed Onyx.

  ‘Relax,’ said Miss Davies. ‘My father employs demons who write millions in seconds. Let’s go!’

  Five minutes later, Dr Cosm and a squad of Security Masters arrived outside the Study door.

  ‘Open up,’ cried Cosm. Silence.

  ‘Break the door down.’

  Four hefty Security Masters hurled themselves at the door. They fell back cursing and rubbing bumps, for it was stout and ancient and studded with nails.

  ‘Sss!’ cried Cosm, striding to the front. ‘What is that?’

  A Security Master squinted at the white rectangle pinned to the door. ‘A Nonvelope,’ he said, tearing it off.

  ‘Addressed to the Headmaster,’ said Cosm. ‘I’ll open it.’

  ‘Actually I think I will,’ said an even, jolly voice, approaching from the end of the corridor. ‘Being the Headmaster, and all that.’

  ‘For the moment only, sss,’ muttered Cosm.

  The Head smiled sweetly and opened the envelope. ‘Oh, look. They have gone on a field trip. How very acceptable!’

  ‘Having caused mayhem and chaos at a Skool Cleanliness Test and disrupted the education of their fellow pupils,’ said Cosm. ‘Let us explain these shocking events to the Governors. How fortunate that there is a meeting in an hour!’

  ‘Item six,’ said Dr Cosm, whose turn it was to run the Governors’ Meeting. ‘Behaviour of this year’s new Polymathic Skolars. Very bad.’

  ‘In what way?’ said Colonel De’ath, who liked to get to the bottom of things.

  ‘Lack of cleanliness.’

  ‘All our pupils are filthy,’ said the Headmaster, beaming.

  ‘Not as filthy as your Polymathics. Plus there was lack of respect while marching.’

  ‘Tut!’ said Police Commissioner Bruce Manacle between clenched teeth.

  ‘Summoning of wild animals contrary to school rules thereby endangering staff health and safety.’

  ‘But aren’t the other pupils just as bad?’ said Inkon Stimp R.A. the artist.

  ‘Who asked you?’ cried Lady Squee.

  ‘Not the point!’ cried Professor Tube.

  ‘The Polymathics are the Head’s personal responsibility. So I propose that the Headmaster be sacked instantly,’ said Cosm with ghastly eagerness.

  ‘Sounds fine to –’

  ‘Ahem,’ said the Headmaster. ‘I fear that this is not allowed. The ancient statutes of the Abbot say, not in the middle of a term, no way, José. May I suggest that we give the Skolars time to settle in? And, as the Colonel proposed at our last meeting, to win the Greyte Cup for Achievement? In Running, Colonel. And Hard Sums, Professor. And Lovely Writing, Mr Stimp. Well?’

  ‘So we can’t sack you?’ said Cosm.

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Cosm. ‘Well, a statute is a statute, I suppose, and all reasonable people know that the law is the law, yes, sss. But there are only three point seven two eight five one weeks till Founder’s Day. For now, I suggest that the Colonel declare this meeting closed.’ He stacked his papers. ‘Sss, start packing, Head,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘No one will stand in my way. Next term, the Skool. Afterwards, the Universe.’

  ‘What?’ said the Colonel.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Cosm.

  In the dovecote the Skolars were settling into the Time Chair and Miss Davies was stuffing the Time Doves into the basket. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Aye.’

  She prodded the basket with her pole. Squawk, flap, thoughts of nests. Then they were back in the reign of Elizabeth I, walking across the new-old farmyard and into the brightly painted house by the Tower. It was nice to have a guide.

  ‘Hand of Glory,’ said Miss Davies, pointing at the human hand with the candles on it. ‘And this,’ she said, pausing opposite a sausage-like object wrapped in dirty bandages and propped against a wall, ‘is a speaking mummy, certified Ancient Egyptian. Go on, talk to it.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Onyx.

  ‘Can’t remember, silly me,’ said the mummy in a hoarse, dry voice.

  ‘It’s called Pft,’ said Miss Davies. ‘None too bright when he was alive, let alone after he had died and someone had pulled his brains out of his nose with a little hook.’ The sound of a splosh and swearing came from above. ‘There’s Dad,’ she said. ‘Stepped in his chamber pot again.’ She shooed her pupils up the stairs and into a large, smelly room. A man was sitting in a carved chair by the fire. He was wearing a floor-length black robe embroidered with mystic sigils. Under the robe, he seemed to be trying to shake something off his foot.

  ‘Sdeath,’ he roared. ‘Oh. Greetyngs, faire daughter.’ He rose, checking that his robe covered the foot. ‘And these wyll be thy Skolars.’ He burst into a flow of gibberish. Onyx stepped forward, made a courteous sign with her hand, and spoke back to him. He looked very surprised. ‘Thou speakest Hittite!’ he cried.

  ‘I get by,’ said Onyx.

  ‘Verilie, thys ys a marvell,’ said Abbot Dagger, stepping back. There was the sound of breaking china. The smell grew stronger. ‘Argh! Trym!’ he bawled. ‘Ye Mopp!’

  ‘Oh, no, not agayne!’ said a voice below, thin and cross.

  ‘Perhaps we will take a look around the house,’ said Miss Davies hastily.

  ‘Sounde Scheeme,’ said the Abbot.

  For half an hour the children examined jewels, eggs and Marvels of Art. When they returned to the Abbot’s chamber, the sage was seated in his chair with his feet in a basket of sweet herbs. A man shuffled out of the room, clanking a mop and bucket. He looked rather angry and rather odd, because of the eye tattooed in the middle of his forehead. ‘I be Trym,’ he said. ‘Keeper of the Doves, tattooed with the Alle-Seeing Eye. Withoute whome thys whole place would falle to byts –’

  ‘Silence, showoff. Thyne eye is mere decoration and thy head is huge,’ said the Abbot.

  ‘Father,’ said Miss Davies, ‘we crave a boon. We crave that thou wylt tell us the true and amazing Historie of the Greyte Cupp. Begge Hymme,
’ she hissed to the children behind her hand.

  ‘It would be an honour,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Just tell it to us and cut the cackle,’ said Owen.

  ‘Please!’ said Onyx, bouncing. ‘Please please please please –’

  ‘Verily thou arte keene,’ said the Abbot, wrinkling his nose. ‘Well, heere goes. Ye Cupp ys mine. But I hyd ytt, for thys reason. I herde from Fryends at Courte that Her Majestie planned to send Leeches and Bloodsuckers upon me, to counte my Riches and take the half portion of them as Taxes, sayynge, One who hath the Skill Necromantick can always make more. Whych is not Right, the Thieves. Soe I took Measures. Soe that when the Leeches came, pox on them and most of all on Abanazer their Cheefe, theye found mee in a three-legged chayre under a roofe with holes in, and alle my flocks, herds, jewels, eggs and Marvells of Arte hidden where they could not be founde. And the Greyte Cupp I hyd not in place, with all my other goodes, but in Forward Tyme against the cunning of this Abanazar. And nowe ytt has gone, I hear. Soe ye must go toe a place yn Tyme where ye Cupp exysteth yet, and take ytt, and place ytt once more in ye Sealed Roome. If ytt bee kept hydden from mortal eye in ye Roome, all wyll be well, for ytt wyll have no effect on Events, being locked away. But if ytt be out in the World, and mayhap cause Tyme to Divide, then may come to pass the Dread Thyng.’

  ‘My head hurts,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Simple,’ said Owen. ‘We go back into the past, steal the Cup before it was stolen and put it back in the Sealed Room after it was stolen.’

  ‘But then it wouldn’t be there to be owned by Abbot Dagger and hidden in the future.’

  ‘Yes it would,’ said Owen. ‘Because what has happened has already happened, or there would never have been a Cup at the Skool.’

  ‘My head,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Children,’ said Miss Davies, ‘we will all go mad if we argue about this. What we must do first is go back in Time, find the Cup and put it in the Sealed Room.’

  ‘Have a care,’ said the Abbot. ‘Beware that ye cause not a Dread Thyng. Daughter, hast thou looked in the Indispensible Examinator?’