‘Oh,’ said Cosm. ‘Yes. Quite. When the Great Day comes you will not regret this, worm.’
‘Oo, ta,’ wheezed the Librarian.
Next morning, the Skolars fought their way through the Skoolie crowds back to the Study. Miss Davies was standing before an easel, over which she had laid a red velvet cloth. ‘I would like to show you an excellent bit of research by Onyx,’ she said. ‘It concerns something she has found out about Chartres Cathedral, in France. Behold.’ She swept off the red cloth.
‘How very beautiful,’ said Rosetti.
On the easel was a large book, open at an illustration of a stained-glass window. It was indeed a beautiful window, bearing a picture of a tall tree with smaller pictures growing from its branches. The glass was richly coloured in blues and crimsons and deep viridian greens.
And golds.
‘On the right-hand side, three panels from the top,’ said Miss Davies. ‘What do you see?’
‘A cup,’ said Owen. ‘Made of gold. With red stones on the knop.’
‘The Greyte Cup,’ said Rosetti. ‘Obviously. But why would anyone put the Greyte Cup in a stained-glass window?’
‘Beautiful thing,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Ancient.’
Rosetti looked at her closely. Unless he was much mistaken, she was hiding something. He remembered what the Templar Novice Master had said. ‘And apparently,’ he said, ‘it is the Holy Grail.’
Miss Davies laughed. ‘When you’ve knocked about in Time as much as I have, you’ll find that just about every tea mug is apparently the Holy Grail.’
‘Oh,’ said Rosetti. But –’
‘Anyway,’ said Miss Davies, cutting him off, ‘the doves will be ready in five days. At which point we will go back and nick the Cup from Chartres Cathedral. Till then this is a Skool. And there is no point in bringing the Cup back unless we’re going to win it once it’s here. It is exactly three weeks till Founder’s Day. So, Onyx, do lots of Lovely Writing. And, Owen, keep in practice with those Hard Sums. And, Rosetti, run as you have never run before. And the Polymathic Skolars will triumph, and Cosm will be defeated, and our dear Headmaster will be able to keep his job, and revolting Cosm will not get his hands on our dear Skool.’
‘But it’s not our dear Skool,’ said Owen, with crushing logic. ‘We’re here because we’re impossible.’
‘We could make it lovelier,’ said Onyx keenly.
‘How?’
‘Paint it pink? Or palest blue,’ said Onyx, remembering that there were boys present.
‘Or scupper Cosm,’ said Rosetti.
‘For which we will first need the Greyte Cup,’ said Miss Davies.
‘Hooray!’ cried the Skolars, inspired.
‘Doves ready on Thursday at six. Till then, practice makes perfect!’
Four days later, high in the Observation Room of the Duggan Cube, Dr Cosm sat and gnawed his fingernails. It was all very well the Librarian telling him things. But quantum engines took time to charge up…
Still, there did not seem to be any hurry. The Library screens showed a cloud of dust with two pigtails sticking out of it at sharp angles. The soundtrack consisted mostly of the coughing and wheezing of the Librarian. In the silences between sneezes could be heard the scritch of a pen doing Lovely Writing. Cosm was gagging to punish someone for something, but there was absolutely nothing to punish there. Gnagn, he thought, turning to the Main Skool Screen. The sound of applause came tinnily over the loudspeakers.
‘It’s obvious,’ said a voice. Then there was the squeak of chalk on slate. Dr Cosm zoomed in.
The camera settled on the stocky figure of Owen French. He had his back to the camera and his face to a huge blackboard. His hand was whizzing over its surface, scrawling an amazingly hard sum. He finished a line, added an equals sign and wrote ‘five camels’. Sections of the room erupted into cheering.
Gnarghnsch, thought Dr Cosm. He hated geniuses, because they were impossible to Test. ‘Where’s Svenson?’ he barked.
‘Here.’
‘Where?’
‘Running track,’ said Otto.
‘Put him on.’ The scene changed to green grass and grey drizzle, and a lean child running smoothly and fast, overtaking other running children. ‘Hah,’ said Dr Cosm. ‘So there you are, my friend. But not for long. Nyahaha!’
‘Nyahaha!’ said Otto.
‘Shut up,’ said Dr Cosm.
Rosetti did not much like racing. So he had worked out that the best thing to do was run much faster than anyone else, so you did not actually notice you were in a race. Today he was hurtling around the perimeter track at eighteen miles an hour, watching a rabbit that was running away from him flat out and realizing that flat out was not going to be fast enough. But Rosetti’s mind was not on rabbits. Rosetti’s mind was on the Holy Grail.
‘Oi!’ said a voice beside him.
He looked to his left and saw Slee Duggan, riding a bicycle. ‘You are pafetic,’ said Slee Duggan.
‘Tell you what,’ said Rosetti, with a kind smile, ‘your mother is a baboon.’ Slee’s heavy brows frowned. His little eyes crossed.
‘Oi,’ said a voice on Rosetti’s right.
Rosetti looked to his right, and saw Damage Duggan, riding another bicycle. ‘And your mother,’ he said, ‘was a different baboon from his mother.’
Damage’s heavy brows frowned. His little eyes crossed, deep in thought. ‘Oi,’ said Damage. ‘You dissin’ our mum?’
‘Yeah,’ said Slee. ‘He’s dissin’ our mum.’
The Duggans said, ‘Rrrr.’ Having caused trouble according to Dr Cosm’s instructions, they surged towards Rosetti.
This was very much what Rosetti had been hoping for. He stopped dead and ran in the opposite direction. Instead of surging into him, the Duggans surged into each other. There was the sound of mixed crashing. When he looked back, he saw Slee’s head sticking through the spokes of Damage’s front wheel, and Damage’s leg wrapped in Slee’s chain. ‘Oo dearie me,’ said Rosetti. ‘Oof.’
For he had collided with something large and solid: a Security Master. ‘You bin spotted bullyin’ them pore little big lads,’ said the Security Master. ‘Come wif me to the Duty Master.’
‘And the Duty Master’s Dr Cosm, isn’t it?’ said Rosetti, spotting the Security Master’s earpiece. ‘Hello, Doctor!’ He waved.
‘Gnaaah!’ shrieked an insect voice in the Security Master’s ear. The master tore the earpiece out and clutched his head. ‘Extra Tests!’ cried the earpiece. ‘Report instantly to the Duggan Cube!’
Rosetti shrugged, and trotted off to the Physics laboratories. It was a silly childish skooly sort of punishment, very unfair, typical of Dr Cosm. Well, if Dr Cosm wanted to be childish and skooly, Rosetti could be childish and skooly right back.
These thoughts of revenge pushed thoughts of the Holy Grail out of his head.
For the moment.
∗
Dr Cosm was delighted to have a chance to punish the brat Svenson. He sent him to sit in the White Room, and wrote a physics problem on the board. ‘Nyah,’ he said. ‘Finish this and show your workings. I have some very important meetings to go to. Your every movement is, of course, watched.’ He waved a hand at the TV camera high on the white wall.
Rosetti looked at the problem on the board, a thing containing weights, springs and electricity. It was not a very interesting problem, but it was not very difficult either. As he finished, the tea bell was tolling. Rosetti did a drawing of Cosm being eaten by a machine, and made sure the CCTV camera saw it. Then he left the answer to the problem on the desk, got his stuff together and set off. But he did not go straight to the Study.
He had an errand to do first. In the kitchens, and elsewhere. An errand of revenge on Cosm.
People said revenge was sweet.
Sweet? said Rosetti in his mind. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
At bedtime that evening, Dr Cosm found himself rather tired. He brushed his teeth exactly six hundred times. Then he washed hi
s large white face, vaulted into his large green pyjamas and went to bed. He had designed his bedroom himself. It had white walls and a white ceiling; Dr Cosm hated colours. The bed was white too. Its duvet was large and white and soft. Tonight, it felt extra delightful, like being covered by a cloud. As every day, Dr Cosm turned out the lights and lay for a moment running over in his mind his plans to take over the Skool. The Governors were on his side. As for the rest… well, things were going very well…
The pasty lids fell over the curranty eyes.
Dr Cosm slept.
Some time later, he woke up. He opened his eyes. It was dark. Also, it was sticky. He raised a hand. The duvet rose with it. He swung his feet out of bed. The duvet swung with them. He stood up in the dark. The duvet stood up too, clinging to him.
‘Help!’ shouted Dr Cosm, trying to wrench free. Something tore. Suddenly the air was full of feathers. ‘Aiee! Noo!’ he cried again. His mouth filled with feathers. He rolled in the direction of the wall. ‘Argh!’ he cried. ‘Help!’ Then he went mad in a sticky blizzard that seemed to involve not only sheets, feathers and something like syrup, but quite a lot of furniture as well.
The door opened. A light came on. The voice of his assistant, Otto, said, ‘Cor!’
‘Summon help!’ shrieked Cosm. ‘I am under attack!’
‘But –’
‘Shut up!’
Footsteps thumped. Doors banged. Shins hit furniture. Someone hosed Dr Cosm down. Ten minutes later, he was standing in clean pyjamas and a new dressing gown, allowing the eyes to play over the wreckage of his room. His mind was once again working like a machine of ice and steel. An enemy had done this thing. And he knew which one. When he had become Headmaster and carried out his other plans they would pay. How they would pay –
‘Better now?’ said Otto.
‘Shut up!’ cried Cosm. ‘To the Control Room!’
To the Control Room they went.
‘Play this evening’s tapes for bedroom AA1A(A),’ said Cosm.
Otto pushed buttons. Cosm’s bedroom appeared on a screen, white and tranquil.
‘Speed it up.’
The whiteness and tranquillity continued for a while. Then, suddenly, the door opened, and a figure in a hooded black robe came in. The face could not be seen.
‘Sss,’ said Cosm.
The figure held up a box to the CCTV camera.
‘Grr,’ growled Cosm.
ICEO, said the letters on the box.
‘Iceo is icing sugar,’ said Otto.
The figure ripped the top off the box, pulled the duvet off the bed, sprinkled a thick layer of icing sugar on the sheet and pulled the duvet neatly back up again.
‘Oh I see!’ cried little Otto. ‘So this person puts the soft, soft sugar in your bed and you lie down and you can’t feel it but then you go to sleep and you get a teeny bit sweaty so the sugar turns to syrup and you get all sticky and then you wake up and, well, I must say, it is very clever ho ho –’
‘Silence!’ barked Cosm. ‘This wicked miscreant will be punished! Horribly punished, so he will never forget it! I shall inform the Governors and the staff in front of the whole Skool! Perhaps news of this outrage will force the Head to resign!’
‘Er…’ said Otto.
‘Your problem, insect?’
‘I’m not sure it is a good idea to let it be known…’
‘What?’
‘You are a very dignified person,’ said Otto, cringing and smarming. ‘And of course a possible – that is to say – a future Headmaster. If the Skool were to hear that you had been found screaming for help dressed only in syrup and a layer of goose feathers, they would laugh at you. So would the staff. So would the Governors. Hee.’
‘Shut up!’
Yes, Doctor,’ said Otto. ‘Hee hee.’
‘Ant! Worm!’
‘Sorry, master. Hee,’ said Otto.
‘Sss,’ said the Doctor. ‘You will see, insect. I have some ideas of my own. Oh, yes, little Svenson, just you wait!’
‘Yes, Doctor,’ said Otto. ‘Hee.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Good.’
‘Hee.’
The Skoolies noticed that the Skolars were extremely cheerful that Thursday morning. In the crowded corridor on the way to breakfast, Rosetti whistled in close harmony with Owen. Onyx, who was a tuneless and spitty whistler, sang along in a high, clear voice:
‘Oo, Dr Cosm,
Friend of our bosom,
Izzums a problem wozm?’
Down the corridor they marched. Round the corner they strode. And walked slap into Dr Cosm.
‘Ah,’ said Cosm, who had sleepless black eyebags above his doughy cheeks. ‘Whistling in the corridors. You –’ he pointed at Rosetti – ‘are obviously the ringleader.’ He snapped his fingers. A Security Master came running.
‘More Tests?’ said Rosetti. ‘Lovely. Bring ’em on!’
‘No,’ said Cosm. ‘Take him to the Detention Attic in the Tower.’
‘Oo, nasty,’ said the Security Master. ‘Tower it is, then.’
The Detention Attic was an ancient room with low beams and a window at each side. It smelled terrible, so Rosetti opened the windows. Below him, the Tower sank to the Quad. There were bars on the windows, but very old and rusty ones, and when he pulled one it came away in his hand. But actually the bars were hardly necessary, because it was more than a hundred feet above the ground. No exit that way.
He waited for hours.
At last the door opened.
‘Ah, Rosetti,’ said the Headmaster’s voice. And in he came, accompanied by Dr Cosm and Miss Davies, attempting to look severe and making a bad job of it. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘It appears that you have done… nothing wrong.’
‘Whistling in the corridors,’ barked Dr Cosm. ‘Bad attitude. Dumb insolence.’
‘Is it a problem when I whistle, er, sweetly, sir, hee?’ said Rosetti.
‘Headmaster, I insist,’ said Cosm. ‘There is a Governors’ Meeting. At which I shall make a full report. Statutes can be changed, you know, in the event of really bad offences.’
‘Mmyes,’ said the Headmaster. ‘Oh, dear, Rosetti. One hates this sort of thing, but Cosm, Governors, difficult… it would be better if you stayed here for the next twelve –’
‘Twenty-four,’ said Cosm.
‘– very well, twenty-four hours.’
Rosetti’s mouth was hanging open. In a mere eight hours, the doves would be rested enough to zip back through Time to Chartres Cathedral to pick up the Cup. He was needed. Badly. ‘But –’ he said.
The Headmaster drew himself up to his full height, striking his head on a low beam. ‘You have made your bed, and you must lie in it.’
‘Not my bed,’ said Rosetti, unwisely.
‘Leave him!’ hissed Cosm. ‘The Governors await!’
‘I suppose they do,’ said Solomon Temple gloomily. ‘Ah, well, into the Jaws of Death, what?’
‘This is so unfair!’ said Rosetti, when they had gone.
‘You put icing sugar in his bed,’ said Miss Davies. ‘And then teased him about it. He is a master and you are a pupil so it is your own silly fault. And I can’t wait, or the doves will overcharge, and Trym is in a terrible mood nowadays so I can’t get new ones out of him, and goodness knows where we’ll land up. So you’ll have to stay behind.’
She left.
Someone brought bread and water.
Unfair, thought Rosetti, stumping to and fro. Unfair, unfair, unfair. He walked to the window and looked out. Pupils milled like ants as the Skool went about its business far below. He might as well not exist. He turned on his heel and went to the window opposite. No busy scene below this one. Just a gargoyle’s head that looked like Nurse Drax.
Rosetti went to the food. There were three loaves of bread, marked LUNCH, SUPPER, BREAKFAST. He went to the window and took out a water pistol from his pocket and squirted water at a starling until the starling flew away. He filled the
water pistol up with ink from the Detention Inkwell and went back to the window. But no more starlings came near him, and there was no point in squirting stones. He put the water pistol back in his pocket and gazed down the cliff of carved stonework that descended to the scree at the foot of the New-boy’s Leap…
The cliff of heavily carved stonework.
Rosetti tightened his bootlaces. He took a deep breath. He climbed on to the sill of the window that looked away from the Quad. The bars had rusted away. Below him, the Tower narrowed with distance. His mouth was strangely dry. He put a foot out of the window and on to the back of a nearby gargoyle’s head. Then he put his other foot on the gargoyle’s head. Then he eased his weight off the windowsill and on to his feet, so he was standing on the projection of stone a hundred feet above the ground, and turned round to look at the view.
The gargoyle’s head broke off.
Wooo, thought Rosetti, plummeting.
Yank, went something at his back. His shirt was hoiked up under his armpits. He swung, caught by the back of his shirt on another gargoyle, watching two shirt buttons spinning down, down…
Pop, went another button. Three to go.
Rosetti raised his hand. The hand found a carving and grasped it. Gradually, he put his weight on it. This one held. He turned and got a foot to another carving. That one held too. Another hand. Another foot. Down he went, down, down. Being Rosetti, he gained confidence as he went. Being Rosetti and in a hurry to catch the dovecote he actually became rather overconfident, and started to scuttle like an ape down the ladder of stone carvings. Lion’s head, carved flower, carved branch, bird’s wing, lady’s shoulder, large block.
On the large block he stood and took a breather.
Until the block fell off.
This time, no handy snag caught his shirt. He fell. But he did not fall for long, because by this time he was only ten feet off the ground.
‘Oof!’ he said to the patch of grass on which he had landed. It took him a couple of minutes to work out how to breathe. When he had done that he stood up. Bang in ribs, he thought. He fell down. Twisted ankle, he thought. He found a bit of wood to use as a stick and hobbled off towards the dovecote. The ankle got better as he went, but not much. He hid in the box under the chair. His eyes closed. He went to sleep.
Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail Page 6