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

by Sam Llewellyn

  Voices woke him. Miss Davies, and Onyx going on about Cathedral Treasuries, and Owen grunting like Owen did. Rosetti kept quiet. He was by no means sure that Miss Davies would approve of death-defying climbs out of detention.

  The flap opened. The basket came in. The pole came down. Flap, squawk, nests in the mind.

  And the world smelled terrible, and sounded like stone and chanting.

  The chair creaked. Rosetti held his breath. The dovecote door opened and closed. Rosetti clambered furtively out of the box and put his eye to a crack in the door. Three figures were standing just outside the door. They were wearing long black cloaks with hoods pulled over their faces. Beyond them, fires burned in a yard, and there was a reek of wood smoke and History. Rosetti rummaged in a basket under the chair, pulled out another robe and put it on.

  For a moment he stood quite still.

  He could hear something. Not a voice; more a Call, really – faint, but there all the same. The whisper of the Greyte Cup, somewhere nearby –

  The whisper stopped like a candle flame blown out.

  Outside the dovecote, one of the robed figures began to talk in the clear, bright voice of Miss Davies. ‘We find ourselves in the Cathedral Yard,’ she said. ‘All these people, excuse me, sir, pardon, madam, mind that goat, have come on pilgrimage. Because inside yonder cathedral, yes, Owen, the very big one with the towers and the round arches, is the Skirt of the Virgin Mary and people come from all over the world to see it. It is in the treasure chamber – what is it, Onyx?’

  Onyx was saying something.

  ‘Yes, Onyx, you are right. This cathedral does not look like the one in the book. Because it is not the same one. Anyone know why?’

  ‘No,’ said Owen. ‘The Cup will be in the treasure chamber. Let’s go and get it.’

  ‘I know! I know!’ said Onyx, bouncing.

  Miss Davies sighed. ‘Yes?’ she said.

  ‘The fire! There was a fire!’

  ‘And the date?’

  ‘1194.’

  ‘What date?’

  ‘Tenth of June,’ said Onyx.

  Miss Davies squinted narrowly at the position of the sun in relation to the tower that soared into the evening-blue sky. ‘Which is actually today,’ said Miss Davies.

  ‘They’ve all come to see the holy relic skirt thing,’ said Owen. ‘Over here.’ He marched off.

  ‘I’ll wait near here,’ said Miss Davies.

  Onyx bounced after Owen and joined him at the end of the line of people shuffling into the great round-arched door of the church. A busker came by, playing a thing like a guitar. Onyx rummaged in her pocket and dropped a small handful of sherbet lemons into his hat and a couple in his mouth. Rosetti sneaked out of the dovecote and stood behind a cart. The busker had fallen to the ground, where he was foaming at the mouth and howling about devils. Rosetti looked at him, but did not really see him. He was tangling with a problem.

  Into his mind had come the screams and smoke at the invasion of the Paris Temple – which had been destroyed on the very day the Cup was stolen by Abbot Dagger. And now they had arrived to steal the Cup again, on the very day when it seemed that Chartres Cathedral was destined to burn down. It seemed possible that these frightful events were connected with the stealing of the Cup. Certainly they were disasters. But were they big enough disasters to be classed as Dread Things? And were they happening because the Skolars had arrived? Or were the Skolars arriving because the disasters were happening?

  Rosetti’s head was hurting again.

  He waited until Miss Davies’s back was turned. Then he limped away from the cart and into the shadows.

  The Holy Skirt queue moved along the great stone nave of the Cathedral, through the fog of incense surrounding the High Altar and down a stone stairway protected by black iron doors. ‘The treasure room,’ said Owen. They shuffled past a large selection of chalices made of silver and gold. None of them was the Greyte Cup.

  People behind them in the queue were pointing at them and whispering. Onyx thought she heard the words ‘busker’, ‘fizzing’ and ‘demons’. Naturally Owen understood nothing, except that he was getting bored. ‘Let’s get back to the dovecote,’ he said.

  But he might as well have been talking to himself. For Onyx was bouncing off down the left-hand side of the church to a wooden scaffolding set against a half-finished window. She scurried up a ladder, and seemed to be talking to one of the workmen.

  ‘Onyx!’ hissed Owen.

  Onyx slid down to ground level. ‘It’s all right!’ she cried. ‘That man’s name is François and the window designer is Georges and come on his workshop is just out here!’

  ‘Wha,’ said Owen.

  ‘That window,’ said Onyx, already walking into a maze of lanes. ‘It’s in the exact same place as the one in the book in the Library, silly! With the picture of the Cup in it! There was a diagram and everything! Only they haven’t put the glass in it yet. So Georges the stained-glass window designer has obviously got the Cup in his workshop so he can make an accurate picture of it. He lives first on the left, second on the right, in the Street of the Coughing Sparrow. Here.’ She started banging on the door.

  Georges was a tall, pale man, not very talkative. He was working on a glass picture of a ship on a sea. Onyx went and stood between him and the frame and tilted her head back. ‘Excuse me,’ she said in a loud clear voice. ‘We are looking for a cup.’

  ‘Go away. I am making window,’ said Georges, reaching round her and holding a bit of green glass up next to a bit of light blue glass.

  ‘Not the green,’ said Onyx. ‘Dark blue would be better.’

  Georges’ hands flexed in a strangling manner, like the hands of so many people meeting Onyx for the first time.

  ‘We want to see the Cup. That Cup,’ said Onyx, pointing to a panel of glass in a temporary frame. Owen nodded approvingly. The panel did indeed bear the image of the Greyte Cup.

  ‘You cannot. I have returned the Cup to its owner. Now I said go away,’ said Georges.

  Onyx folded her arms. ‘Not until you tell me where I can find the owner.’

  ‘Agh!’ cried Georges. He swore for some time in an unknown dialect, then spat out a sentence in Old French.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Onyx. She turned to Owen. ‘Well, we’ve found it. Apparently it belongs to a person called Magnus. At the sign of the Burned Dragon. Over there.’ Finger raised, she trotted out of the glass workshop, through the maze of alleys and wove her way between the pilgrims’ cooking fires towards the Cathedral wall.

  Georges the glassmaker had pointed in the direction of a flight of stone steps that went past a buttress and plunged under the Cathedral. It was a gloomy, threatening place, lit even on this summer evening by flickering orange torches.

  ‘Ooer,’ said Onyx, hesitating.

  ‘Come on,’ said Owen, pushing past her. As far as Owen was concerned, darkness was merely an absence of light.

  Twenty yards down the dark passage, a charred-looking carving of a dragon hung over an arch between two fat pillars. The arch was blocked with iron bars.

  ‘Wha?’ said a low, gravelly voice from behind them.

  ‘We want to look at your Cup,’ said Owen.

  ‘Wha?’ said the voice again. Someone behind the bars lifted a torch.

  ‘Eek!’ said Onyx.

  For the light had fallen on a face that looked like a root vegetable with a disease. It had warts, and hair, and a blob that might have been a nose, and a hole that was definitely a mouth because there was a tooth in it.

  ‘Magnus?’ said Owen, who could see no difference between handsome and ugly.

  The mouth snarled. Onyx spoke. The mouth spoke back.

  ‘He says that’s his name, and who wants to know, and what cup?’ said Onyx. ‘So I’ll draw it! I’ll draw it! I’ve got my crayons!’ She whipped out a pad of paper, made a small drawing of the Cup and coloured it in. ‘That one!’ she said.

  The dwarf examined the notebook page. Th
en he looked up. Suspicion glinted in his only eye. ‘How you know it here?’ he said.

  ‘We just do,’ said Onyx. ‘We want to look.’

  ‘Some chance,’ said the dwarf scornfully. ‘This the Sangrail.’ He started to turn away. Then he stopped. ‘Whazzat?’ he said.

  He was looking at Owen, who had taken out his Swiss Army knife and was carving a hard sum on an oak doorpost.

  ‘Swiss Army knife,’ said Onyx.

  ‘Want it,’ said the dwarf.

  Onyx translated. Owen narrowed his eyes. Then he pointed to a chess set on the dwarf’s table.

  Onyx said, ‘You can have Owen’s knife if you win. We can have a look at the Cup if Owen wins.’

  The dwarf’s face split into a frightful grin. He opened the barred door and bowed them into the room. But his eye never left the knife.

  Owen slid behind the chess table with the practiced ease of a snake sliding under a bedspread. The dwarf cracked his knuckles, thumped down opposite him and made the first move without asking. Owen countermoved. The board became a blur of move and countermove –

  ‘Hey!’ hissed Onyx. ‘He cheated!’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Owen. Half a dozen big, ugly louts had drifted out of the darkness to watch the game, or anyway to crowd round the table with their eyes fixed hungrily on the Yet-to-be-Invented-Country Army knife. Even Onyx realized that this was probably not a good moment to make a fuss.

  There was a final flurry of moves. Owen called, ‘Checkmate! Show us the Cup!’ and stuffed the knife back in his pocket.

  The dwarf sat for a moment with his jaw dropped, his tooth hanging like a yellow Smartie in a cave of darkness.

  ‘He cheated,’ said Owen. ‘So I cheated back.’

  ‘Gragurrh,’ said the dwarf, meaning roughly the same thing. The louts closed in.

  Onyx was furious. ‘He beat you fair and square!’ she said in Old French. ‘And now you say you want his knife anyway and he can’t see the Cup and you are really really horrible and we will all hate you, because this is unfair unfair unfair. Plus if you show us the Cup,’ she said, remembering to bat her eyelashes a bit, ‘I will give you my crayons.’

  The dwarf had been squinting in a grim and sarcastic manner. At the mention of crayons, his eyes unsquinted. ‘Give,’ he said.

  ‘After Cup.’

  ‘Oh.’ Pause for messy scratching of head. He said something. His louts laughed in a not very encouraging way. ‘Come.’

  The dwarf limped ahead, his shadow vast and lumpy in the torchlight. The procession shambled down vaulted stone passages. The walls closed in. The torches grew less frequent.

  The dwarf stopped at last in front of a tiny door made of massive iron and riddled with keyholes. ‘Behold!’ he cried. He took out a large bunch of keys. ‘Turn your backs!’ Everyone turned their backs. Iron hinges shrieked. There was a silence. Then the dwarf screamed, a long, terrible scream that echoed in the vault.

  ‘Hm,’ said Owen.

  The door of the dwarf’s strongroom stood open. Torchlight flickered on crowns, sceptres and enamel coffers. But the rough wooden table in the middle was empty, except for a ring in the dust where a cup had stood.

  ‘Gone!’ shrieked the dwarf. ‘Magnus bin robbed! Aiee!’

  Suddenly there was a lot of yelling and grabbing and people asking other people where the Cup had gone, and a smell of mouldy stone, and a clang, and the sound of bolts shooting, muffled by the thickness of a door. Then there was darkness, and silence except for the sound of breathing. ‘Are we here?’ said Owen.

  ‘I am,’ said a patch of darkness, using the voice of Onyx. ‘I think there’s just us and we’re in a d-dungeon.’

  ‘Quite a deep one, by the smell of it,’ said Owen.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll get rescued,’ said Onyx.

  ‘We are a hundred and ten feet below ground level, eight hundred and fourteen years away from Skool,’ said Owen. ‘Nobody knows where we are. Not even Miss Davies because she is hanging around the dovecote.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Silence.

  ‘Plus the Cathedral is due to burn down any minute now.’

  ‘Oo,’ said Onyx, in a small, high voice.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll get out. But it’s not very likely.’

  ‘Ee,’ said Onyx, even smaller and higher.

  ‘Impossible actually,’ said Owen, after a short pause to think it over.

  ‘Ik,’ said Onyx, in an absolutely minute bat-like squeak.

  Silence fell.

  Rosetti had not bothered to join the relic queue, but had followed his fellow Skolars at a distance, moving carefully because of his bad ankle. He had hung around in the shadows outside the glassmaker’s shop. He had not liked the look of the underground passage, but he had felt he ought to follow. Then sure enough there were Owen and Onyx being hustled down a dark tunnel by five louts and a dwarf, and a scream, and an iron door slamming. Rosetti pressed himself into an alcove as the louts and the dwarf came back without the Skolars. The louts stationed themselves at the end of the passage while the dwarf stumped off to book a torture chamber.

  Squashed into his little patch of shadow, Rosetti thought hard. To help his classmates he would have to get past the louts. The louts had weapons. Primitive weapons, true, but extremely sharp.

  What to do?

  Rosetti allowed himself to imagine that the louts were Security Masters, and the Cathedral Crypt was Skool. What would he have done?

  Easy.

  Reaching under his robe, he pulled out the water pistol. He marched up to the largest of the louts. ‘Oi!’ he cried. ‘Mutton face!’ The lout looked up, ready to maim. A jet of something hit his eye. The eye started stinging. He licked at what was running down his face. It tasted vile. He wiped his face with his hand and saw by the torchlight that the stuff was blue.

  Even in a world where water pistols are easy to get hold of, people are surprised when squirted in the eye with ink. In a world where water pistols had not yet been invented, Rosetti had suspected that the effect would be pretty intense.

  He was not disappointed.

  ‘Aiee!’ cried the lout. ‘Witchcraft!’ A knife hurtled through the air and clattered off the wall in the exact spot where Rosetti had been standing. But Rosetti was no longer there. He was limping down a side-tunnel, taking the wall-torches down from their brackets and throwing them behind him as he ran. His ankle hurt. But Rosetti limping was faster than most people running. He could hear the louts lumbering after him.

  He passed two doorways on his right, and tossed a torch into the second. When he came to a third, he turned down it and waited. The lumbering came closer. He held his breath. If they looked in on him, he was doomed.

  But the lumbering went off down the side-alley where he had thrown the torch. He let out his breath. He heard voices, large and stupid, fading into a hollow distance. He threaded through the passages back towards the Skolars’ dungeon. A lot of red light was pouring out of an archway, together with heat and smoke. The guards must have been doing some torch-throwing of their own. By the light of the flames he caught a glimpse of a wooden scaffolding of the kind that might support a cathedral floor.

  He arrived in the central passage. It was getting quite smoky. Snatching up a torch, he started for the narrow entrance to the dungeon tunnel. Then, seized by an afterthought, he yelled, ‘Fire! Fuego! Feuer! Fuoco! Conflagratio! Incendie! Au feu!’ and heard the cry taken up all through the warren of wood and stone.

  Onyx and Owen were sitting in silence when they smelled smoke and heard muffled shouting. ‘It’s started,’ squeaked Onyx. ‘What shall we do?’

  Owen felt he should say something, but he did not know what. He cleared his throat anyway, in case he had an idea at the last minute.

  The bolts creaked.

  The door swung open.

  ‘Oo!’ cried Onyx.

  ‘Who?’ cried Owen.

  ‘It’s only me,’ said the voice of Rosetti. ‘I think we’d better go. I mean the place s
eems to be on fire and the guards will be back any minute, so on the whole…’

  ‘Run!’ squeaked Onyx.

  ‘Walk,’ said Rosetti, whose ankle was now hurting quite badly. ‘Sing.’

  The louts came back out of the tunnel coughing, spluttering and very annoyed. As they stumped into the main passage, three small Grey Friars walked past them, hoods pulled down, chanting in the language the Grey Friars used.

  ‘Stop ’em,’ said the Chief Lout. ‘Take a look under those hoods.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said the Second Lout. ‘Like it’ll do any good. And like your britches aren’t on fire.’

  ‘Me? Fire? Britches? Aiee!’ cried the Chief Lout, realizing the truth of this remark. And the louts lost interest in the Friars, because they were busy putting the Chief’s trousers out by dipping him in a nearby privy.

  ‘All my eye and Betty Martin, All my eye and Betty Martin,’ sang the Skolars, climbing the steps from the crypt and marching across the churchyard between the pilgrim fires. ‘All my eye and –’

  ‘In,’ said Miss Davies, gliding out of the shadows and unlocking the dovecote door. ‘Goodness! Rosetti! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Being useful,’ said Owen. ‘No Cup, though. Already stolen.’

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘We’d better hurry,’ said Onyx.

  Dusk had fallen. The churchyard was lit with a hard orange light, and the round-arched windows were pouring flame.

  The dovecote door closed. A flap of wings. Nests in the mind. ‘We’re back,’ said Miss Davies.

  Nobody moved. They lay flopped in the chair, minds full of fire and heat and the remains of fear.

  Rosetti said, ‘I started that fire. Or I did the thing that made the lout throw the torch that started it, so without me there wouldn’t have been one. Except –’ he was looking at Miss Davies – ‘all these horrible things keep happening. The invasion of the Temple. The burning of the Cathedral.’