“During the night Paul hears a noise. It’s only a rat, but seeing as how he’s just escaped from a pack of wolves he starts panicking and runs out of his room. The rat follows him, and he goes dashing along the corridor like a headless chicken. Then he throws open the first door he sees and hides behind it. He stays there all night, fearing for his life, no idea where he is. When day dawns he realizes he’s ended up in the west wing library. The sight of the slashed sofa cushions breaks his poor upholsterer’s heart.
“At that moment the carpenters Karsten and Jochen arrive. They’ve been looking everywhere for their friend. Like Paul, they’re shocked to see the state of the library. For breakfast that morning Mrs. Berkenbeck serves them fresh brioche buns, still hot from the oven, and Jochen…” Hannah paused for breath. “Basically, the three of them are so grateful that they offer to repair everything in the library for free. Perfect, right?” She beamed at us triumphantly.
I put my head to one side. “Wow, you’ve really thought this through. But I don’t know … starving wolves in the woods. Rats in the castle. That would just create a whole new set of problems. I mean, it would be cool if we could use the library again, but we also wouldn’t be able to go outside because of the wolves.” And apart from that, the idea of conjuring up three entirely new people gave me a slightly queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Or was it just the alcohol making me feel sick again?
Hannah pouted. “Then we’ll just write something about a hunter who shoots the wolves. Or a disease. Wolf plague or something. And voilà—no more wolves. Come on, it’s taken me all day to come up with that story,” she pleaded, determined not to give up her tradesmen without a fight. “Look at this place. We’ll never be able to fix it without professional help.” She held up a jagged piece of wood, which must once have been part of a bookshelf, and waved it in our faces. “For Jochen, Karsten, and Paul it would be a breeze.”
“I still think we should put the book back in its secret compartment and just forget about it,” said Charlotte, nodding in the direction of the (now three-legged) intarsia table where the chronicle lay.
For a few hours now I had actually been toying with the idea of not keeping the book in my bedroom any longer, but hiding it in the secret compartment here in the library instead. If somebody really was looking for the chronicle then surely this was the safest place in the whole castle: Whoever it was had already searched the library from top to bottom, and wouldn’t come back here again. I’d decided the book wasn’t safe in its previous hiding place under my pillow, so yesterday afternoon I’d transferred it to my sock drawer (which wasn’t exactly high-security, either). So all in all, the secret compartment wasn’t such a bad idea.
But simply forgetting about the chronicle was out of the question. I was fully intending to write in it again today, since I hadn’t gotten around to dealing with the new school uniforms last night. I scooped the chronicle onto my lap and was about to open it when Charlotte, guessing what I was up to, suddenly slammed another book down on the table in front of me. This was too much for the rickety little piece of furniture, which now collapsed once and for all.
“Oops,” murmured Hannah, but Charlotte acted as though nothing had happened. “Anyway, about our next book for Westbooks,” she said loudly, and I closed the chronicle for the time being. “How about Eleanor Morland?”
“Who?” asked Hannah.
“Why her?” I asked. I’d heard the name, of course. About forty-two times that summer. And what I’d heard had been very, very boring.
“Eleanor Morland,” Charlotte repeated. “She’s a famous English writer.”
“I see,” said Hannah.
“Eighteenth century. Romance novels,” I added, and turned back to Charlotte. “Please no.”
“But she’d be perfect. Didn’t your mom’s boyfriend mention in his lectures that Eleanor Morland spent time at Stolzenburg?”
I shook my head. Although perhaps I just hadn’t been paying attention? John’s monotonous delivery had the power to send me into a trancelike state within a matter of minutes. It was entirely possible that I’d slept through the only interesting nugget of information in his entire lecture.
Luckily, Charlotte was better informed than I was. “Eleanor Morland was the daughter of a vicar. She grew up in Hampshire. As a young woman she made several trips to visit relatives and family friends, and on one of those trips she spent a summer in Germany—at Stolzenburg. That must have been around 1794. It was only when she returned to England afterward that she started writing novels and became world famous.”
“Cool,” said Hannah. “Perhaps she was inspired by the castle.”
“She was,” said Charlotte, pointing to the book she’d just slammed down on the table. “I thought we could start with Westwood Abbey. It just so happens to be about an old monastery and a heroine who investigates a series of mysterious events. So, what do you reckon?”
“Sounds good to me!” cried Hannah, brimming with enthusiasm again.
I could see the appeal now, too. It would be fun to read a story inspired by our castle. And I didn’t exactly have time to come up with an alternative. I had more pressing things to think about. For Charlotte’s sake, I managed a smile. “Fine by me,” I said. “But I can’t promise I’m going to have much time for reading over the next few days. I’ve got some writing of my own to be getting on with.”
Charlotte nodded. “Yes. I don’t suppose I’m going to be able to stop you, unfortunately,” she said, then stood up and went to sit in the window seat with her copy of Westwood Abbey.
I flicked through the chronicle on my lap, took out a pen, and wrote September 2017 neatly at the top of the next blank page.
With Charlotte engrossed in Westwood Abbey, Hannah and I spent the next two hours writing a few carefully worded paragraphs in the chronicle. First of all we had the parent governors overturn the plan for new school uniforms at the last minute. Then we thought hard about the best way to fix the library. I still felt that Hannah’s tradesmen, wolves, and rats were too dangerous, and getting a team of elves to bring about a miraculous transformation overnight was even more risky—something was bound to go wrong.
In the end we opted for a less dramatic solution to the problem, and we wrote that Miss Whitfield donated a few nice pieces of furniture she’d found in her attic and wanted to get rid of. Then we started tidying up. Together we lifted the books back onto the battered shelves and lugged the broken furniture into one of the rooms across the corridor. After a while, Charlotte looked out the window and saw a light go on in Miss Whitfield’s attic.
It was all going like clockwork.
* * *
Hannah and I hurried downstairs and across the grounds, and five minutes later we were ringing the doorbell of the little cottage by the meadow.
Then we waited.
It was quite a while before we heard footsteps coming to the door, but eventually it opened and there was Miss Whitfield, wearing a frilly apron and a headscarf and holding a feather duster. “Emma! Hannah!”
“Er, hi,” I stammered. “We … er, we…” In our excitement we hadn’t planned what to say to Miss Whitfield so as not to arouse suspicion. Crap!
Hannah was better at thinking on her feet than I was. “We wanted to ask if we could gather some leaves in the woods and give them to Dolly, Dolly II, and Miss Velvetnose,” she improvised.
Miss Whitfield stared at us. “Now?” she queried. “In the dark?”
“Why not?”
“Do you know much about plants?”
“A bit.”
“Hmm, I’m not sure it’s such a good idea,” said Miss Whitfield. “But while you’re here, do you happen to know whether the school might have any use for a few old bits of furniture? I’ve just come across some in my attic.”
“Really?”
A moment later we were following Miss Whitfield up to her bedroom. The bedspread, pillows, wallpaper, and curtains all featured exactly the same floral design. Just l
ooking at them made me feel slightly dizzy, so I averted my eyes and hurried up the spiral staircase that led from one corner of the bedroom up into the attic.
Bent double, we inched along beneath the rafters. The attic was a square room dimly lit by a bulb hanging from one of the beams. I accidentally knocked it with my shoulder as I shuffled past, and as it swung to and fro it cast a flickering, ghostly light over the boxes and clutter on the attic floor.
Miss Whitfield pointed to a collection of dusty bedsheets draped over what I assumed to be furniture. I could see the arm of a chair poking out from underneath, upholstered in dark red velvet. “I was actually up here looking for some old photo albums,” she explained. “But then I came across these.” She pulled back the corner of the sheet to reveal yet more velvet upholstery and some tassels made from shiny thread. “I so rarely come up to the attic that I’d forgotten these were here. In fact, I can’t even remember how they came to be in my possession. But if a sofa, two armchairs, and a coffee table would be of any use to you…”
“Wow!” cried Hannah, and I, too, was delighted. We beamed at Miss Whitfield.
“Thank you so much,” I said. “They’re exactly what we need. I’ll ask Mr. Schade to come and collect them first thing in the morning.”
“Wonderful,” said Miss Whitfield.
As our teacher went back down the stairs, Hannah and I bumped fists and grinned at each other, congratulating ourselves on our cleverness.
When we joined her in the hallway Miss Whitfield invited us to stay for a cup of tea, but Hannah (keen to avoid another close encounter with Miss Whitfield’s best china) politely declined. And I also found myself in a sudden hurry to leave the cottage. I’d just happened to glance at one of the old photo albums Miss Whitfield had mentioned; it was about eight inches thick, with a dark brown cardboard cover, and was lying open on the sideboard by the door. Several black-and-white photographs with jagged white edges had been glued onto the double-page spread. They probably dated from the early 1900s—that was my guess, anyway, judging by the clothes a woman in one of the photos was wearing. She was standing in the forefront of the picture in a pale lace dress, with a matching parasol in her gloved hands.
But I was more interested in what lay behind the woman: a tall, crumbling archway, surrounded by spruce trees. I knew at once where the picture must have been taken. There was no doubt about it: Behind and to the right of the woman I could see part of the faun statue. And at its base (and this was the most remarkable thing), instead of a big clump of ferns, there was a staircase.
A staircase that led underground.
Oh. My. God.
My palms began to prickle with excitement. “I’m afraid we have to get back,” I told Miss Whitfield hurriedly before bundling Hannah out the front door and marching her off toward the woods.
“I didn’t mean it about collecting leaves for the sheep,” protested Hannah as she struggled to keep up with me. This time I didn’t bother with the path but headed straight through the trees at a brisk pace, taking the most direct route to the ancient monastery. “I really don’t feel like feeding them right now. Shall we just go back to the castle? Emma? Hey, I’m talking to you!”
“Sorry. I just have to check something.” The soft needles under our feet swallowed up every sound, the darkness wrapped itself around us like a cloak, and the first wisps of fog were starting to drift up from the river. I had to admit it was pretty spooky out here. Especially when I thought about that pack of hungry wolves.… But I was too intrigued to wait till tomorrow morning.
Hannah seemed a little freaked out, too. “In the woods, in the pitch dark?” she whispered. “Can’t it wait?”
“We’re just going to make a little detour to the ruins.”
“But why? It’s cold, it’s late, and…”
“Yes, I know, but I think … I think I might have just discovered something important in one of those photos.”
“Huh? What photos?”
“Please just come with me, okay? It won’t take long.”
Hannah sighed. “Okay. As long as it’s quick.”
We soon spotted one of the ruined walls through the trees and ran the rest of the way to the old church. The statue of the faun seemed to be waiting for us in its alcove, shiny particles in the stone glittering in the moonlight. I crouched down and started scraping at the ground with both hands, sweeping aside rotting pine needles and dead leaves and a thin layer of earth until … yes! Just a couple of inches down, my fingers touched something hard. It was a stone slab set into the ground.
“Is that a grave?” whispered Hannah.
I shook my head. “I think it’s the entrance to a secret passageway.”
“Cool!”
“Really?” said Toby Bell from behind us.
Hannah and I spun around to see both Toby and Darcy de Winter standing beside a broken pillar, watching us. Oh, great!
“You again,” I greeted them, shuffling from one foot to the other. “It feels like we’re always bumping into each other. Are you following me or something?” I hoped they wouldn’t notice that my voice was trembling slightly and my cheeks had turned scarlet.
“Of course not,” said Darcy, while Toby looked from him to me and back again with a strange expression. My drunken antics last night had clearly turned me into a laughingstock. Damn it! I drew myself up to my full height and tried, in spite of everything, to look cool and self-assured. Darcy walked slowly toward us. “Do you really think it’s a secret passageway?” he asked. I nodded and pointed to the metal ring I’d just uncovered at one end of the slab.
“We need to see if we can lift this thing out somehow,” I said.
“Okay.” Darcy grabbed hold of the ring straightaway and started tugging at it. “Help me, Toby,” he grunted, his feet planted firmly on the ground on either side of the slab. Toby quickly came to his aid, and Hannah and I joined in, too. The slab was incredibly heavy and seemed almost to have fused with the ground in places. But together we finally managed to shift it. There was a grinding noise as we slid it slowly to one side.
Underneath the slab was a yawning black pit. A musty, moldy smell rose from its depths.
“What if it’s a grave?” asked Hannah in a shaky voice.
“But then why would it have stairs?” Darcy shone the light from his smartphone into the hole, revealing a flight of worn stone steps.
“Exactly,” whispered Hannah, taking a step backward.
I, on the other hand, leaned farther forward and peered over the edge, fascinated. The light from Darcy’s phone was too dim for us to see to the bottom of the steps. How deep did they go? What was down there? A gust of wind blew through the treetops, filling the air with a gentle whispering sound.
“How about you two go and see what’s down there, and Hannah and I will wait for you here,” Toby suggested.
“That’s a good idea,” said Hannah, who’d already taken another step backward and now sat down cross-legged beside the broken pillar. “We’ll stay here and stand guard.”
“Er…” I hesitated. I wasn’t madly keen on the idea of entering an ancient tunnel (potentially a grave) with Darcy de Winter, of all people. But Toby had already sat down beside Hannah, quick as a flash. “Off you go,” he said.
Darcy glared at Toby. Then he heaved a sigh, stepped carefully into the hole, and began his descent.
I had to follow him, of course. This was my discovery, after all, and I had to know what was hidden beneath the stone slab. Answers, maybe? Clues about the ghost stories Gina had apparently been so interested in, or the little silver leaves I kept finding?
I got my phone out, too, and switched on the flashlight app. (I couldn’t help noticing that I didn’t have a huge amount of battery left.) Then I waved to Hannah and Toby and stepped onto the stone staircase. I heard Hannah say to Toby, “So tell me, why aren’t you talking to Charlotte anymore?” And then the cold darkness swallowed me up.
* * *
The steps led steeply downwar
d. They were hewn straight out of the rock. I ran my fingertips over the rough stone walls, and I could feel the jagged edges left by the chisel. There was no handrail, and the steps were covered with a slippery layer of damp moss. Under the circumstances, the sight of Darcy’s back ahead of me was actually quite reassuring. If I were to fall, he would make an excellent airbag.
We made it to the bottom, however, without any mishaps. The last step (the thirty-seventh—I’d counted them) gave way to a stone floor. The bluish light from our phones illuminated columns and brick arches. At first I thought we’d ended up in the monastery’s old crypt, but then I saw that the three archways were not the entrances to vaults—they were the beginnings of tunnels.
“Secret passages!” I breathed. “I knew it!”
Darcy shone his light through one of the arches. “Looks like it,” he murmured. “Which one shall we take?”
I shrugged. “The one on the left?”
“Okay.”
The tunnel led uphill a little way, then bent around to the right. There were no forks in the path, which I was glad about—at least we wouldn’t lose our way. (I was pretty sure Google Maps wouldn’t be much use down here and unfortunately, unlike Hansel and Gretel, we hadn’t thought to bring any breadcrumbs or pebbles with us.)
Eventually the tunnel opened out into a room with an empty wine rack, covered in cobwebs, standing against one wall. Was this just an old wine cellar after all? A wave of disappointment rushed over me, particularly when the tunnel snaked around to the right again soon afterward and we found ourselves standing at the bottom of a stone staircase that looked very familiar.
“We’ve gone around in a circle,” I said, pointing to the three brick archways at the bottom of the stairs. We’d just emerged from the middle one. I fought back a yawn.
“Hmm,” said Darcy. He scrutinized me more closely. “Tired?” he asked.
The Forgotten Book Page 11