The Key to Rondo

by Emily Rodda

  How would a good man look, if he’d fallen under the power of someone wicked? If he had to watch an evil he’d tried to destroy growing in power all over again, without being able to lift a finger to stop it? If he was forced, against his will, to play the role of spy and killer?

  He’d look as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Like Hal did.

  ‘We’d better get you away from here at once,’ said Bertha, clambering to her feet. ‘How fortunate that I brought my hat with me when I left the house. I thought that if I left it where it was, Conker might kick it or fall on it or something.’

  She poked her head in Leo’s general direction. ‘Just tie the ribbons for me, will you, Leo?’

  She was trying to make Leo feel better, and he knew it. He did his best to straighten the hat, and tie the ribbons into a bow under Bertha’s chin. It was difficult in the darkness, and he wasn’t sure he’d done a very good job, but Bertha seemed satisfied.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t manage the bow myself, and I didn’t like to ask that tiger-woman, somehow. Well, now I realise why, of course! I just had an instinct not to trust her. I’m very sensitive about these things.’

  They crept out of the shed, and stopped dead. Now that they were directly facing the river, all of them could see, through a gap in the willow trees, seven white, humped shapes grouped together on the darkness of the bank.

  ‘The swans!’ Mimi hissed fearfully.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Bertha whispered, peering at the shapes. ‘They’ve got their heads under their wings. They’re asleep. Come on!’

  They turned their backs on the river and stole away from the house as quietly and quickly as they could. No one called after them. There was no sound from the riverbank. Breathing sighs of relief, they pushed through the last of the willow trees and stepped out into the open. And there they stopped, staring.

  Before them lay a vast stretch of open grassland which swept on and up to the castle on the hill. The land was dark, but the castle was ablaze with light. Light streamed from every window and spilled through the huge front doors, so that the moat shone like a broken ring of gold. The whole place glowed like a vision, a dream, a castle in a fairytale.

  ‘Do you suppose it’s like this every night?’ Bertha murmured, gaping at the light. ‘All those candles! Think of the expense!’

  ‘The Blue Queen must have got Hal’s message,’ Mimi said in a flat voice. ‘She’s celebrating. There’s some sort of party going on up there. I can hear music.’

  And when Leo concentrated, he found that he, too, could hear music. Familiar music.

  ‘Lawks-a-daisy!’ breathed Bertha. ‘It’s “The Pom-Pom Polka”!’ And she actually began moving gently to the rhythm of the faraway sound.

  Leo felt a shiver run down his spine. Could this be just a coincidence? Or had the Blue Queen chosen the tune as some sort of cruel, gloating joke? His thoughts flew to Jim, to Polly, to Grandma and little Rosebud.

  ‘There’s no point in just standing here,’ Mimi snapped. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Psst!’ The loud hissing sound made them all jump.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Bertha squeaked, spinning around to look behind her.

  ‘Psst! Want a hidey-hole?’ a harsh voice whispered.

  And there on the ground, right beside their feet and almost invisible in the gloom, was an inky black splodge. As they stared at it, it widened invitingly.

  ‘Urk!’ squealed Bertha in disgust, edging away from it.

  ‘Come on in!’ the hole leered. ‘Comfort, security and satisfaction guaranteed!’

  Chapter 28

  The Castle

  Recovering from his shock, Leo looked carefully at the hole in the ground. ‘Are you the hidey-hole we met in town?’ he asked it.

  The hole pulsed with wheezing laughter. ‘Are you joking?’ it chortled. ‘I’m a red-blooded country hidey-hole, I am.’

  ‘You look like the hidey-hole we met in town,’ Mimi said suspiciously.

  The hole’s laughter stopped abruptly. ‘Don’t give me that, girlie!’ it snapped. ‘Those townie holes couldn’t look like a proper hidey-hole if they tried. Bunch of puny, smart-talking softies! Why, in my time I’ve had three goats, four geese and a couple of squirrels in my gullet, and still had room for a parrot. Don’t you tell me that your namby-pamby townie so-called hidey-hole could have done that!’

  ‘It might have,’ said Leo. He didn’t really think so, but he was finding this hidey-hole very irritating.

  ‘Yah!’ jeered the hole. ‘Sez you!’

  ‘If you don’t know us, why are you here?’ Mimi asked.

  ‘You called me!’ said the hidey-hole. ‘I heard you, clear as day!’ It pinched in its edges to make itself small. ‘Oh, I’m so scar-ed!’ it whined in a weak, babyish voice. ‘Oh, what’s going to happen to us! Oh, look at this huge space we’ve got to cross to get to the castle. And there’s nowhere to hide. Oh, if only there was somewhere to hide!’

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t think anything like that!’ huffed Bertha indignantly.

  Leo was just about to say that he hadn’t said anything like that either, when he realised two things: Bertha had said ‘think’, not ‘say’. And Mimi had suddenly become very quiet.

  ‘You hear our thoughts!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Of course I do, dummy,’ the hole said rudely. ‘What else? Or have those town hidey-holes got so soft they don’t pick up mind messages any more? Maybe in town you have to fill in a form, do you? I heard some fool was trying to bring that in. A signed request-for-help form, plus two copies, stamped by the president of the Hidey-Holes’ League and –’

  ‘No!’ Leo broke in, determined to get back in control of the situation. ‘The hidey-holes in town still read minds. It’s just that we didn’t realise it till we met you. We’re –’ he hesitated.

  ‘They’re from the coast,’ Bertha finished for him apologetically.

  ‘The coast!’ exclaimed the hidey-hole. ‘Oh, I see. Right!’

  It curled itself into a grotesque grin, and spoke to Leo very slowly and clearly. ‘If … you … want … a … place … to … hide … I … can … help … you.’

  This hidey-hole was truly annoying, but Leo knew he had to seize the amazing opportunity it offered at all costs. Obviously hidey-holes could move around. Was it possible …?

  ‘We’re on our way to the castle,’ he said to the hole. ‘Could you take us there? I mean, could we all hide inside you while you –’

  The hidey-hole’s grin changed to a sneer of disdain. ‘What do you think I am, a covered wagon?’ it snorted. ‘Of course you can’t –’

  ‘They’re from the coast. They don’t understand,’ Bertha put in, clearly embarrassed by Leo’s ignorance.

  Leo thought rapidly. ‘Then could you come with us to the castle?’ he asked the hidey-hole. ‘We’re sure to need you once we’re inside.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the hidey-hole grumbled. ‘That sort of job could take all night. The whole night on one job …’

  ‘It’s a very important job, though,’ Bertha said quickly. ‘We’re on a quest to save a friend from the Blue Queen.’

  ‘Yeah?’ murmured the hole with interest. ‘A quest, eh? Well, that puts a different complexion on it. I haven’t been on a quest for ages. Still, the whole night on one job …’

  ‘Well, we can’t waste any more time,’ Bertha said briskly. ‘We’re off. If you want to be a hero, come with us. If you’d rather hang around here in case another needy squirrel comes along, that’s up to you.’

  She trotted off across the grass without looking back. Afraid of being left behind, Leo and Mimi ran after her.

  ‘It won’t be able to resist,’ Bertha muttered out of the corner of her mouth as they caught up with her. ‘Hidey-holes are terribly conceited. They love boasting to their friends about all the clever, dangerous things they’ve done. It’ll follow us. You wait and see.’

  And, sure enough, when Leo glanced over
his shoulder he saw an inky black patch sliding furtively behind them. His heart lightened. If he, Mimi and Bertha had a hidey-hole with them when they entered the castle, they’d be much safer.

  Safer! a voice whispered in his mind. Are you mad? Nothing can make you safe in the Blue Queen’s castle! You haven’t got a chance.

  Leo’s steps faltered. He glanced at Mimi. She was trudging along, her eyes fixed on the castle, her face absolutely expressionless. She hadn’t said a word since they first began talking to the hidey-hole.

  Leo knew why. Wincing, he remembered the hidey-hole’s offensive mimicking of the call for help it claimed to have heard.

  Oh, I’m so scared! Oh, what’s going to happen to us?

  Those panicky, terrified thoughts hadn’t been Leo’s. And they hadn’t been Bertha’s.

  They’d been Mimi’s. It was Mimi the hidey-hole had heard – Mimi, wailing in her mind like a frightened child. Far from being as cold and unemotional as she had seemed when they first saw the castle, Mimi was terrified.

  And thanks to the hidey-hole, I know it, Leo thought. And Mimi knows I do. That’s why she’s drawn back into her shell like a snail.

  He wondered if he should say something to her, and decided it was better not to. He might make everything worse.

  So he said nothing. Mimi didn’t open her lips either, and even Bertha didn’t seem to feel like talking. With the hidey-hole trailing behind them, they moved on through the darkness in silence, till at last they reached the bottom of the hill on which the castle stood.

  There they stopped, looking up in fear and awe.

  The castle blazed above them like a giant beacon. Music swept down on them in waves – the merry, jigging tune of ‘The Pom-Pom Polka’, repeated over and over again. There was no doubt now that the tune was no coincidence.

  ‘The Blue Queen knows we were at Jim and Polly’s cottage,’ Leo whispered. ‘She knows Jim and Polly hid us.’

  ‘Of course she does,’ Mimi said bitterly. ‘Jim wrote to Hal asking him to help us, didn’t he? And Tye and Conker saw Bertha at the cottage. They just put two and two together. It was probably all in that message Hal sent.’

  Leo felt sick. He wondered what hideous revenge the Blue Queen was planning for the little family in the woods.

  Because of us, he thought. Because we used their cottage as a hiding place, without giving a thought to what it might mean for them until it was too late. And suddenly, with a sinking feeling, he remembered what Hal had said about Langlanders using this world as a playground.

  ‘Oh!’ moaned Bertha. ‘If only we could send Jim and Polly a warning! Are you sure that neither of you has a pen?’

  Leo and Mimi searched their pockets, just in case the previous owners of their clothes had, by some miracle, left a pen or pencil behind. All Leo found were butter cake crumbs, and all Mimi had was Conker’s lemon drop, now even grubbier than it had been before.

  ‘Keep it,’ advised Bertha, as Mimi moved to throw the lemon drop away. ‘You might need it.’

  ‘I’d never eat this!’ Mimi snorted.

  ‘You’d be surprised what you’ll eat when you’re starving,’ Bertha said darkly.

  Starving in the Blue Queen’s dungeons. Bertha’s unspoken words sent shivers down Leo’s spine. Mimi took a deep breath, and pushed the lemon drop back into her pocket.

  ‘Why don’t we just call a mouse and ask it to tell Jim and Polly to escape?’ Leo suggested in desperation.

  ‘Will mice still do that sort of thing on the coast?’ Bertha asked in surprise. ‘How marvellous! I’m afraid they won’t do it here. They insist on messages in writing.’

  ‘Are you going to stay here blabbing all night?’ grumbled the hidey-hole behind them.

  ‘We’d better keep moving,’ Bertha muttered. ‘We don’t want to lose it.’

  She sighed and began toiling rapidly up the hill with Mimi close behind her. Leo followed more slowly, feeling very close to despair. Mimi’s determination to save Mutt, and his own mad urge to somehow make Spoiler pay for the misery he’d caused in Rondo, had brought disaster on four perfectly innocent people. Suddenly it seemed not only foolhardy, but wrong.

  We should just turn back, right now, he thought miserably. Then he realised that if they did that, the whole awful mess would have been for nothing. The Blue Queen would have snatched Mutt, used Spoiler to try to kidnap Mimi, ordered Hal to kill both Langlanders against his will, and planned some ghastly punishment for Polly and Jim, without anyone lifting a finger against her.

  And that can’t happen, Leo thought, hurrying after the others. We mightn’t be able to do anything to help Polly and Jim, but at least we can finish what we started. We can show the queen that she can’t steal people’s friends and get away with it. And we can fix Spoiler once and for all!

  ‘Our mice used to carry spoken messages,’ Bertha was saying to Mimi as he caught up with them. ‘When I was a piglet, that was. But then there were a few awkward incidents. An old man was told to go home because his wife was dead, for example, when the message should have been that his wife wanted him to bring home some bread.’

  She blew back a troublesome poppy that had flopped from its place on her hat to dangle over her left eye. ‘Well, the old man was cross, naturally, when he got home and found his wife still alive,’ she went on. ‘And his wife, who was a cranky old thing anyway, was furious because there was no bread to go with the broth for dinner. So they complained to the authorities, and the mouse concerned was fined a week’s pay. It complained to the Messenger Mouse Union, and the whole fleet went out on strike.’

  She’s trying to take our minds off Jim and Polly, Leo thought. Maybe she’s trying to take her own mind off them too. She really liked them. She doesn’t want to think about what might happen to them.

  ‘What then?’ he made himself ask, as if he was really interested in the story.

  ‘The mice claimed the mistake was the old woman’s fault, because she’d mumbled her message – she wasn’t wearing her false teeth, apparently, when she spoke to the mouse,’ Bertha said. ‘The woman said that the mouse should have realised just by looking at her that she wasn’t dead. And the mouse said –’

  ‘Watch it!’ growled the hidey-hole behind them.

  Bertha, Mimi and Leo stopped dead and looked up. Without realising it they had almost reached the top of the hill. The castle loomed above them. The ground ahead of them was flooded with light. A few more steps and they would have been clearly visible.

  Keeping low, Leo peered up at the castle. His eyes watered in the glare. The drawbridge was down. Guards wearing fancy blue and gold uniforms were slumped against the walls on either side of the huge front doors, which were gaping wide.

  ‘They look as if they’re asleep,’ Mimi whispered hopefully.

  ‘Can’t depend on that,’ said the hidey-hole. ‘It might be a trick. Hold on.’

  It moved past Mimi, Leo and Bertha, right to the edge of the light, then pursed itself up into a small black spot and disappeared into the ground.

  A few seconds later, Leo thought he saw one of the spaces between the boards of the drawbridge widen very slightly. He rubbed his eyes, and when he looked again the space was back to normal.

  ‘Drunk as skunks,’ the hidey-hole announced, reappearing just in front of his foot. ‘Snoring their heads off. You can’t hear it from here, because of that infernal music. There’s no one else in sight.’

  ‘Right,’ Bertha said briskly. ‘We’d better go straight on, then. We’ll never get a better chance. Once we’re inside, we’ll decide what to do next.’

  ‘Okey-dokey!’ said the hole enthusiastically. ‘See you in there!’

  It shrank to a pinpoint and disappeared beneath a clump of grass. Bertha instantly moved into the light and began trotting boldly to the drawbridge.

  ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Leo panted as he and Mimi ran after her.

  ‘It’s what we came for, isn’t it?’ Mimi snapped. But Leo wasn’
t fooled. Mimi was breathing hard and her eyes were huge and dark. She was as scared as he was.

  For the dozenth time he wondered if he should take Mimi into his confidence about his plans for Spoiler, and for the dozenth time he decided against it. Mimi’s mind was fixed on Mutt. She’d automatically argue against anything that she felt was a distraction.

  Once she has Mutt it will be different, Leo thought. So finding Mutt has to come first.

  When Leo and Mimi reached the drawbridge, Bertha had already begun tiptoeing cautiously across, her trotters making tiny clicking sounds on the planks. At the other end of the drawbridge the great doorway gaped like a hungry mouth waiting to swallow her up.

  Well, it’s too late to turn back now, Leo thought grimly. And suddenly his fear disappeared, and a reckless excitement took its place.

  ‘Come on,’ he breathed to Mimi. ‘As fast as we can.’

  They ran lightly after Bertha. Just as they reached the sleeping guards, Leo thought he caught a gleam of white out of the corner of his eye. He turned his head quickly, but all he could see was the castle wall, and the rippling water of the moat.

  The sight made him uneasy, but he had no time to think about why this should be. The next moment, he and Mimi were past the guards, through the doorway and standing beside Bertha in a grand, deserted entrance hall that echoed with the sound of ‘The Pom-Pom Polka’.

  ‘If we ever get out of this, I never want to hear that tune again as long as I live,’ said Bertha.

  ‘Psst! Ready to hide yet?’ a voice hissed hopefully from the wall of a broad staircase that led from the hall to the upper floors of the castle.

  ‘Not yet,’ Leo whispered. He was looking around, trying to decide what it was best to do next.

  The music seemed to be coming from behind a blue velvet curtain on one side of the entrance hall. The Blue Queen was probably in there, entertaining her guests, though Leo couldn’t hear the sound of any voices.

  He had to be sure. Beckoning to Mimi and Bertha, he crept to one edge of the curtain, tweaked it cautiously aside and peered through the narrow gap into the room beyond.