Leon and the Spitting Image (13 page)

“Napoleons for Napoleon?” Napoleon gasped.

“I
tried
to explain you hate them, but Frau Haffenreffer wouldn’t listen.”

“Keep them, Monsieur Leon! I do not want them! Give them out at school!”

The timing couldn’t have been better. When the taxi pulled up to the steps of the school, Leon saw a yellow bus parked out front.

“The field trip!” he exclaimed. He boarded the bus with the pastries and headed to the back, where Lily-Matisse
and P.W. were saving him a spot. On the way, he passed Lumpkin, who was too busy teasing Antoinette to notice him or the pastry box.

“Your mom’s chaperoning?” P.W. said to Lily-Matisse as Regina Jasprow climbed aboard.

“Looks like it,” said Lily-Matisse. She sounded less than thrilled.

“What’s that purple thing she’s wearing?” P.W. asked.

“She calls that her place-mat dress,” Lily-Matisse said with a sigh. “The seventh graders gave her some place mats for helping at the Nimble Fingers Craft Fair last year. Only Mom doesn’t
believe
in place mats, so she turned them into a dress.”

P.W. and Leon exchanged puzzled looks.

“And check out the handbag,” said Lily-Matisse. “She made it out of an old velveteen glove. She’s always complaining that her bus tokens get caught in the thumb.”

“Well, she looks real colorful,” Leon said graciously.

“Not as colorful as the coach,” said P.W.

Skip Kasperitis climbed onto the bus sporting a bright green nylon tracksuit.

“Check out his pocket,” said Leon. “I bet you that’s his spit jar.”

“Did you read chapter seven in the
Medieval Reader?”
said P.W. excitedly. “They had a Fun Facts box that talked about spit. There was this monk called
Jonas who figured out spit contains magic powers that can bring the dead back to life.”

A large black cape darkened the front of the bus. “Quiet down, you knaves!” Miss Hagmeyer yelled, flicking her instructional needle in the air. “If you don’t, I’ll make you sit alphabetically.”

“She looks like a witch the way she waves that thing,” Thomas whispered.

“It’s a pity this
isn’t
a magic wand, Mr. Warchowski,” Miss Hagmeyer shot back. “If it were, I would use it to remove your voice box! However, since I can’t, adjust your volume control to low while we are driving to the Cloisters.”

After performing a head count, Miss Hagmeyer sat down and told the driver he could go.

“What exactly
are
the Cloisters?” Leon asked as the bus rumbled uptown.

“It’s this ancient castle place with a medieval museum,” Lily-Matisse said. “Mom takes me there all the time.”

“I hope they have a dungeon with torture stuff,” said P.W.

“Why?” said Leon. “We just left a dungeon with torture stuff.”

Ten minutes into the trip Leon held up the pastry box. “Good folk,” he said loudly. “It is I, Sir Leon, wishing to ask how art thee?”

“It’s not ‘How art thee,’” quibbled Antoinette. “It’s ‘How art thou.’”

“Whatever,” said Leon.

“You mean ‘mayhap.’”

“Enough!”

“Enow,” she corrected.

“Knock it off,” said Leon. He gave the pastry box a gentle shake and said, “Anyone hungry?”

“What’d you bring?” someone shouted.

“A treasure beyond rubies,” Leon answered, borrowing a phrase from the
Medieval Reader
. He pulled the birthday ring from his pocket and slid it onto his finger. With a quick, effortless tug, he cut through the string and said, “Behold!” as he lifted the lid.

Classmates peered inside the box at the custard delicacies. Antoinette immediately started pestering Leon whether people actually ate napoleons in the Middle Ages. He ignored her and offered P.W. a pastry, then turned to Lily-Matisse.

“And you, milady?”

Lily-Matisse blushed and bowed her head before grabbing a cream-filled dessert. Leon handed out a few more pastries before making his way to where the teachers were seated.

“No, thank you,” Miss Hagmeyer said, barely looking up from her embroidery. “I brought my cottage cheese.”

Regina Jasprow and Coach Kasperitis weren’t so
restrained. They each took one. The driver of the bus, Mr. Groot (the same fellow who taught wood shop and served as the school photographer) would also have accepted a napoleon if Miss Hagmeyer hadn’t intervened.

“A four-ounce pastry and a four-ton bus should not be handled at the same time, Mr. Groot. Satisfy your sweet tooth
after
we have parked. And with regards to the matter of safety, return to your seat at once, Mr. Zeisel.”

On his way back, Leon hit a roadblock.

“Hey, Sir Panty Hose,” said Henry Lumpkin. “You skipped me.”

Leon tried to push through the muscled olive drab arm that now doubled as a tollgate, but he couldn’t get by. Lumpkin repositioned his hand on Leon’s shoulder and gave it a painful squeeze.

“Would thouest like to wear those desserts like you wore the Hag’s underwear?” Lumpkin said.

Leon tried to pull away.

“What’s going on back there?” Miss Hagmeyer asked.

“Nothing, Miss Hagmeyer!” Leon and Lumpkin both cried.

“Back in your seats,” she admonished.

Lumpkin refused to let go. “So what’ll it be?” he said in a dark, low voice.

Even with his bladed birthday ring, Leon knew he was no match for Henry Lumpkin.

“Now, Mr. Zeisel!” Miss Hagmeyer commanded.

“Here, help yourself,” said Leon, suppressing the impulse to shmoosh a napoleon straight into Lumpkin’s face.

It was a picture-perfect November day when the bus pulled into the parking lot of the Cloisters. A crisp breeze gave the air a pungent odor of wrinkled apples. With Lumpkin temporarily bribed, Leon felt a brief sense of calm—until Antoinette started showing off, calling out architectural terms that she had plundered from the
Medieval Reader
.

“Turret! I see a turret!” she squealed. “And those are
definitely
crenels. And look! One, two, three …
four
loopholes!”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll find that dungeon I was hoping for,” said P.W.

“And if we’re really lucky,” said Leon, “it’ll have
two
empty cells. One for her highness and one for Lord Lumpkin.”

“Aren’t you forgetting the Hag?” said Lily-Matisse.

“Excellent point,” said Leon. “Make it three cells.”

At the museum ticket desk, Miss Hagmeyer quickly remedied the alphabetical chaos she had endured during the bus ride.

“Okay, pay attention,” she said. “A through Gs
stay with me. Coach Kasperitis will take the H through Ns. Ms. Jasprow will monitor the rest of you rapscallions. We regroup at the tapestries in exactly one hour. Do not be late.”

Leon was less than thrilled that his last name separated him from Lily-Matisse and P.W., but at least he hadn’t gotten stuck with Miss Hagmeyer. Leading the O through Zs into the courtyard, Regina Jasprow explained to her charges how the museum’s ancient stone buildings had been shipped from France and Italy. “Every brick, every stone, every roof tile was numbered in white chalk,” she said breathlessly. “If you think your Lego constructions are complicated, try pulling apart a medieval church, complete with flying buttresses. Then try wrapping it up, sending it across the ocean, unwrapping it, and snapping it back together!”

At an archway, she stuck out her tongue at a carved stone monster that was making a similarly rude gesture. “See that gargoyle? What do you think caused the black stains on its teeth?”

“Didn’t floss enough?” said Thomas Warchowski.

“Nice try.”

“Chewed too much tobacco, like the coach?” Leon offered.

“Getting warmer,” said Ms. Jasprow. “The gargoyle did do a lot of spitting in its time. Any guesses what it spat?”

“Boiling oil?”

“No, that’s
too
warm,” Ms. Jasprow said. “Actually, it spouted harmless rainwater. But if you come with me through this arch, I can show you something more satisfyingly deadly.”

Ms. Jasprow guided her group into an herb garden and spoke about plant poisons, then continued on, to a library gallery, where she provided an overview on toxic pigments.

“See the red paint in that illuminated manuscript?” Ms. Jasprow said, pointing at a peaceful castle landscape. “Artists call that color vermilion. Chemists, however, know it as mercuric sulfide. It’s
highly
poisonous. And the yellow on the knight’s banner? That’s orpiment. Orpiment contains arsenic, which is the principal ingredient in rat bait. And farther up, that golden sun, any guesses what that’s made out of?”

No one had a clue.

“Dried cow urine,” Ms. Jasprow said matter-of-factly.

Thomas raised his hand. “Ms. Jasprow?” he said. “I think it’s been an hour. Miss Hagmeyer is probably expecting us.”

“And we certainly shouldn’t keep the Ha—Miss Hagmeyer waiting,” said Ms. Jasprow. But on her way to the meeting point, she had a change of heart. “I can’t resist a quick detour,” she said with a conspiratorial wink.

Ms. Jasprow hustled the O through Zs into a room dominated by a beautiful stained glass window. “Isn’t it a joy to watch the light shine through this? It’s like medieval motion pictures!”

She was just launching into a speech about the dangers of glassmaking when she was interrupted by a tooting sound.

The coach came running up, proudly displaying a clay whistle, shaped like a jester’s head, that he had purchased in the Cloisters gift shop. “Uh, Regina? Phyllis is getting a little, well, you know … ”

“Impatient?” the art teacher suggested. “Fidgety? Restless?”

“You got it,” confirmed the coach.

“At last!” Miss Hagmeyer said as the O through Zs joined the A through Ns at the entrance to the tapestry room. “You’re seven—no, eight—minutes late!”

“It’s my fault,” said Regina Jasprow.

“Of course it is,” said Miss Hagmeyer. She leveled
a look of intense displeasure at her tardy colleague before marching everyone into a large stone hall.

“These,”
she said, waving her needle, “are the reason I arranged this trip.”

“Rugs?” said Lumpkin.

“Not rugs—tapestries. Seven of the most exquisite tapestries in the world.”

“And each one has a unicorn!” Antoinette blurted out. “That’s why you had
us
make unicorns!”