The Midnight Gate (10 page)

“Worse? How do you know? Did Edmund de Braes say something?”

“Yes,” began Steve, then changed his mind. “I mean no. I mean I don't need him to tell me. Look, if the Paladin's job really is to protect the Spellbinder, like he said, then don't you think the Spellbinder is supposed to have at least a tiny bit of common sense?”

“What?”

“Well, there's that feather for starters. It's obvious that a Kere is wandering around here somewhere, but do you even have the sense to draw the curtains or take any care at all? Noooo.”

“It isn't obvious that there's a Kere here,” hissed Belladonna angrily. “And that stupid feather had nothing to do with me being taken into care. That was all Sophie's fault. It wasn't magic, or Night Ravens, or winged women, or evil apothecaries, just a mean-spirited, spoiled little girl. And if you think—”

“Enough!” Elsie's voice echoed around the buildings and even though both Belladonna and Steve knew that no one else could hear her, they both gasped, glanced around, and then smiled a little sheepishly.

“Yowza!” said Steve. “Enough with the shouting. Who knew ghosts could be so loud?”

“So,” continued Elsie, ignoring him, “Steve says you met a monk at the monastery and he gave you a parchment.”

Belladonna nodded. “He's got it.”

“Have you looked at it yet?”

“Yeah,” said Steve. “Can't make head or tail of it. It just looks like streaks across the paper.”

“Well, why don't we look at it at lunchtime, then. In the library.”

Steve looked dubious.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” said Belladonna, rolling her eyes, “it's not like anyone ever goes in there. I think you'll be able to preserve your reputation.”

Steve smiled slightly in spite of himself as the bell for the end of break sliced through the winter air.

“Okay.” He shrugged.

“And no more shouting,” said Elsie.

*   *   *

By the time lunch rolled around, Belladonna was glad to escape to the library. Sophie Warren had spent the bulk of the day so far either smirking knowingly across the room at her or giggling with her friends. Belladonna had never really been in trouble for much of anything at school, but she was sorely tempted to punch Sophie. What could have possessed her to get her mother to phone the authorities? Was one little joke with a chair really too much for her fragile dignity?

She stomped down the hall to the library, her mood getting blacker by the moment.

“Whoa!” said Steve as she walked into the small room that passed for Dullworth's repository of all printed knowledge. “Your mood's improved since this morning, then.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Hello!” chirped Elsie, materializing near the Ancient History section. “Oh…”

“It's alright,” sighed Belladonna, dropping her backpack into a nearby chair. “I've got a headache. Let's have a look at this parchment.”

Steve extracted it from his own extremely battered bag and unrolled it across the nearest table. Belladonna placed books on each of the corners to hold it flat, but as soon as she looked at it, her heart sank.

“Oh,” she said.

“I told you,” muttered Steve.

The parchment was yellowed with age and worn around the edges, but the contents were quite clear … and utterly meaningless. Instead of the map that she had expected, Belladonna found herself staring at a series of black streaks of ink that seemed to have been smeared at random across the page. The only item that made any sense was a rough drawing of the moon near the center of one long edge.

“I thought that was probably the top,” said Steve.

“Brilliant,” said Belladonna, squinting at the ink smears.

“I know what that is,” mused Elsie.

Belladonna and Steve looked at her expectantly.

“It's a … I can't remember the word. It begins with an
A
. We used to have them all over the house. Argh! Why can't I remember?”

They stood around the table and stared at the parchment, as if hoping that by some freak of nature the whole thing would suddenly resolve itself into something legible or leap up vertically like a pop-up book.

“Nuts,” said Steve finally.

“Can't you say some Words over it or something?” asked Elsie.

“I don't think so,” said Belladonna. “I don't feel anything.”

They stared at it for a few more moments, then Steve rolled it up and shoved it back into his backpack.

“I'm going to have lunch,” he announced. “I'm starving.”

Belladonna put the books away and wandered out into the corridor. Elsie trailed along behind, lost in thought, and slowly vanished.

The lunch room was almost empty by the time Belladonna got there. Except for the chess club, of course. They were always there banging their little clocks and peering earnestly at the ranks of wooden figures. She helped herself to some fish and chips, and some peas that seemed to have the mass of Jupiter, and then selected a table as far from the chess club's perpetually pinging clocks as she could manage. Steve wasn't there. He refused to eat school lunches and had been given special dispensation to bring in food from home. When his mother had still been around, his lunches had been the envy of all his friends, but now that it was just him and his Dad, it was nearly always just a ham sandwich, an apple, and a thermos of tea, all of which he ate outside while watching the under-15s football practice.

Belladonna thought about the parchment as she pushed the food around her plate. She could understand the map being disguised in some way, but why wouldn't Edmund de Braes have given them the key? Or a clue to the key? Or the vaguest of hints? He'd said it would help them find the “Instrument of Life.”

She stopped pushing the remains of the fish and chips about and looked up.

No, he didn't,
she thought.
He said it would help us prevent her return, find the Instrument, and hide it again.

Perhaps that was what the map would lead them to—something that would prevent the return of the Empress of the Dark Spaces. That had to be the first thing, surely? But even if that was the case, why not just tell them? Why make everything so complicated? He knew she was the Spellbinder; why not just tell her?

She took her plate back, scraped the remains of the fish and chips into the bin, and put the plate and cutlery into the tub marked
DIRTY PLATES
in large block letters. She noticed that a lot of people didn't bother scraping off their plates before they stuck them in the tub and reflected that there were worse things in the world than being the Spellbinder.

After lunch it was double English followed by French, by which time Belladonna was having difficulty staying awake while Madame Huggins read some endless passage out of a “very important” book. She had prefaced this by going on at length about how she couldn't understand why none of them had ever read it. Then Steve had piped up brightly that possibly it was because it was in
French,
which everyone had thought was very funny, though he was rewarded for his pains by being forced to sit at the very front for the rest of the class.

Belladonna had just diverted her attention from doodling in her book to gazing blankly out of the window when suddenly Elsie appeared, standing right on Madame Huggins's desk.

“Whoops!” she said cheerily, jumping down. “I've got it! I know how we can read it!”

Steve stared at her in disbelief, but Belladonna managed to maintain a bit more composure as Elsie ran up to her desk.

“Honestly, it's so simple!”

Belladonna sighed, turned the page of her exercise book, and wrote in large letters at the top:
NOT NOW. GO AWAY.

Elsie read it, thought about it for a few moments, and glanced around the class. “Oh, righto. Sorry. Wasn't thinking and all that. Reconvene in the library at half three, then?”

And she was gone.

*   *   *

“Can you believe her?” hissed Steve as they made their way down to the library after school. “She doesn't have the sense of a turnip!”

Elsie was waiting in the library when they got there.

“Roll it out!” she commanded.

Steve glared at her for a moment but did as she said, placing the books on the corners just as before. Elsie examined it closely, squinting and crouching down until her eyes were at the same level as the tabletop.

“Right,” she said finally, straightening up. “I remembered the word. It's
anamorphic
.”

“Ana-whatsis?” asked Steve.

“It's a kind of art. My Dad used to collect examples. Prints, mostly, of course. He thought they were really great.”

Belladonna and Steve just stared at her.

“Look,” she said, “you make a painting or a drawing and then you have to tilt it at a certain angle or you need a mirrored cylinder or something to view it properly. They used to hide secret messages in them or just use them for … well, jokes, I suppose. There's a famous one with a skull … um … by Holbein, I think. He was the court painter to Henry VIII. Is there a book on him here?”

Belladonna scanned quickly along the half shelf of books dedicated to art.

“I'm not…,” she began.

“There it is!” said Elsie triumphantly, pointing to a slender volume with a green cover. “
English Art in the Sixteenth Century
! Gosh, I think that book was here when I was alive.”

“Dullworth's does pride itself on being on the cutting edge,” grinned Steve.

Belladonna removed the book and placed it on the table.

“Look at the list of illustrations,” said Elsie. “See if there's something called … um … I think it was
The Doctors
 … or
The Diplomats
 … or…”

“How about
The Ambassadors
?” asked Belladonna.

“Yes!”

Belladonna turned to the page and was surprised to find herself looking at something that seemed perfectly normal to start with: two men in the clothes of the period leaning on a desk covered with papers, scientific instruments, and a large lute, but as her eyes traveled down, she noticed a strange whitish smear that spread diagonally from the center of the picture to its lower left-hand corner.

“What's that?”

“It's the anamorphic part,” said Elsie. “Hold the picture up so it's level with your eyes and then kind of look at it sideways.”

“It's a skull!” said Belladonna, amazed.

“The picture was supposed to hang on a staircase, so you'd see the skull as you came up the stairs.”

“Give me a go,” said Steve, taking the book and holding it up. “Huh. Cool. But I thought you said you needed a mirror.”

“Not always,” admitted Elsie. “But you can sort of see how it works. The ones that needed mirrors were usually drawings or engravings. There'd be a circle or something on the page that told you where to put the cylinder. The moon on our picture is probably where the mirror goes.”

“So we need a round mirror with the same diameter?”

Elsie nodded. “I think you mean cylindrical, though.”

“Maybe a piece of pipe,” suggested Steve, ignoring her. “With foil around it.”

“Or maybe—”

Belladonna didn't get any further.

“Seems to be clear,” said a voice right outside the library. “I'll just check in here.”

Belladonna swept the anchoring books out of the way, and Steve rolled up the parchment and shoved it inside his bag just as Mr. Watson walked into the room.

“Steve Evans! Belladonna Johnson! What are you doing in here?”

Belladonna stared at him, her mind a total blank, but Steve immediately went into trouble mode and picked up the books that had been holding the parchment in place.

“Just getting some books!”

“Really?” said Mr. Watson.

“Yes,” said Belladonna. “For a project for … Geography.”

“Hm. Alright. Don't forget to sign them out. Surprised you know where the library is, Evans.”

Belladonna went to the sign-out book and hurriedly listed the titles and signed her name.

“Right,” said Mr. Watson. “Off you go, we're locking up.”

Belladonna shoved two of the books into her bag and handed the other two to Steve as Mr. Watson steered them out of the library and out of the front door with a hasty “good night.”

“Good job he didn't want to know what the project was for,” said Belladonna.

Steve looked quizzical, then examined the spines of the two books she had handed to him.

“
A Beginners Guide to Forensic Science
and
Britain's Endangered Species
. Well, maybe we're going to open a detective agency.”

Belladonna laughed and for a moment almost forgot that she wasn't going home.

“Where are you staying?” asked Steve.

“Foster parents,” said Belladonna, her mood suddenly darkening again. “They're very nice, really. They try. I feel a little guilty … but … well, it isn't home and…”

“Do they live close by?”

Belladonna nodded.

“Good,” said Steve. “I have to stay off school tomorrow. My Dad sent a note saying I have to visit some sick relative somewhere, but really it's just to help him get ready for the latest sale. Come over on Saturday and let's see if we can find a way to look at this map.”

“Okay,” said Belladonna. “Saturday. This is my road.”

She stopped at the turn to Nether Street, the long road that led to Shady Gardens, but instead of just saying good-bye and sauntering off home, Steve looked suddenly concerned.

“Down here?” he said, “But there isn't … Where did you say you were staying?”

“It's an old apartment building,” said Belladonna. “It's a bit grotty, actually, but it's going to be restored, apparently. At least that's what the Proctors said. It's called Shady Gardens.”