The Secret of Zanzibar (13 page)

‘Don't they?' said the Queen softly.

‘No,' said Alistair firmly.

‘So you always knew you were Gerandan?' the Queen said.

Alistair, who had only discovered this recently, said nothing. His parents had kept it from him for his own safety, he reminded himself fiercely.

‘You're not who you think you are, Alistair,' Queen Eugenia continued. ‘Your parents aren't really your parents. Your brother and sister aren't your brother and sister.' She lowered her voice and stared at him intently as she said, ‘Your whole life has been a lie.'

‘No!' Alistair shouted. ‘
You're
lying!'

The Queen shrugged carelessly. ‘Believe what you want. But if it were me, I'd want to know the truth.'

Alistair looked away, lost for words.
Don't listen to her
, he told himself.

But the Queen wasn't finished. ‘I can help you, Alistair. I can tell you the truth, but I need your help to piece it together. So tell me who the other heir is, hmm?'

Alistair's head was spinning. She was just playing games with him, he knew that – but she'd been right
about his family and friends keeping secrets. They hadn't told him and his brother and sister that they were Gerandan, hadn't told them about FIG, hadn't told them they were the heirs of Cornolius. So many secrets … so many lies …

Suddenly the Queen banged her fist on the arm of the chair. ‘The other heir, Alistair!' she ordered. ‘Tell me who it is!' Her voice dropped to a menacing whisper. ‘If you have no answer for me, then I have no reason to keep you alive.' She raised her voice. ‘Guard! Come here at once – and bring your sword.' She gazed straight at Alistair as she concluded, ‘And there will be one less heir to worry about …'

‘You two, under the couch,' said Cook.

Alice and Alex scrambled under the couch – a rather dusty hiding place, Alice noticed, as she felt a little tickle in her nose. She tried to sweep away the dust around her face while Cook rushed to hide their rucksacks. When all trace of Alice and Alex had been cleared away, Cook went to the door.

‘Who is it?' she called.

‘Queen's Guards. Open up.'

Alice, watching from under the couch, saw Cook open the door a crack and peer out. ‘Queen's Guards?' she said. ‘At this time of night? What on earth is going on?'

‘We could ask you the same question,' snapped one of the guards. He pushed past Cook and entered the room, followed by three more red-coated mice. ‘Had any visitors lately, madam?'

Under the couch a hundred thoughts whirled through Alice's mind. Had they been followed? Or had a neighbour seen them? She almost moaned at the thought that they had got Cook and her family into trouble. Maybe they should give themselves up. Or maybe Cook would betray them … She gave a little sniff and rubbed her face with her hand. The dust they had disturbed when they'd slid under the couch was making her nose twitch in irritation.

Alex nudged her sharply with his elbow.

Cook, meanwhile, seemed undaunted by the fact that there were four Queen's Guards in her house. ‘What is the meaning of this? How dare you accuse me?' The stout mouse drew herself up and glared at the guards. ‘I am the cook at the palace. I cook for General Ashwover himself. And let me tell you, he won't be pleased to hear that you barged into my house and disturbed my sick daughter and scared my grandchildren. Why, I might be so overwrought from the experience that tomorrow I could very well find myself burning the general's cupcakes.'

‘Burning the –? No, I don't think that would be a good idea,' said the first guard.

‘Now if I could just have your names, so I can tell the general and Lester who it was that disrupted my household?'

At the mention of the general's right-hand man – who was roundly despised by everyone but the general, Alex and Alice had found while they were at the palace – the second guard cleared her throat nervously.

‘Ah, Sergeant,' she said, ‘perhaps we shouldn't disturb the lady any longer.'

The other two guards were already backing out of the room.

The tickle was growing stronger, and Alice pinched her nose between her thumb and forefinger.

‘No, of course not,' said the sergeant. ‘We're very sorry to disturb you, ma'am.'

‘I'll let it go – this time,' said Cook haughtily. She opened the door and looked at the sergeant with her eyebrows raised.

At that moment, the sneeze Alice had been trying so desperately to hold back exploded out of her: ‘Ahhh-CHOO!'

There was a shocked silence, then Cook pointed at the couch. ‘My daughter is very ill,' she said in a fierce voice, ‘and you are loitering in my doorway letting the cold night air in. I must insist that you leave
at once
.'

Alice hardly dared breathe. Would the sergeant really believe that the sneeze had come from
on
the couch and not
under
it?

‘Yes, ma'am,' said the sergeant, ducking his head politely. ‘Begging your pardon, ma'am.' As he followed his comrades out the door he cuffed the second guard on the back of the head. ‘Thanks for nothing, Lucille,' he said. ‘You told me someone reported seeing the lady sneaking two kids in here after curfew.'

‘I thought they might be the ones Sophia and Horace were telling us about the other day,' the guard whined.

‘Oh, is that what you thought?' the sergeant said. ‘Well I saw General Ashwover's cook, and a sickly pale mouse, and two tiny grey mice. I didn't see a white mouse with a brown patch or a brown mouse with a white patch. Did you, Lucille?'

‘No,' muttered the second guard sullenly. ‘But Sophia told us to be on the lookout for them. She said they were very crafty. Maybe they dyed themselves grey?'

The sergeant cuffed her again. ‘And maybe they drank a shrinking potion to make themselves very, very small, eh, Lucille?'

‘Maybe,' said the second guard stubbornly. ‘
Very
crafty, Sophia said. Who knows what they're capable of?'

‘Very crafty they might be,' said the sergeant, his voice floating back to them as he crossed the square, ‘but they weren't there – and you almost got us in big trouble.'

With trembling hands Cook shut the door and drew the latch, then turned to lean her back against it. ‘That was close,' she said. The haughty mouse of a few moments ago had deflated and the cook was now quivering with nerves.

Alex slid out from under the couch and stood up, brushing the dust from his fur.

‘For goodness' sake, sis,' he said, his voice cross. ‘Couldn't you have held on two more minutes? You almost gave the whole game away.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Alice miserably. As she crawled out from under the couch she sneezed again. ‘It's the dust.'

Petal hurried over with a threadbare but neatly pressed handkerchief. ‘Bless you,' she said.

‘Thank you,' Alice said, blowing her nose.

Alex frowned at her and raised his voice to be heard over the noise. ‘Who would have told the Queen's Guards about us coming in here?' he asked incredulously. ‘Surely not a Gerandan?'

Cook sighed. ‘Desperate mice do desperate things. I'm lucky – I can bring home scraps from the kitchen to feed my family. If we had to survive on rations alone we'd be close to starvation, like so many other Gerandans. But the Sourians give out extra ration coupons in exchange for information, so neighbours spy on neighbours – I've even heard of family members betraying each other.'

Alice thought of Tobias, who had betrayed Zanzibar, his own cousin, when Sophia and Horace had kidnapped his son – the son who, even now, was languishing in the palace dungeon. And from what Lucille had said, his kidnappers were at the palace too, Alice realised with a pang of fear that momentarily robbed her of breath. Sophia and Horace, just across the river … and it sounded like Sophia was expecting them. She shivered.

‘Oh, you poor thing,' Cook said in a motherly tone. ‘You've had a fright too, haven't you, dear?' She tutted. ‘I can't even imagine what you two must have been through since I last saw you, but I can only think you must have
had a dreadful time. I'll fetch you some blankets and you can curl up on the rug there and have a good night's sleep. Petal, Percy, it's bedtime now.'

‘But, Grandma …' the little mice protested, though not vigorously. Percy had been yawning for some time and Petal's eyes had been growing increasingly bleary.

Alice and Alex didn't protest at all. For now that Cook mentioned it, Alice found she
was
very tired. Her limbs were heavy, her mind was fuzzy. When had she last slept? Oh yes: the swamp … Well, she hadn't really slept at all in that dank, horrible place. Her knees seemed to give way beneath her and she felt a blanket settle gently over her. It was thin but soft, and it smelled like sunshine and lavender …

She wasn't sure how long she slept before a murmuring penetrated her consciousness, yanking her from a dream that had nothing to do with sunshine and lavender, and everything to do with a silvery mouse wielding a sharp blade. For a moment she could make out nothing other than the pounding of her own heart, then she heard voices.

‘It's too dangerous,' Cook was saying regretfully. ‘They can't stay here.'

‘But where else can they go?' her daughter asked.

‘I don't know.'

‘And what about Zanzibar? He needs your help, Mum. This is it, this is our chance – our one chance. If we want Gerander to be free …' There was a moment's silence,
then Lila spoke again. ‘You can't send them away, Mum. They're just kids really. Not much older than Percy and Petal.' She began to cough, terrible gasping spasms.

‘Shhh,' Cook soothed. ‘Don't worry. I'll think of something.'

Cook was right, though, Alice thought. She and Alex couldn't stay here; they had already put Cook and her family in terrible danger. Why hadn't she thought of that before? But Lila was right too: they had nowhere else to go. A wave of hopelessness washed over her.

She started as something brushed her arm, then Alex whispered in her ear, ‘Wait till they're asleep. I've got a plan.'

Alice tried to wait, but she must have fallen asleep, because when her brother next spoke his voice seemed to be coming from a very long way away.

‘What did you say?' she murmured.

‘I said we have to go rescue Tobias's son,' Alex repeated.

Suddenly Alice was wide awake. She rolled over to face him. ‘What kind of plan is that?' she demanded. ‘Our mission is to organise a protest.'

‘You heard Cook. We can't stay here. And the only other place I know in Cornoliana is the palace.'

‘But remember what those guards said? Horace and Sophia are at the palace.' Alice tried to quash the feeling of dread that rose in her whenever she thought of the silvery mouse with the bell-like voice and sharp knife, and her morose companion.

‘They're hardly likely to be in the dungeon,' Alex reasoned. ‘If I know Sophia she'll be in the most luxurious guest suite in the whole building.'

‘But it's not our mission,' Alice said again. ‘If Solomon knew …'

‘Solomon won't know,' said Alex. ‘Anyway, who cares what Solomon thinks? He abandoned us, remember?'

Did she remember? It still troubled her, the casual way he had strolled off without a backwards glance. She had really admired Solomon. He was smart and he was serious, and he took her and Alex seriously, even though they were only kids. He would expect them to carry out their mission. But Alex was right: Solomon wasn't here. Which meant he himself had abandoned their mission, didn't it? And besides, she thought, remembering the conversation she and Alex had had by the river, Tobias's son was their cousin, and they should have rescued him the last time they were in Cornoliana. Really, they owed it to him …

‘And it's not like we're giving up on our mission,' Alex continued. ‘We're not spreading the word about the protest right now in the middle of the night, are we? So we'll go rescue Tobias's son, and by tomorrow morning we'll get back to work on our mission. Come on, sis, what do you say?'

Alice listened to the sleeping sounds of Cook and her family: Lila's rasping wheezes, as if she was struggling for every breath; the occasional soft squeak of Petal (or was
it Percy?), as if in response to a vivid dream; the drawn-out weary sighs of Cook. And it was this last sound that finally decided her. Working long hours at the palace, struggling to feed her grandchildren and care for her sick daughter, Cook had burdens enough without the responsibility of hiding Alice and Alex.

‘Okay,' Alice said. ‘Let's do it. We should probably leave a note for Cook, though, so she doesn't worry …'

Half an hour later, as she stood shivering in the doorway that had concealed them not so many hours before, gazing once more at the bridge that led towards the palace, Alice was already regretting her decision. Lack of sleep was making her limbs leaden and her senses dull. She glanced at her brother, who was watching the bridge with hawk-like intensity. She had to admit that sometimes she envied his physical strength and confidence; his ability to focus on the job at hand untroubled by the doubts and ‘what ifs' that ran through Alice's mind in an endless loop, from the immediate (what if they were caught trying to sneak into the palace?) to the future (what if the protest failed?).

She decided to start with the immediate. ‘Alex, how are we going to get into the palace? We'll never get past the guards at the gate.'

‘Of course we can't go through the gates,' her brother replied. ‘But I had a good look at the palace from above when we were in the bell tower. On the right-hand side
the walls back straight onto the river.' He described a curve of wall and river in the air with his finger. ‘If we turn left when we cross the bridge into the palace square, there's a bunch of pine trees along the walls. We should be able to climb one of the trees and drop over into the palace gardens. I never saw any guards patrolling the walls there when we were working in the grounds with Fiercely Jones. It's not like the Sourians are really expecting anyone to break
into
the palace, after all; they probably reckon they've got the Gerandans too frightened to try anything.'

The mist swirling up from the river added to Alice's sense of unease as she followed her brother across the bridge. The clouds had parted to reveal a sharp, cold moon, and its silvery light threaded through the mist to remind Alice of silvery fur and silvery blades.

But Alex, as usual, had a different view. ‘This mist is a bonus, hey? I can't see the palace very well, but I bet the palace can't see us very well either.'