The Secret of Zanzibar (15 page)

‘In Templeton, isn't she?' his uncle said.

‘Still in Templeton?' Alistair exclaimed, jumping to his feet. ‘Are you sure? She's not safe there. The Queen was asking a lot of questions about Templeton and another ginger mouse. I left my scarf by the fountain where I was caught, hoping Tibby would guess what had happened and leave Souris.' He began to pace. ‘We have to go to her.'

‘Alistair.' Timmy stood too and placed a hand on his arm. ‘We don't know for sure whether she's in Templeton
or not. I've had no word either way. But the Queen has no reason to seek Tibby Rose, does she?' His voice was serious, as if he was intent on the answer. ‘Surely she doesn't think Tibby's an heir of Cornolius too.'

‘I don't know,' said Alistair. ‘The Queen seems certain that there's another heir of Cornolius out there. Yet how can there be? And she was trying to tell me that Mum and Dad aren't really my parents and Alex and Alice aren't my brother and sister, but I knew she was lying. Because that would mean
I
wasn't an heir of Cornolius, and if I wasn't there'd have been no reason for Keaters to kidnap me.'

Alistair was quite pleased with this piece of reasoning, but when he looked up at his uncle he caught a strange expression pass fleetingly across his face. A curious look? An uncertain look? He couldn't quite read it, and all the confusion and bewilderment evoked by the Queen's cryptic statements began to well in him once more.

‘What is it?' Alistair demanded. ‘What aren't you telling me?'

Timmy the Winns, most uncharacteristically, appeared lost for words. He opened his mouth then closed it again, then rubbed the fur on top of his head. Finally, he laid a hand on Alistair's shoulder and looked him in the eye. ‘Alistair,' he said, ‘whatever the Queen told you, she is not in possession of all the facts.'

She is not in possession of all the facts
. What did that mean exactly? It was hardly an answer to his question. Alistair had tried to find out more, but Timmy the Winns refused to answer his questions, saying only, ‘It's not my story to tell, little brother.'

And so Alistair had had to drop the subject, though all through the long journey back to Templeton – for his uncle had agreed that they should find Tibby Rose – he could think of nothing else. They travelled all day and through the night with barely a pause. On leaving the barn, they had skirted the foothills to the west of the Eugenian Range, then a taciturn mouse with a small sailing boat ferried them across Lake Eugenia to the north-eastern corner. From there they followed the path Alistair had so recently travelled with Slippers Pink, Feast Thompson and Tibby Rose.

What story was his uncle talking about, Alistair wondered, and whose was it? Unbidden, the Queen's words came back to him.
Your whole life has been a lie.

When at last Templeton came into view, Alistair led Timmy the Winns along the now-familiar route. Despite his fatigue, he ran up the lane leading to the big old white house on the hill, half expecting to hear Tibby Rose calling to him from her treehouse, even though dawn hadn't yet broken. But there was not a sound, and when he stepped onto the front porch something in him knew already that the house was deserted. He knocked on the door, softly at first and then louder. It should have been
enough to cause cries of alarm, for lights to go on in the bedrooms upstairs, but the house remained stubbornly dark and silent.

Turning away he saw Timmy watching him.

‘No one's home,' he said, not bothering to disguise his anxiety.

‘Maybe Slippers and Feast came back for Tibby,' his uncle suggested.

‘Then where are Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet?' asked Alistair. ‘We should go to Granville's office. He might know something.'

They started back down the hill, Alistair aware only of a heavy sense of dread filling his chest. Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet had barely stirred from the house for years, he knew. So where could they be? Had Tibby and her relatives run away when Alistair was captured? Or – Alistair's chest clenched in apprehension – had they all been captured too? No, he reminded himself. If the Sourians had captured Tibby Rose, they wouldn't have been asking him all those questions. He had to assume Tibby was safe. The thought calmed him, and as they retraced their steps into the darkened town he became convinced that he would find Tibby herself at Granville's office, just as he had left her, poring over the reference books, eyes narrowed in concentration as she made notes on her pad, a smudge of ink on the pink-tinged fur of her cheek.

When they reached the newspaper offices, Alistair rapped on the door.

‘Now who'd be knocking on the door of the
Templeton Times
in the wee small hours of the morning?' said a voice behind him.

Alistair started and spun around as he heard a match strike and then a hiss of flame.

‘Watson,' said Alistair eagerly, recognising the piebald mouse who was holding up a lantern in front of the newspaper kiosk.

‘Who's that?' said the piebald mouse, squinting in Alistair's direction.

Alistair stepped forward, flanked by Timmy the Winns. ‘You probably don't remember me,' he told the newspaper seller, ‘but you once hid me and my friend from the Queen's Guards when we –'

‘I did nothing of the sort,' broke in the piebald mouse. ‘You must be thinking of some other mouse, you must.'

‘No, it was you,' Alistair insisted. ‘We'd been following Grandpa Nelson – that's Dr Nelson – and when you heard the guards coming you –'

‘I don't know who you are, coming along in the dark hours and making up stories about me,' Watson interrupted, a quiver of alarm in his voice. Seeing the way the piebald mouse's eyes darted anxious glances at Timmy the Winns' red coat, Alistair suddenly understood.

‘You don't have to worry,' he reassured Watson. He lowered his voice. ‘He's not a real Queen's Guard. This is my uncle. Tell him, Timmy. It's okay. Watson saved me
and Tibby; he said that he didn't believe ginger mice were the enemies of Souris. He saved our lives!'

‘In that case, we are in your debt,' said Timmy the Winns, stepping forward with his hand outstretched.

Watson shook Timmy's hand, ducking his head shyly. ‘Ah, well now, I don't know about that,' he said. ‘I just did what any right-thinking mouse would do in those circumstances. Or should do, anyways. Seems to me the colour of his fur is no measure of a mouse. Why, you could be …' He paused, as if just now becoming aware of the vision in front of him. ‘Is my lantern there giving off a strange light, or … Excuse me, sir –' he gave Timmy a hard look ‘– but you appear to be, er, blue.'

‘Aye,' said Timmy, ‘that I am. But as you so rightly pointed out, the colour of one's fur is no measure of a mouse.'

‘Watson, we're looking for Granville.'

‘Granville?' The piebald mouse raised his eyebrows. ‘I reckon you won't find him here at this hour.'

‘Of course,' said Alistair, ‘but do you know where –?'

‘And I reckon you won't find him here at any other hour neither,' the newspaper seller continued.

‘Why … why not?' Alistair asked, with a terrible sense of foreboding.

‘He's gone, isn't he?' Watson said simply.

‘Gone?' Alistair repeated, a hollow feeling in his chest.

Watson clicked his fingers. ‘Like that,' he said. ‘Vanished. After forty-gazillion years as the editor of the
Templeton Times
, he disappears without a trace.'

Alistair stared at the newspaper seller, dumbfounded, as his mind tried to process what he had just heard.

‘Ah,' said Timmy the Winns. ‘Without a trace to others, perhaps, but I think I'd be right in suggesting that a mouse such as yourself would have his ear to the ground. In your position, you would hear things … see things … that another mouse might miss.'

‘Now that you mention it,' said Watson with an appreciative nod, ‘I does hear things, with my ear to the ground, as you say. And I've heard tell …' He glanced quickly from side to side, then whispered, ‘Granville had a secret project. Something dangerous.' He whistled through his teeth. ‘Something that's going to rock Souris to the core.' Then, as if embarrassed at having said too much, the piebald mouse turned away abruptly, picked up a knife, and began to cut the cords on bundles of newspapers. ‘Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I'd best be getting back to work.'

‘If Granville had been arrested by the Queen's Guards, surely Watson would have heard, so I think we can assume that he's going ahead with the mission as planned,' said Timmy the Winns as they walked away.

‘But that doesn't tell us where Tibby is,' Alistair pointed out. ‘Or Grandpa Nelson and Great-Aunt Harriet.'

‘It doesn't,' Timmy agreed. ‘But Alistair, I don't think we can afford to spend any more time looking for them. Our first priority has to be reaching Cornoliana in time for the protest.'

Alistair was just opening his mouth to disagree when he heard a shout; he turned to see Watson waving a slim page of newsprint.

‘It's Granville,' the piebald mouse called. Then he bent his head to study the headline. ‘I never seen the like. Not in all me born days.'

Alistair hurried back to the kiosk, his uncle close on his heels.

‘What is it, Watson?' he asked.

Watson didn't even look up; he was sucking his teeth and shaking his head slowly as he stared at the headline. Then he held it up for the others to read:

SOURIANS SAY: JUSTICE FOR GERANDER.

‘They did it,' Alistair breathed. Then, with a burst of joy at seeing his own words – JUSTICE FOR GERANDER – splashed across the page: ‘
We
did it.'

‘What was that?' asked Watson.

‘Nothing,' said Alistair quickly. ‘Um, what makes you think Granville was involved?'

‘Look here,' said the newspaper seller, pointing to the by-line.

Alistair squinted at the small type.
Brought to you by the
Templeton Times,
the
Grouch Guardian,
the
Crossin Chronicle,
the
Sadiz Star … The list went on and on.

‘It looks like every newspaper in the country has got behind this,' Watson remarked. ‘It came as an insert in this morning's issue of the
Templeton Times
–' he opened a copy of the Templeton newspaper ‘– and there was another stack delivered to be handed out free to any customer who doesn't buy the
Times
.' He patted a pile of pamphlets.

‘We'd better get going,' Timmy said. ‘The sun will be up soon.'

‘Where will it lead I wonder?' the piebald mouse was saying as they once again bade him farewell.

‘Where indeed?' said Timmy the Winns as they set off up the road.

‘Where should we look next?' Alistair asked. ‘Perhaps we could find out where Granville lives and –'

‘Alistair,' his uncle broke in quietly, ‘we really do need to get to Cornoliana.'

‘But Tibby …'

‘Tibby's as smart as they come. It sounds like she, her grandfather, great-aunt and Granville have gone into hiding, which is the most sensible thing they could have done.'

Alistair knew his uncle was right, though he still wished they could have found his friend.

They walked in silence, passing the fountain where Alistair had encountered Keaters. There was no sign of his scarf, he noted. They crossed the square and went through an archway that Alistair recognised as the one
he and Tibby had passed through at the very beginning of their journey together. It seemed odd, and lonely, to be travelling without her now. A pale light was creeping up the sky as the two mice followed a dirt path down to a pebbly beach by the river. As they walked beneath an apricot tree Timmy stretched out a long arm and plucked one, two, three pale orange fruits.

‘Let's sit here a minute,' he said.

‘How are we going to get to Gerander?' Alistair asked. He caught the apricot his uncle tossed him and lowered himself onto the pebbles. He bit into the fruit, savouring its sweetness as a stream of sticky juice soaked into the fur on his chin.

His uncle pointed across the river to a hazy mountain range, shimmering in the early morning light. ‘From here, the quickest way is to go over the Crankens,' he said.

‘Not the Crankens,' said Alistair, aghast. The memory of how close he and Tibby had come to being lost in that remote alpine wilderness still filled him with terror. ‘It'll take too long – and what about the Queen's Guards? There's masses of them all along the border.'

‘That won't be a problem,' Timmy the Winns said calmly. ‘You're going to find us a secret path.'

Alistair almost choked on his apricot. He coughed, then swallowed. ‘I'm what?' he said, when he could speak again.