The Secret of Zanzibar (17 page)

‘She fooled us too,' Alice assured him.

‘Anyway,' said Tom, who clearly didn't want to talk about his own experience, ‘you were telling me how you came to be spies at the palace.'

Alex took up the thread of the story again. ‘So we were at breakfast …'

‘No, wait, you have to start with Alistair's kidnap,' Alice broke in. ‘And how we found out about FIG and Gerander.'

Alex sighed. ‘Who's telling this story?' he demanded.

In the end, they both told the story, and it took a long time. The hardest bit, Alice found, was telling Tom about his father's treachery.

‘So Dad was Songbird,' he repeated, almost to himself. His skinny frame was stretched out full-length on the pallet by now and he lay in silence for several minutes, staring at the ceiling. ‘I don't know quite how to feel about that,' he said. ‘Terrible, of course – it means Dad's a traitor. But also … well, I'm glad that he loved me enough to do it. Does that make sense?'

Alice considered this. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘It's kind of the same with our parents, but the other way round. They left us to go on a mission for FIG, knowing that they might be captured or even killed. Sometimes I've wondered if the fact that they were prepared to leave us means they love Gerander more than us.' As soon as the words left her mouth she regretted them; she'd almost forgotten that Tom's mother had died while on a mission for FIG.

‘But remember what Uncle Ebenezer says, sis,' Alex reminded her. He quoted in a passable imitation of their uncle: ‘
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good mice to do nothing
.'

‘I know,' Alice sighed. ‘And the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Still …' She got to her feet and went over to the window. ‘How much time do you think has passed?'

‘Must be late afternoon by now,' Alex speculated.

Tom let out a hoot of laughter. ‘You're joking, right? We'll be lucky if an hour has passed.'

‘An hour?' Alice looked at her cousin in dismay. ‘Is that all?'

‘Spend some time in a cell,' Tom advised. ‘Then you'll learn how slowly time can pass.'

Alice shivered, recalling the dungeon. ‘Thanks,' she said, ‘but I'd rather not.' She turned to regard her brother. ‘Shove over,' she said. ‘I'm going to try to get some sleep.'

And despite the straw sticking into her, and the stifling heat of the little attic room, she did sleep, soundly and dreamlessly, for several hours, and woke feeling more refreshed than she had for ages.

She lay quietly for a few minutes, trying to gauge the time by the length of the shadows on the walls, listening to the murmur of voices from the other pallet, where her brother now sat beside Tom.

‘… So his cheesecake would definitely be on my list of favourite foods,' Alex was saying. ‘Oh, and his four-cheese pizza, too, with a thin and crispy crust. Really, there's nothing Uncle Ebenezer can't cook.'

Alice was about to make a sarcastic remark about Alex's preoccupation with food when her own stomach rumbled. Now that she thought about it, she could barely remember the last time she'd eaten. A few scraps at Cook's place … a hunk of cheese and slice of bread by the river … They needed to find food soon, she realised, or they'd be too weak with hunger to carry on.

‘A salad sandwich,' she said dreamily.

‘Huh?' The boys looked over.

Alice sat up. ‘A salad sandwich,' she repeated. ‘That's what I feel like.'

Her brother rolled his eyes. ‘That's a pathetically boring favourite food, sis,' he told her. He got up and walked to the window, then rubbed at the grimy pane so he could see out. ‘Not much happening out there, as far as I can see,' he said. ‘Hopefully they'll have given up looking for us by now.'

‘They might have given up searching the palace grounds, but they're probably combing the city for us,' Alice pointed out.

‘True,' said Alex. ‘That'll make things difficult when we're looking for Doffy Figleaf.'

Doffy Figleaf … Alice touched her wrist, felt the dried blood on her fur. Who on earth was Doffy Figleaf? she wondered. And how was he – or she – going to help them? Or were they meant to help Doffy Figleaf? She remembered the urgency in Solomon's tone. ‘What time do you think it is?' she asked.

‘The sun's going down,' said her brother, who was still at the window. ‘But we can't really make a move till everyone's gone to bed, and that'll be hours yet.'

Alice flopped back onto the pallet with a groan. ‘The protest is only ten days away and we're losing a whole day stuck in this horrible room.'

‘It's not so bad in here,' said Tom, and Alice bit her lip guiltily. Compared to where Tom had been, this must seem like luxury. And she didn't mean to sound like she was regretting rescuing him.

The hours dragged by interminably until at last Alex said, ‘I think it's probably safe now.'

This time, instead of the roof, they went down the six flights of rickety stairs that led to the cobbled courtyard.

‘Food first,' Alex said firmly, and for the second time in twenty-four hours Alice found herself back in the darkened kitchen. This time, though, the embers in the fireplace were still glowing and as Alice walked past the oven the air around it was warm.

‘I wonder what Cook's been baking?' Alex said, sniffing the air. ‘Triple chocolate cheesecake if I'm not mistaken.' He went to the pantry, his whiskers twitching in anticipation. ‘What else has she got in here …?'

‘Alex, this isn't a shopping expedition,' Alice said sharply. ‘Let's just grab some food and get out of here.' In the back of her mind was the image of another mouse who loved to eat: Sophia. What if the Sourian spy should decide to pay a visit to the kitchen in search of triple chocolate cheesecake? ‘Alex!' she hissed. ‘Come
on
!'

‘All right, all right, keep your fur on, sis.' Alex emerged from the pantry with his arms laden. ‘Can you fit some of this stuff in your rucksack?' He dropped a jumble of items onto the kitchen table. ‘And here's something for now,' he added, passing them each a biscuit. ‘Cheddar and chocolate,' he said, crunching into it. ‘Yum.'

Alice hastily filled her rucksack with the apples, hard-boiled eggs and bread rolls Alex had found, while Alex looked for the cake.

‘I'm sure it's here somewhere,' he said, sniffing the air once more.

‘Alex!'

Tom was pacing nervously by the door.

‘I really think …' he began.

‘All
right
,' Alex said, picking up his rucksack and leading them into the courtyard. ‘What a couple of worry-whiskers you are.' But he set off across the courtyard at a brisk pace, heading for the springy lawn.

Alice jogged after him, her rucksack bouncing on her back.

‘Let me carry that,' Tom offered.

‘It's okay,' she replied, ‘I'm used to it – but thanks.'

They ran past the potting shed, then past the flowerbeds where they had once seen FIG spelled out in purple tulips (they still didn't know who had done that, Alice realised).

Up ahead, Alex had stopped by a stretch of wall overhung by branches from the other side. ‘This is the spot.' He peered at the stone. ‘It's hard to see the rope in the dark,' he said. ‘Can you see it, sis?'

Alice studied the wall and then tilted her head back to see if the rope was visible among the tree branches. ‘No,' she said. ‘Maybe it was a different tree. Let's spread out. You two go left and I'll go right.'

She set off along the wall, inspecting every branch with increasing desperation. But there was no sign of the rope.

When she returned to the spot where she had begun she saw the boys had returned.

Alex looked bewildered. ‘I can't find it.'

‘The guards must have found the rope and cut it down,' Alice said. She put her hands on her hips and exhaled. ‘Now we have to think of another way to get out of the palace grounds.'

Alex kicked at the ground. ‘I can't think of another way,' he grumbled. He turned to scrutinise the stretch of wall he had originally searched. ‘I'm positive we came over the wall here, though,' he said, turning to stare back at the flowerbeds they had passed. ‘I distinctly remember that it was to the left of the zinnias but not quite as far over as the hyacinths.'

Tom raised an eyebrow. ‘You must really love flowers, Alex.'

‘Of course I don't,' Alex said crossly. ‘I told you how we worked in the gardens with Fiercely Jones.'

At the mention of the gardener, Alice remembered the last time they had fled the palace. ‘Whatever happens,' she said, ‘I'm not escaping the same way we did last time.' She wrinkled her nose in disgust.

Alex's expression brightened. ‘That's a great idea, sis! We'll escape the same way we did last time!'

‘No, Alex,' she protested. ‘I said let's not … Oh, never mind.' The important thing, after all, was to escape.

‘How did you escape last time?' Tom asked curiously.

Alice shook her head. ‘You don't want to know.'

Alistair walked with his uncle down a road along the river until they reached a bridge. They crossed it to join a road leading west, towards the Crankens. The sun was up and the light was golden; Alistair thought he detected the first hint of the autumn to come. When the road led them into a small market town they moved into single file, with Alistair in front, holding his hands behind his back as if they were tied, and Timmy the Winns marching behind him.

‘Taking him to the Crankens prison,' Timmy told anyone who asked, but not many did. The way other mice shrank back as they went by suggested to Alistair that the Queen's Guards were respected – or maybe feared – but certainly not loved.

And as the morning progressed, something peculiar started to happen. The mice they saw along the road no longer shrank back in silence, and when they passed
through another town there was a sense of hostility as they marched by.

‘Let him go,' someone called as they made their way up a busy street.

‘I'd rather have ginger fur than a red coat.'

‘Justice for Gerander!' yelled a big brown mouse.

Others took up the cry. ‘Justice for Gerander!'

A rock hit the pavement beside Timmy, causing him to spring back. It was followed by a volley of rocks.

‘I can't believe it,' he murmured. ‘People are throwing rocks at us because they think I'm a Queen's Guard persecuting a Gerandan. What a fine thing!
Ouch!
'

Alistair turned to see that his uncle was bleeding from a cut on his cheek where a rock had struck him. ‘Very fine,' he said. ‘But maybe we should get out of here.'

‘Timmy, there might not be a lake.' Alistair was feeling despondent. They had crested yet another mountain to gaze down into a white-covered valley that was devoid of lakes.

Still, despite their fruitless search for the lake, Alistair had to admit that their journey into the Crankens wasn't as harrowing as his last experience. Indeed, instead of heading straight into the alps proper, Timmy the Winns had set a course south-west towards Crossen, not even entering the foothills till they were near the border of Gerander. They had slept the night on a bed
of pine needles which, though slightly prickly, smelled wonderfully fresh and sharp on the late-summer breeze.

But now they had reached the snow line, and Alistair remembered once again the despair the unforgiving terrain had aroused in him when he and Tibby had wandered, lost, through icy snowdrifts. And really, whatever Timmy the Winns said, they were lost now, weren't they? Searching for a lake Timmy had seen as a boy in the hope that some secret paths might miraculously present themselves?

Alistair sighed and lifted one foot to try to rub some warmth into it. His feet were freezing from trudging through snow, and icy needles of cold were penetrating his fur. He thought longingly of his scarf. Did Tibby have it? he wondered. Or had it been found by a stranger? After everything his scarf had meant to him – as a connection with his mother through the four long years when he had believed her dead and then as a map to guide him along the secret pathways through Gerander – the thought of its loss filled him with sorrow.

‘That peak over there looks familiar,' Timmy said, squinting at a mountain across the valley. ‘Let's go.'

Alistair groaned inwardly as Timmy, showing no sign of discouragement at the idea of trekking across yet another valley and scaling yet another mountain, began the descent. It was hopeless. The protest was only days away and if they couldn't find the lake – not to mention some kind of secret pathways that might or
might not exist – they had no safe way of crossing the border to Gerander. And even if they did manage to cross the border, it was still a long way to Cornoliana. But as Alistair followed his uncle he had to admit that he had no better plan.

‘What did I tell you?' Timmy the Winns, hands on his hips, gazed across the deep blue lake with a satisfied air.

It wasn't a big lake – about the size of a football oval, Alistair judged – but it did resemble the blue circle knitted into his scarf. The only thing was, he thought, as he looked across the broad valley floor encircled by a chain of mountains, there was no sign of the other blue circles from the map on his scarf.

‘Well, Alistair?' his uncle asked. ‘Where should we look now?'

Alistair lifted his shoulders helplessly. ‘I don't know. On the map the other circles looked pretty obvious, but I can't see anything that resembles them here.'

‘Where were they exactly in relation to the lake?' Timmy asked.

Alistair closed his eyes, saw again the deep blue circle in the midst of the white triangles, the trail of bubbles leading from … ‘South-west,' he said, then looked at the position of the sun. ‘The other side of the lake.'

They hastened around the water's edge, sliding on patches of the blue-green ice.

If only there was a song or something to tell him what he was looking for, Alistair thought.
If
there was anything to look for. It was possible that this whole journey was a waste of time, that there was no secret path through the Crankens. But what else could that trail of bubbles be? said a small voice in his head. If they were noted on the map of secret paths running through Gerander, they had to mean something. He wished that Tibby were here, with her quick mind and curiosity and determination. Where
was
Tibby Rose?

His thoughts were interrupted by a strange hollow ringing. ‘What's that sound?'

He turned to Timmy but his uncle was shaking his head. ‘I don't hear anything,' he said.

‘I'm serious,' said Alistair, clapping his hands over his ears, which were starting to ring in concert with the eerie sound. ‘It's really loud. I think it's coming from –' Suddenly his feet slid out from under him and he skidded on a smooth patch of blue ice. The sound grew louder as he careened across the ice.

‘I can't stop!' he cried, half amused, half alarmed, scrabbling at the smooth surface for something to grip. He sailed across the sheet of ice, gathering speed, until his passage was abruptly stopped by a small mound. When he raised his head he saw that at its centre was a hole. He stuck his head into the hole to look and abruptly the noise stopped. He was gazing at a perfectly round tube which went under the ice at a shallow angle.

‘It's a tube!' he said, lifting his head from it to call to his uncle, who was picking his way carefully across the ice towards Alistair. ‘Ouch! There's that ringing again.' He stuck his fingers in his ears and turned to examine the hole in the mound once more. As he did, his eye fell on a piece of blue wool fluttering on the rim of the hole. It was, he saw with rising excitement, the same shade of blue as the circles on his scarf.

‘It's Tibby!' he exclaimed. ‘She's been here and she's left me a sign.' Hansel and Gretel, he realised, remembering their conversation from the Eugenians. ‘It means …' He leaned into the hole. ‘I think this tube is the secret path.'

As he tilted forward his feet slipped again on the ice and he overbalanced. ‘Help!' he cried as he plunged headfirst into the hole. And then he was sliding …

It was like the longest, coldest rollercoaster imaginable, made all the more terrifying by the fact that he couldn't see the twists and turns, the climbs and drops, as he was flung around corners and plunged up and down steep rises and troughs.

Occasionally, there was a strange greeny-blue light from above, as if there were only a narrow sheet of ice between him and the surface, and every now and then sudden beams of blinding light made him blink. Air holes, he presumed, when he realised they were a regular feature. But for the most part he kept his eyes closed, for whenever he opened them and had a sense of the dizzying
speed at which he was moving panic would rise in him and his arms and legs would twitch as if to slow his progress – but he knew that if he stopped he might never get started again, would be trapped in this tube, would stop Timmy, too, if his uncle had slid into the tube after him. So he would tense his limbs and close his eyes again, abandoning himself to the ride.

He was stunned almost to breathlessness from the intensity of the experience by the time he suddenly shot out into dazzling white light. He crawled clear of the hole, his limbs trembling, and lay panting on the ice.

‘Absolutely ingenious,' said Timmy the Winns admiringly as he emerged from the tube. Unlike Alistair, he had made the journey feet first and seemed remarkably unshaken by the wild ride. ‘Carving out those tubes through mountains and across glaciers. Knowing exactly how much momentum is needed to make the climbs.' He clapped his hands once and looked around. ‘So, where's the next one?'

Alistair couldn't believe that anyone would want to take a ride like that again. Except perhaps his brother, Alex. ‘I don't know.'

‘How many bubbles were there?' Timmy asked.

Alistair thought. ‘Six, I think.'

As Timmy, deciding that his red coat and boots had served their purpose, began to shed his disguise, Alistair stood up and walked a few metres to his left, then his right, listening hard.

‘What are you doing?' asked Timmy as he pulled off his boots with obvious relief.

But instead of answering Alistair held up his hand, for he thought he heard a faint ringing. He paced back and forth until … yes, it was growing stronger. When the sound grew too loud for comfort he put his hands to ears and used his eyes, scanning the ice for a mound … there! A mound, a hole and – he smiled – a piece of blue wool stuck to the icy rim.

‘This is it!' he called. And, feet first this time, he slid into the tube.

Although the second tube ride was no less hair-raising than the first, Alistair felt calmer, for he was sure now that he was on the right track. He found a third tube, a fourth, a fifth, and despite the trepidation he felt on entering each tube, he was growing increasingly cheerful. He was following in Tibby's footsteps. Who was she with? he wondered. For surely she hadn't trekked into the Crankens alone. No: Tibby was brave, adventurous even, but not foolhardy. Yet he couldn't imagine Great-Aunt Harriet and Grandpa Nelson whizzing through these tubes – though the thought made him smile as he listened for the ringing that would lead him to the sixth tube.

‘This is the last one,' Alistair shouted when he located it, holding up the piece of wool that had been stuck to the rim.

‘How do you know?'

‘This wool is green, not blue, and it's the same shade as the green pool on the scarf: the source of the Winns.'

Timmy smiled. ‘It's amazing how you and Tibby can communicate so much with just a few pieces of wool.'

‘It's only because we were talking about Hansel and Gretel recently,' Alistair explained.

‘Even so,' Timmy murmured, and it seemed to Alistair there was sadness as well as pleasure in his expression.

‘Let's go,' said Alistair, eager now to be reunited with his friend. He slid into the tube, his legs squeezed tight together and his arms clamped to his sides so that he shot down the icy tunnel like an arrow.

For many minutes he travelled in a straight line, occasionally sliding up the sides of the tube as it changed direction imperceptibly. Then all at once the tube corkscrewed in a series of tight turns. Alistair grew dizzy as he was flung around and around in a sickening spiral, like the worst kind of funfair ride. He seemed to be going down, deep into the earth, and there was no sign of light. Just when he thought he'd be sick he stopped abruptly. But he hadn't left the tube. He was still in the dark and sitting, he realised, in a puddle of mud.

‘Yuck!' he said, as the mud oozed through his fingers. He crawled forward to avoid having his uncle land on him. Of course, he realised. The source was below the snow line, so the tunnel emerged below the snow line too.

There was a faint glow coming from up ahead and he moved towards it on his hands and knees.

‘Yuck!' he heard from behind him. It was his uncle's voice. Alistair chuckled to himself and kept crawling.