The Secret of Zanzibar (20 page)

‘She gave you the scarf because she knew you were the one,' Tibby said. ‘The one who could read the signs.'

Alistair tilted his head as something occurred to him. ‘But it's not just me, is it, Tib?' he said. ‘You can read the signs too.'

‘What?'

‘That's right,' he said, excited now. ‘You found the tubes in the Crankens, just like I did. And did you hear the sound?'

‘I heard a kind of hollow ringing,' Tibby said. ‘But Great-Aunt Harriet and Grandpa Nelson couldn't hear it.'

‘Timmy didn't hear it either. And remember when we found the path through the trees, how you and me and Mum could hear the whistling in the trees, but no one else could?'

Tibby nodded.

‘I bet it's because we're twins,' said Alistair. ‘We
both
have the gift.'

Tibby Rose looked at him, her eyes shining. ‘Twins,' she repeated.

‘Like Alex and Alice,' said Alistair. He laughed aloud. ‘How do you think Alex is going to feel when he hears that I'm going to be king rather than him?'

Tibby nudged him. ‘How do you know I won't be queen?'

‘Huh?'

‘We don't know which one of us was born first,' she pointed out. ‘But I'm going to find out.' She stood up. ‘Coming?'

Alistair looked at her. Her eyes were glowing. ‘Yes,' he said. He rose and followed Tibby – his sister – down the hill. He felt a curious mix of emotions. He couldn't help but feel happy at the sight of Tibby's happiness. What he had lost – a family, a history – she had found. But his loss yawned before him, an abyss of grief that he daren't look into; not now, not while there was still so much to do. He thought back to a conversation he had had with Slippers after his first experience of Keaters' treachery. He had disobeyed Slippers and walked straight into the Sourian spy's trap.

That's the hardest part about the kind of struggle we're engaged in
, she had told him afterwards.
Learning when to think with your heart and when with your head
.

He had vowed after that to put the good of Gerander ahead of his own needs, and he intended to keep that vow. So many questions remained – questions about his future as well as his past – but now was not the time to worry about that.

When he entered the cottage to be greeted by a circle of anxious faces, he didn't refer to the news he had just heard.

‘How will we get to Cornoliana?' he asked.

‘Dead?' It seemed to Alice that her heart had stopped beating as she stared at the grey mouse.

‘Dead,' Maxine confirmed in a heavy voice. Absently she unclipped the pearl earrings from her ears and dropped them on the hallstand. ‘It was Sophia.'

Alice put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh no,' she breathed, her eyes filling with tears. ‘He was trying to protect us from her. It's all our fault.'

‘
Your
fault?' the grey mouse responded sharply. ‘No. Sophia's fault. The Sourians' fault. Not yours. He never should have come back to Cornoliana.'

‘But if he knew he was in danger, why
did
he come back?' Alice asked.

Maxine sank into an easy chair and covered her face with her hands. For a long moment she didn't speak, then she removed her hands, opened her eyes and said, ‘Because he had work to do. He wanted to make sure we were ready.'

‘Who's “we”?' Alex wanted to know.

‘The Figleafers,' Maxine answered. ‘A couple of years ago, Solomon came to Cornoliana – supposedly as a Sourian spy, but he was already working for FIG. He gathered a group of FIG sympathisers and started a resistance group. We used the fig leaf as our symbol; we're like shoots from the FIG tree, you see? Recently we've been making plans for what happens after we've won freedom.'

‘What do you mean?' said Alex.

‘When the Sourians withdraw, Gerandans – and Gerandan sympathisers, like me – will need to take over running the country. There are schools, hospitals, the distribution of food … all those things that the Sourians are currently managing, though not to the benefit of Gerandans. Who will take care of it all once the Sourians leave?'

‘I never thought of that,' said Alice.

Maxine nodded. ‘Few would,' she said. ‘But Solomon did.'

‘What will the Figleafers do now?'

The grey mouse looked surprised. ‘Keep on with our work, of course, preparing for independence. Speaking of which, why don't you tell me what you're doing in Cornoliana? I presume it's something to do with the protest.'

Alice briefly outlined their mission and the plans they'd discussed that day.

Maxine listened in silence, then said, ‘Since you've nowhere else to go, I think you'd better stay here till the rest of your family arrives in the city. You'll have to sleep here in the lounge room, I'm afraid, as my house is only small.'

The three mice accepted gratefully, with Alex offering to cook all the meals and Alice and Tom volunteering to wash up.

The younger mice also agreed to take it in turns between the three of them to keep watch on the square during those hours when they were at home, as an added precaution in case one of them was followed.

And so, at last, their mission began in earnest. Every morning Alice, Alex and Tom left the house before dawn to ensure that they weren't seen by any of Maxine's neighbours. Without a word, they would go their separate ways, each heading for the part of town they had claimed as their own, not to return till late, sneaking through the streets after curfew.

Alice's sector covered the quarter by the east gate. It was an old and poor part of town. The cobblestones that paved the streets were worn smooth and paint peeled from the shabby buildings. Washing hung on lines which stretched across the narrow alleys, the clothes worn and threadbare. But Alice liked the cramped streets better than the grand boulevards that ran through the city centre. It felt more like a neighbourhood, somehow – and,
she noted with some relief, the Queen's Guards tended not to linger in this part of town. The patrols marched quickly through, sticking to the wider streets and rarely venturing into the maze of alleyways in which they could easily become lost.

At first Alice was shy about approaching strangers to speak of the protest, aware of the danger both to herself and to those she spoke with. But gradually she grew better at it. Many of the old shopkeepers were sympathetic, and Alice spent a number of rainy afternoons sitting behind shop counters hearing of the days when the children of the neighbourhood would laugh and play in the streets while their parents gossiped in doorways. The children didn't run and play any more, but Alice found she was able to strike up conversations with kids waiting outside shops while their parents queued for rations inside.

As the week passed, she found that many of the mice she approached, both young and old, were already aware of the protest and were planning to attend. Indeed, there seemed to be a buzz in the air; the sad-eyed mice she had once seen drifting through the streets like shadows walked with a new sense of purpose and energy. They still shrank from the Queen's Guards, but now they seemed reluctant and resentful rather than resigned.

By the day before the protest, Alice was weary from the early rising, the long days spent tramping the streets – always watching over her shoulder for the flash of a red coat, an ear cocked for the sound of marching boots –
and nights broken by taking her turn at watching the dark square outside.

One more day, Alice told herself as she entered the now-familiar maze of streets. The thought of the protest the next day filled her with a strange mix of hope and apprehension. Success, she feared, as she was forced to change her route to avoid a Sourian patrol, was far from certain.

She was helping an old mouse carry her shopping home early that evening when she first had the uneasy sense that she was being watched.

‘I always knew Zanzibar would come home,' the old mouse was saying, pausing to shift her basket to her other hand. ‘I knew it in my bones.'

Alice glanced up and down the tiny street. There were a couple of old metal rubbish bins just ahead of her; a faded terracotta pot, its flowers long dead, stood beside the steps of an apartment building across the street. Other than that, the street was deserted, the pavement empty. But still, the uneasy feeling persisted.

‘How much further?' Alice asked the old mouse anxiously.

‘It's that cream-coloured building up ahead,' the old mouse said. ‘With the green door. At least –' she eyed the shabby door critically ‘– it used to be green.'

‘Let's walk faster,' Alice urged, for she had caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. ‘I think someone's coming.'

‘There, there, dear,' soothed the old mouse. ‘You're just feeling jumpy because of the protest tomorrow. And here we are, see?'

She pushed open the heavy green door and held it as Alice, a shopping bag in each hand, walked through into a small foyer.

‘Just the one flight, dear.' The old mouse began to stump slowly up the stairs.

Oh, hurry, hurry
, Alice begged silently as they inched up the stairs. Then,
Please hurry
, as the old mouse fumbled in her basket for her door key.

‘There we are.' As the key turned in the lock, Alice heard a squeal of hinges as the heavy green door was pushed open on the ground floor.

With rising terror, she heard a silvery voice say, ‘She came in here. I'm sure of it.'

Sophia!

Alice flung herself through the door after the old mouse and shut it behind them, her hand trembling on the lock.

‘I need to hide,' she whispered urgently. ‘There's someone downstairs. She's looking for me. A Sourian spy …'
Who killed Solomon
, she added silently. She looked around the old mouse's apartment to see that it was only a single room. Besides, if she was found here, the old mouse would be in trouble too. A vision of Sophia advancing, knife in hand, flared in Alice's mind.

The old mouse was looking frightened now. ‘The window,' she said. ‘You'll have to go out the window.'

It was only one flight up, Alice reminded herself as the old mouse opened the window.

She heard footsteps on the stairs outside and a silvery voice saying, ‘Of course I don't know which apartment she went into, Horace. We'll just have to look in every one till we find her.'

Alice scrambled out onto the window ledge, almost losing her balance as the old mouse hastily shut the window. Only one flight up. But still … Alice looked at the drop onto the hard cobblestones below. If she hurt herself she'd never be able to outrun Sophia and Horace. She could wait out here until they left maybe? But if they searched the room they'd surely spot her …

Her heartbeat quickened. She had to do something, and fast. She would have to jump. There was no other option … Or was there? For just to the left of the window a washing line was attached to a hook with a pulley on the wall. It stretched across the narrow street to a hook on the opposite wall. Apart from a few tea towels fluttering limply, the line was bare. Would it hold her weight?

It would have to. She edged across the window ledge until she was close enough to grab a tea towel. Throwing it over the line, she grasped one end in each hand. Then, taking a deep breath, she stepped off the ledge.

She slid towards the street, a rush of air whistling in her ears, the line bending beneath her weight. Would it
snap? She looked down at the street then quickly looked up again. Her arms were straining almost out of their sockets, the line straining at the hooks on the walls, as she reached the centre of the washing line and stopped. She was dangling just a few metres above the ground. She let go of the tea towel and dropped to the street, and was preparing to sprint away as she heard a squeal of hinges. The green door was opening again!

With no time to run, her eyes landed on the only possible hiding place and she raced over. She shifted the lid of the metal garbage bin and peered in. It was smelly but, luckily, it was empty. She clambered inside, then pulled the lid back to its original position.

Her heart was pounding so loud she thought it must surely echo off the metal sides.

‘I was sure she went into that building.' It was Sophia, and she sounded frustrated.

‘But she wasn't in there,' said the gloomy voice of her coal-black companion.

‘Thank you, Horace dear, I did notice that,' Sophia said waspishly. The usual amused note was gone from her silvery voice, Alice noticed. ‘Oh, I could just
scream
. There's something about that girl that just gets to me. I hate those thoughtful, watchful types. They have a nasty way of spoiling one's best-laid plans. Just like Solomon …'

‘You shouldn't have killed him, Sophia,' Horace said quietly. ‘You went too far.'

‘Did I ask for your opinion, Horace? No I did not.
Now stop your blathering and start searching. She must be here somewhere.'

‘Search where?' Horace objected. ‘Apart from these bins –' Alice heard a clang as Horace lifted the lid of the bin beside her then dropped it again ‘– there's nowhere to hide.'

As the lid above her head was lifted Alice clamped her hands over her mouth to smother her scream and screwed her eyes shut – but just before she did, she caught a glimpse of coal-black fur and … did their eyes meet, ever so briefly? She couldn't be sure, and so she trembled in silence, waiting for the cry of discovery.

But the lid clanged down on the bin and Horace's doleful voice said, ‘There's no sign of her, Sophia. Are you sure you didn't imagine it?'

‘Do I look like I'm in an imaginative mood, Horace?' Sophia snapped.

‘No, Sophia,' Horace answered.

‘Let's just sit here on the steps for a while,' Sophia decided. ‘She might come out of whichever building she slipped into.'

‘Okay.'

For several minutes neither mouse spoke and Alice, crouching in the bin, groaned inwardly. Her muscles were starting to cramp. How long would they sit there?

Finally, Horace said, ‘Sophia, what are you going to do?'

‘Do when, Horace?'

‘After the protest – if the Gerandans succeed.'

So they knew about the protest, Alice thought. Well, of course they did. It was impossible to keep something that big a secret.

‘The Gerandans can't succeed,' Sophia said vehemently. ‘You know that. Queen Eugenia isn't worried about it and nor should you be.'

‘I know,' said Horace. ‘I know they can't succeed. But … if they do?'

There was a long silence, and for a moment Alice considered the possibility that Sophia had walked away without replying.

Then the silvery voice said, ‘I've never thought about it. I'd … I'd go home, I suppose.' She sounded almost surprised by the idea. ‘I have family in Skardon. Perhaps I'd visit them. Have a holiday. Learn to cook. Who knows? I could live an ordinary life.' She laughed her bell-like laugh. ‘But, Horace, before I do –' her voice turned low and vicious ‘–
I want to get that girl!
'

‘Sophia, I don't even think it was her,' Horace said. ‘Surely she and her brother would have left Cornoliana after they rescued the boy from the dungeon. You must have seen some other brown mouse. So can we please go back to the palace? I thought I heard General Ashwover say something about there being a cheese roast with all the trimmings for dinner tonight. Of course, we might have missed it already.'