The Merlin Conspiracy Read online

  “Oh, it is,” she said. “It’s only a hundred steps over to the trees this morning. I’d been meaning to ask you why.”

  “I think it may be because Romanov’s ill,” I said.

  Mini wasn’t attending. Her ears and her trunk were both lifted toward the sky, somewhere behind the house. I craned round that way. The house was in my way, but I could hear something, a sort of whirring.

  “What is it?” I said.

  Mini’s eyes, wonderful gray, clever, innocent eyes, turned to meet mine. “Some kind of a flying machine,” she said. Her thick gray eyelashes fluttered nervously. “It—it doesn’t feel good.”

  “Is it coming here?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  “In that case,” I said, “come and put yourself in front of the door to the house. I don’t think we want whoever it is going inside. Not with Romanov ill.”

  TWO

  After a bit, from where we stood, with Mini across the house door and me with my head just about touching the lowest bit of her gray, wrinkled stomach, I could see the flier, too, across her huge rump and the corner of the roof. It was just passing from a whitish slice of sky to a blue one. It crossed the line that divided the two sorts of sky with a kind of a blip, which seemed to slow it down. At any rate, it took longer than I expected to cross the blue slice, and when it came to the next line, there was another blip as it crossed into a slice that was all bulgy gray and silver clouds and went doggedly whirring across those. It took so long that I kept hoping it wasn’t coming here after all. But that was too much to hope, of course.

  Five minutes later it circled deafeningly in over the house and came down at the top of the hill, beside the garden wall. It was like a helicopter without the big rotors, white and quite small. Mini curled her trunk up in disgust at the smell that came off it. The hens ran for their lives. I clutched my basket of eggs and stared at big numbers and letters on its pointed tail, and the goat came wandering up, chewing, and stared, too.

  “I bet it’s Mrs. Romanov,” I said as the whirring stopped. “I made her really annoyed this morning.”

  A door popped open, and two boys in embroidered jackets jumped down onto the grass. A man followed them out in a more stately way and stood staring around for a moment, tugging his embroidered coat down and putting his gold-rimmed glasses straight, before he snapped a curt word to the boys, and they all three began walking down the grassy slope toward the house.

  My stomach sort of jumped. This was that Prayermaster I’d mistaken for Romanov in Loggia City, with his two kids. They must be here to have the law on me. I wondered if I could get Mini to kick their flier to bits so that they couldn’t drag me off back there.

  “No, I will not!” Mini said. “What do you take me for?”

  Then I’ll just have to throw eggs at them, I thought, watching them as they came. They were just like I remembered them. The Prayermaster had that stiff, self-righteous look, the look you learn to know and dread in teachers at school, and the boys were just as bad. The older one was dark and smug and saintly. The younger one was the ratty little sneak with fair hair and a pointed face who had pinched me and twisted the pinches.

  They all three looked up at Mini and down at the goat and then shrugged and looked across at me. The Prayermaster unclosed his disapproving mouth to say, “Nick Mallory.” I nodded. I suppose he had got my name from the Loggia City police. “The unclean one,” he said, “known as Romanov—I take it he is inside this house.”

  Unclean yourself! I thought. “What do you want to know that for?”

  “Naturally, because we are here to eliminate him,” the Prayermaster explained, as if he was saying something very obvious to someone very stupid. “Kindly stand aside from the door and remove your animals as you go.”

  I stared into his cool, straight face and his stern gray eyes inside their gold-rimmed lenses, and I wondered all over again how on earth I’d managed to mistake him for Romanov. And the way he put his explanation made me very suspicious. “Just a moment,” I said. “Did you by any chance offer Romanov money to eliminate me?”

  They were so surprised that I knew I’d guessed wrong about that. Ratty’s little mauve face gaped, but he changed it almost at once to a jeer. The older boy blinked and stared. The Prayermaster looked stunned and then appalled and pitying. “That you should think such a thing of me,” he said, “that you should imagine that I would have money dealings with an unclean one, shows that you stand in serious need of guidance and correction, my boy. I shall take you to Loggia City and show you your errors shortly. Meanwhile, stand aside from that door.”

  “But you did put some kind of spell on me, back in Loggia, didn’t you?” I said. “You must have done. It’s the only explanation.”

  The Prayermaster’s face went stony. “Moderate your language before me,” he said. “Cleanse your mouth. I did no such filth. That which I did was wholly lawful, and this I freely admit to. It is my custom, as it has been for years, to raise up correct prayers daily for one to come to me who could lead me to the place where Romanov hides. Yesterday my prayers were answered when you came. And having found you, I then set Joel here”—he laid a fatherly hand on the elder boy’s head—“to watch for your escape and lay bonds upon you to lead to us this place. But this was all done in purity and in the proper form.” He closed his mouth into a straight line and gave me a hard stare.

  “In other words,” I said, “you did do something, but spell is a dirty word.”

  He glared at me. The two boys flickered glances at one another. They were loving this.

  Mini blew a sigh through her trunk. “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind,” I thought at her. “They’re nutters.” I was interested that none of those three seemed to know Mini had said anything. It seemed as if she was on some wavelength that they weren’t picking up. “Then I’m sorry to sound offensive,” I said, “but I think it was a dirty trick whatever you call it. You got me arrested for no reason at all. And what’s Romanov done to harm you?”

  Both boys spoke up at this. Little Ratty said, “He’s vile, strong vile, and he hides away here where we can’t get at him.”

  Joel said, “Shut up, Japheth! Romanov doesn’t pray properly, and he’s got at the workers with his antiprayers so that they keep asking for more money. Isn’t that right?” he asked, turning his face up sweetly to Daddy Prayermaster.

  The Prayermaster nodded and patted Joel’s head again. Ratty Japheth muttered, “Know-it-all. Pet-boy!” but the Prayermaster pretended not to hear.

  “Well, so they should ask for more money!” I said. “They’re the ones who have to sit out in the radiation sewing these pretty flowers you lot wear all over your clothes.”

  The Prayermaster did me his look of sorrow and pity. “You have no true understanding,” he said sadly. “When we have done with Romanov, it will be my pleasure to have you in our Prayer House for proper instruction.”

  The boys flickered another glance at each other at this, full of glee. I could tell it would be their pleasure, too. With steel toecaps probably.

  “Just try it!” I said. “I’m bigger than either of you. You’ll be lucky to come away with the right number of fingers.”

  Joel sniggered. Ratty Japheth said, “Ah, but you’ll be under the prayer. We won’t.”

  The Prayermaster just stood there as if it was no concern of his. I said to him, “Little sweethearts, your sons, aren’t they? And I don’t think much of you as a father either!”

  He ignored this. “Move your animals,” he said, “and stand aside from that door.”

  I said, “Well, I suppose I could, only I don’t see what good it would do you. Romanov’s not here. Didn’t I say? I came all the way here for nothing, just like you lot did.”

  The Prayermaster took no notice of that either. He put his hands up by his shoulders, palms out toward me, and said, “Let the prayer be answered that opens all portals!”

  There was a fair
ly strong feeling of pushing. The goat swayed with it. I found it quite hard not to take a step backward into Mini. Mini swayed, too, but this turned out to be because she had spotted another egg in the flower bed. Her trunk shot out straight, fixed on the egg, and curled up holding it. Very politely and gently, she put it in my basket with the other eggs. “One you missed!” she told me proudly.

  To say the Prayermaster was put out would be putting it mildly. He took his hands down and goggled. The boys gawped. I don’t think they have elephants much in Loggia City. But I think that what really got to the Prayermaster was the way Mini seemed immune to his kind of magic. He could see he was up against a mountain of passive resistance here. He went thoughtful.

  But he was not the kind to give in. He stepped back, humming and intoning things under his breath that I couldn’t quite hear, and his hands came out and made a careful shape in the air. I tried not to think about that shape, but I was fairly sure that it was the outline of me, basket and all. He gave me a stern but kindly look as he finished. “You do not seem to understand,” he said, “that the longer you deny me entrance here, the worse it will be for you. You are now under the prayer, Nick Mallory. Remorse and despair grip you—and will grip you harder the longer you abide. I propose to take a turn round this abomination of an island. When I come back, I believe you will have thought better of your intransigence. Come, boys.”

  He cupped one of his large, well-kept hands round each boy’s head and pushed them in front of him toward the other end of the house. But he let go after a few steps and strode on in front, up the slope in the direction of the trees. He was one of those who always has to stride in front. The boys turned back toward me.

  “He’s not our father!” Joel said. “Thank all the Powers! We’re just his two best prayerboys. So!”

  “And we don’t like you,” Japheth added. I could tell I had really annoyed them by thinking they were the Prayermaster’s sons.

  I was going to say something about the way they all deserved one another, related or not. I had my mouth open ready to say it when Japheth trod on another egg that I’d missed. His embroidered legs shot out from under him. He landed on his behind with an eggy smish.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was wonderful. Poetic.

  Japheth’s reaction was anything but poetic. His mauvish little face went a sort of gray-purple, and he stared, glared—worse than glared—at me as he got up. It was nearly a mad look, the sort of look you’d imagine a murderer giving his victim just before he brought the ax down. It almost frightened me for a moment.

  “Now I really hate you,” he told me, in a soft little voice that sent quite a shiver down my spine. “You just wait.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said. I was nearly twice his size after all. “You’ll still look an idiot.”

  He didn’t answer. He just turned round, with his backside all yellow, and stalked away after the other two.

  I sprang into action the moment they were out of sight. I don’t know about remorse and despair, but I was ready to bet that the Prayermaster was simply using that guff to cover up his next move. I knew he was going to walk round the house and look for another way to get in. And the window was open beside Romanov’s bed.

  “Quick,” I said to Mini. “Guard the door while I’m inside.”

  “All right,” she said. “Are they really wanting to kill the person in the house?”

  “Sure of it,” I said. “Don’t let them in whatever they do.”

  I whipped underneath Mini and through the door, dumped the eggs on the kitchen table and whirled round to shoot the bolt on the inside. Rattle, clap. That felt better. I didn’t bother shutting the kitchen window then, because Mini was faithfully in front of it, making the room quite dark. All the same, the place seemed smaller again than it had been. I simply pelted out and along the corridor to Romanov’s bedroom. That seemed smaller, too, and it smelled a bit dank, but the main thing was that there was nobody else in there yet except Romanov himself. I’d got there in time. I slammed both halves of the window shut and banged the latch until it was down so tight that I couldn’t get it up again.

  Romanov groaned and rolled over at the noise, but that was all right.

  I raced out and into the bathroom. That was suddenly quite tiny, and the little window high in the wall didn’t seem made to be opened anyway. I charged across the corridor to the room that was probably Romanov’s workroom. I opened the door to it, but I couldn’t go in there, any more than I had been able to before. It was dark in there anyway. I hoped that this meant it didn’t have a window, but to be on the safe side, I slammed the door shut and dragged the telephone table over in front of it. Then, hoping that whatever kept me out would at least hold the Prayermaster up a bit, I rushed back toward the living room. As I remembered, the walls there were mostly windows, great wide ones, and he’d only have to smash one to get in.

  Before I got there, an evil white face with horns and a beard came round the corner at me. I nearly screamed. I jumped several feet backward. Then I swore. It was that goat. It must have whizzed indoors after me.

  “Keep away from me,” I said to it, “or I won’t be responsible for what I’ll do!”

  Then I went into the living room. I had to stop for a second and stare. The shelf of books was the same, but all the sofas were gone, including the one I’d slept on. In their place there was a set of moth-eaten old armchairs standing about on a floor of old bare wood with dingy rugs on it. There were still a lot of windows, but they weren’t the nice, pale wooden modern ones I remembered. They were a sort of job lot. There was one rickety long one with lots of small panes, one big tall one that was just a sheet of glass surrounded by new white wood, and about six small crooked ones that would have looked better in one of the sheds. And they all had different fastenings, none of which worked very well. I rushed round them hammering them shut and wedging the worst catches with books. The one that was a big sheet of glass really worried me, though. It was so easy to break. But when I pushed my head against the glass and squinted downward, I saw there was a sheer drop from it to a piece of water that looked like real deep ocean. Big white surf was breaking against the walls of the house down there. So perhaps it was all right. Unless Prayermasters could fly, of course.

  I turned round to discover that the goat had followed me. It looked at me. I looked at it. And I realized I’d gone and shut myself into the house with it. I knew goats smell strong, but I hadn’t known before that when they’re indoors, they reek. Or it was more of a stench, really.

  “All right,” I said. “But if you eat any of these books, Romanov will probably kill you.” I knew he would. They all had leather covers and titles like A True and Faithfulle Historie of the Travels of Jehan Amberglaffe. My dad is always paying fortunes for books like those. He doesn’t let me touch them.

  The goat looked slyly aside from me and started eyeing up an armchair.

  “Yes, have that instead if you have to,” I said.

  Then I remembered the kitchen window and raced off to shut that. The goat had been in the kitchen first. The stone floor was all covered with crumbs from the loaf it had snitched off the table. But Mini, bless her heart, was still standing outside. I took a look out under her gray wrinkled belly as I made that window fast. The hens were pecking about in the grass again, and the flier was still there above them on the slope, but there was no sign of the Prayermaster or his boys.

  Perhaps, I thought, while I hastily crawled around the flagstones scooping up handfuls of loaf crumbs, they’re all in one of the sheds doing dangerous incantations. So the next thing to do is go and stand in Romanov’s bedroom and incantate back at them. I threw the breadcrumbs into the range fire and set off that way again.

  Before I’d even reached the door, I heard the hens shrieking and flapping outside. Then I heard the last sound I would have expected: the violent, tinny whirring of the flier. They were leaving. Or pretending to go. It had to be a trap.

  To tell the truth,
I felt a bit of a fool. I leaned over the sink and peered under Mini’s wrinkly gray tum—which moved out of the way as I got there, as if Mini was as surprised as I was—and the rotor thingy on the flier’s pointed end was definitely spinning, and its front end was cocked upward ready for takeoff. Its door was still open, though, and Japheth’s skinny shape, all covered in bright red embroidery, was tearing along the hillside beside the garden wall, arms waving, obviously terrified he’d be left behind.

  That was astonishing enough. Even more astonishing, there was a new person there. He was an elderly man in tweeds, and he was just stopping on his way down to the house to look over his shoulder at the flier. He had a sort of ex-army look, this new man. I wondered if he’d somehow frightened the other three off. Anyway, he watched, and I watched, while Japheth went rushing up to the open door of the flier and scrambled up through it, and then got it jammed in his hurry to close it and had to open it again, so that it was still partly open when the flier took off in a tremendous, whirring swoop and then went fairly belting, and wagging about as it belted, away across the waters on the other side of the garden.

  The ex-army man shrugged and came on toward the house again, sort of staggering as if he was exhausted.

  I suddenly recognized him by the way he walked. It was the drunk who had given me the blue flame. I said, “Oh, no!” and wondered whether to keep the door bolted and lie low.

  He was outside the door the next second. I heard him say, “Come on, elephant! Out of it now! Move over!” and I heard Mini politely getting out of his way. She really was much too polite and humble for an elephant. After that he was banging on the door and shouting, “Hallo, the house! Anyone home? Open up, damn it!”

  And I behaved just like Mini. I suppose it was those military orders. I unbolted the door and stood aside while he came stumbling in.

  “Somebody here,” he said. “Good. For Pete’s sake, have you got any coffee? I’m out on my feet and dying of a hangover.” And he pulled a chair out from the table and crumpled into it, with his elbows on the table and his face in his skinny old hands. “Coffee!” he croaked imploringly. “Black coffee!”