The Book of Beasts (16 page)

Dimly, Em could sense Simon kneeling on her left, and that she was cradled in Zach's lap. She felt safer than she had in months. But the longer she stayed in this place between consciousness and unconsciousness, the more Zach's anxiety and fear were infiltrating her senses, creeping slowly and deliberately up her spine.

Oh, Em! Why did you save me?

Em's eyes opened. She smiled up at Zach.

Because I knew I could.

The air cleared of the lingering red fog, and the sun came out as Simon and Zach helped Em into the back of the Land Rover. Simon was about to start the Land Rover and turn the vehicle round when Em strained against her seatbelt.

‘Simon, stop!' she croaked. ‘We never checked to see if Grandpa's folder was on the postbox.'

Zach jumped out of the Land Rover and punched in the code again, unlocking the gates. He was gone for several minutes. When he returned, with a shake of his head and empty hands, Em noticed he was limping. A red gooey gash gleamed on his leg, shining as if illuminated beneath the skin.

Minutes later, as they pulled up in front of the Abbey, the only evidence that Zach's injury had ever existed was a smudged red tattoo on his calf. It was the size of a penny and the heart shape of an ivy leaf.

Auchinmurn Isle
The Middle Ages

Solon lifted the key from under his tunic, unlocked the arched wooden door of the Abbot's tower and slipped up the stone steps. He had no idea what might be waiting for him at the top.

How many times had he skipped up these stairs for lessons? He had learned what it meant to be a member of the Order of Era Mina from Brother Renard, but from the Abbot he had been taught how best to prepare a skin so that it absorbed the monks' illuminating inks slowly and evenly; how to fight with a knife and a sword; and perhaps the best gift of all: how to read.

A strange stench filled the spiral staircase. It reminded Solon of the cabbage water that his mother saved in clay pots on the shelf above the hearth, for use whenever any of the children were gripped with illness. Nothing was moving. Not even a breeze from the sea penetrated the arrow slits in the walls. Everything was eerily still.

The first door Solon reached after two flights of stairs was the Abbot's bedroom. He nudged the door with his toes and it swung open. The canopied bed was empty, but someone had slept in it recently: the heavy brocade quilt was bundled at the foot of the bed and the pillows were on the floor. Monks were nothing if not fastidious, and the Abbot was no exception. He would not have left his bed unmade.

Out of respect, Solon shook out the quilt and spread it neatly across the bed. When he picked up the pillows and tossed them on top of the quilts, each filled the air with a red chalky cloud.

Click-clack. Click-clack.

Something was climbing up the tower steps. Solon ducked behind the door. Slipping his bronze dagger from its sheath, he wiped his palms on his tunic and prepared to attack.

When a black cockerel lurched into the room on scrabbling claws, Solon almost laughed with relief. Sheathing his dagger again, he climbed up the last flight of stairs to the Abbot's study.

This room had been torn apart, the furnishings smashed to pieces. The Abbot's chair and desk were upside down in one corner. The tapestry that the Abbot had spent years supervising was in shreds on the floor.

Solon swallowed his pain. He could not do anything about the broken furniture but he could at least restore the desk and chair to their rightful positions.

As he pulled the desk back on to its feet, he noticed a piece of parchment peeking out from underneath a splintered panel of wood. Solon carefully freed the Abbot's ledger, its pages filled with elegant columns and figures. The Abbot had clearly been working on the monastery's accounts when Matt's father had taken control.

Solon sank into the Abbot's chair, holding the ledger to his chest. He couldn't carry it with him while he and Matt searched the rest of the monastery, but it was too valuable to leave here. He needed to find a safe hiding place.

Outside he heard the hoot of an owl and the strange drone that he and Matt had heard echoing beneath the catacombs. Time was running out.

As a young novice in the monastery, the Abbot had been a carpenter. Solon got to his feet again and scanned the room for some kind of secret compartment. He walked carefully round the room three times, tapping, stomping and listening for hollows in the floor. The walls were rock solid. There was nothing.

Solon returned thoughtfully to the Abbot's chair. It had been the Abbot's prize and glory, carved when he himself had been an apprentice to the Abbot before him.

Examining the detail in its carvings – the story of the twin perytons etched into the wood on the high back panel – Solon first tried to manipulate the arms of the chair. When nothing happened, he set it on its side and played with the legs instead, tapping and twisting them. Then he noticed something puzzling.

Viewed from underneath, the back of the chair was thicker than it looked when the chair was upright.

It took only seconds for Solon to discover that pressing and then turning the image of the white peryton on the tall back panel released a series of tiny gears. The gears whirred, clicked – and slid open.

Solon felt such a rush of adrenaline that it set him back on his heels. A manuscript wrapped in leather lay securely tucked into the secret cavity.

He lifted the manuscript out. As he did so, he was hit with a roar of sound so loud that he bit his tongue. Scrambling backwards in pain and shock, he dropped the folio on to the floor. He knew what he had found.

My master dedicated his life to finishing this
, he thought, gazing at the leather-bound manuscript with troubled eyes.
But now he is too frail for the task.

Carefully untying the leather straps, he opened the book.

The last beast that old Brother Renard had illuminated was the griffin, with the head of a giant eagle and the body the size of ten lions. According to the text, the griffin was a ferocious guardian who could gallop on the ground faster than any other beast of the land. Its speed in the air was second only to the peryton.

Solon closed the book and fastened the leather straps again. After a moment's thought, he decided to put it back in its little chamber, together with the ledger. It was clear that no one else had discovered the chair's secret. It would be safe there a while longer.

Next, Solon did his best to re-create the chaos he had found when he'd entered the study. He turned over the chair and the desk again. He cleared his mind as far as he could of any thoughts of the Abbot, the griffin, and most of all,
The
Book of Beasts.

Then he left the room. He needed to find Matt.

There it was again. The same whirring noise they'd heard earlier. It sounded like the shuttle of a loom shooting back and forth, and it was coming from deep in the catacombs. Solon moved across the courtyard, ears pricked, scanning the wave-shattered space for Matt.

A muffled scream echoed from the nearby woods. Solon froze. The tree tops rustled. He decided it was an owl catching prey.

A lantern bobbing on a rowing boat out on the water caught his attention. Darting along the broken wall of the monastery kitchens, Solon ducked for cover behind what remained of the hearth, and watched.

Two figures dragged their boat up on to the sand and tethered it to an outcropping of rocks. Solon recognized them as the gravediggers who had come to Auchinmurn to bury the dead after the Viking attack, and then remained to drink the wine from the monastery cellars. They were simple-minded, shiftless men. Solon thought it likely that Matt's father had them under his control.

‘Ach,' one complained, ‘that auld witch bit me when ah tried to feed her. Nothing more comin' tae her 'til dawn. And if she doesn't want it then it'll be all the more fer me.'

‘Burn 'em all. That's what I say. An ah'll keep saying it. Abomininshawns.' Solon heard a gurgling sound as the second man washed his words down with a swig from a jug hooked on his fingers. ‘An the de'il himself can go with the banshee for all ah care.'

‘Wheesht!' hissed the first. ‘The de'il himself will hear ye!'

Passing the jug between them in silence, the men headed unsteadily for the Keep, a secure square building on the other side of the chapel where the monks kept their stores of rye, barley and beer. At the Keep's small arched doorway, Solon watched them come to a stumbling halt.

Looking around to be sure they hadn't been followed, the heavier one lifted a master key from round his neck to unlock the door. ‘Fancy a wee night cap, ma friend?' he offered, waving the key under his companion's nose.

‘Don't mind if ah do, noble sir.'

The lock creaked and they disappeared inside.

Solon had no doubt who the ‘witch' was. Jeannie, the old woman from the future who had controlled the wave. The woman Matt was so intent on finding.

He unhooked the walkie-talkie from his strap and held his finger on the button the way Matt had shown him.

Breathless and red-faced, Matt appeared at Solon's side within moments. The young scribe was gazing around in consternation, looking for the source of the rapid high-pitched squeal coming from the walkie-talkie in his hand.

‘You can take your finger off the button now,' Matt said.

Solon did. To their relief, the squealing stopped.

‘I think I know where your Jeannie is being held,' Solon said.

Matt tensed. ‘Where?'

‘In the tower on Era Mina. I saw the two drunken fools who have been taking food to her.'

Matt climbed over the rubble and out on to the rocks that lined the shore. Even with the help of the opera glasses, all he could see was the faint outline of the pencil tower in the pale light of the moon. It was still amazing to him how dark it was in the Middle Ages.

‘We need to get across there and see,' he said, lowering the binoculars.

‘Did you find my master?' Solon asked.

Matt shook his head. ‘The cell is empty. What happened in there? The whole room smells of bird droppings.'

‘One of my master's inadvertent animations.' Solon untethered the gravediggers' rowing boat and dragged it to the water's edge. ‘If your father has locked your Jeannie up in that tower, then he may have done the same to my master.' He climbed in the boat and took the oars in his hands. ‘Are you coming?'

As Solon rowed them both towards the small island, Matt thought about animating an outboard motor. But an engine noise, of any size, in this time would call attention to them. So far they had managed to avoid his dad's notice. No point in pushing their luck, just to save a little time.

The island loomed up in front of them. The boys climbed out into the freezing, knee-deep surf, dragged the boat to a level above the tidemark and ran to the tower.

The first thing that Matt noticed was the way that the door stood almost two metres from the ground. Perhaps it had been built that way to avoid the tower flooding during high tides. The second was the thin pulsing glow of an animation shield around the door's perimeter, much like the one Simon had created for the Abbey. But it was the third thing that lifted his heart. He could hear singing. Melodic and merry and unmistakably Jeannie.