The Song of the Winns (30 page)

20

The Rendezvous

T
hey burst through a door and found themselves in the kitchen. Alice looked around wildly for any sign of Queen's Guards, but all she saw was Cook, standing at the kitchen table. She had a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was still trying to comprehend the scene she had witnessed in General Ashwover's office. When she registered the presence of the two panting mice in her kitchen, she looked startled but not surprised.

“Who are you really?” she demanded. “You're not Sourian servants at all, are you?”

“No,” managed Alice, still puffing. “We're Gerandans . . . undercover . . . and Sophia is right behind us.”

“Get in here.” Cook opened the oven door.

Alice was about to protest when she heard footsteps on the servants' stairs. She and Alex clambered in and Cook pushed the oven door shut. The oven was warm from
recent use but not, Alice was relieved to find, hot. As she and Alex jostled for space it seemed that there were too many arms and legs and tails and ears to belong to only two mice, but at last they managed to curl up into two small neat balls. Even so it was a tight squeeze, and Alex's whiskers were poking into Alice's right ear in a most uncomfortable way.

“Oh, ma'am, thank goodness,” came the distant sound of Cook's voice. “Those two horrible children were here. I went after them with my rolling pin but they got away.”

Sophia's silvery voice sounded distorted from inside the oven. “Thank you, Cook, I—” She paused. “It certainly smells delicious in here,” she remarked. “What's that over there on the dresser?”

“That's my blue cheese crumble,” Cook replied.

Alice could feel her legs starting to cramp, but still Sophia continued to linger.

“And there . . . is that a chocolate cake?”

“A triple chocolate cheesecake.”

“And in the oven?” Sophia asked. “I can just make out something through the glass. Two things, in fact . . .”

“The oven, ma'am?” Cook cleared her throat. “In the oven are two big ripe pumpkins.”

“Pumpkins?” Sophia sounded surprised.

“That's right, ma'am. I'm making slow-roasted pumpkin confit, which I'll serve with goat's cheese. It's a Gerandan delicacy.”

“A delicacy, you say? I adore delicacies. May I take a peek?”

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” said Cook firmly, “but you know how it is with confits. They're very temperamental. If I open that door it'll dry those pumpkins right out and they'll be ruined. Then the general will be upset, on account of he wants this dinner to be absolutely perfect for you. And if the general is upset, that Lester will make a slow-roasted confit of my head.”

“I quite understand,” Sophia assured her. “I'll leave you in peace. I have the utmost respect for the careful preparation of meals. Now, about those little brats . . .”

“They went that way!” said Cook. “You'd better hurry.”

“Oh, there's no need to rush,” said Sophia casually, sauntering toward the door. “I'll get them in the end. They know that as well as I do.”

In the close dark space of the oven, Alice couldn't repress a shiver.

Seconds later, Cook opened the oven door and Alice and Alex climbed out. As they were shaking their limbs to try to restore blood flow, they heard someone clump up the back steps. Alice squeaked in terror as the back door opened.

Fiercely Jones pushed his hat back on his head and regarded Alice and Alex balefully.

“The Queen's Guards have turned my potting shed upside down looking for you.” He advanced on them threateningly. “I'll keep a watch on 'em, Cook, and make sure they don't escape. You run for the guards.”

Cook moved to stand between the gardener and his erstwhile helpers. “Fiercely, wait—you don't understand.
Raz and Rita aren't Sourian at all; they're Gerandan.”

The gardener stopped short. “What?”

“The Queen's Guards are after them because they're spies. We can't turn them in.”

Fiercely Jones squinted at Alex and Alice down his long nose.

“Is this true?” he asked them.

The two young mice nodded vigorously.

“We're not really called Raz and Rita. We were sent by—” Alice stopped. Should she reveal who they were and what their mission was?

“Sent by who?” Fiercely was clearly suspicious.

Alice and her brother exchanged glances.

“FIG,” said Alice.

“FIG?” said Cook. “But that's Zanzibar's resistance group.”

“Zanzibar is still in hiding, of course, since he escaped from prison,” Alice explained, “but—”

“Wait,” the gardener interrupted. “Do you mean to say that Zanzibar is free?”

“That's right. He escaped from the Cranken prison and—”

“He's free!” Cook hugged herself gleefully.

Alice glanced around nervously, mindful of Lester's uncanny way of appearing soundlessly. “I think we'd better get out of here,” she said.

“Of course,” said Cook immediately. “Fiercely, we have to help them.”

“Wait here,” said the gardener. “I'll be back in a jiffy.”
Then he pulled his hat down over his eyes once more and slunk out.

“You really shouldn't have written FIG in the icing though,” Cook scolded. “You wouldn't have been caught if not for that. And you almost got me into terrible trouble.”

“But it wasn't us,” Alice protested.

“It wasn't you?” said Cook, astonished. “But who else could it possibly have been? You don't mean to tell me there are other Gerandan spies in the palace?”

“No . . . At least, I don't think so.” Tobias had said that FIG was having trouble infiltrating the palace, hadn't he? She wasn't sure of anything anymore.

All three paced the kitchen anxiously, until finally they heard a squeal and a clunk outside the kitchen door. Cook opened the door a crack and peered out, then gestured to Alice and Alex. It was Fiercely Jones, pushing a wheelbarrow full of manure. The sound they had heard was the wheelbarrow's squeaky wheel.

“What are you doing moving manure around now?” asked Cook. “You were meant to be finding a way out of here for Raz and Rita.”

“This is their way out of here,” returned the gardener.

“Pushing a wheelbarrow of manure?” asked Cook.

“In the manure,” said Fiercely Jones.

Alice groaned.

“Isn't there another way?” Alex asked.

“None that I can think of,” said the gardener. “Get in, and be quick about it.”

Hidden in the manure it was just how Alice had
dreamed it. Her nose and ears were soon clogged with the foul-smelling substance. All she could do was keep her eyes shut tight and try to breathe as shallowly as possible so as not to inhale manure into her lungs.

Then they began to move. Slowly, it seemed to Alice, so slowly. Was the gardener taking them on a tour of the palace grounds? Why was it taking so long? Finally the wheelbarrow began to rattle and bump, as if they were crossing gravel.

“Aren't you going the wrong way with that, Jones?” Alice could just make out Wooster's voice through the manure in her ears.

“No, sir,” said the gardener, his tone aggrieved. “As if it's not enough that I have two hundred and thirty-eight flowerbeds to attend to in the palace grounds, now Mr. Lester's wanting purple flowers growing around the city walls. Meanwhile, those two useless helpers he gave me have skived off somewhere, and I have to shift all this manure myself.”

“It's no wonder those helpers were useless—they weren't really servants at all. They were Gerandan spies!”

“You don't say,” said Fiercely Jones in an uninterested voice.

“And I'm the one who escorted them into the palace,” said Wooster. He sounded quite proud of himself.

“But don't you worry,” said his partner confidently. “There's no way they'll slip by us.”

“That's a comfort, ma'am,” said the gardener. And then they were on the move again, bumping over cobblestones
before passing smoothly over the planks of the bridge on the far side of the square.

“Fiercely, was it you who spelled out FIG in the flowerbed?” Alex asked as they trundled along.

“It was not,” came the gardener's definite reply. “Why would I want to be drawing attention to myself like that?”

“Then who—”

“Quiet,” Fiercely Jones growled. “I can't walk down the street talking to a heap of manure. People will think I've gone crackers.”

From then on they were wheeled in silence, the only words exchanged being those between the gardener and the guards standing sentry at the city gate.

Inside the manure, it was growing decidedly hot, and Alice was just starting to remember hearing stories about how things could actually be cooked in manure when the wheelbarrow trundled to a stop.

“All right, you can get out here,” came the voice of Fiercely Jones, and then the wheelbarrow was tipped up, depositing Alice, Alex, and a heap of manure by a simple stone bridge which crossed a shallow stream. “We came out the south gate, and if you follow this here stream to the east you'll get to the Winns.”

“Thank you!” Alice called, as the gruff old gardener turned the wheelbarrow around and headed back in the direction they'd come.

Fiercely Jones didn't respond, merely raised a hand without looking back.

“Last one in's a rotten egg,” said Alex, looking
longingly at the clear stream. Then, wrinkling his nose as he regarded his manure-covered fur, he added, “Of course, we already smell worse than rotten eggs.”

The two reeking mice slid down the bank toward the water, and were about to dive in when Alice put up a hand to stop her brother. She'd heard a shout in the distance.

“Quick,” she said. “Hide under the bridge.”

The voice grew closer, still shouting, and Alice could make out the distinctive rhythm of boots marching in time.

“It's a Sourian patrol,” she breathed.

“Left, left, left, right, left . . .”

Then the boots were on the bridge, clip-clopping on the wooden boards, and she heard someone mutter in an undertone, “What's that disgusting smell?”

She held her breath until she heard a voice reply, “It must be the river. Eeeuw! I've heard a lot of bad things about Gerander, but I never expected the rivers to stink.”

“No surprise really,” said the mouse who had first commented.

“I suppose,” said the second.

And then they were gone.

When the clatter of heels had faded, Alice and Alex walked into the river and hastily washed the manure off their fur. Then they crossed the bridge and set off down the road, which followed the course of the stream, walking briskly, but not so briskly that they were in danger of catching up with the patrol.

Finally, Alice was able to share some of the thoughts
and fears that had been occupying her mind since they had overheard Sophia and the others in General Ashwover's office.

“Alex,” she said, “did you hear what Sophia was saying about the ginger brat with the scarf ? That must be Alistair!”

“I don't know,” said Alex. “Maybe they were talking about another ginger mouse with a scarf. Why would Alistair be an heir of Cornolius and not us?” He had clearly been doing some thinking too. “And I should think I'd know if I was an heir of Cornolius.”

“Maybe we are,” Alice said slowly. “Remember how Lester talked to Sophia about settling old scores? And then, when she saw us under the desk, she didn't seem all that surprised. It's as if we were already on her mind. And Lester—remember all those questions he asked about our father and about Tornley? It's like he suspected we weren't who we said we were and he was trying to trap us. But why should he suspect us?”

“Which leads us to the most important question,” Alex said. “Who's the traitor? Who's Songbird?”