The Kneebone Boy

by Ellen Potter

  He glowered at her in a way that made her want to take a step backward. She didn’t though. After making a low sound of disgust in his throat, he shoved past them and started off again, muttering, “If I were their aunt, I’d throw them all in the dungeon and toss the key into the abyss.”

  When Saint George was safely out of earshot, Lucia turned to her brothers.

  “He was here,” she said. “Up in that tree.” Her voice sounded odd even to herself. It was light and faraway, like she was recounting a dream.

  “He?” Max said. “Do you mean The Kneebone Boy?”

  Lucia hesitated. It felt like a very, very long hesitation to her, but it was no more than a couple of seconds.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you talk to him? What happened? Did he have Chester?” Otto asked.

  “Yes, Chester was with him,” Lucia said. “We talked a little. He’ll meet us by the birch trees tomorrow.”

  “You sound funny,” Otto said.

  “Did you actually see him then?” Max asked, wincing in expectation of a description.

  “No,” Lucia said. “I never did.”

  You are wondering why Lucia is not telling her brother that The Kneebone Boy is, in fact, the Sultan of Juwi. She has a good reason and it is this: They would not have believed her. Maybe you don’t believe her either. After all, she does have a tendency to see bits and pieces of the sultan in other people. There is no denying that Mr. Dupuis has the sultan’s chin and eyes. And her classmate Aidan McMartin has the Sultan’s lower lip, but exactly. Then there was the woman on the train. . . . They all have bits and pieces of the sultan but the boy in the tree was the sultan, every bit and piece of him, right down to the quick-primed eyes that looked as though they knew all Lucia’s worst qualities and liked her even more because of them.

  If she had told her brothers about the sultan and they didn’t believe that she had seen him, she ran the risk of not believing that she had seen him either. And she must believe she has seen him. Too much depends upon it in order for this story to come out right.

  “Here’s to our last night together!” Haddie tapped her Coke can against each of theirs. “You have been exemplary prisoners. You shall be sorely missed.”

  “But won’t we see you again?” Max said, without drinking to the toast.

  “That’s up to your father,”—Haddie threw back her head and swigged down some soda—“and if he finds you healthy and happy and all in one piece tomorrow.” She quickly scrutinized them all. “None of you have major abrasions or missing fingers, I assume?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Hmm.” Haddie seemed slightly disappointed. “Then maybe we should raise the stakes a little.”

  After supper Haddie fetched a box of fireworks that she had found stuffed up one of the fireplaces, probably by one of the Dusty Old Children as a prank for some poor servant who went to light a fire. (“What stinkers!” Haddie said. “I like those Kneebone kids more and more, even if they were pigs.”)

  They carried the box up the stairs and outside, to one of the walkways on top of the curtain wall. It was an excellent night for fireworks—clear and black and shot through with stars. From the walkway there was a fine view of Kneebone Castle, its lumpy, misshapen silhouette pitted with light from several windows.

  Haddie lit the first firecracker. It was a dud. All it did was make a thwipp sound then fizzle out.

  “Do you miss your mother very much?” Haddie asked them suddenly as she pulled out another firecracker from the box and handed it to Otto.

  The question rankled Lucia. It felt sneaky. It made her want to say, “If you are her, why don’t you just say so already! Say so, and we can be furious at you and make you cry and then we can forgive you!”

  Instead, she answered with perfect composure, “We manage.”

  But Max could not contain himself, of course. “We miss her every day,” he said, looking at Haddie ardently.

  “And you?” Haddie turned to Otto.

  Otto would not meet her eyes. He just stared down at the firecracker as he toyed with it.

  “All right,” said Haddie, “then tell me this.” She suddenly reached out and grabbing the end of his scarf, she gave it a sharp tug. “What’s the deal with the scarf?”

  Otto raised his right hand. Max and Lucia flinched. But instead of attacking Haddie, Otto rubbed his right hand across his chest, held his left pinky up and bent it down twice, then touched it to his chin.

  “What did he say?” Haddie looked to Lucia for a translation.

  Lucia frowned, perplexed. “He says that Mum gave him her scarf before she left.”

  Otto’s hands started moving again while Lucia and Max watched them carefully.

  “He says, the night before she disappeared Mum came into his room. She knelt beside his bed and tied the scarf around his neck. It was her special scarf. Then she told him to wear it always, and no matter what happened to her, no matter where she had to go, she would one day see the scarf and they would know each other by it.”

  Haddie smiled at Otto.

  “Good boy,” she said. Her eyes looked suspiciously moist. So you see, they did make her cry after all, just a little bit.

  They set off the rest of the firecrackers, and a couple of them went off beautifully, lighting up the black sky and even illuminating Kneebone Castle across the way. The drawbridge was down tonight and more lights flicked on throughout the castle, perhaps because of the strange spectacle of fireworks, yet it looked as grim as always.

  “Have you ever met the Kneebones?” Lucia asked Haddie, who was staring at the castle too.

  “Of course not,” Haddie said. “The Kneebones don’t live there anymore. They haven’t in years.”

  All the Hardscrabbles turned to her in surprise.

  “But you said they were living there now,” Lucia objected.

  “I never did,” Haddie replied.

  “She’s right,” Max said after thinking for a bit. “She never did. We just assumed.”

  “Local gossip is, the Kneebones lost all their money almost ten years ago. They sold everything, castle and folly included,” Haddie said.

  “Then who owns the castle now?” Lucia asked,

  “A doctor. What’s his name . . . what’s his name? . . . Oh! Azziz,” Haddie said. “Dr. Azziz.”

  “Dr. Azziz!” Lucia and Max cried out at the same time. They looked at each other in confusion.

  “Do you know him?” Haddie asked as she reached for the last firecracker in the box.

  “No,” Lucia said quickly. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  The last firecracker was a disappointment. It made a loud crack but after a brief flash of light it sputtered right out. Kneebone Castle was absorbed back into the night. They stood there for a few minutes, staring out into blackness, thin wisps of smoke from the fireworks still lolling about the sky. In the distance they could hear the sound of dogs barking—an ordinary nighttime sound, but in the gloom it seemed ominous. Even Haddie’s mood turned somber as she tipped her head up and listened. When she caught them watching her, she shooed them off the battlement.

  “All right, fun’s over. Off to bed,” she said. They weren’t sorry to go. They were fairly bursting to talk to one another in the privacy of the dungeon about what they had learned. Lucia turned back once, only to see Haddie pacing the battlement, her hands shoved in the pockets of her jeans and her eyes fixed on the ground below. Much like a sentry who suspects that a siege is imminent.

  “Do you think it could be the same Dr. Azziz who murdered the sultan’s family?” Otto asked once they were in the dungeon.

  “I think it is exactly the same Dr. Azziz,” Lucia replied fiercely. She was walking around the perimeter of the dungeon wall, while her brothers were sitting on Otto’s bed. She couldn’t remain still; her thoughts were tumbling over themselves. Every so often the rat popped out of the wall and skittered across the floor, but Lucia stepped over it and kept walking.

  “It might
just be a coincidence,” Max said. “And another thing . . . we must have been wrong about The Kneebone Boy. He wouldn’t still be here if all the Kneebones left years ago.”

  “We were totally wrong about The Kneebone Boy,” Lucia said, stopping and facing her brothers.

  Now she could tell her story. Timing is everything, as they say.

  Instead of making fun of her for having seen the sultan, Otto and Max listened carefully. After she had finished they said nothing for a good three minutes as they tried to imagine what it all meant.

  “Then you think Dr. Azziz has been keeping the sultan in the tower?” Max asked Lucia.

  “I’m one hundred percent sure of it,” Lucia replied.

  Actually, she was only about 87 percent sure of it, but try saying you are 87 percent sure of something with conviction. You can’t.

  Max nodded. “That’s quite a common strategy, the most famous of course being Richard the Third, who imprisoned the two young heirs to the throne in the Tower of London and then had them murdered.”

  “Imagine what might have happened if we hadn’t—”

  “Think what Dad will say when he sees him—”

  They each climbed into bed and said good night to one another, and pretended to be falling sleep. Instead, they were all busy thinking.

  Here is some of what Otto thought:

  I wonder what happened to The Kneebone Boy.

  The sultan can take my bed and I’ll bring up the spare mattress from the basement.

  I once read about an albino peacock.

  My neck itches.

  I hear those dogs barking again.

  Now Max:

  I wonder if the sultan likes rooftops. I know he likes treetops. He’ll probably like rooftops.

  I wonder if Haddie likes rooftops. Will Haddie come home with us as well? She will. She has to.

  She doesn’t smell of mountain mint gum. She smells of peanut butter.

  I shouldn’t have called Otto a monster. Now I feel especially rotten after what he said about Mum and the scarf. Not that I ever believed the story about him strangling her with it. Not really.

  Funny thing about the Abyss . . . (he is thinking deeply and importantly about something now, but I won’t tell you what it is because it will spoil things later.)

  Why are those dogs barking like that?

  And finally Lucia:

  If the sultan sees the sketch of himself on my bedroom wall, will he think I fancy him? I mean I do, but not like I fancy Mr. Dupuis.

  I can’t believe I said that.

  No, I don’t.

  Yes, I do.

  It’s different with the sultan though.

  Otto is scratching at something. He probably got a rash from the woods.

  How strange about the scarf! Why didn’t Mum leave a scarf for me as well?

  When Dad comes here, I’ll investigate his face at the very moment he sets eyes on Haddie. That will show whether or not she is Mum. If she is, he’ll smile from the right side of his mouth. His left side is for when he thinks you’re being ridiculous.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, when will those dogs shut up?

  The barking had become increasingly frantic, rising and falling in pitch but never ceasing. Chester leapt off Otto’s bed and sat below the window far above, his silky black ears tuning this way and that.

  “Cor, it sounds like there’s a dozen of them!” Max said out loud.

  “It sounds like they’ve caught something,” Lucia said. Then a second later she sat up in bed and cried out, “No!”

  Jumping out of bed, she began to pull on her trainers. “The sultan! They must have sent dogs after him! Come on, come on, we can’t let them catch him!”

  Otto and Max leapt out of bed and in no time the Hardscrabbles had jammed on their trainers, not bothering with socks, and straightaway rushed out of the dungeon, still dressed in their Snoring-by-the-Sea pyjamas. Well, not perfectly straightaway. There was a hasty discussion about bringing Chester, but they decided it was too risky because of the dogs, so they shut him in the dungeon, though they hated to do it. They ran up the stairs and wound their way around the hallways, backtracking once to grab a torch that hung on a hook, and finally emerged outside in the courtyard. A brisk wind fluttered their pyjama tops and crept up underneath, chilling them to their armpits. Outside, the noise of the dogs baying sounded closer than before. They could hear voices as well—too distant to make out the words, but the voices sounded urgent and excited. It made the Hardscrabbles’ hearts quicken and they ran even faster, across the grassy courtyard and over the drawbridge, which thankfully was already lowered.

  The moment they entered the woods, instinct made them slow down. The night was so black it was almost shadowless. They picked their way along carefully, shining the torch on the ground and heading in the direction of the twin birches. They hadn’t gone far when the barking tapered off, then stopped altogether. In its place came a cry that brought them to a standstill—a human cry so full of anguish that all the Hardscrabbles clamped their hands over their mouths, as though they were trying to stop that horrible sound from entering their own bodies.

  “They caught him,” Otto said. Although his hands were barely visible in the darkness, Lucia and Max understood.

  Soon there was the sound of approaching voices and the loud, brash footsteps of people who didn’t care if they were heard. The Hardscrabbles ducked behind a thicket and crouched low. They watched in silence, holding their breaths when they saw the black outline of dogs attached to leads. To be honest, there weren’t a dozen dogs, as they’d imagined. There were only two. But they were really large. Then came the men holding the leads, and two others. In the midst of them, surrounded on all sides, was the small, slender figure of the sultan.

  One of the dogs lifted his nose in the Hardscrabbles’ direction and let out a sharp bark, but the man who held his lead yanked it hard to quiet him.

  If you’re expecting the Hardscrabbles to do something brave at this point, you’ll be disappointed. Remember that this is a true story with true kids who would no more have ambushed those men than you would. Anyway, it would have been a silly thing to do. They would have been instantly clobbered and we would never get to the most exciting bits that are coming quite soon.

  (Mr. Dupuis says it is a cheap trick for an author to promise that exciting things are about to happen. He says it is the mark of an insecure writer who is afraid that readers might put the book down. He’s wrong in this case though. I just wanted to give you a heads-up. I’m dead positive that you won’t put this book down now, since you’ve read through some boring parts during which you might have, and anyway you’re not stupid enough to stop reading right when we are about to sneak into Kneebone Castle.)

  (Mr. Dupuis says I shouldn’t bully readers by calling them stupid.)

  (I’m not saying you are stupid though. Just if you put the book down.)

  “I’ve been thinking,” Max said when the men disappeared once again into the darkness.

  Lucia and Otto turned to him eagerly. They had not been thinking. They had only been feeling awful.

  “I’ve been thinking about the dragon in the Great Hall,” Max said.

  “Well, that’s useless,” Lucia said.

  “And how, in stories, dragons are always guarding something important,” Max continued, ignoring her. “Like piles of gold or a kidnapped princess. I’ll bet that door behind the grandfather clock is the secret passageway—the one that the Dusty Old Children used in order to visit The Kneebone Boy—and that’s why the dragon is guarding it.”

  Lucia and Otto considered this.

  “Still perfectly useless,” Lucia decided, “unless you want to barbeque yourself.”

  “But the Dusty Old Children got in,” Otto said to her.

  “Exactly,” said Max. “And I think I know how they did it.”

  They waited for to him to tell them.

  “Are you going to tell us?” Lucia said after a few moments.


  “It’s just an educated guess. I’ll tell you when I’m sure.”

  “That’s not fair,” Lucia said.

  “You did the same thing when you thought you saw the sultan,” Max said. He stood up and wiped soil off his shins. “Right. I’m going to town.”

  “What? Now?” Lucia said.

  “Has to be now. We’re leaving tomorrow so we have to rescue the sultan tonight.” He started walking. “You two go back to the folly. I’ll be there later.”

  “You’re going to walk through the woods in the middle of the night by yourself?” Lucia said.

  “I don’t mind,” Max said.

  So Lucia and Otto were forced to not mind either. That was how they found themselves picking their way through the woods, going who knows where, to do who knows what, dressed in pyjamas with lavender hippos on their bums.

  If there are illustrations in this book, I’d prefer that this last part not be shown.

  Chapter 19

  In which Max’s educated guess had better be right or else Lucia and Otto are going to throttle him

  The whole way to town, the Hardscrabbles’ arms and legs were tortured by thistles and scratched by bushes and poked in rude places by branches. There were many outbursts of “Ouch bloody ouch!” and “That nearly took out my eye!” and once, “A snake went down my shirt . . . a snake went down my shirt . . . a snake went down my shirt!!”

  I won’t tell you who screamed that last thing.

  But you’d think someone who was supposedly so intelligent could tell the difference between a snake and an acorn.

  By the time they arrived in town, they had leaves in their hair and scratches all over their legs, some of which were bleeding. They walked down the streets hoping no one would be out, but wouldn’t you know it, a car suddenly pulled up to the curb just ahead of them, its radio pounding out music. The engine and the music stopped. The doors were flung open and six loud teenagers piled out.