Charlie Bone and the Hidden King (Children of the Red King)

by Jenny Nimmo

  Amy’s appearance left Charlie speechless. She wore a glistening fur coat and her hair was as smooth as yellow silk. Two large pearls hung from her ears and her nails were a vivid green. Charlie’s heart missed a beat when he saw that her wedding ring had gone. In its place a huge emerald sparkled on her finger.

  ‘Where are you going, Mum?’ he asked in a strangled voice.

  ‘Just out.’ She descended the second flight of stairs in high heels that made her bounce like a wave.

  Charlie followed her but she left the house without a word, without a backward glance. Charlie ran into the kitchen and stared dismally out of the window, as the gold limousine pulled away from the kerb. For a moment he was too dismayed to move, then, remembering that this was the moment he’d been waiting for, he ran into the hall and phoned Olivia.

  ‘Hi!’ came her cheery voice.

  ‘Mum’s gone out,’ said Charlie. ‘She was with . . .’ He paused, with his mouth open, as Grandma Bone walked out of the sitting room. ‘I didn’t know you were in, Grandma!’

  ‘Didn’t you? Who are you phoning?’

  ‘Hello! Hello!’ Olivia’s voice came bubbling out of the phone. All those drama lessons had given her a very clear, ringing voice. ‘Who’s she gone out with, the –’

  Charlie put his hand over the earpiece. ‘It’s my friend Olivia,’ he told Grandma Bone. ‘I was just asking her if I could go to lunch, because Mum’s gone out, and I don’t suppose there’ll be much food around here.’

  ‘You suppose right,’ said his grandmother. ‘Go on, ask her then.’

  Charlie lifted the receiver closer to his mouth. ‘Um, as I said, Mum’s gone out – in a very smart car.’ He grinned at Grandma Bone, ‘So could I come round for lunch? My grandma, who’s here, says it’s OK.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Olivia in an excited undertone. ‘Mum and me are ready to go. See you, Charlie.’

  ‘You’d better get your coat,’ said Grandma Bone, as she drifted back into the sitting room. ‘It looks like snow.’

  Uncle Paton had already been told of the plan and, although he worried about the danger if things should go wrong, he agreed that it would have to be attempted, if Charlie were not to lose his mother altogether.

  Charlie snatched his coat from his room and popped his head round Uncle Paton’s door. ‘Mum’s gone out with you-know-who, so it’s all systems go,’ he told his uncle.

  Paton looked up from his desk. ‘Good luck!’ he said. ‘I’ll be waiting.’

  Mrs Vertigo decided to wear a tight red leather coat and high-heeled black boots. A red velvet beret and large gold bag completed her outfit. She looked stunning. Olivia, however, didn’t want to be too conspicuous. Today she would play the shy young daughter. Casually dressed in jeans and a navy duffel coat, and with her hair restored to its natural light brown, she looked the picture of innocence.

  ‘You’ve got your mobile, haven’t you?’ Mrs Vertigo asked her daughter as they approached Kingdom’s.

  ‘In my pocket,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Promise to contact me if you’re in trouble.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘This is so exciting.’ Olivia’s mother gave the two doormen a radiant smile and they sprang into action, pulling open the door as wide as they could.

  Olivia and Mrs Vertigo stepped into the sweetly scented, velvety shadowed and incredibly crowded store.

  ‘The sales!’ Mrs Vertigo exclaimed. ‘Oh, Liv, what fun! Let’s start with scarves, shall we?’

  Olivia followed her mother across to the colourful display of scarves. Mrs Vertigo began to enjoy herself. She had brought four lipsticks in shades varying from palest pink to deepest red. ‘I want a scarf to match each of these colours,’ she told the assistant. ‘They must be silk, naturally, not too square and not too long and, hopefully, half price.’ She fluttered her false eyelashes.

  As a group of smartly dressed shoppers pressed around her mother, grumbling impatiently, Olivia slipped away. Pushing through the crowds of bargain hunters, she reached the lift and jumped in, just before the door closed. An elderly couple smiled at her from the other side of the lift. They were both dressed in brown check coats and trilby hats.

  ‘Two?’ enquired the man in a foreign accent.

  ‘Two?’ said Olivia.

  ‘Second,’ explained the elderly woman, nudging her husband. ‘He get it wrong always. My English better.’

  ‘No, thank you. Not second,’ said Olivia.

  The man tried again. ‘Tree, four?’ His finger hovered over the display panel.

  ‘Toys,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Ah, toys,’ sighed the man. ‘I wish.’

  ‘Quick, Herman. We go. Bye bye.’

  The lift door opened and the couple tottered out, the woman waving feebly and Herman still muttering forlornly about toys.

  Alone at last, Olivia pressed a button with no number and the lift sailed to the top of the building. When the door opened she peeped out. A few yards away a large man sat reading a newspaper, his feet lost in a sea of black fur that extended all the way to the end of a long passage. Beside the man a white-panelled door bore an inscription in bronze. ‘Noble.’

  Olivia thought fast. The lift door began to close. She pressed the button again. As the door slid open a loud tweeting could be heard. The man grunted, flung down his newspaper and ran to the end of the passage, where a bird flapped round the light fitting.

  Olivia leapt out of the lift and raced to the door marked ‘Noble’. It was not locked. She slipped inside and closed it softly behind her.

  Ankle-deep in white fur, Olivia gazed around the extraordinary apartment. ‘No time for gawping, Liv,’ she whispered to herself, as she took in the pony-skin sofa, the ivory tables and horribly real-looking stuffed birds.

  There were two doors leading out of the fur-carpeted sitting room. Olivia tried the nearest. It opened into a vast walk-in wardrobe. Every garment was either green or furry. There was a long mirror on the wall, but no sign of a small, ancient one. Olivia backed out.

  The second door led into a room that was far more promising. A huge four-poster bed stood in the centre. It was curtained in thick tapestries and looked hundreds of years old.

  How on earth did they get that up here? Olivia wondered. The great bed had the look of an illusion, something Olivia herself might have conjured up. All at once, she had her answer. The bed was conjured up. So was the blackened chest of drawers standing against the wall, and the small table by the window. They were not illusions but ancient objects brought here by magic.

  A large wooden chair stood in the corner. It looked immensely old with its high curved back and thick, worm-eaten arms. Olivia had seen such a chair in the local museum.

  Where did the count keep the mirror? Perhaps he never let it out of his sight. The table was bare and the chair didn’t even have a cushion in it. Olivia approached the bed. There was nothing under the pillows or between the starched white sheets. She went to the chest of drawers. Starting at the top she pulled out the drawers, one by one.

  Empty, empty, empty. Olivia’s heart sank. She had to kneel on the floor to pull out the last drawer. It squeaked and shivered as she tugged at the handles, but it would only open a few inches. Olivia thrust in her arm and felt about. Her fingers touched something smooth and flat, right at the back. Slowly, she eased it forward and pulled it out of the drawer.

  It shouldn’t come as a surprise when something you hope to find turns up in a place where you half-expect it to be. But Olivia was so stunned by her discovery, she had to sit back on her heels and take several deep breaths before she could bring herself to examine the object on her lap.

  It was a mirror – very ancient, by the look of it. The circle of glass, if you could call it glass, was set in a delicate golden frame. Intricate patterns had been worked into the gold: leaves and birds and tiny dancing creatures with jewelled eyes. The handle was a long oval of twisted gold and silver, and when Olivia held it she felt a throbbing warmth travel t
hrough her body. Slowly, she brought the mirror up to her face. There was no reflection. Am I a vampire, then? Olivia asked herself, squinting into the glass. Where am I?

  A fine mist swirled across the surface of the glass but, try as she might, Olivia could see nothing behind the mist. Remembering the danger of her mission, she quickly pushed back the drawer and slipped the mirror into her duffel-coat pocket. She had forgotten to make her bird disappear and wondered if the guard had discovered by now that it was merely an illusion. She would have to create something more dramatic if she was to distract him a second time. Closing her eyes, she thought of smoke rising out of the black carpet. She didn’t forget to add the smell of burning fur, which she had to imagine, never having smelt it before.

  Tiptoeing through the apartment, she put her ear to the main door. A distant sound of swearing and stamping reached her ears. Holding her breath, Olivia eased open the door, slipped out and closed it softly. The smoke illusion had worked a treat. At the far end of the passage the terrified guard was jumping on the smouldering carpet with both feet. As soon as one smoking patch vanished, another appeared.

  Olivia rushed to the lift and pressed the button. The lift was busy. She pressed again, again and again. The guard took a break from his attack on the carpet. He rubbed his head and looked down the passage. Olivia shrank against the lift door. With a loud ping it slid open and she tumbled in, quickly pressing the ground floor button as she lurched against the back wall.

  ‘Oi!’ called the guard.

  But Olivia was on her way down and, happily, the lift didn’t stop once until she reached the ground floor. Trying to look as casual as possible, Olivia hurried over to her mother. In spite of the crowds she had no trouble in locating Mrs Vertigo’s bright red coat. She was now busy at the make-up counter. When Olivia reached her mother, she found the counter littered with creams, powders, sticks of mascara, brushes and bottles.

  ‘Mum, we’ve got to go,’ said Olivia.

  Mrs Vertigo turned and saw her daughter’s anxious face. ‘Oh, right.’ She gave the assistant a rueful smile. ‘Sorry, it’s not what I want. None of it. Thank you so much.’

  The assistant glared at the mess on her counter as Olivia tugged her mother away.

  ‘Mission accomplished?’ asked Mrs Vertigo.

  Olivia nodded.

  When they emerged into the street, they walked straight into Miss Chrystal who was, unbelievably, holding Joshua Tilpin by the hand.

  ‘Miss Chrystal, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Vertigo in a flamboyant tone. ‘Aren’t the sales brilliant? And who is this?’ She smiled at Joshua.

  ‘One of the pupils,’ Miss Chrystal said lightly. ‘His name’s Joshua. The school asked me to get him a new shirt.’

  ‘An expensive shirt for a little boy!’ Mrs Vertigo remarked, cocking her head at Kingdom’s marble pillars.

  Miss Chrystal ignored this and hurriedly pulled Joshua into the store.

  ‘Poor little fellow,’ said Mrs Vertigo. ‘He looks so pathetic.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, Mum.’ Olivia linked arms with her mother. ‘And please hurry.’

  Charlie was standing on the Vertigos’ step when Olivia and her mother arrived at the house. He knew the mission had been successful as soon as he saw Olivia’s smiling but anxious face.

  ‘We bumped into Joshua and Miss Chrystal,’ Olivia told Charlie as they stepped into the Vertigos’ large hallway. ‘They might be suspicious, and I think the guard saw me.’

  ‘Let’s hope he didn’t,’ said Charlie. ‘Can I see the mirror, Liv?’

  ‘Yes, do let’s. I can hardly wait.’ Mrs Vertigo flung her coat on a peg and pushed the children into the sitting room.

  As Olivia drew out the mirror, there was a loud bang on the front door. Immediately two figures appeared outside the French windows.

  Mrs Vertigo screamed.

  ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ said Olivia. ‘It’s Tancred and Lysander. They’re here to help.’

  ‘And we’re going to need them,’ said Charlie as another loud bang echoed through the house. ‘It sounds as if you were followed, Liv.’

  The enchanter and the endowed

  Tancred and Lysander liked nothing better than a challenge. They didn’t have to see Mrs Vertigo’s unwelcome visitors to know who they were. The furious barking gave them away.

  ‘Rottweilers,’ said Lysander.

  ‘Looms!’ Tancred grinned in anticipation. Looking into the sky, he raised his arms. The next moment a torrent of water fell from above, as though a floodgate had opened in the clouds.

  Olivia unlocked the French windows and Lysander ran inside. The rain continued to pour upon Tancred like a waterfall. In seconds he was standing in an inch of water, while lightning zipped across the Vertigos’ smooth lawn in sheets of blinding light.

  ‘He’ll be struck,’ cried Mrs Vertigo. ‘Someone bring him in.’

  ‘He can’t be struck,’ Lysander told her. ‘He’s a weather-monger.’

  Olivia ran into the kitchen where a small window overlooked the street. Huddled on the step, the Loom brothers were having a hard time controlling their dogs. The frantic creatures were biting their leads in an effort to escape from the storm.

  Cursing their predicament, the brothers finally left the house and stumbled away through the rain, dragged by their hysterical dogs.

  Olivia ran back to the sitting room and announced, ‘They’ve gone!’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Mrs Vertigo, who always bounced back from trouble as though it had never happened. ‘You can call the blond boy in now, and we’ll all have some muffins.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not over, Mrs Vertigo,’ said Lysander. ‘The Looms are harmless compared to what might happen next.’

  ‘If you’re talking about that enchanter thing, he’s not going to put me off my tea,’ said Mrs Vertigo with remarkable composure. ‘Come to think of it, we haven’t had lunch, have we?’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ said Charlie quietly. ‘I couldn’t eat anything at the moment. I just want to see the mirror.’

  Olivia pulled the mirror out of her pocket with a flourish. ‘There!’

  ‘Heavens!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘It’s utterly, utterly beautiful.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Lysander peered into the glass. ‘But it’s not a mirror. I can’t see anything.’

  ‘What a relief,’ said Olivia. ‘I thought I was a vampire.’

  ‘Can I?’ Charlie held out his hand.

  Olivia gave him the mirror. ‘What are you going to do with it, Charlie?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it, I just wanted to get it away from the count. But now . . .’ Charlie looked at the mist that clouded the surface of the glass. ‘I’d like to be alone with it for a while.’

  ‘Course, Charlie.’ Olivia led the way up to her room. She left Charlie sitting on her bed and whispered, ‘Good luck,’ before she closed the door on him.

  For several seconds Charlie was almost too afraid to look at the mirror again. He closed his eyes and Uncle Paton’s words came back to him. ‘Look into the mirror and the person you wish to see will appear. If you want to find that person, look again, and the mirror will take you to them, wherever they are.’

  ‘But I can’t remember his face,’ sighed Charlie. ‘Help me, someone.’

  He felt something lightly brush his wrist, and the white moth crawled out of his sleeve. She flew on to the mirror’s gold frame and gently beat her silvery wings. The mist on the glassy surface began to clear.

  ‘How am I to remember?’ Charlie silently asked the moth.

  ‘Remember what you can,’ came the answer.

  Charlie thought back to a time before he had lived in the house on Filbert Street. He remembered a bright kitchen; he was very small because the swirling hem of his mother’s skirt came very close to his face. She was humming to the music that came from another room. Charlie left the kitchen and walked across a hallway. He pushed open a door and moved towards the elegant legs of a grand pian
o. White curtains billowed in a breeze from the window. The man sitting at the piano had his back to Charlie. He wore a brown jacket and his thick, black hair touched the top of his collar. His fingers flew over the piano keys, but when Charlie walked round the piano stool, the man stopped playing and looked down. ‘Hello, Charlie!’ he said.

  The shock of recognition almost made Charlie lose consciousness. He had seen the man before. Many times. He’d spoken to him only a week ago, never knowing he was his father. Clinging even tighter to the mirror, he stared into the dark, smiling eyes until he felt himself drifting closer. When his father’s face began to recede Charlie cried, ‘Take me to him.’ And the mirror obeyed.

  Now he was in another room: it was the music room at Bloor’s Academy. But here the piano was silent. For the pianist had folded his arms over the keys and laid his head on them.

  ‘Dad!’ Charlie tapped the man’s shoulder. ‘It’s me, Charlie!’

  The dark eyes were no longer smiling. They looked blank and heavy.

  ‘Are you still asleep? You must remember me. I’ve never stopped thinking of you. Never. Please try and remember. Please say something. Please . . .’ Charlie shook his father’s shoulder, this time with some vigour.

  Without moving the man said faintly, ‘There’s nothing left. Go away.’

  A cry escaped Charlie. A cry that was like no sound he had ever heard. And then he was being dragged away. His father’s face began to fade and Charlie spun through the air, now twisting upside down, now floating on his back. He began to see the mirror again, glinting out of a fog, but the glass was empty. The face that had looked out at Charlie was gone.

  With a sudden bump, Charlie landed on a bed. Olivia was standing in front of him, holding the mirror.

  ‘Charlie, you made a dreadful sound.’ She peered into his face. ‘I thought the mirror had frightened you. So I took it out of your hands.’

  Charlie blinked. ‘I wasn’t frightened exactly.’

  ‘Did you see your father?’

  ‘Yes. Liv, I think he’s almost dead.’

  Charlie’s voice was so weak Olivia couldn’t be sure that she’d heard him. ‘Dead?’ she asked. ‘Did you say dead?’