For a few moments Ruby said nothing. When she spoke there was ice in her voice. ‘You just want to take him back so you can be a big hero. That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t care what’s right and what’s wrong. All you care about is that you’re a knight who’s never even been able to hold a sword the right way, and now you’ve got your big chance to show everyone how great you are.’
Roderick’s felt himself turn red. ‘Listen to me,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘Baronia and Nareea have been fighting on and off for centuries and now the Nareeans want to start it again, and whoever is in charge there thinks that Banfor can help them. Now I don’t know if the Nareeans will be able to force him to help them or not, but I do know that there is a risk of war, and if we prevent the Nareeans from finding Banfor then that risk becomes smaller, which means there will be less chance of people getting killed. So if I can do something to reduce the chance of people dying, that’s good enough for me. I have my orders,’ Roderick spat, eyes blazing, ‘and I will carry them out.’
He stood, stomped past Ruby, out the door and down to the river, where he sat for a long time.
CHAPTER 10
THE WAY BACK
Everyone was quiet the next morning. Except, that is, for the bear.
‘Excitement mixed with fear, that is how I would describe it. In fact that is how I am describing it!’ he exclaimed as the four of them made their way towards the tunnel. He was the only one on foot, walking upright on his hind legs, as Banfor had given Ruby his second horse.
‘Until I met Mister Banfor I thought the whole world was within the mountains, which made me feel big. Not as big as the world, but quite big because I knew every part of the world. Of course, I knew also about the hole that led out of the world because it, too, was part of the world, but I did not know where it went. And I did not want to know. Bears are clever. You know that, of course. We are also brave and good at hunting food and hairy and clean and excellent company, but we are not usually very curious. So I never wanted to explore the hole, and because I never wanted to, I never did! That makes sense!’
‘Er, yes,’ replied Roderick uncertainly. He could see the tunnel up ahead. He wasn’t looking forward to entering it again, partly because he didn’t like dark tunnels but mainly because it would bring him closer to the cockroach to whom he had promised, and was not going to deliver, freedom. He hoped Banfor’s presence would protect him.
‘Then Mister Banfor taught me about curiosity,’ continued Chester, ‘and how interesting curiosity could be, and he helped me to grow some of it in here.’ The bear tapped his head. ‘And now it has grown, and I am taking my curiosity out to see the big world!’
Despite his fears, Roderick couldn’t help smiling.
‘But,’ said Chester, ‘I think that part of having a curiosity is being nervous. Actually . . .’ He looked around and lowered his voice. ‘I am a bit scared now.’
‘Without occasional fear, life can be dull,’ said Banfor calmly, sitting still on his horse. He cast a final look back at his home, and added, ‘Or perhaps just peaceful.’
Then he urged the horse up the hill and into the tunnel. The others followed, Chester close behind Banfor, then Ruby, with Roderick last.
Roderick would have preferred not to have been at the back, but he didn’t want to ride alongside Ruby. As the light behind them receded, he saw a blue glow ahead that seemed to hover in front of Banfor. They travelled in silence and eventually reached the tunnel’s other side. Banfor motioned for them to dismount.
‘Stay close behind me and you will be safe,’ said Banfor. ‘But if you stray . . .’
‘Close but not too close,’ said Chester excitedly. ‘Why? Because if we get too close we will bump into each other and someone might fall over and hurt their knee. It’s usually the knee when you fall over. Did you know that? Or the elbow. The pointy bits are the most vulnerable.’
‘Very true,’ said Banfor, ‘but we should be quiet now.’
‘Yes. Very quiet,’ said Chester. ‘But walking makes some noise, and if we don’t walk, we won’t go anywhere. Unless we hopped, or rolled along the ground. But that makes noise too! And so does breathing. But if we don’t breathe . . .’
‘Chester! Quiet!’ commanded Banfor in an urgent whisper.
‘Yes. Sorry. Quiet. Just soft breathing and silent walking. And no rolling.’
They walked the horses out of the tunnel into the gully that led to the cockroaches’ clearing. As they emerged into it, the remaining cockroach faced them, as if it had been waiting for them to appear. Of its dead companion, there was no sign. Roderick wondered if cockroaches were cannibals.
FREEEE MEEE! FREEEE! Roderick heard in his head. The cockroach’s thoughts didn’t ask, they demanded. Roderick shrank back. Unless Banfor could protect him, he was dead.
The old man looked curiously at Roderick, then faced the cockroach and held up his hand. A mighty wave crashed through Roderick’s head, smashing his thoughts to bits and replacing them with an overwhelming feeling of losing balance and falling. Banfor’s power – for surely that is what it was – cascaded over all else, then seemed to sharpen its focus onto something other than Roderick. He still felt its force, but now it was like a searchlight aimed elsewhere.
The ‘elsewhere’ was the cockroach. It stood frozen, and then meekly bowed down.
Banfor called back to them. ‘Come. She will not harm you.’ He strode confidently past the cockroach towards the other side of the clearing. The others followed cautiously. Ruby and Chester passed within a few steps of the beast, but it did not move.
As Roderick approached, he felt a rumbling in his mind, as if the cockroach was trying to break the chains that held her. She let out a huge howl and slashed a leg at Roderick.
Roderick screamed and, more usefully, dived to his left. The leg whistled past, missing him by centimetres. He tried to scramble to his feet. When he reached his knees he heard Banfor. ‘Hold!’
He froze.
‘Not you, Roderick, the cockroach!’ called Banfor. ‘You, move. Quickly!’
Roderick scrambled to his feet and staggered past Banfor into the trees on the far side of the clearing where Ruby and Chester waited. Behind him the cockroach looked like its head was being pushed into the ground by an enormous invisible hand on the back of its head. Its limbs wriggled but its body seemed unable to move. Banfor slowly backed away from it until he was out of the clearing, and then turned away. The invisible hand released its grip. The cockroach rolled onto its side and its huge chest heaved.
‘Come,’ said Banfor. ‘She cannot follow.’ They mounted their horses and headed up the hill. As they climbed, the cockroach let out a huge wail full of anger and despair. Roderick couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. At the top of the hill they stopped. Roderick could still see the cockroach far below, but now it looked as tiny as, well, a normal-sized cockroach.
‘Ruby, Chester. Please gather some firewood if you don’t mind,’ said Banfor, dismounting.
‘A command that is not as un-confusing as you might think,’ said Chester. ‘If a branch falls off a tree, is it firewood? No. It is just wood. So when does it become firewood? When we gather it with the intention of using it as firewood? Or when we put it in the fire? What an interesting question. Perhaps it is even a philosophical question. A good one to talk about as we gather, don’t you think, Ruby?’
Ruby rolled her eyes and they headed off.
Banfor sat on a fallen tree trunk. ‘Well, she’s not happy with you,’ he said. At first Roderick thought he meant Ruby, but then realised he was referring to the cockroach. The old man looked drained, as if the muscles and bones inside his face had suddenly decided they weren’t up to it anymore and had collapsed inwards. The lines on his face seemed deeper and wider, and dark circles ringed his eyes. He looked several years older than he had an hour ago. His breathing was laboured, as if he had just c
limbed a long steep hill, which of course he had. Except he had done it sitting on a horse.
‘Why do we need a fire?’ asked Roderick, trying to change the subject.
‘We don’t,’ Banfor spoke slowly, wheezing. ‘We need . . . them to collect firewood . . . so I can talk to you alone. What happened . . . down there? And where is the other cockroach?’
‘Wait. Are you all right?’
‘No . . . but I will . . . be soon. Tell me.’
Roderick told him everything that had happened with the cockroaches on his way in. ‘So I sort of promised it something I couldn’t deliver. But it was the only way I could think of to get through.’
‘I see. You have . . . made an enemy of one of the world’s most dangerous creatures.’ He paused, looking Roderick up and down. ‘You are also . . . able to communicate in a way . . . not many people can.’
‘I know. What does it mean?’
Banfor held up his hand wearily. ‘Later. This . . . is what we must do. I will widen her cage. I can make . . . it two hundred times bigger. She does not . . . need to guard the entrance again . . . until I return. If I make the cage bigger she may not even . . . realise she is still in a cage. If you send her thoughts as if it is you freeing her . . . she will think you did it, and her hate will turn to gratitude.’
‘Is overpowering the cockroach down there what has made you so weak?’ asked Roderick.
Banfor smiled. ‘Indeed. Everything . . . has its price.’
‘Have you got the strength left to widen the cage?’
‘I think so.’
‘But we’re past her. She can’t hurt me now.’
Banfor took as deep a breath as he could manage. ‘You promised her freedom. Cockroaches hate liars . . . I keep her in the cage . . . but I was always honest with her. One day she will be free again . . . She may hunt you down . . .’
Banfor extended his hand. Roderick helped him to his feet and Banfor faced back down the hill. ‘Now, concentrate. Make her think that you are the one helping her,’ he said.
Banfor stood perfectly still, seemingly strong again, and shut his eyes. Roderick did the same. Once again he felt Banfor’s power throbbing in his head.
You are free. Free. Free, he thought. Somehow he seemed to get in sync with the rhythm of Banfor’s thoughts. Rather than feeling, as he had before, that the old man’s power was going to crush him, this time his thoughts seemed to be carried along with Banfor’s. Roderick kept thinking, Free. Free.
Eventually, faintly, a thought came back from the cockroach. THAAANNNK YOOOOUUUU. He opened his eyes. She stood in the clearing, looking up the hill at them and then slowly bowed her head to the ground. Then she turned and lumbered away down the clearing.
He turned to Banfor, just in time to see him wobble and then crash to the ground.
He knelt beside the old man. ‘Are you all right?’
Banfor strained to speak. ‘No . . . definitely not,’ he wheezed, and then his eyes shut. He was unconscious. Or asleep. Or something.
Banfor tossed and turned fitfully, alternately sweating and shivering. They had made a makeshift bed and pillow for him out of grass, and covered him in a blanket.
‘Has he been like this before?’ Ruby asked Chester.
‘He has not,’ said Chester anxiously. ‘Not exactly like this, because we have never been here before and we have never been now before. So of course he could never have been exactly like this before. There was one time when he was a bit like this before, but bears are not very good with time, so if you ask me when that was I will say “I do not know”. And if you ask me where it happened I will say “At home”, which is now a place that we are not, and which I could get quite sad about not being at, if I wasn’t in the middle of answering your question.’
‘How can we help him to get better?’ asked Ruby impatiently.
‘Better at what?’ replied Chester, confused. Ruby looked like she was about to hit him. ‘Oh,’ the bear said. ‘How can we help him to feel better. Well, I think, definitely, that only the application of one ingredient can create his betterness.’
‘Tell us! What ingredient?’ Ruby demanded.
‘Time.’
‘Time?’ she repeated slowly, then sighed. ‘How much time?’
‘Bears know lots of things about lots of things, but as this bear just said, one thing we do not know lots of things about is time. It will take a period of time, that’s for sure. Anything else is unsure.’
Ruby looked as if any further conversation with Chester would test her sanity, and that it was a test she may not pass. Roderick, meanwhile, collected ingredients and then brewed up a potion used to restore energy to those who were exhausted or rundown. When it was ready, he tried to feed it to Banfor. While some of it dribbled out the corners of his mouth, a few sips seemed to get down his throat.
In the end they did use the firewood. They had no option but to make camp and wait for Banfor to recover. Chester managed to catch two rabbits, and Roderick averted his eyes as, with much slobbering, he scoffed one raw. Ruby, meanwhile, made a stew with the other.
They made themselves as comfortable as possible, which wasn’t very, and slept.
The following morning Banfor seemed a bit better. His fever, if that is what it had been, had subsided and he managed some breakfast of cold rabbit stew. Afterwards, he hauled himself to his feet.
‘Let us be on our way. We have wasted time,’ he said.
‘Are you sure you are well enough?’ asked Ruby.
Banfor nodded. He was still weak, so Chester helped him onto his horse and they rugged him up in a blanket. They rode back along the ridge towards the cave where Roderick had rescued Ruby.
Ruby kept suggesting that they stop and wait for him to recover properly, but Banfor refused. ‘It is a small sickness that comes upon me from time to time,’ he said. ‘It comes, it stays a while and then it goes. Just like you two. Except of course,’ he added drily, ‘you took me with you.’
‘That was just him.’ Ruby pointed an accusing finger at Roderick. ‘I didn’t want you to leave your lovely home.’
Banfor held up his hand. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I decided to come. No one forced me.’
They travelled through the day without incident – unless you consider a bear continually explaining why things that seemed very simple were actually incredibly complicated to be an incident. When they got close to where Roderick had rescued Ruby from the cave-dwellers, they detoured down the far side of the ridge to avoid getting too close. By nightfall they had reached the turn-off to the Forest of Gilderang, where they made camp. In the whole of the day, Ruby and Roderick had exchanged exactly eight words, being ‘you go first’ (from Roderick to Ruby) at a point where the track narrowed, and ‘you go first this time’ (from Ruby to Roderick) at a point where it narrowed again.
Banfor was gradually recovering his strength, but while previously he had seemed such a calm figure of authority, now he was twitchy. He kept fidgeting, scratching the back of his head or his chest, or twisting his hands into knots and drumming them on his thigh.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Ruby.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said quickly. ‘Mosquitos. They always seem to like me.’ He smiled. ‘I must have tasty blood.’
They camped that night and the next morning quickly packed up and made their way through the forest where Roderick had been attacked by the drop python. Roderick tilted his head back and looked carefully above for others, but saw none. Around lunchtime they arrived at the junction where Roderick had parted company with Fromley and Sir Shamus. The right turn led to Palandan, and the left to Danover and Nareea.
‘This is where I say goodbye,’ said Ruby. She hugged Banfor awkwardly. Not because either of them felt awkward, just because they were both on horseback, and hugging while sitting on a horse is tricky.
‘Thank you again
for curing me,’ said Ruby. She flicked her eyes towards Roderick, then leant closer to Banfor. Roderick looked away, pretending to be uninterested, but strained to overhear them.
‘Are you sure you will go with him,’ Ruby whispered, ‘and not with me?’
‘It must be done,’ replied Banfor. ‘Remember what I taught you.’
Ruby nodded and squeezed the old man’s arm. ‘I will. Thank you.’
Huh? thought Roderick. Why did she want Banfor to go with her? And what had Banfor taught her? And why can’t there ever be just one day when nothing confusing happens?
Ruby farewelled Chester. ‘Goodbye,’ said the bear. ‘By which I mean I hope the way in which we say “bye” is good. But I also mean something else; that I hope that when we have said goodbye, all is good for you. And, of course, for me.’
‘Thank you, Chester,’ replied Ruby. ‘You make sure nothing bad happens to Mister Banfor.’
Chester puffed out his chest. ‘A challenge! I accept!’ He saluted Ruby.
Ruby turned to Roderick. ‘Goodbye, Roderick,’ she said stiffly. ‘Take good care of this man.’ She paused, and then added, ‘If you can.’
Roderick tried to form a suitable reply, one which would not only deflect her insult, but would also make her realise how mean and nasty and silly she had been to him. He was still trying to think of the exact words that would achieve all that as she galloped into the distance. They watched her silently until she was out of sight, and then turned south.
‘She was nice.’ Chester sighed. Suddenly, he brightened. ‘In fact, she still is nice! Why would she have changed just because she is no longer with us? She is nice, whether she is here or . . . wherever she is. And speaking of nice, look at that nice tree.’ He ran over to a big oak tree and hugged it.
They continued until the light began to fade, and then made camp by a stream off the road. Chester caught three squirrels for dinner, ate one and then immediately fell into a deep, snore-filled sleep by the fire. Banfor made another stew and, after they had eaten it, he and Roderick sat about the fire drinking tea.
The Adventures of Sir Roderick, the Not-Very Brave Page 10
