The Sword of Straw

by Amanda Hemingway

  “Oh, puh-lease! It was prancing around like something out of panto—Look behind you!—and there wasn’t enough yukky stuff when it got stabbed. There should have been lots of fluorescent green goo bubbling out.”

  “It was better than the ones in Harry Potter. They all ran around like they were clockwork.”

  “Ten p in the forfeit box for mentioning the H-word!”

  Settling down at last in his tarantula-free, scorpion-free bed, Nathan only hoped their zeal wouldn’t disturb their sleep. If they woke in the night and saw him gone—off on some dream voyage in Eos or Wilderslee—there would be panic.

  But the boys slept the night through, and Nathan’s dreams roamed no farther than his own head.

  By Friday the bodyguard had begun to lose enthusiasm. Nathan left cricket practice slightly early to be ready for Annie, preoccupied with what he would say to her—how to apologize without actually telling her anything, how to restore their relationship to its normal easygoing status. (He thought of it as easygoing; Annie was the one whose efforts made it so.) He was mildly relieved to find he had lost his usual footpads as he went into the cloakroom to change. It was empty: those not on the cricket pitch had already left. There was a soft sound behind him—he started, turned. Something struck the back of his head, and the world went out.

  He came to himself with the vague idea that this was a particularly unpleasant dream journey—the intercosmic equivalent of a bad trip. He felt sick, his head throbbed, and the darkness muffling him was tangible and coarse and smelled of stale wool. He tried to move and found his wrists and ankles were tied. The surface on which he was lying was smooth and hard and trembling with subterranean vibration, seriously aggravating his nausea. Between the pulses of headache, recollection trickled back. Not a dream after all, which was a nuisance, since—unless he could fall asleep—dematerializing out of this mess wasn’t an option. He had evidently been hit on the head, tied up, and bundled in a blanket in the back of some vehicle. Curiously, his first thought was: This is ridiculous.

  The sound of voices very near at hand quashed any lingering doubts about the identity of his kidnapper.

  “I know the way.” Damon Hackforth.

  “It’s miles from anywhere.” Another voice, unfamiliar and faintly downmarket. “You missed a turning…”

  “I missed it because it was the wrong one.”

  He’s kidnapped me, Nathan thought, his mind reeling—a mistake, since his body was reeling, too. He must be mad. He’ll be expelled—arrested—he’s totally off his trolley. Sheer incredulity blanked out any thought of fear. Schoolboys didn’t go around kidnapping each other, not even in the inner cities, let alone in a superior private school in the heart of the Sussex countryside. It just didn’t happen.

  Everything happens somewhere…

  He had never been too sure about that theory, but right now it held up. Everything happens somewhere, and for the moment, somewhere was here.

  There were two other boys with Damon, certainly not pupils from Ffylde. The one who had spoken before sounded nervous, asking questions and attempting argument, though with little success. Then there was another, with a strong southeast cockney accent, who spoke rarely and in monosyllables, possibly through gum. The muscle, Nathan deduced. Listening for names, he heard Damon call the first one Ram, while the strong silent type appeared to be Ginge. Something clicked in his brain. Weren’t they the two who had tried to burgle Thornyhill? Nathan’s heart leapt with momentary excitement. So Uncle Barty had been right—there was a definite connection between the failed burglary and the Hackforths.

  But why would Damon be after the Grail—and how would he know about it, or where it was?

  “Check on our passenger,” Damon ordered. Obviously he was driving.

  Nathan closed his eyes hastily as the blanket was pulled back for a few seconds.

  “He’s still out.” Ram. “You hit him too hard. Supposing he’s hurt bad? I’m not going down for assault.”

  “Don’t be such a weasel. You won’t go down for anything so long as you do what you’re told.” Damon was clearly enjoying being the boss.

  “Why do we have to bring him along anyway?”

  “We need him. I explained all that, cretin. He’ll know where it is.”

  “He won’t tell us.”

  “I hope not. I’m looking forward to squeezing it out of him.”

  For the first time, Nathan experienced a twinge of dread. With his hands and feet bound, he couldn’t put up a fight. And if Damon was crazy enough to kidnap him, he might be crazy enough to use torture…Suddenly the situation, fantastic and unbelievable though it was, didn’t seem quite so comic-opera anymore.

  He must listen, learn, think. If only his head didn’t hurt so much…

  “I don’t want to be part of this!” Ram was saying. “I don’t do violence.”

  “Of course you don’t. Ginge does the rough stuff, right?”

  A suitable grunt from Ginge.

  “Ginge does the punching, you do the talking. Only this time I talk, I punch, you both shut up and follow orders. Clear?”

  “Don’t want to go back there.” An unexpected contribution from Ginger.

  Back where?

  “You’re pathetic.” Evidently this was a favorite insult of Damon’s. “An old man and a dog, and you’re wetting yourself. Some tough guy. The dog isn’t even a rottweiler, just a rat-eared mongrel, out of Battersea Dogs’ Home by a postman’s leg. You’re scared of your own fart.”

  “Ginge once bit a rottweiler,” Ram volunteered. “You didn’t see this dog. It don’t act like it’s trained, more like…like it thinks. You know, really thinks. Like a human.”

  “What would you know about thinking?”

  So we’re going to Thornyhill, Nathan assimilated with a pang of relief that he knew could be premature. Uncle Barty and Hoover would be more than a match for Damon, with or without the tentative support of his henchmen. And he—Nathan—was supposed to reveal something, at a guess the secret hiding place of the Grail, after some appropriate physical pressure that Damon plainly intended to enjoy. Only Bartlemy had never shown him where the Grail was kept, so he couldn’t give it away, which was a good thing but might prove painful.

  Despite the discomfort of his position, Nathan’s headache was easing. He was young, fit, and resilient; even under the present conditions, his body was able to recuperate. He wondered briefly what he had been hit with, but decided it wasn’t important. What mattered now was to get free, if he could. But his wrists were bound too tight—it felt as if they had used tape—and he didn’t want to wriggle too much and attract the attention of the three in the front. He felt it would be best for now if they thought he was still unconscious.

  “Don’t know why you and your dad are so set on this cup thing,” Ram was muttering. Nathan ceased his futile struggles so that he could listen. “If it’s really well known it’ll be bloody impossible to fence.”

  “Dad isn’t selling, he’s buying. He thinks it’s the Holy Grail—he’s gone completely nuts on the idea. He believes its magical powers’ll cure my sister. Ever since she got ill he’s gotten more and more desperate”—the constriction in his voice betrayed suppressed emotion, but Nathan wasn’t sure which emotion it was—“now he’s gone soft in the head. He’s stuffed himself so full of fairy tales he’s seeing elves in the bath. Stupid old bugger. If the doctors can’t help her the bloody fairies won’t. She’s dying and that’s that.”

  He does care about her, Nathan thought. Somewhere deep down…

  “You never know,” Ram said. “I mean, that house—it’s a spooky kind of place, right? The old man—he’s spooky. All fat and soft looking, but spooky underneath. Like the dog.”

  “Forget the dog. I can deal with it.”

  “Anyway,” Ram resumed, “if you don’t believe in the Grail stuff, why pinch it?”

  “ ’Cause Dad’ll pay. I told you, he’s buying.”

  “Yeah, but—you’re his son�
�”

  “I’m not dumb. He won’t know it’s me. I’ll do it anonymous—over the phone. He’ll never know.”

  “How much you gonna ask for?” Ram’s brain was evidently beginning to work.

  “You’ll get a thousand apiece. That was the deal.”

  “Not sure that’s enough. If your dad’s desperate like you say, you can ask him for a lot of dosh. A hell of a lot. Ten grand, twenty—fifty. Maybe even a hundred. I reckon we deserve a bigger cut.”

  “You’ll get what you’re given and be grateful for it. Now shut the fuck up.” Earlier, Damon had sounded on a high, but from the first mention of his family his mood had darkened. Nathan sensed him walking an emotional precipice, inching closer and closer to the edge. He didn’t like to think what would happen when Damon went over.

  “I reckon you owe someone.” Ram’s instinct for danger seemed to have temporarily shut down. “If you needed the money for something legit, your old man’d give it to you. ’Course he would. He’s your old man, isn’t he? I reckon you owe someone big time. What is it—crack, charlie? You a gambler?”

  Damon stamped on the brakes with such violence, Nathan was thrown against the seat backs. He nearly cried out.

  “Leave it.” Damon’s voice had sunk to a hiss. “Mind—your—own—business. Understand? You get a thousand each. No questions. Final.”

  The silence crackled. Presently they drove on. Nathan was remembering rumors floating around at school, drifting down from the sixth via someone’s brother’s friend of a friend. Rumors about Internet poker. Ram got it right, he thought. I bet it’s gambling. He felt a germ of pity for Damon, who, he suspected, loved the sister he envied—the sister who was dying by degrees—and who was caught in a dark tangle of his own making, lashing out in vain like a tiger in a net. But a netted tiger can be deadly, if you get too close…

  A few minutes later they slowed and turned, bumping along what Nathan guessed to be a lane or track. Then they stopped.

  “Right,” said Damon. “Let’s get him out and wake him up.”

  “WHERE IS he?” Annie demanded, fighting to keep the panic out of her voice. “Last week he came home with bruises, and now he’s disappeared. Where’s my son?”

  “I’m sure he’s here somewhere.” The teacher spoke in his best parent-soothing accents. “It’s a big school. He may have popped into the library to check up on something—gotten lost in a book. Nathan’s a great reader.”

  “I know.” Annie spoke between clenched teeth—a difficult feat only achievable under extreme stress.

  “He’ll turn up shortly. He might have stopped to have a chat with one of the weekend boarders—begun playing some computer game, maybe. We do allow them on Friday and Saturday evenings.”

  “I’ve been waiting three-quarters of an hour…”

  “Boys that age have no sense of time.”

  “He doesn’t answer his cell…”

  “We insist they’re kept switched off in school hours.”

  “I want to see the abbot.”

  A little later she was talking to Ned Gable and the bodyguard.

  “We were playing cricket,” Ned said. “Nathan went off a bit early to get changed. He wanted to be on time for you. When we went into the cloakroom he’d gone, so we thought…”

  “Yes, I see.” The boys looked uncomfortable and anxious. Annie was conscious of a rising fear. “What’s wrong?”

  “We were worried about him,” said one of the others. “There was someone who—who kept watching him. It was weird. We should’ve stayed with him.”

  “Who?” Annie asked. “Who kept watching him? Was it Damon Hackforth?”

  There was a moment of hesitation before the schoolboy omertà started to fall apart.

  “Was it Damon Hackforth who beat him up?”

  At that, several boys began to speak at once. Ned Gable came out on top. “He didn’t beat him up, honestly. Nathan put up a bloody good fight. Damon looked much worse than him afterward—didn’t he?” There was a general assent. “We think that’s why he’s been acting strange—Damon, I mean. He wants revenge. He’s got this kind of fixation on Nathan, not gay or anything, but, like, jealousy, only more Freudian, because Nathan’s the person he wants to be…”

  “Do you think Damon’s kidnapped him?” someone piped up.

  “Not without help,” opined another boy.

  “Preposterous suggestion!” said the teacher.

  “I want the abbot,” Annie reiterated. “Now.”

  In the time it took to locate Father Crowley, she was phoning Bartlemy.

  With parents coming and going to collect their children, nobody had paid any attention to the little delivery van (it belonged to Ram’s father) that had pulled up near the cloakroom exit at the back of the school. It had been cruising in the vicinity each evening since Wednesday; Ram’s father thought he was using it to run errands. Those who had noticed it drive away assumed it was a legitimate part of the scenery. The school was always taking delivery of something or other. By the time the police were called most of the potential witnesses had gone and Annie, going quietly frantic, found herself confronted with a uniformed officer who took it for granted she was as wealthy as the other parents and her son had been kidnapped for ransom. The idea that the perpetrator might be another boy he, like the teacher, dismissed out of hand.

  When DCI Pobjoy arrived, assigned to the case because of his background knowledge of the family, Annie greeted him like a relieving force. Bartlemy, after brief consideration, had said he would await developments at Thornyhill, and the abbot, though both kindly and competent, assured her it would prove to be a storm in a teacup. Pobjoy listened to her, issued orders, mobilized searchers.

  “Don’t think it’s a sicko,” the uniform asserted, on the side. “Kid’s fourteen but big for his age—too big to be snatched without a struggle—looks pretty mature, too. Sickos go for the baby-faced ones. Don’t see how it could be one of the other kids, either. If you ask me, they’re after a ransom, and grabbed the wrong boy. Some of the parents here are rolling in it. If you ask me—”

  “I didn’t,” said Pobjoy. Previous experience with the Wards made him disinclined to leap to conclusions of any kind. Besides, he knew Damon Hackforth’s record.

  He turned back to Annie.

  “Try not to worry. We’ll find him.” And then: “I’m sorry, I have to ask you this. Has Nathan ever run away or just vanished for a while before?”

  “No!” Annie protested—then checked herself.

  Could he—could he somehow have fallen asleep, slipped into another universe, gotten lost between worlds? It had happened once, but Bartlemy had helped to call him back. Surely, though, he wouldn’t fall asleep straight after cricket, in the school cloakroom, when he was supposed to be going home…

  “No,” she said resolutely. “He’s never done anything like that.”

  Pobjoy saw the doubt writ clear in her face, and wondered at it.

  THEY SET Nathan with his back against a tree, Ginger and Ram holding him on either side. Damon had wanted them to tie him there but they hadn’t brought any rope and their supply of tape was running out. Nathan thought of calling for help: he knew Woody would come to him, but the woodwose would be too timid to do anything, too physically fragile even if he made the attempt. Nathan felt frightened, and angry with himself because he was frightened; fear was debilitating, shaming, it made you stupid. Whatever followed, he mustn’t show fear, he mustn’t let Damon see his weakness. Part of him still didn’t quite believe that this was happening—that he was here in Thornyhill woods with his wrists and ankles taped together, while a boy he barely knew stood in front of him, sleeves rolled up to show unexpectedly brawny arms, one sporting a tattoo of a phoenix in flames, the other a plain metal bracelet, both prohibited at Ffylde. He was lighting a cigarette with peculiar care and drawing heavily on it, so Nathan saw the glow at the tip intensify to a red smolder.

  He’d tried talking to Ram and Ginger, telling th
em they were fools to go along with this—though he suspected Ram at least knew that already—but Damon’s influence over them was too strong. Once the cigarette was going he shook the match and tossed it into the leafmold. A tiny thread of smoke drifted up from the spot.

  “Stamp it out,” Nathan said, fleetingly distracted from the dangers of his own position. “You could start a fire.”

  After a stunned moment, Damon burst out laughing. “Listen to him! Even now he has to be the virtuous little goody-goody! Stamp it out—you could start a fire.” He mimicked Nathan’s tone in a baby voice that didn’t work. “Well, why not? Let’s start a fire. Let’s watch the pretty woods burn…and burn…” He struck another match, holding it so the flame lengthened to a yellow tongue.

  “If you do that,” Nathan said, suddenly angry, really angry, with a tight, black anger that swallowed fear, “I’ll see you dead.”

  Something about his words made an impression, though he wasn’t sure what sort. “Then tell me,” Damon said, “where’s the cup? Where does the old man hide it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Not even to save the pretty woods? How green they are—how lovely and green. Shall I turn them black and charred? Shall I fry all the squirrels and the rabbits and the other cute little woodland creatures? Shall I barbecue Squirrel Nutkin and Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tiggywinkle and all?”

  “The courts don’t like arson,” Ram muttered. “We’d go down for a century.”

  “Shut up.” The match burned down to Damon’s fingers, and he dropped it with an oath, but it went out. Despite his situation, Nathan felt relief ooze through him. No more smoke came from the other one. “All right, enough games. Let’s get on with it.”

  He drew on the cigarette again, tapped the excess ash from the tip. Then he opened Nathan’s shirt.

  Nathan thought: He doesn’t mean it. He won’t really do it—until he looked into Damon’s eyes and saw the darkness there, and the gleam within the dark, the edge-of-madness gleam of someone who has gone beyond reality.

  Damon pressed the cigarette against his chest.