Abbot Dagger's Academy and the Quest for the Holy Grail

by Sam Llewellyn

  ‘Noe.’

  ‘Go forthe,’ said the Abbot.

  As they left the room, he was pouring perfume on his foot.

  They entered a distant part of the house. Miss Davies pulled a lever. A door opened. They walked down a passage whose walls began to shake. The reason for the shaking, it turned out, was a stone gully full of huge water wheels that ran beside the passage. Miss Davies shooed them through this, and into a room full of the glitter of light.

  ‘The Examinator,’ she said. ‘We use it for looking through Time.’

  ‘How does it work?’ said Owen.

  ‘Very badly,’ said Miss Davies. ‘It is done with mirrors.’ She began to haul a series of levers of the kind found in old-fashioned railway signal boxes. ‘And it is very inaccurate. What I am doing now is programming. With luck we will soon see a picture of what the Academy will look like if the Greyte Cup is still missing on Founder’s Day. Look at that wall over there.’

  The wall was covered with glittering little motes of light. Gradually the motes came together. A picture started to form.

  ‘That’s not the Academy,’ said Onyx.

  Rosetti was silent.

  The mountains beyond the Rim looked the same. But where the Academy buildings should have been was a sheet of brown water. Something disturbed the surface. A long green neck came up. At the end of the neck was a reptile head full of fierce teeth.

  ‘Wha,’ said everybody.

  ‘Remember what I said about the River of Time,’ said Miss Davies. ‘A small eddy in Time disappears, so if you eat a little slice of bread in the Middle Ages it doesn’t matter. But if you nick a crown, someone is going to notice, and you change the course of the river, and there will be trouble. In this case, the Examinator is showing what will happen if we do not find the Cup and put it back in the Sealed Room. The very fabric of Reality has been torn, and the dinosaurs will still be ruling the Earth, and most of the Universe will be different too. To sum up: if the Cup doesn’t get back in time for prizegiving on Founder’s Day, there will be bigger problems than the Head losing his job and Cosm taking over. The Skool will never have existed. And nor will we.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Rosetti, ‘we’d obviously better go and find the Cup. But where do we start?’

  ‘Ask the Examinator!’ cried Onyx.

  ‘Not sensitive enough,’ said Miss Davies. There was a crash and a rumble and the slipping roar of falling masonry. ‘And very badly built. That’s it fallen down. We’ll ask Papa.’

  Back they trooped to the Abbot’s room, where the smell was now absolutely ghastly and Trym was skulking with a bucket.

  ‘Father,’ said Miss Davies, through her hanky. ‘I abjure you by all Demons and Laws to tell us, where should we start our Quest?’

  ‘Hence, Trym, vermin, begone,’ said the Abbot. Trym shot him a nasty look and clanked off. The Abbot frowned. His eyes rolled back in his head and he crashed back into his chair in a trance. ‘Alboolah blimpast skweedragora,’ he said.

  ‘Language?’ said Miss Davies.

  Onyx frowned. ‘Sort of pidgin Assyrian with hints of Ancient Egyptian. Nonsense really.’

  ‘Just as I thought,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Pater, how did you come by that Cup?’

  The Abbot came round swiftly. ‘Someone… gave it unto mee.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said his daughter disrespectfully. ‘You nicked it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Alack,’ said the Abbot, looking shifty. ‘I remember mee nott how –’

  ‘You would have nicked it somewhen back in time,’ said Miss Davies. ‘Like you nicked the mummy off the Priest Tot.’

  ‘Fie!’

  ‘Mayhap I wyll place ye contents of yon other dysgustynge Chamber Pott on thy scurvy Hedde,’ said Miss Davies.

  ‘Noe! Groo! I confesse! Ytt was yn ye hands of ye Knights Templar that darkest of Fryedays. I took ytt then!’

  ‘Then we will go back and find it ourselves, before you do, and put it in the Sealed Room,’ said Miss Davies. ‘I shall get a supply of Doves from Trym. Come, Skolars.’

  ‘My lines!’ said Onyx. ‘What about my lines?’

  ‘Ah yes. Father, two thousand times I Must be More Cleanerer.’

  ‘I wyll telle the Demons and Trym will send them by Dove, the knave. Now begone!’

  Miss Davies talked to Trym, who could be heard whining and complaining.

  The Skolars ran to the dovecote. In went the dove basket. Down went the pole. And there was the dirty old Skool farmyard again.

  Phew.

  Four days later, tea was ready in the Study in the Skolary. A large pan of sausages (sent down by the Head, who thought the Skool food was disgusting) was cooking on the open fire. Beside it, a teapot steamed on a trivet. Beside the fire sat Onyx, a leather-bound book open on her knee and a crumpet in her hand. As Rosetti and Owen walked in, slightly stained with mud from Running practice, they noticed she was bouncing.

  ‘This is amazing!’ she said. ‘I found it in the Library. In 1307 the King of France wanted to get rid of the Templars who were sort of monk knights because they were too powerful and he wanted their treasure so he sent the army into their headquarters in Paris and looted it and burned it and put the head Templar in prison but the head Templar cursed him and from that day on the kings of France were absolutely useless and Miss Davies says we can go and see them on the actual day they were raided i.e. Black Friday the thirteenth of October 1307!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Rosetti, panting slightly.

  ‘Wha,’ said Owen.

  ‘Like the Abbot said,’ said Onyx. ‘The Temple. In Paris. The darkest of Fryedays, he called it. This is it!’

  Miss Davies came in. ‘Wash, tea and dovecote!’ she said briskly. ‘And we’ll get the Cup, and come home. It’ll be hard on the doves, of course.’

  ‘Why?’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Normally they take about five days to recharge. But this lot haven’t been used much lately, so we should be all right.’

  Half an hour later they were at the dovecote, full of tea.

  Miss Davies got everyone settled on the Time Chair. ‘Now, then, children, I want you to behave,’ she said. ‘Where we are going you may find people are a little… on edge.’ She consulted a large leather-bound book and a stop-watch. ‘Two. One. Go!’ she cried, mashing the pole on to the dove basket. There was the squawk, the flutter, the feeling of warm nests in the mind. ‘Here we are,’ said Miss Davies. ‘I shall remain with the doves and defend the Cote. You will be novices, which means trainee monks. You will find the Cup, nick it and bring it back here. Be careful.’ She rummaged in a basket and pulled out some robes. ‘Put these on. Onyx has done the –’

  ‘Research!’ cried Onyx, bouncing. ‘I have! I have! We are to consign ourselves to the care and teaching of Father Anselm, the Novice Master, who will definitely show us around because he needs new novices. It’ll be just like being first-day-at-Skool again! And then we’ll take the Cup! How thrrrrilling!’

  ‘Go,’ said Miss Davies.

  The robes were long and black, with hoods. The Skolars ducked into them, then pushed open the dovecote door.

  They were standing on a green lawn. There was a brown pond on which ducks were floating. Around the lawn was a high grey wall, pierced by a mighty gateway blocked with a portcullis and an iron-bound gate. From the gate a cobbled path led across the lawn to a castle. The path was crowded with people and horses. The people looked small, the horses hairy. There was the smell of History again: sweat and no drains.

  ‘Hoods up,’ said Rosetti. ‘Quick march. Let’s get that Cup and get back here and get out as fast as possible.’ He bowed his head and moved towards the castle gate with a smooth, gliding step. The other two Skolars glided after him.

  The smell increased as the crowd thickened. Two surly-looking guards stood at the castle gate, pikes crossed. Onyx pushed forward. ‘Novitiae sumus,’ she cried in fluent Latin. ‘Ingressare volimus!’

  ‘Oo,’ said the guards, uncrossing thei
r pikes. The Skolars marched in, and found themselves in a little room with sawdust on the floor and two hard benches. Magazines had not yet been invented, but even so they recognized it as a waiting room.

  Five minutes later the door crashed open. There was a smell of stale wine and a flutter of robes. A man was standing in front of them.

  ‘Hic,’ he said.

  Gibber, gibber, went Onyx.

  Gibber, gibber, hic, replied the winey man.

  ‘This is Anselmus the Novice Master, as I hoped,’ said Onyx. ‘I have told him we are very eager to maybe join the Templars and would like to be shown around. He says there have not been any novices for ages and we must be crazy, but fine.’

  ‘Ahee!’ cried the Novice Master, and zigzagged off down a stone passage.

  ‘Follow him!’ cried Onyx.

  ‘Cappella!’ cried Anselm, throwing open a door.

  ‘The chapel!’ translated Onyx.

  ‘Ooer!’ cried Rosetti.

  They stood for a moment under the barrel-vault of a huge church, their eyes swimming with incense and dazzled by the glitter of jewels on images. There was no Cup that they could see. Then they were off again. They wove through long tables crowded with warrior monks eating steaks off the points of their daggers. Still no Cup.

  Then Anselmus was zigzagging again, past bedrooms and a long smelly room with a lot of holes in a stone slab –

  ‘Smell like lavs,’ said Owen.

  ‘Actually they are reredorters.’

  ‘Smell like lavs.’

  ‘That is because lavs are exactly what they are. Interestingly enough –’

  Rosetti hissed, ‘We need the Cup. Which means we need to be taken to the treasure chamber. And in a hurry.’

  ‘But I was explaining!’ said Onyx.

  ‘Explain later.’

  ‘Tch,’ said Onyx, and asked for the Thesaurus, which was ‘treasure chamber’ in Latin. Anselmus led the way through three thick doors guarded by nasty-looking armed men.

  ‘I can hear something,’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Me too,’ said Owen.

  ‘No. Inside my head. A Call.’

  ‘Duh,’ said Owen.

  ‘I think it’s the Cup.’

  Anselmus led them into a dark room. He said, ‘Ecce!’

  ‘Behold,’ translated Onyx.

  ‘Ulp,’ said Owen.

  They were standing on the floor of a tower. A single ray of sun lanced from a high window on to an arrangement of chests and shelves in the centre of the circular room. The light blazed on gold and silver. It struck diamonds and rubies and emeralds, and burst into thousands of new colours that shot on to the dark walls and lay twinkling like a new universe in a black sky. And there on the right, on a stand of its own, was a gold cup, the knop halfway down its stem studded with big red stones.

  ‘The Greyte Cup!’ said Onyx.

  ‘Told you,’ said Rosetti. ‘It was Calling.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Owen. ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘But how will you get it out?’ said Rosetti.

  ‘Stun the guards. Run.’

  Rosetti looked at the guards, who were large and heavily armed. He said, ‘They will stun us first.’

  The Novice Master was talking.

  ‘He says this is all really, really ancient stuff,’ said Onyx, bouncing slightly. ‘He says that thing is the Prophet Elijah’s thumb in a box of richest work. And he says that cup over there is actually the Holy Grail, which came from the vaults of the Cathedral that Burned. I told him it’s an important Skool Prize but I don’t think he heard.’

  ‘The Holy what?’ said Rosetti.

  Owen took a step towards the Cup. Five big guards took a step towards Owen. Rosetti said, ‘Perhaps we’d better have a little think about this.’

  At this point, there was a sort of thickening of the air. The thickening became a solidity, and took the form of a chair sitting on a closed basket. A lanky figure was sitting on the chair. The air was filled with the cooing of doves.

  The figure on the chair got up. His robe was covered with moons and stars and Sigils of Art.

  ‘Abbot Dagger!’ cried Onyx.

  The Abbot did not seem to be listening. He got off his chair, scooped up the Greyte Cup, stowed it in his robes and returned to the chair, knocking over the Thumb of Elijah.

  There were cries of fury. Jewels skittered across the stone floor. The figure on the chair said something that sounded like, ‘Ooer,’ and kicked the basket under the seat. Doves squawked. The figure began to fade. Armed men advanced on him from all sides, spears and axes raised.

  A huge bell started to ring. A din of metal came from outside, and a confused roaring of voices. ‘Whoops,’ said Rosetti, who had heard trouble before.

  ‘They are saying that the troops of Philippe le Bel are storming the outer walls,’ said Onyx. ‘He’s the king, by the way. Correction, have stormed.’ Arrows clattered on the ceiling. ‘Perhaps we should, ooer, come back later.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Rosetti. ‘Thank you, gents,’ he said to the guards. He led the Skolars swiftly past the Novice Master and out of the Thesaurus.

  The stone corridors were full of people. ‘To the battlements!’ yelled Rosetti, and led his fellow Skolars down the steps to the duck-pond lawn. Even here the air was full of arrows. People were milling and howling. Several things seemed to be on fire, and a huge battering noise came from the gates. Onyx was looking rather white. The crowd moved aside, and there was the dovecote, with Miss Davies at the door.

  ‘Quick!’ cried Miss Davies. In they ran.

  The door slammed. There was an explosion outside, the sound of the gate bursting inwards, the skitter of arrows on the dovecote roof. Miss Davies stamped on the dove basket. Rosetti said, ‘Ow!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A stone. It’s freezing cold.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Pocket.’ He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a stone that glittered.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Treasure-room floor.’

  The dovecote door burst open. An archer stood there, bow bent, arrow pointing straight at Miss Davies.

  Miss Davies gave the archer her dazzling smile. She took the jewel out of Rosetti’s hand and tossed it to him. ‘Catch,’ she said.

  The jewel looped through the air, twinkling like a tiny sun, and fell to the earth. Already halfway to his knees to pick up the jewel, the archer loosed his arrow. It thunked into the woodwork of the chair. Miss Davies stamped on the dove basket. Nests filled the heads of all. Then they were still in the dovecote, but there was no archer, and the arrow in the chairback was crumbling into dust, and from outside came the distant comforting sound of games being played on muddy pitches. They were back at Skool.

  ‘Skolars, and specially Rosetti,’ said Miss Davies severely, ‘I know that some of your parents were jewel thieves. But I tell you here and now for the very last time, nicking stuff is very, very wrong, and I have to remind you about the Examinator, which showed that nicking stuff in History will cause more trouble than you can imagine. That jewel you tried to nick went into the Crown of Britain, and its absence from the Crown would have changed things very nastily, and ended the Universe, so don’t even think about doing it again.’ She jumped down from the chair. ‘Now come on, everyone. Debrief. Then supper. Then I want you all to write a few pages on What We Did in the Middle Ages.’

  They went to the Study, where a warm fire was blazing. ‘Well?’ said Miss Davies.

  ‘Your dad nicked the Cup,’ said Owen. ‘We saw him do it.’

  Miss Davies sighed. ‘I was afraid of that,’ she said. ‘We’re not used to Time Travel yet, and practice makes perfect, and the Abbot’s had loads of practice. Anyone got any ideas about what to do next?’

  Onyx’s hand was already up, creaking with upness. ‘Miss miss please miss I have miss please.’

  ‘Well, Onyx?’

  ‘The Novice Master said it came from the Vaults o
f the Cathedral that Burned!’ said Onyx. ‘So all we have to do is find out which cathedral! And then go and steal it!’

  ‘But –’ said Rosetti, frowning.

  Whatever he had been going to say was drowned in the tolling of a great bell, and the thunder of thick boots on oak floors.

  ‘Supper!’ cried Miss Davies. ‘Along you go, chop chop!’

  As they ran, Rosetti said to Owen, ‘If that little jewel didn’t want to be moved in Time, what would have happened if we had got the Cup?’

  Owen said, doggedly, ‘A Dread Thing, obviously. So the Cup must be different.’

  ‘How?’

  Owen’s eyes were beginning to cross. ‘Not enough data.’

  ‘And how will it be there for the Abbot to nick if we nick it from this Cathedral?’

  ‘Same answer,’ said Owen, joining the food queue. ‘Now can we talk about something else because if we don’t my eyes will cross again and I’ll start bumping into things.’

  After supper Onyx made her way to the library.

  The Academy Library occupied several floors of the Tower of Flight – it was hard to say exactly how many because of the deep drifts of dust that covered many of its shelves and staircases. Onyx borrowed a wheelbarrow from the Librarian, piled it full of books and wheeled it to a table by a window. She began to open books, leaf through and slam them on a pile. The Librarian opened his mouth to tell her to be gentle. Dust drifted in. He felt one of his asthma attacks coming on. Wrapping a wet handkerchief round his face he went back to his game of patience, trying to ignore the sneezing coming from the middle of the dust cloud.

  ‘Choo,’ it went. Slam went another book.

  ‘Choo.’ Slam.

  ‘Choo. Reeka!’

  A small figure lurched out of the dust cloud carrying an enormous volume.

  ‘I’m borrowing this book,’ said Onyx, and shot out of the Library. The Librarian pressed a button on his communicator. ‘Dr Cosm?’ he wheezed.

  ‘What?’ barked the lard-white Doctor.

  ‘Librarian here.’

  ‘What have I got to do with books? I hate books,’ snarled Cosm. ‘Can you test them? Can you count their contents? No!’

  ‘I admire you greatly,’ wheezed the Librarian. ‘Just as I admire all Great Men who will one day become Headmasters. And I thought you would like to know that one of the Targets is reading up on Chartres Cathedral.’