Children of the Red King Book 05 Charlie Bone and the Hidden King

by Jenny Nimmo

  "Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" asked Charlie as they raced up to the dormitory.

  "I want to see the ladies in their ball gowns," said Billy. "Then I can tell you all about it." He didn't add that he wanted to imagine one of the beautiful dancing figures was his mother.

  Mr. Weedon was waiting in the hall when Charlie came clattering downstairs with his bag. There was one minute to go.

  "Nearly didn't make it, did you, Charlie Bone?" Mr. Weedon had the sort of sneery tone that always made Charlie want to say something rude. But he was a little afraid of the bald, muscle-bound handyman. If he said the wrong thing now, Mr. Weedon was quite capable of locking him in a storeroom, or worse.

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  "Thank you," Charlie managed to say, as the burly man slid back the bolts and unlocked the door.

  "Haven't opened it yet, have I?" mocked Mr. Weedon.

  "No, sir."

  Mr. Weedon opened one of the doors a fraction. Charlie squeezed through the gap and ran across the courtyard. He bounded down the steps into the cobble-stoned square, almost falling off the last one, he was so happy to see Uncle Paton's car parked at the end of the square.

  Uncle Paton didn't hear Charlie's joyful shouts. He was wearing his dark glasses and appeared to be completely engrossed in the book on his lap.

  "Uncle Paton!" Charlie wrenched open the car door and slid into the passenger seat. "I'm here."

  Uncle Paton looked up. "So you are." He gave Charlie a faint smile.

  "Is everything all right? I mean, Maisie - has she? Is she... ?"

  "No change there, I'm afraid." Uncle Paton sighed.

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  "I'm sorry you had to come out in daylight. Did you have any accidents?"

  "None so far." Paton started the engine. He seemed distracted.

  "Are you OK, Uncle P.?" asked Charlie.

  "Me? Yes, I'm fine. It's just... well, I'm worried about your mother, Charlie."

  "Why?" asked Charlie in alarm.

  "She's going to the Grand Ball."

  "Mom?" Charlie couldn't believe it. "How on earth? They'd never let her. Who's she going with? My mom? She can't be."

  "Well, she is." Paton put his foot down and they bumped over the cobblestones and out of the square.

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  BARTHOLOMEW'SDIARIES

  Uncle Paton insisted on taking a route that would avoid any traffic lights. There had been instances when one glance at a red light had resulted in a shower of glass.

  Charlie found it difficult to be patient. He kept throwing questions at his uncle, who seemed to have no answers, though he did know that Amy's invitation had come from Kingdom's, the store that had provided the fatal prawns.

  "Maybe they're trying to make it up to her, for Maisie's accident," said Charlie.

  Uncle Paton shook his head. "Maisie's trouble was no accident. It was meant to put me out of action. And your mother's behavior these last few days leads me to believe that this invitation means a great deal more to her than mere compensation. She's positively glowing."

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  "Glowing?" Charlie had never heard the word applied to his mother.

  "You'll see what I mean, in a minute." Paton drew up outside number nine. "Your mother's not at work today."

  Charlie was out of the car and up the steps before his uncle could reach for his key. As soon as he was in the hall, Charlie cried, "Mom! Mom!" at the top of his voice.

  Grandma Bone stepped out of the kitchen and barked, "Quiet! You're too old to be calling for your mother like that."

  "I want her to know that I'm back," said Charlie, leaping up the stairs before his grandmother could stop him.

  He found his mom in her little room at the top of the house. The ball gown was the first thing he saw when he opened the door. It hung on the wardrobe, a deep, gleaming blue, with thin straps, a tight waist, and a long flaring skirt.

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  "Do you like it, Charlie?" Amy Bone looked up from her dressing table. Her hair was different. It was glossy and smooth with streaks of lighter blond.

  "Mom, why are you going to this ball?" asked Charlie.

  "Charlie, don't look so solemn." Amy Bone's new glowing face smiled at him from her mirror. "I want to have some fun. I want to go out and sparkle again." She was gleamy and glittery and not her usual self at all.

  Charlie swallowed hard and asked, "Who are you going with?"

  "Mr. Noble. He's the new owner at Kingdom's. Such a nice man. You'd like him, Charlie."

  "Like him? Why should I?"

  "He's good to me, Charlie. Doesn't that mean anything to you? He makes me feel special." Her voice took on a dreamy quality. "He uses such wonderful words."

  Charlie went up to the blue dress and touched the slippery material. It felt bewitched. "Has Aunt Venetia been at this dress?"

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  "Oh, Charlie, of course not. I bought it at Kingdom's. I watched the girl pack it myself."

  "Must have cost a bundle," Charlie muttered.

  "It was a gift," his mother said shyly.

  A trap, more like, thought Charlie. "You can't leave Maisie," he blurted out. "Not all frozen. You said you couldn't."

  "Don't be silly, Charlie. Uncle Paton will be here if Maisie - unfreezes. If you can't say anything nice, you'd better go."

  Charlie's hands fell to his sides. He felt that he was losing a battle. He didn't know what weapons to use against the man who was stealing his mother with wonderful words. He crept out of her room and closed the door.

  On his way downstairs, Charlie looked in on Maisie. She was still lying in the bathtub. Someone had put a sleeping mask over her eyes, and it made her look more like a burglar than a frozen granny. Except for the pink sweater.

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  "I suppose you're hungry," said Grandma Bone when Charlie entered the kitchen.

  "No thanks, I've just had lunch," said Charlie.

  "I wasn't offering, I was asking," said his grandmother, without looking up from her newspaper.

  Charlie sighed. "Did the basket come?" he asked.

  "Of course. Paton wouldn't touch a thing, silly man. It was all quite delicious." Grandma Bone smacked her lips.

  "So there's nothing left?"

  "Not a crumb."

  Charlie sighed again. He went upstairs and tapped on his uncle's door.

  "Come in, dear boy, come in," called Uncle Paton.

  Charlie went in and sat on the edge of his uncle's horribly untidy bed, while Paton pushed some papers into a drawer in his desk.

  "You're right, Uncle P.," Charlie said miserably. "Mom's more than glowing. I think she's been kind of enchanted."

  "Me, too!" Paton whizzed around on his swivel chair

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  and stared hard at Charlie. "But look here, dear boy, it's not all gloom and doom. We've got news for you."

  "Good news?" said Charlie hopefully.

  "Interesting, at least," his uncle told him. "When our good ladies have left for the ball, Miss Ingledew will join us here for supper. Emma is staying with the Vertigos apparently. Julia has a most intriguing-looking package for you, and we are both dying to know what's in it."

  "For me?" Charlie was puzzled. His uncle could tell him no more, so he went to his room and unpacked his bag. The white moth flew down from the curtain and settled on his shoulder. Charlie sensed that it was her way of greeting him.

  Time passed very slowly. Charlie thought of visiting Benjamin, but he felt uncomfortable in number twelve, knowing that the Browns were spies. Benjamin would have to come over to him.

  At seven o'clock, Grandma Bone's
door opened and she rustled downstairs. The front door slammed and Charlie looked out his window. Below him, Grandma Bone and two of his great-aunts, Eustacia

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  and Venetia, stood in a huddle talking in low voices. They all wore long dark cloaks, but Venetia's had a particularly slimy look. It glistened like the track of a slug.

  The three sisters got into Eustacia's car, and the next minute it was hooting its way irritably up Filbert Street. A few seconds later there was a swish of silk outside Charlie's room. The door opened and a woman stepped in. Charlie barely recognized her. Was this beautiful woman in a blue gown really his mother?

  "How do I look?" she asked.

  Charlie's gaze traveled down her pale, bare arms. A wide silver bracelet encircled her left wrist, but her diamond ring was gone. Charlie shivered. He had never seen his mother without her ring. Never.

  "Your ring!" He looked into her face.

  "My ring? Oh, I took it off. I don't want to sparkle too much, do I?" She gave a funny little laugh.

  "But, Mom ..."

  "Good night, Charlie." She suddenly bent forward and kissed him on the cheek, and Charlie was

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  enveloped in a scent that was utterly unfamiliar. For a few minutes, he stood in a daze, and then he rushed downstairs after his mother. Someone was already ringing the bell, and Amy Bone left the house without a backward glance. A man in a black uniform closed the door behind her.

  "Mom!" Charlie wrenched open the door, just in time to see his mother get into the back of a long, gold limousine. It had dark, smoked windows that he couldn't see through. The man in black, a chauffeur, no doubt, gave Charlie a nasty look, and then got into the driver's seat. The gold limousine glided away, as silently as a serpent.

  "Don't stand in the cold, dear boy." Uncle Paton came up behind Charlie.

  "Uncle P., did you see Mom?"

  "No. Sorry. I missed that. Did she look good?" Uncle Paton drew Charlie aside and closed the door.

  "Yes," Charlie said slowly. "But she'd taken off her ring."

  "Hmmm. What does that signify, I wonder? Come on,

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  help me set the table for Julia. She'll be here any minute."

  They went into the kitchen where Uncle Paton had already set candles on every available surface. Charlie laid out the knives, forks, and spoons, while Uncle Paton dealt with the glasses. There was a delicious smell coming from the oven, and by the time Miss Ingledew arrived, Charlie was feeling so hungry, he had eaten three of Grandma Bone's favorite cookies.

  The brown paper package that Miss Ingledew carried certainly Looked interesting. It was tied up with string and stamped with so much sealing wax, Charlie didn't know where to start untying it. His name was printed in large capital letters above Miss Ingledew's address.

  "It was delivered by hand," Miss Ingledew told Charlie, "by a rather nervous-looking Asian woman. Quite elderly."

  "Meng!" Charlie nearly dropped the package.

  "Meng?" said his uncle. "Do you know this woman?"

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  Charlie hesitated. In uttering Meng's name, he had already half broken his promise to Bartholomew. But surely, of all the people in the world, Uncle Paton and Miss Ingledew were the most trustworthy. So he sat down with the package on his lap and told them everything about his visit to the wilderness and, for good measure, added an account of what he'd heard during the Hundred Heads' Dinner.

  "I don't like the sound of it," said Miss Ingledew. "I worry about you all in the hands of those dreadful people."

  Uncle Paton didn't seem so concerned. "Dr. Bloor's father is back!" he exclaimed. "Well, I never."

  "I promised him I wouldn't tell," said Charlie, tearing at the brown paper. "He doesn't want anyone to know."

  "I don't blame him. He had a bad time with Ezekiel, his father, and never got on with his son. And then Mary died." Paton shook his head. "Poor Barty."

  "He knew my father," Charlie said.

  "He did indeed." Paton handed Charlie a steak knife.

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  "They went climbing together, just a year before Lyell - disappeared."

  Charlie used the knife on the last piece of string and the brown paper slipped to the floor, along with several small books. Charlie picked them up. Battered and weather-stained, they were each bound with a thin strip of leather to keep the loose and slightly dogeared pages together.

  "Diaries," Miss Ingledew declared. "See, they all have the years printed on the cover. Five years in each book."

  "Diaries?" said Charlie. "Why has he sent them to me?"

  Uncle Paton advised eating his specially prepared meal before examining Bartholomew's diaries. Roast duck, roast parsnips, potatoes, carrots, and peas quickly appeared on the table, followed by a pineapple pudding that melted in their mouths. Uncle Paton was obviously trying hard to impress his guest.

  As soon as the dishes had been cleared away,

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  Charlie put the diaries on the table and undid the first leather string. When he opened the book he found a letter tucked inside.

  Dear Charlie he read,

  I thought you should know what you are up against. You talked of 'the shadow,' and I have remembered his name at last. In these diaries I have marked the places where he is mentioned . . . Harken Badlock. As you will see, I traveled extensively before settling in China. In almost every country I visited, I came across stories of the Red King. I wrote them down, and one day, you will have time to read them all. But now you must concentrate on those that concern 'the shadow.' He is known by many different names but here, in Europe, he is Count Harken Badlock.

  When you have pieced together the true accounts of the shadow, you will know that he is a hunter and a murderer. He steals souls and breaks hearts. Every creature that crossed his path has suffered for it.

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  Somewhere in these books there is a spell that may defeat him. I wrote it down in the language of its creator, and I believe it will lead you to the Red King. But you may need help to understand it.

  Be safe, my friend, and don't be afraid.

  Bartholomew

  Miss Ingledew caught the letter as it fluttered out of Charlie's hands. "He shouldn't have written those things," she said crossly, "scaring Charlie half to death."

  "I had to know," said Charlie.

  Uncle Paton scratched his head. "Let's have a look." He picked up the diaries. Each one had several slim leather markers hanging out of them. "Let's begin with 1965."

  A flurry of sleet whirled past the window and Miss Ingledew closed the curtains. Uncle Paton brought another candle to the table and they pulled their chairs close together, so that they could all read Bartholomew Bloor's spidery, travel-stained writing.

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  Hardly a word was said. They only spoke to tell one another when to turn a page, or to exclaim over some unbelievable atrocity. The night grew colder and the candles wore down until they were flickering stubs of wax. Uncle Paton got up and fetched new candles from a drawer.

  They read on. All three were now caught up in the adventures that had led Bartholomew to uncover the stories of "the shadow." It seemed that he had passed through almost every country in Europe, Asia, and Africa. But it was on his Italian journey that he found the true origin of the Red King's portrait.

  A certain Luigi Salutati had inherited the king's red cloak from his ancestor the Princess Guanhamara. Luigi was a painter and sometime in the fifteenth century he had traveled to Venice to study with the great painter Jacopo Bellini. One night, alone in the studio, Luigi had thrown the cloak over his shoulders to keep warm. As soon as he did this he had been overwhelmed by a desire to paint a portrait o
f a man who had been visiting him in dreams. The face had now

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  become so clear to him, it was as if they were in the same room. Realizing that this must be his ancestor, the legendary Red King, Luigi began to paint him. But while he worked, Luigi was aware of a hostile presence in the room, a shadow that persisted in entering the portrait. Try as he might, Luigi could not prevent his brush from drifting sideways, where a dark shadow began to form behind the figure of the king. Luigi accepted that he was in the power of some malevolent enchanter who was determined to haunt the Red King's memory.

  The painting had remained in Venice until Luigi's descendants brought it to Britain in the sixteenth century. It was at this time that they changed their name to Silk.

  "Gabriel!" cried Charlie. "Gabriel's family owns the Red King's portrait!"

  "Not anymore." Uncle Paton ran his finger down the page. "It says here that the painting was bought from the Silks by trickery and now hangs in Bloor's Academy."

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  Charlie rubbed his eyes. Reading by candlelight wasn't easy, especially when he was half asleep. "It was all lies," he said. "All that stuff I heard about Count Harken when I was under the table. They said he had come to protect the king's children, but he only wanted to cause trouble. He taught them to murder and torture, to hunt animals to extinction, just like Bartholomew said."

  "So much for our books, Julia," Uncle Paton remarked. "I have never found a single reference to such a person in my library."

  "Nor I," said Julia, "but there must have come a time when people didn't look favorably upon men like the count. The descendants of the five children who had so slavishly followed him probably decided to cut him out of their histories."

  "Not Miss Chrystal," Charlie mumbled through a yawn. "She would choose a name that makes you think of something good and beautiful. Her real name's Tilpin." He gave another huge yawn. "I wonder what it was before that."

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  "Time for bed, Charlie Bone," said his uncle. "We've read everything that Bartholomew marked for us, now let's sleep on it. There's nothing more we can do tonight."

  Charlie was relieved to be sent to bed. His eyes were already closing. Leaving the diaries with his uncle and Miss Ingledew, he bid them good night and went up to bed.