Obsidian Pebble (9 page)

Oz nodded, too. It made sense.

“So why don't you just say that?” Caleb suggested. “You could explore chivalry, and I'm sure I could dig up some stuff on knightly virtues.” His eyes became thoughtful slits. “I think there were five or six. Let's see—generosity, chastity, courtesy, piety, friendship, and looking good in heavy armour.”

Oz laughed. His eyes strayed to some papers, covered with sketches, on the desk. Caleb called them doodles. Oz called them absolutely brilliant because they were usually very good depictions of whatever had taken Caleb's fancy to draw.

“Wow, that's the park from the turret window,” Oz said, tilting his head to see better. “And that's the panelled wall with all those weird symbols on them.”

Caleb nodded. “After marking essay number five on ‘Eleventh Century Scottish Highland Lore,' I was becoming comatose. Needed a distraction.”

“They're amazing,” Oz said. “Where did you learn to draw like that?”

“I didn't. And they're just scribbles.” Caleb moved some essay papers over the sketches.

A voice drifted up the stairwell from far below. “Oz! Food.”

“I think I've got some prints somewhere of Gawain's pentagonal shield and the knight picking up his lopped-off head,” Caleb said. “You could do illustrated paragraphs.”

“Cool,” Oz said as he turned to go, but then added, “Oh, if there's any spag bol left over, I could ask mum to put some on a plate for you and leave it in your fridge.”

“Barter? Now that sounds like a plan,” Caleb said, and allowed his lips to curl into a rare smile.

Oz started for the stairs, but there was something niggling at the back of his mind. Something else he'd been meaning to ask Caleb that had nothing to do with green knights or round tables. He whipped around.

“By the way, something happened at school today.”

Caleb looked up.

“There's this girl—you know her, actually, Dr. Heeps' daughter?”

Caleb nodded and a funny little smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. Oz knew that Lorenzo Heeps was something to do with the Dean's office at the university. He also knew that his dad had smiled indulgently just like Caleb had whenever Heeps' name was mentioned.

“Anyway,” Oz went on, “I'm not exactly on her Christmas card list, but she said something today…she said that maybe Miss Arkwright, my form tutor, was being extra nice to me because she knew something about me. Some sort of secret.”

“Oh?” Caleb said.

“Yeah, I just wondered if there was anything…you know, if you'd heard anything…at the university, I mean…I was wondering if it had anything to do with Dad.”

“Your dad? Why your dad?”

Oz squirmed. This wasn't coming out the way he meant it to. “I don't know why,” he explained weakly, “it was just the way she said it after Jenks had explained that Miss Arkwright had gone all soppy on me for setting an essay on dads.”

“I see,” Caleb said, and muttered, “Typical. She sounds like her father's daughter, all right.”

“Pardon?”

“From what little I know of her, Phillipa Heeps is a bit too self-possessed for her own good, Oz. I wouldn't worry too much about her if I were you.”

Oz nodded. It was good advice, but was that a slightly awkward look he was seeing in Caleb's face? He hesitated, and a little knot of silence grew.

“Anyway, look, I'd better get on,” Caleb said, suddenly becoming very interested in his marking again.

“Okay. Well, if you hear anything…”

“I'll keep my ear to the ground, Oz.” Caleb kept his eyes downcast and there was not even the fleeting ghost of a smile on his lips this time.

Oz mumbled thanks, turned and ran down the stairs, trying to work out what he'd said that had made Caleb look so uncomfortable. Was it the fact that Pheeps was Dr. Heeps' daughter and Caleb didn't like discussing colleagues? Or was there something else, something he wasn't quite getting? It troubled him only as far as the kitchen. Once there, the delicious smell of his mum's spaghetti bolognese miraculously pushed all thoughts of Pheeps and Caleb's odd reaction right out of his mind.

* * *

They stayed out of his mind for the next couple of days because there were other things to think about. He did as much research as he could in the library, but there didn't seem to be anything about female ghosts appearing to the owners of Penwurt, nor terrifying orphanage children. In between reaching up to the heavy books on the topmost shelves, Oz did his best to get to grips with algebra, but it was an uphill struggle. And when Friday came, the test was even worse than Oz had feared it would be.

The way that Badger Breath had taught them to solve equations just didn't make any sense to him, and instead of going through the paper doing what he could, he got well and truly stuck on two questions early on. Before he knew it, Badger Breath was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet at the front of the class, announcing that there were five minutes left.

Frantically, Oz turned the page to look at the other questions, but by then his brain was frazzled. He went back to the one he was stuck on. It looked simple enough: solve the simultaneous equation 3x + 2y = 8, 3x - y = 5. But for the life of him he couldn't remember if you had to add the x's together or take them away or multiply everything by 2. In the end, he gave up and sat back, flushed in the cheeks from knowing that he had only attempted three questions and had at least one of those wrong.

Badger Breath came round to collect the papers. He did so in complete silence until he came to Oz, where he lingered, unable to resist turning the sparsely covered paper over in his hands and smiling vindictively.

“All that revision clearly paying off, eh, Chambers?”

Oz didn't rise to the bait. Besides, even from three feet away, fear of a waft of halitosis-laden breath ensured that Oz flinched involuntarily and went into breath-holding mode. Mistaking Oz's lack of response to his question as pure ignorance, Badger Breath shook his head and walked on.

On Saturday, Oz caught the bus into town and headed for the Café Ballista to meet the others. Ruff ordered his usual hot chocolate with extra cream and Oz a vanilla latte. This was their weekly treat, despite the dent it made in their pocket money. They found their favourite table in a tiny alcove and sat in comfy, battered armchairs.

Oz had long ago decided that, other than Penwurt, the Ballista was the best place to be, ever. He loved the strangeness of the place, the warm maroons and browns of the walls and the posters of exotic places like Rio and Santiago and Caracas. No one ever seemed to mind if you stayed there all day, so long as you bought something now and again. And they played great music. Not rubbish pop or golden oldies all the time, but good stuff that Oz never heard anywhere else. It was as if they had a playlist called “stuff that Oz and Ruff and Ellie really like” and put it on whenever they were there. It was warm and pleasant and had the added bonus of free wi-fi.

Ellie was shopping with her mum for her sister Macy's forthcoming birthday, so while they waited for her, Oz and Ruff researched Colonel Thompson's orphanage on Ruff's snail-paced old laptop. But apart from one or two sightings of headless horsemen in the garden—which was quite common in olden days, apparently—there was not one reported sighting of a ghost on the stairs or in the classroom. Nor was there a report of anyone being murdered or spirits with clanking chains in the night, which would have fitted better with Miss Arkwright's poltergeist theory. But there was quite a bit about the chap who'd bought the house once the orphanage had closed.

“I reckon this bloke should have been called Indiana Morsman, by the sound of it,” Ruff said as he absently took another bite from a cookie the size of a small dinner plate while he studied his laptop screen. “He went all over the place looking for artefacts, it says here.” He stopped chewing and looked up quizzically. “What's an artefact?”

“Something someone's made,” Oz replied as he leaned over to see what Ruff had found. “My dad was always going places to see if what people thought were Greek or Egyptian artefacts were real.”

“You think the ghost is him?” Ruff asked.

The chewed fragment of cookie that was halfway down Oz's gullet suddenly began coming up the other way as his throat spasmed. Was Ruff suggesting that the ghost was his dad?

“Him?” Oz spluttered between violent coughs.

“This Morsman bloke. Killed by a bomb in the Second World War, it says.”

“I suppose it could be,” Oz said, recovering, although his eyes watered badly. “But the Bunthorpe Encounter happened way before that, didn't it? So it couldn't have been Morsman who frightened the bell ringers.”

“Yeah,” Ruff agreed, “you're right.”

Suddenly Ruff looked up and groaned. “Oh, no. Look what the north wind just blew in.”

Oz followed Ruff's gaze. Two boys had just banged through the door, pushing and shoving and generally trying to attract as much attention as they could.

Jenks and Skinner.

“Think they'll see us?” Ruff said.

But at that moment, Skinner poked Jenks in the ribs and pointed at a far corner before sauntering off. Oz followed their meandering path and had to push himself out of his chair to see where they were headed. But then he caught a glimpse of a blond head low down in one of the overstuffed armchairs and knew immediately where they were going. The hair belonged to a girl of about nine who was busy attacking a huge, layered cream and mocha concoction that was almost as big as her head. She didn't even look up as Jenks and Skinner slid into chairs on either side of her.

“What is it?” asked Ruff, who had also stood but couldn't quite follow Oz's eye line.

“They've just found Niko's sister,” Oz said.

“That's not good,” muttered Ruff as Oz pushed himself away from their table and started moving across the café.

Skinner and Jenks didn't notice their approach until they were standing right in front of their table. They were too busy taunting the girl, who was trying to hold onto her drink while Skinner, smiling a predatory smile, tried to prise it out of her fingers. It was Jenks who finally looked up.

“Well, if it isn't the Pizard of Oz and Dorothy Adams.”

Oz caught the blond girl's eyes. They were big and blue. And despite being defiant, they were disturbingly wet-looking, too.

“Hi Anya. Where's Niko?” Oz said, ignoring Jenks' jibe.

“He is gone to get prescription for my little brother from chemist shop. He tell me wait here and buy me this,” she nodded somberly at her drink.

Jenks sneered. “Buzz off, Chambers. We're babysitting Anya, all right?”

“You want Skinner and Jenks to stay with you, Anya?” asked Oz.

Anya shook her head. Oz saw that her lip quivered slightly.

“We're not going anywhere, Chambers,” Jenks said.

“What is wrong with you two buzzards?” Ruff said.

“Anya's going to share her drink with us, aren't you, Anya?” Skinner tugged harder on the plastic cup and it wobbled precariously, but Anya didn't let go.

Oz suddenly looked up and nudged Ruff. “Isn't that Seabourne United's new striker over there? What's his name now…”

“Ustenhov?” Ruff said, sounding excited.

As Jenks and Skinner craned their necks around to stare, Oz took his chance. He nipped in and deftly picked the drink from out of Anya's and Skinner's hands.

“Oy,” Skinner protested, “that's mine.”

“No, it isn't. It's Anya's and she's coming over to sit with us at our table, aren't you, Anya?”

The blond girl slipped under the table and out next to Ruff before Jenks and Skinner could react. Oz gave her back her drink and watched her walk across to where Ruff's laptop still sat. But Skinner wasn't going to give up so easily.

“Who do you think you are, Chambers?”

“Someone who isn't scared of you, Skinner.” Oz stood his ground. “Two blokes against a little girl. That must make you two feel really good.”

“They're just Russians,” Jenks said in a tone that suggested that they were, therefore, fair game.

“They're Polish, you gonk,” Ruff said.

“They can hardly speak English,” Jenks sneered.

“Yeah,” Skinner echoed.

“You should get on with them really well, then,” Oz said.

“At least we don't hang around with girls,” Skinner said, his eyes alight with challenge.

“Yeah, where's Messenger? Gone off to buy you some dolls?” Jenks sniggered.

“She's buying some new boots for next week's game,” Ruff said.

Oz had forgotten that the return match with the Skullers was coming up so soon.

Jenks smiled, his small eyes glinting. “She's going to need more than new boots when you play us again.”

“Yeah. Girls shouldn't play football, anyway,” Skinner added nastily.

“I'd like to see you two say that to her. She's better than most of the blokes in our year,” Oz said.

“Most, but not all,” Skinner said, a sly smile on his lips.

“Anyway, how can you say that about girls? The whole point of it is that it's a mixed league,” Ruff said.

“Which we are three points clear at the top of,” Jenks bragged, punching the air.

“Make the most of it. It won't last,” Oz said.

“Yeah? How would you know, Chambers? You can't even play,” Skinner sneered.

“Yes, he can.” Ruff bristled.

“What, in the yard at break time? That's not real football, is it?”

“If it means playing against idiots like you, then I'm definitely not interested,” Oz said.

“You're pathetic, Chambers,” Jenks said, with such vehemence that flecks of saliva flew from his mouth onto the table.

“Yeah, and next time find your own drink to steal,” Skinner whined.