Return to Groosham Grange (8 page)

The voice was shrill and excited. There was a rustle of leaves and a snapping of twigs and a large woman dressed in blue stepped forward. David tried to stand but all his strength had left him. The woman was wearing a billowing velvet-and-silk dress that made her look enormous. Her head was crowned by a silver-and-diamond tiara that sparkled even out of the moonlight and there was a Weight Watchers badge pinned to her lapel. She hadn’t come out of the Chamber of Horrors. Lying, dazed, on a bed of leaves, David instantly recognized the ginger hair and perfect smile of the Duchess of York. She had hit him with her handbag.

“Good work, Your Highness,” Dr. Crippen muttered. His wax nose was bent out of shape where David had hit him and one of his eyes had fallen out.

“Ja. Sehr gut, Fräulein Fergie,”
Hitler agreed.

David wrenched the statuette out of his pocket and tried to stand up. The park was spinning around him, moving faster and faster. He tried to speak, to utter a few words of some spell that might yet save him. But his mouth was dry and the words would not come. He looked up into the leering, lifeless faces that surrounded him and raised a hand. Then the Duchess hit him again and he was out cold.

H
e’s lying,” David said. “I found the statuette. He stole it. And he used magic to do it.”

David was standing in Mr. Kilgraw’s study with Vincent only a few paces away. His clothes were disheveled and there was a large bruise above his cheek where the handbag had hit him. Mr. Helliwell stood in one corner of the room, resting his chin on one hand, watching the two boys quietly. Mr. Kilgraw sat behind his desk with the statuette in front of him. David felt like snapping it in half. And he felt much the same about Vincent.

“I admit he found it first,” Vincent said. He took his hands out of his pockets. “I’ve told you. I worked out the puzzle and found the cabinet, but I was too late. I guessed David had taken it, so I went back to the telephone booth. That was when I saw him with the statuette lying next to him. I figure he must have tripped over or something, so I took the statuette. I didn’t see any waxworks, though,” he added.

“Didn’t see them?” David curled his fists. “You sent them!”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“Then who did?”

“That’s enough of this!” Mr. Kilgraw said, fluttering his hand for silence. His voice was little more than a whisper, but then the assistant headmaster rarely spoke loudly. He leaned back in his chair. “The trial is over,” he said. “And Vincent has won.”

“But, sir . . .” David began.

“No!” Mr. Kilgraw pointed a finger. “David, you talk about cheating, but it seems to me that it was only a few days ago that you were discovered trying to steal the papers for the last exam.”

“That was Vincent too,” David replied. “He set me up.”

“And then there’s the question of Sports Day. The obstacle course . . .”

David fell silent. He was blushing and he knew it. The obstacle course! Mr. Kilgraw had known about it all the time. There was nothing David could say now. He had cheated once in his life, and because of that, nobody would ever trust him again.

“We don’t need to prolong this discussion,” Mr. Kilgraw said. “Whatever happened tonight, Vincent won. He was the first back and he brought the statue with him. Mr. Helliwell . . . ?”

In the corner, the voodoo teacher shrugged. “I’m sorry, David,” he said. “But I have to agree.”

“Then that’s that. Vincent King takes first place in the standings. At prize-giving it will be he who is presented with the Unholy Grail.”

“Thank you, sir.” Vincent glanced again at David. “I mean it, David,” he said. “I didn’t want it to happen this way.”

“Like hell . . .”

“Don’t ever compare anything to hell until you’ve been there!” Mr. Kilgraw snapped, and now he was really angry. “I have to say you’ve been a complete disappointment, David. And not just tonight. Fighting in the corridor. Trying to steal the exam questions and then whining and complaining when you failed to answer all the questions. You used to be our most promising pupil. But now I even wonder if it’s worth your staying here at Groosham Grange.”

“So do I,” David growled. He regretted the words as soon as they were out, but it was too late. Mr. Kilgraw had heard.

“That’s a decision you have to make,” he said. “If you want to leave, nobody will stop you. But remember, once you’ve gone, you can’t come back. We’ll never see you again . . .”

David opened his mouth to speak, but there was nothing to say. He took one last look at Vincent, who was doing his best to avoid his eyes. Mr. Helliwell sighed and shook his head. Mr. Kilgraw’s hand closed round the statuette. “And now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “this has to go back to the museum. It’ll be daylight soon and we wouldn’t want it to be missed.”

 

 

Jill Green was waiting for David outside the study. She was about to ask him what had happened, but one look at his face told her all she needed to know.

“So he won, then,” she said.

David nodded.

“Does it really matter, David? I mean, what’s so important about the Unholy Grail anyway?” She took his arm. “You’re still the best magician in the school. You don’t need a cup to prove it.”

“I told Mr. Kilgraw I wanted to leave Groosham Grange,” David said.

“What?” Jill stiffened beside him, genuinely shocked.

David sighed. “I didn’t know what I was saying, but . . . you remember when we first came here? We didn’t want to be witches or magicians. We hated it here!”

“That was before we knew about our powers.”

“Yes. And now we’re happy here. But that means we’ve changed, Jill. Maybe we’ve changed for the worse. Maybe we’ve become . . .”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

 

 

But lying in bed, two hours later, David couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. Had he become evil? It was true that he had cheated in the race, and despite what Jill had said, he would have done anything to get his hands on the Unholy Grail. Even the name worried him. Unholy. Did it also describe him?

He remembered what Mr. Fitch (or was it Mr. Teagle?) had said to him, but he still wasn’t sure what the head had meant. Good or evil? Stay or go? Why did everything have to be so complicated?

On the other side of the dormitory, Vincent turned in his sleep and pulled the sheets over him. David thought back to their first meeting. Vincent had arrived one July morning, carried over on the ferry that connected Skrull Island with the mainland. Handsome, athletic and quiet, Vincent seemed to fit in much faster than David had. In just a few weeks he had found his way through the mirror in the library and been given his own black ring. Maybe that was part of the trouble. The two of them had been in competition almost from the start and David had never bothered to find out anything about him—his home life, his parents, where he had come from.

How had he come to mistrust Vincent? Because of the East Tower. He had spotted Vincent coming out of the forbidden tower, next to the school’s graveyard, and that had been the start of it. There was some sort of mystery connected with the place. Gregor knew. The school porter had stopped David from going in.

David pushed his covers back and got out of bed. It was three o’clock in the morning; a cold, foggy night. He was probably crazy. But he couldn’t sleep anyway and he had nothing else to do. Whatever Vincent was really up to, he would find the answer in the East Tower. And he would go there now.

 

 

The night was bitterly cold. As David tiptoed through the school’s graveyard his breath frosted and hung in the air around his head. Somewhere an owl hooted. A fat spider clambered down one of the gravestones and disappeared into the soil. Something moved at the edge of the graveyard. David froze. But it was only a ghost, leaving its grave for a few hours’ haunting. It hadn’t seen him. Slowly, he moved on.

And there was the East Tower, looming out of the darkness ahead of him. David gazed at the crooked brickwork, the tangle of dark green ivy that surrounded it, the empty windows and, far above him, the broken battlements. He checked one last time. There was nobody around. He moved toward the entrance.

The only way into the East Tower was through a curved oak door, at least three feet thick. David was sure it would be locked, but no sooner had he touched it than it swung inward, its iron hinges creaking horribly. There was something very creepy about the sound. For a moment he was tempted to go back to bed. But it was too late now. He had to settle this. He stepped inside.

The inner chamber of the tower was pitch-black. A few tiny shafts of moonlight penetrated the cracks in the brickwork, but the central area was a gaping hole. David didn’t have a flashlight or even a box of matches with him. But he didn’t need them. He closed his eyes and whispered a few words set down by the Elizabethan magician called John Dee. When he opened them again, the interior glowed with a strange green light. It was still gloomy but he could see.

The lower floor was empty, the ground strewn with rubble, a few nettles and poisonous herbs poking through. David sniffed the air. Although it was faint, there was something that he recognized, a smell that was at once familiar and yet strange. There was a sound somewhere high above, a sort of fluttering and a high-pitched whine. Ahead of him, a stone staircase climbed upward, spiraling around on itself. David knew that the whole building was condemned, that any one of the stone slabs could crumble and send him crashing to certain death. But there was no other way. He had no choice.

He began to climb the stairs. The East Tower was six hundred feet high. The staircase, pinned precariously to the outer wall, seemed to go on forever and David was beginning to get dizzy when at last he found himself at the top. There was a coin in his pants pocket and on an impulse he flicked it over his shoulder, into the hole at the center of the stairs.

“One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .”

It was a long time before the coin reached the bottom and tinkled on the concrete floor below.

Something moved. David heard a thin clatter like two pieces of cardboard being ruffled against each other. One step at a time, he moved across the concrete flagstones of the upper chamber. He had forgotten to put on any socks and he could feel the frozen air writhing around his ankles. For a second time he heard the strange, high-pitched whining. It was some sort of animal. What animal? What was this place?

He was in a completely circular room. Two of the narrow windows, quite close to each other, had moldered, and now there was only a large, irregular gap. Opposite this, right up against the wall, there was a long wooden table with what looked like two or three baskets on top. Also on the table were an open book, a pile of paper, two candles, a quill pen and a leather-bound book.

David whispered three words. The candles ignited.

It was easier after that. David crossed over to the table and picked up one of the baskets. He felt something flutter between his hands. The front of the basket was a barred door, closed with a twist of wire. David looked inside and now saw what the animal was. A bat. Blind and frightened, it tried to fly, ricocheting off the sides of the cage.

What was Vincent doing with a collection of bats? David put down the cage and went over to the book. He scooped it up and examined it. It was an old exercise book, each page packed with writing so cramped and tiny that it was unreadable. David flicked through the pages. At last he arrived at a section he could read in the light of the candles. A poem:

The Grail! Groosham Grange . . . What did it all mean?

David concentrated on the text. Saint Augustine. He was the man who had brought Christianity to England in the first century. But where had he begun? David racked his brain, trying to remember his history lessons with Miss Pedicure. Augustine had first landed in Thanet, Kent. But that wasn’t right. Of course . . . it was Canterbury! Canterbury Cathedral where four knights had slain Thomas à Becket during the reign of Henry II. Suddenly it was all crystal clear.

Carry the Unholy Grail into the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral and the school would disappear!

So that was what Vincent was planning. He wanted to destroy the school and had learned that the only way to do it was to get his hands on the Grail. But first he had to get rid of David—and he had done that brilliantly, baiting him to start with, then framing him and finally cheating him. In just three days’ time, Vincent would be presented with his prize. And what then? Somehow he would smuggle it off the island. He would carry it to Canterbury. And then . . .

But what about the bats?

David put down the book and went over to the pile of paper. Paper, candles and bats. They were right next to one another. And when you added them together, what did you get? Candles to see by. Paper to write on. Bats to . . .

“Homing bats,” he muttered. Why not? Homing bats were more reliable than homing pigeons. And they were perfect for carrying secret messages. They preferred the dark.

David felt in his pants pocket and pulled out a pencil. It was such an old trick that he was almost ashamed to be trying it. Softly, he scribbled the pencil along the top sheet on the pile of paper, shading it gray. When he had penciled over the entire sheet, he picked it up and held it against the candle flame.

It had worked. David could read five faint lines written in the same tight hand as the notebook: