The Battle for the Castle (12 page)

“Come on, Gudrin, kick some,” he said in her ear. “We're closer to shore now.”

And again, like a robot under his command, she began to move her feet in weak, ineffectual circles.

“The rats don't really care about us,” Jason called to him. “See, they just want to make it to shore as fast as we do.”

William didn't have the strength to answer.

Behind them the skeleton ship continued to burn, and every so often with an exploding pop, some spar or rudder section would split off and drop like a bomb into the sea.

Just when William thought his arm would break from holding on to Gudrin and his feet would never be able to feel anything again, they touched bottom. The boys pushed the boat in as far as it would go and slid
Gudrin off the side of the hull. Her legs crumpled under her. They half dragged, half carried her up the narrow strip of beach. The three of them collapsed into a shivering wet heap.

“We can't just lie here,” Jason said between chattering teeth. “Either we'll freeze to death or the rats will bite us.”

All around them the rats squeaked as they gained the shore and scuttled about on the sand.

“Rub your arms,” William said as he struggled to a sitting position. “Flap them around. We've got to get the circulation moving. Come on, Gudrin, wake up. You'll catch pneumonia lying there.”

Again she did as she was told, and it wasn't long before the three of them were slapping each other on the back and pounding their heels into the sand. Then William and Jason dragged Gudrin to her feet, and they danced around and around in a circle like three whirling maniacs.

“Look,” Jason cried, pulling them to a stop. He pointed down the beach. Lined up like battalions, the rats stood and waited in neatly formed rows, facing out to sea.

“What are they looking at?” Gudrin asked.

Nobody answered. All eyes had shifted to the ship. Silhouetted against the dying flames, a tall black figure stood on the gunwales.

“What in God's name is that?” Jason whispered.

“It's a rat,” said William. “A huge rat. Standing on its back legs like a person does.”

Gudrin stood between them. “William,” she said without taking her eyes off the ship. “It's the one Calendar warned us about. Remember the chant? Evil lurking, evil rising / Washed in with the tide.”

“It's just a bunch of rats,” Jason said, but his voice wavered.

“Let's go,” said William.

“Look,” Gudrin said, and she pointed at the ship.

The biggest rat raised its front legs to the sky, and just before the flames engulfed it, it threw itself into the black sea.

The rats on the beach held their ranks, but a tumult of excited squeaking ran along the line as they followed the progress of the last lone figure paddling smoothly toward shore.

“Never satisfied / Till we all have died,” Gudrin finished in her low chanting voice.

William wasn't going to wait to see more. He grabbed Gudrin by the hand and started sprinting for the path with Jason close behind. Up at the top, he boosted her onto her horse.

“Can you ride?” he asked.

She nodded, and he could see her eyes, once again, wide and frightened and questioning. He looked away.
He didn't have any answers for her. By burning the ship, it seemed they had let something far worse than skeletons loose in the world. They had to get back to the castle as fast as they could ride. Then they could pull up the drawbridge and drop the portcullis and pray that a six-foot rat and its followers would just float on by.

Gudrin was gone in the morning.

“Where?” William asked.

Jason shrugged. “I don't know. She left you a note,” he said, handing it over. “It must be very private because it's sealed with wax.”

William groaned as he settled himself on a bench outside the buttery. “I feel as if a horse walked over my back,” he said.

“Probably from all that swimming,” Jason said. “Uses different muscles.”

Don't let Jason start in on muscles, William thought as he ripped through the blue wax. He scanned the letter quickly and then reread it, trying to make sense of it. Deegan had better come back soon and work on Gudrin's spelling, he thought with a grin. It felt good to smile at anything.

“Gun to cunvent on Sorel. To sea Sister. Wate for me.”

“Where does she think I'm going?” William muttered to himself. He handed the letter to Jason.

“Who's Sister?” Jason asked.

“Must be one of the nuns. We'd better have a little talk with Dick. Tell him what we saw last night.”

“He'll never believe us,” Jason said. “Not in a million years.”

“Even so we should try to convince him.”

Their eyes met. “Maybe they went the other way,” Jason said. “Along the headlands.”

“Maybe,” William said.

They found Dick down in the courtyard running around and around the outer edges in wider and wider circles. They waved at him to stop. His face was bright red.

“You'd better slow down,” Jason said. “You've got to work up to these things slowly.”

“No time like the present, my boy,” Dick said, throwing a few punches into the air for good measure. “Now speak your piece, my friends. As you can see, I'm a busy man.”

William started. While Dick listened, he continued to jog in place and twist his shoulders back and forth as if preparing for a boxing match.

“It sounds as if you had quite an adventure last
night,” he said at last. “Naturally, I do not approve of your dragging my niece off on wild midnight rides.”

“Who dragged who?” Jason muttered, but Dick went right on. “I have not seen Gudrin this morning. It is not like her to stay in bed this late.”

“She's gone to the convent to see Sister,” William said. “Who's Sister?”

“I expect she means Sister Beatrice. She took care of my wife's mother at the end.”

“So she must have heard the prophecy,” William said. “About the evil that was coming.”

“A lot of nonsense,” Dick said with a frown. “Dear Calendar was not well in her last days.”

“Dick, listen to us,” William said. “Here it is once again, pure and simple. The skeleton ship came back last night, and we burned it. And thousands of rats swarmed off the ship.” He shuddered at the memory. “And they may be headed this way.”

“Well, no matter,” said Dick. “I told you Calendar's cat is one of the best ratters around. And besides that, we have stray cats in the stable. They keep us awake at night with their howling and carrying on. Perhaps now they'll be of some use to us.”

“Dick, this isn't just one or two rats,” Jason said. “There's a beachful of them out there. Enough to fill this courtyard.”

“And one of them was huge,” William said.

“Bigger than the cat?”

Jason and William glanced at each other. “Bigger than you, Dick,” William said. “Taller. It stood up on its hind legs.”

He looked from one to the other of them with his brow furrowed. “Are you quite sure, boys?”

“Yes,” said Jason. “We're positive.”

He laid a hand on each of their foreheads. “Calendar always warned me that the sea air at night addled the brain. I do think, boys, you should go back to your pallets and take a little more rest. Perhaps when you wake for the second time, these strange delusions will have passed.”

He waved away their objections and returned to his jogging. “Go on, now, be off with you,” he called.

“Don't say ‘I told you so,' ” William warned as they headed to the buttery to scrounge up some breakfast.

“I told you so,” Jason said.

They settled down to wait. They pretended not to. Jason got Tolliver back on the bike and trained him as if there were no tomorrow. William exercised Mandrake that day and the next, but he didn't dare travel too far from the castle for fear he would miss something. He spent the rest of his time up on the ramparts with Brian, prowling back and forth along the wall with his binoculars held to his eyes.

“What are you looking for, Sir William?”

“Trouble,” was all William said. After talking to Dick, he and Jason had decided they wouldn't try to convince anybody else about the monster rat. “When Miss Gudrin goes out like this, how long does she usually stay?”

“One never knows,” Brian replied. “Poor orphaned child. She's a roamer, more at home in the fields than in the castle. She journeyed often to the convent to see her grandmother in the old woman's last days.”

“Did you think Calendar was mad?” William asked.

“It's not my place to say, but you know, she never really recovered from that other time. From himself.”

“You mean, Alastor,” said William.

“I do not choose to speak his name,” Brian replied with a shudder. “We shall not see the likes of him again, Sir William.”

“I hope not, Brian. For all our sakes.” But perhaps there are things in the world even worse than Alastor, William thought. It had occurred to him that if they had never burnt the ship, the rats might have stayed on it forever. But it was no use thinking about that now. They had done what they had done, and now they had to live with the consequences.

He swept the binoculars across the road leading up to the castle from the west and stopped at the sight of a dark shadow rounding the last corner. “Someone's coming,” he said. “It's Miss Gudrin. Finally.” He handed the glasses over to Brian who put them up to his nose.

“You're looking through them the wrong way,” William called as he sprinted for the tower steps. “Switch them around. And give the order to lower the drawbridge. I'll raise the portcullis. Jason,” he called down into the courtyard. “Gudrin's back.”

She looked tired as she urged Sorrel up the wooden planking of the drawbridge. Her hair was wilder and more unruly than ever, and she clung to the horse's mane with both her hands. Large burlap sacks stuffed with herbs swung from either side of the saddle behind her legs.

William ran to catch Sorrel's halter so Gudrin could slide off before the horse found his own way to the stable and a bucket of oats.

“Did you see any sign of the rats in the countryside?” William asked. He released Sorrel and the horse trotted off.

Gudrin shook her head. “But I was headed in the other direction, away from the coast.”

“Why did you go?” Jason asked.

“I wanted to tell Sister Beatrice. She was the only one besides me and Deegan who believed my grandmother's prophecies. And she knows herbal medicine.”

“Herbs can't drive away a crowd of rats, Gudrin,” William said.

Tolliver was looking from one to the other of them. “Do you really think they're coming this way?” he asked.

“Who told him?” Gudrin asked.

“I did,” said Jason. “At least
he
believed me. Your uncle thinks we have addled brains. But my addled brain is just waking up. William, what about the token? We can use the token on them.”

“Of course!” William shouted. “Of course!”

“Where is it?” Jason asked.

“The backpack.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure, I'm sure,” said William.

“Let's go get it,” Jason said.

Gudrin looked puzzled. “What are you two prattling on about? What token?”

“It shrinks things,” Tolliver said.

“Take my bike,” Jason said as he handed it to Tolliver.

“Wait,” Tolliver said. “There's something I have to—”

“Later,” Jason called. He and William sprinted across the courtyard toward their bedchamber.

It was gone.

“What do you mean?” said Jason, his voice sounding panicky. “Go through your stuff again.” He knelt
beside William and began scrambling through the clothes and old potato chip bags. “It's got to be here.”

William sat back on his heels. “It's not there, Jason.”

“Maybe you hid it somewhere else in the room,” Jason said. “Think. Maybe you put it in a pocket of your jeans.”

“Deegan took it,” said Tolliver's voice from the door. “That's what I was trying to tell you.”

“Deegan! Why?” William said, and Jason cried, “How do you know?”

“He showed it to me as he left the castle,” Tolliver said. “Made me promise to keep it a secret until he was well away. He's going to use it at the fools' feast. A trick to outdo all the tricksters. He said he'll bring it back when he returns.”

“When he returns!” William said. “But that's not for another week, at least. We need it right now.”

“I knew there was something shifty about him,” Jason said.

Tolliver was scuffing the toe of his soft shoe back and forth along the stone floor. “I'm sorry, Sir William,” he said. “I should have told you.”

“What good would that have done?” William said. “Deegan seems able to disappear whenever he feels like it. We would never have found him.”

Tolliver brightened suddenly. “I could go after him
on the bike,” he cried. “Bring them back. After all, Sir Simon's castle is under siege.”

“Not yet, little cousin,” said Gudrin in a weary voice from behind him. “And until the castle is attacked, we will have a hard time convincing Uncle that you should go. I've just been to see him. He is furious with all this talk of rats. He says I have gone as batty as our grandmother and if I persist, he will have to lock me up too.”

She looked as if she might cry, and William felt sorry for her. In the last year, she had lost her grandmother and her mother and her aunt. She was only twelve years old, after all. The girls he knew back home were worried about their clothes and their math grades. It seemed unfair that she should have so much on her shoulders. He jumped up.

“Well, we have each other at least,” he said in as cheery a voice as he could muster. “We'll keep our eyes open and report anything out of the ordinary to the others. Maybe the rats will pass us by. We have no way of knowing. Gudrin, you must go to sleep now,” he ordered in a voice that surprised all of them and himself too. “You're too tired to be of any use like this. The rest of us should go about our business as usual.”