“Before we start,” Skelton announced from the front, “I have the results of last week's electrolysis and rock cycle test. Overall, not too bad, although several people remain confused about cathode and anode. Remember LEO RED CAT. Loss of Electrons is Oxidation. REDuction occurs at the CAThode.”
Half a dozen people in the class groaned as they realised they'd gotten things back to front.
Skelton handed out the marked papers. Oz scanned his eagerly. Fifteen out of twenty. There were ninety people in the year, and he needed to be in the top nineteen to ensure his place on the field trip. On the top right of the paper was a second number in a red circle. This was his post-test position in the science class league table. Oz made a small fist and hissed, “Yesss.” Inside the red circle was a fourteen. He glanced across at Ellie's paper. Sixteen out of twenty.
There was a ten in the red circle, and she was grinning.
Ruff, on the other hand, didn't say anything, and from the black look on his face, he didn't need to.
“Well?” Oz asked.
Ruff slid his paper across to Oz silently.
“Eleven out of twenty?” he said, trying not to sound too incredulous.
“Told you I'd messed it up,” Ruff mumbled.
“Sugar, Ruff, you total gonk.” Ellie snatched his paper and stared at it. “That puts you down into twenty-third position.”
“I did try and tell you,” Ruff protested, his cheeks pinking up.
“Yeah, butâ” Ellie began.
“You always say stuff like that,” Oz finished.
“This time, I meant it,” Ruff said through gritted teeth, taking back his paper and folding it.
“But there's only one more test before the field trip,” Oz said. “You're going to have to get full marksâ”
“Who cares?” Ruff snapped.
“Who cares?” Oz repeated, frowning. “We do, don't we? I thought we were all up for the trip? It's going to be a laugh, isn't it?”
“Oh, yeah.” Ruff's face was maroon now. “Prancing about on a beach, counting whelks. Yomping over moors, looking at bits of heather with Lardy Ladrop and going to bed by ten in a tent sounds a real hoot. And we all know Skyrme'll be sick on the bus like he always is.”
“At least we'd be together and away from here,” Oz pleaded.
Ruff shrugged.
Ellie's mouth had become a tight line. She was staring at Ruff in bewilderment. “We've been looking forward to this trip for months, haven't we?”
“So?” Ruff said, his tone sullen
“Well, haven't we?” Ellie said again.
Ruff 's response was to slam his books on the desk and scowl. Luckily, Skelton chose that moment to claim their attention and cleared his throat loudly.
“As you know, there is one more test before we break for Easter. This will be on all the work done this term and will take place next Monday. It will be your last chance to improve your position in the class table and get into that elusive and exclusive top nineteen. Now today, we're going to look at the reactions of acids with bases⦔
Oz was only half-listening because he was quietly fuming inside. Ruff kept his head down and didn't return Oz's glances, while between them Ellie spent the whole lesson furiously scribbling notes so as not to have to talk to either of them. Oz was glad when the bell went and he was able to slope off to orchestra practise, where he took out his frustrations on the drums, much to Mr Fidler's frowning disapproval. But things didn't improve that afternoon. Oz wanted to ask Ruff why he didn't seem bothered by not coming on the trip with Ellie and him, but every time he tried to say something, Ruff just mumbled things like, “I don't want to talk about it,” or, “Give it a rest.”
When Oz turned to Ellie for support, all he saw in her expression was seething fury. In the end, Oz decided it was best to say nothing at all. When the bell went for the end of the day, Ruff grabbed his bag and headed straight for his bus without a word to the other two.
“Have you any idea what's going on?” Oz asked Ellie as they stood in the milling crowd making for the bus bay.
Ellie shook her head. “I don't know why we even bother talking to him sometimes.”
“The trip's the week after next, but it's almost as if he doesn't want to come with us,” Oz said. “Something's bothering him, obviously.”
Ellie made a noise in her throat and threw Oz a flinty glare. “Will you stop defending him? If he wants to behave like a little kid, let him. It's pathetic. What if there is something bothering him? We've all got problems, you know.”
To Oz's utter astonishment, Ellie's eyes suddenly welled up. She pursed her lips and looked away quickly, but not quickly enough for Oz not to have noticed.
“Ellie, is everything⦔
But she was gone before he could finish his sentence, striding away to her bus with her nose in the air and without a backwards glance, leaving Oz to wonder if they'd be better forgetting about the trip altogether.
Chapter 10
The Letter And The Buried Man
Oz's mood did not improve much later that afternoon when he walked into the kitchen at Penwurt to find Rowena Hilditch yet again sitting at the table with his mother. It seemed she was becoming a permanent fixture. The paint charts had been pushed to one side to make room for a strange collection of glass tubes, each one full of a vivid liquid. Oz assumed this was yet another variation on the never-ending quest for the ideal mood-enhancing wall colour. Or, as Ruff would aptly put it, another load of buzzard
guano
, his recently discovered word for a type of manure that came from birds. Remembering it triggered the beginnings of a smile that died long before it ever got to Oz's lips, because thinking of Ruff sent another jolt of frustrated confusion coursing through him. He was tempted to just turn and run up to his room rather than face Rowena Hilditch again. Alas, his unannounced entrance had not gone unnoticed, though it had caught his mother off-guard. She smiled a greeting and stood quickly to give him a hug, but there'd been a moment's hesitation in which he'd caught a look of stark weariness etched on her face.
“Everything okay, Mum? You look a bit tired,” he asked, glancing at the calendar over her shoulder and feeling a little surge of relief on noting it was as he'd seen it that morning, with no part of a black dog showing.
“The latest news from the roofers is that they can't come for another month at least. Don't know why they even took on the job if they knew they couldn't start it. We'll just have to hope it doesn't rain too much for the next few weeks.” She sighed. “So I can't sleep because of that, and when I do, I keep dreaming about being sent to prison because I've chosen the wrong colour for the guest rooms.” She sounded thoroughly fed up.
“Does it really matter what colour a wall is?” Oz asked in exasperation.
There were several seconds of loaded silence, and Oz thought he saw his mother cringe slightly.
“But of course it does,” Rowena Hilditch said from across the table, in a shocked, breathy voice. “As I have explained already, colours have deep spiritual meaning. So much so that I have offered to help Gwen with her sleep problems.” She smiled and sat up. “I am, after all, a qualified rainbow practitioner.”
The guano alarm went off in Oz's head, but he tried desperately not to let anything show on his face. If it did, Rowena Hilditch didn't seem to notice. He looked at the coloured tubes and asked, “Is Mum supposed to drink all that?”
Rowena Hilditch threw her head back and let out a throaty laugh. “How ridiculous. That would just be silly. All that's necessary is that, when Gwen sleeps, she arranges the colours in a specific order around her pillow so as to ensure that her brain receives the appropriate amount of electromagnetic wave therapy.”
“Right,” Oz said, casting a wary glance at his mother, who was smiling wanly.
“I'm willing to give it a go,” she said, trying her best, Oz thought, to sound convinced.
“Does it work then, this rainbow therapy?” he asked, looking pointedly at Rowena Hilditch.
“Of course it works,” she said, as if Oz had asked if water was wet. “Recalibration of one's energising meridians is something we should all do on a regular basis.”
“But if you can't sleep, Mum, wouldn't it be better if you saw Dr Tarpin?”
Rowena Hilditch shook her head and smiled sadly. “Doctors have their place, but when someone's chakras are misalignedâ”
Oz frowned. That sounded serious. A bit like a dislocated hip.
Mrs Chambers let out a hollow sort of giggle, which ended in a frozen smile.
Rowena Hilditch sent Mrs Chambers an admonishing glance. “There is no doubt about it. Your energy centres are way out of sync, Gwen. Just look at you.”
Mrs Chambers shrugged, but her eyes were on Oz, seeking his approval. “Won't do any harm to try, will it?” she asked, and gave another unconvincing giggle.
Common sense was telling him that going to sleep surrounded by a load of coloured tubes couldn't possibly do any harm, just as it couldn't possibly do any good. Oz also sensed Rowena Hilditch was peering at him, her eyes full of challenge. But he didn't rise to the bait. He had no appetite for another discussion this afternoon, not after what had happened in school today.
“Got another science test,” he muttered. “Mind if I go up and start some revision, Mum?”
“Go ahead, Oz,” Mrs Chambers said, her face softening.
Oz dumped his bag in his bedroom but didn't linger. He'd wanted a glass of milk but couldn't stand the thought of spending another minute with Rowena Hilditch.
Instead, he grabbed a torch, took the stairs up to the library, and opened the passage behind the eastern wall by pressing the alchemical symbols for essence, alum, soap, and tin in the oak panel. He headed for the one place he could think of where neither Rowena Hilditch nor anyone else could disturb him. At that moment, Oz just didn't want company. All he wanted was time to think.
Moments later, he stepped down into the tiny, dim space in the room of reflection. He sat on the floor with his back against one wall and his legs drawn up beneath him. The place smelled old and dusty, but there was no hint of mushrooms, unlike in Room 62 at school. He stared at his cramped surroundings in the thin green light from the window, wondering how many other people over hundreds of years had done the same, hiding or simply finding somewhere quiet to just think.
The trouble was, all he could think about was Ellie and Ruff and that the chance of the three of them being together on the school trip was lessening by the day. Why was Ruff being such a complete gonk about all this? He was normally up for everything. Ellie, too, was taking his side, or at least warning Oz not to make a big thing out of it. But it
was
a big thing, wasn't it?
He shifted his feet in the cramped space and heard something
clank
. Oz looked down and saw a shape jammed into the corner. In the beam of his torch, he picked out some crumpled papers, a curved piece of wood, and an odd angular shape. He reached down and picked up a heavy ornament of some kind. He brushed off the dust and held it up. It was about twenty inches high and had a lion's head above a long sturdy bar that ended in a pair of moulded lion's-paw shapes.
Two-thirds of the way down the bar's length, another plain bar, at a right angle, led back a good fourteen inches to a rectangular footplate. Oz set it down; it was sturdy and well-balanced. He pressed the pebble, and when Soph appeared an instant later, asked her what it was.
“It is a firedog, Oz. It is one of a pair that would have been used to support logs in an open fireplace.”
“What's it doing here?”
“That I cannot answer,” she said, “but from the markings upon it, I would say it had been used extensively.”
Oz studied the heavy piece. The lion had its mouth open in a silent roar, and the feet were slightly rusty. Bits of charcoal and grey ash coated the rectangular bar. He looked about him at the tiny room. There was no sign of a fireplace, so what such a thing might be doing here was anyone's guess. Yet another one of Penwurt's many bewildering mysteries, he mused. He placed the firedog back into the corner and turned to the crumpled paper, smoothing it out on the floor. Nothing but scribbles and the word “secretary” written out thirty times. The wooden item was curved, with two splintered ends. A red band ran around the inside.
“What do you reckon, Soph? The rim of a tennis racquet?”
“I would suggest it is more likely to be a child's hoop. It was a common game to roll a hoop along the streets, using a stick to propel it.”
“Sounds like a bundle of laughs,” Oz observed. “And the paper looks like someone has been forced to write out a badly spelled word.”
“I agree.”
“This is just random stuff. I bet some kids from the orphanage must have found their way up here at some stage.”
He let out a huge sigh and let his eyes drift over the wooden panelling and the strange and wonderful way they'd been decorated. Now that he could look at them properly, he gazed at them with mounting admiration for their workmanship. It took him ages to complete any artwork of his own, because he could never stop fiddling with the details and was always being hurried along by Mr Holland in art lessons. He let the torch beam play over the intricate details of the plants and birds, the weird-looking engines and machinesâif indeed that was what they were.
One panel in particular caught his eye. Roughly two feet by two, it seemed lighter in colour than all the rest, and the intricate designs looked a little fresher. It didn't seem quite square either, and his eye was drawn to a small, dark gap between the panel and the wooden beam above it.
Oz pushed himself forward for a closer look. There
was
a gap. It was as if the wood had shrunk away from the beam, and when he ran his finger over it, he felt something snap. It was the faintest of sensations, as if there was something loose within the crack, like a sliver of wood, or the edge of a piece of paper. He felt a crackle of excitement tingle his scalp and bent to inspect the gap. There was something there, but it was pushed right in. He needed something fine to get at it. Oz sat back and thought. The answer came in an instant.