The Book of Lies (10 page)

“But what can I do to help you? I don’t even remember who I am,” Marcel reminded him.

“It’s who you are that matters, not whether you remember it,” snapped Starkey. Suddenly, his eyes brightened and his confidence returned. “In fact, it might be…” he murmured to himself, trailing off. “Yes,” he said, looking across the wall at Marcel. “You can still play a role, a vital role indeed, and one that only you can perform. If I can just get you away from Lord Alwyn…”

These words made Marcel’s frustration unbearable. He wrenched uselessly at the ring around his finger and felt its curse like never before. What could he do that was so important? he wondered. Only he could do it, according to this man, even though Lord Alwyn had tried to erase all trace of his former…

“Wait!” cried Marcel.

At this, the two men ducked quickly behind the wall. “Quiet, boy! You’ll have everyone in the place here beside you.”

“I’m sorry,” he went on, in a whisper now. “There’s a girl here, named Nicola.”

“What of her?” said Starkey in an offhand manner as he dared to stand up, though there was no doubting the interest he was already showing.

Marcel hurried to explain. “Lord Alwyn did the same thing to her as he did to me. I’m sure of it. She doesn’t know who she really is either.”

Starkey and Hector exchanged an astounded glance. In fact, Hector was about to put their surprise into words when Starkey held up his hand to stop him. “This girl. Is she older than you?”

“I think so. Maybe a year older.”

His answer brought rising excitement. “Describe her,” Starkey demanded quickly.

Marcel did so, and with each feature he named, her hair, the pale skin dotted with freckles, even her haughty demeanour, he saw Starkey’s face brighten with glee.

“Yes, it must be her,” he declared at last.

“Can she help you too?” Marcel asked.

“Help us! Why, she can do everything that you were to do.” Then the light in his face died as quickly as it had come to life. “Does she have a ring like yours?”

“No,” Marcel assured him.

“A stroke of luck at last. We can take her instead of you!”

Marcel’s heart immediately sank into his shoes. In a matter of moments he had been cast aside like an unwanted puppy. It wasn’t fair. It was
his
name that had brought them here. He was the one – with Bea’s help, it was true – who had discovered Nicola’s connection to the Book of Lies in the first place. They
had
to take him.

Then things became even worse.

“The third child,” Hector whispered to Starkey. “Could he be here as well?”

Starkey turned eagerly to Marcel. “Hector is right.
Three
children disappeared in all. Perhaps all three were sent here, to be watched over together by Alwyn himself.”

“Another girl?” asked Marcel.

“No, a strapping boy, your age but taller, and I daresay somewhat stronger. Thick brown hair, a wide round face – oh yes, and a short temper, by all accounts,” he added with a grin towards Hector.

Marcel was devastated. The description could not have been more accurate. Of all the children in the orphanage, in fact, of all the children there must be throughout the entire kingdom, why did the third child have to be
that
boy?

Could Marcel deny it? He was tempted. These men might never know he had lied. Yes, he was sorely tempted, but he made his head nod all the same, just once.

“He’s here,” he said quietly. “We call him Fergus.”

The first person Marcel came across after he had left the orchard was Bea. He felt terrible about deceiving her, but he had already decided to tell her nothing about Starkey.

What could he have told her? That two strangers had suddenly come for him, two men who frightened him as much as they gave him hope? Starkey, especially, was an odd collection of people all bound into one. Fierce determination shone in his eyes, stronger than sunlight through broken cloud. He had set himself a quest to bring down an evil king. Was there any more dangerous task, or any more important? Yet he had shown gentleness and sympathy when Marcel told of what had been done to him.

If only he could go with them!

He pushed such vain hopes aside and went to find Nicola. She was puzzled when he asked to speak to her alone, but she agreed to follow him into the little cave beneath the blackberry bushes. There, she listened, open-mouthed, to the amazing story he had to tell.

“Ever since I found you and Bea in the kitchen with that strange book I’ve been thinking. My memories seem real but somehow I can feel myself acting like I’m expected to, instead of the way I truly am.” She could barely sit still. “And now this man Starkey comes along. It’s almost too much to believe. He wants me to go with him, tonight?” Nicola asked breathlessly.

“Yes, after Termagant has come back from hunting.”

“How will he know when to come for me?”

“It’s all been arranged. I will signal Starkey with a candle when we reach the orchard,” Marcel explained.

It had been his idea entirely. With Termagant loose for much of the night, Starkey and Hector would have been easily discovered. If she had found them lurking near the orchard… he didn’t even want to think about that. But with Marcel acting as a spy inside the house, listening near the girls’ room for Termagant’s return, they stood a good chance of escape.

“Are you coming too, Marcel?” Nicola asked.

He grimaced and held up his hand, allowing what little light there was in the tiny grotto to catch the gold of his ring. “I can’t leave the orphanage with this on my finger.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve seen how restless you are here,” she said, surprising him. Since when had Nicola bothered to do more than glare at him, and as for caring about how he felt…

Fergus was even easier to convince, not because of what Marcel told him but because of what he didn’t. He would simply have assumed it was a trick if Marcel had tried to explain the whole story. Instead, he took Fergus aside and said, “Some strangers have come to the orchard, a knight and a soldier. They want a brave boy to go with them and be part of some adventure they have planned. If they go to Mrs Timmins, she won’t let you go, but you can escape with them tonight, if you dare.”

If he dared. That was Marcel’s real trick, just the kind of challenge Fergus could not possibly turn down. “Where do I meet them?” was his instant response.

Marcel had to smother a smile. Yet no smile could survive on his face for long that day. Nicola and Fergus were about to escape, while he would be left behind.

In the early hours of the morning, Marcel lay awake listening for the sound of Termagant as she moved through the tunnel. He had heard her leave the house many hours before and now waited anxiously for her return.

Then it came, the familiar sound. The beast had returned to her lair in the tower. It was time to fetch the others.

Nicola was already waiting for him outside the girls’ room when he arrived with Fergus. Marcel carried the candle he had taken from the kitchen after dinner, and when they had safely left the house and reached the last apple tree before the boundary, he lit it.

Starkey and Hector joined them three minutes later.

“Yes, I recognise you both. You are the ones we have been looking for,” Starkey whispered exultantly into the darkness, killing Marcel’s last hope that Fergus, at least, would not be invited to go with them.

The candlelight caught the fevered excitement in Starkey’s face. “All three of you. I could not have wished for such luck. What names do you two call yourselves?”

Nicola answered, then began to ask Starkey what her real
name was, but he cut her off. “We must get moving. For now, you should keep the names Lord Alwyn gave you. Quickly, climb across the wall.”

Marcel heard the urgency in Starkey’s voice and realised they were about to slip away into the night without another word. “Please,” he begged, “you haven’t really told me much at all. Why were the three of us brought here? Let me know that much, at least.”

“Haven’t you guessed?” barked Starkey. “To keep Pelham on the throne, that’s why. He’s a usurper, a false king who has stolen the crown from the rightful heirs.”

“The rightful heirs. Who are they?”

“I mentioned their names this afternoon. Damon and Eleanor. With these two to assist me, there is a chance, at least.” He moved to help Nicola clamber over the wall, not an easy task with the folds of her dress catching her knees and feet.

Fergus, however, had already jumped over it in a single bound. He had little idea of what they were talking about but the mention of a quest to bring down an unworthy king was enough.

“I’m coming with you,” he assured Starkey, and because he couldn’t give up the chance to taunt his old enemy he turned to Marcel, adding cruelly, “You stay here with the other little orphans. We’ll come back for you when the job is done.”

Marcel felt his heart twist and writhe inside his chest. On any other occasion he might have whacked Fergus on the nose, whatever the consequences. But tonight was too important.

Even in the darkness Starkey could sense the dejection that had all but consumed poor Marcel. He reached across the wall and took him gently by the elbow, whispering, “I wish I could take you as well, truly I do, but you know yourself what a risk that would be. I promise you, as soon as Pelham is dead, I will come back for you.”

“But it’s still so dangerous. Tomorrow, when Lord Alwyn finds out these two are gone, he’ll send Termagant along the road after you.”

“Don’t fret. Thanks to your warning earlier I have decided not to use the roads, nor even the horses. I sold them in the village this afternoon in exchange for these supplies.” He nodded towards the pack Hector now carried on his back, with a bundle of blankets protruding from the top. “I know of another way to get to where we are going.”

“And where is that?”

“Best you don’t know.”

He was not to know anything much, it seemed, because Starkey turned quickly on his heel and led the other three figures off into the night.

Marcel watched them go, conscious as never before of the crushing emptiness inside him. He still knew nothing of who he was, or of the father Starkey had mentioned. All he had gained were three names: Damon, Eleanor and the man Starkey had sworn to overthrow, King Pelham.

F
OR WHAT REMAINED OF
that long, long night, Marcel stayed awake listening for the sounds from inside the wall. If Termagant were on the move again, it would mean she knew of the escape and had set out after them.

No sounds came. His fevered mind churned with questions. Where were they going? What role were Nicola and Fergus to play, the vital part that had been his until Starkey learned of the ring and its curse? Damn this ring, he cursed for what seemed the hundredth time since sliding into bed.

Above him in the tower, Lord Alwyn doubtless lay sleeping, unaware of the daring escape. Somewhere in that forbidding room, a room Marcel was afraid even to picture in his mind, lay the Book of Lies. If he could get his hands on it again, he would have so many more questions for it now.

He wondered if it could answer the most important question of all – more important than any question about himself. Would Starkey succeed in forcing King Pelham from the throne, or would Nicola and Fergus die along with him in the attempt? Even if their fate was a heroic death, that fate was his too, by rights, and his soul ached to think it had been snatched away from him like this.

That sounded foolhardy, he realised, but he knew just as strongly that it was not false bravado. He wished the Book of Lies were before him now, because it would certainly glow brightly as he spoke into the darkness: “I would rather die with them than live here for the rest of my life and never know who I am.”

Dawn finally touched the windowpanes and Albert came to rouse them for another day. “Where’s Fergus?” he asked, bemused. At the same time, Nicola’s empty bed was the talk of the girls’ room.

Mrs Timmins was unruffled at first. They would be in the kitchen, hoping for an early bite of breakfast, she guessed. But they were not in the kitchen, nor were they to be found in the orchard or the stables. The house was soon in uproar.

“Albert! Into the village with you and ask if they’ve been seen. And Belch,” she called, seeing the stable hand’s anxious face appear at the kitchen door, “search the forest roads, even the forest itself if you have to.”

Old Belch rode off on the chestnut stallion soon afterwards. “Search the forest,” he repeated to himself grumpily. “She might as well ask me to sift the entire ocean through my fingers.”

As for everyone else, they ran through the house, in and out of rooms that had been searched five times already, calling, “Nicola, Fergus, where are you?” until Marcel was ready to scream.

He was the only one who knew that they would not be found, and aware of this, he checked under beds and behind doors harder than any of the others.

He couldn’t hide his secret from Bea, though.

“I’ve been watching you. You aren’t really looking for them at all. You know something, don’t you?” she challenged him.

Marcel glanced around nervously, in case someone else had heard her accusation, but they were alone in the boys’ room. “Shh,” he said, putting a finger to his lips.