The Serpent in the Glass (The Tale of Thomas Farrell) (9 page)

Only one seat remained entirely unoccupied on the small bus. Thomas headed straight for it, eager to sit down. He dropped into the seat, and pulled his bag onto his lap just as Penders sat down next to him. Jessica sat in a space on the seat across the aisle, next to a very prim-looking girl whose small-featured and bespectacled face eagerly strained to see over the seat in front of her to get a view of the stern-looking woman now speaking with Mr Clear, who’d just stepped into the bus.

‘My name’s Jessica Westhrop,’ Thomas heard Jessica say to the surprised girl next to her. He decided not to listen. Jessica would inevitably turn the conversation to shopping anyway. Instead, he took the opportunity to look around. They were seated halfway down the bus, so Thomas could see a number of faces. There were seven girls, including Jessica, and six boys, including Penders and himself. He wondered what all their gifts might be. Maybe some were great musicians, others talented singers or mathematical geniuses. One large-boned boy — who certainly seemed unlikely to be any of those things — sat at the back of the bus. He had the long seat all to himself, and by the dark scowl on his face it was likely to remain that way.

In the seat behind Jessica sat a couple of girls who were obviously twins. Both wore their long, strawberry-blonde hair in a ponytail. They were engrossed in conversation, but every now and again looked about as if to check they hadn’t missed anything else of interest that might be going on.

Thomas’s attention switched to a red-haired boy on the seat behind, mainly because he’d just sneezed. The small, mousy-haired girl sitting next to him stared at the boy as if he had the Plague. The boy glanced at Thomas and smiled as he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Thomas forced a small smile and turned back to face the front. The stern-looking lady now stood in the aisle, studying the clipboard with an occasional glance at the occupants of the bus.

‘Who’s she?’ Thomas asked Penders in a lowered voice, but it wasn’t so low that the girl next to Jessica couldn’t hear, for it was she who answered his question.

‘That’s Miss Havelock, the Deputy Head. She met me and my parents at the station.’

Jessica, seeing the look on Thomas’s face, introduced her new-found friend. ‘This is Merideah Darwood.’

‘Merideah
Constance
Darwood,’ the girl corrected Jessica. ‘Jessica has told me all about you,’ she added, as she looked back at Thomas.

Thomas cringed. How could Jessica have told her ‘all’ about him so quickly? Jessica had a way of giving people the wrong idea about him — about all her friends. She didn’t intend it, she just didn’t qualify important facts sometimes, which all too often led to the wrong impression. Once she’d told two of her best friends that Thomas couldn’t find his marbles. He was nine at the time and it was perfectly true, but Jessica’s exact words were that he’d ‘lost his marbles’ and so her friends went around telling everyone that Jessica’s brother had gone crazy.

Merideah and Jessica were going to be friends. Thomas could tell. He’d seen the signs before, countless times. Something about the two girls was the same, a kindred spirit; though they certainly were opposite in appearance. Merideah’s dark brown, almost black hair, cut just above the shoulders, hung perfectly straight and very neat. A black band held it back off her ears, and upon these latter rested a pair of round, black-rimmed glasses that gave her the look of a librarian.

Merideah caught Penders’ grinning face and she raised an eyebrow in response, but before either could speak Miss Havelock called for silence.

‘Children, for those of you who don’t know me already, my name is Miss Havelock. I’m sorry for the wait some of you have had. You’ll be happy to know that it’s only an hour’s drive to Darkledun Manor. I have here a copy of the Darkledun Manor information pamphlet for each of you. I suggest you take the time to read it. You will remain seated for the entire journey, and should you need me please raise your hand. Now, are there any questions?’

If there were, no one dared to ask any. This woman made even Miss McGritch seem like a sweet old grandmother. Miss Havelock handed out the pamphlets as Mr Clear started up the engine. The bus rattled no end to begin with, but then the noise, though not the shaking, died down to a level that allowed communication without the need for shouting.

‘Red do be stop, right?’ Thomas heard Stanwell ask Miss Havelock. She replied in the affirmative, seemingly unfazed by the Caretaker’s lack of knowledge regarding the Highway Code. Thomas looked around. No one else seemed to have heard. Most were looking at the small, off-white-coloured pamphlet in their hands. Jessica, of course, had begun to read it in earnest, as had Merideah. Thomas glanced at them every now and again and saw them pointing out parts of the text to each other. What they were saying, Thomas didn’t hear above the din of the engine, but they seemed to always end by nodding at one another.

‘Gum?’ Penders shoved a stick of chewing gum in Thomas’s direction. His pamphlet lay abandoned on his lap.

Thomas bounced in his seat as the bus went over a speed hump a little too fast. ‘No thanks. What’s Lincolnshire like? I’ve never been.’

‘Oh, pretty nice. Flat too, where my home is anyway. Makes cycling easier.’

Thomas thought he wouldn’t like flatness. There’d be no hills to view it from. Thomas liked hills. He wasn’t quite sure why. Too much flatness seemed unnatural, though he could’ve done without the speed humps right now, he thought, as they bounced over another.

After a while Penders started to have trouble keeping his eyes open. Thomas was tired too, but he didn’t want to sleep, not now at least. Another dream about that giant serpent might result in him falling off his seat, and he didn’t want everyone laughing at him. Instead, he opened the pamphlet and flicked through it. But it was only ‘daydream reading’. That was when what he read and what he thought were two different things, a bit like when a person daydreams and stares at something, but doesn’t realize it’s there. He broke from his reverie as the bus hooted. Thomas watched a man in jeans on a zebra crossing jump wildly out of the path of the oncoming bus. The daydream dissolved as he came back to the waking world, but he sensed a small glass orb had featured in it somewhere.

Thomas looked over at Jessica. She flicked through the short pamphlet as if trying to spot something she might have missed on her first perusal. Merideah examined the landscape as it flew past. To Thomas she had the look of a kidnap victim taking mental notes of where she was being taken. Maybe she was a little nervous. He wondered how he should feel. Excitement and a little apprehension filled the faces of the children on the bus, but Thomas felt something different; he felt content. For the first time in his life he had a connection with his father. He was meant to be at Darkledun Manor. Thomas didn’t know if he had any gift, not the sort the school wanted anyway, but he did have a gift from his father — the gift of an education at Darkledun Manor.

Bessie came to a juddering halt just inches away from the large rocks that edged the Manor’s rockery.

Stanwell removed his hat and wiped his brow. ‘Well, another fine run, if I do be saying so myself! And no accidents to boot!’

The Caretaker jumped from his seat and made for the door as Miss Havelock began to usher the students off in an orderly manner. Soon they’d all disembarked Bessie and stood waiting in the small car park.

As the Caretaker undid the straps holding the luggage to the roof of the bus, Thomas stared at the Manor. This would be his home now. His eyes followed the ivy as it climbed up the walls of Darkledun and, as his gaze reached the roof, his attention shifted to the top of the tower poking above the thin trees that grew upon the patch of ground at the side of the school. Holes ran around the tower, just below the pointed roof. Perhaps they were crude windows of some sort. Why, he thought, did the school even have a tower in the first place? The sun, passing out from behind a cloud, shone in Thomas’s face and he dropped his gaze back to the ground and to the rockery that fronted the Manor. Real rocks, perhaps from the foothills of a mountain, surrounded and dotted the feature. It was a far cry from the broken patio slabs that decorated Mrs Westhrop’s rockery. Thomas smiled. He was glad to be back.

When the last suitcase hit the ground, Miss Havelock announced that everyone should follow her. She led them briskly up the narrow cobbled path to the Manor door where the Housekeeper, Miss McGritch, stood waiting in the same brown dress Thomas had seen her in when he’d first visited. She nodded slightly at Miss Havelock and then opened the door wide. The children were herded through the entrance hall until they all stood at the bottom of the Manor’s wide staircase.

Here Miss Havelock stepped up onto the stairs, turned to face the students and requested quiet. The Deputy Head gave Jessica a glare, and Jessica, who’d been talking to Merideah and hadn’t heard the call for silence, fell silent with a guilty look on her face. Miss Havelock turned her attention back to the group.

‘Miss McGritch, the Housekeeper here at the Manor, will take the girls to their dormitories; Mr Clear, the boys. Please follow them and they will inform you of your assigned room where you may deposit your luggage. You will all attend the assembly hall at seven o’clock promptly.’

Miss McGritch and Stanwell Clear led the children to the top of the stairs where they separated — Miss McGritch leading the girls to the left, and Stanwell leading the boys to the right. After they’d walked through a common room filled with low tables, red sofas, and comfy chairs of the same colour, they found themselves in a corridor lined with many numbered doors. Thomas remembered that these were the dormitories.

Mr Clear pulled a creased piece of paper from one of his numerous pockets. ‘Ah, now let me see. There do be more of you every year, just like my perch — when the ’erons don’t get ’em!’ Stanwell stepped a couple of paces down the corridor to the first door: number twelve. Here he called out the name of one Reginald Quaint. The red-haired boy Thomas had seen sneeze on the bus came forward dragging a suitcase almost twice his size. Mr Clear unlocked the door, gave Reginald the key, and then showed the boy in. Others were assigned their rooms as they went along, and eventually Thomas had his name called out as they reached room number three.

With a catch-you-later nod from Penders, Thomas moved his luggage into the room, took the key from Mr Clear with a grateful smile, and closed the door behind him. The room was much as the one he’d seen on Miss McGritch’s tour, except that on the bed someone had left a sealed ‘Welcome Pack’ with a copy of something called
The Darkledun Manor Rulebook
topmost in the small pile. On the top of the pack, on a small square note, it read
Please Open Immediately
.

He picked up the pack and looked around. His very own room, he thought. An excitement filled him born of feeling both free of the Westhrops and in charge of his own life at last. This room was his. He felt quite overwhelmed by the new-found freedom. However, despite his enthusiasm, tiredness crept over his mind. He dropped down onto the bed, and the welcome pack slipped from his hand. His attempts to keep himself from falling asleep on the bus had worked, but he could resist no longer. Mr Clear had been right: journeys were tiring. Thomas wasn’t used to travelling. He’d seldom been outside of Holten Layme in his life. And it was so nice to be able to stretch out on a soft surface after sitting on train and bus seats nearly all day, not to mention lugging a suitcase about. Thomas’s bed felt far more comfortable than the dog basket in the Westhrop’s loft. In fact it was very comfortable indeed.

It seemed to Thomas that no sooner had he drifted off into welcome slumber than a most unwelcome voice called him out of it again.

‘Thomas, it’s Penders,’ came the voice again.

Thomas sat up wearily. Penders stood in the doorway. He wore a blazer and black trousers. He had an anxious look on his face.

Thomas yawned. ‘What time is it?’

‘About ten to seven, so you’d better hurry up and get changed!’ Penders replied.

Thomas sat up and put his feet on the splinterless, fully carpeted floor and looked at Penders’ new apparel. ‘We have to wear our uniform?’

‘Yeah, didn’t you read the note in the welcome pack?’ Penders asked.

‘I — no,’ Thomas mumbled as he looked down at the still-sealed pack on the bed beside him. ‘I guess I was more tired than I thought.’

Less than five minutes later, Thomas finished tying his laces and stood up to pull the tie and blazer from the bag in which they hung in the wardrobe. It was then he noticed what he’d been too tired, and then too rushed, to notice on Penders’ uniform: the shield-shaped Darkledun Badge upon the blazer’s breast pocket had been divided horizontally into thirds; the two thirds at the bottom contained a blue horn and a yellow spear, but the third at the top of the badge, just under the title
Darkledun Manor
, bore the image of a green serpent, uncannily similar to the appearance of the serpent in his father’s Glass. First he’d received the Serpent in the Glass from his father, then there was the dream about the giant serpent, and now the badge with the same creature on it. Could it just all be coincidence?

Thomas’s attention fell down to the very bottom of the badge where a narrow banner displayed the school motto
Aonfhuil is Aonchnamh
. Thomas had no idea what it meant. Maybe it was Scottish. It wasn’t English for certain, and yet it seemed strangely familiar.

‘Sorry?’ Penders said.

Thomas hadn’t realized he’d read the words out aloud. ‘Oh, the words on the badge.’

Penders looked at his own badge. ‘Is that the way it’s said?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Thomas replied.

Thomas looked from Penders back to the badge. How would he know how to pronounce the words? Maybe, if it was Scottish, he’d heard the language before? Maybe his father had been Scottish? It made sense. The solicitors were Scottish, and why else would the representative of his father’s estate have chosen a school in Scotland for his education?