The Fabulous Phartlehorn Affair Read online

  The parrot cocked her head. Clearly she didn’t want to leave the old man’s side.

  “Please, Chippy,” urged Grandpa Trevor. “You’re our only hope.”

  Chippy fluttered her wings and let out a warbling screech. “Ain’t no mountain high enough! Ain’t no valley low enough,” she sang, fluttering up into the air, “to keep me from you-oooo!”

  With a last look back at Grandpa Trevor, Chippy sailed away into the sky. Mr and Mrs Chalk watched in amazement.

  “Do you think she’ll make it?” asked Mrs Chalk.

  “Of course she will,” said Grandpa Trevor proudly. “Agent Frogmarch will be up at that castle in no time. Whether she makes it back here in time to rescue us is another question.”

  30

  The Waiting

  The first part of Grace’s plan shouldn’t have been too difficult to pull off, for it simply involved acting normal. Yet acting normal proved easier said than done. At breakfast the next morning the children struggled to keep the fear from their faces.

  Acting naturally during the dress rehearsal in the Phartling Hall proved even tougher. Even if they hadn’t known about the knights’ terrible plot, it would still have been a strange occasion. The children stood together on a little raised platform in the centre of the stage. A grand piano had been wheeled out, and the Countess Strudel now sat at it, fingers poised over the keys. The duke conducted from the Royal Box. A few paces behind him stood the trusty moustache-bearers, pulling back his whiskers like a pair of reins.

  “When I point at you,” the duke instructed the children, “it’s time to phartle out your part. Right, let’s start with The Magic Phartlehorn. Bruno, after last night’s performance I’m expecting nothing short of perfection.”

  Yesterday, nothing would have made Bruno happier than taking centre stage. Today it took all his acting skills to muster a smile. All his life Bruno had loved parping. Finally he’d thought his talents might be appreciated. He’d dared to dream he could live the life of a famous phartiste. But it had all turned out to be a lie. The Knights Trumplar weren’t just passionate about parping — they were mad about murder.

  Now, Bruno stared out at the magnificent hall and longed to be safe at home aboard The Jolly Codger with Chippy and his Grandpa Trevor. More than anything he yearned to be reunited with his parents. But that, he thought sadly, would happen only in heaven. Somehow his sadness found an outlet in his phartling.

  Parp, parp, parp, parpagena, sang his phartlehorn, and the notes were mournful, rich and low.

  “Bravo!” cried the duke when the piece came to an end. “I’d never have thought it possible, but that was even better than yesterday. Phartle like that tomorrow and you’ll blow the audience away!”

  Bruno wanted to scream with anger, “Your little jokes don’t fool me! I know what you’re planning!” But what good would it do? They were outnumbered twenty to one. Grace was right. Their only chance was to try to act normal. With a heavy heart he listened to the countess strike up the next tune.

  The duke made the children play each piece over and over until he was satisfied that it was perfect, and the dress rehearsal dragged on until dinner. After another quick bowl of Stunkenstew the children were sent straight to their dormitory. Now there was nothing to do but wait until it got dark. The hours dragged on and on. The atmosphere grew tenser and tenser. Bruno and Grace tried to while away the hours by playing cards. Xanadu helped Natasha to braid her hair. Humbert picked his nose.

  “What if the boys get caught?” fretted Natasha.

  “What if they can’t find the potion?” worried Xanadu.

  “Guys!” said Grace, exasperated. “Will you please try to think positive!”

  Bruno said nothing. He was determined not to show it, but inside he was more nervous than any of them.

  At last the sun began to sink below the horizon. In a few hours, the knights would go to bed and it would be time to put the second part of Grace’s plan into action.

  Eight hours had passed since Grandpa Trevor and the Chalks had fallen into the pit. As darkness fell over the mountain, noises could be heard in the clearing above. First there was a soft snuffling sound, followed by an eerie bleating. Then a long, elegant head peered down into the hole. Everybody in the pit breathed out in relief. A deer. The animal blinked at them for a few seconds before wandering away into the forest.

  “Beautiful creature,” said Mr Chalk with a sigh. “She probably came to drink from the stream.”

  “This is hopeless,” complained Mrs Chalk. “We can’t just sit here waiting for Agent Frogmarch. What if she hasn’t made it to the castle yet? Anything could be happening to the children.”

  An idea was beginning to form in Grandpa Trevor’s mind. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it had to be worth a shot. With a huge creaking effort, he crouched down until his head was level with Mr Chalk’s bottom.

  “Hop onto my shoulders, Julian,” he invited.

  “A piggyback?” asked Mr Chalk, incredulous.

  “Not just a piggyback,” declared Grandpa Trevor. “A human pyramid!”

  Mr and Mrs Chalk looked at the old man as if he was mad, but he wasn’t to be put off.

  “OK — so it’s not technically a pyramid. More like a human ladder. Penny, when Julian’s on my shoulders you’ll have to find a way to climb up onto his. Then you can scramble out of this hole and find a rope or something to haul us boys out. We’ll storm the castle tonight!”

  “Or how about I just escort you there myself?” came a gravelly voice above their heads.

  Grandpa Trevor and the Chalks froze. Slowly, they raised their eyes to the top of the pit. To their dismay, they found themselves surrounded by a circle of brightly coloured pompomed clogs.

  31

  Making the Swap

  The second part of Grace’s plan was what is commonly known as a diversion. All that day, the children had been gathering small objects from around the castle: teaspoons, pepperpots, bars of soap — whatever they could get their hands on. These objects were now piled up on a table in the dormitory. They had blown out all the candles so that no one would suspect they were still awake, and It was almost as dark inside the dormitory as it was outside.

  Natasha, Xanadu and Humbert were whispering together in a corner, awaiting instructions. Bruno watched as Grace grabbed a spoon and threw it as hard as she could out of the window. It landed with a splosh! in the moat below.

  “We’ll keep lobbing these out until you’re back,” she said, peering out into the darkness. “That should keep the knights distracted.”

  Far below, two armed knights were already running over to investigate.

  “Unidentified flying object in the moat!” they called in Phartesian. “Possible intruder alert! Possible intruder alert!”

  Grace tapped Bruno on the shoulder. “Here,” she said, “you’ll need these.” She shoved two plastic water bottles into his hands. One was empty, the other was full. Bruno looked at them blankly.

  “What do I do with these?” he asked. Grace tapped her pixie nose with a smile. Bruno got the impression she was beginning to enjoy her new-found leadership skills.

  “Think about it…” she said.

  Suddenly the penny dropped. Bruno’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “I get it! I pour the elixir into the empty bottle. Then I replace it with the water from the full one. Grace, you’re a genius!”

  Grace tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks,” she said, blushing. “Now, quick, it’s time for you and Humbert to get going.”

  At the sound of his name, Humbert strolled over. “Come on then, Stink Bomb,” he sneered. “Let’s go and see this Chamber of Horrors. Exploding children! What a load of tosh! I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “You bet you will,” said Bruno.

  Armed with only a candle and the two plastic water bottles, the boys set off down the corridor. Having come this way once already, Bruno was less jumpy than he’d been last night. Soon they wer
e at the entrance to the East Tower.

  “With any luck,” said Bruno, “the knight will be asleep. If not, you’ll have to think of something to distract him while I make a run for it.”

  Gingerly, Bruno pulled back the curtain. From the far side of the room there came a loud drilling sound.

  “Yikes,” said Humbert, sticking his fingers in his ears. “What’s that?”

  “That,” replied Bruno, “is a good sign. He’s snoring. The staircase is right behind his chair. All we have to do is creep past. I’ll go first.”

  Keeping his back pressed against the wall, Bruno skirted round the edge of the chamber. Reaching the top of the staircase, he turned to check on Humbert. Bruno couldn’t believe it. He was sauntering across the middle of the room, as relaxed as if he was taking a stroll around the St Ermingarda’s school playground! Didn’t he realize the knight could wake up at any moment?

  And then, to Bruno’s dismay, he did.

  Abruptly, the snoring stopped. The knight sat bolt upright in his chair. His eyes flipped open. For a second he seemed to stare directly at Humbert. Then his chin fell back to his chest. The snoring started again, louder than ever. Humbert scampered towards the stairs.

  “That was close!” He laughed.

  “Close?” gasped Bruno. “You almost had us killed! Now, come on.”

  “So this is the way to the Chamber of Horrors,” scoffed Humbert as they descended down into the gloom. “I bet you and Grace imagined it all. Scared of the dark, that’d be my guess.”

  Bruno ignored him.

  When they came to the bottom of the staircase, Bruno pushed open the door and shoved the candle into Humbert’s hands.

  “Here,” he said. “See for yourself.”

  Still smirking, Humbert wandered over to the wall of photographs. He began to sneer at the old-fashioned haircuts and clothes. “What a bunch of losers,” he pronounced, looking at a photo taken — judging by the bouffant hairdos — sometime in the nineteen-eighties. Then his mouth fell open. His head swivelled about on his neck as he looked from one photograph to another. He let out a bloodcurdling scream. The candle dropped from his hand. The chamber was plunged into darkness.

  “You were right,” wailed Humbert, “we are in terrible danger!”

  “We are now.” Bruno sighed. “How am I going to find the elixir in the dark?”

  Humbert the bully had turned as wet as a football field in winter. For some reason his weakness seemed to give Bruno strength. The darkness made it harder to find the elixir, but at least it meant he didn’t have to look at the photographs.

  His arms stretched out like a zombie, Bruno began to feel his way around the chamber, imagining he had eyeballs in the palms of his hands. Here was the circle of golden chairs. Here was the tallest chair, where the duke had sat yesterday. The elixir must be around here somewhere…

  Bruno felt along the wall behind the duke’s chair until his hands made out the contours of a small wooden cupboard. Finding the handle, he tugged open the door. At first his fingers clutched at nothing but air. Then they closed on a small glass vial… The explosive elixir! Bruno was sure of it!

  While Humbert snivelled in the corner, Bruno reached into his pockets for the plastic bottles. It was easy enough to tell by their weight which one was empty and which one was full. Careful not to spill a drop, Bruno decanted the elixir into his empty plastic bottle. To think what just a few drops of this lethal liquid could do! Then, just as carefully, he refilled the glass vial with harmless water.

  “Come on,” he said to Humbert. “Time to see what’s cooking in the kitchen.”

  32

  Down in the Dungeons

  The clank! of the dungeon door swinging shut behind Sir Oswald echoed in the darkness. Grandpa Trevor sank to the floor of the underground cell he now found himself locked inside, narrowly avoiding impaling himself on a stalagmite. Or was it a stalactite?

  “Mites crawl up your legs. Tights fall down them,” offered Julian Chalk, as if reading the old man’s mind. “That’s how I remember it. You know, if they weren’t being used as a prison, these caves would make quite a tourist attraction.”

  “Oh, please stop twittering on, dear,” begged his wife. “Now is not the time to be talking about rock formations.”

  “Sorry,” replied Mr Chalk sheepishly. “You’re right. Best I just shut up.”

  The three of them fell back into despondent silence.

  After an hour or so of this, Grandpa Trevor was startled to hear a hollow sound coming from beneath his feet. He put his ear to the ground and listened. It was a muffled scraping, as if a badger or some other clawed creature was burrowing through the stone. Soon the scraping had become a rumbling, and the small patch of ground, where Grandpa Trevor had been listening, began to ripple and bulge.

  “An earthquake!” cried Mrs Chalk.

  The three of them looked on in alarm as part of the cave floor suddenly gave way. A mass of rock and earth disappeared into a hole that was growing wider before their eyes. Then, from out of this hole appeared first the head, then the shoulders, then the body of a man.

  “Aarghhhhh!” cried Mr and Mrs Chalk together.

  The man’s unkempt hair stuck up in all directions. His skin was caked in mud and dust. In fact, all you could see of his face were his eyebrows, which were black and furry. One was a good deal bushier than the other. He pushed a dirty hand through his hair, revealing a pair of sticky-out ears.

  Grandpa Trevor stared at the man as if he was a phantom. I must be hallucinating, he thought. “Ronald?” he said in a weak voice. “Ronald, is that really you?”

  “Dad!” gasped the man, hauling himself up into the cave. “Dad? What are you doing here?”

  The Chalks looked back and forth between the two men in amazement. Despite the mud and dust, the resemblance was striking. Ronald Pockley dropped to his knees and bellowed into the hole.

  “Love! Get yourself up here! There’s something I need to show you!” A brief delay. Then an echoing reply.

  “What’s the point? How many times do I have to tell you? You’re tunnelling in the wrong direction…”

  “Trust me. There’s something I really think you should see.”

  A few moments later, the scruffy-looking man was joined in the cave by a dishevelled young woman. Grandpa Trevor stared in disbelief. Her curly hair now fell all the way down her back and she was skinnier than when Grandpa Trevor had last seen her. Still, there was no mistaking his daughter-in-law Jane.

  “Trevor!” she shrieked, throwing her arms around him in joy. “But where’s Bruno? Tell me! How is he?”

  Grandpa Trevor could not answer. Mrs Chalk came forward and took the other woman’s hand in hers.

  “I’m Penny Chalk. My daughter Grace is at school with your boy Bruno. I’m afraid we have some upsetting news.”

  As gently as she could, Mrs Chalk explained that Bruno and Grace had gone missing on a school trip. She told how they’d been kidnapped and brought here to Phartesia by a dastardly organization known as the Knights Trumplar. Ronald and Jane Pockley listened to this story with mounting concern.

  “But what I still don’t understand is what you two are doing here,” said Grandpa Trevor when Mrs Chalk had finished. “I thought you were dead!”

  Now it was Ronald Pockley’s turn to explain. It seemed that after they’d been whipped off the roof of the block of flats, Mrs Pockley’s amazing skirt balloon had carried them all the way across the Channel. Above Calais they had run into a thermal that had whisked them up and over the French Alps, eventually depositing them on a hillside in Phartesia. They’d spent a week frantically searching for a way out of the forest before Sir Oswald had found them and had them thrown in the dungeons for trespassing. Ronald had been trying to tunnel his way out ever since.

  As you can imagine, Grandpa Trevor and the Chalks thought this story a little far-fetched. But then Julian Chalk remembered a documentary he’d seen on the Discovery Channel about mini-tornadoes, and
declared that it was after all entirely possible.

  When the tears eventually stopped falling, and it had really sunk in that at least three of the Pockleys had found each other again, it was time to decide what to do next. At first they considered waiting until Agent Frogmarch arrived with reinforcements. But they decided that the children’s rescue could not be delayed any longer. With five of them all there together, they might just have a chance of overpowering the guards who were due to come with food the next day. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was the only one they had.

  33

  Trouble in the Kitchens

  “Right,” said Bruno when he and Humbert arrived back on the landing outside the dormitory. “You’ll need to lead from here. You do remember the way to the kitchens, don’t you?”

  Humbert’s thin lips quivered. “I’m n-n-not sure,” he sniffed. “It’ll be hard to find the w-w-way without a candle.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Bruno. He darted off down the corridor to borrow another candle from an alcove. “Whatever you do, don’t drop this one,” he warned as he returned. “Now, let’s get a move on. The others will be wondering what’s taking us so long.”

  Humbert took Bruno down the staircase that led to the dining room. Once again, Bruno was amazed at how even familiar places could become frightening in the dark. The portraits seemed to glare out of the shadows and the floorboards creaked ominously beneath their feet. Before they reached the dining hall, Humbert took a turn to the right and pushed back a heavy steel door to reveal an industrial-sized kitchen. Over in the corner stood an enormous fridge. Humbert used the candle to guide them across to it. He tugged on the fridge door and blue light spilled out into the kitchen.

  It seemed that the castle chefs had been hard at work. The fridge was heaving with delicious-looking food: grilled prawns, little strawberry tarts, cheese puffs, miniature Yorkshire puddings, frogs’ legs and sticky sausages on skewers.