"I wouldn't want to be in your shoes," Fidelio remarked with a grin.
"What do you mean by that?" Gabriel asked in an offended tone. "This man isn't after me and Charlie, particularly."
"Sorry." Fidelio often forgot how touchy Gabriel Silk could be. "But you're both endowed, Gabe. These weirdos are always after you lot; by and large they leave normal people like me alone."
Gabriel had to admit that this was true. He realized that he would have to take Fidelio into his confidence as well as Charlie. Best friends always stuck together during break.
After lunch the three boys jogged around the grounds. It was one of those dreary March days when the sky is a dark gray slab and the cold air sneaks into your very bones. Sixth years were allowed to stay indoors, but the rest of the school, almost three hundred children from eight years old to sixteen, were trying various ways to keep warm.
Some of the boys were playing a rather halfhearted game of soccer, others were being violently active in an athletic kind of way, and yet more were doing formal exercises, presided over by an enthusiastic outdoorsy type named Simon Hawke.
Most of the girls were walking around in pairs or large groups. Someone had put up an umbrella, even though the rain wasn't more than a damp mist. It was a very bright umbrella, printed with red and yellow butterflies. The girl beneath it had almost white hair and wore a scarlet coat. She was holding her umbrella high enough to cover the head of a very tall boy of African descent.
"Is that Lysander?" Gabriel pointed at the boy beneath the umbrella.
"Must be," said Fidelio. "Who's the girl?"
"Never seen her before," said Charlie.
The girl turned toward them, and Charlie recognized Olivia Vertigo. He had never seen her as a bleached blonde before. Her hair color changed frequently from purple to green to indigo—she'd even gone stripy—but never white. He wondered why she and Lysander were together. They were both endowed, but they had little else in common. And then he remembered that their best friends were both missing. Lysander was seldom apart from Tancred Torsson, while Olivia and Emma were practically inseparable.
Charlie waved at Olivia and she leaped forward, catching Lysander's head in her umbrella. "Ow!" he yelled. Olivia flapped her hand at him and came bouncing over the grass in her red fur-tipped boots. Lysander stood looking around for another companion for a moment, but finding none, he followed Olivia over to the group.
Gabriel groaned to himself. Now he would have to tell his story to four people instead of one. It was such a small incident; it might mean nothing or everything. He hadn't wanted to broadcast it this way; in fact, he decided, he probably wouldn't tell anyone at all, because what he had seen wasn't all that important. His mind had simply exaggerated its significance.
"We've been talking about the Pets' Cafe," said Olivia, obligingly closing her umbrella, "and you—know—who." She glanced at Lysander.
"Shhh!" Lysander looked over his shoulder as the Branko twins passed behind them.
The Branko twins were now lingering just within earshot. They had pale, impassive faces and the bangs of their shiny black hair touched the tips of their long, thick eyelashes. The eyes beneath those lashes were dark and inscrutable. If the twins were to get the slightest hint that Tancred was still alive, they would pass the news straight to Manfred, and that would be a disaster. The Bloors would be furious that his survival had been kept a secret, and Dagbert might even make a second attempt on Tancred's life.
"Let's move," Lysander suggested, nodding at an ancient wall standing at the top end of the grounds.
The massive red walls surrounded a castle built by the Red King nine centuries ago. It had been a vast and beautiful building, but today it lay in ruins, its thick walls crumbling, its stone floors lined with moss and weeds,
its roofs fallen, and its once sturdy beams mildewed and rotting. But just inside the great arched entrance was a paved courtyard, surrounded by thick hedges, and facing the entrance were five smaller arches, each one leading into the castle. Four were like the mouths of dark tunnels. Only one gave a view of the green hill beyond.
"Smells a bit musty in here," said Olivia. She planted herself on one of the stone benches located between the arches.
The others squeezed in beside her, but Fidelio suddenly jumped up and ran to the entrance, He stood beneath the arch where he could get a good view of the rest of the school. "Don't want any snoops," he said.
A low grunt came from beneath the bench beside them. Everyone stared at it until a gray paw emerged, followed by a long-nosed, overweight, short-legged dog.
"Blessed!" they cried.
Olivia held her nose. "I might have known."
"He can't help being smelly," Gabriel reproved her.
"He looks so sad," said Charlie. "I'm sure he misses Billy."
At the mention of Billy's name, Blessed waddled over to Charlie, wagging his bald tail. Charlie stroked the dog's rough head, saying, "Billy will come back, Blessed, I promise you."
The dog grunted a couple of times and then waddled away through the arch.
"How are you going to keep that promise, Charlie?" said Gabriel. "Billy doesn't even want to come back."
"He will." Charlie looked pointedly at Gabriel. "You wanted to tell me something, Gabe."
Gabriel grimaced. "I said you, Charlie, not everyone."
"We're not everyone, Gabe." Olivia dug her elbow into his side. "Or is it just very, very private?"
Gabriel shifted uneasily on the cold stone bench.
"Not private exactly. I mean, I suppose it concerns you as much as anyone, being endowed."
"Come on, Gabe. I can't bear the suspense," said Lysander.
Gabriel stared at his hands rather than meeting anyone's eye. "It's about the Red Knight," he muttered.
No one spoke. It was as if Gabriel had dropped a spell into the chilly air.
He looked up and saw that they were taking him very seriously.
"What about him?" asked Charlie with a catch in his voice.
"I think you're the only one who's seen him," said Gabriel, playing for time.
"I've seen him," Olivia said quietly.
"Oh, yes. I forgot." Gabriel had seldom seen such an earnest expression on Olivia's face. It was encouraging. "As you know," he continued, "my family inherited the Red King's cloak. It was kept in a chest under my parents' bed,
and as I told you before, the cloak disappeared just before the knight was seen."
Charlie nodded. "He was on the iron bridge, and he saved Liv and me from drowning. He's saved my life twice now."
"The cloak was billowing all around him, like a great red cloud," Olivia said, elegantly demonstrating with her arms, "but we couldn't see his face because of the helmet and the visor. We thought it might be the Red King himself, or his ghost."
"No," said Gabriel. "It wasn't. I've thought and thought about it. I've gone over it in my mind, trying to remember every little detail. ..."
"Hurry up, Gabe," said Fidelio. "Some of the others are leaving the grounds.
It's nearly the end of break."
Fidelio's interruption flustered Gabriel. He frowned with concentration while the others waited for him to continue.
"It was one morning," Gabriel began, "very early, still night really, because the moon was up.
Something woke me, I don't know what. I went to the window to see if a fox had crept in and gotten one of our chickens. And I saw this figure in our yard in the moonlight. He was wearing a dark, heavy coat with the hood up, so I couldn't see his face. The funny thing was, my dad was down there, talking to him in a very low voice, almost whispering really. And then my dad handed the man a package. Quite a big package, tied up with string. And then the man left. He crossed our yard and when he reached the gate, he gave my dad a wave, and then he was gone. And the next day I found that the cloak had disappeared, and I thought it must have been the man in the dark coat who took it. And if my dad gave it to him, he must have trusted him."