Grailblazers. Part 22

Bedevere did his best not to stare; he managed to get by with just glancing out of the corner of his eye as he dialled in the number. If she was going into the Gla.s.s Mountain, that meant that she was . . .

She was smiling again. 'You are a sharp one, Master Bedevere,' she said. 'You're quite right. Not in my own right, though; just by marriage, so to speak.'

The last piece dropped into place in the jigsaw of Bedevere's memory. Dr Magus and Matron had, of course, both left in the same term. All those long walks.

'How is Dr Magus, by the way?' he asked, as nonchalantly as he could.

'Simon?' Matron beamed. 'Very well indeed, thank you, or at least he was when I last saw him. That was some time ago now, of course, but I don't imagine he'll have noticed. A brilliant man, of course, but something of a dreamer. I expect I'll find fifteen hundred years' worth of washing-up waiting for me in the sink when I get home. I'll tell him you were asking after him; he always said you were rather brighter than you looked.'

Bedevere was going to say something, but then it occurred to him that from what he had heard, time in the Gla.s.s Mountain is rather different, somehow.* Rather like life, he remembered someone telling him once; you only get out of it what you're prepared to put into it. Something like that, anyway.

'Here goes,' he said. 'Hold tight. . .' Transmitting.

*The best way to describe Gla.s.s-Mountain time is to consider the a.n.a.logy of first- and second-cla.s.s post. Both get to exactly the same place eventually; but whereas one of them usually arrives within twenty-four hours, the other can take a great deal longer, is far more p.r.o.ne to get lost on the way, and somehow always arrives at its destination tatty, heavily stamped on and via Preston.

Chapter 6.

In the stables of the Schloss Weinachts, the reindeer were restless.

Because the Graf has distinctly idiosyncratic requirements in transport, the stables are twice the size of the rest of the castle; and the rest of the castle is rather larger than, say, Tuscany.

There are sports reindeer, touring reindeer, four-leg-drive reindeer, turbo-charged reindeer with six stomachs and extremely antisocial digestive systems, reindeer with red go-faster stripes down their flanks; even a few with 'My other reindeer's a Lappland Red' stickers on their rumps. And then there is Radulf.

Radulf and the Graf go way back; right back to when he started out as a Finno-Ugrian storm-deity with responsibility for punishing perjury and collecting the souls of the dead. They have seen some high old times together, howling through the midwinter skies with the wind in their hair and the world splayed out below them like a spilt breakfast. It wasn't Klaus and Radulf then, of course; it was Odin and Sleipnir - and there have been other names, too, which the race-memory has been only too glad to forget. All the stuff with the red dressinggowns and the sleigh bells is comparatively recent, the result of one of the biggest b.a.l.l.s-ups in theological history.

Radulf is virtually retired now, and only rides the winds once a year. He hates the Americanised form of his name, and the song and the greetings cards make him sick. The slight discolouration of his nose (he prefers to think of it as a snout, anyway) is an honourable wound, the red nose of courage; a lasting memento of a desperate ten minutes with the Great Frost-Bear, back when the world was young, violent and not nearly so d.a.m.n soppy.

Retired from flying, anyway; there's plenty of work for him to do on the ground, what with all the various jobs that need to be done under the terms of the Great Curse. There are toy catalogues to be pored over, order forms to make out, deliveries to supervise, and mountains and mountains of requisition chits to be sorted through as the requests from every family in the world come cascading through. And last, but definitely not least, there are the preparations for each year's Ride; itineraries to plan, architects' plans to study, ingenious methods of breaking into chimneyless houses, converted windmills and blocks of flats to be worked out.

'Radulf?'

A girl's voice, echoing melodramatically in the vastness of the stables. The old reindeer lifted his snout, took off his reading gla.s.ses and mooed softly. He knew the Graf didn't hold with the Grafin coming down to the stables. Not safe for a young girl, he said, and he was right. Some of the reindeer were special thoroughbreds, wild and savage, with antlers like pneumatic drills and tempers to match; and the Grafin was young and silly. She carried sugar-lumps in the pocket of her dress. Not sensible.

'Radulf, the phone for you!' she was saying. It sounded like she was down among the drag-racers. Radulf flicked his left ear apprehensively. Give a sugar-lump to one of those highoctane monstrosities, you could have an explosion.

He mooed loudly to her to stay where she was and not feed anything, then sprang to his hooves and padded silently through the rows of stalls. He knew the layout of the stables as well as a taxi driver knows Bayswater. He should do, by now.

'There you are, Radulf,' said the Grafin, and handed over the portable phone. 'It's Father. He says it's urgent.'

Radulf nodded his head, and the dim light of the chandeliers high above under the rafters glinted on the tinsel wrapped round his horns. He put the receiver to his ear and mooed into it.

'Moo. Moo. Moo. Moo? Moo? Mo . . .' The antlers nodded a couple of times, and Radulf hung up. 'Moo,' he explained.

'Oh dear,' said the Grafin. 'I suppose we'd better get back to the house, then.'

'I expect he'll need plenty of hot water and bandages.'

They left the stables, switching out the lights as they went. For a while, the enormous building was silent - except, of course, for the shuffling of innumerable hooves and the quiet whinnying of the reincalves.

Then a voice spoke in the Number 2 hayloft.

'Are you sure this is the right place?' it said.

There was a sharp intake of breath next to it, and a m.u.f.fled click as a torch was switched on.

'Be quiet, Gally, I'm trying to think.'

'Please yourself.'

In the hayloft, Boamund was turning the situation over in his mind; or at least he was trying to. Something - he hadn't the faintest idea what - kept getting in the way. His companion, Galahaut the Haut Prince, had gladly abdicated any partic.i.p.ation in the decision-making process at a very early stage, and was filing his fingernails. Toenail was cleaning the boots.

'Who was that?' Boamund asked suddenly. Galahaut shrugged, and so it was left to Toenail to reply.

'Looked like a b.l.o.o.d.y great big deer, boss,' he replied. 'Domesticated, too, by the looks of it.'

'Thank you,' said Boamund, with what he hoped was irony. 'Actually, I meant-'

'It's amazing the things you can train animals to do,' Toenail went on. 'Cousin of mine, worked in a circus, used to tell me how they trained the lions-'

'Toenail.'

'Sorry.'

Boamund leant his chin on his cupped hands. 'That girl,' he said. 'I don't remember there being anything about a girl . . .'

Toenail pointed out that they had heard her speak of somebody, presumably the Graf, as Father, and suggested that she might be his daughter.

'Don't be silly, Toenail,' Boamund replied. 'Whoever heard of the Graf von Weinacht having a daughter?'

'Whoever heard of the Graf von Weinacht?' Toenail answered.

Boamund clicked his tongue. 'Not under that name, maybe. But-well, surely you've twigged by now. It's him. You know . . .' Boamund rubbed his stomach and said 'Ho ho ho!' with a sort of manic jollity. Toenail smiled tactfully.

'Yes,' he said, 'I'd managed to get that far, sure. What I mean is, all this -' he waved his arms in an encircling gesture '- doesn't actually fit in with what you might call his public image. I mean,' he went on ruefully, 'the barbed wire. The dogs. The searchlights. The mines. The moat full of piranhas . . .'

He glanced down at his boots, which had nibble-marks where the toecaps had once been. Boamund nodded.

'I think I see what you're driving at,' he said. 'You mean, he isn't really like how he seems to us.'

'Exactly,' Toenail replied, relieved. 'The image and the man. It turns out that we don't know anything about the real Santa . . .'

Boamund put his hand over the dwarf's mouth and hissed. 'Not here, you clown. I don't think you should say that name here.'

'Why not?' asked Toenail through a gag of fingers.

'I don't know,' Boamund replied. 'I just have this feeling, all right?'

'About the real Graf von Weinacht, then,' Toenail said. 'I mean, the person with the sack and the sleigh doesn't have a daughter, admittedly, but then, I've never seen a Christmas card with claymore mines and attack dogs on it, have you?'

Galahaut yawned. 'You mean,' he said suddenly, 'we should abandon our preconceptions?'

The other two looked at him.

'Forget about stereotyped role-perceptions,' he continued. 'Look for the real persona behind the image. Fair enough.'

For the seventy-third time since they'd set out, Toenail gave his master that Why-did-we-have-to-bring-him look. Boamund shrugged and grimaced back. Galahaut, for his part, was completely engrossed in dealing with a potential whitlow.

'So,' Boamund said, 'you reckon that girl was his daughter, then?'

'Could be.'

'Right.'

Boamund lowered his chin back on to the palms of his hands and sat for a while, completely still. If this was a cartoon, Toenail said to himself, he'd have a big bubble with 'Thinks' in it coming out of his head.

'Anyway,' said Boamund at last, 'I reckon it's about time we got on with the job in hand. Right.' He nodded his head purposefully and punched the palm of his hand to register decisiveness. Boamund, Toenail decided, would have been a great success in the silent movies.

He waited.

'So,' Boamund said. 'First things first, eh? Let's . . .' He bit his lip thoughtfully. 'How'd it be if . . .?'

The dwarf looked at him expectantly. An X-ray of his head, he said to himself, would show up completely blank at this particular moment.

'Sorry to interrupt,' Toenail said, therefore, 'but if I could just break in here . . .'

Boamund registered the democratic att.i.tude to supreme command and nodded. Toenail thanked him.

'What I was thinking was,' he said, 'we want to get inside the castle proper, don't we?'

'Correct.'

'Just off the top of my head, then,' Toenail went on, 'wouldn't you say our biggest problem was getting past the gates?'

The gates. They'd seen them already, of course. They made you feel vertiginous half a mile away. The two flanking towers were black needles of masonry soaring up into the sky, and the gates themselves were cliff faces in hobnailed black oak.

'Tricky, certainly,' Boamund replied. 'I thought we might actually give the gates a miss and try the wall instead.'

Toenail couldn't help shuddering. Eighty metres high at least, and built of polished black marble. Probably best, he decided, to try and divert the boss's mind away from that one.

'Good idea,' he said, 'I hadn't thought of that. Yes, that's much better than what I had in mind.'

Boamund raised his eyebrows, registering his willingness to listen to any suggestion, however puerile. 'What were you thinking, then?' he said.

'Oh, it was just . . . No, it was silly.'

'Out with it.'

'I thought,' Toenail said, 'we could pretend to be postmen.'

Boamund's face clouded over. 'Postmen,' he said.

'That's right,' said Toenail. He waited for what he judged to be the right moment, psychologically speaking, and added, 'Didn't you notice the letterbox, then?'

'Letterbox?'

'In the gate,' Toenail said artlessly. 'Well, not in the big gate, of course. I meant the little side gate we pa.s.sed when we were trying to find a place to cross the moat.'

'Ah,' Boamund said. 'The side gate.'

'That's it,' Toenail said brightly. 'You remember. I kept trying to point it out to you and you kept telling me to shut up, so I guessed you must have noticed it for yourself. Well, it had a letterbox in it, so it stands to reason . . .'

'Yes,' Boamund said, 'of course. I was wondering when you were going to . . .'

'Of course,' Toenail continued, 'to begin with, I was puzzled how the postman gets to the letterbox, what with the moat and the piranhas and everything. Had me thinking there, I can tell you.'

'I bet!'

'And then,' Toenail went on, 'I saw what you'd seen.'

'Oh good.'

'The little boat,' said Toenail, kindly, 'tied up under the weeping willow. Of course, you with your trained eye, you saw that like a shot.'

Boamund managed to register smugness.

'And then I wondered, Why did he make us paddle across the moat on that floating log when there was a perfectly good boat just sitting there? Pretty slow on the uptake, wasn't I?'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Boamund feebly. 'It takes a special sort of mind, I always think.'

'Anyway,' Toenail said, 'it wasn't till after we were across the moat and in the potting shed and I was putting TCP on where the piranhas-'

'Then,' said the dwarf, 'I realised. Of course, I said, we couldn't have taken the boat, or else it wouldn't have been there for the milkman, and he'd have raised the alarm, and . . .'

'Ah,' said Boamund. 'Just out of interest, what was it put you on to there being a milkman?'

'Same as you, I expect,' said Toenail, maliciously.

'Good man.'

'The empty milk bottles outside the little gate, I mean.'