The Robe of Skulls Read online

  “Skulls,” said Lady Lamorna. “Definitely skulls. Rows and rows of dear little skulls, sewn all along the hem.” She sighed with pleasure as she imagined the clitter-clatter of bone on her cold stone floors. “After all, it really is time I had a new gown. Black velvet, of course, and long . . . very long. Perhaps embroidered? Hmm . . . yes. A motif of spiders, or maybe twists of poison ivy.” Her huge silver eyes gleamed. “In fact, why not interweave the ivy with spiders’ webs? That would be truly beautiful. And petticoats. Layers and layers of blood-red petticoats . . . oh, yes, yes, YES! It will be a robe beyond all compare, and I shall order it this very minute!”

  Lady Lamorna snapped her long bony fingers, and within seconds a sharp-toothed bat came flipping in through the open window.

  “Yup?”

  “I have an order for the Ancient Crones,” Lady Lamorna said. “I require a new robe, edged with skulls —”

  “Got it.” The bat made a swift circle over the Lady’s head. “Skulls, velvet, webs, ivy, petticoats. No prob. Delivery date?”

  Lady Lamorna looked put out. “Bat! Listen to me! I would like a new robe, made of deep-black velvet —”

  “Told ya. I got it.” The bat circled again. “Heard you a mile away. I’m a bat, right? Bat ears ’n’ all that stuff. Now — delivery?”

  Lady Lamorna gave up. “As soon as possible,” she said stiffly.

  “Roger Wilco. I’ll be back soon with info on price and delivery. Have the readies ready. Coins of all denominations readily accepted. Ciao!” And the bat whizzed away into the purple twilight.

  For a second, Lady Lamorna considered frizzling the bat to a burnt ember as it flew, but then she remembered her delicious dress. With a smile of happy anticipation, she swept toward her treasure chest, flung open the lid . . . and SCREAMED!

  They still talk about that scream in the high mountain village of Fracture. Dogs howled and bit their owners. Cats’ whiskers curled into corkscrews and fell off. Children clutched their ears and shrieked in agony. Only the old and extremely deaf were spared . . . the old, the extremely deaf, and Gracie Gillypot. Gracie had been shut in her stepfather’s cold, dark, and spidery cellar for being cheerful, and the cellar had very thick walls. Even in the cellar she heard a faint cry and wondered what it could be — but her ears did nothing worse than tingle. Her stepsister, Foyce, caught the full blast, and when Gracie was finally allowed out of the cellar, Foyce slapped her several times because her head felt as if it were full of stinging wasps, and she didn’t like it.

  Gubble, crouched only a few yards away from Lady Lamorna as she hit the highest and most piercing note of her scream, sighed heavily. He’d been the Lady’s servant for more than 170 years, and he had heard her scream before. He knew what the scream meant. It meant trouble.

  “Poor Gubble,” he said to himself. “Trouble coming. Trouble for Gubble.” He shook his head and began to suck his large grubby thumb.

  Five minutes later, he realized what he had said. A huge self-congratulatory smile spread across his flat green face. “Trouble for Gubble!” he said, and the smile grew even wider. “Clever Gubble! Gubble’s a POTE!” And he chuckled happily.

  It was lucky for Gubble that Lady Lamorna didn’t hear him. A hundred and seventy years of faithful service would have meant nothing if she’d seen him smiling, let alone chuckling. Fortunately, she was pacing the battlements of her crumbling castle, muttering as she stared out across the rooftops of the village.

  “Money! Money! Money! Gold! Silver! Pennies, even! How can it be that my treasure box is empty? And how can I pay the crones for my beautiful, magical dress?” The Lady tugged at a lock of her long white hair. “Hmm. I could send fool’s gold, but fool’s gold lasts for one month only . . . and the Ancient Crones will strike me down with thunderbolts if they find I have paid with nothing but pebbles . . .”

  Lady Lamorna stamped her foot in frustration and fury and swung back inside. “Gubble!” she called. “Gubble!”

  Gubble half hopped, half hobbled from the dark cupboard that was his usual resting place.

  “What skills do I have, Gubble?” Lady Lamorna demanded. “What skills that will earn me a fortune in good strong gold?”

  Gubble shook his head.

  “Think, Gubble!”

  Gubble opened and shut his toothless mouth. He could see by the glint in Lady Lamorna’s silver eyes that Gubble’s Trouble was extraordinarily near now, all ready to jump. Gubble gulped. He wasn’t entirely certain that he actually knew what skills were . . . but at the last second some kind of association of sounds dropped another word into his head — a word he knew his mistress liked. “Spells, Your Evilness,” he said. “Spells.” A happy memory came to him. “That frog thing you do. Prince. Zap! Frog.” Gubble’s piggy little eyes shone. “That be magnifying!”

  “Fool! You mean magnificent!” snapped Lady Lamorna, but she didn’t sound nearly as menacing as she usually did when Gubble got things wrong. He heaved a sigh of relief as she strode across the room and seized a black marble urn from her mantelpiece. Peering inside, she nodded. “If we are economical, Gubble, there is sufficient spell powder for at least a dozen transformations.”

  Gubble looked vacant.

  Lady Lamorna tapped sharply on the heavy oak coffin lid she used as a table. Underneath, in the coffin, the bones of her great-grandmother, the first Lady Lamorna, rattled loudly, and there was a hollow laugh.

  “Good,” said the living Lady. “Great-Grandmother approves. Now, Gubble — we’ve established that my ability to turn princes into frogs is a valuable asset. So — how do we progress with this idea?”

  Gubble stared blankly at his mistress. He’d understood princes and frogs, and his ears always pricked up when the word valuable came into a conversation, but he had no idea what the Lady wanted now. For the second time in one day, he cast wildly about in the small foggy compartment where his brain got on with its own private life. Mostly it was busy with murder, or blood, or violent death, but Gubble managed to track down something that seemed to suit the occasion. “Toast!” he said. Then, seeing Lady Lamorna’s face darken, he hastily added, “And marmalade.”

  Lady Lamorna slapped Gubble. His head spun off his shoulders and thunked onto the floor.

  “Urk!” grunted the head. And then, completely amazing Lady Lamorna and dazzling Gubble himself, the head made a suggestion. “Blackmail.” His mistress positively gasped. “Gubble!” she said. “I could kiss you!”

  The head rolled away as fast as it could into a dusty corner. “Nah!” it whimpered. “Not kisses!” And it hid its nose in a convenient cobweb.

  Lady Lamorna wasn’t listening. She had seized a piece of paper and was wildly scribbling. She took no notice at all as Gubble’s head and body silently edged toward each other and were reunited.

  Gracie Gillypot stood and stirred the saucepan of boiling water on the old iron stove. Maybe, she said to herself, maybe if she imagined as hard as she possibly could, it might taste of roast beef. Or chicken. Or tomatoes. Or even cabbage. Anything would be better than water soup. They’d had water soup every night for the last three days, and it wasn’t improving her stepfather’s temper. Mange Undershaft had started to shut her in the cellar every time he saw her smiling, and he’d threatened that if he ever heard her laughing, he’d keep her down there for a week. Gracie sighed. She didn’t mind too much if she was put in the cellar during the day; once her eyes got used to the dim light from the grating, she could see her way around. But it was different in the evening. It was horribly dark and creepy, and it was all she could do not to burst into tears and wail miserably. It was only the thought of how delighted Mange would be if he thought he’d made her cry that stopped her, but it was getting harder and harder to stay brav
e. She’d had to bury her face in her hankie to stifle her sniffing just the night before . . . but then a bat had come swooping in for a chat, and that had cheered her up.

  “Hi, kiddo!” the bat had said. “Come here often?”

  “Much too often,” Gracie said with feeling.

  The bat flew swiftly around the cellar and settled on the handle of a broken spade. “Seems OK to me,” he said cheerfully.

  “It’s all right for you,” Gracie said. “You can see in the dark. I can’t. And I’m sure the spiders are sniggering at me.”

  “That’s really something.” The bat sounded impressed. “Never heard them myself. Always thought they had a sense-of-humor bypass. What are you doing down here, anyway?”

  “My stepdad doesn’t like me laughing,” Gracie explained. “Or smiling. I made water soup for supper, and I was trying to be cheerful about it, and he got horribly angry and threw me and the soup down here together.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said the bat, “but would the main ingredient of water soup be water?”

  Gracie nodded. “I do use hot water and cold water. It doesn’t make much difference in the taste, though.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Gracie wondered if the bat had flittered away, but then he said, “Are you hungry, kiddo?”

  Gracie was so hungry she didn’t know what to say. She’d been hungry for days and weeks and months and years. In fact, she couldn’t remember a single moment in the whole of her life when she hadn’t been hungry. She said, “Yes.”

  “Thought so. I’ll see what I can do. Won’t be same-day delivery, mind you.”

  “Any day delivery would be just wonderful,” Gracie said.

  “Check. Be seeing you soon, then. Ciao!” There was the faintest sound, and the bat was gone.

  Gracie pulled at her pigtails thoughtfully. How could a very small bat deliver anything that would go even the smallest way to making her feel as if she’d eaten?

  “Oi! Kiddo!” The bat was outside the grating. “If an alternative position were offered, would you be up for it?”

  “What?” Gracie stared into the darkness.

  “Something different. Change of employment. New line. Different boss.”

  Gracie was about to say that she wasn’t employed by anyone, but then a whole new thought clanged into her head. The bat was right. She did have a boss. Mange might be her stepfather, but he was all “step” and no “father.” All he ever did was order her around. And Foyce . . . Gracie bit her lip. Her stepsister, Foyce, was as mean as both of Cinderella’s sisters rolled into one, but she wasn’t ugly. She was dazzlingly beautiful, with a heart as hard as a frying pan.

  “I’d certainly be interested,” she told the bat. “In fact, very interested.”

  “Great. No prob there, then. See ya, kiddo!” And this time the bat was really gone.

  Gracie strained her ears to see if she could hear him, but the silence was overwhelming. She sat down on a heap of kindling to wait for Mange to remember her and let her out. As she waited, she thought about the bat and wondered what he had in mind.

  Gracie was still wondering as she stirred her soup the following day. There hadn’t been any sign of the bat, and she was beginning to believe she’d imagined the whole thing. After all, how likely was it that a talking bat would come flitting into Mange Undershaft’s cellar? Any bat that was intelligent enough to talk would surely keep clear. Everything else did. Even second-class zombies never knocked on the door to offer badly made packages of hauntings and screechings. Word had gotten around, and Mange’s door was the most unknocked-on in Fracture. All the same, Gracie had packed her few belongings into an old shawl and hidden them under the sink. Just in case.

  “Pssssst! Kiddo!”

  Gracie jumped.

  The bat was hovering outside the open back door. In one claw it was holding a small cloth bag. “Here!” he said. “Dump this in your soup! And get your gear ready. We’ve got liftoff tonight!”

  Gracie took the little bag with trembling fingers. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much!”

  “Just remember — don’t crack a smile,” the bat instructed. “I can’t get you out of the cellar. Keep frowning! Ciao!” And it vanished.

  As Gracie untied the little bag, a strange smell began to fill the room. It was the smell of a rich meaty stew . . . previously quite unknown in that cold bare kitchen. Gracie tipped the gray powder into the boiling water. At once the smell grew ten times stronger, and the water bubbled and thickened. As she went on stirring, the soup turned a glorious deep brown, and chunks of beef and onions and mushrooms and buttery potatoes filled the saucepan to the very top.

  “Wow!” Gracie breathed softly. “Wow! Thank you, bat!”

  Crash!

  The door slammed shut as Mange arrived in a rush, his thin bony nose twitching. “Food!” he growled. “And about time, too! Dish it out, dung beetle!”

  Gracie began to ladle the stew into three bowls, but Mange snatched the spoon from her hand.

  “And what have you done to deserve a supper?” He picked up the third bowl and dropped it on the stone floor.

  As it smashed into a thousand pieces, Foyce followed her father into the kitchen. She paused in the doorway and sniffed the air. “Is that food?” she asked, and as always, Gracie found herself wondering how such a clear silvery voice could sound so evil. “And where exactly did the little slug find food like this?”

  Gracie didn’t answer, and neither did Mange. He was far too busy slurping stew into his mouth. Foyce came closer to the saucepan and pinched Gracie’s arm. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me where it came from, or I’ll tell Pa to put you in the cellar till your bones rot.”

  Gracie was saved from answering by Mange leaping up to refill his bowl. “Start eating, princess,” he spluttered through a mouthful. “You can pinch her afterward. It’s good stuff!”

  Foyce let Gracie go but gave her a calculating stare as she sat down across from her father. “She’s been up to something, Pa,” she said. “Look at her sneaky face! And if you ask me, it’s magic, and if she’s gotten hold of any magic, she should hand it over to us!”

  “Umph,” said Mange. “More stew!” And he filled his bowl for the third time.

  “See?” Foyce told him. “That pan’s filling up as soon as you empty it. It’s like I told you. She’s found some magic. Put her in the cellar, Pa.”

  “Got to eat first,” Mange said without moving.

  “Then I’ll do it,” Foyce said. “Something’s odd around here. I know it is!” And she began to get up from the table.

  Gracie backed away, her heart pounding. Should she make a dash for it now? Should she run out of the door and hope the bat would find her? She knew she didn’t have much chance of getting away. Foyce had long legs and could run like the wind.

  Gracie decided to try to distract her stepsister instead. “Please!” she begged in her whiniest voice. “Please, dear Foyce — please let me have some stew! Just a very little bit — please!” Gracie’s begging was genuine. Her stomach was tying itself in knots, and the smell of the stew was driving her mad with hunger.

  “Not likely, slug.” Foyce gave a triumphant glare and began to eat. She had hardly finished her second mouthful when Mange slumped onto the table, snoring loudly.

  “Pa?” Foyce shook his arm. “Pa! Wake up!”

  Mange didn’t move.

  Foyce tried to leap to her feet but couldn’t. She felt heavy . . . very heavy indeed . . . and she rubbed her eyes furiously to stop them from closing. “You little toad!” she screeched at Gracie. “You’ve poisoned us! Just you wait until I catch you. . . . I’ll make your life so miserable you’ll wish you were —” Her head flopped, and she began to snore almost as loudly as her father.

  Gracie looked wistfully at the magic stew. She was so hungry, but she certainly didn’t want to risk falling into an enchanted sleep and waking up beside a vengeful Foyce. Or Mange. She moved across to the back door and op
ened it to see if the fresh evening air would blow away the mouthwatering aroma of meat and onions . . . and the bat flipped in with a cheery “Hi, babe! Enjoy your dinner?”

  Gracie shook her head. “I haven’t eaten any yet. Won’t it make me go to sleep?”

  “You?” The bat’s eyes widened as he settled on the back of a chair. “Never! Didn’t you read the label?”

  “Erm . . . no. Sorry.” Gracie fished in the trash for the twist of cloth and peered at it. Something was written in the most minute handwriting, and she had to screw up her eyes to read it.

  “WOW,” Gracie said, and hurried to the stove. “That’s so clever!” She seized a spoon and looked at the bat. “Would you like some?”

  “Nah. Thanks all the same.” The bat shifted uneasily. “Never been too certain of the state of the old heart. Dodgy deals are my business, see.”

  Gracie dug a spoon into the saucepan and began to eat hungrily. “What kind of deals?” she asked.

  The bat shook his head. “You don’t want to know. Nothing evil, mind you. I don’t do evil. Just dodgy. Now, get that inside you, and we’ll be off.”

  “That was totally delicious!” Gracie said as she polished off her last spoonful of stew. Tidy to the last, she put the spoon and saucepan in the sink before pulling out the bundle she’d hidden underneath. “I’m ready now. Where are we going?”

  The bat glanced over his shoulder, as if expecting to be overheard. “The Ancient Crones,” he whispered.

  “Wow!” Gracie said, and shivered. “I thought they were supposed to be scary. . . .”

  “They are,” said the bat. “Now, let’s go!” He flittered out the back door and Gracie hurried after him.

  Foyce heaved her head off the table. “Shneaky little rat shrunning away, eh?” she said thickly. “Well, well, well. We’ll shee about that!” And she pulled her warm fur-lined cloak from the hook on the door and staggered after Gracie.

  Lady Lamorna looked at her map and frowned. “The Kingdom of Gorebreath. The Kingdom of Dreghorn. The Kingdom of Cockenzie Rood. The Kingdom of Wadingburn. The Kingdom of Niven’s Knowe. Is that five, Gubble? Or six?”