Читать книгу Dragon's Green - Scarlett Thomas - Страница 15

9

Maximilian walked into the Old Rectory with Effie and followed her up the stairs. The house had stopped being a rectory around fifty years before, when it had been converted into two large apartments. Downstairs, Miss Dora Wright’s rooms sat quietly, waiting for her return. In the hallway a single coat hung limply from a hook, and an umbrella rested forlornly against an empty hat stand. Everything was a little dusty, and there were large cobwebs hanging across the ceiling. But thick oriental rugs spoke of a time of homeliness and comfort. There were several oil paintings on the walls, and glazed ceramic lamps on little tables.

Griffin Truelove’s rooms began on the second floor. Here was his small kitchen and dining room and his large sitting room, all the glass-fronted cabinets still full of interesting artefacts from his travels and adventures. Although this room was familiar to Effie, who had been coming here regularly since the worldquake, Maximilian could not believe what he was seeing.

He walked around looking at all the strange objects in the cabinets with wonder, rather as Effie had done when she was younger. The walls were covered with framed maps and charts and paintings of mythical creatures and endless green landscapes. The furniture was old and sturdy, but none of it matched. There was an old red sofa, a yellow armchair, a turquoise chaise longue and a coffee table made from a very dark wood that Maximilian had never seen before.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Your grandfather really lived here?’

‘Yes,’ said Effie. She sighed, and walked around, touching the chair her grandfather used to sit in. ‘I suppose this is the last time I’ll come here. I don’t even know what to do.’

‘And your grandfather was really Griffin Truelove?’ he said. ‘I mean, the Griffin Truelove?’

Effie shrugged, not knowing what Maximilian meant. ‘I guess so.’

She was checking her grandfather’s desk for any other secret drawers; any objects she might have failed to rescue before. She had the feeling that he had made sure she now had all the most important things but . . . She felt behind one of the large drawers on the left hand side of the desk and, indeed, there was a catch she hadn’t noticed before. When she released it, a smaller drawer sprung out of the space between the large drawers.

Inside, there were three letters, two with the same gold stamp on them and one without. Each was addressed to Griffin Truelove. Effie scanned the first one. It was from something called the Guild of Craftspeople – it was their gold stamp, it seemed – and told him that he was suspended from performing magic for five years. It had been dated not long after the world-quake. So he hadn’t been joking.

Another letter, also with the gold stamp but addressed more recently, told him that his application to become a wizard had been turned down. The third letter had no stamp, no address and no signature. It simply said, You will pay. It seemed like some sort of threat. Effie put all three letters in the pocket of her cape.

‘Wow,’ Maximilian said again, after sniffing a box full of incense. ‘And where was the library?’

‘Upstairs. I suppose it’ll be empty now. I’m not sure I can even . . .’

‘Come on,’ said Maximilian. ‘You can at least say goodbye.’

So they walked together up the wooden stairs, and through the black door with the blue glass window and the polished bone handle. And there it was. A room full of bookshelves with no books on them. One of the saddest things a book lover can see. Each shelf seemed to hold the memory of the books it had once housed. In some cases light had faded the wood around where the books had been; in other cases the shape was made by dust. The shelves seemed to be sighing to themselves, fretting and worrying about where their occupants had gone and when they were coming back.

The room echoed with the children’s footsteps as they walked around looking at the places where the books used to be.

‘It sounds weird in here,’ said Effie. ‘I don’t like it.’

‘Can I ask you something?’ said Maximilian.

‘What?’ said Effie, touching one of the shelves.

‘Do you think your grandfather knew that any of this was going to happen?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, could he have known that your father was likely to sell the books? He made sure you got those magical items somehow. Did he leave you any instructions or anything to tell you what to do?’

Effie decided this was not the time to tell Maximilian that she had ended up with the items almost by accident – and that she would not have the ring at all if his mother hadn’t come after her with it.

‘He left a codicil. But my father took it and destroyed it. I . . .’

Maximilian looked uncomfortable for a moment.

‘Do you think your grandfather might have hidden something for you? Something important?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps . . . Maybe if we used the spectacles . . .?’

Ever since Maximilian had taken the spectacles off, he had wanted to put them back on again. He felt it like an ache, a hunger. He’d read about these glasses, or ones like them, so many times, but he’d never dreamed he would get the chance to use them. He remembered reading that people had once tried to develop glasses like this that were purely digital, not magical, but they had never quite taken off. And they’d had nothing like the capabilities of these spectacles, of course.

Effie got her grandfather’s old glasses case out of her schoolbag. She opened it and took out the spectacles. She could see her grandfather wearing them and suddenly wanted to cry again, because she remembered that he was dead and she would never talk to him again. Effie put the glasses on herself for the first time, wondering what she would see, but the world simply blurred in that way it does when you try on someone else’s glasses. It felt as if Effie’s brain had tipped over to the side slightly.

‘I can’t see anything,’ she said, talking them off. ‘I thought you said that they were magic, that they gave you some kind of special power or something . . .’

‘They do,’ said Maximilian. ‘But like I said before, you have to have the right ability – the innate potentiality – for them to work. Give them to me.’

Effie hesitated, then passed them over.

Maximilian put them on. Yes, there was the world, but clearer than ever before. He could see that Effie’s energy level was almost half-full now, which was good. There were other stats that he didn’t quite understand. He’d have to do a lot more research. He would never have told anyone this, but he was secretly pleased that Effie couldn’t see anything through the glasses. He was also pleased that he could see things through them; it meant that he really was a true scholar.

Maximilian had often read about everyone having some innate magical ability, left over from a time when the world was a lot more magical, and he’d always hoped he’d find out he was a scholar, rather than a warrior or a mage or a healer. He felt special, probably for the first time in his life. Not only that; Effie needed him. She needed him to say what he saw through the glasses.

‘Well?’ she said now.

‘It’s the same as before. Your energy is looking a lot better, but you should get something to eat soon. Um . . . Right, well, these rooms are even more interesting with these on. I can see which books used to be shelved here – which will be useful when we have to try to get them back. And, well, I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Can you see if there’s anything hidden?’

‘Hang on.’ Maximilian took off the glasses and gave them a polish with the little cloth from inside the case. ‘That’s better. You got fingerprints all over them when you touched them. Right. Let’s see. There’s nothing hidden behind the shelves or under the shelves or in the ceiling cavity or . . . But, aha. I see. Over there, under the table, there’s a loose floorboard. I think there might be something underneath it.’

Effie got down on her knees and started pulling up the floorboard. And yes, there was something there. A brown package in the shape of a book. Was she going to get her one book after all? The package felt both soft and hard in her hands. She stood up, not bothering to brush the dust off her knees.

‘You’d better unwrap it,’ said Maximilian.

Again, Effie felt that she’d rather be alone. But she wouldn’t have found the book at all if it hadn’t been for Maximilian, so she started unwrapping it while he watched. There was a layer of bubble wrap, then brown paper, then another layer of bubble wrap, then another layer of brown paper, and then a layer of cloth, and then a layer of silk. It was a bit like a solitary game of pass the parcel.

Effie unwrapped the last layer very carefully. And there it was. A pale green hardback, with gold lettering on it. Its title was Dragon’s Green. It was about three hundred pages long and looked very old and very new at the same time, like an antique book that no one has ever read. The cover was in perfect condition and the pages were still crisp and white. Effie opened the book and saw that there was an inscription inside, in her grandfather’s handwriting, in his usual blue ink.

To Euphemia Sixten Truelove, the last reader of this book.

Something about the inscription made Effie tingle with fear and excitement. So her grandfather had meant her to have this book in particular. Of course he had – he’d told her to find Dragon’s Green, after all. But how would he know she was to be its last reader? And what did that even mean? And why hadn’t he made it a bit easier to find? Why hadn’t he told her where it was? It was surely only luck that she happened to have been in detention with someone who could use the spectacles. This wasn’t even a Magical Thinking problem – it was just completely random.

Suddenly there was a noise from downstairs. A scratching, metallic sound, which went on for a few seconds, and was then followed by some drilling. Clearly someone had come to change the locks. Effie and Maximilian crept down the stairs until they could hear what was going on.

‘Yes, mate,’ she could hear someone saying, in a familiar, gruff voice. ‘House clearance tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock, mate. Locks today, clearance tomorrow.’ It was the charity man again.