‘So I can go back,’ repeated Arthur. ‘I am going to go back.’
He looked down at the Will. It was sulking near his feet.
‘I want you to help me, Will. Forget about the Original Law. How can I get back home?’
‘You must not go back,’ said the Will. It puffed itself up to twice its usual size in an effort to impress him with the gravity of its words. ‘You wield the First Key. You are Master of the Lower House. There are still six imprisoned sections of the Will that must be freed, and six Keys that must be claimed –’
‘I’m a boy!’ interrupted Arthur. ‘I want to go home and grow up normally. Grow up to be a man, not a Lord of the Universe or whatever. I don’t want to change into an immortal, like the Old One said I would if I keep the Key. Can’t I – I don’t know, make someone else look after everything till I’m old enough?’
The Will muttered something inaudible.
‘Can’t I make someone else look after the Lower House till I’m old enough?’ Arthur repeated firmly.
‘Yes, yes, you are within your rights to request a delay in your full assumption of power,’ said the Will grumpily. ‘I suppose we can allow you five or six years in your own backwater. After ten millennia, it is little enough, and there is a certain amount of preliminary work that will not require your presence. But who knows what the Morrow Days will do if you hand over your powers and return to the Secondary Realms, even temporarily? I do not know the exact terms of their compact, but I think you could be in danger from Grim Tuesday at least, since his powers and authority border your own.’
‘I don’t care!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘I have to risk it. Maybe the Morrow Days will leave me alone once they know I’ve passed on my powers. And you can always get another mortal heir if you need one.’
‘Who shall be your Steward?’ asked the Will. ‘You do realise this is how the present trouble arose with the Trustees? It is very hard to find a trustworthy bearer of power.’
‘You will be, of course,’ said Arthur. ‘But you’ll have to choose a more imposing presence than a frog.’
‘But I’m a facilitator, not an executive,’ protested the Will. ‘A mere functionary.’
‘You were going to be my Noon, weren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ replied the Will. It hopped about in agitation. ‘This is not at all as I planned!’
‘Well, tough luck,’ said Arthur. ‘Are you going to be the Steward or not?’
The Will did not answer. Everyone stared as it hopped madly backwards and forwards across the lawn for at least a minute. Finally it stopped and knelt near Arthur’s feet ‘I will be your Steward of the Lower House,’ croaked the Will.
A single sharp black letter oozed out of the frog’s skin, followed by another, and another, until a whole sentence spilled out across the grass. More words followed, and more sentences, like a ribbon unspoolling. The words began to spin and tumble and rise up in the air. More and more letters joined them, buzzing backwards and forwards with the sound of a harp strumming. Soft trumpets joined in as the letters moved into set positions and spread out to join in new and constantly changing combinations.
Then the letters all stopped in midair, containing and outlining the shape of a tall manlike figure. The trumpets blared and white light flashed, blinding everyone for a second.
Arthur blinked twice. With the flash of light, the words of the Will had become a woman. A tall winged woman in a plain blue dress that totally paled to insignificance under her arched and shining silver wings. She was not young, nor old, and was imposing rather than beautiful, with serious dark eyebrows and a rather large nose under her tightly pulled-back platinum hair. Her forehead was wrinkled in either exasperation or thought. She bent down, picked up the jade frog, and put it in the small lace-trimmed reticule she carried in her left hand.
‘I’ll make that into a brooch. It has served me well.’
The Will’s voice was clear and musical to start with, but disconcertingly lapsed into the deep rasp it . . . she . . . had used as a frog.
The Will curtsied to Arthur. He bowed back, suddenly much more nervous. It had been easier to deal with the Will as a frog.
‘I will be your Steward,’ repeated the Will. ‘But who shall be your . . . our . . . Dawn, Noon, and Dusk?’
‘Dusk,’ said Arthur slowly. ‘Do you want to keep your job?’
‘No, my lord,’ said Dusk. He smiled and bowed. ‘I would step out of the shadows and stand in the sun to serve you and your Steward, my lord, as either Dawn or Noon. Many of my Midnight Visitors would also like a change of employment, if you see fit to allow them. They grow weary of wearing black.’
‘You shall be Noon, then,’ said Arthur. He looked at the Will and added nervously, ‘And if it’s all right with you, Will, then the old Noon shall be the new Dusk.’
‘Hummph!’ exclaimed the imposing lady. Her tongue was still green, Arthur noticed. The pale green of fine jade. ‘On probation! I shall be keeping a careful eye on everyone! What about Dawn?’
‘I guess she can keep her job too, for now,’ said Arthur slowly. Dawn smiled gratefully at him and swept a very low curtsy that sent small sunbeams sparkling across the lawn.
‘But there is one other appointment I’d like to make. Can Noon have an assistant?’
‘Of course,’ replied the Old Dusk, now the New Noon.
Arthur turned to Suzy.
‘I know you can’t go back,’ he said haltingly. ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m very sorry I can’t change that. But you don’t need to be an Ink-Filler anymore. Would you like to be Noon’s Assistant? Then you can help the other children the Piper brought here and keep an eye on things for me in general. A mortal eye.’
Suzy looked at the ground and shuffled one foot back and forth.
‘That’d make me Monday’s Morning Tea or something stupid, wouldn’t it?’ she said gruffly. ‘I s’pose I could give it a go.’
‘The post is Tierce, the hour halfway between Dawn and Noon,’ intoned the Will. ‘Monday’s Morning Tea indeed!’
‘Monday’s Tierce,’ repeated Suzy softly. She sniffed and wiped her sleeve across her nose and face before looking up at Arthur.
‘I hope your family . . . I hope they all . . . you know . . . they’re all right.’
She rushed forward and gave him an embarrassed hug. Before Arthur could hug her back, she let him go and retreated to stand by Dawn and Noon and Dusk.
‘Do I have to do anything else?’ Arthur asked the Will quietly. ‘Can I go back now?’
‘You must grant me use of the Key,’ said the Will. ‘It is quite simple. You need to hand it to me hilt-first and repeat a few words.’
Arthur drew the Key out of the grass. It felt good in his hand. Right. As if it belonged there. He could feel power from it surging into him, lending him strength. It would be so easy to keep it. To be Master in truth and not concern himself with the petty matters of the Secondary Realms . . .
Arthur shuddered and quickly reversed the Key, holding it by the blade towards the Will, who took it.
‘Now repeat, “I, Arthur, Master of the Lower House and Wielder of the First and Least of the Seven Keys of the Kingdom . . .”’
Arthur repeated the words dully. He felt exhausted. Worn out by his battle with Monday, by everything.
‘“I grant my faithful servant, the First Part of the Great Will of the Architect, all my powers, possessions, and appurtenances, to exercise on my behalf as Steward, until such time as I shall require them rendered unto me once more.”’
Arthur gabbled out the words as quickly as he could, fighting the desire to stop and snatch back the Key. Then he finally let go, and would have fallen over if the Will had not swept him up under one powerful arm.
‘Home,’ whispered Arthur. ‘I want to go home.’
Twenty-eight
I ’M STILL NOT SURE I approve,’ said the Will. ‘Sneezer, is Seven Dials still located within the Dayroom, or has it moved?’
‘I believe it is still there, milady,’ said Sneezer. The butler had undergone a rapid transformation and was much cleaner and better groomed. His fingerless, falling-apart gloves had become spotless, complete, and white. His teeth were no longer curved and yellow and his nose was no longer crisscrossed with broken blood vessels.
‘There are two main ways to enter the Secondary Realms from the Lower House,’ explained the Will to Arthur. ‘Seven Dials is certainly the easiest, if you know how to set the dials. The Door, of course, is the other.’
‘I don’t want to go through that dark void again,’ said Arthur, thinking back to Monday’s Postern.
‘Oh, you wouldn’t have to do that,’ said the Will, her voice once again disconcerting Arthur by shifting between melodic female tones and gravelly frog-in-the-throat. ‘You would go out the Front Door all the way. Though as that is almost certainly watched more carefully by the Morrow Days, it would be wiser to avoid their interest for as long as possible. So, I think Seven Dials will be best. Come along.’
Arthur nodded and yawned. He turned back to say good-bye, mainly to Suzy, and was surprised to see everyone kneeling on the grass.
‘Good-bye!’ Arthur called out. He hesitated, then bowed. They all bent their heads while remaining on one knee. Arthur’s heart sank. He didn’t want to say good-bye like this. Then he saw Suzy raise her head. She winked and smiled and rolled her eyes at the company she was in.
‘Good-bye, Monday’s Tierce,’ said Arthur quietly.
‘See you,’ said Suzy. ‘Watch out for them Morrow Days.’
‘Good-bye, everyone!’
‘Good-bye, sir!’ chorused Dawn, Noon, and Dusk, and all the assembled Denizens behind them.
Arthur waved again, then turned and followed the Will back through the door into Monday’s Dayroom. All the steaming mud had disappeared. Now it looked like the interior of an old house, or maybe a museum.
‘This way, please,’ said Sneezer, taking them up a stairway and down a very long corridor. Arthur and the Will followed the butler into a library, a very comfortable-looking one, about as big as the one at Arthur’s school, but with old wooden shelves and several comfortable-looking armchairs.
‘I have taken the liberty of placing your clothes behind that shelf, milord,’ said Sneezer as he rapidly applied a cloth and a brush to Arthur, magically removing the mud.
‘Oh, yeah, thanks,’ said Arthur. He looked down at his strange clothing and a faint smile crossed his face. He didn’t want to go back in a nightshirt without underpants.
It only took Arthur a minute to get dressed. Though his school clothes were pressed and cleaned, the labels and the waistband from his underpants were still missing. That would be a tough one to explain to his mum, he thought.
He took special care to take the Nightsweeper from his coat and put it in his shirt pocket, wedging it tightly so it could not fall out. The little horse whinnied quietly, but seemed quite comfortable.
When Arthur emerged, Sneezer was waiting.
‘I believe this is yours, milord,’ said Sneezer, and he plucked a volume from a small ivory-fronted shelf next to one of the chairs. He gave the book to Arthur, then went to pull on a bell rope in the corner. A bell boomed in the distance as he tugged the rope. A few seconds later, it was answered by a deep rumbling. The floor shivered under Arthur’s feet, and one entire wall of bookshelves rolled back to reveal a strange seven-sided room. In the centre of the room seven grandfather clocks were set facing one another, their pendulums making a collective swimmy sort of thrum that was like listening to your own heartbeat with your fingers in your ears.
Distracted for a moment, Arthur didn’t look at the book. When he did, he realised it was the Compleat Atlas of the House.
‘But this isn’t mine,’ he protested to the Will. ‘You should have this. I can’t even open it without the Key.’
‘It is yours,’ boomed the Will. ‘You have borne the Key long enough that some pages will open to your hand. You will also need this.’
She reached into her sleeve again and pulled out not a handkerchief, but a red lacquered container about the same size as a shoe box. Arthur took it and tucked it under his arm.
‘What is it?’
‘A telephone,’ said the Will. ‘You may have need to speak to me, should the Morrow Days prove less kind than we might hope. Or if I need your counsel.’
‘I don’t want it,’ said Arthur stubbornly. ‘You said I could have five or six years!’
‘The telephone will not be used save in the most dire emergency,’ replied the Will. ‘It is insurance against perfidious fate, nothing more.’
‘Oh, all right!’ said Arthur. He tucked the box under his arm and paced angrily next to the Will. ‘Now, can I finally go home?’
‘I do beg your pardon, milord,’ said Sneezer. He had gone inside the room and was moving the hands of the clocks around. ‘This is rather complicated, but it will only take a moment.’
Arthur stopped pacing. Once again he checked his pocket to make sure the tiny black horse was still there.
‘Ready!’ pronounced Sneezer. ‘Quickly, quickly, get in before the clocks strike!’
‘Good-bye, Master,’ said the Will. ‘You have shown great fortitude and proved, as I fully expected, to be a most excellent choice.’
She gave Arthur what was clearly meant to be a small push towards the clocks, but actually sent him flying across the room and almost into them. Sneezer caught him, spun him around, and set him in the middle, caught between the clocks. Then the butler leaped out of the circle.