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“’Ere we are. ’Ome at last,” said Jack cheerfully as he unharnessed the donkey and led the animal inside the hovel. Stanley stayed in the cart, reluctant to leave the warmth of the blanket but knowing that he must.
“Yer welcome to come in and stay a while,” Mad Jack offered. “I likes to ’ave a rat around the place. Brightens things up a bit. Bit a company. Know what I mean?”
Stanley very regretfully shook his head. He had a message to deliver, and he was a true professional, even if they had withdrawn his Confidential status.
“Ah, well, I expect yer one a them.” Here Mad Jack lowered his voice and looked about him as if to check there was no one listening. “I expect yer one a them Message Rats. I know most folk don’t believe in ’em, but I do. Bin a pleasure to meet you.” Mad Jack knelt down and offered Stanley his hand to shake, and Stanley could not resist offering Mad Jack his paw in return. Mad Jack took it.
“You is, isn’t you? You is a Message Rat,” he whispered.
Stanley nodded. The next thing he knew Mad Jack had his right paw in a vicelike grip and had thrown the donkey blanket over him, bundled him up so tightly that he could not even try to struggle and had taken him into the hovel.
There was a loud clang, and Stanley was dropped into a waiting cage. The door was firmly closed and padlocked. Mad Jack giggled, put the key into his pocket and sat back, surveying his captive with delight.
Stanley rattled the bars of the cage in fury. Fury with himself rather than with Mad Jack. How could he have been so stupid? How could he forget his training: A Message Rat always travels undetected. A Message Rat never makes himself known to strangers.
“Ah, Ratty, what good times we’ll have,” said Mad Jack. “Just you and me, Ratty. We’ll go out cuttin’ them reeds together, and if you’re good we’ll go to the circus when it comes to town and see the clowns. I love them clowns, Ratty. We’ll have a good life together. Yes, we will. Oh, yes.” He chuckled happily to himself and fetched two withered apples from a sack hanging from the ceiling. He fed one apple to the donkey and then opened his pocketknife and carefully divided the second apple in half, giving the larger half to Stanley, who refused to touch it.
“You’ll eat it soon enough, Ratty,” said Mad Jack with his mouth full, spraying apple spit all over Stanley. “There ain’t no other food comin’ your way until this snow stops. An’ that’ll be a while. The wind’s shifted to the north—the Big Freeze is comin’ now. Always ’appens round about MidWinter Feast Day. Sure as eggs is eggs, and rats is rats.”
Mad Jack cackled to himself at his joke, then he wrapped himself up in the donkey-smelling blanket that had been Stanley’s undoing and fell fast asleep.
Stanley kicked the bars of his cage and wondered how thin he would have to get before he could squeeze out.
Stanley sighed. Very thin indeed was the answer.
28
THE BIG FREEZE
The remains of the MidWinter Feast of stewed cabbage, braised eel heads and spicy onions lay abandoned on the table as Aunt Zelda tried to coax some life into the spluttering fire at Keeper’s Cottage. The inside of the windows were glazing over with ice, and the temperature in the cottage was plummeting, but still Aunt Zelda could not get the fire going. Bert swallowed her pride and snuggled up to Maxie to keep warm. Everyone else sat wrapped in their quilts, staring at the struggling fire.
“Why don’t you let me have a go at that fire, Zelda?” Marcia asked crossly. “I don’t see why we have to sit here and freeze when all I have to do is this.” Marcia clicked her fingers and the fire blazed up in the grate.
“You know I don’t agree with Interfering with the elements, Marcia,” said Aunt Zelda sternly. “You Wizards have no respect for Mother Nature.”
“Not when Mother Nature is turning my feet into blocks of ice,” Marcia grumbled.
“Well, if you wore some sensible boots like I do instead of prancing around in little purple snakey things, your feet would be fine,” Aunt Zelda observed.
Marcia ignored her. She sat warming her purple snakey feet by the blazing fire and noted with some satisfaction that Aunt Zelda had made no attempt to return the fire to Mother Nature’s spluttering state.
Outside the cottage, the North Wind howled mournfully. The snow flurries from earlier in the day had thickened, and now the wind brought with it a thick, swirling blizzard that blew in over the Marram Marshes and began to cover the land with deep drifts of snow. As the night wore on and Marcia’s fire at last began to warm them up, the noise of the wind became muffled by the snowdrifts piling up outside. Soon the inside of the cottage had become full of a soft, snowy silence. The fire burned steadily in the grate, and one by one they all followed Maxie’s example and fell asleep.
Having successfully buried the cottage up to its roof in snow, the Big Freeze continued its journey. Out over the marshes it traveled, covering the brackish marsh water with a thick white layer of ice, freezing the bogs and quags and sending the marsh creatures burrowing down into the depths of the mires where the frost could not reach. It swept up the river and spread across the land on either side, burying cow barns and cottages and the occasional sheep.
At midnight it arrived at the Castle, where all was prepared.
During the month before the advent of the Big Freeze, the Castle dwellers stockpiled their food, ventured into the Forest and brought back as much wood as they could carry, and spent a fair amount of time knitting and weaving blankets. It was at this time of year that the Northern Traders would arrive, bringing their supplies of heavy wool cloth, thick arctic furs and salted fish, not forgetting the spicy foods that the Wendron Witches loved so much. The Northern Traders had an uncanny instinct for the timing of the Big Freeze, arriving about a month before it was due and leaving just before it set in. The five Traders who had sat in Sally Mullin’s cafe on the night of the fire had been the last ones to leave, and so no one in the Castle was at all surprised by the arrival of the Big Freeze. In fact, the general opinion was that it was somewhat late, although the truth was that the last of the Northern Traders had left a little earlier than they had expected, due to unforeseen circumstances.
Silas, as ever, had forgotten that the Big Freeze was due and had found himself marooned in The Hole in the Wall Tavern after a huge snowdrift blocked the entrance. As he had nowhere else to go anyway, he settled down and decided to make the best of things while Alther and a few of the Ancients pursued their task of trying to find Simon.
The black rat in the Rat Office, who was awaiting Stanley’s return, found himself marooned at the top of the iced-up East Gate Lookout Tower. The drainpipe had filled with water from a burst pipe and then promptly froze, blocking his way out. The rats in the Customer Office downstairs left him to it and went home.
The Supreme Custodian was also waiting for Stanley’s return. Not only did he want information from the rat—where exactly Marcia Overstrand was—he was also anxiously awaiting the outcome of the message that the rat was to deliver. But nothing happened. From the day the rat was sent, a platoon of fully armed Custodian Guards was posted at the Palace Gate, stamping their frozen feet and staring into the blizzard, waiting for the ExtraOrdinary Wizard to Appear. But Marcia did not return.
The Big Freeze set in. The Supreme Custodian, who had spent many hours boasting to DomDaniel about his brilliant idea of stripping the Message Rat of his Confidential status and sending a false message to Marcia, now did his best to avoid his Master. He spent as much time as he could in the Ladies’ Washroom. The Supreme Custodian was not a superstitious man, but he was not a stupid man either, and it had not escaped his notice that any plans he had discussed while he was in the Ladies’ Washroom had a habit of working out, though he had no idea why. He also enjoyed the comfort of the small stove, but most of all he relished the opportunity to lurk. The Supreme Custodian loved lurking. He had been one of those small boys who was always listening around a corner to other people’s conversations, and consequently he was often able to have a hold over someone and was not afraid to use it to his advantage. It had served him well during his advancement up the ranks of the Custodian Guard and had played a large part in his appointment as Supreme Custodian.
And so, during the Big Freeze, the Supreme Custodian holed up in the washroom, lit the stove and lurked with glee, hiding behind the innocent-seeming door with the faded gold lettering and listening to conversations as people passed by. It was such a pleasure to see the blood drain from their faces as he jumped out and confronted them with whatever insulting comment they had just made about him. It was even more of a pleasure to call the Guard and have them marched straight off to the dungeons, especially if they went in for a bit of pleading. The Supreme Custodian liked a bit of pleading. So far he had had twenty-six people arrested and thrown into the dungeons for making rude comments about him, and it had never crossed his mind even once to wonder why he had yet to hear something nice being said.
