Searching for Arthur (The Return to Camelot #1)(7)

“You heard them, Arthur.”

I heard him inhale because it was sharp: a short reflex sniff through his nose.

“I’ll check on Mr. Rochester, and then bring you up some vegetable soup or something,” he said. “Now don’t get out of that bed. I don’t care if a whole platoon of soldiers with swords starts marching up the garden. You stay put, do you understand?”



Boys don’t scream like girls, yet Arthur’s cry was so high, it could have been mistaken for one. He stopped me from running further than the fallen trellis, and once I knew why I was grateful. My heart would have broken into a thousand pieces if I had seen him.

The police blamed the attack on a group of local feral kids, but I knew they were wrong. The local animal shelter said my baby rabbit was probably gutted with a large knife, but I only saw the pointed end of a sword.

One that I had seen before.



We buried my beautiful baby rabbit far away from Avalon Cottage. Arthur, Slurpy and I walked for hours to find a pretty little spot where we could bury him. Arthur wanted to dig a hole near a clear blue stream, but I couldn’t bear the thought of Mr. Rochester lying forever near water. It wasn’t safe, and Arthur, of all people, should have known that. So instead we put Mr. Rochester to rest in a shoe box, containing fresh straw and chocolate drops, underneath some wild roses. I didn’t want Slurpy there, but as I had no friends, I had no choice. Mr. Rochester deserved more than just me and Arthur at his funeral.



Two days later, and Arthur knocked on my bedroom door. He had soup.

“I need to tell you something, Titch.”

I sat up and put the book I hadn’t been reading on my bedside table. My fingers nudged the only photo of Mr. Rochester that I had. I had been holding the camera, so I wasn’t even in it – Arthur was.

Twisting his fingers around the cup of soup, Arthur sat on the edge of my bed. He looked really tense; he was chewing on his tongue, and his blue eyes were fixed firmly on floating bits of carrot.

“What is it?”

“It’s about Mr. Rochester.”

I sat up a little straighter. “What is it?”

“You aren’t going to like it. Mum and dad don’t even want me to tell you.”

That just made me want to hear whatever it was even more. I wasn’t a child.

“What is it, Arthur?”

Arthur was gulping. He knew what to say, he just didn’t know how to say it.

“There’s a reason I put Mr. Rochester in the box, Titch. I didn’t want you to see him.”

Of course I hadn’t wanted to see him. He had been sliced open. My baby had been gutted and…no, even thinking about it made me want to puke. Why was Arthur doing this to me?

“Whoever killed him didn’t just stab him, Titch.” Arthur looked close to tears.

“What else did they do?” My voice was barely a whisper.

My brother put the soup on the carpet and hugged me. I think it was because he couldn’t face looking at me.

“They took his eyes, Titch. Whoever killed him gouged out his eyes as well.”





Chapter Three

Starlight



Three days after we had buried Mr. Rochester and I was still reeling. Slurpy didn’t seem to care. Her giggling, the moaning, and the creaking of Arthur’s brass bed shook every inch of the cottage. Even a pillow over my ears failed to smother the noise. The nasty part of me, the one that we all possess but keep hidden most of the time, wanted to place the pillow over SS’s face. That would shut her up.

The idea for her SS nickname came to me one day when I was reading a book about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. His organisation was called the Schutzsstaffel. That’s where the abbreviation SS comes from. History is for people who care enough to remember, or those who simply can’t forget. People like me.



So I was trapped in the house. I couldn’t run outside because the autumn skies had blackened the day after Mr. Rochester’s funeral and the rain started.

The darkness matched my guilt.

Even my mother had shed a couple of tears for Mr. Rochester. Then she got on the phone to my father – who was in Brussels – and her crocodile tears were matched by the gnashing of teeth.

“This place is feral. We cannot live here.”

I couldn’t hear my father. I didn’t want to hear my mother.

“That is not a choice, Luther. I do not want to live in London. You are asking me to choose between terrorists with bombs or terrorists with knives.”

Silence, apart from the sound of my mother twisting the cap from a bottle of pills.

“Luther, you need to come home. I cannot deal with this by myself.”

More silence, apart from the clinking of a crystal glass as the pills were washed down with something I would bet on my life wasn’t water.

“Arthur is fine, of course Arthur is fine. It’s Natasha. You know what she’s like. She just won’t make any effort.”

The stairs creaked as I shifted my butt cheeks, but the noise from Arthur’s room couldn’t have been drowned out by anything quieter than a jump jet. I couldn’t believe that after everything that had happened, my mother was still pissed about a stupid school dance. I really needed to go into the kitchen to get my homework, but I couldn’t face my mother, and so I had no choice but to wait until she had finished speaking to my father.