Pepper King

Robin Bennett

Description

Deep below Creake Castle there lies a secret...A ghost story with hidden tunnels to boot. Can Fred solve the mystery of the Pepper King in time to save Creake Castle from being bulldozed?This is an Adventure story about a remarkable boy, Fred Longshanks, who lives in Creake Castle with his parents and several unruly hedgehogs. It may contain nuts.

Sujets

• Children's

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 13 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780957456549
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Title Page
THE PEPPER KING
A ghost story
by
Robin Bennett



Publisher Information
Originally published in Great Britain by Monster Books
The Old Smithy, Henley-on-Thames, OXON RG9 2AR
Digital edition converted and distributed in 2013 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
The right of RS Harding to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Text © 2013 Robin Bennett
Illustrations © 2013 Rob Rayevsky
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser



Dedication
The Creake Castle series is dedicated to Major Francis Budd, otherwise known as ‘Grandpa’






Prologue
The moon shone down, carpeting the Great Lawn in silver as it threw long shadows out across the lake and lit the surrounding countryside like a negative. An owl floated ever so lightly over the tops of the trees by the Back of Beyond and the ancient Grandfather Clock, standing at the foot of the stairs, struck twelve times.
The Witching Hour had begun...



Chapter One
Creake Castle and Fred
Fred was an unusual boy.
For starters, he lived in an old castle called Creake Castle, high on a green hill, with his parents, Sir and Lady Longshanks. It had been there for centuries, and some of the older people in the village whispered that it had originally been built by a sorcerer, which is a kind of magician; though not the sort you would like to meet at a party.
Secondly, Fred said unusual things. ‘We live in a Sumptuous Mansion,’ he once told a group of people standing at the bus stop. Nobody had anything much to say to this, except an old lady, who tutted.
Fred turned to his mother. ‘I’m a cheeky monkey,’ said Fred.
‘Yes,’ said his mother.
A ‘Sumptuous Mansion’ was not, strictly speaking, that accurate. Although Creake Castle was certainly quite large, and the grounds particularly elegant, had the grass been mown once in a while, the Longshanks family were in fact very, very poor. ‘Crumbling Pile’ was probably a better description. Nor was Fred unusual just for living somewhere that was built before plumbing was invented, or for occasionally saying irritating things to people in public places. When he was about two, Fred’s mother had wandered into the playroom to find all Fred’s toys piled on top of the cupboard. Lady Longshanks was surprised. The cupboard was at least six foot tall and Fred was barely two and a half foot. The following week, on peering into the playroom, she was pleased to see all the toys back in their rightful place, on the floor - but rather unhappy about the fact that they seemed to have swapped places with her son, who was beaming down at her from on top of the cupboard. Since then, both his parents were somewhat relieved that Fred had kept his supernatural activities to a minimum. Once in a while he made something move just by looking at it in a funny way, or saw things that should not be there, as we shall shortly find out for ourselves - but, generally speaking, he didn’t go out of his way to be eccentric. He just couldn’t help himself sometimes.
Anyway, the Longshanks had enough on their plate, which usually means quite the opposite, from a practical point of view. They no longer held grand balls or kept lots of horses. In fact they could barely afford to keep Frodo, Fred’s dog, in real dog food. He was the only vegetarian dog Fred knew. Frodo mainly lived off boiled potatoes and lots of cabbage, much like Fred, who would often go for weeks without being bought anything that was remotely bad for him. ‘Not well orf,’ his cousins would say when they came to visit. His mother assured him, however, that although they did not have much money, they were very nice. Young Fred understood this completely. His cousins had stacks of money and they were dreadful. Especially when they came to stay, which they did - all too often.
However, despite the cold cabbage and his cousins coming to stay, Fred would not have swapped his Castle for the world, and neither would his parents. This was all very well - but every year it got harder and harder for them to pay the heating bills and stop the roof caving in. Unfortunately, Fred’s father was not very good at sticking to things, apart from by accident. Usually this meant sticking to jobs. In fact, he seemed to lose jobs the same way that people lost their socks; that is to say, about once a month.
So far Fred’s dad (or Sir Longshanks, to give him his proper name) had been a travelling salesman for a heating firm (he didn’t manage to sell a single heater), the local milkman (he drove the milk van into a pond by mistake and nobody had seen it since), a bicycle repair man (Fred’s dad knew even less about bicycles than he did about milk vans, so you can just imagine how long that one lasted), and a parking inspector (he kept letting people off, which was fine if you wanted to win a popularity contest, but eventually the local town got so full of cars parked illegally, they had to call in the army to sort it all out). And that was just the list of jobs he’d managed to lose so far that year. And it was only July. He sometimes got depressed because of this, and spent a lot of time in his library, high up in one of the towers, where he would talk to no one, not even Fred’s mother, for ages and ages. This was a pity because Fred loved his dad, especially when his dad was cheerful and they were all together as a family doing normal stuff.
In point of fact, the castle was so big you could go for days without seeing anyone, which meant Fred was pretty much used to his own company. Supper was always cooked at 7 o’clock sharp by Mrs. Bee, the housekeeper, and the only other person who lived full time at Creake now. She had been at the castle since she was a little girl, and was an almost completely round person with a red face like an apple in late autumn. If asked, she would have described herself as ‘jolly’, which meant she laughed all the time, even when things just weren’t that funny. But when Fred’s mother said she could, she baked the most enormous strawberry and chocolate cakes you’ve ever seen in your life, and she was very kind to Fred, who didn’t deserve it a lot of the time.
‘I am particularly fond of where we live, mother,’ Fred said one day. ‘If you sell Creake Castle I shall stop eating.’
‘That’s okay,’ said Lady Longshanks. ‘We’ll stop feeding you before we sell the Castle,’ and she smiled to show she was only joking, then sighed heavily. ‘Now here’s a lettuce, Fred, it’s nearly fresh, take it outside please and feed the hedgehogs.’
‘Feed the hedgehogs, that’s all I’m good for,’ said Fred as he stomped off down the garden, wading through the long tufty bits of uncut grass by the herb garden that they called the Back of Beyond. ‘When I grow up, I’m going to live in a bouncy castle; and hedgehogs will be banned.’
Now over the centuries various owners had built quite literally miles of secret passageways, leading out from the main tower and going in all sorts of weird and wonderful directions. There were lots of good reasons to have tunnels. Some were used as escape routes in dangerous times and others simply as convenient short cuts. Some of them were extremely old, as old as the castle itself, and some were quite new (which for Creake Castle meant they were carved out of the bedrock about three hundred years ago). However, there was a strong possibility that any of them could collapse at any moment. Fred was forbidden to explore them because of this, and his mother kept a beady eye on some of the hidden entrances to make sure he wasn’t using them when he thought no one was looking. Nevertheless, over the course of the last couple of long summer holidays Fred had found the time to make a few brief trips to some of the more obvious ones.
For example, there was one that went from a trapdoor under his bed in his room down to the library, and another that started in the kitchen behind the old fireplace and came up unexpectedly at the back door. It was a very good way of keeping out of Mrs. Bee’s way: otherwise she made Fred stand in the kitchen up to his elbows in ice-cold water, peeling big black lumpy potatoes that grew by the ton in the Back of Beyond.
Fred knew that there were plenty of other tunnels leading away from the castle, out into the grounds and down to the Old Woods or the lake. Fred had even discovered one or two coming from behind two large pillars in the cellar.
He had no idea where they went, and he was dying to find out. Really, he had plenty of time for exploring. But Creake had as many grisly stories of the unquiet grave variety as it had secret passages and Fred, though very brave for his age and smart enough not to believe everything he was told by adults, was still a little worried about visiting some of the really old, really deep tunnels on his own.
And that is where Kit comes into the story.
During the summer holidays, when our story is set, Fred’s mother had invited someone to stay from the local children’s home. To keep Fred company. ‘And do our bit,’ as his Mum would put it.
Fred’s mother had issued strict and very precise orders about not a