The Pepper King by Robin Bennett

Author:Robin Bennett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ghosts, tunnels, humour, like Harry Potter, magic, castles, boys adventure stories, boys' magic stories, fantasy
ISBN: 9780957456549
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2013
Published: 2013-04-17T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

The Truth

That night they found the Pepper King wandering along one of the passageways just past the Throne Room. This time he almost looked pleased to see them. ‘Hello you two,’ he said brightly, bobbing off a short bow, and then turned abruptly down a corridor they hadn’t seen before. Kit and Fred looked at each other and followed; his faded slippers hardly made a sound compared to the slip slap of the children’s trainers. After five minutes of walking in silence, the King mumbled something and took a set of keys from his pocket. ‘Here we are,’ he said cheerfully as they peered over his shoulder. There was nothing there, except brown earth, until the King stretched out his thin hand and touched the wall in front of them, and Fred was surprised to see a hazy door appear in the half-light, accompanied by a rusty lock, into which he inserted one of the longer keys. There was no sound as the door swung open on its invisible hinges, to reveal a room piled high with sacks smelling strongly of something Kit found very familiar, stretching far away into the distance. Their feet echoed in there. It was cold, and the children could see their breath, cut by the torch’s beam. The King motioned for them to sit on one of the sacks whilst he perched on another nearby.

‘We’ve been reading about you,’ said Fred. The Pepper King just blinked, and fiddled with a large ring on his middle finger.

‘We found a portrait of you in the attic, at the top of the castle,’ Kit added. ‘On the back of it there was a letter.’ Still the little King said nothing. Fred decided to press on regardless. ‘The portrait looked like you and anyway, it had your name on it. But it said that you were a bad King and then gave some pretty good reasons. Whoever wrote it seemed to know what they were talking about. Although I don’t think much of their spelling,’ he added. The King’s eyes scanned the room, avoiding the children’s faces. As Kit’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw that all around there were sacks piled on top of one another. There was still a strong smell of something she could not place.

‘Do you like apples?’ he said quite suddenly. ‘I like apples.’ He smiled at the children, and his smile seemed to Kit the saddest thing she had ever seen.

‘It was you, wasn’t it.’ It was more of a statement, this time. But she said it as gently as she knew how. The room about them was still, and Kit wondered just how deep below the hill they really were. As if he read her mind the King said:

‘No wind has passed through these halls in over 1000 years - no rain, for that matter, no sunlight, no living soul. What’s in here is more precious to me than all that. Yes, the portrait was mine,’ he added.

And it was there that he told them everything.

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