The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Questioner

By Jill Marshall

It's full-time boarding at the Runes for Tilly and Mattan, as Tilly gets to grips with being a guardian and has superbly excellent kb training with Judge Savage. But someone special is sick. Stony eyeballs and swivelling heads are threatening Tilly P with death if she can't answer their questions. But this is Matilda Peppercorn - and she's got some questions of her own.

Join Tilly and the gang for magical madness and thrilling adventure in the third book in the series about living legend, Matilda Peppercorn, from best-selling author Jill Marshall.

The TLOMP quartet is also a SWAGG Origin Story. Meet Matilda as she teams up with Blonde, BC and Stein to defend the world from a host of vicious enemies in the first S*W*A*G*G book, Spook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Marshall
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990024665

Jill Marshall

Jill Marshall is the author of the best-selling Jane Blonde series and fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her middle-grade series about sensational girl spy, Jane Blonde,published by Macmillan Children's Books UK, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, featured as a World Book Day title and reached the UK Times Top 10 for all fiction. Jane Blonde has been optioned for film and TV and is currently undergoing some exciting Wower-ish transformations.Jill has now brought Jane together with her other series in this age group - Doghead, The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Stein & Frank - in a fantastic new ensemble series. Meet the SWAGG team, and their first book, SPOOK.As well as books for tweens and teens, Jill writes for young adults and adults, each with a collection of three stand-alone novels. She also writes for younger children, with a Hachette-published picture book for teenies, Kave-Tina Rox.When she's not writing books, Jill is a communications consultant and a proud mum and nana. She divides her time between the UK and New Zealand, and hopes one day to travel between the two by SatiSPI or ESPIdrilles.

Book preview

The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn

QUESTIONER

By Jill Marshall

First published by Jill Marshall Books 2020

Copyright © Jill Marshall 2020

The right of Jill Marshall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

ISBN 978-1-99-002466-00

Cover Design by Katie Gannon

Illustrations by Madison Fotti-Knowles

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.

Dedicated to all those who know that, actually, being a Questioner is a good thing. Curiosity, checking the facts, challenging to get to the truth

Don’t ever stop.

xxx

Chapter 1

It’s always a bit exciting when you’re starting a new school, don’t you think? Especially when the school is a weirdy witchy one called The Runes. Where cats are trained for superbly excellent fighting. Where hordes of weirdy witches and warlocks abound.

Just let me say it again.

A-BOUND.

(I’ve loved that word ever since I read in a paper that someone I happen to know - actually the tall and gangly and frankly terrifying man known as The Hopkins - was seen galloping down Bramsdean high street on a horse shouting ‘Evil abounds!’ He may be ugly, but you have to admit, the guy has style.)

Anyway, starting at this school was extra specially exciting because:

It’s a wonderfully whacky place, and as I’d be boarding there from Monday to Fridays I’d get to see all the night-time whackiness for myself because I wasn’t totally forbidden to be there.

I’d get to do kickboxing ALL THE TIME with the sensational sensei, Judge Savage, and mostly and especially…

Mattan my biffle-Swede got to come with me!

The mad Swede and I discussed the brilliance and sheer good luckness of all this and many other things as we stood in my bedroom, stirring clothes around with our feet (stumpy and solid for me, fairy light with freaky long toes for Mattan) and trying to decide what to pack for the Runes.

‘Do you think it gets cold at night?’ I said, stroking the leg of my onesie. ‘It takes up the whole bag but I’ll regret it if I don’t take it and I get chilly.’

‘You’re a cat,’ Mattan pointed out. ‘Can’t you just grow some fur like I do?’

‘Maybe,’ I said grumpily, not quite able to meet her eye. ‘If I feel like it.’

The truth was that I just wasn’t very good at the whole cat thing. Since I’d been told by the Trinity Sisters that I was destined to be one of their Guardians, I’d been doing my best to squeeze cat fur out of my pores like Play-Doh through a sieve. Sometimes I went practically blue with super-squeezy effort. It never seemed to work when I wanted it to, and seemed only to happen when I was trying to protect someone, or completely by accident, like when I sneezed or fell off something.

Mattan, meanwhile, was not told ever by anyone that she was due to be a Feline Felidae Fighter looking after a witch or Warlock, but she had been hypnotised by the Hopkins into revealing her true self. Her true self turned out to be a cat as white and fluffy as her white fluffy hair. The cat is even Swedish, like her – a Swedish Ragdoll, apparently. Now she could puff out like a hairball just by thinking cat thoughts, while I still had to remember sometimes that I was supposed to look after the Trinity instead of causing them even more trouble.

Which also meant that unlike me, Mattan was now safe from ‘death by Trinity Sisters.’ She’d already fix-formed into her special cat breed. I’d tried five already – Manx, Siamese, Bengal, massive Monster Bengal and a weird shiny blue creature that I hadn’t mentioned to anyone. I mean, who’s ever heard of a blue cat? Plus nobody had seen it but the Hopkins so I could pretend it didn’t happen, because if I didn’t find a breed to stick with by my ninth try, I’d be cast out of the Runes and then hunted down by its freaky inhabitants for knowing too much. And for that I’d have to …

‘Die,’ said Mattan.

‘Whaaaaat?’ It came out as a bit of a screech, but honestly, it was like she was reading my mind. She had turned a smidge scary recently, so I wouldn’t really put anything past her.

‘For your onesie. You could get some dye and try different colours to pretend you’ve found your cat form.’

I scowled at her as I shoved the onesie under my bed. ‘I’ll find my cat form, don’t you worry. And it will be superbly brilliant.’

‘Just a suggestion.’ Mattan shrugged. ‘And only because I don’t want my total best friend getting tracked down and killed.’

‘Your total best friend doesn’t want that either,’ I said.

‘Then we should probably pack and get to the Runes,’ replied Mattan with her usual Swedish logic and timekeeping. ‘It won’t be a good start if we’re late.’

She had a good point, as she often does, which is good as she has to dance on points being a feathery-ballerina-type, unlike me, who is more of a kickboxing-Shetland-pony-type. I pulled out the onesie one last time and stared at it. If I took it, it would remind me of home, and Mumsy and Dadsy, and snuggly hot chocolates with them in front of the TV etcetera … so I stuffed it back under the bed, behind the deflated medicine ball and large moth-eaten teddy bear who also lives there. This was no time to be thinking about how I’d pathetically miss the parentals. This was the moment to finally find my fix-form and become a Guardian of Us All, just like my destiny proclaimed:

"A child of unknown birth will be selected by the Guardian Three.

Upon the feat of three harsh tests, the Sisters’ choice performs the best.

Defend and fight and nimbly fall,

Matilda, Guardian of us all!’

I’d passed the tests and been doing okay, but it was time to step up my game because - in spite of all my bleating otherwise - I actually quite liked being a legend and a guardian-in-training.

And that made up my mind for me as to what to take.

‘I’m bringing my kickboxing gear, four tracksuits and a pair of jeans. Might as well, if I’m spending all my time with Sensei becoming a Guardian. Also eight tops, all identical, so I don’t waste time every day choosing what to wear.’

‘Eugh.’ Mattan wrinkled her tiny nose. ‘It will look like you never get changed. People will think you’re wearing the same things all week. They might think you … you know.’ She wrinkled her nose even further until it practically disappeared inside her face.

‘Oh.’ Darn Mattan and her good points. I didn’t want Alyx or Bomani fake-sniffing their armpits whenever I was in the area. ‘Well, what are you taking?’

Mattan ticked off her list immediately. ‘Three sets of ballet gear, black jeans, pale denim jeans, a dress for events and visits –’ She paused and didn’t say or Alyx but I knew what she meant – ‘and six different tops, one for each day of the week and a spare for emergencies. Plus equal amounts of underwear, three sets of PJs, light shoes, heavy shoes and my boots with tiny heels.’

‘That’s ridiculous! You’ll be home on Friday, after five days and nights. That lot will last you a month!’

I didn’t even have three pairs of pyjamas, let alone all the rest of it. That onesie was looking more and more interesting by the minute. Maybe I could turn it inside out to create a different look.

Luckily for me, Mattan and I are practically telepathic, and she said immediately: ‘Just take what you were going to anyway and I’ll lend you anything else you might need.’

‘It won’t fit.’

Mattan smiled. ‘It will if we put some magic on it.’

‘That’s true. The Runes is a good place for magic. And I’m willing to bet Miss Honoria loves a good fashion show.’ Miss Honoria was the beautiful, well-dressed sister in the Trinity. And she never smelt of armpits, only of fresh-baked cookies scented with tiny flowers.

Well, if she could make herself all gorgeous with nice aromas, she could do the same for me.

So I stuffed exactly what I was going to take anyway into my school bag, Dad’s old student backpack covered in little round patches and slogans like ‘BAN THE BOMB!’ and a spare duffle bag we got from the zoo that had a gibbon’s face on it. I tried to ignore Mattan’s disapproving expression as I stuffed.

‘I haven’t got a neat little expanding case either,’ I said in a huff.

‘Mum got me one from Ikea,’ Mattan explained. She pronounced it EEKAYAHHH, which is the Swedish way to say it, apparently. ‘It’s got all sorts of compartments in it so it’s very organised.’

‘Of course.’

‘And it’s bright orange.’

‘Double of course.’

‘Also it’s got a special secret lock on it and a detachable travel clock.’

‘Triple of course.’

Mattan glared at me, then changed the subject. ‘Why does your dad’s old backpack say BAN THE BOMB! on it?’

‘Er, because he wanted the bomb to be banned?’

‘But which bomb is THE bomb? Shouldn’t it be ‘Ban bombs!’ because we don’t want any bombs at all, do we?’

‘That actually makes sense, my logical BFF, and was also what I thought,’ I told her, ‘but who knows with Ian. I could ask him?’

We stared at each other, working out how long it would take for him to explain why it was THE bomb ie ONE bomb and not ALL bombs that he wanted banned, all in the language of Ian which is mostly wavy eyebrows and flappy hand movements, and said together: ‘Nah.’

Just as we said it, he called up the stairs. ‘Matildas! Are you ready to go? Judge Savage is here to collect you.’

Mattan and I gazed at each other, electrified. It was happening!

‘Yesssssss!’ we screamed together.

As we bounded down the stairs, Ian and Caroline - or Mum and Dad as they just love me to call them - looked a little sad that I was so keen to get going. They were going to miss me a lot, I could tell, and truth be told … I pictured the cuddly onesie and swallowed down a lump in my throat. ‘All right, you two; no crying,’ I said sternly.

‘As if,’ said my mum, though she was already blowing her nose with noises like a snorting camel.

Felicity Savage was standing in the hallway with her hands neatly folded in front of her as if she was a prefect at school. Ordinary school, which we wouldn’t be going to for a whole term. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ she said gently.

‘We have to call at Mattan’s to collect her case and say her Swedish goodbyes,’ I reminded the judge, wellying backpacks along the hall to her.

Savage caught them as if they were party balloons filled with helium. She nodded to Mattan. ‘I’m glad you’re organised, Mattan.’ She didn’t quite say ‘Unlike Tilly’ but I caught her drift. ‘We’ve got lots to do, but I don’t want to rush you.’

I understood that tone. It meant she really did want to rush us, so I turned my back on her and put my arms around both my parentals at once.

‘Don’t worry, I’m really close by if you need to see me, and I’ll be home on Friday anyway, and they’ve all promised to look after us, and I have Mattan with me and you know how sorted she is, and everything will be fine.’

Then I gave each of them a peck on the cheek. ‘Also I … you know …’ and I mouthed the words ‘love you’ at them. It was a bit of a mistake, as they both started wailing.

‘Oh, we can’t believe you’re grown up enough to be going off to boarding school!’ cried my dad. ‘And with my old rucksack, too!’

‘It’s more like training camp,’ I said.

‘But you’re away at night!’ sobbed Mum.

‘Just a few, then I’m home again.’

‘But we haven’t been apart from the moment we first brought you home!’ they said together, hiccupping madly. Schnitzel the Schnauzer barked at the same time, as if he was crying too.

‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ I said, actually to Schnitzel who looked so adorable I thought my heart might crack open at the thought of leaving him.

And of course, like everything else I ever say to my parents and head-teachers and weirdy sisters and just about all adults, I really really meant it at the time.

Eventually I managed to pluck myself out of their clutches, pat Schnitzel on the head and race down the path after Judge Savage and Mattan. I flung myself into the back of the car.

‘Okay?’ said Mattan.

‘Yeah, but I’m staying out of the way when you say goodbye to your mum and dad. I can’t go through all that again.’

‘Oh, we’ll be fine. We’ve been doing role-play practices all week and have worked out exactly what to say to show how much we care without getting upset.’

I stared at her as Judge Savage slammed her door shut and revved the engine of my grandpa’s old Jaguar that he’d swapped for the Trinity Sisters’ Riley Elf. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you and your family are cyborgs,’ I whispered.

‘Of course not,’ she hissed. ‘We’re Swedes.’

There was no answer to that as it’s her explanation for completely EVERYTHING, so I just trained my eyes on the road ahead and carefully didn’t think about my parents as we trundled through the streets of Bramsdean. Oop. Thinking about my parents. Ouch ouch, really thinking about my parents and most especially Dad’s wobbly lip as I left. Maybe he was just sad to see his old backpack disappear.

Must focus on something else, I told myself. So while Mattan ran in for her case and performed her goodbyes, I sat in the back of the car – which was – and stared at Judge Savage in the rear-view mirror until she spoke to me.

She was looking oddly twitchy, scoffing fudge as if it had gone out of fashion, from a white box that had once been wrapped with a silver ribbon.

‘An exciting night, Matilda Peppercorn,’ she said with a smile, glancing in the side mirror as she spoke. ‘Fudge?’ She flung a few squares over her shoulder into the back seat.

‘Too excited to eat. I can’t wait to see the Runes at night. I mean, more at night. I’ve seen it at night, but not all of it. For instance, where does everyone sleep?’

‘You’ve seen where they sleep,’ said the judge, checking in the glove compartment for something and emptying tissues out all over the footwell of the passenger seat. She grabbed one and wiped her forehead frantically.

‘I haven’t.’

‘You have. You just didn’t know it.’

‘Oh, well, I …’ I started, but she didn’t appear to be listening. Instead she was clicking her fingers on the clock, over and over, tapping out a frantic rhythm as she peered into the bushes surrounding Mattan’s house. ‘Judge Savage, are you okay?’

Suddenly she whipped around, her human head morphing into the beige cat form of her Guardian self. She cleared her throat loudly. ‘You do know why you’re coming to the Runes, don’t you, Matilda?’

‘Yes. To increase my training to be a Guardian because Troubletskoy is currently ...’ I carefully didn’t say in FF Prison or anything, because he was still one of her friends for some reason. ‘… out of action.’

The Furson form of Judge Savage shook her head and nodded at the same time. ‘Sort of. I mean, yes, that’s the surface reason. But there’s something else.’

Mattan was already opening the front door, shouting something over her shoulder to her tall, blond parents who stood in the doorway like Viking pillars guarding Asgard, solid and imposing. Mattan’s mother dabbed at one eye delicately, while Mr Lundquist simply frowned with his Santa-white eyebrows to show deep, deep emotion.

‘I have a message for you,’ rasped Felicity Savage suddenly. She spluttered, clutching at her throat, then shouted, ‘Take heed.’

‘That’s the message? Take heed? Is that a bit like Evil Abounds?’

‘No!’ snapped the judge, unusually sharp. ‘Attention, please, Tilly! The message is this.’

She opened her mouth to speak, but as her lips parted her tongue suddenly protruded at an alarming rate before splitting in two as if an invisible knife was slicing through it. The forked ends separated and wrapped themselves around her face like a fleshy scarf. The judge screamed as the tongue tightened.

‘It’s a Tattle Tail!’ I screamed, having experienced one myself. ‘Stop talking and it will go away!’

But it was too late for that. Savage’s feline eyes were filling with blood and tears as the Tattle Tail coiled around her neck, hooped like a strangling python as it squeezed the life from her.

‘Get off her!’ I yelled, yanking at the head-rest to reach the judge before her own tongue snapped her head off. ‘She’s not saying anything! I don’t need the message, okay?’

The Tattle Tail slackened instantly, but at the same moment the furry face changed, not into Judge Savage’s Guardian or person self, but into a sort of … well, a reverse Furson. A Refurson. The tongue rattled backwards into a face that looked more or less like her usual human one but with weird glossy curls, all smooth and dark and Rapunzelish. Her head was so high it puckered the vinyl roof of the car and below it, a feline body covered in a golden pelt, much more vivid than her usual caramel colour, took up the whole of the driver’s seat.

As I stared, the head slid round like an owl’s so that it faced backwards. Heavy eyes circled with black eyeliner gleamed at me through the hole in the headrest as words rushed from her mouth, wreathed in smoke that poured out between her lips as the hideous mouth opened.

‘Who’s closer than friends yet furthest from you;

Keeps counsel within and allegiances tight?

Who takes care of those who care for those who

Take flight on silk woven across starlit night?

Who ties them together so you will espy

The people whose wish is for you to die?

This is my question for you to uncover.

My legend beats all, as you will discover!’

The eyes swam like goblets of poison as the smokey, threatening words poured straight into my ears, filling me with terror like I’d never experienced before – not even from seeing the three-headed weirdy witches or Horridly Hideous Hopkins. Through the car window I could see Mattan gazing at me, then running, running, as my head fell back and the sickly smoke swirled in my stomach. My friend. My best friend. Closer than all friends. Was she a danger to me? And who took flight on silk? Spiders! It had to be spiders … or … or silk worms! But did silk worms fly?

‘Sensei, I don’t understand the poem,’ I gasped, just as Mattan reached the car door.

‘Sensei is gone,’ said the smokey voice abruptly. ‘I am the questioner now.’

‘You’re the … who is the questioner? Well, I suppose it’s me now, as I’m asking a question, but what do you mean about friends and … and silk worms? And where is Judge Savage? Ah! Another question!’

‘Still the tongue!’ screeched the Questioner, very obviously a Questioner with a capital Quest. ‘I and only I am the Questioner!’

The head was rotating again, left and right, right and left, as if the Questioner was trying it for size. As I took in the back of Judge Savage’s head, which was suddenly back to its normal frizzy self, the Questioner’s face swivelled into view. The black-lined eyes focussed on me again, but instead of Felicity Savage’s happy beam, a pair of marbled, green-blue corneas appeared through the haze, so ancient that they looked like chips of jade.

Which was why, when Mattan flung the door open, the swirly smoke inside me made its escape. I projectile-vomited all over the back seat and a tiny bit of Mattan’s coat.

Before she had time to protest, the cold, stony eyes of the Questioner fixed upon Mattan so that she tumbled in shock into the car on top of her bright orange suitcase. With Mattan dangling half out of the vehicle, we hung onto each other in horror as the Jaguar – feeling not very sunny - screeched off along the road.

Chapter 2

‘We’re about to be abducted by spiders! Silk webs! She’s some kind of … spider woman!’ I hissed to Mattan, who held onto my arm to stop herself from sliding out of the open car door.

Mattan managed to wedge a toe in the trim on the car door and heave herself onto the floor beneath the back seat. Casual as anything, she popped a piece of the flung fudge into her mouth, even though it was on carpet and everything. I blame all those cupcakes. She never could resist anything sweet. ‘What are you talking about?’ she slurred through the sweeties. ‘It’s Judge Savage!’

‘It’s not. It’s the Questioner. Sensei has been possessed or something.’

‘I think you’ve been possessed,’ spat Mattan, rolling around on the carpet as the ancient-eyed woman once known