The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Trinity

By Jill Marshall

Luckier than a cat with nine lives? Not so much. Matilda Peppercorn is on the run, not just from the Hopkins but from the very - err - people she's meant to protect. With her friends in tow, she crosses continents to be mighty in battle, to uncover her 'unknown birth' - and to find out the truth about the legend of Matilda Peppercorn. Hold on to your tail-belts for the conclusion of the mad magical TLOMP mysteries from Jill Marshall.

The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn quartet is also a SWAGG Origin Story. Join Tilly and new friends Jane Blonde, Jack BC and Prince Stein in the first S*W*A*G*G book, Spook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Marshall
• Release date: May 5, 2020
• ISBN: 9781990024719

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

Chapter 0

Defender of the Trinity

And all the Sisters’ legacy,

A child of unknown birth shall be

Selected by the Guardian Three.

Egyptian, Russian, Grecian walls

Bear legends that our life enthrals;

Their pictures of our souls’ dark woes

Before the hero’s courage glows.

So dance her steps as skies alight

With cobalt fire, through darkest night;

Waltz one, then two, then three, then hold

As mysteries of the world unfold …

Upon the feat of three harsh tests

The Sisters’ choice performs the best

Defend and Fight and Nimbly Fall,

Matilda, Guardian of us all!

Chapter 1

Do you know what’s really, really nice? It’s when your friends all stick together and say they’re going to come with you even if you are going into Untold Danger and Uncharted Territory and Possible Doominess. My friends had done that for me. Nice. Really nice.

Do you know what’s not really, really nice, though? Having to lie to the parentals who are just looking forward to having you home for the weekend, watching films for two days straight and making excuses to hug you. My parentals actually thought they were about to do that with me.

Wrong. And not nice.

But Mattan and I had made a plan. We’d both go home. Both say we’d had a brilliant time at our new ‘school’ (or The Creepy Runes as they were sometimes known) and we were going to spend the weekend at each other’s house. Then we’d both not go to each other’s houses but find a way to go somewhere else.

And why?

Well, because we couldn’t exactly say we were heading off into Untold Danger and Uncharted Territory and Possible Doominess and other generally peculiar stuff. No way.

But that was what we were about to do. For some reason which I hadn’t quite fathomed yet, I’d spent the last few months getting involved in some very peculiar stuff - like meeting weirdy witches who turned out to be the Trinity Trio, in charge of all witches, warlocks and their familiars, aka Felidae Fighters, aka cats. Discovering I was meant to be one of those cats – a very special one of those cats called Guardians - but not being very good at it. Mattan, my bestest friend, Thomas the small Ginger Ninja and Alyx Smuggity Sundaland all finding they can be cats as easily as blinking. Having a Tattle-Tail spell cast on me so that my own tongue strangled me if I said too much. Which was quite often. Then meeting exploding toads … inventing dragons … grappling with Sphinxes of all flavours and ugliness … flying by magic carpet … and most of all, battling the Hopkins.

And in all the weirdiness I’d forgotten to do the one thing I was supposed to do which was:

to protect the Trinity, and

fix-form as a cat before my nine lives were up, and also

get rid of their most hated enemy, the Hopkins.

Okay, so that’s three things, and there were probably more, but the bare facts were that now I was on the run, less than one day ahead of the Trinity who had to kill me because I hadn’t fix-formed into a proper cat Guardian and I now knew too much, aka pretty much EVERYTHING.

Everything apart from some very obvious questions. Like, where did I actually come from and who were my actual parents? And what had happened to them? And why did so many people and not-people apparently want me dead?

I had to find out or kind of die.

Well, not kind of. Actually die.

So if that meant telling a little teensy white lie to my mumsy and dadsy before zipping off for a weekend pretending to make cupcakes, then that was what I had to do.

All my friends had insisted on coming with me to Possible Doominess. Smuggity the Smug Sundaland and Tiny Tom-Tom (aka Alyx and Ickle Tom-Tom) figured out how to hide Dogweed the Dragon at the Runes without him burning down the Runes, the forest, the whole town of Bramsdean etcetera, while Mattan and I ‘borrowed’ Bronco the Broomstick and headed for home. Just two Flying Matildas, doing our stuff. Lying, stealing, riding on broomsticks and turning into cats.

Like I said – it was all weird stuff. And it was about to get very muchly weirdier.

I parked Bronco behind a potted plant at the side of the front porch. I’d only been out of the house for a week, but it already felt smaller, somehow. If I was away for months it would feel like a doll’s house by the time I returned.

Wondering if I should creep in I opened the door quietly, but even that tiny noise brought both parents running.

‘It’s you!’ cried Mum. ‘You’re early.’

‘We thought it might be burglars,’ said Dad, looking worried.

‘With a key? Seriously, Parentals, you need to relax!’

I hugged them both very hard and hoped secretly that they’d never, ever relax, or else what would I tease them about?

If I got to tease them about anything.

If I wasn’t slain by a Trinity Sister or choked by my own treacherous body-parts.

The hug went on for such a long time that Mum eventually had to pause to breathe. She extracted her nose from my hair and looked me up and down suspiciously.

‘Did you actually miss us?’ she gasped, hardly daring to believe it.

‘Of course I did, Caroline. Mum. Mumsy Mum. Although it was fun. So much fun that … erm, I’m going back right now.’

Their faces fell. ‘On your own?’

‘No, Mattan too. And … I might stay at Mattan’s this weekend. Is that okay?’

They both stared at me for the longest moment, Dad carefully sorting his face into a serious-but-accepting expression as Mum gulped back tears.

Then Dad spoke. ‘We always knew this time would come, Caro.’ He wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

‘But she’s still so young. I thought we would have longer!’ said Mum, grappling in her pocket for a tissue.

‘We have to be strong. She’s our girl, and she will be fine.’

‘She is right here, you know!’ I interjected, watching their faces carefully. ‘And what do you have to be strong about? I’m the one growing up and struggling with becoming independent and all that.’

Dad wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. ‘Well, Tilly, it’s like this. You bring home this little baby,’ he said with his head on one side, in true Ian-mode, ‘and you can’t quite believe she’s going to grow into an amazing girl and then a remarkable young woman ...’

‘… and that one day she’s going to want to go away to—'

‘—her friend’s—' interrupted Dad.

‘—for a—' blubbed Mum.

They finished together with a sob. ‘—weekend!’

Well, it was so much more than a whole weekend that I very nearly couldn’t go. I spent several minutes longer than I should hugging them again while secretly scratching Schnitzel’s head, and then another several minutes longer than I should mucking around in my bedroom transferring things from Dad’s tiny old backpack into my much bigger kickboxing bag. ‘Clothes – tick. Kickboxing helmet - tick. Schnitzel’s dogfood for a dragon – tick. Capture cloud – tick tick.’

Packing for FF escapes was bizarre.

Tap tap tap. That was different to tick tick tick. That was an actual tap tap on the window. Being quite used to this, I strode across and flung open the curtains.

‘Yowsers, that’s a big head,’ I cried.

‘Matilda Peppercorn,’ boomed the head. ‘As commanded by my queen and my love, I am here with your friends to take you to your destiny.’

‘He carried us here in the magic cloth like a bag of sweets,’ squeaked another familiar voice. ‘It was superbly excellent!’

The head belonged to Jermaine the Genie, although it was several sizes bigger than last time I’d seen it. Clustered around his giant feet, stamping on Dad’s runey cobble stones in my garden, were Alyx, Thomas and Dogweed the Dragon. Dogweed coughed in excitement at seeing me and torched a patch of ivy.

‘You were supposed to be hiding him!’

Alyx tutted. ‘I tried making him stay but he sobbed and incinerated the ends of my fringe. You try arguing with a dragon.’

‘Do you wish to be taken to your destiny?’ Jermaine repeated patiently.

‘Not sure. One, that sounds like being taken to my death,’ I said. ‘And two, where exactly is my destiny?’

The gigantic African man in silky harem pants raised his hands dramatically. ‘At the end of the journey.’

Well, that made a strange kind of sense, but it didn’t help me much. ‘I thought this was the beginning of the journey.’

‘Jermaine begs to differ,’ he said. ‘You have travelled far already – to distant lands, to new races and cultures, and even to other histories.’ His grin blinded us from many metres up in the air.

‘Jermaine had better shrink for a minute,’ I told him. ‘My folks will think the security light has come on. They’re very worried about burglars.’

As I climbed down the drainpipe to the garden, Jermaine whistled back down to his normal size – still gigantic, but not like an actual Fe-Fi-Fo type of giant. It was quite a relief to be able to look him directly in the ribs.

‘The point is, Jermaine,’ I said, for the benefit of the others as much as him, ‘we’re all playing this by ear. I don’t really know what my destiny is. I thought it was to be a kickboxer, schoolgirl and BFF to Mattan, but then it turned out I’m supposed to be a fighting cat and a Guardian. I’ve not been very good at being a cat, though, so now I’m on the run and apparently it’s no longer my destiny to be a Guardian. It may actually be my destiny to die very young at the warty hands of a three-headed witch, or possibly be strangulated by my own stupid tongue which won’t stop getting me into trouble. Anyway,’ I ended cheerfully, ‘I don’t quite know what’s going on but I suddenly feel like this journey started with my birthy parents, and before I find out about them, I want to say goodbye to my non-birthy parents.’

Jermaine nodded. ‘And now it is time. My queen’s desire is to help you seek your purpose, so you may request for Jermaine to take you anywhere you please.’

I smiled hopefully. ‘Your wish is my command?’

He smiled back. ‘No.’

‘Oh. That’s very disappointing.’

‘Only my queen may command me,’ Jermaine explained, expanding at the shoulders. He was definitely getting broader. And taller. ‘But you may direct me on where to go.’

‘That’s how we drove Jermaine’s magic sweet bag,’ said Thomas happily. ‘It’s like a massive car with Sat Nav and autonomous driving!’

‘Hey! It even has …’ Alyx could hardly stop himself from sniggering as he pointed at the golden sheet of silk which was spread like a matador’s cape beneath our feet. ‘… a cloaking device.’

Actually that gave me an idea. ‘Jermaine, can you turn invisible?’

‘Jermaine can do pract-ic-ally anything,’ said the super-sized genie, laughing.

‘Okay. Vanish from sight, then wait here and I’ll fly around the back on Bronco when I leave. Then we can collect Mattan and …’ I blinked with how crazy it sounded. ‘… find my destiny.’

‘And mine,’ snapped Alyx.

Even Thomas rolled his eyes. Alyx had been getting very snappy about his whole family background – but then, he had a right to know too.

‘And yours, obviously,’ I said. ‘And everyone’s. It’s a Runes class trip to Destiny Land.’

‘So it shall be,’ said Jermaine.

He clapped his hands together. The moment his palms met, he began to disintegrate from the tips of his fingers, up his arms, down through his torso and legs to the feet that stood behind us, and lastly up his neck and round his ears, his face disappearing as if it was being sucked into a sink-hole until finally he was gone. Like the Cheshire Cat, the last thing to disappear was his grin.

‘Impressive,’ I said, as Thomas, Alyx and Doggers vanished too, swept up by an invisible hand in a cloth like a knotted handkerchief.

Suddenly I heard Dad calling me. ‘Probably time to go, Tills. I’m sure Mattan will be waiting for you.’

I hurtled up the ivy and through the window, grabbing my bag as I hurried out of my bedroom door.

Dad was standing at the front door, staring out into the twilight. He smiled sadly as I walked down the stairs.

‘Mum’s had to dash off to deal with a work emergency, I’m afraid.’

‘On a Friday night? At the local Post Office?’

‘Mis-labelled package.’ His lip wobbled as he spoke, and I knew that wasn’t about the parcel. ‘She says to give you her love and that she’ll see you next week.’

‘Okay.’

It wasn’t really, because I didn’t know if I would see her next week or even again, in fact. But I couldn’t say anything, so instead I hoicked my kickboxing bag onto my shoulder and went to give Dad a farewell peck on the cheek.

His cheek was wet.

‘Dad, don’t cry. It’s just a weekend.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said with a brave smile. ‘You’ve just grown so fast in the last few months.’

You should see Jermaine, I wanted to say. But of course, he shouldn’t see Jermaine. He shouldn’t ever see any of the other world I’d found myself in. If he worried about burglars, discovering all about my new life would make his head explode.

So I stepped into the garden where I’d met each of the Trinity sisters, and Hopkins and his mad, bad horse, and even Gramps with Schnitzel and a trail of frog guts. A lot had happened on this path. ‘Bye, path,’ I whispered.

I turned to wave to Dad, but he was silhouetted in the doorway, holding something. ‘Aren’t you taking this? I think you should.’

It was his old backpack. He must have raced back up to my room to fetch it.

‘It’s empty, Dad. I’m taking this.’ I showed him the sports bag.

‘Take this anyway. I’ll feel better if you do. Like a little part of us is there with you. A little message from our hearts.’

‘Ian, it’s just a smelly old rucksack,’ I said sternly.

He smiled again, but I could see how much he was forcing it onto his face. ‘Humour me.’

‘You really are the sappiest pair.’

‘And that’s why we’re perfect,’ he said, grabbing me for one last hug.

And that was true, but it was, as he’d said, time to go.

It was really, really, really hard, but I turned my back on him and walked away down the non-cobbly paving stones. Only when I heard the door close behind me did I dare to look back. Had he really gone?

He really had.

I waited a while, just to be sure he wouldn’t reappear, then nipped back to the front door, jumped on Bronco and whistled round to the back of the house, before leading my merry troop of invisible weirdos along the back fence, over the gardens, across the charred remains of the doctor’s surgery and the railway tracks, and down the next road.

It was only when we reached Mattan’s that I realised something. For the first time ever in my entire life, neither parental had insisted on giving me a lift. Which was just the teensiest bit weird when they normally insisted on at least waving until I was out of sight, or even refusing to let me out of sight. Could it be that they actually … trusted me? Weird again. They really truly did believe I was growing up.

If only the Trinity believed it too.

Chapter 2

Mattan seemed just as disturbed about lying to her parents. As she latched onto Bronco’s tail twigs with her strange monkey toes, she said, ‘I told them I was staying with you, and they just said oh, fine. Just like that. Oh, fine.’

‘They totally believed you and everything?’

‘Totally.’ Mattan shook her white-blonde head in disgust. ‘Don’t they know what you’re like? They used to think you were a bad influence!’

‘Hm. Well, they’ve obviously changed their mind. Like mine. Dad didn’t as much as mention giving me a ride to your house.’

She stared at me, alarmed. ‘Do you think they’ve been cat-nipped?’

‘They’re not cats, dufus. Anyway, I think it’s just that they know we’re growing up.’

Mattan considered this. ‘We have matured a lot in the last few months,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘I feel like centuries older rather than just half a year.’

‘Me too. We really have grown up!’

‘We have. Isn’t that superbly excellent? The parentals will leave us alone, and we can go off on adventures—'

‘—and we’re probably old enough for boyfriends! Finally!’ squealed Mattan as we bumped into something beside us.

The cape fell away as Jermaine lowered it to the train station forecourt, and Thomas, Dogweed and Alyx appeared next to Mattaan. For once, Alyx was more scarlet than the Ginger Ninja.

‘What was that, Mattan?’ asked Thomas fake-innocently.

‘Nothing! Our … our parents don’t care about us any longer!’ she blurted quickly, turning pretty scarlet herself.

Alyx shrugged, trying to look like his usual casual self. ‘Join the club.’

‘They care about us, Biffle. They just feel we’re old enough to have more freedom.’

‘That’s what I meant,’ said Mattan. ‘I can’t help getting the words wrong. I’m Swedish.’

Before we could all point out that she’d been brought up speaking English as well as any of the rest of us, even if her parentals still lurched around saying ‘haff’ with sounds of spitting, Jermaine de-vanished in front of us. In other English words, he appeared.

‘Jermaine serves his queen and takes you to your destiny,’ he intoned seriously. ‘Where next?’

We all spoke at once.

‘Borneo,’ said Alyx.

‘Russia?’ Mattan suggested.

‘Wherever Tilly says,’ said Thomas loyally.

‘I think … Russia, like Mattan said.’ I hoisted my backpacks a little further up my shoulders. ‘After all, she does have Swedish logicalness, and it is where I’m from.’

‘There’s a cat called a Russian Blue,’ said Thomas. ‘Did you know that, Tilly?’

‘I did not, Ickle Tom-Tom. Well, I’m Russian, but I’m not blue. Ha ha ha haaaaa.’

That was me laughing nervously, because actually my hair is a bit blue and sometimes it shines out with a turquoise light. Same with my feet. Why hadn’t he mentioned this before?

‘So, Mattan of Swedish logicalness, and Thomas of Not-evil Genius,’ I said quickly to cover my blueness shame. ‘Can I just point out that if we’d figured this out months ago I might have fix-formed and not have to run away from a three-headed killer.’

Thomas and Mattan both looked a bit bleak at that.

Alyx laughed. ‘Just think of all the adventures we’d have missed out on, though,’ he said with his dazzling grin. ‘Manx.’

Well, that was true.

‘Okay,’ I said to Jermaine. ‘It’s decided. Russia, please.’

Jermaine folded his arms and cocked his turban to one side. ‘Russia is being a very big place,’ he said. ‘Where in Russia spe-ci-fic-ally?’

‘Ah. Well, I don’t know that. Somewhere with norfans and Policeski.’

Alyx tutted. ‘Sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about. I actually wonder whether you know yourself.’

‘Alyx, that’s mean.’ Mattan elbowed him in the side. Apparently her elbow was the only bit of her allowed to touch him without giving away their whole we lerrvv each other but can’t say so yet vibe. She was always digging him in the ribs for something or other. ‘Don’t forget that, just like you, Tilly grew up not knowing her birthy parents and being stolen by the Policeski.’

‘Aww, I have trained you well, Biffle,’ I said.

‘Not really. You’ve just gone on about it a lot.’

‘I totally have not!’ I said, more than a bit outraged. ‘I can’t have done because I didn’t even know until this whole Guardian thing began. Mum and Dad only told me when the orphans were being napped that there was anything weird about my baby days, and even then they told me practically nothing.’

Jermaine stared down at us from his great height, his head snaking from one side to the other as we bickered. ‘Can you be giving me anything?’ he said eventually. ‘Something to work with. The name of the orphanage. Map coordinates. A choice of cities?’

‘No.’ I shrugged, the back packs tilting off my shoulders. It really was too hard trying to carry two. ‘Nothing,’ I said, as I dropped the little backpack to the floor.

It clunked.

‘Hang on,’ I said, doing some quick police detectiving. ‘There shouldn’t be any clunking. I just emptied that out.’

I pulled the drawstring open. The backpack opened like a mouth, but I still couldn’t see anything.

Thomas’ head appeared beneath my armpit, peering into the bag. ‘Look, the lining’s ripped,’ he said helpfully.

‘Aha. Nicely done, Detective Thaumaturge.’

The ancient old material that lined the backpack had a tear across the base, big enough to have things disappear into it but not so massive as to be noticed. Without even hesitating - because this was Ian/Dad’s bag, after all - I stuck my hand in and opened the pocket of material.

Nestled at the bottom was an old shortbread tin with a picture of a white dog on it. Even though I’d never seen it before, it had that battered-but-polished look about it that suggested it was one of Dad’s favourite possessions. I touched the surface and it felt silky beneath my fingers. Wow. Something of Dad’s I’d never seen before, when usually he was completely open about everything.

‘This must have been sitting in here for years.’ I stroked the little dog again. ‘I didn’t notice before because I’d stuffed it full to the brim. I wonder –'

Mattan grabbed it and opened it. ‘You’re taking too long,’ she said when I gawped at her. ‘Look! Some paper.’

‘Is that all?’ scoffed Alyx. ‘I was hoping for gold coins. Food, at least.’

But that was definitely it. A sheaf of paper with curly writing all over it, and printed on the back with a strange logo that I’d seen before somewhere – a circle with three lines meeting in the middle.

‘Is it a treasure map?’ said Alyx, not at all hopefully.

‘They look like legal documents to me.’ It was time for Thomas to get all official. He grabbed the papers and whisked through them, scanning for information. ‘These are your adoption papers, Tilly. They say that you were homed in an orphanage in Kaliningrad after your birth parents disappeared and the police took you in.’

That sounded familiar. ‘That’s what I was told. First I was kidnapped, then the police found me and took me home, but then my birthy parents had disappeared so I was taken to the orphanage with my name on a piece of paper and a sack of stones.’

They all looked appalled. ‘That’s even worse than what happened to me,’ said Alyx. ‘You were found and taken home but your parents had gone? They might still be alive! And still looking for you! Like the parents of those napped kids at the Runes!’ He was growing louder with each sentence. ‘Maybe even like my parents!’

He was getting a bit shouty, to be honest, so I nodded calmly. ‘That’s very true. I’d never thought of that.’

‘And a sack of stones. Don’t babies eat stones?’ cried Mattan, practically blubbing.

I nodded. ‘That’s why Dad cemented them into his special mosaic.’

Thomas practically had his notebook out. ‘And what about the piece of paper you had with you?’ he asked gently.

‘Never seen it.’

‘You have now,’ he said.

And he peeled the last sheet of paper from the small pile in front of him. It wasn’t part of it, but something separate – a dog-eared