The Fox and the Ghost King Read online

  Copyright

  First published in hardback in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2016

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 2016

  Illustrations copyright © Michael Foreman 2016

  Photographs in end material © Shutterstock.com

  Cover photographs © James Warwick / Getty Images (adult fox face); FLPA / Alamy (fox cub face) eye35 / Alamy (Leicester Cathedral); Shutterstock.com for all other images

  Michael Morpurgo and Michael Foreman assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008215774

  Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008215781

  Version: 2016-08-31

  For Jonathan, charioteer supreme, and his family.

  Remembering our journey from Kettering to Exeter.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  1. Over the Moon

  2. Weird or What?

  3. Rotten Onions and High-fives - global

  4. The Promise of a King

  5. Digging and Dreaming

  6. Is This a Pizza I See Before Me?

  7. All’s Well That Ends Well

  A Note on Leicester City F.C.

  A Note on Richard III

  Discover more unforgettable books from the nation’s favourite storyteller

  Also by Michael Morpurgo

  About the Publisher

  On moonlit nights we still often get together. We usually meet on the football pitch, after a match, because it’s quiet, no one about. That’s how foxes and ghosts like it. It’s only when all of us are together again that I can really believe it happened, that we really did make not just one but two impossible dreams come true.

  I have to pinch myself – sometimes even then – to believe it happened. But I was there. I saw it all with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears, smelt it with my own nose.

  Honest. Cub’s honour. Dib, dib, dib!

  Imagine a family of foxes – Mum, Dad and the four of us little cubs – living in our den under a garden shed in Leicester. That’s us. I am the oldest, and I am the boss cub too, the friskiest, the peskiest, the pushiest. Dad likes that because it reminds him of himself, he says. And that’s why, if I pester him enough, he takes me out with him, now that I’m a little older, when he goes on his hunting expeditions at night. Mum never does, because she says she hunts better without me there to worry about. And it’s true; she always brings back a fat rabbit or a rat or a mole or a vole every time she goes out. Mum’s milk is so good and tasty and there’s always enough for all of us. But she does snap at me when I push my sisters off to get the best place to feed.

  Dad never snaps at me. He’s a good hunter too, but he prefers dustbins, he says, because they don’t run away, and they’re full of tasty surprises. He hunts pizza crusts, and chips – my favourite, because I love tomato sauce – and chewy Chinese spare ribs, bits of burgers and buns – all great stuff. He’s the best dustbin hunter in the world, my dad, and he’s the top fox around, top dad too.

  He’s not afraid of anyone, or anything, not ghosts, not kings, not even ghost kings – as you will see.

  But the most important thing you have to know about our family is that all of us are football crazy: Leicester City fans, Foxes fans. The Foxes are our team, win or lose – mostly lose – the best team in the world.

  Every fox in the whole town, in the whole country just about, is a Foxes football fan. We foxes are brought up Foxes fans.

  All his life Dad has been going to the home games; Mum too, when she can, when she’s not having cubs. Down in our smelly old den – we like it smelly – all the talk is of football, or food. We talk a lot about food, it’s true: pizzas, worms, frogs, mice, chips – especially chips. A varied diet we have.

  So you can imagine how excited I was when Dad asked me for the first time, one winter’s night, to come with him to the football. I felt at long last I was becoming a proper grown-up fox. All I wanted now was my silly droopy, drippy little tail to grow into a proper brush, like Dad’s. Once you’ve got a proper brush for a tail, then you’re a proper fox, but I was off to my first football match and that was good enough for me.

  Over the moon, I was.

  I loved it that first time I went, and every time afterwards, the lights, the roar of the crowd, the smell of hot dogs, the music, the singing, the chanting. The losing wasn’t so great. Dad always said then that the referee was rubbish, that he had favoured the other side.

  He hated Chelsea especially, so did I, especially their manager. He was such a cocky-looking fellow.

  I went with him after that whenever I could, whenever Mum would let me go. She worried about me, but mums do that. It’s their job.

  The night this story began was the night we lost to Chelsea, again, a night we’ll never forget, but not because of losing to Chelsea.

  No, not because of that at all.

  Because of the ghost we met afterwards.

  We were not happy foxes on our way home. Dad was going on about how Mourinho, the Chelsea manager, would be crowing like a cockerel, and how foxes knew how to deal with cockerels.

  “Give him a good neck-shaking I would, then gobble him up,” he was saying. But we did pick up titbits of this and that from the pavement, leftovers: hotdogs and beef burgers, and fish and chips. You would not believe the stuff people throw away, but I’m glad they do. After that we knocked over a couple of dustbins and found some dribbly ice cream and some mouldy old cheese, which was delicious. We were trying to make ourselves feel a bit better, and we did too. So the Foxes had lost again. So what was new about that?

  “Always look on the bright side of life, eh, son? Not the end of the world,” he said as we padded along homewards, down the lamp-lit city street. “The Foxes are still the best team in the world, son, right?”

  “Right,” I told him. We stopped to do a high-five together, then chased our tails round and round three times – three times would bring us luck the next time, Dad said. I didn’t believe him, of course. We did the same every time we lost, and we still lost the next time. I knew really that he made me do it to cheer me up, and to cheer himself up too.

  A little while later, and happier now, we were on our usual way home, trotting through the empty car park, half of which was still being dug up, for some reason or other. We always stopped here, because the earth was always freshly turned, just right for worm hunting.

  We leapt the fence – well, Dad did; I crawled underneath – then jumped down into a shallow trench and, noses to the ground, began sniffing out worms, and listening for them too. We can hear worms wriggling, you know; it’s what we’ve got these pointy ears for.

  I was good at worm-catching – watched Dad doing it and just did what he did – loved it too, the s
nuffling them out, the watching, the waiting, then, best of all, the leaping and pouncing.

  I was happily chomping away on the nice fat wriggly worm I had just caught, which was trying to curl itself round my nose, when I thought I heard a strange voice. It seemed close by and yet far away at the same time. And somehow it was coming from below me too.

  Weird or what? I thought.

  Dad had heard it as well. His ears were pricked, turning, turning, this way and that, and that way and this.

  Then the voice spoke again, definitely a man’s voice, and it really was coming from somewhere deep down below the ground.

  “I know a fox when I smell one,” it said. “You all wear your smell about you like a coat of rank and rotten onions.”

  I could feel the hair standing up in fear all along the back of my neck. But Dad wasn’t frightened, so after a moment or two I wasn’t either. Like me, he was looking for the voice, trying to smell and hear exactly where it might be coming from. So I did the same.

  Dad spoke then, in his growliest angriest voice: “I don’t know who you are, but how we smell is our business. So, whoever and wherever you are, you have no business making rude remarks to strangers you have never even met, and who mean you no harm and have never hurt you. I have my son with me. I have brought him up never to be rude. So mind your manners, stranger, whoever you are. And there’s something else I want to tell you: all onions are delicious, rotten or not. Especially old pizza onions in tomato sauce, however rotten they are.”

  “I do not wish to discuss onions, Mister Fox,” the voice came again. “I have much more important things on my mind.”

  “Such as?” Dad asked.

  “Such as getting out of here,” came the reply. “I have been stuck down here for hundreds of years, and I need to get out. You must help me. It is my command, and I am used to people doing what I say when I say it.”

  He was sounding rather hoity-toity, and I could see Dad did not like being told what to do by this voice one bit.

  Dad told him in no uncertain terms, but politely, what he thought of his command. “So don’t you come all lah-di-dah and lordly with me. I don’t know who you think you are, but if you want our assistance, then you are going to have to explain yourself. How can we possibly help you get out of where you are if we don’t even know where that is? And, by the way, we don’t know who you are either. You’re just a strange, rather snooty, disembodied voice to us at the moment. Where are you? Who are you, for goodness’ sake?”

  “The king,” said the voice, more haughtily even than before. “You are speaking to the King of England, Mister Fox.”

  Dad laughed at that. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, course you are! The King of England! So you’re one of those, then. Too much to drink, eh? A bit bonkers, off your rocker. I’ve met lots of your sort before, out in the city at night, wandering the streets. But I’ve never met anyone before that I can’t see. Never even talked to anyone I can’t see. Now, my little son and I have to get home. It’s getting late. Goodnight, Your Kingship.”

  “No, don’t go,” came the voice again, more polite now, pleading almost. “Please don’t go. I would show myself to you if I could. But that’s my problem – I can’t get out of here. Listen, Mister Fox and Master Fox, all I’m asking is for you to do me a small favour. I want you to show those idiot archaeologists, who are doing all the digging, where I am.”

  “Arky-what-a-gists?” I asked. “What are they, Dad? What do they do?”

  “They do digging, son,” Dad told me, “for old stuff, old things.”

  “Old worms, you mean?” I said.

  “Older, son. Bigger. Old buildings, old bits and pieces, anything. They even dig up old people sometimes.”

  “And sometimes even an old king,” came the voice again. “I am not bonkers, not off my rocker, Mister Fox, I promise you. I am just an old king who has been lying down here for hundreds and hundreds of years, and I want to get out. And I won’t ever get out if those stupid archaeologists don’t find me. Which is why I really need you to lead them to me. They’ve been digging for me, searching for me for months and months now, but never in the right place. They keep missing me, just can’t seem to find where I am. I’ve been calling them and calling them, just like I called you, but I don’t think they can hear me. Foxes hear better, don’t they? You must do. You heard me after all.”

  “That’s because foxes do everything better, don’t we, son?” said Dad.

  “Right on, Dad,” I replied. And we did our high-fives again.

  “And foxes dig well too – am I right?” came the voice.

  “We only dig the best tunnels and deepest dens in all the world,” Dad told him proudly. “They may smell of rotten onions, but we like home to smell like that, right, son?” We high-fived again.

  “Listen, Mister Fox,” the voice said, in quite a different tone altogether now. “I’m really sorry I ever said that, about you smelling like rotten onions. Dastardly thing to say. Pardon me, please. I should be so grateful if you could please dig me one of your best tunnels in the world, towards where I am. I’ll just keep talking and you keep digging. It won’t take long. You’ll find me sooner or later. You can’t miss me. I’m not going anywhere, not until you find me anyway.”

  I could see Dad was thinking long and hard. “Now, let me get this right, Your Kingship,” he began. “You want us, me and my little cub here – who by rights should be back home and fast asleep by now down in our smelly den – you want us to get digging and keep digging till we find you. I mean that could take all night, couldn’t it? Have you any idea of the trouble I’ll be in with the wife if I stay out all night, if I don’t get our little son home till morning? Trouble and strife, Your Kingship, that’s what I’ll be in for, trouble and strife.”

  Dad was shaking his head and tutting away. Quite an actor my dad can be.

  “But let’s just say we oblige you, Your Kingship,” he went on, “and we do what you ask, what do we get in return? I mean, just how grateful would you be, if you see what I’m saying?”

  “So foxes are as cunning as they say,” came the reply.

  “Oh yes indeed, Your Kingship,” Dad said. “King or fox, you have to be cunning to survive in this life, as cunning as a fox.”

  “I cannot argue with you there, Mister Fox. Very well, tell me what it is you most wish for in all the world,” said the voice, “and I shall grant it.”

  “With what power?” asked Dad. “You can’t even tell the archaeologists where you are.”

  “Only because I have never had a king’s burial,” said the voice. “Release me, and I can do anything. Just tell me your greatest wish.”

  “That’s simple,” Dad said, “but it’s also quite impossible. We all have an impossible dream. We want our team, Leicester City, to win the next match, don’t we, son? And—”

  “Easy, it’s a deal,” the voice interrupted. “Get me out of here and I’ll make sure you win the next match.”

  “No, no, I hadn’t finished, Your Kingship,” Dad went on. “We don’t just want to win the next match, but the one after, and the next after that, and the next, and go on winning. We want to beat Spurs and Man United, and Man City and Liverpool – wipe the floor with them all, especially Chelsea. Us, the Foxes, Leicester City, we want to be top of the Premier League, top of the world. Me and my little cub here, and my family and my kind, we have supported the Foxes for ever. But we never win a thing. Last season we were almost bottom of the league, nearly went down. Do you know, the betting against us winning the league this season is five thousand to one? You help us win the league, Your Kingship, help us achieve the impossible dream, and we’ll dig for you, tunnel our way to you, and help get you out of there. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  “You strike a hard bargain, Mister Fox. Very well. I agree. You have my word. You get me out of here, and I will guarantee your team wins the league this season. And that’s a promise.”

  “Promises, promises,” said Dad. “Ther
e’s always a problem with promises: they are so easy to make, and so easy to break. How, pray, Your Kingship, will you do it? How do we know you can do it, and how can we be sure you will?”

  “I do not break my promises. You are speaking to the rightful king of all England, Mister Fox,” he said, sounding haughtier again. “What I say should happen in this land, happens. I am king, do you hear me? I rule here! And when I am laid to rest as befits a king I will be able to do stuff, make stuff happen, impossible stuff – ‘such stuff as dreams are made on …’ Oh rats! There I go. You hear that? I can’t seem to help myself. I’m always quoting that villainous scribbler Will Shakespeare, that ‘rogue and peasant slave’. Rats! You see? His words again! They haunt me. He haunts me. He’s inside my head: his voice, his words, his poems, his plays. That infernal dramatist haunts my life and my death to this very day.”

  The voice was becoming more agitated and angry, and louder now, with every word he spoke.

  I crept under Dad’s brush and hid myself away. But I could not stop myself from trembling.

  “Alack, alack,” the voice went on, the pitch rising, “but for a horse a kingdom was lost, my kingdom. ‘A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ There I go again! Losing my horse, losing my throne, losing my life on Bosworth Field that day, was bad enough, painful enough too, I can tell you. But worse, so much worse – Will Shakespeare took my reputation. ‘Reputation, reputation! Oh, reputation, I have lost my reputation!’ By his play of Richard III, that vile villain made a villain of me, a traitor, a murderer. I may not have been the best of kings, not whiter than white maybe, but not blacker than black either. And who do they celebrate now all over the world? Me? A crowned King of England? No, that wretched man, that ruinous rhymster, that dastardly dramatist, that William Shakespeare.

  “And as for me? I end up buried in a car park in Leicester, not in my rightful place, not honoured in a tomb in a cathedral like other kings and queens. But if they find me, these archaeologists, I will be famous again, a king again, and honoured. The people, history, may even begin to remember me as I was, not as that which Shakespeare made me to be. Just get me out of this horrible car park, I beg you, my foxy friends, and I will ensure the Foxes of Leicester City win the league. You have my promise, the promise of a king.”