The rooks shifted uneasily, inspecting their feathers or staring down at their claws. Some of them looked to Mangiz, but the crow had distanced himself from the whole thing by perching upon a cupboard with his eyes closed.

Ironbeak carried on ranting. “Kaah! I flew down to attack this so-called ghost, and did it strike me dead, did it attack me, did it even stay to defend its Abbey? No, it hid away by some silly little trick. It fooled you all, but it did not fool Ironbeak, nor did it scare him. I am the greatest fighter in all the northlands. An earthcrawler mouse with bits of metal does not scare me. I will face it right now, or in the middle of a dark night. Mangiz, is what I say true?”

The seer crow opened one eye. He knew better than to argue with the raven leader.

“The mighty Ironbeak fears no living thing. He speaks true.”

*   *   *

Baby Rollo was taking cooking lessons. Brother Dan and Gaffer were teaching him to make breakfast pancakes of chestnut flour and greensap milk, studded with dried damson pieces preserved in honey sugar. The infant bankvole was far more concerned with the tossing of the pancakes than the mixing of them. Brother Dan was up to his paws in the sticky mixture, and blobs of it clung to his ears and nosetip. Gaffer discovered he had a sweet tooth for preserved damson pieces. The mole sorted through the supply for the choicest bits and promptly ate them.

Winifred the Otter caught all three of them like guilty young ones as she entered the kitchen.

‘What’s the hold-up out here? There’s a lot of hungry creatures waiting for breakfast out in the —Well, swish my tail! What in the good name of bulrushes is going on? Rollo, stop sticking those pancakes to the ceiling, this instant!”

Rollo was in the act of throwing a pancake from the pan at the ceiling. He stopped, and the pancake flopped neatly over his head, covering him to the neck. Another pancake slowly detached itself from the ceiling and began to fall. Winifred grabbed a plate and ran to catch it.

“Brother Dan, stop playing round with that batter like a hedgehog in mud and help me.”

Winifred caught the falling pancake as Brother Dan took a plate in his sticky paws and went after another potential dropper. Gaffer began trying to remove the pancake from baby Rollo’s head. The infant had eaten a hole in it to give himself some breathing space. Sensibly, Gaffer began eating from between Rollo’s ears.

“Hurr, bain’t gonna pull this’n offa you’m, Rollyo. Best scoff away both’n uz ’til it be gone. Hurr hurr!”

Cornflower appeared in the kitchen doorway. She tried to look very forbidding, while at the same time doing her best to stifle the laughter that was bubbling through at the comical scene.