“Is this another one of your jokes, Gonff?” Bella asked, eyeing him sternly.

Gonff placed the leaves in order, still smiling. “If it is a joke, then it’s a very clever one, you’ll admit. Beech, oak, ash and rowan in that order, can’t you see, it’s the first letter of each one. B then o then a then r, spells Boar.”

Bella shook his paw warmly. “You’re right. Boar is badger, named after wood. And look at this line lower down: ‘The way is in four trees.’”

Dinny clapped his paws together with excitement. “O joy, now we’m agetten sumwheres. Roight, thinken carps on.”

“Yes. Look at this line: ‘Search inside, stay indoors.’ At least we know the map is somewhere in Brockhall; we don’t have to go out scouring the woods.”

“But where indoors?”

“Where Boar played on rainy days.”

“Boar the Fighter, playing?”

“Ho aye, ’ee must’ve played when he’m a liddle un.”

“Good thinking, Din!”

“Now, ‘where did I eat bread and cheese?’ D’you think that’d be Boar having his lunch?”

“Nay, that’d be thy granfer, Miz Bell.”

“Of course. Boar was very close to old Lord Brocktree. It’s quite probable he’d be playing around near him while Brocktree was eating.”

“Aye, but there’s the difficult bit: ‘Your castle your fort’. Where’s there a castle or a fort inside Brockhall?”

“No no, look at the next line; ‘Or so you thought.’ Didn’t you ever play make-believe with something when you were little?”

“Haha, I still do, matey.”

“Hurr, we’m know that, zurr. Coom on, Miz Bell. Show us’ns whurr Bowar did play when ’ee wurr a liddle un.”

They wandered haphazardly from room to room. Every so often Bella would stop, look about and shake her head, muttering, “I’m not too sure, my father never talked too much about playing when he was little. Besides, I wasn’t even born then.”

Martin paused between the passage and the main hall. “Then think for a minute. Did your father ever say where Lord Brocktree went to eat his bread and cheese?”

“Hmm, not really. I expect he ate it at the table like any civilized creature would do indoors.”

“The table!”

They hurried into the main hall to where the huge dining table stood.

Gonff rapped it with his claws. “Well, a good stout table, looks like it’s made from elmwood. What do we do now?”

Bella had a faraway look in her eyes. “Wait, I remember now. Lord Brocktree was a crusty old soul. I recall my father telling me that he refused to eat at this big table, said he needed a spear to reach for things from the other end. So one day he made a table of his own, just big enough for him to sit at and handy, so that his bread and cheese and ale were all close to paw. It’s out in the kitchen. Grandfather loved the heat from the oven. Besides, he used to dip his bread into any pans of sauce that were cooking. He liked it out there.”