1
Frans Receives A Mysterious Letter
And now the story has begun
This is one

It was boiling hot, even though the windows and the door
into the corridor were all open. The children had been silent for
an hour, but that probably had more to do with the heat than
with the tongue-lashing their teacher had given them at the
beginning of the afternoon. Now that they’d nearly all finished
the dull grammar exercises he’d told them to do, the noise was
creeping back, little by little – whispers, a cough, quiet giggles,
feet shuffling, desks creaking, paper rustling.
Frans van der Steg, sitting at his desk on the platform at the
front of the classroom, tutted and looked up. His stern look
didn’t make much impression on the class though, perhaps in
part because his spectacles had slipped down to the tip of his
nose. But he didn’t say anything. He simply wasn’t in the mood.
In the class of first-years at the end of the corridor, the little
ones were singing.
Do you know the Seven, the Seven,
Do you know the Seven Ways?
What a tedious tune, thought Frans van der Steg.
People say that I can’t dance,
But I can dance like the King of France.
This is one…
“Well, I know I certainly couldn’t dance at this tempo,” he said
out loud. “By the time they get to seven, I could have counted
to a hundred.”
The buzz and bustle in the classroom increased, but Frans
banged his hand on the desk and put a stop to it before it
became a din. Twenty-five pairs of eyes looked at him. Frans
stared back and then pretended to go on marking the books
in front of him. He looked at the red line he’d drawn beneath
the title of Marian’s essay, THE SEKRIT TRESURE, and gloomily
wondered why he tried so hard to teach his students to spell.
As he glanced at his watch, he heard Maarten’s voice: “Sir?”
Frans van der Steg looked up again. He still wasn’t used to
being called “sir”. He hadn’t been working in this village for
long, and in town he’d just been “Mr Van der Steg”. What he
should have said to Maarten was: “Did I give you permission to
speak?” But instead he said, “What is it, Maarten?”
The chattering began again. The children could tell their
teacher wasn’t really angry with them anymore, and besides…
“It’s twenty-five past three,” said Maarten.
Twenty-five past three was packing-up time, and Frans van
der Steg’s group of ten- and eleven-year-olds could pack up faster
than any other class. It had been like that almost since the first
day back to school after the summer holidays. At first, the class
had been very noisy when twenty-five past three came around,
but that hadn’t lasted for long. Kai, one of the most boisterous
boys in the class, had – accidentally on purpose – dropped a big
box of coloured pencils, much to his classmates’ secret delight.
Mr Van der Steg had just shaken his head and said with a serious
look on his face, “Kai, Kai, you probably think there’s no harm
done and it’ll be easy enough to pick up the pencils and tidy
them away, but I’ve seen for myself the terrible consequences
of such clumsiness. A friend of mine once did the same thing,
only it wasn’t pencils he dropped, but two whole armfuls of
lances and spears.”
Kai had just gaped at his teacher, but Maarten, who always
spoke without being spoken to, had squawked, “Huh? Lances
and spears? But how come?”
“Lances and spears,” his teacher had repeated, “with sharp
iron points, which don’t break as easily as pencil points. It made
such an incredible din! And it had to happen just as we were
sneaking through the palace at night…”
“Palace? What palace?”
“The King of Torelore’s palace. We were caught like rats
in a trap. We’d worked so hard to steal those spears from the
armoury. And then that idiot let them go crashing to the floor!
Well, of course, everyone woke up: the King of Torelore, the
Queen of Torelore, and all their soldiers with their sabres. And
then the fun really started…”
As the teacher continued his tale, you could have heard
a pin drop. But when the bell went, the class exploded with
questions. “And then? What happened next?!”
Their teacher couldn’t let them go home until they’d
heard how he’d managed to escape from the deepest dungeon
in the royal palace, where he was tied up with thick ropes
and guarded by a hungry lion, could he? But Frans van der
Steg had simply told Kai to pick up the pencils and sent
them home with a promise to continue the story another
day.
And he’d done exactly that. He’d been teaching the class
for three weeks now and, at the end of every day, from twentyfive
past three to half past, as they packed up, he told them a
story, and on Saturday mornings, when the children also had
lessons, the stories went on for much longer, sometimes for
as long as three quarters of an hour.
His class had heard the tale of his adventures in the Kingdom
of Torelore, and his account of his journey back home, complete
with a shipwreck and a desert island. They knew all about his
stay in the haunted castle, and about the time he’d faced the
Abominable Snowman in the Himalayas.
“But it’s not true, is it?” Maarten sometimes said. “You’re
just making it up.”
The other children knew that too, but that didn’t make
them any less interested in their teacher’s tales. Somehow,
in their imaginations, he was two people – one was just their
teacher, Mr Van der Steg, but the other was a kind of fearless
knight, with hair like flames, FRANS THE RED, a hero who
could take on anyone.
And now the only thing that could save this hot, boring
afternoon was a new adventure. Yesterday Frans the Red had
returned safe and sound from an expedition to the rainforests
of Urozawa, and he had a few minutes left today to set off on
his next escapade.
Mr Van der Steg straightened his glasses, ran his fingers
through his hair and then slowly shook his head.
“Um, chaps,” he said (he always called them that, even
though there were girls in the class too), “I’m tired.” He
knew he was disappointing his students, but he really had no
idea what to tell them. “The thing is…” he continued, “I’m
waiting for…”
“For what, sir?” (there’s no need to explain who asked that
question).
“For a letter,” said the teacher. It was the first answer that
came to him. “A very important letter,” he added. “It might
arrive this evening. The sender is… something of an enigma…
And I hope,” he concluded, “that it’ll be the beginning of a new
adventure, with a mysterious and perilous mission.”
They’ll have to make do with that, he thought. When all the
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