Time-Travel Bath Bomb Read Online Free PDF

of whistling, you would realise that the Hundred Years’ War in France is exactly what I’ve been talking about, Mr Nilly. For example, what did I just say about Joan of Arc?”
    “Joan of Arc,” Nilly repeated, scratching the sideburns by his left ear thoughtfully. “Hm, sounds familiar. A woman, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “A famous cancan dancer?”
    “Nilly!”
    “Okay, okay. Can you narrow it down for me a little?”
    Mrs Strobe sighed. “Joan of Arc was a nice, pious village girl. As a young girl she received a mysterious message to find the French crown prince, who was hiding somewhere in France, and help him.”
    “Sounds very familiar,” Nilly said. “She didn’t by any chance get the message on a postcard from Paris with a rare stamp on it from 1888, did she?”
    “What are you talking about? Joan of Arc’s message came from angels talking inside her head!”
    “Sorry, Mrs Strobe, just a short circuit in my tiny, and yet very complex, brain.”
    Nilly glanced over at Lisa, who had her head down on her desk and her hands over her head again.
    “It won’t happen again, Mrs Strobe,” Nilly said. “So, what happened to this Joan of Arc?”
    Mrs Strobe leaned over her desk.
    “That is precisely what I was about to tell you. Joan of Arc found the crown prince and they fought the English together. That young teenage girl put on armour, learned to use a sword like a master and led the French troops into battle. To this day, she remains the great national heroine of France. Write that down, everyone!”
    “Wonderful!” Nilly exclaimed. “The good girl won. I love a story with a happy ending!”
    Mrs Strobe lowered her long, protruding nose so that it almost touched her desk and peered at the class over the top of her glasses.
    “Well, there are happy endings and there are happy endings. She was taken prisoner and sold to the English, who sentenced her to death for witchcraft. Then they invited all the inhabitants of Rouen to come to the Old Market Square, where they tied her to a stake, tossed wood on a bonfire, lit it . . .”
    There was a high-pitched, almost plaintive outcry from somewhere in the classroom, “. . . but then, just in the nick of time, the crown prince rescued her!”
    Everyone turned to look at Lisa, who was holding her hands over her mouth in horror. No one – not even Lisa – was used to Lisa having an outburst like that.
    “Look closely at the picture in your history book, Lisa,” Mrs Strobe said. “You can see the flames reaching all the way up to the top of Joan of Arc’s white dress. Does it look like she got rescued?”
    “No!” the class shouted in unison.
    “And she didn’t,” Mrs Strobe said. “She burned to death and they tossed her charred body into the river. Joan of Arc was nineteen years old.”
    Lisa looked at the illustration in her history book. The girl’s face reminded her of another face in another picture. The young Juliette Margarine in the sidecar of Doctor Proctor’s motorcycle. Lisa’s eyes teared up at the thought of the awful thing that had happened.
    “Of course the girl died,” Nilly said.
    Mrs Strobe took off her glasses. “Why do you say that, Nilly?”
    “To be a real hero, you have to be really dead.”
    The class laughed, but Mrs Strobe nodded at this. “Maybe so,” she mumbled. “Maybe so.”
    And, with that, the bell rang and even before Mrs Strobe got to the h in “have a good weekend”, the first student was out of the door. Because this was the last class on a Friday and now they were all free.
    Lisa was putting on her jacket out in the hallway when she overheard some of the other girls talking excitedly about some party or other that it seemed like they’d all been invited to. Except for her. And Nilly, of course. She’d heard them whispering about him too. That he was so little and strange and said and did such crazy things that they didn’t really understand.
    “Hi!”
    Nilly jumped up onto the bench next to her so