Free Fleeced by Julia Wills Page A

cameras and squawked into mobiles as beyond the room an alarm bell began clanging. Covering her ears, Rose looked back up at the stand.
    Filling the space where the caryatid had stood was a sheep – the biggest, baldest sheep she’d ever seen – and a dazed-looking boy of about her own age. Rose could hardly believe her eyes and couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to clamber up there.
    Kicking up its back hooves, the sheep freed itself of the curtain whilst the boy stood absolutely still, pink-faced with horror, staring at the shattered statue on the floor. Hardly surprising, thought Rose, not only had he helped demolish a precious artefact, but he also appeared to be dressed in what looked like a pillowcase, drawn in round the middle by a wide leather belt.
    Just then a guard in a grey shirt and trousers raced into the room, shouting at the tourists. Tall and thin with a fierce black moustache and hair that stuck out beneath his cap like a scrubbing brush, Rose recognised Eric, because, as she would have pointed out, you didn’t spend your entire life in a museum without getting to know everyone who worked there. He sprinted across the floor, scrabbledup onto the empty stand and threw his arms around the boy’s chest.
    “Gotcha!” he shouted, pinning the struggling boy to the spot. “Damaging the property of this ’ere museum is a chargeable offence!”
    The boy twisted and squirmed, his bare feet slipping over the smooth plinth as Eric pulled him onto the floor. Bleating wildly, the sheep leaped down, just as Ron, a second guard, chubby and breathless, lumbered into the room and rolled back his shirtsleeves. Fingers twitching, he pursued the sheep through a party of Japanese schoolgirls before chasing it into a cluster of old ladies. There was a
whumping
sound as copious handbags thumped the sheep, before it reappeared wearing a straw hat, trimmed with yellow roses, over its horns. Now blinded by the hat, it skidded into a pushchair, sending a teddy bear into the air. Two tiny pink fists waved furiously from under the canopy.
    Looking desperate, the sheep tossed the hat away and galloped past Rose. For a second she caught the look in its eyes: wild, angry… and something else.
    Intelligent?
    Rose blinked the weird thought away. And yet, she felt certain there was something different about the animal, quite apart from its size andbaldness and that sparkle of gold across its brow.
    Finally, the sheep gasped to a standstill and Ron, sensing his chance, seized a wooden chair that stood against the wall and walked towards it, brandishing the chair in front of him like a lion tamer. In response, the ram lifted its shoulders and lowered its head, snorting through flapping black nostrils.
    “Aries! No!” The tourists’ heads swung round like spectators at a tennis match as the boy shouted, straining against Eric’s hold. “Don’t do it!”
    Rose stared at the boy and then at the sheep.
    Aries?
    To her amazement, the sheep relaxed, lowered its shoulders and looked towards the boy.
    It’s behaving more like a dog than a sheep,
thought Rose.
Stranger still, as if it understands what the boy says.
And that, she reminded herself, was completely crazy.
    Ron set down the chair. “That’s better.”
    He walked through the sea of startled tourists to the spoilt plinth, unhooked the velvet crowd-rope and fashioned it into a makeshift lead.
    “Easy now,” he murmured, walking back towards the sheep with the rope held out boldly in front of him.
    Rose blinked, certain that the sheep rolled itseyes at the ceiling as Ron draped the rope around its neck. Holding the lead tight, Ron returned his attention to the boy.
    “You one of them protestors?” he barked. “Them that wants the British Museum’s marbles back in Greece again?”
    The boy looked confused.
    “Protestors?” gasped a nearby American lady and lifted her gigantic sunglasses off her nose for a better look. “I get it! That’s why they’re dressed up in