Blackbriar Read online

  Philippa glanced at him suspiciously. “But you’re the one who didn’t want to come here in the first place. What’s made you change your mind? Good God, there’s still so much we don’t know about the place! Why was that awful wooden figure there, for instance? No, I’m sure this isn’t the complete answer. I’m sure we’ve only tapped the surface. It would take more than this plague business to make everyone hate Blackbriar so much.”

  “But that’s another reason why I want to stay. I’ve got to find out the rest of the story.”

  Philippa flipped on the headlights, murmuring, “Now we’ll have to drive up there in the dark.” They drove on in silence until they reached the Black Swan. She pulled into the driveway. “I’m going in for a drink,” she said. “You can come in with me if you want.”

  10

  It was dark inside the public house, and hot, and the air hung with smoke. There was the heavy pub smell of rich beer and cigars, and the hum of glasses and conversation. Behind the stained mahogany bar, bottles of every size and shape were arranged in pyramids against dark wooden columns and oval mirrors reflecting a darker, smokier room. The heavy beams on the ceiling were hardly discernible, and the fire blazing in the stone fireplace, which was big enough for a man to walk into, flickered over the groups of people huddled around the bar, standing in corners, seated on black leather window seats or at the round wooden tables scattered about the room.

  They made their way to the bar. Danny felt slightly uncomfortable, never having been in such a place before, but the bearded bartender hardly seemed to notice him at all. “What’ll it be, madam?” he asked Philippa, wiping off the counter with a white cloth.

  “Gin and French, please,” she said, “but only a drop of French.”

  “And for you, my lad? A ginger beer? A lemonade?”

  “Some lemonade, please.”

  Philippa paid for the drinks, and they made their way to a table in the corner near the fireplace, where no one would be able to hear them. The tabletop was comfortably scarred and stained, and there was a large black ashtray in the center. Philippa took a sip of her drink and lit a cigarette. “We can’t stay long,” she said. “I’ll just have this one drink. But I do need something to help me face that place now.” She took a nervous puff and stared into the fire.

  His elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands, Danny studied her face. In the firelight it looked soft and worn, the skin loose, her eyelids drooping in a way that was weary rather than just tired. He wondered if it was wise to have told her what he had learned about Blackbriar.

  She took another slow sip, and a long column of ash fell from her cigarette onto the floor. “If we leave here,” she said, “we’ll have nowhere else to go, nowhere.”

  Danny sat up so quickly he almost knocked over his chair. He hardly had time to be amazed at his own concern as he leaned toward her across the table and said in an intense whisper, “Leave here? But why? Just because it was a pesthouse once a million years ago? Just because some people died there? People die everyplace. People had the plague everywhere! How can you mean it?” He had never argued with her so vehemently before; until now, he had never cared enough about anything.

  “I hardly know what I mean,” she said slowly. “I can’t bear the thought of moving again, I can’t bear the thought of looking for another place to live. But I wonder if I can bear to go on living there. . . .”

  “But—” Danny sighed and fell loosely back into his chair. How could she be so stodgy and unadventurous? He searched his brain for something nasty to say to her.

  But before he had a chance to say anything he felt a light tap on his shoulder, and turned to find Lark standing behind him. “Oh, hullo,” he said, getting up awkwardly. “I was wondering if you would be here.” She was still wearing jeans and the thick black sweater, and her hair was no neater than it had been the day before on the windy hillside.

  “I didn’t expect you to be,” she said. “Why should anybody be in this place when they could be up there with just the wind and the trees all around, in your wonderful house? Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Right. Philippa, this is Lark. I met her at the tumuli yesterday. And this is Mrs. Sibley, the lady I live with.”

  “Hello,” Philippa said. She turned to Danny. “You didn’t tell me you’d met anybody yesterday.”

  “I—I guess there just wasn’t time,” Danny said lamely, trying to hide his embarrassment. “I mean, so many other things happened last night that—”

  “I’m very glad to meet you,” Lark interrupted, somewhat timidly, Danny noted.

  “Why don’t you sit down,” Philippa said coldly. “Danny, pull up a chair for her.”

  He was ashamed to be told what to do in front of his independent friend; but there was nothing he could do but pull back a chair and then flop carelessly back into his.

  “I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since I met Danny,” Lark began, leaning forward. “I knew I would like anybody who liked Blackbriar, especially someone who would come all the way from London to live there.”

  “You might not like her, then,” Danny said. “She wants to leave.”

  “Oh, come now,” Philippa said. “You’re exaggerating, and you’re not telling the whole story. The truth is,” she went on, turning to Lark, “that I have been wondering, just wondering, if we really should go on living there. You must know the strange attitude people have about the place. They seem either disgusted or afraid, and so secretive, all of which does have some relevance, after all. And now it turns out that Blackbriar has a really rather macabre history, as Danny discovered today.”

  “What did you find out?” Lark asked quickly.

  “Oh, it was a pesthouse,” Danny said, trying to make it sound boring and ordinary. “When the Great Plague came in the seventeenth century that’s where they put the people from Dunchester who caught it. I told you about that door, remember? All the names on it must be the people who died there.”

  Lark gave a long, low whistle and slowly leaned back in her chair. “I see what you mean,” she said to Philippa. “That’s about as ghastly as you can get.” To Danny she said, “How clever of you to find that out! And in less than a week as well. I’ve been here for practically as long as I can remember, and I had no idea it had been used for that.”

  Danny felt a quick wave of pleasure. It was the first time he had ever been complimented for something he had done completely on his own, perhaps because he had never really done anything on his own before.

  “Yes, yes,” Philippa said. There was an unpleasant edge to her voice. “I’m sure we all appreciate how very clever Danny is. But I don’t understand why no one will tell us anything about the place.”

  While Lark was explaining to Philippa that the people in this part of the country were really quite secretive, Danny suddenly remembered that he hadn’t told her not to mention the chanting on the tumuli to Philippa. Now she was probably going to say something about it, and Philippa would be furious that he hadn’t told her, as well as even more convinced that they shouldn’t stay. Every time Lark opened her mouth Danny was sure her next words would give it away. Silently he begged her not to mention it, while he desperately tried to think of some way to keep her quiet without making Philippa suspicious.

  But in a moment Philippa finished her drink and stood up. “I’m going to the loo,” she said. “And then we’ve really got to get back. There’s the firewood to find, the oven to light, the lamps to fill, the dinner to cook, poor Islington’s been cooped up in that car practically all day . . .” And she moved off into the smoke.

  Danny breathed deeply. “I kept thinking you were going to tell her about all those people at the tumuli!”

  “Oh, didn’t you tell her? But you shouldn’t have worried. I got the drift of what was going on. She seemed to be on the verge of wanting to leave, so it would have been stupid of me to remind her of something like that, even if she already knew. I suppose it was wise
of you not to tell her.”

  “It certainly seems that way now. But listen, there’s this thing I forgot to tell you the other day.” And he described the doll, told about Philippa’s reaction to it and how he had secretly hidden it in his room.

  “I’m dying to go up there now,” Lark said. “I can’t wait to see all these things you’ve been telling me about. I wonder if it would be possible . . .”

  “I can ask her,” Danny said, and then added quickly, “and anyway, it’s my house too. She has no right to refuse—”

  Lark motioned to him to be quiet, for Philippa was approaching the table. They both looked up guiltily, but she seemed too preoccupied to notice. Quickly Danny said, “Philippa, could Lark come back to the house with us now?”

  Philippa looked at Lark doubtfully. “Well, you’d have to spend the night. I’m not driving back down again, you know. If you think your father would approve . . .”

  “I’m sure he would.”

  “Well, in that case, I suppose it’s all right.”

  “Oh, thank you so much! That’s super. I’ve just got to go and tell my father. I mean ask.”

  “And you must be sure to tell him precisely where it is we live,” Philippa said, as the three of them started for the door, “in case he has any objections to your spending the night in that house.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he won’t worry about it.”

  Danny pulled open the heavy, iron-studded door, and they stepped out into the starry night. The air was icy, as clear and brittle as glass. “We just live a few yards from here,” Lark said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She dashed off into the darkness.

  “Whew! It does feel good to be able to breathe again, after being in that smoky hole for so long.”

  “It’s a nice pub,” Philippa said, climbing into the car. “You didn’t have to come in, you know. And you might as well stop sulking and whining. It’s not going to do any good. And besides, I was just thinking aloud. I still don’t understand why you’ve suddenly decided to like being here—although perhaps I do now,” she added slowly, looking back for a moment in the direction Lark had gone. She paused, then went on quickly. “But be that as it may, I haven’t decided to leave—yet.”

  Danny was eager to turn the conversation away from Lark. “It would be nice if there was a heater in this thing,” he said, as she started the car and turned on the lights.

  “Oh, do shut up, will you? It’s going to be hard enough to get up there in the pitch darkness as it is, without your nasty little comments. Not that I expect you to behave so childishly in front of your friend. Which reminds me, I think you’d better get in the back so that there’ll be room for her. And you can keep a grip on the lamps and things so that they won’t get broken on the way up.”

  Sighing audibly, but leaving the blanket on the front seat, Danny climbed into the back. He tried to arrange himself in a comfortable position but found that the back was full of hard edges and sharp places that stuck into him painfully. “She can take care of Islington,” he said. “She has the blanket, and I’ll have to be holding on to all this stuff back here.”

  They heard quick footsteps on the gravel, and in a moment Lark poked her head through the front window. “This must be the right car,” she said brightly as she climbed in. “I adore Land Rovers.”

  “Would you hold Islington?” Philippa said. “Here, put this blanket on your lap first, he gets a bit panicky on the track and hangs on to people’s legs with his claws, as I’m sure Danny will be glad to describe to you in gory detail.”

  “Great fun back there, isn’t it,” Lark said to him, turning around in her seat.

  “Mmmm,” said Danny.

  “What was your father’s reaction when you asked him about spending the night at Blackbriar?” Philippa asked as she turned onto the dirt lane that wound up the hill. “I assume he said yes.”

  “He did. I’d already told him about meeting Danny at the tumuli, so he knew I knew the people who were living there. He didn’t say much, just told me not to get into any mischief. He did ask me what you were like, but when I told him you had been a school secretary he seemed satisfied.”

  “Hmph!” Philippa said. “Secretaries can be quite wild, you know.” The engine groaned and she shifted with a lurch into a lower gear.

  On the field, the moonlight was almost as bright as day. The car swayed across the open expanse of land like a small boat rocking on a silver-green sea. The night sky shimmered above them, more huge and endless than in day; but the other hilltops, like mysterious black-crowned islands, seemed to enclose them in their own lonely world, cutting them off from all that was comforting and ordinary down below. They were all eager, Danny felt, to get to the relative security of the house.

  But when they reached the house and saw the firelight flickering in the windows, the pale, moonlit smoke curling from the chimney, Islington was the only one who seemed to want to get out of the car.

  11

  “Well,” Philippa said finally, a slight tremor in her voice, “the perfect end to this wonderful day. Now what do we do?”

  Islington scratched at the door, eager to begin his nightly mouse hunt around the yard.

  “You’re sure you didn’t leave a fire burning this morning?” Lark asked.

  “I would never leave a fire burning in an empty house. And even if I had, it would have burned out hours ago.”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then, turning to face Danny (who was waiting for her to decide what to do), Philippa said, “Well? I thought you wanted to find out all about this place. Didn’t I hear you make some remark about how ridiculous it was to be afraid?”

  “What I said was . . .” Danny began, and then stopped. They were both staring at him. What would Lark think of him if he didn’t do something? He sighed. “Well,” he said peevishly, “how can I get out of the car unless somebody moves?”

  Lark opened the door and Islington sprang through it, disappearing immediately into some bushes. Lark stepped out cautiously, and Danny followed her.

  “What are you going to do, then?” Philippa whispered.

  “Just . . . I don’t know. Look in the windows, I suppose.”

  “I’ll wait for you here. And you two had better be careful.”

  Danny started quietly across the yard, Lark close behind him. He felt helpless and exposed, and every step was an effort. But he hated to think of what Philippa would say if he backed down, especially in front of Lark; and some- how he was able to put each foot forward mechanically, trying not to think what he might find.

  Finally he reached the house. Holding his breath, he peered through one of the living room windows.

  The fire, which looked freshly built, only dimly illuminated the room. But although there were some dark corners, Danny was sure no one was there. “Let’s look through the other windows,” he whispered. They slunk around to the other side, and from this viewpoint the room seemed as empty as before. Silently, they peered through the other ground-floor windows. All the rooms were empty.

  “But there could still be somebody upstairs,” Lark whispered, as they started back to the car. “And if anybody is there, they’ll know we’re back. That car makes an awful lot of noise in the quiet up here.”

  “Well?” Philippa said, leaning out of the car win- dow, “well?”

  “Nothing,” said Danny.

  “Nobody,” said Lark.

  “Then the only thing we can do now is go inside,” Philippa said. Do we have to? Danny almost whined, but stopped himself in time. Philippa twisted around and struggled with the packages in the back of the car, finally unearthing a huge flashlight. “We can use this as a weapon as well as a light source,” she said, stepping out of the car and then smoothing her skirt nervously. “Shall we get started, then?”

  The key in the lock seemed to make an incredible amount of noise, and Danny was sure the door had never squeaked so loudly. Philippa switched on the flashlight. Its yellow beam darted into all the corners, exposing
no crouching figures. “Shhhh!” she hissed as she led them into the kitchen. “Be as quiet as possible so we can hear any other noises there might be.”

  Danny hung behind her nervously. He thought of their conversation in the car, and wondered why he had spoken so bravely, without really thinking about how frightening the house could be. He also wondered what he would have done in the present situation if Philippa had not been there. All at once the London apartment did not seem so bad.

  The kitchen was untouched, not a dish or a towel out of place. The dining room table was still covered with the crumbs Danny had forgotten to wipe away after breakfast, and as they approached the door to the stairway Philippa managed to shoot him an annoyed glance.

  She pulled open the door as slowly and silently as she could, then paused for a long moment, listening. There were creaks, and something that sounded like scratching, but it was hard to tell in an old house which noises were natural and which were not. Finally she started up the stairs, flinging the beam ahead of her. Lark and Danny were just behind.

  Danny’s bedroom was empty. As they stepped into the middle room Philippa whispered to Lark, “This is where you’ll be sleeping.” This room was empty too. Philippa’s bedroom was the largest and most shadowy. Hardly cautious anymore, she flashed the light around her. “Naturally, no one would be under the bed,” she said, and they all peered into the cavern beneath the sagging mattress.

  There was a quick scuffling behind them. Philippa spun around the light. Suddenly Lark and Danny were clutching each other.