Blackbriar Read online

  “Well,” said Philippa, as she handed Lark a large, heavy plate piled high with everything, “why don’t the two of you tell me what you were whispering about while I was in the kitchen.”

  Lark put down her plate and stared silently at the great steaming mound of potatoes. Danny played with his fork.

  “Well?” Philippa said. She passed Danny a plate with even more food on it, and fixed him with a penetrating stare.

  Danny set the plate in front of him. How am I going to eat all this? he thought “Nothing,” he said. “We weren’t whispering.”

  “Oh, come now,” Philippa said. “Next you’ll be telling me it was Islington. The gall! There I am, slaving away in the kitchen, making an apple pie for you that I don’t even want, and you’re lazing about by the fire, telling secrets. It’s infuriating!’’ She sighed angrily, and finished serving herself.

  As she picked up her knife and fork she turned to Lark. “We’ll drop this for now,” she said. “I don’t want to embarrass our guest with a family squabble. But,” she said to Danny, “I’ll worm it out of you sometime, no doubt. I’ve always been able to before.”

  They all ate rapidly. Danny noticed that the food on Lark’s plate was disappearing just as quickly as his or Philippa’s. It would have been difficult for anyone to eat slowly, the food was all so delicious. The meat was juicy and rare, with a slight hint of garlic; the pudding was crusty on the outside, moist and greasy in the middle; the parsnips were tender and vaguely sweet; and the potatoes, though they were served plain and boiled, with nothing but salt and pepper, were nevertheless tasty and satisfying.

  “More?” Philippa said.

  “Just a bit of meat, please,” said Lark, lifting her plate. “It’s so good.”

  “More meat?” Philippa sounded shocked. “My dear girl, this meat has to last us for the next three days. We’re not rolling in wealth, you know. Have some more potatoes.”

  “Oh, no thank you. I’m really not—”

  “Nonsense,” Philippa said, picking up Lark’s plate herself and piling potatoes onto it. “Potatoes are very good for you. Full of vitamins and minerals, make you laugh and play. And here,” she added, “I think I can find a little sliver of meat to go with them.”

  Lark stared for a moment at the plate set before her, then resignedly picked up her fork.

  “You’ll have more meat tomorrow, Danny,” Philippa said, “but I know you want more potatoes.” He handed her the plate without a word. Philippa then put plenty of potatoes on her own plate.

  Her form of etiquette usually required that she keep some sort of conversation going during a meal. Tonight, however, Philippa was obviously preoccupied, and all the potatoes were finished with hardly a word passed between them. While Philippa brooded, Lark and Danny cleared the table and brought on the next course. But by the time everyone had a large helping of salad and a piece of warm bread with butter and sharp cheese, Philippa had reached the point where she could no longer keep her thoughts to herself.

  Just as she set her fork down to speak, Islington trotted in with something in his mouth. Philippa always left the front door open for him, so that he could come and go as he pleased. (She seemed to be impervious to cold, and naturally assumed that everyone else was the same.) The cat jumped onto Philippa’s lap, then up onto the table, where he deposited a tiny, quivering brown creature.

  “What have you got there, darling?” Philippa cooed. She watched the stunned vole stagger helplessly about beside her plate, then gingerly picked up the little animal by its tail. “An omen,” she said, holding it out to Danny. “Please take this poor creature outside.”

  “If anybody happens to come by here in a week or so, we may be in the same state as that vole,” Philippa was saying to Lark as Danny returned to his place.

  “You mean you want to stay?” Danny said. “You’ve decided to stay?”

  “I never said we were going to leave. Of course I want to stay. It’s going to take an awful lot to get me to leave this house . . . I feel so at home here . . .”

  “Oh, it’s so much nicer than at my house,” Lark said. “I wish I could stay here all the time.”

  “How sweet of you,” Philippa said tonelessly.

  “Even with some unknown person sneaking around and building fires?” Danny said.

  “I’ll get a new lock,” said Philippa. “And mind you, I’m not guaranteeing a thing. It all depends on what else happens, and how successfully we can manage to deal with the situation. And by that I do not mean that you should go snooping and prying about. Oh, I’m not so dim-witted that I can’t make a good guess at what you were whispering about before. I can tell that you two have the idea that you’re these brilliant child detectives or something, and that this so-called ‘mystery’ seems like an adventure to you”—Danny started to interrupt, but she waved him down—“and that’s just the kind of attitude that will get us in real trouble. If we keep people out of here, and let them see that we don’t care what they do as long as it doesn’t affect us, then perhaps they will learn to leave us alone. But if you go getting involved in things that aren’t your business, it will never work out.”

  “But what did we do wrong?” Danny said.

  “Nothing, yet. It’s your whole attitude that makes me so angry. And I am angry. I know you don’t have the courage or the nerve to get into anything really dangerous, but I just hope you realize that it’s exciting just to live in a place like this, you don’t need to look for adventures. If things don’t work out here, it won’t be my fault. Eat your salad.”

  Lark and Danny washed the dishes; Philippa didn’t want to put her burned hand in greasy water. They began to giggle as they worked. Philippa’s remarks hadn’t been particularly pleasant or humorous, but at least they indicated that she was no longer thinking of leaving; and Lark and Danny both felt rather light-headed with relief. Everything seemed funny: the gurgle of the faucet, the dainty flowers on the plates, the glass Lark almost dropped. “Whoops!” she whispered, and they giggled all the more. Danny knew that they should try to calm down; Philippa, nursing her hand in the living room, was still angry, even after her outburst; and their mirth, which excluded her, would make her feel even worse. But he could not help himself. When she called to them, her voice tense and bitter, to take the pie out of the oven (they were to eat it in the living room, by the fire), he made a face at her through the wall, and he and Lark couldn’t keep from laughing. How funny it all was; how funny that she should be so serious. The room spun with their hysteria as Lark bent down and opened the oven door. Her hands were soapy, the pie was hot, and before she knew it, it was flattened upside down on the kitchen floor.

  “Oh, no!” she gasped. It was too much. Clutching their sides, they rolled against the sink in helpless, hilarious agony.

  Almost at once, Philippa was standing in the kitchen doorway. The instant they saw her face, their laughter died. “Oh,” Lark stammered, “oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Philippa’s lips were shaking. “And just what is so bloody funny about ruining something I slaved over? What, may I ask?”

  “We can eat it anyway,” Danny said.

  “We cannot eat it anyway!” Her eyes glistened. “Oh, you . . . you monsters!” she shouted. “I can’t bear the sight of you!” She turned from the kitchen, dashed loudly up the stairs, and slammed her bedroom door.

  When the kitchen floor had been scrubbed and the dishes finished, Lark and Danny sat for a while in the large, dark living room. The firelight danced across the beamed ceiling and into their remorseful, downcast faces. Lark, they both knew, couldn’t have made a worse impression.

  Then Danny remembered about their visitor the night before, and, eager for a chance to make conversation, told her what had happened, and who Mr. Creech had thought the strange man was.

  “Well,” she said when he had finished, “he didn’t actually say he’d seen Mary Peachy.”

  “But he said he thought it might be her. And her name was ob
viously carved there about three hundred years ago.”

  “Well, I don’t actually know very much about Lord Harleigh, hardly anyone does, but he’s supposed to be quite batty. The one thing I do know is something that happened to my father once, and even that isn’t much.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, a few years ago, Lord Harleigh must have heard that my father was living here, and sent word that he wanted to commission my father to do some kind of painting for him. My father was quite pleased about it, since Lord Harleigh lives in the local manor house and must have a lot of money. He left whistling”—she paused, and her voice dropped,—“and came back only about an hour later, looking pale and shaken. He had a drink at once, and told me the commission was off.”

  “But why? Wouldn’t he tell you?”

  “He said he’d changed his mind, he’d rather do his own work, and we really didn’t need the money. Which wasn’t true, we did need the money quite badly then.”

  “But what made him change his mind? Don’t you know?”

  “All I know is that he looked . . . frightened. I’d never seen him look that way before. And he wouldn’t talk about it.”

  Danny thought again of Lord Harleigh’s voice, and felt his skin crawl. For a moment they sat and watched the fire without speaking. It was almost out now, and the room was so dark that he could hardly see Lark sitting close beside him. The wind rattled at the front door.

  “Maybe we should go to bed,” he said, standing up.

  “Yes,” Lark said, looking toward the dark part of the room, “I suppose that would be a good idea.”

  Very soon they were huddled in their beds under piles of blankets. The moment Danny closed his eyes he was asleep.

  * * *

  There were figures all around, vague and shadowy but with distinct livid faces. They were moaning softly, painfully. They were sprawling on the floor, crouching in corners, leaning against the walls. Danny stepped through them carefully, trying not to touch them, avoiding their eyes. The room seemed endless, but in the distance there was a window, a window filled with bright yellow light. He had to reach it. But the people kept getting in his way. His foot brushed against someone’s head and the grinning, puffy face lolled over. A heavy body toppled against him and almost knocked him down. The window was getting closer, but the bodies around him were thicker and seemed to be pulling at him. He struggled against them, feeling the warm, moist touch of their flesh at every step. Outside the window he could see the view from the ridge, the Black Swan, and fields rolling clearly into the distance. It was spring, and everything was green. Just as he put his hand on the windowsill he heard a woman’s laugh, and the window went black. He was lost. The laughter echoed all around him.

  And as he struggled, moaning, to consciousness, the laughter was still there. The same laughter he had heard the other night. This time, too, it faded away quickly, but remained just long enough to leave him wondering again if it had been part of the dream, or if it had been real. He drew his head under the blankets and pressed his body against the wall. He was afraid, but not terrified as he had been the last time. Half asleep, he was able to keep from thinking about what the laughter could mean. He only knew that it was pleasant laughter, gay, mischievous. He somehow felt that he would like the girl who laughed that way.

  When he closed his eyes the dream ran clearly through his mind. He had been in the living room downstairs, but the room had been much longer, and he remembered the feeling of not getting anywhere as he walked and walked. Just before he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep he realized that in the dream the cellar door had been new, the hinges shiny. And there were no names on the door at all.

  13

  Then, for a while, things seemed to quiet down. Of course there were all the little, unexpected events that naturally occur when city dwellers move to a primitive, secluded house. Lil got stuck in the mud during a heavy rain and Philippa and Danny had to subsist on potatoes and canned molasses for three days. (Philippa didn’t mind as much as she pretended.) The two of them made the awful discovery that it was an absolute necessity to empty the large metal can in the outhouse every week or so. This involved digging a deep hole in some out-of-the-way corner of the yard, then lugging the heavy can, its contents slopping over at the edges, all the way from the outhouse to the hole, then averting one’s face and dumping it all into the hole, then filling up the hole, then washing out the can with water from the rainwater tank, then returning it to the outhouse again. Philippa tried to make the tiny room a little more pleasant by filling it with fragrant pine branches, and she pasted up some magazine pictures of youths on Greek vases.

  At first, bathing too made them both secretly yearn for London plumbing, but as time went on they actually began to enjoy the ritual of it. There was a large white enamel hip bath in Philippa’s bedroom. To use it, all their little pots had to be filled with water and heated in the kitchen. Then, one by one (they hadn’t yet bought a pail), each pot was carried up the winding stairs and dumped into the tub, filling the room with clouds of steam. It was worth it all, though, to rip off one’s clothes in the frigid atmosphere, then plunge into the heavenly, scalding water. Philippa learned to have her largest pot always full of water on the stove, so that in the morning, and at any other time when the icy well water was too much to bear, a bit of hot water would be ready.

  Daily rituals were something they had to get used to. Danny was awakened every morning by the sound of Philippa pouring hot water into the small washbasin in his room. Then there was the awful moment of jumping out of his warm bed into the freezing morning air. The room was much colder than his bedroom in London had been, but somehow, perhaps because he knew that whatever comfort they would have during the day depended on the tasks that only he could perform, he had little trouble getting out of bed. He would rapidly pull on long woolen underwear, splash the steaming water on his hands and face, then hurry down to the cellar landing and immediately begin to pump. At first he hated this, but soon he discovered it was the best way to wake himself up, and even began to enjoy trying to do at least one more stroke every day. By breakfast time he was ravenous. In London it had been a struggle to face his single egg, but here he always ate at least three of the delicious country ones, and mounds of thick, charred toast.

  Then, out under the gray sky, still palely streaked with early-morning color, he would wander among the heaving, sighing trees, his face stinging with the cold, and pick up pieces of dead wood scattered over the ground. Occasionally he would come upon a whole dead tree, and feeling very woodsmanlike (he only attempted the thinnest ones), he would either pull it down, or hack at it with the little ax. He loved watching them crash noisily to the ground through the other tree branches, but it was even more satisfying to stagger back to the house, to Philippa’s cries of praise, with the trunk on his shoulder and the whole length of it dragging along behind him.

  By the light of the Aladdin lamp, he would study at the round wooden table in front of the fire. He had done reasonably well at school in London, but it was due more to the way he could figure out just what the teacher wanted than to actual hard work. He had always been drowsy and inattentive in class, frequently even falling asleep in geometry, his closed eyes hidden by his hand. But here, whether from the invigorating cold air, or the strenuous exercise (something almost completely unknown to him before), his mind was unusually alert. History seemed much more real to him, because now he could more clearly imagine what it must have been like to be alive in other times. Latin, and even math, were easier to concentrate on. And not only did he feel more alert, but for the first time in his life his mind was more concerned with what was actually going on, less apt to drift off into some vague dreamworld.

  Lunch was usually eaten standing up in the kitchen, and consisted of a thick and crumbly ham or cheese sandwich and a mug of hot, milky tea. Afterward Danny would deal with any outdoor chores that were left. Frequently there were big pieces of wood to saw up into logs. On som
e days, after a heavy wind, he would have to gather up brush and twigs scattered over the yard, breaking them up to use for kindling, and prop up the lopsided arbor by the door. This was the time to carry coal up from the rapidly diminishing pile in the cellar, and to fill the lamps and the little kitchen burner with smelly oil. He always did this on the outside table which Lark had first used, but now he covered it carefully with newspaper to keep the spilled oil from seeping into the wood, for both he and Philippa were looking forward to the time when they would be able to eat outside.

  Islington had his job too, and he enjoyed it thoroughly. Much of the time he was nowhere to be seen, but then he would suddenly appear, dashing madly past the house or inside it at the heels of a frantic, squealing little mouse or vole. He enjoyed playing games with the poor creatures, and would chase one into a corner and then just sit there, staring at the quivering ball of fur, or bat it violently about with his paws. Sometimes he would eat it, but most often he just trotted upstairs with the body in his mouth and dropped it on Philippa’s bed as a gift, and to show her how useful he was being. It was a rare day that she didn’t find one or more of them sprawled out on her pillow when she opened her eyes in the morning.

  When his afternoon chores were over, and his studying for the most part was out of the way, Danny liked to wander across the hill. The tumuli, with their odd aura of magnificent bleakness and elemental, almost supernatural power, drew him frequently; and he would spend many hours there with no idea of how much time was going by. He loved it there on the rare sunny days, when he could see the ocean, and cloud shadows would fly, undulating, over the hills and valleys spread below. He loved it too when it was dark and threatening, when distant trees would toss and sway and the wind keened all around him.

  Once, when a storm was approaching, he couldn’t bear to leave, but stood up on one of the mounds and watched as the black clouds and silvery rain swept toward him from the sea. The thunder seemed more passionate here, like the expression of some gargantuan rage, and the rain was a million speeding fingers, brittle and cold, drenching him instantly. Lightning reached out at the villages like palsied hands, but Danny did not move, feeling somehow protected by the mystical power of the tumuli. And the storm passed over him quickly, leaving him strangely breathless, his heart pounding and his spirits surging inside him. Philippa was almost wild when he got home, his clothes plastered to his shivering body. She was as wet as he, for she had been running out into the yard to call him, then dashing back inside at every loud clap of thunder.