White Crow

by Marcus Sedgwick

  But, Lord, I swear upon your son’s name, that if you will not show me, then Dr Barrieux and I shall find out for ourselves.

  Today I was at the Hall, and the doctor and I spoke long and hard upon our quest. I have recorded before that our quest is to be a voyage into the unknown, but only today did this miraculous Frenchman reveal his full methods to me. We talked, nay, argued for an hour and more and then with a curse, he threw his hands in the air, would speak no more, and took me by the hand.

  Holy God!

  What I saw!

  For when our speaking came to a close, Dr Barrieux led me into the darkest bowels of Winterfold Hall, and there I beheld the dreadful apparatus with which our voyage will be made.

  1798, 9m, 19d.

  Last night I was plagued by night terrors. I scarce ever saw myself so weak and bereft as this night, and I could find no rest.

  I rose at four in the morning, abandoning the torture of my bed, and stumbled into the night, and the fresh air revived my senses.

  Deciding me to take a walk, I wandered the streets of

  Winterfold, and before I knew it, my feet were leading me to the Hall.

  As I approached, I saw why they had led me there.

  Despite the hour, a candle burned in a room on the ground floor, at the side of the house. I know this room to be the doctor’s study, and I made my way to the window and peered in.

  There sat the doctor, poring over some accounts I fancied. I tapped on the window and far from seeming surprised, the doctor turned his head, squinted, then lifted a hand and beckoned me in.

  I met him at the kitchen door and he led me into the drawing room, where the remains of a fire glowed in the grate.

  I beheld the doctor. A man of forty or fifty years on the earth, I could not tell which. His wig sat on the desk before him, and now I saw that he still owned a fine head of black hair, but peppered through with grey, as of one who has seen the troubles of the world. His skin is pallid, yet smooth, and I suppose he has kept indoors for most of his time. He has a fine nose, and strong eyebrows, and his stare is most fixed.

  He poured me a glass of port, and another of the same for himself, and bid me sit at the fireside.

  I did as I was invited, and suddenly, with one sip of the drink at this early hour, began to feel the weariness within me. But the doctor was speaking, speaking of matters both great and small. He spoke of his life, and I tried to heed him, but it became hard to distinguish wakefulness from sleep, and I drifted in and out of the room, my mind like a phantom in the dark.

  He spoke of his time in Paris. He had not been born there, but in some place to the south, a place of sunflower fields and walnut trees, he said, but I do not remember if he gave it a name. As a young man he studied natural philosophy, and his studies brought him inevitably to the great city of Paris, with all its philosophers, thinkers, poets, painters, musicians and lovers.

  He sampled some of each.

  I had grown extreme drowsy, but I know he was speaking of things close to him. All I can recall, is this. He got up from his chair, and went to a table in the corner of the room, returning with a small pair of portraits, two ovals in one frame. Though my ears seemed to have closed down, my eyes beheld a young woman, and a little girl. The woman was beautiful, with curling tumbling black hair, and the complexion of milk. She gazed from her portrait as if amused by something.

  In the other half of the frame sat the young girl. She is perhaps eight, a frail and weak-looking thing.

  They are mother and daughter, it is clear, and I did not perceive what the doctor was telling me, but he leaned over the chair in which I sat, holding out the portraits, urging me to look.

  Then I saw that tears were freely running down his face.

  One fell from the doctor’s cheek to mine, and I wiped it away.

  He said one word, of French, and it is a word that even I know.

  - Mort!

  Tuesday 27th July

  Rebecca and Ferelith swim and sunbathe, sunbathe and swim all afternoon. The sun is unrelenting, the sky is blue from one horizon to the other, the waves shush on the shingle, the tide slowly, slowly edges in, then by mid afternoon halts and starts its retreat.

  A group of three boys loiter nearby. They’re a little older than the girls, and Rebecca is relieved that Ferelith covers herself up a bit more as they come by. They make a few blunt remarks about the girls, and what they’d like to do with them, but soon get bored when neither shows any sign of reacting.

  ‘Idiots,’ mutters Ferelith from under her hat. ‘Is there any more water?’

  ‘All gone,’ Rebecca mutters dreamily. She’s been thinking about her life in London, feeling sorry for herself, enjoying feeling sorry for herself, and marvelling at how different things feel in Winterfold. Until Ferelith spoke she’d been imagining that it was Adam lying next to her on the beach, talking to her about music as he often did, tracing the line of her eyebrows with a fingertip, and the line of her lips.

  The spell is broken.

  She sits up and gazes out to sea. It shimmers in the heat haze, and she can taste that her lips are salty from the sea water.

  ‘We could go to that café,’ she nods her head back to the beach car park.

  ‘No way,’ says Ferelith. ‘It stinks in there. Let’s go to the pub and have some chips.’

  ‘The pub?’

  ‘Yeah, the pub. Haven’t you been there yet? It smells too, but in a better way.’

  ‘You’re really selling it,’ Rebecca says.

  They pull their clothes back on lazily, and saunter back into the village and into The Angel and The Devil. Ferelith chooses a quiet corner away from the bar, and a dumpy girl comes over, notepad in hand.

  She clearly knows Ferelith, but also clearly has no intention of saying any more than is necessary to her.

  ‘Two Cokes and a bowl of chips,’ Ferelith says, and the girl scribbles on her pad, not troubling to hide her scorn. She stomps off and Ferelith adds, ‘Think you can remember that?’

  ‘Shhh!’ hisses Rebecca. ‘She’ll spit in your Coke or something.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have the brains to even think of that.’

  ‘Doesn’t she like you?’

  ‘She was in my year at school.’

  ‘Was? Did she get excluded for being too grumpy?’

  ‘No, she didn’t leave. She doesn’t like me because she’s still there and I’m not.’

  ‘What do you mean? Did you get excluded?’

  ‘No, I left.’

  The dumpy girl returns with the Cokes and pretty much slams them onto the table top, spilling some.

  ‘Thanks, Melanie,’ Ferelith says, insincerely.

  Melanie has already plodded away and is trying to flirt with some boys at the bar, maybe even the ones who’d passed them on the beach earlier. They look over from time to time, one of them catches Rebecca’s eye.

  ‘What do you mean, you left?’ she asks, looking away.

  ‘Just that. Two years ago.’

  ‘You left school when you were fourteen?’

  This raises so many questions in Rebecca’s head that she doesn’t know which one to ask first.

  ‘I’d had enough of school. I did my A-levels, I couldn’t go to university, I came home, my mum went mad, Dad left. That’s all there is to know.’

  ‘Wait, wait, you did your A-levels when you were fourteen?’

  ‘Yes. After that I couldn’t be bothered any more.’

  ‘And you said, your mum . . .’

  ‘My mum went mad. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it, okay.’

  She sips her Coke and looks out of the window.

  ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned it in the first place,’ Rebecca says quietly, wondering why she feels the need to be tetchy. Maybe it’s just the heat that’s got to her.

  Melanie brings the bowl of chips over, and slopes off again. They’re undercooked and soggy and Ferelith fetches lots of ketchup and vinegar.

  ‘The
Angel’s finest fare,’ she says, drowning the chips. ‘Enjoy.’

  They start eating slowly, thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rebecca says. Then, ‘But where do you live? Who do you live with if you don’t have any parents?’

  Ferelith shrugs.

  ‘I live with this bunch of losers. It’s sort of a commune type thing. Big house at the end of the village, in Long Lane. They’re all drop-outs of one kind or another. Nobody has any money, everyone gets by somehow.’

  ‘Sounds great, really…what’s the word?’

  ‘The word you’re thinking of is bohemian.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘But it isn’t. It’s a hole.’

  Ferelith falls silent again, and Rebecca hunts for something to say.

  Almost accidentally, she hits the right thing.

  ‘This place is nice,’ she says, meaning the pub. And it is, it’s old world Englishness, the real thing, not reconstructed to look like it by some marketing men. ‘But the name is so weird.’

  Ferelith lights up.

  ‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of pubs called the The Angel, but The Devil, too? That’s odd.’

  ‘It’s . . . uncommon,’ she says, and grins. Then she leans in close to Rebecca and utters in a mock stage whisper, ‘But do you want to know the truth behind the name? Yes? Do you dare hear the truth?’

  ‘Ooh, Stop it, you’re scaring me,’ says Rebecca, playing along. Then she forces herself to look serious. ‘Very well. Do your worst! Tell me the awful and horrible truth behind it all!’

  Ferelith nods.

  Rebecca sees something flicker in her friend’s dark eyes, but she cannot tell what it is. Ferelith puts her hand on Rebecca’s, and their eyes meet.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, glancing at the others by the bar. ‘But not here. There’s somewhere better we can go.’

  The Warning

  I was glad to get out of the pub, anyway.

  I could see Melanie was up for making trouble, and on another day I might have enjoyed it, but I was thinking about Rebecca. I could see Tom Halter and his mates looking at her too often, as well.

  It was still hot, so we took the dog track beside the woods, past St Mary’s again.

  ‘You’re right,’ Rebecca said, pausing at the churchyard gate.

  I said, ‘I usually am,’ or some similarly lame thing. ‘But what about, this time?’

  ‘The church is better at night.’

  I nodded. She was reading the words on the tape across the path. She tutted.

  ‘You probably don’t want to look at that either, then,’ I said, pointing at the ‘Danger: Keep Out’ sign just inside the gate.

  She read it.

  ‘Yes, well, “entering the site” very probably is “liable to lead to injury and the danger of death.” You know, I seem to remember we danced on the altar. Isn’t that . . . what’s the word?’

  ‘Blasphemous?’

  ‘Yes. Isn’t that blasphemous?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know the exact rules, but I would think they probably include dancing on altars in the list of bad things. But then, I think it really depends on whether you believe in God. Don’t you?’

  Rebecca didn’t say anything. She seemed thoughtful, and I let her have her thoughts. For a while at least.

  I went on along the path round the far end of the churchyard, and she followed.

  She asked me if I believed in God.

  ‘I asked first,’ I said.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ she said, and we argued, until she gave in.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ve never really thought about it.’

  ‘That’s it?’ I asked. ‘All that fuss for “I’ve never really thought about it?”’

  She said she was just being honest, then she asked me again if I believed in God. I looked at the crucifix around her neck before answering, trying to think how to reply.

  ‘What do you think?’ I said eventually, and walked off.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ she said. ‘That’s not a proper answer.’

  Then we argued about that for a bit until I think she forgot that she hadn’t had an answer at all.

  I asked her if she had a boyfriend back in London.

  What she said was funny.

  No, what she did was funny.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, but she took forever to say it. Then there was another pause and I think she expected me to say something. I didn’t, I just waited for her to talk again.

  ‘He’s called Adam.’

  I thought about Adam. I had a picture of him in my head straight away, though I knew nothing about him. But I could see him. I knew the type, just a stupid dull boy, like Tom and his mates in the pub. She didn’t need him. I mean Rebecca didn’t need an idiot like that, she needed someone better.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Rebecca said.

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ I repeated. ‘I can tell there’s a problem.’

  ‘The problem is I’m stuck here.’

  She looked really angry.

  I thought she was going to be sick, or yell at me, but all she did was stop walking for a second, laugh once, and then start walking again.

  I took that to be the end of the conversation.

  We came to the turning where the path runs back inland to find the main road again, and Rebecca was heading in that direction when I called her back.

  ‘No, this way,’ I said pointing over the wall into the grounds of the Hall. I was trying not to think about Adam.

  I saw that look in her eye again.

  ‘Isn’t that trespassing?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Someone would have to live there for it to be trespassing, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘Where are we, anyway?’

  We were at Winterfold Hall.

  There’s a bit of wall that’s half collapsed and it’s easy to climb over. I hopped over, and waited for her to follow, and when she did, we walked through the grounds of the Hall to my favourite place. The grounds are really wild and it’s a great place to walk. You can see the remains of the old paths that lead through the trees, but they’re all overgrown and the surface has decayed and crumbled over the years.

  Weeds and vines cling to everything, ivy drips from every branch, and it’s always deathly quiet in there, it’s even hard to hear the sea, though it’s not far away. Closer to the house itself, the jungle gives out and it’s just tall grass and weeds up to the front door, but that wasn’t where I was headed.

  One of the paths leads through the trees to a funny little footbridge, which crosses a sunken path that runs straight from the Hall to the sea. I wonder where it used to lead, because now it just drops off into the sea not long after it goes under the bridge, which is beautiful and old. It’s a honey colour when it’s dry, but when it rains it goes dark grey, and the moss and lichen make it slippery. Then you have to be careful.

  I often come and sit on the bridge; in fact, as I told Rebecca, I come and sit here almost every evening in the hot weather. And if it’s raining, I still come and sit, but underneath.

  And though there’d been no sign of rain for weeks, and none in sight, I felt it more appropriate to sit underneath to tell Rebecca my story.

  ‘This is cute,’ she said, and made a big fuss about finding something dry to sit on. I threw my towel on the ground.

  ‘That’s bone dry now,’ I said. ‘So be a good girl and listen to my story.’

  She smiled, but not with her eyes as usual, because she was wondering if I was kidding or not, which was interesting in itself, because I wasn’t sure either. I allowed myself a moment to stare at her face; those freckles that made her lightly tanned skin seem even more perfect. Her hair held up at the back of her neck, strands tumbling onto her shoulders.

  Then I told her the legend of Winterfold Hall.

  Most people in Winterfold can tell it, but they’
ll do it really badly, or forget bits, and even if they get it all right, they tell it as though it’s just a silly story.

  But I think it’s a great story. It goes back a few hundred years, I’m not sure exactly, because some say it’s only two hundred, whereas others say four or even five. Whatever, everyone agrees that Winterfold Hall has always been a strange place, and that strange things have always happened there. In the museum, you can read about it. It says that the original medieval Manor House was built on the site of worship of some pagan cult or other, but I don’t know how they know that. They say the first Lords of the Manor built a house and a chapel on the site to try and stamp out the last vestiges of superstition. That’s what it says in the museum, ‘Last vestiges of superstition’. By building a church.

  Anyway, that first house and chapel are long gone, and the one that’s there now has some medieval bits, and some later bits, Georgian and Victorian.

  So, whenever it was, a few hundred years back, the house was bought by a strange man, a magician, some say, or others, a wizard. Like there’s a difference.

  Even then the house had been empty for years, but this new owner soon had lights burning in the windows, at all times of day and night.

  The magician’s name was Barrow, and even though Barrow was all alone, just him with no family or anything, he had many visitors, at ungodly hours.