by Lari Don
Thomas had one hand flat, holding a piece of ground behind him steady for the Laird and the four horses, who were shifting their hooves nervously.
Thomas and the Earl were lifted and swung carefully by the earth as if it held them in its hands. They smiled at the triplets, who had stepped onto the most vigorously moving grass.
The children kept losing their place in the song, shrieking with laughter as they bounced and bumped into each other. Ruby fell over and pulled Jasper down with her. Emmie kept her footing with her arms out like wings.
The circle of moving grass widened towards Pearl. As she stood up, she caught Thomas staring at her. He pointed to the still island behind him, but she didn’t want his help. She placed her feet wide apart, held her head up, and rode the pulsing waves of earth. She was flung upwards, then the earth vanished and she dropped down, but she didn’t lose her balance.
The waves sweeping through the grass were like a brush through matted hair, smoothing and tidying the green blades. Moss, nettles and dandelions vanished, replaced by buttercups and daisies, already closing for the night.
Thomas murmured, “Shshsh.” The triplets stopped shrieking and singing, the Earl blew a last note on his horn, the grass shivered and lay still.
Pearl stood steady on her feet and crossed her arms.
Thomas flung his arms wide and cried, “See what we have done!”
Pearl looked reluctantly round at a beautiful pleasure garden: fresh water, smooth lawns, a mature wood with a couple of towers peeping above the trees.
“Did you enjoy that?” he asked the triplets.
They were breathless, but nodding.
“If you want to feel that glorious power again, come with me and crown the Earl.”
Before they could answer, Thomas held up a hand. “It’s only fair to let your sister have her say first.” He sat down, folding his long legs, and putting his staff and its shell carefully beside him.
“Your turn, Pearl.”
Chapter 26
The triplets tumbled happily into a heap beside Thomas. The Laird and the Earl stood watching Pearl critically. The horses wandered off, the black and the grey already nibbling at the fresh new grass.
Pearl felt grubby, sweaty and exhausted, in no state to save her brother and sisters with clever words. However, the argument she wanted to present had been forming in her mind all day as she travelled through the mountains.
She faced Emmie, Ruby and Jasper. “I’m going to persuade you there’s no such thing as destiny. I don’t have any fairy tales or magic tricks or family singalongs.
“But I do have a witness.”
That caught the triplets’ attention. They looked round, confused.
“I call as a witness our brother, Peter Chayne.”
She swept her hand behind her, as if to usher someone forward. When no one appeared, she looked puzzled and searched over her shoulder.
“Oh, of course. Peter can’t be here, can he? Peter can’t give evidence to you about destiny and the people who tell you what your destiny is, because Peter is DEAD.”
There was a moment’s silence. The triplets had stopped tickling and giggling; they looked up at Pearl’s tense face.
“Peter is dead because when he was only sixteen years old, he was told it was his destiny to fight for his country. Told by politicians in the newspapers, by ministers in the church, by women in the street who gave white feathers to schoolboys. He was told it was his destiny to kill people he didn’t know, on the orders of other people he didn’t know.
“Because he believed it was his destiny, and because he believed destiny was glorious, Peter lied about his age, joined a Glasgow regiment where no one would recognise him and was killed in his first week in France, probably shot by someone who thought he was fulfilling his own destiny.
“Peter died because he was told it was his destiny to go to war. But it didn’t have to be his destiny. If he had waited until he was eighteen, until he was old enough to join up without lying, the Great War would have been over. Then he could have told you himself that you make your own destiny.
“The future is not written anywhere, and even if it was, why would we trust them to write it?” She pointed at Thomas, the Earl and the Laird. “We don’t know these people, but we know what they do. They destroy buildings, they rip up mountainsides, they mutilate animals, and they try to kill each other and their neighbours’ children.
“We can’t know what they want with you in that castle tonight, because even if I asked all three of them straight questions, we couldn’t trust their answers. We don’t know whether it’s a midnight feast or a violent sacrifice. All we do know is they’ve planned your part in it without asking you.
“When someone tells you they know your destiny, it means they want you to do something for them, and they don’t think you’ll like it. There is no such thing as destiny, there is only the result of the choices you make.
“So your choice is: follow these people who’ve caused so much destruction and fear in just one day; or refuse to have anything to do with any of them, Horsburghs or Swanns, and come home with me to your own lives.”
Pearl walked slowly along the line of triplets.
“Emmie, Jasper, Ruby. I don’t have Thomas’s spectacular power, but I do love you. They want you to be their tools. I just want you to be my brother and sisters. Please come home with me for supper.”
Her voice cracked, and she stopped. She had no more words.
Thomas stood up. “Finished?” She nodded.
He started to say, “So my precious …” but Pearl interrupted.
“No more speeches. They know what they have to decide.”
Three faces, pink-cheeked and framed with curls, glanced at each other then looked back up at the two older children.
Ruby sniffed. “I want to go home. You’re lots of fun, Thomas, but Pearl’s right. I don’t think I trust you.” She hid her face in a hanky.
“Emmie?” asked Pearl tentatively. If Emmie voted with Ruby, perhaps Jasper would simply go along with his sisters.
“Let Jasper decide next,” said Emmie, leaning back on her hands.
Jasper looked at Pearl, then at Thomas, then at the huge chestnut rocking horse. The horse whickered at him.
Jasper spoke clearly. “You might be right, Pearl. Perhaps there is no such thing as destiny.” Pearl began to smile.
Her brother raised his voice. “So, if we do have free choice, I choose to be with the Horsburghs and learn to wield the power I deserve.”
Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. “One! I only needed one, and they all have to come.”
Pearl felt like her skin was crawling over suddenly freezing bones. She gasped, “Emmie! What do you vote?”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Emmie. “If Jasper goes, we all go. We have to stay together.”
“But what would you have voted?” asked Pearl desperately.
Emmie looked calmly at her. “It’s probably better if no one knows.”
Ruby sobbed, “Pearl, will you stay with us?”
Pearl really didn’t want to go up to that dark, jagged stronghold and witness the Horsburghs’ ceremony. She glanced at Thomas, who shook his head very slightly. But she said firmly, “If you need me, Ruby, I’ll be there.”
The Earl instructed the horses to follow the river round the mountains and to go to Horsburgh Hall. Thomas ordered the Laird to start walking. And in the fading light, Pearl climbed back into the mountains.
As Pearl trailed up the slope, Thomas caught up with her. She slowed down to let him get ahead, but he slowed down too and walked beside her.
He nodded at Jasper, striding out at the front, humming a tune and offering to carry the Earl’s jacket. “He has betrayed you at least three times today.”
He jerked his head back at Ruby, blowing her nose in a soggy hanky, and he lifted his lip in disgust. “Why don’t you just walk away? Why are you doing this for them?”
“Because I’m their big sist
er.” She looked coldly at him. “Why are you doing this to them?”
“Because it’s my destiny just as much as it is theirs.”
“Do you really believe that, Thomas?”
“Yes. Your only witness today was a ghost. I produced real people and real power. I won the argument because destiny is real and you can’t fight it.”
“We don’t know how Emmie would have voted. Perhaps I won.”
“You didn’t win! You’ll never win against me! Emmie didn’t tell you how she would have voted because she didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I won. They’re moving towards their destiny, and if you don’t want to watch, you should just go home.”
“Thomas, I’m not sure I’ve understood anything you’ve said today. But if you really believe the music you sing stops the land decaying, then you don’t believe even erosion is inevitable. Nothing is written in stone, not even the future of your rocks. If the earth’s destiny isn’t fixed, how can the triplets’ destiny be fixed? How can yours be, Thomas?”
Pearl took a few faster steps, leaving Thomas frowning behind her. As she strode on, Pearl heard a deep drumming, and looked down at the shining gardens. A flock of swans, elegant at this distance, were flying back to the Laird’s lands, beating the air with their wings. They settled down on the dark clean water, fluffing up their pure white feathers.
Chapter 27
The summer sun, which had been with Pearl all day, sank behind the Keystone Peak as they reached Landlaw Hold.
In the sudden dark, Pearl reached out for her sisters’ hands. She whispered, “We need a plan.”
Emmie answered, “No, we don’t. How can we have a plan when we don’t know what they’re doing?”
“Then we need to tell them that they don’t need a crown, because the whole peak is the keystone they’re looking for.”
“No,” said Emmie firmly. “We mustn’t tell them that. The Earl won’t let us leave here until we’ve crowned him, whatever we say to him. And we mustn’t give them the keystone’s power as well as the power of this crown. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”
“How can you be so naïve?” Pearl snapped. “Just because you can sing their music doesn’t mean you can match their power.”
“Don’t worry, Pearl. All you need to do is stand about with your hands in your pockets.”
“Is that all the thanks I get for spending this whole day chasing rocking horses, fighting swans and dodging earthquakes?” Pearl’s voice started to rise.
“Shhhh. If the Earl notices you again, he might leave you outside, because he doesn’t want a Pearl who can’t sing in his crown!” Emmie laughed, an echo of the contempt Pearl had endured from Thomas all day.
Pearl dropped Emmie’s hand. She and Ruby followed Jasper and the Earl onto the final approach into the castle.
The girls couldn’t have crossed to the castle three abreast anyway. The path was so narrow that two slim children had to put their arms round each others’ waists to cross together. Armed men would have had to rush along the path one by one, exposed to the arrowslits in the two front towers for its full forty paces. Pearl imagined attacking the Horsburghs’ ancestors here, and shivered.
The ground at their feet, the castle ahead, the sky above, and the drop to the haugh below, were all different shades of grey. They headed towards the only patch of true black: the arched entrance of Landlaw Hold.
Jasper and the Earl entered first, then Ruby and Pearl together, then Emmie on her own, and finally the Laird, shoved through the arch by Thomas.
The courtyard was open to the sky, so they could see each other, but there wasn’t enough light for Pearl to see any hiding places or escape routes.
Thomas knelt down by the entrance, picked up a small box, and after a couple of short scrapes, produced a sharp orange spark.
“Jasper, there are dried reed torches behind that pillar. Could you hold them up so I can light them?”
Thomas summoned everyone to take a torch. Pearl kept out of the way, remembering Emmie’s warning that the Earl might leave her outside if she made herself noticeable. Soon only Pearl and the Laird had no light of their own.
As the torches warmed and brightened, Pearl could see that the inside of the castle’s keep was crumbling too: heaps of rubble in corners, staircases ending halfway up flights, and rooms with missing walls, like empty boxes on their sides. She couldn’t see any way out apart from the arched entrance, which led to that dangerously exposed path; nor any places to hide that weren’t also traps.
The Earl led the way into the main castle building. Their footsteps sounded hollow as they trailed along a winding corridor towards the turrets at the back.
The Earl ushered them into a huge room, even bigger than the Laird’s ballroom, then Thomas twisted a rusty key in the door and put it in his pocket.
Pearl realised this room had been used for much older entertainments than stately ballroom dances. This was a feasting hall, with a raised platform at the end for the lord and his family, and a long stretch of bare stone floor for the rest of the guests, leading to a fireplace big enough to cook an ox on a spit.
There were no longer any tables or benches, but near the dais there was a large round hole in the floor, with a hinged cover made of one thick slab of rock lying flat at its side.
Ten paces away from the hole, nearer the fireplace, stood a tall stone carving. Pearl stepped softly over to it.
It was a throne: a throne built on a column, with rough steps, no more than footholds, curving up and round to the huge seat on the top. It was the height of two tall men, and only a little wider at the base than at the top.
Its rough edges and solid height reminded Pearl of the rock stacks carved by waves off the Scottish coast. It had been hacked from one massive boulder. All the way up the column, jagged mountain peaks had been scraped into the stone, but they looked like scars rather than decoration. She touched the rock with one finger. It was cold. The sun never reached in here.
The Earl grabbed everyone’s torches and jammed them into brackets round the walls. Then he clambered onto the dais, turned to face the floor of the hall and opened his arms wide. Pearl moved away from the pillar and stood quietly in a dark corner. After letting Thomas have his way at Swanhaugh Towers, the Earl was now taking charge.
“Swanhaugh. Observe the oubliette.” He pointed at the hole in the floor. “From the French word oublier, to forget, because the people inside were forgotten. One of our ancestors, one of the lords of Landlaw Hold, was an unforgiving man. He liked to drop those who offended him down there, and let them hear the feasts above as they starved below. We’ve swept it out for you.”
“For me?” the Laird croaked.
“We can’t have you wandering loose in our mountains with your nasty bloodlore. I can’t take complete control until you’re totally defeated. I’m impressed with Thomas’s green reed rope, but it wouldn’t last more than a day, would it? So we’re going to bind you into the foundations of Landlaw Hold.”
“You can’t!”
“I can, Swanhaugh, I can.”
“But I’ll fade away in there.”
“Don’t worry, you will be fed. Most days.”
“I mean, I’ll fade away without the sky to soar in. I’m a creature of the air, not of burrows and dens. Horsburgh, my cousin, please don’t do this to me.”
“You lost, Swanhaugh. I won. Will you jump, or shall I get my strong right arm,” he gestured at Thomas, “to throw you in?”
“I will jump,” the Laird said in a strained voice, but with his head high.
He stepped to the edge and glanced down, then turned to the triplets. “I gave you a gift, children. Perhaps it will save us all,” and he leapt into the hole. Pearl held her breath until she heard a dull thump.
Thomas flipped his staff over in his hands, like a sergeant major tossing a baton on parade. As the staff turned in the air, the lid of the oubliette lifted up on its hinge and crashed down to cover the hole.
The E
arl rubbed his hands together and nodded at Thomas, who started to twist his staff.
But Jasper stepped forward. “Hold on, sir. Hold on a minute. How long is he going to be down there?”
The Earl didn’t answer, but Thomas said in an offhand voice, “As long as you three are up here, your power will keep him down there.”
He swung his staff in wider circles, and Pearl noticed the huge rock carving starting to move. She rushed from her corner to drag the girls out of the way and called Jasper to join them against the wall, as the tall chair scraped round the stone floor.
Thomas twirled his staff, and the throne spun round the oubliette like a leaf caught in a whirlpool, grinding smaller and smaller circles, until it settled on top of the trapdoor.
The Earl jumped heavily off the dais, and Pearl stepped back into the shadows. As he strode towards the triplets, she noticed a narrow door in the far corner of the hall. She started to edge towards it.
“That was a little unpleasant, but now we get to have fun,” the Earl shouted jovially. “You three are going to sing me a crown.”
“Then we’ll go home?” sniffed Ruby.
“And the Laird too?” asked Jasper anxiously.
The Earl laughed. “My dear children, I give you my word that you will go home when the Laird goes home. Oh yes. At exactly the same time.”
Pearl thought the Earl’s vague answer must have satisfied Ruby, because she stuffed her snotty hanky up her sleeve and stopped sniffling. But it hadn’t stopped Emmie’s questioning gaze flying all around the hall.
Jasper was walking uncertainly towards the stone throne over the oubliette when Thomas called to him, “Jasper, can you give me a hand?”
Pearl was still moving towards the narrow door, but Thomas marched past her, grasped the handle and yanked the door open. Over his shoulder Pearl saw wooden shelves and a stone wall. A cupboard. She sighed, and looked round for other possible ways out.
Thomas jammed the cupboard door open with his heel and lifted a teetering pile of wide stone bowls off a high shelf. “They’re very heavy, Jasper. Do you think you can manage a couple?”