Emerging out onto the narrow, crumbing battlements Leana saw gulls cawing in the blustery air. She ran as far as she could along the curtain wall ahead of her, heading all the time in the general direction of the gatehouse. She came to a break in the walkway and battlements, a damaged gap, which looked too far to jump across, and paused for thought. Down below she could see the steely-grey snake of the moat and smoke from the fires on its furthest bank but an arrow whistling past her ear and snapping against the crenels in front of her reminded her she had no time. One glance back was long enough to see an archer pulling a fresh arrow from his quiver. He was standing at the tower door she’d run out of.
“Halt, lass!” he cried, his black beard cracking open to reveal blacker teeth.
Leana took a step back, steadied herself and leapt into the air with the fiercest spring she could muster. Whilst she was off the ground she heard nothing but the wind. She saw fires below and they were beautiful. She saw a yellow-eyed gull hanging in the air, totally still, alongside her. They were both, for an instant, flying. And then she landed, knees cracking into the stone walkway and she was away – adrenaline numbing the pain – running for the gatehouse again, another arrow whistling past her head.
At the end of the curtain wall was a long drop to the courtyard. The gatehouse was ahead but too far; not connected to the curtain wall. Leana climbed up onto a crenel and hauled herself onto the highest merlon, the setting sun lighting the sky behind the far-off hills – and jumped.
Down below the water of the moat was grey as granite and almost as hard.
Leana came up, spluttering, lungs bursting from the shock of the cold, and swam for the far bank. Thwacks fizzed and she heard thunder under the water but nothing struck her.
Climbing out through the reeds, Leana found herself staring into the face of a gleaming black stallion that whinnied and scratched at the turf. Leana controlled her violent, shuddering breaths. “Come here, bonny lad. Come here. Let’s get out of here, you and me. Let’s ride away from all this. Ride away.”
The stallion examined the girl with black eyes who smelled so strangely. Behind her the fires in the castle lit the sky orange. The stallion lowered its starred nose and came in to nuzzle the girl and Leana pulled herself up onto its strong, broad back and whispered kind words into the beast’s ear as she turned him and kicked for freedom.
But almost as soon as she began to gallop she noticed a figure in black standing in the middle of tracks. “Stop in the name of the King!” the man shouted.
Leana was caught in two minds. It was an old man, bald, somewhat wild, but the words – and the authority invested in them and the way the man delivered them – made her draw up the horse.
“Dismount!” cried the man.
Leana did as she was told. The man came across to the horse and Leana could see Macduff’s castle, ablaze, behind him.
“I am a doctor,” he declared angrily. “My horse has been taken. My possessions stolen. I have been commanded by the King to attend to the Queen immediately.” He had one foot in the stirrups but the stallion seemed to have no interest in allowing him to saddle up. The black beast turned first one way and then the other and ignored the doctor’s attempts to beat it with his bare hands or force it to submit with the bridle. “Make your beast allow me mount!”
“He’s not mine, sir,” Leana answered.
The doctor became enraged and threw his balled fists up angrily at the sky. The stallion meanwhile trotted over to Leana and bowed its head.
“Not yours, ye say?” the doctor cried. “Not yours and he acts thus?”
“He’s not mine, sir.”
The doctor put his hands on his thighs and panted. “I have been ordered to attend to the Queen,” he repeated. “Can ye take me to the King’s castle? Know ye the way?”
“I do, sir,” answered Leana.
“Then prithee, take me. Take me now. There will be a reward for ye in all this.”
Leana thought of Sam in the hut. “I will take you, sir, if you promise to do one thing for me,” she said. The doctor exploded again with rage and walked in small circles on the grass with his hands balled but finally he gave in and walked over to where she was standing with the horse.
“What?” He was a man of about sixty. Unshaven with long side-whiskers and hair coming out his nose. “What? What? What?”
“You will attend to my husband,” Leana told him. “I live near the King’s castle. We will rest there for the night and in the morning you will be able to attend to Her Majesty.”
“Get me into the saddle and you have a deal,” the doctor replied.
Leana bowed. “’Tis done.”
She was thinking, My husband!
15
On The Eleventh Hour Of The Eleventh Day
Uncle Quentin drove Sam back to St Francis’s to drop him off. He parked outside the Main Building, next to a Rolls-Royce in which a fourth-year boy was eating a full roast dinner in the backseat while his parents sat in the front. Sam, who was used to this odd occurrence, had to tell his uncle to stop staring. “They do it every Sunday,” Sam explained.
Uncle Quentin helped Sam get his bags out of the boot. “Any repeats of those dreams of yours and you give me a call straight away, all right, big man?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Your father’ll be home for half-term. Let’s not give him anything to worry about, eh?” Quentin winked and climbed into the driver’s seat. Sam noticed his uncle trying not to stare into the Rolls as he fumbled with his keys. Sam waited for him to reverse and waved until the grey Peugeot had swung away out of the drive.
“We thought you’d run away with your girlfriend,” a female voice declared from behind him. Sam turned to see a tall, thin third-year called Katy Carr with a much smaller, zitty girl he didn’t recognise. The tail of Katy’s scarf was trailing in the dirty snow at their feet. Behind the girls, beyond a peeling yellow fence, an extractor pipe was pumping out steam from the school kitchens.
“What happened to Leana?” asked Sam, heaving his bag onto his shoulder.
“What happened to you?” Katy shot back.
Sam turned towards St Nick’s. It was late and he wasn’t sure what to say. But he supposed he’d have to say something sometime – and he wanted to know about Leana. “We were out walking and we got lost in the snow. I can’t remember much after that.”
Katy folded her arms. “That’s not what we heard.”
“What did you hear?”
“That’s for us to know and for you to find out,” crowed the little, zitty girl. She was a strange, rat-faced creature with a mouthful of short, stumpy teeth.
“Fine,” Sam agreed. “Well, I’m gonna go inside now or I’ll get done.”
“Leana was running away,” Katy sang. “You went to try and get her back and you got into a fight with some gypsies on the path up to the Gallops. We reckon you were running away with her and you’re just saying that you went for a walk so you don’t get expelled like she did. They found a backpack on you and you’d put food in it and stuff so you’d be able to survive for a few days. The police got the gypsies but they’re saying that when they get out they’re gonna come back to the school and go for anyone and everyone. You’ve more or less given everyone a death sentence, Lawrence, so well done.”
Sam took a moment to take all of this information in. “Leana was expelled?”
“Hachet did it that Sunday night while you were wasting valuable NHS time. Leana told Hachet you went to get her, to stop her leaving, and she pushed you over the church wall. She was trying to get you out of it but some of the girls in Burmester saw the gypsies in the pony field and then the police got involved and everyone found out the truth. Hatchet told Bainbridge the whole story and Bainbridge told her sister on the phone the other night. That’s how we know. Bainbridge is loud.” Katy smiled and blew up her fringe. “Very brave of you, Lawrence. Made a right mess, you have. Not only are we all going to die but now The Magistrate have stopped a
ll leaving privileges.”
Sam shrugged his shoulders. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he said.
As he walked away he heard Katy shouting, “I told you he did it!”
Sam headed for the yellow light outside St Nick’s and walked in through the boot room door. There was no great welcome home. As he walked into the locker room Renton from Dorm Six, snaffling a bag of crisps and eager not to share them, crushed the pack, spat in it and turned his back.
Steam from the showers drifted out to where boys were lying on the benches swapping stickers and reading magazines. Sam shuffled up past the towel room and at the cross where all the corridor’s met he caught the eye of Mr Dahl, pinning something to the notice board. The housemaster nodded and grunted, “Brave but futile, Lawrence.”
“Thanks, sir.”
“Leave women to their own devices and you’ll stay sane.”
“Righto. Thanks, sir.”
“You’ll never understand them, nor they us. Worry about yourself.”
“I will, sir.”
“Get unpacked, then.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Sam dug his hands into his pockets and walked up to his dorm. Orhan had Turkish pop music playing and three of the boys were occupied with a console on Walt’s bunk. “Did your uncle give you any dosh?” Orhan asked Sam – the only comment any of them made to show they knew he’d been away.
“No. Why?”
“Burroughs’s been made a Junior Praetor,” came the answer. All eyes turned to Eddie Burroughs who was on a top bunk with his head resting on the sausage-like thighs of a swimsuit model.
Burroughs winked at Sam and tapped the small white square he’d had sown into the school jumper he was wearing even though it was Sunday night. “Connections, lads. Connections. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
“He has Prep with Jimmy Hilton,” Kap Tagore explained. Hilton was the current Head Boy of the school.
“Buttering him up,” Walt Schulberg put in.
Burroughs sniffed. “It worked didn’t it?”
“What does it actually mean, though?” asked Sam, unpacking. “You don’t have to wear slippers in the house?”
“Village shop whenever he wants,” said Orhan.
“Whenever we want,” corrected Femi.
“For a commission,” appended Burroughs.
“Access to The Eleusinian Room and Magistrates Meetings,” continued Tagore.
Orhan rubbed his hands. “So finally we’ll get to know what goes on in there!”
“Forget that,” Burroughs answered, shaking his head. “No way. My life’s worth more than that.”
“Oh, so you’re one of them now?” Femi sneered.
“Definitely,” nodded Eddie Burroughs. “Better than being one of you losers!”
The conversation was interrupted by Mr Dahl poking his head around the door. “Number One uniform tomorrow, lads. If you haven’t got your blazers out of storage, speak to matron now, please. Clean white shirts, and make sure they’re pressed. Regulation school ties only, skinny sides tucked in, fat sides out. Polished shoes, brushed hair and a smile on your ugly mugs if you please.” His one-eye swivelled around and focussed on the top bunk. “Oh, and, Mr Burroughs?”
“Yes, sir?” asked Eddie, turning pale. He wasn’t sure if he’d said anything.
“Congratulations on your promotion.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And ignore this shower. They’re only jealous.”
“Yes, sir. Will do, sir.”
Monday was Armistice Day and the winter weather seemed also to have called a truce.
The sky burned blue and cloudless from the moment Sam stepped outside the House to when he walked up to St Catherine’s with the rest of the school after breakfast.
Although he didn’t know yet exactly what had really happened to Leana, the incident during Exeat seemed to have raised his standing within the school. The general take on things seemed to be much as Katy Carr had told it, which was this:
Leana, a new girl with many issues, not least not having a family, had attempted to run away during treacherously snowy conditions during Exeat. Sam, who had a good heart and sympathised, having coming so close to losing his own mother, had gone after Leana to try to convince her to come back.
Some kind of altercation had taken place on Riley’s Way, by the churchyard, possibly involving gypsies, gangs from another school, immigrants or escaped prisoners, and Sam had been knocked unconscious in a violent struggle. Leana had abandoned Sam in his time of need, stolen his rucksack filled with all the tuck he had left in the world, and, after being caught shortly after, had been expelled from St Francis’s and would never be seen again.
Sam, for his part, felt quite sure he knew where Leana was and that in twenty days he would see her again. Of course he kept this fact very much to himself. Indeed, now that he thought he knew more or less what was going on with him and Leana, he began acting very ‘normally’.
“The break’s done Lawrence good,” Sam overheard Mr de Queiroz telling Mr Dahl at the church gates.
Sam knew he wasn’t supposed to hear that or Mr Dahl’s reply: “His uncle’s talked some sense into him, it seems. Lad’s damned with his mother’s imagination but without the talent to go with it.”
Sam moved on quickly, blocking everything out but the views. It was strange to walk back into the churchyard that morning as the bright, austere but happy weather made it seem a completely different place from the last time he’d been there with Leana.
The teachers were lined up on either side of the path and the students were forced to walk up to the church between them. This meant Sam couldn’t look properly for the corner of the garden where he and Leana had found the tunnel. He was pleased to see, though, once he was inside the church and bunched up on the pews with the other boys, that the same priest they’d spoken to was standing beside the altar going over something in the order of service with Mr Coetzee, the head of the Church Service’s Committee.
As they rose for the first hymn, Sam’s eyes alighted on the votive candles where he’d seen Leana praying and he missed her, careful to show nothing outwardly.
I’ll be with you soon enough, he thought.
Drifting outside after the service, Sam broke off from his friends and walked around St Catherine’s to where he and Leana had spoken to the gardener. There was nobody in the shadowed part of the churchyard but Sam wasn’t surprised: the gardener was probably inside or at home. It was a Monday after all.
He strolled over to where they’d found the tunnel but there were no strange mounds in the earth, no trestles or hedges, nothing, in fact, but graves. The tombstones looked old but not ancient. Sam could decipher the names and there were flowers in various stages of decomposition in the small pots upon them. He wandered over to where he was sure the tunnel entrance had been and read the name on the gravestone there. It said:
MATTHEW CHIPPING
Mr Chipping?
Underneath the dates was an epigram:
Fate
The willing leads.
The unwilling
it drags along.
“Sam!” came a cry from beside the church. “What do you want from the shop, mate? Eddie’s going in!”
Sam ran back to his friends and loitered with them outside while Burroughs went in.
Instead of heading back via the gate in the wall by The Admiral Benbow, the boys from Dorm Four joined a pack of senior girls who were passing by, laughing and joking with them as they all walked down the main road. When they got to the crossroads at the school entrance, Orhan and the others broke off and crossed over to the school. Sam lagged behind as the girls filed past him until he stood alone on the pavement.
He was transfixed by the place where Mr Chipping’s house had been: the cottages in the old stables where they’d had tea together with Leana. He was staring at a low, pretty house with net curtains and bright hibiscus plants in hanging pot
s thinking this place looks nothing like I remember. A small plaque on the wall read: Chipping Cottage.
A senior girl tapped him on the shoulder as she passed by. “¿Que pasa, Mr Lawrence? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Who lives in that cottage, Carmen?” Sam asked. “Mr Chipping?”
The girl pulled a face. “Who?”
“Nothing, no.” Sam was quick to hide his confusion. “Who lives here again? It’s just a question. Nothing more. This is Chipping Cottage, right?”
“Yes, look. It says so. Mr and Mrs Allende live here. They’re still at the church. Want to talk to them about something?”
“Oh, no, no. I know what’s going on now.” Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m just getting confused. Nothing! That’s all right. Forget it. Bye! Thanks, Carmen!”
The Spanish girl shook her head and went on into Burmester. Sam skipped across the road and broke into a jog to catch up with the others. He did his best to clear his head quickly. What was going on?
In the dinner queue one of the Year Ten girls playfully moulded his hair into the “cool” style of the school and Sam let her. “Are you going out with anyone?” the girl asked as they filed into the warm dining hall.
16
A Miserable Little Pile Of Secrets
A strange thing happened that Micklemas term: Sam relaxed.
He began to play a real part in the daily life of St Francis’s: singing in church, laughing in Assembly and trotting up to Prep of an evening whistling Orhan’s tunes. Somewhere in his mind he knew that he had to enjoy the time he had while the world was more or less normal. He knew that when the next full moon came around everything would go topsy-turvy again. This was the lull in the storm; the moment the caped superhero was at home watching a film about someone else saving people for a change.
The Invisible Hand Page 9