‘I have never been so bored since that time Mum and Dad took us to Stratford-on-Avon to see Hamlet,’ Alice announced as he approached.
‘I quite liked Hamlet,’ Mary said in a dull voice.
‘Everyone knows you’re mad, Mary,’ Alice told her, pityingly. ‘It was the longest, soppiest, most incredibly boring thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life . . .’
‘So, like I was saying,’ William interrupted her, ‘we’ve got to treat all this like orienteering.’
‘Oh, now what are you talking about, Will?’ Alice demanded, close to despair.
‘With orienteering,’ he persisted, ‘you get dropped from a car in a bit of country that you don’t recognize and you haven’t a clue where you are but, with the aid of a map . . .’ as he spoke, he raised the map he was holding, ‘and a compass . . .’ he produced his compass from his pocket, ‘and using the landmarks that surround you, you can find your way home.’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything,’ Mary snapped. She really disliked William when he started lecturing.
‘Just think about it, Mary. When we were last here, at Christmas, all sorts of incredible things happened but we didn’t know why . . .’
Alice sighed, gloomily. She didn’t feel like having one of William’s long discussions.
‘I wonder where Spot is?’ she said, looking round. ‘I haven’t seen him since we were up in the secret room.’
‘That’s just the sort of thing I mean,’ William said quickly.
‘What?’
‘Things keep happening – or not – and we don’t know why. I’m sure that they’re like . . . clues and we could learn from them if we could only see how.’
‘Spot says,’ Alice remembered suddenly, ‘that humans are always trying to work things out when really we should just let things happen.’
‘But – we are humans,’ William protested. ‘And we’ve got human brains that are capable of working things out – so, it’s only natural that we should try.’
Alice shrugged and looked sulky.
‘I’m just telling you what Spot said.’
‘Anyway, I know what he means,’ Mary cut in. ‘While we’re all the time trying to work things out in our heads, we don’t notice what’s going on round us.’
‘With orienteering’ William continued ‘you have to notice everything – and work out what you’re being told at the same time.’
‘What’s orienteering got to do with anything?’ Mary protested.
‘Because we have to work out what’s going on.’
‘If you’re so busy thinking,’ Mary said, ‘you forget to use your other senses. Smell and touch and sight . . . and maybe they can help you to understand as well.’
Alice nodded enthusiastically.
‘That’s exactly how it was with Spot . . . when I went inside him on the steps up the chimney. When I was just being me, I could only see the dark and I was trying ever so hard to see . . . But, when I went into him, I could see things in the dark and feel the steps and smell the chimney smoke and . . . everything.’
‘That’s how it was on the Dark and Dreadful path as well,’ Mary continued, warming to the subject. ‘I expect most people would just have found that path and walked up it and not bothered about anything else. But Spot made me feel . . . the atmosphere of it . . . the . . .’ she shivered and shook her head, ‘I don’t know what the right word is . . . but it was horrible. You could smell . . . something . . . and feel it. Then when we were down in the crypt – it was the same sensation – as if all of me was feeling the cold . . . only it was more than cold.’
For a moment they were silent. Around them the spring hummed and buzzed and fluttered and moved. All nature seemed to be responding to the warm sun and the soft breeze. Birds flitted from tree to tree and in and out among the young leaves of the fruit bushes, while others perched on the branches, singing blithely. Two butterflies flickered past them, like bright jewels. Somewhere up in the forest a woodpecker was drumming and distantly a dog barked.
‘He said we had to get to know the natural world,’ Mary said, looking round at the peaceful scene.
‘I never knew people killed badgers for sport,’ William said, as if he’d only just been told. ‘What a horrible thing. I wonder where she lives.’
‘Who?’
‘That woman we met. Meg Lewis.’ As he spoke he opened the map and, crouching down on the ground, he spread it out in front of him.
The girls rose and joined him.
‘She said Four Fields,’ Mary remembered. ‘D’you suppose that’s the name of her house?’
The map was large scale. William said it covered only about ten miles in each direction. Golden Valley was clearly marked, cutting a narrow winding cleft through the centre of the country in a more or less north to south direction.
‘That’s the house,’ William said, pointing at a little square with the words Golden House written beside it.
‘Look!’ Alice exclaimed. ‘It says Dovecote there! How funny. There should be three little dots with William, Mary and Alice written beside them. We’re looking at a map of where we are – like if we were suddenly birds, looking down at ourselves.’
‘So, yesterday, we went through the gate and up. . . . There!’ Mary said, excitedly. ‘Look! Standing Stone it says . . . and there’s the lake we saw.’
‘And look,’ William pointed at a spot to the left of the lake. ‘You see this clear area . . .’
‘Four little squares. What are they?’ Alice asked.
‘They could be fields, I suppose,’ William suggested.
‘Then that’s where she might live.’
‘She’d get awfully cold in winter,’ Mary said. ‘Fancy having to get water from a well.’
‘And no electricity,’ Alice added. ‘She must be awfully poor.’
‘I think that dot there,’ William said, pointing, ‘probably indicates that there’s some sort of building that must be her house.’
‘What are these funny lines over here?’ Alice asked, pointing to a place on the map at the other side of the lake from the four fields.
William glanced down at the chart of reference.
‘It’s a quarry,’ he said.
‘It’s got it written,’ Mary told them, peering at the small print. ‘Blackscar Quarry and then it says in brackets Disused. Oh look, there’s a long straight sort of path from the quarry . . . It says bridleway . . .’
‘What, like brides and grooms?’ Alice asked.
William shook his head.
‘Horses. Somewhere you’re allowed to take a horse, I think.’ He peered more closely at the map. ‘I think we must have crossed it at some point yesterday . . .’ then he looked up at them both. ‘You know what it is, don’t you?’
Mary nodded.
‘The Dark and Dreadful Path,’ she said, quietly.
‘It just goes to the quarry,’ Alice said in a matter of fact voice. ‘It was probably once the road to it, d’you think?’
‘Maybe,’ William agreed.
‘And,’ Mary said, pointing again at the map. ‘There’s another bridleway leading from those four fields to the forest track.’
‘D’you remember when we were looking for Alice, Mare?’ William said. ‘We got to that first cliff – where we could look over the forest . . . and we saw two paths cutting through the trees. What was it Spot called them?’
‘The Light Path and the Dark Path,’ Mary replied.
‘I think that must be them,’ William said.
‘They run on either side of the straight line we saw . . . but that isn’t marked, is it?’ Mary said.
‘Doesn’t really need to be,’ William said, thoughtfully. ‘You don’t need a map to find it. You just have to look for the signs.’
‘Are those gaps in the trees marked on the map, I wonder,’ Alice said, crouching closer. ‘Where would they be, Will?’
William moved in beside her and together they searched the sheet of paper.
‘I can’t see them,’ he said.
‘But then, maybe they wouldn’t be on a map,’ Mary said, ‘any more than our yew tree would be marked. They’d only be there for those people who knew what they were looking for.’
‘What people?’ Alice asked.
‘Maybe people who were looking for Golden House,’ Mary said.
‘So you mean the straight line was put there after the house was built?’ William asked her.
Mary shook her head and frowned.
‘It couldn’t have been, could it? The lake was already there – and that stone might be as old as Stonehenge . . .’
‘What if . . .’ said Alice, then she hesitated.
‘What?’ asked William.
‘What if the house – or at least the tower bit that belonged to the monastery – was built here so that it would be on the straight line.’
‘Yes, that’s it!’ William whooped excitedly. ‘Brilliant, Al! Well done.’
‘What?’ Alice cried, delighted to be so clever and not at all sure what it was that she’d discovered.
‘The line came first,’ William said, standing up. ‘For some reason men built the tower here and men built the dovecote here and men placed the standing stone there and men cleared the gaps in the trees there and there . . . because those points all happened to be special . . . and then they noticed that all the special points were on this straight line.’
He sat down on the bench behind them and blinked, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
‘So, where does that get us?’ he asked.
‘Maybe we’d know if we went up in a helicopter,’ Alice suggested.
‘Or . . .’ Mary said quietly, looking up above her head, ‘if only we could have a bit of magic . . .’
And out of the limitless blue bowl of the sky above them a kestrel suddenly appeared, wheeling and hovering, watching and waiting.
‘Kee! Kee! Kee!’ it called, the sound echoing from side to side of the valley.
12
‘A Bit of Magic’
‘MR TYLER!’ MARY called, running forward and reaching up with her hands.
The kestrel swooped lower, its wings outstretched and motionless except for the quivering tips that seemed to tread the air like a swimmer in water.
William took a step towards Mary, also watching the sky, and Alice, who was still kneeling on the ground beside the map, raised her head, straining her neck as she gazed up at the bird.
The kestrel looked down.
The three children looked up.
It was as if they were all mysteriously held together, silent and still. The watching between them was intense. ‘Like a string tied us together . . .’ was how Mary would later describe it. ‘Like adjusting the focus on a microscope,’ was William’s interpretation, ‘until the image is crystal clear . . .’
Then Alice suddenly cried out with surprise.
‘Oh!’ she gasped.
For a moment, instead of seeing the bird, she had seen the three of them on the ground below her; William and Mary with their faces upturned and she herself, crouching on the ground beside them, staring up.
‘Let it happen,’ a voice whispered.
‘But . . . I don’t understand,’ William sighed.
‘Are we in you?’ they heard Mary’s voice whisper through their minds.
‘Don’t ask questions,’ the voice trilled, and it was as if each of them had made the sounds. They felt the vibrations in their throats and the high, mournful noise came through each of their mouths.
‘Kee! Kee! Kee!’
Flexing their wings they slowly turned into a current of air and were lifted on a gentle thermal. The paths and beds of the walled garden were spread out below them like a drawing pinned to a board. At the centre of the design was the dovecote. From it, the four main paths radiated, like the arms of a cross; one to the yard gate, its opposite number to the forest gate; then the two side arms to the outer perimeter path that followed the four square walls of the garden. This outer path, meeting each of the central paths, cut the garden into four equal squares and these four squares were in turn also divided into four smaller squares by narrow paths. Where each of these paths crossed, a tree had been planted in a small circular bed. The whole layout had a symmetry that was pleasing to the eye and yet, at the same time, was a sensible way of dividing a large space into manageable growing areas for the plants that must once have stocked the garden.
For a moment longer they saw themselves, grouped on the side path near one of the benches, staring up, as if they were part of some painting or photograph. Then, with a single beat of the wings, they soared up into the open sky and the garden grew ever smaller until it looked like a beautifully patterned floor tile or a flag stretched out on the ground.
The breeze was stronger now. It combed through the feathers on their breast and skimmed the top of their sleek grey head. But it wasn’t cold, it was more as if the breeze was part of them and not something separate; as if the bird wore the air as a person wears a coat. Then the neck craned forward again, and the eyes, hooded against the light, searched the country below.
They could see the steep rake of the roof of Golden House. The chimneys – with the circular windows of the secret room – were in a direct line with the yard gate into the walled garden. The yard itself, from this high vantage point, seemed more an extension of the original tower of the house and they could see fragments of broken wall and slight ruts and mounds in the earth that suggested that at one time the tower had had other buildings behind it.
‘That could explain why Uncle Jack hasn’t found the steps down into the crypt,’ William thought. ‘The way down could have come from somewhere in the yard.’
‘But wouldn’t that mean that there’s more crypt under the yard?’ Mary thought.
‘Probably,’ William responded, without realizing that he hadn’t thought of the idea.
‘Isn’t it odd,’ Alice mused. ‘It’s as though we’re all one person. Thinking and everything . . .’
‘That’s right,’ a voice trilled, and the bird sailed higher, spiralling round and round on a thermal of warmer air, ‘Kee-ing’ with pleasure at the sense of space and freedom.
The steep sides of Golden Valley disappeared into shadows and formed a dark cleft through the trees of the forest. When they were poised high above the yew tree with its secret house, they turned and glided on outstretched wings, sliding down the air until, distantly, the surface of a small lake came into view.
The sun, reflecting on the lake, flashed and sparkled filling the space in front of them with glittering fragments as though a glass bowl had shattered, scattering particles of light. They turned once more on languid wings and rose even higher into the pale blue sky, parting the radiant air so that it dripped and fell away from them like water from a swimmer’s arms.
The details on the ground became less well defined. The tips of the trees merged together forming a carpet of variegated green. The lake was immediately below them. Ahead, the chimneys of Golden House reached up out of the dark shadows of the valley. They saw the top of the dovecote, standing between them and the house, and beyond, high up on the crest of the valley side, a cleft in the trees, no more than a scratch on the carpet, was clearly visible. The country beyond gradually dropped away to rolling farmland with hedges, woods, sparkling streams and a distant ridge of steep hills.
Again, as the bird slowly turned, they saw the undulating forest stretching far to the horizon. At one place a clearing in the trees made way for four square fields:
‘Like a bit of the garden,’ Alice thought.
From the four fields a narrow snake of paler green denoted a path through the forest, passing in a near-straight line to the edge of the escarpment above Golden Valley, before disappearing from sight down into its depths.
Swinging still further round, they saw the country beyond the lake. Here the forest gradually grew sparse and finally petered out into rough moorland which in turn rose
upwards to more rugged peaks beyond.
‘Mountains,’ William whispered.
And still they turned, looking now to the opposite side of the lake. Here once again the forest stretched uninterrupted to a hazy horizon. At one place, dark and mysterious, a jagged cliff revealed the only trace of an ancient quarry and a thin dark path stretched in a straight line from it to the forest track.
Finally, coming full circle, the bird hovered on the air, facing Golden House once more.
‘It reminds me of something,’ William whispered.
‘Stop thinking,’ the kestrel cried.
‘But we’ve got to work things out,’ William protested.
‘Later,’ the bird whistled.
‘Later, later,’ Mary and Alice thought in unison. And William sighed and remained silent.
The bird’s outstretched wings were like the arms of a tightrope artist, reaching out to maintain a balance.
‘That’s it!’ William cried, his words coming out as an excited cry and at once the bird turned its head towards the earth and, folding its wings to the side of its body it dropped like a stone out of the sky.
‘Ooooh!’ Alice screamed, closing her eyes as the ground hurtled towards her. She could feel the rush of wind stingingly cold against her face and tugging at her body with a force that seemed strong enough to tear her apart. Somewhere along the way she felt as though she’d left her stomach behind her and she gasped as if she’d been struck. Then a wave of nausea overwhelmed her and she reached out with her hands, desperate to find something to cling on to.
The pebbles of the path were rough and warm. She found she was kneeling on all fours, facing the earth, gasping for breath.
‘What happened?’ she sobbed and, as she spoke, she looked up. Mary was still standing beside her, but now, instead of staring up into the sky, she was doubled up and had both her arms up over her head, as though she was protecting herself from some terrible imminent accident. William, at the same moment, staggered backwards, still staring up into the sky. His legs hit the edge of the garden bench and he fell back into a sitting position, his mouth open as if he was trying to scream but was unable to make any sound.
The Door In the Tree Page 10