by Ross Welford
‘Lord, through whom we may all find eternal life …’ it began. His voice was quavery and old, and the prayer droned on. Finally, as we were starting to shiver in the cold breeze, he said something that I noticed – through my half-closed eyes – caused Mam to look up. She caught me peeking.
‘Lord,’ Old Paul was saying. ‘Be merciful to those who choose to take the mighty power of life and death into their own hands. If it be a sin to prolong a life beyond its allotted span, look not with anger upon those who do.’
Do you understand? Old Paul was asking God not to punish Mam and me for being Neverdeads.
Mam gave me the cloth-wrapped package and I shoved it in the space between the boulder and the cave wall.
It was safe forever.
‘How long have you thought that? How long have you thought that the Lord may punish us for … for being what we are?’ Mam asked Paul as we walked into the wind back to the farmhouse, with Paul holding my hand for guidance.
‘It has troubled me for some time,’ he said. ‘I sought clarification from the Bishop who guided me in his wisdom.’
There was a pause as Mam stopped walking and the wind howled.
‘You told the Bishop?’ Mam was horrified that Paul had broken our pact of secrecy.
‘Do not worry,’ Paul said, trying to reassure her. ‘I said nothing about you or Alve. Our discussion was restricted to what might happen if someone had such a power.’
‘But still,’ I said, ‘he might have thought it was a strange question. He might have wondered …’
‘Fear not, young Alve,’ said Old Paul firmly. ‘The Bishop had no suspicions. Your secret remains a secret. And the Lord will love those who love Him.’
I was not so sure.
Not long after, Old Paul died and was buried in the garden of the island’s tiny chapel, where his bones lie to this day. Mam and I, and Biffa, stayed on in the farmstead.
A little while after that, a Church official came to tell us we must move out, as a new priest was coming to live there. That is when we decided to leave the life-pearl box in its place.
‘It is safe here,’ declared Mam, as we walked down the steep and rocky cliff path to the cave. ‘No one will find it.’
It had been about ten years since we had performed the little ceremony on that windy evening with the puffins skittering overhead. Nothing had changed.
‘Should we check?’ I asked Mam. ‘You know: that it is still there?’
She smiled her wise smile. ‘Why would it not be?’
‘Because …’ but I dried up. It was impossible for it not to be there.
‘So I think we should just leave it, Alve. We both know it is there. We are the only ones who do. It can come to no harm. I feel easier in my heart when it is not in our home. This island is not going anywhere; that stone,’ she was pointing at the large boulder, ‘is going nowhere, either.’
‘And if one of us should be called to the Lord –’ that is what Mam used to say: instead of dying you would be ‘called to the Lord’ – ‘then the other will come straight here, administer the contents of the life-pearl and begin the process of growing older. If that is what he or she wants,’ she added.
It was a thought that filled me with awe. That this immense power – the power both to create and to end immortality – lay in a small clay box buried in a dry sandstone cave on a windy island in Northumbria.
And lies there still. Undisturbed for centuries.
In the children’s home, countless questions jostled for position in my head, demanding answers that I could not give.
Where has Jasper been for a thousand years?
Why did he turn up now?
What did he want from me?
Was it the life-pearl?
It had to be. That must be what he was after – he was ageless; the scars on his arm made that clear. And, like me, he wanted to end it.
He could not possibly know where it was, though. But there was a more frightening possibility. Perhaps he knew that I knew and planned to use me to get to it.
I stared at the new school uniform hanging on the back of my bedroom door. Sangeeta said she would take me to school tomorrow, and after that I was to make my own way.
Make my own way.
Make friends. Grow up with them. Be normal.
Except that I could not. Not unless I managed to get to the pearl – before anyone else.
The first day back at school, and the summer term had already started badly. It would get worse by the end of the week.
I’d been looking forward to catching up with Spatch and Mo, but something had changed.
I guess it had been happening for a while without me noticing. But now I did. Their holiday together at Spatch’s grandparents in Naples had made each of them much better friends with the other than they were with me.
Spatch had got such a deep tan that he was even browner than Mo, but he said they hadn’t been able to go to the beach much owing to a sewage overflow closing it halfway through the holiday.
‘That’ll be why you’re so brown, then!’ I said, punching his arm gently.
He didn’t get it, and pretended my punch had hurt him (which it can’t have done). ‘Ow! What do you mean?’
‘You know – you’re brown cos you went swimming in the sewage!’
Now I know it’s not the sort of joke that could be described as ‘sophisticated’, but I thought it was pretty funny, and started laughing, but they didn’t join in. Spatch rolled his eyes at Mo.
‘You’re so lame, Linklater.’
That’s when I knew that, although we weren’t enemies, our threesome had become a twosome, and the one left out was me.
Besides what could I say about my Easter break?
‘Guess what happened to me over the holidays? I became friends with Roxy Minto. She’s my next-door neighbour.’
‘Wow, cool.’
‘Yeah, and you know that fire that was on telly? Well, there’s a kid who escaped it and he’s called Alfie and he says he’s a thousand years old.’
‘Oh, how interesting. I’d like to meet him.’
Instead I would be teased about whether I was in love with Roxy, and mocked for believing (even temporarily) someone who claimed to be a thousand years old.
As it was, I had to be content with telling the story of the fire, and the fire trucks, etc. They liked that, sort of. The rest of it I kept to myself.
I hadn’t seen Alfie since the funeral a few days before. To be honest, he had been a bit weird, suddenly hurrying off without saying goodbye. I reckon being his friend might be pretty difficult. (I cannot imagine him laughing at sewage jokes, for example.)
I don’t think he quite understood that we were trying to make up to him, and convince him that we had not told the police.
Then, on the first day back, he turned up in afternoon assembly, at the end of the row, with the rest of shouty Mr Springham’s rowdy class. He was two rows in front, and hadn’t seen me, but I had a good view of him.
Brand-new school uniform, haircut, and a pair of those glasses like my Uncle Jasper’s that get darker in the sunshine but which were now semi-tinted.
It didn’t look like anyone was talking to him, but that was normal for a new kid.
By lunchtime, word had got around.
1. New kid called Alfie Monk.
2. He’s the boy orphaned by the big fire in the woods.
3. Very quiet.
4. Speaks strangely, like English isn’t his native language.
5. Shocking teeth, like he’s never been to the dentist.
I didn’t see him at break, or at lunchtime, even though I was looking out for him. It wasn’t until the next day that our paths crossed.
The first week of term was Local History Week. According to the letter sent out to parents, local history is the Head’s ‘lifelong passion’ and he’s determined to share it with – that is, inflict it on – everyone else. Some people get totally excited about it. That’s some people for you
.
This year we were going to The Saxon Experience, which the letter home said was:
A vivid recreation of life in Anglo-Saxon times, peopled by larger-than-life characters in authentic clothing. A unique chance to live the life led by our ancestors of more than a thousand years ago.
And here’s the strange thing: until I read that, I had had no idea what Alfie had been talking about.
A thousand years? Might as well have been a million. But now I had what the Head, Mr Landreth, calls a ‘frame of reference’. Alfie was from Anglo-Saxon times. Even thinking that was strange.
I was secretly hoping that the trip would be a chance to rebuild ties with Mo and Spatch, but, after just one day, Mo was off sick. (He was skiving, I’m certain. He just needs to cough and his mum keeps him at home.) Worse, Spatch was on report for ‘persistent non-completion of homework’ and was banned from the trip. He’d be spending the day in Mrs Spetrow’s office, finishing his biology project from last term.
There were about a hundred kids – all of Year Seven, more or less – waiting in the school playground before getting on the coaches for The Saxon Experience, and it was pretty noisy.
I felt a poke in my back. It was Roxy, and next to her was Alfie, a nervous, gappy smile on his face.
‘Look who I’ve found,’ she said.
Before I could say anything, Mr Springham popped up next to us and said needlessly loudly:
‘YOU THREE. COACH ONE, SEATS 18, 19, 20, GO!’
Allocated seats? Oh great.
It was an hour on the coach to The Saxon Experience. An hour in which I discovered:
1. That Alfie was living in a children’s home in Culvercot.
2. It was very strict and had imposed a curfew on him: in by 9pm.
3. Sangeeta and the council were trying to find him a foster family, but these things take time, apparently.
And he kept asking about Jasper. I mean – more than once. At first, it wasn’t weird. It was just, ‘How’s your Uncle Jasper?’ which sort of surprised me a bit because, if I’d mentioned him at all, it had only been in passing.
‘He’s, erm … fine. I guess. Why?’
‘Oh, no reason. I was just asking.’
Alfie’s tone was unconvincingly casual, so I asked, ‘Have you met him before or something?’
‘No. Never in my life. Never met him, no. Not at all.’
Hm. Too many denials there, I thought. Once again, a bad liar spots a bad lie. Did this have something to do with Jasper’s odd behaviour the day Alfie was found? But I thought I’d let it go.
Then, a few minutes later, he said: ‘How did he meet your aunt?’
‘Who? Jasper? Blimey, Alfie – online, I think. Why? What’s it to you?’
‘Nothing, Aidan. Just small talk.’
And there we left it because the Glasses Incident happened.
Inigo Delombra was sitting behind us, and he is someone you just steer clear of. He’s not exactly a bully because – as Mo discovered once in primary school – he’ll back right off if you stand up to him. The problem is he’s already as tall as the women teachers (and Mr Green) and weighs about eighty kilos, easy. He’s huge, in other words, and standing up to him takes courage.
So when Inigo stuck his head over the back of our seats and said, ‘Hello, new boy!’ I sensed trouble.
Roxy and Alfie were seated together. I was across the aisle. I could see Inigo Delombra’s posse of supporters (all two of them) chortling at what might come next.
‘Wanna Haribo?’ Inigo said, looking directly at Alfie.
‘A what?’ said Alfie.
‘A Haribo.’
‘What is one of those?’
Oh no.
Inigo grinned at his sneering followers. ‘New kid doesn’t know what Haribos are!’ Turning back to him, he said, ‘Here! Have one.’ He showed him a packet of sweets. Alfie looked dubious.
‘Go on! Have one! Have two! I’ve got another packet. Where you from then?’
‘I was, well, my father was from Gotland, but then he lived in, erm … he … he is sort of Danish.’ The fear was written all over Alfie’s face.
‘Oh! So you’re from, erm … Danishland. Pastries, yeah? I love ’em! That’ll be why you talk funny, eh? Anyway let’s have a look at your specs then?’
‘My spectacles?’
‘Yeah! Your gogs, specs, bins – go on!’ He reached out and plucked them from Alfie’s nose. Roxy had been quiet up to this point, but now she piped up: ‘Hey. Give it a rest.’
‘Oh, Little Girl speaks, does she?’ Inigo leant in close. ‘Shut it, squirt, or the rest of your term is gonna be H. E. double-L. Now what about these specs, eh? They are cool. Let’s see if they go darker.’
He had put them on and was staring out of the window.
‘Wow! They do. Here, Jonesy: check these out.’ He passed them back to his pal, who held them up to the light, and put them on and then passed them to someone else, and then someone else.
One boy said, ‘Where are these from? Are they unbreakable?’
I glanced across at Alfie, and the pained expression on his face was unbearable.
I got out of my seat and made my way to the back of the coach. By now, the glasses had become just a thing to be passed around. Half of the people at the back had no real idea where they’d come from, or that they’d been stolen from Alfie. It was comparatively easy for me to say,
‘Here! Let me have a go!’ I had to say it a couple of times, but then they arrived in my hand. I put them on, posed, smiled and headed straight back to my seat.
‘Oi! Bring them back!’ shouted Inigo. ‘Linklater, you’re dead! And you, Danish boy!’
It was only a small victory but my heart was thumping.
I was back in my seat when Mr Springham got out of his, and bellowed down the coach:
‘QUIET! I SAID QUIET! DELOMBRA – WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT OF YOUR SEAT? GET BACK AT ONCE! YOU’RE A DISGRACE, THE LOT OF YOU! SIT DOWN AND EITHER READ OR PLAY SOME BRAIN-ROTTING GAME ON YOUR PHONES! I DON’T CARE, BUT I WANT SILENCE UNTIL WE GET THERE. IS THAT UNDERSTOOD?’
There was a murmuring of ‘Yes, sirs’ during which I handed Alfie’s glasses back to him across the aisle. If that didn’t convince him that our offer of friendship was sincere then nothing would.
‘Thank you,’ he whispered but he knew what had just happened. You don’t live as long as he has without knowing that making an enemy of Inigo Delombra is a bad idea.
He was about to find out just how bad.
I’ll say this for The Saxon Experience: they tried their hardest to make things interesting.
The problem was the kind of thing they thought a bunch of kids from Percy Ack would find interesting. Everything was aimed at six-year-olds, with signs in bright colours featuring cartoon figures and speech balloons saying things like:
Can you spot the biggest house?
How many animals are in this picture?
That sort of thing.
Alfie, Roxy and I ended up together in one group. There was a visitor centre, a café and the education room, where a man dressed in Saxon clothes gave us a welcome talk. Mr Springham only had to shout at us once to QUIETEN DOWN!
‘Greetings and salutations, children of the twenty-first century!’ said the man in the old-fashioned clothes. ‘My name is Eckfrith and I own a small farm on the banks of the Tyne …’ and so on.
All the way through, Alfie kept quietly tutting and shaking his head slightly. I thought nobody had noticed apart from me, but the man who was giving the talk had obviously seen it as well, and suddenly stopped.
‘Aha! I see we have a disbeliever among us!’ he said sort of good-naturedly. ‘Tell me, young man – what is wrong? What makes you think I am not a genuine Anglo-Saxon farmer?’
Without missing a beat, Alfie said, ‘You are too clean,’ and the class erupted in laughter. The man didn’t seem to mind.
‘Well, young man, you’re probably right. Soap was very expensive in those days!’
‘Practically non-existent, you mean? And no one said ‘salutations’ – that is a French word that was not common until long after 1066,’ said Alfie.
‘Well, erm …’ The man was floundering.
‘Also your tunic would not be red.’
The man looked down at his simple cotton overshirt. He was clearly a little surprised.
‘Ah, really?’
‘No. Unless you were a very wealthy farmer, you would not be able to afford a red tunic. Red was a very expensive dye.’
‘Ah, well,’ said the man, grinning. ‘Then I am an exceedingly wealthy farmer!’
‘So why are you wearing a poor man’s boots?’
More laughter from the class until Mr Springham shouted, ‘ENOUGH!’ and gave the evil eye to Alfie, who shut up.
Behind us, I heard Inigo Delombra mutter, ‘Think you’re clever, don’t you?’
The nudges and giggles continued, though much quieter. Alfie had got himself noticed, that’s for sure. Whether that was a good thing or not, I couldn’t tell.
But it was nothing to what came next.
What came next was the ‘authentic reproduction Anglo-Saxon village’, which was a collection of round huts with thatched roofs, and Alfie started sneering even at the sign. It was like being with a grumpy adult.
‘How can it be authentic and a reproduction?’ he said. ‘It is either one or the other.’
Roxy was humouring him. ‘Stop it, Alfie. You’ll love it. It’ll be just like when you were, erm … younger.’
Looking round, I saw that we had lost the rest of our group.
‘Great Scott,’ Alfie said. ‘Who built these? An army of dwarves?’ We crouched to go through the doorway.
‘I think they were smaller than us back then,’ Roxy said by way of explanation.
‘Only a bit,’ said Alfie. He looked at the hut’s fireplace and then up at the roof. ‘Where is all the smoke going to go? There is not a smoke hole. People would choke.’
‘All right,’ I said, a bit irritated by his know-all attitude. ‘It’s probably just a mistake. Look.’ I pointed out of the window slit at the next hut along. ‘That one has a smoke hole. There’s smoke coming out of it.’