‘Hello,’ he said pleasantly.
Incredulous, Jude stepped from behind the tree. ‘Where do you think you’re going on our horse?’ he said. ‘Give her back or we’ll call security.’
The stranger laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not stealing her. I’m just borrowing her for a bit. There’s a difference. If you wait here, I’ll return her in a wee while.’
He squinted through the gloom. ‘Hey, you’re those American kids, right? I read about you. How’s it working out with Clifford and Marina? Which do you prefer: stately-home luxury or your old yacht? Me, I’d choose the ocean, but if four-poster beds and oil paintings of stuck-up ancestors are your thing, that’s cool too.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Jess said angrily. ‘Blakeney Park is STUNNING. We’re very lucky and extremely grateful.’
‘Yeah, but are you happy?’
‘None of your business,’ snapped Jude. ‘Give us our horse, please. This is your last warning before we call the guards.’
‘Finders keepers,’ the stranger said with a grin. ‘Anyway, she’s not your horse, is she? If the Blakeneys want her, let them come claim her. I’ll tell them that you lost their horse and I rescued her. No doubt, they’ll hand me a huge reward. Or maybe not. From what I hear, they’re as tight as a submarine hatch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m dealing with an emergency.’
‘What emergency?’ Jess said in disbelief.
‘A fox emergency.’ He tilted his head. ‘Hear that?’
Beyond the woods, a hunting horn blew. The bloodthirsty hounds resumed their chase with a cacophony of barking.
Jess flushed with anger. ‘I hear the sound of hunters hounding some innocent creature to its death.’
He regarded her with new respect. ‘So we’re singing from the same song sheet.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m a hunt sab. That hunting horn you just heard was blown by one of my mates. He’s doing that to divert the hounds away from the fox. It’s worked twice. But it probably won’t work again.’
‘What’s a hunt sab?’ Jude asked with suspicion. He didn’t trust the man an inch.
‘A hunt saboteur. We’re on the side of the animals. If our undercover teams learn that a hunt’s taking place – foxes, deer, hares, or whatever – we try to disrupt it.’ He patted his backpack. ‘That’s what’s in here – disruptors.’
The twins shrank away from him.
‘What’s a disruptor?’ demanded Jude. ‘Are you carrying explosives? Was it you flying that drone? Spying on the hunters? On us? It frightened our horses. Jess’s pony threw her. She could have been killed.’
The stranger looked aghast. ‘Do I look like some kind of deranged dweeb who’d terrify horses with a drone?’ He smiled wryly. ‘Don’t answer that. For what it’s worth, I had nothing to do with any drone. Can’t stand the things. As for the disruptors, I have two, neither of which is an explosive. Fox poo and—’
‘Fox poo?’
Jess knew that she and Jude should definitely, positively NOT be chatting to a stranger wearing camouflage in a forest, especially since nobody had any idea they were there. Yet she found it hard to be afraid of this curious Robin Hood figure. She could tell that Jude felt the same way.
‘That’s why I was late this morning,’ the saboteur was saying. ‘I had to swing by a fox sanctuary to collect fox bedding.’ He climbed off Autumn and took a strong-smelling sack out of his backpack. ‘If the hounds get a whiff of this, they’ll go berserk. My other weapon is citronella.’ He took out a spray bottle. ‘It’s made from an Asian grass plant. Smells a bit like orange skin and lemongrass. Confuses the hounds, puts them off the scent . . .’
He cocked an ear. ‘Oh no. That’s not good.’
Jude tensed. ‘What’s not good?’
‘The hounds have gone quiet. Means they’re hunting again. Right, kids, things are about to get serious. I’m Sirius, like the star. It’s been a trip chatting with you, but it’s make-your-mind-up time now. Are you with the foxes or against them?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He means, whose side are we on – the foxes or the hunters?’ said Jess.
‘I’ll make you a deal,’ Sirius suggested. ‘A favour for a favour.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Jude’s patience had run out. ‘No favours and no deals. We just want our horse back.’
‘The favour’s not for me. It’s for the foxes. A vixen and a dog. We think the vixen is pregnant with cubs.’
‘Cubs?’ breathed Jess. ‘I’ve never seen a fox cub.’
‘They’re heart-meltingly cute – or at least they will be if we can save their mum. If I’d been able to get here before dawn, like I planned to, I’d have dragged the poo sack around or sprayed the stiles and fences myself. Now it’s too late. If I go out there, I’ll be arrested by hunt security or the Blakeneys’ estate guards. But if the two of you scatter the poo or spray the fences, you’ll have endless excuses. You can say you got lost, or your horse ran away with you. And keep in mind that you’re not breaking the law by saving innocent foxes. They are.’
‘I’ll take the spray,’ said Jess, suddenly deciding.
‘And I’ll drag the sack.’ Jude reached for Autumn’s reins. ‘Now will you give me back my horse?’
And so it was that, seven days after arriving at Blakeney Park, the twins foiled a fox hunt.
Jude trotted across the fields on Autumn, dragging the sack behind the horse to lure the hounds in the wrong direction. Guided by Sirius, Jess ran on foot to spray the fence posts and tree trunks around the ‘earth’ – the fox’s den – to disguise its smell.
By the time the hounds came tearing down the fence-line, Jess was hidden behind the stone wall, close to where Lizette had left them. She watched through a gap in the rocks as the hounds rushed about in bewilderment.
A terrier picked up the trail Jude had left for them and the ‘whips’, who directed the dogs, sent them chasing after the fresh scent. The baying hounds faded into the distance. Eventually, there was no sound but the birdsong.
Riding across the field to meet Jess, Jude was spotted by a farm worker. As instructed by Sirius, he’d already ditched the smelly sack, so he had no trouble explaining that he was a hapless beginner who’d lost control of a racehorse.
The Blakeneys’ security guards were rather more threatening. They came roaring up in a jeep with blacked-out windows. The snout of a slavering Rottweiler poked around the door as one man leaped out. The other yanked the dog back.
The man came bounding up to them in combat boots, with no regard for Autumn. Her nostrils flared in fear as he barked, ‘Seen anyone acting suspiciously?’
Jude reacted with comic befuddlement. ‘Like who?’
‘Like any fox-hugging, tree-worshipping nutters out to ruin the huntsmen’s day.’
‘Definitely not,’ Jess said mildly. ‘If we’d seen someone hugging a fox or praying to a tree, we’d remember it, wouldn’t we, Jude?’
The man glowered at her, trying to decide if she was making fun of him. ‘If you do see any of those hunt-saboteur characters, run for your life. They’re nutjobs, vagrants and trespassers. Leave it to us to deal with them. Gnasher will sort ’em out.’
He gestured towards the vehicle, from which snarling and snuffling emanated.
After the jeep had roared away, the twins went to say goodbye to their new friend. He was waiting beneath a pine tree on the edge of the forest.
‘You’ve saved many lives today,’ Sirius told them.
‘Don’t you mean two?’ said Jess.
‘Two adult foxes, yes – but also a family of cubs-to-be. Vixens can have as many as six babies. But it wasn’t only the foxes you helped. You and Autumn saved me, too. The Blakeneys’ guards are notorious. I owe you. A favour for a favour.’
‘It was nothing,’ said Jude. ‘We were happy to help. You rescued our horse. We scattered a bit of poo. It was a fair exchange.’
‘Jude, we’d better go,’ Jess i
nterrupted, pointing anxiously at Lizette who was riding across the field on Fred, leading Tempest. ‘Sirius, how will you get off the estate without the guards catching you? There are alarms and CCTV cameras all around the perimeter.’
‘Same way I got here. By kayak.’ He grinned. ‘No point in investing in a fancy security system and thug guards if you forget to monitor the waterways. We Water Rats are invisible. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a great thing.’
Jude stared at him. ‘Water Rats?’
‘Boat dwellers, like you. Your home was a yacht. Mine’s a beat-up old narrowboat on the River Severn. The way I see it, Water Rats everywhere are kin.’
‘Sirius, Lizette is almost here,’ panicked Jess. ‘Go, go, go. Wait – will we see you again?’
‘Maybe you will; maybe you won’t. Either way, I owe you big time for today. Thanks, guys.’ He looked towards the distant hall, perched on a crown of green. ‘If I can ever return the favour, call on me.’
‘We don’t have phones and we don’t know England,’ said Jude. ‘How would we ever find you?’
Sirius unzipped his backpack and reverently removed a photocopied map.
‘You trusted me. This is me trusting you. You’re smart kids. You’ll figure out what the symbols mean and how it works. As for my narrowboat, the clue’s in the name. If you ever need my help, “X” marks the spot.’
20
DRAGON RIDGE
The trouble started the day after the hunt. The farmhand who’d spotted Jude ‘riding eccentrically and possibly up to no good’ right before the hounds were thrown off the scent, had reported the encounter to his manager, Rex, a man with a face like a soggy weekend.
Eager to find a scapegoat for the hunt disaster, T. Rex, as the twins had nicknamed him, told Clifford.
Hours later, the Master of the Hunt called Marina to complain that a skinny girl with long dark hair had been witnessed flitting from the copse where a pregnant vixen was thought to have an earth. Did Mrs Blakeney have any idea who it could have been?
Confronted, the twins stuck to their story. A drone had frightened Autumn. They’d gone in search of her. Jude had ridden the racehorse back to the forest’s edge, where they’d agreed to meet Lizette.
‘It was our first ever tour of your estate, and we’re clueless about fox hunting,’ Jess had pointed out reasonably. ‘I’ve never in my life even seen a vixen.’
Marina’s violet gaze bored into her. ‘Logically, I know that’s true. And yet you just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time, and the foxes escaped.’
‘Maybe it was the drone’s fault,’ suggested Jess. ‘Whoever was flying it was out to cause mischief that day. I could have broken an arm. Did you tell the police about that?’
‘I’ve apologized twice for the pony’s bad behaviour,’ snapped Marina, ‘but I refuse to waste police time with a drone that exists only in the imagination of you and your brother.’
‘Lizette heard it too.’
‘Heard it, yes. In her opinion, it was a plane or a chainsaw. Even if it were a drone, I’m told they have a range of ten kilometres. It could have been dispatched from Bristol for all we know. It wasn’t a drone that scattered fox bedding and sprayed citronella all over the fields. That’s the work of a sab. Do you have those in America? They’re unhinged eco-warriors on a mission to save foxes and other vermin. Thanks to their efforts, the reputation of Blakeney Park as a haven for hunters is in jeopardy.’
Jude said innocently, ‘I’m confused. Seth told us fox hunting was against the law.’
‘It’s complicated,’ snarled Marina. ‘Fine. Let’s draw a line under this incident. We can’t expect you to know how the estate runs overnight. A word of caution. Be very careful. You’re not in Bantry Creek now.’
Two days later, the twins were in trouble again. After waking to find Blakeney Park once more carpeted in white, they’d rushed out to make snow angels with Sam.
Soon they were embroiled in an epic snowball fight. Round and round the topiary bears they went, dodging icy missiles and shrieking and laughing. In the excitement, Jude dropped the Swiss Shepherd’s lead. Sam joined in the chase, barking joyfully.
The sound of breaking glass stopped them in their tracks.
Mary came barrelling out. ‘Which of you smashed that window?’
‘We were nowhere near it,’ protested Jude. ‘Even if we had been, the snow’s too powdery to crack glass.’
‘Nobody likes a liar,’ accused the housekeeper, prodding Jude’s chest with a finger.
Sam took exception to Mary’s aggressive manner. Leaping up, he knocked her flat in the snow.
While Jess helped Mary to her feet, apologizing profusely, Jude rushed to clip on the dog’s lead. As he hauled Sam away, something made him glance up. Caspian was laughing at them from an upstairs window.
The boy thumbed his nose at Jude, then ducked out of sight.
‘That little weasel,’ Jude said furiously to Jess after they’d been marched back inside, lectured all over again by Marina, and told they’d be paying for a new window out of any future pocket money. ‘Caspian smashed the glass so that we’d get the blame. What’s his problem?’
‘We’re his problem,’ said his sister. ‘Don’t ask me why when he has everything and we have nothing. We’re going to have to appeal to his better nature, if he has one. Find out what’s bothering him. Build bridges. Otherwise, he could make our lives hell.’
An opportunity presented itself that evening when Clifford and Marina, dressed like royalty, left the house in a limousine.
After dinner, Lizette went upstairs to make a call. The twins were about to start piecing together a sailing ship puzzle in the games room when Caspian wandered past the open door. When his eyes met theirs, a guilty look flashed across his face. He hurried away.
The twins dashed after him. ‘Hey, Caspian,’ called Jess. ‘Any chance we could have a word?’
‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ came the haughty response.
‘Please, Caspian – it’s important.’
Caspian took the stairs like a stumpy gazelle and slammed the door of the family living quarters shut behind him.
Disastrously, the twins decided to follow.
Any hope they had of trying to befriend the thirteen-year-old evaporated when they burst into his room and discovered a box containing a drone among Caspian’s expensive gadgets and toys.
A huge row broke out.
Jude lost his temper and accused Caspian of trying to kill Jess twice. First, by insisting she ride his unruly pony; then, by terrorizing that pony with a drone.
‘Why would I scare my own horse?’ sneered Caspian. ‘That thing doesn’t even work. I only hoped that Tempest would scare you. If she’d dumped you in the mud, I’d have laughed, just like I did when Mary yelled at you for breaking the window. It would have served you right.’
‘But why?’ Jess said in bewilderment. ‘What have we done to make you hate us? Why are you so jealous?’
‘Jealous? You’re joking, right?’ Caspian laughed rudely. ‘I don’t want you here, that’s all. Your mum was a thief, and your dad drove a car off a bridge and killed my grandfather. There, I’ve said it. No one else will. I don’t understand why my parents fostered you.’
For eleven seconds, time stopped.
Then Jude punched him. He would have hit him again had Lizette not run in and dragged him away.
The memory of the hours and days that followed returned to Jude now like flickering outtakes from an old movie as he gazed out of the car window.
Marina, arriving home in a floor-length silver dress, confirming that, yes, a ruby ring had disappeared around the same time that the twins’ mother had left Blakeney Park. ‘But it was wrong of Caspian to suggest that we believed she was the thief.’
Marina had cooled down since calling Jude a thug. She was almost apologetic. ‘Even if Joanna did take the ring, it’s important to remember that she was grie
ving for your dad and not in her right mind. It really doesn’t matter now. It’s so long in the past that all is forgotten and forgiven.’
‘What about our dad?’ demanded Jess. Jude had never seen her so furious. Throughout the entire row, her eyes had remained bone-dry. ‘Is it true that our father was driving on the night of Caspian’s grandfather’s accident?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Marina. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Jess. Do remember that it was an accident, and that Jim redeemed himself by trying to save Robbie after the vehicle went into the river. In doing so, he lost his own life. It was a double tragedy because Clifford’s father died of pneumonia not long afterwards. He was frail and in poor health. The icy river was too much for him. We don’t hold it against your dad, or we’d never have offered you a home here.’
Clifford had remained standing throughout, staring moodily at the drawing-room fire. Glancing covertly at him, Jude had noticed a dab of Caspian’s blood on the white bib of the Godfather’s tuxedo.
‘I believe it would be in everyone’s best interests if Jess were to accompany me to London tomorrow,’ Clifford had said in his mumbled, husky way. ‘She can stay with my aunt until she starts school next week. Have Astrid make the arrangements.’
‘London?’ Jess had burst out. ‘But I thought we’d be going to local schools. And what about Jude? If I’m going to London, is he coming too?’
‘You wanted to go to the best schools,’ Marina reminded her. ‘That was your dream. As a result, we’re sending you, Jess, to one of the finest girls’ boarding schools in the country, and you, Jude, to one of the most expensive boys’ boarding schools. They’re in London and Wales respectively.’
Panic-stricken at the thought of being torn away from his sister and dispatched to a strange school on the other side of the country, Jude had found it hard to form a coherent thought. ‘But w-what about Sam? Do either of these schools take dogs? How often will we be coming—?’
The word ‘home’ had stuck in his throat like gristle.
Marina got in first. ‘How often will you be coming back here? Is that what you’re asking? Depends on our family schedule. Clifford is under immense pressure at work, so it’s highly unlikely we’ll see you at half term. The Easter holidays, would be my best guess. Don’t worry about your dog. He’ll cope just as our Rottweilers do. Eddie or the guards can walk him.’
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