by Susan Cooper
Bill looked at her in sullen reproach, jerked forward and went on up the path without a word.
“Oh dear,” Miss Withers sighed. “Now I’ve hurt his feelings. These village people are so touchy.” She made a charming, conspiratorial little grimace at them. “I suppose I’d better go after him.” She turried to follow the boy, and then swung round again. The words shot out like a flick of lightning: “Have you found a map?”
For a moment of roaring silence that seemed like an hour they stared at her. And then Barney, driven by pure naked alarm, took refuge in gabbling nonsense. “Did you say a map, Miss Withers? Or was it a gap? We did find a gap in the hedge, down there, that was how we got through up on to the headland. But we haven’t got a map, at least I haven’t, I don’t know about Simon and Jane . . . don’t you know your way up the hill?”
Miss Withers, staring fixedly at them, relaxed into friendliness again. “Yes, that’s right, Barnabas, a map . . . I don’t know my way about at all well, as a matter of fact. And I couldn’t find a map anywhere in the shops this morning. There’s one little foot-path I’m looking for, just over the other side, and Bill isn’t very much help.”
“I believe Great-Uncle Merry has a map,” Jane said, vaguely. She was watching closely from the corner of her eye; but not a muscle moved in Miss Withers’ face. “You haven’t met our great-uncle, have you, Miss Withers? He’s gone out fishing with Father today. What a pity. I’m awfully sorry we can’t help.”
“I do hope you find your way,” Simon said kindly.
“Well, well, I expect I shall,” Miss Withers said. She flashed her brightest smile at them, and turned away up the path, raising her hand. “Good-by, all of you.”
They watched in silence until she disappeared over the line where the slope met the sky. Then Barney flung himself face down on the ground and rolled over and over, letting out a long relieved breath. “Wheeee-ee-ee-ee! How awful! When she suddenly said . . . !” He buried his face in the grass.
“D’you think she realises?” Jane said anxiously to Simon. “Did we give it away?”
“I don’t know.” Simon gazed thoughtfully up the quiet green slope. There was no sign there now of Miss Withers, or of anything except one far-away grazing sheep. “I don’t think so. I mean, we must have all looked pretty silly when she asked about a map, I know you did.”
“So did you. Like a fish.”
“All right . . . well, we could perfectly well have looked surprised anyway, her saying it out of the blue like that. I don’t think she’d be able to tell if we were looking guilty or just startled. I expect,” he added, gaining confidence as he went on, “she believes we really did think she just wanted an ordinary map to find her way.”
“Perhaps that’s all she did want.”
“No fear,” Barney said, emerging from the grass. “She was testing us out, all right. Otherwise why did she say ’found’? Have you found a map? Any normal person would have said, I say, have you got a map?”
“He’s quite right.” Simon stood up, rubbing the dust from his legs. “Great-Uncle Merry was right too. They aren’t taking chances. Miss Withers was surprised to see us, you could tell, but it wasn’t five seconds before she was having a go about the map.”
“It was nasty altogether,” Jane said, wriggling her shoulders as if she could shake off the memory. She looked up the slope. “How can we go on up there now? We shan’t be able to tell if she and that horrible boy are hidden away somewhere, watching everything we do.”
“Well, it’s no good letting that stop us,” Simon stuck out his chin. “If we think about being watched we shall never do anything. So long as we behave normally, as if we were just wandering about, it ought to be all right.” He picked up his rucksack. “Come on.”
The side of Kemare Head was steeper than the opposite headland had been, and for a long time as they toiled up the zigzag path they saw nothing above them but the line of the slope against the sky, with the sun blazing down into their eyes. The end of the headland, rocky and grey, stretched out far beyond them into the sea, and sweeping towards it the land looked immensely solid, as if it were all rock and the soil above it no more than a skin.
And then they were at the top of the slope, where the grass grew short in a great dry-green sweep, and they could see the standing stones. As they drew nearer, the stones seemed to grow, pointing silently to the sky, like vast tombstones set on end.
“Stones,” Simon said, “is the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard. Like calling Nelson’s Column a stick.”
He stood considering the giant granite pillars rising above him. There were four of them; one much higher than the rest, with the other three grouped irregularly round it.
“Perhaps the grail’s buried under one of those,” Barney said tentatively.
“It can’t be, they’re too old . . . anyway, I think you’re wrong about it being buried.”
“Oh come on, it must be,” Jane said. “How else could anything stay hidden all that time?”
“And remember that bit in the manuscript,” said Barney. “Over sea and under stone.”
Simon rubbed his ear, still dissatisfied. “We aren’t over the sea here. The sea’s miles away. Well all right, not miles, but I bet it’s four hundred yards to the end of the headland.”
“Well, we’re still above the sea, aren’t we?”
“I’m sure that’s not what he meant. Over sea, over sea—I wonder—anyway, we’re trying to go too fast. Step by step, Gumerry said. We ought to stick to the step we’re on.”
Simon looked at the sun, gradually sinking over the coast where cliff after cliff curved into the mist beyond Kemare Head. “Have a look at the stones. The sun’ll be as low as it was yesterday soon.”
“They look so different when you’re close.” Jane wandered round the weather-beaten grey pillars of rock. “We want to know which one it was that looked in line with the sun from the other side, isn’t that it? But how do we find that out from here?”
“It was the biggest one,” Barney said. “It stood up higher than the rest.”
The sun glowed deep towards the horizon, casting an orange-gold warmth over their faces. “Look at the shadows,” Simon said suddenly. His shadow on the ground before him moved a long arm, dapple-edged by the grass, as he pointed. “That’s the way we can do it from this side. Backwards. If one stone was directly between us and the sun yesterday, that means that from here its shadow would be pointing directly to where we were standing then. Towards the rock Gumerry was sitting against. Look, you can just see it from here.”
Following his arm, they saw the one chunky rock on the opposite headland; a small far-away bump on its skyline, lit bright by the gold of the setting sun. It was higher than the standing stones on Kemare Head, and further out towards the sea. But it was undoubtedly the spot where they had stood the day before.
Jane gazed at Simon in open and unusual admiration. He flushed slightly, and became very brisk. “Come on, Barney, quick before the sun goes. Which stone d’you think it was?”
“Well, it was the biggest, so it must have been this one.”
Barney moved a yard or two downhill to the tallest stone. He crossed to its other side, facing the harbour, and crouched down in the shadow, peering at the lone stone across the bay. He frowned, doubtfully. Simon and Jane moved to one side of him, waiting impatiently.
Barney, his frown deepening, suddenly lay down on his stomach in the grass, so that he was lying along the line of the pointing shadow and looking straight ahead. “Am I lying straight?” he said, rather muffled.
“Yes, yes, dead straight. Is it the right one?”
Barney scrambled to his feet, looking doleful. “No. That shadow doesn’t point exactly at the rock. You can see the rock clearly enough, but you have to shift your eyes slightly to be looking straight at it. And that’s cheating.”
“But you said it was the tallest stone you saw.”
“I still say it was.”
“I
don’t see how it could have been,” Jane said, petulant with disappointment.
Simon was thinking hard, holding the rucksack swinging by its strap and banging it absently against his leg. He turned and looked back at the other three stones, standing black now and gold-rimmed against the blaze of the sun. Then he yelped, dropped the rucksack and rushed towards the furthest stone, scrambling down as Barney had done to lie in its shadow. Holding his breath, he dropped his chin to the grass and shut his eyes.
“Move your top half a bit to the left, you’re not straight,” Jane said, close beside him, beginning to understand.
Simon shifted a few inches, raising himself on his elbows. “That right?”
“Okay.”
Simon crossed his fingers and opened his eyes. Straight in front of him over the blades of grass, right in the middle of his line of vision, the bright sunlit rock on the opposite headland was staring him in the face. “This is the one,” he said in a curiously subdued voice.
Barney rushed across and dropped down beside him. “Let me, let me—” He elbowed Simon out of the way and squinted across the harbour at the rock. “You’re right,” he said rather reluctantly. “But it was the biggest stone that I saw, I know it was.”
“That’s right,” said Jane.
“What d’you mean, that’s right?”
“Look at the way the stones are put up. Look at the way the ground slopes. This is the top of the headland, but it isn’t flat, and the big stone is lower down than the others. The one you’re next to now is higher up the hill, even though it’s not the tallest. So where you saw its outline against the sky yesterday, it looked as if it were the tallest.”
“Gosh,” Barney said. “I never thought of that.”
Simon said loftily, “I thought you might get there in the end.”
“It was jolly clever of you,” Jane said. “If you hadn’t been so quick we might never have realised. The shadows’ll be gone soon.” She pointed down at the grass. The blaze of the sun was sinking over the far horizon behind them, and the shadow creeping up over the ground, swallowing up the long shadows of the stones. But across the harbour the rock on the other headland, higher up and longer exposed to the sun, still shone bright like a beacon.
Barney whooped with delight. “We’ve got it! We’ve got it!” He thwacked one hand against the hard warm rock of the standing stone, and whirled round in a circle. “We’re on the first step, isn’t it fabulous?”
“Only the first step, though,” Simon said. But pleasure was bubbling within him as well. They all three felt suddenly enormously energetic.
“But we’ve started . . .”
“We know where to look for the next clue now.”
“We go from here.” Barney ran his hand over the surface of the standing stone again. “From this one.”
“But where?” Simon said, determined to be realistic. “And how?”
“We shall just have to look at the map again. It’s bound to tell us. I mean, really the first clue was marked plain as plain, how to get from the other headland over to the stone here, if only we’d known how to understand it.” Barney ran across to where Simon had dropped his rucksack, flipped the straps open and fumbled inside, bringing out the grubby brown roll of the manuscript from its case. “Look,” he said, sitting down with a bump and spreading it out on the grass before him. “Here’s where the stone’s marked . . .”
“Bring it farther up,” Simon said, looking over his shoulder. “The sun’s still on the grass a bit higher up, and you need the brightest light you can get to look at it. Anyway it’ll be warmer.”
Barney clambered obligingly up the slope, past the massive grey foot of the last and tallest standing stone, to where the grass was still a brighter green in the last golden light of the sun. Simon and Jane followed him, standing on either side so that their own shadows should not darken the faint indistinct scrawl on the curling parchment. They bent down, intent, staring at the crude quick outline that was the Cornishman’s picture, made nine hundred years before, of the standing stones.
Miss Withers’ voice said, behind them: “So you have found a map after all.”
A great wave of horror enveloped Barney, and he froze hunched over the manuscript. Simon and Jane wheeled round in alarm.
Miss Withers stood close behind them, higher up the slope. Her outline was dark and menacing against the sunset sky, and they could not see her face. The boy Bill appeared silently behind her, and stood at her elbow. The sight of them both poised there filled Jane with panic, and she suddenly felt frightened at the silence and emptiness of the headland.
Barney’s finger unconsciously curled into his palm, and the edge of the manuscript, released, sprang back into a closed roll. The faint crackle of its movement sounded like a gunshot in the silence. “Oh, don’t put it away,” Miss Withers said clearly. “I want to have a look.”
She took a step forward, stretching out her hand, and in terror of the flat expressionless voice Jane cried out suddenly.
“Simon!”
As the dark figure loomed swiftly towards him from the hill, Simon felt himself wake up. Quicker than his own thought he swung round, dipped swiftly and snatched up the manuscript from Barney’s knee. And then he was gone, half slithering, half running down the slanting side of Kemare Head, towards the village.
“Bill! Quickly!” Miss Withers snapped. The big silent figure beside her shot into sudden life, tearing down the hill at Simon’s heels. But he was too clumsy for his speed, and in mid-flight on the edge of the slope he stumbled and half fell. He recovered himself almost at once, but not before Simon, running and slipping straight down over the grass and the zigzagging paths, had gained thirty yards’ lead.
“He won’t catch him,” Jane said, her voice wavering with excitement, feeling a broad smile of relief spreading over her stiff cheeks.
“Run it, Simon!” Barney shrilled down the hill, scrambling to his feet.
Miss Withers came down towards them, and they drew back from the sight of her face, twisted by rage into something frightening and unfamiliar, no longer attractive, no longer even young. She snarled at them: “You stupid children, tampering with things you don’t understand—”
She swung away from them and made off down the slope in the same direction that Simon had taken, in a long quick stride. They watched her angry erect back cross and recross the slope on the zigzag path, until she disappeared over the edge of the headland.
“Come on,” Barney said. “We’ve got to find Gumerry. Simon’s going to need help.”
The dry grass was like polished wood under Simon’s feet, giving no grip as he slipped and slithered down the hillside; now on his feet, now flat on his back and elbows, holding one arm up always to keep the manuscript from damage. Behind him he heard the noise of the boy from the village slipping and stumbling more heavily, his breath rasping in his throat, and an occasional gasping curse as he lost his footing and fell.
Facing outwards across the harbour as he ran down, Simon felt that he could almost jump straight out into the sea. The slope seemed much steeper than when they had climbed up by the path, dropping below him in an endless green curve. His heart was thumping wildly, and he was too intent on getting away to imagine what might happen if the boy caught up with him. But gradually, minute by minute, the panic at the pit of his stomach was disappearing.
Everything depended on him now—to keep the manuscript safe, and get away. He was almost enjoying himself. This was something that he could understand; it was like a race or a fight at school, himself against the boy Bill. And he wanted to win. Panting, he glanced over his shoulder. The boy seemed to be gaining on him a little. Simon flung himself down the rest of the slope, sliding and bumping on his back, alarmingly fast, now and again coming to his feet for a couple of staggering steps.
And then suddenly he was at the bottom of the slope, stumbling and gulping for breath. With a brief glance up at the pursuing Bill, who yelled and glared at him as he saw him loo
king round, Simon was off and away over the field, running like a hare and feeling confidence surge stronger as he ran. But he could not lose the boy behind him. Stronger, bigger and longer-legged, the village boy pounded after him with grim determination, striding more heavily but never losing ground.
Simon made for a stile in the hedge at the far side of the field and leapt over, gripping the shaky wooden bar at its top with one hand. He came out at the other side into a quiet lane, pitted with deep dry ruts hard as rock, lined with trees, arching overhead in a thick-leaved roof. With the sunlight quite gone now, it was half dark under the branches, and both ends of the lane vanished within a few yards into impenetrable shadow.
Simon looked wildly up and down, clutching the manuscript and feeling the sweat damp in the palms of his hands. Which way would lead him to the Grey House? He could no longer hear the sea.
Making a blind choice, he turned right and ran up the lane. Behind him he heard the clatter of the boy’s boots climbing over the stile. The lane seemed never-ending as he ran, dodging light-footed from side to side to avoid the ruts. Round every bend there stretched another, curving on in a gloomy tunnel of branches and banks, with no break anywhere into a gateway or another field.
He could hear the beat of the boy’s feet behind him on the hard dry mud of the lane.
The boy shouted nothing now, but pounded along in grim silence. Simon felt a thread of panic creep back into his mind, and he ran more wildly, longing to get out of the cavernous lane and into the open air.
Then facing him round the next bend he saw the sky, bright after the gloom, and within moments he was out again, running on a paved road past quiet walls and trees. Again he turned automatically without time to think where he was going, and the rubber soles of his sneakers pattered softly along the deserted road.
The long high grey wall along one side, and the hedge of a field on the other, gave no sign to tell him where he was running—more slowly now, he knew, for try as he might he was beginning to tire. He began to long for someone, anyone, to appear walking along the road.