“It belongs to me now!” Danny held it up. The doll’s face was streaked with Lord Harleigh’s blood. A strange idea leapt into Danny’s mind.
“You must give it to me, you must!”
Was it fear shaking in his voice? Was Lord Harleigh afraid of the power of the doll? Danny clutched it tighter than ever.
Islington, who was still dangling, squirming in agony, suddenly swung himself over and dug deeply into Lord Harleigh’s stomach, putting his whole weight into his claws. Lord Harleigh cried out, and instinctively flung the cat away from him.
Islington flew screeching into the fire.
Danny did not think. Holding his breath, his eyes wide open, he stepped into the flames. He heard Lark shriek and the music stop and his hair crackle, he felt the fire around him like boiling waves, and he saw Islington staggering and crying at the edge. He bent down, grabbed the cat by his withering fur, and stepped backwards, almost collapsing in the sudden coolness of the night air.
“Danny, Danny!” Lark was screaming. “Are you all right? Oh, your hair, your hair!”
He touched his head and felt the brittle strands crumbling to ash.
Lord Harleigh turned toward him from the fire. His whole body was shaking. It was not the cat he cared about now. “Give me that doll!” he shrieked, and lunged at Danny. Danny thrust the whimpering cat into Lark’s arms and darted away. Lord Harleigh could not see well, through the holes in the mask. He lunged at Danny again, and missed.
Danny held the doll above his head, dancing across the top of the mound. The people below watched silently, transfixed. “You’ll never get it now,” he cried. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. You’re afraid of me!”
Grunting, Lord Harleigh ripped the mask from his head and tossed it aside. His face was long and pale, and twisted with fear and rage.
Danny danced away again as Lord Harleigh grabbed for him. “This doll is you now, isn’t it! Isn’t it! It has your blood on it. Whatever happens to it will happen to you. That’s what you think it does! That’s why you want it so much! Well, see how it feels!” he cried, and pitched the doll into the fire.
A cry of many voices rose from the people gathered below. Lord Harleigh stumbled. He raced to the fire and thrust in his arm, trying to reach the doll. But the fire was too hot for him, the doll was at the center of the blaze, and in a moment it was only a charred lump of wood. He turned to the people. “Help me!” he called. “Oh, help me! We shall burn them, as we have been burned!”
From all directions the crowd surged up the mound. No one noticed Islington now, and Lark held him tightly as she and Danny flew together and clutched each other in panic. Many hands grabbed them, pulled them apart, and down the mound toward the fire around the people.
“No! Oh, no!”
Everyone stopped and turned to the sound of Lord Harleigh’s voice. He was still on top of the mound. And even though the fire was behind him, suddenly a clear, bright light flashed across his face. He squinted. He held up his hands to shield his eyes from the glare. He staggered and almost fell.
Is it really true? Danny thought wildly. Does the doll really work? But then he turned with the others and saw where the light was coming from.
Two headlights were bouncing toward them across the plateau. They were moving very quickly, and soon the shape of the car was clear. Danny pushed his way through the stunned crowd to Lark. He grabbed Islington and pressed him against his chest. “It’s Lil!” he said. “She’s come to save us!”
THE TUMULI
23
The noise of the engine was the only sound. As the car drew closer the people huddled together. Suddenly they seemed embarrassed.
Lark and Danny stood close to each other, watching the car. Danny turned back briefly to look at Lord Harleigh. The lights had left him, and he was now only a scrawny shadow before the flames.
The car shuddered to a stop at the edge of the crowd. A tall bearded man stepped out. Lark ran into his arms. Two policemen leapt from the back, surveyed the scene, and hurried toward Lord Harleigh. Philippa emerged from the driver’s seat, and Danny started toward her.
She gasped when she saw him. There were tears in her eyes. “Danny!” she cried. “Oh, my God, what happened to you?”
“The fire,” he said, “Lord Harleigh threw Islington into the fire, and I pulled him out.”
“You risked your life to save Islington? You? But, are you all right?”
“Yes, it’s just my hair.”
“And Islington?”
The cat’s fur was blackened and curled, but he did not seem to be in pain. He rested comfortably against Danny’s chest. Reluctantly, Danny handed him to Philippa, who cuddled him against her, rocking slowly back and forth. “My poor darling,” she said softly to the cat, “at least I haven’t lost you as well.”
“As well . . . ?” Danny asked, but he knew what she meant, and a strange kind of joy, half mixed with sorrow, rose inside him.
The policemen were back now, each with a firm grip on Lord Harleigh’s elbow. “Didn’t even put up a struggle,” one of them said. “Came as gentle as a baby, he did.”
The other policeman spoke to Danny. “Young fellow, I wouldn’t have been in your shoes for anything. And this poor girl!” Lark and her father had approached. His arm was around her, and she was wiping her face with the back of her hand. “No,” the policeman went on, “I wouldn’t have done what you did, and neither would anybody else around here. We’ve known about these goings-on for years. But nobody dared to interfere with this fellow.” He shook Lord Harleigh’s arm. “His family’s been in control in these parts for centuries. Just look at all the followers he has, all these poor, misguided people whose lives he runs.” Lord Harleigh snorted. “They live in fear of him, I can tell you.” Danny searched for the librarian, and thought he saw him crouching behind a shivering group of fat ladies. “But we could never take steps. We never had proof that he did anything against the law, and so many people were involved who he can get to do anything for him, anything.” The policeman paused and cleared his throat. “But tonight, why, we had to come here, we had to stop this thing, once we heard you children were here, and possibly in danger. There was nothing else we could do. If it weren’t for you, young man, and the girl, why this might have kept going on and on. But because of you, we had to put a stop to it.”
“Sniveling adolescent,” Lord Harleigh murmured, but no one seemed to hear him.
“I don’t know what to say,” Danny said. “I suppose it was dangerous. I just had to find out what was going on here.”
“I must say,” said Lark’s father, “I wasn’t particularly pleased when I heard you two were up here.” His voice was deep and rather rough. “But I know my daughter. She’s just as foolhardy as they come.”
Lark looked up at him. “But what happened? How did you get here so soon?”
“Well, I was worried. You’ve always been curious about things, and I knew the two of you were up to something. I was almost sure you had come up here, and I was furious.” He shook her gently. “But just when I was really getting frantic, I heard a knock on the door, and Philippa stumbled in. I knew who she was immediately.” He looked at her. She still seemed rather dazed. “And the whole story came out. Philippa had a good wash with cold water, and I rang the police.”
“We’re always on the alert on one of these nights,” the policeman said, “just in case, you know.” He turned back to face the huddled, confused crowd. “We’d better get going. We’ll have to take your car, ma’am, to get his lordship down to the station.”
“Of course,” Philippa mumbled.
He raised his voice to speak to the others. “All you people, go on home now. We’re going to forget about most of you, pretend we never saw you here. Unless anything like this starts up again, then we’ll know who to look for. And there’s some of you, you know who you are, who better get out of this county, and quick, or you’ll end up behind bars for a long, long time. Get on, now!” In groups
, they began to move slowly away. “And one more thing, young man. What did they do with you here? How did your hair get burned? Did they try to hurt you?”
“Be careful, you little fool!” Lord Harleigh whispered hoarsely.
“Shut it!” snapped the policeman. “Ignore him. He can’t do no witchcraft in jail.”
“Well,” Danny said, “yes, they did try. After Lord Harleigh threw the cat in the fire, and after I got him out—that’s how I burned my hair—it all went so fast, it’s a bit confused in my head—I burned this doll that was supposed to be magic. And Lord Harleigh sort of went crazy and made the people grab us, to throw us in the fire—and just then you got here.”
“Oh, my God,” Lark’s father said, and tightened his arm around her.
“That’s plenty to hold him on, plenty,” said the policeman. “This fellow will be out of mischief for years to come. And not in a prison, I’ll bet you. In hospital.” Briskly, he snapped a pair of handcuffs on Lord Harleigh’s wrists, and in a moment the car was hurrying back across the plateau. Almost all the people were gone, and the fires were dying away.
“Well, I guess we should start back,” Danny said. He felt curiously light, as though at any moment he might simply float into the sky. “What time is it, anyway?”
“It must be almost morning,” Lark’s father said. And as Danny looked back one last time across the plateau he saw a pale glow beginning to creep over the tops of the hills.
They tramped in silence through the muddy places and out onto the track. Danny’s mind was empty; all he could think about was the countryside around them, and as they walked he studied it more carefully than ever before. Everything was gray or black in the pre-dawn light, and the forest on the left was just beginning to separate into distinct trees. It was almost as though what had just happened was a dream, until Lark, walking beside him, said, “Hey, we did it, didn’t we? It’s all over now, we found out everything, and didn’t it turn out perfect, though?”
“It almost didn’t turn out at all,” Lark’s father said. “It’s damn lucky we got there when we did, I can tell you.” He sounded a bit irritated.
“But how did you get there, in Lil, I mean?” Danny asked.
Philippa, walking with her head bowed, and Islington pressed tightly against her, did not answer. So in a moment Lark’s father said, “The police picked us up outside the Black Swan, then drove up the hill. We had to go past Blackbriar, that’s the only road up the hill, you know. Their car just barely made it to the house. They said it had already been up there once this evening . . .”
“Oh, yes,” Danny said, remembering Mr. Bexford.
“And the thing just died right outside the front door. We were frantic, but Philippa’s car started right up.”
They had almost reached the end of the track, and the morning light was stronger. Lark’s father looked closely at Danny and shook his head. “You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have recognized you at all from Lark’s description. She said you were skinny and pale, but you’re just as robust and ruddy as a young farmhand.”
“I guess I’ve changed,” said Danny.
“You certainly have,” Philippa said.
“Oh, it was the country,” Lark said. “I know it.”
“And I suppose all your daring exploits had something to do with it too,” Philippa added.
“And Mary Peachy,” said Danny. “I just have the feeling that part of her is still at Blackbriar, and somehow it got through to me.”
“Oh, come off it,” said Philippa. “You don’t believe in ghosts.”
But the events of the night had been so fantastic, so unreal, that what Danny was saying about Mary Peachy hardly seemed strange to him at all. “I don’t really, but you yourself—” He stopped abruptly.
“What about me?”
Why shouldn’t I tell her? Danny thought. “You were afraid of her doll. You felt something from it. It had some kind of power over you. I didn’t throw it away, and I was never afraid of it. It had a different power over me.”
“That’s what I told you,” Lark said.
“I know. It’s a lucky thing I didn’t throw it away. No wonder you hated it, Philippa. I’m sure it was other things, too, but if it hadn’t been for that doll, and Mary Peachy, I’d probably still be—”
But this time he knew he shouldn’t finish. They stepped out of the pine thicket, and stopped.
The house itself looked no different than it had the first time they had seen it. Still a part of the earth, it seemed just as bleak and gray and desolate as ever. But as they stood there, the sun appeared over the edge of the hill and touched the house with a rich glow that made the flint walls look warm for the first time. And overnight, the yard around it had become a blanket of tiny blue flowers.
EPILOGUE
Danny went back to London with Mr. Bexford. It should have been an unpleasant train ride, but Danny stared out the window the whole time in a warm, happy daze. Once in London, he insisted on going to a school in the country, and Mr. Bexford finally agreed that the problem of finding him a place to live could most easily be solved by sending him to a boarding school. He chose one with green fields and crumbling medieval buildings, and though his life there was not quite as exciting as it had been at Blackbriar, it was stimulating enough, in many new ways, to keep him very busy for the next few years.
Philippa did not try to persuade him to stay with her. After a few lost, lonely days she woke up one morning with a brilliant idea. She gathered together all the money she had left, and bought a small shop in Dunchester. Doing much of the work herself, she made it over into a restaurant. The food she spent hours preparing was so much more delicious than anything else available in Dunchester that the restaurant soon provided her with a comfortable income. She had a small staff who followed all her orders to the letter, and not once did any of them drop a single pie. Islington’s coat soon grew back, and he was just as beautiful as he had always been. Lark’s father, and even Lark herself, became her good friends, and often visited her in her little apartment above the restaurant.
On occasional weekends she would pick Danny up in Lil and bring him back to visit Blackbriar. They never stayed long, and soon stopped entering the house at all. Year by year tiles dropped off the roof, windowpanes cracked, and the forest crept slowly into the yard.
And for years to come, Danny could not forget the sound of Mary Peachy’s voice. He often wondered if, on winter nights, it still echoed past the cold fireplaces, through the empty rooms of the house that would always belong to her alone.
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