Rose sighed.
What was it about this odd-shaped hump of earth that everyone seemed so interested in?
First there’d been the old man on the train, telling her to keep away from it, and now here was Phoenix poring all over it.
Clearly the business about the place being haunted was just a load of nonsense. But what if there was something at least interesting about Gravenhunger Manor and its grounds? And what if Phoenix knew all about it?
Well, one thing was for sure – he wasn’t going to share any valuable nuggets of information with her. Since their head-to-head in the attic yesterday, they hadn’t uttered a single word to each other.
Rose turned away from the window.
There was nothing more infuriating than being left out of a secret.
She flopped down on the end of her bed, then jerked back upright.
Of course! The guidebook! Surely the mound would be mentioned in that.
Dragging her rucksack out from underneath the bed, she slid back the zip on the top pocket and drew out the booklet.
Perhaps – just perhaps – she was about to get some answers.
Phoenix checked his watch.
Eleven-thirty already.
A whole hour of trudging up and down in the pouring rain, and so far he had found nothing.
His plan the previous evening had been to retrace his steps from the house to the mound, starting on the fourth-floor landing just outside the hidden entrance to the attic room. But then it had dawned on him in the middle of the night that the most likely place the little angel would be was where he had tripped and caught his foot in the burrow at the edge of the mound. It made sense to look there first.
He pulled the hood of his waterproof down over his forehead and stared at the ground once more.
He had scoured the area around the burrow again and again, parting the tufts of grass and combing the sandy soil with the tips of his fingers, but there was no sign of the angel. He was going to have to go back to the house soon and dry off before Dad returned from the village. He could always sneak out again later on. A lot later on, if necessary – once it had grown dark and everyone had gone to bed. At least then his nosy-parker cousin wouldn’t be watching him out of the window, as she was almost certainly doing right now.
Phoenix made to leave the mound, then froze.
A shape was drifting towards him, a shape which seemed at first glance to be no more than a rogue patch of mist, blown this way and that by the buffeting wind, but as he stared harder seemed to take on the form of a human silhouette.
So he hadn’t been seeing things yesterday…
For a moment he just stood there, his brain screaming at him to run – but his legs felt like jelly.
Now the shape was coming closer…and suddenly he was scrambling down the side of the mound, not knowing what it was that he was running from, knowing only that he had to get away…
Halfway to the embankment he glanced back.
The silhouette was still there, flitting over the surface, its outline pale and blurred … but very definitely human.
Phoenix raced on towards the river.
At the crest of the embankment he paused, bent double from a stitch in his side and gasping for breath.
He blinked.
Directly below him something bright was scudding down the river … something silvery-white…
Dropping to his knees, he craned forward, but already he could see that the brightness was nothing but the foaming water itself, taunting and teasing him with the illusion of a thousand silvery angels.
How could he have been so stupid? If the angel had dropped out while he was crossing the tree-trunk bridge, he was hardly going to find it floating on the surface of the river, was he? It would be lying at the bottom, unreachable amongst the weeds and the mud and the rocks.
He twisted round and lowered himself over the edge of the embankment, his view of the mound slowly slipping from view.
On its flattened top the strange silhouette had become eerily still…
…as if it was watching his every movement.
Rose ran up the narrow staircase to the attic.
Lunchtime had been a total nightmare.
Apart from one remark Uncle Joel had made about the brilliant sunshine down in the village that morning, no one had said a thing.
They had sat round the kitchen table in silence, and if it hadn’t been for the chimney sweep arriving, Rose reckoned they would have stayed there all afternoon, their moods darkening by the minute.
It wasn’t what she was used to, that was for sure. You could barely get a word in edgeways at home, what with Mum and Dad rabbiting on about this, that and the other. Here at Gravenhunger Manor it was a miracle if her cousin and uncle managed to exchange more than a few words.
Still, she’d managed to escape at last.
Uncle Joel was getting on with some more work and the chimney sweep had disappeared into the drawing room with a collection of peculiar-looking brushes, muttering to himself about the weather.
Where Phoenix had gone, she wasn’t sure.
For a moment she wondered whether he might have dared to go straight back over to the mound. But there was no sign of him out of the window. And in any case, the rain was getting worse by the minute. No one in their right mind would be out there in that.
Rose sprawled on top of her bed and opened the guidebook. She’d only managed a quick look through before lunch, and so far she’d found no information about the mound at all.
She flicked past the list of tourist attractions … past the map of the seafront … past the names and addresses of places to stay…
And then she paused.
Near the back, tucked away in the corner of the page, was something she’d missed: a small photo of the mound – and beneath it, a couple of lines of text.
She pressed the pages flat and started to read.
Believed to be an old burial site, the mound in the grounds of Gravenhunger Manor dates from Anglo-Saxon times. Rumour has it that the place is haunted and local people regard the area with some disquiet.
She snapped the book shut.
So much for thinking there might be something interesting about the mound. It was just an ancient hump of earth, that was all. The inhabitants of Gravenhunger obviously led such boring lives they had to invent stupid ghost stories to keep themselves amused … and the old man she’d met on the train was no exception.
As for Phoenix, well, she was no closer to understanding her cousin’s odd behaviour than she had been before she’d opened the guidebook. Even if he’d read something similar and got it into his head that the mound was haunted, it didn’t explain what he’d been doing walking up and down all over it.
Rose sighed.
This whole holiday had been a terrible mistake. The weather was atrocious, her uncle was working all the time and she and Phoenix weren’t even on speaking terms. At least if they’d been talking they could have been listening to music or playing a board game together. True, she could think of better ways of spending what was supposed to be a glorious summer. But it would be a definite improvement on sitting around all by herself.
Perhaps it was time to put yesterday behind them.
Perhaps it was time to call a bit of a truce.
Snatches of conversation were drifting up through the floorboards into his bedroom, and Phoenix didn’t like the sound of what he was hearing.
“I don’t know what to make of it,” the chimney sweep was saying. “I’ve been sweeping that chimney for nearly three hours now and I can’t get the blasted thing working for love nor money.”
“I thought it was just me,” Phoenix heard his father reply. “I spent ages trying to light a fire yesterday and all I got was a huge cloud of smoke and a great big mess. I really am getting pretty fed up with this place, and the awful weather isn’t helping. I’m about ready to ditch the whole thing and head home.”
Phoenix sat down on the four-poster bed, his heart cl
enching.
Leave? Already? Without the silver angel? And before he’d had a chance to find out what had happened here?
“It’s certainly got a climate of its own,” agreed the sweep. “I’m not one for village gossip myself, but they do say it does nothing but rain up here.”
There was a clattering of poles and brushes, then the sound of footsteps as the two men left the drawing room and went out into the hallway.
A minute later there was a knock at the bedroom door.
“Who is it?” called Phoenix, jumping to his feet.
He scowled as his cousin’s head appeared round the side of the door.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s you. What d’you want?”
Rose blushed. “I was wondering whether you wanted to do something together. You know, to help pass the time.”
“Like what exactly?” said Phoenix suspiciously.
“I don’t know. It’s too wet to go out on the bikes. But we could play a board game if you like. Let’s face it, there’s not much else to do around here, is there?”
“Are you saying you don’t like this house? Are you saying there’s something wrong with it?”
“Something wrong with it? Oh, come off it! This has got to be about the coldest, dampest, most miserable place I’ve ever been to in my life. If we left tomorrow it wouldn’t be a moment too soon.”
Phoenix bristled. “You should count yourself lucky you were invited down here at all. You wouldn’t have gone anywhere this summer otherwise, would you?”
Rose shrugged. “Probably not. But anything would have been better than this.”
“Well, it’s not my problem you’re bored,” said Phoenix, crossing the room towards her. “It wasn’t my idea for you to come. I would have much preferred it if it had just been me and Dad.”
And before his cousin could open her mouth to reply, he had shut the door firmly in her face.
Rose stood on the landing, her heart thumping against her chest.
So much for a truce. Phoenix had to be about the touchiest person she’d ever met.
Rummaging in her jeans pocket, she pulled out her phone. If only she could contact her parents, then perhaps they might agree to let her come home. Especially if they knew things were as bad as this.
But it was the same here as in every other room she’d tried – the little bars at the top of the screen steadfastly refused to spring to life.
She trailed downstairs.
In the hallway everything was quiet. The door to the drawing room was open, but there was no one about. The chimney sweep must have gone home, and her uncle was probably still working.
Rose opened the front door and stood under the old hurricane lamp, listening to the rain pounding on the driveway and scowling down at her mobile.
Still nothing.
At this rate she’d have to cadge a lift with Uncle Joel next time he went into the village and find a phone box. There had to be some way of getting through to Mum and Dad.
She turned to go back inside, then stopped.
In amongst the hammering of the rain and the screeching of the wind, she could hear a creaking noise coming from the forest to the left of the manor.
Pulling up the hood of her fleece, she set off round the side of the house and plunged into the thickly clustered pines, grateful for their canopy of evergreen.
The noise was getting louder and clearer now … and not far off something was visible between the trees.
Another few steps and she was standing right in front of it – a small grey building emblazoned with a cross … a chapel hidden amongst the pines, its door creaking back and forth in the wind.
Rose picked her way towards it, eyeing the clusters of moss-encrusted gravestones around her. When she reached the chapel door, she pulled the iron latch towards her and stepped inside.
She stood quite still in the darkness, breathing in the musty scent and staring up at the single stained-glass window, a circular mosaic of greens and reds and blues and golds.
Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
The tiny chapel was lined with wooden pews, each one boxed in with a little door of its own. At the top of the nave stood a plain stone font, and beyond the pulpit lay a pair of alabaster tombs – some long-dead lord and lady of the manor probably, their hands clasped in death.
Rose jumped as a violent gust of wind slammed the door behind her.
She steadied herself against a nearby pew, then raised her eyes to where, just a short distance up the nave, a small, modern-looking bronze plaque glinted on the whitewashed wall.
Tiptoeing across the floor, she craned forward and scanned the stark black lettering.
IN MEMORY OF OUR ANGEL
LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Rose turned and hurried back down the nave.
She pushed her way out into the open and huddled into her fleece.
But it wasn’t the cold that was making her shiver.
7.
UNDER THE FLOORBOARD
Phoenix peered through the gap in the banisters.
If only Dad would hurry up and go to bed.
This had to be about the sixth time he had crept up to the second-floor landing, and still the line of light under his father’s bedroom door was as bright as ever.
He skulked back down the stairs and returned to his room.
The silver angel had to be out there somewhere, it just had to be. He hadn’t looked in the right place yet, that was all. He needed to revert to his original plan and retrace his steps one by one. Work his way round to the back of the house, past the swings at the bottom of the garden and out into the forest.
But he had to do it soon … he had to find the angel tonight. Dad was losing patience with Gravenhunger Manor, that much was obvious, and the rate things were going they might not be here much longer.
He slumped down on the edge of the four-poster bed and buried his head in his hands.
What a mess he’d made of everything. He was supposed to be getting to the bottom of his mother’s terrible secret, and so far all he’d managed to do was lose his last connection with her. Things couldn’t have turned out any worse if he’d tried.
And then there was Rose. He hadn’t exactly got off to a flying start with her either. What had got into him earlier, biting her head off like that, when all she’d done was ask him if he wanted to hang out with her? It was hardly reasonable behaviour.
Well, tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow he would try and be pleasant to Rose – and what was more, if he’d found the angel by then, he would get his act together and discover what had happened here. Whatever it took, he would unlock the door to his mother’s mysterious past.
Phoenix stood up from the bed.
Maybe he should just take a chance. Sneak off outside while his father was still awake. After all, it wasn’t very likely he was going to come down and check on him, was it? He’d never exactly been the saying-goodnight sort.
But then again, what if he did come down? What if he chose tonight to break the habit of a lifetime and knocked on the door only to find the room empty? There’d be hell to pay then. And there’d be questions too. Lots of them. Questions which he didn’t feel in the least like answering.
Footsteps sounded on the landing above and Phoenix dived into bed, pulling the covers up over his head.
He could hear the bathroom door opening … a tap being turned on and off … then the door re-opening and footsteps padding back across the landing.
Perhaps this time he was in luck.
He lay there for a while in the darkness, his eyes wide open, then relaxed as a rhythmic snore began to resonate through the floorboards.
At last! It sounded like Dad was well away, and luckily he had always been a heavy sleeper.
Phoenix scrambled out of bed and switched on the bedside lamp. He pulled his clothes on over his pyjamas and put on his waterproof.
Then he rolled up a spare blanket and pushed it down under the covers, prodding it into po
sition until it was roughly human in shape.
Just in case, he thought, picking up his torch and flicking off the lamp. Just in case.
Every time Rose closed her eyes she was back in the little chapel in the forest, staring at the words on the bronze plaque until they were burned like scars into her brain: In memory of our angel, lost but not forgotten.
She pressed her face into the pillow and shuddered.
It was the angel bit that did it. A word like that had to refer to a child, surely? But why not call the child by its name? And why were there no dates on the inscription? It was so bare. So empty-looking.
Outside the wind raged and the rain rattled like gunfire against the glass. It seemed the storm was working itself up into a frenzy.
Rose sat up. She might just as well get out of bed and have a look. Anything to take her mind off those creepy words.
She padded over to the window and pulled back the curtains, then blinked.
Zigzagging across the garden was the beam of a torch…
Squinting down, she watched the narrow shaft of light sweep in silent strokes over the drenched grass.
What was Phoenix playing at? What on earth could be so important that he needed to go out there in the dead of night?
The torchbeam circled the pair of swings at the far end of the garden before moving off once more. There was the occasional morse-like flash as her cousin picked his way through the trees on the outskirts of the forest … and then he was swallowed up into the beckoning arms of the pines, and all she could see was darkness.
Whatever he did, he mustn’t give up.
True, he’d nearly reached the end of the forest and hadn’t found the silver angel yet. But there was still the last bit of woodland left to check … and then the undergrowth on either side of the river and the stretch of land beyond.
Phoenix paused for a moment, rubbing his eyes.
Gravenhunger Page 5