Phoenix propped himself up against the riverbank and took the little boat from Rose.
He scraped off the lumps of earth that clung to its sides and rubbed it on his soaking jeans.
The frame was rotten in places and some of the nails that held it together had worked themselves loose, but the basic shape was clear enough – an open wooden shell, flattened at its base, each end arched upwards in a graceful point.
“D’you think it’s his?” whispered Rose, hugging herself against the cold.
Phoenix nodded. “It must be. It all fits, doesn’t it?”
“So you reckon what Mr Riley said was right, then? That Lorenzo drowned in the river? Oh, Phoenix. I can’t bear it. It’s too horrible to imagine…”
“Maybe he followed my mum through the forest when she came over to the mound,” said Phoenix. “Maybe he was hoping to sail his boat.”
Rose looked at her cousin. “You think he tried to cross the tree-trunk bridge by himself and fell into the river?”
Phoenix considered for a moment.
“I suppose it’s possible,” he said. “But Mum must have been involved in some way, surely? Why else would she have felt so guilty? I reckon it’s more likely the pair of them went across the bridge together and made it as far as the mound.”
He cradled the toy boat in his hands.
“Perhaps she persuaded him to wait for her while she dug. And perhaps he had a bit of a dig around himself. Yes … yes … that would definitely make sense.”
“If you say so,” muttered Rose. “It doesn’t make much sense to me.”
She frowned. “So you think he just got bored and wandered off by himself, do you? And that’s when the accident happened?”
Phoenix shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I don’t. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I think he touched something he shouldn’t have done. And because of that he got drawn towards the river.” He glanced away, flushing. “Exactly the same way I got drawn towards it just now.”
Rose gaped at her cousin. “You’re saying you were led down here?”
Phoenix stared at the little boat and ran his fingers over the nail heads that studded its sides.
He thought back to what the whispering voice had said to him.
Come down, boy. Come down and see the riches of the past…
“Just after you left me I found an old trowel in the hole we were digging,” he explained. “I’m pretty sure it was what my mother had been using. And when I dug down further I uncovered a bronze coin and a shield studded all over with jewels.”
Rose’s eyes widened.
“I reached out to touch them,” Phoenix continued, “and the next thing I knew there was this weird light shining in front of me and a voice from the earth calling me down to the river. And when I got there I saw…”
He broke off, his fingers clenched round the toy boat.
“You saw what?” breathed Rose.
Phoenix said nothing.
His fingers were moving again, running backwards and forwards over the nail heads as if they were measuring the distance between each tiny point of metal.
“Come on, Phoenix! Tell me what you—”
“We’ve got to get back to the mound,” interrupted Phoenix, his eyes flashing with excitement. He started to haul himself up from the riverbank. “Now.”
“But we can’t!” exclaimed Rose. “You’re dripping wet! You’ll freeze to death if you stay out here much longer. And anyway, Mr Riley was right, can’t you see? The garblings aren’t just empty rumour after all. There really is something strange about the mound. I mean, look at what’s just happened to you. You might not be so lucky next time.”
She reached out towards him, but Phoenix pulled away.
Already he was making for the embankment, Lorenzo’s little boat in his hand.
“I have to go back there one more time, Rose. I have to. You see, I think I know what’s underneath it.”
Elvira jumped as a clap of thunder sounded overhead.
“Time to go back, Lorenzo,” she muttered. “Looks like there’s a proper storm brewing.”
Leaving the trowel at the edge of the pit, she straightened up.
“Lorenzo? Did you hear me?”
She looked around her.
Her brother was nowhere to be seen … and nor was his toy boat.
Elvira rushed over to the side of the mound, a cold sickness rising up from the pit of her stomach.
Surely he hadn’t gone off to sail it without her? Not with the river as it was…
“Lorenzo!” she shouted. “Lo-ren-zo!”
She raced towards the river, still crying out his name.
Perhaps he’d got bored with waiting and decided to go back to the house to dry off.
But that would mean crossing the tree-trunk bridge all by himself … and he couldn’t swim…
At the crest of the embankment she skidded to a halt, forcing her eyes downwards to scan the furious watery spew of greys and greens and dirty whites, but there was no sign of her brother.
Was it possible he had made it across OK after all? Might he already be safely home?
Elvira scrambled down the embankment and hurried over to the tree-trunk bridge.
If she had been just a few moments earlier, she might have caught sight of her own blue anorak … scudding down the surface of the river towards the sea beyond.
“Talk to me!” shouted Rose, struggling to catch up with Phoenix as he approached the mound. “Tell me what’s going on!”
She hurried up the slope after him, her shoulders hunched against the driving sleet.
“You still haven’t told me what you saw when the voice drew you towards the river. Was it some sort of a vision you were having?”
Phoenix didn’t answer.
He clambered to the top, then stopped abruptly.
“What’s the matter?” asked Rose, hauling herself up the last stretch. “Oh, come on, Phoenix. Don’t tell me you’re still surprised to see that silhouette thing hanging around up here.” She came to stand beside him, panting. “I told you, it’s—”
“No,” interrupted Phoenix. “It’s not the silhouette. I mean, I can see it and everything. But it’s not that.” He leaned his head to one side. “Listen, Rose. Stop talking for a moment and listen.”
A low rumbling was coming from deep beneath them … and round the edge of the mound a series of tiny hollows was starting to sink into the ground.
“What’s happening?” cried Rose.
Beside her, Phoenix was standing very still, his eyes glued to the trembling earth.
He pointed towards the hollows.
“They’re making a pattern, see? There…and there … and there … a sort of stretched-out oval shape.”
Rose stared about her.
The mound was a mass of hollows, stretching all the way round its summit and meeting in a tip at each end, the pattern interrupted only by the burrow Phoenix had fallen into the previous night.
She grabbed her cousin’s arm.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “It’s as if someone doesn’t want us here. Let’s get out of—”
Phoenix held up his hand to silence her.
“Wait!” he said. “We’ll go in a minute, I promise. But first I need to show you something.”
“Phoenix…”
“Watch me, Rose. Just watch me…”
Edging towards the nearby burrow, Phoenix pulled one of the glowing iron bolts out of his jeans pocket and dropped it neatly inside.
“Yeah?” said Rose. “So you’ve put it back in the burrow. So what?”
The rumbling seemed to subside a little as Phoenix rejoined his cousin and thrust Lorenzo’s toy boat into her hands.
“Now hold this out in front of you,” he instructed, wrenching his eyes away from the silhouette, which was darting backwards and forwards over the surface of the mound. “Hold it in one hand and give me the other.”
Rose allowed him to take her fre
e hand. She felt the rough arc of nails beneath her skin as Phoenix placed her fingertip on to a protruding nail head at one end of the boat and guided it across its length.
Lifting her finger off, he repositioned it on to the nail head directly below.
“For goodness’ sake, Phoenix. We haven’t got time for all this…”
But again her cousin was running the tip of her finger across the length of the boat … and again she could sense the bumpy pattern of tiny metal points.
“Got the shape?” said Phoenix, releasing her hand at last. “Feel the pattern?”
“Of course,” said Rose. “It’s how a boat’s made, isn’t it? Runs of rivets holding all the wooden planks together. It’s not exactly rocket science.” She glared at her cousin. “Come on, Phoenix! Stop talking in riddles. What are you trying to show me?”
“Can’t you see?” said Phoenix.
He pointed his finger at the burrow, then moved his hand slowly all the way round the stretched-out oval of hollows.
Rose’s eyes widened.
“Are you saying…?” she started.
And now her gaze was flitting between the toy in her hand and the pattern sunk into the still-shuddering earth.
“Are you saying there’s a boat underneath this mound?”
Elvira stood in the hallway and listened.
Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this.
At first she’d been pretty sure she would catch up with Lorenzo in the forest, and when she hadn’t she had tried to persuade herself she would find him in the kitchen telling everything to Mum. There would be raised voices and slammed doors and a stinking great row.
But instead she had returned to an unnerving stillness.
Where, oh where, had her little brother got to? It just didn’t make sense.
She had looked inside the kitchen already, but there was nobody in there. All the boxes had been cleared away and the cupboard doors were shut. Her mother must have moved on to tackle a different part of the house. The drawing room was empty too, save for the army of toy soldiers, all lined up and standing to attention – exactly as she had left them earlier.
Footsteps sounded directly above her head and Elvira’s heart leaped. They were coming from Lorenzo’s bedroom. Perhaps he was up there after all, waiting for her to come and say she was sorry…
She sneaked up the stairs, but even before she had reached the landing she could see through the half-open doorway that it was only Mum in there, bent over yet another stack of cardboard boxes.
Elvira tiptoed past. She started to move up through the rest of the house – faster and faster now – checking inside every room as she went. Each time she opened a door her spirits surged … only to plummet seconds later.
On the fourth-floor landing she stopped.
“Please be up there,” she whispered to herself. “Please, Lorenzo. Please be sitting on my bed grinning that mischievous grin of yours. If you are, I’ll never be cross with you again, I promise. I’ll play with you for the rest of the day. I’ll do whatever you want…”
She raced up the narrow staircase and pushed open the door.
The room was empty.
Hurrying over to the window, she checked outside, willing her brother to burst out of the forest and run across the garden towards her … but there was no one out there.
Elvira sank down on her bed, her head in her hands. This was ridiculous. It wasn’t even as if Lorenzo was any good at hiding, was it? When they played hide-and-seek together she always knew exactly where to find him. But now it wasn’t a game any more, now he was missing for real; it seemed he’d managed to vanish into thin air.
If only she could shout out his name – at least that way she might be able to quell some of her crippling fear. But if she did that, Mum would guess at once that something was wrong.
She jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice calling from the bottom of the stairs.
“Elvira? Are you up there?”
Elvira sat very still on the bed.
“Yes, Mum!” she called back. “I’m here.”
“Is everything all right? You’ve got Lorenzo with you, haven’t you?”
“Everything’s fine,” Elvira heard herself reply – and now she’d told one lie she couldn’t stop. “We – we were just about to play a game of hide-and-seek.”
She stared down at her mud-streaked clothes, praying that her mother wouldn’t come up.
“OK!” shouted her mother. “I’ll just unpack a few more boxes and then we’ll have lunch.”
Elvira listened as her mother’s footsteps moved off across the landing.
What on earth was she going to do now? After what she’d told Mum, she could scarcely come down to lunch without Lorenzo…
Standing up, she made for the door.
She had to get out there again. She had to find him. He might have got lost in the forest … or wandered out on to the road … or fallen over and hurt himself … the possibilities were endless.
She crept back down the stairs, feeling inside her pocket for her brother’s silver angel.
It didn’t seem right her having it now. It didn’t belong to her. Wherever Lorenzo was, the angel should be with him.
Phoenix looked at Rose, his eyes bright.
“It’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “There’s a longboat buried directly beneath us. Or at least the remains of one. The wooden frame will have rotted away by now, but the bolts that held it together are still there. I’ll bet you anything you like there’s one below every hollow.”
He gestured over the trembling mound, pausing for a second at the place where the silhouette now hung motionless amidst the sleet.
“There’ll be bolts everywhere, of course,” he went on. “It’s just the position of the topmost ones that have been revealed to us. The bolt I discovered in the burrow must originally have been much higher up – I suppose it got dislodged when whatever animal it was tunnelled into the earth.”
Rose gazed around her.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” she said.
“Of course I’m sure,” replied Phoenix. “What else could possibly create a shape like this? Besides, it’s what I saw in my vision.”
“You saw what’s lying underneath the mound?”
Phoenix turned and stared through the sleet towards the river.
“It was incredible, Rose. So majestic. So graceful. The ends of the boat were curved upwards into points and the sides were packed with oarsmen. And in the middle…”
He swallowed, struggling to keep his voice steady.
“In the middle, raised up on a sort of square platform, was a king. A warrior-king. He must have been the one calling me down to the river. He was wearing a massive bronze helmet with a face-mask. And there was a hoard of treasure at his feet. Piles and piles of jewels and coins. And he had a shield at his side, studded with sapphires and rubies.”
“The same as the one you uncovered in the pit?”
Phoenix nodded.
“I saw the whole thing, Rose. The boat. The king. The treasure. Everything. Just as it once was. And it’s all right here, buried beneath the mound.”
He made to move across the juddering surface towards the pit in the centre, but Rose yanked him back.
“Oh no, you don’t!” she exclaimed. “That treasure’s done more than enough damage already.”
“I wasn’t going to touch it … I was only going to have a quick look.”
“Don’t even think about it…”
Rose shook her head at her cousin, then frowned. “So you reckon the king was buried here along with the boat, do you?”
“Yes,” replied Phoenix. “I suppose it must have been some sort of ancient custom. A way for a tribe to honour its leader when he died. They must have dragged the boat up from much further downstream, where the embankment isn’t so steep.”
He glanced back towards the pit.
“In any case, the voice that lured me into the river
sounded like it was coming from inside the earth itself. It was as if somebody was actually down there.”
“Which they were,” said Rose. “Protecting their treasure. This king of yours must have put a curse on the mound before he died. So that anyone who touched what was rightfully his would come to harm.”
She shuddered. “It really was all there in the village garblings, wasn’t it? The curse … the treasure … the burial ground… Just imagine what a spectacle it must have been. All those men hauling the boat up from the river and covering it with earth. There would have been hundreds of them.”
“It’s about the only bit I do have to imagine though,” said Phoenix. “I saw that boat, Rose. I actually saw it.”
Rose eyed him sharply. “Yes,” she said, “and it nearly cost you your life.” She bit her lip. “And what about Lorenzo? Have you thought about him? Like you said, he must have touched something he shouldn’t have – something belonging to the king – and been drawn towards the river too. Except he wasn’t quite as lucky as you, was he?”
Phoenix screwed his eyes up tight, then opened them wide, as if he was trying to shake away the memory of his vision.
“He must have done it when my mum’s back was turned, mustn’t he?” he said. “She can’t have had a clue what was happening to him, otherwise she would have tried to stop him.”
He stared at his cousin.
“Perhaps she never worked out that the mound was cursed. It would explain the letter, wouldn’t it? About the whole thing being her fault. Perhaps…”
“Perhaps … perhaps…” said Rose. “It’s all just guesswork, isn’t it? We’re never going to know exactly what happened that day.”
She put a hand on his shoulder.
“Come on. We’ve got to get going. Your dad’ll be back any minute and you’re freezing cold. Besides, I don’t like it over here.”
“But—”
“Look,” Rose interrupted, “you’ve found out as much as you possibly can about your mother’s secret. You’ve got to stop now, Phoenix. It’s time to put the past back where it belongs.”
Phoenix sighed. He turned and started to follow his cousin down the side of the quivering mound.
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