HartsLove

by K. M. Grant

  Robin breathed very quickly as he pulled back the covers, for a moment terrified of what he might find. But his parents were there, both fatly snoring. Robin dropped to his knees. He had often complained of his parents’ snoring. Now it was as comforting as a lullaby. He started to shake them awake, then stopped. He did not want to be laughed at. He did not want them to know that he had wet himself. ‘It was that horrible dinner,’ he said loudly. ‘It’s upset my digestion. That’s all.’

  A rush of air; a tap on his shoulder. Gut-dissolving dread. This was not the Furious Boy: it was Daisy. She grabbed his arm and dragged him with her. ‘Never mind your parents,’ she panted. ‘He’s after you. Run!’

  Blindly, his wet pantaloons clinging to his legs, Robin followed as Daisy hobbled round more corners, up more stairs, down more passages. Once he tried to look over his shoulder. ‘DON’T!’ Daisy smacked him sharply. ‘Just hurry!’ Robin did not look behind again. When they got to the hall, Daisy halted, though she was twitchy and constantly on the lookout. ‘I think we’ve shaken him off,’ she said.

  Shafts of moonlight lay like lances across the floor. The Furious Boy was there, pale and one-armed, but with no soggy stump, no blood and no knife. Robin let out a long breath. ‘I was dreaming,’ he said. At once, he let go of Daisy’s hand, furious that he had held it in the first place. Daisy went to sit on the fender, half in and half out of the dark.

  ‘I had a nightmare,’ Robin blustered, sounding just like his father. ‘A stupid nightmare, righty right.’ He hoped she had not noticed his wet pantaloons.

  ‘Yes,’ Daisy said, ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She moved so that he could see her better and gave an enigmatic smile. ‘I just know.’

  No smile had ever made Robin more uneasy. ‘We’ll get rid of this horrible thing,’ he said, pointing at the Furious Boy.

  ‘Of course you will.’ Again she gave that smile. She swung one leg gently, her callipers clanging against the ironwork. ‘We got rid of a similar statue once.’ She clanged her callipers again. ‘Well, almost.’

  ‘What do you mean? Almost?’

  ‘It was a girl and I knocked her leg off, you see. She was a nymph, just like these.’ She gestured at some of the other statues.

  ‘So?’

  ‘That’s why I’m lame.’

  ‘You mean its – her – leg landed on your leg?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Daisy. ‘Her leg landed on the floor.’

  ‘You mean you fell over it?’ He began to laugh hysterically.

  Daisy carried on swinging her callipers. ‘No. Nothing like that.’ She paused.

  ‘I suppose you did something really stupid.’ Robin couldn’t stop his laughter, even though he wanted to.

  Daisy did not seem to notice. ‘The night after I knocked the leg off, the statue came to me. She was crying. I’m not sure exactly what happened next.’ Daisy hesitated nicely and stared at the floor. ‘All I know is that a week or so later my right leg began to feel strange – you know, as if I’d been sitting on it for too long. Then, one morning, it just wouldn’t work at all.’ Robin stopped laughing. A light sweat covered his forehead. ‘We called the doctor and he tried so many things. Everything, I think. Nothing helped. My leg just got weaker and weaker, and after my right leg collapsed, my left one started. In the end they both just withered away.’ She looked up. ‘If I take my stockings off, I could show you.’

  He started. ‘No! Don’t you dare!’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Daisy said. ‘There’s nothing worse than a withered limb – unless it’s two withered limbs.’ She left a tiny pause. ‘Does your arm feel funny?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t,’ snarled Robin. But did it?

  Daisy pressed on. ‘I came to find you, to warn you.’ Another pause. ‘I thought I saw the Furious Boy with a knife.’

  ‘It was a dream,’ said Robin, his voice strangled. ‘The Furious Boy with a knife was a dream. Look! He’s been here all the time.’

  Daisy shook her head. ‘Don’t you understand? That’s what I thought about the nymph. She was still here, yet –’ she gestured to her legs. ‘Are you sure your arm doesn’t feel funny?’

  ‘NO! My arm’s just fine. You can’t be crippled by a statue.’

  ‘Not in a normal house,’ Daisy agreed, ‘but you can if you live here. I should know. Let me look at your arms.’

  Robin began to curse. This silly halfwit was really scaring him with her fibs. And they were fibs. He absolutely knew it. They were fibs, fibs, fibs. Weren’t they? He punched both his arms up and down. ‘My arms are just perfectly fine and dandy.’ He lied. His arms were not fine and dandy. Surely one was throbbing? Surely the other was aching? Surely they were both withering. He was sure of it. Then he was unsure. Then he was sure again. ‘Oh God, oh God!’ he moaned.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Daisy said.

  ‘Lucky?’ He was pulling up his sleeves. He had to see. He had to know.

  ‘You can still escape,’ Daisy said. ‘Perhaps if you leave here and never come back, the statue will forget.’ Robin was gurgling as he frantically inspected each arm in turn. ‘You know,’ Daisy spoke dreamily, ‘I once saw somebody with a withered arm. Everybody spoke to him as if he was the village idiot. It must have been so humiliating. Even more humiliating than wetting yourself.’ Robin groaned. ‘I don’t know for sure what happened in the end,’ Daisy said in the same dreamy voice. ‘I think his parents had him locked away in an asylum for lunatics and left him there until he died. There’s lots of asylums for cripples in Liverpool, you know. I expect your parents wouldn’t want you quite so close, though. It’s easier to forget about people if they’re further away.’

  There was a noise. Daisy’s mouth flew open.

  ‘What now?’ Robin squeaked and whipped round. The Furious Boy had vanished and three of the nymph statues were rotating on their plinths pointing white and bony fingers in Robin’s direction. He reversed into the fireplace and tried to hide behind the firedogs.

  Daisy fought hard not to laugh. She would let Robin burble and blubber for a minute or two, then take him back up to his room where he would see the Furious Boy for a final, unforgettable time. She grinned at the three ‘nymphs’ doing their job so perfectly. Except not so perfectly, because whilst Daisy managed to swallow her laughter, the sight of Robin quivering behind the firedogs completely overwhelmed Clover and Columbine. They began to shiver and shake and, in most unnymphlike fashion, to bend, hold on to their stomachs, to cough, to sneeze, to silently implore, to wring their hands until they finally collapsed amid a babble of completely uncontrollable giggles.

  So jangled were Robin’s nerves that it took him a long moment to hear the giggles and an even longer moment to really look. Once he had looked, however, it took him no time at all to realise that he had been duped, utterly and comprehensively duped and hung out to dry like a prize idiot. At first he was speechless. Then he was howling, quite beside himself at being taken in. He lunged at Clover or Columbine with fists, elbows and teeth. ‘You monsters! You filthy devils! I’ll pay you back for this! I’ll break your bones. I’ll cut off your arms and legs. I’ll stamp on your faces and feed your brains to the crows. Your lives are over, OVER! You’re finished! You’re dead! You’ll never frighten us away from here! We’ll turn you out tomorrow morning with nothing – nothing, do you hear?’

  Daisy was on her feet. She could hardly believe it. The whole evening’s work undone in a second! How could they? She banged her fists against the fender, so boiling with fury at Clover and Columbine that she could quite easily have added to Robin’s hideous threats. But the twins were too far gone. Though they knew they had ruined everything, they just could not stop their giggles. Whenever one almost succeeded, the other would start again until, gasping and horrified but still helplessly hiccuping, they rushed past Daisy, down the stairs and into the kitchen. Robin pursued them. Daisy pursued Robin.

  The twins whisked out through the far door and s
lammed it. Robin was still shouting. ‘Tomorrow I’ll be back with a gun and then there’ll be real blood. Bang! Bang! Bang! BANG! You’ll scream and beg for mercy, you see if you don’t. But there won’t be any mercy. I’ll shoot you one by one.’ He ran past the range. A crunch and a cloud of ash. A hooded, smoky black figure seized Robin, threw him over one shoulder and vanished. Now Daisy screamed and bumped slap bang into Mrs Snipper. ‘Mrs Snips! Mrs Snips!’ Daisy clung to her. ‘We were just pretending – then the twins – then something . . .’

  Mrs Snipper hurried Daisy up the stairs and back into the hall. ‘Go to your bedroom,’ she commanded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘But –’

  Mrs Snipper shook her. ‘Don’t you know that Hartslove looks after its own, Miss Daisy?’ She was a tiny, hedgehog figure in a voluminous nightcap and knitted shawl, but she carried the authority of the castle with her.

  Daisy ran to her room, flung open the shutters and threw herself on to the window seat. In the moonlight, she could see the outline of the chestnut tree. There was movement. She clapped one hand over her mouth. Part of the gnarled and knotted trunk had detached itself and taken on the blurred form of the ashy figure, Robin still over its shoulder. The boy was silent now – at least Daisy could hear nothing. She wondered, with dread, if he was actually dead. A little distance from the chestnut tree, a ghostly horse appeared. Daisy cried out. White from nose to tail, the horse appeared to float, hoofless, above the ground. The hooded figure pitched Robin on to its back and sprang up behind. At once, the horse launched into a hand gallop, careening in wild zigzags around the Resting Place until it melted into a cloud that seemed to spin towards the river. The cloud vanished, reappearing two long minutes later. For several seconds, the ghost horse towered over the moat, then it reared and pitched Robin off like a sack of dead rabbits.

  Daisy was already hurtling downstairs, out of the front door, across the courtyard and on to the drawbridge. There was no sign of the ghost horse. She peered into the moat where, to her relief, she could hear Robin spluttering and puking. She crossed the drawbridge, lay down on the moat’s edge and held out a hand. ‘I’m here,’ she called.

  ‘Go away! Go away!’

  ‘Come here! I’ll help you.’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘Do you want the ash man to come back?’

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘Give me your hand then.’

  Robin still refused her hand but he did crawl out of the moat. Daisy dragged him back into the hall.

  Dawn was beginning to render the lances across the floor of the hall fuzzy and indistinct. All the statues were back in their places, though whether the real statues or not Daisy could not tell and did not care. She propped Robin against a plinth. He was shrunken, like a balloon without air. Daisy had no idea what had just happened. That the horse was The One, she was pretty sure. And who else could the ash man be but Skelton? That could all come later. The important thing now was not to squander this illusion as Clover and Columbine had squandered the statue trick.

  Robin clutched his arms round his knees and forced his voice through a crack in his throat. ‘Who was that man?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Daisy said with nearly complete honesty, ‘but then we don’t know all the ghosts here.’

  ‘He wasn’t a ghost. He was real. He can’t get in here, can he? The door’s locked?’

  ‘Ghosts can do anything,’ Daisy said.

  ‘For God’s sake, you cretin.’ Robin gripped her wrist. ‘He wasn’t a ghost. Is the door locked?’

  Although Daisy knew that there was no lock, it being several hundred years since anybody had thought one necessary, she hobbled to the door. ‘It’s locked,’ she said because that seemed easiest. She pressed her nose against the window. ‘There’s nobody there.’ She returned to Robin and crouched down.

  Robin wanted to curse and cry at the same time. He still wanted to kill Daisy, but he did not want to be alone. He wished they had never come here. ‘You must know who he was! He stank of rotten things and said I’d no right to touch lilies.’

  ‘Lilies? Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ Robin began to shiver. ‘We’ll block the fireplaces. We’ll put cannon on the roof. We’ll fill the moat with burning oil. He must never touch me again. Never.’ He stared fearfully into the hearth. ‘Oh God! He could get in down here!’ He wanted to move. But where to go? ‘We’ll pull the place down and start all over again.’

  Daisy drooped. Despite Skelton’s last-minute effort, the night was a complete failure. Far from putting Robin off, they had simply made him vicious. The dark was thinning fast. ‘Better go back to bed,’ she said.

  Robin jerked. ‘I can’t sleep on my own.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the ash man will be back tonight.’

  ‘He said . . . he said . . . he said he’d bring me a present.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  He glowered at her. ‘Can’t we just stay here?’

  ‘You stay here if you want to.’ Daisy was so tired she wondered if she could actually drag herself upstairs. She hauled herself to her feet. ‘You smell. You’ll need to wash yourself. There’s water in the kitchen and you’ll find some of Garth’s clothes airing near the range.’

  ‘I don’t want to go down there.’

  ‘Then stay smelly,’ she said. She hobbled up to her room and lay on the top of her bed. There was something under the cover. She put her hand in and drew out a small bag. Inside was a robin. It was very pretty, with its brown back and red breast. It was also stone dead.

  18

  The Entwhistles were gathered in the dining room when Daisy came down. Their carriage – their second carriage, as Mrs Entwhistle kept repeating – had already arrived. Mrs Entwhistle and her husband had slept well. They did not, however, wish to repeat the dinner experience. They would breakfast at home. Merle and Lilith appeared, yawning. Jonas Entwhistle, finding Charles just where he had been left the night before, had marched him into the dining room and was delivering a lecture on household management. It took Robin’s appearance to silence him.

  If his daughters were dishevelled without their maid and their hairbrushes, his son was a wreck. Robin had neither bathed nor changed his clothes. He smelled of unmentionable things. He was also hideously flushed and his eyes were hollow. He could not stand still. ‘We’ve got to fix cannon on each corner,’ he said without any preamble, ‘and block up all the fireplaces. We’ll need guard dogs, lots of them. Big ones with teeth.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Mr Entwhistle blinked. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ Robin’s voice was high and querulous.

  ‘I heard you. Look at yourself! Have you . . . have you –’ Jonas could not bring himself to identify his son’s smell.

  ‘Guard dogs and cannon, Father. Order them now.’

  ‘Guard dogs? Cannon? This is 1861, righty right? Who do you think’s going to invade?’

  ‘It’s for the girls’ protection,’ Robin said, ‘and for Mother’s. There was an intruder last night.’ He glared at Garth and Rose. Clover and Columbine were lurking, shamefaced, behind them. ‘A real intruder. Not some poxy girl dressed up as a statue.’

  Mrs Entwhistle felt for her necklace. ‘An intruder? Thank goodness this was under my pillow.’

  Robin turned on her. ‘Who cares about your necklace! He wasn’t after that! He came for me!’

  ‘For you?’ Mrs Entwhistle’s eyes were wide.

  ‘Yes. And he was made of ash from the kitchen range!’

  ‘An intruder made of ash? God in heaven, Mr Entwhistle! Our son’s gone mad.’

  ‘An intruder?’ Charles caught the tail end of the conversation. ‘Not possible. Gryffed would have –’ he broke off. Why did he never remember?

  ‘Gryffed?’ said Mrs Entwhistle, thoroughly bemused. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Rose.

  ‘Why is nobody listening? There was an intruder!�
� Robin stamped his foot and pointed to the doorway. Daisy had just appeared. ‘Ask her.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s right,’ Daisy said. ‘There was an intruder.’

  Mrs Entwhistle felt for her necklace again. ‘For the love of God! Is nowhere safe?’

  ‘Now then, Mother,’ Jonas said. He did not know what to make of any of this. He looked back at his son. ‘If you disturbed a burglar, why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘I couldn’t, Father.’ Robin’s words tumbled out. ‘He grabbed me and burrowed underground. We came out by a tree. I think he was part of the tree. Perhaps it’s an ash tree. We galloped on a white horse. It was hideous and he said vile things but I wasn’t at all frightened of course. Not at all. All the same, we need to protect our-selves. I mean, next time he might take one of the girls and God knows what he’d do to them.’ Mrs Entwhistle and his sisters shrieked. ‘Perhaps he wouldn’t bring them back,’ Robin added, to make his sisters shriek louder.

  ‘Be quiet! All of you!’ ordered Jonas. His son looked very strange, and Jonas did not like anything strange. He forced himself to smile. ‘You had a nightmare, son. That’s all. Pull yourself together.’

  Robin stamped his foot. ‘He threatened me, Father. I had to beat him off. He threw me in the moat.’

  ‘Was that before or after he turned into a tree?’ Jonas asked, his patience beginning to run out.

  Robin turned furiously on Daisy. ‘You tell him.’

  Daisy felt the little bag in her pocket. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t want to. Tell him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Tell them now this minute.’

  Daisy fiddled with her hands. ‘I’m sorry, Mr and Mrs Entwhistle,’ she said. ‘It’s just as Robin said.’