Enchanted Glass (19 page)

As he and Rolf turned into the lane leading to Melstone House, Aidan had a horrible thought. Suppose, because Andrew was away, that Mrs Stock did not think she had to get lunch, not even cauliflower cheese? Aidan was so hungry by then that he could have eaten those broad beans raw. Well — almost. He went round the house to the back door to give Mrs Stock her pink bag back and then, perhaps, to look pleading the way Rolf did.

Rolf dashed ahead, round the corner. Aidan heard him give a roaring sort of bark there, full of surprise. Aidan ran after him, lugging the bag. Groil was there, looming shyly round the corner beyond the water butt. Rolf was bouncing around Groil, giving yelps of greeting and standing up to paw at Groil’s knees. Groil made Rolf look tiny. “Oh, hello!” Aidan said. “I thought you only came out at night.”

“Not these days,” Groil said, fending Rolf off with his enormous right hand. “I got zips now. And friends.” His bush of hair was full of dust and cobwebs. He scratched a storm of it out with his left hand as he said, “I came to say we finished the glass in the roof, me and Shaun. Want to
come and look? It’s got faces in it now. Power’s up. You could speak to the High Lord now if you want.”

“What do you mea—” Aidan began.

A look of huge dismay came over Groil’s big face. He put a large finger across his lips and fell to his knees, looking imploringly at Aidan to keep quiet. Then — it was a little like watching Rolf change — Groil shrank into something smaller and darker and harder. In less than a second you might have thought Groil was a boulder at the corner of the house.

Aidan was looking at the boulder, thinking, So
that’s
why I can never find him in the daytime! when a loud, rather shrill voice cried out behind him, “Aha!
Found
you!
Got
you!”

Aidan whirled round. Rolf spun away from sniffing at the boulder. His hackles came up like a bush round his shoulders and like a hedge down his back. He bared his fangs and snarled.

The fat little man, standing beside Aidan with one hand out to grab his arm, backed away a step. “Keep that brute under control!” he said. He was wearing a black coat and striped trousers, as if he was going to a wedding.

Aidan stared. “I can’t,” he said. “He doesn’t like you. Who are you? Are you going to a wedding?”

“
Wedding!
” exclaimed the little man. “What a stupid
idea!” His round face flushed. Aidan thought, Here is somebody else who looks like someone I know! Round and red and clean-shaven though the little man’s face was, it was still remarkably like Tarquin O’Connor’s.

“Then what are you doing here?” Aidan asked, not very politely. Gran would have been shocked and said something about manners maketh man. But Aidan knew the man had been about to grab him, and it was clear that both Groil and Rolf considered him to be an enemy.

The little man drew himself up to his full, fat height. “I am loyal butler to the King,” he said proudly and added, even more proudly, “I am the Puck, no less. I am come here to deliver a letter to the magician Hope from my master, when here I see
you.
” He waved an expensive-looking envelope in one hand. He reached out for Aidan with the other hand. “You used the wallet. There is no doubt who you be. I shall take you prisoner forthwith.”

Aidan backed away. Just like Andrew, he thought, I don’t
believe
this!

But Rolf evidently did believe it. He was advancing on the little man step by slow step, growling deeply. Aidan would not have credited that Rolf could look so sinister. “I — I don’t believe you,” he said. “Go away, or I’ll set my dog on you!”

Rolf didn’t wait to be told. He went from crawling to a leap, snarling hideously.

The little man — Was he
really
the Puck? Aidan wondered — dodged nimbly aside and got his back against the water butt. Rolf went thundering by, scrabbled to a stop and turned to attack the little man again. The Puck held up both plump hands and sang out, “Change! All change!” and Rolf was suddenly a soft-skinned small boy, kneeling on the grass and looking most unhappy.

“Ow!” he said. “That hurt.”

“I meant it to,” said the Puck. “You traitor! You are by rights one of us who do not use iron. Why are you defending a human?”

“Because you wish him harm, of course!” Rolf said angrily.

“Not I,” said the Puck. “I am going to take him softly and kindly to the King my master, and the King my master will put him softly and kindly to death.” He gave Aidan a sly little grin. “Kindly,” he said. He held both hands up again and sang, in a soft, buzzing chant:

A dark cloud of big flying things came streaming over the roof of the house and descended on Aidan. He took his glasses off and tried to back away from them, but they were all round him, circling him, up and down and round, buzzing louder and deeper and stronger than bees. Meanwhile, the Puck was chanting again:

Aidan tried to keep his eyes on just one of the creatures, to count how many times it circled him, but he soon realised he could be hypnotised that way. It was like trying to follow one snowflake in a blizzard. Without his glasses, he was not sure if they were exactly hornets, but he could see they had big bent, striped bodies and stings sticking out at the ends. Their wings made a snarling blur. Aidan remembered reading somewhere that you could die if enough hornets stung you. He was terrified. He looked across at poor near-naked Rolf, crouching on the grass, but the creatures did not seem to be interested in Rolf. That was one good thing at least.

“Help!” he shouted. Mrs Stock must be in the kitchen. Surely she would hear.

“
Seven times round
,” chanted the Puck. “
Seven times round.
” And he added in a more normal voice, “Then walk where my hornets take you and you will not be hurt. Walk towards the front of this house.”

“
No!
” Aidan screamed. “
Help!
” Was Mrs Stock
deaf?

Help came from another direction instead. Uneven feet ran, one foot light, one heavy. “What the green festering devil is going
on?
” demanded a voice. It could have been the Puck’s voice, except that it had an Irish accent. Tarquin came round the corner of the house and exclaimed at the sight of Aidan half crouching in a funnel of whirling dark creatures. He swore. “Call those things off!” he said, pointing his crutch at the Puck. “Call them off now!”

The Puck looked extremely dismayed to see Tarquin, but he shook his head. “Not I. This is in my master’s service,” he said, and went on with his chant. “
Seven times round, Seven times round…
”

Tarquin suggested several very filthy things the Puck could do with his master and rushed at the little chanting man with his crutch pointed like a lance. “
Stop
it!” he yelled.

“I take no orders from a man with
one leg!
” the Puck
screamed out, as Tarquin’s crutch hit him in his bulging grey waistcoat.

Tarquin’s missing leg promptly gave way. Tarquin landed in a crouch on his real knee. But he heaved with the crutch as he went down and the Puck went up and over backwards into the water butt. SPLASH!

Rolf cheered and seized the chance to become a dog again. And, Aidan saw out of the corner of his eye as he ran out from among the dwindling, vanishing hornet creatures, Groil also seized his chance. Aidan glimpsed him uncurling and whisking himself out of sight round the corner of the house.

Aidan knelt down beside Tarquin. “Thanks,” he said. “What can I do for your leg?”

“The Lord alone knows, except it isn’t there any more,” Tarquin said wretchedly.

Here the kitchen door opened and Mrs Stock came out with her what’s-going-on face. Shaun followed her, busily gnawing on half a French loaf filled with steak and lettuce. Aidan’s stomach rumbled at the sight. Then they all had to shield their faces as the Puck came soaring back out of the water butt in a brown surge of rainwater.

“I’ll be even with you yet!” he screamed at Tarquin, spitting out water and pond life.

“Evens is all you’ll ever be with me,” Tarquin said to
him. “I’m your human counterpart, so I am. Add in Shaun here and you’re outnumbered. Go away.
Stay
away.”

“What in the
world
…?” said Mrs Stock, watching the Puck come hovering down to the ground in his dripping morning dress. “Shaun, get that creature out of here before my nerves get the better of me, for Heaven’s sake!”

“I’m going, I’m going!” the Puck said, glowering at her. “You needn’t invoke That Place. And,” he added to Aidan, “I shall find you again, soon enough. Whenever you use that wallet.” He bent and popped the soaking envelope he was holding into the pink bag. Then he was gone. There was nothing of him left but a small shower of water falling among the thistles and the grass.

“We must ask the professor for some way to keep these creatures off you,” Tarquin said to Aidan.

“Professor’s not here,” said Mrs Stock. “Gone to London. World of his own. Were you wanting him for anything particular?”

“Nothing, only hoping for a bit of physio, as you might say,” Tarquin said. He was still kneeling on his good leg, propped on his crutch. He pointed miserably to the missing one, where his trouser leg draped across the grass.

“Help him up, Shaun,” Mrs Stock commanded. She picked up the pink bag — which had got rather wet in the encounter — and looked inside it. “Wet letter for the
professor,” she said. “Damp cereal. At least you got proper food for that ungrateful dog.” Rolf gave her a reproachful look and shook himself. Water sprayed across Mrs Stock’s apron. “None of that, or I shan’t open you a single tin,” Mrs Stock said. “Aidan, your filled French will be ready in ten minutes.
Be
here.” She marched back indoors with the bag. Rolf followed her, with his nose practically inside the bag.

Shaun, with his French bread waving in one hand, heaved Tarquin up with his other hand, and Aidan helped steady him. Tarquin’s shoe fell off his missing foot as he came upright. “See?” Tarquin said despairingly. “Gone again.”

There was a perfectly good sock on the missing foot. Aidan looked at it, glad of the distraction. He was still vibrating all over from the hornet creatures, and from knowing that someone here in Melstone wanted him dead now. He was like the strings of Andrew’s piano, he thought, if you struck one of the deep keys hard and then went away.

“Your sock’s still on,” he said to Tarquin. He bent and felt the air above the sock. His fingers met a sharp shin and a bony knee and strong muscles at the back of them. “Your leg’s still there. The Puck just made you
think
it wasn’t.” He put the shoe back on over the sock to prove it to Tarquin.

“Is that so?” The colour began to come back to Tarquin’s bearded, elfin face. Very cautiously, he stood on both feet. He flexed the missing leg, then stamped. “You’re right!” he said. “It
hasn’t
gone!”

Shaun nodded, satisfied that Tarquin was now all right, and turned to Aidan. “Groil wants you to look in the shed. He got the window clean.”

Groil came sidling back round the corner of the house, big again, with his head nearly level with the bedroom window beside him. He grinned down at Aidan. “That was a good parsnip last night,” he said. “Sweet. Big. Come and look in the shed.”

Here was another distraction. Aidan grinned back. “There’s about a thousand broad beans for tonight,” he said.

“Oh, good,” said Groil.

Tarquin tipped his head back to look up at Groil. His mouth came open. “Who—?” he said to Shaun.

Shaun had just taken a massive mouthful of bread and steak. “Glmph,” he said, with lettuce hanging down his chin.

“This is Groil,” Aidan said. “He’s one of those who don’t use iron. My gran told me there’s a lot of them all over the place if you look. Coming?”

Tarquin nodded wonderingly and limped after Shaun as
Shaun followed Groil and Aidan round the house to the yard. There Groil stopped beside the lawnmower and bowed Aidan towards the shed door with one huge hand outstretched. It was so courtly that it made Aidan laugh as he slipped inside the shed.

The place was quite different already. It glowed with strangely coloured light from the glistening clean glass in the roof. Aidan could see where Shaun had been at work on two of the walls, cleaning and polishing the carved wood. The oddly shaped birds and little animals stood out all over the back wall, shiny and almost golden. The polish revealed that there were carved people in there too, mixed with trails of leaves and flowers.

Aidan breathed in the honey smell of the beeswax. “It’s lovely!” he called out. He took his glasses off and looked up at the coloured glass in the roof. You could hardly see where the panes had been cracked now, or if you could see a crack, it looked like part of the patterns in the glass. Those patterns certainly seemed to be faces, but the window was too high for Aidan to see them properly with his naked eyes. All he could see was that they seemed to be moving. Or was it that his head was moving because he was craning upwards?

Something strange happened then.

The shed went away from Aidan and, with it, the
footsteps of the others and Tarquin’s voice — Tarquin was chattering as usual. But Aidan could still hear birds singing somewhere in the garden or in the orchard. He could hear trees rustling too, and smell damp leaves mixing with the scent of honey from the walls. Out of this, a voice spoke to him. It did not seem to use words, but it reminded him of Gran’s voice all the same, even though it seemed to be the voice of a man.

What is it you need, young sprig of kindling?

Aidan answered the voice in his mind, not by speaking. I want to be
safe.
People keep coming after me.

The voice seemed to consider. Then it said,
Steps have been taken, by you and by others, but to be sure of safety you need to get rid of that wallet in your pocket.