Gravenhunger (11 page)

Phoenix reached the top of the mound and paused to catch his breath.

He saw it almost at once, drifting amidst the sleet not far from where he was standing – the same silhouette he had seen the previous day, but clearer now and more defined.

His skin prickled against his clothes. Was he dreaming, or was that the faintest outline of a hand he could see … a web of trailing fingers amidst the haze of greyish-white?

Rose appeared over the crest of the mound,
red-faced
from running after her cousin.

“What is it?” she asked. “Can you see that thing again? Is it still here?”

Phoenix nodded.

He glanced back to where the shape was now moving off towards the other side of the mound.

“It’s weird,” he said, pulling on his waterproof and zipping it up. “It’s like it knows when someone else is with me. It’s as if … it’s as if it’s only here for me.”

Rose considered for a moment. “Perhaps that’s not so surprising,” she said. “After all, you’re the one with the connection to this place, aren’t you? You’re the one whose family owns Gravenhunger Manor.”

She gazed around.

“So what do we do now, then? What’s the plan?”

Phoenix looked at her.

“Well, we think it’s likely Mum found the bolt on the mound, don’t we?” he said. “But maybe she just stumbled across it by accident. Maybe she was really looking for something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Treasure, maybe? She might not have heard the local gossip like we have, but that wouldn’t have stopped her from wondering what might lie beneath such a strange hump of ground.”

“I suppose not,” agreed Rose.

Phoenix crossed to the centre of the mound and knelt down.

“I need to put myself in Mum’s shoes. I need to imagine I was her that day.”

He began to scratch away the surface covering of sandy soil.

“And if I was looking for treasure, I reckon I’d start here – right in the middle.”

11.
THE WHISPER INSIDE THE EARTH

The view from up here was incredible.

She could see for miles around – right out to sea in one direction and over the chimneys of Gravenhunger Manor in the other. It was like being on top of the world.

Elvira wiped the sweat from her forehead and crouched back over the hole she was digging in the mound.

It was getting quite deep now, but so far she had found nothing. There was a steady thickening of the soil as she dug deeper, but that was all.

She wasn’t ready to give up yet though. Not when there might be real treasure to find. And anyway, being over here on her own was way better than hanging around the house and garden all day looking after Lorenzo. If she had to play one more game of hide-and-seek with him she’d go mad. Little brothers could be such a nuisance
.

The trowel struck something hard and Elvira’s heart soared.

Throwing it to one side, she reached into the earth with her hands. There it was: a stub of metal, not much longer than her finger, but thicker and pitted all over. A piece of bronze, perhaps? A lump of gold studded with jewels?

She loosened the object from the soil and drew it out, her pulse racing.

But even before she had rubbed it clean, she could see that what she had found was nothing special.

It was just a rusty iron bolt.

Elvira dropped it back into the hole and sighed.

If there was anything interesting to discover beneath this mound, then she obviously wasn’t looking in the right place.

She checked her watch. Five o’clock already! Dad would be home from work soon. She was going to have to get back to the house double-quick and clean herself up.

Tomorrow, if she got the chance, she would slip out again and dig some more – maybe in the middle this time. That would make much more sense, wouldn’t it?

Nudging the trowel into the hole, she glanced down once more at the iron bolt, then reached inside and picked it up.

Perhaps she would take it with her after all.

It might not be treasure, but it could be the beginning of her collection, couldn’t it?

She pushed it into her jeans pocket and stood up.

And above her, the April sky grew suddenly dark
.

“This is ridiculous,” said Rose. “Just look at the state of our hands! They’re all blistered and scratched.” She got to her feet, blinking the sleet out of her eyes. “I’m going back to the house to find something to dig with. There might be a spade in the shed.”

Phoenix looked up at her and shrugged. “Suit yourself. But I’m staying here. We haven’t got much time.”

He glanced across at the silhouette, then forced his gaze away and watched as Rose disappeared down the side of the mound.

They’d been scrabbling away for nearly twenty minutes now and had made very little headway. The hole wasn’t very deep at all, and their fingers were red-raw where they had snagged against stones and twigs hidden beneath the sandy soil.

He clawed his hand once more into the earth, Mr Riley’s words reverberating inside his head.

There’s some say there’s treasure buried beneath the mound
…

Was that really what his mother had been hoping to find?

If so, what had happened to her over here? And how could it possibly have had anything to do with Lorenzo’s disappearance?

Phoenix swallowed.

Just the thought of the little boy’s name made his blood run cold. His mother had had a brother, and he had never known. Perhaps Dad hadn’t known either.

He sighed, then caught his breath as his fingers scuffed against a hard, narrow ridge buried inside the earth.

Freeing it from the soil, he stared down at the jagged lump of metal in his hand.

For a moment confusion mingled with the sour taste of disappointment.

So much for treasure. It seemed he had uncovered nothing more exciting than the remains of a trowel, its wooden handle rotten and wasted.

And then it dawned on him.

Was it possible that he had truly struck lucky … that his mother really had dug into the mound right here … and that this rusty old bit of metal was the tool she had been digging with?

Phoenix plunged the blade of the trowel into the earth, a shiver coursing through him.

In which case, what was it doing buried beneath the earth?

Horizontal sheets of rain lashed against the attic window, rattling the glass in its casement
.

Elvira twisted and turned on the crumpled sheets.

Tomorrow wouldn’t be much fun, would it?

Not if she and Lorenzo were going to be stuck inside the house all day while Mum carried on with the unpacking. No trips out till it was done, she’d said. Not even to the village.

It looked like there’d been a power cut too. The light had suddenly gone out when she’d been reading before bedtime, and when she’d checked, the switch down by her tape deck wasn’t working either. At this rate they wouldn’t even have the television for company in the morning.

Shivering, she pulled the quilt up round her shoulders.

And on top of her chest of drawers, the rusty iron bolt she had brought back with her from the mound began to glow
.

Since finding the trowel, Phoenix had made swift progress. The hole was now so deep he was going to have to get right inside it in order to reach the bottom.

He began to climb in – then scrambled out again, his pulse quickening at the prospect of crouching in the narrow shaft below.

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Not after his experience trapped in the burrow the previous night. He would have to wait until Rose got back. If she’d managed to find a spade in the shed then they could carry on digging from the surface. If not, his cousin would have to get inside the pit and take a
turn at scooping out the earth herself. In the meantime, he would make things easier by widening the hole as best as he could from up here.

Phoenix bent back over the edge and scraped another trowelful of earth towards him, then gasped as a tiny bronze-coloured disc skittered down the side of the pit and landed with a clink at the bottom.

Sticking the trowel-stub into the soil behind him, he gazed into the hole, his eyes smarting at the blast of heat that had risen to greet him.

It was hard to see anything clearly in such a dark and confined space, but if he screwed up his eyes he could just make out a battered old coin, and beside it, a bright speck of blue.

Phoenix leaned forward and began to blow away the covering of hot dry soil, his heart thudding against his chest.

Clear of its dusty veil, the blue speck grew to the size of his fingernail before giving way to another speck, red this time.

Then came another … and another … a pattern of tiny blue and red stones, arranged in a perfect spiral and set into what appeared to be a thin plate of yellowish metal.

Now the plate was curving downwards … and Phoenix was straining towards it, gripping the side of the pit and blinking at what lay before him.

It was a shield, its centre studded with precious stones – real sapphires, real rubies – and set into nothing less than pure gold.

His fingertips brushed the sumptuous spiral of jewels.

And that was when he heard it.

A voice – little more than a whisper, yet impossible to ignore. A voice that seemed to be coming from inside the earth itself.

Elvira lined up the last of her brother’s toy soldiers on the drawing-room floor and stood up.

“There you are,” she said. “That’s the whole army set up, Lorenzo. All ready for you to play with.”

She dropped a kiss on top of his head. “I’ll be back in a bit, OK? Then we can have a game of hide-and-seek before lunch.”

Out in the hallway, she glanced into the kitchen. Mum was standing at the table with her back turned, surrounded by cardboard boxes and pieces of crumpled-up newspaper, humming to herself as she unpacked countless pieces of china.

Elvira tiptoed on towards the front door and opened it a crack.

It was pretty wild out there, and there was certainly no sign that the weather was about to improve. But it was only wind and rain – and it smelt wonderful, as if the whole
earth had suddenly come alive.

She reached up and grabbed her anorak off the peg.

No one was likely to notice if she went out for a while, were they?