Greenwitch (9 page)

He glanced back into the box, and then all at once a brightness was in his eyes, a fierce brilliance flashing into his brain, and he was staring in disbelief, crying out in a voice that broke into huskiness.

“Simon! It's the grail!”

In the same instant the world about them changed; with a crash the doors of the little caravan swung shut, and blinds fell over the windows, cutting out all light of day. There was an instant of black darkness, but almost at once Barney found himself blinking in a dim light. Wildly he looked round for its
source, and then he realised with a sick shock that the glow, still dim, disturbing, came not from any lamp but from the painted ceiling. Up on the roof, the eerie green whorls that had so troubled him were shining with a cold bleak light. They had shapes, he saw now; angular shapes arranged in groups, like a kind of unknown writing. In the cold green light he looked down, fearful, disbelieving, and saw the same wonderful familiar object that he had seen before gleaming inside the cardboard box. Gently he lifted it out, forgetting everything around him, and set it on the table.

Simon breathed, beside him, “It is!”

Before them on the table the Cornish grail glowed: the little golden goblet that they had first seen, after so hard a search, deep in a cave beneath the cliffs of Kemare Head, and that they had saved from the people and the power of the Dark, for a while. They did not understand what it was, or what it could do; they knew only that to Merriman and the Light it was one of the great Things of Power, something of infinite value, and that one day it would come into its own when the strange runic signs and words engraved over its sides could be understood. Barney gazed as he had gazed a thousand times before at the pictures and patterns and incomprehensible signs on the golden sides of the grail. If only, if only . . . but the ancient lead-encased manuscript that they had found with the grail, in that deep lost cave, lay now at the bottom of the sea, flung by Barney himself from the end of Kemare Head in the last desperate effort to save grail and manuscript from the pursuing Dark. Though the grail had been saved, the manuscript had come to the sea, and only in that manuscript was the secret by which the vital message written on the grail could be understood. . . .

The dim light in the caravan could not dull the glow that came from the grail; yellow it blazed like a fire before them,
warm, glittering. Simon said softly, “It's all right. Not a scratch on it.”

A cold voice from the shadows said, “It is in good hands.”

Abruptly they were out of their absorption with the grail and back in the ominous half-light of the painter of the Dark. The man's black-bead eyes glittered at them from behind the table; he was a surreal pattern of black and white, black eyes, white face, black hair. And there was a deeper strength and confidence in the voice now, a note of triumph.

“I allow you a sight of the grail,” he said, “to make a bargain with you.”

“You make a bargain with us?” Simon said, his voice coming out higher and louder than he had intended. “All you do is steal things. Barney's drawing, Captain Toms' dog. And the grail—it must have been you who stole it from the Museum, or your friends—”

“I have no friends,” said the man unexpectedly, swiftly; it seemed a bitter reaction that he could not help, and for a moment there was a faltering of his cold gaze as he knew it. In the next instant he was composed again, looking down at them both in total self-possession.

“Stealing can be a means to an end, my young friend. My end is very simple, and there is no harm in it. All I require is five minutes of your time. Of your small brother's time, that is, and of a certain . . . talent . . . that he has.”

“I'm not leaving him alone, not for a minute,” Simon said.

“I did not suggest you should.”

“What, then?”

Barney said nothing, but watched, cautiously. For once he felt no resentment that Simon should be taking over. Deep inside his mind something was beginning to fear this strange taut white-faced man more and more, perhaps because he had
so clearly blazing a talent. It would have been much easier to face an uncomplicated monster.

The painter looked at Barney. He said, “It is very simple, Barnabas Drew. I shall take the cup that you choose to call the grail, and I shall pour into it some water, and a little oil. Then I shall ask you to sit calmly, and look into the cup, and tell me what you see.”

Barney stared at him in amazement. Like a sea-mist a strange idea wreathed into his mind: was the man not evil at all, but simply off his head, a little mad? That could, he suddenly realised, explain everything the strange painter had done; after all, even great artists sometimes did odd things, acted strangely; think of nutty Van Gogh. . . .

He said carefully, “Look at the water, and the oil, and tell you what I see? Oil does make nice patterns on water, and colours . . . well, that sounds harmless enough. Doesn't it, Simon?”

“I suppose so,” Simon said. He was staring hard at the dark man, at the wild eyes and the pale intent face, and the same hypnotic suggestion was creeping into his own mind. He too was thinking it more and more likely that their supposed adversary might not have anything to do with the Dark at all, whatever Great-Uncle Merry may have thought, but be simply an eccentric, a harmless nut. In which case, it would be safest to humour him.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Why not?”

Simon thought: when this daftness is all over, we can grab the grail and run. Give him the slip somehow, call Rufus in, get the grail back to Gumerry. . . . He looked hard at Barney, trying to communicate; nudged him surreptitiously and flicked his eyes at the grail. Barney nodded. He knew what his brother was trying to tell him; the same thought was only too vivid in his own mind.

The dark man ran some water from the tap into a glass and poured it into the grail. Then he took a small brown bottle from a shelf near the table and added a drop or two of some kind of oil. He looked greedily at Barney. The tension in him sang like a plucked wire.

“Now,” he said. “Sit down, here, and look hard. Look hard, look long. And tell me what you see.”

Barney sat in the chair before the table, and slowly took the glowing golden chalice in both his hands. Though the inscribed gold of the outside was as bright as it had ever been, the inside surface was a dull black. Barney stared down at the liquid in the bowl. In the cold green light from above his head, incomprehensibly shining out from the patterns of the painted ceiling, he watched the thin, thin layer of oil on the surface of the water swirl and coil into itself, curving, breaking and joining again, forming islands that drifted out and then vanished, merging into the rest. And he saw . . . he saw. . . .

Darkness took hold of his brain like sudden sleep, and he knew nothing more.

 

 

JANE WAS ALMOST IN TEARS. “BUT THEY COULDN'T JUST DISAPPEAR!
Something awful must have happened!”

“Nonsense,” Merriman said. “They'll be rushing in any moment now, demanding their breakfasts.”

“But breakfast was more than an hour ago.”

Jane stared distractedly out over the harbour, busy and bustling in the sunshine. They stood on the little paved path outside the cottages, above the winding web of stairs and alleys that led down to the harbourside.

Will said, “I'm sure they're all right, Jane. They must have woken up early and wandered out for a walk, and gone farther than they intended. Don't worry.”

“I suppose you're right. I'm sure you are. It's just that I keep having this awful picture in my mind of them going out to Kemare Head, the way we used to, last year, and one of them getting stuck on the cliff, or something. . . . Oh dear, I know I'm being stupid. I'm sorry, Gumerry.” Jane shook back her long hair impatiently. “It all comes of seeing the Greenwitch falling, I suppose. I'll shut up.”

“I tell you what,” said Will. “Why don't we go out to Kemare Head just to check? You'd feel a lot happier.”

Brightening, she gazed from one to the other of them. “Could we really?”

“Of course we could,” Merriman said. “Mrs Penhallow will give the truants their breakfast if they arrive in the meantime. You two start off—I'll have a word with her, and catch you up.”

Jane beamed. “Oh, that's much better. Waiting's awful. Thank you, Will.”

“Don't mention it,” said Will cheerfully. “Lovely morning for a walk.”

Into Merriman's mind he said unhappily,
“The Dark has them, I think. You feel it?”

“But without harm,”
came the answer cool into his thoughts.
“And perhaps to our gain.”

*   *   *

Barney stood at the door of the caravan, blinking in the sunlight. “Well,” he said, “aren't we going to get them?”

“What?” Simon said.

“The drinks, of course.”

“What drinks?”

“What's the matter with you? The drinks he just offered us. He said, there are cans in the little cupboard, you can help yourselves. And something about a cardboard box.” Turning to go in, he glanced at his brother in amusement. He stopped abruptly.

“Simon, what
is
the matter?”

Simon's face was white and strained, the lines of it drawn downwards in a strange adult expression of concern and distress. He stared at Barney for a moment, and then he seemed to make a great effort and wrench himself on to the same level of conversation. “You get them,” he said. “The drinks. You get them. Bring them out here. It's nice in the sunshine.”

There was a sound behind them inside the caravan, and Barney saw Simon jump as if he had been stabbed; then again he saw the same straining for control. Simon leaned back against the wall of the caravan, his face up to the sun. “Go on,” he said.

Puzzled, Barney went into the caravan, its interior bright with the sunshine streaming in through the windows. The dark painter was sipping a cup of coffee, leaning on the table.

“This one?” Barney waved a foot at the little cupboard under the sink.

“That's right,” the man said.

Down on his knees, Barney took out two cans of orange soda then peered round the dark little cupboard. “You said a cardboard box, but I can't see one.”

“Not important,” said the painter.

“There's something, though—” Barney reached in, and took out a piece of paper. After one glance he sat back on his heels and looked up at the man without expression. “It's my drawing. That you took.”

“Well,” said the man. “That's what you came for, isn't it?” His dark eyes glinted coldly at Barney beneath the scowling brows. “Take it, and drink your drink, and go.”

Barney said, “I'd still like to know why you ran off with it.”

“You irritated me,” the man said shortly. He put down his coffee cup and motioned Barney towards the door. “No brat criticises my work. Don't start again.” His voice rose ominously as Barney opened his mouth. “Just go now.”

Simon said from the doorway, “What's the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Barney. Rolling up the drawing, he picked up the two cans and went to the door.

“I'm not really thirsty,” Simon said.

“Well, I am.” Barney drank deep.

The painter stood watching them, scowling, barring their way back into the caravan. Outside in the sunshine his big horse moved one placid step forward, rhythmically ripping at the grass.

Simon said, “May we go now?”

The man's eyes narrowed; he said swiftly, “I have no hold over you. Why ask me?”

Simon shrugged. “Just now Barney said, let's go home, and you said, not yet. That's all.”

A kind of relief seemed to flicker over the other's dark face. “Your brother has his precious drawing, so go, go. Up to the left of the farm”—he waved a hand at the grassy lane disappearing on round the corner—“you'll find a short cut back to the village. The path's a little overgrown, but it will take you to Kemare Head.”