Obsidian Pebble (13 page)

“Wow,” Ruff said, handling the trefoil.

“This is really cool. Thanks, Oz,” Ellie said, holding up the little carved animal with shining eyes.

“Yours is about two thousand years old,” Oz explained to Ellie. “The Viking arrowhead is only a thousand.”

“Mine's two thousand years old,” Ellie sang a taunting tune to Ruff. “Yours is only a thousand.”

Oz grinned. He had loads to tell them. So much, in fact, that he didn't manage it all until lunchtime over baked sausage in onion gravy and mash. By then he'd told them about S and S's telescope and SPEXIT and was on to the trinket box and the Morsman article his dad had written.

“So,” said Ruff with his mouth full of sausage, “this bloke Morsman was a little bit mental, then, sounds like.”

“Dunno,” Oz said. “But he was definitely convinced that these artefact things were to do with Bunthorpe.”

Ellie shook her head and frowned. “That's freaky, because I've been reading
A Short History of Seabourne's Ancient Houses
and Morsman wasn't the only one to think that whatever happened at Bunthorpe was weirdly weird.”

“What do you mean?” Oz asked.

“Maybe it has nothing to do with it, but there's this chapter in the book about the Seabourne Farriers.”

“The whosamawhats?” Ruff said, moving on to his jam rolly-polly with extra custard.

“The Seabourne Farriers. You know, people who shoe horses and stuff?”

“What have horses got to do with anything?” Ruff asked, wiping a drip of custard from his chin.

“Well,” Ellie said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “listen to this.” She took out a sheet of lined paper covered in her own precise handwriting and smoothed it out on the table so that Oz and Ruff could read it.

“So what happened to this shell, then?” Oz said.

“Probably lost it, along with all the marbles in his head,” Ruff muttered.

Ellie shook her head. “No one really knows. Charles Shoesmith was involved in looking after artillery horses in the First World War. He was killed at the battle of something or other.” She consulted her notes. “Umm, Le Cateau in 1914. No one has seen the shell since. But the timing is what's really interesting, isn't it? John Shoesmith came across this shell thingy in 1760 and the Bunthorpe Encounter was a year later.”

“So you think they're tied together?” Oz asked.

Ellie shrugged.

“Buzzard,” said Ruff. “Shells and artefacts. What does it all mean?”

“It means that Caleb was right when he said Penwurt meant a place where weirdness happens. Something really strange was going on and my dad knew about it,” Oz said, thinking furiously. “Oh, and I saw Caleb arguing with Lucy Bishop again, through S and S's telescope.”

“You think she has something to do with all this?” Ellie frowned.

“Dunno. But she was in the library the night we heard the footsteps and you have to admit there's something funny about her. You saw how she was when we turned up.”

“Stroppy armpit,” Ruff said.

“Exactly. And she's always like that. I just have a really bad feeling…”

“Bad feelings?” said a mocking voice behind them. “Overdone it on the fruit and custard, have we, Chambers?”

They swung around. Jenks and Skinner were leering at them.

“Go away,” Ellie said.

“What's that you've got, Messenger?” Jenks said as he leaned forward and snatched Ellie's handwritten Shoesmith research up from the desk.

Oz shot her a worried glance, but Ellie was up to it. “English essay on farriers. ‘Course, you wouldn't know what they are, since you don't bother doing any homework at all.”

Jenks frowned and balled up the paper before throwing it back at her, narrowly missing Ruff's custard.

“Yeah? Well, I wouldn't bother trying to play football anymore if I were you,” he retorted.

“Just wait 'til next week,” Ruff said.

“Yeah, maybe I'll get a hat trick,” Jenks said. Skinner sniggered loudly and they moved away, well pleased with themselves.

The bell went for the end of lunch and as they joined the throng of pupils heading towards afternoon registration, Oz only just had time to hurriedly say, “Get your thinking caps on. I'm sure the answer to all this is staring us right in the face. We've just got to keep working at it.”

By the time Oz got back to Penwurt, a chill north wind had blown away the clouds and turned the muggy day to crisp autumn under a clear, pale blue sky. There was now only an hour after he got home before it got dark, and Oz decided to make the most of it before attempting his history homework. As a goalkeeping drill, his dad had taught him how to lay two old mattresses from the garage on the floor and use a wall as his attacker. Oz kicked the ball as hard as he could against the wall and then “saved” the rebound. He did all this in the garden so that, if the ball did get past him, there was grass and shrubbery to act as his backstop.

Practise was hard work, and after forty minutes of stretching and diving, he decided to give it one last blast at full power before calling it a day. But his concentration was waning, and the ball hit a drainpipe and went careening off at an angle towards the south end of the house. Oz watched in disbelief as the ball, caught by the wind, flew almost the whole length of the building, bouncing merrily on a gravel path as it went. Cursing, Oz hurried after it. But just as the pathway petered out and gave way to the small lawn at the very rear of Penwurt, Oz stopped. He could hear voices.

“…nothing you can do about it.” Caleb's voice, patient and calm.

“But what if it was? What if we could use it?”

Oz recognised Lucy Bishop's strident tones.

“Yes, but what if it isn't? You'd be showing your hand for nothing,” Caleb said.

“But I have to do something,” Lucy Bishop said. “I can't just stand back knowing what he's going through…”

Oz heard the anguish in her voice as it died in frustration.

“My advice is to—”

Caleb's voice stopped abruptly as the ball finally rolled over the end of the path and onto the lawn. Oz trotted after it and did his best to be nonchalant.

“Oh, hi,” he said as Caleb and Lucy Bishop came into view around the edge of the building.

“What are you doing down here?” Lucy Bishop snapped.

“Uh, I was doing some goalie practise,” Oz said, “and the ball just ricocheted off the drainpipe and…”

Lucy Bishop picked the ball up and threw it back over Oz's head the way it had come.

“There. Now you've got it back,” she said, her mouth a thin line.

Oz watched as the ball veered towards the main garden and got stuck in the soggy mess of leaves at the edge of a small pond. “Yeah, I can see that,” he said drily. “Uh, thanks a lot.”

“Sorry, Oz. Private conversation, you know,” Caleb said with an apologetic look.

Oz shrugged and went to fetch his ball, all the while wondering why Lucy Bishop was mad at everyone all the time.

The evening got even better at about seven when Oz, trying to get his head around the Battle of Hastings and wondering if the arrow that killed King Harold was anything like the one he'd given to Ruff, heard a car pull in. He went to his bedroom window and looked down to see Lorenzo Heeps emerging from his sleek Jaguar, pausing only to crouch down to check his hair in the side mirror. Oz groaned, but felt a wave of relief on realising that at least no one else had got out from the passenger side and it didn't look like Pheeps was in tow. Five minutes later, he heard voices on the stairs and went out to the landing.

“Ah,” said Heeps jovially, “here's the little man himself.”

Oz forced his lips into a toothless grin.

“Your mother was telling me how you helped clear the study. Very good of you, Oscar. Of course, some of the university documents will be confidential, so I thought I'd best take everything away and return the private property later.” He looked at Mrs. Chambers. “That would be for the best, I think, don't you, Gwen?”

“Well, I suppose…”

“That's okay. I opened all the letters addressed to Dad anyway,” Oz stated.

Heeps' eyes narrowed just a smidgen. “Very thorough of you, Oscar.”

“I'll give you a hand with the boxes if you like.” Oz offered, reasoning that, the quicker it was done, the sooner Heeps would be gone.

For the next thirty minutes, Oz lugged heavy cardboard boxes full of papers and artefacts down to the front door, all the while listening to Heeps banging on about the need for cataloguing and confidentiality.

Finally, the study stood empty and Heeps hovered in the doorway, peering into every corner, satisfying himself that they'd taken every last thing. Suddenly he turned to Oz. “You're sure that there's nothing else of any importance? Nothing that you might have mistakenly held on to?”

“No. I've only got what Dad wanted me to have. I checked it all with Caleb.”

“I'm sure you did, but perhaps I ought to double-check, eh?”

“Well, I've given an arrowhead and a boar figurine to Ruff and Ellie, but you can see the ones I kept, if you like?”

“Arrowheads and figurines? No, that will not be necessary.” His eyes seemed to bore into Oz's face. “You're certain there was nothing else in here that I should know about?”

Oz thought about that. There was, of course, the trinket box. But it had been in his dad's study by mistake. Heeps would, Oz was sure, have been more than a little bit interested in that. But it was Oz's property. Given to him by his father and delivered by Royal Mail. It had nothing to do with the university. So Oz shook his head and returned Heeps' intense gaze with interest. Finally, Heeps glanced one last time into the room.

“There is, of course, the clock.”

“That was my dad's and he bought it after we moved here. Mum will not let you have that,” Oz said defiantly.

Heeps scowled, but after a moment of hesitation he finally said, “Splendid. Now, your mother promised me some tea, I do believe.”

Oz followed him down to the kitchen and had a glass of milk while Mrs. Chambers poured tea.

“Thirsty work, carrying boxes. Eh, Oscar?” Heeps chuckled as he helped himself to some digestive biscuits. “Anyway, thanks for your assistance. But don't let me keep you from your homework any longer.” He glared at Oz expectantly, and on seeing no movement added, “Actually, Oscar, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like a private word with your mother.”

Oz still didn't take the hint. He was too busy dunking a biscuit into his milk to really notice Heeps staring at him until he cleared his throat loudly.

“Oh, right, yeah,” Oz said, and took his snack back upstairs. But he didn't take it back to his own room. Instead, he made for the toilet on the first floor. Strictly speaking, this was in the part of the house that the tenants occupied, but no one ever used the toilet because there was one in a huge bathroom with a shower next door. Oz hardly ever used this toilet, either, because it was a bit pokey and cold. But it did have one saving grace in a far corner—a metal pipe that ran vertically up from the kitchen below. Once the smokestack from the old kitchen stove, it had a tiny little door secured by a latch two feet off the floor which, his dad had once explained, was used as access to clean the chimney pipe.

But there was no stove in the kitchen anymore. In fact, there was nothing but a square metal canopy which helped carry fumes and smells away from his mum's modern oven. But other things were carried up that pipe, too. Noises, like the beeping alarm of the fridge door being left open, the banging of pots and pans and, when the kitchen was occupied, voices. Oz knelt and undid the latch on the door, tilted his head slightly and leaned in.

“…I have had a chance to talk to a few of the people you met at the Fanshaws',” Heeps was saying, “and I can tell you that Jack is very interested, indeed.”

“Jack?” his mother asked.

“Jack Gerber, as in Gerber and Callow. It was their window you were gazing into when I bumped into you and Oscar in town. He sees huge potential in a property of this size. There is a great need for more affordable accommodation in this area.”

“Well, that's very interesting, but I haven't had a chance to talk to Oz about this. Not seriously, I mean.”

“Well, of course, that is up to you, but I hardly think an eleven-year-old is capable of making a rational decision on such weighty matters. I mean, the upkeep on a place like this must be—”

“Horrendous, yes, it is. But I must discuss it with Oz. That's how we do things. Just hasn't been the right moment. Not yet.”