The Greenstone Grail (14 page)

‘So Nathan is growing up,’ Bartlemy said to Annie, over the comfort of tea and exquisite little biscuits whose flavour she couldn’t identify. ‘He has secrets. It’s a cliché, but he’s no longer a child. He’s becoming a man, an adult if you prefer, and men keep secrets from their mothers. It’s natural. He has asked you to trust him, and I think that’s what you should try to do. If there’s something going on, something we should know about, we will find out in due course. Forbidding him to meet this stranger won’t help. An asylum-seeker … I wonder now.’

‘What do you wonder?’ Annie inquired. She was feeling insensibly soothed, perhaps by his placid attitude, perhaps by the sweetness of the biscuits.

‘I was wondering where this stranger comes from. A man on a beach, who has swum in from a boat, only I believe they never traced the boat, nor found any sign of companions. Illegal immigrants rarely travel alone. Don’t press him with questions, but maybe Nathan could be persuaded to bring this man here for a meal. He must be destitute, and he’s bound to be hungry.’

Annie smiled suddenly. ‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘Food
is your cure-all, isn’t it? You use it to work magic, to open hearts and unlock minds. Not a potion, but a biscuit –’ she took another ‘– or a mug of broth, or a piece of cake.’

‘Exactly,’ said Bartlemy.

And then Hoover looked up, thumping his tail, and they knew Nathan was coming back, and Bartlemy went into the kitchen to find more biscuits.

Back in the village, an hour or so later, Nathan went to see Hazel. He needed to talk about what had happened in the Darkwood, he needed a confidante, an ally – in his heart, he knew he needed someone to go back there with him. When he had thrust his hands between the roots, into the crumbling soil of the earth-wall, he was sure there had been a hollow space beyond; he even thought he had touched metal, like a rod of iron buried under tree and tuber. He had noted with relief that, as he had hoped, Annie seemed more relaxed with him after her tea with Bartlemy. When he said he was going to see Hazel she started to question him, then stopped short, smiling and saying: ‘Okay.’ He smiled back, trusting things were all right again, and went out.

As he approached the Bagots’ house he heard raised voices – adult voices, not Hazel’s. Her father and Lily. And Effie Carlow. The front door opened and Dave Bagot strode out, carrying a zip bag so full it wouldn’t close. He brushed past Nathan, ignoring him, got into his car, and drove off much too fast. Inside, he heard Effie Carlow say: ‘Good riddance.’ He knocked tentatively on the still-open door.

Effie’s face appeared suddenly from the gloom of the hall, looking more than ever like a predatory bird, beak-nosed and beady-eyed. ‘So it’s you,’ she said. ‘Hazel’s upstairs, in her
room. Of course, in my day a girl didn’t invite a boy into her bedroom, not if she wanted to keep her reputation she didn’t. But times change. How is it with the dreaming? Been in any new worlds lately?’

‘Not lately,’ Nathan said. From the kitchen, he could hear the sound of weeping – the gentle tears of resignation, not the wild sobs of anger and despair. He felt it was best not to comment on it.

Effie smiled at him, or perhaps merely bared her teeth in a kind of ferocious grin. He went upstairs in search of Hazel.

She stuck her head round the bedroom door and pulled him inside, shutting out any possibility of adult interference. The room was less of a bedroom than a lair, the walls layered with pictures and posters, books and CDs stacked on shelf and floor, teenage magazines skulking under the bed. There was a desk littered with unfinished homework, a half-eaten bar of chocolate, a bottle of ginger beer, and a portable sound system which pumped out some sort of weird twanging music that Nathan thought might be Indian. Hazel’s taste in music was still at the experimental stage: she refused to restrict herself to the accepted trends and was always trying out new genres. It was as if she was searching for a certain sound, something that would make her feel a certain way, but she could never quite find it. ‘What’s this?’ Nathan asked, picking up a CD case, but Hazel brushed such trivia aside.

‘Did you see Dad?’

‘He shot past me outside. Has he –’

‘He’s left. He’s really left. He and Mum had a row, and Great-grandma Effie came round, and he was yelling at her too, and I think he hit Mum, and she – Great-grandma – drove him out with a broomstick. He called her a wicked old witch, and other things too, but he went. I’m so glad. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m so glad.’ She pulled her hair over
her face, and pushed her fist in her mouth, and for a moment Nathan thought she was crying.

He said: ‘Are you okay?’

She nodded, but didn’t say any more. He put his arm around her, and felt her shuddering.

‘He didn’t hit you, did he?’

‘Not this time. Only the once, with the back of his hand, not a proper hit, just casual. He was drunk. I told you about that.’ Nathan made an affirmative noise. ‘Great-grandma says she’s going to stay here for a while. That’ll stop him coming back. He’s afraid of her.’

‘Are you?’ Nathan asked.

‘A bit.’ He was almost sure she shivered again. ‘Sometimes. But she’s better than Dad. She has to be better than Dad.’

They sat for a while listening to the strange twangy music and drank some of the ginger beer, which was flat. When Hazel was calmer Nathan told her about finding the site of the first house of the Thorns, and even about Woody, which she found rather hard to take in – she could deal with other worlds, but semi-human creatures lurking round tree-trunks sounded suspiciously like pixies or goblins, and she wasn’t having any of that. She said with conscious cynicism that she had long outgrown fairytales. ‘You’ll understand when you meet him,’ Nathan assured her. He tried to tell her about the whispering and the phantom pursuit, but that was hardest of all to describe.

‘If you didn’t see anything,’ Hazel demanded, ‘how did you know there was anything there?’

‘I saw – movement. Twigs quivering, a disturbance on the ground. It’s difficult to explain.’

‘And you want to go back? D’you really think the missing paper will be there? I mean … it doesn’t seem awfully likely to me.’

‘Not the injunction, no,’ Nathan conceded. ‘But there’s got to be something.’

‘How do you know?’ Hazel asked.

‘If there’s nothing to hide, why chase me away?’

Hazel could find no argument against this reasoning, though she wasn’t happy about it. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll go there with you. But
only
if it’s a nice, sunny, friendly sort of day. Not if it’s all cloudy and – and ominous. Okay?’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in fairytales?’ Nathan said, feeling sufficiently encouraged to tease her.

‘I don’t. But I
do
believe in ghost-stories. Besides, what happened – whatever it was – frightened you, and you’re normally much braver than me.’

‘When we go back,’ Nathan said doggedly, ‘I won’t be frightened.’

In the week, Bartlemy telephoned Annie. ‘How would you like a day in London? It’ll take your mind off your troubles, real or imagined – stop you worrying about things you can’t change.’

‘That would be lovely,’ Annie said. ‘What’s brought this on?’ She could never recall Bartlemy spending a day in London, or indeed anywhere else, since she had known him.

‘Rowena Thorn is off to Sotheby’s to take a look at the Grimthorn Grail. She wants me to go with her – moral support – and I thought a day out would do you good.’

‘The Grimthorn Grail!’ Annie exclaimed. ‘Nathan will be jealous. It’s really caught his imagination. I will get to see it too, won’t I?’

‘I don’t see why not,’ Bartlemy responded. ‘If they make a fuss, we can always say you’re another expert. Apparently, they’ve been trying to date it and they’ve encountered some kind of a problem …’

‘But I’m not an expert!’

‘Of course you are. You have an amazing way with computers, small children, and dogs. We don’t have to say what you’re an expert
on
.’

Annie laughed. Michael Addison, who was in the shop at the time, drinking coffee and leafing through a rare history of the Agricultural Revolution, looked up inquiringly. After Annie had rung off, she told him of the project.

‘I shall have to close for the day,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Shocking. Seriously, the old man’s right. You could do with a day off. Playing truant from everything. You worry too much about Nat. He’s a good kid.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Sometimes, that’s what scares me.’

‘So tell me about the Grimthorn Grail – if it’s not a secret?’

They went up to London on Wednesday, leaving the Jowett in Crowford and taking the train. The sun shone, and the city looked its best decked out in the vivid greens of early summer. At Rowena’s insistence they took a taxi to Bond Street; Mrs Thorn had the habits, if not the income, of the privileged, and disdained bus and tube. They were greeted at Sotheby’s by her friend Julian Epstein, a man of fortyish with badger-striped hair and beard and heavy eyebrows drawn into what appeared to be a permanent frown. He accepted, rather doubtfully, the presence of Bartlemy, hesitated over Annie (‘My assistant,’ Bartlemy said), then gave in. ‘Any advice is welcome,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘This damned cup has got everyone baffled. What exactly do you know about its history, Rowena?’

‘Just what I’ve told you,’ she said guardedly.

‘Have you had it carbon-dated?’ Bartlemy inquired.

‘Yes,’ said Epstein, ‘and no.’ He led them into a room with strong artificial lighting and no windows, and unlocked a steel cupboard. From inside he produced a box, an ordinary wooden box packed with false straw. ‘It came in this,’ he said. ‘God
knows where they’d been keeping it. Took us a day to get it clean.’ He thrust the straw aside and extricated the cup.

Without really thinking about it, Annie had been anticipating the gleam of gold, even a diamond or two, and its dullness came as something of a disappointment. Rowena took it, turning it in her hands, and an eagerness came into her face which could not be hidden, changing it, making it harder and stronger. Bartlemy wondered if Epstein noticed. ‘You said, yes
and
no?’ he probed gently.

‘We tried,’ Epstein elaborated. ‘The results were – bizarre. Carbon-dating never fails, but this time … They tested it three times, and were told variously that it was a hundred years old, eight thousand years old, and two hundred thousand years old. There appears to be no logical explanation. In addition, we have so far been unable to discover what it is made of. Is there any clue in your family records?’

‘Tradition said it was gold,’ said Rowena. ‘Or stone.’ She hadn’t taken her eyes off it. ‘I’d go for stone. Some sort of agate, perhaps. It’s definitely not metal. So it didn’t want to be dated? Family legend claims it has strange powers. You should be careful how you meddle with legends, Julian.’

Epstein looked sceptical. ‘Are you going to tell me there’s a curse?’

Rowena gave a snort, not quite laughter, but made no answer.

‘May I see?’ Bartlemy requested.

She relinquished the cup slowly, as if with reluctance. He passed his hand over it, his eyes half closing, as though seeing through his fingers, or feeling with senses beyond touch. Observing it more closely, Annie saw it was made of some dark substance, green-tainted, bleared as if with stains so old that they had become a part of its natural patina. The snaky patterns round the rim seemed little more than scratches,
worn thin with the scrubbing of centuries. It looked neither valuable nor beautiful, only very ancient, primitive, even crude, holding perhaps some faint echo of forgotten magic, but too remote or too obsolete to have any lingering significance. ‘Would you like to take a closer look?’ Bartlemy said, passing it to Annie – he didn’t miss Rowena’s quick gesture of interception, abruptly checked.

Annie’s fingers closed around the stem. The sudden rush of nausea that swept over her was so violent the world turned black – she felt herself losing hold on consciousness, tried to cry out, let the cup slip from her grasp. Then she fainted.

She came to, moments later, to see Bartlemy’s concerned face bent over her. She had been lifted into a chair; his arm was around her shoulders. Julian Epstein peered past him, his natural frown deepened with anxiety. Only Rowena wasn’t looking at her: she had picked up the cup, and was staring fixedly into the shallow bowl. ‘We should get her out of this room,’ Epstein was saying. ‘It’s airless in here. A touch of claustrophobia …?’

‘Possibly,’ said Bartlemy. ‘Secure the cup.’ He threw a quick glance towards Rowena, conveying what might have been a warning.

Epstein turned to Mrs Thorn; Annie tried to stand up and found she was still sick and shaking. Bartlemy picked her up with surprising ease and carried her from the room.

Afterwards, while she was recovering in a comfortable chair by an open window, he asked her what had happened. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t. I touched the goblet, and then – that was it. Sickness. Blackness. I’ll be all right in a minute.’

He looked at her long and thoughtfully. Presently, Epstein reappeared bringing a glass of water, with Rowena in his train. While Annie sipped from the glass he continued to
expand on his theory of claustrophobia, almost as if he were trying to convince himself. Mrs Thorn looked disbelieving.

‘Don’t start telling me that this is more evidence for your family legends,’ Epstein said to her. ‘I’ve never thought of you as the credulous type. You seemed very intrigued by the cup. Are you going to try and buy back the lost heirloom?’