Wild Robert (8 page)

Mum seemed all right, but she kept darting alarmed looks at the shepherd’s crook, which was propped up in a corner. From time to time she said, in a puzzled way, “It’s too early in the season to be overworked. I wonder if I’m going down with something.”

Each time Heather said, quickly and firmly, “Of course not. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.”

“You
are
being kind,” Mum said at last. “How grown-up and considerate you’re getting, Heather.”

Heather found her face getting hot again. It was Robert who was making her feel that way. When she thought about him, she almost felt like a mother herself – a mother with the kind of naughty small boy who pulls down piles of food in the supermarket and the mother has to pay for it. “The potatoes are nearly done,” she said, to take her mind off it. “How long is supper going to be? I can hardly wait.”

This was true. After just one sandwich for lunch, Heather was starving. Strawberries do not fill a person up.

“Not long now,” Mum said. “I like suppertime, too. It’s the only time of day when we can be a proper family. You can go and jangle the bell for Dad, while I dish the meat up.”

When supper was on the table, Heather fell on it as if she was the one who had not eaten for three hundred and fifty years. But she knew she had to talk to Dad about Robert. So, as soon as she felt a little less empty, she started the talk by saying, “Dad, you know all the history of Castlemaine, don’t you?”

“I’ve read up a fair bit,” Dad admitted. “Why?”

“Have you read about anyone called Robert Toller?” Heather said. “About three hundred and fifty years ago.”

As if this was a cue, the room tipped a bit and the spoons clattered on the table. Mum put her hand to her head. Heather jumped nervously. For a moment she wondered if Robert was actually in the room, invisible. But when she thought about it, she knew that the tipping had a sort of far-away feel to it. Robert was still in the tower. He was just reminding her he was there. She looked at Dad. Dad did not seem to notice anything unusual at all. He was frowning, trying to think of the Robert Toller Heather meant.

“He may have been the youngest son of the second Sir Francis,” Heather said. It was a guess, but she thought it was right. Robert had talked as if his brothers were older than he was.

“Oh
him
!” said Dad. He smiled. “You’re thinking of your treasure again, aren’t you? You mean the young man who was executed for witchcraft?”

“
Executed
!” Heather exclaimed. Was Robert really dead, then, she wondered, without knowing he was?

There was another tipping. Saucepans joggled on the stove. In spite of her horror and alarm, Heather began to be annoyed. Robert really was like a naughty small boy in some ways. Why couldn’t he leave her alone to talk to Dad? She was
trying
, wasn’t she?

“Go on,” she said to Dad.

“Well, it’s a strange story,” Dad said. “Robert’s father, the younger Francis, met some kind of very odd woman and married her as his second wife. I suspect she was a gypsy. Nobody seems to have known where she came from and she ran away quite soon, leaving the boy with his father. And it looks as if Robert inherited some peculiar gifts from his mother. The records say that when he was small and fell down and hurt himself, all the church bells rang.”

There was a faint chiming from the corner of the kitchen. Heather turned round, with the back of her neck prickling, to see the row of little bells there, which the Franceys used to ring when they wanted a servant, swaying back and forth. Robert was still at his tricks.

“I’m sure that was absolute nonsense,” Dad said, “but in those days it was enough to start all the people in the village talking about witchcraft. Robert’s father wouldn’t listen to a word of it. He gave the boy anything he wanted and refused to believe there was any difference between Robert and his two elder brothers.”

“So he always got away with it,” Heather murmured.

The bells were still chiming. Mum was watching the salt cellar roll slowly down the length of the table, leaving a trail of salt. “I think,” Mum said nervously, “that I may be going down with flu. Or something.”

“No, you’re not,” said Heather. “There’s nothing wrong with any bit of you. I know. So Robert must have grown up very spoilt and babyish. Go on, Dad.”

Mum smiled feebly. Dad said, “He probably did, Heather. And trouble began after his father died and James, the eldest brother, inherited Castlemaine. James married Eliza Francey. Eliza was very religious and she clearly hated young Robert. She tried to make the village people burn him as a witch, but the village people said they were scared even to try, because of what Robert might do to them. And it does look as if Robert did something to Eliza. Next morning she woke screaming, saying that Robert had put her in hell all that night.”

“With his hand the other way up,” said Heather. “If he did, I bet she deserved it. And?”

“So Eliza made James bring in a bishop who was an uncle of hers,” Dad said. “And the record says the bishop cleansed Castlemaine. It doesn’t say how. It just says that Robert was buried in the grounds. They didn’t let witches have a grave in the churchyard, you know.”

“So it
doesn’t
say the bishop had Robert executed!” Heather said.

“Not in so many words,” Dad said. “But you don’t bury people unless they’re dead, Heather.”

“But I think they
did
! Poor Robert!” said Heather. She finished her pudding in three mouthfuls. Janine would know. And the key to the tower was in the living room, hanging on the board above the telephone. “Can I use the phone?”

D
ad was amused. “Phone?” he said. “Heather, this was hundreds of years ago! I don’t think today’s bishop knows anything about it. Besides, bishops are busy men.”

“I don’t want to phone a bishop,” Heather said. “I want to ring Janine.”

“Then don’t talk for more than twenty minutes,” said Mum. “It’s getting near your bedtime. Look how dark it is.”

Heather knew this was just one of Mum’s unfair excuses. The kitchen faced away from the evening sun, so it was always dark around supper time. But Mum worried about phone bills, particularly after a difficult day. “I’ll be ever so quick,” Heather promised forgivingly. She bounced up from the table and hurtled into the living room, where, sure enough, the light was strong pink sunset. It coloured Heather’s hand orange as she dialled Janine’s number.

“Janine,” she said, when Janine was called to the phone,
“tell me every bit you know about Wild Robert. It’s important.”

“I told you most of it,” Janine said. “My mum and dad may know a bit more, I suppose. Want me to go and ask them?”

“Yes,” said Heather.

Janine was gone quite a long time. Heather waited, and watched the sun colour the row of keys on the board above the phone a deeper and deeper pink. After a bit, she took down the key to the tower and held it ready. She would have to go and fetch Robert to the kitchen when Janine had told her the rest of the story. That would stop him playing any more tricks, and it would show Mum and Dad he was real. She just had to hope that what Janine told her would help her to explain about him.

“Well,” said Janine’s voice at last. She sounded out of breath. “Sorry to be so long. Mum told me to go next door and ask my gran and Gran does talk a lot. Anyway, this is the story. Don’t blame me. It’s what my gran said. She says Wild Robert’s father had a wife, but he loved another woman who was – well sort of – well Gran called her a fairy.” Janine sounded really embarrassed having to say this. “And this other woman was Wild Robert’s mother. Wild Robert’s father married her after his wife died, when Wild Robert was a baby. But Gran says the rest of the family was furious, and hated the new wife so much,
and were so nasty to her that she ran away and left Wild Robert to grow up by himself at Castlemaine. And it wasn’t long before he was working all sorts of magic. And when he grew older, he read books and studied and found out how to do even more magic.

Gran says his father was ever so proud of him, but the only thing was—” Janine got embarrassed again and stopped.

“Go on!” said Heather.

“She,” said Janine, “his mother, you know, was only half
of Wild Robert, so he couldn’t work magic all the time, only during the daytime. And the rest of the family knew this. So when his father died and his brothers wanted to get rid of Wild Robert, Gran says they waited until it was dark. Then they cut his heart out and put it into a silver box where he couldn’t get at it and buried both parts of him in that mound.”

“How –
awful
!” said Heather. No wonder Wild Robert had that way of looking hurt and trying to hide it. He must have liked and trusted his brothers.