Gravenhunger (13 page)

“Yeah?” said Rose. “So you’ve put it back in the burrow. So what?”

The rumbling seemed to subside a little as Phoenix rejoined his cousin and thrust Lorenzo’s toy boat into her hands.

“Now hold this out in front of you,” he instructed, wrenching his eyes away from the silhouette, which was darting backwards and forwards over the surface of the mound. “Hold it in one hand and give me the other.”

Rose allowed him to take her free hand. She felt the rough arc of nails beneath her skin as Phoenix placed her fingertip on to a protruding nail head at one end of the boat and guided it across its length.

Lifting her finger off, he repositioned it on to the nail head directly below.

“For goodness’ sake, Phoenix. We haven’t got time for all this…”

But again her cousin was running the tip of her finger across the length of the boat … and again she could sense the bumpy pattern of tiny metal points.

“Got the shape?” said Phoenix, releasing her hand at last. “Feel the pattern?”

“Of course,” said Rose. “It’s how a boat’s made, isn’t it? Runs of rivets holding all the wooden planks together. It’s not exactly rocket science.” She glared at her cousin. “Come on, Phoenix! Stop talking in riddles. What are you trying to show me?”

“Can’t you see?” said Phoenix.

He pointed his finger at the burrow, then moved his hand slowly all the way round the stretched-out oval of hollows.

Rose’s eyes widened.

“Are you saying…?” she started.

And now her gaze was flitting between the toy in her hand and the pattern sunk into the
still-shuddering
earth.

“Are you saying there’s a
boat
underneath this mound?”

Elvira stood in the hallway and listened.

Whatever she’d been expecting, it hadn’t been this.

At first she’d been pretty sure she would catch up with Lorenzo in the forest, and when she hadn’t she had tried to persuade herself she would find him in the kitchen telling everything to Mum. There would be raised voices and slammed doors and a stinking great row.

But instead she had returned to an unnerving stillness.

Where, oh where, had her little brother got to? It just didn’t make sense.

She had looked inside the kitchen already, but there was nobody in there. All the boxes had been cleared away and the cupboard doors were shut. Her mother must have moved on to tackle a different part of the house. The drawing room was empty too, save for the army of toy soldiers, all lined up and standing to attention – exactly as she had left them earlier.

Footsteps sounded directly above her head and Elvira’s heart leaped. They were coming from Lorenzo’s bedroom.
Perhaps he was up there after all, waiting for her to come and say she was sorry…

She sneaked up the stairs, but even before she had reached the landing she could see through the half-open doorway that it was only Mum in there, bent over yet another stack of cardboard boxes.

Elvira tiptoed past. She started to move up through the rest of the house – faster and faster now – checking inside every room as she went. Each time she opened a door her spirits surged … only to plummet seconds later.

On the fourth-floor landing she stopped.

“Please be up there,” she whispered to herself. “Please, Lorenzo. Please be sitting on my bed grinning that mischievous grin of yours. If you are, I’ll never be cross with you again, I promise. I’ll play with you for the rest of the day. I’ll do whatever you want…”

She raced up the narrow staircase and pushed open the door.

The room was empty.

Hurrying over to the window, she checked outside, willing her brother to burst out of the forest and run across the garden towards her … but there was no one out there.

Elvira sank down on her bed, her head in her hands. This was ridiculous. It wasn’t even as if Lorenzo was any good at hiding, was it? When they played hide-and-seek together she always knew exactly where to find him. But now it wasn’t a game any more, now he was missing for
real; it seemed he’d managed to vanish into thin air.

If only she could shout out his name – at least that way she might be able to quell some of her crippling fear. But if she did that, Mum would guess at once that something was wrong.

She jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice calling from the bottom of the stairs.

“Elvira? Are you up there?”

Elvira sat very still on the bed.

“Yes, Mum!” she called back. “I’m here.”

“Is everything all right? You’ve got Lorenzo with you, haven’t you?”

“Everything’s fine,” Elvira heard herself reply – and now she’d told one lie she couldn’t stop. “We – we were just about to play a game of hide-and-seek.”

She stared down at her mud-streaked clothes, praying that her mother wouldn’t come up.

“OK!” shouted her mother. “I’ll just unpack a few more boxes and then we’ll have lunch.”

Elvira listened as her mother’s footsteps moved off across the landing.

What on earth was she going to do now? After what she’d told Mum, she could scarcely come down to lunch without Lorenzo…

Standing up, she made for the door.

She had to get out there again. She had to find him. He might have got lost in the forest … or wandered out
on to the road … or fallen over and hurt himself … the possibilities were endless.

She crept back down the stairs, feeling inside her pocket for her brother’s silver angel.

It didn’t seem right her having it now. It didn’t belong to her. Wherever Lorenzo was, the angel should be with him.

Phoenix looked at Rose, his eyes bright.

“It’s exactly what I’m saying,” he said. “There’s a longboat buried directly beneath us. Or at least the remains of one. The wooden frame will have rotted away by now, but the bolts that held it together are still there. I’ll bet you anything you like there’s one below every hollow.”

He gestured over the trembling mound, pausing for a second at the place where the silhouette now hung motionless amidst the sleet.

“There’ll be bolts everywhere, of course,” he went on. “It’s just the position of the topmost ones that have been revealed to us. The bolt I discovered in the burrow must originally have been much higher up – I suppose it got dislodged when whatever animal it was tunnelled into the earth.”

Rose gazed around her.

“Are you absolutely sure about this?” she said.

“Of course I’m sure,” replied Phoenix. “What else
could possibly create a shape like this? Besides, it’s what I saw in my vision.”

“You
saw
what’s lying underneath the mound?”

Phoenix turned and stared through the sleet towards the river.

“It was incredible, Rose. So majestic. So
graceful
. The ends of the boat were curved upwards into points and the sides were packed with oarsmen. And in the middle…”

He swallowed, struggling to keep his voice steady.

“In the middle, raised up on a sort of square platform, was a king. A warrior-king. He must have been the one calling me down to the river. He was wearing a massive bronze helmet with a face-mask. And there was a hoard of treasure at his feet. Piles and piles of jewels and coins. And he had a shield at his side, studded with sapphires and rubies.”

“The same as the one you uncovered in the pit?”

Phoenix nodded.

“I saw the whole thing, Rose. The boat. The king. The treasure. Everything. Just as it once was. And it’s all right here, buried beneath the mound.”

He made to move across the juddering surface towards the pit in the centre, but Rose yanked him back.

“Oh no, you don’t!” she exclaimed. “That treasure’s done more than enough damage already.”

“I wasn’t going to
touch
it … I was only going to have a quick look.”

“Don’t even think about it…”

Rose shook her head at her cousin, then frowned. “So you reckon the king was buried here along with the boat, do you?”

“Yes,” replied Phoenix. “I suppose it must have been some sort of ancient custom. A way for a tribe to honour its leader when he died. They must have dragged the boat up from much further downstream, where the embankment isn’t so steep.”

He glanced back towards the pit.

“In any case, the voice that lured me into the river sounded like it was coming from inside the earth itself. It was as if somebody was actually down there.”

“Which they were,” said Rose. “Protecting their treasure. This king of yours must have put a curse on the mound before he died. So that anyone who touched what was rightfully his would come to harm.”

She shuddered. “It really was all there in the village garblings, wasn’t it? The curse … the treasure … the burial ground… Just imagine what a spectacle it must have been. All those men hauling the boat up from the river and covering it with earth. There would have been hundreds of them.”

“It’s about the only bit I
do
have to imagine
though,” said Phoenix. “I saw that boat, Rose. I actually
saw
it.”

Rose eyed him sharply. “Yes,” she said, “and it nearly cost you your life.” She bit her lip. “And what about Lorenzo? Have you thought about him? Like you said, he must have touched something he shouldn’t have – something belonging to the king – and been drawn towards the river too. Except he wasn’t quite as lucky as you, was he?”

Phoenix screwed his eyes up tight, then opened them wide, as if he was trying to shake away the memory of his vision.

“He must have done it when my mum’s back was turned, mustn’t he?” he said. “She can’t have had a clue what was happening to him, otherwise she would have tried to stop him.”

He stared at his cousin.

“Perhaps she
never
worked out that the mound was cursed. It would explain the letter, wouldn’t it? About the whole thing being her fault. Perhaps…”

“Perhaps … perhaps…” said Rose. “It’s all just guesswork, isn’t it? We’re never going to know exactly what happened that day.”

She put a hand on his shoulder.

“Come on. We’ve got to get going. Your dad’ll be back any minute and you’re freezing cold. Besides, I don’t like it over here.”

“But—”

“Look,” Rose interrupted, “you’ve found out as much as you possibly can about your mother’s secret. You’ve got to stop now, Phoenix. It’s time to put the past back where it belongs.”

Phoenix sighed. He turned and started to follow his cousin down the side of the quivering mound.

She was right, of course. If he didn’t stop going over everything in his mind like this, he’d drive himself crazy. He really did have to try and put it all behind him.

He trudged down the slope through the steadily worsening sleet.

If only he could have one last glance at that shield… True, he had seen it already, but it was so mixed up with the vision and everything that had happened since, he no longer had a clear picture of it in his head. And what if all the rumbling and settling of the earth had exposed something else too? The great bronze helmet with its face-mask, perhaps? Or some of the jewels he had seen at the feet of the warrior-king?

Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have one final look? It wasn’t as if he was going to touch anything. All he wanted was an image to take away with him, something he could carry around inside his mind for the rest of his life.

He hung back a little, allowing his cousin to reach the bottom first, then whipped round and began to scramble up the mound once more.

“Phoenix!” yelled Rose. “
Phoenix!
”

She reached out towards him … but it was too late.

A massive tremor was tearing through the earth beneath them, ripping Phoenix from his feet and catapulting him up into an explosion of fiery dust.

He landed just inches from where a jagged crack was snaking around the base of the mound, separating it from the grassy stretch of land beyond.

Staggering upright, he braced himself to jump across the gap, but already the two sides were wrenching apart and a chasm was opening up before him.