The Dark Is Rising (28 page)

“The back entrance,” Merriman said. “Near the village. Used mainly by tradesmen — and butlers.” He smiled at Will.

“This really is where the old smithy used to be?”

“In the plans of the old house it is called Smith's Gate,” Merriman said. “Buckinghamshire historians writing about Huntercombe are very fond of speculating on the reason. They're always wrong.”

Will stared through the trees at the manor's tall Tudor chimneys and gabled roofs. “Is Miss Greythorne there?”

“Yes, she is, now. But didn't you see her in the crowd?”

“The crowd?” Will became aware that his mouth was foolishly gaping, and shut it. Conflicting images chased one another through his head. “You mean she is one of the Old Ones?”

Merriman raised an eyebrow. “Come now, Will, your senses told you that long ago.”

“Well . . . yes, they did. But I never knew quite which Miss Greythorne it was who belonged to us, the one from today or from the Christmas party. Well. Well, yes, I suppose I knew that too.” He looked up tentatively at Merriman. “They're the same, aren't they?”

“That's better,” Merriman said. “And Miss Greythorne gave me, while you and Wayland Smith were intent on your work, two gifts for Twelfth Night. One is for your brother Paul, and one is for you.” He showed Will two shapeless, small packages wrapped in what looked like silk; then drew them again under his cloak. “Paul's is a normal present, I think. More or less. Yours is something to be used only in the future, at some point when your judgment tells you you may need it.”

“Twelfth Night,” Will said. “Is that tonight?” He looked up at the grey early-morning sky. “Merriman, how have you stopped my family wondering where I've been? Is my mother truly all right?”

“Of course she is,” Merriman said. “And you have spent the night at the Manor, asleep. . . . Come now, these are small things.
I know all the questions. You will have all the answers, when you are once at home, and in any case really you know them already.” He turned his head down towards Will, and the deep dark eyes stared compelling as a basilisk. “Come, Old One,” he said softly, “remember yourself. You are no longer a small boy.”

“No,” said Will. “I know.”

Merriman said, “But sometimes, you feel how very much more agreeable life would be if you were.”

“Sometimes,” Will said. He grinned. “But not always.”

They turned and strode over the little edge-stream of the road to walk together towards the Stantons' house along Huntercombe Lane.

*  *  *

The day grew brighter, and light began to infuse the edge of the sky before them, where the sun would soon come up. A thin mist hung over the snow on both sides of the road, wreathing round the bare trees and the little streams. It was a morning full of promise, with a hazy, cloudless sky tinged faintly with blue, the kind of sky that Huntercombe had not seen for many days. They walked as old friends walk, without often speaking, sharing the kind of silence that is not so much silence as a kind of still communication. Their footsteps rang out on the bare wet road, making the only sound anywhere in the village except the song of a blackbird and, somewhere further off, the sound of someone shovelling. Trees loomed black and leafless over the road on one side, and Will saw that they were at the corner that passed Rook's Wood. He stared upwards. Not a sound came out of the trees, or the untidy great nests high up there in the misted branches.

“The rooks are very quiet,” he said.

Merriman said, “They are not there.”

“Not there? Why not? Where are they?”

Merriman smiled, a small grim smile. “When the Yell Hounds are hunting across the sky, no animal or bird may stay within sight of them and not be driven wild by terror. All through this kingdom, along the path of Herne and the Hunt, masters will not be able to find any creature that was loose last night. It was better known in older days. Countrymen everywhere used to lock up their animals on Twelfth Night Eve, in case the Hunt should ride.”

“But what happens? Are they killed?” Will found that in spite of all the rooks had done for the Dark, he did not want to think of them all destroyed.

“Oh, no,” Merriman said. “Scattered. Driven willy-nilly across the sky for as long as the nearest hound chooses to drive them. The Hounds of Doom are not of a species that kills living creatures or eats flesh. . . . The rooks will come back eventually. One by one, bedraggled, weary, sorry for themselves. Wiser birds who had no dealings with the Dark would have hidden themselves away last night, beneath branches or house-eaves, out of sight. Those who did are still here, unharmed. But it will take a while for our friends the rooks to recover themselves. I think you will have no trouble with them again, Will, though I would never quite trust one if I were you.”

“Look,” Will said, pointing ahead. “There are two to trust.” Pride came thick into his voice, as down the road towards them came rushing and bounding the two Stanton dogs, Raq and Ci. They leapt at him, barking and whining with delight, licking his hands in a greeting as gigantic as if he had been gone for a month. Will stooped to speak to them and was enveloped in waving tails and warm panting heads and large wet feet. “Get off, you idiots,” he said happily.

Merriman said, very softly: “Gently, now.” Instantly the dogs calmed and were still, only their tails enthusiastically waving; both turned to Merriman and looked up at him for a moment, and then they were trotting amiably in silence at Will's side. Then the Stanton driveway was ahead, and the noise of shovels grew loud, and round the corner they found Paul and Mr Stanton, wrapped against the cold, clearing wet snow and leaves and twigs away from a drain.

“Well, well,” said Mr Stanton, and stood leaning on his shovel.

“Hallo, Dad,” said Will cheerfully, and ran and hugged him.

Merriman said: “Good morning.”

“Old George said you'd be about early,” said Mr Stanton, “but I didn't think he meant quite this early. However did you manage to wake him up?”

“I woke myself up,” Will said. “Yah. I turned over a new leaf for the New Year. What are you doing?”

“Turning over old leaves,” Paul said.

“Ho, ho, ho.”

“We are, though. The thaw came so suddenly that the ground was
still frozen, and nothing could drain away. And now that the drains are beginning to thaw as well, the flood's got everything jammed up with washed-away rubbish. Like this.” He lifted a dripping bundle.

Will said, “I'll get another spade, and help.”

“Wouldn't you like some breakfast first?” Paul said. “Mary's getting us some, believe it or not. There's a lot of leaf-turning going on here, while the year's still new.”

Will suddenly realised that it was a long time since he had last eaten, and felt a gigantic hunger. “Mmmm,” he said.

“Come on in and have some breakfast or a cup of tea or something,” said Mr Stanton to Merriman. “It's a chilly walk from the Manor this time of the morning. I really am extremely grateful to you for delivering him, not to mention looking after him last night.”

Merriman shook his head, smiling, and pulled up the collar of what Will saw had now again subtly changed from a cloak to a heavy twentieth-century overcoat. “Thank you. But I'll be getting back.”

“Will!” a voice shrilled, and Mary came flying up the drive. Will went to meet her, and she skidded into him and punched him in the stomach. “Was it fun at the Manor? Did you sleep in a four-poster?”

“Not exactly,” Will said. “Are you all right?”

“Well, of course. I had a super ride on Old George's horse, it was one of Mr Dawson's huge ones, the show horses. He picked me up in the Lane, quite soon after I'd gone out. Seems ages ago, not last night.” She looked at Will rather sheepishly. “I suppose I shouldn't have gone out after Max like that, but everything was happening so quickly, and I was worried about Mum not having help —”

“Is she really all right?”

“She'll be fine, the doctor says. It was a sprain, not a broken leg. She did knock herself out, though, so she has to rest for a week or two. But she's as cheerful as can be, you'll see.”

Will looked up the drive. Paul, Merriman, and his father were talking and laughing together. He thought perhaps his father had decided that Lyon the butler was a good chap after all, not merely a manorial prop.

Mary said, “Sorry about you getting lost in the wood. It was all my fault. You and Paul must have been very close behind me actually. Good job Old George ended up knowing where everyone was. Poor Paul, worrying about both of us being lost, instead of just me.” She
giggled, then tried to look penitent, without great effort.

“Will!” Paul swung away from the group, excited, running towards them. “Just look! Miss Greythorne calls it a permanent loan, bless her — look!” His face was flushed with pleasure. He held out the bundle Merriman had been carrying, now open, and Will saw lying on it the old flute from the Manor.

Feeling his face break into a long, slow smile, he looked up at Merriman. The dark eyes looked down at him gravely, and Merriman held out the second package. “This, the Lady of the Manor sent for you.”

Will opened it. Inside lay a small hunting horn, gleaming, thin with age. His gaze flicked more briefly to Merriman, and down again.

Mary hopped about, giggling. “Go on, Will, blow it. You could make a noise all the way to Windsor. Go on!”

“Later,” Will said. “I have to learn how. Will you thank her for me very much?” he said to Merriman.

Merriman inclined his head. “Now I must go,” he said.

Roger Stanton said, “I can't tell you how grateful we've been for all your help. With everything, through this mad weather — and the children — you really have been most tremendously —” he lost his words, but thrust out his arm and pumped Merriman's hand up and down with such warmth that Will thought he would never stop.

The craggy, fierce-carved face softened; Merriman looked pleased and a little surprised. He smiled and nodded, but said nothing. Paul shook hands with him, and Mary. Then Will's hand was in the strong grasp, and there was a quick pressure and a brief intent look from the deep, dark eyes. Merriman said, “Au revoir, Will.”

He raised his hand to them all and strode off down the Lane. Will drifted after him. Mary said, skipping at his side, “Did you hear the wild geese last night?”

“Geese?” Will said gruffly. He was not really listening. “Geese? In all that storm?”

“What storm?” said Mary, and went on before he could blink. “Wild geese, there must have been thousands of them. Migrating, I suppose. We didn't see them — there was just this gorgeous noise, first of all a lot of cackling from those daft rooks in the wood, and then a long, long sort of yelping noise across the sky, very high up. It was thrilling.”

“Yes,” said Will. “Yes, it must have been.”

“I don't think you're more than half awake,” Mary said in disgust, and she went hopping ahead to the end of the driveway. Then she stopped suddenly and stood very still. “My goodness! Will! Look!”

She was peering at something behind a tree, hidden by the remnants of a snowbank. Will came to look, and saw, lying among the wet undergrowth, the great carnival head with the eyes of an owl, the face of a man, the antlers of a deer. He stared and stared without a word in his throat. The head was crisp and bright and dry, as it had always been and always would be. It looked like the outline of Herne the Hunter that he had seen against the sky, and yet not like.

Still he stared, and said nothing.

“Well, I never,” said Mary brightly. “Aren't you lucky it got stuck there? Mum
will
be pleased. She was awake by then, it was when the floods came up all of a sudden. You weren't there of course; the water came in all over the ground floor and quite a lot of things got washed out of the living-room before we realised. That head was one of them — Mum was all upset because she knew you'd be. Well, look at that, fancy that —”

She peered closer at the head, still prattling gaily, but Will was no longer listening. The head lay very close to the garden wall, which was still buried in snow but beginning to break through the drifts at either side. And on the drift at the outer edge, covering the verge of the road and overhanging the running stream in the gutter, there were a number of marks. They were hoofprints, made by a horse stopping and pivoting and leaping away over the snow. But none of them was in the shape of a horseshoe. They were circles quartered by a cross: the prints of the shoes that John Wayland Smith, once at the beginning, had put on the white mare of the Light.

Will looked at the prints, and at the carnival head, and swallowed hard. He walked a few paces to the end of the driveway and looked down Huntercombe Lane; he could see Merriman's back still, as the tall, dark-clad figure strode away. And then his hair prickled and his pulses stood still, for from behind him came a sound sweeter than seemed possible in the raw air of the cold grey morning. It was the soft, beautiful yearning tone of the old flute from the Manor; Paul, irresistibly drawn, must have put the instrument together to try it out. He was playing “Greensleeves” once more. The eerie, enchanted
lilt floated out through the morning on the still air; Will saw Merriman raise his wild white head as he heard it, though he did not break his stride.