Second Night (28 page)

His errand accomplished, John slipped upstairs to the little kitchen in the housekeeper's flat to light the stove that was always kept supplied with wood and kindling in case of emergency.

‘Seeing as how there'll be extra staying over and young Caz can eat up there without fear of being disturbed,' he whispered.

Daisy wiped her hands on her apron. ‘And that reminds me! The room's not ready for young Jemima yet! That bed hasn't been slept in for years and it will need a thorough airing out. What can I be thinking of? We'll need to get a fire going up there too, and sort the linen and I don't know what else!'

‘Calm yourself, old Dark-eyes. You carry on with what you're doing and Sara and me'll sort it out. Just tell us where she's going to be lodged and we can get to work.'

‘We'll put her in Lady Christina's room. That's always been her favourite.'

Jemima was overjoyed when she found out where she would be sleeping. The minute supper was over, she went upstairs to find Kresh already curled up on one of the matching cushions on either side of the fireplace. Kush jumped onto the chaise longue at the foot of the four-poster bed and paddled the hand-embroidered upholstery. Jemima dropped him on the cushion opposite Kresh.

‘No, you don't!' she said sternly. ‘You must behave, or else we'll be sent home in disgrace and there'll be no more pheasant for you, wicked, naughty boy!'

She laid her silver brush set on the rosewood dressing table. All three mirrors were speckled black at the edges. It was the only blemish in the richly elegant room where the gilded ormolu mouldings were still bright at the corners of the furniture. She thought it odd that there were no pictures on the walls. A single nail discreetly protruding from the panel over the marble mantelpiece was the only evidence that anything had ever been hung there at all.

Perhaps they've been put in that cupboard
, she thought, eyeing the permanently locked door in the panelled wall on the other side of the bed.

She sat on the stool, looking into the room reversed in the middle mirror, noticing how the faded blue in the silk curtains draping the bed and the windows perfectly set off the colour of her hair. She straightened her pyjama top and pulled at a particularly difficult wrinkle around the neckline.

What would it have been like to be Lady Christina and massively rich?
she wondered.
I bet she didn't get panda eyes when she took off her mascara. Her maid would have done it for her, and sorted out her disaster pyjamas at the same time. Why on earth did I buy them?

She turned the outside mirrors inward so that each reflected countless repeated images in the other, framed in misted vignette and receding out of normal vision. In that infinite space she could look into her favourite parallel world where she had inherited the same deep, dark blue eyes as her mother and Caz, her hair was black and straight, and deliciously long, and Jasper was someone else's brother.

The drawers in the dressing table were all empty, save for what looked like a flat silver box that opened out as a double picture frame. On one side, a young Sir Saxon in dress uniform brandished a gleaming sword, while a small boy with a mop of blond curls and large, pensive eyes regarded her solemnly from the other. She arranged them in front of the middle mirror beside the silver hairbrush, but soon found such close scrutiny unsettling and put them away.

Something rattled and dropped down behind the drawer as she closed it. Intrigued, she pulled it right out and put her hand into the space, and drew out an ornate brass key. A wisp of frayed and faded silk ribbon, twisted around the handle, suggested that it had hung there, hidden, for many years. It was too large for any of the tiny locks on the drawers in the bureau and too small to fit the mysterious cupboard door.

There are so many locked doors in this house,
she reflected.
But locked doors always have keys. This has to fit somewhere. I'll sort it out tomorrow.

She got into bed and put the key under the pillow. The bed was warm and deliciously comfortable. Her eyes closed. She seemed to be sinking down into a sea of endless soft feathers when she felt a paw tapping her nose and whiskers tickling her chin.

‘What now?' she grunted crossly.

The weight of four paws straddled her chest. Two wide green eyes were looking down at her. The paw patted her nose again. Hooves clattered in the stable yard. She jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The catch was stiff. She levered it open with the poker and leaned out, but the yard was already empty. Kush jumped onto her shoulders, purring loudly in her ear. There was movement in the copse beyond the lake. The colt called out. Nanna answered. Three ghostly shadows charged up the hill.

‘He rides wild horses and doesn't take me,' Jemima murmured wistfully.

The sky was uniformly thick with heavy cloud tinged with the faint light reflected from a distant village on the other side of the hills. The lake was still and smooth, a gleam of polished obsidian sliced between the broad expanse of the lawns and the ragged depths of the copse. There was not a breath of wind. The night air was vibrant, quivering on the edge of vision. Jemima concentrated, breathing deeply.

‘Help me, Golden Goddess,' she prayed, looking directly up into the dark sky where a shifting in the cloud cover was taking form.

‘I see horses, many horses,' she whispered. ‘They are all grey and only some have riders. I am one of the riders. I can't see the others, their faces are blurred, but this isn't the past. I know it's the future because Caz is waiting for us on the hills.' She left the window ajar and collected her cloud book from the bureau and got into bed. ‘I must write it down before I forget.'

But she had mislaid her pen. Kush paddled the pillow and she nuzzled into his warm fur, too tired to bother with anything any more.

‘Clever Kush,' she murmured.

Her eyes closed. The book fell onto the floor. She was soon deeply asleep.

Far away in the West Country, the last quarter moon was rising over a mirror-calm sea. Maddie paced the quiet hotel room, sleepless. Memory raged of the last coherent night before her husband had drifted into the long sleep in her arms.

‘They're coming for me, Maddie girl,' he had whispered. ‘There's always the reckoning. If the kids get a chance to sort it out, don't stand in their way.'

‘Sort what out?' she cried. ‘Tell me! You must tell me!'

But he could no longer answer and she had wept, already alone. The death agony came with the first light of dawn.

CHAPTER 48

Caz came late to Thunderslea. The kettle swung on the iron chain over the fire, steaming gently. Alan was cleaning his sword.

‘Are you expecting company or is that intended for me?' Caz asked.

Alan gave the blade a final wipe and sheathed the weapon. ‘It's getting down to the time of year when company's expected. Better safe than sorry.'

He took carrots and handfuls of horse nuts out of a deep pocket and shared them among the mares.

‘There, there,' he murmured, ‘all's home and well now. You've got your freedom. There's no need to fret.'

Freyja snatched a carrot and darted away, tossing her head. Rúna nosed around his pockets, nudging at him to scratch between her ears before she turned away to graze. Kyri stood under the tree, her eyes glowing in the firelight. Blue lay down beside her.

Alan put a handful of chestnuts in the embers to roast. Caz sat down, propping his boots on the ring of stones to warm his feet. Each waited for the other to speak, aware of the silence between them.

Finally Caz said, ‘Tell me about this Guardian thing and these meetings.'

‘I can only tell you what you already know. You were there.'

‘So how long has the old man been into it?'

‘Since he was twelve years old.'

Caz was incredulous. ‘You're telling me he took that oath when he was just a kid?'

‘By his account he knew what he was doing. His mother had done it a few years before that, but his dad had already refused. They say that marriage was never the same afterwards.'

‘But would you have taken it if you'd had a son?'

‘I still had the wife with me when I was sworn. There was still a chance of me being a dad but, like I've said before, there's some things greater than all of us put together. You should remember that.'

‘Is that why your wife left you?'

‘She didn't know anything about the Guardians. She went because she was bored silly stuck out here in the backwoods, as she used to call it.'

‘Has anyone ever taken the oath and then got fed up and left after they've done it?'

‘No.' Alan drained the last from the cup on the stone beside him. ‘Blood oaths go down deeper than stone. There's no going back on them without a retribution following.'

‘But parents have no right to swear something like that on behalf of their children!'

Alan kept his attention on the fire. ‘Maybe that's why none of us has any kids to carry it on.'

‘Then what happens to the Guardians when the old man dies?'

‘He names his successor and we continue.'

‘So he didn't lie about that then.'

‘Why should he?'

‘Is there some kind of a Guardian's book I can see? I'd like to know who else has been into it, or is that top secret too?'

‘There were never so many invited as to make up much of a list. There's only been a couple of times when all nine of those seats were taken.'

Caz detected wariness in Alan's tone and heartbeat.
You're hiding something Al. Or you have been ordered to hide it?
He persisted. ‘How long have Daisy and John been in it?'

‘Oh, a long time now. Dais must have been about twenty-one when she took the oath and John was eighteen, I believe.'

‘And the Bank?'

‘He was accepted at the same time as John, both of them following on the family tradition. They're about the same age.'

‘You mean that all their parents were Guardians too?'

‘Yes, except Charles's mother who died young. She was Zulu and didn't take too well to living in London smog. Her dad was an old witch doctor. He was supposed to have healed Sir Saxon after he got mauled by a lion when he was in the army in South Africa.'

‘Maybe that's why the Bank's like he is then.' Caz moved his feet away from the fire. ‘Full-time banking on top of witch-doctoring's a pretty weird combination, wouldn't you say?'

Alan's eyes narrowed. ‘You've got to understand that the Master's happy cutting the copse but it's Charles who plants it and tends it. You've got to keep money moving, you can't just spend it. Without Charles and all his investing and saving expertise this whole place, house, horses and all, would have gone under years back, for all its wealth. Whatever ideas you've got in your head about him, he's always been nothing less than one hundred per cent a Guardian. Think of him like that and you'll know where you stand with him. He's the third generation of his family to serve and serve he does, very well.'

‘That doesn't mean to say I can trust him.'

‘You will, in time.' Alan rummaged in his bag and brought out a tin of cocoa and a bottle of sweetened condensed milk. The kettle spluttered and bubbled dry. The silver jug was empty.

‘I'll get it,' said Caz.

He squatted down beside the spring and dipped the jug in the water. He filled his own cup and drank, savouring the icy draft. The air around the spring sparkled, glowing ozone-rich over the gleaming surface of the pool. He was reminded of the sea, of the waves and the white foam crashing up onto the beach.
What did Grandpa mean by keeping the watch?
he wondered.

He waggled his fingers, sending the glittering blue light that was no longer dependent on the presence of the sun to manifest, flashing through the water. It collected in a bright rim on the lip of stone before it vanished over the falls and was lost in the darkness of the inner ditch.

A giant's foot would crush this place in a single step,
he thought.
The next step would take out the house and the yard, and then the world, if the old stories mean what they say.

He returned to the fire. When the kettle was full and set back over the flames to boil, he resumed his seat, gesturing around the clearing.

‘Is it really up to us to save all this?' he asked. ‘Does it need us to save it?'

Alan looked up into the tree and at the black sky above them. ‘As I see it, there's a whole lot of humanity and only one Planet Earth. Sooner or later Planet Earth's time will end because that's natural, but I like to think that the people will go on. If we can help it happen, even in just a small way, we haven't been wasting our time.'

‘You really do believe in this Guardian thing, don't you?'

‘I've never doubted and I signed up late compared with the others. What you and the pretty lady did two years ago made it all worth while.'

‘But it's not finished yet,' said Caz.
Will they send a giant to crush me?

Alan caught the touch of fear in his voice.

‘Like I said, I'm with you, boy,' he said gruffly. ‘Don't you ever forget, and that's more than just Guardian stuff, as you well know.'

The tension broke between them. They made eye contact for the first time that evening.

Caz smiled. ‘Yes, I know.'

‘Just don't go forgetting it.'

‘I won't.'
Except that the oath stands between us. Is it greater than your loyalty to me, my brother? There's so much I can't tell you until I know for sure.

An explosion of fine ash and white seed-flesh reminded Alan of the chestnuts roasting in the fire. He scooped them out with a shovel and laid them to one side to cool. He raked over the embers, adding more dry kindling before he swung the kettle back over the blaze.