The Puzzle Ring (42 page)

Ten great black hounds loped towards them, eyes glowing red. Hannah sprang forward. Never had she run so fast. The ground whizzed beneath her feet. Her father caught up the old rowan walking-stick and followed swiftly.

They reached the doorway where the two gargoyles sat peering around, puzzled to hear shouts and the pound of feet but see nothing except flickering shadows.

‘What's going on?' the sad one shouted. ‘Is it a fire?'

‘Oh, it must just be a merry game of hide-and-seek,' the happy one said.

Ignoring the gargoyles, Hannah pulled her little eating-knife out of the crack and flung the door open. Max shot through it as if he had rocket-propelled boots, with Donovan a stride behind. The phantom hounds were upon them, though, snarling and slavering with yellow foam. Robert twisted the handle of the walking-stick three times, and drew out the slim sword. He drove it straight through the breast of one of the phantom hounds, and cracked another over the head, which yelped and slunk away.

There was a bang and a crash of cymbals as Scarlett brought her tambourine down upon the head of another of the black hounds. It sat back on its haunches, shaking its head frantically, trying to get rid of the broken tambourine. Yellow foam splattered the walls. Scarlett ran through the door, as Robert whacked another of the hounds with the stick, and sliced the ear off yet another.

‘Dad!' Hannah cried. ‘Come on!'

Robert gave one more swift lunge towards the hounds, who yelped and cringed back, then ran towards the doorway. As he leapt through, Hannah slammed it shut.

It was dark on the other side. They hurried down the passageway, hands on either wall, until they came to another doorway. Light burnt from a lantern, and a fat old dwarf in leather armour lay sleeping in a comfortable chair tilted back on its legs so that it rested against the stone door. Very carefully they set the chair straight and pulled it away from the door. The dwarf mumbled, but did not wake.

Hannah took down the lantern and they all joined hands, Robert at the end of the chain with the rowan stick clenched in his hand. Hannah laid her hand on the door and sang the words she had composed only yesterday, on the slopes of Black Rock a hundred miles away and four hundred and forty-odd years ago.

On this Midsummer's Eve,
Open, hill, and let us leave,
Let us go back to our own time,
By the power of rhythm and rhyme,
Back to the dawn of the next day,
After the day we went away.
Open, open, great door of stone,
By the magic in my blood and bone
.

Howls echoed down the corridor as someone opened the doorway at the other end of the corridor. Hannah took a deep breath, opened the door, and led the way through.

By the light of the lantern she saw a narrow, crooked passageway beyond. She walked out, praying incoherently
under her breath. The others followed her, and Robert shut the door behind him. They hurried down a series of rough steps and rocky falls, and came through a familiar graffiti-scrawled cave. Hannah's heart leapt with joy.

Still clutching Donovan's hand, she hurried out into the icy-cold grey dawn. Frost crunched under her bare feet and silvered the roof of Wintersloe Castle below. The light in her lantern was dim now.

Everyone clustered around, cheering and clapping. Suddenly Hannah heard behind them the dreadful howling of the hounds. Her stomach lurched.

‘They've followed us through to this time!' Scarlett cried. ‘What shall we do?'

Hannah's mind moved like lightning. She remembered the first time she had climbed this hill, with Donovan at sunset on her first day at Fairknowe. He had broken off a bare twig from the blackthorn tree and told her some of the stories about its powers. That twig was back in her bedroom, kept in her wooden box with all her other treasures, but the blackthorn still grew on the crown of the hill above them.

‘Dad, my dagger!' she cried.

He hesitated, but when she gestured wildly, passed it to her, hilt first. ‘Hannah . . . ?' he began uneasily.

She wasted no time on explanations. She thrust the knife through her belt and desperately clambered up the rock, grazing her knees and her palms. Panting, her hair all over her face, she reached the hill's crest and swiftly cut another twig from the ancient tangle of thorns. She scrambled back down, sliding half the way on her bottom.

The howls were very close now. Hannah glanced wildly into the cleft in the hillside. Irata was running towards her,
her wand glowing green in her hand, a host of malevolent fairies at her heels. Black hounds, eyes glowing madly, raced before her.

‘Run!' Hannah shrieked.

Everyone took to their heels. Hannah gulped a deep breath, clutched the hag-stone tight in her left hand and flung the blackthorn twig over her left shoulder. As soon as it touched the ground, an impenetrable hedge of vicious thorns sprang up, barring the entrance to the cave. She heard faint screams of rage and pain from behind the hedge, and howls, and shouts of despair.

Hannah smiled and ran down through the winter-bare trees, her red hair flying. Below her, warm lights spilt from the kitchen windows of Wintersloe Castle and smoke drifted from the chimneys. Her father turned back and waited for her, smiling gladly.

‘We're home!' Hannah cried. ‘We're home at last!'

The door to the kitchen was still unlocked, just as Hannah had left it, eight hours and four hundred and forty-odd years earlier. Even though she had grown used to the mental flips and cartwheels needed to calculate the differences in time, it still made her feel very strange coming back into the kitchen and knowing little had changed here, in her own time, when so much had happened to change her.

Linnet was sitting by the fire, the toad crouched on her lap. The lines in her old, wrinkled face were driven in deep, and she looked older and smaller than Hannah remembered. She jumped up as Hannah eased open the door, letting the toad spring to the floor, and held out both her hands. ‘Oh, my lamb, you're safe home again!'

Hannah leapt across the flagstones, and into Linnet's arms, her eyes smarting with tears. She had to stoop to embrace the old woman, and felt the tiny hands patting her all over
as Linnet said brokenly, ‘My lamb . . . my chick . . . you're safe . . . you're home again . . . och, I've been worried!'

It felt so strange to see Linnet as a stooped, white-haired old lady when Hannah had grown used to seeing her young and lissom. Hannah hugged her as hard as she dared—for this Linnet seemed so frail and breakable—and managed to say, ‘We're home, yes, all of us, home again!'

Then Linnet drew herself up, tears running down her face, as she saw the others piling in through the door—Donovan, Max and Scarlett, all filthy, tousled-haired and very oddly dressed—and then behind them, the tall figure of Robert, his red hair and beard wilder than ever, dressed in the motley of a court jester.

‘Bobby!' Linnet cried, her voice breaking. ‘Bobby, you're home!'

In two strides, he was beside her, lifting her up in his strong arms and swinging her round as if she was a child. A babble of voices broke out as Linnet asked questions and demanded explanations, all the time patting Robert's shoulders as if she could not believe he was really there in her kitchen. Then Donovan burst out laughing and pointed to the toad, which was leaping and jumping and croaking with joy underfoot, in grave danger of being squashed. Hannah went down on her knees and gathered the old toad close.

‘Angus, Angus, I'm so sorry,' she said, nearly as croakily as the toad. ‘I never realised . . . so long trapped as a toad . . . we missed you so much!'

The toad croaked complacently.

Scarlett was down on her knees too. ‘We did, we did!' she cried. ‘We wished you were there the whole time.'

‘Don't worry,' Donovan said in his grave way, bending down to touch the toad's head lightly. ‘The tale is almost all told, the spell shall soon be undone. We promise.'

Angus the toad leapt high on his springy back legs.

‘I knew last night was the night,' Linnet said, wiping tears away from her cloudy green eyes. ‘I dared not say anything, unless I changed history somehow . . . oh, but I watched you sneak out, my chick, and I've stood vigil all night, so afraid for you . . . I knew the whole story, you see, right up until the time you and Max and Scarlett disappeared into Black Rock. But I had no idea what happened after that. More than four hundred and forty years I've had to wait to hear the end of the story . . .'

Helter-skelter they told her, and she gasped and sighed and covered her eyes with terror and laughed out loud. Before the story was done, though, Robert was already looking towards the swinging door.

‘You'll be wanting to see your grandmother,' Linnet said. ‘And Roz, of course!'

‘She's here?' Robert asked, starting forward, and then casting an anguished eye towards Hannah. ‘But . . . she must hate me . . . thirteen years gone . . . how can I explain it?'

‘Leave that to me!' Hannah cried. ‘You go see Belle and I'll sort Mum out, don't you worry.'

‘And I'll whip you all up something to eat,' Linnet said, seizing one of her copper pans from the rack. ‘But you must all wash first, you're filthy!'

‘Hot running water!' Scarlett sighed, clasping her hands together above her heart. ‘Flushing toilets! Oh, it's so good to be home!'

Linnet gurgled with laughter. ‘I must admit, running water
and flushing toilets almost made the long wait worthwhile. Not to mention supermarkets!'

Hannah paused only long enough to avail herself of the running water and flushing toilet, before making her way to her mother's bedroom.

‘Mum! Wake up!' Hannah stood at the foot of her mother's bed.

Roz stirred and stretched. ‘Mmm?'

‘Mum. I need you to wake up. Guess what?'

‘What?' Her mother sleepily opened her eyes.

‘I've got a surprise for you.'

‘Look at you! You're all in a mess. Look at your hair. You look like you've been dragged backwards through a thicket! Hannah, what have you been doing?'

‘Never mind that now. Come on, I've got a surprise for you. You've got to get up.'

‘But it's still so early . . . what surprise?' Even as she spoke, Roz threw back the bedclothes and sat up, reaching for her shabby old dressing-gown.

‘You can't wear that,' Hannah said. ‘Here, I've brought an old one of Belle's for you. See, isn't it pretty? All silky, with roses on it. Just let me brush your hair, it's sticking up all over the place.'

‘Hannah, what's this all about?' Roz submitted to her daughter's fussing, but with a worried frown between her brows.

‘Can I put some powder on you? And some lipstick? Why do you wear such a boring brown? It makes you look old.

‘Hannah! What's this all about? Hannah!'

‘Oh, you are going to be so surprised. You won't believe what I've found for you.
Who
I've found.' Chattering all the way, Hannah led her mother down the stairs.

‘Who? Hannah, what do you mean? Is someone here? I don't want to see anyone when I'm in my nightie . . .'

‘
He
won't mind,' Hannah said and flung open the door to the drawing room.

Robert turned quickly and started forward, his hands held out. He had spent the last ten minutes washing and brushing himself up as best he could, but it was still a rather wild-haired, oddly dressed man who came towards his startled wife.

‘Bob!' Roz screamed, and flung herself into his arms. They hugged each other for a few minutes, patting each other, murmuring each other's names. Hannah and her great-grandmother watched happily, holding each other's hands tightly. Lady Wintersloe was not at all her usual elegant, stylish self, sitting in her chair in an old bathrobe with her white hair falling down onto her shoulders and her broken leg sticking out from underneath her flannelette nightgown. She was laughing and clapping her hands together with joy.