Wild Robert (2 page)

She was sure Mr McManus could hear this lady from the corner where he was working. When Heather found him, he was raking a seedbed as if it were the throat of an old lady.

“Get you gone!” he said to Heather.

“I only wanted to ask—” Heather began.

“Laying down the law, tramping my lawns, messing up my paths with packets and papers and gum,” said Mr McManus. “Screaming, asking things—”

“I hate tourists too,” said Heather. “There’s no need to take it out on me.”

“Leaving bottles and tins,” said Mr McManus. “You’re worse than all the rest. Get you gone!”

This was so unfair that all Heather could think of to do was to stump away through the nearest door, with her mouth pressed tight, hoping Mr McManus would tread on a rake and get concussion. She turned the corner into the ruined temple. Usually, nobody found the way there. But today was a bad day. Some very large and grown-up teenagers had found the temple and they were romping there among the pillars and the green mounds. Heather slithered on past, skirting a fallen statue where a pair of the teenagers were kissing, and plunged into the woods behind the temple.

She only knew one other place that was likely to be private. This was the peculiar little mound right on the edge of the Castlemaine grounds. When
Heather and her parents had first moved to Castlemaine, Mum had been very excited about this mound. She said it was surely an ancient Bronze Age burial mound. Then Heather had gone to school in the village and met Janine. Janine told Heather that it was the grave of a man from the olden days who had been accused of doing witchcraft. He was called Wild Robert and everyone in the village knew about him. They said there was a box of treasure buried with him. This made Heather as excited as Mum. She went to Dad and suggested they hunted for the treasure.

Dad smiled kindly, in the way he had, and looked at the old maps of Castlemaine. “Sorry to disappoint you both,” he said to Heather and Mum. “You know what that mound really is? It’s an ice-house. They used to keep ice in a sort of cave inside the mound, so that the Tollers and Franceys could have ice-cream in summer. I dare say if we dug in it, we’d find the cave still there.”

After that, the mound seemed rather dull. Mum forgot about it and Heather only went there at times like today, when there seemed to be tourists everywhere else.

Or
was
it dull? she wondered as she walked towards it. It was hidden in a mass of yew trees. Heather’s feet made almost no sound as she ploughed through the soft piles of yellow needles.
And there was something about the light that filtered through the dark black-green of the needles overhead. It made everything look sort of smoky. The mound itself reared up into this smokiness, bald and covered with yew needles. Not dull, Heather thought. More as if this is not a nice place to be.

She climbed the mound and sat down. She opened her book. But it was too dark under the yew trees to read.

Somehow, this was the last straw. Heather banged the soft earth with her fist. “Oh, bother it all!” she cried out. “Wild Robert, I just wish you were really under there. You could come out and deal with the tourists and teach Mr McManus some manners!”

The sun came out overhead. That seemed to make the mist under the trees smokier than ever. The smell of it was strange, like earth and spices. It rolled over Heather in waves. Out of it, a voice said, “Did somebody call?”

“D
id somebody call?” the voice said again. It was a husky voice. Heather thought it must be one of the teenage boys from the temple. She did not answer. But the voice said, “Didn’t somebody call?”

“Well – sort of,” Heather said. “I was just talking really.”

There was a noise somewhere below that sounded like someone crawling through undergrowth. Heather stood up nervously. She was fairly sure the person had mistaken her for one of his friends. Unless she ran away quickly, it was going to be very awkward. But she could not see where he was and she did not want to run straight into him. She stood where she was, looking anxiously round into the smoky mist. And the person took her by surprise by standing up in front of her to dust yew-needles off his tight black clothes.

“There. So, here I am,” he said cheerfully.

He was not one of the ones by the temple. He was the oldest kind of teenager, or perhaps even a young
man. Heather was never quite sure when people changed over from one to the other. He was very good-looking. He had fairish, wavy hair that came to his shoulders and huge dark eyes set a little slanting in his smooth dark face – in fact, he was so good-looking that it made up for his not being very tall. He was only a head higher than Heather. She thought, from his clothes, that he must have come here on a motorcycle, although he had a big white collar spread over the shoulders of his black jacket, which puzzled her a little.

“Did you come to see round the house, or are you just exploring?” she asked him politely.

The young man laughed. “No, sweetheart, I came because you called. It is always so. The words Bishop Henry laid on me were never so heavy that I could not hear my name when it was said.”

“I – I beg your pardon?” said Heather.

“What date is it?” the young man asked.

“Er – nineteen eighty-nine,” said Heather. She was beginning to feel alarmed. Either the young man was mad, or something very odd had happened.

The young man seemed even more alarmed. He stared at her, and she could see he had gone pale by the black way his eyes stood out in his face. “No!” he said. “Oh, no! Then that makes three hundred and fifty years shut in the mound!” He put his hand on Heather’s arm appealingly. “Tell me not that so much time has passed.”

His hand felt – strange. It was chilly, but it was warm too, and it somehow fizzed against Heather’s bare arm so that all the hairs stood up round the place he touched. Heather backed away. The feel of his hand, even more than what he said, made her fairly sure he was not mad, and even surer that something very odd indeed had happened. “Who are you?” she said.

The young man laughed again, in the bright way people laugh when their feelings are hurt. “My name is Robert Toller,” he said.

“
Wild
Robert?” Heather said from behind both hands, which had somehow leapt to cover her mouth. “The one who – who was supposed to do witchcraft?”

Robert Toller looked definitely hurt now. “And so I can,” he said. “Why else should my half-brother call a bishop to put me down? They knew I had studied the magic arts and were persuaded I meant to take their heritage from them – though I meant them nothing but kindness.” He looked more hurt than ever for a moment. Then a thought struck him. His slanting eyes turned to Heather, sideways and warily. “Are the present-day Tollers likely to think the same? Who holds Castlemaine now?”

“Well – no one really,” Heather said. “The last of the Tollers died out a long time ago. And then it went to the Franceys, and the last Francey died six years ago and left everything to the British Trust. My mum and dad look after it for the Trust.”

Heather was not sure how much of this Robert Toller took in. While she was speaking, he almost looked as if he might cry. But that look was pushed aside by a bright smile and a fierce sort of delight. Before she had finished explaining, he was laughing wildly and hugging himself with both arms.

“Oh, splendid news!” he cried out. “Then I am the only Toller living! Castlemaine is mine after all!” He stopped laughing and explained to Heather, rather anxiously, “I
am
in line to inherit. My father was the younger Francis and he married my mother when his first wife died.”

Heather nodded. She could see how sad he was
really and she did not want to hurt his feelings any more, but she could not help wondering how Robert Toller was going to explain to the people who ran the British Trust. And I bet he doesn’t have a birth certificate! she thought. I don’t think they were invented in his day.

While she wondered what she
could
say, Robert Toller gave her a little bow and stuck out one elbow to her. “Come,” he said. “Let us leave this dismal wood and take a look at my heritage.”

Heather knew he meant her to take hold of his elbow in an elegant way, but the strange fizzing she had felt when he touched her made her scared to try. Robert Toller smiled. He had a very winning smile, as good-looking as the rest of him.

“Walk with me,” he said, “and tell me your name.” And he waited, holding his elbow out and keeping the smile until it looked quite strained.

Heather found she simply could not bear to hurt his feelings any more. “My name’s Heather Bayley,” she said. She picked up her book and her bag of lunch and put her hand on his elbow – his sleeve was black silk, not the leather she had taken it for – and it fizzed. But she got used to it quite quickly and let him help her slither down the mound.

They walked under the yew trees and Heather felt quite grand and old-fashioned. She noticed that Robert Toller, in spite of his black clothes, seemed to
stand out strong and bright in the smoky light. She looked down at herself and found that her own legs, and her hand on Robert Toller’s elbow, looked much greyer and dimmer. When they came out into the sunlight, Robert Toller looked brighter still. It was as if he was somehow twice as alive as ordinary people. Heather was staring at him, thinking about this, when they came to the ruined temple.