Greenwitch Read online

  “Will told you.”

  “All he knew was what he got out of some book.”

  “He’s going to be a nuisance, I’m afraid,” Barney said with distaste.

  Merriman looked down at him sharply. “Never dismiss anyone’s value until you know him.”

  Barney said, “I only meant—”

  “Shut up, Barney,” said Jane.

  “The making of the Greenwitch,” said Merriman, “is an old spring rite still celebrated here, for greeting summer and charming a good harvest of crops and fish. In a day or two, as it happens. If you will all tread a little more gently, Jane might be able to watch it.”

  “Jane?” said Barney. “Only Jane?”

  “The making of the Greenwitch is very much a private village affair,” Merriman said. Jane thought his voice seemed strained, but his face was so near the roof of the narrow landing as to be lost in shadow. “No visitors are normally allowed near. And of the locals, only women are allowed to be present.”

  “Good grief!” said Simon in disgust.

  Jane said, “Surely we ought to be doing something about the grail, Gumerry? I mean after all that’s why we’re here. And we haven’t got long.”

  “Patience,” Merriman said. “In Trewissick, as you may recall, you never had to go looking for things to happen. They tended to happen to you.”

  “In that case,” Barney said, “I’m going out for a bit.” He held the flat book in his hand unobtrusively against his side, but his great-uncle looked down from a height like a lighthouse.

  “Sketching?” he said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Barney reluctantly. The Drews’ mother was an artist. Barney had always expressed horror at the idea of possessing the same talent, but in the last twelve months he had been disconcerted to find it creeping up on him.

  “Try drawing this terrace from the other side,” Merriman said. “With the boats as well.”

  “All right. Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said his great-uncle vaguely. “It might come in handy. A present for someone. Perhaps even for me.”

  * * *

  Crossing the quay, Barney passed a man sitting at an easel. It was a common enough sight in Trewissick, which like many of the more picturesque villages in Cornwall was much frequented by amateur painters. This particular artist had a very great deal of uncombed dark hair, and a square, hefty frame. Barney paused, and peeped over his shoulder. He blinked. On the easel was a wild abstract in crude bright colours, bearing no visible relation at all to the scene in the harbour before them; it was unexpected, compared to the neat, anaemic little water-colours that nineteen out of twenty Trewissick harbour-painters produced. The man was painting away like one demented. He said, without pausing or turning round, “Go away.”

  Barney lingered for a moment. There was real power in the painting, of a peculiar kind that made him oddly uneasy.

  “Go away,” the man said more loudly.

  “I’m going,” Barney said, moving one step backwards. “Why green, up in that top corner, though? Why not blue? Or a better kind of green?” He was distressed by a lurid zig-zag of a particularly nasty shade, a yellowy, mustard-like green which drew the eye away from the rest of the picture. The man began to make a low rumbling noise like a growling dog, and the broad shoulders stiffened. Barney fled. He said to himself rebelliously, “But that colour was all wrong.”

  On the far side of the harbour he perched himself on a low wall, with the steep sliced rock of the headland at his back. The ill-tempered painter was invisible from there, hidden behind one of the inevitable piles of fish-boxes on the quay. Barney sharpened a new pencil with his penknife and began to doodle. A sketch of a single fishing-boat went badly, but a rough outline of the whole harbour began to turn out well, and Barney switched from pencil to an old-fashioned soft-nibbed fountain pen of which he was particularly fond. He worked fast then, pleased with the drawing, absorbed in its detail, sensing the awareness—still new, this spring—that something of himself was going out through his fingers. It was a kind of magic. Coming up for air, he paused, and held the drawing out at arm’s length.

  And without a sound, a large dark-sleeved hand came from one side and seized the sketch pad. Before Barney could turn his head, he heard a noise of ripping paper. Then the pad was flung back at his feet, tumbling over itself on the ground. Footsteps ran. Barney leapt up with an indignant shout, and saw a man running away up the quayside, the page from the sketch pad flapping white against his dark clothes. It was the long-haired, bad-tempered painter he had seen on the quay.

  “Hey!” Barney yelled, furious. “Come back!”

  Without a glance behind, the man swung round the end of the harbour wall. He was a long way ahead, and the harbour path sloped uphill. Barney came tearing up just in time to hear a car engine snarl into life and roar away. He whirled round the corner into the road, and ran smack into someone walking up the hill.

  “Uh!” grunted the stranger, as the breath was thumped out of him. Then his voice came back. “Barney!”

  It was Will Stanton.

  “A man,” gasped Barney, staring around him. “Man in dark sweater.”

  “A man came running up from the harbour just ahead of you,” Will said, frowning. “He jumped into a car and drove off that way.” He pointed down into the village.

  “That was him,” Barney said. He peered resentfully at the empty road.

  Will looked too, fiddling with his jacket zipper. He said with astonishing force, “Stupid of me, stupid, I knew there was something—just not properly awake, thinking of—” He shook his head as if tossing something away from it. “What did he do?”

  “He’s loopy. Mad.” Barney could still scarcely speak for indignation. “I was sitting down there sketching, and he just came up from nowhere, ripped the drawing out of my book and belted off with it. What would any normal person do that for?”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. Well, that is, I’d seen him, but only today. He was sitting down on the quay, painting, at an easel.”

  Will smiled broadly. A silly smile, Barney thought. “Sounds as though he thought your picture was better than his.”

  “Oh, come off it,” Barney said impatiently.

  “Well, what was his picture like?”

  “Weird. Very peculiar.”

  “There you are, then.”

  “There I am not. It was weird, but it was good too, in a nasty sort of way.”

  “Goodness me,” Will said, looking vacant. Barney glared at his round face with its thick brown fringe of hair, and felt more irritated than ever. He began trying to think of an excuse to get away.

  “He had a dog in the car,” Will said absent-mindedly.

  “A dog?”

  “Barking like anything. Didn’t you hear it? And jumping about. It nearly jumped out when he got in. Hope it didn’t chew up your drawing.”

  “I expect it did,” Barney said coldly.

  “Lovely dog,” Will said, in the same vague, dreamy tone. “One of those long-legged Irish setters, a super reddish colour. No decent man would shut a dog like that up in a car.”

  Barney stood stock-still, looking at him. There was only one dog like that in Trewissick. He realised suddenly that directly across the road he could see a tall familiar grey house. At the same moment a gate at the side of the house swung open, and a man came out: a stout, elderly man with a short grey beard, leaning on a stick. Standing in the road, he put his fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp two-note whistle. Then he called, “Rufus? Rufus!”

  Impulsively Barney ran towards him. “Captain Toms? You are Captain Toms, aren’t you? Please, look, I know Rufus, I helped look after him last summer, and I think someone’s stolen him. A man went off with him in a car, a dark man with long hair, an awful man.” He paused. “Of course, if it was someone you know—”

  The man with the beard looked carefully at Barney. “No,” he said slowly, deliberately. “I don’t know a gentleman of that de
scription. But you do seem to know Rufus. And by that hair of yours I fancy you’d be maybe Merriman’s youngest nephew. One of my tenants, last year, eh? The children with the sharp eyes.”

  “That’s right.” Barney beamed. “I’m Barnabas. Barney.” But something puzzled him about Captain Toms’ manner: it was almost as if he were carrying on some other conversation at the same time. The old man was not even looking at him; he seemed to be gazing blankly at the surface of the water, seeing nothing, lost in his own mind.

  Barney suddenly remembered Will. He turned—and saw to his astonishment that Will too was standing near him staring vacantly at nothing, expressionless, as if listening. What was the matter with everybody? “This is Will Stanton,” he said loudly to Captain Toms.

  The bearded face did not change expression. “Yes,” said Captain Toms gently. Then he shook his head, and seemed to wake up. “A dark man, you said?”

  “He was a painter. Very bad-tempered. I don’t know who he was or anything. But Will saw him going off with a dog who sounded just like Rufus—and just outside your door—”

  “I will make enquiries,” Captain Toms said reassuringly. “But come in, come in, both of you. You shall show your friend the Grey House, Barnabas. I must find my key. . . I was busy in the garden. . . .” He felt in his pockets, patting at his jacket ineffectually with the arm not leaning on the stick. Then they were at the front door.

  “The door’s open!” Will said sharply. His voice was crisp, very different from his inane babbling of a few moments before, and Barney blinked.

  Captain Toms pushed the half-open door with his stick, and stumped inside. “That’s how the fellow got Rufus out. Opened the front door while I was round the back . . . I still can’t find that key.” He began fumbling in his pockets again.

  Following him in, Barney felt something rustle at his feet; he bent, and picked up a sheet of white paper. “You didn’t pick up your—” He stopped abruptly. The note was very short, and in large letters. He could not help taking it in at a glance. He held it out to the captain, but it was Will, this strange brisk Will, who took the paper, and stood staring at it with the old man, the two heads close, young and old, brown and grey.

  The note was made of large black capital letters cut from a newspaper and stuck very neatly together on the sheet. It said, “IF YOU WANT YOUR DOG BACK ALIVE, KEEP AWAY FROM THE GREENWITCH.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  UNDER THE SUNSET SKY THE SEA WAS GLASS-SMOOTH. LONG SLOW rollers from the Atlantic, rippling like muscles beneath the skin, made the only sign of the great invisible strength of the ocean in all the tranquil evening. Quietly the fishing-boats moved out, a broad fishtail wake spreading behind each one; their engines chugged softly through the still air. Jane stood at the end of Kemare Head, on the crest of a granite outfall that tumbled its rocks two hundred feet to the sea, and she watched them go. Toy boats, they seemed from there: the scatter of a fishing fleet that every week, every month, every year for endless years had been going out after the pilchard or the mackerel before dusk, and staying at the chase until dawn. Every year there were fewer of them, but still every year they went.

  The sun dropped at the horizon, a fat glowing ball spreading yellow light over all the smooth sea, and the last boat crept out of Trewissick harbour, its engine thumping like a muffled heart-beat in Jane’s ears. As the last spreading lines of the boat’s wake washed against the harbour wall, in a final swift rush the great sun dropped below the horizon, and the light of the April evening began very slowly to die. A small wind sprang up. Jane shivered, and pulled her jacket around her; there was suddenly a coldness in the darkening air.

  As if in answer to the beginning breeze, a light starred up suddenly across Trewissick Bay, on the headland opposite Kemare Head. At the same time there was a sudden warmth behind Jane’s back. She swung round, and saw dark figures against tall flames, where a light had been set to the towering pile of driftwood and branches that had lain waiting to become a bonfire for this one night. Mrs Penhallow had told her that the two beacons would burn until the fishing-boats came back, flames leaping all through the night until the dawn.

  Mrs Penhallow: now there was a mystery. Jane thought again of the moment that afternoon when she had been alone in the living-room, flipping through a magazine, waiting for Simon. She had heard a nervous clearing of the throat, and there in the kitchen doorway Mrs Penhallow was standing, round and rosy and unusually fidgetty.

  “Ef you fancy comin’ to the makin’ tonight, m’dear, you’m welcome,” she said abruptly.

  Jane blinked at her. “The making?”

  “The makin’ of the Greenwitch.” The lilt of Mrs Penhallow’s Cornish accent seemed more marked than usual. “It do take all the night, ’tes a long business, and no outsiders allowed near, generally. But if you feel you’d like . . . you being the only female close to the Perfessor, and all . . .” She waved a hand as if to catch words. “The women did agree it’s all right, and I’d be happy to take ’ee.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Jane, puzzled but pleased. “Er . . . can Mrs Stanton come too?”

  “No,” Mrs Penhallow said sharply. She added more gently, as Jane’s eyebrows went up, “She’m a furriner, you see. Tisn’t fitting.”

  Up on the headland, gazing at the fire, Jane remembered the flat finality of the words. She had accepted the pronouncement and, without even trying to explain the situation to Fran Stanton, had come out after supper to the headland with Mrs Penhallow.

  Yet still she had been given no idea of what was to happen. Nobody had told her what the thing called the Greenwitch would be like, or how it would be made, or what would happen to it. She knew only that the business would occupy the whole night, and end when the fishermen came home. Jane shivered again. Night was falling, and she was not over-fond of the nights of Cornwall; they held too much of the unknown.

  Black shadows ran over the rocks around her, dancing and disappearing as the flames leapt. Instinctively seeking company, Jane moved forward into the circle of bright light around the bonfire; yet this too was unnerving, for now the other figures moved to and fro at the edge of the darkness, out of sight, and she felt suddenly vulnerable. She hesitated, frightened by the tension in the air.

  “Come, m’dear,” said Mrs Penhallow’s soft voice, beside her. “Come by here.” There was a hint of urgency in her tone. Hastily she took Jane by the arm and led her aside. “Time for the makin’,” she said. “You want to keep out of the way, if you can.”

  Then she was gone again, leaving Jane alone near a group of women busying themselves with something not yet visible. Jane found a rock and sat down, warmed by the fire; she watched. Scores of women were there, of all ages: the younger ones in jeans and sweaters, the rest in sturdy dark skirts, long as overcoats, and high heavy boots. Jane could see a big pile of stones, each the size of a man’s head, and a far higher pile of green branches—hawthorn, she thought—too leafy to be intended for the fire. But she did not understand the purpose of either of these.

  Then one tall woman moved out before the rest, and held one arm high in the air. She called out something Jane could not understand, and at once the women set to working, in a curiously ordered way in small groups. Some would take up a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, and test it for flexibility; others then would take the branch, and in some swift practised way weave it together with others into what began very slowly to emerge as a kind of frame.

  After a while the frame began to show signs of becoming a great cylinder. The cleaning and bending and tying went on for a long time. Jane shifted restlessly. The leaves on some of the branches seemed to be of a different shape from the hawthorn. She was not close enough to see what they might be, and she did not intend to move. She felt she would only be safe here, half-invisible on her rock, unnoticed, watching from a little way off.

  At her side suddenly she found the tall woman who had seemed the others’ leader. Bright eyes looked down at her out of a thin face, fra
med by a scarf tied under the chin. “Jane Drew, it is,” the woman said, with a Cornish accent that sounded oddly hard. “One of those who found the grail.”

  Jane jumped. The thought of the grail was never fully out of her mind, but she had not linked it with this strange ceremony here. The woman, however, did not mention it again.

  “Watch for the Greenwitch,” she said conversationally. It was like a greeting.

  The sky was almost black now, with only a faint rim of the glow of daylight. The lights of the two bonfires burned brightly on the headlands. Jane said hastily, clutching at this companionship against the lonely dark, “What are they doing with those branches?”

  “Hazel for the framework,” the woman said. “Rowan for the head. Then the body is of hawthorn boughs, and hawthorn blossoms. With the stones within, for the sinking. And those who are crossed, or barren, or who would make any wish, must touch the Greenwitch then before she be put to cliff.”

  “Oh;’ Jane said.

  “Watch for the Greenwitch,” said the woman pleasantly again, and moved away. Over her shoulder she said, “You may make a wish too, if you like. I will call you, at the right time.”

  Jane was left wondering and nervous. The women were busier now, working steadily, singing in a strange kind of wordless humming; the cylinder shape grew more distinct, closer-woven, and they carried the stones and put them inside. The head began to take shape: a huge head, long, squarish, without features. When the framework was done, they began weaving into it green branches starred with white blossoms. Jane could smell the heavy sweetness of the hawthorn. Somehow it reminded her of the sea.

  * * *

  Hours went by. Sometimes Jane dozed, curled beside her rock; whenever she woke, the framework seemed to look exactly as it had before. The work of weaving seemed endless. Mrs Penhallow came twice with hot tea from a flask. She said anxiously, “Now if you do feel you’ve had enough, m’dear, you just say. Easy to take you along home.”

  “No,” Jane said, staring at the great leafy image with its court of steady workers. She did not like the Greenwitch; it frightened her. There was something menacing in its broad squat shape. Yet it was hypnotic too; she could scarcely take her eyes off it. It. She had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no she quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree.