Silver on the Tree Page 3

  They slid to a halt in front of the small tense figure. Will recognized two of them as boys who went to his own school, a tough troublesome pair much given to gang-rumpus on the playground. One of them smiled a thin nasty smile at the boy they had been chasing.

  “Don’t want to say hallo, Pakkie-boy? What you scared of, eh? Where you been?”

  The boy jerked to one side and lunged, trying to slip past and away, but one of the others stepped swiftly sideways and blocked him. The music-case fell to the ground, and as the small boy leaned to pick it up a large dirty foot came down on its handle.

  “Been to piano lesson, has he? Didn’t know Pakkies played the piano, did you, Frankie? Only those funny little plinky-plink instruments, wheee-eeeee-eeeee—” He capered about, making sounds like a bad violinist; the other, gurgled with unpleasant laughter, one of them picking up the music-case and whacking it for applause.

  “Please give me back my case,” said the small boy, in a precise, unhappy little voice.

  The bigger boy held it high over the water of the stream.

  “Come and get it, Pakkie, come and get it!”

  Will shouted indignantly, “Give it back!”

  Their heads turned sharply; then the bully’s face relaxed into a sneer as he recognized Will. “Mind your own mucking business, Stanton!”

  The other boys hooted derisively.

  “You brainless oiks!” Will yelled. “Always picking on little kids—give it back to him, or—”

  “Or what?” said the boy, and he looked at the smaller boy and smiled. He opened his hand, and let the music-case fall into the stream.

  His friends guffawed and cheered. The small boy burst into tears. Will, spluttering, thrust his bicycle aside; but before he could move further a whirl of limbs shot past him and Stephen’s tall rangy form was bounding down the slope.

  The boys scattered, too late. In only a few paces Stephen had grabbed the ringleader. Holding him by the shoulders, he said softly, “Get that case out of the water.”

  Will watched, motionless, caught by the controlled fury in the quiet voice, but the other boy was riding too high on his own confidence. He twisted in Stephen’s grasp, snarling at him. “You crazy? Get meself all wet for some bleedin’ nignog? That little cat-food eater? You think I’m—”

  The last word had no chance. With a quick shift of grip Stephen suddenly heaved the boy off his feet and into the air, and dropped him into the scummy green water of the stream.

  The splash left a silence. A bird chirruped gaily overhead. The two boys on the bank stood motionless, staring at their leader as he slowly hoisted himself up, dripping weed and muddy water, to stand knee-deep in the nearly stagnant stream. He looked at Stephen, his face empty of expression; then bent, picked up the flat leather music-case and held it out, dripping, at arm’s length. Stephen handed it to the little boy, and he took it, dark eyes saucer-wide; then turned and fled without a word.

  Stephen swung round and climbed back up to the road. As he stepped long-legged over the wire fence, the boy standing in the water came suddenly to life as if released from a spell. He splashed back to the bank, muttering. They heard a few scattered obscenities, then a furious shout: “You think you’re so great, just because ou’re bigger’n me!”

  “The pot is speaking to the kettle,” said Stephen peacefully, swinging his leg over his bicycle.

  The boy yelled: “If my Dad ever catches you, you just wait—”

  Stephen paused, propelled himself to the edge of the bridge and leaned over. “Stephen Stanton, at the Old Vicarage,” he said. “You tell your Dad he can come and discuss you with me any time he likes.”

  There was no answer. James came up at Will’s side as they rode away; he was beaming. “Lovely,” he said. “Beautiful.”

  “Yes,” Will said, pedalling. “But—”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “That must have been little Manny Singh,” Mrs. Stanton said, digging a large knife into the treacle tart. “They live at the other end of the village, in one of the houses on that new estate.”

  “I know them,” Mary said. “Mr. Singh wears a turban.”

  “That’s right. They aren’t Pakistani, as it happens, they’re Indian—Sikhs. Not that it’s relevant. What horrible boys those three are.”

  “They’re horrible to everybody, that lot,” James said, hopefully watching the size of the piece of tart about to be cut for him. “No relation to race, colour or creed—they’ll bash anyone. So long as he’s smaller than them.”

  “They seemed a little more … selective today,” Stephen said quietly.

  “I’m not sure you should have dropped him in the water, though,” his mother said placidly. “Pass the custard round, Will.”

  “Richie Moore called the little boy a cat-food eater,” Will said.

  Stephen said, “Pity that stream wasn’t ten feet deep.”

  James said, “There’s an extra piece of tart there, Mum.”

  “For your father,” Mrs. Stanton said. “Eyes off. He doesn’t work late for you to pinch his dinner. Don’t stuff, James. Even Mary’s eating more slowly than you.” Then she raised her head suddenly, listening. “What’s that?”

  They had all heard the faint noise outside; it came again, louder. Distant squawking sounds rose from the chickens in their yard behind the house; not ordinary squawks of protest or demand, but high cackles of alarm.

  Instantly the children stampeded, James even forgetting his treacle tart. Will was first out of the back door—and then instantly, abruptly, he stopped, so that Stephen and James blundered round him and almost fell. They ran on. But Will could feel the sense of malevolence, of immanent undiluted ill-wishing, so strong all around him that he could scarcely move. He stood, shaking. Thrusting against the sensation as against a high wind, he stumbled on after the others. His mind felt thick and slow. He thought, I have felt this before…. But there was no time to remember.

  He heard shouting from the yard, and scuffling feet, through the cackling of the frightened birds. In the half-light of the hazy evening he saw Stephen and James dodging to and fro as if chasing something; closer, he thought he saw a small twisting dark body, lithe and swift, darting between them. Stephen grabbed for a stick; whacked at the shape; missed. The stick hit the ground, splintering. A garden fork stood against the fence of the hen run; Will seized it, moving closer. The animal ran past his feet. It made no sound.

  “Get it. Will!”

  “Hit it!”

  Feet flurried, birds squawked, the yard was full of colliding bodies, grey shapes in the dim light. For an instant Will saw the full moon, an enormous yellow arc beginning to rise over the trees. Then James was bumping into him again.

  “Over here! Catch him!”

  Will had one quick clear glimpse. “It’s another mink!”

  “Of course! Over here!”

  Twisting in its urgent search for flight, the mink was suddenly between Will and the fence, cornered. White teeth flashed. It stood taut, staring, and screamed suddenly, a high angry screech that pierced Will’s mind and brought flooding into it the overwhelming awareness of evil he had felt when stepping outside the door. He flinched.

  “Now, Will, now! Hard!”

  They were both yelling at him. Will swung the garden fork high. The mink stared at him, and screamed again. Will looked at it. The Dark is rising; killing one of its creatures will not stop the Dark from rising. He let the fork drop.

  James groaned loudly. Stephen leapt to Will’s side. The mink, teeth bared, ran straight at Stephen as if to attack him; Will gasped in horror, but at the last minute the creature veered aside and darted between Stephen’s legs. Even then it did not run at once for freedom; it dived at a frightened huddle of chickens, seized one by the neck and bit hard at the back of its head, so that the bird went instantly limp. The mink let it drop, and fled into the night.

  James was stamping in angry frustration. “The dogs! Where are the dogs?”<
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  A beam of light wavered outside the kitchen door. “Barbara took them to Eton to be clipped,” his mother’s voice said. “She’s late because of picking up your father.”

  “Oh damn!”

  “I agree,” said his mother mildly, “but there it is.” She came forward with the light. “Let’s look at the damage.”

  The damage was considerable. When the boys had sorted noisy hysterical pullets from their dead companions, they had six fat corpses lying in a row. Each bird had been killed by a vicious bite at the back of its head.

  Mary said, bewildered, “But so many? Why so many? It didn’t even try to take a single one away.”

  Mrs. Stanton shook her head in bafflement. “A fox will kill one bird and run off with it, quickly. Which makes more sense, I must say. You say this thing was a mink?”

  “I’m sure,” James said. “There was a piece in the paper. Besides, we saw one this afternoon by the river.”

  Stephen said drily, “Looks as though it just enjoyed killing our chickens.”

  Will was standing a little way off, leaning against the wall of the barn. “Killing for the love of it,” he said.

  James snapped his fingers. “That’s what the paper said. Why they were pests. It said the mink was the only animal besides the polecat that killed for the sake of killing. Not just when it was hungry.”

  Mrs. Stanton picked up a pair of dangling dead chickens. “Well,” she said with brisk resignation, “bring them in. We’ll just have to make the best of it and hope the wretched animal didn’t choose the best layers. And just let him try to come back…. Steve, will you tuck up the rest of them?”

  “Sure,” Stephen said.

  “I’ll help,” said James. “Wow—you were lucky, Steve. I thought it was going to bite you. Wonder what stopped it?”

  “I taste bad.” Stephen looked up at the sky. “Look at that moon—we hardly need a torch at all…. Come on. Wood, nails, hammer. We’ll make that hen-run eternally mink-proof.”

  Will said, “It won’t come back.” He was looking at the pimpernel flower drooping wilted and forgotten from Stephen’s buttonhole. “Good against venomous beasts. It won’t come back.”

  James peered at him. “You look funny. You okay?”

  “Of course I am,” Will said, fighting the turmoil in his mind. “Course I am. Course….”

  His head was whirling; it was like giddiness, except that it seemed also to be destroying his sense of time, of what was now and what before or after. Had the mink gone, or were they still chasing it? Had it yet come at all; were they shortly to be attacked, the hens to begin a dreadful frightened clamour? Or was he … somewhere else … entirely …?

  He shook his head abruptly. Not yet. Not yet. “Dad’s tool chest is in the barn now. He moved it,” he said.

  “Come on, then.” Stephen led the way into the wooden outbuilding that was known, more romantically than it deserved, as the barn. Their house had once been a vicarage, never a farm, but the chickens and rabbits that their farmbred mother kept were enough to change its mood.

  James snapped on the electric light, and they paused, blinking; then collected hammer, pliers, stout nails, some chicken-wire and several pieces of left-over half-inch board.

  “Just right,” Stephen said.

  “Dad made a new rabbit-hutch last week. Those are the bits.”

  “Leave the light on. It’ll shine out.”

  A shaft of light from the dusty window beamed out into the night. They began cutting chicken-wire and fitting together boards, on the far side of the hen-run where the mink had wriggled its way in.

  “Will—see if there’s another piece of board in there, about a foot longer than this one.”

  “Righto.”

  Will crossed the moonlit yard towards the stream of yellow light reaching out from the barn. Behind him the sound of Stephen’s hammer rang rhythmically over the still-restless murmur of the hens.

  And then the whirling took hold of his mind again, and caught his senses into confusion, and the wind seemed to blow in his face. Tap-tap-tap … tap-tap-tap … the hammering seemed to change, to a hollow metallic sound as of iron striking iron. Staggering, Will leaned against the wall of the barn. The shaft of light was gone, and the moon. The alteration came with no more warning than that: a time-slip so complete that in an instant he could see no trace of Stephen or James, nor any familiar thing or animal or tree.

  The night was darker than it had been. There was a creaking sound that he could not identify. He found he was standing against a wall still, but a wall of different texture; his fingers, which had been touching wood, discovered now large blocks of stone, mortared together. The air was still warm as in his own time. From the other side of the wall, he could hear voices. Two men. And both voices were so familiar to Will, out of the other side of his life that his family had never touched or seen, that the small hairs rose on the back of his neck and joy swelled in his chest like pain.

  “Badon, then.” A deep voice, expressionless.

  “It will have to be.”

  “Do you think you can drive them back?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?” The second voice was almost as deep, but lightened by a warmth of feeling, like a profound amusement.

  “Yes. You will drive them back, my lord. But it will not be forever. These men may be driven back, but the force of nature that they represent has never yet been driven back for long.”

  The warm voice sighed. “You are right. This island is doomed, unless…. I know you are right, my lion. I have known it since I was a boy. Since a day—” He stopped. There was a long pause.

  The first man said gently, “Do not think about it.”

  “Do you know, then? I have never spoken of it to anyone. Well, of course you must know.” He laughed softly; the sound held affection rather than amusement. “Were you there, Old One? You? I suppose you must have been.”

  “I was there.”

  “All the best men of Britain slaughtered. Every one. Three hundred leaders at the one gathering, three hundred! Stabbed, strangled, clubbed, at one sign—I even saw him give the sign, do you know that? I, a boy of seven…. All dead. My father amongst them. The blood flowed and the grass was red, and the Dark began its rising over Britain—” He choked on the words.

  The deep voice said, grim and cold, “It shall not rise for ever.”

  “No, by heaven it shall not!” He had collected himself again. “And a few days from now Badon shall show that. Mons Badonicus, mons felix. So let us hope.”

  “The gathering is begun, and men come from every corner of your loyal Britain,” said the first. “And this night the Circle shall be summoned, the Circle of the Old Ones, to meet this great need.”

  Will stood straight, as if someone had called his name. He was so deep in this time now that he had no need of calling. There was no thought, even; only awareness. He turned, and saw light glimmering round the doorway in the stone wall; walked forward to the doorway, jumped suddenly at the sight of two figures armed with sword and spear in front of him, at either side of the door. But neither moved; they stood stiff, at attention, staring ahead.

  Will reached out to the heavy, thick-woven curtain that hung over the entrance, and pulled it aside. Bright light blazed into his eyes; he brought up his arm to cover them, blinking.

  “Ah, Will,” said the deeper voice. “Come in, come in.”

  Will stepped forward, opening his eyes. He stood there, smiling at the tall robed figure with its fierce proud nose and springing shock of white hair. It was a long time since they had met.

  “Merriman!” he said. They moved to one another, and embraced.

  “How do you, Old One?” the tall man said.

  “Well, I thank you.”

  “Old One to Old One,” said the other man softly. “The first and oldest of them, and the last and youngest. And I too greet you, Will Stanton.”

  Will looked at the clear blue eyes in the weather-brown face; the short grey bear
d; the hair still brown but streaked with grey. He went down on one knee, and bent his head. “My lord.”

  The other bent forward in his creaking leather chair and touched Will’s shoulder briefly in greeting. “I am glad to see you. Rise now, and join your master. This part of time is for you two alone, and there is much to do.”

  He stood, pushing a short cloak back over one shoulder, and strode to the door, soft-shod feet noiseless on the patterned mosaic floor. Though he was a head short of Merriman’s great height, there was an authority in him that towered over any man. “I will go and hear the new count of men,” he said, turning at the door, over the clatter and scrape of spears as the guards presented arms. “A night and a day. Be swift, my lion.”

  Then he was gone, as if the swirl of the cloak had carried him away.

  Will said, “Those guards didn’t challenge me.”

  “They had been told to expect your coming,” Merriman said. There was a wry smile on his bleak bony face as he looked down at Will. Then suddenly he put his head back with a quick intake of breath and a sigh. “Eh Will—how is it with you, in the second great rising? For this now, here, is the first, and I tell you it does not go well.”

  “I don’t understand, you know,” Will said.

  “Do you not, Old One? After all my teaching, and the learning of the Book of Grammarye awhile ago, do you still not understand how time must elude the consciousness of men? Perhaps you are still too close to men yourself…. Well.” He sat down abruptly on a long couch with curved arms. There was little furniture in the high square room; on its painted plaster walls bright pictures of country summer glowed, sunshine and fields and harvest gold. “Within the time of men, Will,” he said, “there are two great risings of the Dark. One is in the time into which you were human-born. One is here and now, fifteen centuries before that, when my lord Arthur must win a victory that can last long enough to detach these invading ravagers from the Dark that drives them on. You and I have a part to play in the defence against each of these two risings. In fact, the same part.”

  “But—” Will said.

  Merriman raised one bristling white eyebrow, looking at him sideways. “If you dare to ask me, you, how it is that someone from the future can take part in something that has, in that foolish phrase, already happened….”