Greenwitch (2 page)

“Super,” said Simon.

Barney said, “Why should they have taken the grail
now?
Does it mean they've found the lost manuscript, the one that explains the cipher written on the sides of the grail?”

“No,” said Great-Uncle Merry. “Not yet.”

“Then why—”

“I can't explain, Barney.” He thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his bony shoulders. “This matter involves Trewissick, and it does involve that manuscript. But it is part of something very much larger as well, something which I may not explain. I can only ask you to trust me, as you all trusted me once before, in another part of the long battle between the Light and the Dark. And to help, if you are sure you feel able to give help, without perhaps ever being able fully to understand what you are about.”

Barney said calmly, pushing his tow-coloured forelock out of his eyes: “That's all right.”

“Of course we want to help,” Simon said eagerly.

Jane said nothing. Her great-uncle put one finger under her chin, tilted her head up and looked at her. “Jane,” he said gently. “There is absolutely no reason to involve any of you in this if you are not happy about it.”

Jane looked up at the strongly-marked face, thinking how much it looked like one of the fierce statues they had passed on their way through the museum. “You know I'm not scared,” she said. “Well, I mean I am a bit, but excited-scared. It's just that if there's going to be any danger to Barney, I feel—I mean, he's going to scream at me, but he is younger than we are and we oughtn't—”

Barney was scarlet. “Jane!”

“It's no good yelling,” she said with spirit. “If anything happened to you, we'd be responsible, Simon and me.”

“The Dark will not touch any of you,” Great-Uncle Merry said quietly. “There will be protection. Don't worry. I promise you that. Nothing that may happen to Barney will harm him.”

They smiled at one another.

“I am not a baby!”
Barney stamped one foot in fury.

“Stop it,” said Simon. “Nobody said you were.”

Great-Uncle Merry said, “When are the Easter holidays, Barney?”

There was a short pause.

“The fifteenth, I think,” Barney said grumpily.

“That's right,” Jane said. “Simon's start a bit before that, but we all overlap by about a week.”

“It's a long way off,” Great-Uncle Merry said.

“Too late?” They looked at him anxiously.

“No, I don't think so. . . . Is there anything to prevent the three of you from spending that week with me in Trewissick?”

“No!”

“Nothing!”

“Not really. I was going to a sort of ecology conference, but I can get out of that. . . .” Simon's voice trailed away, as he thought of the little Cornish village where they had found the grail. Whatever adventure might now follow had begun there, deep inside a cave in the cliffs, over sea and under stone. And at the heart of things now, as he had been then, would always be Great-Uncle Merry, Professor Merriman Lyon, the most mysterious figure in their lives, who in some incomprehensible way was involved with the long struggle for control of the world between the Light and the Dark.

“I'll speak to your parents,” his great-uncle said.

“Why Trewissick again?” Jane said. “Will the thieves take the grail there?”

“I think they may.”

“Just one week,” Barney said, staring pensively at the empty showcase before them. “That's not much for a quest. Will it really be enough?”

“It is not very long,” said Great-Uncle Merry. “But it will have to do.”

*   *   *

Will eased a stem of grass out of its sheath and sat down on a rock near the front gate, despondently nibbling. The April sunshine glimmered on the new-green leaves of the lime trees; a thrush somewhere shouted its happy self-echoing song. Lilac and wallflowers scented the morning. Will sighed. They were all very well, these joys of a Buckinghamshire spring, but he would have appreciated them more with someone there to share the Easter holidays. Half his large family still lived at home, but his nearest brother James was away at a Scout camp for the week, and the next in line, Mary, had disappeared to some Welsh relations to recuperate from mumps. The rest were busy with boring older preoccupations. That was the trouble with being the youngest of nine; everyone else seemed to have grown up too fast.

There was one respect in which he, Will Stanton, was far older than any of them, or than any human creature. But only he knew of the great adventure which had shown him, on his eleventh birthday, that he had been born the last of the Old Ones, guardians of the Light, bound by immutable laws to defend the world against the rising Dark. Only he knew—and because he was also an ordinary boy, he was not thinking of it now.

Raq, one of the family dogs, pushed a damp nose into his hand. Will fondled the floppy ears. “A whole week,” he said to the dog. “What shall we do? Go fishing?”

The ears twitched, the nose left his hand; stiff and alert, Raq turned towards the road. In a moment or two a taxi drew up outside the gate: not the familiar battered car that served as village taxi, but a shiny professional vehicle from the town three miles away. The man who emerged was small, balding and rather rumpled, wearing a raincoat and carrying a large shapeless holdall. He dismissed the taxi, and stood looking at Will.

Puzzled, Will scrambled up and came to the gate. “Good morning,” he said.

The man stood solemn for a moment, then grinned. “You're Will,” he said. He had a smooth round face with round eyes, like a clever fish.

“That's right,” Will said.

“The youngest Stanton. The seventh son. That's one up on me—I was only the sixth.”

His voice was soft and rather husky, with an odd mid-Atlantic accent; the vowels were American, but the intonation was English. Will smiled in polite incomprehension.

“Your father was the seventh in that family,” the man in the raincoat said. He grinned again, his round eyes crinkling at the corners, and held out his hand. “Hi. I'm your Uncle Bill.”

“Well I'm blowed!” said Will. He shook the hand. Uncle Bill. His namesake. His father's favourite brother, who had gone off to America years and years ago and set up some sort of successful business—pottery, wasn't it? Will did not remember ever having seen him before; he was sent a Christmas present each year by this unknown Uncle Bill, who was also his godfather, and he wrote a chatty letter of thanks annually as a result, but the letters had never had a reply.

“You've grown some,” said Uncle Bill as they walked to the house. “Last time we met, you were a little scrawny bawling thing in a crib.”

“You sound like an American,” Will said.

“No wonder,” said Uncle Bill. “I've been one for the last ten years.”

“You never answered my Christmas letters.”

“Did that bother you?”

“No, not really.”

They both laughed, and Will decided that this uncle was all right. Then they were in the house, and his father was coming downstairs; pausing, with an incredulous blankness in his face.

“Billy!”

“Roger!”

“My God,” said Will's father, “what's happened to your hair?”

Reunions with long-lost relatives take time, especially in large families. They were at it for hours. Will quite forgot that he had been gloomy over the absence of companions. By lunchtime he had learned that his Uncle Bill and Aunt Fran were in Britain to visit the Staffordshire potteries and the china-clay district of Cornwall, where they had business of some complex Anglo-American kind. He had heard all about their two grown-up children, who seemed to be contemporaries of his eldest brother Stephen, and he had been told rather more than he really wanted to know about the state of Ohio and the china-making trade. Uncle Bill was clearly prosperous, but this seemed to be only his second trip to Britain since he had emigrated more than twenty years before. Will liked his twinkling round eyes and laconic husky voice. He was just feeling that the prospects for his week's holiday had greatly improved when he found that Uncle Bill was staying only one night, on his way from a business trip to London, and travelling on to Cornwall the next day to join his wife. His spirits drooped again.

“Friend of mine's picking me up, and we're driving down. But I tell you what, Frannie and I'll come and spend a few days on our way back to the States. If you'll have us, that is.”

“I should hope so,” said Will's mother. “After ten years and about three letters, my lad, you don't get away with one mouldy twenty-four hours.”

“He sent me presents,” Will said. “Every Christmas.”

Uncle Bill grinned at him. “Alice,” he said suddenly to Mrs Stanton, “since Will's out of school this week, and not too busy, why don't you let me take him to Cornwall for the holiday? I could put him on a train back at the end of the week. We've
rented a place with far more space than we need. And this friend of mine has a couple of nephews coming down, about Will's age, I believe.”

Will made a strangled whooping sound, and looked anxiously at his parents. Frowning gravely, they began a predictable duet.

“Well, that's really very good of—”

“If you're sure he won't be—”

“He'd certainly love to—”

“If Frannie wouldn't—”

Uncle Bill winked at Will. Will went upstairs and began to pack his knapsack. He put in five pairs of socks, five changes of underwear, six shirts, a pullover and a sweater, two pairs of shorts, and a flashlight. Then he remembered that his uncle was not leaving until the next day, but there seemed no point in unpacking. He went downstairs, the knapsack bouncing on his back like an overblown football.

His mother said, “Well, Will, if you'd really like to—Oh.”

“Good-by, Will,” said his father.

Uncle Bill chuckled. “Excuse me,” he said. “If I might borrow your phone—”

“I'll show you.” Will led him out into the hall. “It's not too much, is it?” he said, looking doubtfully at the bulging knapsack.

“That's fine.” His uncle was dialling. “Hallo? Hallo, Merry. Everything okay? Good. Just one thing. I'm bringing my youngest nephew with me for a week. He doesn't have much luggage”—he grinned at Will—“but I just thought I'd make sure you weren't driving some cute little two-seater. . . . Ha-ha. No, not really in character . . . okay, great, see you tomorrow.” He hung up.

“All right, buddy,” he said to Will. “We leave at nine in the morning. That suit you, Alice?” Mrs Stanton was crossing the hall with the tea-tray.

“Splendid,” she said.

Since the beginning of the telephone call, Will had been standing very still. “Merry?” he said slowly. “That's an unusual name.”

“It is, isn't it?” said his uncle. “Unusual guy, too. Teaches at Oxford. Brilliant brain, but I guess you'd call him kind of odd—very shy, hates meeting people. He's very reliable, though,” he added hastily to Mrs Stanton. “And a great driver.”

“Whatever's the matter, Will?” said his mother. “You look as though you'd seen a ghost. Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing,” said Will. “Oh no. Nothing at all.”

*   *   *

Simon, Jane and Barney struggled out of St Austell station beneath a clutter of suitcases, paper bags, raincoats and paperbacks. The crowd from the London train was dwindling about them, swallowed by cars, buses, taxis.

“He did say he'd meet us here, didn't he?”

“'Course he did.”

“I can't see him.”

“He's a bit late, that's all.”

“Great-Uncle Merry is never late.”

“We ought to find out where the Trewissick bus goes from, just in case.”

“No, there he is, I see him. I told you he was never late.” Barney jumped up and down, waving. Then he paused. “But he's not on his own. There's a man with him.” A faint note of outrage crept into his voice. “And a
boy.”

*   *   *

A car hooted peremptorily once, twice, three times outside the Stantons' house.

“Here we go,” said Uncle Bill, seizing his holdall and Will's knapsack.

Will hastily kissed his parents good-by, staggering under the enormous bag of sandwiches, thermos flasks and cold drinks that his mother dumped into his arms.

“Behave yourself,” she said.

“I don't suppose Merry will get out of the car,” said Bill to her as they trooped down the drive. “Very shy character, pay no attention. But he's a good friend. You'll like him, Will.”

Will said, “I'm sure I shall.”

At the end of the drive, an enormous elderly Daimler stood waiting.

“Well well,” said Will's father respectfully.

“And I was worrying about space!” said Bill. “I might have known he'd drive something like this. Well, good-by, people. Here, Will, you can get in front.”

In a flurry of farewells they climbed into the dignified car; a large muffler-wrapped figure sat hunched at the wheel, topped by a terrible hairy brown cap.

“Merry,” said Uncle Bill as they moved off, “this is my nephew and godson. Will Stanton, Merriman Lyon.”

The driver tossed aside his dreadful cap, and a mop of white hair sprang into shaggy freedom. Shadowed dark eyes glanced sideways at Will out of an arrogant, hawk-nosed profile.

“Greetings, Old One,”
said a familiar voice into Will's mind.

“It's marvellous to see you,”
Will said silently, happily.

“Good morning, Will Stanton,” Merriman said.

“How do you do, sir,” said Will.

*   *   *

There was considerable conversation on the drive from Buckinghamshire to Cornwall, particularly after the picnic
lunch, when Will's uncle fell asleep and slumbered peacefully all the rest of the way.