HartsLove (20 page)

Daisy was already hurtling downstairs, out of the front door, across the courtyard and on to the drawbridge. There was no sign of the ghost horse. She peered into the moat where, to her relief, she could hear Robin spluttering and puking. She crossed the drawbridge, lay down on the moat's edge and held out a hand. ‘I'm here,' she called.

‘Go away! Go away!'

‘Come here! I'll help you.'

‘Go away!'

‘Do you want the ash man to come back?'

‘No! No!'

‘Give me your hand then.'

Robin still refused her hand but he did crawl out of the moat. Daisy dragged him back into the hall.

Dawn was beginning to render the lances across the floor of the hall fuzzy and indistinct. All the statues were back in their places, though whether the real statues or not Daisy could not tell and did not care. She propped Robin against a plinth. He was shrunken, like a balloon without air. Daisy had no idea what had just happened. That the horse was The One, she was pretty sure. And who else could the ash man be but Skelton? That could all come later. The important thing now was not to squander this illusion as Clover and Columbine had squandered the statue trick.

Robin clutched his arms round his knees and forced his voice through a crack in his throat. ‘Who was that man?'

‘Don't know,' Daisy said with nearly complete honesty, ‘but then we don't know all the ghosts here.'

‘He wasn't a ghost. He was real. He can't get in here, can he? The door's locked?'

‘Ghosts can do anything,' Daisy said.

‘For God's sake, you cretin.' Robin gripped her wrist. ‘He wasn't a ghost. Is the door locked?'

Although Daisy knew that there was no lock, it being several hundred years since anybody had thought one necessary, she hobbled to the door. ‘It's locked,' she said
because that seemed easiest. She pressed her nose against the window. ‘There's nobody there.' She returned to Robin and crouched down.

Robin wanted to curse and cry at the same time. He still wanted to kill Daisy, but he did not want to be alone. He wished they had never come here. ‘You must know who he was! He stank of rotten things and said I'd no right to touch lilies.'

‘Lilies? Are you sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure.' Robin began to shiver. ‘We'll block the fireplaces. We'll put cannon on the roof. We'll fill the moat with burning oil. He must never touch me again. Never.' He stared fearfully into the hearth. ‘Oh God! He could get in down here!' He wanted to move. But where to go? ‘We'll pull the place down and start all over again.'

Daisy drooped. Despite Skelton's last-minute effort, the night was a complete failure. Far from putting Robin off, they had simply made him vicious. The dark was thinning fast. ‘Better go back to bed,' she said.

Robin jerked. ‘I can't sleep on my own.'

‘I don't suppose the ash man will be back tonight.'

‘He said . . . he said . . . he said he'd bring me a present.'

‘That's nice.'

He glowered at her. ‘Can't we just stay here?'

‘You stay here if you want to.' Daisy was so tired she wondered if she could actually drag herself upstairs. She hauled herself to her feet. ‘You smell. You'll need to wash
yourself. There's water in the kitchen and you'll find some of Garth's clothes airing near the range.'

‘I don't want to go down there.'

‘Then stay smelly,' she said. She hobbled up to her room and lay on the top of her bed. There was something under the cover. She put her hand in and drew out a small bag. Inside was a robin. It was very pretty, with its brown back and red breast. It was also stone dead.

The Entwhistles were gathered in the dining room when Daisy came down. Their carriage – their
second
carriage, as Mrs Entwhistle kept repeating – had already arrived. Mrs Entwhistle and her husband had slept well. They did not, however, wish to repeat the dinner experience. They would breakfast at home. Merle and Lilith appeared, yawning. Jonas Entwhistle, finding Charles just where he had been left the night before, had marched him into the dining room and was delivering a lecture on household management. It took Robin's appearance to silence him.

If his daughters were dishevelled without their maid and their hairbrushes, his son was a wreck. Robin had neither bathed nor changed his clothes. He smelled of unmentionable things. He was also hideously flushed and his eyes were hollow. He could not stand still. ‘We've got to fix cannon on each corner,' he said without any preamble,
‘and block up all the fireplaces. We'll need guard dogs, lots of them. Big ones with teeth.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?' Mr Entwhistle blinked. ‘What's happened to you?'

‘Didn't you hear me?' Robin's voice was high and querulous.

‘I heard you. Look at yourself! Have you . . . have you –' Jonas could not bring himself to identify his son's smell.

‘Guard dogs and cannon, Father. Order them now.'

‘Guard dogs? Cannon? This is 1861, righty right? Who do you think's going to invade?'

‘It's for the girls' protection,' Robin said, ‘and for Mother's. There was an intruder last night.' He glared at Garth and Rose. Clover and Columbine were lurking, shamefaced, behind them. ‘A real intruder. Not some poxy girl dressed up as a statue.'

Mrs Entwhistle felt for her necklace. ‘An intruder? Thank goodness this was under my pillow.'

Robin turned on her. ‘Who cares about your necklace! He wasn't after that! He came for me!'

‘For you?' Mrs Entwhistle's eyes were wide.

‘Yes. And he was made of ash from the kitchen range!'

‘An intruder made of ash? God in heaven, Mr Entwhistle! Our son's gone mad.'

‘An intruder?' Charles caught the tail end of the conversation. ‘Not possible. Gryffed would have –' he broke off. Why did he never remember?

‘Gryffed?' said Mrs Entwhistle, thoroughly bemused. ‘Who's he?'

‘He's dead,' said Rose.

‘Why is nobody listening? There was an intruder!' Robin stamped his foot and pointed to the doorway. Daisy had just appeared. ‘Ask her.'

‘I'm afraid he's right,' Daisy said. ‘There was an intruder.'

Mrs Entwhistle felt for her necklace again. ‘For the love of God! Is nowhere safe?'

‘Now then, Mother,' Jonas said. He did not know what to make of any of this. He looked back at his son. ‘If you disturbed a burglar, why didn't you wake me?'

‘I couldn't, Father.' Robin's words tumbled out. ‘He grabbed me and burrowed underground. We came out by a tree. I think he was part of the tree. Perhaps it's an ash tree. We galloped on a white horse. It was hideous and he said vile things but I wasn't at all frightened of course. Not at all. All the same, we need to protect our-selves. I mean, next time he might take one of the girls and God knows what he'd do to them.' Mrs Entwhistle and his sisters shrieked. ‘Perhaps he wouldn't bring them back,' Robin added, to make his sisters shriek louder.

‘Be quiet! All of you!' ordered Jonas. His son looked very strange, and Jonas did not like anything strange. He forced himself to smile. ‘You had a nightmare, son. That's all. Pull yourself together.'

Robin stamped his foot. ‘He threatened me, Father. I had to beat him off. He threw me in the moat.'

‘Was that before or after he turned into a tree?' Jonas asked, his patience beginning to run out.

Robin turned furiously on Daisy. ‘You tell him.'

Daisy felt the little bag in her pocket. ‘I don't want to.'

‘I don't care if you don't want to. Tell him.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Of course I'm sure. Tell them now this minute.'

Daisy fiddled with her hands. ‘I'm sorry, Mr and Mrs Entwhistle,' she said. ‘It's just as Robin said.'

‘There!' cried Robin. Mrs Entwhistle began to fan herself.

‘Though actually,' Daisy continued, ‘it's worse.'

‘Worse?' Mrs Entwhistle sat down with a bump.

‘Yes, worse,' Daisy repeated. ‘You see, the intruder said he'd leave Robin a present. Isn't that right, Robin?'

Robin nodded.

Daisy brought out the little bag and opened it. ‘I think this is it.'

Jonas seized the bag and tipped the contents on to the table. Robin's breath was a jagged high croak.

‘For God's sake, boy! It's just a dead bird!' his father shouted.

‘But, look at it! Don't you see what kind of a bird it is, Jonas?' his wife whispered.

‘Birds are birds!'

Daisy whipped the little corpse out of the way as Jonas crashed his fist down. ‘Be careful of the poor robin!' she cried. ‘It must have died because its wings are withered and it couldn't fly.'

‘A robin? What? A robin with withered wings? Oh, this is nonsense,' cried Jonas, glaring at Daisy, then Robin, whose croak had dissolved into a whimper. ‘Don't be such a sissy, boy!'

Merle and Lilith were wailing. ‘We want to go home.'

‘Home? This is going to be your home!'

Daisy approached Robin. She was holding the broken bird out to him, and on his other side Garth was stroking the Furious Boy's arm. Robin took no notice of Garth, but there was something about the dead robin amid the breakfast crumbs that spooked him more than anything he had seen the night before – indeed, more than anything he had seen in his life. It was not that the robin looked tortured. It did not. But it did not look peaceful either. Its beak was open, as though death had crept up on it when least expected. In the milky glaze of its dead eyes, Robin's own reflection was distorted. And those wings. Those pathetic, helpless wings. Robin would have run outside and ground the bird into the dirt if his legs had agreed to carry him. That stuff with the statue had been a joke, right? He knew it.
He knew it
. Yet there were Daisy's withered legs, and she was looking so weird – almost as if she were sorry for him. He could not help running his hands up and down his arms. ‘I hate you
all and I hate this place,' he groaned. He glared at his father. ‘Can't you see? This whole castle's ugly and deformed, and if we live here that's just what we'll become. I don't like it. I don't want it.'

‘You'll want what I tell you to want!' shouted Mr Entwhistle.

‘I won't,' Robin shouted back.

‘Jonas! Jonas!' cried Mrs Entwhistle. ‘The boy's not well.'

The girls backed away from their brother. ‘We don't want to live here either. We don't want to end up mad like him.'

‘But this is a castle! A castle!' Jonas argued angrily. ‘It's fitting. It's our right.'

His wife drew her tassles around her and forced herself to touch her son. ‘There, there.' She turned on her husband. ‘There's other castles,' she snapped. ‘I'm not asking the neighbours round to meet intruders and dead things.'

Mr Entwhistle thumped the table. ‘We ARE going to live here.'

‘We aren't,' said his wife. ‘Robin's right. There
is
something rotten about this place, and if my boy's permanently damaged –' she shook her necklace at Charles as she pushed her children out – ‘I shall hold you personally responsible.' Her husband was still thumping the table. ‘The carriage, Jonas.'

Mr Entwhistle knew that tone. He carried on thumping even as he began to deflate. ‘I simply don't understand
what's happened here.' When he finally stopped thumping, he looked to each of the de Granvilles for an explanation. None was forthcoming. Mrs Snipper brought him his hat. ‘Goodbye, dearie,' she said. Complaining, Jonas Entwhistle found himself chivvied out of the dining room. He was still complaining when the front door slammed behind him. As he got into his carriage, his complaints became more muffled until eventually they merged with the crunch of carriage wheels.

In the long pause that followed, Charles retreated to the library and Daisy found herself surrounded.

‘How on earth did you manage that?'

‘Yes, how
did
you do that?'

‘Was there really a horse?'

‘That poor robin.'

‘Where did you find it?'

‘On my bed,' said Daisy when she could get a word in.

‘No, Rose meant before that,' said Garth.

‘I didn't find it before that. It was in a bag on my bed.'

‘Who put it there?'

Daisy shook her head. ‘I've no idea. And there
was
a horse. It was The One.'

‘Of course, but how did you make him white?'

‘I didn't,' Daisy said. ‘I really didn't have anything to do with it. Nothing at all. It must have been Skelton. I absolutely swear it wasn't me.' She turned on the twins. ‘You two! How could you have giggled? You spoiled everything!
We should never have needed The One or the dead robin.' Her relief at getting rid of the intruders was quickly turning to concern. The One's first gallop! In the dark and with a great lump of a boy on top of him!

‘We're so sorry!' cried the twins. ‘We didn't mean to.' They were mortified and nervy. They could not imagine how they had giggled.

Daisy swallowed. What was the point of shouting at the twins now? ‘I'm going to the stables. I've got to see if The One's all right,' she said. Her crutches were leaning against the door.

The twins hung back. The thought of The One being lame again was almost worse than the Entwhistles.

‘You really think it was Skelton? It doesn't seem like him at all. What does he care about the place – I mean, really?' Garth was running with Daisy. Rose and Lily hurried close behind. The twins followed reluctantly.

‘It must have been him,' Daisy said, swinging as fast as she could. ‘Just because we don't like him doesn't mean he's completely bad. I mean, he was helpful when The One was lame, and I suppose he doesn't want to move from here either.'