Unexpected Magic (41 page)

I
t was December 27, the day of the Courcy party, that Alex and Cecilia took the adventure into their own hands. To a great extent, it was their father's fault that they did so. Josiah was outraged when they arrived back from the island, after dark, when all the Courcys had long ago gone home.

“Where did you run away to?” he demanded. “Gatly's?”

“No!” said Cecilia. “We did not run away at all.”

Possibly, Josiah was secretly pleased that his children had stood their ground when even the Courcys had fled, but he never dreamed of showing it. He raged and lectured and told them they should have come home to entertain the Courcys.

“Hang the Courcys,” said Alex, smarting now both from the Courcys and from the boy in black who reminded him of them.

In those days it was simply not done to answer back. For that, Alex got the beating that the island boy had failed to give him. He and Cecilia were both sent to bed and not allowed out of their rooms until the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Cecilia passed the time in an agony of worry about their outlaw. She saw him killed in several dozen grisly ways, and she saw him as many times miraculously saved. Part of the time, she spent on her knees, praying for his safety. Alex brooded the while. He brooded on the boy in black and he brooded on the Courcys, until they were all involved in his mind in one great stony hatred.

Not surprisingly, they had a wretched Christmas. Josiah was surly with them, the weather was raw and sleety, and the Courcy party loomed over them. Both of them dreaded it. The Courcys were so superior. Alex knew they had only been invited so that the Courcys could smile at one another and say: “Look how kind we are to those inferior little Hornbys.” Cecilia knew how Charlotte and Lavinia would raise their eyebrows at her poor homemade dress. Alex's feelings were not helped by discovering that Josiah was actually going to London on the 27th to see to the Courcys' business affairs. “Why should he do that?” he thought angrily. “He is not their servant.”

On the evening of Boxing Day, Alex found Cecilia alone, mournfully sewing away at her new dress in the kitchen. “Cecil,” he said, “I don't care if I never see another Courcy again, do you?”

Cecilia looked up eagerly. “Nor I. Alex—” And their plans were made almost in so many words.

Josiah Hornby left early that morning on the London train. His children left a bare two hours later. Things were made a great deal simpler for them than they might have been, because the Courcys always expected them to come early on the day of a party and help with the preparations. All they had to do was to decide to go on horseback instead of in the pony-trap. Miss Gatly made no objection. Old John Britby, the outdoor man, had little to do on the farm that day. He took the trap to Arnforth with Cecilia's dress in it and Alex's best suit. They were delighted that it was Old John. He was not exactly stupid, but he was a man who said so little that no Courcy would ever hear from him what Alex and Cecilia had done.

“Not that they will ask him,” Alex said, trotting beside Cecilia on the Arnforth road. “I would bet you five shillings none of them notice we are not there. Is he out of sight yet?”

They looked behind. The bay was still in sight behind them, brown and barren sands under a heavy gray sky. It was threatening to snow. Old John and the trap were out of sight behind the Hornbys' hill.

“Now, quick!” said Cecilia. “Thank goodness there is no snow.”

They left the road and cantered down a pasture to the woods beside the river. There they waited until Old John and the trap had gone jingling by above them on the road. Then they turned back toward the bay.

There was a risk that someone in the farmhouse might see them, but it was a risk they meant to take. It was possible that there would be no one in the front rooms. Miss Gatly's work was done mainly at the back. Cecilia felt she would not turn back even if Miss Gatly herself ran after them across the frozen sands. Alex was not so sure. For him, it was mainly a voyage of exploration and a gesture against Josiah.

“We must hurry,” he said, “or the tide will come in as we go.”

They picked their way around the edge of the sands, bending their heads in the icy wind, until they could see a way clear toward the island. It was safer on horseback to go to it across the sands, than among the broken rocks of the causeway. At last they were beside the bare swaying trees of the island again, but this time they went around the edge of it.

Alex looked nervously back at the farmhouse. No one seemed to have seen them. “There must be a way across this bay,” he said, “and it must be easy to see. Think of the way those riders went over.” He had given up his notions of it being supernatural. That boy he had fought had been hard and real and heavy. He was a solid person who needed a solid road to ride on.

They rode slowly around the island, searching the sands anxiously in the direction those three riders had taken. There seemed nothing but broken sandy banks, icy puddles, rifts, and drifts of sea-washed old snow. They became more and more anxious that the tide would come in before they found what they hoped to find.

Then, suddenly, they both reined in and laughed incredulously. There, stretching from their horses' hoofs, was a road, a wide, raised ridge of sand, running straight across the bay.

“There!” said Cecilia triumphantly.

“How odd!” Alex said. “Why has no one else found it?”

“One has to see it from straight on,” said Cecilia. “See what happens if you move away.”

They moved their horses a few steps back. Cecilia was right. There seemed to be no road. It was lost in a confusion of ridges and sandbanks. They went forward again, and the road was there. Alex laughed again, it was so easy and so extraordinary.

“Hurry,” Cecilia said. “The tide.”

They set off along the ridge, trotting first, then cantering. By the time they reached the river channel, the tide was coming in. They could see the white line of sea hurrying in from the open mouth of the estuary.

“It is a long way yet,” Cecilia called out. “We must gallop.”

Indeed, the opposite shore of the bay looked as distant as it had from the island. They galloped. Behind them, the river channel swelled and foamed, and they could hear the sea roaring. Alex caught a glimpse of shining sands on either side, covered here and there with treacherous brittle feathers of ice. He knew it was the quicksands, but their way went straight between them. He and Cecilia galloped on, and neither of them gave a thought to how they would get back, once the tide was in.

They came to the other side just as the sea swirled up to them. There was a steep muddy bank, full of other people's hoofprints. Their horses heaved up it, as glad as their riders to escape the sea, and stood steaming among bushes. Alex stood in his stirrups and saw a wood nearby, and beside it a strange turretted house which he had certainly never seen before.

“Well,” he said, rather hushed with amazement, “we are plainly not in our country here. This is all quite different. There ought by rights to be moorland, but there is—almost a castle. It looks empty, though.”

“Good!” said Cecilia, and her cheeks were bright red with excitement. “We'll ride inland then. Let us follow this path.”

The path led them through the bushes, until it was joined by other paths to become a road, a grassy, moorland road, winding between hills. They judged it must be a main road, because of the number of hoofprints on it. Cecilia determined to keep to it until she found some way of reaching Gairne—for of course it was Gairne she meant to get to. Alex did not mind where they went. All of it was to him the greatest adventure of his life.

Before long, it began to snow. Cecilia, who was looking all the time for someone to ask the way of, was disappointed. Whether because of the snow, or for other reasons, there was no one about. The road was empty. The hills were deserted. Several times they passed turnings into valleys, one leading to a fair-sized stone village, but they decided to go straight on. There was no one about in the village and they were shy of knocking at doors. These strange people might all be as unfriendly as the boy in black.

At last, in a long upland, where the snow caught them hard and filled their hair and reddened their faces, they met a shepherd. He looked, to Alex's disappointment, very like the shepherds they knew. He had a crook and a dog and a small herd of sheep. He was bearded, and he had that withdrawn, solitary look which men have who spend much time alone in the hills. He wore a smock and gaiters and an old blanket on his shoulders against the snow, just as the Hornbys' own shepherd did. The look he gave them could have been astonished, or it could have been just vacant.

“Excuse me,” said Cecilia. “Could you tell us the way to Gairne, please?”

The man stared a while. Then he pointed slowly to where the road turned right beside some craggy hills. “There be Gairne road,” he said.

“And what lies that way?” Alex asked, pointing to where another road branched beside the hills and led down into a gap or a pass of some kind.

“Falleyfell,” said the shepherd.

Both of them gasped. It seemed that they were in Miss Gatly's kingdom of the dead and that it was really true. Alex looked quickly for the shepherd's shadow, but if he had one, the snow obscured it.

“Thank you,” Cecilia said quaveringly. “Come, Alex.” She set off quickly on the way to Gairne. Alex kicked his horse so hard that the poor beast stumbled in trying to obey him. He felt it was the worst possible omen.

Just as he caught Cecilia up, there were sounds from the road which led to Falleyfell. The snow drowned the horses' hoofs, but they heard talking from a number of people. They kept on their road, looking back rather nervously, and saw a large band of men ride out into the upland. These were not in the least like people they knew. Most of them seemed to be soldiers with wicked spears and dull sheeny helmets and breast-plates. Beneath the armor they all wore the same uniform tunic, banded with brown and dim blue. At their head were two men, not in armor, wearing black and muffled in great hooded capes. The whole party turned and stared at Alex and Cecilia riding self-consciously to Gairne.

“Let us keep on our way,” said Cecilia, “as if it were quite natural.” She rode staring straight ahead into the snow.

Alex, however, could not help turning to look back every few seconds. The other riders had stopped, which alarmed him a little. He saw the two men in black leaning toward one another, talking, glancing at him. Next time he looked, one, the taller and stouter of them, was beckoning the shepherd. During the next look, he saw the shepherd talking too, looking up at the stouter rider, and making gestures down the Gairne road. At the next look, he saw the whole party riding after them.

“Cecil! I think they're chasing us.”

“Maybe they have business this way,” Cecilia answered. “Keep on.” She was nervous enough, though, to trot her horse. Alex saw the other riders coming faster still.

“Cecil!”

“You there! Stop!”

“Gallop, Alex!” gasped Cecilia.

They galloped, both thoroughly frightened. It was rather like being caught trespassing on someone's land, Alex thought, only worse because this land seemed endless and there was nowhere safe to escape to. Worse still, the riders were catching up rapidly. They all had splendid horses, obviously fresh. Their own were only moderate—Josiah would not trust them with better—and had already come a long way. Cecilia's little mare was dropping behind. Alex could hear her calling it names.

“You lazy beast! You pit-pony, you!”

Then the soft thump of other hoofs was all round them. Snow flew, blurred riders came up and came past. Two soldiers pulled their horses right across the road ahead, crossing their sharp spears to make a further barrier. Alex's horse turned aside and reared. A soldier with a hard brown face caught the bridle and pulled. Alex nearly fell.

“Stop that, will you! I can manage him!”

He saw Cecilia behind him lashing out indignantly at hands trying to take her bridle. He lashed out at the soldier with his crop, but it rang harmlessly on a steel shoulder-piece. His horse plunged and kicked backward.