by Tony Walker
“So, no,” my dad said. “No spade.”
But we didn’t give up. “There’s some in the farmer’s barn,” John said. “I saw them.”
“We can’t steal them,” I said.
“We wouldn’t be stealing them,” John said. “We’d give them back when we were done with them.”
Alan nodded. “Exactly!”
So we stole the spades. There were two and a trowel. I got the trowel.
We stowed them in our tent under the sleeping bags while we drew up detailed plans for the treasure hunt.
It was midafternoon, and the sun was hot. We had more coke and mum provided three choc ices from the fridge in the van. When she was gone, we got down to business.
“I’m not camping there again,” John said.
I thought of the huge shape and the cutting of the tent.
Alan looked scornfully at him. “Scared of the big black hen?”
“No!” John stared back.
“There was no hen,” Alan said. “Don’t believe anything Billy Boustead tells you.”
“Then what cut the tent?” I asked.
Alan shrugged. “A branch. A broken branch that caught it in the wind.”
“There was no wind,” I said.
John nodded. “No. There wasn’t any wind.”
“There wasn’t a big bloody hen either,” Alan snorted.
I grunted. Alan pointed at me. “He thinks it was a big hen!”
John laughed too.
“No, I don’t,” I said, “But it wasn’t a branch either.”
We went by night. Worried about being caught digging for treasure in a scheduled ancient monument, either by the police or the farmer, we’d elected for darkness to cover our misdeeds. Mr Eilbeck who owned the land was a bad tempered old devil and if he caught us he’d beat us with his stick. Strangers could do that to kids then.
I was nervous.
“There’s no hen,” Alan said, as we set off, leaving the lights of the caravans behind and the grown ups playing Canasta and drinking gin.
I said nothing.
“There’s no hen, Malcolm,” he said again.
“Yeah, whatever you say.”
He nudged me. “It was a stick. A sharp broken stick.”
I said nothing but watched the shadows.
I had the foresight this time to fetch my father’s big black rubber torch. I didn’t switch on the beam yet. We were too close to the parents for comfort; them and farmers and policemen who might be lurking in the dark. Not to mention huge black hens.
We sidled our way closer to the broken walls of Pendragon Castle.
“Where do you think the treasure will be?” said John loudly.
“Whisht, man,” Alan hissed. “Radio silence.”
The walls loomed higher above us. The moon had come up which turned them white-grey and black. The shadows were thicker than India ink. The old limestone walls had a faint sparkle to them.
I gestured so we would walk round the wall. There was an entrance way still roofed that we could stoop down into and get through to the inner courtyard. The courtyard was grassed over now. I’d been many times before. But in daylight.
“Do you think it was a branch?” John asked.
“Of course it was a branch,” Alan said. “What else could it be?”
We stood there hesitating before the dark mouth of the entranceway.
“Put the torch on, Malcolm” Alan said. “So we don’t bang our heads.”
“What about policemen?” John said.
“There’s nobody here,” Alan said.
And I listened. I could hear the River Eden gurgling by about fifty yards away. A slight breeze shifted the trees which rustled still in full summer leaf. Away to our right a sheep bleated, but that was that: no traffic noise, no aeroplanes, no sound of humanity at all.
I pressed the stiff button with my thumb and the torch light came on, its yellowy beam sickly and weak but good enough to illuminate the rough entrance to the tunnel that would take us to the inner courtyard of the castle.
“Needs new batteries,” John said.
“I know,” I said. And I hesitated.
After a minute of me just standing listening for I don’t know what: pecking, maybe? John said, “What we waiting for?”
Alan said, “He’s waiting for the big hen.”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
“Then go on.”
“Why do I have to go first?”
“Because you’ve got the torch.” Alan’s logic was as impeccable as it was irritating.
“Okay,” I said, but I didn’t.
“Go on!” Alan hissed.
I sighed, gathered my courage and stepped forward. I had to stoop to avoid banging my head on the uneven stones that roofed the passage. I guess this had been some kind of kitchen passage when the castle was functioning. It was pretty tumbledown now though.
I emerged first into the courtyard. There was nothing there, just stone and grass. I disturbed roosting crows who flapped into the air scaring Alan and John as they stepped out behind me. That made me happy.
Sickly moonlight bathed the courtyard. I had a trowel; they had spades.
“Dig here?” John asked.
“Aye, I think so,” I said. “Start in the middle?”
The truth be told, I had no real idea of where we should dig and we could dig all night and find nothing, our plan was so hare-brained. But I felt a thrill of excitement as I watched John turn the first sod. After a few shovelfuls he was breathing heavily. Alan stood with his spade idle, but I wanted a go.
“My turn,” I said. John handed me the spade, and I handed him the trowel. The trowel would be for when we found the treasure, to do the fine work of excavation.
I was digging heartily, when John said, “What’s that?”
I stopped instantly. The moon still shone. All I heard was a vixen barking way off. “What?” I said.
“No, I heard it too,” Alan said. “You were digging.”
I had my hand on the spade. I’d managed to shovel a lot of dry earth. I hadn’t heard anything. I wanted to dig more. I started again.
The moon went behind a cloud and I went to pick up the rubber torch I’d put down when I started digging.
Alan put his hand on my arm. “Listen.”
I listened. I said, “I still can’t—” but then I heard it.
“It’s outside,” John said. He meant outside the courtyard, through the tunnel. But something big enough could come over the walls too.
It was the pecking sound, I’d heard in the tent.
“What the hell’s that noise?” Alan said.
“Pecking,” John said. “Like there’s something pecking at the ground.”
Then the moon appeared again from behind the cloud. By the light I saw something metallic in the hole, at the bottom, covered by dirt. I said, “There’s something in there.”
“Stop,” Alan said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“We’re safer in here,” John said.
“What if it can get through the tunnel?” Alan said.
I picked up the torch and shone it. Something gleamed gold in the hole I’d dug. I knelt down and touched warm smooth metal. There was a golden plate, half buried, and coins. “Uther Pendragon’s treasure,” I said.
Then the boggle leapt the walls and landed in front of us. John screamed, Alan bolted for the tunnel out. I stood there petrified and shining the torch on the apparition in front of me.
It was a huge black hen the height of a giraffe but much wider. It had black shiny feathers and a red cockscomb that fell over itself. It had bright beady eyes and a yellow beak — a beak sharp enough to slice canvas, or my skin.
The hen lunged at me with its beak, but I darted sideways and then stooped and ran at the tunnel. More by luck than judgement I didn’t brain myself on the stones. Panting, and wheezing with effort and fright and shot out of the far side of the tunnel and ran from the castle, avoiding a low wall and j
umping to land on soft grass. I turned and saw the huge shape of the hen clucking after me. I sprinted across the grass, hoping I wouldn’t trip and got away from the castle. The hen was after me, then I jumped the narrow beck, mostly dried up by the long summer’s heat.
And I fell. I was sure it would kill me, butcher me with its knife like beak. But it didn’t. I lay there cowering, my head down, waiting for my death. But when I didn’t die, I turned. I rolled and saw the black hen with its black eyes watching me from the other side of the beck. I remembered something from old wives stories that spirits couldn’t cross running water. That must be it.
As the black hen watched me, I stood up, spun round and fled. I didn’t look back until I got back to our tent in the farmer’s field. John and Alan were both there already.
Alan said, “We left the spades.”
“And the trowel,” John said. “Unless you brought it, Malcolm?”
I shook my head. “Did you see that?” I asked.
Both John and Alan remained silent.
“The boggle. The black hen.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Alan said.
Whether it was for fear of ridicule or pure terror that such a thing could exist, we never spoke about it again. I went in the daylight to get the spades and trowels. They wouldn’t come with me. There was no black hen. There was a hole where I’d dug, but in the clear light of the sun, there was no gold or treasure at the bottom of it.
And that was that.
Alan went to Australia and John died young of a brain haemorrhage. I never really saw either of them after that, because I got interested in girls and rock music so I stopped going to the caravan and stayed in Kendal with my school friends. Then I grew up and moved away.
I’ve been back to Pendragon a few times over the intervening years, but I never saw the boggle again. I’m not sure I’ll return there now. Why would I?
But Pendragon Castle; that’s where we used to meet — me and John and Alan — going on our bikes and fishing with nets and roaming the fells when we were young, at Mallerstang in the long hot summer of 1976.
