by Susan Cooper
Rufus led them straight across the harbour and round into the road that ran inland from the Grey House and the sea; the road was familiar at first, leading back through the narrowest part of the village, past quiet cottages sleeping behind lace-curtained windows, and once or twice a modest house grandly labelled PRIVATE HOTEL. Then they were behind Trewissick, in the hedge-rimmed farmland that curved around the white cones and green ponds of the clay-burrow country, until, far inland, it met the moors.
Simon said, “We can’t go much farther, Barney. We shall have to turn back.”
“Just a little bit more.”
On they went, along silent roads bright with the springtime green of newly full trees. Simon looked around him, with the flickerings of unease in his mind. Nothing was wrong: the sun warmed them; dandelions brightly starred the grass; what could be wrong? Suddenly Rufus turned off the road into a narrow, leafy lane; a signpost at the corner read PENTREATH FARM. On either side, the trees reached their branches up and over to arch in a leafy roof; even in full daylight the lane was shadowed, cool, with only a faint dappling of sunshine filtering through the leaves. All at once Simon was filled with an immense foreboding. He stood stone-still.
Barney looked over his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know, exactly.”
“Did you hear something?”
“No. I just . . . it’s as if I’ve been here before. . . .” Simon shivered. “It’s the funniest feeling,” he said.
Barney looked at him nervously. “P’raps we really should go back?”
Simon did not answer; he was staring ahead, frowning. Rufus, who had disappeared round a corner in the lane for a moment, was bounding back again in a great unexplained hurry.
“Into the trees, quick!” Simon grabbed Barney’s arm, and with the dog close behind them they slipped into the thicket of trees and brush that edged each side of the road. In there, picking their way carefully from tree to tree to avoid rustling footfalls, they inched forward until they could see the part of the lane that lay ahead, round the corner. They did not speak or whisper; they scarcely breathed, and at their feet Rufus crouched still as a dead dog.
There ahead, the trees were no longer thick, the land no longer a leafy tunnel. Instead they saw a wide field scattered with large single trees and clumps of scrub. Across it, the lane was no more than a grassy track, two wheel-worn ruts, winding away to where the trees grew thick again. It did not look as though many people used the path to Pentreath Farm. And there was no sign of any farmhouse. Instead, clear ahead of them in the sunlit field, they saw a caravan.
It stood tall and glittering and handsome: a real old-fashioned Gipsy caravan, of a kind they had never seen before except in pictures. Above the high wood-spoked wheels rose white wooden sides, sloping gently outwards, up to the curved wooden roof with its cone-hatted chimney. At each corner between roof and walls, brightly-painted scrollwork filled the eaves. In the side walls, square windows were set, neatly curtained; leaning down from the front of the van were shafts for the horse that stood grazing quietly nearby. At the rear, a sturdy six-rung ladder led up to a door painted with ornate decorations to match the scrollwork: a split door, of the kind used in stables, with the top half hanging open and the lower half latched shut.
As they crouched behind the trees, breathlessly staring, a figure appeared in the doorway, opened this lower door and began descending the steps of the caravan. Barney tightened his grip on Simon’s arm. There was no mistaking the long wild dark hair, the snarling brow; the painter was even dressed exactly as he had been both times before, like a fisherman, in navy-blue jersey and trousers. He swallowed nervously at the impact of the man’s nearness; it was as if there were a cloud of malevolence all around him. Barney was suddenly very glad that they were deep in the trees, out of all possible sight. He stood very still indeed, praying that Rufus would not make a sound.
But although indeed there was no sound anywhere in the clearing, except the clear morning song of birds in the trees, the dark man paused suddenly at the bottom of the caravan steps. He lifted his head and turned it all round, like a deer questing; Barney saw that his eyes were shut. Then the man turned full in their direction, the cold eyes opened beneath the lowering brows, and he said clearly, “Barnabas Drew. Simon Drew. Come out.”
No thought of running away came into their minds, or anything but unquestioning obedience. Barney walked automatically forward out of the trees, and felt Simon moving with him in the same unhesitating way. Even Rufus trotted docile at their side.
They stood together in the sunlit field beside the caravan, facing the dark man in his dark clothes, and although the sun was warm on their skin it seemed to them that the day had become chill. The man looked at them, unsmiling, expressionless. “What do you want?” he said.
Somewhere in Barney’s mind, as a spark flickers and finds tinder and blazes up into a flame, a small light of resentment flared suddenly into a crossness that burned away fear. He said boldly, “Well, for one thing I’d like my drawing back.”
Beside him he half-saw Simon shake his head a little, like one pushing away sleep, and knew that he too was clear of the spell. He said more loudly, “You stole my drawing, down in the harbour, goodness knows why. And I liked it, and I want it back.”
The dark eyes contemplated him coolly; it was impossible to read any emotion behind them. “Quite a promising little scribble, for your age.”
“Well, you certainly don’t need it,” Barney said; for a moment he spoke with admiration, thinking of the real power in the man’s painting.
“No,” said the man, with an odd, grim half-smile. “Not now.” He moved back up the steps and through the double door; over his shoulder he said, “Very well, then. Come on.”
Rufus, who had stood stock-still from the beginning, began a low rumbling growl deep in his throat. Simon put a hand down to quiet him, and said, “That wouldn’t be very sensible, Barney.”
But Barney said lightly, “Oh no, I think it would be all right,” and he moved towards the caravan steps. Simon had no choice but to follow him. “Stay, Rufus,” he said. The setter folded his long legs and lay down at the foot of the steps, but still the long low growl went on eerie and unbroken; they could hear it soft in the background like a reminder of warning.
The dark man had his back to them. “Look well at the Romany vardo,” he said, without turning. “There are few of them to be seen any more.”
“Romany?” said Simon. “Are you a Gipsy?”
“Half Romany dial,” the man said, “and half gorgio.” He turned and stood with arms folded, surveying them. “I am part Gipsy, yes. That’s the best you’ll find these days, on the road at any rate. Even the vardo is only part Gipsy.”
He nodded at the roof of the caravan, and they saw, looking up, that it was edged all about with the same brightly-painted scrollwork that decorated the outside, and that tools of some small kind hung all over one wall, with an old fiddle and an oddly-striped woollen rug. But the furniture was shiny-cheap and modern, and the chimney was not a real chimney, but only a vent for carrying away hot air from above the neat electric stove.
Then they saw suddenly that the ceiling was painted. From end to end, above the bright conventional curlicues of the scrollwork, a huge churning abstract painting was spread above their heads. There was no recognisable form to its shapes and colours, yet it was a disturbing, alarming sight, full of strange whorls and shadows and shot through with lurid colours that jarred on the senses. Barney felt again the power and the nastiness that had leapt at him from the canvas he had seen the man painting in the harbour; up on this ceiling too he saw the particular unnerving shade of green he had found so unpleasant out there. He said suddenly to Simon, “Let’s go home.”
“Not yet,” said the dark man. He spoke softly, without moving, and Barney felt a chill awareness of the Dark reaching out to control him—until without warning a faint hissing sound that had been vaguely puzzling him erupted in
to the boiling of a kettle, and a shrill whistle filled the room and made a sense of evil suddenly ridiculous.
But Simon had felt it too. He looked at the dark man and thought: you keep steering us away from being frightened, delaying it. Why do you want us to stay?
The dark-haired man busied himself with the prosaic matter of spooning instant coffee into a mug and pouring on water from the kettle. “Either of you drink coffee?” he said over his shoulder.
Simon said quickly, “No thank you.”
Barney said, “I wouldn’t mind a drink of water.” Seeing Simon’s scowl, he added plaintively, “Well, I did get awfully thirsty walking. Not just a drink of water from the tap?”
“In that cupboard by your right foot,” the painter said, “you will find some cans of orange soda.” He moved to the small table at the end of the caravan, stirring his coffee. “Sealed,” he added with a deliberate ironic stare at Simon. “Fizzy. Harmless. Straight from the factory.”
“Thanks,” Barney said promptly, bending to the cupboard door.
The man said, “You might bring out a cardboard box you’ll find in there, too.”
“All right.” After some bumping and rattling, Barney came up with an unremarkable brown box; set it on the table and produced two drinks from the crook of his elbow. Without comment Simon took one, and popped open the top, to a reassuring hiss; but a stubborn caution still made him reluctant to drink, and he made only a pretence of swigging at the can. Barney drank thirstily, with appreciative gurgling noises.
“That’s better. Thanks. Now may I have my picture back?”
“Open the box,” the man said, the long hair falling about his face as he drank from his mug.
“Is it in there?”
“Open the box,” the man said again, with a faint edge of strain in his voice. Simon thought: he’s as tense as a strung wire. Why?
Setting down his drink on the table, Barney opened the top of the brown cardboard box. He took out a sheet of paper, and held it up critically. “Yes, that’s my drawing.”
He glanced back into the box, and then all at once a brightness was in his eyes, a fierce brilliance flashing into his brain, and he was staring in disbelief, crying out in a voice that broke into huskiness.
“Simon! It’s the grail!”
In the same instant the world about them changed; with a crash the doors of the little caravan swung shut, and blinds fell over the windows, cutting out all light of day. There was an instant of black darkness, but almost at once Barney found himself blinking in a dim light. Wildly he looked round for its source, and then he realised with a sick shock that the glow, still dim, disturbing, came not from any lamp but from the painted ceiling. Up on the roof, the eerie green whorls that had so troubled him were shining with a cold bleak light. They had shapes, he saw now; angular shapes arranged in groups, like a kind of unknown writing. In the cold green light he looked down, fearful, disbelieving, and saw the same wonderful familiar object that he had seen before gleaming inside the cardboard box. Gently he lifted it out, forgetting everything around him, and set it on the table.
Simon breathed, beside him, “It is!”
Before them on the table the Cornish grail glowed: the little golden goblet that they had first seen, after so hard a search, deep in a cave beneath the cliffs of Kemare Head, and that they had saved from the people and the power of the Dark, for a while. They did not understand what it was, or what it could do; they knew only that to Merriman and the Light it was one of the great Things of Power, something of infinite value, and that one day it would come into its own when the strange runic signs and words engraved over its sides could be understood. Barney gazed as he had gazed a thousand times before at the pictures and patterns and incomprehensible signs on the golden sides of the grail. If only, if only . . . but the ancient lead-encased manuscript that they had found with the grail, in that deep lost cave, lay now at the bottom of the sea, flung by Barney himself from the end of Kemare Head in the last desperate effort to save grail and manuscript from the pursuing Dark. Though the grail had been saved, the manuscript had come to the sea, and only in that manuscript was the secret by which the vital message written on the grail could be understood. . . .
The dim light in the caravan could not dull the glow that came from the grail; yellow it blazed like a fire before them, warm, glittering. Simon said softly, “It’s all right. Not a scratch on it.”
A cold voice from the shadows said, “It is in good hands.”
Abruptly they were out of their absorption with the grail and back in the ominous half-light of the painter of the Dark. The man’s black-bead eyes glittered at them from behind the table; he was a surreal pattern of black and white, black eyes, white face, black hair. And there was a deeper strength and confidence in the voice now, a note of triumph.
“I allow you a sight of the grail,” he said, “to make a bargain with you.”
“You make a bargain with us?” Simon said, his voice coming out higher and louder than he had intended. “All you do is steal things. Barney’s drawing, Captain Toms’ dog. And the grail—it must have been you who stole it from the Museum, or your friends—”
“I have no friends,” said the man unexpectedly, swiftly; it seemed a bitter reaction that he could not help, and for a moment there was a faltering of his cold gaze as he knew it. In the next instant he was composed again, looking down at them both in total self-possession.
“Stealing can be a means to an end, my young friend. My end is very simple, and there is no harm in it. All I require is five minutes of your time. Of your small brother’s time, that is, and of a certain . . . talent . . . that he has.”
“I’m not leaving him alone, not for a minute,” Simon said.
“I did not suggest you should.”
“What, then?”
Barney said nothing, but watched, cautiously. For once he felt no resentment that Simon should be taking over. Deep inside his mind something was beginning to fear this strange taut white-faced man more and more, perhaps because he had so clearly blazing a talent. It would have been much easier to face an uncomplicated monster.
The painter looked at Barney. He said, “It is very simple, Barnabas Drew. I shall take the cup that you choose to call the grail, and I shall pour into it some water, and a little oil. Then I shall ask you to sit calmly, and look into the cup, and tell me what you see.”
Barney stared at him in amazement. Like a sea-mist a strange idea wreathed into his mind: was the man not evil at all, but simply off his head, a little mad? That could, he suddenly realised, explain everything the strange painter had done; after all, even great artists sometimes did odd things, acted strangely; think of nutty Van Gogh. . . .
He said carefully, “Look at the water, and the oil, and tell you what I see? Oil does make nice patterns on water, and colours . . . well, that sounds harmless enough. Doesn’t it, Simon?”
“I suppose so,” Simon said. He was staring hard at the dark man, at the wild eyes and the pale intent face, and the same hypnotic suggestion was creeping into his own mind. He too was thinking it more and more likely that their supposed adversary might not have anything to do with the Dark at all, whatever Great-Uncle Merry may have thought, but be simply an eccentric, a harmless nut. In which case, it would be safest to humour him.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “Why not?”
Simon thought: when this daftness is all over, we can grab the grail and run. Give him the slip somehow, call Rufus in, get the grail back to Gumerry. . . . He looked hard at Barney, trying to communicate; nudged him surreptitiously and flicked his eyes at the grail. Barney nodded. He knew what his brother was trying to tell him; the same thought was only too vivid in his own mind.
The dark man ran some water from the tap into a glass and poured it into the grail. Then he took a small brown bottle from a shelf near the table and added a drop or two of some kind of oil. He looked greedily at Barney. The tension in him sang like a plucked wire.
“
Now,” he said. “Sit down, here, and look hard. Look hard, look long. And tell me what you see.”
Barney sat in the chair before the table, and slowly took the glowing golden chalice in both his hands. Though the inscribed gold of the outside was as bright as it had ever been, the inside surface was a dull black. Barney stared down at the liquid in the bowl. In the cold green light from above his head, incomprehensibly shining out from the patterns of the painted ceiling, he watched the thin, thin layer of oil on the surface of the water swirl and coil into itself, curving, breaking and joining again, forming islands that drifted out and then vanished, merging into the rest. And he saw . . . he saw. . . .
Darkness took hold of his brain like sudden sleep, and he knew nothing more.
CHAPTER SIX
JANE WAS ALMOST IN TEARS. “BUT THEY COULDN’T JUST DISAPPEAR! Something awful must have happened!”
“Nonsense,” Merriman said. “They’ll be rushing in any moment now, demanding their breakfasts.”
“But breakfast was more than an hour ago.”
Jane stared distractedly out over the harbour, busy and bustling in the sunshine. They stood on the little paved path outside the cottages, above the winding web of stairs and alleys that led down to the harbourside.
Will said, “I’m sure they’re all right, Jane. They must have woken up early and wandered out for a walk, and gone farther than they intended. Don’t worry.”
“I suppose you’re right. I’m sure you are. It’s just that I keep having this awful picture in my mind of them going out to Kemare Head, the way we used to, last year, and one of them getting stuck on the cliff, or something. . . . Oh dear, I know I’m being stupid. I’m sorry, Gumerry.” Jane shook back her long hair impatiently. “It all comes of seeing the Greenwitch falling, I suppose. I’ll shut up.”
“I tell you what,” said Will. “Why don’t we go out to Kemare Head just to check? You’d feel a lot happier.”
