The Secrets Tree

by Holly Webb

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 – Patch

  2 – The Great Tree

  3 – The Secret Code

  4 – The Tragical Ballad

  5 – Breaking the News

  6 – Worried and Waiting

  7 – The Woods at Night

  8 – The Lantern Parade

  Codes

  More books by Holly Webb

  About Holly Webb

  Copyright

  “There’s the bell! Have a really nice half-term, all of you. And enjoy Halloween. Don’t forget to do your reading diary and maths worksheets…” Miss Roberts smiled as the whole class groaned.

  “It’s meant to be a holiday,” Lucy grumbled, and Polly nodded.

  “I know. It’s just wrong, giving us homework over half-term.”

  “I’ll have to take it all to London with me, I suppose.” Lucy sighed. “Bet I have to take something out of my bag just to fit it in.”

  “I’m going to miss you!” Polly said as she stuffed her homework diary into her backpack. “I mean, I’m sure you’ll have a great time with your dad, but it’ll be weird, not having you around. And you know who else is going to miss you?” she added. “Skip! I hope your gran’s bought him some special dog treats.”

  Lucy laughed. “Yes, she did, and a new rope toy. He’ll be OK. Sometimes I think Gran loves him even more than I do. He’ll be spoilt by the time I come back.” She glanced at her watch. “I’d better go. I have to catch a train from Penbridge with Mum and we haven’t got much time to get there.”

  The two girls grabbed their bags and coats and then hurried out into the playground.

  “Oh look!” Polly pointed over to the gate. “Your mum and your gran – and Skip!”

  “They brought him!” Lucy said excitedly, starting to run.

  “We thought you’d like to walk home with him,” Lucy’s mum said, giving her a hug as the two girls rushed up.

  “He looks so beautiful now, with his proper collar and his fur so clean and brushed,” Polly said admiringly. Skip was a stray dog that Polly and Lucy had found in the grounds of Penhallow Hall and he had been adopted as one of the Penhallow dogs, sharing their magical bond.

  Now Skip lived with Lucy and he clearly adored her. His tail was wagging so fast that Polly could hardly see it, and he was whining with excitement.

  “Sorry, Polly,” Lucy’s mum said. “We’d better hurry back, we’ve got to get to the station. Maybe your mum will let you come for tea the week after half-term?”

  “Or a sleepover?” Lucy asked pleadingly, looking between her mum and her gran.

  “Maybe…” Her gran smiled. “Bye, Polly! I should think you’ll have a busy week too, won’t you? I saw an article in the local paper about all the nice things happening up at the hall.”

  “Have a good time with your dad!” Polly called after Lucy as the three of them hurried off down the lane.

  “I will! Send me a photo of your Halloween outfit!” Lucy yelled, waving. “See you back at school!”

  Polly sighed a little. It would have been fun to have had Lucy around over half-term, but now that her dad lived in London, Lucy spent some of the holidays with him. She was going to be away for the whole week so they couldn’t even do anything together for Halloween, which was the Saturday before they went back.

  It was going to be a fun week anyway, she told herself. Lucy’s gran was right. Her mum was going to be busy at work, organizing all the Halloween events for Penhallow Hall. Polly had promised to help out with the decorations and there was going to be a costume parade on the Saturday. There would be loads to do and Lucy had just reminded her that she hadn’t even decided what she was going to wear. She was sure she had a witch’s hat and some face paints somewhere under her bed but she quite fancied trying to make something new. Maybe even something to do with the history of Penhallow Hall. Since her adventures with Rex and the other dogs, Polly was starting to feel like an expert on it.

  She wandered back along the cliff path from the village to the hall, trying to think of good costumes. She could be the Green Lady, the ghost that two of the Penhallow boys had made up three hundred years before. They had been trying to cover up their adventures with the smugglers bringing illegal cargoes into the cove. Polly felt the hairs rise up on the back of her neck. Even though she and Rex had worked out that the Green Lady wasn’t a real ghost, Polly was still scared of her.

  Once she was back at the hall, Polly stuck her head round her mum’s office door but Nina, who worked with Mum in the office, smiled at her round the phone she was holding. “Down at the stables,” she whispered. “She’s starting to put up the decorations!”

  Polly waved to say thank you, and decided to go and get changed before she went to help. She’d feel properly on holiday once she wasn’t wearing her school uniform, she reckoned.

  As soon as she’d changed, she hurried down to the terrace to see Rex – she usually did as soon as she came home from school. It was a beautiful afternoon. She could see the sun gradually sinking and through the trees there were tiny scraps of the gleaming sea. Polly ran her hand over Rex’s stone nose and saw a faint golden tinge run through the weatherworn surface. It wasn’t the greenish gold of the lichen flecked across his muzzle or even the faint October sun on his fur. He was there inside the stone, alive and listening to her.

  But not waking up.

  “Rex…” she whispered again after a quick glance round to make sure none of the visitors were listening. Penhallow Hall was always busiest in the school holidays, but even today there were people all over the house and gardens. Polly was glad about that, of course, since it was her mum’s job to make sure that Penhallow did well and made enough money.

  Polly couldn’t help wishing that the visitors wouldn’t all end up in the rose garden though. She could see why they wanted to admire the seed heads in the borders, and the autumn colours on the trees in the little wood that half hid the cliff path and the view down to the sea – the garden was beautiful. But the visitors made it very difficult to have a conversation with a statue without everyone noticing.

  “Wake up!” she hissed. But Rex’s statue stayed stubbornly grey and solid. The stone figure on the other side of the steps shifted a little and one heavy grey eyelid opened. Magnus’s eye glinted darkly at Polly.

  “It’s too cold,” the huge hound murmured in a low growl. He wasn’t angry – it was his everyday voice – he was a growly sort of dog.

  “It isn’t that cold,” Polly whispered, surprised. She’d actually been quite enjoying the clear, fresh feeling of the air. It went well with the rusty-golden leaves and the faint smell of bonfires from behind the gardeners’ sheds. But there had been a frost that morning – it had still been sparkling on the grass when she walked across the lawns on her way to school.

  “It’s cold and it’s damp. Damp gets into our bones, Polly. Leave us to sleep.”

  Polly sighed and ran one hand down Rex’s stone nose again. “Sleep well,” she whispered. “I’ll come back later.” She walked away across the lawn, looking back every so often at the two statues. Rex was usually so keen to wake up, to gallop over the lawns and race Polly along the beach. They just had to watch out for visitors while he was changing. Only Polly could see Rex once he was awake, most of the time, but in the moment where the statue disappeared and the stone dog sat up, stretched and shook his ears, he was visible.

  “I suppose he is hundreds of years old,” Polly muttered to herself as she headed round the back of the house to the old stable yard to find her mum.

  She wasn’t actually sure how old Rex was. He had been part of Penhallow since long before the great house was built, she knew that. He was even older than the grea
t wooden staircase, which was the only part of the medieval hall that had been kept when the Tudor Penhallows had built themselves a grand new house. Since then every generation of the family seemed to have added something on – but Polly loved the higgledy-piggledy pile of turrets and towers.

  Perhaps statues really did feel the cold more and centuries-old ghost dogs only woke up in warm weather. Polly grinned to herself at the thought, then her smile faded. She had Lucy, of course, but Rex was definitely still her best friend. She didn’t want to be without him until the spring.

  “Polly! Hello, love! How was school?” Polly’s mum waved at her from across the yard and reached out one arm to hug her, and then had to stop and snatch at the massive pumpkin she was carrying. It had started to slip now she was trying to carry it under her other arm.

  Polly made a grab for the pumpkin too. “Watch it! School was good. But I’m glad we’ve got a week off and I’ve come to help. This is a massive pumpkin, Mum.”

  “I know, isn’t it? And there are quite a few more. Stephen’s been growing them in his garden. I wasn’t sure he was actually going to let me have them – they’re his babies. There’s one he’s going to need a wheelbarrow to move, it’s so big! It really would come up to your waist, Polly – you should go and see. It looks like something out of Cinderella. They’ll be fantastic for decorating the house for Halloween.”

  Stephen was the head gardener and he lived in a little cottage that was made out of part of the old stables. The horses had lived in brick-built stalls around the stable yard, with a long hayloft and sleeping areas for the stable boys up above. Polly had always thought it was quite funny that the horses had such a grand place to live. The stables had little turrets here and there, just like the hall, and there was a tiny clocktower above the tack room. The tack room was the ticket office now, while the stalls had been turned into a gift shop, and rooms for craft events and school groups. Even the tattier bits were used to store chairs and tables for when there was a wedding.

  “We need to make the stables look really nice,” Polly’s mum said, a little worriedly. “Halloween’s always been a big event at Penhallow and there’ll be lots of people coming. I’ve been trying to think of something new to make this year extra-special but I just can’t.” She sighed.

  “I’ll keep thinking,” Polly promised her. “Um, what do you want me to do?”

  Her mum looked around thoughtfully. “Can you hang up those garlands?” She nodded towards a box spilling over with tiny black bats. “There are hooks to hang them just above the doors, can you see? You’ll be able to reach if you stand on that little stepladder. I’ve got to take this pumpkin over to the tearoom.”

  Polly hauled the stepladder over towards the wall and peered up, looking for the hooks. She wrinkled her nose – it was all a bit dusty and cobwebbed but she’d promised to help. She could tell that her mum really wanted all the special Halloween events to be perfect. Carefully, she climbed up the ladder and started to loop the string of bats along the hooks. It was easy enough to do but it took some time because she had to keep climbing down the stepladder, moving it along and then climbing back up.

  It was while Polly was looking for the hook just next to the old tack-room door that she fell off. She realized afterwards that she mustn’t have positioned the ladder correctly, but at the time it just seemed as if it suddenly went sideways. She squeaked and made a grab for something – anything to hold on to. As the ladder toppled over, she managed to catch at a handle on the old wooden door, and ended up panting and leaning against the door, her heart thumping. She’d been lucky not to land on top of the ladder, she reflected as she leaned down to pick it up and noticed she had put the stepladder down on a stone. As it was, all she’d done was wrench her shoulder a bit.

  Polly set the ladder straight and sat down on a nearby step, wondering how she’d managed to be so stupid. She rubbed her shoulder and let out a shaky breath. Then she leaned down to stroke the little dog nuzzling at her knees.

  Only there was no dog there.

  Polly blinked. There had been one. A little scruffy terrier sort of dog. Mostly russety-golden, but with black patches and huge eyebrows.

  A couple of months before, Polly might have thought she’d hit her head as she fell and was imagining things, but not now. She looked around for the place the dog must have been hidden, feeling excited. There wasn’t going to be a statue or painting in the old stable yard, though. She couldn’t see anything even slightly dog-shaped. Polly frowned. When she’d woken dogs at Penhallow before, she had always been looking at their hiding places, or even touching them. So what had she done to wake this dog?

  Polly whirled round and stared at the tack-room door. She had grabbed at a handle as she slipped from the ladder. Or something sticking out of the door, anyway. Now she pressed her hands against the smooth wood, peering at it and searching for some kind of carving of a dog. Then she smiled. The dog was staring at her, almost nose to nose.

  He was on the latch, or rather the bit that stuck out of the door for the latch to drop in. Polly didn’t know what it was called. Someone had carved it into a little dog’s head, with neat turned-over ears and a wiry, whiskery muzzle. Just like the dog that she’d seen. “So that’s where you are,” she whispered.

  Polly ran one finger over the top of the dog’s head, laughing out loud as the wood grew warm, then somehow furry. And then all of a sudden, a little tawny-and-black dog was barking and frisking around her.

  She crouched down and fussed over him, but he was too excited to stand still. He raced round and round her, and then went sniffing eagerly up and down the yard. Polly watched him dash about, nose to the ground, wondering what he was looking for. Perhaps he was just enjoying being awake? He must have been shut up inside that door latch for a very long time, even if he had slept through all those years.

  She had woken him by herself, Polly thought happily. She hadn’t needed Rex to help. Perhaps that meant she was starting to properly belong at Penhallow?

  At last the terrier came trotting back to her and sat down at her feet. “No rats,” he said, with a huffy sort of sigh. His voice sounded different to any of the dogs she had met at Penhallow before – a soft, countryish burr.

  “Oh! Is that what you were looking for?” Polly looked around and gave a little shudder. She’d seen mice sometimes in the parts of the house that the visitors never went to but never any rats. She was glad he hadn’t found any.

  “Course. It’s my job to find them.” The dog gazed at her with his head on one side. He had a black patch over one eye, which gave him a daring, piratical look.

  “Are you called Patch?” Polly asked. She knew it wasn’t a very original name but if she’d had a dog like this, she would definitely have called him Patch, or maybe Pirate.

  The dog wagged his tail – a short, stubby tail that wagged into a blur – and barked excitedly again. “Yes! Yes!” Then he stopped and stared at her, and his tail stilled. His ears drooped and he looked worriedly around the yard.

  “Who are ye?” he yapped. “I don’t know ye! Where’s Jake? Where’s my Jake?”

  “It’s all right!” Polly gasped. “Please don’t panic.” But Patch was on his feet again, circling and sniffing. “Where is he? Jake? Jake!” He stared at Polly, his upper lip drawn back just a little so that she could see his teeth. Suddenly she could imagine that he would be a demon rat-catcher. “Ye’s not Jake,” he said again, a low growl in his voice.

  “I know, please listen.” Polly crouched down, even though she didn’t really want to get any closer to those teeth. “You’ve been asleep for … for a very long time. I’m sorry, but I don’t know where Jake is.” She didn’t want to say that she didn’t even know who Jake was. That Jake must have died many years before.

  “Where are all the horses? Where are the stable lads?” Patch demanded. “I don’t understand! Jake! Jake!”

  “There aren’t horses here any more,” Polly said gently. “I don’t think there have be
en for … for ages. Maybe even a hundred years.”

  Patch shook his ears, as if he didn’t understand what this meant. Then he pressed himself back against the tack-room door, showing his teeth again. He looked terrified.

  “I shouldn’t have touched the latch again, not without Rex here,” Polly muttered. “I didn’t mean to scare you, Patch. I just thought … when I woke you up by accident, I thought you’d be happy about it. Look, stay here, please. I’ll get Rex. He’ll explain.”

  But the little terrier glanced from side to side, growling quietly, and then shot away out of the yard towards the woods. Before she knew it, he’d disappeared among the trees, leaving Polly staring after him and feeling horribly guilty.

  Polly raced back through the gardens towards the terrace. She didn’t care if there were visitors around – she had to fetch Rex somehow. He had to wake up and help them. What would happen to poor Patch, out in the grounds on his own? It was worse than him not knowing where he was – he didn’t know when he was.

  He probably didn’t even recognize half the grounds, Polly thought as she ran. How long was it since he had last been through those woods?

  She practically crashed into the stone plinth that supported Rex’s statue, grabbing at his paws. Several visitors stared at her in surprise and then looked around smiling, assuming that she was playing a game and someone was chasing her.

  “Rex! You have to wake up now!” she hissed into his stone ear. “Please! One of the dogs needs you. I woke him up and I think he’s in trouble!”

  Rex twitched and shuffled, then glanced sideways at Polly.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. “No one’s looking.”

  Rex shook himself and sprang down on to the steps, his tail whipping from side to side. “What’s the matter? What is it, Polly? You look quite pale.” He licked her cheek, gazing down at her anxiously.