Second Night

by Gabriel J Klein

  ‘He names his successor and we continue.’

  ‘So he didn’t lie about that then.’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘Is there some kind of a Guardian’s book I can see? I’d like to know who else has been into it, or is that top secret too?’

  ‘There were never so many invited as to make up much of a list. There’s only been a couple of times when all nine of those seats were taken.’

  Caz detected wariness in Alan’s tone and heartbeat. You’re hiding something Al. Or you have been ordered to hide it? He persisted. ‘How long have Daisy and John been in it?’

  ‘Oh, a long time now. Dais must have been about twenty-one when she took the oath and John was eighteen, I believe.’

  ‘And the Bank?’

  ‘He was accepted at the same time as John, both of them following on the family tradition. They’re about the same age.’

  ‘You mean that all their parents were Guardians too?’

  ‘Yes, except Charles’s mother who died young. She was Zulu and didn’t take too well to living in London smog. Her dad was an old witch doctor. He was supposed to have healed Sir Saxon after he got mauled by a lion when he was in the army in South Africa.’

  ‘Maybe that’s why the Bank’s like he is then.’ Caz moved his feet away from the fire. ‘Full-time banking on top of witch-doctoring’s a pretty weird combination, wouldn’t you say?’

  Alan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve got to understand that the Master’s happy cutting the copse but it’s Charles who plants it and tends it. You’ve got to keep money moving, you can’t just spend it. Without Charles and all his investing and saving expertise this whole place, house, horses and all, would have gone under years back, for all its wealth. Whatever ideas you’ve got in your head about him, he’s always been nothing less than one hundred per cent a Guardian. Think of him like that and you’ll know where you stand with him. He’s the third generation of his family to serve and serve he does, very well.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean to say I can trust him.’

  ‘You will, in time.’ Alan rummaged in his bag and brought out a tin of cocoa and a bottle of sweetened condensed milk. The kettle spluttered and bubbled dry. The silver jug was empty.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Caz.

  He squatted down beside the spring and dipped the jug in the water. He filled his own cup and drank, savouring the icy draft. The air around the spring sparkled, glowing ozone-rich over the gleaming surface of the pool. He was reminded of the sea, of the waves and the white foam crashing up onto the beach. What did Grandpa mean by keeping the watch? he wondered.

  He waggled his fingers, sending the glittering blue light that was no longer dependent on the presence of the sun to manifest, flashing through the water. It collected in a bright rim on the lip of stone before it vanished over the falls and was lost in the darkness of the inner ditch.

  A giant’s foot would crush this place in a single step, he thought. The next step would take out the house and the yard, and then the world, if the old stories mean what they say.

  He returned to the fire. When the kettle was full and set back over the flames to boil, he resumed his seat, gesturing around the clearing.

  ‘Is it really up to us to save all this?’ he asked. ‘Does it need us to save it?’

  Alan looked up into the tree and at the black sky above them. ‘As I see it, there’s a whole lot of humanity and only one Planet Earth. Sooner or later Planet Earth’s time will end because that’s natural, but I like to think that the people will go on. If we can help it happen, even in just a small way, we haven’t been wasting our time.’

  ‘You really do believe in this Guardian thing, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve never doubted and I signed up late compared with the others. What you and the pretty lady did two years ago made it all worth while.’

  ‘But it’s not finished yet,’ said Caz. Will they send a giant to crush me?

  Alan caught the touch of fear in his voice.

  ‘Like I said, I’m with you, boy,’ he said gruffly. ‘Don’t you ever forget, and that’s more than just Guardian stuff, as you well know.’

  The tension broke between them. They made eye contact for the first time that evening.

  Caz smiled. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Just don’t go forgetting it.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Except that the oath stands between us. Is it greater than your loyalty to me, my brother? There’s so much I can’t tell you until I know for sure.

  An explosion of fine ash and white seed-flesh reminded Alan of the chestnuts roasting in the fire. He scooped them out with a shovel and laid them to one side to cool. He raked over the embers, adding more dry kindling before he swung the kettle back over the blaze.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re interested in a cup of cocoa while I’m about it?’ he enquired.

  ‘I’m okay with water.’ Caz began peeling the chestnuts, handing them one by one to Alan and throwing the husks back into the flames. ‘Why do people start things like this, Al?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘This secret society thing?’

  Alan thought about it. ‘I always thought that this one started out with the idea of preserving a particular knowledge,’ he said carefully. ‘But there’s always something else at work in this sort of thing. Generally it takes a lot of time and money before anyone finds out whether it was put together for the good or the bad. It’s the risk we all take.’

  ‘So why did you do it?’

  ‘To settle a few old debts.’

  ‘What debts?’

  ‘The Guardians, as they were then, contacted me and invited me to join them at a time when no one had been recruited for years and not one of them had a son. I can only tell you I had a sort of blood feeling that it was something I should do. That’s the best way I can describe it. I suppose I see it different, coming from the refuser side of the family and having had plenty of time to make up my own mind about it.’

  ‘What do you mean? What’s your family got to do with it?’

  ‘A long time back, my granddad Ethan took Sir Edmund’s side when it came to the sons being invited to join up. They refused the oath together.’

  ‘So what happened to them?’

  ‘They died young.’

  ‘May life fail me and death defeated claim me, and the lives of my sons and their sons,’ quoted Caz, shaking his head. ‘How can anyone in their right mind swear something like that? I suppose that’s why the Bank got into a sweat when I wouldn’t take it. He thinks I’m going to drop dead before I get the rest of the runes. Did Ethan’s father swear it on his behalf?’

  ‘He was one of the first to do so. He was Henry Crawford, Sir Saxon’s head groom. Ethan would have been Daisy’s uncle.’

  ‘So that makes you and Daisy related as well.’

  ‘We’re second cousins. Old Henry was her granddad.’

  ‘What about your father? Did he refuse too?’

  ‘They tried making contact with him a couple of times but he kept himself well out of the way. We weren’t local any more and he never answered any of their letters. Ethan had left the manor after the rumpus over the oath. He married and started farming his wife’s dad’s old place near Hertford, north of the big city, where I was born. My dad Stephen was their only child. He was just ten when Ethan died but he was still old enough to have heard the family history and to take it all in.’

  ‘Did he ever say anything about being cursed?’

  Alan gave him an odd sideways look. ‘No, there was never anything said about that. I would have been less inclined to join up myself if I thought there was anything about a curse involved.’

  ‘So what did he tell you?’

  ‘That there’re two sides to every coin, especially when that particular coin came out of the mint as Sir Saxon Pring. You’ve heard the Master’s side of it and read some of the books and papers he wrote but, according to Ethan, Sir Saxon was an arrogant and selfish old snob, play
ing lord of the manor and hiring and firing just as he pleased. Being the second son and a clever one at that, he’d already made sure of his own future by bagging himself a fine catch as he went ferreting around the best of the season’s debutantes. An almighty slice of cash and property walked alongside Christina Lewis the day she went up the aisle. Then his brother died. He was the first Sir Edmund and he was never interested in women. He’s supposed to have been poisoned by a young fella he’d got involved with. So Saxon came into the title and the estate with no hangers on, so to speak. The family has never had to go without, not then nor since.’

  ‘Was his wife a Guardian as well?’

  ‘Oh yes. They started it together. The Council Chamber was all her doing and she funded most of the work that went on up here, but he was always the boss. The refusers generally reckoned Sir Saxon was more prepared to risk their lives than his own, whatever his army record might have suggested to the contrary. He was said to be ready to spend anything and anyone, including his own son, to prove his theories about the old days, no matter what the cost. He wanted to go down in world history for his part in altering the course of humanity. Needless to say, he died a very disappointed man.’

  ‘Do you think what they said about him was true?’

  ‘There’s no smoke without fire – but we’ve already had the proof that some of his ideas were on the right track and there’s no denying it.’

  Above them the cloud cover was lifting. Stars shone fitfully through the haze. The horses gathered around the fire. Kyri bent her head, whickering softly to Caz. He stood up, grasping the spear.

  ‘So is that what the old man’s doing now, spending me?’ he said slowly.

  Alan looked troubled. ‘He worshipped his old granddad and he’s been Master of the Guardians since he was fifteen. How can any one of us really know what goes on inside his head?’

  Caz leapt onto Kyri’s back. ‘We can’t,’ he said shortly. ‘And that will always be the problem.’

  Long after the hoofbeats had faded, Alan gathered together his things and buckled the sword belt around his waist. The fire had almost gone out. The sky was clear.

  ‘Well, that’s over and done with,’ he told Blue. ‘But I don’t feel any better for it.’

  Charles was expecting a report by noon the next morning. He decided to delay as long as possible. That way I get a bit of time to figure out what needs saying and what’s best left aside.

  CHAPTER 49

  Jemima worked through her chores during the bright and sunny morning, hoping Caz would invite her to ride in the afternoon, but there was no sign of him in the house. The room with the round window in the attic was locked and the horses were all turned out in the paddock. The coffee went cold in the jug in the kitchen. Sir Jonas invited her to lunch with him in the library.

  The rain began soon after and she gave up on the idea of taking Nanna out alone. Daisy fetched the housekeeper’s ring and gave her the key to the other door in Lady Christina’s room.

  ‘It’s for her old dressing room,’ she said. ‘I expect it could do with a good go around after all this time. Take the vacuum cleaner with you and a duster.’

  ‘Why is it always locked?’ asked Jemima.

  ‘There’s no special reason, as far as I know. Just habit I suppose. It was cleared out after she died and no one’s ever bothered with it since.’

  The narrow room had been stripped bare save for a table and an empty rail. It smelled faintly of lavender and the elusive touch of a long forgotten perfume. There were no curtains at the window. Jemima folded back the shutters, peering out at the dismal afternoon through the veil of rain while the cats stalked their reflections in the two, long wall-mirrors facing each other on either side of the window. Jemima stood between them, looking at her hair from behind.

  I can’t believe Lady Christina had to put up with a head full of orange wire like me. I wonder if the pictures of her have been hidden in here?

  She set about searching the dressing room but all the cupboards and shelves built across the narrow wall opposite the window had been completely cleared out. The double doors between them led into a long walk-in wardrobe. The hatboxes lining the shelf above the rails were empty and the shelves in the cupboard at the far end were bare. She sighed. ‘There’s nothing, not even one little hat.’

  At the bottom of the cupboard, an old wooden shoe rack was tipped up on top of what looked like a big rectangular box covered with a linen cloth. Jemima lifted the edge of the cloth. The box underneath was black and shining. ‘But what have we here?’

  She dumped the shoe rack on the floor behind her, pulled off the cloth and squatted down in front of a lacquered Chinese chest, decorated with sprays of leaves and flowers that were inlaid with glossy mother-of-pearl and tiny slivers of different coloured woods. It had a curved brass handle at either end and brass hinges and locks on the two doors on the front.

  ‘Hey! Cats! We’ve got a treasure box!’ she exclaimed excitedly.

  The key she had found in the dressing table fitted both locks. The two cats sat on the top of the chest, peering down as she opened the doors. Inside there were six drawers. Only the two deep drawers at the bottom had locks and the key didn’t fit either of them. ‘What an absolute bummer!’

  The four top drawers were all empty. She took them out and shone the torch into the space, but there was no other key to be found. She was ready to cry with disappointment. One of the drawers jammed when she tried to put it back.

  ‘I must have got them mixed up,’ she muttered miserably.

  She took them all out again and laid them on the floor, trying to work out how they would fit. The one that had jammed seemed shallower inside than the others. On impulse she picked it up and shook it hard. Something rattled inside. She turned it over and found a tiny indentation in the middle of the bottom edge at the back. It was just big enough for the tip of a fingernail to ease away the base of the drawer, revealing a small flat key set neatly in a perfect cut-out in another layer of lacquered wood. As she expected, it unlocked both the other drawers. ‘Yes!’

  The first drawer was full of old, and slightly grubby, cloth-covered photo albums. The top one had the word Edmund embroidered on the cover. The second drawer was jammed with what appeared to be a big parcel wrapped in layers of tissue paper. Whatever it contained was bulky and inter-wrapped with more tissue paper. She heard it crackling as she lifted it out.

  A flat parcel at the bottom of the same drawer felt like a picture frame. She unwrapped the paper and shone the torch on an old photograph that had been colour-tinted and mounted in a mahogany frame. The warrior with the shield and spear was instantly recognisable, although a lot younger than he had been when he sat for the portrait in the library. The woman standing next to him was nearly the same height. Her brilliant, sky-blue dress matched the braiding in her long, red-gold hair. She wore an extraordinary necklace glittering with what looked like large diamonds set around a single great stone sparkling on her breast. A blue and gold-coloured headband with a central blue jewel was bound around her forehead. Two white Persian cats lay at her feet. The photograph was signed: Wotan and Frija

  Jemima showed the picture to Kresh and Kush in turn. ‘At last! The elusive Christina Pring and her very posh cats! She didn’t have impossible hair. But why did they call themselves Wotan and Frija?’ She shone the beam directly on the necklace. ‘They can’t be real diamonds. They’re too huge. Even she can’t have been that rich.’

  Kresh sniffed around the picture frame.

  ‘What do you think of Lady Christina then?’ Jemima asked the little cat. ‘I don’t think we can call her beautiful, do you? Her eyes are a bit too big and boggly for that, but she’s massively elegant and I love that dress! Maybe that’s what’s in the parcel. Let’s have a look!’

  Both cats watched while she untied the ribbon and began peeling away the layers of tissue paper. Both cats witnessed her astonishment when she unwrapped something far better than the dress. Hardly ab
le to believe what she was seeing, she shook long years of neglect and creasing out of the shimmering garment, gasping in pure delight when an embroidered gold and silver brow-band, studded with pieces of the finest amber, fell out of the folds onto the floor. She picked it up and went to stand in front of the mirrors to put it on. Then she draped the heavy cloak around her shoulders and fastened the silver and amber clasp.

  She pirouetted between the mirrors, marvelling at seeing herself completely enveloped in glistening silk. The cloak was shot through with silver on a background of deep sky-blue at the hem, rising through rose-red and fusing into gold around the hood. It was embroidered all over with tiny golden starbursts. Where the cloak swung open, the gold silk lining was stitched with silver stars.

  Kresh crouched under the mirror while Jemima held up the picture to compare the blue in the cloak with the blue of the dress Lady Christina was wearing in the picture. They matched. Only the brow bands were different. Kush raised a tentative claw but Jemima swept him up before he could take a hold on the shining fabric. She held him by his middle, his paws dangling as she picked up Kresh. All three looked at each other in the mirror.

  Jemima laughed. ‘Look at us! We are the Goddess and her sacred cats. Somewhere in this house there’s a dress that’s silver or white, and maybe an amber necklace. We’re going to find them and it will be our secret. You have to swear not to say a word to anyone.’

  The cats blinked solemn eyes and sniffed at their reflections in the glass.

  CHAPTER 50

  When Bryony got home she was convinced that the living room had been hit by a bomb. Every item of furniture was out of place, the houseplants were tipped out of their pots and the floor was strewn with cushions and magazines.

  ‘Old Perce isn’t on his way in behind you, is he?’ asked her grandmother anxiously.

  Bryony leaned against the wall, her arms folded, staring at the mess. ‘No, he’s not, and a good thing too by the looks of it. I hope you’re not thinking about asking me to help you clear that lot up because I won’t.’