‘What do you think about tonight, Jem?’ whispered Sara, as they were getting ready to walk to the yard. ‘Do you think the snow’s changed anything?’
‘I think it’s a sign that everything’s going to be okay.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
CHAPTER 86
By early afternoon, the manor house was humming with an infectious happiness that masked the more sombre mood of the Guardians. All the principal rooms were draped with garlands of ivy and bunches of holly tied up with gleaming red tinsel and hung with strings of gold and silver lametta. The dining room table was magnificently crammed with shining silverware and sparkling crystal. Each individual place setting was indicated with a gold name card inserted into a miniature arrangement of porcelain Christmas roses. Jemima’s traditional kissing bunch – more glittering and stuffed with mistletoe than ever before – hung defiantly in the doorway between the dining room and the reception room. The ballroom remained locked and out of bounds to everyone except the band.
Alan and John excused themselves immediately after lunch and went outside to the shed to sharpen their chainsaws. The weight of snow had toppled a tree over the old iron gate in the wall at the back of the orchard and Sir Jonas was anxious that no entrance into the forest should be hindered on this most significant of winter nights. Jasper pointed the boys in the direction of the ballroom.
Daisy had dealt emphatically with his remarks regarding Caz’s convenient absence during the morning. ‘There’ll be no naming shirkers in this house by you or anyone else, young Jasper! There’s plenty left of the usual chores that always need doing, party or no party, and it’s a good thing one of us remembers and gets on with them!’
There was still a lot of of work to be done in the kitchen. Melanie volunteered to help.
‘Where do you want us to start, Daisy?’ asked Sara.
Daisy pointed in the direction of the sculleries. ‘We’ll get cracking in there first!’
Maddie looked at her watch. ‘I’ve just got a couple of things to finish in the office. I’ll be back as soon as I’m done.’
‘And I’ve got to finish decorating the hall,’ said Jemima.
She was putting the final touches to the huge Christmas tree towering up into the stairwell, when the front door opened and Sir Jonas appeared, stamping the snow from his boots onto the mat.
‘What do you think of the tree, sir?’ she cried.
‘Very highly commendable,’ he said, nodding enthusiastically. ‘Very commendable indeed.’
He hastened to the cloakroom to divest himself of his coat and hat and to retrieve his slippers. He had great respect for Jemima’s intuition and lately he had surprised some odd looks in his direction that were not always friendly. It would not do to arouse her suspicion at this late hour when his preparations were almost complete. A few minutes of conversation would not be wasted while he took the opportunity to warm himself in front of the fire in the hall.
She turned on the lights just as he reappeared, and ran up the stairs to look at the tree from every angle.
‘Very well done, my dear Lady Sibylla!’ he said loudly, determined to show suitable appreciation over the discordant beginnings and ends of guitar solos and abrupt drum rolls booming out of the ballroom.
‘I think it’s utterly magical!’ she exclaimed, her face rapt.
‘Indeed it is.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The house looks all the better for it, I can assure you, all the better.’
She leaned over the gallery rail looking down at him and obviously inviting further comment. He coughed and cleared his throat again, desperately awkward under the scrutiny of those grey eyes that he fancied were intent on prising out his deepest and most secret thoughts. A prolonged drum roll and Jasper’s voice lifted up in song from the direction of the ballroom settled the matter.
‘Ah, ah, I think I shall take a little nap,’ Sir Jonas said hastily, retreating towards the library door. ‘If you could mention it to Madame Marguerite I would be grateful.’
Jemima’s eyes gleamed in the færy light. ‘I’ll bring your tea at four o’clock.’
‘That would be very kind, most kind, I can assure you. Thank you, my dear Lady Sibylla, thank you.’
The tree was forgotten and all Jemima’s suspicions were back on red alert. He’s getting more cringey every minute, she thought. And what’s happened to Caz? That’s what I want to know.
He had been missing all day. She crept along the gallery to listen outside the master’s suite. There was no sound and no light showing under the door. She went back to the hall and listened at the double doors to the ballroom. The music had come to an abrupt halt. Jasper and Laurence were arguing. Tristan was commenting. Caz wasn’t there either. She checked the smoking room and the billiard room before she crept along the corridor to the office. The telephone rang once. Maddie answered. Jemima listened.
‘Oh, hello,’ said her mother happily. There was a short pause. ‘Well, I’m afraid he’s very busy at the moment but I’m sure he would love you to visit any time after Christmas. Yes, do bring her. I’m sure he would be delighted to see her again.’
Jemima pressed her ear to the door. Who would Sir Jonas be delighted to see? And why did her mother have a smile in her voice?
The conversation continued. ‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry, I can’t. We have the party tomorrow night.’ There was a longer pause, obviously an explanation, or an excuse. ‘That’s quite all right. It was very kind of you to ask me. Yes, that would be lovely. Bye.’
Jemima crept away. Someone’s been chatting up my mother! It can’t be that slimy Charles. He wouldn’t be phoning up for an appointment to see Sir Jonas. Has someone else been creeping around her while she’s been going up to London? She was almost at the kitchen when she realised who it was. The bloody vicar! That’s all I need! And who else does he think he’s going to bring up here? If it’s Bindweed I’ll have to kill him!
CHAPTER 87
Sir Jonas hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the study door and locked it carefully. He took one last look through the new security spy-hole before he dared to open the secret panel in the curved wall between the fireplace and the door to the vault. The latest news from London had confirmed his deepest fears. With Guardian Armourer refusing to communicate, Council was irretrievably divided.
‘I must prepare for the worst,’ he muttered. ‘The necessary steps shall be taken as soon as this night is done.’
The hidden cupboard was exactly large enough to conceal the chalice, the knife and the decanter of mead prepared for the traditional stirrup cup that always preceded the Hag Night Vigil. He took them out and reached inside to spring the secret latch on the interior panel at the back of the cupboard. There were three loose bricks in the back wall. He eased them out and removed the old, leather-bound box left to him by his grandfather, Sir Saxon Pring.
‘This most precious legacy,’ he murmured, laying the folded papers and the envelopes out on the desk. ‘All that remains of those bright days before you went away forever, and left your only son to obliterate everything that was so dearly familiar to me and so dreadful to him.’
Simply to recall those troubled times would set him trembling with rage. That great bed, broken up and burned with no care for the memory of those generations of our family who breathed their first and their last under its lofty canopy. How my dear mother fought for the rights of the Guardians in my name. How fearlessly she defied my father to defend my inheritance.
Many of the words on the papers were so faded as to be almost indecipherable, the ink unevenly delivered according to the scratching of the pen. But Jonas knew them all by heart. In the afternoon of this short winter day, he peered through the magnifying glass, his attention riveted on one key paragraph in a letter Sir Saxon had addressed to him on his fifteenth birthday. He had read it repeatedly during this difficult period of devastating self-doubt:
‘Regarding that most ancient tradition where a boy child is ritually sacrificed at winter
solstice in place of the king, the offering up of the life of a son from one of our chosen bloodlines, in place of the Master, is not too great a price to pay to claim the last and greatest of the runes. These sons have been so dedicated, so nurtured and educated since the hour of their birth, and I urge you, Jonas, do not deny them any opportunity to fulfil the unique and honourable destiny that awaits them’.
He sighed. ‘Yours was the clear vision that laid the great foundations, Grandfather, but mine was the courage to endure and to build. Without my vision, my foresight, all you achieved would have come to nothing. Nothing!’
One envelope he laid aside. He had sealed it in happier times more than two years before, and directed the contents to the person whose name he had written under the seal. He was tempted to break the red wax, remove the contents and put the envelope in the fire, but something stayed his hand and he put the package in the drawer in the desk, next to the box of keys to the bookcases and the observatory.
He unfolded another paper and held the magnifying glass to the faint lines on the pencilled diagram of his own first rune casting. The two blank runes mocked him. They had seemed auspicious until the young upstart had cast all three in his first attempt at Thunderslea. Not one of the Guardians, in all the long history of their order, had achieved as much.
The old man stood up abruptly and began pacing around the desk, repeating the words of the verse: ‘Much have I fared, much have I found, much have I got of the gods. Much have I fared, much have I found, much have I got of the gods. What shall live of mankind when at last there comes the mighty winter to men?’
He stopped in front of the mounted bronze figure of the God on the window ledge and looked out at the relentless snow, clenching both fists.
‘I am the worthy and legitimate son of our house and I will live!’ he cried. ‘I will survive the Great Winter in whatever form it takes and, because of me, humankind will also live. I will sacrifice this night before the God. I will win the runes and the chanter will sing the glory of my renown forever!’
A burning nerve pain seared the site of the old wound on the side of his head. He groaned aloud and staggered against the window, clutching frantically at the curtains as he was flung, chained around the neck and fighting for breath, into the icy depths of a black and bottomless crevasse.
Promptly at four, in the last twilit hour of that shortest day of the year, he was roused from the desperate, semi-conscious state that had overwhelmed him by a sharp knocking at the door. The blue eye opened, gazing fearfully around the quiet room.
Jemima called out. ‘I’ve got your tea, sir.’
Shivering, and tangled in the curtain that was mostly ripped from the hooks attaching it to the track, he pulled himself up onto his chair and reached for the brandy bottle.
Jemima knocked again, harder. ‘Sir Jonas!’ She tried the door handle. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I am quite well,’ he gasped. ‘Leave the tray in the library, my dear.’
‘But are you okay?’ she asked again.
‘I’m not quite awake yet. Otherwise I am perfectly well.’
‘If you’re sure then.’ She sounded doubtful.
‘I am quite sure, thank you.’
CHAPTER 88
Nightfall brought more snow, falling thick and fast against the leaded windowpanes. Daisy closed the shutters in the dining room, labouring one-handed with the latch and muttering, ‘I don’t like this one bit. Of all the nights to have snow, it had to happen now.’
In the faint light from the window she saw two ghostly figures clearing the path under the garden wall. Ignoring the activity in the kitchen, she hurried to the back door in time to meet John and Alan stamping their feet and shaking the snow off their coats.
‘There’s your tea been ready and waiting this last hour,’ she said anxiously.
‘There’s no time for supping tea, old Dark-eyes,’ said John. ‘Whatever you’re doing will have to wait until tomorrow. We’ve got to be getting off home before this weather gets set in any thicker. The snow’s coming down faster than we can shovel it.’
‘Daisy, you go with John and round up the women,’ said Alan. ‘Where are the lads?’
‘Young Caz is upstairs eating and the others are still mucking about in the ballroom. I haven’t been able to get in there and clean for a week. I don’t know what state we’re going to find ourselves in come tomorrow night.’
‘I’ll go and sort them out. You get your things together. I want everyone cleared up and gone in ten minutes.’
‘All the Guardians should be staying, and you know it,’ she said peevishly. ‘The fire’s been burning in my good mother’s old kitchen all day. The place is aired out enough for sleeping and we’d be handy if we were needed.’
Alan shook his head. ‘This is no place for women tonight, not even you, Daisy. Leave me the keys and I’ll lock up behind you.’
‘But I want to stay,’ protested Jemima, when she was told to leave. ‘I can walk back later. I like the dark and the snow.’
‘Sir Jonas wants us safely home,’ said John firmly, putting the armful of coats he had collected off the pegs in the passage on the kitchen table. ‘And there’s no arguing with that.’
The old man shook each of them by the hand as they left, repeating his thanks and reminding them of the customary late start the following morning. ‘Caspar and I can manage perfectly well until ten o’clock. You’ll have quite enough to do later in the day.’
Jasper nodded towards the ballroom doors. ‘You’re welcome to have a tune-up, boss. Just make sure you turn everything off before you go to bed.’
Sir Jonas bowed hastily. ‘Thank you, Mister Jasper, I shall bear your most generous offer in mind.’
John came last into the hall, carrying an extra shovel over his shoulder.
‘Daisy’s just bidding young Caz goodnight,’ he said. ‘I’m to go and get the van warmed up.’ He inclined his head, his hand on his heart in the customary salutation. ‘Good hunting, Master, come back safe and well.’
Sir Jonas returned the salute. ‘I will. Bless you, Guardian Archivist, for your loyalty.’
As soon as John disappeared into the snowy night, Sir Jonas tiptoed through the hall and listened at the corner of the passageway. He heard whispering and looked around in time to see Daisy and Caz in urgent conversation. There was no mistaking their consternation, confronted as they were when least expected.
Caz gave Daisy a quick hug. ‘I’ll go and say goodnight to the others in the yard.’
‘I would like a word when you come in, Caspar,’ said the old man stiffly. ‘We must finalise our arrangements for tonight.’
‘Okay.’
Confident that Guardian Spear-Bearer would eventually persuade Daisy to allow him unauthorised access to the Council Chamber, Sir Jonas had already taken steps to ensure that she would find the black key missing from the usual hiding place when she went to look for it. There would be no chance for the young upstart to draw on the power of the sacred stone before Hag Night was truly upon them. With the key safely beyond temptation in his trouser pocket, he was tempted to challenge Guardian Keeper of Hearth and Keys, to remind her where her fealty lay while she was still discomfited. Instead he offered her his arm and escorted her to the hall where John was waiting at the front door.
‘You take care of yourself now, Master,’ she said quietly. ‘Don’t forget to wrap up warm.’
Sir Jonas smiled. ‘You have said that to me on this particular night for more than twenty years, Madame Marguerite.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But it’s different now, isn’t it?’
He patted her shoulder. ‘Go home and get some sleep, my dear, and try not to fret. We are Guardians. We have long prepared for whatever this night may bring.’
‘I know, but there’s no making it any easier for those that have to sit and wait. Take care of young Caz, won’t you, Master? Don’t let anything happen to him.’ She turned abruptly and put out a hand for John to help
her down the steps.
‘I’m glad I married you, John Flint,’ she whispered fiercely, hugging him tightly with her one good arm when they were out of the light of the lamp and safely out of earshot. ‘We could have just as easily not married and have had no life at all, just carrying on being servants and doing nothing more than run around after his every whim until the end of our days.’
‘But we’ve always been more than just servants, Daisy Dark-eyes, especially you. The Masters always encouraged the Guardians to marry.’
‘Only to give them our sons,’ she answered bitterly.
‘There is that,’ agreed her husband.
Jemima and Sara were last to climb into the back of the Land Rover, lingering as long as possible to say goodnight to each one of the mares looking out over their doors. Blue followed Daisy and John to the van and jumped up on the seat between them, wagging his tail. The girls were alarmed.
‘Where’s he going?’ said Jemima.
‘Why isn’t he staying with you?’ asked Sara.
‘He’s having the night off,’ Alan replied. ‘No sense him trekking around with me in the snow when he can be warming his toes down the cottage.’
Caz closed the door on their questions. He smiled. ‘Sleep tight, Jem. Goodnight Verthandi.’
‘I think that was supposed to make me feel better,’ Sara muttered. ‘But I don’t.’
‘Neither do I,’ whispered Jemima.
Jasper sounded the horn and pulled slowly forward, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror and the van behind them, which was following their tracks in the snow. Jemima rubbed a space in the freezing condensation on the window. Sara looked out too. They saw Caz raise his hand once in farewell, with Alan stood beside him, both of them backlit by the lights in the yard against the curtain of falling snow.
‘That’s it then,’ said Alan.
Caz grinned. ‘Time to get our gear together, brother.’
Second Night Page 39
