The Greenstone Grail

by Jan Siegel

  ‘People get confused in the dark,’ said Pobjoy. ‘I prefer the obvious explanation. Contrary to popular fiction, it’s usually true.’

  ‘Do you think they murdered the Graf as well?’ Annie asked quietly.

  ‘According to the autopsy report,’ Pobjoy almost sighed, ‘his death was an accident.’

  ‘Accident?’ Michael and Annie demanded in chorus.

  ‘They seem to think he could’ve been struck by a rebounding branch, knocked out with his face in the leaf-litter, and drowned in mud and rainwater.’

  ‘Drowned …’ Annie echoed, in a whisper.

  ‘There are too many people getting drowned round here lately,’ Michael said in a suddenly shaken voice.

  ‘But …’ Annie’s face changed as a thought struck her. ‘I understood he died around lunchtime. That’s what you said before. It didn’t start to rain until much later.’

  Pobjoy swore to himself. She was right, and he hadn’t spotted it. The path lab had conveniently forgotten – or failed to check – what time the rain started. And before that, the ground would have been dry as a bone.

  ‘When your son comes back, Mrs Ward,’ he said, ‘I’d like to talk to him. Please call me on this number.’ He handed her a card. ‘And don’t worry too much about what the children did. They’re underage, and although the act was criminal, the motives weren’t. Once they’ve returned the cup, I’m sure the court will take a lenient view.’

  ‘They don’t have the cup to return,’ Annie said when the police had gone. ‘I know.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Michael. ‘We need a lawyer.’

  ‘I must warn Lily,’ Annie said. And: ‘Thank you. Thank you for standing by me. Us.’

  ‘I’ll always stand by you,’ Michael said. His tone was abrupt and almost cold, free from sentiment. She looked up at him with the hint of a question in her face.

  His arms went round her as though of their own volition, and he kissed her – not a quick peck on the cheek but a real kiss, opening her mouth with his. But the moment of intimacy was swift, and swiftly over. He drew back, looking as shaken as she felt. ‘Sorry. Sorry. I shouldn’t have … Very bad timing. I’ll sort out the lawyer, I promise. Call you tomorrow.’ And then he went, letting the door slam behind him, leaving her in such a state of emotional upheaval she almost forgot to phone Lily Bagot.

  ELEVEN

  The Grail Quest

  Hazel and Lily were taken to the police station in Crowford for a formal interview. Pobjoy wanted answers, and he judged the official surroundings might prove sufficiently daunting to inspire them. Deep down inside, he had a nagging feeling he could be on a losing streak, but the circumstantial evidence was damning, and his hunches had got him exactly nowhere. He had believed the children’s story at first, but bitter experience had taught him to distrust belief. There had been the insurance fraudster who claimed he was in France when his business premises burned down, the stepfather who wept crocodile tears for a murdered teenager, the paedophile teacher who declared his only interest was in education. True, he hadn’t actually believed any of them, but he might have done, if he had been more credulous, if they had been well-behaved thirteen-year-olds who had managed to sneak under the barbed-wire fence of his instincts. You thought you had seen it all, he reflected, and then something worse came along. Still, their motives had been good …

  ‘You wanted to help Mrs Thorn, didn’t you?’ he said. ‘That’s why you looked for the injunction.’

  Hazel made a tiny sound which might have been: ‘Mm.’

  ‘And then you were afraid it wouldn’t do the trick. D’you have a friend who knows about the law?’

  Hazel thought of George’s legal ambitions, but decided that didn’t qualify. She said, a little louder: ‘No.’

  ‘You heard they were bringing the cup to Thornyhill, so you and Nathan decided to spy on the meeting. You must have been pretty excited about it.’

  It wasn’t a question, and Hazel saw no need to answer it. She shut her mouth very tightly, trying not to be afraid, wishing Nathan were here. He would’ve known what to say.

  ‘Were you excited?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘But you were interested enough to go to Thornyhill, and hide outside the house. Were you hoping to sneak in when no one was looking, and see what was going on?’

  Another shrug. But she was tugging at her hair, pulling it over her face, always a sign of nerves.

  ‘They were just naturally curious,’ Lily said. ‘They’d heard a lot about the cup. It was just an adventure to them.’

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ said Pobjoy. ‘You must have been disappointed when you didn’t find the injunction. I expect you and Nathan talked about how wonderful it would be if you could get the cup, and give it back to Mrs Thorn. Didn’t you, Hazel? Didn’t you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what did you talk about then? Tell me.’

  Other worlds, Hazel thought. Dreampower. She didn’t answer.

  ‘What – did – you – talk – about?’ Pobjoy repeated.

  ‘Stuff. Music. School. You know.’

  ‘But not the cup of the Thorns?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Not much.’ It was too small an admission to be of value, but he did his best to build on it. ‘Not much, but enough. You thought of the Graf Von Humboldt and the people from Sotheby’s as the bad guys, didn’t you? You thought the cup was rightfully the property of Mrs Thorn. You waited in the storm, hoping for an opportunity, and then the lights went out. Do you recognize this?’ He held up a rubbery green thing with rats’ tail hair hanging down on either side.

  ‘It’s my witch-mask,’ Hazel said, taken by surprise. ‘I had it for Halloween, two years ago. What about it?’

  ‘You can’t take that,’ Lily said. ‘You couldn’t – you didn’t have a search warrant. I know you have to have a search warrant.’

  ‘It was in the dustbin,’ Pobjoy said. ‘We don’t need a warrant for that. At a guess, you were the one who threw it out, just before we got there.’

  Lily turned from the inspector to her daughter in evident panic, looking both guilty and confused. Annie had told her about the inspector’s insinuations, and she had found the mask in Hazel’s room before she returned from school and determined to dispose of it. ‘I want a lawyer,’ she said.

  ‘If you insist. It will mean keeping you both here for some time while we obtain one.’

  ‘What about the mask?’ Hazel hadn’t been primed. ‘Why is it important?’

  ‘Witnesses to the theft described someone short, almost a dwarf, with lots of hair –’ he glanced at Hazel’s untidy mop ‘– the face unclear. How tall are you, Hazel?’

  As the sense of what he said sank in, she went white, then red. White with shock, red with anger. ‘There was a dwarf,’ she said. ‘He was nearly a foot shorter than me. We saw him – we chased him. I haven’t bothered with that stupid mask in ages. Ask the other people – ask Mr Goodman, Mrs Thorn. It was a dwarf.’

  ‘Mr Goodman wasn’t in the room at the time of the theft,’ Pobjoy said. ‘Of the others, both Alex Birnbaum and Julian Epstein concede that the thief could have been a child.’ The concessions had been reluctant, but he didn’t mention that.

  ‘I’m nearly five foot,’ Hazel confessed (it was clearly a sore point). ‘It’s not that tall, but it’s too tall for a dwarf. He was really short, I told you –’

  ‘You tell lies sometimes, don’t you? You sent us an anonymous letter about your great-grandmother’s death. That was a lie, wasn’t it?’ He didn’t really think so, he just wanted to keep her off balance, talking too much, admitting things. ‘Mrs Carlow died naturally; you just wanted to make trouble. For your father, perhaps? You thought if he went to prison he wouldn’t hurt your mother any more. Was that it?’

  ‘No – it wasn’t that – it wasn’t him –’

  ‘And now you’re lying about this. I’m sure it was all in a good cause – right? You weren’t stealing the cup,
you were saving it. Planning to restore it to its rightful owner.’

  ‘No –’

  ‘Stop!’ Lily cried. ‘Stop now. I want a lawyer. I don’t care how long it takes. You can’t bully her any more. You’re not allowed to talk to her until the lawyer comes. Isn’t that right?’ She sounded both resolute and uncertain.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ Hazel persisted. ‘I didn’t take the cup. Nathan will tell you …’

  ‘I expect it was Nathan’s idea,’ Pobjoy suggested, giving them both an out. ‘He pushed you into it, didn’t he?’

  Hazel gave him a look so scornful he was jolted. ‘Nathan? Nathan would never do anything wrong. He’s not like that. And he doesn’t push people into things. You’re stupid. Nathan’s … different. He would never steal in a million years.’

  And the worst of it is, Pobjoy thought, beating a temporary retreat, I believe her.

  Nathan had been searching for Woody again, still without success. It was nearly six when he got home and Annie looked both anxious and impatient. ‘Hazel’s been arrested,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  Annie launched into a disjointed explanation. ‘They may not have actually arrested her but I saw them drive off in a police car with her and Lily. They want to talk to you too. They think you took the Grail. If you have any idea where it is –’

  ‘Do you think I took it?’ he demanded, picking up on the implication immediately.

  ‘Of course not. But if we could get it back I’m sure they’d drop the whole thing.’

  ‘What about the murder?’

  ‘They’ve convinced themselves it was an accident,’ Annie explained. ‘Never mind about the murder. It’s the cup … I ought to call the inspector. He said he wanted to see you at once.’

  ‘No. Please, Mum. I can get the cup if you just give me time. I’m almost certain I know where it is. The dwarf sent it back into the other world …’

  ‘Worlds tend to be big places,’ Annie pointed out. ‘Where would you look?’

  ‘It was kept in a cave before it was here, or so they said. I’m sure it’s back there. It’s the logical place. If I could get it – return it to Sotheby’s – they’d let Hazel go, wouldn’t they? There wouldn’t be a crime any more.’

  ‘I think that would depend on how Sotheby’s and the Graf’s family felt about it,’ Annie said doubtfully. ‘And the police, of course. Oh dear. If you bring it back, they’ll definitely think you took it.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Nathan said. ‘Let them think.’

  He had started upstairs as he spoke. Annie called after him: ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Sleep!’ came the answer.

  He had never been able to sleep – or dream – to order but now he must, he must. He thought of Hazel in a grey-walled room, shrinking into a chair while faceless policemen hurled accusations at her. It wasn’t a relaxing image. That was no good: he must find the place in his mind, the weak spot, the chink through which his awareness escaped when it moved from Here to There. The falling darkness spotted with stars and whirling with planets. He reached not out but inwards, all the way in, deep into himself. There seemed to be great spaces in his head, as if its inside was far bigger than its outside, and shadows lay darkly over the crevasses of the subconscious, and somewhere up above there was a white light shining into him, its rays streaming down like a visitation from God. And then he found what he was looking for, on the far left – he didn’t know if he could see it or feel it, but it was there behind his eye, a patch of something that didn’t belong. He thought it was bluish, though it was hard to be sure, and filled with snow-flecks which winked in and out of existence like interference on a TV screen. He pulled with his mind, drawing all his being inwards, pouring himself into that blob of otherness. Instantly – or so it seemed – he dreamed.

  There may have been sleep: he felt as if he emerged not from a waking state but from brief oblivion. He spun down the tunnel, trying to decide if the planets and galaxies were the same or different ones. He thought it might be a wormhole, if a wormhole could connect not just different points in space but spaces in different worlds. A planet hove past him that was red with boiling gases; storms the size of continents slipped beneath his feet – if his consciousness had feet. Giant rings rushed towards him – then there was something in front of him like a wall, a cold dead surface pitted with craters, like a bad case of global acne. But it flicked away, and everything speeded up. Sound was a dim throbbing roar, like a vast wind far off, but he had a strange feeling that if you could slow it down, there might be music in it. Then came the dazzle of light, so his eyes closed, and a kind of silent, whole-body thud as he collided with atmosphere, destination and his own being.

  He opened his eyes and looked around. He felt more solid than he had ever done – he sensed the difference at once – as if his own world was the dream, and this was real. He wouldn’t be able to shift from place to place any more: he was stuck. Stuck in himself, bounded by reality. He should have been terrified, but he was too busy wondering where he was.

  He seemed to be in a complex of inter-connecting chambers, all circular. He was sitting on a curving sofa in the largest one, with a round rug on the floor, and curious pieces of furniture scattered about, all round, or curved, or blob-shaped. There were no external windows: the light, as always on Eos, appeared to come out of the walls, and down from the ceiling, though there were individual lamps in oval recesses which shone with hues of pink, apricot and turquoise. Everything else took colour from them. One of the adjacent chambers was fitted with what looked like a bed; another, closed off with a screen of clouded glass, emitted watery sounds, bubbling, and gurgling, and faint splashes. It’s like a bedroom suite, Nathan deduced, and someone’s in the bath. For a moment he thought of hiding – but he couldn’t hide now, not any more. He was here, and he was real, and he needed help.

  He wasn’t really surprised when the glass screen slid back and Halmé emerged from the bathroom.

  She wore a loose robe which hung open in a curious echo of Kwanji’s prison garb, and her body was all glowing golden smoothness, with swells and hollows, and shapes of bone gentled under the mantling of flesh and skin. He thought she resembled an art deco statue he had seen once in Rowena’s shop, unnaturally tall and slender, elongated into an impossible perfection. He gaped and stared as you stare at beauty, not womanhood, remembering too late to be embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry, I –’

  ‘Who –?’ Halmé drew her robe around her, but it seemed to be a purely automatic gesture. She too was staring. Her eyes were very dark and yet seemed to be shot with hidden colours. ‘Who are you? How did you get in here?’

  ‘My name’s Nathan.’

  ‘You’re very small. What race are you – what planet? Are you a refugee?’ She looked anxious or concerned and he thought: Refugees carry contamination.

  He said: ‘I’m human. From Earth. It’s not here: it’s in another universe.’ She was silent, still staring, and he went on: ‘I’m small because I’m thirteen. I’m still growing. Actually, I’m not that small in my world – people are shorter there – but I’ll get taller. I’m really tall for thirteen.’

  Her face altered – softened. Shock drained away. ‘You’re a child,’ she said. ‘Is that right? You’re saying – you’re a child?’

  He remembered what Eric had said. No children here for hundreds of years. And … hadn’t he said Halmé had tried to conceive, before the magic stopped her womb, tried and failed?

  He said: ‘Yes.’

  Emotion seemed to be breaking over her in waves; he saw the ripples traversing her expression. She came closer, reached out, touched him, touched his cheek. ‘You might be my son,’ she said. ‘You are not so very alien. Your face is – wrong. The wrong shape. Too short, too broad, too low here –’ she brushed an eyebrow ‘– but I think you are beautiful.’ He noticed that she believed him without questioning, without doubt.

  He said awkwardly: ‘I think you ar
e beautiful too.’

  ‘Do you? All my life people have told me I am beautiful. My beauty has a life of its own, a life of fame and legend which has nothing to do with me. But you come from another world, where people look different – a world of children – yet you say I am beautiful. I think – that is the first time it has ever meant anything.’ She smiled, and he realized he had never seen her smile till now. ‘My name is Halmé.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen you before. To begin with, when I got here I was invisible; then – like a ghost – sort of transparent. This is the most real I’ve ever been in your world.’

  ‘I’ve felt you,’ she said. ‘I’ve felt you watching. When we went to the laboratory, you followed. That was months ago. How long have you been here?’

  ‘I come and go. It’s dreams – I dream myself here. That’s how I got in. And time must be different in my world. It wasn’t months ago, when I followed you to that laboratory.’

  ‘How do you speak our language?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just do.’ In the dream, it came easily, fluently, as if it was native to him.

  ‘Why did you come to me?’ Halmé asked.

  ‘I found myself here. I don’t choose – I can’t control it. I go – wherever I end up. I don’t think it’s random, but I don’t know how it happens. I wanted to get here, and I found the place in my mind where I go when I dream – the way through. But I’ve no idea why I came out in your rooms. Honestly.’ He added: ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt your bath.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I’d finished. Anyway, I’m glad. I’m glad you came here. If there is a pattern, then it was meant. My brother believes in patterns. He says all worlds are interwoven, part of a Great Pattern, and if you have the power you can change it, bend it around you.’

  ‘Your brother … the Grandir?’

  ‘Of course – you saw him too. He will want to meet you …’ She stopped. The light dimmed in her eyes.

  ‘I came to you,’ Nathan said.

  ‘He would be angry, if he knew I had hidden something like this from him. Something like you.’