Shaman of Stonewylde

by Kit Berry

  ‘Aye – Imbolc were the best day!’ cackled Vetchling, and then stopped as another cough erupted in her bony chest. She clutched the table and tried to steady her breathing. Starling threw more logs on the fire and pulled up the spark guard, oblivious to her mother’s suffering.

  ‘We could do with a man about the place,’ she mused. ‘How about it, Auntie Violet? Can you summon me a man? A nice little love spell? ’Tis been a long time and I could do with something to warm me up at nights, a woman in her prime like me.’

  She leered at the crones, brown teeth gleaming in the flickering light.

  ‘A man? Who needs a man? More trouble than they’re worth,’ said Violet bitterly, shuffling towards the stairs. ‘We are three and we have the power. We don’t need no man messing things up!’

  ‘That’s all right and good for you, Auntie,’ said Starling, ‘seeing as how you’re the Wise Woman and solitary as you must be. But what about me? I have my needs and I ain’t getting no younger. If we had a fine strapping man here to look after us, we’d have no worries about Jay turning up to chop our wood and fetch our water. We need the garden dug too, and lots o’ jobs done around the cottage. You two are useless now and I can’t do it all on my own. ‘Tain’t fair on me!’

  ‘No, Starling, no man!’ said Violet firmly. ‘ ’Twould spoil the balance and the harmony o’ things. If you want your bed warmed, get yourself a cat.’

  Harold’s round glasses were bright with the reflected glare of his desk lamp as he gazed at the screen. Around him the bedroom was in near darkness and all the surfaces were piled high with plates and cups, legacy of too many meals taken in private away from the humiliation of the Dining Hall. Harold was not a popular member of the community right now and he found it much easier to bring his food up here and stay out of sight.

  Muttering to himself, he sat tapping rapidly at the keyboard, entering data into the new system. He was attempting to repair the damage done at Imbolc but it was a daunting task. He’d spent ages building up the enterprise that was Stonewylde.com, but it had fallen in a matter of minutes, and would take a long time to resurrect. Harold was still mystified and more than a little frightened by what had happened that night, when his hopes and dreams for a great business empire had tumbled before his eyes and that strange message had flashed repeatedly on the screen.

  He’d tried to hide the damage in a futile attempt to put it all right before anyone noticed. That had been stupid. Clearly the whole network had been hacked by someone who knew what they were doing. Yul had soon discovered that the system was down, as had all the students and teachers, Hazel and the medical staff and even Martin and the household staff – everyone, in fact, who used the network. Harold had prayed that it was only a few files infected but slowly it dawned on both him and Yul that the whole lot had gone. For a few days he’d tried everything he could possibly think of, with Yul raging at him constantly. But Harold was no computer wizard and had been forced to admit defeat. The final straw had been when he’d tried to reinstall the back-up and had reinfected the system. The virus had started up all over again; the backup was corrupted too and none of the data on it could ever be used. Everything had gone.

  The expert called in to sort out the mess, at great expense, had been impressed by the sheer ingenuity of the virus. It was one he’d never seen before and extremely cleverly programmed. Much of his explanation and speculation had gone over Harold’s head, but the bottom line was that Harold’s data – his files and accounts, contacts and records, everything he’d worked so hard to build up – had all gone. As had the household accounts and records, the medical and dental files, everything to do with the farming and production of food, and all the school records too – lesson plans, student coursework and personal data. The system had to be wiped clean to destroy the virus that permeated the entire network; little bits of code, like poisonous seeds, were ingeniously tucked away inside the back-ups and programmes, and would suddenly bloom into deadly flower all over again at a hidden stimulus.

  Perhaps the worst aspect was what had happened to all the customers’ data. When Harold had launched his pre-Yule marketing campaign he’d succeeded beyond all expectation. The orders for goods had come flooding in during November and December, hundreds and hundreds of wealthy customers finding the unusual and exclusive Stonewylde products to be the perfect answer to their Christmas gift dilemmas. Harold had introduced a ‘recommend a friend’ reward scheme to bring more contacts to the mailing list, and this had resulted in a massive expansion of potential customers, whom he’d intended to contact in the New Year with a newsletter. But one of the nasty twists of the virus was to corrupt this database of contacts and send obscene spam to each e-mail address. There’d been a flood of complaints and Stonewylde’s name had become sullied and blacklisted even though Harold had convinced the authorities of the company’s innocence. Because of the collapse of the system, he couldn’t even contact his customers to apologise.

  A new network was almost up and running but Harold was worried that it would be hacked into again. The computer doctor had explained about Trojan viruses – ones concealed within apparently harmless data and links – and how some of the more sophisticated ones were very slow burn. They could lurk unnoticed for a long time before being detonated either by a pre-determined trigger, or by someone physically activating them. It terrified Harold that whoever had done this at Imbolc, or even before then if the slow-burn theory was correct, could and would do it again. There was a traitor in their midst and Harold had no idea who it could be.

  In the meantime, everyone who’d responded to his January sales marketing drive was still waiting for their orders to be fulfilled, but Harold didn’t know who they were. Their money had been taken but no goods could be sent out, and he couldn’t even e-mail them to let them know. A few irate letters had arrived and luckily the orders could be dispatched to these, but other than that, the warehouse near the Gatehouse now sat idle. Yul had ordered a halt to all quota work as Harold had no idea what goods were required, and all the new schemes such as the llama herd and the range of toiletries were on hold.

  Harold was devastated and took the disaster as a personal failure. He felt that he’d been targeted by the hacker. He constantly relived that dreadful moment when his temple of figures had crumbled and the red message had flashed before his eyes. He wondered almost obsessively who this Malus could be. And what did it mean? As soon as he was back online, he’d researched the meaning of Malus. Dismissing the crab apple links, he’d found references to an evil entity in a Doctor Who episode, and also a character linked to Dracula through a computer game. He dismissed these as well and decided that Malus must be a reference to an ‘evil one’, if Magus meant ‘the wise one’. So there was an evil one lurking in Stonewylde ready to cause mayhem, and the thought of that gave Harold nightmares.

  One thing he knew for sure was that there was nobody within the community with the expertise to devise such a virus. The professional who’d assessed the damage was adamant that this was an extremely sophisticated bug and not the work of an amateur. Nobody living at Stonewylde could have created it, so the traitor was getting external help. Who could afford that? The thought crossed Harold’s mind, much as he tried to dismiss it – was it actually Yul himself? He seemed the only person clever enough to come up with such an idea, but Harold couldn’t see any possible motive. Yul had been delighted with Stonewylde. com and the much-needed money pouring into Stonewylde’s coffers. Why would he set out to destroy it?

  Sitting now in his cold bedroom, for Yul’s bad temper was such that it wasn’t a good idea to spend any more time in the office than strictly necessary, Harold felt thoroughly depressed. Every scheme he’d dreamt up was now suspended, including the negotiations for supplying venison to a supermarket chain. In the furore after Imbolc when there’d been no Internet access for a good couple of weeks, and then with all his contacts lost, he’d missed the opportunity for that particular deal and the buyers had gone elsewhere
. All his costings and research for schemes such as the bottled spring water had vanished and Harold was now far too despondent to start all over again, or at least not until he knew it was safe from sabotage.

  There was only one bright hope on the horizon, one idea that had not gone down the pan on the night when this evil Malus had entered the heart of Stonewylde.com and wreaked such havoc. Harold, his thin face quite haggard with worry and stress, and his nervous tic even more jerky than usual, allowed a tiny hope to flare. This was the exciting proposal he’d been waiting to hear about on that terrible night. The e-mail never had come through because at that point the whole system had succumbed to the attack from Malus. But fortunately all had not been lost with this scheme. Harold was still scared of mentioning the idea to Yul in his present volatile state, but something must be decided soon, as time was of the essence. With a heavy sigh, Harold prepared to shut down his screen for the night and get some sleep. He knew this proposal could be the making of Stonewylde, the one thing that could get it back on its feet, but he was terrified of Yul’s response. He must be brave and broach the subject with Yul; Buzz wouldn’t wait forever for an answer.

  5

  Sylvie sat in her little office near the School Wing and gazed out of the window. It was almost Beltane and April had been bright and beautiful; the green haze that clothed many bare branches was already unfurling into leaves. Some of the older folk were shaking their heads and muttering about lack of rainfall and everything being far too early this year, but the younger ones were out and about, enjoying the warmth and that magical feeling of expectation when nature seems poised to explode.

  She’d been sitting still for some time, lost in dreams, listening to the rooks noisily stealing each other’s twigs up in the trees. This stirred a memory from years ago; standing on the terrace beside Magus and laughing together at the messy nests in the rookery. They’d been discussing her and Miranda’s initiation into Stonewylde society and whether they wanted to permanently join the community. Sylvie suddenly had a very bizarre thought – suppose she were to open her eyes now and find herself back in that hospital ward with the pack of white-coated wolves still surrounding her. Suppose all of this had only been a dream?

  A loud knock put paid to that idea and the door crashed open. Sylvie winced and glanced quickly at her list; this would be Jay, the last youngster she must see today. Taking a deep breath and trying to brighten her expression, she looked up to meet his piercing blue gaze. Sylvie felt herself spiralling in a weird vortex of time-slip, like a television programme she’d watched as a child where a figure spun around and around in a whirlwind of strange images. Surely this was Jackdaw?

  The youth stomped across the polished floor, almost tripped over the edge of the Axminster rug, and approached her desk. She’d arranged the furniture so that visitors sat by her side rather than opposite, and she gestured for him to sit down.

  ‘Hello, you must be Jay,’ she began.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He wouldn’t look at her but sat, enormous and awkward, slightly turned away so he didn’t have to meet her eye again.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jay, but I don’t think we’ve ever had much to do with each other, have we? I do know a lot of youngsters here but I don’t really know you at all.’

  He grunted in reply, staring down at his dirty work boots. He wasn’t wearing traditional Stonewylde clothes but had adopted Outside wear – jeans, a checked shirt and steel-toed boots. Only his heavy leather jacket was Stonewylde. Like his father, he had a large, bullet-shaped head with a massive neck, although unlike his father he hadn’t shaved his head but, instead, kept his hair clipped very short. His eyes bulged in just the way Jackdaw’s had, with a look of unhinged menace as if he were on the verge of losing his temper and becoming violent. Sylvie realised she’d tensed up and felt nervous of this youth, which was ridiculous.

  ‘Right, Jay, just a few details first to establish things and then we’ll have a chat about what you’d like to do with your future. Okay?’

  He shrugged noncommittally and, picking up his papers, Sylvie sighed. This wasn’t going to be an easy interview.

  ‘You’re living at the Hall, of course, and you’re currently attending college in the Outside World? It seems . . . you’re doing reasonably well, looking at your last exam results and college report . . .’

  Jay shifted suddenly in his seat which made Sylvie jump.

  ‘So . . . you don’t have a family trade to follow. And—’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ he said harshly, ‘And that’s because my dad was killed.’

  ‘Er, yes. I do remember your father, and it—’

  ‘Don’t say nothing against him, I’m warning you!’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it!’ replied Sylvie, shocked at his aggression.

  ‘Yeah, well, there’s them as bad-mouths my dad and it ain’t right! He done nothing wrong but everyone hates him.’

  Sylvie remembered Jackdaw’s appalling treatment of Yul at the quarry. She recalled too the way he’d looked at her when Magus had dragged her there to visit – a kind of visual rape. She’d been terrified of the brute and knew that Yul had suffered again at his hands that Samhain, when he’d been captive in the stone byre after her moon-dancing on the cliff-top. Yul still bore some scars from the torture inflicted by Jackdaw. Besides which, he’d originally been banished for choking his young wife – Jay’s mother and Marigold’s daughter – to death. But she had no intention of bringing any of that up now.

  ‘Jay, all we’re doing today is talking a little about what you’d like to do when you finish college. We need to look at the options and see if you’d like to stay at Stonewylde or seek work in the Outside World. And—’

  ‘I’ll stay in Stonewylde o’ course!’ he said scornfully. ‘I belong here, unlike some.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  She was astounded at his tone. He merely shrugged and looked pointedly out of the window. Sylvie considered asking him to leave the room, but that wasn’t her remit and she must try to help him. He obviously had a dreadful chip on his shoulder.

  ‘Alright, Jay, let’s forget that and discuss what your interests are. What do you enjoy doing?’

  He sniggered at this and Sylvie felt her skin crawl. He smelt horrible, not just unwashed teenage boy but another odour, rank and primitive. There was something about Jay that really made her uncomfortable.

  ‘Do you have any idea what type of work you’d like to do at Stonewylde?’ she asked, a little more sternly.

  ‘Yeah. I want to work at Quarrycleave.’

  Sylvie’s jaw dropped open at this and her heart fluttered in her chest.

  ‘But . . . but Quarrycleave is closed! You know what happened there. Everyone knows. It’s not a working quarry any more.’

  ‘I want to learn about stone, and I want to work there,’ he said stubbornly. ‘My dad worked there – Granny Vetchling and Great-aunt Violet told me all about it, and my Auntie Starling. My dad done a good job there and he enjoyed the work. That’s what I want to do.’

  ‘But Jay, it’s a terrible place. It’s—’

  ‘No it ain’t! I been up there many a time and I love it. I feel . . . I dunno . . . it’s where I want to be. That’s what I’m gonna do – be a quarryman.’

  Sylvie stared at him in disbelief, noting the way his greasy, slightly spotty face had broken out in a sweat. His bulbous eyes locked into hers and she shivered at the hostility and belligerence that emanated from him.

  ‘Right,’ she said, shuffling his papers and trying to make a note with a shaky hand. ‘We’ll look into apprenticeships in the quarrying industry. With both Portland and Purbeck close by, there must be some opportunities in that area. But Jay, I can tell you categorically – Quarrycleave will never be a working quarry again. And it’s not a place you should be visiting.’

  As the youth left her office, she felt immense relief and stood up to open the French window and blow away his lingering stench. She felt dizzy and stran
gely faint, and wondered whom she should talk to about Jay. He really didn’t seem quite right.

  Outside her office, Jay stormed down the corridor towards an outside door. He needed a smoke and knew just where to go. Shame he’d get roped into chopping wood, but it was a small price to pay. In his jacket pocket, his hand closed around the small chunk of pale, sparkling stone, about the size of a quail’s egg. He’d recently found it at the base of the great serpent stone in Quarrycleave and it had strange carvings on it. Jay thought of it as a talisman; it came from his favourite place and, in the absence of any mementoes from his father, it served as such. He now carried it with him always. Quarrycleave was the place where he wanted to be, and no threats from that skinny bitch would stop him.

  Sylvie knew she should be getting back to the cottage as the day was wearing on and evening was almost here. Maizie would be standing at the range in the kitchen, a delicious meal cooking and the table scrubbed and laid, ready for supper. The girls would have come back from Nursery a couple of hours ago. It was lovely that now they could just make their own way home together every day without waiting to be collected. Maizie would have greeted them, given them a drink and a snack, and then they’d either be out playing, doing jobs for her, or making something in the parlour. At the moment they were both enjoying knitting and felting, and were also writing more chapters in their book about hares and faeries. Sylvie smiled at the thought of her two precious daughters, but felt reluctant to go back to the cottage quite yet.

  Instead she made her way through the corridors until she reached the Galleried Hall. She paused a moment, gazing up at the Green Men and the triple hares. The place held so many memories . . . But resolutely, she went through a doorway with a pointed arch and into an even older passage. And then she’d reached the heavy oak door to Clip’s tower. Studded with iron rivets and nowadays locked on the inside, it wasn’t inviting. Sylvie lifted the heavy iron knocker and rapped hard. She repeated this and eventually heard the bolt being drawn back on the other side; there’d been no sound of footsteps, but when she saw Clip’s felt slippers she knew why.