Tregarthur's Crystal: Book 4 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  ‘Go on.’ Jenna let Demelza sit up.

  ‘The cave had a green glow at the back, a sort of light coming from the stones.’ Demelza stood and tried to brush away the mud. ‘It has to be some sort of radiation for the crystal.’

  ‘Re-charging it, you thought?’ Jenna asked.

  Demelza nodded.

  ‘Why didn’t she just do that this time?’ I said.

  Demelza looked away. ‘I did tell you, she said it was too late, that the crystal was no use, she couldn’t get it to work again, it was dead. Look at the pieces you’ve found.’

  Jenna took out the two pieces and held them up.

  Demelza went on: ‘There’s no light inside. You could always see some light in the crystal and after being in the cave the light became stronger.’

  ‘She needed something stronger.’ Jenna held the pieces up again, peering into them, Demelza was right; there was no light coming from them.

  ‘A nuclear bomb would certainly be stronger,’ I said, gesturing the explosion, ‘Boom.’

  ‘Well, she’s trying something.’ Jenna put the crystal pieces in her jacket pocket. ‘We can’t stay here so we might as well go to Miss Tregarthur’s cave. Come on Demelza, take us to it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Demelza said, with her usual sly tone.

  I thought she would try and make some sort of demand.

  ‘Oh Alvin, it’s torture time again,’ Jenna sounded so serious and Demelza cringed. ‘Just take us to it.’

  ‘Ok. Ok. It’s over there.’ She pointed down the valley, down into the mist which had formed again.

  Before we left I hung back and shouted one more time at the Hanging Stones. I kicked out at the rock, hurting my foot, and still nothing happened.

  ‘Come on,’ Jenna shouted.

  Surely it must have been my imagination but I thought I heard a deep whispered sigh coming from somewhere deep in the moor. Just imagination. I joined the others and we slipped and slid down the hill in the mud. HG appeared to be a little better as we came down off the high moor.

  Tregarthur’s Cave

  -12-

  Demelza pointed out the route, down into the valley and along a stream. In the mist it was difficult to be sure of our direction.

  ‘Follow the stream,’ Demelza said.

  For a while the wind blew the mist away and we saw the valley open up before us, hills looming on either side. This felt familiar, a wild place but one that I recognised. As we came lower we saw sheep.

  ‘No hut,’ I said, but my words were blown away. There was no shepherd’s hut, no dead bodies as there had been before. Just the bleak moor, always watching us. I didn’t believe that was imagination, this moor was alive, the stones, the crystal and whatever happened to time. Nothing I could see helped to fix time, there was nothing to see that wasn’t the moor, nothing made by man.

  Further down we started meeting people. There were other people walking on the moor. Should we worry about them? They didn’t seem to be part of any plot, Miss Tregarthur’s plot, they were just walking on the moor. I couldn’t help staring at them – their clothes, amazing, like you would see in old pictures but here they were alive. They were all men; I suppose no women had taken up walking.

  ‘Women not allowed, I expect,’ Jenna said. ‘Had to stay at home and work.’

  I thought she was right but that didn’t stop us staring at their clothes: heavy tweeds and short length trousers with long socks and boots and above all wearing TIES! Why would anyone wear a tie to go walking?

  I hadn’t really taken into account HG’s clothes but they were similar to the other walkers. The three of us were in rough jackets and trousers and I knew we looked more like labourers than people walking for pleasure. Everyone we passed said hello to HG and ignored us. Actually they didn’t so much say anything but tipped their hats. Because that was the other thing they were all wearing – hats. Mostly flat cap, some tweeds and some …

  ‘They’re like Sherlock Holmes,’ Demelza squealed at one group, all with the same hats, exactly like we’d seen on TV programmes.

  ‘Deer stalkers, they’re called,’ HG found his voice to tell us something he knew about. ‘You’ve heard of Conan Doyle, have you?’

  ‘Who?’ we all asked together.

  ‘The great author who wrote about Sherlock Holmes – you mentioned him so you must have read the books.’

  ‘No, saw an old TV programme,’ I said.

  ‘Wasn’t one of his stories about this moor and a big dog?’ Demelza said.

  ‘I heard he was thinking about writing a book about some hound that was meant to terrorise this moor. But only thinking about it.’ HG stared at the ground looking worried. ‘Perhaps I’ll tell him he should write it. Have you got an idea for the title?’

  ‘Hound of the Basket thingies, wasn’t it?’ Demelza said.

  ‘Don’t know, we’ve done huge dogs on this moor already,’ Jenna answered. ‘Don’t want anymore.’

  HG must have felt we’d stolen his famous writer for our weird future things. He didn’t say anymore, but did tip his hat at other walkers.

  We went on, down a steeper part of the valley. Coming off the wild part of moor we found a path, used by other walkers but overgrown with ferns and brambles crowding our way. Brambles with long spiky thorns which whipped our legs, ferns dripping with water. And above us, the likelihood that we would soon get a lot more water from the sky.

  ‘Somewhere near here,’ Demelza said, when Jenna asked her several times where the cave might be. The path moved closer to the stream, closer and muddier.

  Demelza stopped and looked around. ‘We have to cross over the stream, get off this path.’

  The stream wasn’t wide and should have been easy to cross, but HG slipped and slid half into the water, I had to haul him out. There was no path on the other side. I pulled off a branch and started to smash my way through, Jenna did the same. Doing anything useful was beneath Demelza who just hung on to HG.

  ‘In case he falls again,’ she said, with her usual smirk.

  Still following the stream, we were going down into a gully with the ground becoming steeper and steeper on our side, forming a cliff covered with rocks and trees leaning over towards the stream, some trees had tumbled down making it even harder to make our way.

  HG found the cave. Not on purpose. He stumbled and fell headlong down a hole into water. Demelza had, of course, let go of him as soon as he started to fall. I had to pull him out again, he was soaked and muddy and I didn’t want to even think about the smell, this stream was used by animals and not only for drinking.

  Jenna was peering at an opening in the cliff side, partly covered by ferns and by one of the fallen trees. It had to be the entrance to Miss Tregarthur’s cave. The dark rock of the moor was streaked with browns and reds and greens. Colours we had not seen before out here, except in the crystal.

  Water streamed out of the entrance, coming from darkness further in and flowing down to join the main stream.

  ‘There is a path,’ Demelza pointed.

  On one side, a narrow ledge led into the cave. Could this have been used recently, by Miss Tregarthur? I couldn’t see any footprints but they would probably have been washed away. To get to the ledge we had to push through a mass of brambles, catching at us with every move we made.

  Jenna stopped, plucking a piece of yellow thread from a thorn and turned to me with a question on her face.

  ‘Could be,’ I said.

  ‘She wears a yellow cloak,’ Demelza had been leading and looked back at the thread.

  Difficult to believe anything from one yellow thread. If it did belong to Miss Tregarthur had she snagged herself going in or coming out? Did it mean she was further inside or had she left?

  ‘We need … keep quiet,’ Demelza spoke so softly I didn’t catch all her words.

  Keeping quiet was probably a good idea but it was unlike Demelza to make that sort of suggestion. ‘Is there something else in there?’ I pointed into the dark. ‘Apa
rt from the fact that Miss Tregarthur could be lurking with her gun.’

  ‘I said we HAD to keep quiet,’ Demelza whispered. ‘Miss Tregarthur said we had to keep quiet or her family would hear.’

  That sounded a lot worse. If we didn’t find Miss Tregarthur we might find a whole hoard of her crazy family. What were her family doing out here on the moor and why did she want to avoid them?

  ‘Maybe her family know all about her, and that’s why she kept away,’ I said.

  ‘We’ve met two of them before and both were all bad,’ Jenna said. ‘Although she is probably the worst.’

  Demelza didn’t know more or didn’t own up to knowing more, even with the threats she got from Jenna. That didn’t mean she was telling the truth. Truth and Demelza never went together. Was it likely that people might live in here? There were no signs that anyone had spent any time here.

  ‘We went in quite a way,’ Demelza explained. ‘The cave goes back a long way and comes out somewhere on another side, I’ll show you where we stopped.’

  Jenna turned on Demelza. ‘If you didn’t go far in, how do you know it comes out somewhere else?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Demelza squeaked as Jenna poked her and she stumbled. ‘She said it went on, Miss Tregarthur said it did.’

  ‘Can’t you leave her alone?’ HG helped her up.

  ‘Leave her alone? Not really,’ Jenna said, with a stifled laugh. ‘I may have to kill her soon.’

  Demelza clung on to HG. ‘You’ll save me, won’t you Herbie?’

  HG looked more than confused, banter was lost on him.

  We followed Demelza further along the ledge, ducking under the dripping overhanging rock. After a few more steps the passage became wider with no vicious plants to avoid, still following a branch of the stream. The further we went, the darker it became, and we were soon splashing through pools of water and feeling our way.

  With the light from behind almost completely fading, I thought we might have to find something to burn to light the way. But as we turned a corner a faint glow appeared, a faint green glow coming from the rocks and getting stronger as we moved along.

  It wasn’t bright enough to see our way clearly. I had ended up in front and missed the dip in the roof, banged my head hard and stumbled forwards into a larger, wider space.

  ‘Another cave, another place,’ I muttered in the gloomy light and rubbed my head.

  We could see more because the back of this cave glowed with a stronger green light. Bright enough to see where we were, as our eyes grew accustomed to the light. Bright enough to see there were signs that someone had been here before. This cave had obviously been used fairly recently. At one side there was an old battered chair, a row of shelves, a blanket and a rough bed.

  ‘This has been used recently,’ Jenna held up a cup she’d found on a ledge. There were a few plates and more mugs. ‘Someone’s been here, can’t tell how long ago.’

  ‘I told you, we came here,’ Demelza sounded as though we should be pleased.

  ‘She’s not here now,’ I said, after checking the cave to make sure there weren’t any places for Miss Tregarthur to hide.

  ‘Let’s suppose she was here, did something with the crystal, made it work and she’s left, what do we do?’ Jenna rounded on Demelza. ‘What did she do with the crystal? What did she do to get it working again? What should we do with these pieces?’ Jenna pulled out the two fragments.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Demelza was obviously trying to hide information, almost as though she couldn’t stop doing it, couldn’t tell the truth.

  ‘Talk, or you go in the stream.’ Jenna had grabbed her and was about to upend her into the water before she gave in. I stood in front of HG in case he decided to intervene but he probably wanted to know more as well.

  ‘Hold on, hold on,’ Demelza squirmed in Jenna’s grip. ‘She tried to stop us watching her but I saw what she did. She put it up there near the brightest green light.’ Demelza pointed to a ledge higher up on the cave wall.

  ‘Then what?’ Jenna still held on to her and gave her a shake.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ Demelza struggled which made Jenna take a stronger hold around her neck.

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ Demelza gurgled.

  ‘You can still talk,’ Jenna eased her hold a bit.

  ‘Just let me go and I’ll explain.’ Demelza did pull away and stood rubbing her neck as though it was some terrible injury.

  ‘Well?’ Jenna said and was ready to grab her again. Demelza had a habit of keeping secrets, and Jenna was becoming much harder on her. Jenna would have been like that at school. I knew that Demelza lying was not the only problem.

  ‘It seemed to take on the green colour,’ Demelza said, still rubbing her neck.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, more loudly than I had expected and the noise echoed around the cave.

  ‘Shh. I told you, we have to keep quiet,’ Demelza recovered, preferring giving instructions to being attacked.

  I wasn’t sure we should do anything Demelza told us. If we put the pieces up on the ledge, then Demelza might try and run off with them. It could just be a trick.

  If Miss Tregarthur’s family lived somewhere round here, and if she was so keen to avoid them, they might even help us. Having thought that, I remembered Hugh – one of her relatives who’d locked us in a barn to wait for the hanging party. I shivered, probably best to keep quiet.

  ‘When Miss Tregarthur put the crystal up there it turned green as though the stone was regaining its power?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s what I said.’ Demelza looked pleased, happy to be the one who knew most.

  ‘She must have come back here after she left that Masterson man.’ Jenna reached up to the ledge and ran her hand along it, not finding anything.

  ‘I just don’t understand why she didn’t do it straight away, why all this messing around with nuclear bombs and radiation? Why didn’t she come here straight away?’ I said.

  ‘I told you she kept saying it was no use this time,’ Demelza said.

  ‘What could have changed her mind? What happened to make her decide this was worth a try?’ Jenna could have been asking the cave for all the answers I had.

  HG had not said a word since we had been in the cave. In the silence after Jenna’s question he coughed and said: ‘This time travel is probably rubbish, I don’t believe a word you’ve been saying, but you did say you thought she’d got it wrong, didn’t you? Came to the wrong time.’

  ‘Of course … she didn’t know,’ I started. ‘When she came out of the tunnel, shot Zach and went off, she thought it was the right time, the time she had planned to find Marie Curie.’

  ‘She must have known the crystal was fading. She knew that before she came here,’ Jenna said.

  ‘That’s right …’ Demelza blurted before realising this was another new piece of information.

  ‘Maybe the tunnel did it on purpose.’ Jenna just held off another attack on Demelza. ‘It planned to let her rot in this time, no crystal, no time travel. Miss Tregarthur sets up Masterson just in case, in case she is stuck here.’

  Demelza gave a sort of nod as though she agreed with Jenna. If so, that meant she knew it already, I couldn’t see how she could have worked it out.

  ‘She only needs to jump a few years forward,’ Jenna sounded as though she had the answer. ‘Doesn’t need to make the crystal work perfectly, just enough to get her to Marie Curie. That’s why she came here.’

  There seemed a lot of holes in that explanation, but it was probably the best we could do. ‘Are we trying to go after her or to get home?’ I wasn’t clear what Jenna felt we should be doing.

  ‘We’re still trying to get this crystal to the tunnel in the hope that the tunnel will take us home, it won’t do that unless we bring the crystal,’ Jenna said, making it clear that this was still what we had to do.

  ‘Even if it doesn’t … even if it’s dead?’ I said, realising how daft that sounded, talking about a dead piece of stone.

&
nbsp; ‘Yep.’

  ‘Ok,’ I agreed, looking down at the rough bed. We could be here for a while and I wished we could find somewhere a bit more comfortable.

  ‘Demelza, tell us again what she did here. When you weren’t passing the time plotting our deaths, what exactly did she do?’ Jenna stepped closer.

  ‘Told you, she put the crystal up there,’ Demelza pointed back to the ledge.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Then she’d take it away and say it was no use and she’d find another space. Like that one,’ Demelza pointed to another hole in the wall. ‘She’d do it over and over, saying it wasn’t powerful enough. But in the end she seemed happy enough.’

  ‘Happy with what?’ I said.

  ‘When she took it out the crystal colours were brighter, all sorts of colours.’

  ‘There, that wasn’t too difficult,’ Jenna prodded her. ‘Wasn’t too difficult to tell a bit of the truth, was it?’

  Demelza pouted. ‘When it didn’t work quickly, Miss Tregarthur often said she needed something more powerful than this cave.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d had the nuclear bomb idea before,’ Jenna said.

  ‘Why Masterson? Where does he fit in?’ I said, after a while.

  ‘Wasn’t he in the book?’ Demelza said.

  ‘No,’ HG butted in, startling us. ‘It was just those machines of war.’ He’d said so little since we’d been in the cave. But Masterson still remained a mystery. How had Miss Tregarthur known about him?

  We put the broken pieces of crystal on the ledge and waited. As Demelza said, our stone took up the green glow. The glow disappeared when we took the pieces away from the light.

  ‘Leave them overnight. That was what Miss T did,’ Demelza suggested.

  That sounded a reasonable idea, but it could just be Demelza planning to steal the pieces when we slept. I could see Jenna had the same idea in her mind.

  The stifling air in the dark, cold cave eventually drove us outside. A few steps away from the cave entrance the stream opened up onto a grassy area. I tried to light a fire but didn’t succeed. It was a cool night but none of us wanted to sleep in the cave. HG shivered and groaned all the time.