by Janet Rising
“Oh, Bean, it happened years and years ago,” said James, his eyes glinting with the excitement of it all.
“It was only last summer!” protested Bean.
“I mean the Rowe family feud and possible bad death,” explained James, giving me a look.
“Well, it grosses me out!” Bean replied.
“And me,” I admitted.
We couldn’t wait to tell the others—not Cat, of course. Any mention of the séance and she got grumpy. I wished I didn’t know about it. I’d gladly exchange freaked out for grumpy any day.
“So the old man was murdered by his son?” asked Katy. “How horrible!”
“That’s a pretty bad death in my book,” said Dee ghoulishly. “This is so fantastic!”
“You’re weird, do you know that?” said Bean, looking at her in amazement.
“Do you reckon he poisoned him?” I asked.
“Or smothered him with a pillow, like in that movie,” suggested Dee, still smiling.
“What movie?”
“Can’t remember its name. Old black-and-white one. The woman smothers the faithful old servant with a pillow, and he’s too weak to cry out. I bet that’s what he did. No evidence, you see.”
“Can you all please shut up?” asked Bean, hugging herself.
“Why did she kill off a faithful old servant?” asked James.
“Dunno,” Dee replied. “I didn’t see all of it, just that part. She was evil, though.”
“La la la la la la la,” chanted Bean, her fingers in her ears.
Standing in front of her, James opened his eyes wide and made a slashing motion across his throat. Bean took one hand down to give James a shove, then put it back up to her exposed ear again.
“So they all lived in the big house?” asked Katy.
“According to Alex’s story,” I said. “And the family is buried in St. Mark’s churchyard.”
“Let’s go and look at the graves!” yelled Dee, jumping up.
“No way!”
“Get lost!”
“Don’t think so!”
“What are you all saying?”
“Take your fingers out of your ears, and you’ll hear us!”
“Shhhh, here comes Cat. You know how she hates us talking about it,” hissed Katy as Cat came along the drive.
“What’s going on?” asked Cat. “Why have you got your fingers in your ears, Bean?”
“Oh, nothing,” said James, winking at me. My knees went all wobbly. I hate myself, sometimes. I mean, it’s so pathetic. “We’re just talking about Laurel Heights, again!”
“Why have you got your fingers in your ears, Bean?” repeated Cat.
“Coming riding?” Katy asked her. “We’re all going for a ride in the woods since it’s so hot.”
“Mmmm, OK. I’ll get Bambi,” said Cat. “But why has…?”
Bean took her fingers out of her ears and narrowed her eyes. “Have you all finished?” she said, looking at us all.
James bundled her off to the barn, with Bean’s protests drowned out by James telling her to come and get Tiffany’s grooming kit—even though it was in the tack room.
“What is going on?” asked Cat again.
“Oh, you know Bean!” said Katy, grinning and shrugging her shoulders, and we all fled to get the ponies ready for their ride.
We all had a great ride. Sophie was in a particularly mellow mood so Dee had been allowed to come with us, providing we all rode sensibly, Sophie had insisted, with a particularly threatening look. Of course, five minutes away from the yard that went out of the window when Dee suggested we all play cowboys and Indians. James, Cat, and Bean were the Indians, and Katy, Dee, and I were the cowboys, and we took turns finding one another after a one-hundred-count start. It was a bit like hide-and-seek, only on ponies. James would insist on making whooping noises, which totally freaked out Tiffany, not that Bean seemed to care. She was too freaked out by the Rowe connection to worry about Tiffany bolting off through the trees.
Drummer loved it. He especially loved trying to find Bambi, which he did every time—which was annoying because I’d rather have found James. All the ponies, not just Tiff, got thoroughly overexcited, and we had to walk them home to cool off and get them to settle.
“My mom will never let me come out with you all again if I take Dolly back in this state!” Dee warned us as Dolly jogged along, fighting for her head and sweating, chanting, Let’s do it again! over and over. “For goodness sake, Pia, have a word, will you?”
“It was your idea!” I mumbled, trying to convince Dolly to walk quietly.
By the time we got back to the yard the ponies were cool and—with the exception of Tiffany—walking calmly. Jessica was in the yard with Alex, and she had news.
“What is it?” we asked eagerly, crowding around her on the ponies.
“Have you found anything?” asked Katy.
“Yes, we’ve found lots of things,” said Jessica, “but the foundations alone, although fascinating, won’t help your cause, I’m afraid.”
“But if they’re so fascinating, why don’t you want to preserve them?” asked Bean.
“I’m sorry, everyone,” Jessica said, ruefully shaking her head. “But our work here is almost done, and although we have put together a fabulous show—and I have you all to thank for that—there is not much else we need. We’ll be shooting the final few shots in the next couple of days, and we’ll probably be gone by the end of the week.”
“Is there really no way whatsoever you can prevent Robert Collins from building here?” James asked passionately. “Surely this Elizabethan house is important enough to stop any building work?”
“I’d love to say yes, James,” Jessica replied, “really I would, but although National Heritage did show some initial interest in our discoveries, they’re really not sufficiently interested in mere foundations. There’s nothing to see, nothing to save.”
“It’s all been for nothing!” Bean hissed at me.
I didn’t reply. I didn’t trust myself to speak. In my mind I saw all the ponies being led into trailers and going off in different directions to new homes. I thought of never seeing Bean or Katy or Dee or even Cat again. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine going to a stable where James wasn’t.
“If only you had something here that was still intact,” Jessica continued, smiling at James. “You know, a gazebo or a summerhouse or something. Anything that would tie in with the historical connections of this place and provide National Heritage with something tangible to latch on to.”
“She means charge people to see,” Bean whispered.
“There’s the icehouse,” said James.
The icehouse. Of course! I looked at Bean. She looked at me. We both looked at the others.
“The icehouse!” we all chorused.
“There’s an icehouse?” Jessica asked him sharply. James nodded. “About a mile away. Next to the lake—obviously.”
“Icehouses were usually later than Elizabethan,” said Jessica, “but I’d be very interested to see it. They’re fascinating.”
“So how old would it be?” asked Katy.
“Probably eighteenth century,” Jessica said. “Can you show me tomorrow?”
“Of course!” I said, my heart soaring. Could the icehouse really help us?
It was our third chance.
We were all at the stables bright and early, the ponies in and saddled, ready to take off. Then we had to wait around for Jessica and Alex. They arrived eventually, and with both of them walking, and all of us riding, we set off. Of course, with two pedestrians, it took forever to get there, but we finally rode past the river and on to the clearing where the icehouse was hidden.
As we approached, I felt my stomach churning with a mixture o
f excitement and fear. The icehouse was such a spooky place. For a start, you would never find it if you didn’t know it was there. It was set in a small clearing surrounded by trees and thick bushes, like it was hiding. When you did force your way through the leaves and branches, all you could see on three sides was a small, grassy mound. The fourth side held an old wooden door with big rusty hinges and looked just like a Hobbit house. The creaking wooden door opened up into a dark, brick-lined space that dropped away below ground and into darkness. Before refrigeration, ice would have been cut from the frozen lake nearby in winter and stored in its cold depths, ready to be used for ices and desserts in the big house subsequently built next to the remains of the Elizabethan mansion.
For something used for such a mundane purpose, the icehouse always gave me the creeps. It had been the hiding place of Jazz, the runaway girl I’d befriended, and Bambi had been held captive there, but even without these connections the place just seemed (to me, anyway) to have a sinister air about it. Hidden in a clearing, few people seemed to know it even existed.
Why hadn’t we thought of the icehouse before?
Jessica and Alex didn’t seem to have any qualms about its spookiness. They loved it.
“Oh, wow!” exclaimed Jessica, tugging at the door with Alex. “It’s fantastic!”
They both disappeared inside while we sat on the ponies in the sunshine.
“Will we be here long?” asked Bambi. She didn’t like being there—for obvious reasons, it brought back unwelcome memories for her.
“It’s OK, Bambi,” I heard Drummer tell her. “We’re all here with you.”
“I hate this place, too,” said Tiffany, looking around for an excuse to bolt home.
“Yes, well, we all know why,” said Bluey, “but it happened a long time ago.”
“What did?” I asked him.
“What did what?” everyone chorused at me.
“I was talking to Bluey,” I explained.
Bluey didn’t answer.
“What happened a long time ago, Bluey?” I repeated. Bluey just wrinkled up his muzzle and looked uncomfortable.
“Best you don’t know,” said Drummer, in the same sort of voice grown-ups use when they don’t want to tell you something about a wayward aunt who’s got lots of boyfriends or why they’d argued with the neighbors. It’s bad enough when they do it, without having to put up with the same sort of thing from my own pony. Annoying? I think so!
Alex and Jessica returned, interrupting my thoughts.
“This is fabulous!” Jessica enthused. “I’ll find out whose land this is, and then I can get the team along to take a look. I mean, there probably won’t be anything much to discover, but it’s such a well-preserved icehouse, it will make an interesting recording.”
“You mean it won’t help stop the development?” asked Katy, getting straight to the point.
“I can’t see how it could,” Alex told us. “It’s so far away from it.”
“There goes our third chance,” grumbled Bean.
I felt disappointed for another reason. I hadn’t really wanted to draw attention to the icehouse. It was sort of the yard secret. Who knew what would happen to it once everyone knew it was there. It would be labeled as dangerous and fenced off. We’d never be able to come and see it again. Not that I particularly wanted to, but it was sort of special, something we knew about that no one else did.
We all trooped back to the stables, feeling down, and it wasn’t until I was in bed that night that I remembered we still hadn’t found out what the ponies knew about the icehouse. I remember deciding just before I fell asleep that I’d tackle Drum about it the next day. Only the next day so much happened, the icehouse was the last thing on my mind.
When I arrived at the yard, everything was in an uproar, as usual. The Time Detectives were getting in everyone’s way, leaving the hose running and parking their cars in stupid places (like right across the entrance to the barn or the outdoor school), and I noticed that James was leaning over Bambi’s stable door, talking to Catriona, which was odd, given their attitude to each other since they’d been out together and split up.
I parked my bike and tried to look nonchalant as I walked up to Drum’s stable to get his halter. “Here’s Pia,” announced James. “She’ll be able to help.”
“Help with what?” I asked, sidling up beside James and peering into Bambi’s stable. Our combined silhouettes blocked most of the daylight, but as I looked into the gloom it was obvious that Cat and Bambi were not happy.
“Someone is coming to see Bambi,” said Cat, her voice trembling as she threw the saddle on her skewbald mare.
At first, being a bit slow on the uptake, I didn’t get the significance of what she was telling me. Coming to see Bambi? That was nice. And then I did get it. Wham! I got it all right. How dim was I?
“Oh no!” I cried, my hand flying to my mouth in horror. “You mean, coming to try her? To buy her?”
“That’s exactly what she means!” said James grimly.
“So much for all your bright ideas!” grumbled Bambi, snaking her head up and down as Cat did up her girth. “Now I’m going to the highest bidder, shipped off to goodness-only-knows where, with some people I don’t know, with ponies I’m not friends with, leaving Drummer—and it’s all YOUR FAULT!”
“Mine?” I protested.
“Not just yours—everyone!” moaned Bambi—with some justification. I was relieved to hear that I wasn’t held personally responsible. I usually seemed to be. But then, I thought, this isn’t about me. It’s about Bambi. What could we do now?
We heard a car door slam—Katy had arrived. As her mom drove away, Katy came over, and we told her the bad news.
“Oh no!” she cried, her eyes wide, her mouth open. “We have to do something!”
“You’ve all done quite enough already!” snapped Bambi as Cat did up the throatlatch to her bridle.
“Who’s coming to try her?” asked James.
“Some girl who wants a second pony,” spat out Cat, her eyes blazing. “Seems she’s grown out of her first pony and wants something with a bit more friskiness, a bit of a challenge, which, thanks to our plan being so successful, Bambi is now deemed to be.”
“Well that’s easy to remedy,” said James casually. “I mean, Bambi just has to be the opposite of what the girl wants.”
Everyone was silent. This plan was brilliant in its simplicity. Bambi now had to be boringly quiet.
Bambi sighed. “OK, so now you want me to be a slowpoke, am I getting that right?”
“Perfectly!” I told her, and explained to the others that Bambi had it figured out.
“Well I, for one, am getting very confused!” snapped Cat.
“Isn’t that your Aunt Pam’s car?” asked Katy, gazing down the drive.
We all scattered, leaving Cat and Bambi to it. From the safety of the tack room we watched as Aunt Pam went into Bambi’s stable to brief Cat. Then another car arrived, a huge SUV, ejecting a tall, blond woman and a girl a bit younger than us, dressed in a polo shirt and jodhpurs and looking excited.
“Bambi’s just about to ruin her day!” remarked James.
“Oh, what a shame,” said Katy kindly. “What’s more exciting than looking for a pony?”
“She’s the enemy!” I growled, unsympathetic to anyone wanting to take Bambi away from my Drummer. I was glad he was still in the field—I could only guess his reaction to this latest development in our Bambi saga.
We sat on tack boxes in the tack room, pretending we weren’t interested, yet looked intently at proceedings in the yard. Cat led Bambi out while Aunt Pam talked to the woman and her daughter. We could hear her assuring them how Bambi was anything but a novice ride. The daughter smiled at Cat. Cat scowled back at her.
“We want something Natasha can d
o all Pony Club activities on,” the mother said as Natasha stroked Bambi’s nose, “and she needs a pony with some liveliness. Our old Sunshine is too slow for Nat these days.” Cat just stood there, holding her beloved Bambi while her pony’s merits were discussed in front of her. I could only imagine how she was feeling. This was just terrible!
“Catriona will ride Bambi first,” we heard Aunt Pam say, taking Bambi’s reins so Cat could get her riding hat. She walked over to us in the tack room, her face expressionless.
“Oh, Cat,” wailed Katy, “this is torture!”
“Tell me about it!” snapped Cat, jamming on her hat and retracing her steps. Mounting Bambi (Bambi stood in the yard with her head down, the very picture of a tired, dead-quiet, bored pony), Cat nudged her pony into a walk, and they made their way to the outdoor school. We all trailed behind at a respectable distance, loitering by the barn, watching from afar.
There was a holdup while Aunt Pam had to get one of the Time Detectives team to move their car by the school gate, and Cat explained to Bambi’s potential buyers about the TV series excavating the field, and then she was riding Bambi around the school. A very reluctant Bambi. A Bambi who looked barely able to put one hoof in front of the other.
“I wish we could hear what was being said!” I cried, anxiously biting the inside of my cheek.
“Oh I can’t bear it!” squeaked Katy. “This is just too awful!”
“That Bambi is one hell of an equine actress,” observed James. She was, too.
“You don’t have to hear what’s being said to realize that Aunt Pam is pretty annoyed,” I said. Cat’s aunt had her lips pressed together and her hands on her hips. I couldn’t blame her. It must have been very confusing; one minute Bambi was all over the place like a pinball machine, the next she acted like the quietest pony on the planet. Analyze that, I thought.
After just a few minutes demonstrating that Bambi wasn’t going to do anything wild, Cat brought her to a halt (she was practically there anyway), dismounted, and helped Natasha mount, shortening her stirrups to the new rider’s length.
