The Shadow Guests

by Joan Aiken

  ‘You need glasses, pal.’

  ‘Glasses?’

  ‘Spectacles.’

  ‘I know not spectacles.’

  The poor boy was desperately short-sighted. When he read his little book, Lives of the Saints, he held it three inches from his nose.

  ‘Anyway,’ Cosmo reflected, ‘I suppose you could hardly wear glasses under that saucepan. Put it all on, Sim, and let’s see how you look.’

  So, piece by piece, the armour was all hung or jammed on to Sim; the short tunic, or hauberk, with sleeves coming down to the wrists and chain-mail gloves to match; the leggings, or chausses, also of chain mail sewn on to cloth, and the eye-slitted helmet which when put over his head suddenly turned the inoffensive Sim into a highly sinister figure.

  ‘There ought to be a shield, a sword and a spear, of course,’ he said. ‘But those my uncle will provide.’

  Cosmo had forgotten about the shield.

  ‘Blimey – that as well! How much does the shield weigh? Ten or twelve pounds at least; and the sword; you had better do some weightlifting exercises, Sim, to thicken up your biceps. Like this, see, twenty or thirty times every morning and evening.’

  Sim heaved another long sigh.

  ‘You know not, friend, how fortunate you are to dwell in this peaceful spot, and not be required to ride off and rescue the Holy Places from the infidel.’

  ‘Oh, I do know, pal,’ Cosmo answered sadly. ‘I do know; believe me. Are you all fixed up now? Want a trial fight, with staves, to see how you manage in your armour?’

  ‘I thank you, no.’ Sim was firm. ‘There will be fighting enough by and by. And you have been too good a friend these last few days for me to wish to fight you any more – even in play! God keep you. When I come back –’ his voice wavered for a moment – ‘when I come back from the crusade I shall visit you again, and shall have great tales to tell, and many trophies to show!’

  ‘Of course you will,’ said Cosmo, feeling as if his heart was breaking. Twilight was beginning to thicken. He said, ‘Is your uncle going to come and pick you up here, or what?’

  ‘I am to meet him, this eve, at the head of the lane, where it meets the causeway. So I had best be off. Adieu, my good, good friend and helper. When two grown men bid farewell, they think no shame to embrace,’ he said, and hugged Cosmo, nearly tipping himself over. Then he stumped away at a slow but dogged pace, swaying slightly from side to side, but each time just managing to recover his balance.

  Cosmo watched him vanish into the twilight, and heard his small clear voice raised bravely in one of his own songs:

  ‘See the crusader

  Stride up the lane.

  He will be a hero

  When he comes again.

  Gallant are they

  Who now have gone

  With helmet and sword

  To Ascalon.

  If he be not

  In battle slain

  He will be a hero

  When he comes again.’

  7. Moley

  ‘Do you happen to know whether that monkish chronicle mentioned if there was a Simon Curtoys killed in the crusades?’ Cosmo asked Eunice at breakfast one day.

  ‘I don’t remember, Cosmo. But it seems awfully likely, doesn’t it? There was appalling mortality on those crusades anyway – about fifty per cent of those who went never came back; and on the earlier, more disorganized ones, I believe it was more like ninety per cent. No wonder the ones who came back were so pleased with themselves that they lie on their tombs with their legs crossed.’

  ‘Poor Simon. I suppose he did get killed.’

  ‘Poor Simon,’ echoed Eunice. ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘In my mind, I think. I’ve been having – dreams, about people.’

  ‘I wondered if something was going on. You’ve been – well, rather absent lately.’

  Cosmo looked at his cousin nervously. Eunice was a scientist; could she possibly believe in what had been happening to him? He did not think he could tell her; not just yet. He needed to get himself sorted out first.

  She went on, giving him a cautious glance, ‘Dreams are usually memories; the computer in your mind pressing a button, selecting something it wants to show you, that it reckons is important. Do you know, I read somewhere, that we use more energy suppressing things we want to forget than in remembering things we want to keep. Isn’t that strange?’

  ‘Do you think,’ said Cosmo, ‘that my computer could press a button in somebody else’s mind? Someone who had been dead for hundreds of years? Or that his computer could press a button in my mind?’

  Eunice looked at him gravely. ‘I don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘Telepathy is a very well-established fact by now. People are getting in touch with each other’s minds all the time. And I wouldn’t think that an interval of a few hundred years could make much difference. Listen –’ she switched on the radio, which, at that moment, happened to be playing a Mozart bassoon concerto. ‘We are hearing that exactly the way Mozart heard it in his mind, just about two hundred years ago. It’s just as if he is transmitting his idea to us. So, if a tune, why not other things? Pictures, sensations, tastes, ideas, other kinds of sounds? Formulae? We have to remember too that our five senses – sight, hearing, feel, taste, smell – are a terribly limited means of finding out what’s going on around us. We’re like deaf, colour-blind, myopic bats groping about – dogs can smell things that we can’t, owls can hear sounds our ears can’t catch, telescopes can see objects far beyond our range of vision – heaven only knows what is happening right in front of our noses, which our primitive apparatus just isn’t capable of grasping. We’re like a little old lady with an ear trumpet and a crystal set, trying to hear the London Philharmonic which is playing away at top volume in the next room.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Heavens, I must get on with my proofs. I keep forgetting that just because you’re on holiday doesn’t mean that I’m off the hook. See you at lunch –’ and she hurried off to her study.

  Cosmo decided that now was the time to make a thorough exploration of the mill buildings. He had been rather ducking that – the insides looked so dark and cobwebby and Eunice said the floors were rotten; and he had really been quite occupied, one way and another.

  As usual he couldn’t resist standing on the footbridge and staring down into the clear fast-running waters of the Dribble. He thought about Con, and about Sim. Had he dreamed them, or made them up? Were they products of his own mind? How could he ever tell? They had seemed perfectly real. There, moored by the bank, was the boat in which Sim had been lying, reading his book; there, across the lawn, was the walnut tree, the lookout platform defended by the poles that Con had helped hammer into place. Surely they were real people? If I had made them up, if I had invented them, he thought, I’d have liked them more from the start, I would have made them into ideal friends. But I didn’t like them, not at first. And then, later, I found out things about them that I hadn’t expected – so they must have been real, mustn’t they?

  Soon he would tell Eunice about them. But not just yet.

  All of a sudden, he decided that he didn’t want to explore the mill today.

  His decision was affected by an optical illusion he had had just for a moment or two. A few semi-rotten planks were leaning against a wall of the mill building. For a brief flash of time he had been certain that he saw a man in a black cloak standing there, motionless, watching him. Then he turned his head a bit more and realized with relief that what he had seen must have been the triangular dark shadow of the planks against the wall. But still – the mill would keep for another day. Instead he did various jobs for Mr Marvell, helping him sink two posts and make a gate for the pigsty.

  After lunch Mrs Tydings said she was going to walk over the fields to Gitting-under-Edge to visit her cousin who kept a shop there; she asked if Cosmo would like to go along. He hadn’t been that way yet, and said that he would. They set out together wearing raincoats and Cosmo carrying a basket which contained
a cake Mrs Tydings had made for her cousin.

  The diagonal path they took climbed through the wood behind the house. Bluebells were beginning to come out but were still half curled up; the general effect was like a greenish grey mist through the wood. Halfway up, Cosmo noticed a tremendously strong smell of garlic; looking down he saw that they were above the point where the brook bubbled out of the hillside as a spring, and began its descent.

  ‘Ransoms growing down there,’ said Mrs Tydings.

  ‘Ransoms?’

  ‘Wild garlic. See those white flowers? Keep off a peck of vampires, those would,’ Mrs Tydings said with her sniff, and Cosmo chuckled, thinking of Remove’s nickname for Eunice. If they knew what she was really like!

  ‘How are you getting on at school, then?’ asked Mrs Tydings, as they came out from the top of the wood. In front of them, now, stretched a long smooth ridge of ploughed land which they would have to cross. It was like walking over the back of a whale, high and windy, with gulls and plovers wheeling around them. Their path went ahead in a series of right-angle turns, working round the edge of fields. The sky was grey and flurried, undecided whether to rain or not.

  ‘School? Not too well. The work’s all right but I don’t like the people. They’re spiteful.’

  ‘Ah. They’re like chicken, I daresay,’ Mrs Tydings said. In spite of her age she had no trouble keeping up with Cosmo, she walked with the loose stride of a countrywoman. ‘You keep chicken cooped up, they take to pecking themselves and each other. Children’s the same. I don’t hold with boarding schools. It’s not natural to take children from home. But I daresay they’ll get better, you’ll find, as they get bigger.’

  ‘Mrs Tydings,’ Cosmo said, hopping over a style – ahead of them, across a pale-brown horizon of curved ploughland, they could now see the steeple and roofs of Gitting-under-Edge, a small hamlet huddled against a grassy hillside.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Do you think the Curtoys family curse will ever stop?’

  ‘You been worrying your head over that?’

  ‘Of course I have! What about when I grow up and have children?’

  ‘Well: I think it will stop in the end,’ said Mrs Tydings, after some thought. ‘Trouble is, when someone gets real furious, like that old priestess must have been – and you can’t blame her, poor soul, with her daughter and her grandson killed – you get someone real vicious-angry like that, what they’re going to do’s going to have an effect for a long, long time. It’s like dropping burning acid on cloth – it don’t go through only one layer, it goes down and down. But it won’t go on for ever; in the end it’ll come to a thicker layer of cloth, maybe, and there it’ll stop.’

  ‘You think it’ll be like that with the curse?’

  ‘Ah, I do.’

  ‘What sort of thing might stop it, do you think, Mrs Tydings?’

  ‘Well,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘maybe what your Ma and brother done might stop it. Going off by theirselves like that. Breaking the pattern, putting in another kind of layer. Do you see what I mean?’

  And immediately, Cosmo did see what she meant. He looked at her in amazement, thinking that her shrewd little wedge-shaped face was exactly right for the sort of person she was. An eight-foot patch of sunlight came sweeping towards them along the ground. Cosmo felt like bounding right over it, from end to end.

  ‘Look – the sky’s clearing,’ he said. ‘I believe the sun will be out by the time we walk home – see that big chunk of blue over there!’

  When Cosmo went to bed that night he was comfortably tired – not exhausted, as he had been after days of armour-polishing and battle practice with poor Sim, but just pleasantly stretched by the things he had been doing, and the walk to the village. He fell asleep instantly, and began to dream at once.

  He dreamed that Mark had shut him in the dog kennel; they had had a dog once, long ago, in Hampstead.

  ‘Mark, let me out. Please, please let me out!’

  But Mark would not.

  Trying to struggle out of his dream, Cosmo woke himself up. But then he realized that he must still be dreaming. Mark used, long ago, to have a horrible trick of holding Cosmo pinned under the bedclothes, the sheets and blankets pressed down tightly over his head so that he couldn’t escape – it was the worst torture in the world. Mark was doing it now. Cosmo tried to yell, but there was so little air in the black cave of the bed that he couldn’t draw enough breath into his lungs to make any sound. He was suffocating. It was a horrible, nightmarish feeling. It must be a nightmare. And yet he couldn’t break out of it. He tried to move his arms and legs, but they wouldn’t move. A terrific weight, on top of him, was pressing him down. In fact the only reason why he wasn’t squashed flat was that his bed had a hammocky sag in the middle; huddled in this dip, with his head jammed between his arms, he was just able to survive. But not for long … Again he tried to call out, but could only produce a grunt.

  It must be a nightmare!

  ‘Cosmo!’

  That was Eunice, her voice cracked with horror and amazement. ‘What in heaven’s name – Cosmo, are you all right under there? Are you there?’

  ‘Ugh –’

  ‘Wait, I’ll have to fetch Emma – Keep calm, Cosmo, I’ll only be gone three minutes –’

  It seemed like a century. By breathing shallowly, Cosmo reckoned he might manage to last for six more breaths. His eyes felt red-hot, his cheeks were swollen, he had a pain like a blade in his chest –

  He had counted up to twelve when he heard Mrs Tydings.

  ‘Good gracious heavens, Miss Eunice, how ever in the world did that get there?’

  ‘I cannot imagine! But Cosmo’s underneath, and we’ve got to get it shifted. Cosmo? Can you hear me?’

  ‘Ugh –’

  ‘We’re going to lift it when I say one, two, three. Can you push up too? Kind of hump yourself? It’s going to take all our combined strength to get it shifted. Do you understand?’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Okay. Get ready. One – two – three! Lift! Are you all right, Emma? For God’s sake don’t drop it again – tilt this way if you feel it going – good – heave – again – again – well done, Cosmo – got it!’

  At last Cosmo was able to struggle out from under. The light was on in his bedroom he now realized – must have been before, but he had not been aware of it. Eunice and Mrs Tydings – the latter in her lock-knit nightgown and pink flannel dressing gown, looking tousled and appalled – Eunice still in day clothes but equally white and shattered-looking – were standing with their eyes fixed, not on Cosmo, but on the thing that had been on top of him.

  It was the wardrobe.

  Not a small wardrobe. A big, old-fashioned oak one. It had probably stood at the end of his room for a hundred years. It weighed as much as a cart. Now it lay tilted over the end of the bed, where, by pushing and levering, they had managed to slide it. Like a drunk man against a lamp post.

  It had been right on top of Cosmo.

  ‘It’s lucky the bed has such a sag in the middle,’ he said after a moment. ‘Otherwise I might really have been squashed.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Eunice said in rather an odd voice. She was still very pale.

  Cosmo moved his arms and legs.

  ‘Yes, I’m okay. My shoulders got a bit bruised. Luckily I was sleeping on my face with my head almost under the pillow; I mostly do. But what made you come? I couldn’t shout for help. I hadn’t any breath.’

  ‘I heard the crash. I felt it. The whole house shook.’

  Mrs Tydings was indignant.

  ‘How could that blessed wardrobe have fallen on the bed? Just tell me, how? Had you been moving it around, Cosmo? Fiddling with it or shifting it?’

  ‘Never touched it.’

  ‘That’s a good twelve feet away! It didn’t just fall! It must have flown. How are we ever going to get it back again?’

  ‘Well, we can’t shift it now, that’s certain,’ Eunice said. She laughed
a little, shakily. ‘It’s going to take a team of strong men with ropes and levers to get it upright again. In the meantime, Cosmo, I think we’ll make you up a bed somewhere else. But first let’s all have a little brandy.’

  Lob was at the head of the stairs, whining and bothered about the whole affair. He followed them down and huddled against Eunice as she poured the brandy. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said to him. ‘I feel the same myself!’

  ‘Could there have been an earth tremor?’ suggested Cosmo.

  He tried the brandy, which he had never tasted before; it was like fiery vanilla, he decided; not a particularly pleasant taste, but certainly very hot and heartening when it got a little way down.

  ‘If it was an earthquake,’ snapped Mrs Tydings, ‘why didn’t nothing else fall over? That wardrobe’s never been shifted in my lifetime.’

  Eunice looked at Cosmo in a worried way and said, ‘It seems as if you’ve disturbed something, Cosmo.’

  ‘What sort of something?’ he said uneasily.

  ‘Well – I don’t really know. Something with a lot of energy.’

  ‘First time I heard there was energy in a wardrobe,’ sniffed Mrs Tydings.

  ‘Maybe you’d better sleep the rest of the night in Emma’s cottage. Would you mind, Emma?’

  ‘Course not. He’s welcome. But what about you, Miss Eunice? Won’t you be nervous here on your own?’

  ‘Where I’ve lived for twenty years? Not likely! I’ll have Lob. Besides, I don’t think this disturbance has anything to do with me. It’s obviously Cosmo that sets it off.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ Cosmo said uncomfortably.

  ‘Oh, don’t apologize, my dear! It’s tremendously interesting. Only, I think we’d better keep an eye on you for a day or two.’

  Sleeping in Emma’s cottage was comfortable – like being inside an egg. The house was tiny, just two rooms up and two down – part of the long barn building. Cosmo’s bedroom looked out on to a little cobbled yard at the side, where Mrs Tydings grew pinks, lavender, sage and a camellia bush round the edges, besides pots of geraniums and begonias. He could hear the comfortable quacking of her ducks in the shed acros the yard. From his other window, in the back wall, he could see the water meadow and the fold of wood curving round to the river.