Wild Robert

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Wild Robert

  Illustrated by

  Emma Chichester Clark

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Also by Diana Wynne Jones

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Heather was in a bad mood. Her bicycle was broken, right at the start of the summer holidays, too, and this meant that she could not ride down to see her friend Janine in the village. It was five miles to the village. Either Heather could walk, five miles there and five miles back, or she could stay at home. And home was not really home – or not in the summer anyway. Heather lived in a stately home called Castlemaine, because her mum and dad were curators there.

  In summer, every day at eleven-thirty, the car park at the side of the old stables began to fill with cars, vans and coaches, and tourists climbed out of them and spread all over the house and gardens. There was almost nowhere that was private. And Heather’s mum and dad were far too busy showing people round the house, or coping with sudden emergencies, to be any company for Heather.

  That day, Heather made a mistake about the time. She looked up from the book she had been gloomily reading since breakfast and thought the clock said ten-thirty. Good, she thought. That would give her an hour to get to a really private hiding place before the tourists came. She thought she would go to the very top of the old castle tower, because that was supposed to be unsafe for crowds. There she could read her book, or look out over the hills and woody valleys while she ate her lunch. It was not as good as being with Janine, but it was not a bad place on a fine day. You could not see the tourists from there, and hardly even hear them.

  But first she had to get some lunch. Heather went to the small kitchen, behind the huge whitewashed kitchen the tourists were shown, and opened the fridge there.

  “Bother!” she said. If she wanted sandwiches, there was a choice between tuna fish and spam, and they were out of tomatoes again. To get tomatoes, or fruit, she would have to go to the gardens and be polite to surly old Mr McManus the gardener. Heather decided she could not face his bad temper. She would go to Mrs Mimms, who kept the tourist shop, and ask her for crisps or biscuits instead. She hated Mr McManus even more than she hated spam.

  She made herself six tuna sandwiches and put them in a bag. She was just fetching her book from the big tourist kitchen when voices rang out somewhere near. She heard the grind and crunch of wheels through the thick white walls.

  “Oh, no!” Heather said. She ran out into the passage that overlooked the parking space. Through the diamond-pane windows there she could see quite a number of cars parked already and at least one coach. Another coach lumbered in as she looked, and people carrying cameras jumped down from it. “Why have they all come so early?” Heather said, still not realising she had made a mistake with the time.

  She knew she couldn’t get to Mrs Mimms’ shop before those people from the coach crowded into it to buy ice-creams. She set off for the tower at once instead, by the easy back way that brought her out on a high gallery, looking down on the round room beside the stone steps up to the tower. But she was too late. Even before she got to the gallery, Heather heard the shuffle of tourists’ feet. Her father’s voice rang out.

  “We are now in part of the old castle. It was built by the first baron, Hugh Toller, early in the twelfth century. These stone stairs behind me lead to the watch-tower built by Hugh Toller’s son William.”

  Heather leant over the rail of the balcony and looked down on packed heads with the faces all turned towards Dad. Dad was talking away, posed with one foot on the tower steps. Heather was in time to see him reach out expertly and grab the boy who had tried to sneak behind the red rope across the steps.

  “No, sonny, you can’t go up. The tower’s unsafe and we can’t get insurance. By 1150, the castle was already quite large…”

  Heather turned away. “Sheep,” she muttered. “Beastly sheep in the way.” She knew Dad was quite capable of going on talking until Mum or one of the other guides came along with the next party. She was cut off from the tower. And by now the coach party would be filling the entrance hall and waiting to be taken up the main stairs.

  Heather ducked down a side passage and ran. If she went through the Long Gallery and the Feud Room, she might be able to make it to the back stairs before any tourists did. She raced along the polished floor of the Long Gallery, where white reproachful faces of dead Tollers stared out of thick gilt frames at her. She was just going to turn into the Feud Room, when feet shuffled again. This time Heather heard her mother’s voice.

  “We are now coming into the small gallery known as the Feud Room. This is because the portraits of the Tollers on your left and the portraits of the Franceys on your right are those of the two branches of the family who kept up a long and hostile quarrel for nearly one hundred years…”

  “More beastly sheep!” Heather said. She turned and looked at the big clock above the picture of Sir Francis Toller bowing to Queen Elizabeth I. It said five to twelve. She understood her mistake now.

  “Oh bother!” she said. “I hate tourists! I hate living at Castlemaine!”

  She went back through the Long Gallery and down the main stairs. Halfway down, she met the next party of tourists coming up. It was like wading in a stream with the current the wrong way. Heather turned sideways and wriggled and fought her way down into the entrance hall. A glance was enough to show her that the shop at the side was crowded out and that Mrs Mimms was too busy to spare Heather a look, let alone any biscuits. Heather wandered gloomily out through the main door. Mr Mimms, sitting at his desk there to take tickets, did spare her a smile and a nod, but Heather was feeling so dismal by then that it did not help much.

  She wandered on, into the formal gardens. Here there were some girls and boys her own age eating ice lollies and dropping the wrappers on the gravel path. “They wouldn’t dare do that at home!” Heather muttered, and she took care to pass them in the distance. She went on into the walled garden, where Mr McManus usually was. Since things were so horrible anyway, she thought she might as well ask him for a tomato.

  The walled garden, for some reason, was always the place where the elderly couples went. Heather passed one set, where the lady was saying, “See, Harry. This one is the old thornless rose.” Then there was another foursome, where a man was lecturing the other three about pruning roses. And a third pair, where the lady was hooting, “That is simply not the way to plant roses! If the gardener here was mine, I’d soon tell him where to get off!”

  She was sure Mr McManus could hear this lady from the corner where he was working. When Heather found him, he was raking a seedbed as if it were the throat of an old lady.

  “Get you gone!” he said to Heather.

  “I only wanted to ask—” Heather began.

  “Laying down the law, tramping my lawns, messing up my paths with packets and papers and gum,” said Mr McManus. “Screaming, asking things—”

  “I hate tourists too,” said Heather. “There’s no need to take it out on me.”

  “Leaving bottles and tins,” said Mr McManus. “You’re worse than all the rest. Get you gone!”

  This was so unfair that all Heather could think of to do was to stump away through the nearest door, with her mouth pressed tight, hoping Mr McManus would tread on a rake and get concussion. She turned the corner into the ruined temple. Usually, nobody found the way there. But today was a bad day. Some very large and grown-up teenagers had found the temple and they were r
omping there among the pillars and the green mounds. Heather slithered on past, skirting a fallen statue where a pair of the teenagers were kissing, and plunged into the woods behind the temple.

  She only knew one other place that was likely to be private. This was the peculiar little mound right on the edge of the Castlemaine grounds. When Heather and her parents had first moved to Castlemaine, Mum had been very excited about this mound. She said it was surely an ancient Bronze Age burial mound. Then Heather had gone to school in the village and met Janine. Janine told Heather that it was the grave of a man from the olden days who had been accused of doing witchcraft. He was called Wild Robert and everyone in the village knew about him. They said there was a box of treasure buried with him. This made Heather as excited as Mum. She went to Dad and suggested they hunted for the treasure.

  Dad smiled kindly, in the way he had, and looked at the old maps of Castlemaine. “Sorry to disappoint you both,” he said to Heather and Mum. “You know what that mound really is? It’s an ice-house. They used to keep ice in a sort of cave inside the mound, so that the Tollers and Franceys could have ice-cream in summer. I dare say if we dug in it, we’d find the cave still there.”

  After that, the mound seemed rather dull. Mum forgot about it and Heather only went there at times like today, when there seemed to be tourists everywhere else.

  Or was it dull? she wondered as she walked towards it. It was hidden in a mass of yew trees. Heather’s feet made almost no sound as she ploughed through the soft piles of yellow needles. And there was something about the light that filtered through the dark black-green of the needles overhead. It made everything look sort of smoky. The mound itself reared up into this smokiness, bald and covered with yew needles. Not dull, Heather thought. More as if this is not a nice place to be.

  She climbed the mound and sat down. She opened her book. But it was too dark under the yew trees to read.

  Somehow, this was the last straw. Heather banged the soft earth with her fist. “Oh, bother it all!” she cried out. “Wild Robert, I just wish you were really under there. You could come out and deal with the tourists and teach Mr McManus some manners!”

  The sun came out overhead. That seemed to make the mist under the trees smokier than ever. The smell of it was strange, like earth and spices. It rolled over Heather in waves. Out of it, a voice said, “Did somebody call?”

  Chapter Two

  “Did somebody call?” the voice said again. It was a husky voice. Heather thought it must be one of the teenage boys from the temple. She did not answer. But the voice said, “Didn’t somebody call?”

  “Well – sort of,” Heather said. “I was just talking really.”

  There was a noise somewhere below that sounded like someone crawling through undergrowth. Heather stood up nervously. She was fairly sure the person had mistaken her for one of his friends. Unless she ran away quickly, it was going to be very awkward. But she could not see where he was and she did not want to run straight into him. She stood where she was, looking anxiously round into the smoky mist. And the person took her by surprise by standing up in front of her to dust yew-needles off his tight black clothes.

  “There. So, here I am,” he said cheerfully.

  He was not one of the ones by the temple. He was the oldest kind of teenager, or perhaps even a young man. Heather was never quite sure when people changed over from one to the other. He was very good-looking. He had fairish, wavy hair that came to his shoulders and huge dark eyes set a little slanting in his smooth dark face – in fact, he was so good-looking that it made up for his not being very tall. He was only a head higher than Heather. She thought, from his clothes, that he must have come here on a motorcycle, although he had a big white collar spread over the shoulders of his black jacket, which puzzled her a little.

  “Did you come to see round the house, or are you just exploring?” she asked him politely.

  The young man laughed. “No, sweetheart, I came because you called. It is always so. The words Bishop Henry laid on me were never so heavy that I could not hear my name when it was said.”

  “I – I beg your pardon?” said Heather.

  “What date is it?” the young man asked.

  “Er – nineteen eighty-nine,” said Heather. She was beginning to feel alarmed. Either the young man was mad, or something very odd had happened.

  The young man seemed even more alarmed. He stared at her, and she could see he had gone pale by the black way his eyes stood out in his face. “No!” he said. “Oh, no! Then that makes three hundred and fifty years shut in the mound!” He put his hand on Heather’s arm appealingly. “Tell me not that so much time has passed.”

  His hand felt – strange. It was chilly, but it was warm too, and it somehow fizzed against Heather’s bare arm so that all the hairs stood up round the place he touched. Heather backed away. The feel of his hand, even more than what he said, made her fairly sure he was not mad, and even surer that something very odd indeed had happened. “Who are you?” she said.

  The young man laughed again, in the bright way people laugh when their feelings are hurt. “My name is Robert Toller,” he said.

  “Wild Robert?” Heather said from behind both hands, which had somehow leapt to cover her mouth. “The one who – who was supposed to do witchcraft?”

  Robert Toller looked definitely hurt now. “And so I can,” he said. “Why else should my half-brother call a bishop to put me down? They knew I had studied the magic arts and were persuaded I meant to take their heritage from them – though I meant them nothing but kindness.” He looked more hurt than ever for a moment. Then a thought struck him. His slanting eyes turned to Heather, sideways and warily. “Are the present-day Tollers likely to think the same? Who holds Castlemaine now?”

  “Well – no one really,” Heather said. “The last of the Tollers died out a long time ago. And then it went to the Franceys, and the last Francey died six years ago and left everything to the British Trust. My mum and dad look after it for the Trust.”

  Heather was not sure how much of this Robert Toller took in. While she was speaking, he almost looked as if he might cry. But that look was pushed aside by a bright smile and a fierce sort of delight. Before she had finished explaining, he was laughing wildly and hugging himself with both arms.

  “Oh, splendid news!” he cried out. “Then I am the only Toller living! Castlemaine is mine after all!” He stopped laughing and explained to Heather, rather anxiously, “I am in line to inherit. My father was the younger Francis and he married my mother when his first wife died.”

  Heather nodded. She could see how sad he was really and she did not want to hurt his feelings any more, but she could not help wondering how Robert Toller was going to explain to the people who ran the British Trust. And I bet he doesn’t have a birth certificate! she thought. I don’t think they were invented in his day.

  While she wondered what she could say, Robert Toller gave her a little bow and stuck out one elbow to her. “Come,” he said. “Let us leave this dismal wood and take a look at my heritage.”

  Heather knew he meant her to take hold of his elbow in an elegant way, but the strange fizzing she had felt when he touched her made her scared to try. Robert Toller smiled. He had a very winning smile, as good-looking as the rest of him.

  “Walk with me,” he said, “and tell me your name.” And he waited, holding his elbow out and keeping the smile until it looked quite strained.

  Heather found she simply could not bear to hurt his feelings any more. “My name’s Heather Bayley,” she said. She picked up her book and her bag of lunch and put her hand on his elbow – his sleeve was black silk, not the leather she had taken it for – and it fizzed. But she got used to it quite quickly and let him help her slither down the mound.

  They walked under the yew trees and Heather felt quite grand and old-fashioned. She noticed that Robert Toller, in spite of his black clothes, seemed to stand out strong and bright in the smoky light. She looked down at herself and
found that her own legs, and her hand on Robert Toller’s elbow, looked much greyer and dimmer. When they came out into the sunlight, Robert Toller looked brighter still. It was as if he was somehow twice as alive as ordinary people. Heather was staring at him, thinking about this, when they came to the ruined temple.

  The teenagers were still there, romping about. Heather wondered how she could ever have thought Robert Toller was one of them. He stood out as quite different, now she saw them. Three of the girls were up on the fallen statue throwing empty coke cans at the boys. Robert Toller stopped dead and stared at them. Heather looked at the black leather mini-skirts and the tall punk hairstyles and suddenly saw that they must seem outrageous to someone from three hundred and fifty years ago.

  But it was not that. Robert Toller had gone white again. He said, “This I will not have! This temple was where my father met with my mother.” And he shouted at the teenagers, “Get you gone! Go riot in some other place!” They all looked round at him, a bit surprised. Then they laughed and went back to pelting one another with cans. Robert Toller’s face bunched up. His lower lip stuck out. He looked exactly like a very small boy who was just about to burst into tears, but Heather was fairly sure he was very angry. He spread one hand out palm down in front of him, and muttered something under his breath. Then he tipped his hand slowly sideways. “Go riot, then, until I bid all stop,” he said.

  Heather felt as if something tipped with Robert’s hand. It was as if the part of the world that was ordinary and possible went slanting away sideways in a thin sheet. One edge of the thin sheet went upwards, and the other sloped down through the harder, stranger part of the world that was always underneath, leaving that part bare. Heather actually saw the grey edge tip and travel across the sunny grass and the white stone pillars and the laughing girls and boys. For a moment, she was sure she was standing out sideways, somehow, on the slice of ordinariness. Then she found she was on the deeper bit after all.