Wild Robert

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “Hi, sunshine,” Dad said. “Don’t take your friend up the tower now. It’s nearly closing time.”

  “Is it?” Heather said. She was very surprised. The day had simply raced by.

  “Yes, I’m sorry to disappoint your friend,” Dad said, “but I wouldn’t like to lock you both in when I lock this part. I’ll be coming round with the keys in about ten minutes now.”

  While Dad was speaking, Heather had a sideways glimpse of Robert’s hand spread out, and a tipping feeling. After that, however much she pushed her eyes sideways, all she could see was an empty stretch of whitewashed wall. “What friend?” she said, but inside she was saying frantically Where is he? What has he done NOW?

  Dad looked at the empty part of the wall and blinked. “How odd!” he said. “I could have sworn you had a friend with you. It even struck me he had a sort of Jacobean look. Anyway, I’ll see you at supper, sunshine.” And he rushed away.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Heather unhooked the red rope and raced round and round up the tower steps. At the top, she sagged with relief. Robert was sitting in the place she liked to sit herself, with his hands clasped round his knees, staring out at the hills and the patches of wood all lit golden green as the sun began to go down.

  “You spoke to your father?” he said.

  “Well, I – er – not yet. He was in a hurry,” Heather explained.

  “I left you alone to speak with him,” Robert said reproachfully. “Where is the food you promised?”

  “Coming up soon,” Heather said. “But only if you stay here while I fetch it. You’re not to disappear like that again! You give me heart attacks!”

  Chapter Six

  Heather plunged back down the tower stairs, knowing she only had about ten minutes, and not trusting Robert to stay there longer than that anyway. She raced through the old kitchen and into the new small one and opened the fridge. Bother. Only spam there, apart from raw food for supper. Heather collected the spam and the last of the bread and hurtled off to the tourist shop to catch Mrs Mimms before she went home.

  Mrs Mimms was clearing up, and she was very puzzled. “Something’s up today,” she said. “I don’t know! First there’s half the people went home in the middle of the afternoon, just when they usually want to come in here for their ice-creams and their tins of fizz. My takings are right down.”

  “Oh, dear,” Heather said guiltily. “Is it very bad?”

  “Only so-so,” Mrs Mimms said quite cheerfully. “It was a good morning, and Mr Mimms says most of them bought tickets to see round the house, even though they didn’t use them. It makes you wonder what got into everyone.”

  “Do you think something frightened everyone?” Heather suggested, picking up two packets of biscuits and a bag of peanuts.

  “Could be,” said Mrs Mimms. “Mr Mimms says he kept getting complaints there were nudist boys chasing girls in nighties all over the woods. Someone came and told me that, too, and I told her not in Castlemaine. But someone else told your dad and he went out to look. He said he couldn’t see a thing.”

  “Er – probably just some teenagers messing about,” Heather said, guiltily adding crisps and popcorn to her pile of food.

  “Bound to be,” said Mrs Mimms. “Or people imagined it, like that new guide who swore to your dad there were sheep droppings all over the Long Gallery floor. Sheep, I told him. There’s been no sheep near here for fifty years now! Next thing, I said to him, you’ll be telling me you saw Wild Robert risen from his mound, treasure and all!”

  Heather found her face had gone very hot. Knowing it must be bright red, she picked up a plastic bag labelled VISIT CASTLEMAINE and bent over it while she pushed her pile of food inside it. “Do you know all about Wild Robert then?” she asked.

  “No more than most people in the village do,” Mrs Mimms said. “I’ve only lived here half my life, after all. If you want to know about that old story, you should ask your friend Janine. Her folks have been in this area for centuries. And why are you taking all that food, Heather, may I ask?”

  “Our fridge is empty,” Heather said. “I didn’t get much lunch.”

  “And you’re acting as odd as the rest!” Mrs Mimms said. “You wouldn’t believe the strange phone call I had a while back from Mrs McManus. Little as I like that woman, I think me and Mr Mimms better pop in on our way home and see if she’s all right. Sounds off her rocker to me – and I don’t think I can let you have more than just one tin of coke, Heather.”

  Heather took a packet of cupcakes as well as the coke and pelted to the tower, clutching the bag to her. She was very glad to find that Robert was still there, wistfully watching the sun march through a tower of cloud, down towards the hills. He smiled at Heather when she came panting to the top of the stairs, and nodded out towards the view.

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “None of this is Castlemaine land any longer. Right?”

  “Only the house is now,” Heather said. She had not any breath to say more.

  Robert spread his hand out towards the green landscape. Heather found she had stopped even being able to pant. She thought she really might have a heart attack. “In my time,” Robert said, “everything a man could see from the top of this tower was Castlemaine land.” He took his hand back, sadly. “If I made it mine, it wouldn’t last,” he said. “Where is the food you promised?”

  “Here,” gasped Heather. She was breathless with relief now.

  Robert smiled quite heartily. “My hunger is three hundred and fifty years old. I feel like an empty rain barrel,” he said.

  Heather had to leave as soon as she had given him the bag of food, for fear of getting locked up in the old castle when Dad did his rounds with the keys. She told herself that this would mean that Robert was safely locked up in the tower, where there was no one to turn into sheep or dogs, at least until tomorrow morning. The trouble was, she did not believe this. She was fairly sure Robert could easily burst the locked doors open if he wanted to. Or, if he did decide to stay in the tower, he could probably work any magic he wanted to from there. Heather just had to hope he would decide to stay there quietly until she had spoken to Dad. He seemed to trust her to do that. And this was another thing that made Heather uncomfortable, because she was still not sure what she was going to say to Dad.

  At the moment, however, it was Mum she wanted to see. It took Heather a while to track Mum down. She found her, at last, in the small kitchen, starting to get supper ready. Heather at once began to help, without even being asked, so that she could go on keeping an eye on Mum.

  Mum seemed all right, but she kept darting alarmed looks at the shepherd’s crook, which was propped up in a corner. From time to time she said, in a puzzled way, “It’s too early in the season to be overworked. I wonder if I’m going down with something.”

  Each time Heather said, quickly and firmly, “Of course not. There’s nothing wrong with you at all.”

  “You are being kind,” Mum said at last. “How grown-up and considerate you’re getting, Heather.”

  Heather found her face getting hot again. It was Robert who was making her feel that way. When she thought about him, she almost felt like a mother herself – a mother with the kind of naughty small boy who pulls down piles of food in the supermarket and the mother has to pay for it. “The potatoes are nearly done,” she said, to take her mind off it. “How long is supper going to be? I can hardly wait.”

  This was true. After just one sandwich for lunch, Heather was starving. Strawberries do not fill a person up.

  “Not long now,” Mum said. “I like suppertime, too. It’s the only time of day when we can be a proper family. You can go and jangle the bell for Dad, while I dish the meat up.”

  When supper was on the table, Heather fell on it as if she was the one who had not eaten for three hundred and fifty years. But she knew she had to talk to Dad about Robert. So, as soon as she felt a little less empty, she started the talk by saying, “Dad, you know all the history of Castlemaine, do
n’t you?”

  “I’ve read up a fair bit,” Dad admitted. “Why?”

  “Have you read about anyone called Robert Toller?” Heather said. “About three hundred and fifty years ago.”

  As if this was a cue, the room tipped a bit and the spoons clattered on the table. Mum put her hand to her head. Heather jumped nervously. For a moment she wondered if Robert was actually in the room, invisible. But when she thought about it, she knew that the tipping had a sort of far-away feel to it. Robert was still in the tower. He was just reminding her he was there. She looked at Dad. Dad did not seem to notice anything unusual at all. He was frowning, trying to think of the Robert Toller Heather meant.

  “He may have been the youngest son of the second Sir Francis,” Heather said. It was a guess, but she thought it was right. Robert had talked as if his brothers were older than he was.

  “Oh him!” said Dad. He smiled. “You’re thinking of your treasure again, aren’t you? You mean the young man who was executed for witchcraft?”

  “Executed!” Heather exclaimed. Was Robert really dead, then, she wondered, without knowing he was?

  There was another tipping. Saucepans joggled on the stove. In spite of her horror and alarm, Heather began to be annoyed. Robert really was like a naughty small boy in some ways. Why couldn’t he leave her alone to talk to Dad? She was trying, wasn’t she?

  “Go on,” she said to Dad.

  “Well, it’s a strange story,” Dad said. “Robert’s father, the younger Francis, met some kind of very odd woman and married her as his second wife. I suspect she was a gypsy. Nobody seems to have known where she came from and she ran away quite soon, leaving the boy with his father. And it looks as if Robert inherited some peculiar gifts from his mother. The records say that when he was small and fell down and hurt himself, all the church bells rang.”

  There was a faint chiming from the corner of the kitchen. Heather turned round, with the back of her neck prickling, to see the row of little bells there, which the Franceys used to ring when they wanted a servant, swaying back and forth. Robert was still at his tricks.

  “I’m sure that was absolute nonsense,” Dad said, “but in those days it was enough to start all the people in the village talking about witchcraft. Robert’s father wouldn’t listen to a word of it. He gave the boy anything he wanted and refused to believe there was any difference between Robert and his two elder brothers.”

  “So he always got away with it,” Heather murmured.

  The bells were still chiming. Mum was watching the salt cellar roll slowly down the length of the table, leaving a trail of salt. “I think,” Mum said nervously, “that I may be going down with flu. Or something.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Heather. “There’s nothing wrong with any bit of you. I know. So Robert must have grown up very spoilt and babyish. Go on, Dad.”

  Mum smiled feebly. Dad said, “He probably did, Heather. And trouble began after his father died and James, the eldest brother, inherited Castlemaine. James married Eliza Francey. Eliza was very religious and she clearly hated young Robert. She tried to make the village people burn him as a witch, but the village people said they were scared even to try, because of what Robert might do to them. And it does look as if Robert did something to Eliza. Next morning she woke screaming, saying that Robert had put her in hell all that night.”

  “With his hand the other way up,” said Heather. “If he did, I bet she deserved it. And?”

  “So Eliza made James bring in a bishop who was an uncle of hers,” Dad said. “And the record says the bishop cleansed Castlemaine. It doesn’t say how. It just says that Robert was buried in the grounds. They didn’t let witches have a grave in the churchyard, you know.”

  “So it doesn’t say the bishop had Robert executed!” Heather said.

  “Not in so many words,” Dad said. “But you don’t bury people unless they’re dead, Heather.”

  “But I think they did! Poor Robert!” said Heather. She finished her pudding in three mouthfuls. Janine would know. And the key to the tower was in the living room, hanging on the board above the telephone. “Can I use the phone?”

  Chapter Seven

  Dad was amused. “Phone?” he said. “Heather, this was hundreds of years ago! I don’t think today’s bishop knows anything about it. Besides, bishops are busy men.”

  “I don’t want to phone a bishop,” Heather said. “I want to ring Janine.”

  “Then don’t talk for more than twenty minutes,” said Mum. “It’s getting near your bedtime. Look how dark it is.”

  Heather knew this was just one of Mum’s unfair excuses. The kitchen faced away from the evening sun, so it was always dark around supper time. But Mum worried about phone bills, particularly after a difficult day. “I’ll be ever so quick,” Heather promised forgivingly. She bounced up from the table and hurtled into the living room, where, sure enough, the light was strong pink sunset. It coloured Heather’s hand orange as she dialled Janine’s number.

  “Janine,” she said, when Janine was called to the phone, “tell me every bit you know about Wild Robert. It’s important.”

  “I told you most of it,” Janine said. “My mum and dad may know a bit more, I suppose. Want me to go and ask them?”

  “Yes,” said Heather.

  Janine was gone quite a long time. Heather waited, and watched the sun colour the row of keys on the board above the phone a deeper and deeper pink. After a bit, she took down the key to the tower and held it ready. She would have to go and fetch Robert to the kitchen when Janine had told her the rest of the story. That would stop him playing any more tricks, and it would show Mum and Dad he was real. She just had to hope that what Janine told her would help her to explain about him.

  “Well,” said Janine’s voice at last. She sounded out of breath. “Sorry to be so long. Mum told me to go next door and ask my gran and Gran does talk a lot. Anyway, this is the story. Don’t blame me. It’s what my gran said. She says Wild Robert’s father had a wife, but he loved another woman who was – well sort of – well Gran called her a fairy.” Janine sounded really embarrassed having to say this. “And this other woman was Wild Robert’s mother. Wild Robert’s father married her after his wife died, when Wild Robert was a baby. But Gran says the rest of the family was furious, and hated the new wife so much, and were so nasty to her that she ran away and left Wild Robert to grow up by himself at Castlemaine. And it wasn’t long before he was working all sorts of magic. And when he grew older, he read books and studied and found out how to do even more magic.

  Gran says his father was ever so proud of him, but the only thing was—” Janine got embarrassed again and stopped.

  “Go on!” said Heather.

  “She,” said Janine, “his mother, you know, was only half of Wild Robert, so he couldn’t work magic all the time, only during the daytime. And the rest of the family knew this. So when his father died and his brothers wanted to get rid of Wild Robert, Gran says they waited until it was dark. Then they cut his heart out and put it into a silver box where he couldn’t get at it and buried both parts of him in that mound.”

  “How – awful!” said Heather. No wonder Wild Robert had that way of looking hurt and trying to hide it. He must have liked and trusted his brothers.

  “People were awful in those days,” Janine said.

  “So is that all?” said Heather.

  “No,” said Janine. “There’s a bit more.” She was embarrassed again. “They say that because of his mother being – being what she was, Wild Robert couldn’t really die. They say that if someone calls his name by the mound, specially if it’s around midday, Wild Robert will answer and come out. Gran told me quite a few stories of how people called him and then ran like mad when he appeared.”

  “Oh, dear!” said Heather.

  So Robert had been out before. It was odd the way he didn’t seem to remember. But he was, Heather thought, most of the time half dead, the way he was half alive. And every time he came o
ut, it must have been all new to him – a new time in history and a new, fresh memory of how the people he had loved had tried to kill him. Heather thought that in Robert’s place, she wouldn’t have behaved even half as well. She would have done more than play tricks. She would have tried to break the place up. And she thought that, in spite of being a spoiled baby, this must mean that Robert was a nice person underneath.

  Janine must have thought that Heather was getting upset by the story. “Yes, but it’s all right,” she said soothingly. “It’s not really a ghost story, because his power ends at sunset. Gran says he has to go back to his mound and his heart as soon as the sun goes down.”

  “Does he?” Heather shot a frantic look at the dark pink light slanting through the window.

  “Definitely,” said Janine. “That’s the treasure they talk about – the silver box with his heart in it.”

  “Sorry, Janine,” Heather said. “I have to go now. I need to go up the tower at once. See you as soon as my bike’s mended.”

  She hurled the phone down and raced back to the kitchen. She could tell Robert was up to more tricks in there, because there were now strangled-sounding yelps and whines coming from someone. Heather was afraid Robert had made Mum really ill.

  But the sounds were coming from the large mottled dog. Mrs McManus was standing, planted like a massive tree, just inside the back door, blocking Heather’s way to the tower. She was holding a rope that was tied round the dog’s neck and the dog kept straining to get free.

  “And he comes from nowhere in the middle of the afternoon,” Mrs McManus was telling Mum and Dad.

  Heather looked at the dog’s mottled face. The dog looked back accusingly.

  “And round the hoose and round the hoose and pawing at the door to come in,” said Mrs McManus. “And not a soul in the village owns to him any more than you do! I’m thinking someone of those tourists kidnapped Mr McManus and left me this beast in his place.”