Enchanted Glass (24 page)

Aidan, who had been standing by, rather bored, stared at the front of it. It was labelled in Jocelyn’s writing:
Blind Trust for Aidan Cain. The least I can do after my failure with Melanie.
Inside, official forms stated that, ten years ago, Jocelyn Brandon had set aside some thousands of pounds, to grow into more thousands of pounds, until Aidan was eighteen. Then the money was Aidan’s.

“Wow!” said Aidan. He had to whisk his glasses off, because his eyes flooded with tears. He found himself
longing, hopelessly, that he could have known Andrew’s old grandfather. He must have been quite something, to do this for a baby he had never met.

“Good man, wasn’t he?” Stashe said. “Mind you, he could be a right old curmudgeon too! He used to growl at me and call me ‘Tarquin’s silly little bitch’. I put my tongue out at him once or twice. Anyway, Andrew, I’ll get on transferring these to your name, shall I? Don’t worry. I know just what to do. I did it for Ronnie Stock when his mother died.” Stashe took hold of one end of the box and began to tow it towards Andrew’s study. She stopped. “Is your computer still working?”

“It went down when Titania appeared,” Andrew said, sighing.

“Then I know how to put it right,” Stashe said and went on towing the box. They heard her in the distance muttering, “Honestly, I could smack Mrs Stock!” as she went.

Andrew and Aidan set off for the second time. Andrew had decided they would join the boundary where it crossed the Melton road, this time, and walk back to the cart track they had taken yesterday. So they went up the village, past the church and the football field. There was now a gate across the entry to the field and a big notice on the gate saying that Mr Ronald Stock would open the Fete at 2.30 on Saturday.

“It gets going before that,” Andrew told Aidan. “As I remember, there is usually a procession with the band and people in fancy dress. The entries to the competitions have to be in by midday. Mr Stock will be wheeling in his vegetables most of the morning. He practically empties the garden for this.”

Aidan stood on tiptoe and saw more tents beyond the hedge and a glimpse of a roundabout being put up. He was suddenly quite excited about this Fete. He had never been to one before. It looked as if it was going to be fun.

Otherwise their walk was uneventful that day. They found the place on the Melton road and a stile that led to the same faint path that they had followed yesterday. When they were in any doubt about where the boundary was, Rolf found it for them. There was no sign of Groil anywhere. Andrew suggested that Groil was probably sleeping off the vast meal he had eaten last night. Aidan hoped so. He hoped Groil was keeping thoroughly small and hard and well hidden.

As they walked home down the cart track, Andrew sighed and said, “Well, there’s only one thing more for tomorrow and that’s getting round the Manor grounds somehow. I vote we try to get round outside Mr Brown’s barbed wire. It must be possible. He can’t have covered the whole countryside in it. Can you help us do that, Rolf?”

Rolf looked up and nodded. He was thinking of supper.

“Won’t that make your field-of-care bigger?” Aidan asked.

“Possibly,” Andrew said. “But I’m not going to let Brown get the better of us. Hurry up, Aidan. I want to get back before Stashe has to leave.”

Stashe had waited for them, saying she had made a good start on the folders and would do more tomorrow. Shaun had waited too. He wanted Andrew to come and look inside the shed and see what it looked like now he had finished it. He waved both hands and looked so pleading that Andrew went there at once, without taking his walking boots off.

Once inside, he stood and marvelled. The place glowed. In the multicoloured light from the window, the carved walls were a luminous honey colour, where small creatures peeped out from among a riot of tendrils, leaves and flowers, and man-shaped people seemed to dance in a line that wound in and out and through the other carvings, up and down across each wall. Shaun had made efforts to clean the floor too. Andrew had assumed it was concrete, but it was actually honey-coloured tiles, cracked and old but still beautiful. It all made the mower, sitting in the middle of the floor, look completely out of place. I must find somewhere else to keep the thing, Andrew thought while
he was telling Shaun what a marvellous job he had done.

Shaun beamed and then looked anxious. “What do you want me to do now, Professor?” he said.

Trying not to leave mud from his boots on the tiles, Andrew took Shaun outside. He pointed to the thistles, nettles and small struggling blackberry plants that were crowding round the base of the walls. The walls themselves outside were brick, covered in old whitewash. “You can clear all these weeds away,” he told Shaun, “and then give the walls a coat of white paint. This place is a chapel, as you told me once, and it ought to look as good outside as it is inside.”

Shaun looked relieved. Andrew could see Shaun had been afraid that his usefulness was now over and Andrew would dismiss him. “I’ll do that tomorrow, Professor,” Shaun said. “I’ve almost finished my robot. For the Fête,” he explained, when Andrew looked blank.

“Good. Great,” Andrew said, and found himself adding, “and after that, there are hundreds of jobs for you inside the house.”

Shaun’s hands were waving happily as he went away.

He was rather late the following morning. “Up half the night finishing the robot,” he explained when he arrived with Mrs Stock, who was also late.

“I’ll give you robots!” she said. “I was up at five,
pinning prices on my old clothes. And I wish you wouldn’t encourage Trixie, Shaun. That sideshow of hers makes me feel ill.”

Andrew did not attend to much of this. He was talking to Stashe and waiting for Aidan to get his second-best boots on. Aidan was slow. His legs ached and there was almost a blister on his left foot. He was wondering if all this walking was good for him. But Rolf and Andrew were determined to finish the last lap of the boundary, so Aidan sighed and went with them.

He cheered up when they came level with the football field. There was bunting up now. If he peered over the new gate, he could see a platform at the other end being covered with flags and a red carpet.

“I’m really looking forward to this Fête,” he told Andrew. “I’ve never been to one before.”

Andrew was startled. He had not considered that the Fete was anything to do with him or with Aidan. He remembered being bored out of his mind when his grandfather had taken him to to admire Mr Stock’s Prize Vegetables, year after year. “You may not enjoy it,” he said.

“Oh, I know I will,” Aidan said. “Will I need any money?”

Andrew sighed. “There’s an entrance fee,” he said, “and
all the stalls and rides cost money. All right. I’ll take you to it.”

Aidan’s joy at this carried him round most of a tedious morning, while he and Andrew and Rolf walked carefully along outside Mr Brown’s massive coils of barbed wire. There was so much of it that they were forced almost over to the road in places, and in other places found themselves stumbling among nettles and clawed by brambles that were almost as bad as the wire. The weather was hot and grey, which seemed ideal conditions for midges, mosquitoes and horseflies. When they sat down for lunch halfway, they were bitten all over, even Rolf. For the rest of the way, Rolf had to keep sitting down to give himself big, thumping scratchings.

Aidan was not enjoying himself at all by then. The almost-blister from yesterday had developed into a full-grown one, large, squashy and painful. He could feel another growing on his other foot. But at last, long last, the walk was almost over. They were walking on the road by then, because Mr Brown’s defences had filled the space between that and the marshy place, and it was a great relief to Aidan when they arrived at the dip in the road and he knew they had finished.

It was even more of a relief to see Wally Stock driving his cows out into the field beside the road. Wally waved to
Andrew and came over. He wanted to talk, as usual. Aidan sat thankfully in the grass beside the scratching Rolf, while Wally told Andrew what a terrible price the Fête Committee was having to pay for the hire of the bouncy castle and how unreliable some of the Fair people were.

“And what’s Mr Brown up to in that wood?” Wally asked eventually. This seemed to be what he had really come over to say. “I thought it was
your
wood.”

“It is,” Andrew said.

“Well, you better look into it,” Wally said. “It’s all barbed wire in there now. Man with a dog turned me out of it when I went in to get a sheep that had got herself caught on the wire.”

“
What?!
” Andrew was, for a moment, almost too angry to speak. What was the
point
, he thought, of trudging right round the boundary, when Mr Brown quietly expanded to take over from inside? “Come on, Aidan,” he said curtly. He waved to Wally and set off in long, angry strides towards the wood, with Rolf bounding ahead and Aidan limping behind.

They came to the sheep field. Rolf had almost reached the wood by the time Aidan had clattered the gate shut behind him. Andrew, halfway across the field, could see that the wood was full of pale coils of wire between the trees. He swore.

A grey, snarling dog shot out from among the trees and raced towards Andrew. It was coming straight for him and he knew it meant to attack. He stood still, wishing he had a stick. But his walking boots were quite stout. He supposed he could kick it.

B
efore Andrew could think what to do, or even move, Rolf came hurtling round the edge of the wood and threw himself on the grey dog. The air filled with snarls, growls and hoarse yelping —all the clamour of a serious dog fight. The golden body and the grey one rolled in a tangle on the grass.

Aidan forgot his blister and ran. “
No
, Rolf!” he shouted. He remembered only too well what thick muscles that grey dog had and the drool on its yellow fangs. It didn’t seem fair that Rolf should die defending Andrew. But he had only run about ten yards when the fighting yellow body beside the wood dissolved into a blur and then into a small boy, clinging to the back of the grey dog, holding it by one ear and punching its head mightily.

The grey dog howled with pain and heaved the boy
away with a twist of its huge shoulders. Then it too became misty. It rolled over and it was Security, in his ragged coat with his knitted cap on crooked, diving to to strangle Rolf with his big knotty hands. But by this time Rolf was a dog again, snapping at Security’s hands. Security snatched his hands away and scrambled to kick Rolf in the head. Rolf dodged the flailing boot and became a boy again. And Security was a dog then, snarling and going for Rolf’s bare legs.

Aidan pelted onwards, frankly fascinated by the way were-dogs fought. They were man, boy, yellow dog, grey dog, boy, man again, almost quicker than Aidan could think. Andrew was circling warily in on them, watching for a chance to kick the grey dog in the head. But the changes were too fast for him to find his target. The snarling, hoarse shouting and screams were horrible.

“Go it, Rolf!” Aidan panted. “
Get
him!”

The fight was over as he said it. Security rose up into a man again, with one big boot drawn back to kick Rolf as soon as Rolf’s yellow blur became a dog. But the yellow blur dissolved into a boy instead. As a boy, Rolf ran at Security head down and butted him violently in the stomach. Security went “Bwah!” as all the breath left his body, then toppled over on to his back. Andrew saw his chance and, quite unscrupulously, raced in and kicked
Security in his knitted hat. Several times. It helped that he did not think of Security as human any more.

“Get out!” he roared. “Get out at once!”

Security rolled over into a cowed, dazed dog. Andrew threatened to kick him again, but Security did not wait. He put his whiplike tail between his bulging back legs and bolted away into the wood. Rolf sank down on to his stomach, panting out a pink triumphant tongue. His plumed tail flapped on the grass. Didn’t I do well?! every inch of him said.

Aidan dashed up and hugged him. “You were brilliant!” he said. “You used your brain.” Rolf licked Aidan’s face contentedly.

“I’m afraid it’s not over yet,” Andrew said.

Aidan looked up and saw twenty more grey-hatted figures standing at regular intervals along the edge of the wood. They were all identical and they all reminded Aidan —just faintly —of Shaun. As he looked, they began to advance out into the field.

Andrew was furious. This was
his
wood,
his
property,
his
field-of-care. How
dare
they set a pack of were-dogs on him in his own place! He had just walked round every inch of it, making it his own, hadn’t he?

His own. It dawned on Andrew that he was now able to draw on all the power in his field-of-care, even
Mr Brown’s, since he had just walked round the Manor too. He drew in a deep breath and, with it, the whole strength of Melstone. It made him feel huger than Groil. He spread out both arms and then flung them forward in a great scooping push. The power of it roared in his ears.

“Get out of here!” he shouted over the noise of the power. “G
et out of here NOW!
”

And he rolled the lot away backwards through the wood, all the grey-hatted figures and the coils of barbed wire, tumbling over and over. Beyond, he could feel most of the barbed wire melting away around the Manor walls. But not all of it. It stopped at one sparse coil and the Securities stopped when they were behind the ruined wall. He did not seem to be able to send them any further than that, although the trees thrashed about in the storm of magic. Leaves flew off them as if it were autumn and birds came up in a screaming cloud. But that was all. Mr Brown had clearly done something that fixed his boundaries at the walls. Andrew made sure that they could not come any further again by stamping three times, like Stashe when she threw Titania out.

“And
stay
there!” he said as the storm died down a little.

Aidan said, “Wow!”

There were shouts in the distance. To Andrew’s
surprise, Mr Stock was rushing across the sheep field, carrying a spade.