Greenwitch (6 page)

Suddenly a shout, high-pitched as a scream, rang out over the crowd; Jane jumped, and turned to see a scuffle of jostling bodies at the edge of the crowd. A man seemed to be trying to break through; she glimpsed a dark-haired head, the face twisted with fury, and then the group closed again.

“Another of they newspaper photographers, I shouldn't wonder,” Mrs Penhallow said with a hint of smugness in her pleasant voice. “'Tisn't allowed to take pictures of the Greenwitch, but there's always one or two do try. The younger lads usually take care o' them.”

Jane thought the younger lads were probably taking good care of this year's intruder, judging by the speed with which his threshing form was being hustled away. She looked again for Merriman, but he seemed to have disappeared. And a change in the voice of the crowd drew her eyes back to the end of Kemare Head.

A voice called again, this time with familiar words of childhood. “One to be ready . . . two to be steady . . . three to be
off!”
Only the ropes at the rear and sides of the trolley were held now, Jane saw, by perhaps a dozen men each. At the last word of command the crowd buzzed and murmured, the lines of men ran forwards and sideways, Greenwitch lurching faster and faster before them; and then in one swift complex movement the trolley was jerked outwards over the edge of the cliff, and brought up short from falling by its ropes.

And the great green tree-woven figure of the Greenwitch, with no rope to hold it back, was flung out into the air and down over the end of Kemare Head. For a split second it was there, visible, falling, in the blue and the green among the wheeling screaming white gulls, and then it was gone, plunging down, driven by the weight of the stones inside its body. There was a silence as if all Cornwall held its breath, and then they heard the splash.

Cheers and shouts rose from the headland. People rushed to the edge of the cliff, where the rope-holders were slowly dragging the wheeled trolley back up over the rock. After a swift glance over the edge, they surrounded the heaving string of men, cheering them back along Kemare Head. When the crowd near the rocks had thinned away Jane clambered to the edge, and peered cautiously down.

Down there, the sea washed its great slow swells against the foot of the cliff as if nothing had happened. Only a few scattered twigs of hawthorn floated on the water, rising and falling with the swells, drifting to and fro.

Suddenly giddy, Jane drew back from the rocks to the edge of the cheerful Trewissick crowd. There was no smell of hawthorn now, only a mixture of wood-smoke and fish. The bonfire had burned out, and people were beginning to drift away, back to the village.

Jane saw Will Stanton before he saw her. Beside her, a group of fishermen moved away and there was Will, outlined against the grey morning sky, straight brown hair flopping down to his eyebrows, chin jutting in a way that for a split second reminded her oddly of Merriman. The boy from Buckinghamshire was gazing out to sea, unmoving, lost in some fierce private contemplation. Then he turned his head and looked straight at her.

The fierceness became a polite relaxed smile with such speed
that Jane felt it was unnatural. She thought: we've been so chilly to him, he can't really be as pleased to see me as all that.

Will came towards her. “Hallo,” he said. “Were you here all night? Was it exciting?”

“It went on a long time,” Jane said. “The exciting part was sort of spread out. And the Greenwitch—” She stopped.

“What was the making of it like?”

“Oh. Beautiful. Creepy. I don't know.” She knew she could never describe it, in the sensible light of day. “Have you been with Simon and Barney?”

“No,” Will said. His gaze slid past her. “They were—busy—somewhere. With your great-uncle, I expect.”

“I expect they were dodging you,” Jane said, astounded at her own honesty. “They can't help it, you know. I don't think it'll last long, once they've got used to you. There's something else bothering them, you see, nothing connected with you. . . . ”

“Don't worry about it,” Will said. For an instant Jane was looking at a quick reassuring grin; then his eyes flicked away again. She had an embarrassing feeling that she was wasting her breath; that the Drews' rudeness had not troubled Will Stanton in the least. Hastily she took refuge in prattle.

“It was nice when the fishermen and everyone came up from the harbour. And sea gulls everywhere . . . and I saw Gumerry too, but he seems to have gone again now. Did you see him?”

Will shook his head, pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his battered leather jacket. “We're lucky he got us the chance to come up here. They're supposed to go to a lot of trouble keeping visitors out, normally.”

Jane said, remembering: “There was one newspaper photographer who tried to get up close to the Greenwitch when they were taking it to the edge of the cliff. A lot of boys dragged him off. He was yelling like anything.”

“A dark man? With long hair?”

“Well yes, as a matter of fact. At least I think so.” She stared at him.

“Ah,” Will said. His amiable round face was vacant again. “Was that before you saw Merriman, or afterwards?”

“After,” Jane said, puzzled.

“Ah,” Will said again.

“Hey, Jane!” Barney came skidding up, out of breath, oversize boots flapping, with Simon close behind him. “Guess what we did, we saw Mr Penhallow and he let us go on board the
White Heather,
and we helped them unload—”

“Poof!” Jane backed away. “You certainly did!” Wrinkling her nose at their scale-spattered sweaters, she turned back to Will.

But Will was not there. Gazing round, she could see no sign of him anywhere.

“Where's he gone?” she said.

Simon said, “Where's who gone?”

“Will Stanton was here. But he's vanished. Didn't you see him?”

“We must have frightened him away.”

“We really ought to be nicer to him, you know,” Barney said.

“Well, well, well,” Simon said indulgently. “We'll keep him happy. Take him for a climb, or something. Come on, Jane, tell us about the Greenwitch.”

But Jane was not listening. “That was odd,” she said slowly. “I don't mean Will going off, I mean something he said. He's only known Gumerry for three days, and he's a polite sort of boy. But when he was talking about him just now, without thinking, the way things slip out naturally because you aren't watching—he didn't call Gumerry ‘your great-uncle' or ‘Professor Lyon,' the way he usually does. He called him ‘Merriman.' Just as if they were both the same age.”

 

 

IT WAS THE SKY THAT BEGAN THE ODDNESS OF THE REST OF THAT
day. As the Drews walked back along Kemare Head to the harbour the sun rose higher ahead of them, but gave no warmth, for as it rose a fine hazy mist began to grow too. In a little while the mist covered all the sky, so that the sun hung there familiar and yet strange, like a furry orange.

“Heat haze,” said Simon when Jane pointed this out to him. “It's going to be a nice day.”

“I don't know,” said Jane doubtfully. “It looks funny to me, more like a kind of danger signal. . . .”

By the time they had finished their large breakfast at the cottage, served by a sleepy Mrs Penhallow, the haze was thicker.

“It'll burn off,” Simon said. “When the sun gets higher.”

“I wish Great-Uncle Merry would come home,” said Jane.

“Stop worrying. Will Stanton isn't back yet either, they could be talking to Mr Penhallow, or someone. What's the matter with you this morning?”

“Needs a nap,” Barney said. “Poor child. Had no sleep.”

“Poor child, indeed,” said Jane, and was overtaken by a huge yawn.

“See?” said Barney.

“Perhaps you're right,” Jane said meekly, and she went to her room, setting the alarm clock to waken her in an hour's time.

When the shrilling bell buzzed through her head, it woke her into total confusion. Though the curtains were open, the room was almost dark. For a moment Jane thought it was night, and she waking early, until into her mind swam the image of the Greenwitch falling, falling down to the early-morning sea, and in alarm she jumped out of bed. The sky outside was solid with heavy dark clouds; she had never seen anything quite like it. The light was so dim that it was as if the sun had never risen that day.

Simon and Barney were alone downstairs, gazing anxiously out at the sky. Mr and Mrs Stanton, Jane knew, had left Trewissick early that morning for a two-day tour of china-clay pits; Mrs Penhallow, the boys reported, had retreated to bed. And Merriman and Will had still not appeared at all.

“But what could Gumerry be doing? Something must have happened!”

“I don't know quite what we can do, except wait.” Simon was subdued now too. “I mean, we could go out to look for him, but where would we start?”

“The Grey House,” Barney said suddenly.

“Good idea. Come on, Jane.”

*   *   *

“He seems to be taking the appearance of a painter,” Will said to Merriman as they made their way back along Kemare Head, behind the last straggle of cheerful villagers. “A swarthy kind of man, of middle height, with long dark hair and apparently a real but rather nasty talent. A nice touch, that.”

“The nastiness may be unintentional,” Merriman said grimly. “Even the great lords of the Dark cannot keep their true nature from colouring their dissimulations.”

“You think he is one of the great lords?”

“No. No, almost certainly not. But go over the rest of it.”

“He has already made a contact with the children. With Barney. And he has a totem—he stole a drawing that Barney had done, of the harbour.”

Merriman hissed between his teeth. “I had a purpose for that drawing. Our friend is further ahead of us than I gave him credit for. Never underestimate the Dark, Will. I have been on the verge of it this time.”

“He has also,” said Will, “stolen Captain Toms' dog Rufus. He left a note warning that the dog would die if the captain went near the Greenwitch—taking care Barney would see the note too. A very neat piece of blackmail. If Captain Toms had gone up to Kemare Head after that, Barney would have thought him a murderer. . . . Of course the Dark knew he would be keeping only one of the Old Ones away from the making, but it could have helped him a lot. . . . Rufus really is a marvellous animal, though, isn't he?” For a moment Will's voice was that not of an ageless Old One but of an enthusiastic small boy.

The concern in Merriman's bleak, craggy face relaxed into a small smile. “Rufus played a part of his own in the winning of the grail last summer. He has more talent for communicating with ordinary human beings than most four-legged creatures.”

At the end of the grassy headland, most of the villagers turned downhill to the quayside and the main village road. Merriman led Will straight ahead, to the higher road overlooking the harbour. Pausing to let a few other weary Greenwitch-makers pass, they crossed to the narrow grey-painted house that stood tallest of any in the terraced row. Merriman opened the front door, and they went in.

A long hallway stretched before them, hazy in the early-morning light. From an open door on their right Captain Toms said: “In here.”

It was a broad room of bookshelves, armchairs, pictures of sailing-ships; he sat in a leather armchair with his right leg outstretched. Its foot, wearing a carpet slipper over a bandage, was propped on a leather-padded footstool. “Gout,” said Captain Toms apologetically to Will. “Kicks up now and again, you know. Sign of a misspent youth, they say. It immobilises me just as effectively as any gentleman of the Dark could do—if our friend had had any foresight, he needn't have bothered to grab poor Rufus.”

“That is a gift he lacks, I think.” Merriman spread-eagled himself on a long sofa, with a small sigh of relief. “I am not quite sure why, since he is clearly of some rank. Something he dares not exercise, perhaps? Anyway the theft of the grail, the attention paid to linking up with the children, and especially Barney—they all add up in the same direction.”