Fire and Hemlock

  “Our phone bill,” said Fiona, “will jump up and hit the gong at this rate. Polly, I’m disappointed. From the look on your face, I made sure you were going to give Marmaduke the push.”

  “That was collecting evidence for the push,” said Polly. “Don’t worry, he’s got it. Now find me the bus timetable and I won’t bother you again.”

  5

  About the dead hour of the night

  She heard the bridles ring,

  And Janet was as glad of that

  As any earthly thing.

  TAM LIN

  On the bus to Middleton the following day, Polly sat clutching the book of ballads. She did not need to read those first two. She had them more or less by heart by then. But she thought about them the whole way.

  They were both about young men Laurel had owned, but their fates had been rather different. Thomas the Rhymer was a harpist, and a man of considerable spirit. When Laurel proposed rewarding him for his services by giving him the gift of always speaking the truth, Thomas objected very strongly indeed. He said his tongue was his own. But Laurel went ahead and gave it him. And what an awkward gift, Polly thought, one which could be downright embarrassing if Laurel happened to be annoyed when she gave it him. True Thomas, she called him, and turned him back into the ordinary world with his awkward gift after seven years. In the book, the story stopped there. But Polly knew she had read a longer version, perhaps in another book Tom had sent her, which made it clear that Thomas the Rhymer was still Laurel’s property even after he got home. Years later she came and fetched him away and he did not come back.

  The second Thomas had been taken as a boy, and he had escaped. He was rescued by a splendid girl called Janet, who was forever hitching her skirt up and racing off to battle against the odds. When the time came, Janet had simply hung on to her Tam. Laurel, or whatever she was calling herself then, had been furious.

  Polly could only hope she might manage to do what Janet had done, but she was very much afraid it would not be quite like that. Despite the similarity of the names, it was not Tam Lin but Thomas the Rhymer whom Thomas Lynn most resembled. He had been turned out too, also with a gift. And Laurel had been furious with Thomas Lynn at the time. She was still furious at the funeral. So the gift had been given with a twist. Anything he made up would prove to be true, and then come back and hit him. Which must, Polly thought, have made things so much easier for Mr Leroy.

  But this was where Polly herself had come in. She had become connected to the gift because she had helped Mr Lynn make up Tan Coul. And she rather thought that the gift had been intended to be conveyed through the pictures Tom had been allowed to take – shoddy, second-rate pictures, until Polly had stepped in there too and mixed the pictures up.

  So I did some good, Polly thought as she got off the bus and hurried with long, anxious strides to Granny’s house. Even if I cancelled it out later. Cancel it she had. Neither ballad more than hinted at what Laurel really needed young men for.

  Granny opened the door blinking, roused in the middle of her rest. “My heavens!” she said delightedly. Then sharply, “You fetched it out.”

  “Yes,” said Polly. “Come and sit down, Granny. I want to read you two things.”

  “Then just let me get the big pot full of tea,” Granny said. “I can see this is going to be a session.”

  They went into the kitchen, where Granny made the tea and fetched out a tinful of her best biscuits. Then she sat opposite Polly, with Mintchoc draped across her knees, very upright and looking curiously obedient.

  Polly read both ballads aloud to her, slowly and emphatically, pausing to explain the difficult words. “Well?” she said when she had finished.

  “Read them again,” said Granny.

  Polly did so. “Does that mean anything to you, Granny?”

  Granny nodded. “It’s laid on them not to say, nor me to remember, but I keep what I can in my head by living where I do. She likes them young, she likes them handsome, and musical if she can get them. She seems to have a fancy for the name Tom too, doesn’t she? But those rhymes have got one thing wrong, Polly. It’s every nine years that the funeral comes down.”

  “And last time was a woman,” said Polly. “Seb’s mother – supposedly Laurel’s mother, who is of course the same person as Laurel. Laurel takes a new life every eighty-one years, and I suppose she has to pretend the dead woman is her mother so that she can inherit from herself. I think Thomas Lynn was lucky he didn’t have to go then. Do you remember him now, Granny?”

  “Oh yes,” said Granny. Her hand smoothed Mintchoc. “The young man with the pictures. I should have been kinder to him for bringing you away from That House. But I was scared. I was going by Mintchoc, you see. She ran away from him on sight. And I thought He’s one of Hers, that one. He’ll be lucky if he can call his soul his own. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “You may have been then,” Polly said. “But he was getting free somehow – I know he was – until I stopped him.”

  “I know it,” Granny said. “Mintchoc sat on his knee the second time he came. That was a rainy day, and he was just off to Australia. I’d terrible sciatica that day.”

  Eh? thought Polly. Granny never rambled on about weather or sciatica unless she was trying to distract attention from something else. And of course she was. Mr Leroy had got at Granny that Sports Day, just as Polly had feared he would. She leaned back in her chair and looked at her. “Granny, come clean. What did you do?”

  “Told him off,” said Granny. “You can look at me how you like, Polly, but I did right, and you know it! You were barely fourteen, and you worshipped the ground he walked on, and it was not right of him to let you. You’d your own life to live, Polly. It wouldn’t have been right even if he was what he seemed and not one of Hers. And so I told him. He took it well too. I don’t think he’d quite seen it before.”

  Polly sighed. “I suppose you were right – but, oh, I do wish you hadn’t. That accounts for – It led to what I did – Never mind. What did he say?”

  “Looked stricken, and then said he wouldn’t forgive himself for using you,” Granny replied.

  “Using me?”

  That was an odd thing to say, Polly thought. Chilling.

  “So that was what I did,” said Granny. “And what did you do, my lady?”

  “I used that Fire and Hemlock picture,” Polly said, bleaching with shame to admit it even to Granny. She described what she had done that day. But she had barely got to the part where it had worked, and she had seen Tom with Laurel, when Granny arose, creaking a little, and gathered up Mintchoc.

  “See what they do to your mind from That House,” she said. “I’d wondered about that picture often, but I never thought to look. We’d best look at it at once, Polly.” She marched up the stairs to Polly’s room, and Polly marched after her, both of them so determined that Polly felt they needed military music playing to express it. “Take it down,” Granny said, with her arms full of Mintchoc, nodding at the picture.

  Polly carefully unhooked it and laid it on her bed. While she did it, she found she was watching Mintchoc as carefully as Granny was, but Mintchoc sat serenely against Granny’s chest and did not seem perturbed. There seemed nothing to perturb anyone about the picture. It was a big, enlarged colour photograph, exciting enough, but still empty of the mystery Polly had seen in it as a child. “I’ve often wondered,” she said, “why they never tried to take it back.”

  “My guess is they couldn’t,” Granny said. “It must have been his to give, and he gave it you. It looks to me as if the back unclips. Take it up, but carefully.”

  Polly turned the picture over to show the typewritten label that said simply Fire and Hemlock, and loosened the big clamps that held glass to picture and picture to the board behind. She pulled the board up. “Oh.” There was a hank of hair inside, between the board and back of the photograph, pale hair, a little wavy. The sort of hair the boy in the stolen photograph had had. “The Obah Cypt,” she said.
“He never could think what it was. And I had it all the time.” She put out a cautious fingertip and touched the hair. The wavy end she touched dissolved to dust as her finger met it. She snatched her finger back.

  “Don’t do that!” Granny said sharply. “Let it lie. You may have voided the charm, but there’s no need to kill him. Put the back on again and let’s have some more tea.”

  Down in the biscuit-scented kitchen again, where the clock seemed to tick louder as the room darkened, Polly sipped the new brew of tea and asked, “But have you any idea what I can do?”

  “Maybe,” said Granny. “Read me the charm out of the second song again.”

  “Charm?” said Polly.

  “Goose,” said Granny. “The bit that sticks out from the rest. Give it here. I’ll know it. It talks generally.” She took the book and leaned back so that her long-sighted eyes could see the print. “Here we are – and I wish I’d known of it when I was your age—

  The night it is good Hallowe’en,

  The fairy folk do ride,

  And they that would their true-love win

  At Miles Cross they must bide.

  There’s what you do. Plain as a pikestaff.”

  “What? Go to the station?” Polly said.

  “Where else?” said Granny. “Between twelve and one o’clock, it says. But I should be there by eleven, if I were you. We don’t know what clock they’re keeping.”

  She seemed so certain that Polly took the book back and looked at the rest. The instructions, once you began to see them as that, were very clear and detailed.

  “And there’ll be three companies, it says, and he’ll be in the last. And not the brown or the black, but the white. Are you sure?”

  “Well, you’ll have to look sharp about you. It may not seem the same in these modern days.”

  “And then just hang on to him, I suppose, whatever they do to stop me,” Polly said. “That’s what Janet did. But I’ve a feeling that won’t seem the same either.”

  “If she could, you can,” Granny said. She chuckled. “I must say I like that Janet, even though she was no better than she should be.” She was quiet for a moment, sitting very upright, with the clock ticking loudly in the near-dark of the kitchen. Polly could see the white outlines of Granny’s face and no more. It struck her suddenly that she now knew what Granny looked like when she was young, knew it properly, not just from a photograph. “And I envy her too,” Granny added.

  “What do you mean?” Polly asked.

  “Your grandfather,” said Granny. “He was called Tom too. She does like that name. You should have heard him play the violin, Polly. But she took him when the nine years were up. I didn’t know any charm to help. I was left alone, with Reg ready to be born.”

  “Oh.” There seemed nothing Polly could say. This explained so much about Granny, and probably a great deal about Reg too. She sat in the dark, thinking of Granny, all these years doing what she could not to forget, and a memory came to her. Her own hands with woolly gloves on, carefully hanging a little oval photograph up in the place of the one she had decided to steal. She wondered if the old-fashioned boy in it had been her grandfather.

  From there she passed to wondering about the way Hunsdon House had opened that time to let her in to take the photograph. It must have been hers to take, then. Did that mean there was some hope now, or not?

  Here Granny sprang up, saying, “This won’t do!” and turned on the light. “I must get some food into you if you’re to walk to Miles Cross before eleven.” She looked closely at Polly. “You’re not wearing your pendant.”

  “No,” said Polly.

  “Better be safe than sorry,” Granny said.

  “But think of being both at once,” said Polly. “I’ve passed the point where I care about being safe. Besides, they’ve been able to get round it for years.”

  Granny sighed, but accepted it. Apart from insisting as strongly as Fiona that Polly eat something, she said very little else. When Polly got up to leave, Granny kissed her goodbye without comment and went to the door with her. It proved to be pouring with rain outside. Granny picked the famous green-and-white umbrella out of the hall stand and put it in Polly’s hand. “Any other time I’d say make sure to bring it back,” she said. “But don’t put it up inside the house, all the same.”

  Granny, Polly thought as she trudged off into the rain, was not really expecting to see her back.

  The rain had slacked to a drizzle by the time Polly reached the station. The forecourt was black and shiny, and unreal with orange wriggles of light. A little hesitantly Polly crossed it and approached the thing in the middle that she had always thought was a fountain. She now saw it was a cross, old and weather-bitten and eroded, like the one in Stow-on-the-Water. She climbed the steps to it and stood leaning against the upright. And waited. The entire place seemed deserted, although there was dim light in the station building. There were no people about, and nothing to do but watch the rain run in little orange-lit shivers across the black forecourt.

  I’m on a wild-goose chase, she thought some time after eleven had struck in the distance. The railway station was a silly place to be. It had to be wrong. She should have gone to Hunsdon House. But the book had been so clear, and she had no other guide. She went on waiting. She knew she would still be standing here at two o’clock, just on the wild chance it was true. It was not because of the things Fiona had said, or Granny, or because she was determined not to be embarrassed off this time. It was not even because Tom had given her an awkward, sideways goodbye kiss. It was because this really was the only way she knew to prevent certain murder.

  The drizzle kept gusting in under Granny’s umbrella. Polly was soaked through and her feet were numb by the time she heard midnight striking. And still nothing had happened. She put her wrist close to her eyes and tried to see her watch in the murky orange light. I’ll give it five minutes, she thought. If nothing’s happened by then, I’ll have to go, and run like crazy to Hunsdon House. This has to be wrong! It was stupid to trust an old rhyme like that. Her hand shook drops from the spikes of the umbrella from the effort she had to make not to start running to Hunsdon House that instant. She put her watch to her eyes again. It was ticking, but the hands did not seem to have moved.

  But there were some people coming. Polly heard them crossing the court in the distance, in an irregular splashing of feet, a lot of them, with whistles, catcalls, and loud, drunken-sounding laughter. She moved the umbrella to look and saw a riotous crowd of dark shapes stampeding towards the station entrance. Only a crowd of drunken youths, after all. Polly subsided against the cross, feeling rather exposed and more certain than ever that she had foolishly come to the wrong place. The boys did not notice her. They went straight to the station building, laughing and whooping and pushing one another about, where, in the doorway, their progress was interrupted by the inevitable drunken quarrel. The group milled about, and loud, young voices barked like dogs for a second or so. After that, they seemed to sort it out, and all went piling into the booking hall. But just for that second enough dim light fell on the struggling bodies for Polly to see that one of them was Leslie.

  I think this really is it! she thought.

  Shortly after that, several big cars drove into the forecourt. Each raced past Polly, slashing rain across her, gleaming under the light so that they looked almost unreal, and stopped in a group near the station entrance. The doors opened. The headlights blazed ample, freckled light.

  Laurel got out of one car with a number of other women, all beautifully dressed. Mr Leroy and Seb, in smart suits, got out of another. And a crowd of other people, equally well dressed, whom Polly vaguely knew as Hunsdon House folk, climbed out of the other cars. All held their hats or put up umbrellas and hurried into the station.

  There was no longer any doubt. Polly leaned on the knobby stone of the cross, knowing she only had to wait. And behind the umbrella she heard more cars. One stopped. Another. Handbrakes croaked. A third stopped,
with a wild squeal of wet tires. Doors slammed. Feet barked on the tarmac. Two dark figures hurried by, one short, one tall, carrying violin cases. Ed seemed to be in black, Sam in dark brown. Neither of them saw Polly. Tom came next, wearing a light-coloured padded parka, carrying his cello case, and turning his light-coloured head to say something to Ann, who was a little behind.

  6

  And see you not yon bonny road

  That winds across the ferny lea?

  That is the road to fair Elfland

  Where you and I this night must be.

  THOMAS THE RHYMER

  Polly found herself smiling because of the well-known way Tom’s head turned. It was an utter delight just to see it again. Now watch it! Watch it, she told herself. She was reminded of the glee she had felt while she set up that piece of witchcraft with the picture. It was not to be like that this time. This was not what it was about. All the same, she was so glad! She was still smiling as she slipped round the cross and down the steps, tottering a bit on her numb feet, and seized hold of Tom’s arm. She felt it tense and jerk. “Hello,” she said.

  It did not surprise her particularly when Tom turned and peered at her blankly through his rain-speckled glasses. “I think you’ve made a mistake of some kind,” he said.

  “No I haven’t,” Polly said. It was bound to be like this. “And I’m hanging on to you from now on.”

  By this time Ann had passed them and joined Ed and Sam. Tom hurried after them, shaking his arm to free it from Polly, and Polly went with him, hanging on. “Will you please let go,” he said.

  “My good woman,” Polly prompted him. “No, I won’t.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Do you want money or something?”

  “You know perfectly well I don’t!”

  “I don’t know anything about you. Let go!”