They were halfway across when he thought of the promise he’d made on his twelfth birthday. He’d told his mother that he wouldn’t make any more hasty decisions; that he’d stop to consider the consequences before he rushed into things. And yet, here he was, walking across an unsafe bridge above a river that could quite definitely drown him were he to fall into it.
Naren looked back. ‘Why have you stopped?’ she called.
‘I was just admiring the view,’ Charlie said airily.
‘Come on.’
At that instant one of the supports that held the metal rail fell out and clanged on to the rocks below. The whole bridge shuddered and a shower of icicles spun down into the void.
Charlie froze.
‘It’s OK.’ The girl smiled encouragingly. ‘We’re not heavy, you and me. The bridge will hold us.’
Gritting his teeth, Charlie strode after her.
When he got to the end of the bridge he hid his relief by swinging nonchalantly between the two final posts, and jumping on to a welcome strip of firm rock.
Naren laughed. ‘Now, another climb,’ she said.
The sky had become lighter and the climb to the top of the cliff didn’t seem nearly so hazardous as the descent on the other side.
At the top of the cliff they were surrounded by huge naked trees. A faint path led through the forest and Charlie, stepping behind Naren, became aware that the place was full of sound. From the bare branches, clusters of chattering birds watched the children passing beneath; even the dead grass rustled with life. Rabbits hopped beside the path, a stag peeped from behind a tree, and then, gradually, the wild sounds were drowned by an incessant and exciting barking.
A few seconds later, Runner Bean burst through the undergrowth and leapt up at Charlie, yelping with joy.
‘Runner!’ cried Charlie, hugging the big yellow dog.
‘He’s yours?’ asked Naren.
‘No. He belongs to my friend. But I feel kind of responsible for him, because Benjamin, my friend, has been away.’
‘That dog was the first,’ said Naren. ‘Over the bridge he came, and the others followed: dogs, cats, ponies, goats, rabbits, everything. We heard them coming and ran to the cliff to look. It was quite a sight, all those animals under the moon, running across the bridge.’
‘But why did they come here?’
‘Because it’s safer. Can’t you feel it? Over there, in the city, something evil has woken up. My father will explain.’
Before Charlie could ask any more questions, Naren turned quickly and began to bound along the path. Runner Bean leapt beside her, but Charlie followed at a slower pace. He gazed up at the canopy of branches above his head. Yes, it did feel safer here. There was a calmness, a wonderful sense of protection. He wondered what sort of man he was about to meet. If Naren was descended from the Red King, then, in all probability, so was her father. Was he a sorcerer? A hypnotist? A were-beast?
A fence came into view, and an open gate. Charlie’s heart began to pound. Naren was standing just inside, but Runner Bean waited for Charlie and together they walked through the gate into a wide enclosure.
At the far end stood a small cottage, with red-brick barns on either side. Smoke drifted from the cottage chimney and the slate roof was covered with birds. Animals of every description filled the enclosure. There were ponies cropping the sparse winter grass, dogs feeding from stone troughs and cats sitting on the fence.
A grey bird sailed out of a window calling, ‘Dog ahoy!’ Surely it had to be Lysander’s parrot, Homer.
Charlie barely registered the existence of the other creatures. His attention was held by a figure standing in front of the cottage door. The man was of medium height with a brown weathered face and a shock of white hair. In spite of the cold he wore only a tartan shirt over his muddy jeans. His tanned skin emphasised the colour of his vivid blue eyes, eyes that stared at Charlie with shock and recognition.
And Charlie noted the large axe, held across the man’s chest. He looked all too ready to use it.
The explorer
‘Dad, I’ve brought Charlie Bone,’ Naren said, a little anxiously.
‘So I see. Naren, I forbade you to enter the city.’ The man’s voice was husky with suppressed anger and while he spoke to his daughter, he never took his eyes off Charlie. ‘I suppose you crossed the iron bridge?’
‘Sorry.’ Naren looked at her feet. ‘I couldn’t help it.’
‘Of course you could help it.’ Her father raised his voice. ‘Will you never learn? Will you never do the safe and sensible thing?’
‘But now you are glad, aren’t you?’ Naren smiled hopefully. ‘Glad that I brought Charlie.’
The man gave a grunt of exasperation and brought his axe crashing down on to a tree stump, already pitted with blade marks. Leaving the axe, he turned his back on the children and strode into the cottage.
Unexpectedly, the door wasn’t slammed. All the same, Charlie didn’t feel welcome.
‘My father will calm down,’ Naren said confidently. ‘His anger is like a flame that dies. Come into the warm.’ She walked to the open door, motioning Charlie to follow.
But Charlie stayed where he was. In spite of the cold, he was reluctant to leave the animals. He had begun to recognise some of them. Emma’s duck was pecking at a trough of corn. Homer had settled on a fence-post and there were two white rabbits cropping the grass in a far corner; they looked very like Olivia’s.
‘I think I’ll just take Runner Bean and go home,’ Charlie told the girl. ‘My friends can come and fetch their pets now that I know where they are.’
‘No,’ Naren said sharply. ‘No one must know about this place. My father’s anger, then, would be terrible. Come,’ she beckoned. ‘You must talk with him.’
The white-haired man had seemed so grumpy, Charlie didn’t feel he could possibly want to talk to him, but Naren beckoned so insistently, he found himself edging closer and closer.
Runner Bean came as far as the door, but wouldn’t follow Charlie when he went into the house. Naren took off her boots in a small stone-flagged hall, and Charlie did the same. And then Naren opened a second door, and when Charlie stepped through it, he found himself in a warm, bright kitchen.
A kettle boiled on an iron range, and burning logs blazed in the grate beneath it. An oil-lamp sitting on a round table gave the room a smooth, mellow glow.
Naren’s father sat in a chair by the stove, while a grey-haired woman bent over him, talking urgently. She looked up when she heard the children enter, and gave Charlie a smile that banished all his uncertainty. Like Naren, the woman appeared to be Chinese.
Charlie would have spoken to the woman but something happened that he was quite unprepared for. He became aware that pictures covered every spare surface of the walls. It was as if a hundred windows were showing him a different view of a mountain. There were mountains bathed in sunlight, mountains ice-white in moonlight, snow-fields streaked with purple shadows and splashed with fluttering rainbow-coloured pennants. So many breathtaking peaks, so many splendid ranges.
In one of the pictures a mountaineer waved at the camera. His dark glasses were pushed up over his blue woollen hat and he was laughing. Charlie could hear his voice. There were movements in the room around him, and then the kitchen swung violently from side to side and vanished. Charlie was alone, sailing towards the distant mountains.
Cold, cold air stung his cheeks and rattled in his lungs. He was flying over dazzling white snow while the man’s laughter grew louder.
Someone tugged Charlie’s arms. It really hurt. He wished they would let go. He tried to shrug them off but he was too weak. So he let himself be tugged and pulled and shaken and shouted at, until he had to open his eyes. And there he was, standing just inside a kitchen door, with a pair of blue eyes peering anxiously into his, and a face that wasn’t grumpy any more.
Naren’s father took Charlie’s arm and set him in a chair by the stove.
‘I thought I was on a m
ountain.’ Charlie looked up at the pictures on the wall. ‘You were there, Mr . . .?’
‘I know,’ said Naren’s father. ‘You chose a fine time to travel, Charlie Bone. Gave us all a nasty fright.’
‘Oh. Do you know about it, then?’ asked Charlie in surprise. ‘My travelling, I mean.’
‘Yes. I’ve heard.’
The Chinese woman said, ‘You are welcome here, Charlie.’ She glanced at the man with a frown. ‘My husband worries for Naren, but he should not have been angry with you.’ Shaking her head in a worried way, she pulled out a chair and sat at the table. ‘That was not right.’
Naren put her arm round the woman’s shoulders, saying, ‘Sorry. My fault. Sorry, sorry, Mother.’
‘Erm . . . who exactly are you?’ Charlie asked the man.
‘My name is Bartholomew. I’m Ezekiel Bloor’s son.’ When he saw the look of alarm on Charlie’s face, the man added quickly, ‘Don’t worry, I’m the black sheep of the family, or perhaps the white. I haven’t seen my father for years, or my son. They are as far removed from me as the moon from the earth.’
‘But why . . .’ Charlie looked round the room. ‘How come you’re here?’
‘Ah.’ Bartholomew moved to the window and gazed at his animal visitors.
‘He will tell you,’ Naren said. ‘Won’t you, Father? You must tell Charlie.’
Bartholomew strode back to them. ‘Yes.’ His tone was solemn and a little regretful. ‘I must.’ He drew a chair close to Charlie’s and began to talk.
While Charlie listened, Naren’s mother gave him a bowl of delicious, steaming tea, and then a cake of sweet, fulfilling munchiness. He had never tasted anything so wonderful, but he could only nod his thanks, for he was incapable of dragging his mind away from Bartholomew’s incredible story.
It began with a wedding. Bartholomew Bloor married Mary Chance on a rainy autumn morning. No one was happy about it except for the bride and groom, who were so in love they hardly noticed the weather. Ezekiel Bloor and his Yewbeam cousins despised the bride, who was a pretty, but impoverished dancer. And Mary’s parents feared for a daughter who was marrying into such a strange, unsociable family.
‘For a while they left us alone,’ Bartholomew said with a sigh. ‘And then I heard about the expedition. My mother used to take me with her when she collected rare plants in the mountains of Bavaria. Ever since then I have loved mountains. After my mother died, I spent all my holidays climbing with friends. We went to Snowdonia, the Alps and the Pyrenees, but my dream, always, was to climb in the Himalayas.
‘One day a letter came from one of my mountaineering friends. Harold, my son, was eight at the time. He was serious and stolid. He didn’t share my love of travel. He hated camping, hiking, even picnies.’ Bartholomew gave a rueful laugh. ‘Imagine a child not liking picnics.’
Naren clicked her tongue. ‘Imagine!’
‘The letter told me about an expedition,’ Bartholomew went on. ‘There was a place for me. They were leaving for the Himalayas in a month.’
Charlie munched the sweet cake as quietly as he could – and waited.
Bartholomew’s voice faltered before he said, ‘Mary told me it was the chance of a lifetime, and I’d always regret it if I didn’t go. So I did.’ He stood up and began to pace the room. ‘Things went well until the night of the storm. It was ferocious and terrifying. An avalanche killed two of our party, and I was swept into a ravine. For two days I lay there, unable to move. I was rescued by a man from an unknown tribe of extraordinary people.’
Bartholomew came and sat down again. He told Charlie how the mysterious tribe had cared for him. Both his legs were broken and a gash on his head gave him constant pain, but at the end of a year he was well enough to travel. A young tribesman took him to a mountain path that led out of the valley and, after several weeks, he reached a town with a telephone.
‘I was full of excitement, longing to speak to Mary again, to tell her I was alive and coming home.’ Bartholomew shook his head. He ran a hand through his white hair and covered his eyes with the other.
At first Charlie was afraid to ask a question. He looked at Naren and her mother, but they seemed unable to speak, Bartholomew was so distressed. Eventually, curiosity got the better of Charlie and he ventured, ‘So what happened?’
Bartholomew looked up. ‘Your grandmother, Grizelda Bone, answered the phone. She was in my house, on the point of selling it. She told me that everyone believed I had died in the avalanche. When Mary heard she went into an empty theatre and danced and danced herself to death.’ Bartholomew took a deep breath. ‘My son was living in Bloor’s Academy, cared for by Ezekiel and Grizelda. And very happy he was too, apparently.’
Charlie was too shocked to speak.
‘So I didn’t come home,’ Bartholomew continued. ‘I became an explorer. I went on travelling until I came to China, where I lived for many years until I met my second wife, Meng.’ He looked over to the grey-haired woman, who smiled at him. ‘One day, after a terrible flood, a flower from the sun walked into our home. Her parents had been swept away by the water. She was four years old and called herself Naren – a sunflower.’
‘Yes, me!’ cried Naren. ‘And they adopted me, and here I am.’
Charlie looked round at her and grinned. ‘But why did you all come back here?’ he asked.
‘Ah.’ Bartholomew went to the window. ‘That’s something I can’t explain. I had to be close to the place where the Red King’s children were born. From this side of the gorge we can see the castle, or what’s left of it. But we’re safe from the city and those two terrible families. And we’re safe from,’ he paused, ‘from something I heard about, when I was in Italy. A thing they called “the shadow”. I dream about it sometimes.’
A sudden chill entered the cosy room, as though an invisible door had fallen across the window. Charlie shivered. ‘A shadow stands behind the king in his portrait,’ he said. Bartholomew nodded. ‘You’ve seen it then.’
‘We think,’ Charlie hesitated, ‘it seems as if he’s back. The shadow has moved, you see, and we think – well, that is, a rat told my friend Billy (Bartholomew didn’t bat an eyelid) that the earth shuddered. And then a dog . . .’ Charlie repeated Blessed’s story about the shadow that had turned into a man.
Naren’s mother put a hand to her mouth and Bartholomew closed his eyes against an unimaginable horror.
‘They say it’s Borlath,’ Charlie went on, ‘your ancestor – and mine too, I suppose, as we’re kind of cousins.’
‘It’s not Borlath,’ the explorer said grimly. ‘The king’s shadow was a man who tore the Red King’s family apart. I forget his name.’
‘I never heard of him before,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s not in my uncle’s history books.’
‘Histories are written from a certain point of view,’ Bartholomew said dismissively. ‘They are edited, embellished, shorn of the facts. Only the traveller can find the truth, Charlie, for the truth is in men’s heads and in their hearts. Do not always put your trust in words that you see on paper.’
‘I s’pose I’m a traveller, in a way,’ said Charlie.
‘You certainly are. And who knows, you may discover more about the Red King than I have, in all my years of travelling.’
‘Only if I can get past the shadow,’ Charlie murmured.
‘Ha! We’re back to the shadow.’ Bartholomew suddenly rose to his feet with a closed look on his face.
All Charlie’s questions were swallowed in a gulp. Instead, he spoke about his life since his father disappeared, about Bloor’s Academy and the endowed children who had become his friends.
‘You will find your father, Charlie,’ Bartholomew said with conviction, ‘because of the way you are, and because of the loyalty you have inspired. Lyell is an extraordinary man. It’s a miracle he remained so decent surrounded by all those vipers. I am old enough to be his father, but in a few short weeks we became the best of friends. You were a year old, Charlie, when I paid my family
a brief visit. They wanted nothing to do with me. My son barely acknowledged me. I suppose, in a way, Lyell became the son I’d lost. I took him climbing with me . . .’ Bartholomew’s voice trailed off, then, with a big shrug, he said, ‘Time for you to go home, Charlie. And not the way you came.’
‘Can I –?’ began Naren.
‘No,’ her father said sternly. ‘You will stay here with your mother. And you will never cross that iron bridge again.’
Naren grinned sheepishly at Charlie. ‘But the animals, Father. Charlie must take them back with him.’
‘Not all the animals,’ laughed her mother.
‘Just the ones that belong to my friends,’ said Charlie. ‘You haven’t seen any gerbils, have you?’
‘Lots!’ Naren ran into the passage and, pulling on her coat and boots, called, ‘The barns are full of them. Come and see.’
Hurriedly putting on his outdoor clothes, Charlie followed Naren across to a large barn standing at right-angles to the house. As he stepped into the barn, an army of small rodents scampered across the dusty floor, leaping for hay bales or burrowing under logs.
‘How on earth am I going to sort them out?’ groaned Charlie. ‘My friend’s lost more than twenty.’
‘Who’s going to know which is which?’ said Naren.
‘Gabriel knows his gerbils intimately,’ said Charlie with a sigh.
At this Naren gave such a peal of merry laughter, Charlie began to giggle.
It took them almost an hour to catch twenty-five vaguely recognisable gerbils, two white rabbits, a duck, a grey parrot and a blue boa. Boxes were found, and a cage for the boa. ‘Don’t fancy that thing creeping round my neck while I’m driving,’ said Bartholomew, as he helped Charlie to coax the snake into a cage. But the boa was an amiable creature and would never have harmed a friend. None of the family was surprised to learn that it was probably a thousand years old. On his travels, Bartholomew had met creatures of an even greater age.
A battered-looking van stood in the yard behind the house, and the boxed animals were carefully packed into the back. Charlie took a seat beside Bartholomew, Homer perched on the boa’s cage and Runner Bean sat on Charlie’s lap.