Over Sea, Under Stone

  The boy’s footsteps rang more loudly behind him now, over the quiet evening twitter of birds hidden in the trees. The sound of the feet so much noisier than his own gave Simon the beginnings of an idea, and when at last the road branched off he put on a desperate burst of speed and ran down the side turning.

  The wall ended at two battered gate-posts through which he glimpsed an overgrown drive. Further down the road he caught sight of the rising tower of Trewissick church, and his heart sank as he realised how far he was from home.

  The boy Bill had not turned the corner yet; Simon could hear his steps gradually growing louder from the main road. Quickly he slipped inside the deserted gateway of the long drive and wriggled into the bushes which grew in an unruly tangle beside the gate-post. He jumped with pain as thorns and sharp twigs stuck into him from all sides. But he crouched quite still behind the leaves, trying to quiet his gasping breaths, certain that the pounding of his heart must be audible all up and down the road.

  The idea worked. He saw Bill, dishevelled and scarlet, pause at the end of the road, peering up and down. He looked puzzled and angry, listening with his head cocked for the sound of feet. Then he turned and walked slowly towards Simon’s hiding-place down the side road, glancing back uncertainly over his shoulder.

  Simon held his breath, and crouched further back into the bushes.

  Unexpectedly he heard a noise from behind him. Turning his head sharply, wincing as a fat purple fuchsia blossom bobbed into his eye, he listened. In a moment he recognised the sound of feet crunching on gravel, coming towards the road down the drive. The gaps of light through the branches darkened for an instant as the figure of a man passed very close to him, walking down the drive and out through the gateway. Simon saw that he was very tall, and had dark hair, but he could not see his face.

  The figure wandered idly out into the road. Simon saw now that he was dressed all in black; long thin black legs like a heron, and a black silk jacket with the light glinting silvery over the shoulders. The boy Bill’s sullen face brightened as he caught sight of the man, and he ran forward to meet him in the middle of the road. They stood talking, but out of earshot, so that Simon could hear their voices only as an indistinct low blur. Bill was waving his hands and pointing back behind him to the road and then down the drive. Simon saw the tall dark man shake his head, but still he could not see his face.

  Then they both turned back towards the drive and began to walk in his direction, Bill still talking eagerly. Simon shrank nervously back into his hiding-place, feeling suddenly more frightened than he had been since the chase began. This was no stranger to Bill. The boy was smiling. This man was someone he had recognised with relief. Someone else on the enemy side. . . .

  He could see nothing now but the leaves before his face, and did not dare move forward to peer through a gap. But the footsteps ringing on the metalled road outside did not change to the crunch of gravel; they went past, outside the wall, and on up the road. Simon heard the murmur of voices, but could distinguish nothing except one phrase when the village boy raised his voice. “. . . got to get ’n, she said, ’tis surely the right one, and now I’ve lost . . .”

  Lost me, thought Simon with a grin. His terror faded as their footsteps died away, and he began to feel triumphant at having outwitted the bigger boy. He glanced down at the manuscript in his hand and gave it a conspiratorial squeeze. There was silence again now, and he could hear nothing but the song of the birds in the approaching dusk. He wondered how late it was. The chase seemed to have lasted for a week. The muscles of his legs began to nag protestingly at their long cramped stillness. But still he waited, straining his ears for any sound showing that the man and the boy were still near.

  At last he decided that they must have gone out of sight down the road. Clutching the manuscript firmly, he parted the bushes before his face with one hand and stepped out into the drive. No one was there. Nothing moved.

  Simon tiptoed gingerly across the gravel and peered up and down round the gate-post. He could see no one, and with growing cheerfulness he crossed from the gateway to make his way back to the road from which he had come.

  It was not until he was several paces out in the open that he saw the boy Bill and the dark man standing together beside the wall fifty yards away, in clear view.

  Simon gasped, and felt his stomach twist with panic. For a moment he stood there, uncertain whether to bolt back to the shelter of the drive before they could see him. But as he hesitated, mesmerized, Bill turned his head, shouted and began to run, and the man with him, realising, turned to follow. Simon swung round and dashed for the main road. The silence all round seemed suddenly as menacing as the leaf-roofed lane had been; he ached for the safety of crowds, people and cars, so that at least he would lose the awful sensation of being alone, with feet pounding after him in implacable pursuit.

  Down the side road, round the corner and along the wall of the churchyard, faster, faster; Simon’s heart sank as he ran. His legs were stiff after the cramped pause in the bushes, and his whole body was very tired. He knew that he would not be able to last very much longer.

  A car passed him, travelling fast in the opposite direction. Wild thoughts flickered through Simon’s mind, as he felt the road beating hard through his thin rubber soles: he could shout and wave at a car, perhaps, or run for refuge into one of the little houses that were fringing the road as he neared the village. But the boy Bill had a man with him now, and the man could tell some story to any stranger Simon approached, and the stranger would probably believe that instead. . . .

  “Stop!” a deep voice called behind him. Desperately Simon tried to fling himself forward faster. Everything would be over if they caught him. They would have the manuscript, they would have the whole secret. There would be nothing left to do. He would have broken the trust, he would have let Gumerry down. . . .

  His breath began to come in great painful gasps, and he staggered as he ran. There was a crossroads ahead. The fast decisive footsteps behind him sounded louder and louder; almost he heard his pursuers breathing in his ears. He heard the boy call, on a note of triumph: “Quick . . . now . . .” The voice was farther away than the footsteps. It must be the man who was behind him, almost at his heels, his feet thudding nearer, nearer. . . .

  Simon’s ears were singing with the fight for breath. The crossroads loomed ahead, but he could hardly see it. He heard half consciously the noisy roar of a car’s engine, very near, but it barely registered in his weary brain. There was a rattle and a squeal of brakes, and half-way across the crossroads he almost collided with the rusting hood of a big car.

  Simon slithered to a halt and made to dodge round it, aware only of the danger at his heels. And then, as if the darkening twilit sky were once more suddenly flooded with sunlight, he realized Great-Uncle Merry was leaning from the window of the car.

  The car’s engine revved up again with a thunderous roar. “The other side! Get in!” Great-Uncle Merry yelled at Simon through the window.

  Sobbing with relief, Simon stumbled round the back of the big estate car and wrenched at the handle of the door on the other side. He collapsed into the creaking seat and pulled the door shut as Great-Uncle Merry let in the clutch and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The car leapt forward, jerking round the corner, and then they were down the road and away.

  • Chapter Eight •

  “But how did you know where to come?” Simon said, as Great-Uncle Merry changed gear noisily at the foot of the hill up to the Grey House.

  “I didn’t really. I was just driving round the village hoping I should find you. I left as soon as Jane and Barney came tumbling back into the house. Poor mites, they were in a dreadful state—they rushed into the drawing-room and grabbed me bodily. Your parents were rather amused. They seem to think we’re playing some great private game.” Great-Uncle Merry smiled grimly.

  “Gosh, it was lucky you chose that road to drive along,” Simon said. “I’ve never been so glad to
see anybody in my life.”

  “Well, you must remember I know Trewissick. When the children said they hadn’t been able to find you on the path back to the house I knew there was only one way you could have gone. You came out into Pentreath Lane, didn’t you?”

  “There was a lane,” Simon said. “All shut in by trees. I didn’t really have time to see what it was called.”

  Great-Uncle Merry chuckled. “No, I dare say not. Anyway I gambled on your turning out of that lane on to the main Tregoney road, which in fact you did. Good job you didn’t go the other way.”

  “Why?” Simon said, remembering the blind choice he had made in the lane, with the boy scrambling over the stile behind him.

  “In the other direction that lane is a dead end. It leads up to Pentreath Farm. If you can call it a farm—it’s been hopelessly neglected for years. Mrs. Palk’s no-good brother lives there—young Bill Hoover’s father. So does the boy himself when he bothers to go home, which I gather isn’t very often. But on the whole it wouldn’t have been a very healthy place for you to run to.”

  “Golly!” Simon felt cold at the thought.

  “Well, never mind. You didn’t anyway.” Great-Uncle Merry stopped the car with a final rattle and roar and heaved at the hand-brake. “Here we are. Safe home. Now you run along in and clean yourself up before your mother sees you. There’s some friend of hers come to supper, luckily, so she’ll be shut up in the drawing-room. Out you get. I’ll put the car away. And Simon—”

  Simon, half-way out of the door with the manuscript clutched to his breast, paused and looked back. He could only just see Great-Uncle Merry’s face, his ruffled white hair turned to a dark tangle by the shadow, and light from a street lamp up the hill reflecting eerily back to make his eyes two glinting points in the dark.

  “It was very well done,” Great-Uncle Merry said quietly.

  Simon said nothing, but slammed the door feeling suddenly more grown-up than he ever had before. And when the car had coughed on up the hill he forgot all his weariness and crossed the road holding his back very straight.

  Jane and Barney were at the door before he had one foot on the step. They hustled him inside and towards the stairs.

  “Did he catch you?”

  “You’ve still got it! Oh well done . . .”

  “We thought you’d get all beaten up. . . .” This was Barney, wide-eyed and solemn.

  “You didn’t get hurt, did you? What happened?” Jane ran her eyes critically over Simon like a doctor.

  “I’m all right. . . .”

  There was a sudden bright streak of light in the hall as the drawing-room door opened. Mother called, over a murmur of voices from inside. “Is that you, children?”

  “Yes,” Jane called across the banisters.

  “Supper’s nearly ready, don’t be long. Come straight down when you’ve washed.”

  “All right, Mother.” The door closed again. “They’re all talking like anything in there,” Jane said to Simon. “Mother and Father met some long-lost friend in the harbour and it turns out she lives in Penzance. I think she paints too. She’s staying to supper. She seems quite nice. Did he chase you for miles?”

  “Hundreds of miles,” Simon said. He yawned. “Hundreds and hundreds . . . and then Great-Uncle Merry turned up just when I was going to get caught.”

  “We sent him out after you,” Barney said eagerly. They went on up the stairs.

  “We didn’t send him,” Jane said reprovingly. “He went. Like a rocket, as soon as he heard what had happened.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t have gone if we hadn’t told him, and then Simon wouldn’t have got rescued.” Barney was glowing with excitement. He would have given his ears to have been the hero of the chase. “We didn’t know which way you’d gone. We tailed Miss Withers for a bit, but she just went down the headland and sat down on the grass at the bottom looking out at the sea.” His voice rose to an incredulous squeak. “So we rushed home, and Great-Uncle Merry was just back from fishing. We were jolly glad to see you getting out of the car,” he added unexpectedly.

  “Not half so glad as me,” Simon yawned again, and rubbed his forehead. “I do feel mucky. It must have been when I hid in those bushes . . . come on, I can tell you while I wash.”

  First they were too busy eating to talk, and then towards the end of supper, too busy trying not to fall asleep; so all three children were grateful that Miss Hatherton was there. She was a small. bright, bouncy person, quite old, with cropped grey hair and twinkling eyes. She was a sculptress—a famous one, Great-Uncle Merry told them afterwards—and had taught Mother when she was a student at art school. She also seemed to have a passion for catching sharks, and at the supper-table she alternated between enthusiastic discussions of art with Mother and fishing with Father. The children listened with interest, but were relieved when Mrs. Palk brought the coffee in and Mother, who had not missed their yawns, sent them to bed.

  “Nothing like Cornish air to send you to sleep,” Miss Hatherton said cheerfully as they pushed back their chairs and said good night. “If any of these follows in your footsteps,” she added to Mother, “it’ll be that one.” She pointed disconcertingly at Barney.

  Barney blinked at her.

  “What do you want to do when you grow up, young man?” she asked him.

  “I’m going to be a fisherman,” Barney said promptly. “With a big boat, like the White Heather.”

  Miss Hatherton roared with laughter. “You tell me that in ten years’ time,” she said, “and I shall be very surprised. Good night. I’ll buy your first picture.”

  “She’s dotty,” Barney said as they went upstairs. “I don’t want to be a painter.”

  “Never mind,” Simon said. “She’s nice. Don’t go, Jane, come in our room for a minute. I think Gumerry’s coming up, he made a sort of face at me as I closed the door.”

  They waited, and in a few moments Great-Uncle Merry appeared in the doorway. “I can’t stay more than a minute,” he said. “I am engaged in the beginnings of what promises to be a long and heated discussion with Miss Hatherton and your mother over the relative merits of Caravaggio and Salvator Rosa.”

  “Coo,” said Barney.

  “As you say, Barnabas, coo. I rather think I am out of my class with those two. However—”

  “Gumerry, we found it,” Jane said eagerly. “We found the second step, and we’ve started properly now. It’s one of the standing stones on Kemare Head. The boys did it between them really,” she added honestly. “Come on, Simon, get the manuscript out.”

  Simon got up and retrieved the telescope case, grubbier and more battered now than it had been, from the top of the wardrobe. They laid the scroll out on the bed and showed Great-Uncle Merry the rock where it had all begun, and the small rough sketch of the sun, and how they had worked their way to the standing stone.

  “But we can’t tell which standing stone it is on the map,” Simon said. “Because they don’t look the same here as they actually do on the headland.”

  They all bent over the drawing that they still could not help calling a map. Great-Uncle Merry looked at it in silence.

  “Gumerry,” Jane said tentatively, an idea that she could not quite grasp beginning to chase about her brain, “would he have done the whole thing on the same system, do you think?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Simon said, bouncing flat on his back on the bed.

  “Well, you remember when we were trying to work out the first bit, and I said that it ought to be the way all treasure maps start—six paces to the east, or something. And you said, no, it might be done by getting one thing in line with another as a sort of pointer.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, does that mean that you have to get everything in line with something else, at every step? Are all the clues going to be the same kind of clue?”

  “You mean, next we shall have to get something else in line with the standing stone?”

  Great-Uncle Merry was still gazing
down at the map. “It’s possible. What makes you think so?”

  “That,” Jane said. She pointed at the map. Everyone peered.

  “I can’t see anything,” Barney said querulously.

  “Look, there. Over the end of Kemare Head.”

  “But that’s just another of those blodges,” Simon said in disgust. “How can that mean anything?”

  “Doesn’t it remind you of anything else?”

  “No,” Simon said. He lay back again, and yawned.

  Great-Uncle Merry looked from one to the other, and smiled to himself.

  “Oh really,” Jane said, exasperated. “I know you’ve done jolly well today and I know you’re tired, but honestly—”

  “I’m listening,” Barney said at her elbow. “What about the blodge?”

  “It’s not a blodge at all,” Jane said. “At least I don’t think so. It’s a bit smudged, but it’s a circle, a properly drawn one, and I think it means something. It looks just like the other one, the one over the standing stones that turned out to be the setting sun.”

  Simon propped himself up on his elbows and began to take an interest again.

  Jane went on, thinking aloud: “The way the first clue worked, we had to find the stone that was in line with the sun and the rock we started from. And then we had to go to the stone and check that it was the right one by the shadow. Well, perhaps now we have to do the same thing. Find something that’s in line with the stone, and then go to it and see if its shadow points back to the stone.”

  Great-Uncle Merry said softly. “The signs that wax and wane but do not die . . .”

  Jane turned to him eagerly. “That’s it. That’s what he said, isn’t it, in the manuscript? There must be all sorts of clues in the writing, as well as in the drawing. Only they’re even more buried and we don’t know how to get at them.”

  “This shadow business,” Simon said doubtfully. “Couldn’t it be simpler than the way you just said? Perhaps all we have to do is find out what the shadow of our standing stone points at.”