The vicar, standing silent and intent, pulled himself together and moved towards the French windows. You can come out this way, it's quicker. The front door is seldom used.'

 

He held out his hand to Jane. 'I am pleased to have met you, Miss Drew. I am sorry not to have been more helpful, but I must say I think it unlikely that our coast here has ever had any characteristics that are not shown on Mr Hawes-Mellor's map. He was, I understand, a cartographer of some repute. I am glad you came to see me.'

 

He inclined his head gravely as he shook Jane's hand, with a strange, archaic gesture that reminded her suddenly of Mr Withers when he left the Grey House. But this, she thought, seemed more genuine, as if it were something which Mr Withers had been trying to imitate.

 

'Good-bye,' she said quickly, and ran of through the long feathery grass towards the drive of the silent shabby house, and the road that led back home.

 

 

 

Chapter 5

 

 

When Jane reached the Grey House, Simon and Barney were chattering like monkeys in the living-room to Great-Uncle Merry, who sat quietly listening from the depths of a big arm-chair. Both boys were glowing with excitement, and even Barney's fair skin had been flushed by the wind and sun to a faint pinkish-brown.

 

'There you are, darling,' Mother said. 'I was just beginning to worry about you.'

 

Simon hailed her with a yell from across the room, 'Oh you should have come! It was fabulous, like being right out to sea, and when the wind was behind us we went tremendously fast, far better than a motor boat ... Only we came back in on the engine, because the wind dropped, and that was fun too. Mr Withers came back with us for a drink, but he's gone now. Father went with him, to fetch up some of the mackerel we caught.'

 

'And what's Jane been doing ?' said Great-Uncle Merry quietly from his corner.

 

'Oh, nothing much,' Jane said. 'Wandering about.'

 

But when all three children were upstairs (sent early up to bed because, Father said ominously when Simon imitated a lightship siren right behind his chair, they were all 'overtired'), Jane knocked at the door of the boys' room and went in to tell them about her discovery and her visit to the vicar. She did not meet quite the enthusiastic response that she had expected.

 

'You copied out part of the manuscript?' Simon demanded, his voice rising to a squeak of horror. 'And showed it to him?' 'Yes, I did,' Jane said defensively. 'Well, for goodness' sake, what harm can that possibly do? A little pencilled line in a guide-book can't mean anything to anybody.'

 

'You jolly well shouldn't have done anything connected with the manuscript unless we all agreed it together.'

 

'It wasn't connected with the manuscript, not as far as he knew. I just told him I wanted to find something out about the coast.' Jane forgot any uneasiness she had felt about the vicar in building a defence against Simon's indignation. 'I thought you'd be grateful, my finding out the manuscript map shows Kemare Head.'

 

'She's quite right, you know,' Barney said from his pillow. 'It's terrifically important finding that out. For all we knew up to now it might have been a map of Timbuctoo. And if it turns out from what the vicar says that Trewissick hasn't changed since when our map was drawn, that's going to help us when we find if there are any clues in the manuscript.'

 

'I dare say,' Simon said grudgingly, clambering into bed and kicking off all the blankets. 'Oh well, yes, it does help. We'll talk about it tomorrow.'

 

'Then we can start our quest,' Barney said sleepily. 'Night, Jane. See you in the morning.'

 

'Good night.'

 

 

But the morning brought more that any of them had bargained for.

 

Simon woke first, very early. The air was still as warm as it had been the day before. He lay in his pyjamas staring up at the ceiling for a little while, listening to Barney's peaceful breathing from the other bed. Then he grew restless, so he went out and padded downstairs barefoot, feeling hungry. If he found Mrs Palk already in the kitchen he might manage to have two breakfasts.

 

But Mrs Palk seemed not to have arrived yet, and the house was quite silent. It was not until he reached the flight of stairs leading down into the hall that Simon first noticed something wrong.

 

Always on his way down to breakfast he stopped to look at the old map of Cornwall that hung on the wall at the turn of the stairs. But when he looked for it this morning, it was not there. Only a rectangular mark on the wallpaper showed where it had hung; and as Simon glanced along the wall of pictures down the stairs he saw there were several more gaps as well.

 

Puzzled, he went slowly down into the hall. He found several strange naked-looking patches where pictures had been taken down, and the barometer, next to one empty space, was leaning sideways.

 

Simon went across and straightened it, feeling the bare wooden blocks of the floor cool under his bare feet. Looking down the long hall, he could see nothing else unusual at first. Then he noticed that at the far end, where the sun was streaming in from the kitchen through the open doorway, several of the blocks had been wrenched out and were strewn all over the floor. Simon stared, puzzled.

 

He started down the hall towards the kitchen, and then on an impulse turned to his right and reached for the handle of the door into the living-room. It squeaked under his touch as it always did, and nervously Simon opened the door and peered round. Then he gasped.

 

The room looked as though a tornado had blown through it in the night. The pictures hung crooked on the walls, or lay torn from their frames on the floor, and the furniture seemed to Simon's first startled glance to be completely buried in books.

 

Everywhere there were books, scattered over the floor, open, closed, upside-down; heaped on the tables and chairs, mounded on the sideboard; and a lonely few still lying on the empty shelves. All the locked bookcases around the walls, that they had been forbidden to touch, were empty. The glass doors hung loose from their hinges with splintered wood showing round their locks; and one or two, completely wrenched away, were propped against the wall. The shelves had been swept clear of everything they held, and the drawers below were open, with papers spilling from them loose on to the chaos of books on the floor. There was a faint musty smell, and a thin pall of dust seemed to hang in the air.

 

For one frozen moment Simon stood staring, aghast. Then he turned on his heel and raced upstairs, shouting for his father.

 

Everyone was woken out of their early half-sleep by his shouts. Led by Father, they all stumbled out into the passage in pyjamas and night-dresses and followed Simon downstairs, trying dazedly to understand the words tumbling over each other out of his mouth.

 

'What is it?'

 

'What's the matter, is the house on fire? '

 

'Burglars I' Father said incredulously, following down the stairs. 'But you don't get burgled in a village like - good heavens !' He caught sight of the devastation in the living-room through the open door. As Mother, Jane and Barney followed his gaze they fell silent too, but not for long.

 

Wherever they went on the ground floor of the house they found the same thing. The doors of bookcases had been ripped off, and the books tumbled off the shelves into a chaotic jumble on the floor. Every locked drawer or cupboard had been forced, and the papers from inside scattered wildly about. Even in the breakfast room half a dozen elderly cookery books had been scattered from a shelf.

 

'I don't understand this,' Father said slowly. 'The place is practically wrecked, but one or two obvious things that are clearly valuable haven't been touched. That statuette on the mantelpiece there, for instance, and that big silver cup on the sideboard in the front room. There doesn't seem any point to it all.'

 

'Someone was rejoicing in destruction,' Barney said solemnly.

 

Simon said slowly, 'They must have made an awful noise. Why didn't it wake us up?'

 

'We're two floors away,' Barney said. 'You can't hear anything up there. I like this, it's mysterious.'

 

'I don't,' Jane shivered. 'Imagine someone wandering about down here all night while we were asleep upstairs. It gives me the creeps.'

 

'Perhaps there wasn't anyone,' Barney said.

 

'Don't be an idiot, of course there was. Or do you think all the books jumped of the shelves? '

 

'It needn't have been human. It might have been one of those special sort of ghosts that throws things about just for fun. A polter - polt -'

 

'Poltergeist,' said Father absently. He was opening all the silver cupboards to see if anything had gone.

 

'There you are. One of those.'

 

'Well, Mrs Palk says the house is supposed to be haunted,' Jane said. 'Oh dear.'

 

They all looked at one another round-eyed, and suddenly shivered.

 

Mother said, appearing suddenly in the doorway and making them all jump: 'Well, it's the first ghost I've ever heard of who wore crepe-soled shoes. Dick, come and have a look out here.'

 

Father straightened up and followed her out into the kitchen, with the children close at his heels. Mother pointed, without a word.

 

Two kitchen windows were open, the big one over the sink and a small one above it; and so was the door. And on the flat white tiles of the table-top beside the sink there was the faint but unmistakable outline of a footprint. A large footprint, with bar markings across the sole; and traces of the same markings on the window-sill above.

 

'Gosh!'

 

'There's your ghost,' Father said cheerfully, though he did not look cheerful at all.

 

Then he turned on them briskly. 'Now come on, all of you, of upstairs and get dressed. You've seen all there is to see. No' - he waved his hands as all three children began to protest vigorously. 'This isn't a game, it's extremely serious. We shall have to call the police, and I don't want anything touched before they arrive. Off!'

 

Father had one voice which stopped all argument, and this was it. Simon, Jane and Barney trailed reluctantly out of the kitchen door and along the hall, and then stopped still at the foot of the stairs, looking up. Great-Uncle Merry was heavily descending the stairs towards them, clad in a pair of brilliant red pyjamas and with his white hair all standing up on end.

 

 He was yawning prodigiously and rubbing his eyes in a puzzled kind of way. 'Won't do,' he was muttering to himself. 'Can't make it out ... heavy sleep ... most unusual ...' Then he caught sight of the children. 'Good morning,' he said with dignity, as if he were fully and impeccably dressed. 'Befuddled though I am this morning, a great clamour has been penetrating up the stairs from down here. Is anything wrong ? '

 

'We've had burglars ... !' Simon began, but Father came striding out after them from the kitchen and clapped his hands. 'Come on, come on, I told you to go and get dressed ... Oh good, there you are, Merry. The most extraordinary thing has happened -' He glared at the children, and they hastily ran upstairs.

 

After breakfast the police arrived from St Austell: a solid, red-faced sergeant and a very young constable following him like a mute shadow. Simon was looking forward to eager questions about his discovery of the crime. At the very least, he thought vaguely, he would have to make a statement. He was not quite sure what this meant, but it sounded familiar and important.

 

 But the sergeant only said to him, his warm Cornish accent stroking the words: 'Came down first, did 'ee?'

 

'Yes, that's right.'

 

'Touch anythin'?'

 

'No, not a thing. Well, I did straighten the barometer. It was crooked.' Looking round at the chaos, Simon thought how silly this sounded.

 

'Ah. Hear any thin'?'

 

'No.'

 

'All quite as usual, eh, apart from the mess?'

 

'Yes, it was really.'

 

'Ah,' said the sergeant. He grinned at Simon sitting eagerly on the edge of his chair. 'All right, I'll let 'ee of this time.'

 

'Oh,' said Simon, deflated. 'Is that all?'

 

'I reckon so,' the sergeant said placidly, tugging his jacket down over his stout middle. 'Now, sir,' he said to Father, 'if we might take a look at this footprint you say you found ...'

 

'Yes, of course.' Father led them out of the kitchen. The children, drifting behind, peeped through the door. The sergeant gazed impassively at the footprint for some moments, said to his speechless constable, 'Now take good note o' that, young George,' and moved ponderously out to the disorder of the living-room.

 

'You say there seems to be nothin' gone, sir?'

 

'Well, it's difficult to tell, of course, since it's a rented house,' Father said. 'But certainly nothing valuable seems to be missing. The silver's all intact, not that there's much of it anyway. That cup, as you see, wasn't touched. But they seemed to go for the books, and I can't vouch for those. There may well be some missing that we don't know about.'

 

'Tis a proper mess, surely.' The sergeant bent down, with some effort, and picked up a book. A small deflated black cobweb lay along the top of its pages. 'Very old, these - valuable, maybe. Quite well of, the captain is, I believe.'

 

'If I might suggest, sergeant -' Great-Uncle Merry said diffidently, from the edge of the group.

 

'What is it, Professor?' The sergeant beamed at him all over his rosy countryman's face; even he seemed to know Great-Uncle Merry inexplicably well.

 

'I had no chance to look very thoroughly, since most of the bookcases were locked. But I should have said that very few of the books in this house were valuable, to a dealer at any rate. None of them was worth more than a few pounds, at the outside.'

 

'Funny. They seem to have been looking for something ... hey, look here.' The sergeant shifted aside some of the papers whitening the floor, and they saw a pile of empty picture-frames.

 

'Those are from the hall,' Simon said at once. 'That bumpy gold frame had a map in it at the top of the stairs.'

 

'Hmm. No map in ut now. All of 'em been ripped out. Still, I dare say we'll find them somewhere in all this clutter.' The sergeant rocked to and fro on his heels, gazing with an expression of mild regret at the battered bookcases and piles of books. He rubbed one of his shiny silver buttons thoughtfully, and finally turned to Father with an air of decision. 'Sheer hooliganism, I reckon, sir. Can't be no other explanation. Seldom is round these parts, anyway.'

 

'Ah,' said the young constable regretfully, and immediately turned crimson and looked down at his feet.

 

The sergeant beamed at him. 'Someone with a grudge against the captain, I dare say, havin' a go at his belongings. Might well be one or two people hereabouts don't like him, he's a funny old bird. Wouldn't 'ee say so, Professor?'

 

'You might call him that,' Great-Uncle Merry said abstractedly. He was standing looking about him with a puzzled frown.

 

'Breakin' in idn' difficult in a place the size of Trewissick,' the sergeant said. 'People don't expect it, they leave their windows open ... did 'ee lock up last night, Dr Drew ? '

 

'Yes, I always do, back and front.' Father scratched his head. 'I could swear there weren't any windows open downstairs, but I must admit I didn't go round trying them all.'

 

'Well no, you wouldn't expect this sort of thing ... beats me why anyone should want to take the risk, just to rough the place up and- not pinch anything. Now if I could have one more look at that print -' He led the way out of the room.

 

Simon beckoned Jane and Barney to stay behind. 'Hooligans,' he said thoughtfully. He picked up a book that lay sprawled open face downwards on the carpet, and shut its covers gently.

 

'It doesn't sound right, somehow,' Jane said. 'It's all so thorough. Every drawer opened, and almost every book taken down.'

 

'And every map taken out of its frame,' said Barney. 'It's just the maps, have you noticed ? None of the pictures.'

 

'The burglars must have been looking for something.'

 

'And they went on all through the house because they couldn't find it.'

 

'Perhaps it wasn't down here,' Simon said slowly.

 

'Well, it couldn't have been upstairs.'

 

'How d'you know?'

 

'Don't be silly, there just isn't anything upstairs. Except us.'

 

'Isn't there?'

 

'Well -' Jane said, and then suddenly they were all three looking at one another in horror. They turned and dashed out of the room and up the stairs, to the second-floor bedroom where the great square wardrobe stood between Simon's and Barney's beds.

 

Simon hastily dragged a chair forward and jumped up on it to feel round on top of the wardrobe. His face went blank with alarm. 'It's gone!'

 

There was a fearful moment of silence. Then Jane sat down with a bump on Barney's bed and began to giggle hysterically.

 

'Stop it!' Simon said sharply, sounding for a moment as authoritative as his father.

 

'Sorry ... it's all right, it hasn't gone,' Jane said weakly.

 

'It's in my bed.'

 

'In your bed?'

 

'Yes, I've got it. It's still there. I clean forgot.' Jane babbled, then pulled herself together. 'When I went to see the vicar I didn't want to take it with me, and I had to hide it somewhere in my room. So I shoved it right down under the bed-clothes. It was the nearest place. Then last night I forgot it was there, and I must have gone to sleep without feeling it. Come on.'

 

The front bedroom was full of sunlight, and through the window the sea sparkled as merrily as if nothing could ever disturb the world. Jane hauled back the sheet of her rumpled bed and there, tucked in a corner at the bottom, was the telescope case. They perched in a row on the edge of the bed, and Jane opened the case on her lap. They stared in silent relief at the familiar hollow cylinder of the old manuscript inside.

 

'Do you realise,' Simon said gravely, 'this was the safest place it could possibly have been ? They could have looked anywhere else, but not in your bed without waking you up.'

 

'You don't think they came up and looked in our rooms?' Barney turned pale.

 

'They might have looked anywhere.'

 

'Oh, but this is silly.' Jane swung her pony-tail as if she were trying to clear her head. 'How on earth could they have known anything about the manuscript at all? We found it in the attic, all hidden away, and it had obviously been there for years and years. And no one can even have been up in the attic for ages - think of all that dust on the stairs.'

 

'I don't know,' Simon said. 'There's a lot of things I don't understand. I only know I've been feeling funny about the manuscript ever since you said that vicar of yours got all excited about the copy of the map.'

 

Jane shrugged. 'I don't see how a vicar could be bad. Anyway he didn't know about the manuscript. He asked a few questions, but I think he was just being nosy.'

 

'Wait a minute,' Barney said slowly. 'I've remembered something. There was someone else asking questions. It was Mr Withers, on the boat yesterday, when I was down in the cabin with him getting lunch. He started saying a lot of peculiar things about the Grey House, and to tell him if we saw anything that looked very old ... any' - he swallowed 'any old books or maps or papers ...'

 

'Oh no,' Simon said. 'It couldn't have been him.'

 

'But whoever it was,' said Barney in a small clear voice, 'they were looking for the manuscript - weren't they?'

 

Sitting there in the silence of the Grey House they all three knew that it was the truth.

 

'They must want it awfully badly.' Simon looked down at the manuscript. 'It's that map part, that's what it is. Somehow someone knows it's in the house. Oh, I wish we knew what it said.'

 

'Look here,' Jane said, making up her mind, 'we've got to tell Mother and Father about finding it.'

 

Simon stuck his chin out. 'It wouldn't do any good. Mother would be worried stiff. Anyway, don't you see, we shouldn't have a chance to work it out ourselves then. And suppose it does lead to buried treasure?'

 

'I don't want to find any beastly treasure. Something horrible's bound to happen if we do.'

 

Barney forgot his fright in outraged ownership. 'We can't tell anyone about it now. We found it. I found it, it's my quest.'

 

'You're too young to understand,' Jane said pompously. 'We shall have to tell someone about it - Father, or the policeman. Oh do see,' she added plaintively. 'We've got to do something, after last night.'

 

'Children 1' Mother's voice came from the stairs outside, very close. They jumped guiltily to their feet at once, and Simon held the manuscript case behind his back.

 

'Hallo?'

 

'Oh there you are.' Mother appeared in the doorway; she looked preoccupied. 'Look, the house is going to be chaotic all this morning - would you like to go off swimming and come home for a late lunch - about one thirty? Then this afternoon Great-Uncle Merry wants to take you all out.'

 

'Fine,' Simon said, and she vanished again.

 

'That's it!' Barney thumped the pillow in excitement and relief. 'That's it, of course, why didn't we think of it before? We can tell someone and still have things all right. We can tell Great-Uncle Merry!'

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

 

'Now then,' said Great-Uncle Merry as they strode down the hill to the harbour. 'It's a splendid afternoon for a walk. Which way d'you want to go?'

 

'Somewhere lonely.'

 

'Somewhere miles from anywhere.'

 

'Somewhere where we can talk.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry looked down at them, from one strained face to the next. His bleak, impassive expression did not change and he simply said, 'Very well,' and lengthened his stride so that they had to trot to keep up. He asked no questions, but walked in silence. They climbed the winding little street on the side of the harbour opposite Kemare Head and the Grey House, and followed the cliff path past the last straggling houses of the village, until the great purple-green sweep of the opposite headland rose before them.

 

Up the slope they toiled, through heather and prickling gorse, past rough out croppings of grey rock patched yellow with lichen and weathered by the wind. There had been no breath of a breeze down in the harbour, but here the wind was loud in their ears.

 

'Gosh,' Barney said, pausing and turning outwards to look down. 'Look I' They turned with him, and saw the harbour far below and the Grey House tiny on the threading road. Already they were higher than their own headland, and still the rock-scarred slope stretched above them to meet the sky.

 

They turned again and scrambled up the slope, and at last they were at the top of the headland, with the line of the surf laid out like a slow-moving map below them on either side, and beyond it the great blue sweep of the sea. One big slanting boulder of granite stood higher than any they had passed on the way up, and Great-Uncle Merry sat down with his back against it, his legs arched up before him, long and knobbly in their flapping brown corduroys. The children stood together, looking down. The land before them was unfamiliar, a silent, secret world of mounded peaks and invisible valleys, all its colours merging in a haze of summer heat.

 

'Hic incipit regnum Logri ...' Great-Uncle Merry said, looking out with them across it all, as if he were reading out an inscription.

 

'What does that mean?'

 

'Here begins the realm of Logres ... Now come on, the three of you, and sit down.'

 

They squatted down beside him, in a semicircle before the big rock. Great-Uncle Merry surveyed them as if he were enthroned. 'Well,' he said gently, 'who tells me what's wrong?'

 

In the quiet with only the sound of the wind stirring the air Jane and Barney looked at Simon. 'Well, it was the burglar,' he said haltingly. 'We were worried ...' and then the three of them were all tumbling out the words.

 

'When Miss Withers came the other night she was asking questions about the Grey House, and whether we'd found anything.'

 

'And so did Mr Withers on their yacht, he asked me about old books.'

 

'And whoever it was last night, they only touched the books and all the old maps ...'

 

'... they were looking for it, they must have been ...'

 

'... only they didn't know where to look, and they didn't know we already had it.'

 

'Suppose they know we've got it, they might come after us ...'

 

Great-Uncle Merry raised one hand, though he did not move. His chin was up. He looked as if he were waiting for something. 'Gently now,' he said. 'If you have found something in the Grey House, what is it you have found? '

 

Simon felt inside the rucksack. He held out the roll of parchment to Great-Uncle Merry. 'We found this.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry took the parchment without a word, and gently unrolled it on his knees. He gazed at it in silence for a long while, and they could see his eyes moving over the words.

 

The wind on the headland whined softly round them, and although, as they watched, Great-Uncle Merry's expression did not change, they suddenly knew that some enormous emotion was flooding through him. Like an electric current it tingled in the air, exciting and frightening at the same time; though they could not understand what it was. And then he raised his head at last and looked out across the hills of Cornwall rolling far into the distance; and he breathed a great sigh of relief that was like a release from all the worry of the whole world.

 

'Where did you find it?' he said, and the three children jumped at the quiet, ordinary tone of his voice as if it brought them out of a spell.

 

'In the attic.'

 

'There's a great big attic, all full of dust and junk, we found a door behind our wardrobe, and a staircase leading up.'

 

'I found it,' Barney said. 'I threw my apple core away, and I went to get it back because of the rats, and I found the manuscript by accident in a corner under the floor.'

 

'What is it, Gumerry? '

 

'What does it say?'

 

'It's terribly old, isn't it?'

 

'Is it important? Is it about buried treasure?'

 

'In a way,' Great-Uncle Merry said. His eyes seemed dazed, unable to focus anywhere, but there was a twitching at the corners of his mouth. Somehow, without smiling, he looked happier than they had ever seen him look before. Jane thought, watching: it is a sad face usually, and that's why there is such a difference.

 

He laid the manuscript down on his lap and looked from Jane to Simon to Barney and back again. He seemed to be searching for words.

 

You have found something that may be more important than you can possibly realise,' he said at last.

 

They stared at him. He looked away again over the hills.

 

'You remember the fairy stories you were told when you were very small - "once upon a time ..." Why do you think they always began like that?'

 

'Because they weren't true,' Simon said promptly.

 

Jane said, caught up in the unreality of the high remote place, 'Because perhaps they were true once, but nobody could remember when.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry turned his head and smiled at her. That's right. Once upon a time ... a long time ago ... things that happened once, perhaps, but have been talked about for so long that nobody really knows. And underneath all the bits that people have added, the magic swords and lamps, they're all about one thing - the good hero fighting the giant, or the witch, or the wicked uncle. Good against bad. Good against evil.' '

 

Cinderella.'

 

'Aladdin.'

 

'Jack the Giant-killer.'

 

'And all the rest.' He looked down again, his fingers caressing the curving edge of the parchment. 'Do you know what this manuscript is about?'

 

'King Arthur,' Barney said promptly. 'And King Mark. Simon found the names, in Latin.'

 

'And what do you know about King Arthur? '

 

Barney looked round triumphantly at his captive audience and drew breath for a long recital, but somehow found himself stammering instead.

 

'Well... he was King of England, and he had his knights of the Round Table, Lancelot and Galahad and Kay and all of them. And they fought jousts and rescued people from wicked knights. And Arthur beat everyone with his sword Excalibur. It was good against bad, I suppose, like you said about, in the fairy stories. Only he was real.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry's quiet pleased smile was flickering again.

 

'And when was Arthur King of England?'

 

'Well -' Barney waved his hands vaguely. 'A long time ago.....'

 

'... like in the fairy stories,' Jane finished for him. 'I see. But Gumerry, what are you trying to tell us? Was King Arthur a fairy story too?'

 

'No!' Barney said indignantly.

 

'No,' said Great-Uncle Merry. 'He was real. But the same thing has happened, d'you see - he lived such a long time ago that there's no record of him left. And so he's become a story, a legend, as well.'

 

Simon fidgeted with the strap of his rucksack. 'But I don't see where the manuscript comes in.'

 

The wind over the headland stirred Great-Uncle Merry's white hair outlined against the sky, and as he glanced down he looked magisterial and severe.

 

'Patience a little. And listen carefully now, because you may find this difficult to understand.'

 

'First of all, you have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will,' he added softly to himself, 'for there is something of each in every man.

 

'Sometimes, over the centuries, this ancient battle comes to a peak. The evil grows very strong and nearly wins. But always at the same time there is some leader in the world, a great man who sometimes seems to be more than a man, who leads the forces of good to win back the ground and the men they seemed to have lost.'

 

'King Arthur,' Barney said.

 

'King Arthur was one of these,' Great-Uncle Merry said. 'He fought against the men who wanted Logres, who robbed and murdered and broke all the rules of battle. He was a strong and good man, and the people of those days trusted him absolutely. With that faith behind him, Arthur's power was very great - so great that in the stories that have grown up since, people have talked about his having magical help. But magic is just a word.'

 

'I suppose he didn't win,' Jane said with sudden conviction, 'or there wouldn't have been any wars since.'

 

'No, he didn't win,' Great-Uncle Merry said, and even in the clear afternoon sunshine he seemed with every word to become more remote, as ancient as the rock behind him and the old world of which he spoke.

 

'He wasn't altogether beaten, but he didn't altogether win. So the same struggle between good and evil sides has gone on ever since. But the good has grown very confused, and since the ancient days of Logres it has been trying to regain the strength it was given by Arthur. But it never has. Too much has been forgotten.

 

'But those men who remembered the old world have been searching for its secret ever since. And there have been others searching as well - the enemies, the wicked men, who have the same greed in their cold hearts as the men whom Arthur fought.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry looked out into the distance, his head out- lined against the sky like the proud carved head of a statue, centuries old and yet always the same. 'I have been searching,' be said. 'For many, many years.'

 

The children stared at him, awed and a little afraid. For a moment he was a stranger, someone they did not know. Jane had a sudden fantastic feeling that Great-Uncle Merry did not really exist at all, and would vanish away if they breathed or spoke.

 

He looked down at them again. 'I was beginning to know that this part of Cornwall held what we sought,' he said. 'I did not know that you children would be the ones to find it. Or what danger you would be putting yourselves in.'

 

'Danger?' Simon said incredulously.

 

'Very great danger,' said Great-Uncle Merry, looking him full in the face. Simon swallowed. 'This manuscript, Simon, puts you all right in the middle of the battle. Oh, nobody will stick a knife in your back - their methods are more subtle than that. And perhaps more successful.' He looked down at the manuscript again. 'This,' he said more normally, 'is a copy.'

 

'A copy? ' said Barney. 'But it's so old.'

 

'Oh yes, it's old. About six hundred years old. But it's a copy of something even older than that - written more than nine hundred years ago. The part at the beginning is in Latin.'

 

'There, I said so,' Jane said in triumph.

 

Simon stuck out his lower lip. 'Well, I translated bits of it, didn't I? Not much, though,' he confessed to Great-Uncle Merry. 'I couldn't recognise any of the words.'

 

'I don't suppose you could. This is medieval Latin, not like the Latin you learn at school ... it's written by a monk who must have lived near here, and I think about six hundred years ago, though there's no date. He says, roughly, that near his monastery an old English manuscript has been found. He says it tells of an old legend from the days of Mark and Arthur, and that he has copied out the story to save its *being lost, because the manuscript was falling to bits. He says he copied out a map that was with the manuscript too. Then all the rest, underneath, is the story that he copied out - and you can see the map right at the bottom.'

 

'If the original manuscript was so old that it was falling to bits six hundred years ago . . .' Barney said, bemused.

 

Simon broke in impatiently. 'Gumerry, can you understand the copied-out part? That's not Latin, is it?'

 

'No, it's not,' Great-Uncle Merry said. 'It's one of the Early English dialects, the old language that used to be spoken centuries ago. But it's a very old form of it, full of words from the old Cornish and even some from Brittany. I don't know - I'll read it out as best I can. But I may turn it into rather curious English, and I may have to stop...'

 

He peered at the manuscript again. Then, stumblingly and with many pauses while he held it to the sunlight or fumbled in his mind for a word, he began to read, in his deep, far-away voice. The children sat and listened, with the sun hot on their faces and the wind still whispering in their ears.

 

'This I write, that when the time comes it shall be found by the proper man. And I leave it in the care of the old land that soon shall be no more.

 

'Into the land of Cornwall, the kingdom of Mark, there came in the days of my fathers a strange knight fleeing towards the west. Many fled hither in those days, when the old kingdom was broken by the invader and the last battle of Arthur was lost. For only in the western land did men still love God and the old ways.

 

'And the strange knight who came to the place of my fathers was called Bedwin, and he bore with him the last trust of Logres, the grail, made in the fashion of the Holy Grail, that told upon its sides all the true story of Arthur soon to be misted in men's minds. Each panel told of an evil overcome by Arthur and the company of God, until the end when evil overcame all. And the last panel showed the promise and the proof of Arthur's coming again.

 

'For behold, said the knight Bedwin to my fathers, evil is upon us now, and so shall it be for time beyond our dreaming. Yet if the grail, that is the last trust of the old world, be not lost, then when the day is ripe the Pendragon shall come again. And at the last all shall be safe, and evil be thrust out never to return.

 

'And so that the trust be kept, he said, I give it into your charge, and your sons', and your sons' sons', until the day come. For I am wounded near death from the last of the old battles, and I can do no more.

 

'And very soon he died, and they buried him over the sea and under the stone, and there he lies until the day of our Lord.

 

'And so the grail passed to my fathers' charge, and they guarded it in the land of Cornwall where men still strove to keep alive the old ways, while in the east the men of evil grew more numerous and the land of Logres grew dark. For Arthur was gone, and Mark was dead, and the new kings were not as the old had been. And with each turn of years the grail came to the charge of the eldest son, and at the last it came to me.

 

'And since the death of my father I have kept it safe as best I might, in secret and in true faith; but now I grow old, and am childless, and the greatest darkness of all comes upon our land. For the heathen men of evil, who came to the east in years past and slew the Englishmen and took their land, are turning westward now, and we shall not long be safe from them.

 

'The darkness draws toward Cornwall, and the long ships creep to our shore, and the battle is near which must lead to final defeat and the end of all that we have known. No guardian for the grail is left, since my brother's son whom I loved as my own is turned already to the heathen men, and guides them to the west. And to save my life, and the secret of the grail that only its guardian knows, I must flee even as Bedwin the strange knight fled. But in all the land of Logres no haven remains, so that I must cross the sea to the land where, they say, Cornishmen have fled whenever terror comes.

 

'But the grail may not leave this land, but must wait the Pendragon, till the day comes.

 

'So therefore, I trust it to this land, over sea and under stone, and I mark here the signs by which the proper man in the proper place, may know where it lies: the signs that wax and wane but do not die. The secret of its charge I may not write, but carry unspoken to my grave. Yet the man who finds the grail and has other words from me will know, by both, the secret for himself. And for him is the charge, the promise and the proof, and in his day the Pendragon shall come again. And that day shall see a new Logres, with evil cast out; when the old world shall appear no more than a dream.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry stopped reading; but the children sat as still and speechless as if his voice still rang on. The story seemed to fit so perfectly into the green land rolling below them that it was as if they sat in the middle of the past. They could almost see the strange knight Bedwin riding towards them, over the brow of a slope, and the long ships of the invaders lurking beyond the grey granite headland and its white fringe of surf.

 

Simon said at last, 'Who is the Pendragon?'

 

'King Arthur,' Barney said.

 

Jane said nothing, but sat thinking of the sad Cornishman sailing away over the sea from his threatened land. She looked at Great-Uncle Merry. He was gazing unseeing down at the sea and the headland beyond Trewissick, the taut lines of his face relaxed and wistful. '... when the old world,' he repeated softly to himself, 'shall appear no more than a dream...'

 

Simon scrambled to his feet and went to crouch close to him, peering at the manuscript on his knee. 'Then the map must show where the grail is. I say, suppose we find it I What will it mean?'

 

'It will mean all kinds of things,' Great-Uncle Merry said grimly. 'And not all of them pleasant, perhaps.'

 

'What will it look like? What is a grail, anyway?'

 

'A kind of drinking-vessel. A chalice. A cup. But not like an ordinary cup.' Great-Uncle Merry looked at them gravely. 'Now listen to me. This map you have found shows the way to a sign which men have been seeking for centuries. I said that I had been looking for it. But you remember I said that there were others too - the enemy side, if you like. These people are evil, and they can be very, very dangerous indeed.' Great-Uncle Merry spoke with great seriousness, leaning forward, and the children gazed rather nervously back.

 

'They have been very close to me for a long time now,' he said. 'And here in Trewissick they have been close to you too. One of them is the man Norman Withers. Another is the woman who calls herself his sister. There may be others, but I do not know.'

 

'Then the burglary.' They stared at him and Jane said, 'Was it them?'

 

'Undoubtedly,' Great-Uncle Merry said. 'Not in person, perhaps. But they must have been behind it all - the ransacked books, the stolen maps, the attempt to look for a secret hiding- place under the floor. They were very near, you know, nearer than I. When I rented the Grey House it was no more than a shot in the dark. I had narrowed the search down to the Trewissick area, but that was all. And I had no idea what I was looking for. It might have been anything. But they knew. Somehow, in some dark way, they had found out about the manuscript and they came after it last night. Only, they hadn't bargained for your finding it by chance first.' He smiled slightly. 'I should like to see Withers's face today.'

 

'Everything fits now,' Simon said slowly. 'The way he made friends so quickly with Father, the way he took us out in the boat -' For an unpleasant moment he heard Great-Uncle Merry's voice saying again emphatically, 'They can be very dangerous indeed ...'

 

Barney said: 'But Gumerry, did you know that we should find whatever it was? Us, I mean, me and Simon and Jane? '

 

His great-uncle looked at him sharply. 'What makes you say that?'

 

'Well - I don't know -' Barney fumbled for words. 'You must have looked yourself, before we came, and not found anything. But when we did come, you were never there. You kept on disappearing, almost as if you were leaving the house to us.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry smiled. Yes, Barney,' he said, 'I did have an idea you might find it, because I know you three very well. That was one idea I had before our friends did, so that for all their interest in the Grey House they were still worried about what I was up to. And I led them a high old dance all over south Cornwall while you were at home. I was, you might say, a red herring.'

 

'But what -' Barney said.

 

'Oh never mind,' Simon broke in. He had been hovering restlessly at Great-Uncle Merry's elbow. 'It's all obvious now. The thing is, what about the map? '

 

'You're quite right.' Great-Uncle Merry sat down by the rock again. 'We haven't any time to lose.'

 

'It's a map of Trewissick,' Simon said eagerly. 'Jane found that out. Only the coast seems to have changed -'

 

'I was comparing it with the map in a guide-book at the Grey House,' Jane said. It hardly seemed worth mentioning her visit to the vicar. 'The funny thing is that though the outlines of the coast don't look alike, the names are the same. If you look very closely on the manuscript one of the headlands is called King Mark's Head, only it's spelt all wrong. And that's the name the guide-book uses for Kemare Head. So the manuscript must show Trewissick.'

 

'That's right,' Great-Uncle Merry said, bent over the parchment. 'Simple corruption, dropping consonants -' His head shot up. 'What did you say?'

 

Jane looked puzzled. 'Mmm? '

 

'Did you say it was called King Mark's Head in the guide- book?'

 

'Yes, that's right. Does it matter? '

 

'Oh no.' The usual remote expression came back over Great- Uncle Merry's face like a veil. 'Only that particular name hasn't been used for a very long time, and most people have forgotten about it. I should like to have a look at that guide-book of yours.'

 

'I don't understand this.' Simon was peering over the old map. 'Even if it is Trewissick, where does that get you? It's the most useless treasure map I ever saw, there are all sorts of peculiar marks on it but none of them means anything. Nothing leads to anything else, so how can it show you where the grail is?'

 

Great-Uncle Merry pointed at the manuscript. 'Remember what the text says - for the proper man, in the proper place, to find ...'

 

'Perhaps it's like one of those mazes you see in books sometimes,' Jane said, thinking hard. 'The ones that are simple once you get going but it's awfully hard to find where to start. That could be what he meant by "in the proper place". If you took the map to the right starting-point, then it would tell you where to go from there.'

 

Simon almost wailed, 'But how do we find out where to start from?'

 

Barney, standing at Great-Uncle Merry's elbow, had not been listening. He had lapsed into one of his dreaming silences, gazing wide-eyed out over the harbour and occasionally glancing back at the map. 'I know what it reminds me of,' he said musingly.

 

No one took any notice. Barney went on dreamily to himself, 'It's like one of Mother's drawings, the ones she calls perspective sketches. It looks like a picture, not a map at all really. You've got the bump of this hill coming over the edge of the harbour when you look down, and the headland curving like that' - he traced his finger through the air over the view before him - 'and those stones on top of it make the funny little knobs on the side of the map ...'

 

'Golly, he's got it!' Simon shouted, jerking Barney out of his reverie. That's what it is, look! It is a picture, and not a map, and that's why the shape looked all wrong compared with the guide-book. Look, you can see -' He took the manuscript carefully from Great-Uncle Merry's hands and held it up in front of them, against the long rocky arm of Kemare Head. And as they looked from the headland back to the manuscript, the scrawled brown lines suddenly seemed so obviously a picture of the scene before them that they wondered how they could possibly have thought it was a map.

 

'Well then,' Jane said, incredulity spreading over her face as she looked from one to the other, 'this must be the proper place. The beginning of the maze. All this time without knowing it we've been standing on the very same spot as the man who drew the picture. Just think!' She looked at the manuscript in awe.

 

'Well, come on,' Barney said, glowing with excitement at what he had discovered. 'We know where he started from. How do we find out where he went from here?'

 

'Look at the picture. There's a sort of blodge marked on this headland.'

 

'There are blodges all over the place. Half of them are blots and the rest are dirt marks.'

 

'The marks of age,' Great-Uncle Merry said sepulchrally.

 

'No, but this one's intentional,' Simon persisted. 'Right here, where - gosh! It must be that rock you're leaning on, Gumerry!'

 

His great-uncle looked round critically. 'Well, it's possible, I suppose. Yes indeed, it's possible. A natural outcropping, I think, not erected by the hands of men.'

 

Barney got up and trotted all round the rock, gazing closely at its yellow lichened scars and every small crevice and cleft, but noticing nothing unusual. 'It looks very ordinary,' he said in disappointment, reappearing at the other side.

 

Jane burst out laughing. You look just like Rufus, sniffing along after a rabbit and then finding there's nothing there after all.'

 

Barney slapped his knee. 'I knew we should have brought Rufus. He'd have been terrifically useful on a hunt, sniffing things out.'

 

'You can't sniff things out when they've been hidden for centuries, idiot.'

 

'I don't see why not. You wait, I bet you he'll help.'

 

'Not a hope.'

 

'Where is he, anyway? '

 

'With Mrs Palk. Shut up somewhere, I suppose, poor thing. You know Father said he wouldn't have him in the house any more when he got in a rage the other night.'

 

'Mrs Palk takes him home every evening.'

 

'If she hadn't taken him home yesterday evening he might have caught the burglars.'

 

'Gosh, so he would.' There was a moment's silence as they all digested the thought.

 

'I don't trust Mrs Palk,' Jane said darkly.

 

'Well, don't worry about it,' Great-Uncle Merry said easily. 'From what I know of that dog he'd just have licked their hands and told them to go ahead.'

 

'He doesn't like Mr Withers,' Barney said. 'He came to meet us wagging his tail when we came in off the boat yesterday, but when he saw Mr Withers his tail went right down and he barked. We all laughed about it at the time,' he added thoughtfully.

 

'Well, we'll bring him out tomorrow. But we shall have to go home soon and we still aren't any nearer the beginning. Gumerry, could this rock really mean anything?' Simon rubbed its grey surface doubtfully.

 

'Perhaps it's in line with something,' Jane said hopefully.

 

'Like a compass bearing. Look at the map, I mean the picture.'

 

'Doesn't help. It could be in line with any one of those blodges.'

 

'Well then, we ought to find out where all the blodges are and go and see if there's anything near one of them.'

 

'But that would take months.'

 

'Oh!' Barney stamped his foot with impatience. 'This is awful. What are we going to do?'

 

'Leave it,' Great-Uncle Merry said unexpectedly.

 

'Leave it? ' They stared at him.

 

Leave it until tomorrow. Come to it with fresh minds. We haven't much time, and it's going to be a race in the end, but we're all right at the moment. The other side don't know that we've found anything. They watch me like hawks, but they don't suspect you, and with any luck they won't. You can afford to go away and think about it for tonight.'

 

'Won't they come back and burgle us again?' Jane said nervously.

 

They wouldn't dare. No, that was a long shot - they staked everything on being able to find a clue the first time, and they failed. They'll try something different now.'

 

'I wish we knew what.'

 

'Great-Uncle Merry,' Simon said, 'why can't we tell the police it was them? Then they wouldn't be able to come after us at all.'

 

'Yes,' said Jane, eagerly. 'Why not?'

 

'We can't possibly,' Barney said with conviction.

 

'Why not?'

 

'I don't know.'

 

They looked at Great-Uncle Merry.

 

He said non-committally, 'Why didn't you tell the police that you thought you knew what the burglars had been after? '

 

'Well - they'd have laughed. They'd have thought it was just an old bit of paper.'

 

'And if we'd gone to them it wouldn't have been a secret any more and we shouldn't have been able to follow up the map.'

 

'And anyway,' Jane said, with a return of the old guiltiness, 'we hadn't told Mother and Father about finding it in the first place.'

 

'Well,' Great-Uncle Merry said, 'you would have said to them, we found an old parchment in the attic and we think that's what the burglars were looking for when they turned the house upside-down. And our worthy sergeant, who is satisfied that the culprits were just hooligans, would have smiled indulgently and told you to go away and play.'

 

'That's right, that's just it. That's why we didn't.'

 

Great-Uncle Merry smiled. 'Now, I could go to him and say this manuscript is a clue to a kind of ancient cup, called a grail, that is hidden in Trewissick. It tells the real story of King Arthur. The man from the yacht called the Lady Mary wants it, and he burgled the house, and he has me followed night and day to discover if I have found it before him. And what would happen?'

 

'They'd go and arrest Mr Withers,' Simon said hopefully, but he sounded less convinced than before.

 

The sergeant would go to Mr Withers, who would of course have a perfect alibi for the night of the burglary, and he would question him rather apologetically about my odd-sounding story. Mr Withers would impress him as a courteous and gentlemanly antique-dealer on a harmless holiday with his pretty sister.'

 

That's what we thought he was,' Barney pointed out. The sergeant knows of me,' Great-Uncle Merry went on, 'and knows I do things that sometimes seem' - he chuckled - 'eccentric. He would think things over, and he'd say to himself : Poor old Professor, 'tis all been too much for 'n at last. All that book-learnin', tidn' natural, it do 'ave turned the poor old chap's head.'

 

'You do it even better than Simon,' Jane said admiringly.

 

'I see now,' Simon said. 'It would just sound fantastic. And if we told the sergeant about Mr Withers and his sister asking questions about old books, it would just seem perfectly normal to him and not suspicious at all.'

 

He looked up and grinned. 'Of course, we couldn't possibly tell them. Sorry. I didn't think.'

 

'Well, you must think now, and seriously,' Great-Uncle Merry said, turning his grave dark eyes on each face in turn. 'I'm going to say something I shan't say again. You may think the same as the sergeant would, that this is all a business of a private rivalry. An old professor and a book-collector, both intent on beating the other to something that doesn't matter much to anyone else anyway.'

 

'No!'

 

'Of course not.'

 

'It's much more than that,' Jane said impulsively. 'I've got a feeling . . .'

 

'Well - if you all have a feeling, if you understand just a little of the things I was trying to say earlier on, then that's more than enough. But I am not happy about having the three of you mixed up in this at all, and I should be even less happy if I thought you didn't have any idea of what you were doing.'

 

'You make it sound fearfully serious,' Simon said curiously.

 

'So it is ... I worry because I can only be on the edge all the time, acting as decoy, making them think they have nobody to bother about except me. So that you are left all on your own, with the responsibility of unravelling this.' He touched the manuscript in Simon's hand. 'Step by difficult step.'

 

'Smashing,' Barney said happily.

 

Simon glanced at his brother and sister and drew himself up  trying to look as dignified as it is possible to look in shorts and sandals.

 

'Well, I'm the eldest -'

 

'Only by eleven months,' said Jane.

 

'Well I am, anyway, and I'm responsible for you two and I ought to be spokesman, and - and' - he floundered, and then gave up all attempt at dignity in a rush - 'and honestly, Gumerry, we do know what we're doing. In a way it is a kind of quest, like Barney said. And it isn't as if we were altogether on our own.'

 

'All right,' Great-Uncle Merry said. 'It's a bargain.' And he shook hands solemnly with each of them in turn. Everyone looked at everyone else, wide-eyed and a little breathless, and then they all suddenly felt rather foolish, and burst out laughing. But behind the laughter they were dimly aware of a new kind of comforting closeness, in the face of possible danger.

 

When they packed up, and were starting down the hill, Great- Uncle Merry said, stopping them in their tracks, 'Take a good look at it first.' He swept his arm out over the harbour, the cliffs and the sea. 'Take the real picture with you too. Learn what it looks like.'

 

They looked across from the slope once more. The sun was setting down in the westward sky, over Kemare Head and the Grey House, lighting the top of the headland and the strange grey rocks that prickled its skyline. But the harbour was already darkening into shadow. As they looked, the sun seemed gradually to fall, until the unbearable brightness of it was over the outlined fingers of the group of standing stones, and the stones themselves became invisible in the blaze.

 

 

 

Chapter 7

 

 

'Well, I think it's underneath the Grey House.'

 

'Yes - look how the burglars tried to take up the floor.'

 

'But they were looking for the map, not the grail'

 

'No they weren't. Remember what Great-Uncle Merry said. They didn't know what they were looking for, nor did he. It might have been a clue to it, like the map, or it might have been the thing itself.'

 

'Well, the clue was there, why shouldn't the thing itself be there as well?'

 

'But look, idiot,' Simon said, unrolling the map, 'the Grey House isn't marked. There isn't even a blodge. It just wasn't there then. Remember our Cornishman lived nine hundred years ago.'

 

'Oh.'

 

They were sitting on the grass half-way up Kemare Head, at the side of one of the rough-trodden tracks which ran zigzagging up its slope. Great-Uncle Merry had left them on their own. 'A day's grace to find the first clue,' he had said, 'while I draw of the hounds. Just one piece of advice - don't start till the afternoon. Spend the morning on the beach or something. Then you'll be sure the hounds are gone.'

 

Then he had gone out fishing for the day with Father, who was intent on trying a part of the sea of a headland a mile down the coast. And sure enough, as their small boat puttered out of the harbour with Father at the tiller and Great-Uncle Merry towering stiff-backed in the bows, the yacht Lady Mary, gleaming white in the sun, had within minutes moved silently out after them, her engine purring faintly over the quiet morning sea. Watching from the house, they had seen her sails gradually unfurl and billow as she came into the bay. She took a wide course out to sea, but one from which Great-Uncle Merry and Father would always be just in sight.

 

Up on the headland now the afternoon sun prickled their bare legs, and there was a small breeze. 'Oh dear,' Jane said despondently, edging a blade of grass from its sheath and nibbling it. 'This is hopeless. We just don't know where to start. Perhaps we should go back to where we were yesterday.'

 

'But we know what things look like from there.'

 

'Well, so what? Which things? '

 

'Well - the headland, and the sea, and the sun - and those stones up on the top there.' Barney gestured vaguely above their heads, up the slope. 'I think they've got something to do with it. The Cornishman must have been able to see them. Gumerry says they're three thousand years old, so they'd have been almost as ancient-looking nine hundred years ago as they are now.'

 

'You can certainly see them clear enough from the other side.' Simon sat up, interested.

 

'But they're such a long way across,' Jane pointed out. 'I mean, the first clue might be that you have to take ten paces to your left, or something. It always is in stories about buried treasure. But to get to the standing stones, up here, from over there, you'd have to take thousands of paces right across the harbour. It doesn't make sense.'

 

'It doesn't have to be like that,' Simon said. 'It could be the thing like compass bearings again. You know - perhaps we have to get something in line with something else to lead us on to a third thing.'

 

Barney closed his eyes and screwed up his face, trying to bring back a picture of the scene they had gazed at so hard the evening before. 'D'you remember when the sun set yesterday?' he said slowly. 'The biggest standing stone was right bang in line with the sun, from where we were. I remember because you could only see it if you didn't look straight at it, if you see what I mean.'

 

Simon looked closely at the manuscript again, excitement beginning to dawn on his face.

 

'D'you know, I think you've got something there. This round thing drawn here over the standing stones, that we thought was just decoration - perhaps it's supposed to be the sun. I mean, if he knew the map wouldn't be found for years and years and years he'd have to use signs like the sun, that wouldn't be likely to change.'

 

'Come on then, let's go further up and look.' Jane jumped eagerly to her feet; and then suddenly she froze, stock-still. 'Simon, quick,' she said quietly, in a strained, tight voice. 'Put the map away. Hide it.'

 

Simon frowned. 'What on earth -'

 

'Quickly! It's Miss Withers. She's coming up the path, and someone else with her: They'll be right on top of us in a minute.'

 

Simon hastily rolled up the manuscript and stuffed it into his rucksack. 'Who is it with her?' he hissed.

 

'I can't see - yes, I can.' Jane turned away quickly as if it hurt her to look, and sat down again. She was very flushed. 'It's that boy. The one who knocked me over. I knew he was mixed up in all this somehow.'

 

They heard voices then, coming nearer up the slope. Miss Withers's clear tones floated up to them. 'I don't care, Bill, we have to check on everything. He may already have -' Then she was on them, silhouetted against the skyline, and she stopped short as she saw the three children all sitting looking expressionlessly up at her. The boy stopped too, glowering.

 

For a moment Miss Withers stood with her mouth slightly open, taken aback. Then she pulled herself together and flashed a smile at them. 'Well' she said pleasantly, coming forward 'What a nice surprise! All the Drew family at once. I hope you boys didn't get too tired after all that sea air we gave you the other day.'

 

'Not a bit, thank you,' Barney said in his clearest, most public voice.

 

'It's a marvellous boat,' said Simon, equally distant and polite.

 

'And what are you all doing up here? ' Miss Withers inquired innocently. She was wearing slacks, with a sleeveless white blouse that made her arms look very brown; and her dark hair was tumbled by the breeze. She looked very attractive and healthy.

 

She glanced at Jane expectantly. Jane gulped. 'We were just looking at the sea. We saw your boat go out this morning.'

 

'We thought you'd be on board her,' Simon added, without thinking.

 

A flicker of weariness crossed Polly Withers's face. She said easily, 'Ah, I'm not the best of sailors, as I probably told you.'

 

Simon looked deliberately down at the sea. It lay as flat and unrippled as a pond. Miss Withers said, following his gaze, 'Ah, it'll blow up later, you mark my words.'

 

'Oh? ' Simon said. His face was expressionless still, but there was the faintest note of insolent disbelief in his tone. For the first time Miss Withers's smile faded slightly.

 

Before she could say anything, the boy with her spoke. 'Miss Polly be allus right about the sea,' he said gruffly, glaring at Simon. 'She do know more about 'n than all they old men down there put together.' He jerked his head contemptuously down at the harbour.

 

'Oh - I haven't introduced you,' Miss Withers said brightly. 'Do forgive me. Jane, Simon, Barnabas, this is Bill, our right-hand man. Without him the Lady Mary couldn't do a thing.'

 

The boy flushed darkly and looked down at his grubby plimsolls, after a quick glance up at her. Jane thought, pityingly: he thinks she's wonderful.

 

'We've met before,' Simon said shortly.

 

Barney said: 'How is your bicycle?'

 

'No better for your askin',' the boy snapped.

 

'Watch your manners, Bill.' Through the sweet smile Miss Withers's voice was cold and tight as a steel wire. 'That's not the way we speak to our friends.'

 

Bill looked at her in sullen reproach, jerked forward and went on up the path without a word.

 

'Oh dear.' Miss Withers sighed. 'Now I've hurt his feelings. These village people are so touchy.' She made a charming, conspiratorial little grimace at them. 'I suppose I'd better go after him.' She turned to follow the boy, and then swung round again. The words shot out like a flick of lightning: 'Have you found a map?'

 

For a moment of roaring silence that seemed like an hour they stared at her. And then Barney, driven by pure naked alarm, took refuge in gabbling nonsense. 'Did you say a map, Miss Withers? Or was it a gap? We did find a gap in the hedge, down there, that was how we get through up to the headland. But we haven't got a map, at least I haven't, I don't know about Simon and Jane ... don't you know your way up the hill? '

 

Miss Withers, staring fixedly at them, relaxed into friendliness again. 'Yes, that's right, Barnabas, a map ... I don't know my way about at all well, as a matter of fact. And I couldn't find a map anywhere in the shops this morning. There's one little foot-path I'm looking for, just over the other side, and Bill isn't very much help.'

 

'I believe Great-Uncle Merry has a map,' Jane said, vaguely. She was watching closely from the corner of her eye; but not a muscle moved in Miss Withers's face. 'You haven't met our great-uncle, have you, Miss Withers? He's gone out fishing with Father today. What a pity. I'm awfully sorry we can't help.'

 

'I do hope you find your way,' Simon said kindly.

 

'Well, well, I expect I shall,' Miss Withers said. She flashed her brightest smile at them, and turned away up the path, raising her hand. 'Good-bye, all of you.'

 

They watched in silence until she disappeared over the line where the slope met the sky. Then Barney flung himself face down on the ground and rolled over and over, letting out a long relieved breath. 'Wheeee-ee-ee-ee! How awful! When she suddenly said ... !' He buried his face in the grass.

 

'D'you think she realises? ' Jane said anxiously to Simon. 'Did we give it away? '

 

'I don't know.' Simon gazed thoughtfully up the quiet green slope. There was no sign there now of Miss Withers, or of anything except one far-away grazing sheep. 'I don't think so. I mean, we must have all looked pretty silly when she asked about a map, I know you did ...'

 

'So did you. Like a fish.'

 

'All right ... well, we could perfectly well have looked surprised anyway, her saying it out of the blue like that. I don't think she'd be able to tell if we were looking guilty or just startled. I expect,' he added, gaining confidence as he went on, 'she believes we really did think she just wanted an ordinary map to find her way.'

 

'Perhaps that's all she did want.'

 

'No fear!' Barney said, emerging from the grass. 'She was testing us out, all right. Otherwise why did she say "found"? Have you found a map? Any normal person would have said, I say, have you got a map?'

 

'He's quite right.' Simon stood up, rubbing the dust from his legs. 'Great-Uncle Merry was right too. They aren't taking chances. Miss Withers was surprised to see us, you could tell, but it wasn't five seconds before she was having a go about the map.'

 

'It was nasty altogether,' Jane said, wriggling her shoulders as if she could shake off the memory. She looked up the slope. 'How can we go on up there now? We shan't be able to tell if she and that horrible little boy are hidden away somewhere, watching everything we do.'

 

'Well, it's no good letting that stop us,' Simon stuck out his chin. 'If we think about being watched we shall never do anything. So long as we behave normally, as if we were just wandering about, it ought to be all right.' He picked up his rucksack 'Come on.'

 

The side of Kemare Head was steeper than the opposite headland had been, and for a long time as they toiled up the zigzag path they saw nothing above them but the line of the slope against the sky, with the sun blazing down into their eyes. The end of the headland, rocky and grey, stretched out far beyond them into the sea, and sweeping towards it the land looked immensely solid, as if it were all rock and the soil above it no more than a skin.

 

And then they were at the top of the slope, where the grass grew short in a great dry-green sweep, and they could see the standing stones. As they drew nearer, the stones seemed to grow, pointing silently to the sky, like vast tombstones set on end.

 

'Stones,' Simon said, 'is the biggest understatement I've ever heard. Like calling Nelson's Column a stick.'

 

He stood considering the giant granite pillars rising above him. There were four of them; one much higher than the rest, with the other three grouped irregularly round it.

 

'Perhaps the grail's buried under one of those,' Barney said tentatively.

 

'It can't be, they're too old ... anyway, I think you're wrong about it being buried.'

 

'Oh come on, it must be,' Jane said. 'How else could anything stay hidden all that time?'

 

'And remember that bit in the manuscript,' said Barney. 'Over sea and under stone.'

 

Simon rubbed his ear, still dissatisfied. 'We aren't over the sea here. The sea's miles away. Well all right, not miles, but I bet it's four hundred yards to the end of the headland.'

 

'Well, we're still above the sea, aren't we? '

 

'I'm sure that's not what he meant. Over sea, over sea - I wonder - anyway, we're trying to go too fast. Step by step, Gumerry said. We ought to stick to the step we're on.'

 

Simon looked at the sun, gradually sinking over the coast where cliff after cliff curved into the mist beyond Kemare Head. 'Have a look at the stones. The sun'll be as low as it was yesterday soon.'

 

'They look so different when you're close.' Jane wandered round the weather-beaten pillars of rock. 'We want to know which one it was that looked in line with the sun from the other side, isn't that it? But how do we find that out from here?'

 

'It was the biggest one,' Barney said. 'It stood up higher than the rest.'

 

The sun glowed deep towards the horizon, casting an orange-gold warmth over their faces. 'Look at the shadows,' Simon said suddenly. His shadow on the ground before him moved a long arm, dapple-edged by the grass, as he pointed. That's the way we can do it from this side. Backwards. If one stone was directly between us and the sun yesterday, that means that from here its shadow would be pointing directly to where we were standing then. Towards the rock Gumerry was sitting against. Look, you can just see it from here.'

 

Following his arm, they saw the one chunky rock on the opposite headland; a small far-away bump on its skyline, lit bright by the gold of the setting sun. It was higher than the standing stone on Kemare Head, and further out towards the sea. But it was undoubtedly the spot where they had stood the day before.

 

Jane gazed at Simon in open and unusual admiration. He flushed slightly, and became very brisk. 'Come on, Barney, quick before the sun goes. Which stone d'you think it was?'

 

'Well, it was the biggest, so it must have been this one.' Barney moved a yard or two downhill to the tallest stone. He crossed to its other side, facing the harbour, and crouched down in the shadow, peering at the lone stone across the bay. He frowned, doubtfully. Simon and Jane moved to one side of him, waiting impatiently.

 

Barney, his frown deepening, suddenly lay down on his stomach in the grass, so that he was lying along the line of the pointing shadow and looking straight ahead. 'Am I lying straight?' he said, rather muffled.

 

Yes, yes, dead straight. Is it the right one?' Barney scrambled to his feet, looking doleful. 'No. That shadow doesn't point exactly at the rock. You can see the rock clearly enough, but you have to shift your eyes slightly to be looking straight at it. And that's cheating.'

 

'But you said it was the tallest stone you saw.'

 

'I still say it was.'

 

'I don't see how it could have been,' Jane said, petulant with disappointment.

 

Simon was thinking hard, holding the rucksack swinging by its strap and banging it absently against his leg. He turned and looked back at the other three stones, standing black now and gold-rimmed against the blaze of the sun. Then he yelped, dropped the rucksack and rushed towards the furthest stone, scrambling down as Barney had done to lie in its shadow. Holding his breath, he dropped his chin to the grass and shut his eyes.

 

'Move your top half a bit to the left, you're not straight,'

 

Jane said, close beside him, beginning to understand. Simon shifted a few inches, raising himself on his elbows. 'That right? '

 

'Okay.'

 

Simon crossed his fingers and opened his eyes. Straight in front of him over the blades of grass, right in the middle of his line of vision, the bright sunlit rock on the opposite headland was staring him in the face. 'This is the one,' he said in a curiously subdued voice.

 

Barney rushed across and dropped down beside him. 'Let me, let me -' He elbowed Simon out of the way and squinted across the harbour at the rock. You're right,' he said rather reluctantly. 'But it was the biggest stone that I saw, I know it was.'

 

'That's right,' said Jane.

 

'What d'you mean, that's right? '

 

'Look at the way the stones are put up. Look at the way the ground slopes. This is the top of the headland, but it isn't flat, and the big stone is lower down than the others. The one you're next to now is higher up the hill, even though it's not the tallest. So where you saw its outline against the sky yesterday, it looked as if it was the tallest.'

 

'Gosh,' Barney said. 'I never thought of that.'

 

Simon said loftily, 'I thought you might get there in the end.'

 

'It was jolly clever of you,' Jane said. 'If you hadn't been so quick we might never have realised. The shadows'll be gone soon.' She pointed down at the grass. The blaze of the sun was sinking over the far horizon behind them, and the shadow creeping up over the ground, swallowing up the long shadows of the stones. But across the harbour the rock on the other headland, higher up and longer exposed to the sun, still shone bright like a beacon.

 

Barney whooped with delight. 'We've got it! We've got it!' He thwacked one hand against the hard warm rock of the standing stone, and whirled round in a circle. 'We're on the first step, isn't it fabulous? '

 

'Only the first step, though,' Simon said. But pleasure was bubbling within him as well. They all three felt suddenly enormously energetic.

 

'But we've started ...'

 

'We know where to look for the next clue now.'

 

'We go from here.' Barney ran his hand over the surface of the standing stone again. 'From this one.'

 

'But where?' Simon said, determined to be realistic. 'And how?'

 

'We shall just have to look at the map again. It's bound to tell us. I mean, really the first clue was marked plain as plain, how to get from the other headland over to the stone here, if only we'd known how to understand it.' Barney ran across to where Simon had dropped his rucksack, flipped the straps open and fumbled inside, bringing out the grubby brown roll of the manuscript from its case. 'Look,' he said, sitting down with a bump and spreading it out on the grass before him. 'Here's where the stone's marked.....'

 

'Bring it farther up,' Simon said, looking over his shoulder. 'The sun's still on the grass a bit higher up, and you need the brightest light you can get to look at it. Anyway it'll be warmer.'

 

Barney clambered obligingly up the slope, past the massive grey foot of the last and tallest standing stone, to where the grass was still a brighter green in the last golden light of the sun. Simon and Jane followed him, standing on either side so that their own shadows should not darken the faint indistinct scrawl on the curling parchment. They bent down, intent, staring at the crude quick outline that was the Cornishman's picture, made nine hundred years before, of the standing stones.

 

Miss Withers's voice said, behind them: 'So you have found a map after all.'

 

A great wave of horror enveloped Barney, and he froze hunched over the manuscript. Simon and Jane wheeled round in alarm.

 

Miss Withers stood close behind them, higher up the slope. Her outline was dark and menacing against the sunset sky, and they could not see her face. The boy Bill appeared silently behind her, and stood at her elbow. The sight of them both poised there filled Jane with panic, and she suddenly felt frightened at the silence and emptiness of the headland.

 

Barney's finger unconsciously curled into his palm, and the edge of the manuscript, released, sprang back into a closed roll. The faint crackle of its movement sounded like a gunshot in the silence. 'Oh, don't put it away,' Miss Withers said clearly. 'I want to have a look.'

 

She took a step forward, stretching out her hand, and in terror of the flat expressionless voice Jane cried out suddenly. 'Simon!'

 

As the dark figure loomed swiftly towards him from the hill, Simon felt himself wake up. Quicker than his own thought he swung round, dipped swiftly and snatched up the manuscript from Barney's knee. And then he was gone, half slithering, half running down the slanting side of Kemare Head, towards the village.

 

'Bill! Quickly!' Miss Withers snapped. The big silent figure beside her shot into sudden life, tearing down the hill at Simon's heels. But he was too clumsy for his speed, and in mid-flight on the edge of the slope he stumbled and half fell. He recovered himself almost at once, but not before Simon, running and slipping straight down over the grass and the zigzagging paths, had gained thirty yards' lead.

 

'He won't catch him,' Jane said, her voice wavering with excitement, feeling a broad smile of relief spreading over her stiff cheeks.

 

'Run it, Simon!' Barney shrilled down the hill, scrambling to his feet.

 

Miss Withers came down towards them, and they drew back from the sight of her face, twisted by rage into something frightening and unfamiliar, no longer attractive, no longer even young. She snarled at them: 'You stupid children, tampering with things you don't understand --'

 

She swung away from them and made off down the slope in the same direction that Simon had taken, in a long quick stride. They watched her angry erect back cross and recross the slope on the zigzag path, until she disappeared over the edge of the headland.

 

'Come on,' Barney said. 'We've got to find Gumerry. Simon's going to need help.'

 

 

The dry grass was like polished wood under Simon's feet, giving no grip as he slipped and slithered down the hillside; now on his feet, now flat on his back and elbows, holding one arm up always to keep the manuscript from damage. Behind him he heard the noise of the boy from the village slipping and stumbling more heavily, his breath rasping in his throat, and an occasional gasping curse as he lost his footing and fell.

 

Facing outwards across the harbour as he ran down, Simon felt that he could almost jump straight out into the sea. The slope seemed much steeper than when they had climbed up by the path, dropping below him in an endless green curve. His heart was thumping wildly, and he was too intent on getting away to imagine what might happen if the boy caught up with him. But gradually, minute by minute, the panic at the pit of his stomach was disappearing.

 

Everything depended on him now - to keep the manuscript safe, and get away. He was almost enjoying himself. This was something that he could understand; it was like a race or a fight at school, himself against the boy Bill. And he wanted to win. Panting, he glanced over his shoulder. The boy seemed to be gaining on him a little. Simon flung himself down the rest of the slope, sliding and bumping on his back, alarmingly fast, now and again coming to his feet for a couple of staggering steps.

 

And then suddenly he was at the bottom of the slope, stumbling and gulping for breath. With a brief glance up at the pursuing Bill, who yelled and glared at him as he saw him looking round, Simon was off and away over the field, running like a hare and feeling confidence surge stronger as he ran. But he could not lose the boy behind him. Stronger, bigger and longer legged, the village boy pounded after him with grim determination, striding more heavily but never losing ground.

 

Simon made for a stile in the hedge at the far side of the held and leapt over, gripping the shaky wooden bar at its top with one hand. He came out at the other side into a quiet lane, pitted with deep dry ruts hard as rock, lined with trees, arching overhead in a thick-leaved roof. With the sunlight quite gone now, it was half dark under the branches, and both ends of the lane vanished within a few yards into impenetrable shadow.

 

Simon looked wildly up and down, clutching the' manuscript and feeling the sweat damp in the palms of his hands. Which way would lead him to the Grey House? He could no longer hear the sea.

 

Making a blind choice, he turned right and ran up the lane. Behind him he heard the clatter of the boy's boots climbing over the stile. The lane seemed never-ending as he ran, dodging light-footed from side to side to avoid the ruts. Round every bend there stretched another, curving on in a gloomy tunnel of branches and banks, with no break anywhere into a gateway or another field.

 

He could hear the beat of the boy's feet behind him on the hard dry mud of the lane.

 

The boy shouted nothing now, but pounded along in grim silence. Simon felt a thread of panic creep back into his mind, and he ran more wildly, longing to get out of the cavernous lane and into the open air.

 

Then facing him round the next bend he saw the sky, bright after the gloom, and within moments he was out again, running on a paved road past quiet walls and trees. Again he turned automatically without time to think where he was going, and the rubber soles of his plimsolls pattered softly along the deserted road.

 

The long high grey wall along one side, and the hedge of a field on the other, gave no sign to tell him where he was running - more slowly now, he knew, for try as he might he was beginning to tire. He began to long for someone, anyone, to appear walking along the road.

 

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 quieten 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 done 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, mesmerised, 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 cross-roads 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 cross-roads 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 cross-roads he almost collided with the rusting bonnet 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 realised 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 8

 

 

'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 ruffed 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 incredible 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.'

 

'But it points back at the place we started,' Barney said.

 

'Because he didn't use it as his first clue. His first clue was "Look and see what's between you and the setting sun." The shadow was just our way of proving it.'

 

'Well, it doesn't have to be a shadow made by the setting sun this time.'

 

That's where my blodge comes in,' Jane said.

 

Barney said sleepily: 'Perhaps it's the rising sun. Only it can't be, it isn't in the right place.'

 

'No,' Simon said. 'Of course it isn't. It's just a blodge.'

 

Jane spluttered with impatience and glared at him. 'Oh ... why does it have to be the sun at all? '

 

Great-Uncle Merry was still sitting silent and statuesque on the edge of the bed. He said again lovingly to himself : The signs that wax and wane but do not die...'

 

Simon gazed at him blankly.

 

'Don't you see? ' Jane almost howled at him. 'It isn't the sun - it's the moon!'

 

Simon's face began to change like the sky on a windy day, different expressions chasing one another across it. He looked from Jane, to the map, to Great-Uncle Merry. 'Gumerry,' he said accusingly, 'I believe you knew all the time. Is she right? '

 

Great-Uncle Merry stood up. The bed creaked as he rose, and his height seemed to fill the room; the light, swinging from the ceiling behind his head, cast his face into shadow and brought back once more to all three of them the old sense of mystery. His great dark figure, with a mist of light faintly silver round his head, left them silent and awed.

 

'This is your quest,' he said. You must find the way every time yourselves. I am the guardian, no more. I can take no part and give you no help, beyond guarding you all the way.' He turned slightly so that the light shone on his face and then his voice was ordinary again. 'I imagine you'll need some guarding on this next stage, too. You know what it is now, don't you?'

 

Simon said slowly: 'We have to find which way the shadow of the standing stone points at night. Under the moon.'

 

Barney said, matter-of-fact: 'The full moon.'

 

The full moon? '

 

'Jane's blodge - he drew it round, not crescent-shaped, so it must mean the full moon.'

 

'What's it like now? '

 

'You are not going up on the headland to look at the moon tonight,' Great-Uncle Merry said firmly.

 

'No, I didn't really mean that. I don't think I could manage it anyway.' Simon stifled another yawn. 'I wondered whether the moon was full or not now. We should have to wait for ages if it were all thin and new.'

 

'It's full tonight,' Jane said. 'I could see it shining in through my bedroom window. So that means it will be almost as bright tomorrow. Would that do, Gumerry? I mean, could we go and look tomorrow night? '

 

Before their great-uncle could answer Simon was sitting up again, looking thoughtful. 'There's one thing wrong with all this. If we've got a moon that's only just past full, then we've got all the light we ought to have. But the moon changes, doesn't it  I mean, it rises and sets at different times, and in different places, according to the time of year. Well - we're in August now, but how do we know that the Cornishman wasn't working out his clues in the middle of January or April or something, when the moon wouldn't look the same as it does to us? '

 

'You're just being awkward,' Barney said.

 

'No,' said Great-Uncle Merry. 'He's right. But I will say just one thing. I think you will find that this is the right time of the year. Call it luck, call it anything you like. But since you were able to follow the first clue, I think you'll find you're able to follow the rest as well. And yes, Jane, tomorrow night would do very well for looking at the moon and the standing stones. Especially well, for a reason you don't know yet - just after you came up, Miss Hatherton was asking your parents to go and see her studio in Penzance tomorrow, and to stay the night.'