Greenwitch

Susan Cooper © 1974

Book 3 of 5 in "The Dark is Rising" series

Scanned August 2002

When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;

Three from the circle, three from the track;

Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;

Five will return, and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;

Wood from the burning, stone out of song;

Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;

Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold;

Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;

Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;

All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.

Chapter One

Only one newspaper carried the story in detail, under the headline: TREASURES STOLEN FROM MUSEUM.

Several Celtic works of art were stolen from the British Museum yesterday, one of them worth more than £50,000. Police say that the theft appears to be the result of an intricate and so far baffling plan. No burglar alarms were set off, the showcases involved were undamaged, and no signs have been found of breaking-in.

The missing objects include a gold chalice, three jewelled brooches and a bronze buckle. The chalice, known as the Trewissick Grail, had been acquired by the Museum only last summer, after its dramatic discovery in a Cornish cave by three children. It had been valued at £50,000, but a Museum spokesman said last night that its true value was 'incalculable', due to the unique inscriptions on its sides which scholars have so far been unable to decipher.

The spokesman added that the Museum appealed to the thieves not to damage the chalice in any way, and would be offering a substantial reward for its return. 'The grail is an extraordinary piece of historical evidence, unprecedented in the whole field of Celtic studies,' he said, 'and its importance to scholars far exceeds its intrinsic value.'

Lord Clare, who is a trustee of the British Museum, said last night that the chalice -'

'Oh do come out of that paper, Barney,' Simon said irritably. 'You've read it fifty times, and anyway it's no help.'

'You never know,' said his younger brother, folding the newspaper and cramming it into his pocket. 'Might be a hidden clue.'

'Nothing's hidden,' said Jane sadly. 'It's all too obvious.'

They stood in a dejected row on the shiny floor of the museum gallery, before a central showcase taller than the rows of identical glass cases all round. It was empty, save for a black wooden plinth on which, clearly, something had once been displayed. A neat silver square on the wood was engraved with the words: Gold chalice of unknown Celtic workmanship, believed sixth century. Found in Trewissick, South Cornwall, and presented by Simon, Jane and Barnabas Drew.

'All that trouble we had, getting there first,' Simon said. 'And now they've simply come and lifted it. Mind you, I always thought they might.'

Barney said, 'The worst part is not being able to tell anyone who did it.'

'We could try,' Jane said.

Simon looked at her with his head on one side. 'Please sir, we can tell you who took the grail, in broad daylight without breaking any locks. It was the powers of the Dark.'

'Pop off, sonny,' Barney said. 'And take your fairy stories with you.'

'I suppose you're right.' Jane said. She tugged distractedly at her pony-tail. 'But if it was the same ones, somebody might at least have seen them. That horrible Mr Hastings -'

'Not a chance. Hastings changes, Great-Uncle Merry said. Don't you remember? He wouldn't have the same name, or the same face. He can be different people, at different times.'

'I wonder if Great-Uncle Merry knows,' Barney said. 'About this.' He stared at the glass case, and the small, lonely black plinth inside.

Two elderly ladies in hats came up beside him. One wore a yellow flowerpot, the other a pyramid of pink flowers. 'That's where they pinched it from, the attendant said,' one told the other. 'Fancy! The other cases were over here.'

'Tut-tut-tut-tut,' said the other lady with relish, and they moved on. Absently Barney watched them go, their footsteps clopping through the high gallery. They paused at a showcase over which a long-legged figure was bending. Barney stiffened. He peered at the figure.

'We've got to do something,' Simon said. 'Just got to.'

Jane said, 'But where do we start?'

The tall figure straightened to let the be-hatted ladies approach the glass case. He bent his head courteously, and a mass of wild white hair caught the light.

Simon said, 'I don't see how Great-Uncle Merry could know - I mean he isn't even in Britain, is he? Taking that year off from Oxford. Sab - whatsit.'

'Sabbatical,' Jane said. 'In Athens. And not even a card at Christmas.'

Barney was holding his breath. Across the gallery, as the crime-loving ladies moved on, the tall white-haired man turned towards a window; his beak-nosed, hollow-eyed profile was unmistakable. Barney let out a howl. 'Gumerry!'

Simon and Jane trailed blinking in his wake as he skidded across the floor.

'Great-Uncle Merry!'

'Good morning,' said the tall man amiably.

'But Mum said you were in Greece!'

'I came back.'

'Did you know someone was going to steal the grail?' Jane said.

Her great-uncle arched one white-bristling eyebrow at her, but said nothing.

Barney said simply, 'What are we going to do?'

'Get it back,' said Great-Uncle Merry.

'I suppose it was them?' Simon said diffidently. 'The other side? The Dark? '

'Of course.'

'Why did they take the other stuff, the brooches and things? '

'To make it look right,' said Jane.

 Great-Uncle Merry nodded. 'It was effective enough. They took the most valuable pieces. The police will think they were simply after the gold.' He looked down at the empty showcase; then his gaze flicked up, and each of the three felt impelled to stare motionless into the deep-set dark eyes, with the light behind them like a cold fire that never went out.

'But I know that they wanted only the grail,' Great- Uncle Merry said, 'to help them on the way to something else. I know what they intend to do, and I know that they must at all costs be stopped. And I am very much afraid that you three, as the finders, will be needed once more to give help - far sooner than I had expected.'

'Shall we? ' said Jane slowly.

'Super,' said Simon.

Barney said, 'Why should they have taken the grail now? Does it mean they've found the lost manuscript, the one that explains the cipher written on the sides of the grail?'

'No,' said Great-Uncle Merry. 'Not yet.'

'Then why -'

'I can't explain, Barney.' He thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his bony shoulders. 'This matter involves Trewissick, and it does involve that manuscript. But it is part of something very much larger as well, something which I may not explain. I can only ask you to trust me, as you, trusted me once before, in another part of the long battle between the Light and the Dark. And to help, if you are sure you feel able to give help, without perhaps ever being able fully to understand what you are about.'

Barney said calmly, pushing his tow-coloured forelock out of his eyes: 'That's all right.'

'Of course we want to help,' Simon said eagerly.

Jane said nothing. Her great-uncle put one finger under her chin, tilted her head up and looked at her. 'Jane,' he said gently. 'There is absolutely no reason to involve any of you in this if you are not happy about it.'

Jane looked up at the strongly-marked face, thinking how much it looked like one of the fierce statues they had passed on their way through the museum. 'You know I'm not scared,' she said. 'Well, I mean I am a bit, but excited-scared. It's just that if there's going to be any danger to Barney, I feel - I mean, he's going to scream at me, but he is younger than we are and we oughtn't -'

Barney was scarlet. 'Jane!'

'It's no good yelling,' she said with spirit. 'If anything happened to you, we'd be responsible, Simon and me.'

'The Dark will not touch any of you,' Great-Uncle Merry said quietly. 'There will be protection. Don't worry. I promise you that. Nothing that may happen to Barney will harm him.'

They smiled at one another.

'I am not a baby!' Barney stamped one foot in fury.

'Stop it,' said Simon. 'Nobody said you were.'

Great-Uncle Merry said, 'When are the Easter holidays, Barney?'

There was a short pause.

'The fifteenth, I think,' Barney said grumpily.

'That's right,' Jane said. 'Simon's start a bit before that, but we all overlap by about a week.'

'It's a long way off,' Great-Uncle Merry said.

'Too late?' They looked at him anxiously.

'No, I don't think so... Is there anything to prevent the three of you from spending that week with me in Trewissick ?'

'No!'

'Nothing!'

'Not really. I was going to a sort of ecology conference, but I can get out of that . . .' Simon's voice trailed away, as he thought of the little Cornish village where they had found the grail. Whatever adventure might now follow had begun there, deep inside a cave in the cliffs, over sea - and under stone. And at the heart of things now, as he had been then, would always be Great-Uncle Merry, Professor Merriman Lyon, the most mysterious figure in their lives, who in some incomprehensible way was involved with the long struggle for control of the world between the Light and the Dark.

'I'll speak to your parents,' his great-uncle said.

'Why Trewissick again?' Jane said. 'Will the thieves take the grail there?'

'I think they may.'

'Just one week,' Barney said, staring pensively at the empty showcase before them. 'That's not much for a quest. Will it really be enough?'

'It is not very long,' said Great-Uncle Merry. 'But it will have to do.'

*******

Will eased a stem of grass out of its sheath and sat down on a rock near the front gate, despondently nibbling. The April sunshine glimmered on the new-green leaves of the lime trees; a thrush somewhere shouted its happy self-echoing song. Lilac and wallflowers scented the morning. Will sighed. They were all very well, these joys of a Buckinghamshire spring, but he would have appreciated them more with someone there to share the Easter holidays. Half his large family still lived at home, but his nearest brother James was away at a Scout camp for the week, and the next in line, Mary, had disappeared to some Welsh relations to recuperate from mumps. The rest were busy with boring older preoccupations. That was the trouble with being the youngest of nine; everyone else seemed to have grown up too fast.

There was one respect in which he, Will Stanton, was far older than any of them, or than any human creature. But only he knew of the great adventure which had shown him, on his eleventh birthday, that he had been born the last of the Old Ones, guardians of the Light, bound by immutable laws to defend the world against the rising Dark. Only he knew - and because he was also an ordinary boy, he was not thinking of it now.

Raq, one of the family dogs, pushed a damp nose into his hand. Will fondled the floppy ears. 'A whole week,' he said to the dog. 'What shall we do? Go fishing? '

The ears twitched, the nose left his hand; stiff and alert, Raq turned towards the road. In a moment or two a taxi drew up outside the gate: not the familiar battered car that served as village taxi, but a shiny professional vehicle from the town three miles away. The man who emerged was small, balding and rather rumpled, wearing a raincoat and carrying a large shapeless holdall. He dismissed the taxi, and stood looking at Will.

Puzzled, Will scrambled up and came to the gate. 'Good morning,' he said.

The man stood solemn for a moment, then grinned. 'You're Will,' he said. He had a smooth round face with round eyes, like a clever fish.

'That's right,' Will said.

'The youngest Stanton. The seventh son. That's one up on me - I was only the sixth.'

His voice was soft and rather husky, with an odd mid-Atlantic accent; the vowels were American, but the intonation was English. Will smiled in polite incomprehension.

'Your father was the seventh in that family,' the man in the raincoat said. He grinned again, his round eyes crinkling at the corners, and held out his hand. 'Hi. I'm your Uncle Bill.'

'Well I'm blowed!' said Will. He shook the hand. Uncle Bill. His namesake. His father's favourite brother, who had gone off to America years and years ago and set up some sort of successful business - pottery, wasn't it? Will did not remember ever having seen him before; he was sent a Christmas present each year by this unknown Uncle Bill, who was also his godfather, and he wrote a chatty letter of thanks annually as a result, but the letters had never had a reply.

'You've grown some,' said Uncle Bill as they walked to the house. 'Last time we met, you were a little scrawny bawling thing in a crib.'

'You sound like an American,' Will said.

'No wonder,' said Uncle Bill. 'I've been one for the last ten years.'

'You never answered my Christmas letters.'

'Did that bother you?'

'No, not really.'

They both laughed, and Will decided that this uncle was all right. Then they were in the house, and his father was coming downstairs; pausing, with an incredulous blankness in his face.

'Billy!'

'Roger!'

'My God,' said Will's father, 'what's happened to your hair?'

Reunions with long-lost relatives take time, especially in large families. They were at it for hours. Will quite forgot that he had been gloomy over the absence of companions. By lunchtime he had learned that his Uncle Bill and Aunt Fran were in Britain to visit the Staffordshire potteries and the china-clay district of Cornwall, where they had business of some complex Anglo-American kind. He had heard all about their two grown-up children, who seemed to be contemporaries of his eldest brother Stephen, and he had been told rather more than he really wanted to know about the state of Ohio and the china-making trade. Uncle Bill was clearly prosperous, but this seemed to be only his second trip to Britain since he had emigrated more than twenty years before. Will liked his twinkling round eyes and laconic husky voice. He was just feeling that the prospects for his week's holiday had greatly improved when he found that Uncle Bill was staying only one night, on his way from a business trip to London, and travelling on to Cornwall the next day to join his wife. His spirits drooped again.

'Friend of mine's picking me up, and we're driving down. But I tell you what, Frannie and I'll come and spend a few days on our way back to the States. If you'll have us, that is.'

'I should hope so,' said Will's mother. 'After ten years and about three letters, my lad, you don't get away with one mouldy twenty-four hours.'

'He sent me presents,' Will said. 'Every Christmas.'

Uncle Bill grinned at him. 'Alice,' he said suddenly to Mrs Stanton, 'since Will's out of school this week, and not too busy, why don't you let me take him to Cornwall for the holiday? I could put him on a train back at the end of the week. We've rented a place with far more space than we need. And this friend of mine has a couple of nephews coming down, about Will's age, I believe.'

Will made a strangled whooping sound, and looked anxiously at his parents. Frowning gravely, they began a predictable duet.

'Well, that's really very good of -'

'If you're sure he won't be -'

'He'd certainly love to -'

'If Frannie wouldn't -'

Uncle Bill winked at Will. Will went upstairs and began to pack his knapsack. He put in five pairs of socks, five changes of underwear, six shirts, a pullover and a sweater, two pairs of shorts, and a torch. Then he remembered that his uncle was not leaving until the next day, but there seemed no point in unpacking. He went downstairs, the knapsack bouncing on his back like an overblown football.

His mother said, 'Well, Will, if you'd really like to - Oh.'

'Good-bye, Will,' said his father.

Uncle Bill chuckled. 'Excuse me,' he said. 'If I might borrow your phone -'

'I'll show you.' Will led him out into the hall. 'It's not too much, is it? ' he said, looking doubtfully at the bulging knapsack.'

'That's fine.' His uncle was dialling. 'Hallo? Hallo, Merry. Everything okay ? Good. Just one thing. I'm bringing my youngest nephew with me for a week. He doesn't have much luggage' - he grinned at Will - 'but I just thought I'd make sure you weren't driving some cute little two-seater. . . Ha-ha. No, not really in character . . . okay, great, see you tomorrow.' He rang off.

'All right, buddy,' he said to Will. 'We leave at nine in the morning. That suit you, Alice?' Mrs Stanton was crossing the hall with the tea-tray.

'Splendid,' she said.

Since the beginning of the telephone call, Will had been standing very still. 'Merry?' he said slowly. 'That's an unusual name.'

'It is, isn't it?' said his uncle. 'Unusual guy, too. Teaches at Oxford. Brilliant brain, but I guess you'd call him kind of odd - very shy, hates meeting people. He's very reliable, though,' he added hastily to Mrs Stanton. 'And a great driver.'

'Whatever's the matter, Will?' said his mother. 'You look as though you'd seen a ghost. Is anything wrong?'

'Nothing,' said Will. 'Oh no. Nothing at all.'

*******

Simon, Jane and Barney struggled out of St Austell station beneath a clutter of suitcases, paper bags, raincoats and paperbacks. The crowd from the London train was dwindling about them, swallowed by cars, buses, taxis.

'He did say he'd meet us here, 'didn't he?'

' 'Course he did.'

'I can't see him.'

'He's a bit late, that's all.'

'Great-Uncle Merry is never late.'

'We ought to find out where the Trewissick bus goes from, just in case.'

'No, there he is, I see him. I told you he was never late.' Barney jumped up and down, waving. Then he paused. 'But he's not on his own. There's a man with him.' A faint note of outrage crept into his voice. 'And a boy.'

                                                          *******

A car hooted peremptorily once, twice, three times outside the Stantons' House.

'Here we go,' said Uncle Bill, seizing his holdall and Will's knapsack.

Will hastily kissed his parents good-bye, staggering under the enormous bag of sandwiches, thermos flasks and cold drinks that his mother dumped into his arms.

'Behave yourself,' she said.

'I don't suppose Merry will get out of the car,' said Bill to her as they trooped down the drive. 'Very shy character, pay no attention. But he's a good friend. You'll like him, Will.'

Will said, 'I'm sure I shall.'

At the end of the drive, an enormous elderly Daimler stood waiting.

'Well well,' said Will's father respectfully.

'And I was worrying about space!' said Bill. 'I might have known he'd drive something like this. Well, good-bye, people. Here, Will, you can get in front.'

In a flurry of farewells they climbed into the dignified car; a large muffler-wrapped figure sat hunched at the wheel, topped by a terrible hairy brown cap.

'Merry,' said Uncle Bill as they moved off, 'this is my nephew and godson. Will Stanton, Merriman Lyon.'

The driver tossed aside his dreadful cap, and a mop of white hair sprang into shaggy freedom. Shadowed dark eyes glanced sideways at Will out of an arrogant, hawk-nosed profile.

'Greetings, Old One,' said a familiar voice into Will's mind.

'It's marvellous to see you,' Will said silently, happily.

'Good morning, Will Stanton,' Merriman said.

'How do you do, sir,' said Will.

                                                          *********

There was considerable conversation on the drive from Buckinghamshire to Cornwall, particularly after the picnic lunch, when Will's uncle fell asleep and slumbered peacefully all the rest of the way.

Will said at last: 'And Simon and Jane and Barney have no idea at all that the Dark timed its theft of the grail to match the making of the Greenwitch?'

'They have never heard of the Greenwitch,' Merriman said. 'You will have the privilege of telling them. Casually, of course.'

'Hmm,' Will said. He was thinking of something else. 'I'd feel a lot happier if only we knew what shape the Dark will take.'

'An old problem. With no solution.' Merriman glanced sideways at him, with one bristly white eyebrow raised. 'We have only to wait and see. And I think we shall not wait for long. . .'

Fairly late in the afternoon, the Daimler hummed its noble way into the forecourt of the railway station at St Austell, in Cornwall. Standing in a small pool of luggage Will saw a boy a little older than himself, wearing a school blazer and an air of self-conscious authority; a girl about the same height, with long hair tied in a pony-tail, and a worried expression; and a small boy with a mass of blond, almost white hair, sitting placidly on a suitcase watching their approach.

'If they are to know nothing about me,' he said to Merriman in the Old Ones' speech of the mind, 'they will dislike me extremely, I think.'

'That may very well be true,' said Merriman. 'But not one of us has any feelings that are of the least consequence, compared to the urgency of this quest.'

Will sighed. 'Watch for the Greenwitch,' he said.

Chapter Two

'I thought we'd put you in here, Jane,' Merriman said, opening a bedroom door and carefully stooping to go through. 'Very small, but the view's good.'

'Oh!' said Jane in delight. The room was painted white, with gay yellow curtains, and a yellow quilt on the bed. The ceiling sloped down so that the wall on one side was only half the height of the wall on the other, and there was space only for a bed, a dressing-table and a chair. But the little room seemed full of sunshine, even though the sky outside the curtains was grey. Jane stood looking out, while her great-uncle went on to show the boys their room, and she thought that the picture she could see from the window was the best thing of all.

She was high up on the side of the harbour, overlooking the boats and jetties, the wharf piled with boxes and lobster-pots, and the little canning factory. All the life of the busy harbour was thrumming there below her, and out to the left, beyond the harbour wall and the dark arm of land called Kemare Head, lay the sea. It was a grey sea now, speckled with white. Jane's gaze moved in again from the flat ocean horizon, and she looked straight across to the sloping road on the opposite side of the harbour, and saw the tall narrow house in which they had stayed the summer before. The Grey House. Everything had begun there.

Simon tapped on the door and put his head round. 'Hey, that's a super view you've got. Ours hasn't any, but it's a nice room, all long and skinny.'

'Like a coffin,' said Barney in a hollow voice, behind the door.

Jane giggled. 'Come on in, look at the Grey House over there. I wonder if we'll meet Captain Thing, the one Gumerry rented it from?'

'Toms,' Barney said. 'Captain Toms. And I want to see Rufus, I hope he remembers me. Dogs do have good memories, don't they?'

'Try walking through Captain Toms' door and you'll find out,' said Simon. 'If Rufus bites you, dogs don't have good memories.'

'Very funny.'

'What's that?' Jane said suddenly. 'Hush!'

They stood in a silence broken only by the sounds of cars and seagulls, overlaid by the murmur of the sea. Then they heard a faint tapping sound.

'It's on the other side of that wall! What is it?'

'Sounds like a sort of pattern. I think it's Morse. Who knows Morse?'

'I don't,' Jane said. 'You should have been a Boy Scout.'

'We were supposed to learn it last year at school,' Barney said hesitantly. 'But I don't ... wait a minute. That's a D . . . don't know that one . . . E . . . er . . . W . . . and S, that's easy. There it goes again. What on earth -?'

'Drews,' Simon said suddenly. 'Someone's tapping "Drews". Calling us.'

'It's that boy,' said Jane. 'The house is two cottages joined together, so he must have the exact same room as this one, on the other side of the wall.'

'Stanton,' said Barney.

'That's right. Will Stanton. Tap back to him, Barney.'

'No,' Barney said.

Jane stared at him. His long yellow-white hair had fallen sideways, masking his face, but she could see the lower lip jutting mulishly in a way she knew well.

'Whyever not?'

'He's stopped now,' Barney said evasively.

'But there's no harm in being friendly.'

'Well. No. Well. Oh, I don't know . . . he's a nuisance. I don't see why Great-Uncle Merry let him come. How can we find out how to get the grail back with some strange kid hanging round?'

'Great-Uncle Merry probably couldn't get rid of him,' Jane said. She tugged her hair loose and took a comb from her pocket. 'I mean, it's his friend Mr Stanton who's renting the cottages, and Will's Mr Stanton's nephew. So that's that, isn't it?'

'We can get rid of him easily enough,' Simon said confidently. 'Or keep him away. He'll soon find out he's not wanted, he looks fairly quick on the uptake.'

'Well, we can at least be polite,' said Jane. 'Starting now - it's suppertime in a few minutes.'

'Of course,' Simon said blandly. 'Of course.'

************

'It's a marvellous place,' Will said, glowing. 'I can see right over the harbour from my room. Who do the cottages belong to?'

'A fisherman called Penhallow,' said his uncle. 'Friend of Merry's. They must have been in the family for a while, judging by that.' He waved at a large yellowed photograph over the fireplace, ornately framed, showing a solemn-looking Victorian gentleman in stiff collar and dark suit. 'Mr Penhallow's granddaddy, I'm told. But the cottages are modernised, of course. They can be let either separately or together - we took both when Merry decided to invite the Drew kids. We'll all eat in here together.'

He waved at the cheerful room, a pattern of bookcases and armchairs and lamps, very new and very old, with a large solid table and eight dignified high-backed chairs.

'Have you known Mr Lyon a long time?' Will said curiously.

'Year or two,' Bill Stanton said, stretching in his arm-chair, ice clinking in a glass in his hand. 'Met him in Jamaica, didn't we, Fran? We were on holiday - I never did find out whether Merry was vacationing or working.'

'Working,' said his wife, busy setting the table. She was calm and fair, a tall, slow-moving person: not at all what Will had expected from an American. 'On some government survey. He's a professor at Oxford University,' she said reverently to Will. 'A very very clever man. And such a sweetie - he came all the way to Ohio to spend a few days with us last fall, when he was over giving a lecture at Yale.'

'Ah,' said Will thoughtfully. He was prevented from asking more questions by a sudden noise from the wall beside him. A large wooden door swung open, narrowly missing his back, revealing Merriman in the act of closing another identical door beyond it.

'This is where the two cottages connect,' Merriman said, looking down at Will's surprise with a faint grin. 'They lock both doors if the two are let separately.'

'Supper won't be long,' said Fran Stanton in her soft drawl. As she spoke, a small stout lady with a grey knot of hair came into the room behind her, bearing a tray rattling with cups and plates.

'Evenin', Perfessor,' she said, beaming at Merriman. Will liked her face instantly: all its lines seemed carved by smiling.

'Evening, Mrs Penhallow.'

'Will,' said his uncle, 'this is Mrs Penhallow. She and her husband own these cottages. My nephew Will.'

She smiled at him, setting down the tray. 'Welcome to Trewissick, m'dear. We'll make sure you do have a wonderful holiday, with those other three scallywags.'

'Thank you,' Will said.

The dividing door burst open, and the three Drews came piling in.

'Mrs Penhallow! How are you?'

'Have you seen Rufus about?'

' Will Mr Penhallow take us fishing this time?'

'Is that awful Mrs Palk still here? Or her nephew?'

'How's the White Heather?'

'Slowly, slowly,' she said, laughing.

'Well,' Barney said. 'How's Mr Penhallow?'

'He'm fine. Out on the boat now, o' course. Now you just bide a moment while I get your supper.' She bustled out.

'I can see you three know your way about the place,' said Bill Stanton, his round face solemn.

'Oh yes,' said Barney complacently. 'Everyone knows us here.'

'We shall have a lot of friends to see,' said Simon rather too loudly, with a quick sideways glance at Will.

'Yes, they've been here before. They stayed for two weeks last summer,' said Merriman. Barney looked at him crossly. His great-uncle's craggy, deep-lined face was impassive.

'Three weeks,' said Simon.

'Was it? I beg your pardon.'

'It's lovely to be back,' Jane said diplomatically. 'Thank you very much for letting us come, Mr Stanton, Mrs Stanton.'

'You're very welcome.' Will's uncle waved a hand in the air. 'Things have worked out fine - you three and Will can all have a great time together, and leave us square old characters to ourselves.'

There was a very small silence. Then Jane said brightly, without looking at her brothers, 'Yes, we can.'

Will said to Simon, 'Why is it called Trewissick?'

'Er,' said Simon, taken aback, 'I really don't know. Do you know what it means, Gumerry?'

'Look it up,' said his great-uncle coolly. 'Research .sharpens the memory.'

Will said diffidently, 'It's the place where they have the Greenwitch ceremony, isn't it?'

The Drews stared at him. 'Greenwitch? What's that?'

'Quite right,' Merriman said. He looked down at them, a twitch beginning at one side of his mouth.

'It was in some book I read about Cornwall,' Will said.

'Ah,' Bill Stanton said. 'Will is quite an anthropologist, his father was telling me. Watch out. He's very big on ceremonies and such.'

Will seemed to look rather uncomfortable. 'It's just a sort of spring thing,' he said. 'They make a leaf image and chuck it into the sea. Sometimes they call it the Greenwitch and sometimes King Mark's Bride. Old custom.'

'Oh yes. Like the carnival,' Barney said dismissively. 'In the summer.'

'Well no, not quite.' Will rubbed his ear, sounding apologetic. 'I mean, that Lammas carnival, it's more a sort of tourist affair, isn't it?'

'Huh!' said Simon.

'He's right, you know,' Barney said. 'There were far more visitors than locals dancing about the streets last summer. Including me.' He looked at Will rather thoughtfully.

'Here we be!' cried Mrs Penhallow, materialising in the room with a tray of food almost as big as herself.

'Mrs Penhallow must know all about the Greenwitch,' said Fran Stanton in her soft American voice. 'Don't you, Mrs Penhallow?' It was a well-meaning remark intended to keep the peace, in a situation which seemed to her a little prickly. But it had the reverse effect. The small round Cornishwoman set down her tray abruptly on the table, and the smile dropped from her face.

'I don't hold with talk of witches,' she said, politely but finally, and went out again.

'Oh my,' said Aunt Fran in dismay.

Her husband chuckled. 'Yankee, go home,' he said.

*******

'What is this Greenwitch affair really, Gumerry?' Simon said next morning.

'Will told you.'

'All he knew was what he got out of some book.'

'He's going to be a nuisance, I'm afraid,' Barney said with distaste.

Merriman looked down at him sharply. 'Never dismiss anyone's value until you know him.'

Barney said, 'I only meant -'

'Shut up, Barney,' said Jane.

'The making of the Greenwitch,' said Merriman, 'is an old spring rite still celebrated here, for greeting summer and charming a good harvest of crops and fish. In a day or two, as it happens. If you will all tread a little more gently, Jane might be able to watch it.'

'Jane?' said Barney. 'Only Jane?'

'The making of the Greenwitch is very much a private village affair,' Merriman said. Jane thought his voice seemed strained, but his face was so near the roof of the narrow landing as to be lost in shadow. 'No visitors are normally allowed near. And of the locals, only women are allowed to be present.'

'Good grief!' said Simon in disgust.

Jane said, 'Surely we ought to be doing something about the grail, Gumerry? I mean after all that's why we're here. And we haven't got long.'

'Patience,' Merriman said. 'In Trewissick, as you may recall, you never had to go looking for things to happen. They tended to happen to you.'

'In that case,' Barney said, 'I'm going out for a bit.' He held the flat book in his hand unobtrusively against his side, but his great-uncle looked down from a height like a lighthouse.

'Sketching? ' he said.

'Uh-huh,' said Barney reluctantly. The Drews' mother was an artist. Barney had always expressed horror at the idea of possessing the same talent, but in the last twelve months he had been disconcerted to find it creeping up on him.

'Try drawing this terrace from the other side,' Merriman said. 'With the boats as well.'

'All right. Why?'

'Oh, I don't know,' said his great-uncle vaguely. 'It might come in handy. A present for someone. Perhaps even for me.'

*********

Crossing the quay, Barney passed a man sitting at an easel. It was a common enough sight in Trewissick, which like many of the more picturesque villages in Cornwall was much frequented by amateur painters. This particular artist had a very great deal of uncombed dark hair, and a square, hefty frame. Barney paused, and peeped over his shoulder. He blinked. On the easel was a wild abstract in crude bright colours, bearing no visible relation at all to the scene in the harbour before them; it was unexpected, compared to the neat, anaemic little water-colours that nineteen out of twenty Trewissick harbour-painters produced. The man was painting away like one demented. He said, without pausing or turning round, 'Go away.'

Barney lingered for a moment. There was real power in the painting, of a peculiar kind that made him oddly uneasy.

'Go away,' the man said more loudly.,

'I'm going,' Barney said, moving one step backwards. 'Why green, up in that top corner, though? Why not blue? Or a better kind of green?' He was distressed by a lurid zigzag of a particularly nasty shade, a yellowy, mustard-like green which drew the eye away from the rest of the picture. The man began to make a low rumbling noise like a growling dog, and the broad shoulders stiffened. Barney fled. He said to himself rebelliously, 'But that colour was all wrong.'

On the far side of the harbour he perched himself on a low wall, with the steep sliced rock of the headland at his back. The ill-tempered painter was invisible from there, hidden behind one of the inevitable piles of fish-boxes on the quay. Barney sharpened a new pencil with his pen-knife and began to doodle. A sketch of a single fishing-boat went badly, but a rough outline of the whole harbour began to turn out well, and Barney switched from pencil to an old-fashioned soft-nibbed fountain pen of which he was particularly fond. He worked fast then, pleased with the drawing, absorbed in its detail, sensing the awareness - still new, this spring - that something of himself was going out through his fingers. It was a kind of magic. Coming up for air, he paused, and held the drawing out at arm's length.

And without a sound, a large dark-sleeved hand came from one side and seized the sketch pad. Before Barney could turn his head, he heard a noise of ripping paper. Then the pad was flung back at his feet, tumbling over itself on the ground. Footsteps ran. Barney leapt up with an indignant shout, and saw a man running away up the quayside, the page from the sketch pad flapping white against his dark clothes. It was the long-haired, bad-tempered painter he had seen on the quay.

'Hey!' Barney yelled, furious. 'Come back!'

Without a glance behind, the man swung round the end of the harbour wall. He was a long way ahead, and the harbour path sloped uphill. Barney came tearing up just in time to hear a car engine snarl into life and roar away. He whirled round the corner into the road, and ran smack into someone walking up the hill.

'Uh!' grunted the stranger, as the breath was thumped out of him. Then his voice came back. 'Barney!'

It was Will Stanton.

'A man,' gasped Barney, staring round at him. 'Man in dark sweater.'

'A man came running up from the harbour just ahead of you,' Will said, frowning. 'He jumped into a car and drove of that way.' He pointed down into the village.

'That was him,' Barney said. He peered resentfully at the empty road.

Will looked too, fiddling with his jacket zip. He said with astonishing force, 'Stupid of me, stupid, I knew there was something - just not properly awake, thinking of -' He shook his head as if tossing something away from it. 'What did he do?'

'He's loopy. Mad.' Barney could still scarcely speak for indignation. 'I was sitting down there sketching, and he just came up from nowhere, ripped the drawing out of my book and belted off with it. What would any normal person do that for?'

'Did you know him?'

'No. Well, that is, I'd seen him, but only today. He was sitting down on the quay, painting, at an easel.'

Will smiled broadly. A silly smile, Barney thought.

'Sounds as though he thought your picture was better than his.'

'Oh, come off it,' Barney said impatiently.

'Well, what was his picture like?'

'Weird. Very peculiar.'

'There you are, then.'

'There I am not. It was weird, but it was good too, in a nasty sort of way.'

'Goodness me,' Will said, looking vacant. Barney glared at his round face with its thick brown fringe of hair, and felt more irritated than ever. He began trying to think of an excuse to get away.

'He had a dog in the car,' Will said absent-mindedly.

'A dog?'

'Barking like anything. Didn't you hear it? And jumping about. It nearly jumped out when he got in. Hope it didn't chew up your drawing.'

'I expect it did,' Barney said coldly.

'Lovely dog,' Will said, in the same vague, dreamy tone. 'One of those long-legged Irish setters, a super reddish colour. No decent man would shut a dog like that up in a car.'

Barney stood stock-still, looking at him. There was only one dog like that in Trewissick. He realised suddenly that directly across the road he could see a tall familiar grey house. At the same moment a gate at the side of the house swung open, and a man came out: a stout, elderly man with a short grey beard, leaning on a stick. Standing in the road, he put his fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp two-note whistle. Then he called, 'Rufus? Rufus!'

Impulsively Barney ran towards him. 'Captain Toms? You are Captain Toms, aren't you? Please, look, I know Rufus, I helped look after him last summer, and I think someone's stolen him. A man went off with him in a car, a dark man with long hair, an awful man.' He paused. 'Of course, if it was someone you know -'

The man with the beard looked carefully at Barney. 'No,' he said slowly, deliberately. 'I don't know a gentleman of that description. But you do seem to know Rufus. And by that hair of yours I fancy you'd be maybe Merriman's youngest nephew. One of my tenants, last year, eh? The children with the sharp eyes.'

'That's right.' Barney beamed. 'I'm Barnabas. Barney.' But something puzzled him about Captain Toms' manner: it was almost as if he were carrying on some other conversation at the same time. The old man was not even looking at him; he seemed to be gazing blankly at the surface of the water, seeing nothing, lost in his own mind.

Barney suddenly remembered Will. He turned - and saw to his astonishment that Will too was standing near him staring vacantly at nothing, expressionless, as if listening. What was the matter with everybody? 'This is Will Stanton,' he said loudly to Captain Toms.

The bearded face did not change expression. 'Yes,' said Captain Toms gently. Then he shook his head, and seemed to wake up. 'A dark man, you said?'

'He was a painter. Very bad-tempered. I don't know who he was or anything. But Will saw him going off with a dog who sounded just like Rufus - and just outside your door -'

'I will make inquiries,' Captain Toms said reassuringly. 'But come in, come in, both of you. You shall show your friend the Grey House, Barnabas. I must find my key . . . I was busy in the garden. . .' He felt in his pockets, patting at his jacket ineffectually with the arm not leaning on the stick. Then they were at the front door.

'The door's open!' Will said sharply. His voice was crisp, very different from his inane babbling of a few moments before, and Barney blinked.

Captain Toms pushed the half-open door with his stick, and stumped inside. 'That's how the fellow got Rufus out. Opened the front door while I was round the back ... I still can't find that key.' He began fumbling in his pockets again.

Following him in, Barney felt something rustle at his feet; he bent, and picked up a sheet of white paper. 'You didn't pick up your -' He stopped abruptly. The note was very short, and in large letters. He could not help taking it in at a glance. He held it out to the captain, but it was Will, this strange brisk Will, who took the paper, and stood staring at it with the old man, the two heads close, young and old, brown and grey.

The note was made of large black capital letters cut from a newspaper and stuck very neatly together on the sheet. It said. 'IF YOU WANT YOUR DOG BACK ALIVE, KEEP AWAY FROM THE GREENWITCH.'

Chapter Three

Under the sunset sky the sea was glass-smooth. Long slow rollers from the Atlantic, rippling like muscles beneath the skin, made the only sign of the great invisible strength of the ocean in all the tranquil evening. Quietly the fishing-boats moved out, a broad fishtail wake spreading behind each one; their engines chugged softly through the still air. Jane stood at the end of Kemare Head, on the crest of a granite outfall that tumbled its rocks two hundred feet to the sea, and she watched them go. Toy boats, they seemed from there: the scatter of a fishing fleet that every week, every month, every year for endless years had been going out after the pilchard or the mackerel before dusk, and staying at the chase until dawn. Every year there were fewer of them, but still every year they went.

The sun dropped at the horizon, a fat glowing ball spreading yellow light over all the smooth sea, and the last boat crept out of Trewissick harbour, its engine thumping like a muffled heart-beat in Jane's ears. As the last spreading lines of the boat's wake washed against the harbour wall, in a final swift rush the great sun dropped below the horizon, and the light of the April evening began very slowly to die. A small wind sprang up. Jane shivered, and pulled her jacket around her; there was suddenly a coldness in the darkening air.

As if in answer to the beginning breeze, a light starred up suddenly across Trewissick Bay, on the headland opposite Kemare Head. At the same time there was a sudden warmth behind Jane's back. She swung round, and saw dark figures against tall flames, where a light had been set to the towering pile of driftwood and branches that had lain waiting to become a bonfire for this one night. Mrs Penhallow had told her that the two beacons would burn until the fishing-boats came back, flames leaping all through the night until the dawn.

Mrs Penhallow: now there was a mystery. Jane thought again of the moment that afternoon when she had been alone in the living-room, flipping through a magazine, waiting for Simon. She had heard a nervous clearing of the throat, and there in the kitchen doorway Mrs Penhallow was standing, round and rosy and unusually fidgetty.

'Ef you fancy comin' to the makin' tonight, m'dear, you'm welcome,' she said abruptly.

Jane blinked at her. 'The making?'

'The makin' of the Greenwitch.' The lilt of Mrs Penhallow's Cornish accent seemed more marked than usual. 'It do take all the night, 'tes a long business, and no outsiders allowed near, generally. But if you feel you'd like . . . you being the only female close to the Perfessor, and all . . .' She waved a hand as if to catch words. 'The women did agree it's all right, and I'd be happy to take 'ee.'

'Thank you very much,' said Jane, puzzled but pleased. 'Er . . . can Mrs Stanton come too?'

'No,' Mrs Penhallow said sharply. She added more gently, as Jane's eyebrows went up, 'She'm a furriner, you see. Tisn't fitting.'

Up on the headland, gazing at the fire, Jane remembered the flat finality of the words. She had accepted the pronouncement and, without even trying to explain the situation to Fran Stanton, had come out after supper to the headland with Mrs Penhallow.

Yet still she had been given no idea of what was to happen. Nobody had told her what the thing called the Greenwitch would be like, or how it would be made, or what would happen to it. She knew only that the business would occupy the whole night, and end when the fishermen came home. Jane shivered again. Night was falling, and she was not over-fond of the nights of Cornwall; they held too much of the unknown.

Black shadows ran over the rocks around her, dancing and disappearing as the flames leapt. Instinctively seeking company, Jane moved forward into the circle of bright light around the bonfire; yet this too was unnerving, for now the other figures moved to and fro at the edge of the darkness, out of sight, and she felt suddenly vulnerable. She hesitated, frightened by the tension in the air.

'Come, m'dear,' said Mrs Penhallow's soft voice, beside her. 'Come by here.' There was a hint of urgency in her tone. Hastily she took Jane by the arm and led her aside. 'Time for the makin',' she said. 'You want to keep out of the way, if you can.'

Then she was gone again, leaving Jane alone near a group of women busying themselves with something not yet visible. Jane found a rock and sat down, warmed by the fire; she watched. Scores of women were there, of all ages: the younger ones in jeans and sweaters, the rest in sturdy dark skirts, long as overcoats, and high heavy boots. Jane could see a big pile of stones, each the size of a man's head, and a far higher pile of green branches - hawthorn, she thought - too leafy to be intended for the fire. But she did not understand the purpose of either of these.

Then one tall woman moved out before the rest, and held one arm high in the air. She called out something Jane could not understand, and at once the women set to working, in a curiously ordered way in small groups. Some would take up a branch, strip it of leaves and twigs, and test it for flexibility; others then would take the branch, and in some swift practised way weave it together with others into what began very slowly to emerge as a kind of frame.

After a while the frame began to show signs of becoming a great cylinder. The cleaning and bending and tying went on for a long time. Jane shifted restlessly. The leaves on some of the branches seemed to be of a different shape from the hawthorn. She was not close enough to see what they might be, and she did not intend to move. She felt she would only be safe here, half-invisible on her rock, unnoticed, watching from a little way off.

At her side suddenly she found the tall woman who had seemed the others' leader. Bright eyes looked down at her out of a thin face, framed by a scarf tied under the chin. 'Jane Drew, it is,' the woman said, with a Cornish accent that sounded oddly hard. 'One of those who found the grail.'

Jane jumped. The thought of the grail was never fully out of her mind, but she had not linked it with this strange ceremony here. The woman, however, did not mention it again.

'Watch for the Greenwitch,' she said conversationally. It was like a greeting.

The sky was almost black now, with only a faint rim of the glow of daylight. The lights of the two bonfires burned brightly on the headlands. Jane said hastily, clutching at this companionship against the lonely dark, 'What are they doing with those branches?'

'Hazel for the framework,' the woman said. 'Rowan for the head. Then the body is of hawthorn boughs, and hawthorn blossoms. With the stones within, for the sinking. And those who are crossed, or barren, or who would make any wish, must touch the Greenwitch then before she be put to cliff.'

'Oh,' Jane said.

'Watch for the Greenwitch,' said the woman pleasantly again, and moved away. Over her shoulder she said, 'You may make a wish too, if you like. I will call you, at the right time.'

Jane was left wondering and nervous. The women were busier now, working steadily, singing in a strange kind of wordless humming; the cylinder shape grew more distinct, closer-woven, and they carried the stones and put them inside. The head began to take shape: a huge head, long, squarish, without features. When the framework was done, they began weaving into it green branches starred with white blossoms. Jane could smell the heavy sweetness of the hawthorn, Somehow it reminded her of the sea.

*******

Hours went by. Sometimes Jane dozed, curled beside her rock; whenever she woke, the framework seemed to look exactly as it had before. The work of weaving seemed endless. Mrs Penhallow came twice with hot tea from a flask. She said anxiously, 'Now if you do feel you've had enough, m'dear, you just say. Easy to take you along home.'

'No,' Jane said, staring at the great leafy image with its court of steady workers. She did not like the Greenwitch; it frightened her. There was something menacing in its broad squat shape. Yet it was hypnotic too; she could scarcely take her eyes off it. It. She had always thought of witches as being female, but she could feel no she quality in the Greenwitch. It was unclassifiable, like a rock or a tree.

The bonfire still burned, fed carefully with wood, its warmth was very welcome in the chill night. Jane moved away to stretch her stiff legs, and saw inland a faint greyness beginning to lighten the sky. Morning would be coming soon. A misty morning: fine drops of moisture were flicking at her face already. Against the lightening sky she could see Trewissick's standing stones, five of them, ancient skyward-pointing fingers halfway along Kemare Head. She thought: that's what Greenwitch is like. It reminds me of the standing stones.

When she turned back again towards the sea, the Greenwitch was finished. The women had drawn away from the great figure; they sat by the fire, eating sandwiches, and laughing, and drinking tea. As Jane looked at the huge image that they had made, out of leaves and branches, she could not understand their lightness. For she knew suddenly, out there in the cold dawn, that this silent image somehow held within it more power than she had ever sensed before in any creature or thing. Thunder and storms and earthquakes were there, and all the force of the earth and sea. It was outside Time, boundless, ageless, beyond any line drawn between good and evil. Jane stared at it, horrified, and from its sightless head the Greenwitch stared back. It would not move, or seem to come alive, she knew that. Her horror came not from fear, but from the awareness she suddenly felt from the image of an appalling, endless loneliness. Great power was held only in great isolation. Looking at the Greenwitch, she felt a terrible awe, and a kind of pity as well.

But the awe, from her amazement at so inconceivable a force, was stronger than anything else.

'You feel it, then.' The leader of the women was beside her again; the hard, flat words were not a question. 'A few women do. Or girls. Very few. None of those there, not one.' She gestured contemptuously at the cheerful group beyond. 'But one who has held the grail in her hands may feel many things. . . Come. Make your wish.'

'Oh no.' Jane shrank back instinctively.

In the same moment a cluster of four young women broke away from the crowd and ran to the broad, shadowy leaf-image. They were shaking with giggles, calling to one another; one, larger and noisier than the rest, rushed up and clasped the hawthorn sides that stretched far above her head.

'Send us all rich husbands, Greenwitch, pray thi'!' she shouted.

'Or else send her young Jim Tregoney!' bellowed another. Shrieking with laughter, they all ran back to the group.

'See there!' said the woman. 'No harm comes to the foolish, which is most of them. And therefore none to those with understanding. Will you come?'

She walked over to the big silent figure, laid a hand on it, and said something that Jane could not hear. Nervously Jane followed. As she came close to the Greenwitch she felt again the unimaginable force it seemed to represent, but again the great loneliness too. Melancholy seemed to hover about it like a mist. She put out her hand to grasp a hawthorn bough, and paused. 'Oh dear,' she said impulsively, 'I wish you could be happy.'

She thought, as she said it: how babyish, when you could have wished for anything, even getting the grail back . . . even if it's all a lot of rubbish, you could at least have tried. . . But the hard-eyed Cornishwoman was looking at her with an odd surprised kind of approval.

'A perilous wish!' she said. 'For where one may be made happy by harmless things, another may find happiness only in hurting. But good may come of it.'

Jane could think of nothing to say. She felt suddenly extremely silly.

Then she thought she heard a muffled throbbing sound out at sea; she swung round. The woman too was looking outward, at a grey streak of horizon where none had been before. Out on the dark sea, lights were flickering, white and red and green. The first fishermen were coming home.

Afterwards, Jane remembered little of that long waiting time. The air was cold. Slowly, slowly, the fishing-boats came closer, over the stone-grey sea glimmering in the cold dawn. And then, when at last they neared the wharf, the village seemed to splutter into life. Lights and voices woke on the jetties; engines coughed; the air was filled with shouting and laughing and a great bustle of unloading; and over all of it the gulls wheeled and screamed, early-woken for thievery, eddying in a great white cloud round the boats to dive for discarded fish. Afterwards, Jane found herself remembering the gulls most of all.

Up from the harbour, when the unloading was done, and lorries gone to market and boxes gone into the little canning factory - up from the harbour came a procession of the fishermen. There were others too, factory men and mechanics and shopkeepers and farmers, all the men of Trewissick, but the dark-jerseyed fishermen, shadow-eyed, bristle-chinned, weary, smelling of fish, led the long crowd. They came along the headland, calling cheerfully to the women; no meeting could have been less romantic, Jane thought, up there in the sleepless cold under the dead grey light of the dawn, and yet there was a great light-heartedness among them all. The bonfire still burned, a last stock of wood newly blazing; the men gathered round it, rubbing their hands, in a tumult of deep voices that sounded harsh in Jane's ears after the lighter chattering of the women all night.

High and low in the sky the gulls drifted, uncertain, hopeful. Amongst all the bustle stood the Greenwitch, vast and silent, a little diminished by light and noise but still brooding, ominous. Despite all the raucous exchanges tossed between the men and women there was a curious respectfulness towards the strange leafy image; a clear reluctance to make any fun of the Greenwitch. Jane found that for some reason this left her feeling relieved.

She caught sight of Merriman's tall figure at the edge of the crowd of Cornishmen, but made no attempt to reach him. This was a time simply to wait and see what might happen next. The men seemed to be gathering in one group, the women moving away. All at once Mrs Penhallow was at Jane's side again.

'Come, let me show 'ee where to go, m'dear. Now, as the sun comes up, the men do put the Greenwitch to cliff.' She smiled at Jane, half earnest, half offering a self-conscious apology. 'For luck, you see, and for good fishing and a good harvest. So they say. . . But we must keep our distance, to give them a clear run.' She beckoned, and Jane followed her away from the Greenwitch to the side of the headland. She had only half an idea what this was all about.

The men began to crowd round the Greenwitch. Some touched it ostentatiously, laughing, calling aloud a wish. For the first time, in the growing daylight, Jane noticed that the square, leaf-woven figure had been built on a kind of platform, like a huge tray made of boards, and that this platform had a heavy wheel at each corner, carefully wedged with big stones. Calling and whooping, the men pulled the stones from the wheels, and Jane saw the figure sway as the platform moved free. Greenwitch was perhaps half again as high as a man, but very broad for its height, with its huge square head almost as wide as its body. It did not look like a copy of a human being. It looked, Jane thought, like a single representative of a fearful unknown species, from another planet, or from some unthinkably distant part of our own past.

'Heave, boys!' a voice called. The men had attached ropes to all four sides of the platform; they milled round, holding, steadying gently pulling the swaying image towards the end of the headland. Greenwitch lumbered forward. Jane could smell the heavy scent of the hawthorn. The blossoms seemed brighter, the green boughs of Greenwitch's sides almost luminous; she realised that inland, over the moors beyond Trewissick, the sun was coming up. Yellow light blazed out over them; a cheer rose from the crowd, and the platform with the green figure moved almost to the clutter of rocks at the edge of the cliff.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'What was the making of it like?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'A dark man? With long hair?'

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

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

'After,' Jane said, puzzled.

'Ah,' Will said again.

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

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

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

'Where's he gone?' she said.

Simon said, ' Where's who gone?'

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

'We must have frightened him away.'

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

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

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

Chapter Four

It was the sky that began the oddness of the rest of that day. As the Drews walked back along Kemare Head to the harbour the sun rose higher ahead of them, but gave no warmth, for as it rose a fine hazy mist began to grow too. In a little while the mist covered all the sky, so that the sun hung there familiar and yet strange, like a furry orange.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'See?' said Barney.

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

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

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

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

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

'The Grey House,' Barney said suddenly.

'Good idea. Come on, Jane.'

*******

'He seems to be taking the appearance of a painter,' Will said to Merriman as they made their way back along Kemare Head, behind the last straggle of cheerful

villagers. 'A swarthy kind of man, of middle height, with long dark hair and apparently a real but rather nasty talent. A nice touch, that.'

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

'You think he is one of the great lords?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Captain Toms ran a finger reflectively over his close grey beard. 'You think he plans to have the boy look into the grail, to find him the future... the old scrying? ... Well, it's possible.'

Will said: 'But is that what he wants first?'

'Whether it is or not, Barney will need careful watching.'

' I shall haunt him,' Will said, 'He'll hate it.' He prowled restlessly round the room, staring at pictures without seeing them. 'But where is the Dark? Where is he? Not far away, I think.'

'I have had that feeling too,' Captain Toms said quietly from his armchair. 'He is quite close by. Just after sunrise this morning I felt him go past the house, quite quickly, and there has been a faint sense of his nearness ever since.'

'That was when he tried to get to the Greenwitch, before the throwing,' Merriman said. 'Lucky for us he failed, or the creature might have responded. The fishermen hustled him of this way - they were most indignant, and rather rough. . . I followed into the village, until they released him. Then he put a shadow round himself, and I lost the way. But yes, he is near. One senses the ill-will.'

 Will stopped his prowling abruptly, stiffening like a pointing dog. Hastily Merriman swung his long legs of the sofa and stood up. ' What is it?'

'Do you feel anything? Hear anything?'

'I did, I think. You're right.' Captain Toms hobbled to the door, leaning heavily on his stick. 'Come outside, quick.'

The sound of barking rose even while they crossed the hall, and as they stood together on the steps of the Grey House it grew louder, nearer, the straining hysterical noise of a dog demanding freedom. Overhead the sky was leaden grey, and the daylight had become grim and murky. Along the road from the village, further down the hill where the harbour and the jetties began, a red flurry of speed came hurtling towards them, with the dark figure of a man running after it.

Will said sharply, on a high note of alarm: 'But look - the children!'

On the quayside along the edge of the harbour road they saw Simon, Jane and Barney breaking into a run, excited, not yet seeing Rufus but responding eagerly to the sound of his bark. 'Rufus!' Barney was shouting gleefully. 'Rufus!'

The Old Ones stood poised, waiting.

As Rufus rushed joyfully round the corner towards the children, they saw the dark man raise his hand. In midair the dog froze, motionless, and dropped like a log of wood right in the children's path. Simon, thrown off balance too late to veer aside, tripped helplessly over him and fell hard to the ground. He lay still. Jane and Barney skidded to a halt, aghast. The dark-haired man neared them, paused, raised a hand pointing at Barney -

Only Simon saw. Lying on the ground, facing the hill, drifting back out of the moment of black unconsciousness that had swallowed him when he hit the ground, he blinked his dazed eyes open. And he saw, or thought he saw, three shining figures in a great blaze of white light. They towered and grew, their brilliance blinding Simon's eyes; they seemed to be swelling towards him, and he closed his eyes against the pain of the light. His head was full of whirling noise still, he was not properly out of

unconsciousness. Afterwards he was able to tell himself that it was all imagination: confusion after a blow. But the overwhelming sense of awe that had swept over him never afterwards quite left his memory.

And Jane and Barney, caught out of movement, staring horrified at the dark-haired man almost upon them now, saw only the dreadful change on his face as suddenly he reeled back, spun away from them, beneath the impact of some unseen force. Snarling with malignant fury, he seemed to be fighting a tremendous battle with - nothing. His body was rigid; the fighting was all in his eyes and the cold line of his mouth. There was a long horrible moment of waiting, as the dark figure froze, fiercely twisted under the grey light of the dark sky. Then something in him seemed to snap, and he flung round without another glance at them; rushed away and was gone.

Rufus moved, whining; Simon stirred and sat up. He got to his hands and knees over the dog, and patted his head groggily. Rufus licked his hand, struggling to his four wobbly feet like a newborn calf.

'I feel like that too,' said Simon. Carefully, he stood up. Jane prodded him with a nervous finger. 'Are you all right?'

'Not a scratch.'

'What happened?'

'I don't know. There was such a bright light...' His voice trailed away, as he tried to remember.

'That was from banging your head,' said Barney. 'The man, you didn't see him, he was right on top of us and then - I don't know, something stopped him. It was weird.'

'As if he had some kind of fit,' said Jane. 'He sort of writhed about, with this awful look on his face, and then he just dashed off.'

'He was the painter. The one who took my drawing.'

'Was he really? Of course, he stole Rufus too, that was why -'

But Barney was not listening. He stood gazing up at the high-sloping road beside the harbour. 'Look,' he said in a strange flat voice.

They looked with him, and striding down towards them from the direction of the Grey House came Merriman. His jacket flapped open, his hands were in his pockets, his wild white hair lifted in the breeze that was beginning to stir all around. He said when he reached them. 'You're going to get wet if you stand about waiting for the rain.'

Jane glanced up distractedly at the darkening sky. 'Didn't you see what happened, just this minute?'

'Some of it,' Merriman said. 'Are you hurt at all, Simon?'

'I'm fine.'

Barney was still gazing at him with a bemused look on his face. 'It was you, wasn't it?' he said softly. 'You stopped him, somehow. He's from the Dark.'

'Come now, Barney,' Merriman said briskly. 'That's a large assumption. Let us not conjecture where your unpleasant friend came from - just enjoy the fact that he is gone, and Rufus safe and sound back again.'

The red dog licked his hand, feathery tail waving furiously. Merriman rubbed his soft ears. 'Go home,' he said. Without a glance round, Rufus made off up the hill beside the harbour, and they watched in silence as he disappeared into the side entrance of the Grey House.

Barney said, 'That's all very well, but I thought you brought us here to help?'

'Barney!' said Jane.

'You are already helping,' Merriman said gently. 'I told you, be patient.'

Simon said, 'We came out to look for you. We thought something might have happened.'

'I was just in the Grey House, chatting with Captain Toms.'

'Will Stanton hasn't come home since the Greenwitch thing, either.'

'Just sight-seeing, I dare say. I expect we shall find him at home when we go back.' Merriman glanced up again at the lowering grey clouds. A long low rumbling came from the sky over the sea. 'Come along,' he said. 'Home. Before the storm breaks.'

Jane said absently, as they trotted obediently to keep up with his long loping strides, 'The poor Greenwitch, all alone there in the sea. I hope the waves don't smash it all to bits.'

They scrambled up the last narrow steps to the cottage; as they reached the door, white light ripped open the sky, and a huge thumping crash echoed and re-echoed around the bay.

Merriman said, through the noise, 'I don't think they will.'

*******

Jane stood again on Kemare Head, but now she was alone, and the storm at its height. It seemed neither night nor day. The sky was grey all around, heavy, hanging; sharp lightning split it, thunder rumbled and thudded, echoing back from the inland moors. Gulls whirled and screamed in the wind. Below, the sea boiled, waves raging, tearing at the rocks. Jane felt herself lean on the wind, lean out over the cliff - and then leap high in the air, out, down, falling through the wind with the gulls swooping round her as she fell.

There was sick horror in the falling, but a kind of wild delight too. The great waves swirled to meet her, and with no shock nor splash nor sense of another element she was still falling, falling slowly, floating down through the green underwater where none of the wild frenzy from the storm above could reach. There was no movement but a slow swaying of weed, from the deepest touch of the great ocean swells. And before her, she saw the Greenwitch.

The great leafy image rested upright against a group of craggy rocks; they gave it shelter. The Greenwitch stood undamaged, just as Jane had seen it before, the square unhuman head set on the gigantic broad body. Its leaves and hawthorn blossoms were spread like weed in the gentle tug of the water, rippling to and fro. Small fish darted round the head. The whole structure swayed now and then, rhythmically, when the long reach of the storm swell pulled at it.

Then as Jane watched, the swaying grew more pronounced, as though the storm were reaching deeper into the sea. She could feel the pull of the waves herself; she moved like a fish, both obeying and resisting them. Greenwitch began to turn and sway, faster, further, drawn so far in each direction that it seemed the whole figure must topple and be carried away. Jane felt a dark chill in the water, a sense of great threatening power, and to her horror the movement of the Greenwitch changed. Limbs stirred of themselves, the leafy head rippled and stirred as if it were a face. Then the coldness suddenly was gone, the sea was muted blue and green again with the weed and the fish swaying in the swell - but now the Greenwitch, she knew, was alive. It was neither good nor evil, it was simply alive, aware of her as she had all along been aware of it.

The huge leafy head turned towards her, and without a voice the Greenwitch spoke, spoke into her mind. 'I have a secret,' the Greenwitch said.

Jane felt the loneliness that she had felt in the thing up on the headland, in the beginning : the sorrow and emptiness. But through it she felt the Greenwitch clutching at something for comfort, like a child with a toy - though this child was hundreds of years old, and through all its endlessly renewed life had never had such comfort before.

'I have a secret. I have a secret.'

'You are lucky,' Jane said.

The living tower of branches bent towards her, nearer. 'I have a secret, it is mine. Mine, mine. But I will show you. If you promise not to tell, not to tell.'

'I promise,' Jane said.

The Greenwitch lurched sideways, all its twigs and leafy armlets rippling together in the water, and as it moved away from the shallow niche in the rocks against which it had been leaning, Jane saw something there in the shadows. It was a small bright shining thing, lying within the cleft in the rock, on the white sand; it was like a small glowing stick. It looked like nothing of importance, except that it glowed with this strange light. As to a small child showing its toy, she said to the Greenwitch: 'It's lovely.'

'My secret,' said the Greenwitch. 'I guard it. No-one shall touch it. I guard it well, for always.'

Without warning, the darkness and the chill came again over the water, infusing the whole undersea world. The Greenwitch changed utterly, in an instant. It became hostile, angry, threatening. It loomed over Jane. 'You'll tell! You'll tell!'

The leafy head split horribly into a parody of a face, snarling, furious; the branching form seemed to spread, opening, grasping out to envelop her as the Greenwitch lurched inexorably forward. Jane backed away in terror, cowering down. The water was very hot suddenly, fierce, oppressive, full of roaring noise.

'I won't tell! I promise! I promise! I promise . . .'

Cold air was on her face. 'Jane! Wake up! Come on, Jane, wake up now, it's all over, it's not real . . . Jane, wake up . . .' Merriman's deep voice was soft but insistent, his hands strong and reassuring on her shoulders. Jane sat bolt upright in the little bedroom, looked at his face, leant her damp forehead on his arm and burst into tears.

'Tell me about it,' said Merriman soothingly.

'I can't! I promised!' The tears came faster.

'Now look here,' Merriman said when she was calmer. 'You had a bad nightmare, and it's all over. I heard a very muffled sort of shout in here and when I came in you were right down among the bedclothes, must have been as hot as blazes. No wonder you dreamed. Now tell me about it.'

'Oh dear,' said Jane miserably. She told him.

'Mmm,' said Merriman, when she had finished. His bleak, bony face was in shadow; she could read nothing from it.

'It was awful,' Jane said. 'The last bit.'

'I'm sure it was. Last night's doings were too rich a diet for your imagination, I'm afraid.'

Jane managed a small weak grin. 'We had apple pie and cheese for supper tonight. That might have helped too.'

Merriman chuckled and stood up, looming against the low ceiling. 'All right now?'

'All right. Thank you.' As he went out she said, 'Gumerry?'

'What is it?'

'I really do feel sorry for the Greenwitch, still.'

'I hope you may retain that emotion,' said Merriman obscurely. 'Sleep well now.'

Jane lay tranquil, listening to the rain against the window, and the last rumbles of the dying storm. Just before she drowsed away she thought, in a sudden flash of remembering, that she recognised the small bright object that in her dream had been the Greenwitch's secret. But before she could catch at the memory, she was asleep.

Chapter Five

Simon burrowed deeper into the small cosy cave between pillow and bedclothes. 'Mmmmmff. Nya. Go away.'

'Oh come on, Simon.' Barney tugged persistently at the sheet. 'Get up. It's a super morning, come and see. Everything's all shiny from the rain last night, we could go down to the harbour before breakfast. Just for a walk. No-one else is awake. Come on.'

Growling, Simon opened one eye and blinked at the window. In the clear blue sky a seagull turned and lazily drifted, arching down on unmoving wings. 'Oh well,' he said. 'All right.'

In the harbour, nothing moved. Boats hung motionless at their moorings, their mast-images unrippled in the still water. There was a sea-smell of creosote from nets draped for mending over the harbour wall. Nothing broke the silence but the clatter of a distant milk-van somewhere high up in the village. The boys pattered down rain-patched steps and through narrow alleys.

As they stood looking down at the nearest boats a village mongrel trotted up, sniffed amiably at their heels, and went on his way.

'Rufus might be out too,' Barney said. 'Let's go and see.'

'All right.' Simon ambled after him, content, relaxed in the stillness and the sunshine and the gentle swish of the sea.

'There he is!' The rangy red dog came bounding towards them across the quayside. He pranced about them, tail waving, white teeth grinning as the long pink tongue lolled out.

'Idiot dog,' said Simon affectionately as the tongue curled wetly round his hand.

Barney squatted down and gazed solemnly into Rufus's brown eyes. 'I do wish he could talk. What would you tell us, boy, eh? About the painter from the Dark, and where he took you? Where was it, Rufus? Where did he hide you, eh?'

The setter stood still for a moment, looking at Barney; then he cocked his narrow head on one side and gave a curious noise that was half-bark, half-whine, like a kind of question. He swung round, lolloped a few paces along the quay, then stopped and looked back at them. Barney stood up slowly. Rufus trotted away a few more steps, then again turned and looked back, waiting for them.

'What on earth?' said Simon, watching.

'He wants to show us!' Barney hopped nervously up and down. 'Come on, Simon, quick! He'll show us where the painter hides, I bet you, and we shall be able to tell Gumerry!'

Rufus whined, questioning.

'I don't know,' Simon said. 'We ought to get home. Nobody knows where we are.'

'Oh come on quick before he changes his mind.' Barney grabbed his arm and tugged him after the lean red dog, already trotting away now confidently across the quay.

Rufus led them straight across the harbour and round into the road that ran inland from the Grey House and the sea; the road was familiar at first, leading back through the narrowest part of the village, past quiet cottages sleeping behind lace-curtained windows, and once or twice a modest house grandly labelled PRIVATE HOTEL. Then they were behind Trewissick, in the hedge-rimmed farmland that curved around the white cones and green ponds of the clay-burrow country, until, far inland, it met the moors.

Simon said, 'We can't go much farther, Barney. We shall have to turn back.'

'Just a little bit more.'

On they went, along silent roads bright with the spring- time green of newly full trees. Simon looked around him, with the flickerings of unease in his mind. Nothing was wrong: the sun warmed them; dandelions brightly starred the grass; what could be wrong? Suddenly Rufus turned of the road into a narrow, leafy lane; a signpost at the corner read PENTREATH FARM. On either side, the trees reached their branches up and over to arch in a leafy roof; even in full daylight the lane was shadowed, cool, with only a faint dappling of sunshine filtering through the leaves. All at once Simon was filled with an immense foreboding. He stood stone-still.

Barney looked over his shoulder: ' What's wrong?'

'I don't know, exactly.'

'Did you hear something?'

'No. I just . . . it's as if I've been here before . . .' Simon shivered. 'It's the funniest feeling,' he said.

Barney looked at him nervously. 'P'raps we really should go back?'

Simon did not answer; he was staring ahead, frowning. Rufus, who had disappeared round a corner in the lane for a moment, was bounding back again in a great unexplained hurry.

'Into the trees, quick!' Simon grabbed Barney's arm, and with the dog close behind them they slipped into the thicket of trees and brush that edged each side of the road. In there, picking their way carefully from tree to tree to avoid rustling footfalls, they inched forward until they could see the part of the lane that lay ahead, round the corner. They did not speak or whisper; they scarcely breathed, and at their feet Rufus crouched still as a dead dog.

There ahead, the trees were no longer thick, the land no longer a leafy tunnel. Instead they saw a wide field scattered with large single trees and clumps of scrub. Across it, the lane was no more than a grassy track, two wheel-worn ruts, winding away to where the trees grew thick again. It did not look as though many people used the path to Pentreath Farm. And there was no sign of any farmhouse. Instead, clear ahead of them in the sunlit field, they saw a caravan.

It stood tall and glittering and handsome: a real old-fashioned gipsy caravan, of a kind they had never seen before except in pictures. Above the high wood-spoked wheels rose white wooden sides, sloping gently outwards, up to the curved wooden roof with its cone-hatted chimney. At each corner between roof and walls, brightly-painted scrollwork filled the eaves. In the side walls, square windows were set, neatly curtained; leaning down from the front of the van were shafts for the horse that stood grazing quietly near-by. At the rear, a sturdy six rung ladder led up to a door painted with ornate decorations to match the scrollwork: a split door, of the kind used in stables, with the top half hanging open and the lower half latched shut.

As they crouched behind the trees, breathlessly staring, a figure appeared in the doorway, opened this lower door and began descending the steps of the caravan. Barney tightened his grip on Simon's arm. There was no mistaking the long wild dark hair, the snarling brow; the painter was even dressed exactly as he had been both times before, like a fisherman, in navy-blue jersey and trousers. He swallowed nervously at the impact of the man's nearness; it was as if there were a cloud of malevolence all around him. Barney was suddenly very glad that they were deep in the trees, out of all possible sight. He stood very still indeed, praying that Rufus would not make a sound.

But although indeed there was no sound anywhere in the clearing except the clear morning song of birds in the trees, the dark man paused suddenly at the bottom of the caravan steps. He lifted his head and turned it all round, like a deer questing; Barney saw that his eyes were shut. Then the man turned full in their direction, the cold eyes opened beneath the lowering brows, and he said clearly, 'Barnabas Drew. Simon Drew. Come out.'

No thought of running away came into their minds, or anything but unquestioning obedience. Barney walked automatically forward out of the trees, and felt Simon moving with him in the same unhesitating way. Even Rufus trotted docile at their side.

They stood together in the sunlit field beside the caravan, facing the dark man in his dark clothes, and although the sun was warm on their skin it seemed to them that the day had become chill. The man looked at them, unsmiling, expressionless. 'What do you want?' he said.

Somewhere in Barney's mind, as a spark flickers and finds tinder and blazes up into a flame, a small light of resentment flared suddenly into a crossness that burned away fear. He said boldly, 'Well, for one thing I'd like my drawing back.'

Beside him he half-saw Simon shake his head a little, like one pushing away sleep, and knew that he too was clear of the spell. He said more loudly, 'You stole my drawing, down in the harbour, goodness knows why. And I liked it, and I want it back.'

The dark eyes contemplated him coolly; it was impossible to read any emotion behind them. 'Quite a promising little scribble, for your age.'

'Well, you certainly don't need it,' Barney said; for a moment he spoke with admiration, thinking of the real power in the man's painting.

'No,' said the man, with an odd, grim half-smile. 'Not now.' He moved back up the steps and through the double door; over his shoulder he said, 'Very well, then. Come on.'

Rufus, who had stood stock-still from the beginning, began a low rumbling growl deep in his throat. Simon put a hand down to quiet him, and said, 'That wouldn't be very sensible, Barney.'

But Barney said lightly, 'Oh no, I think it would be all right,' and he moved towards the caravan steps. Simon had no choice but to follow him. 'Stay, Rufus,' he said. The setter folded his long legs and lay down at the foot of the steps, but still the long low growl went on eerie and unbroken; they could hear it soft in the background like a reminder of warning.

The dark man had his back to them. 'Look well at the Romany vardo,' he said, without turning. 'There are few of them to be seen any more.'

'Romany?' said Simon. 'Are you a gipsy?'

'Half Romany chal,' the man said, 'and half gorgio.' He turned and stood with arms folded, surveying them. 'I am part gipsy, yes. That's the best you'll find these days, on the road at any rate. Even the vardo is only part gipsy.'

He nodded at the roof of the caravan, and they saw, looking up, that it was edged all about with the same brightly-painted scrollwork that decorated the outside, and that tools of some small kind hung all over one wall, with an old fiddle and an oddly-striped woollen rug. But the furniture was shiny-cheap and modern, and the chimney was not a real chimney, but only a vent for carrying away hot air from above the neat electric stove.

Then they saw suddenly that the ceiling was painted. From end to end, above the bright conventional curlicues of the scrollwork, a huge churning abstract painting was spread above their heads. There was no recognisable form to its shapes and colours, yet it was a disturbing, alarming sight, full of strange whorls and shadows and shot through with lurid colours that jarred on the senses. Barney felt again the power and the nastiness that had leapt at him from the canvas he had seen the man painting in the harbour; up on this ceiling too he saw the particular unnerving shade of green he had found so unpleasant out there. He said suddenly to Simon, 'Let's go home.'

'Not yet,' said the dark man. He spoke softly, without moving, and Barney felt a chill awareness of the Dark reaching out to control him - until without warning a faint hissing sound that had been vaguely puzzling him erupted into the boiling of a kettle, and a shrill whistle filled the room and made a sense of evil suddenly ridiculous.

But Simon had felt it too. He looked at the dark man and thought: you keep steering us away from being frightened, delaying it. Why do you want us to stay?

The dark-haired man busied himself with the prosaic matter of spooning instant coffee into a mug and pouring on water from the kettle. 'Either of you drink coffee?' he said over his shoulder.

Simon said quickly, 'No thank you.'

Barney said, 'I wouldn't mind a drink of water.' Seeing Simon's scowl, he added plaintively, 'Well, I did get awfully thirsty walking. Not just a drink of water from the tap?'

'In that cupboard by your right foot,' the painter said, 'you will find some cans of orangeade.' He moved to the small table at the end of the caravan, stirring his coffee. 'Sealed,' he added with a deliberate ironic stare at Simon. 'Fizzy. Harmless. Straight from the factory.'

'Thanks,' Barney said promptly, bending to the cupboard door.

The man said, 'You might bring out a cardboard box you'll find in there, too.'

'All right.' After some bumping and rattling, Barney came up with an unremarkable brown box; set it on the table and produced two drinks from the crook of his elbow. Without comment Simon took one, and popped open the top, to a reassuring hiss; but a stubborn caution still made him reluctant to drink, and he made only a pretence of swigging at the can. Barney drank thirstily, with appreciative gurgling noises.

'That's better. Thanks. Now may I have my picture back?'

'Open the box,' the man said, the long hair falling about his face as he drank from his mug.

'Is it in there?'

'Open the box,' the man said again, with a faint edge of strain in his voice. Simon thought: he's as tense as a strung wire. Why?

Setting down his drink on the table, Barney opened the top of the brown cardboard box. He took out a sheet of paper, and held it up critically. 'Yes, that's my drawing.'

He glanced back into the box, and then all at once a brightness was in his eyes, a fierce brilliance flashing into his brain, and he was staring in disbelief, crying out in a voice that broke into huskiness.

'Simon! It's the grail!'

In the same instant the world about them changed; with a crash the doors of the little caravan swung shut, and blinds fell over the windows, cutting out all light of day. There was an instant of black darkness, but almost at once Barney found himself blinking in a dim light. Wildly he looked round for its source, and then he realised with a sick shock that the glow, still dim, disturbing, came not from any lamp but from the painted ceiling. Up on the roof, the eerie green whorls that had so troubled him were shining with a cold bleak light. They had shapes, he saw now; angular shapes arranged in groups, like a kind of unknown writing. In the cold green light he looked down, fearful, disbelieving, and saw the same wonderful familiar object that he had seen before gleaming inside the cardboard box. Gently he lifted it out, forgetting everything around him, and set it on the table.

Simon breathed, beside him, 'It is!'

Before them on the table the Cornish grail glowed: the little golden goblet that they had first seen, after so hard a search, deep in a cave beneath the cliffs of Kemare Head, and that they had saved from the people and the power of the Dark, for a while. They did not understand what it was, or what it could do; they knew only that to Merriman and the Light it was one of the great Things of Power, something of infinite value, and that one day it would come into its own when the strange runic signs and words engraved over its sides could be understood. Barney gazed as he had gazed a thousand times before at the pictures and patterns and incomprehensible signs on the golden sides of the grail. If only, if only . . . but the ancient lead-encased manuscript that they had found with the grail, in that deep lost cave, lay now at the bottom of the sea, flung by Barney himself from the end of Kemare Head in the last desperate effort to save grail and manuscript from the pursuing Dark. Though the grail had been saved, the manuscript had come to the sea, and only in that manuscript was the secret by which the vital message written on the grail could be understood . . .

The dim light in the caravan could not dull the glow that came from the grail; yellow it blazed like a fire before them, warm, glittering. Simon said softly, 'It's all right. Not a scratch on it.'

A cold voice from the shadows said, 'It is in good hands.'

Abruptly they were out of their absorption with the grail and back in the ominous half-light of the painter of the Dark. The man's black-bead eyes glittered at them from behind the table; he was a surreal pattern of black and white, black eyes, white face, black hair. And there was a deeper strength and confidence in the voice now, a note of triumph.

'I allow you a sight of the grail,' he said, 'to make a bargain with you.'

'You make a bargain with us?' Simon said, his voice coming out higher and louder than he had intended. 'All you do is steal things. Barney's drawing, Captain Toms' dog. And the grail - it must have been you who stole it from the Museum, or your friends -'

'I have no friends,' said the man unexpectedly, swiftly; it seemed a bitter reaction that he could not help, and for a moment there was a faltering of his cold gaze as he knew it. In the next instant he was composed again, looking down at them both in total self-possession.

'Stealing can be a means to an end, my young friend. My end is very simple, and there is no harm in it. All I require is five minutes of your time. Of your small brother's time, that is, and of a certain . . . talent . . . that he has.'

'I'm not leaving him alone, not for a minute,' Simon said.

'I did not suggest you should.'

'What, then?'

Barney said nothing, but watched, cautiously. For once he felt no resentment that Simon should be taking over. Deep inside his mind something was beginning to fear this strange taut white-faced man more and more, perhaps because he had so clearly blazing a talent. It would have been much easier to face an uncomplicated monster.

The painter looked at Barney. He said, 'It is very simple, Barnabas Drew. I shall take the cup that you choose to call the grail, and I shall pour into it some water, and a little oil. Then I shall ask you to sit calmly, and look into the cup, and tell me what you see.'

Barney stared at him in amazement. Like a sea-mist a strange idea wreathed into his mind: was the man not evil at all, but simply off his head, a little mad ? That could, he suddenly realised, explain everything the strange painter had done; after all, even great artists sometimes did odd things, acted strangely; think of nutty Van Gogh ...

He said carefully. 'Look at the water, and the oil, and tell you what I see? Oil does make nice patterns on water, and colours . . . well, that sounds harmless enough. Doesn't it, Simon?'

'I suppose so,' Simon said. He was staring hard at the dark man, at the wild eyes and the pale intent face, and the same hypnotic suggestion was creeping into his own mind. He too was thinking it more and more likely that their supposed adversary might not have anything to do with the Dark at all, whatever Great-Uncle Merry may have thought, but be simply an eccentric, a harmless nut. In which case, it would be safest to humour him.

'Yes,' he said firmly. 'Why not?'

Simon thought: when this daftness is all over, we can grab the grail and run. Give him the slip somehow, call Rufus in, get the grail back to Gumerry. . . He looked hard at Barney, trying to communicate; nudged him surreptitiously and flicked his eyes at the grail. Barney nodded. He knew what his brother was trying to tell him; the same thought was only too vivid in his own mind.

The dark man ran some water from the tap into a glass and poured it into the grail. Then he took a small brown bottle from a shelf near the table and added a drop or two of some kind of oil. He looked greedily at Barney. The tension in him sang like a plucked wire.

'Now,' he said. 'Sit down, here, and look hard. Look hard, look long. And tell me what you see.

Barney sat in the chair before the table, and slowly took the glowing golden chalice in both his hands. Though the inscribed gold of the outside was as bright as it had ever been, the inside surface was a dull black Barney stared down at the liquid in the bowl. In the cold green light from above his head, incomprehensibly shining out from the patterns of the painted ceiling, he watched the thin, thin layer of oil on the surface of the water swirl and coil into itself, curving, breaking and joining again, forming islands that drifted out and then vanished, merging into the rest. And he saw . . . he saw . . .

Darkness took hold of his brain like sudden sleep, and he knew nothing more.

Chapter Six

Jane was almost in tears. 'But they couldn't just disappear! Something awful must have happened!'

'Nonsense,' Merriman said. 'They'll be rushing in any moment now, demanding their breakfasts.'

'But breakfast was more than an hour ago.'

Jane stared distractedly out over the harbour, busy and bustling in the sunshine. They stood on the little paved path outside the cottages, above the winding web of stairs and alleys that led down to the harbourside.

Will said, 'I'm sure they're all right, Jane. They must have woken up early and wandered out for a walk, and gone farther than they intended. Don't worry.'

'I suppose you're right. I'm sure you are. It's just that I keep having this awful picture in my mind of them going out to Kemare Head, the way we used to, last year, and one of them getting stuck on the cliff, or something ... Oh dear, I know I'm being stupid. I'm sorry, Gumerry.' Jane shook back her long hair impatiently. 'It all comes of seeing the Greenwitch falling, I suppose. I'll shut up.'

'I tell you what,' said Will. 'Why don't we go out to Kemare Head just to check? You'd feel a lot happier.'

Brightening, she gazed from one to the other of them. 'Could we really ? '

'Of course we could,' Merriman said. 'Mrs Penhallow will give the truants their breakfast if they arrive in the meantime. You two start off - I'll have a word with her, and catch you up.'

Jane beamed. 'Oh, that's much better. Waiting's awful. Thank you, Will.'

'Don't mention it,' said Will cheerfully. 'Lovely morning for a walk.'

Into Merriman's mind he said unhappily, 'The Dark has them, I think. You feel it?'

'But without harm,' came the answer cool into his thoughts. 'And perhaps to our gain.'

*******

Barney stood at the door of the caravan, blinking in the sunlight. 'Well,' he said, 'aren't we going to get them?'

'What?' Simon said.

'The drinks, of course.'

'What drinks?'

'What's the matter with you? The drinks he just offered us. He said, there are cans in the little cupboard, you can help yourselves. And something about a cardboard box.' Turning to go in, he glanced at his brother in amusement. He stopped abruptly.

'Simon, what is the matter?'

Simon's face was white and strained, the lines of it drawn downwards in a strange adult expression of concern and distress. He stared at Barney for a moment, and then he seemed to make a great effort and wrench himself on to the same level of conversation. 'You get them,' he said. 'The drinks. You get them. Bring them out here. It's nice in the sunshine.'

There was a sound behind them inside the caravan, and Barney saw Simon jump as if he had been stabbed; then again he saw the same straining for control. Simon leaned back against the wall of the caravan, his face up to the sun. 'Go on,' he said.

Puzzled, Barney went into the caravan, its interior bright with the sunshine streaming in through the windows. The dark painter was sipping a cup of coffee, leaning on the table.

'This one?' Barney waved a foot at the little cupboard under the sink.

'That's right,' the man said.

Down on his knees, Barney took out two cans of orangeade then peered round the dark little cupboard. 'You said a cardboard box, but I can't see one.'

'Not important,' said the painter.

'There's something, though -' Barney reached in, and took out a piece of paper. After one glance he sat back on his heels and looked up at the man without expression. 'It's my drawing. That you took.'

'Well,' said the man. 'That's what you came for, isn't it ? ' His dark eyes glinted coldly at Barney beneath the scowling brows. 'Take it, and drink your drink, and go.'

Barney said, 'I'd still like to know why you ran off with it.'

'You irritated me,' the man said shortly. He put down his coffee cup and motioned Barney towards the door. 'No brat criticises my work. Don't start again. His voice rose ominously as Barney opened his mouth. 'Just go now.'

Simon said from the doorway, 'What's the matter?'

'Nothing,' said Barney. Rolling up the drawing, he picked up the two cans and went to the door.

'I'm not really thirsty,' Simon said.

'Well, I am.' Barney drank deep.

The painter stood watching them, scowling, barring their way back into the caravan. Outside in the sunshine his big horse moved one placid step forward, rhythmically ripping at the grass.

Simon said, 'May we go now?'

The man's eyes narrowed; he said swiftly, 'I have no hold over you. Why ask me?'

Simon shrugged. 'Just now Barney said, let's go home, and you said, not yet. That's all.'

A kind of relief seemed to flicker over the other's dark face. 'Your brother has his precious drawing, so go, go. Up to the left of the farm' - he waved a hand at the grassy lane disappearing on round the corner - 'you'll find a short cut back to the village. The path's a little overgrown, but it will take you to Kemare Head.'

'Thank you,' Simon said.

'Good-bye,' said Barney.

They went on across the field, without looking back. It was like coming out of a dark mist.

'D'you think it's a trap?' Barney whispered. 'Someone might be lying in wait for us at the farm.'

'Too complicated,' Simon said. 'He doesn't need traps.'

'All right.' Trotting alongside, Barney peered at him curiously. 'Simon, you really do look awful. Are you sure you're all right?'

'Do shut up about it,' Simon said, fierce and low. 'I'm fine. Just get a move on.'

'Look!' said Barney in a moment as they rounded the corner. 'It's empty!'

A low grey stone farmhouse faced them, obviously deserted: nothing moved anywhere, old pieces of machinery lay rusting in the yard, and several windows gaped black and jagged-edged. The thatched roof of an out-house was sagging ominously; brambles waved wild green arms where the woods were stealing in towards the house. 'No wonder he's living in a caravan. D'you think he's really half gipsy?'

'I doubt it,' Simon said. 'Just a handy explanation for looking different. And for the caravan. I don't know why but Gumerry will. There's the path. He headed for a break in the tangled growth near the old house, and they pushed their way along a narrow, bramble-crossed track.

'I'm ravenous,' Barney said. 'Hope Mrs Penhallow's got eggs and bacon.'

Simon glanced round, his face still drawn. 'I've got to talk to Gumerry. We both have. I can't explain yet, but it's terribly urgent.'

Barney stared. 'Well, won't he be at home?'

'Might be. But they'll have had breakfast ages ago, they'll be out looking for us.'

'Where?'

'I don't know. We could try the Grey House, to begin with.'

'Okay,' Barney said cheerfully. 'This path must come out pretty near there. And we can -' He stopped dead, staring at Simon. 'Rufus! We didn't bring him back! Simon, how awful, I clean forgot about him! Where did he go?'

'He ran away. That's one of the things I have to explain about.' Wearily Simon went on up-the path. 'It's all part of the same thing. And we've just got to find Great-Uncle Merry as soon as we possibly can, or something's going to go horribly wrong.'

*******

'There's no sign of them up here.' Will came clambering back across the rocks at the tip of Kemare Head. 'No,' Merriman said. He stood still, the sea wind blowing his white hair back like a flag.

'They might have climbed down into the next bay, to the rocks at the bottom,' Jane said. 'Let's go and see.'

'All right.'

'Wait,' Merriman said. As they turned in surprise he raised an arm and pointed inland, back along the headland towards the silent grey group of standing stones that overlooked Trewissick Bay. For a moment Jane noticed nothing. Then she saw a patch of brownish red moving towards them very fast, a patch that resolved itself in a few moments into the form of a desperately running dog.

'Rufus?'

The red setter skidded to a halt in front of them, panting, trying to bark in odd little gasping coughing sounds.

'He's always rushing up from nowhere trying to tell people things,' said Jane helplessly, crouching to rub his head. 'If only he could talk. Want to come with us, Rufus? Want to come and help find Barney and Simon?'

But it was very soon clear that Rufus wanted nothing but to persuade them to go back along the headland the way they had come. He jumped and whined and barked, and so they followed him. As they came closer to the standing stones, the great grey monoliths of granite in their lonely group up on the windy grass, they saw coming towards them from the village Simon, Barney and Captain Toms. They were moving slowly, the old man still hobbling on a stick; Jane could sense the suppressed impatience in the boys' deliberate pace.

Merriman stood beside the standing stones as they came up to him. He looked only at Simon, and he said, 'Well?'