Chapter 2

"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 sea gulls, 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 grand- daddy, I'm told. But the cottages are modernized, 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 armchair, 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 some times 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 perped over his shoulder. He blinked. On the case 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 zig-zag 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 penknife 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, seming the awareness-still new, this spring-that some thing 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 cams from one side and seized the sketch pad. Before Barney could form his head, he heard a noise of ripping paper. Then the pad was fung 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, had-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 around 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 off 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 zipper. 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, Mail" Barney could still scarcely speak for indignation. "I was sitting down there sketching, and be 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 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 enquiries," 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."

to be continued.....

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