Chapter Two #3
Kit’s shoes were enormous, like his hands and his ears. He and Toby were the same height, with the same dark hair, but were put together very differently. Kit was skinny and all angles, his knees and elbows like knots in string; and he was never still except in sleep.
Wearing a pinafore over her dress and smelling of bread dough, Mona came to inspect the finished shoes.
‘That’s a grand job, Christopher,’ she said.
‘Can you see your face in them?’ he demanded, since no lesser praise would do.
Mona took them over to the window. ‘Why, I certainly can!’
Kit thumped the table in delight and rocketed to his feet.
‘Then let’s go, Toby!’
‘Are we going somewhere?’
‘Yes. To the castle.’
‘The castle again?’ Mona said. ‘Aren’t you ever tired of it?’
‘No! Come on, Toby. Are we going?’
Toby stretched his shoulders. ‘We’re going,’ he said.
Kit rushed for the door.
‘Christopher! Socks and shoes!’ Mona called after him. ‘No child of mine will run barefoot like a savage.’
‘Aren’t we all savages, Mum?’ Toby said. ‘Isn’t that what the good reverend said last Sunday?’
‘Some more than others.’ She swiped at him with her cloth.
Toby ducked up the stairs to get his notebook, which he always took with him to the castle, then followed his brother out.
The castle mound was swathed in daisies and red clover, and Kit was already halfway up it, swinging a stick he’d picked up, as Toby dropped their ha’penny into the box by the gate.
The afternoon was as hot as the morning had promised, the sky buoyantly blue with a few faraway scuffs of cloud.
Toby rolled up his sleeves, damp around his collar and waistband.
He spotted the antiquarian, Timothy Crudge, in a shallow ditch in the north courtyard, and walked over to him as Kit ran around, swiping gleefully at imaginary foes.
‘Found anything, Mr Crudge?’
The older man squinted up at him. ‘Ah! Toby, my boy. Alas, no, not a dickie-bird thus far.’ He wore a curious outfit of beige canvas, with an apron of pockets for his trowels and brushes and picks. He wiped his hands on it and offered one to Toby to shake.
‘Arnaud, come and meet Toby Meriwether, local scholar and gentleman,’ Crudge said.
The quiet young man, who had been diligently scraping at some broken bricks, rose to his feet. ‘A pleasure to make your acquaintance.’
‘How do you do? Hot day for it,’ Toby said.
‘I was told it only ever rained in England.’ Arnaud took off his hat and rubbed his hairline.
‘Ah ha, you see!’ Crudge raised a finger. ‘Prejudice. The French really are terribly superior, when it comes to the English.’
Arnaud gave a small smile, and at that moment Kit came jogging towards them. Crudge spread his arms to intercept him.
‘Hold, there! Around the diggings if you please, young man – I thank you!’
Kit grinned. ‘But I’m the king of this castle!’
‘Well, kings can still sprain their ankles. Not to mention trample archaeological evidence.’
‘Sorry,’ Toby said, as Kit jogged on.
‘For what?’ Crudge waved a hand. ‘I should have erected a cordon.’
‘What is wrong with that boy?’ Arnaud asked.
Toby bridled. ‘Not much at all, in fact.’
‘That’s Toby’s younger brother, Christopher,’ Crudge said. ‘A pure soul, as innocent as the day he was born.’
Stiffening at the rebuke, Arnaud returned to his work.
Crudge nodded at Toby’s notebook. ‘Did you come to study the symbols?’
‘I supposed I might. Though I already have drawings of all of them – that I can find, anyway. Unless you’ve found any more?’
‘And not told you? Hardly.’
‘Somehow, they make more sense when I see them actually in the stone. As though something about their exact setting might be relevant. Does that sound bizarre?’
‘It sounds quite logical to me, in fact. The symbols are distributed throughout the castle – if their positions weren’t relevant, surely their author would have simply written them all out together, in a convenient line?’
Toby had worked at it since he was ten years old, and knew the symbols better than anyone.
Common enough in medieval buildings, they were originally thought to have been stonemasons’ so-called banker marks, to identify who had worked what.
Then Theodora Hallewell’s great-grandfather had found some lines written in the margin of an eleventh-century tome, long forgotten in an attic, that implied the symbols spelled out the location of some kind of treasure.
The lines had been published in Notes and Queries in 1832, with a pledge from the Hallewells to split the value of any finds with the finder.
Fortune-hunters had been coming to the castle ever since.
Toby had the magazine clipping in his notebook.
He’d also written it out more times than he could count, hoping for some new insight: Let the treasure of the Holy Well, from the blood of Abrecan who was called Wolf, be found by the marks in the stone and the knowledge thereof.
Some respected scholars denounced it all as a hoax, but the legend of Lord Abrecan’s not-quite death encouraged others to believe that the ‘treasure of the Holy Well’ was the secret to eternal life, a bit like the Holy Grail.
That attracted a handful of swivel-eyed, mystical types every year, alongside the more erudite.
But Toby had noticed something about the marks, something he didn’t think anyone else had.
He crossed to the broken arch of a Norman window.
There, tucked below the embrasure, was one of the symbols that stood out to Toby as incongruous, and highly unlikely to be a simple banker mark: a perfect circle, with a dot in the centre.
Or so most people, including himself, had thought.
In alchemical notation it was the symbol for the sun, and therefore for gold; a few outliers thought it was an eye, and tried to follow its gaze towards a geographic location.
Toby thought something else altogether. He suspected the central dot might in fact be frost damage.
And when the sun caught it from a very particular angle another detail emerged: two tiny cuts either side of the circle, angled to meet on its surface, like an arrow pointing the direction in which the circle might turn.
Or like a mouth – the mouth of a serpent, eating its own tail.
Uroboros. A symbol of eternity that had made its way from prehistoric Egypt into the alchemical writings of the ancient Greeks at Alexandria.
A representation of endless return . . .
He straightened up in surprise at the sight of Theodora Hallewell, carrying three glasses and a jug on a silver tray, and staring at him as though dumbstruck.
He cleared his throat to say hello but somehow ended up not saying it.
Her hair was loose, held back at the sides with combs that looked ready to fall out, and she wore a striped grey dress, boned and buttoned, with long skirts.
They saw much less of each other these days, and he was always surprised by the changes in her.
The elongation of her face and steeper contours of her cheekbones; the way her dress no longer clad the body of a child.
Only her demeanour – one of lively animation coupled with an air of diffidence and perpetual distraction – was unchanged.
‘I’ve brought lemonade for Uncle Crudge and Mr LeRoy,’ she said, when the moment for a polite greeting had passed. ‘But you can have some too, if you’d like?’
‘Capital,’ Toby said, a word that Crudge often used, though he didn’t sound like a pompous idiot when he did.
The trace of a smile touched Theo’s lips. She looked down at the tray she was holding. Each glass had a splash of water in the bottom. ‘There was ice, but it’s melted.’
Toby was suddenly intensely thirsty. ‘That’s a pity. But never mind.’
Again, he sounded like a bad actor.
Theo waited a moment longer, then carried on towards Crudge’s dig.
Toby watched her, annoyed. Since when did he act like an idiot in front of her?
Since when did his every word and gesture feel so ill-fitting?
Perhaps it had to do with his leaving, and the feeling that he ought to say something to her before he did.
Though he had no idea why, really. Or what.
Squaring his shoulders, Toby turned to follow her.
Kit appeared, as if by magic, to claim one of the glasses of lemonade. He gulped it down, then belched and yelled, ‘Sorry, thank you!’ as he cantered away again, making Theo laugh.
Usually, Toby hated it when people laughed at his brother, but Theo only did it because Kit delighted her.
‘And for you?’ she said to Toby, refilling the glass.
‘Wasn’t the third glass supposed to be for you?’
‘I had some before I brought it up. And I haven’t been running about as much as Kit.’
‘Now, Toby,’ Crudge said. ‘I hear you will be attending Theodora’s midsummer rite this evening?’
Theo put the jug down with a clatter, then had to steady the tray.
Toby became very aware of her penetrating gaze.
‘Gosh – I’d clean forgotten about it,’ he lied. ‘I’ve got an awful lot of reading to do tomorrow, so perhaps—’
‘But you must,’ Theo burst out, patches of pink appearing on her cheeks. ‘It . . . it won’t work without enough of us there.’
‘It won’t work because, well – because it obviously won’t,’ Toby heard himself say, as though vaguely amused by the idea.
Theo stared in silence at the bricks in Crudge’s trench.
‘I’m surprised to find you such a sceptic, young man,’ Crudge said reprovingly. ‘Especially given the contents of your notebook.’
‘That’s different,’ Toby said, sounding like a child again. ‘But you’re right – I ought to keep an open mind.’
‘Then, you’ll come?’
‘Yes. I’m sure I said so, already.’
Theo relaxed, visibly, then her eyes found Kit, who was scaling one of the broken stacks. It was only about eight feet high, so safe enough.
‘Will Kit come?’ she said.
‘If he wakes up, I’ll have to bring him.’
‘Well. Perhaps he won’t wake,’ she said, though not unkindly.
Toby knew she was fond of Kit, but his brother was unsuited to certain things, and being quiet for a secret – and entirely pointless – ritual was likely to be one of them.
On cue, Kit hallooed them from the top of the stack, waving his arms. The sun caught in the creases of his gleeful smile, and Toby realised he was going to have trouble getting him to come home – particularly while Theo was there to show off to.
Glee could quickly turn to frustration, to anguish and tears.
But Theo was watching Kit with a smile of her own, and returned his wave, and a strange pang made Toby look away.
He felt exposed, and when he looked at Crudge for distraction he found the old man watching him shrewdly.
As though seeing something Toby was unaware of.
‘I ought to get him down, I suppose,’ he said, to cover himself.
‘Oh, why?’ Theo said. ‘Look how much fun he’s having.’
But at that moment Kit went too close to the edge and teetered, arms wheeling.
‘That’s why,’ Toby said, far more sternly than he’d meant to.
Her face fell.
He spent the next ten minutes trying to persuade Kit to come down.
Crudge, to whom Kit would sometimes listen, soon came to join him at the foot of the stack, and shortly after that Toby saw Theo making her way back to the house, her hair swinging behind her.
With her gone, Kit was finally swayed by the prospect of bread and jam, and slithered back down to earth.
Crudge touched Toby’s arm as he turned to go. ‘Please, be kind to her, young Toby,’ he said.
‘Kind? To whom?’
Crudge smiled tolerantly. ‘Soon you’ll be off to university, and then to wherever else your ambitions take you. But this . . .’ He gestured at the castle, the hills, the house. ‘This is all she has. It isn’t easy to be left behind.’