Chapter 7
This time I dreamed of the sea. I was standing on a beach and I could see Dunaire Castle in the background as I walked away from it, with the sea bobbing at my ankles in a swirl of surf.
It was one of those dreams that feels as though it means something important.
A dream where every move and thought seems laden with allegorical detail, where, if you paid enough attention, the solution to your problems would become apparent.
Instead, I woke up with an overwhelming desire to go for a swim when Mal exploded into our bedroom from the staircase.
‘Incoming!’ he shouted. ‘We’ve got action!’
Kaylinn and I sat up blearily, stared at each other for a second while memory returned, and then at Mal.
‘What?’ she asked, combing her hair with her fingers.
‘There are people! Coming to the castle! People and horses and baggage and all sorts, it looks as though the boss might be back.’
Kaylinn was clearly still half asleep. ‘Bruce Springsteen?’
‘Just look.’
We climbed out of bed and shuffled to the window, where we peered out between the slats at a transformed scene below.
It looked as though a country fair had come to town – there were horses everywhere, and dogs; large carts filled with sacks and with a few cows tied by rope halters to the back.
There was a vaguely agricultural smell on the air that drifted in.
The small black terrier that had growled at us last night was barking itself hoarse as it tackled the large dogs that milled around getting under the horses’ hooves.
Cows mooed, carts creaked, people shouted and occasionally laughed.
It all looked horribly, improbably real.
‘We’d better get out,’ I said, pulling my jeans on and losing the dream completely. ‘We don’t want them to find us here.’
Mal and Kaylinn, who had, after all, had more time to get used to the situation than I had, exchanged a look.
‘They can’t,’ Mal said. ‘They literally can’t.
But Lachlan said to come and get you anyway, because it looks like this place is going to fill up fast and we don’t want to get split up if any doors get locked.
He and David are out in the yard, where apparently Fergus is going mad and Jeannie is doing something with food, so come on. ’
He watched, seemingly with no interest in our dignity or privacy, as we got dressed, and then hustled us down the staircase to the ground floor.
The main doors stood wide open to the weak sunshine and our previously dank and quiet cellar had been opened to become a centre of activity as men ran up and down both sets of stairs carrying boxes and sacks, dropping the odd vegetable and handful of grain as they went.
‘The forward baggage train perhaps?’ Lachlan said as we all arrived together in a corner, where the headland walls wrapped around the cliff to enclose it at an angle.
A passing horse shied dramatically and looked at us with its nostrils flaring until a young man in grubby breeches and a long coat led it away, still snorting.
‘They’re bringing the supplies to the castle, so something big must be happening. ’
I stared at the huge cart occupying the corner with us.
We were half crouching in the cover it offered, although David had found an apple rolling loose and was eating it furtively.
We huddled together as though our village had been invaded by bandits.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘I mean, it’s like the ascent of Everest getting up here, with the steps down and back up again – how the hell are they getting horses and carts up that? ’
‘There’s a postern,’ David said around the apple.
‘How lovely for them. What’s a postern?’ Again I wished I’d listened to Dad when I was young. He and Lenny would sit and discuss things like this for hours, while I’d do a jigsaw and wish Dad had a TV.
‘Don’t pull that face, Mal, Pax isn’t meant to know,’ Kaylinn said fiercely. She didn’t seem to have taken being woken abruptly well, clearly not a morning person.
Lachlan took pity on me. ‘It’s a back way in with a path up to the castle. Small and easy to block off if you’re under attack, but a way to bring supplies in. They’re probably hauling stuff up the cliffs too from the beach.’
The word ‘beach’ triggered memory and the dream I’d had floated back in glimpses of images and a half-remembered mood. It had felt – important, somehow?
Kaylinn sighed. ‘I so need coffee.’
We stayed behind our cart and watched the general melee of horses being unsaddled, shouting men wearing ruffled linen shirts like extras from a historical drama unloading boxes and crates and barrels, groups of bare-chested men seeming not to feel the bitter edge of the wind chatting together and the ground being churned up to mud under hooves and feet.
The occasional dog would run in our direction sniffing along scent trails, then stop dramatically, stare over at where we hid, bark a few times and then run back with their tails tucked low.
‘I wonder if those are talbots?’ Lachlan said. ‘I’ve only ever seen pictures.’
‘Talbot who?’ I took the apple that Mal handed me. There was a basket lined with straw and full of apples on the cart and as long as we were sure nobody was looking – in case levitating fruit drove anyone to madness – we were helping ourselves.
‘Breed of dog. Extinct in our time.’ He smiled at me, which made me feel a bit better.
Maybe, I thought, biting the apple, which was small and sweet and tasted delicious after all the soupy stew, I should have paid more attention in GCSE history, but as that had mostly concerned itself with the causes of the Second World War it probably wouldn’t have helped much. I should have listened to Dad…
I pushed down the residual feeling of resentment that memory threw up and stifled the panic that replaced it.
‘Why are we hiding?’ David said. ‘I’m going out there. This is stupid.’
‘Be careful,’ Lachlan said, almost automatically.
‘Of what? They can’t see or hear us and they can’t touch us – what’s going to happen? Spontaneous combustion?’
‘Well, no, but if the horses all bolt there could be a bit of a riot.’
‘I’ll be careful. I just need – some space.’ David slid out to walk cautiously through the milling throng. Literally through most of it, although the carts and equipment seemed solid the people and animals treated him as though he were a shadow.
‘Poor Davey,’ Lachlan said, gazing after him. ‘He’ll be worrying to get back.’
‘Lachlan.’ Kaylinn still sounded fierce and in need of a coffee. ‘We all wanna get back, right?’ She looked at me. ‘Right?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I agreed. I noticed though that Mal didn’t immediately chime in with his fervent wish to return and a quick glance at him showed his hair had flopped forward and he was sucking in his cheeks. He looked like a deflated choirboy.
‘I’m going to fill my pockets,’ he said, still without confirming a desire for immediate relocation. ‘There’s fruit and things rolling about everywhere, might as well. Come on, Kay.’
Kaylinn gave him an uncaffeinated glare but reluctantly got to her feet and followed Mal, who now looked more like the Artful Dodger, grabbing handfuls of anything loose on passing carts.
I took the opportunity to sit next to Lachlan, while Kaylinn and Mal stole some more food. ‘I had a dream,’ I said.
‘Go on, Martin Luther King.’ He ate his apple core. ‘Although if this is some tedious New Age thing…’
I was glad he was taking the piss. It made me feel less stupid.
‘Can we go down to the sea?’ I settled my back against the wheel of the cart and felt the wooden hub dig into my spine with a renewed sense of this can’t be happening.
‘I know the water will be cold, but we could get in and have a quick splash. We might feel better after a good wash.’
Lachlan gave me a thoughtful look. ‘I think Davey went down to the postern gate to try, but it was closed and locked so he couldn’t get through even if he wanted to. Do you feel that maukit?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what maukit is.’ I refused to be abashed, because I was sure he was doing it on purpose and the glint in his eye told me I was right.
‘It means filthy. Dirty.’ Lachlan ate the last of the apple.
‘You look all right to me there, but you’ve only just arrived.
And I have to admit that I’m starting to think this shirt could do with a wee rinse.
’ He plucked at his coat, pulling it away from his body to reveal the ghastly jumper and, peeking out beneath, the neck of a T-shirt.
‘I think it’s starting to make a noise when I turn round. ’ He gave me another grey-eyed twinkle.
‘It would be good for morale,’ I said sturdily, not wanting to think about the disgusting state of his clothing.
‘Why not? Shall we give it a go?’
‘What, now?’
He smiled again and wiggled his eyebrows.
‘No time like the present, three hundred years ago. Come on, lass.’ He stretched out a hand to pull me up, as he had done last night.
His hand was warm and slightly sticky with apple juice.
‘Mal, Kaylinn – Pax and I are off to check something out. Stay together and we’ll be back. Hopefully.’
Kaylinn whipped around from her raiding of the apple baskets. ‘You can’t leave us, Lachlan!’ Panic was stacked behind her words and she reached out to grasp at my sleeve. ‘We agreed. We stay together.’
Her fear was catching. Mal joined in too. ‘We can’t split up, Lachlan.’
‘You’re not worried about Davey going off,’ Lachlan said. ‘Why is this different?’
‘Because… because it just is.’ Mal put down the bag he’d swiped off a passing cart. ‘You are the only one of us who isn’t going to pieces here,’ he said. ‘We’re relying on you to keep us from falling into screaming hysterics.’
‘Look.’ Lachlan spoke slowly and carefully. ‘I’m only going to check out an idea that Pax has had. I’m not going far. It’s going to be all right, Mal.’
Mal gave a sharp-edged laugh. ‘Well, obviously, because it’s so totally fine at the moment, isn’t it?’