His Name Was Walter Read online

  He could hear Mrs Fiori’s alarmed voice calling out and the sound of thudding feet far above. The crying was definitely coming from ground level though — from somewhere directly ahead, just past the end of the corridor, where a small beam of light made a white stripe across the floor. The torch, Colin guessed — by some miracle it hadn’t broken and gone out when it fell.

  He stumbled forward. Then light and shadows started dancing on the walls beside him and he heard Tara’s voice breathlessly urging him to wait. She’d come after him and — showing more sense than he had, Colin thought ruefully — she’d brought the candle with her.

  Together they hurried to the far end of the corridor, where a door lined with some sort of heavy green material stood partly open. The sound of echoing, choking sobs grew louder as they pushed through the doorway into a larger space — the house’s grand, tiled entrance hall — where a staircase rose to the upper floors.

  Colin had expected to see Grace lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, but she was standing up, clutching the banister for support. Her crutches were lying on the floor just out of her reach. The torch had rolled away to rest against a door to her left, just a few steps away.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Colin heard himself gabbling.

  Grace shook her head wordlessly. Her face was wet with tears, and though her sobs had quietened when she saw Tara and Colin, she was still obviously very upset. She didn’t look actually hurt, though. Colin began to wonder if she’d fallen down the stairs at all.

  Above their heads, Mrs Fiori was still calling frantically as she ran.

  ‘It’s okay!’ Colin shouted up the stairs. ‘Everything’s okay!’ He turned to the sobbing girl. ‘Grace, what happened?’

  ‘I-I checked out the rooms along the corridor from the kitchen,’ Grace gasped, between shuddering breaths. ‘They’re only a bathroom and some storerooms and pantries and things. Then I came out here and I saw that door’ — she pointed to the door against which the torch lay — ‘and I thought I’d look to see what was in there, so I went over and — and suddenly I felt awful. Really awful! It was like … I don’t know … like the worst thing in the world had just happened.’

  She shivered. ‘It was so terrible. Worse than — even worse than when my dog got run over. And there was no reason! No reason!’

  Fresh tears started rolling down her cheeks. She was trembling all over.

  ‘It’s okay, Grace,’ Tara said softly. ‘You’re okay. Something very bad once happened here, that’s all.’

  Colin whirled round furiously to tell her to be quiet, but when he saw her face, he bit his tongue. Tara was standing by the door where the torch lay. Her face looked waxen in the candlelight. Her eyes were dark with horror.

  ‘Something very bad once happened here,’ she repeated dully, looking down at the floor. ‘You can still see the mark where it happened. You can feel the fear and the hate. That’s why the house is empty. That’s why workers won’t stay. That’s why the other tow-truck man was worried about us coming up here. He knew …’

  All Colin knew was that he had to stop this. One hysterical girl was bad enough. Two were more than he could handle.

  He strode over to Tara. He was going to tell her to stop talking superstitious garbage. He was going to tell her that the book, and the dark, and being stuck in this weird old place, had given her and Grace the creeps.

  Tara looked up and met his eyes with a kind of sad, resigned defiance. She knew what he was going to say.

  But by the time Colin reached her side, he no longer wanted to tell her to shut up. Literally between one step and the next, he’d lost the will to say that the ‘bad’ feeling was just her imagination.

  Because he could feel it, too.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Colin heard Mrs Fiori come hurrying down the stairs behind him. He heard her demanding to know if Grace was hurt, if she’d hit her head. He couldn’t turn round. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the beam of the torch, and the faint brown stain that crept horribly across the black and white tiles at his feet. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck were standing up. His heart was pounding, and he’d begun to shiver and twitch like a horse that could smell fire.

  He jumped as a hand plucked at his sleeve. ‘Come away, Colin,’ Tara said in a low voice. But only when she actually tugged his arm could he make himself move.

  The moment he was away from the stain on the floor, he felt better. His breathing slowed. His heart stopped crashing in his chest. His knees felt weak, but he managed to turn and take the next couple of steps back to the foot of the stairs.

  Mrs Fiori’s relief at finding Grace in one piece had changed rapidly to fury. Lucas was sitting on the stairs, watching developments with interest.

  ‘… never had such a fright in my life!’ Mrs Fiori was scolding, bending to snatch up Grace’s crutches. ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay in the kitchen, Grace? Didn’t I tell you not to attempt to come upstairs? You could have broken your neck!’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Fiori,’ whispered Grace, meekly taking the crutches as they were thrust at her one by one. ‘Sorry I scared you, but I didn’t try to go upstairs, truly. I was just looking round down here and …’ Her bottom lip trembled. She bit it and shook back her hair. She glanced up at Lucas, then turned to look steadily at Tara and Colin.

  ‘I skidded on the tiles here, that’s all, and my crutches fell down and I couldn’t reach them, and then the torch rolled away,’ she said rapidly. ‘It-it gave me such a shock that I just burst into tears and then I couldn’t stop. Sorry.’

  Colin stared at her, amazed. She returned his gaze without a flicker, as if daring him to contradict her.

  ‘Well, really!’ Mrs Fiori snapped.

  ‘Did you get the phone to work, Mrs Fiori?’ Grace asked, obviously keen to change the subject.

  ‘No! There was no signal anywhere — even right up in the cupola. Goodness, those stairs were steep!’

  ‘You mean you got into the tower?’ Grace glanced enviously at Lucas.

  ‘Cupola, Grace,’ corrected Mrs Fiori, who seemed to be recovering her temper. ‘C-u-p-o-l-a. It’s too small to be called a tower. There’s a dear little round room up there, though.’

  ‘With bars on the windows,’ Lucas muttered.

  ‘Yes, well, it’s very high up, isn’t it?’ Mrs Fiori, suddenly brisk, clapped her hands. ‘All right — we don’t know what’s happened, so we’ll just have to make the best of it. Everyone back to the kitchen and we’ll have something to eat. Colin, is that your torch lying over there wasting its batteries?’

  She led the way back to the corridor. Grace followed her closely, keeping, Colin noticed, well away from the stained tiles. Taking a deep breath, Colin darted over to where his torch lay. As his foot touched the stained tiles he felt the panic that had gripped him before, but this time he was expecting it so it wasn’t such a shock. He gritted his teeth and snatched up the torch. Then, obeying some defiant impulse, he threw the door open and swept the narrow beam around the room.

  Nothing. The big room was entirely empty except for a huge, dusty crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Wind whistled eerily down the chimney of a grand marble fireplace The dangling crystals of the chandelier, trailing wisps of spider web, jingled softly in the draught from the doorway. The sounds set Colin’s teeth on edge and he stepped quickly back, almost bumping into Tara, who was standing just behind him.

  ‘It was probably the dining room,’ she murmured.

  ‘Colin!’ shouted Mrs Fiori from the corridor. ‘Tara! Hurry up!’

  As he and Tara hurried to catch up with the others, Colin wondered if Tara had stayed with him in case he needed help, and was grateful and irritated, both at the same time.

  He couldn’t deny that there was something very strange about that spot just outside the dining-room door. He wasn’t going to lie about that to himself or to anyone else, as Grace had obviously decided to do. But he couldn’t make himself
believe what Tara had said, either.

  Something very bad once happened here …

  Was it just that he didn’t want to believe it?

  Back in the kitchen, everything looked normal — or as normal as it could look by the light of another candle Lucas had found in one of the dresser drawers and by the moonlight stuttering through the window as fast-moving clouds sped across the sky. The rain had stopped. The wind that had blown the storm away moaned around the house and rattled the door. Mrs Fiori was pulling boxes and packets out of her bag. Yet to Colin the room seemed more eerie than it had before. The furniture seemed to move as the shadows changed. He felt jittery. He couldn’t get the thought of those stained tiles out of his mind.

  ‘Colin, read us another chapter of that book while I sort this lot out, will you?’ Mrs Fiori commanded, ignoring both Grace’s loud protests and Lucas’s bored silence. ‘I’d like to hear. What happened in the chapter I missed?’

  ‘Walter found out his name, and got told that his mother was dead, and then he ran away,’ Grace said sulkily, before Colin could say anything.

  ‘To seek his fortune, I suppose, in the best fairytale tradition!’ Mrs Fiori smiled briefly and started tearing open a pack of muesli bars. ‘Right, Colin!’

  Colin slid onto the bench and looked down at the book on the tabletop. The draught from the corridor must have blown a few pages over, because now the book was open at the right place. He heard Tara’s quick breath as she edged along the bench from the opposite side and saw what had happened.

  It’s just a coincidence, he wanted to snap, but he said nothing.

  The picture opposite the text was of a sunlit garden and the back of a small, round house. Colin felt the scene draw him in, and the jittery feeling eased as he felt warmth on his face, heard birdsong and the humming of bees, and breathed in the faint, tangy scents of rosemary, mint and thyme. At the end of the garden three white ducks swam in a pond, and in the foreground was a handsome grey-and-black-striped cat wearing a thin black collar and what seemed to be a gold name tag. Colin gazed into the cat’s knowing amber eyes …

  He jumped and glanced up as Tara nudged him gently. Mrs Fiori, her eyebrows raised, was looking at him over her shoulder. Grace was giggling uneasily. Lucas was regarding him as if he were a curious specimen in a glass case.

  ‘Sorry,’ Colin said hurriedly, wondering how long he’d been silent. ‘I was just interested in the picture. It’s … so good.’ No one said anything. He wet his lips, looked back down at the book and began to read.

  During his years at the warren, Walter had heard grim tales of what happened to orphan boys who rejected the King’s kind arrangements for their protection and ran away. He knew that if they were caught they were sent to prison, for their own good and as a warning to others. So until he had left the smoking chimneys of the city behind, he walked without rest and looked often over his shoulder, fearful that he would see soldiers marching after him.

  He did not lose his fear when he reached the countryside, but it ebbed a little, and he did not look over his shoulder so often. The air was warm and sweet with the scent of spring flowers. The sky was a great blue bowl above his head. Hidden birds sang in the trees that lined the road, and after a time Walter began to whistle in answer to their calls. Whistling had been forbidden in the hive, but in the warren, though it was frowned upon, it was not so grave a sin. Walter had learned how to do it from a red-haired, freckled boy called Ginger, who had often worked with him in the warren’s steamy laundry room.

  A little older than Walter and quite a bit taller, with shrewd grey eyes and a cheeky grin, Ginger seemed to care nothing for authority and delighted in breaking rules. He called Walter ‘Nipper’, gave him advice about survival in the warren and treated him with an easy, casual friendliness that made Walter actually look forward to laundry duty.

  Ginger had vanished one day and never returned. It was said that he had run away, but would soon be caught. Walter hoped he was still safely running.

  For a day or two, Walter drank from creeks and slept hidden among the roadside trees. He grew hungrier and hungrier, however, and when he saw a town ahead, he knew he could not skirt it, but would have to stop and get some food.

  He found a dim little grocery shop in the main street, and there bought bread, a small chunk of cheese and two apples with coins from his knotted handkerchief. He thought that the sharp-eyed shopkeeper looked at him suspiciously, so when he had parted with the money and crammed the food into his knapsack he hurried on out of the town with the back of his neck prickling.

  That night he lay fretting in his leafy nest, twitching at every bush that rustled, every twig that snapped. He did not fall asleep till the early hours, and then slept so soundly that he did not hear the heavy feet marching past his hiding place just after dawn.

  And so it was that a little later, when he had woken and started on his way again, he still looked behind him. He had no idea that the danger he feared had overtaken him, and was ahead.

  Then he reached the brow of a hill, and as he looked down, his heart seemed to stop. Below, the road ran over a bridge that crossed a fast-flowing river. Four soldiers of the King stood on guard at the bridge. More soldiers were searching the village that lay on the river’s far bank.

  Walter dropped to the ground, rolled to the side of the road and squirmed into the undergrowth. Hoping against hope that he had not been seen, he forced his way deeper and deeper into the thick scrub, till at last he crossed a creek and found himself in a sunlit clearing.

  He crept forward, blinking in the bright light. First he came across a pond, where three white ducks paddled. Then he passed under a gnarled old apple tree frothing with blossom and humming with bees. Then he stumbled on a fragrant garden, where small plants he had never seen before grew among the vegetables. And then he felt a shadow fall across his face, wiped his watering eyes and saw that he had come to the back of a little round house built of sunbaked mud bricks and thatched with bundles of dry grass.

  The back door of the house stood open, and a curious, tangy odour wafted from the dimness within.

  It was a witch’s house. Walter knew that just by looking at it. He turned to run, and jumped in shock. A brindled grey cat was standing close behind him, its tail thrashing angrily. It was very large, and around its neck hung a gold locket on a thin black ribbon.

  Walter took a quick step backwards. The cat’s amber eyes were burning. As it met Walter’s frightened gaze it flattened its ears, arched its back and hissed, showing all its teeth.

  It’s only a cat, Walter told himself. But it was a very big cat indeed, and now its powerful muscles were bunching as if it were gathering itself to spring.

  Imagining that heavy body slamming into his chest, the claws digging in, the needle-sharp teeth tearing at his hands, his throat, Walter took another hasty step back towards the house. His heel caught under the lip of the doorstep, and with a yell he lost balance and fell sprawling over the threshold. With a yowl the cat leaped after him, and the door slammed, shutting them in.

  Who knows what might have happened then if there had not been, just at that moment, a sudden, loud knocking on the front door of the house? This story would have been very different, certainly. In fact, it might never have been told at all.

  But there was a knocking at the front door. And to go with it there were the sounds of booted feet pounding around the side of the house towards the back.

  Panic-stricken, Walter scrambled to his feet. He was in a dim, steamy space that seemed to be part kitchen, part sitting room. A black pot was simmering at the back of the stove. On a round table stood some little pots of paint, a tin of brushes, a sketchbook and a stem of mint in a jar of water. A red curtain covered the doorway that led to the front of the house, but it did nothing to muffle the thunderous knocking sound.

  ‘Stop that cursed row!’ screeched a cracked female voice on the other side of the curtain. ‘I’m coming as fast as I can!’

  The knock
ing stopped. Walter heard a heavy bolt being pulled back, and the front door creaking open.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ the cracked voice demanded irritably. ‘And where are those men going, may I ask? If they trample my herb garden, I’ll—’

  Walter heard a deep rumbling as the person on the doorstep answered.

  ‘There are no runaway boys here!’ the woman snapped. ‘I ate my last one yesterday.’ She gave a harsh, high cackle.

  As the rumbling began again, Walter glanced desperately around. The angry cat had vanished, but through the window beside the closed back door he could see three soldiers searching the clearing. There would be no escape that way. He would be seen the moment he poked his nose out of the house.

  ‘Those oafs in the village sent you up here, I suppose,’ he heard the woman rasp. ‘Fools and troublemakers, the lot of them! Stop asking stupid questions and go away!’

  ‘Nothing but a few ducks back here, Sarge!’ a man shouted, so close to the back door that Walter froze in fright.

  Rumble, rumble …

  ‘Do you think I don’t know who’s in my house and who isn’t?’ the woman jeered. ‘And as for danger — well, I’d like to see any runaway orphan get the better of me!’ She cackled again. ‘Oh, come in, then, if you have to! See for yourself. Just don’t touch anything.’

  The front door creaked as it was opened wider. Heavy feet tramped in. Walter’s eyes darted everywhere, frantically searching for a place to hide. Nowhere, nowhere … Then he saw that the long, cushioned seat under the back window had a hinged lid. It was a chest for storage! If it should be empty …

  He ran on tiptoe to the window seat, lifted the lid, saw a coffin-like space inside and climbed in.

  He had just lowered the lid over his head when he heard the curtain rings jingle. Then he heard angry muttering and the tapping of a stick on the floor, coming closer. He held his breath.