His Name Was Walter Page 7

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Colin whispered, but the girl just pressed her lips together, shook her head and darted after Mrs Fiori and Grace. Annoyed and uneasy, Colin was about to follow when he heard a tiny sound behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Lucas standing in the shadows, trying the door.

  He realised then that Lucas never took anything on trust. Before Lucas believed anything, he had to prove it for himself.

  Satisfied that the door really was locked, not just stuck, Lucas bent and peered through the keyhole. As he straightened, he saw that Colin was watching him, but he didn’t smile, frown, or even shrug. Without any change of expression at all, he stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled after the others. He didn’t look back.

  * * *

  An hour later they were all in their sleeping bags, fully dressed except for their shoes — Grace, Tara and Mrs Fiori on the sitting room side of the entrance hall, Colin and Lucas against the library wall. It was very dark. The sounds of the house echoed around them, the wind moaned outside.

  Colin lay well down in his sleeping bag, his torch in his hand, the book he’d secretly retrieved from the kitchen pressed against his chest. He was waiting for Tara to come and tell him that Mrs Fiori was asleep, so it was safe for them to turn on the torch and get back to the story.

  He and Tara hadn’t actually made this plan out loud — they’d just exchanged glances as Colin slid the book under his shirt — but Colin was sure they understood each other. He just hoped that Tara would have the sense to make certain Grace was asleep as well before making her move. If Grace saw torchlight across the room she was bound to get up to see what was happening. She might even call out. She’d gone to bed in a sulk after trying to get her confiscated phone back (‘If I look through my old messages it will help me get to sleep, Mrs Fiori!’) and being grimly told to count sheep.

  Colin wasn’t worried about Lucas. Asleep or awake, Lucas would be no problem. He’d set up camp as far away from Colin as he could get, beside the corridor that led to the locked room. When Colin last saw him clearly, just before the candle and torches went out, he was lying on his back with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. As far as Colin could tell, he hadn’t so much as twitched a finger since.

  Possibly Lucas had his own plans. He might be waiting for everyone else to sleep so he could sneak out the forbidden device Mrs Fiori was so certain he was hiding. In any case, he wasn’t going to do or say anything if he saw Colin and Tara reading the book by torchlight. He’d just sneer to himself and store this further proof of their oddness away in those frigid memory banks of his.

  The minutes slid slowly by. The darkness seemed to thicken. The air in the entrance hall was perfectly still, but as time went on somehow the creaks, cracks, rattles and groans of the old house were almost drowned by the soft whistling of the wind. As Colin listened, his eyelids growing heavy, it almost seemed as if the wind were whistling a melody — a strange, lilting, haunting little tune …

  He jerked awake as he felt someone crouching beside him and heard Tara whisper his name. Embarrassed to be caught dozing, he clumsily wriggled out of his sleeping bag and sat up.

  ‘Grace?’ he muttered, and turned to see Tara’s nod.

  ‘Asleep,’ she breathed. Her eyes were on the book he was hugging to his chest.

  Silently they both swivelled round till they were facing the wall, with their backs to Mrs Fiori and Grace. Then Colin cautiously switched on his torch, passed it to Tara to hold, and began turning the book’s pages to find their place. The strange little tune was still going round and round in his head like a recording set on replay.

  ‘We must be crazy, doing this,’ he mumbled.

  ‘No,’ said Tara. ‘We’re just doing what we’re supposed to do.’

  Again Colin looked at her. She nodded vehemently. Her strange, green-brown eyes were gleaming in the torchlight. ‘What we’re supposed to do,’ she repeated.

  She sounded completely serious. Uneasily, Colin wondered what was going on in her mind. Nothing sensible, anyway. Nothing that his mother or father, or his friends at his old school, would respect. And yet … well, he couldn’t dismiss what Tara had said so easily. Because he felt it himself — a gentle but insistent urging in the darkness. A feeling that someone — something — wanted him to read on.

  The book fell open at the riverbank scene Colin had looked at briefly before. For some reason it looked even more enchanting than it had the first time. The river was puddled with sunlight and framed in the trailing, feathery green branches of a weeping willow tree. The timbers of an old wooden bridge were visible on the left of the picture. And now Colin noticed that a small, speckled brown bird — a sparrow — was perched on one of the willow boughs, its head cocked as if it were listening, its eyes shining like bright black beads.

  ‘Okay?’ Colin breathed. But Tara didn’t answer, and when he looked at her for the third time, he saw that she was already reading, her brows knitted into a frown, her fists clenched.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Walter was well past the village by the river before he looked back to see smoke rising from the witch’s hill. He thought of the little round house burning to ashes. He thought of the herb garden kicked and trampled. He thought of angry curses echoing around the clearing where only birds had called before.

  Then he thought of Magda, resting safe from harm beneath the apple tree. He had placed her body there, in the grave he had dug on her orders the day before. He had covered her with warm, soft earth and replaced the clumps of violets so carefully that no one could guess they had ever been disturbed.

  You’ll protect a friend …

  So Magda had told him and so it had come to pass, though not in the way Walter had imagined.

  The witch-hunters who had set the house alight probably thought Magda had vanished into thin air. With luck, they would think that the boy who lived with her had done the same. Over the past three years, Walter had gone down the hill now and then, to buy flour, matches and oil. The shopkeepers had treated him warily, not sure if he was really the witch’s grandson, as he claimed, or a spirit she had conjured up to do her bidding.

  Still, Walter walked a little faster, the knapsack he had taken from the house bumping heavily against his back. He had brought away Magda’s sketchbook, a sleeping blanket, his few clothes and all the food and water he could carry. In the inside pocket of his jacket, with his mother’s note, the lock of her hair, his remaining coin store and the identity papers bearing his hive name, were the gold locket and the letter he had taken from Magda’s dead hand.

  Magda had not asked him to make this journey. She had left the choice to him. But as she had predicted, he had decided to follow his heart. The idea had come to him as he sat beside her bed before dawn, reading the letter she had left for him to find.

  Dear Mother,

  We are far apart, even as the crow flies, and I hope this

  letter reaches you safely. I didn’t dare send it in the normal

  way. No one here knows about my past.

  It’s a little over a year since I left home, and I had to

  write, just this once. I want you to know that I’m married. My

  husband is a rich nobleman, a little older than I am. His home

  is a palace by a beautiful river. It’s guarded by griffins and

  filled with treasures. I don’t tell you this to boast, Mother —

  you know me better than that — but so you’ll be assured that

  I’m not in need, and you don’t have to worry about me.

  I think of you every day, and hope you’re well. I had to

  go — you know why — but I miss you and home very much. I

  miss Aidan, too. When we lost him, I felt as if I’d lost half

  of myself.

  Perhaps you’ll persuade my messenger to tell you where

  I am, Mother, but if you do I beg you won’t try to make

  contact with me. My husband mu
st never suspect my true

  nature. He’s highly respected in these parts and very jealous

  of his reputation.

  Please give me your blessing and think of me kindly as I still

  think of you, despite everything. You’ll always be in my heart.

  Your loving daughter,

  Abby

  The letter was old. According to the date at the top, it had been written towards the end of the Great War. By now, Abby would be over forty. Did she still think of her mother every day? Did she still miss her old home? Had the loneliness that Walter felt in every word of her letter become less with the passing of time?

  Walter could not know these things, but of others he was perfectly sure. Abby must be told that her mother’s last thoughts had been of her. She must be given the locket with the portraits of her brother and herself inside. She must have Magda’s sketchbook.

  So Walter had to find her. And then, carefully, discreetly, without endangering her secret, he could do what he knew her mother would have wished.

  Magda had said she had learned Abby’s whereabouts from a messenger crow. That crow, no doubt, had brought her Abby’s letter, and she had persuaded it to tell her that Abby lived to the west, in a place called the Vale of Thunder. It was very likely that Abby and her husband lived there still. A nobleman who owned a grand palace was not likely to abandon it and go and live somewhere else.

  So Walter went on his way, whistling to keep up his spirits, studying signposts and asking directions wherever people looked friendly. It soon became clear to him that the crow’s name for Abby’s home was not the same as the name by which it was known to humans, but he solved that riddle after a day or two, and steadily moved towards his goal. He still shied like a nervous colt and slipped out of sight whenever he saw a troop of soldiers, but was half ashamed of his caution. Three years had passed since he ran away from the city. He was over eighteen now, old enough by law to live without the King’s protection.

  He had no doubt that this had been Magda’s plan from the beginning.

  Three years should be enough …

  Time enough for Magda to finish painting every herb in her garden, and to let go of life without regret. Time enough for Walter to learn what she had to teach him, and to leave the clearing in safety.

  And Walter was safe — he realised that quite quickly. No one was looking for him. In the early weeks of his journey, whenever he met with another traveller or passed through a town, he heard fragments of gossip about a village to the east where the citizens had burned down a hut, claiming that the witch who lived there had put three girls under a spell.

  Sometimes the story went that the girls had been changed into swans or geese, and sometimes that they had been put into an enchanted sleep. In one place Walter heard it said that the witch had escaped by dissolving into a mass of biting crickets. Whatever the details, some of the gossipers shivered as they told the tale but most laughed scornfully at it, and no one seemed to suspect Walter of having anything to do with the matter. Most people barely noticed him at all.

  It was sometimes useful, Walter thought wryly, to look as meek and ordinary as he did.

  If most of the people he heard talking mocked tales of witches, they did not mock the other rumours they repeated. Walter soon understood what Magda had meant when she talked of a shadow looming over the land. The Enemy defeated in the Great War was stirring once more. An evil tyrant now ruled there, people said, and he was bent on conquest. Every free land would soon be under threat, and it would not be long before the new King was forced to raise another army and again go to war.

  Walter heard the rumours, thought about them briefly, and put them aside. Magda had warned that the shadow would darken his path whichever way he took. She had also told him that he would die young, by an enemy’s hand.

  But that time was not yet. The shadow will overtake me in the end, I daresay, Walter thought calmly, but before that happens I have other things to do.

  Find true love. Free a prisoner. Champion the weak. Save a life. Keep faith …

  The first four sounded far too dramatic and romantic to be part of Walter’s fortune. The last, however, he could understand. And for now, keeping faith meant moving on, saying little and seeing much, guarding what remained of the shell around his heart. When anyone asked his name, he gave the name written on his identity papers. He was alone in the world again now, and preferred to keep his true name to himself, locked away with his other secrets, till it was time to share it again.

  As he moved farther west, spring warmed into summer. A mountain range shimmered like blue smoke on the horizon. Towns became fewer and Walter was mostly walking through open countryside where crops grew and sheep and cattle grazed. It was then that his plain, harmless appearance came in handy once more. His food and money ran out and he had to begin knocking on the doors of farmhouses, offering to chop wood, weed gardens or mend a gate in exchange for a meal. Farmers in isolated places were wary of the hollow-eyed spectres from the city who tramped the country roads looking for work, but no one was afraid of Walter. Some farmers offered him a hot bath as well as a meal. Some gave him extra food to take with him when he left, or let him wash his clothes and stay till they were dry. It was the same when he toiled over the mountains. One motherly woman there even trimmed his hair!

  And so it was that when at last Walter reached the place he had come so far to find, he did not look like a tramp. In fact, he looked no dirtier or untidier than any young man taking a healthy walking holiday. Still, when he reached the brow of a gentle hill and saw in the valley below the glittering windows and shining turrets of a palace rising on the far side of a river edged with willows, his confidence was shaken.

  He made himself move on, but as he neared the bridge that spanned the river, his feet began to drag, and when he had crossed the bridge, seen the griffins snarling by a pair of tall iron gates and looked up at the palace in all its glory, he stopped entirely.

  He had often imagined this moment, but now that it had come his spirits sank. His idea had been to go boldly to the nobleman’s door and ask for garden work as a way to get to Abby, who probably walked in the garden often, but now he could see that this plan had been absurd.

  The palace stood on the crown of its own green hill, proudly looking down on the river, the road, and the surrounding farms. Every brick of its frowning walls seemed to boast of riches and power. No tousled wanderer would ever gain entrance to such a place.

  Walter stood alone on the dusty road, and without warning a great wave of homesickness rolled over him. He wished with all his might that he was back in the little cottage in the clearing, with Magda singing as she stirred the soup on the stove.

  But Magda was gone and the cottage was gone, too. There was no going back.

  Walter’s eyes blurred. He turned away from the palace, left the road and stumbled down to the bank of the river.

  An old willow tree bent over the water by the bridge, the feathery tips of its branches trailing in the slowly moving current. Walter crept into the tree’s green shade like a hurt animal seeking shelter. Hidden from the road, away from the griffins, the iron gates and the frowning palace, he threw off his knapsack, knelt by the river’s edge and splashed his hot face again and again.

  Slowly his misery eased. Slowly he began to feel himself again. At last he sat back, and after drying his face and hands with his handkerchief, he took out his water flask and the slice of leek and potato pie that the last farmer had given him. He did not feel hungry, but it had been many hours since his meagre breakfast, and he knew that food would help him to feel better. Sitting with his back to the trunk of the willow tree, he chewed without tasting, staring out at the river and watching the shadows move on the wrinkled water.

  When there was nothing left of the pie except for a few crumbs, he took out Magda’s locket and opened it.

  Abby’s sweet face smiled up at him from its tiny oval frame. Gazing at the image, Walter felt his mind cle
aring. He had come to this valley to give Abby what was hers by right, and he would do it. He would walk on to the town he had heard was not too far from the river. There he would gather information and make a plan.

  Leaning back, he shut his eyes and softly began to whistle one of Magda’s favourite songs. And as the minutes slipped by, a feeling of peace stole through him, almost as if Magda herself were standing by, telling him that all would be well.

  Just as he was finishing the haunting tune, he heard the flutter of wings above his head and looked up to see a sparrow perched on a nearby willow branch, regarding him intently.

  ‘Hello, little Sparrow,’ Walter said. ‘Do you like my music?’

  The small brown bird chirruped, cocking its head enquiringly. Walter smiled and began to whistle the song again. To his surprise and delight, with every note he whistled the sparrow hopped a little nearer. By the time the tune was done, it was so close to him that he could have reached out and touched it.

  Walter had never seen a wild bird behave like this before. The birds in Magda’s garden had not been afraid of him, but they had known him well. He was a stranger to this sparrow, and yet …

  Perhaps the little creature was hoping for food. Being careful not to move too quickly, Walter sprinkled the last crumbs of his pie onto the ground beside him. ‘There, Sparrow,’ he said softly. ‘Help yourself!’

  But the sparrow ignored the crumbs. It remained quite still, watching Walter with its head on one side as if it were puzzled about something.

  An idea came to Walter on a thrill of excitement. ‘It was the tune I whistled that made you come to me, wasn’t it, Sparrow?’ he whispered. ‘You recognised it, because you know the Lady Abby, and she sings the same song when she walks in her garden! It was her mother’s song, so Abby must know it as well as I do.’

  As if it had understood, the sparrow chirruped again and hopped even closer. And now Walter could see that its bright black eyes were no longer fixed on him, but on the locket that still lay open in his hand — at the portraits of Abby and Aidan.