Child of the Phoenix. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘It said you were weird!’

      ‘I’m not!’ She was furious.

      ‘You are. You see ghosts.’

      ‘So what? Can’t you?’ She went on to the attack.

      Her change of mood took him aback. He frowned, then reluctantly shook his head.

      She sensed triumph: ‘You would be scared out of your mind if you saw one.’

      ‘I wouldn’t.’ It was his turn to be on the defensive.

      ‘You would.’

      ‘Wouldn’t!’

      ‘All right then. Prove it.’ Caution was thrown to the winds. ‘I’ll take you to a room where I saw a ghost.’

      Robert hesitated for a fraction of a second, then he nodded. ‘Go on then.’

      ‘What about riding?’ Eleyne smiled, daring him to take the escape route. He shook his head firmly. ‘Later,’ he said.

      Both had forgotten that she was Countess of Huntingdon and mistress of the castle. It was as two truant children that they dodged out of sight of the stables and raced across the courtyard towards the keep, sliding with the invisibility only children can manage across the lower chamber and up the dark stairs towards Lord Albemarle’s bedroom. At the top of the stairs they stopped, panting.

      ‘It was in here,’ Eleyne whispered. The sun was on the far side of the keep this time and the room was in shadow.

      Robert peered past her. ‘What did it look like?’ he hissed.

      She smiled. ‘Just a lady. A very beautiful lady in strange black clothes. She had lace here round her face,’ she gestured with her hands, ‘and a veil.’

      ‘Did she say anything?’

      Eleyne shook her head.

      ‘She doesn’t sound very frightening,’ Robert scoffed.

      Eleyne frowned. ‘She wasn’t frightening exactly,’ she said. It was hard to describe the feelings she experienced when she saw these figures who slipped through the fine gauze curtain which was time and then slipped away again. She surveyed the room, then tiptoed through the rounded stone arch. ‘Come on,’ she said quietly. ‘I was in the little chapel through here.’ She gestured towards the doorway in the far wall. ‘Then I looked back and saw her there, by the window.’

      She crept into the oratory, Robert close at her heels. The tiny chapel was very dark. Both children held their breath as they stared round.

      ‘Can you smell anything strange?’ Eleyne whispered, her mouth very close to Robert’s ear.

      He swallowed nervously and gave a cautious sniff. ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘Incense,’ she murmured. ‘When she came there was a smell of incense.’

      Robert felt the hairs standing up on the back of his neck; he wished they had gone riding instead. ‘I can’t smell anything.’ His eyes swivelled round in his skull as he tried not to move his head. ‘There’s nothing here. Let’s go.’

      ‘No. Wait.’ Eleyne could smell it. The rich exotic fragrance drifted imperceptibly in the still air of the oratory. ‘She’s here,’ she breathed.

      Robert stepped back and felt the rough stones of the wall cold through his tunic. His mouth had gone dry. Nervously, he turned his head so that he could see through the arch towards the window. There was nothing there. He frowned, staring harder, following her gaze, his hands wet with perspiration.

      ‘Can you see her?’ Eleyne asked softly. There was nothing there and the scent such as it was had gone. She glanced at him. He was shaking his head, his eyes screwed up with the effort of trying to see. His face was pasty.

      ‘It’s not the lady of Fotheringhay,’ she said very quietly. ‘Do you see? It’s huge. And ugly. So ugly!’

      Robert’s face went whiter. He was pressing hard against the wall, wishing the stones would swallow him up.

      ‘I can’t see anything,’ he gulped. ‘I can’t see anything at all.’ He looked at her in mute appeal, then he stared. Her face had lit with suppressed laughter and she was giggling. ‘If you could see your face, Nephew Robert,’ she scolded.

      ‘There’s nothing there,’ he said slowly. The fear and awe on his face vanished. ‘There’s nothing there at all! You’ve been teasing me! Why you – ’

      With a little shriek of laughter she dived past him. She raced across the empty bedchamber and pelted down the long spiral stairs, round and round and round, with Robert hot on her heels, bursting into the shadowy lower chamber just as John’s steward appeared at an inner doorway. He stared at Eleyne as she stopped in her tracks, noticing with amused approval the flushed face and rumpled veil. ‘Good day, my lady,’ he said with a bow. ‘His lordship was looking for you in the great hall.’ His gaze strayed to the boy behind her and he hid a smile. ‘It’s good to see you again, Master Robert.’

      Robert grinned impudently: ‘And you, Master Steward.’ He turned to Eleyne and bowed in turn. ‘We mustn’t keep Uncle John waiting, Aunt Eleyne,’ he said severely. Then he winked. ‘I’ll race you!’

      Eleyne hesitated for only a second, but already he was across the floor, scattering the scented woodruff which covered it, and out through the main door and out of sight.

      XVI

      The Earl and Countess of Huntingdon left the castle two months after Isabel and Robert had departed for Scotland. Eleyne had missed them enormously – after their ghost-hunting escapade they had become firm friends and he had kept the secret of her forbidden vision. Only the promise of another visit soon had consoled Eleyne as they rode away.

      In her renewed loneliness she had turned to John more and more for company. She missed Rhonwen very much, but she also found it a relief not to have her constant supervision, and it was a pleasant surprise to find she no longer felt guilty enjoying her husband’s company when they set off on a tour of his estates.

      The lands which comprised the Honour of Huntingdon were for the most part flat. They stretched for miles, bisected by the black, slow-moving Nene, from the fens where they flew their hawks to the great forests of central England.

      Eleyne was ill at ease in the flatness of the landscape and, try as she might to please John, she could not pretend to like the cities they visited. She did not like Cambridge or Huntingdon or Northampton, as they journeyed slowly from castle to castle; and most of all she did not like London, where he kept a town house. Instinctively she distrusted the slow-speaking, cold, suspicious easterners and she longed for the mountains and the wild seas; she longed for the quick-tongued, nimble-footed, warm-hearted people of Gwynedd where tempers might be quick to flare, but where vivacity and warmth and hospitality were second nature to the people. Twice John promised her that they would make the long ride to Chester and that from there she could, if her father agreed, visit Aber, but twice she was disappointed as John succumbed to the debilitating bouts of fever which returned again and again to plague him.

      It СКАЧАТЬ