Alchemy, Book Two of the Mercian Trilogy Page 3

  “I’m William Dangrave,” he said, and stirred from the dream, nervous for a moment that he’d said those words aloud.

  But the driver was staring intently at the road which looked icy here and there in front of them, and Eloise was sitting quietly next to Will. At some point in the last few minutes she’d slipped her hand into his. The warmth of her ran through him, seeming almost to fill him, and he clasped his fingers round hers.

  She smiled at him, as if this simple act had been meant to offer her reassurance, and he smiled back, though he knew that right now he could assure her of nothing.

  They had the taxi drop them in a side street close to the city centre. Will paid the driver in full and told him to keep the change, but once Eloise was out of the car, he said, “Just a second.” He opened the passenger door and climbed back in.

  The taxi driver looked hostile. “What do you think you’re doing? We’re …” His eyes caught Will’s and his words disappeared somewhere in his throat. The radio, which had been blaring some jangly and infectious tune, became a wall of static and frequency noise.

  “Do you remember this evening? You collected an elderly man and woman, Mr and Mrs Wyndham. They’d been walking out at Marland. Their son’s car broke down so they called a taxi to bring them back into the city. You were the driver of that taxi. Do you remember?” The driver offered a confused nod, lost in a dream of his own, and Will said finally, “Forget about us.” He climbed back out of the car and closed the door.

  Will and Eloise started to walk towards The Whole Earth and Eloise checked her watch and said, “Twenty to eleven, a good time to catch them.” Then, as an afterthought, “You’ll be able to get me back into school, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you just got back into the taxi because …?” She looked behind and Will followed suit – the taxi driver was sitting where they’d left him, looking confused, fiddling with the buttons on his radio.

  “I hypnotised him, muddied his thoughts – he’ll have some vague recollection of us, but jumbled up with other things, false memories. The fewer people who remember us the better.”

  Eloise shook her head and said, “There are times when I realise I hardly know you at all. I mean, I know you, but I forget all the weird stuff.”

  “That’s one of the reasons I like being with you.”

  She looked at Will questioningly.

  “Because you make me forget the weird stuff. Sometimes when I’m with you I forget …” He tried to sum up the enormity of how transformed he was by her company, but he couldn’t. “I just forget.”

  “Me too.” She smiled, and they turned into the narrow street where The Whole Earth was located, less busy than usual, no doubt because of the cold. They were nearly at the café when Eloise said, “If there is a problem with Chris and Rachel, couldn’t you hypnotise them to forget? Marcus Jenkins too.”

  “It would make life simpler, but I don’t think so. For one thing, I imagine Wyndham is powerful enough to counter my limited efforts, perhaps even to use them against me. We should hope, instead, for simple explanations.”

  He stopped at the café door and Eloise stepped in ahead of him. Before Will was inside, he heard Rachel say, “This is a nice surprise! What are you doing here?”

  Without missing a beat, Eloise said, “We needed to come into the city, but we wouldn’t have asked you to fetch us during opening hours.”

  Rachel smiled and kissed Eloise on the cheek. She looked at Will, falling short of encroaching on his physical space, as she said, “Thanks. It has been manic this evening. Do you want to go through and we’ll follow as soon as we’re free.”

  Chris emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray with soup and bread on it. He looked visibly shocked at the sight of them standing there and it took a moment for him to regain his composure. He placed the food in front of a customer at a corner table, and by the time he turned back to them, he was smiling.

  He approached with his arm outstretched, shaking Will’s hand, then kissing Eloise on the cheek as Rachel had. Will noticed his hand was dry and hot, without the supposed tell-tale clamminess of the guilty.

  “You didn’t tell us you were coming in.”

  “They didn’t want to call us away from the café,” said Rachel. “Isn’t that sweet of them?”

  Her response was genuine, but it appeared to irritate Chris in some way, as if she’d broken his momentum. If that was the case, he rebounded quickly enough, saying, “Well, to be honest, this evening would’ve been difficult, but we’ll take you back of course.”

  Someone called him from behind and he made his excuses and returned to work. Will and Eloise left Rachel and walked through to the house, sitting on the green sofas where Will had first confronted them about their interest in him. There was a sickly familiarity about the return of his suspicions, made worse by the realisation that Rachel and Chris had been privy to almost all his plans and movements these last two months.

  They sat for a while in silence, listening to the distant sounds of the café winding down for the evening. Then Eloise looked at the bookshelves and said, “Do you think we’ll ever see the spirits again?”

  “You mean the witches?” She nodded. “Perhaps not. Perhaps they told us all they wished to impart. At least we know we have nothing to fear from them if they do return.”

  “I was just thinking, since Puckhurst nothing has actually … happened. I know we’ve just found the tunnels, but I thought things would keep happening, that we’d set something in motion.”

  Whether she knew she was doing it or not, she played with the pendant hanging round her neck as she spoke. She was right, of course. If this was the time of his destiny, where was it, and why had the messengers failed to show themselves? Lorcan Labraid was calling to him, that was the essence of everything he’d learned in November, and yet now he was met with silence, scrabbling forward on his own, understanding nothing of what he’d so far found.

  He thought of that darkened passageway in the tunnels though, and even here in the safety of the city it chilled his spine. The witches would be a welcome sight now, if only that he might ask them about those tunnels, that one tunnel in particular.

  Eloise wanted something to happen, a desire he appreciated, yet still he said, “You know that old saying – be careful what you wish for.”

  As his words died away, Chris and Rachel came through from the café and Rachel said, “Can I get you anything, Eloise?”

  “No thanks.”

  Chris said, “How is it being back at school?”

  Eloise looked at him with a bemused expression, eyebrows raised, as if asking if he really needed a response to that question. Will often forgot that she was sixteen, over seven hundred and fifty years younger than him, but right then, she looked very much a schoolgirl.

  “Please sit down,” said Will. Eloise recognised his tone and suddenly looked adult again, nervous as to where this might lead. “I’ll get straight to the point because I’m sure there’s an explanation, and if there is, we can perhaps use it to our advantage.”

  “This sounds intriguing,” said Chris as he and Rachel sat on the sofa opposite Will and Eloise.

  “A pupil arrived at the school at the beginning of this term and for various reasons – not important at this moment – we’re convinced that he’s been placed there to spy on Eloise, and perhaps on me.”

  Rachel said, “But no one knows you’re there.”

  She was innocent at least. Will could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice.

  “So we thought. Eloise found out who’s paying this boy’s fees and it’s a charity called The Breakstorm Trust. You’re involved with them, aren’t you, Chris? I saw their brochures here last November, addressed to you.”

  Chris nodded, glancing at Rachel as he said, “We both donate to different charities. Breakstorm is an educational charity – I’ve given them money, that’s about it.” Rachel looked as if she was about to remind him of something, but he
jumped in quickly as if offering the information voluntarily. “Oh, and I attended a dinner for donors.”

  “Where you would have met the trustees, including one Phillip Wyndham.”

  Chris laughed a little to himself, bitterly, with the look of someone disappointed that he’d let it come to this, then said, “Yes, I met Phillip Wyndham. In fact, I met him a couple of times, when he was outlining the work they did, discussing my donation.”

  Rachel looked astounded and said to Will, “Phillip Wyndham? The Wyndham who’s trying to destroy you?”

  “No,” said Chris. “No, this can’t be the same man. That’s why I didn’t mention it because I knew you’d find it suspicious and because I knew this couldn’t be the same person. He’s a suit, you know, a guy in his fifties who’s been in business …”

  “What business?”

  “I don’t know, but trust me, this guy is no sorcerer, he just isn’t.”

  Eloise cleared her throat and said, “After we got back from Puckhurst, when we were sitting at the kitchen table, you actually brought the subject up – you asked who Wyndham was, how he fitted into things.”

  Chris nodded. “Because I’d done a check on Wyndham, just to be sure, and …”

  “And?” Rachel looked as much in need of an answer as Will or Eloise.

  “And I couldn’t find any trace of him, except for Breakstorm itself. That doesn’t mean there’s anything suspicious about him – lots of rich and powerful people are hard to trace – but I asked that night because I suppose I wanted a little more reassurance.”

  No one spoke. Will was unsure what to think. Chris sounded like a person who was genuinely conflicted, finding it hard to believe the man he’d met could be the sorcerer trying to destroy Will. He also sounded desperate, but that said nothing of his guilt or innocence.

  Finally Chris looked at Will, as if asking for a response.

  Will said, “Tell me about the person you’ve met – Phillip Wyndham. What’s he like? What does he talk about? Everything you can remember.”

  “Like I said, he’s probably in his fifties, could be older or younger, but he’s grey-haired, in pretty good shape, always very smartly dressed, the bearing of someone who’s been a powerful businessman, though he’s never talked about his past to me. He talked about education for the most part, a few polite questions about our business, about why we decided to open a café. He knew I was interested in the occult so he asked about that. But he didn’t actually seem interested himself – he was humouring me, that was all.”

  Eloise said, “He didn’t ask about Will in any way, not even … I don’t know, sort of, leading questions?”

  “No, that’s my point exactly. That’s why I can’t believe he’s the same person.”

  Rachel had been frowning as she listened. “But you should have told us, or at least me. You must see how it looks coming out like this.”

  Chris nodded and put his hand on Rachel’s, but she pulled hers away, reminding Will of Eloise’s gesture in the frozen parkland earlier. Was Rachel having a similar moment, wondering who this man was who was sharing her life?

  “I didn’t tell anyone because I thought you’d cut me out of everything, and I was certain there couldn’t be a connection. Almost certain. But I should have told you all, and I apologise. I can try to find out more about him, but if you met him, you’d be as certain as I am that he has nothing to do with this.”

  Will smiled, trying to believe that Chris was just incredibly naïve, and said, “He is a leading trustee of a charity that quite inexplicably placed a boy in Eloise’s school just as we returned there, a boy we do not doubt is a spy, and his surname is Wyndham. Do you not see, even if he isn’t the sorcerer – the sorcerer, let me remind you, who conjured my own brother from his grave in order to attack me – he is at the very least a relative or accomplice of that person?”

  “Of course, when you put it like that.”

  “Is there any other way of putting it?”

  “No. I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid,” said Chris, and covered his face with his hands for a moment. When he took his hands away again, he looked determined. “You won’t be able to trust me after this, obviously, so I can have no more direct involvement. Tell me nothing of your plans or what you’ve discovered. It’s the only way you can be sure.”

  Will stared directly into his eyes, but didn’t try to hook him in, wanting his answer to be completely uninfluenced, and said, “Have you betrayed me?”

  “No, I swear on my life.”

  “And I will hold you to that. But if you have given your word, I’ll accept it and we’ll speak no more of it. You will be as privy to our plans as you were before. The only thing I can ask of you is that you respond with caution if you’re contacted by Wyndham again.”

  “Of course, and I’ll tell you, but I haven’t heard from him in months, since around the time we met you.”

  “Good.”

  There was another awkward pause, but then Rachel smiled, trying to draw a line under the discussion by saying, “So how are things going?”

  “Still nothing happening,” said Eloise. “It’s really annoying actually, specially after me going back to Marland.”

  “But we do have hopes of the school chapel and its crypt,” said Will and Chris gave him a small grateful smile. “It’s too soon to say if we’ll discover anything specific, but it makes sense that the chapel of the old house should be significant.”

  Rachel looked up at the clock and said, “You won’t be going there now though? It’s late. I mean, Eloise, how are you managing to get up in the mornings?”

  Eloise laughed and said, “I’m doing OK, and no, we’re done for the night, but I suppose we’d better be going.”

  “Yes, if you don’t mind.”

  Both Rachel and Chris accompanied them on the journey back, the conversation touching on the weather and Eloise’s studies and anything else that would put some distance between the four of them and the suspicions and accusations that had been so recently aired.

  They dropped them at the school gates to avoid suspicion, and Will and Eloise started walking up the long drive, sheltered from view by the woodland on both sides.

  As soon as the car had gone, Eloise said, “I don’t trust him.”

  Will laughed and said, “That’s an interesting development.”

  She laughed too, but said, “Clearly, I’m not alone – otherwise you wouldn’t have made up all that business about the school chapel. Quick thinking.”

  “Thank you. But to answer your point, I’m not sure whether I trust him or not. Perhaps giving him that misinformation will lead us in due course to an answer.”

  A small branch snapped in the woods ahead of them. It wasn’t unusual, but they were cautious and both stopped walking and listened. After a moment, Eloise whispered, “Can you see anyone?”

  Will couldn’t, and in fact the hoar frost would have made it hard for someone to hide even from regular eyes, let alone his.

  “No, I don’t think there’s anyone there.” But he didn’t move and nor did Eloise.

  Now that they’d been alerted by that snapping twig, they were both aware that something was not as it should be. Will could still hear Chris and Rachel’s car disappearing into the far distance, he could hear the hissing release of steam from the school boiler, Eloise’s breathing, but he could hear something else too, something faint and disturbing.

  A moment later, Eloise said, “What’s that noise? I can hear something.” She looked up, her breath rising above her.

  Will looked too, and could hear the sound more clearly now, like a sickening heartbeat, pumping, growing louder, and then he could see something. He couldn’t make out what it was or how big because he couldn’t tell how far away it was, but something, a darker shadow against the dark sky, was flying fast towards them.

  5

  Eloise cocked her head to one side and said, “It sounds like …”

  “Wings,” said Will. Not a heartbe
at, but the beat of a wing, and guessing now that the dark shape was a bird, he was able to judge how close it was as it swooped in, aiming directly for Eloise’s head.

  Dark against darkness, hurtling, and silent now as even the wings stopped. Will lunged forward, moving fast. Eloise let out a confused cry, but it was already done. Will snatched the bird out of the air as it neared the end of its dive. He felt it break in his hand with the impact. He looked at it, there in his fist like a broken umbrella.

  “A crow?” Eloise sounded astonished more than afraid.

  Will nodded, but before he could speak, he heard the same beating sound. He dropped the dead bird and looked around, trying to see where the other one was. It came swooping down from behind them.

  “Run,” he said to Eloise. She hesitated and he pushed behind her and grabbed the bird out of the air. But the sound of beating wings didn’t stop. Eloise let out a cry and when he turned she’d been scratched on the head and was hitting another crow away, the bird flying back beyond arm’s reach before mounting another ferocious attack.

  Will lashed out, knocking the crow into the trees at the side of the drive. And yet still he could hear more wingbeats in the air above them, and increasingly, the cawing of twenty, fifty, maybe even a hundred crows. They were ignoring him and it was clear that Eloise alone was their target.

  He looked at her. The attack had left a small scratch at the top of her forehead, a bright patch of blood shining glossily in the midst of her pale skin. He felt the emptiness surge up inside him, the need to take in what that blood offered him.

  But a shape swooped down from the dizzying carousel of shadows that was above and all around them. He hit out at the bird, its lifeless and broken body immediately falling to the ground a few paces away from them. And swiftly he removed his coat and threw it over Eloise’s head, as much to conceal the blood from his view as to protect her.

  “Keep that over your head and follow me.” He took her hand and led her forward quickly, fighting off the crows which attacked relentlessly now, some swooping low, but staying just out of reach, others diving straight for her. They remained blind to Will, even as he knocked them out of the air.