Unknown

X THE DIARY

Geoffrey couldn’t tell what time he woke, but the shadows on the forest trees made it look as if the sun was quite high already. Sally was still fast asleep, muffled in a yellow fur and breathing with contented snorts. He looked out of the window into the hall and saw that the feast was still there, though the dogs had been at it in places, scattering dishes and pulling the whole boar’s head on to the floor, where two of them wrenched at opposite ends of it. He felt stupid and sick, which might have been the wine, and very stiff, which must have been yesterday’s climbing and running. His clothes were muddy and torn. In one of the chests he found some baggy leggings, with leather thongs to bind them into place, and in another a beautifully soft leather jerkin. There was a belt on the wall, too, carrying a short

sword in a bronze scabbard, pierced and patterned with owls and fig leaves. He buckled it round the jerkin and went down into the hall to see if the dogs had left any of the food undefiled.

They were enormous things, very woolly and smelly, big-boned, a yellowy-gray color. Wolfhounds, he decided. Two of them lurched towards him, snarling, but backed away when he drew his sword. He found that they’d only messed up a tiny amount of the hillocks of food spread down the tables, so he filled a silver tray with fruit and bread and cold chops and looked round for something to drink. The thought of wine or mead or ale made him sick, and after Mr. Furbelow’s warning about the water he decided it would be safer to boil it, if only he could find a pot to put on the fire. He was afraid the gold and silver vessels might melt, and there didn’t seem to be anything else.

In the end he found, hanging between two of the torches, a steel helmet with a chain chinstrap and a pointy top. He used his sword to hollow out a nest in the red embers of the fire, settled the helmet into place and poured water in, spilling enough to cause clouds of steam to join the smoke and waver up towards the hole in the roof. It boiled very fast. He hooked it out by the chinstrap and realized that he couldn’t put it down because of the point and he had nothing to pour it into, so he held the whole contraption with one hand while he poured the water from one of the big jugs on to the floor and then wine out of a smaller jug into the big one, and at last he could pour his boiled water into the small jug.

When he went to put the blackened helmet back in its place he found a new, shiny one already hanging there. Chilly with fright he carried his tray up to the bedchamber and woke Sally to tell her what had happened.

“He must have done it,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Who? Mr. Furbelow?”

“Oh, Jeff, don’t be tiresome. I mean the ‘he’ Mr. Furbelow keeps talking about, the one who makes all the food and could get rid of the wolves if he felt like it and might put a lot of horses into the stable to keep poor Maddox company. The Necro man.”

“I expect you’re right. I just don’t want to think about it. I’ve boiled the water, so it should be all right to drink, but it’s still pretty hot. There might be enough left to wash with. You look a right urchin. I found my clothes in the chests, and it mightn’t be a bad idea if we looked for something for you. I’m sure Mr. Furbelow would like that. He’s got himself some pretty elaborate fancy dress. Though I suppose Latin’s our best bet. What do you think he means about lucid intervals?”

“I don’t know. It ought to mean clear spaces, that’s what the words mean in Latin. May I have the last chop — you’ve got three and I’ve only got two. Is he mad?”

“Mr. Furbelow? No, at least he’s a bit loopy, but he’s not just imagining things, or not everything. Somebody must have built this tower and put the forest there — they aren’t on the map. And if you agree that far, it means that the somebody’s still here. He brings the food and he built the tower and he put the helmet back just now. He might be mad. I think that’s what lucid intervals’ means — the times when mad people aren’t mad for a bit. But I don’t think Mr. Furbelow’s mad.”

“But I don’t think he’s bad either. I think he’s made some sort of mistake and has gone on making it worse and doesn’t know how to stop. But I think he might easily be rather touchy. We must be careful what we say to him.”

“Yes. And don’t push the Latin too hard. Just wait for a natural chance to come up again. Let’s see if we can find some clothes for you.”

Everything in the chests was really much too big for an eleven-year-old girl, but they found a long emerald tabard with bits of red silk appliqued to it and intricate patterns of gold thread filling the gaps. On Sally it reached to the ground, almost, but when it was pulled in with a big gold belt it looked OK;

there weren’t any sleeves, so they left her brown arms bare. They found a silver comb in another small chest and did her hair into two pigtails tied with gold ribbon, and when Geoffrey had sponged the mud and sweat off her face she looked quite striking, as if she was about to play the queen in a charade. There was still no sign of Mr. Furbelow so they carried the tray down to the hall and started to explore the rest of the tower.

There were two stories of rooms in the gallery, all just like theirs, full of chests and furs. The ones in the lower story were all separate, but the higher ones ran into each other all the way round, with heavy curtains across the doorways, but with nobody in them at all. There was no sound in the whole tower except the crash of a log falling into the fire, followed by a squabble of disturbed hounds. It was very confusing, like a maze. Half way round they found another ladder going up still further. It led them out on to the roof.

They stood in the open air, still only a third of the way up a dizzy funnel of inward-leaning stone. An open timber staircase climbed spirally up inside this tube of roughhewn yellow boulders, and finished in a wooden balcony running all the way round inside the parapet. The roof they stood on was a flat cone, with the smoke hole at its point and drainage holes cut into the wall round its perimeter. As they climbed the endless timbers of the stairway Geoffrey noticed that you could still see on them the cutting strokes of a great coarse shaping tool. From the balcony they could see the whole valley, with the ridges of the hills mellow in the morning sunlight and the darker treetops smothering and unshaping everything in between. The children felt oppressed by those million million leaves. The bare upland beyond seemed suddenly a place of escape, if they ever did escape.

Geoffrey leaned over the parapet, his palms chilly with the knowledge of height, to study the courtyard. It was really nothing except the ground enclosed by the outer wall, against which leaned a higgledy-piggledy line of pitched roofs, tiled with stone and slate. They looked very scrappy from up here, like the potting sheds and timber stores and huts where mowers are kept which you can usually find behind privet hedges in the concealed nooks of a big garden. They seemed just to have grown there. In one place this ill-planned mess gave way to a neat modern building, set askew to the wall, finished in whitewashed stucco, with proper sash windows and steep slate steps leading up to a yellow front door. While they were staring at it the door opened and Mr. Furbelow came out carrying a tray. The old man stood for a moment, blinking in the keen sunlight like a roosting bird disturbed by a torch beam, and then tittupped down the steps with an easy little run that showed he’d done it a thousand times before.

“He’s going to come a cropper one of these days,” said Geoffrey.

“What’s that he’s carrying?” asked Sally.

She wasn’t tall enough to see over the parapet, so she’d wriggled herself up on to the warm gold stone and was lying on it face down, craning over the dizzy edge. Geoffrey grabbed angrily at her belt.

“Don’t be a nit, Sal. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

“There’s no reason to fall off either. What has he got?” It was a large black tray, with several dishes on it, and jugs, and a jar. Two cloths hung over Mr. Furbelow’s arm, and there was something about his bearing that didn’t seem to belong to this world of battlements and saffron-soaked chicken and wolfhounds scratching and snarling round a central fire. A faint haze of steam rose above the largest jug. Suddenly Geoffrey saw a picture, sucked out of forgotten times but very clear — lunch in a big hotel with Uncle Jacob, with tea trolleys whisked silently across thick carpets and huge bowls of fruit in baskets; men walked like that, carrying trays like that, with cloths over their arms like that.

“He looks like a waiter,” he said.

“Do you think he's going to wait on the Necro man? He must see him sometimes, if he knows that he's bored, and he keeps trying to talk to him in Latin.”

They watched Mr. Furbelow move across the cobbles to what Geoffrey had decided was a second well, with a heavy, roped windlass above it. Here the old man put the tray down and started to crank the handle. He turned it for ages, so that it seemed as if the well must be enormously deeper than that from which they'd watered Maddox.

“Oh look, Jeff. The stone's moved. I can just see the edge of it from here. It's enormous.”

Geoffrey moved along the parapet and saw what she meant. The side of a thick flagstone, a huge one, had been heaved out of the ground and a pitch-black opening showed beneath. The handle-winding hadn’t been because the well was deep, but because the windlass had to be highly geared to allow Mr. Furbelow to shift a stone that weight. At last he stopped cranking, picked up the tray and felt his way into the hole. From the jerky way his body moved as he disappeared they could see he was going down steps.

“Quick, Sal, now’s our chance to find something out.”

They belted down the long spiral of steps, through the trap in the roof, down the ladders and into the hall where the hounds lounged. The big doors were barred from the outside; Geoffrey shoved and tugged, but they moved as little as a rooted yew.

The children climbed back to the parapet and waited in the generous sun. They were feeling hungry again before Mr. Furbelow came out.

While he was cranking the flagstone back into place Geoffrey said “I’ve had a thought —we don’t want him to think we’ve been spying on him. Let’s try and find a window downstairs from which we can see him going back to his house but can’t see the windlass. If I leave my handkerchief on the balcony we’ll be able to keep our bearings when we get down.”

It wasn’t easy, even so, and they got it wrong first time. Then they found a suite of rooms with the tiny square windows tunneled through the masonry, from one of which they could see the white cottage. The ratchet of the windlass was still clacking monotonously.

“We can shout, I suppose,” said Geoffrey, “but he’ll never see us in here. We might try poking a cloth out on a stick.”

“I could wriggle along and poke my head out. Lift me up.”

“Don’t get stuck. It isn’t worth it.”

She squirmed into the opening, working herself along with toes and elbows. When she stopped Geoffrey could only just reach her feet. The folds of the tabard completely filled the square, blotting out the sunlight and the noise of the ratchet. He was mad to let her go in without taking it off — it would ruck up as she came back and make it twice as hard for her to get out if she stuck.

“Mr. Furbeloo-ow! Mr. Furbeloo-ow! Please can you come and let us out?”

Faintly Geoffrey heard an answering shout, and Sally began to wriggle back. He reached into the hole and pulled at the hem of the tabard so that it couldn’t bundle itself up and cork her in. She slid to the floor grinning.

“He nearly dropped the tray. He’s gone into the house but he says he’ll be coming in a minute. Have I messed myself up?”

“Not too bad. Your cheek's dirty. I’ll go and get some water.”

“Use lick. I don’t mind.”

They went down and waited by the big doors. At last there was a squeaking and rattling outside and when Geoffrey shoved the door groaned slowly open. Mr. Furbelow looked tired, but was gushingly apologetic.

“My dear young things, I am so sorry. I am in the habit of shutting the dogs in, you see, and to tell the truth I had completely forgotten your presence here. On the days when I have to visit him I find it hard to think of anything else. I do apologize. And goodness, it must be nearly lunchtime. I hope he left some food for your breakfast. Shall we eat at once?”

“Please, Mr. Furbelow,” said Sally, “may I go and see if Maddox is all right? And could I let him out into the courtyard for a bit?”

“Of course, my dear, of course. How well that attire suits you, like a little Maid Marian. You two go and look after your pony, and then come and join me for a bite of food.”

Maddox was in a bitter temper, snarling at Geoffrey and trying to work him into a corner where he could be properly bitten. Sally pretended not to notice, scratched him between the ears, found another cube of horse bait and led him out into the courtyard, where he yawned at the magic tower, sneered at the delicious sunlight and began to scratch his sagging belly with a hind hoof. Then he noticed some green grass growing between cobbles and cheered up. They left him systematically weeding the whole paved area and walked into the cavern of the tower.

Mr. Furbelow was talking baby talk with a funny Welsh lilt to one of the wolfhounds; the uncouth monster lay on its back, legs waggling in an ecstasy of adoration, while he rubbed its chest with his foot.

“Aren’t you afraid of them?” said Geoffrey. “They frightened me stiff this morning when I came down to get some food.”

“Oh dear me, no, I’m not afraid. I love dogs, though I really wanted Corgis but I couldn’t make him understand. But in any case he wouldn’t let me be hurt — he said so. If you tried to hit me on the head or your pony tried to kick me he’d prevent it.”

“Would he stop you hurting yourself —by accident?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that. But I don’t think it’s likely to happen. Shall we have a go at this side of beef. They seemed to prefer it rather high, I’m afraid, but sometimes you can eat it. Oh dear. I think we won’t risk it. You take that end, Geoffrey, and I’ll take this, and we’ll drag it to the fire for the dogs. Don’t try to do it all yourself, it’s much too heavy. Oh dear, what it is to be young and strong. I must ask you to give me a hand with one or two things this afternoon, too trivial to bother him about. Now, let’s see.”

He walked down the long table sniffing suspiciously at the mighty slabs of meat, muttering and clucking and shaking his head, and eventually settled for a peacock with all its tailfeathers in place. The dark meat was chewy but pleasant, but the stuffing was disgusting. Most of the strawberries had gone moldy overnight, but there were some delicious apricots. Mr. Furbelow insisted that they must peel these, as they had probably been ripened on dungheaps.

“Did he make all this food out of nothing?” asked Geoffrey. “Or does it come from somewhere? I boiled some water in a helmet this morning and when I’d finished there was another helmet on the wall. Did he really make this tower all at once, just like that?”

“Oh dear, I don’t know how he does. it. The tower came in a night, and he took my cottage away but I made him get it back because it had my medicines in it. I think this is all a copy of something; bits of it look so used and all those clothes seem to belong to real people. I think it’s the same with the food. Sometimes these big pastry things look as if they’d been made for a special occasion. I often think they’re not even copies — they’re the real things and he’s just moved them about in time.”

“Then why aren’t there any people?” said Sally.

“Oh dear, it is difficult, isn’t it? I’ve asked him that, before I lost him completely, and he said something about ‘natural I think he meant it was wrong somehow to do to people what he’s done to the tower and the food — it’s against nature. I suppose that’s why he doesn’t stop the food going bad, too, but he is so difficult now, and he gets so impatient when I have to look things up in the dictionary, and it’s all so different from everything I meant.”

“Would you like me to come and help?” said Sally. “I could do the Latin if you’d tell me what to say.”

The old chemist, who’d been practically sniveling with misery at the end of his last speech, opened his mouth to say “no,” but instead he made a funny sucking noise, and sat for several seconds with his mouth wide open, staring at her. He looked as if he were going to cry, but instead he shook his head and sighed.

“Too late, too late. If you’d come four years ago, perhaps. But you cannot get through to him now, and even if you could . . .”

The old despairing voice dwindled into mumblings.

“If you could?” said Geoffrey at last.

“I don’t know ” said Mr. Furbelow irritably. “How can I know? There’s nothing to go on. I’ve interrupted a process I don’t understand — no body could understand it — especially as I was waking him in gradual stages and he wouldn’t let me continue once he was partially awake — he's wavering between two worlds, you might say, and now if I try to interfere again it will only make him worse, and then I don’t know what he mightn’t do, I really don’t.”

“Does he understand what’s happened, do you think?” said Geoffrey. (Really it was a very awkward conversation, trying to lead the old man on into telling them more, but not to seem too inquisitive. Like a guessing game, not knowing who “he” was or what he did.)

“Sometimes, I suppose,” said Mr. Furbelow. He’d lost his irritation and his voice had returned to its normal dazed lilt. “But a lot of the time it’s not as if he were in this world at all. When he has a lucid interval, though . . . No, I doubt even then. It must be very difficult for him down there.”

“Then,” said Sally, “he probably doesn’t know what he’s done to the rest of us — how many people he’s made leave their homes and run away.”

“How many people have been killed,” said Geoffrey.

“Is he good or bad?” said Sally.

“Oh, he’s good” said Mr. Furbelow, leaning forward across the table with such earnestness that his beard trailed through the greasy juices on his plate. “There’s no doubt about that, none at all. You can feel it even when he’s at his most completely lost.”

“Then couldn’t I try to explain to him?” said Sally. “About what’s happened, I mean, and how much harm he’s doing?”

Mr. Furbelow sniffed several times and stared into his goblet.

“Oh dear,” he said, “I suppose we ought to try. I do confess I don’t want to. I find him a very frightening creature. But it may be the only chance, the last chance. Ah, well . . .”

He drank the last mouthfuls of wine and stood quickly up.

“We must go now,” he said. “There is some chance of catching him at a good moment, when this world is real to him, when he’s not quite lost in dreams. He didn’t say anything to me this morning, but he ate what I gave him — perhaps the contact with a real person and the taste of real food on his tongue may make him more conscious of what is really happening. Come, let us get it over with. Geoffrey, you ran turn that filthy crank for me, but I will go down alone with Sally. You must promise not to follow us and come nosing down. I know how inquisitive young folks are. I put you on your honor.”

“I promise,” said Geoffrey. They followed Mr. Furbelow out of the hall.

The windlass was harder work than he’d supposed. There was a lot of friction in the wooden cogs and axles, and he wound on and on, surprised at the willpower that enabled Mr. Furbelow to drive his doddering body to work the contraption. At last the stone, a great tilted flap of paving, jarred against a crossbeam, and Geoffrey could see coarse steps leading into darkness.

“They’re rather steep,” said Mr. Furbelow. “I’ll show you the way.”

Sally followed him down.

At first Geoffrey mooned about the area round the windlass, but soon Maddox clumped up, snarling, and drove him off. The pony seemed to know where Sally was, and even tried putting a foot on the top step, but thought better of it and stood staring down into the burrow like a cat nosing at a mousehole or a lover gazing at the window of his beloved. Geoffrey left him to it.

The second time he passed the white cottage he decided to explore. He could see Maddox from the steps, still standing like a stuffed animal in a museum. Any movement from the pony would be a warning that someone was coming out. The yellow

door was ajar. The hall was a clutter of dumped objects, with just room to walk between them. There was that funny smell of damp and dirt that you sometimes find in houses where nobody does any proper cleaning. Upstairs were two rooms, one a dusty storeroom and the other a pretty, pink room with two beds in it. Downstairs was a kitchen with a Calor gas cooker, but it didn’t look as if it had been used for ages; a back door led out to the angle between the outer wall of the tower and the house. Opposite the kitchen, across the hall, was the room GeoErey wanted.

This was where Mr. Furbelow lived and kept his belongings. There were rows of chemist’s bottles on shelves, and more chemistry-looking things in cardboard cartons piled along a wall. Most of the books on the shelves were about chemistry and medicine, and there were piles of Pharmaceutical Journals. The only furniture in the room was a very ragged sofa with some rugs on it, which looked as though this was where Mr. Furbelow usually slept, and a big desk with an upright chair. There was a photograph on the desk, of a smiling, plump, dark-haired woman with her hair in a big bun. Beside her lay two dictionaries, one Latin-English and the other Eng-lish-Latin. In the middle of the desk was an account book. The latest entry, made only yesterday, read:

Very restless. Would not talk to me at all, but kept muttering to himself. Shouted “Quamdiu” several times, and once (I think) “Regem servavi dum infantem.” I begin to believe his speech is more slurred than it was. Hope this is no bad symptom, but can find nothing in my books. He suddenly was disturbed by something, and almost stood up. Instead he went into a trance, and I heard a tremendous noise of thunder outside. There was a small storm disappearing over the eastern hills when I came out. Nothing like this for months.

Geoffrey glanced out of the window. Maddox was still at his post. The rest of the book was full of short entries, every other day, sometimes just the two words, “No change.” There was always at least that. On the bookshelf Geoffrey found four similar account books, all full of entries, and next to them a proper diary with the dates printed on each page. Each book covered one year, so the diary must be five years old. Geoffrey leafed through it; the first half of the year was almost empty, except for notes of visit to K’s grave, but on the 17th of May there was a longer one:

A most extraordinary thing, which I must record in full. Last spring dear K planted at Llanthony a flowering cherry. Prunus longipes it said on the label. She used often to say, after Doctor H told us the ill news, that she would never see it in flower, but at our last visit before

she went into hospital — because of the shop we could only come up at weekends — it was in perfect flower, but deep yellow. This was October, and it was supposed to bear white flowers in late April. We laughed and cried and imagined the nursery had made a mistake. But when I came up here last month — I could not endure to come before — it was in flower again, big white dangling bunches like upside-down powder puffs. Perhaps I ought to have got in touch with some botanical body, but I felt it would be a desecration of dear K’s tree. Instead, thinking there might be some peculiarity in the soil, I took samples back to town for analysis. I did the work myself, and either I am mad or it is full of gold!

There were no entries for a week, then a short one:

I have begun to dig at Llanthony. Difficult without disturbing the roots of K’s tree. I am tunneling down and then sideways. I feel compelled to do this.

Next weekend he had dug still further and had taken more samples, which were also rich with gold. The entry after that was longer; Geoffrey read it, glancing out of the window between sentences.

Now I know! But I do not know what to do. I have been digging for the past two weekends, leaving little Gwynnedd to care for the shop on Saturdays. It was not for the gold — I felt I had to do it, just to know. It was hard work for a middle-aged man, but I kept on, and yesterday at noon I struck a smooth, sloping rock. It seemed that I must be at the end of my tunnel, and either give in or dig somewhere else. Then I saw a crack in the rock that seemed too straight to be a fault. I cleared a larger area and uncovered a shaped, rectangular stone. With great difficulty I levered this out. There was a hole behind it, into which I crawled and found myself in a low cavern, full of a dim green light. I thought it must be an ancient burial chamber, for on a slab in the center there was the body of a very big man, and very hairy. I thought he must be dead, and preserved by some freak which produced the green light too, but when I touched him his flesh was firm and far colder than the coldest ice. It burnt like solid CO2. But I knew for certain he was alive. Then I saw that there were letters on the side of the slab. They said merlinus sum. qui me tangit turbat mundum. Latin, I think, but I cannot buy a dictionary until tomorrow. I left, and leaned the stone back into its place.

There was a three-day gap, and then another entry.

I have decided what to do. I cannot leave him and go. I feel sure that I was meant to find him, and that the tree and the gold were signs for me, and me alone. I know that he has enormous powers. I could feel that in the cavern, and that in my hands he could use those powers for good. In what way I do not yet know. Perhaps he might even stop these wicked wars in the Far East, or bring dear K back to me.

The problem is how to wake him, so that I can best direct him to exert his powers where they can do most good. I have been reading about the process of reanimating patients whose metabolism has been slowed by refrigeration for the purpose of such operations as heart transplants (a very immoral process it seems to me, though I have no clear idea why).

There appears to be a new synthetic stimulant which can be injected into the veins in very precise doses, so that its effect on the patient can be very carefully watched, and I see that this drug is in the catalogues of one of the American companies who manufacture pharmaceutical products in England. I shall attempt to order a quantity of this. Alas, I shall have neither the equipment nor the knowledge which is avail-

able in a big hospital, but I feel that it is my duty to take the risk. If I fail, only he (and possibly I) will suffer. And I really do intend to try and use him for the good of mankind. Pray heaven that I turn out to be justified.

The Latin, I think, means: I am Merlin. He who touches me upsets the world.

I have already touched him. I cannot change that.

Phew, thought Geoffrey, things certainly hadn’t turned out as Mr. Furbelow intended. Fancy expecting to make Merlin his slave! Other way round, now, from the look of it. He began to turn on, looking for an account of the wakening, when out of the corner of his eye he saw Maddox move. Geoffrey put the diary back in its place and slipped out through the back door. He ran down a long empty shed full of perches for hawks and climbed through the open window at the far end. From here he was out of sight, and could saunter back towards the windlass, noticing for the first time, as he did so, the flowering cherry that had started all the upheaval.

Mr. Furbelow was already winding the slab down into position, and Sally was talking to Maddox, her face as white as a limed wall.