The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [141]
I nodded. ‘Where’ll I find–’
‘Where I told you. I’ll leave it on the path behind the hedge; you pick it up before you enter the Half-Moon Garden. We’ll show them something,’ he said, his eyes glittering.
So now I waited in the cold, under a fat moon a few days off the full. They’d surely be out any minute. I thought I’d seen a chink of light as someone lifted the edge of a blackout curtain, though that might have been the staff watching, curious as Davey and I had been once. My instructions were to bow, lift my arms to the sky and disappear as fast as I could down the hidden path between the hedges and the curved wall. Mr Cromley and Mr Keiller would lead the guests into the Half-Moon Garden, and I would then reappear, emerging between the horns of the tall yew hedges in the centre.
The door from the Library swung open, a dark yawning mouth because no one dared show a light in the blackout. But it was only Mr Cromley, who ran down the steps with something white in his hands. ‘They’ll be out any second,’ he hissed. ‘Careful with it, mind, or Alec will murder me.’ He pressed the white thing into my hands, and dashed back to the steps, at the same moment as Mr Keiller appeared in the doorway at the top. He had a brandy glass in one hand, and was looking back over his shoulder to talk to the lady in the violet dress.
Something was amiss. It was all happening too fast. This object was to be part of the ritual later: I should have been empty-handed when I saluted the moon in the topiary garden. But I did what I’d been told. As they came out, I dipped my head, then rose as tall as I could, lifting high under the moon the thing he had given me. It was cold in my cold hands, yellow-white under the yellow-white moon. Only when I lifted it did I understand what it was: not one of the plaster skulls, not a fake as Donald had told me it would be.
It was Charlie’s, bulbous and misshapen.
Moonlight poured ice-water through my blood, running down my arms, like the relic was channelling it from the white orb in the sky to my heart. I near dropped the child’s skull with the shock, because this felt wrong, there was something cruel bad about it, a horrible parody. Charlie was only a little boy: he deserved to be left in peace.
Mr Keiller knew it was Charlie too. He swung round looking for Donald, his face furious, bellowing. The brandy glass hit the bottom of the steps with a gurt smash, where Mr Cromley had been a second before. I didn’t stop to see any more. Mr K’d never forgive me.
Didn’t know what else to do, so I slipped between the tall bushes and sped along the hidden path by the curved wall, clasping Charlie’s skull. In summer this path was scented with catmint and honeysuckle, but tonight there was a dank, rotting smell behind the yew hedges, like I was carrying death with me. Had some idea if I ran fast and far enough, I might be able to hide from them all, so I kicked off my shoes and pelted past the gap in the hedge that led into the Half-Moon Garden, on to the end of the path, near tripping on the hem of my long dress as I turned the corner into the Italian walk bordering the ha-ha at the Manor boundary.
He caught me there, stepping out onto the paved walk in front of me so I had to slow.
‘Give it to me, Heartbreaker,’ he said, holding out his hands for the skull. ‘Poor old lad’s lasted five thousand years–I’d hate for him to be smashed now.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Keiller,’ I said, cowering, expecting his temper would flare as soon as he had the skull safe. ‘I didn’t think it would be a real skull, I swear.’
‘I know,’ he said gently. ‘Donald overstepped the mark, I think.’ He put his free arm round my shivering shoulders, and walked me into the orchard. The night sky was enormous over us, a mass of white pinpricks, and there was a sparkle of frost on the grass.
‘What about everybody else?’ I asked.
‘I have no doubt Mrs S-T has everything in hand. Waters will be serving