Wylding Hall

Chapter 10

Nancy

I wish Lesley had told me what was going on with Julian. Eventually, she did, but it was months later. I know that they all scoff at what I do, but Julian didn’t. I was the only one who might have been able to talk to him — we were on a similar wavelength, we shared a lot of the same interests. Not the occult so much as arcana — antiquarian books, medieval grimoires, Dr. Dee. Books of knowledge. Things like that. If I’d had a better sense of what he was up to, I might have done something to help, especially after that night on the floor when we heard the voice.

As it was, next morning he and I took a long walk in the woods, very early. Everyone else was passed out. I couldn’t sleep because Will was snoring — he was a terrible snorer. I kept kicking him, but he wouldn’t budge, so I finally gave up and went downstairs to make some tea.

Julian was the only one up. I don’t think he’d even been asleep — Lesley told me later that some nights he’d only sleep for an hour or two before he’d go off into the wood.

But now he seemed wide awake, in good spirits, but quiet. Thoughtful. We didn’t talk about what had happened the night before, when I’d flashed into whatever it was he’d summoned up. We didn’t need to. I knew he knew, and he knew I did. It happens like that. Not often, but sometimes.

We had tea and eggs, he had a smoke, then asked if I’d like to go for a walk. I wasn’t really dressed for a hike, long skirt and suede boots, but in those days I didn’t care about things like that.

It was a perfect summer morning, daisies and campion in bloom, skylarks singing. Butterflies everywhere, wood nymphs and orange tips. Even though it was warm, Julian had on his old corduroy jacket, the one you see in all the pictures. The air had that sweet green smell you get before the leaves begin their turn toward autumn. Dew on the ground, everything shone and dazzled. Like walking inside a kaleidoscope — every shade of green you can imagine, and blue sky beyond, tiny birds hopping everywhere.

Julian was singing to himself, “Thrice Tosse These Oaken Ashes.” It was the first time I’d ever heard it — this was months before the album came out. He’d set it to his own music, though there were echoes of that eerie melody we’d heard the night before.

Or, not echoes: more like an absence of sound. As though he’d taken all the silences in a piece of music and strung them together.

It was beautiful, but chilling. Much more so than the version on the album. If things had turned out differently, if they’d been able to record more than one take of Julian’s voice — maybe then you’d have a true sense of how it was supposed to sound. It made the hairs on my neck stand up.

That was when I remembered what the farmer had said. He should stay away from the wood. All of them …

But it was broad daylight, and there were two of us — if me or Julian had fallen or turned an ankle, we’d have been able to manage. Still, that singing unnerved me, and I was glad when he stopped.

There was a path through the wood, not too overgrown. I think deer must have used it; there were red deer in Hampshire then. That was the direction we took. I asked Julian if he’d been that way before, and he said yes.

“There’s some ruins.” He seemed excited. His face was flushed, and he started laughing. “Wait till you see, it’s brilliant.”

“Have any of the others been here?”

“Not yet. I wanted to — well, I wanted to keep it secret.” He sounded a bit embarrassed. “I know that’s childish, but it’s such a beautiful place, I didn’t want everyone stamping over it. Having a party and leaving their bottles everywhere.”

Which sounded sensible enough to me.

“It’s just up here,” he said after a few minutes. We walked more slowly now. He no longer seemed excited, not reluctant, exactly, but slightly hesitant. I wondered if he was sorry that he’d decided to share his secret with me.

Ahead of us, the woods thinned out. There was a copse of alders, odd I thought — alders usually grow near water, and I hadn’t seen any streams or ponds since we’d started. Alders and hazel and rowan. As we drew nearer, I saw that they were arranged in a long oval, and in the center of the oval was a mound — a long barrow. Like a gigantic egg half-buried in the earth, maybe twenty feet long and eight feet high, all overgrown with ferns and wildflowers. Julian stopped a few yards away and gazed up at it.

“Here it is,” he said softly.

He turned and held out his hand. And that was unheard of for Julian — the one thing I knew about him, other than that he was supposed to be a brilliant musician, was that he didn’t like to be touched. I flattered myself by thinking maybe he fancied me. Uh oh, I thought, now there’ll be trouble with Will and Lesley both.

I took his hand and clambered up after him. Almost immediately I regretted it — the mound was much steeper than it appeared. From ground level, it seemed barely taller than the trees, and some of the bigger ones, oaks and beech, towered above it.

Yet the instant I began climbing, I started to slide backwards. My long skirt made it worse. It took two or three tries before I got any momentum, and if Julian hadn’t been holding on to me, I don’t think I could have done it. The turf was ankle-high, very soft but slick as glass, with bluebells and narcissus peeking out of it, even though the season for bluebells was long gone. The grass smelled sweet where we crushed it, and everywhere wrens darted out from their nests in the brush. There must have been a hundred of them. Wrens don’t fly very high, so they skimmed all around us, singing then disappearing into the tangle underfoot. I’ve never seen so many birds.

It took a good five minutes to reach the top. When we did, I was so out of breath, I couldn’t say a word. Julian immediately let go of my hand.

“Look at this!” He sounded giddy, spinning in a circle with his arms out. “You can see for miles!”

I looked around and gasped.

Everywhere I turned, there was the countryside. Fields and woods and roadways, villages like clusters of acorns and green hills vanishing off into the clouds, with here and there a church spire, all beneath a sky bright as bluebells. I could see ancient field systems clearer than I ever had, and to the west, another mound like this one, with people standing on it. Then I realized they weren’t people, but a stone circle, or trees.

And closer than that, like a mirage, Wylding Hall’s towers rose above the greenery, all golden in the sun.

Yet it was impossible that I could see any of this from where we stood. The mound wasn’t that high. A wood surrounded it. Beyond that there were more woods that hid the village. I looked for those trees I’d seen, the ring of alders and rowan and hazel.

And yes, there they were, but now they were below us: I looked down on a canopy of leaves.

I turned to Julian. “This is crazy.”

He laughed. “I know.”

“Was there something in that tea you made?”

“Of course not!” He walked to the edge of the mound, the narrow end of the egg, crouched down and stared out across the woods and fields to the hill with the standing stones. “Not that I know of, anyway.”

“What is it, then? An optical illusion? A mirage?”

Julian shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care, either. Does it really matter? Isn’t it enough that it’s all there, and we can see it?”

I should have been more frightened; that came later. It was just too lovely to be scared. Pale green butterflies the size of my thumbnail fed in the bluebells and filled the air like snow. I was afraid I’d step on them, but they seemed to sense where my foot would fall and flew off before it touched the ground. I watched a skylark circle up and up until it disappeared into the blue. Everywhere, little wrens rustled in the grass.

We must have stayed there for an hour. I don’t think we spoke another word to each other. Julian remained where he was, staring out into the blue. I walked the perimeter of the mound, then crossed it back and forth. Quartering it. At one point I sat in the grass and searched around, looking for rocks, a flint or coin — the kind of thing you read about people discovering in old burial mounds.

I didn’t find anything. I thought of the farmer who’d given me a ride and wondered if he ever ploughed up ancient coins, or anything else. I’m certain he must have. I wish now I’d gone over to his place and asked him, but of course I would never have dreamed of doing such a thing when I was twenty. Given what they’re finding there now at the dig, it might have been useful knowledge.

Finally, Julian scrambled back to his feet. He stood for a few more minutes and I could hear him singing under his breath; the same two verses, it sounded like, though I couldn’t make out any words. Chanting, almost. I was just learning my craft then, otherwise I might have been more alarmed. Cognizant, at any rate, that he was up to something and in way over his head.

“We’d better go,” he said at last, and turned to me. He looked … different. Calm, but also expectant. “I have a song I want to get down. I want to go over it with Ashton before we begin rehearsing it.”

And that was the end of it. He scrambled back down the hill — no holding hands this time. I had to call out to him to wait for me before he raced off into the woods. It was easier going down than up. Julian waited for me at the edge of the copse, looking very impatient.

I turned to gaze back at the mound. It was no higher than it had first appeared. I saw an old oak tree that absolutely towered above it.

“Come on,” said Julian.

Without waiting for me, he strode back into the woods. It was only that afternoon, when I went to take a bath, that I found one of those tiny green butterflies had gotten trapped in the folds of my long skirt.

“Look at you,” I said, shaking it free, and watched it flutter off into the house.