The Puzzle Ring (4 page)

A thin, crooked-looking man limped after the boy, shaking an oily rag. ‘Come back here, you little brat! Did I say you could go?'

He stopped shouting at the sight of Roz and the two girls, and rather self-consciously shoved the oily rag in his back pocket. He wore a torn blue singlet under a dirty flannelette shirt. ‘Sorry about that. That boy would enrage a saint! What can I do for you?'

‘Allan? Is that you?' Roz stared at him.

He stared back. ‘Roz?'

She nodded. ‘I've come back. Just for a little while. This is Hannah. My daughter.' She put her hands on Hannah's shoulders.

‘My God. Bob's daughter? Bob's little girl?'

With difficulty, Hannah stopped herself from rolling her eyes.

Allan huffed out a great breath and limped towards them. He did not seem to know whether to embrace Roz, or shake her hand, or just nod and smile at her. He settled for the latter, perhaps because of the dirt and grease on his hands, which he wiped on his shirt. Hannah then saw, with a shock, that one of his hands was badly scarred. ‘Welcome home, Roz. It's been a long time.'

Roz nodded and smiled too, and said, ‘Yes, indeed.'

‘Where have you been all this time?'

While Roz answered politely, Hannah looked around her with curiosity. They were standing in a yard crowded with cars and motorbikes and trucks, all in various stages of dismemberment or decay. A big shed had its doors thrown
open. Inside were a dirty white van and a bench littered with tools.

Roz was explaining about their bags. ‘I think we may just walk up to Wintersloe, it's such a lovely day, and it's not far from here, really. If you wouldn't mind bringing up the bags for us later.'

‘Of course, not at all. Good to have you back.'

Hannah picked up her backpack and her guitar. She was not leaving
them
in the care of this dirty-looking man. She followed her mum out into the street.

‘I warn you, the castle is haunted,' Scarlett said, close to Hannah's ear. ‘A witch was burnt to death near there. You'd better be careful.'

‘Really?' Hannah asked, but Scarlett just called ‘See you!', and went back down the hill towards the village with a casual wave of her hand.

‘I cannot believe how much Allan has changed!' Roz was saying. ‘I guess thirteen years is a long time. I would not have recognised him if I'd passed him in the street. He's got so . . .' She groped for a word.

‘Old?' Hannah suggested.

‘Older, of course. We're all older.' Roz sounded irritated. ‘I mean we were only quite young when I saw him last. No, I don't mean that. I mean . . . he was just so . . .'

‘Dirty?'

Roz flashed her a look. ‘Yes, I guess that's what I mean. He's changed an awful lot.'

‘Oh, well, I bet you've changed heaps too,' Hannah said cheerfully. ‘Lots more grey hair now.'

Roz smiled wryly. ‘Thanks, darling.'

The road ran through close-growing trees. Glimpses of the loch could be seen to the west. To the north rose a high green hill, crowned by a great mass of twisted black twigs and thorns. A shadow hung over the hill, as clouds gathered before the sun. Hannah gave a little shiver and pulled her cardigan closer.

‘That hill is called Fairknowe,' Roz said. ‘See how the landscape changes? That's the Highland Boundary Fault. A collision of tectonic plates about four million years ago caused the Midland Valley to fall by, oh, I don't know, several thousand metres. That's why the highlands are so much higher than—'

‘Let me guess, the lowlands. Thanks, Mrs Science Teacher.'

Roz grinned. ‘Well, I thought you'd be interested. It's very dramatic, geographically speaking. It's the fault that causes Fairknowe Hill to rise up so steeply from the land all around
it, and made all those islands across the loch. The fault crosses Scotland all the way to Arran.'

‘It certainly makes pretty scenery.' Hannah paused to catch her breath at the top of the hill. From here, they had an uninterrupted view of the loch and its scattered islands, looking like the beads of a broken necklace.

‘The view is even better from Wintersloe. Come on! Just round this corner.'

Hefting her guitar higher, Hannah followed the curve of the road and found herself standing before a wide set of iron gates. Stone gargoyles were crouched on top of the massive pillars, each holding a twig. One looked merry, the other sad.

High walls curved away from either side, with trees hanging over the capstones. Beside the gate was a tiny stone house, gabled and turreted, surrounded by tall spires of foxgloves and a spilling profusion of alyssum. A boy's bicycle lay abandoned on the drive outside the small wooden gate. It had a ramshackle motor attached to the back, and Hannah recognised it as the one ridden by the black-haired boy in the village.

‘That little house was practically a ruin last time I was here,' Roz said. ‘It looks like someone lives there now. And the gates are shut. Should we ring the bell, I wonder?'

‘Of course we should.' Hannah seized the chain attached to the clapper and rang it vigorously. A magpie flew down to investigate. Head cocked, it perched on the gate, regarding her with a black beady eye.

‘One for sorrow,' Hannah said.

‘Superstitious nonsense,' Roz replied automatically, her fingers playing with the ring hanging about her neck. The
magpie gave a shriek and flew at her, as if trying to seize the ring with its beak. Roz ducked, hastily pushing the chain back inside her shirt and waving her arms to frighten the bird away. ‘Magpies are such thieves! They'll steal anything bright.'

‘It's much smaller than the magpies in Australia,' Hannah said.

The magpie fluttered to the top of the sad gargoyle, which was holding a twig with berries on it. The happy gargoyle was holding a twig with flowers. ‘I wonder what plant that is,' Hannah said.

‘Blackthorn,' a woman's voice replied. ‘
Prunus spinosa
. It's part of the rose family. It has flowers in spring and sloe berries in autumn. At least, most blackthorns do. The one on top of Fairknowe Hill has not bloomed in living memory. The castle is named after it, you know.'

Hannah and Roz looked round and saw a woman with very short black hair and a dirt-streaked face standing in the middle of the foxgloves. She was dressed in a khaki shirt and trousers, and wore heavy-duty gardening gloves. She was carrying a little spade in one hand.

‘You must be Lady Fairknowe.' She stripped off her gloves and came forward with a warm smile. ‘You won't remember me, though we did meet, many years ago. I'm Evangeline Lombardi, the gardener here. Come on in.' She swiftly unlocked a little gate set one side of the main gates and held it open for them.

‘Please, call me Roz.' Hannah's mother looked at the other woman with interest. Although she was only small, she looked wiry and strong, and her hands were brown and hard. Her eyes were a clear blue, startling in her brown face, and her teeth were charmingly crooked.

‘Okay, Roz. You can call me Genie, most people do. You go on up to the house. Lady Wintersloe is so looking forward to seeing you.'

Roz nodded, smiling.

‘You look like you could do with some help,' Genie said to Hannah as she heaved her backpack up onto her shoulder again. She turned her head and yelled, ‘Max!'

‘What?' a distant boy's voice yelled back.

‘Come and help out, okay?'

‘But, Mum, Donovan's here!'

‘He can come and help too. And then I want you two out in the garden.'

‘But, Mum, I'm just reading an article on anthrax! It's really cool.'

‘You've had enough time on that computer, young man! It's a beautiful day. And I need you to come and carry Lady Hannah's bags.'

Hannah felt a little shock of surprise. No one had ever called her Lady Hannah before. She considered it, and decided she quite liked it.

‘Please, just Hannah,' Roz said. ‘No need to call a twelve year old girl “lady”!'

‘But, Mum, I'm almost thirteen,' Hannah protested.

‘Still no reason to get all lah-di-dah on me,' Roz said firmly.

The upstairs window was flung open and a boy around Hannah's age put his head out. He was thin and dark like his mother, and wore round, gold-rimmed glasses. He stared at Hannah in open curiosity.

‘Come on, Max, can you do what I ask for a change?' Genie put her hands on her hips, staring up at her son.

‘All right, all right, I'm coming,' he answered, sounding very put-out.

Hannah raised her chin. ‘I'm fine. I don't need help. I'd rather carry my own stuff.'

‘Are you sure?' Genie looked troubled, but then smiled and shrugged. ‘All right then. I'll be seeing you around. Come down and have a cup of tea whenever you like.'

‘Thanks, I'd like that,' Roz said.

Mother and daughter walked past the gatehouse and up the curving drive towards the house. Hannah was so excited she felt as if she had springs attached to her boots. Even her backpack and guitar did not seem so heavy any more. The drive came out of the shadow of the trees into sunshine, turning a giant circle around a garden where crimson roses, heavy-headed, filled the air with sweet fragrance.

‘They call that the Queen's Garden. Mary, Queen of Scots, is meant to have planted the first red rose there. Personally I always thought that very unlikely. If she had slept in all the beds and visited all the houses she's meant to have visited, she can't have spent many nights under her own roof! She only lived in Scotland for six years or so.'

Hannah gazed at the garden in awe. ‘Imagine if she did, though. I wonder which rose it was?'

‘She died hundreds of years ago, Hannah. Roses do not live that long! It's not reasonable to think any one of those roses is more than ten or twenty years old.'

‘They could be the descendant of the rose planted by Mary, Queen of Scots,' Hannah argued. ‘Just like I'm the descendant of the people who lived here then.'

‘I suppose that may be possible,' Roz conceded. ‘Though I still think it's very unlikely she ever came near this place!'

Hannah was not listening. She stood still, staring up at Wintersloe Castle, which had just come into view behind the trees. Built of warm golden-grey stone, the house basked in the sunshine, surrounded by a tangled profusion of flowers. At one end was a tall pepper-pot tower, its bronze roof turquoise blue with age. At the other end was a small turret crowned with a pointed roof on which stood an ornate weathervane. In between was a tall house, with large bay windows, tall chimneys, crow-stepped gables and steeply pitched slate roofs that sported stone gargoyles and heraldic beasts.

‘Wow!' Hannah said.

‘See, I told you it wasn't a castle. Built in the 1860s, I think.'

‘It looks like a castle.'

‘Believe me, real castles were never so pretty. It'd take a marauding army about ten seconds to breach this place's defences.'

‘It's gorgeous!'

‘If you like that sort of thing. I must say,
I
think it's the most impractical house I've ever seen. All it needs is a folly in the garden.'

‘What's a folly? I thought that meant doing something stupid?'

‘Yes, exactly. In this case, architecturally speaking.' Seeing Hannah's look, Roz smiled. ‘It means when you build something in your garden that has no use. You build it just for the look of it. Rich people in Victorian times used to build fake ruins in their garden, for example. Too much money!'

‘Not everything has to be practical, or useful, you know.'

‘Why not? What's the point of it if it's not useful?'

‘I don't know. Fun, perhaps? Or maybe, just because it's beautiful?' This was an old argument between mother and daughter, and so was conducted lazily, without rancour.

‘Does it really have a ghost?' Hannah wanted to know.

‘Of course not. The whole concept of ghosts is completely irrational, you know that.'

‘I wish it did.'

Roz cast her a look, half amused, half irritated. ‘The only scary thing in this house is your great-grandmother, you can trust me on that. Come on, let's get it over with.'

Together they walked up the broad stone steps to the front door. Roz smoothed down her skirt with both hands, took a deep breath, and then put her finger to the bell. They heard a shrill ringing somewhere inside the house.

She was just ringing it again when the door was flung open.

A very old, very small woman stood in the doorway. Her back was so stooped she had to twist her head sideways to see. A cloud of short white curls covered her head, and her skin was as creased and spotted as ancient linen. Her green eyes were dim and clouded. At the sight of Hannah, her whole face lit up. She reached out two trembling, clawlike hands and seized Hannah's shoulders, drawing her down into a close embrace.