At the gates of Frost Hollow Hall, I took a long breath. ‘Straight there and straight back. Got it?’
Will turned up the collar of his coat. I could tell he was nervous too, and making a bad job of hiding it. He looked over his shoulder once or twice and then peered through the gates.
‘We’re going that way, are we?’ I nodded at the wide drive leading away from us into a thicket of trees.
‘Yep. But we’ll need to be quick.’
‘What we waiting for then? We in’t here to admire the view.’
‘All right, all right,’ he tutted, and pulled down his cap.
The gates were shut. I reckoned I was small enough to squeeze through the bars, but Will had found another badger hole in the hedge, so we clambered through there, and went quickly round the first bend of the drive. I was hoping for a view of the house, but all I could see was snow. I kept walking straight ahead. Will yanked me back by my shawl.
‘Not that way! You’ll leave footprints! Now stick close,’ he said, crossly.
We turned a sharp left off the drive and slowed our pace, though my heartbeat seemed to quicken. The way was too narrow to walk side by side, so Will took the lead and I fell in behind. Wild gorse and bracken grew over the path and branches bent low across us. It looked like no one had walked this way in years. The snow was deeper here. It came up to the tops of my boots and soaked my skirts. I hitched them up, best I could.
Will stopped suddenly. I ploughed right into the back of him.
‘Can you climb that?’ He pointed to a waist-high stone wall.
‘’Course.’
He vaulted over it with a quick flick of his heels. I pulled my skirts between my knees and tucked the hem in my waistband at the front. I ignored his offer of a hand up and scrambled over. On landing, I looked around me. What I saw made me shudder. We stood in a dismal, dank little graveyard. I didn’t fancy going much further in.
It struck me just how quiet it was here, the eerie kind where even a breath sounds deafening. Before us, the ground swarmed with little metal headstones, poking up through the snow like teeth. Each one was red with rust, and between them were great tussocks of dead grass. The place looked uncared for, forgotten about. They might’ve been pets’ graves, though I’d not have buried a dog in such a spot if you’d paid me.
What a poxy place!
Kit Barrington wasn’t buried here. Any fool could see that straight away. We’d come all this way for a big fat nothing. And now my plan looked stupid too: I’d wanted to see Kit’s grave, to know how his family remembered him. Stupid me for thinking Will might help. And even stupider him for reckoning he knew all the flipping answers. It was about time Will Potter got a piece of my mind.
One little grave stood out from the rest. It had been tended, and recently too. The brambles had been cleared, the ice scraped off and a fresh snowdrop lay beneath the headstone. I crouched down to read the name on it:
Ada
Taken Too Soon
No date. No surname. Just four simple words. But it stirred me strangely and my eyes filled with tears. She was dead in the ground, this Ada. Yet someone still cared enough to come out here in the cold and tend her sorry little grave. It seemed so very sad. But then if I was dead I supposed my pa might do such a thing for me, and the thought made me well up even more.
It was colder than ever now and it had started snowing again. I wiped my face and stood up, looking for a way out of this godforsaken place. I realised then that I’d lost Will.
I called out. ‘Where are you?’
The noise sent rooks bursting from the tree tops, their hateful racket setting me right on edge.
‘Will? Where the flip are you?’
‘Over here, slow coach!’ He was standing by the far wall. I hurried over to him.
‘What are we doing here?’ I snapped.
He rolled his eyes like I was a total lummox. ‘This is where they bury the servants.’
‘But I want to see Kit Barrington’s grave! And you said you knew where it was!’
‘This place is a shortcut, that’s all. Not scared, are you?’
This was mighty rich, coming from him.
‘Fat chance!’ I said. ‘But you better know where we’re going, I’m warning you!’
Will led me through a gap in a holly hedge and this time onto a clearer path, wide enough for us to walk together. A blackbird hopped from bush to bush up ahead, singing sweetly in the chill air.
‘The Hall’s half a mile behind us. You won’t see it from here,’ he said as I turned to look. ‘Come on, we’re nearly there.’
The path curved to the right and into a clearing flanked by yew trees. Leading off from the centre were more little walkways, each one ending with a stone urn or a pillar or marble cross, all covered in snow. People lay buried here too, it seemed. Only this place was grand, with its clipped hedges and fancy carvings. The quiet was different too; not bleak and queer, but painfully sad in a way that made my throat ache.
Will nodded up ahead. ‘Here it is.’
Standing pale against the leaves was a most magnificent sight. An angel stood before us, taller than a man, with wings spread wide and head bowed, clutching flowers to its breast.
I stood still, completely overawed.
‘Go on then. Have a look,’ said Will, nudging me forward.
Hardly knowing where to put my feet, I stumbled forwards. I reached out to touch the angel’s hand; I wondered for a moment if it was real. The stone was smooth and cold against my fingers. Looking down, I saw the name carved into the base at the angel’s feet:
Christopher Edward Barrington
Fell asleep February 6th 1871
Our Beloved Kit
‘Goodnight sweet prince
And flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest’
Before this moment, I might just have convinced myself that I’d had a fright and imagined everything: the boy under the ice, the dreams, the ring. Not now. Kit was dead. The gravestone made it real. And what a fine grave it was.
I knelt down and stared at the stone angel towering above me, tears streaming down my face. Someone had laid a wreath of fresh winter roses at the foot of the statue; Lord and Lady Barrington, most probably. They’d have knelt here too, just as I was doing now. This was Kit’s final resting place.
Only I knew he wasn’t truly at rest.