AIDAN WAS STARTLED AND DEPRESSED TO LEARN THAT Andrew and Stashe were getting married soon. It did not help that he had seen it coming.
It was Mrs. Stock who sourly broke the news to him when Aidan and Rolf came galloping in for lunch. Mrs. Stock didn’t exactly say, “They won’t want you around now,” but Aidan knew she meant it. He tried very hard to be as nice as Shaun was about it. Shaun beamed. He took Andrew’s hand and shook it, up and down, up and down, with his hairstyle glittering. “Good,” he said. “Very good, Professor.”
Aidan had very little chance to say more than “Congratulations!” before Andrew and Stashe were off to Melton, Stashe clutching a rattling vase that she told Aidan was very valuable. Aidan blinked a bit. It struck him as a very ordinary and ugly vase, but he supposed Stashe knew what she was talking about.
Aidan mooched about with Rolf for the rest of that afternoon, anxiously wondering what would become of him now. He couldn’t go back to the Arkwrights. He had arranged for them not to want him. Thinking about it, Aidan rather wished he could have thought of some other way to stop them sending people after him, but he had done it, and that was that now. Meanwhile, he tried to avoid Mrs. Stock, who was in her sharpest mood, and kept out of the way of Mr. Stock. Mr. Stock looked like the cat that had had the cream. Stashe was his niece, and he was extremely proud of her. Mr. Stock knew he had started it all by visiting Tarquin that day. He even whistled as he sorted out another huge box of vegetable discards.
And there was no football to take Aidan’s mind off things. The football field was filling with tents and dusty lorries loaded with fairground machines. Where Aidan and his friends had played football, people were walking solemnly about, putting in markers for the roped-off enclosures where the various competitions were going to be. At any other time, Aidan would have been highly interested and excited about Saturday’s Fête, but not now. The field was just one more place to avoid.
To add to Aidan’s gloom, Groil did not appear that night. Andrew, helped by Stashe and Aidan, piled the woodshed roof with vegetable discards, but they were still there the next morning.
Ronnie Stock needed Stashe urgently that day. Andrew had a good mind to tell the man that he needed Stashe even more urgently, but at least he could send her off to the Stables with a bright new emerald ring twinkling on her elegant ring finger. Titania’s jewels had turned out to be worth quite a lot. With Stashe not there, Andrew felt almost as gloomy as Aidan. He firmly turned his mind to other urgent things. He could get on with his book, but his computer had gone wrong again, probably when Titania arrived. Anyway, this was not urgent, not nearly as urgent as Aidan, who was seriously in need of explanations. Andrew and Stashe had had a long talk about Aidan. Stashe was insistent that Andrew tell Aidan exactly what the position was. “I know how I’d feel if everyone kept me in the dark,” she said. So Andrew decided to talk to Aidan while they went on walking the boundary. This was urgent too. It proved the field-of-care was Andrew’s and not Mr. Brown’s.
“Get your boots on and bring Rolf,” he told Aidan. “We’re walking the boundary again today.”
Aidan listlessly agreed. He wanted to hit Rolf for being so glad to do it.
They walked down the village and started from the Stables—where else, with Stashe so near?—from the place by the gates of the Grange where the boundary wheeled off beyond the other side of the village. It was good walking weather, not too hot, not too cold, with just a hint of rain in the air. Andrew and Rolf appreciated it. Aidan didn’t. Aidan was more unhappy still that the first bit meant they were definitely trespassing. The boundary curved through the gardens of the Grange, right across the corner of a rose bed and over a lawn, before plunging among a copse of ornamental trees. Aidan was not happy about this, not even slightly, until they came to a stile beyond the trees, where they had to lift Rolf over into the fields and heathland on the other side. There Rolf uttered an excited “Yip!” and set off with his nose down on the line of the boundary.
Then the only problem was keeping up with Rolf. Luckily, Rolf realized and kept coming back for them. As they toiled after Rolf’s distant golden figure, Andrew began a careful explanation to Aidan.
“What?” Aidan said. “You mean I am your cousin?”
“Certainly,” Andrew assured him. “Distant, but it means I have a perfect right to have you to live with us. More than the Arkwrights anyway. Stashe is going to look into what we have to do to make it official—whether we need to adopt you or get made your legal guardians. I probably need to be married before I can adopt you. Is that all right? Do you mind?”
Did he mind! Aidan felt his face stretching into a smile that beamed wider than any of Shaun’s. “Thanks!” he managed to say. It was as if a heavy weight had been levered off his back and from inside his head. There was such a lightness to him that he began to walk faster and faster, still beaming. Perhaps, he thought, he might persuade Andrew that a telly in the boxroom wouldn’t really be in his way. With a beanbag to sit on, maybe. And he thought he could get round Stashe to let him have a mobile phone, if he went at it carefully. Oh, joy!
They were now walking up a long hill, among gorse bushes. Aidan was going so fast that Andrew struggled to keep up. He was more than a little out of breath as he gave the next part of the explanation. And six months ago, Andrew thought, I wouldn’t have believed a word of what I’m saying now! Telling a boy that his father was Oberon and that his father wanted to kill him. Am I giving him too much of a shock?
Aidan was still too happy to feel much of a shock. The Puck had told him some of it, after all. And Gran had always been very clear that Aidan’s father was a very bad thing indeed. Aidan had always believed that. Instead, he worried about something Andrew had never expected. “Does that mean,” he asked, “that I’m half something else?”
“They’re not as different as everyone likes to think,” Andrew panted, thinking of Stashe battling with Titania. What was the difference between two angry women? Except one of them was Stashe, of course. “Think of yourself,” he puffed, “as having the best of two worlds. A lot of people would give their eyeteeth for a heredity like yours.”
“Mmm,” Aidan said, taking this in. As long as it didn’t show…
Up ahead of them, Rolf stopped and sat down. Warned by this, Aidan and Andrew stopped too. Andrew stood getting his breath back, wondering what Rolf had heard or smelled.
There seemed to be a jogger out on the faint path that marked the boundary. He came looming up over the brow of the hill, taller and taller, rushing toward them in great strides and huge leaps, most unlike the usual kind of jogger. He saw them and swerved away and went bounding down into the meadows below the hill, where they saw him dodging past bushes and splashing through patches of marsh. Over the brow of the hill after him came pouring a smoky stream of somethings. Whatever they were, they checked at the exact spot where the mighty jogger had left the path and then went pouring down into the meadows after him.
Andrew and Aidan both whipped off their glasses. Although the smoky stream was still hard to see, the long, galloping shapes of what might be dogs were part of it, and the upright, running figures of—maybe—men. The jogger they were after was much plainer.
“It’s Groil!” Aidan said. “They’re chasing him because he’s got my wallet.”
There was nothing either of them could do. Groil and his pursuers were going far too fast. Andrew led the way slowly upward to where Rolf was sitting. Neither he nor Aidan could stop themselves from staring down into the meadows most of the time. Groil was jinking, turning, racing round bushes, and the smoky stream of the pursuit faithfully followed his exact path, even when he ran round in a circle. They watched Groil lead them into a figure-of-eight, leave them crossing their own path, mindlessly, and then set off uphill again in great energetic leaps. At that point the pack seemed to lose Groil. At any rate, just as Andrew and Aidan reached Rolf, Groil was nowhere to be seen, but the horde of pursuers was streaming uphill toward them.
Rolf, Andrew, and Aidan all froze as the smoky pack came up against the line of the boundary just ahead. It seemed as if they could not cross it. For a moment, they billowed round and round, aimlessly. Then something in their midst cried out. A horn sounded. And the whole cloudy crowd of them came streaming downhill toward Andrew, Aidan, and Rolf.
Andrew hastily pulled Aidan, and Aidan pulled Rolf, out into the hillside beyond the boundary. There they stood and watched the chase pour soundlessly past, mean dogs, big catlike creatures, Security in his woolly hat, manlike beings with stag’s heads, staglike creatures with men’s faces, and a crowd of tall, skinny people in golden helmets, who all looked rather like Mr. Stock.
“They seem to have lost him,” Andrew said. “And us,” he added thankfully, as the chasers rushed away downhill and out of sight. He had had a feeling, for a moment, that the hunt had started to home in on Aidan, until Aidan had crossed the boundary.
They walked carefully back to the line of the boundary and climbed on up the grassland. Aidan was feeling guilty, wishing he had not asked Groil to keep that wallet for him. But then they passed a large gorse bush, and Groil stood up out of it, laughing.
“This is fun,” he said. “I go small and hard, and they lose me.”
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Aidan asked anxiously.
Groil shook his great shaggy head. “Not had so much fun for years,” he said. “Hi, Rolf. You being tame these days?” He put a massive hand down on Rolf’s back.
A look of extreme alarm came over Rolf’s face. All four of his legs buckled. Before his legs could quite give way, Rolf was forced to change into boy shape, lying facedown on the turf. “Stupid!” he said over his shoulder.
Groil grinned. “That always happens when I lean on him,” he said. “Funny, that.”
“I’ll bite your leg,” Rolf said.
Groil laughed, waved to Aidan and Andrew, and went bounding away down into the meadows again.
“Oaf!” said Rolf. It turned into a bark as he went back to dog shape.
“They must have known one another for ages,” Aidan said to Andrew. “I think they tease each other all the time.”
They went on. Beyond the top of the hill, the boundary took a wide curve. To balance the bulge where the Manor was, Andrew thought. It was so much wider than the oval shape Andrew had been predicting that they only walked half of it that day and had to come back to the village by a cart track level with the lane that led to Melstone House.
They got back to the house to find that Mrs. Stock had made cauliflower cheese again. She was not going to forgive Andrew for marrying Stashe in a hurry. Mr. Stock had also been in again, with bundles and bundles of weeded-out carrots. Andrew thought those could possibly have been a reward. But there were far too many to eat, so they put them up on the roof for Groil, on top of yesterday’s heap. Aidan anxiously hoped that Groil would manage to get back to eat them soon.
He must have done. The vegetables were gone the next morning, carrots and all. That’s a relief! Groil must have worked up quite an appetite! Aidan thought, while he waited impatiently to set off walking the boundary again. Stashe was back that day, and Andrew did not seem able to leave her side.
They got going in the end. They were halfway down the drive, with Rolf charging ahead, when Stashe came racing after them. “Wait! Wait! You must come and see this. Both of you!” They turned back, to Rolf’s annoyance. He sat down in the drive and yawned disgustedly.
Stashe had begun unpacking the third box. The first layer had been more of Andrew’s comics collection, mixed in with numbers of old Jocelyn’s irritable notes to himself. Andrew picked one up at random and read, “O. Brown trying to take over my wood again. What does he make all that barbed wire out of?” Ah, he thought. So he’s done this before, has he? There had been no sign of the barbed wire when Andrew first came into his inheritance. He would very much have liked to know what his grandfather had done to get rid of it.
The rest of the box contained nothing but fat, dusty cardboard folders. Andrew took the one that Stashe handed to him and opened it, dubiously. It was full of accounts from an investment firm. Form after form announced that Jocelyn now had so many thousands of pounds invested and that these had earned him so much more money that Andrew’s mind reeled.
“They’re all like that,” Stashe said. “There’s a small fortune here, Andrew. Did you know about them?”
“No,” Andrew said. “I only knew about what he had in the Bank.”
“Then I could smack Mrs. Stock for bundling them all in this box!” Stashe said. “And you take a look at this one, Aidan.” She passed Aidan a much slenderer folder.
Aidan, who had been standing by, rather bored, stared at the front of it. It was labeled in Jocelyn’s writing, Blind Trust for Aidan Cain. The least I can do after my failure with Melanie. Inside, official forms stated that, ten years ago, Jocelyn Brandon had set aside some thousands of pounds, to grow into more thousands of pounds, until Aidan was eighteen. Then the money was Aidan’s.
“Wow!” said Aidan. He had to whisk his glasses off, because his eyes flooded with tears. He found himself longing, hopelessly, that he could have known Andrew’s old grandfather. He must have been quite something, to do this for a baby he had never met.
“Good man, wasn’t he?” Stashe said. “Mind you, he could be a right old curmudgeon too! He used to growl at me and call me ‘Tarquin’s silly little bitch.’ I put my tongue out at him once or twice. Anyway, Andrew, I’ll get on transferring these to your name, shall I? Don’t worry. I know just what to do. I did it for Ronnie Stock when his mother died.” Stashe took hold of one end of the box and began to tow it toward Andrew’s study. She stopped. “Is your computer still working?”
“It went down when Titania appeared,” Andrew said, sighing.
“Then I know how to put it right,” Stashe said, and went on towing the box. They heard her in the distance muttering, “Honestly, I could smack Mrs. Stock!” as she went.
Andrew and Aidan set off for the second time. Andrew had decided they would join the boundary where it crossed the Melton road this time, and walk back to the cart track they had taken yesterday. So they went up the village, past the church, and past the football field. There was now a gate across the entry to the field and a big notice on the gate saying that Mr. Ronald Stock would open the Fête at 2:30 on Saturday.
“It gets going before that,” Andrew told Aidan. “As I remember, there is usually a procession with the band and people in fancy dress. The entries to the competitions have to be in by midday. Mr. Stock will be wheeling in his vegetables most of the morning. He practically empties the garden for this.”
Aidan stood on tiptoe and saw more tents beyond the hedge and a glimpse of a roundabout being put up. He was suddenly quite excited about this Fête. He had never been to one before. It looked as if it was going to be fun.
Otherwise, their walk was uneventful that day. They found the place on the Melton road and a stile that led to the same faint path that they had followed yesterday. When they were in any doubt about where the boundary was, Rolf found it for them. There was no sign of Groil anywhere. Andrew suggested that Groil was probably sleeping off the vast meal he had eaten last night. Aidan hoped so. He hoped Groil was keeping thoroughly small and hard and well hidden.
As they walked home down the cart track, Andrew sighed and said, “Well, there’s only one thing more for tomorrow, and that’s getting round the Manor grounds somehow. I vote we try to get round outside Mr. Brown’s barbed wire. It must be possible. He can’t have covered the whole countryside in it. Can you help us do that, Rolf?”
Rolf looked up and nodded. He was thinking of supper.
“Won’t that make your field-of-care bigger?” Aidan asked.
“Possibly,” Andrew said. “But I’m not going to let Brown get the better of us. Hurry up, Aidan. I want to get back before Stashe has to leave.”
Stashe had waited for them, saying she had made a good start on the folders and would do more tomorrow. Shaun had waited too. He wanted Andrew to come and look inside the shed and see what it looked like now he had finished it. He waved both hands and looked so pleading that Andrew went there at once, without taking his walking boots off.
Once inside, he stood and marveled. The place glowed. In the multicolored light from the window, the carved walls were a luminous honey color, where small creatures peeped out from among a riot of tendrils, leaves, and flowers, and man-shaped people seemed to dance in a line that wound in and out and through the other carvings, up and down across each wall. Shaun had made efforts to clean the floor too. Andrew had assumed it was concrete, but it was actually honey-colored tiles, cracked and old but still beautiful. It all made the mower, sitting in the middle of the floor, look completely out of place. I must find somewhere else to keep the thing, Andrew thought while he was telling Shaun what a marvelous job he had done.
Shaun beamed and then looked anxious. “What do you want me to do now, Professor?” he said.
Trying not to leave mud from his boots on the tiles, Andrew took Shaun outside. He pointed to the thistles, nettles, and small, struggling blackberry plants that were crowding round the base of the walls. The walls themselves outside were brick, covered in old whitewash. “You can clear all these weeds away,” he told Shaun, “and then give the walls a coat of white paint. This place is a chapel, as you told me once, and it ought to look as good outside as it is inside.”
Shaun looked relieved. Andrew could see Shaun had been afraid that his usefulness was now over and Andrew would dismiss him. “I’ll do that tomorrow, Professor,” Shaun said. “I’ve almost finished my robot. For the Fête,” he explained when Andrew looked blank.
“Good. Great,” Andrew said, and found himself adding, “And after that, there are hundreds of jobs for you inside the house.”
Shaun’s hands were waving happily as he went away.
He was rather late the following morning. “Up half the night finishing the robot,” he explained when he arrived with Mrs. Stock, who was also late.
“I’ll give you robots!” she said. “I was up at five, pinning prices on my old clothes. And I wish you wouldn’t encourage Trixie, Shaun. That sideshow of hers makes me feel ill.”
Andrew did not attend to much of this. He was talking to Stashe and waiting for Aidan to get his second-best boots on. Aidan was slow. His legs ached, and there was almost a blister on his left foot. He was wondering if all this walking was good for him. But Rolf and Andrew were determined to finish the last lap of the boundary, so Aidan sighed and went with them.
He cheered up when they came level with the football field. There was bunting up now. If he peered over the new gate, he could see a platform at the other end being covered with flags and a red carpet.
“I’m really looking forward to this Fête,” he told Andrew. “I’ve never been to one before.”
Andrew was startled. He had not considered that the Fête was anything to do with him or with Aidan. He remembered being bored out of his mind when his grandfather had taken him to admire Mr. Stock’s Prize Vegetables, year after year. “You may not enjoy it,” he said.
“Oh, I know I will,” Aidan said. “Will I need any money?”
Andrew sighed. “There’s an entrance fee,” he said, “and all the stalls and rides cost money. All right. I’ll take you to it.”
Aidan’s joy at this carried him round most of a tedious morning, while he and Andrew and Rolf walked carefully along outside Mr. Brown’s massive coils of barbed wire. There was so much of it that they were forced almost over to the road in places, and in other places found themselves stumbling among nettles and clawed by brambles that were almost as bad as the wire. The weather was hot and gray, which seemed ideal conditions for midges, mosquitoes, and horseflies. When they sat down for lunch halfway, they were bitten all over, even Rolf. For the rest of the way, Rolf had to keep sitting down to give himself big, thumping scratchings.
Aidan was not enjoying himself at all by then. The almost-blister from yesterday had developed into a full-grown blister, large, squashy, and painful. He could feel another growing on his other foot. But at last, long last, the walk was almost over. They were walking on the road by then, because Mr. Brown’s defenses had filled the space between that and the marshy place, and it was a great relief to Aidan when they arrived at the dip in the road and he knew they had finished.
It was even more of a relief to see Wally Stock driving his cows out into the field beside the road. Wally waved to Andrew and came over. He wanted to talk, as usual. Aidan sat thankfully in the grass beside the scratching Rolf, while Wally told Andrew what a terrible price the Fête Committee was having to pay for the hire of the bouncy castle and how unreliable some of the Fair people were.
“And what’s Mr. Brown up to in that wood?” Wally asked eventually. This seemed to be what he had really come over to say. “I thought it was your wood.”
“It is,” Andrew said.
“Well, you better look into it,” Wally said. “It’s all barbed wire in there now. Man with a dog turned me out of it when I went in to get a sheep that had got herself caught on the wire.”
“What?!” Andrew was, for a moment, almost too angry to speak. What was the point, he thought, of trudging right round the boundary, when Mr. Brown quietly expanded to take over from inside? “Come on, Aidan,” he said curtly. He waved to Wally and set off in long, angry strides toward the wood, with Rolf bounding ahead and Aidan limping behind.
They came to the sheep field. Rolf had almost reached the wood by the time Aidan had clattered the gate shut behind him. Andrew, halfway across the field, could see that the wood was full of pale coils of wire between the trees. He swore.
A gray, snarling dog shot out from among the trees and raced toward Andrew. It was coming straight for him and he knew it meant to attack. He stood still, wishing he had a stick. But his walking boots were quite stout. He supposed he could kick it.