The Secrets Tree Read online

  “It’s easier than using a book,” William murmured. “They don’t have to do page numbers, it’s all on one page. The only problem would be if there was a word they needed to use that wasn’t in the ballad. Unless they’re doing it letter by letter, I suppose.”

  “What does it say?” Polly moaned impatiently. “I can’t work out how the numbers fit together. Are they putting line numbers first?”

  “Hang on, I’m counting, shh.” William muttered to himself, tapping his pencil along the lines and faintly writing in a number at the beginning of each verse. “I think it’s like this – there’s fifteen verses. Do you see the way the numbers are written in the message? They’re mostly in groups of three or four – and the first pair never goes above fifteen.”

  “Yes! So the second number has to tell us where the word comes in the verse?”

  “I think so. Look. The first number is three, then there’s a little gap and then twelve.”

  Both of them turned eagerly to look at the ballad and even Magnus thrust his muzzle between their elbows. Polly was pretty sure he couldn’t read – she knew Rex couldn’t – but the excitement had caught him too.

  “Where,” she said eagerly. “Here, I’ll write it down. What’s next?”

  “Are. Then you. Where are you – this has got to be right, Polly. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise!”

  “I know, keep going. The next word’s … Master?”

  “Master … furious.”

  “That’s Sir Anthony.” Polly looked at William worriedly. “Oh, I hope he didn’t catch Jake’s brother. Have you see his portrait in the gallery? He’s got such a cold, mean sort of face.”

  “Shh a minute, I’m counting… Price … on … your … heads… Hang on, chicken?”

  “No, wrong line,” Polly pointed out. “It’s servants.”

  “Oh yes. Servants … sent … catch … you. I suppose he missed to out because he thought he didn’t need it. This must have taken ages to write. Guarding … road … tomorrow … night.” William sucked in his breath. “If this note was still in the tree, Polly, do you think that means the brother never got it?”

  “Probably. Unless Nat put it back but I don’t see why he’d do that.” Polly swallowed hard. “What’s the last word?”

  “Run.”

  Even though the message had been written more than three hundred years before, the panic and fear in those carefully chosen words set Polly’s heart thumping. Solving the code had been so exciting. She’d felt really clever, working out the secret of the ballad sheet like that. But now she just felt sad, and frightened for Jake and Nat. And how was she going to tell Patch what must have happened?

  She went out into the gardens, followed by William and Magnus, and laid her hand gently on the stone fur of Rex’s neck. “Can you come and talk to Patch with me?” she whispered. “William and I solved the code. I know what the message says.”

  Rex shook himself awake instantly and peered round at them all with interest. “You have? Excellent.”

  “Not really.” Polly sighed. “Jake’s message was a warning to Nat to tell him that Sir Anthony’s servants were guarding the road and they’d be caught if they tried to hold up another carriage. But he never got it, you see…”

  “So you think perhaps Nat got caught,” Rex murmured.

  “Yes. Because he never read it, did he? Nat was probably transported. Or maybe he was even hanged.” Polly swallowed hard, thinking back to what her mum had said about punishments for robbers back then. “But what’s really bad is – what if Jake got caught too? Maybe that’s why Patch can’t remember. If it was something really awful that happened to his boy, perhaps he’s not remembering on purpose. Do you see what I mean?”

  Rex jumped down from his plinth and gazed into Polly’s eyes. “But you’re not sure anything happened to Jake.”

  Polly shook her head. “We’ve only got that one message, so I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised. They might have thought Jake was telling the highwaymen when the richest guests were coming to Penhallow. He’d have inside information, working in the stables, wouldn’t he? Surely the stable boys would have to know when people were bringing carriage horses, so they could have stalls ready for them?”

  “We’d better go and find Patch.” Rex set out across the lawn. “Perhaps this will help him remember what happened.”

  “Come on, Polly. We have to tell him,” said William.

  “But what if what happened is awful?” Polly said, hanging back.

  Rex sighed. “He still needs to know.”

  Patch appeared around the tack-room door as Polly and William and the dogs walked into the stable yard. He looked perkier than he had the day before, Polly thought. His stubby tail bounced from side to side as he raced across the yard and he danced around Rex, yapping. Magnus gave him a look that suggested Patch had better not try that on him.

  Rex sniffed at the little terrier and licked his ears. “What have you been doing?” he asked.

  “There’s a stove in there, where Emperor and Lady Lily’s boxes were,” Patch said happily. “They were Jake’s horses, the ones he had to look after. It was very warm. No one noticed me curling up next to it. Or not quite. One lady did go to stroke me but then she stopped and looked at her hand as if she were cakey.”

  Polly giggled. “That’s the ticket office now.” Then she whispered to William, “What does cakey mean?”

  “Umm. Half-baked. A bit silly. He talks a bit in dialect, Patch. Old Cornish. I suppose that’s how Jake spoke too.”

  “Patch,” Rex said gently. “We need to talk to you.” He glanced around at the stable yard, noticing one of the staff smiling and waving at Polly. “Somewhere private.”

  Patch’s ears sagged. “Can ye get up a ladder?” he muttered.

  Rex looked surprised. “I expect so, if you can.”

  “I been up to the old hayloft. That’s not changed.” A shiver ran over him, like a ripple of fear at the strangeness of this new world. “Tis a good place, if ye can get up there. I slept in the hayloft with Jake and the other lads, back then.”

  It actually turned out to be much harder for Rex and Magnus to climb the ladder to the old hayloft than it was for Patch. They seemed to keep getting tangled up in their own long legs, and Polly and Rex had to boost Magnus through the hatch at the top. He was very heavy, for a ghost. Then he sat on the dusty boards shuddering and peering back at the gap.

  “I never agreed to this,” he kept muttering. “How am I supposed to get down?”

  Patch thought it was very funny – the wide steps of the ladder were the perfect distance apart for him – he’d run up and down it several times to show them. Then he seemed to remember why he’d brought them to the hayloft and he sat down next to Rex, the worry showing in his hunched back and flattened ears. “What did ye find?” he asked.

  “Polly and William worked out what the note said,” Rex told him gently. “You remembered that Jake was frightened, didn’t you? We think it was because there were men hunting for Nat and the other highwaymen. The note was a warning to his brother – Jake was worried that Sir Anthony and his servants were going to catch him.”

  “We solved the code,” Polly explained. “You know that tune that Jake used to whistle, the one that you said was his favourite, The Tragical Ballad of Johnny Marks? He had a ballad sheet of it. And somehow it ended up in the papers that were in the Penhallow records. I don’t know how. Maybe Nat left his copy in the robbers’ hideout and Sir Anthony kept it? The message in the tree was Jake telling Nat that the robbers were in danger. He was telling Nat he had to get away!”

  It was horrible to watch. Patch stared at Rex for a moment, and then Polly and the others could see him start to remember. He slumped down flat on the boards, whining miserably. “He said Nat had to run…” he whimpered. “He was all panicked… Oh, Jake…”

  He threw his head up and howled, the saddest, eeriest noise Polly had ever heard a dog make. She wanted to stroke Patch, to
tell him it was going to be all right – but she couldn’t. She didn’t know that it would be. “Are you remembering what happened?” she whispered, pressing herself closer against Rex.

  “I remembers him writing that letter. He were frantic.” Patch looked around at the bare dusty loft and sighed. “It was in here, but it were different then.”

  Rex nudged him gently. “Tell us. What happened? Tell us all of it.”

  Patch crept forward, curling himself between Rex’s huge paws and began in a growly sort of whisper.

  “Ye have to understand. Jake first came to the hall after his father drowned. His fishing boat was lost. It blew on to the rocks one night, when there was a storm. Worst storm they’d ever seen, the men told Jake.”

  Polly caught her breath. “Oh no!” But she wasn’t that surprised. Fishing must have been such a risky life back then. Even now, those rocks were known to be dangerous. There was a lifeboat station just along the coast, and Stephen had told her and Mum that a boat went aground on them almost every summer and had to be rescued.

  “Jake was left all alone. His mother had died when he was just a baby and even though Jake did have an older brother, Nat had argued with their father a few years before and run away. He never came back and all the village thought he was dead. Jake couldn’t stay in the cottage, not without paying rent and he couldn’t earn enough for that. No one knew what to do with him, except send him to the workhouse. So the vicar asked Sir Anthony to take him on as a stable boy – he told the master that he’d taught Jake his letters hisself and he were a bright lad. He said he’d surely be a steady worker.”

  Patch was silent for a moment and Polly reached out to stroke him but then drew her hand back. She didn’t want to break into his thoughts. It sounded as though Jake’s life had changed for ever in one night – a little like hers, when Dad had been knocked off his bike. But at least she’d still had Mum.

  “Were you his dog before?” William asked quietly. “I mean, before he came here?”

  “No…” Patch lifted his head. He was staring into a patch of air where the sun was shining through a chink in the roof. He seemed to be looking at the dancing specks of dust but Polly was sure he was seeing Jake. “I didn’t belong to no one. I was here to keep the rats down. Didn’t have no one to call my own, not till Jake came. He didn’t like the stables but he liked me.” Patch’s stubby little tail thumped the boards. “I was his dog then.”

  Polly blinked and there was another boy sitting with them in the hayloft – except that now the room was stacked with mounds of sweet-smelling hay. The boy was wearing breeches made of some rough fabric and a tattered shirt. He was curled up on one of the piles and Patch was with him, stretched half asleep in his lap.

  Polly held still, not wanting to move in case she frightened the vision – ghost, whatever it was – away. But she swivelled her eyes sideways to look at Rex. Patch was no longer curled up between the great hound’s paws – it was as though he had transported himself back into the past and taken them with him.

  “They all think he’s dead,” the boy murmured. “That’s what they say in the village. That it was bad luck that I was left all alone and I didn’t even have my brother to look after me.” He ran his hand over Patch’s ears and the little dog squirmed with happiness. “Nat isn’t dead, though, ye know. It’s a secret.”

  He chuckled and rubbed Patch’s ears again. “Not that ye’s going to tell anyone, are ye? He comes to visit me, sometimes.” He looked around the hayloft rather miserably. “I wish he’d come and take me away from here. Old Foxy keeps calling me a stupid, gawky lad but I’ve only been here a week! I don’t want to work in a stables, I don’t know anything about horses. They wouldn’t let me work on the boats, they said I was too young.”

  He was silent for a moment and then he went on, “Nat will come and take me away. And he’ll take ye too, Patch. I wouldn’t leave ye behind. He won’t mind me having a dog, he never minds anything. He’s almost a gentleman now, my brother. He has the grandest clothes, all black. And he brings me comfits, the liquorice ones I like best, and ballad sheets.”

  He pulled a wodge of folded paper out of the pocket of his breeches and laid it next to Patch’s nose. Leaning forward, Polly could see that the papers were ballad sheets – and the one on the top was the same song that she’d seen before, The Tragical Ballad of Johnny Marks.

  “Nat’s got lots of friends, good friends. They…” He hesitated, even though he knew he was alone with the dog. “They rob carriages. It isn’t wrong, Nat says. What’s wrong is the money some of those people have. Gold and jewels and all manner of fine things. Why shouldn’t us have some of that too? Dad always worked every hour God sends and he never had clothes like Nat’s. It’s not fair for those lords and ladies to have all that. It isn’t wrong to take it,” he said again, but there was something in his voice that made Polly think he knew it was. She found it hard to think kindly of Nat, but it was clear that Jake adored him – his wonderful older brother, who turned up every so often out of the blue and brought him presents.

  “I don’t know how us’ll meet up now,” Jake muttered, sinking his chin to rest on Patch’s head. “I can’t go off down to the beach of a night, not without one of the other boys seeing me. What if I don’t ever see him again, Patch? He won’t know I’m here. He doesn’t even know what happened to Dad. I wish I knew what to do…”

  Then it was as if time shifted and the scene reset itself – Polly almost saw it, the lurch between. The hayloft was shadowy now, the golden sunlight gone. Instead there was a colder look to the place and Polly wondered how the stable boys could bear to sleep up there through the winter. She supposed they just didn’t have a choice. Jake must have been glad of Patch’s warmth, snuggled up against him.

  “The others’ll be coming up here soon,” the boy muttered. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the loft, with a stone bottle of ink next to him and he was dipping in a draggled quill. Patch was watching him, looking as though he’d like to nibble on the feather pen. “Haven’t got long. I got to warn him, Patch! Sir Anthony, he’s some mazed now, since that Lady Alice got her necklace taken by the highwaymen. Storming about he be, the maids told us, all red in the face. He’s not going to stand for it, he do want them caught. He’ll have them hanged, I know it.”

  He glanced over at the ballad sheet, propped up against a bale of hay, frowning. He’s counting in his head, Polly thought.

  “He’s writing the letter!” William whispered in her ear. “The letter you found!” He sounded fascinated.

  “There…” Jake pushed the cork into the bottle of ink, and his eyes widened as a scuffling and a creaking began down below. He hustled away the ink bottle and the quill under an old blanket, and stuffed his letter and the ballad sheet into his pocket.

  “Jake! Where art’a? You up there? Old Foxy’s after you. Says you need to saddle up Emperor for Master Jeremy.”

  “I’m coming!”

  As they watched, the boy and the dog flickered and faded. It was just Polly and William and Rex and Magnus left behind, staring at the dust motes dancing in the autumn sun.

  Polly hadn’t quite realized what she was getting herself into when she’d suggested a lantern parade. Everyone seemed to be rushing around talking about how to fix the lantern frames together and stick down the special tissue paper for covering them, and whether to use real candles to light them up, or battery ones. (The battery ones, Mum and Nina had decided. Real ones were just too dangerous.) The workshops were popular with the families visiting and lots of them had said that they were going to come back on the Saturday evening for the parade.

  Nina had shown Polly how to make a lantern, which was a bit fiddly but not actually that difficult, and recruited her to help with the workshops. She said it was really useful to have another pair of hands and someone else who knew what they were doing. Mum said she might even be able to pay Polly a bit of extra pocket money to help. This was all great, except it meant there was l
oads of time when Polly wasn’t helping Patch.

  Solving the code was all very well but she felt as though the only thing she’d done so far was make Patch more miserable. They’d reminded him how scared Jake had been about his brother and then they’d just left him worrying. Polly couldn’t see how they were going to find out what had happened next, either.

  “If this is what the week before Halloween’s like at Penhallow, I can’t imagine the Christmas holidays,” Polly muttered to her mum as she dashed into the craft room on Wednesday afternoon, threading her way through a lot of excited, glue-sticky children with another bundle of willow sticks.

  Polly’s mum rolled her eyes. “I don’t even want to think about it. People started sending me emails about Christmas events back in August. We were lucky we managed to sort all this out so last-minute. Thanks for getting those, Polly. I can’t believe we’d nearly run out already. I’m going to have to order some more and we’re only halfway through the week!”

  Polly placed the willow sticks on a table next to the rest of the craft stuff, then sat down with Mum at a table with some of the younger children. “Do you really think everyone who’s made a lantern will come back for the parade?” she asked hopefully as she helped stick on a last bit of paper for a little girl she recognized from the Reception class at school. Billie was supposed to be making a lantern in a triangle shape, but it looked more like a hedgehog.

  “I’m coming! Mum said,” Billie put in. “I’m going to wear my white mouse costume. Look, it’s finished!”

  “It looks … excellent.” Polly changed the subject quickly. “A white mouse costume sounds good. I don’t know what I’m wearing. I’ll probably be a witch. Mum, have you got any stripey tights?”

  “No… We could maybe get some.” Polly’s mum brushed her hair out of her eyes with a gluey hand and then flinched as she realized the glue and some bits of paper were now in her fringe. “Oh well. Have you seen what Nina’s making over there, Polly?” She pointed over at the central table, where Nina was building a huge framework out of willow sticks and tape. “Come and see.”