Sacrament

'It's all stupid,' he muttered. 'What is?' said somebody at his back.

He turned round, and found not one but two pairs of eyes upon him. The speaker, a fair-haired, fair-skinned and presently heavily-freckled girl a little older than himself, was standing at the rise of the bridge, while her companion squatted against the wall opposite Will and picked his nose. The boy was plainly her brother; they had common broad, plain features and grave, grey eyes. But while she still looked to be in her Sunday best, her sibling was a mess, his clothes wrinkled and grimy, his mouth stained with berry juice. He stared at Will with a scowl.

'What's stupid?' the girl said again. 'This place.'

"Tisn't,' said the boy. 'You're stupid.' 'Hush, Sherwood,' the girl said.

'Sherwood?' said Will.

'Yeah, Sherwood,' came the boy's defiant reply. He scrambled to his feet as if ready for a fight, his legs scabby with old scrapes. His belligerence lasted ten seconds. Then he said: 'I want to go and play somewhere else.' His interest in the stranger had plainly already waned. 'Come on, Frannie.

'That's not my real name,' the girl put in, before Will could remark upon it. 'It's Frances.'

'Sherwood's a daft name,' Will said.

'Oh yeah?' said Sherwood.

'Yeah.'

'So who are you?' Frannie wanted to know.

'He's the Rabjohns kid,' scabby-kneed Sherwood said.

'How'd you know that?' Will demanded.

Sherwood shrugged. 'I heard,' he said with a mischievous little smile, "cause I listen.'

Frannie laughed. 'The things you hear,' she said.

Sherwood giggled, pleased to be appreciated. 'The things I hear,' he said, his voice sing-song, as he repeated the phrase. 'The things I hear, the things I hear.'

'Knowing somebody's name isn't so clever,' Will replied.

'I know more than that.'

'Like?'

'Like you came from Manchester, and you had a brother only he's dead.' He spoke the d-word with relish. 'And your dad's a teacher.' He glanced at his sister. 'Frannie says she hates teachers.'

'Well he's not a teacher,' Will shot back.

'What is he then?' Frannie wanted to know.

'He's ... he's a Doctor of Philosophy.'

It sounded like a fine boast, and for a moment it silenced his audience. Then Frannie said: 'Is he really a doctor?'

She had unerringly gone to the part of his father's nomenclature Will had never really understood. He put a brave face on his incomprehension. 'Sort of,' he said. 'He makes people better by .. . by writing books.'

'That's stupid,' Sherwood said, crowing the word that had begun their whole exchange. He started to laugh at how ridiculous this was.

'I don't care what you think,' Will said, putting on his best sneer. 'Anybody who lives in this dump has got to be the biggest stupid person I ever saw. That's what you are-'

Sherwood had turned his back on Will and was spitting over the bridge. Will gave up on him and marched off back towards the house.

'Wait-' he heard Frannie say.

'Frannie,' Sherwood whined, 'leave him alone.'

But Frannie was already at Will's side. 'Sometimes Sherwood gets silly,' she said, almost primly. 'But he's my brother, so I have to watch out for him.'

'Somebody's going to bash him one of these days. Bash him hard. And it might be me.'

'He gets bashed all the time,' Frannie said, "cause people think he's not quite...' she halted, drew a breath, then went on: '... not quite right in the head.'

'Fraaaannnnie...' Sherwood was yelling.

'You'd better go back to him, in case he falls off the bridge.'

Frannie gave her brother a fretful backward glance. 'He's okay. You know, it's not so bad here,' she said.

'I don't care,' Will replied. 'I'm going to be running away.'

'Are you?'

'I just said, didn't I?'

'Where to?'

'I haven't made up my mind.'

The conversation faltered here, and Will hoped Frannie would go back to her brattish brother, but she was determined to keep the exchange going, walking beside him. 'Is it true what Sherwood said?' she asked, her voice softening. 'About your brother?'

'Yeah. He was knocked down by a taxi.'

'That must be horrible for you,' Frannie said.

'I didn't like him very much.'

'Still ... if something like that ever happened to Sherwood ...They had come to a divide in the road. To the left lay the route back to the house; to the right, a less well-made track that rapidly wound out of sight behind the hedgerows. Will hesitated a moment, weighing up the options.

'I should go back,' Frannie said.

'I'm not stopping you,' Will replied.

Frannie didn't move. He glanced round at her, and saw such hurt in her eyes he had to look away. Seeking some other point of interest, his gaze found the one visible building close to the right-hand track, and more to mellow his cruelty than out of genuine curiosity he asked Frannie what it was.

'Everybody calls it the Courthouse,' she said. 'But it isn't really. It was built by this man who wanted to protect horses or something. I don't know the proper story.'

'Who lives there?' Will said. As far as he could tell at this distance, it was an impressive-looking structure; it almost looked like a temple in one of his history books, except that it was built of dark stone.

'Nobody lives there,' Frannie said. 'It's horrible inside.'

'You went in?'

'Sherwood hid there once. He knows more about it than I do. You should ask him.'

Will wrinkled up his nose. 'Nah,' he said, feeling as though he'd made his attempt at conciliation and he could now depart without guilt.

'Fraaannnie!' Sherwood was yelling again. He had clambered up onto the wall of the bridge and was imitating a trapeze artist as he walked along it.

'Get down off there!' Frannie shouted at him, and saying goodbye to Will over her shoulder, hurried back to the bridge to enforce her edict.

Relieved to have the girl gone, Will again considered the routes before him. If he went back to the house now he could slake his thirst and fill the growing hole in his belly. But he'd also have to endure the atmosphere of ill- humour that hung about the place. Better to go walking, he thought; find out what was around the bend and beyond the hedgerows.

He glanced back at the bridge to see that Frannie had coaxed Sherwood down off the wall and that he was now sitting on the ground again, hugging his knees, while his sister stood gazing in Will's direction. He gave her a half-hearted wave, and then struck out along the unexplored road, thinking as he went that perhaps the route would be so tantalizing that he'd make good on his boast to the girl, and keep walking till Burnt Yarley was just a memory.

CHAPTER IV

The Courthouse was further than he'd thought. He walked and walked, and every turn in the road showed him another turn and every hedgerow he peered over another hedgerow, until it dawned on him that he'd completely miscalculated the size of the building. It was not near and small, it was far and enormous. By the time he came abreast of it, and surveyed the hedge looking for a way into the field in which it stood, fully half an hour had passed. The day had grown more uncomfortable than ever, and there were heavy clouds looming over the fells to the northeast. Adele Bottrall's cleansing storm, at last, its billowing thunderheads casting shadows on the heights. Perhaps it would be better to leave this adventuring for another day, he thought. The sting on his neck had begun to pain him afresh, and had passed its throb to the bones of his head. It was time to go home, whatever he'd boasted.

But to have come so far and not have anything to tell was surely a waste. Five more minutes he'd be through the hedge and across the field, into the mystery building. Another five and he'd have seen its dank interior, and he could be away, taking a short cut across the fields, content that his trudge had not been in vain.