“Now!” Valerian called.
He spurred his horse forward, but when the animal came close to its masters it stopped. One of the villagers put his hand up to the horse’s cheek and whispered to it. The horse rose on its back legs and let out a loud whinny. Valerian slipped from the horse’s back and fell into the thin straw on the stable floor.
As he hit the ground he howled with pain and then blacked out.
Two men stepped forward, and Boy saw the cart driver behind them. Another villager lowered an old but sturdy pitchfork at Boy, pointing its three prongs at his throat. The man was strong and broad, with a weather-worn, dirty face.
“Now,” he said, “my fine City boy, what have you done to our church?”
“I?” said Boy.
The villager swung the pitchfork, hitting Boy across the side of the head with the handle. Willow rushed over as he fell next to Valerian.
“You’ve killed him!” she screamed.
The man spat in the straw.
“Not yet,” he said. “He’s breathing yet.”
With relief Willow saw it was true. She looked about her. Boy and Valerian both lay, out cold, in the foul-smelling straw of a barn in a village miles away from the City. Around her stood a gang bent on revenge, and she knew there was nothing she could do.
2
Dawn rose on the morning of December 30, but Boy and Willow did not see the day break. Valerian did not see anything.
Boy had come round from the blow to his head quite soon, and immediately been sick in the straw. He put his hand to his head, and felt blood and broken skin. He had a murderous headache.
The villagers had escorted Willow and Boy back to the church, and had carried Valerian none too gently with them.
They took them to the hole in the church floor, Gad Beebe’s place of interment. Seeing it again, Willow was shocked by what they had done, the violation they had caused.
“You did this?” grunted a man with sunken cheeks.
Boy was too fearful to speak after his last try. Willow couldn’t see that there was any point in denying it, but couldn’t bring herself to admit to it either.
Then Pitchfork Man spoke.
“What are we going to do with them?”
“Kill them now,” said one.
“We ought to send for the Watch,” said a taller man, who seemed nervous.
“That will take days,” said Pitchfork. “Let’s drown them in the millrace.”
“It’s frozen, you fool! It’ll take hours to make a hole big enough.”
And so they argued, and eventually decided to lock their prisoners in the crypt while they decided what to do.
The sunken-cheeked man pushed Boy and Willow ahead of him, waving his scythe. At the far end of the church, in a corner of the nave, was a low archway. Four steps led down from it to a metal grille.
Sunken Cheeks unlocked the gate to the underworld.
Boy and Willow hesitated, but when he lowered the tip of his scythe at them they slunk into the dark. Beyond the grille a dozen more steps curved around, taking them back under the body of the church itself. At the bottom, they stopped in complete darkness.
There was a noise like a scuttling animal, then a flash of sparks behind them-a burning torch had been thrown down the stairs so there was light to carry Valerian down.
He was dumped roughly on the floor.
“Heavy, he is,” said one, and they left. The nervous one turned and bent to take the torch back with them.
“Please!” said Willow. “Please leave us some light!” She tried to make herself sound as pitiful as possible, but that wasn’t hard. The man looked at her and was reminded of his own daughter sleeping safely in her bed in the farmhouse.
Without a word he handed her the torch and followed his friend back up the curving steps to the church.
Boy rushed after him, but the gate was already shut and locked.
“Please,” he begged through the metal grille of the crypt entrance, “please can we have a blanket for Valerian?”
Their footsteps disappeared up the four stone steps and they were gone.
3
The crypt was a cramped room with a vaulted ceiling low above their heads, which made it feel as if they were sitting inside a treasure chest. In the center stood a large stone sarcophagus, and along each of the longer walls were three cists capped with headstones commemorating the person whose bones lay inside.
On one of the shorter walls was an iron bracket, and Willow put the torch there so that they could see a little better. Boy returned from the metal grille at the top of the steps.
“It’s not good,” he said. “It’s locked tight.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not like they need to stop people getting out of here, is it?”
“No,” said Willow. “It’s to stop people getting in. To stop them…”
“Stealing bodies,” said Boy, finishing what she could not.
“Boy,” cried Willow suddenly, “what are we doing? What have we got into?”
“You, you mean,” said Boy. “I was always a part of this. Whatever he does, I do. You had a choice.”
Willow looked at Valerian.
“Let’s see what we can do for him.”
They lifted his head and folded the wide collar of his coat out, then rested his head back on it. His arm was worse. There was a distinctly unpleasant smell coming from it. They pulled his coat tight around him.
“Where’s that last bottle?” said Willow.
Boy fished in Valerian’s pockets and pulled out the last of Kepler’s potion.
Lifting Valerian’s head again, they tipped a small amount of the thin green liquid into his mouth.
Automatically he swallowed, coughing.
Boy sniffed the liquid before shoving the cork back. He pulled a face. As Willow was busy trying to lower Valerian’s head, a burning curiosity came over him. Holding his nose, he took a small swig of the stuff.
He choked but swallowed. Immediately fire spread through his body. The taste was awful, but it was soon replaced by a wonderful feeling of strength and power and lightness. He felt better than he had in days, in ages.
His body no longer ached. He felt no hunger, no pain, no fear. He looked at the bottle in his hand and then at Valerian, who already showed signs of stirring.
Willow turned round to Boy. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.” He smiled at her. He was amazed to feel calm, confident, even glad.
“Well,” he said, “what are we going to do?”
Willow crumpled. “What can we do?” she wailed. “We’re locked in a stone hole, under a church, in a god-forsaken village miles from home. Valerian has two days left unless maybe we find the book, and we still have no idea where it is!”
She stopped.
“Don’t we?” said a voice behind her.
Valerian looked up at them from the stones. He raised himself on one arm, then lifted himself back to his feet. Willow was amazed by this, but Boy knew the secret of Kepler’s green liquid.
“Boy!” said Valerian, fishing in his pocket. “Where’s my bottle?”
“Here,” said Boy, bringing it to him. “We just fed you a little of it. We thought it might help.” He couldn’t hide the smile on his face as he saw Valerian on his feet again, and as Valerian took the bottle back from him with his good arm, he smiled back.
Boy felt good, strong and happy.
Valerian looked at the bottle. It was half empty.
“You were right,” he said, “but there is little left. Still, it is time we were about things.”
He put a hand out to Boy’s cheek for a moment, then seemed to remember himself and instantly pulled it back. It happened so fast that Boy wondered if he’d imagined it.
“But what can we do?” said Willow.
Valerian turned to her, his bad arm swinging loosely at his side.
“Come now, Willow, it’s not like you to be weak! It’s usually the boy here.”
Boy laughed. He didn’t even mind Valerian making fun of him. He felt good and that was all.