Let’s Get Out of Here

Only a couple of weeks now to school. I always feel a bit desperate at this time of year. The holidays just seem to slip away – so smooth and easy. One minute you have weeks and weeks of golden Summer, with school just an odd grey blur on the horizon – the next minute – it’s not a blur any more, it’s a huge shadow looming over you, darkening your last few days of remaining freedom.

Cathy’s been on the computer quite a lot recently. It seems her parents kept some sort of on-line hard disk – one of those things where you can save your documents and pictures and so forth, and access them from anywhere which connects to the internet. Very useful for investigative journalists who travel a lot.

Cathy’s been reading through their files – trying to find out what they had been working on – looking for clues. Luckily for her the lawyers who looked after her parents’ estate were good at that kind of stuff – so everything they found, they renewed in Cathy’s name. She has all the codes and passwords, so it should have been easy. But she says there’s nothing. The only thing they were working on recently was a news report – it was some kind of anthropology study – it seems her parents were also some sort of anthropological experts – makes me and Dad seem rather lame – but there you go. She says they were working on collecting legends about ancient burial mounds – kind of looking for connections between stories. I’d always thought anthropology was about discovering missing tribes in the heart of the Amazon – just goes to show, doesn’t it.

I went down to my dad’s study – that’s where the computer is. Dad’s not there – but sure enough, Cathy is sitting there, book on her lap, eyes on the screen.

“It’s a bit weird,” I say. She looks up, so I go on. “I mean, me and Dad – we hardly watch any news at all – we don’t get a newspaper – we don’t go reading up on it on the internet – I mean, to be honest, we actively avoid the news.”

“But then here’s me,” she says, “up to my eyeballs in old news reports and photo’s, and with parents whose whole live revolved around finding news, photographing news, and then getting that news published as, well, news.”

“Yeah,” I say, “totally odd.” I look at her carefully – “So, all that news, all those horrible things that happen all over the world – is that what made you grow up all warped and distorted and stuff?”

Luckily I have quite good reflexes, otherwise she might have damaged the book, or even my face for that matter – since that’s what she threw it at. Not that it’s the most beautiful of faces – but I prefer it without book-shaped dents or cuts. It was a good shot too, and it wasn’t easy to catch cleanly. I had to cheat a bit. I doubt she noticed – most people don’t.

“What was that for!” I say – I’m trying to put an expression of hurt confusion over my grin, and I think I’m failing.

“Oops, sorry,” she says – trying just as hard to look innocent, and failing just as badly – my hand must have slipped,” she says.

“You were lucky I have good reflexes.”

“Maybe. But I do have eyes in my head, you know. I’ve seen you – reflexes of a wombat.”

“Aren’t wombats a bit slow and stupid?”

“Are they,” she says, grinning. Well, I walked into that one! So maybe she’s right. Anyway, I can see I stand no chance here today so I fall back on the real reason I came and disturbed her.

“I just talked to Dad, and he says he has to go away for a while – he’s got some work to do.”

“Yeah,” she says, taking the book back and shutting down the computer. “Does that mean I’m going to meet your famous Mrs Scarsdale?”

“Fraid so.”

“Oh well, never mind.”

“But I do have some other news.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Well, we do pretty well for ourselves around here, so I thought you might like to know that we don’t only have standing stones nearby, we do, actually, also have and old burial mound.”

“A barrow?”

“Not very big or impressive. It’s been ploughed over a couple of times, er, that was before it got a conservation notice. Now it’s just a grassy hill – not very big, but it’s still a burial mound.” She looks pretty pleased, so I add, “It’s supposed to be Bronze Age or something. And you said your parents were studying things like that – so I thought . . .”

She jumps up. “Great,” she says, “fantastic! A real dragon mound!”

“Whoa there,” I say, “I didn’t say anything about dragons. It’s just a mouldy old hill.”

“No silly,” she says, “that’s what people call them – dragon mounds – on account of the old Anglo-Saxon ideas about dragons coming to guard treasure and make it their own, about dragons sometimes living in barrows.”

“Well, I don’t know anything about that. It certainly doesn’t look like anything a dragon might live in.”

“It’s just the stories. You remember? I told you, my Mum and Dad were looking at the old stories. There’s lots of old stories about dragons and barrows. Lots of place names too ‘Drakelow’, Draclowe’, ‘Wormwood Hill’, ‘Wyrmslowe’, stuff like that. Have you never read Beowulf?”

“Er, shall we go, then?” I ask, deftly changing the subject.

***

It’s not far to the old barrow hill, but it’s a bit of an odd route. You have to edge around the Stone Woods – most people don’t know the woods are named for the standing stones – they just assume that the name comes from all the rocks and boulders that are scattered through it. You follow the edge of the woods along rutted old farm lanes – woods to your left, ditch – then hedge – then fields, to your right. We follow the deep rutted tractor tracks in a great uneven curve around the woods. Lucky it hasn’t rained recently.

It’s fun. Mostly the mud is baked hard by the sun, but from time to time we go through patches that have been shielded by the great oaks and beeches that lean over from the wood. There it is muddy and treacherous. I act the gentleman, and I only push Cathy a little bit – she hardly gets muddy at all. She’s not as restrained with me – but I’m good at dodging or jumping away. It must be those wombat reflexes again. I hardly cheat at all.

The Stone Woods look really thick when you look from the lane – thick brambles and nettles – and little enough light.

“Is that where we went to the Stones?” asks Cathy.

“That’s right,” I say, jumping over a deep rut to avoid a particularly rich, large, splattered cowpat. “There’s not many paths, and it looks a bit dark and uninviting, so not a lot of people go in.” I grin. “That’s why it’s so private.”

On the right hand side, the hedge gives way to an old brick wall – crumbly, but high and strong.

“What’s behind there?” she says.

“That’s the wall to the old manor grounds.” She looks interested, so I go on. “Actually, the fields we passed before – they’re part of the estate too – but this wall closes off the private parts of the lands.”

“Anyone live there?”

“Oh yeah – the old house and this wall date back to Tudor times – and the same family still owns and runs the estate.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah – the Austen family – or the Leightons – I’m not sure which.”

“It’s a bit different isn’t it?” She says – teasing me again.

“OK then, the family name is Austen – but the man who owns it is called Lord Leighton or something. Leighton’s the title, but Austen’s the name. OK?”

She laughs, “OK smarty pants. No need to get all clever on me!”

I don’t know. I’m either too stupid or too clever – and she gives me lectures on dragon hills! “It’s a bit out of the way,” I say, “but if you want to take a look at the gates – they’re worth a look.”

“The gates?”

“Yeah, the gates.”

 

So we follow the wall, away from the dirt tracks, off to the right. It faces onto a proper road now, – but still narrow, and mostly unused. The wall pulls back away from the road and broadens out to make a kind of small house – the gatehouse. The gatehouse stands next to a pair of huge wrought-iron gates. The gates are closed, and the gatehouse looks pretty empty. There’s a surveillance camera mounted on the wall of the gatehouse – pointed at the gravel in front of the gates.

“Is it OK?” says Cathy.

“Yeah. Lots of people come to look at these gates. They’re famous.”

So, we make our way up to the gates to take a look. Actually – when I said these gates were worth a look – I hadn’t told the whole truth. The gates are amazing. That’s true. They’re amazing, but they always make me feel a bit odd. I don’t know why.

The gates are made of wrought-iron – but with iron figures woven into the structure. The main thing about them is that each wing of the great gates figures a knight on horseback killing a dragon. It’s the usual St George type of thing – dragon on its back – all long and scaly and serpentine – and the knight piercing it through with his trusty lance.

The two wings of the gate are almost mirror images of each other – but there are plenty of minor differences for the dedicated maniac to focus on.

I’ve always hated those knights – they look so cruel. And the dragons – they are made to look evil – but for me it just doesn’t work. I like dragons.

“It’s well made,” she says.

“Yeah – like I said, it’s a famous piece of work.”

She’s quiet a bit, looking at the sculpting – then she grunts.

“But it’s a great pack of lies really!”

“What?” I say.

“Well – look at it. Pissy little knights like that – there’s no way they could defeat those great fierce dragons – they’d be ripped to pieces.”

I look closer. Of course she’s right – but I can’t help thinking how cruel those knights look – like they have some sort of evil powers beyond the lance and the sword – powers that might defeat even dragons as huge and strong as these.

I tell her what I think – and I’m surprised – she doesn’t laugh.

“Maybe you’re right,” she says. “They don’t look nice, do they.” And they didn’t. I felt a buzzing in my ears – like when you have water inside them – and I almost felt swallowed by the scene in front of me. The dragons’ eyes seemed to glint – red – angry – and the evil grin of the knight cuts through me as he pushes his lance harder –deeper into the writhing beast – he thinks he’s won – but I could see better – there were depths of power in that old dragon that weren’t beaten yet.

I shook my head.

Cathy, too, looks a bit odd – shaken.

“Let’s get out of here,” she says. So we do.

 

It takes a little while to get back to our original path, but soon we’re back on route – headed for the barrow.

“Did you – see anything? she asks, a bit too casually.

“What do you mean,” says me.

“Those figures – the knights – the dragons.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “The sun’s a bit strong today.”

“They looked like they moved,” she says.

“Yeah.” I nod.

“And the dragons – they wanted us to help. They called our names.”

I hadn’t heard that. I’ve seen those figures move before – every time I’ve been to look at them. But I’ve never known anyone else who’s seen the same thing – and even I’ve never heard them speak.

“What did they say?”

“Nothing. Just our names – that’s all I heard – ‘Sean’ and ‘Cathy’. But they needed us to help them.

“We better had, then,” I said. But I had no idea how.