The Treasure Beneath the Hill, chapter 10

'Are you going to be Pan from now on, instead of Dora?' said Grandpa Jack.

'Maybe,' said Pan. 'Perhaps. I think so, probably. Is that all right? Do you mind?'

'No, I don't mind,' said Grandpa Jack. 'But I've already bought you fluffy pink slippers for Christmas.'

'You can still give them to me,' said Pan. 'I like fluffy pink slippers.'

They tramped up the hill through the rain, accompanied by Thomas Mountford, on whom the raindrops made no impression. Soon they found themselves on the fringes of a crowd of ghosts, which grew more and more dense as they approached the church.

'What have those rotten buggers done to my house?' exclaimed Grandpa Jack in aggrieved tones.

'It's all right, Grandpa,' said Pan. 'I told you the end of the school had fallen down, but your house is fine.'

'Then why have they covered it in all this scaffolding?' said Grandpa Jack.

'That's just to make sure it's safe,' said Pan.

'Doesn't look very safe to me,' grumbled Grandpa Jack.

By this time they were at the yellow and black tape and warning signs that guarded the entrance to the playground. Thomas Mountford lifted up the tape so that they could walk under it.

'I thought you couldn't move or touch anything except when you were underground,' said Pan.

'At first I couldn't,' agreed Thomas Mountford. 'But perhaps I have been above ground for long enough now, or perhaps the barrier between the two worlds is thinning. Your daylight world certainly seems to be filling up with ghosts.'

It certainly did. They picked their way through the mud along the edge of the playground-diggings, until they reached the steps that led up to the front of the church. There were ghosts everywhere, thronged around the church in the same way that iron filings throng around a magnetic field. But no matter how dense the crowd became, they never had to push their way through. The ghosts parted for them, like dust motes in a shaft of sunlight, swirling aside when you wave your hand through them.

But when they got to the steps, Pan suddenly felt a terrible blankness opening up inside him. He stopped with his foot on the bottom tread, clutching the hand rail, with rain running down his face.

'Go on,' urged Grandpa Jack from behind him.

'Grandpa,' whispered Pan, 'I've forgotten it all.'

'What?'

'I've forgotten everything. I've forgotten what I'm supposed to do.'

'What do you mean?' hissed Grandpa Jack. 'You've got the bag, haven't you?'

For some reason they felt obliged to speak in whispers, as if they were performing in a play and they'd forgotten their lines.

'The bag!' said Pan. 'I'd even forgotten about the bag!'

He took it out of his pocket, and looked at it in the palm of his hand. The rain fell on it. It was a small crumpled sack of soft green cloth, with a tie of red string round its neck. It looked just big enough to hold a few coins, or maybe half a dozen marbles. How was this bag going to help against Abner Brown and Sylvia Pouncer?

'What am I supposed to do with it?' said Pan hopelessly.

'You've got to give it to Abner Brown, haven't you?' said Grandpa Jack.

'Have I?' said Pan. He really couldn't remember at all. His mind had gone completely blank.

'Yes, and then you've got to say that rhyme.'

Pan scrunched the green bag in his fist. 'How does the rhyme go, Grandpa?' he whispered.

'I haven't got a clue,' said Grandpa Jack. 'Didn't it have an old fashioned word in it?'

'Did it?' said Pan in agonized tones. 'I don't know whether it did or not. I don't know any of it any more. I can't do any of it. Why does it have to be me? I'm no good at this sort of thing.'

'All right, calm down,' said Grandpa Jack. 'It's just nerves. Stage-fright. I was the same, the first time I had to play the piano in front of an audience.'

'That's nothing like this, Grandpa.'

'Of course it is,' said Grandpa Jack. 'It's exactly the same thing.'

'I recognize that purse,' said Thomas Mountford, looking over Grandpa Jack's shoulder. 'It belonged to Bridget, or one very like it did.'

Pan stared at him.

'Did it?'

'Where did you get it from?' said Thomas Mountford.

'From a lady called Brigid, who lives under the hill.'

'And what's this about a rhyme?'

'I had to give this purse to Abner Brown,' said Pan, 'and then I had to recite one of the rhymes from that book. But I can't remember the rhyme.'

'And the book is buried under all that masonry,' said Thomas Mountford, looking back across the playground at the collapsed end of the school. 'Only a mouse could reach it there.'

'It's hopeless,' said Pan.

'But perhaps a little help is at hand,' said Thomas Mountford.

As he spoke they saw something tiny and dark moving across the wet surface of the rubble. Something tiny and dark with - was it? - something white at the front end.

'What is it?' said Pan.

'I believe it's a mouse,' said Thomas Mountford. 'Carrying a scrap of paper.'

'I can't see a bloody thing,' said Grandpa Jack.

'Are you friends with the mice?' said Thomas Mountford.

Pan didn't have a chance to reply, because it was at that moment that the door of the church was flung open, and Abner Brown and Sylvia Pouncer appeared on the threshold.

For a few moments Abner and Sylvia stared in astonishment at the drowning landscape and the throng of ghosts; but then Abner Brown regathered his wits and started to look around more sharply; and he must have had eyes like an eagle, because the first words out of his mouth were 'Quickly, my Pouncer! I spy a mouse!'

'Where?' cried Sylvia.

'There!' He threw out his arm, pointing to the old school. 'Catch it!'

Sylvia Pouncer ran, with startling speed and athleticism, straight along the front of the church towards the steps where Pan, Grandpa Jack and Thomas Mountford were standing. On her face was such a strange fierce stare, so concentrated and savage, that it was impossible to tell whether she had seen them or recognized them at all. 'Stop her!' said Thomas Mountford, and Pan was bracing himself to get in her way - but before she reached them an extraordinary change came over her. Her eyes turned amber and green and blazed even more fiercely than before. Suddenly she was on all fours. She was lithe, electric, elastic, black. She was a black cat.

She left the path and streaked diagonally past them, onto the top of a gravestone, onto the church wall, then into the playground. In a few leaps, lightning-fast, she crossed the flooded trenches and the collapsed canvas roofs, and reached the jumble of masonry on the far side. They saw the tiny scurrying dark brown shape with its speck of white stop in its tracks, freezing at the sight of her - and next moment she pounced on it, launching herself in a deadly arc. The little creature was flattened by her paw. The white speck it carried fluttered into the air.

Almost in the same instant it flattened the mouse, the black cat twisted itself round with supernatural speed to catch the fluttering scrap of paper, but it was just too late. Something small and grey flickered through the rain-drenched air and snapped up the paper as if it was a moth, then jigged away out of range. The cat's paws grasped at the empty space where it had been. The small grey flying creature was already on its way towards the church steps, dancing through the raindrops with blurry almost-invisible wings.

'Are you also friends with the bats?' said Thomas Mountford.

As he spoke, the bat flicked above their heads, and a scrap of paper came drifting down through the air, like a falling leaf. Pan caught it as it fell. He already knew what it was before he spread it out to look at the antiquated black ink handwriting that covered it. It was the rhyme from Bridget's book. The ink was already beginning to run and blot in the rain, but it didn't matter, because as soon as he caught it the words reappeared inside his head. He looked up towards the church, and found himself looking straight into Abner Brown's cold, powerful stare.

'Go on, Pan,' urged Grandpa Jack. 'Now's the time.'

A strange feeling of remote control came over Pan, as if he was being pulled forward by a power outside of himself. He went up the steps and along the front of the church towards Abner Brown without making any conscious effort or decision to do so, and indeed without any distinct feeling that he was walking at all. It was more as if he was gliding on rails. He was completely unaware of his own legs. It was as if he had walked out onto a stage in front of a packed audience, because as soon as he reached the top of the steps the attention of all the ghosts was fastened on him - but he hardly noticed that. In fact he was only properly conscious of two things: one was his thumping heart; and the other was Abner Brown's stare, which was focussed on him with a mixture of intense fury and scorn.

'What's this?' said Abner in his most withering tones. 'What have we here? Is it a boy or a girl?'

Pan stopped in front of him.

'Go away,' said Abner Brown. 'Run back to grandpa, little girl or little boy. I'm busy.'

'Here lies the hoard beneath the hill,' started Pan in a shaking voice - but once he started he found himself speaking out more loudly and firmly:

Here lies the hoard beneath the hill,

A curse on them that wreak it ill.

Spare ye enow the bag to fill

Of she that walks both fast and still.

The audience of ghosts seemed to understand that he was issuing some sort of challenge. They turned their attention to Abner Brown, to observe his response.

'What's that supposed to mean?' sneered Abner. 'Did you just make it up? It's not very good, is it?'

'Take this,' said Pan, and held out the bag.

'No thank you,' said Abner - but at the same moment that he said it, he reached out and took the bag. 'This is the bag, is it? What have I got to do with this? What's this got to do with me? Who does this belong to? Where is she? Is she here?'

He looked round sharply. His eyes went searching rapidly through the ghost-crowd, looking for somebody he couldn't find, and his face was suddenly white: the face of a greedy old miser who thinks somebody's trying to steal his money.

'Is who here?' said Pan.

'She who walks both fast and still. Don't play games with me. You know exactly who I mean.' He stared suspiciously at Pan. 'Have you met her?'

'Yes,' said Pan, 'I've met her.'

'And how - how did you catch up with her?' said Abner Brown.

'I rode on the back of the pig,' said Pan. 'And I called her by her name.'

Abner opened his mouth as if to ask him something else, then closed it again. Then he looked at the bag Pan had given him, and smiled a tight little smile. 'Well,' he said, almost to himself, 'no harm done. It won't take much to fill this.'

He turned on his heel and walked into the church. Pan followed him through the door; a few seconds later, Grandpa Jack and Thomas Mountford came after; and after them, in a slow rustling filter, came the ghosts. Last of all, at the back of the crowd, unnoticed by anyone, came a black cat.

They all stared in astonishment at the ruination that had fallen on the church: the black trench in the middle of the floor, the pews dragged up against the side walls, the heaps of dirt and soil everywhere.

'Look at the mess they've made!' exclaimed Grandpa Jack. 'They're ransacked the place! The miserable buggers!'

A collective sigh went through the ghosts, like a breeze passing through a field of corn.

But Abner Brown was already at the far end of the floor-hole, stooping over the pile of gold and silver acorns.

'All right,' he said defiantly, his voice echoing in the church. 'I can spare enough to fill this bag. It's only small. It won't take more than a few. Four or five at the most.'

Saying which, he picked up a handful of the acorns and started to drop them one at a time into the bag. They clinked against one another as they fell to the bottom. When his hand was empty he hesitated for a moment, and held up the bag by its neck; but it still wasn't full; so he stooped and picked up another handful of acorns, and dropped those in one at a time too.

The bag still wasn't full. He held it up by its neck again, then picked up another handful of the acorns, this time the biggest handful he could manage; and again, he fed them into the bag one at a time, more slowly than before, this time holding it up to look at it again after each one. Eventually the whole handful was gone - and the bag still wasn't full.

He turned angrily towards Pan, Grandpa Jack and Thomas Mountford. 'It's a trick,' he said accusingly. 'I've been tricked. Why won't it fill?'

They said nothing.

'Why couldn't I catch up with her,' he said, addressing the whole audience, 'even though she wasn't walking fast? And why won't the bag fill?'

Still nobody answered.

He picked up another handful of the gold and silver acorns, and this time he tried to shovel them all into the bag at once, with the result that two of them dropped onto the floor with bell-like tinging noises. Still the bag wasn't full. He did the same again, with an air of growing desperation, and still the bag was no more full than it had been after the first handful.

'Why won't it fill?' shouted Abner Brown, his face reddening with exasperation. 'What's happening?'

'Look,' said Thomas Mountford, 'there's Bridget.'

As he spoke there was a gasp from the ghost crowd, and then they all saw her: Brigid, the lady from beneath the hill, standing next to Abner Brown, as if she had been there all the time. Perhaps she had. He saw her himself at the same moment, jumped back in astonishment, and almost fell into the hole in the floor. He saved himself in the nick of time, with a sideways stagger; and then they were facing each other, across the width of the black rectangular trench.

'What are you doing here?' he said. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' And then, ridiculously: 'This - this is private property! You're not allowed in here! Didn't you see the signs?'

'You need to fill the bag,' said Brigid.

'What?' said Abner in disbelief. 'Didn't you hear what I said?'

'You need to fill the bag,' she repeated.

'What do you think I've been trying to do?' he retorted. 'I've been trying to fill it! It won't fill! I've been trying! It's some kind of trick!'

'You need to fill it,' said Brigid. 'You.'

'What?' said Abner.

'Not the acorns,' said Brigid. 'You.'

'What?' said Abner again. He held up the bag by the neck. 'Me? What are you talking about? What are you saying - me get in there? In that bag? What are you talking about? I couldn't fit in there! Is that what you mean?'

'You need to fill it,' repeated Brigid. 'You think you can fill the bag of life with riches, but you can't. You have to fill it with yourself.'

'Don't talk rubbish,' said Abner angrily, and he threw down the bag and stamped on it. But somehow, instead of landing on top of the bag, his foot went inside it. He staggered, and tried to pull it back out, but without success. He was off balance, flailing his arms. The end of one leg was gone. The bag wasn't big enough to fill the palm of his hand, yet it was around his foot and ankle. It almost seemed to be eating him. The ghost crowd huddled forward with a rising murmur of excitement and consternation, to see what would happen. It was unclear whether Abner was getting smaller or the bag was getting bigger, but both his feet were inside it now, and it was up to his knees, then up to his waist. It was like a nightmarish version of a sack-race, in which the sack was trying to devour the contestant. The more he tried to escape from it, the more he was dragged in, like a man struggling in quicksand. The ghost crowd gave a moan of pity and sympathy and fulfillment. The last thing that was visible was his face, contorted with fury and panic; and then he vanished completely.

There was a shocked silence. At the back of the crowd, the black cat quietly slipped away, unobserved, out of the church door.

'Poor bugger,' said Grandpa Jack eventually.

Brigid picked up her bag. It was only large enough to hold a few coins.

'What's going to happen now?' said Pan.

'Now,' said Brigid, 'I'm going to play my harp.'

'Oh, that'll be nice,' said Grandpa Jack. 'I haven't heard any harp music in ages.'

'I remember,' said Thomas Mountford, 'that you used to play the harp many years ago. It was one of the loveliest things I ever heard. You played it for me one evening, when you had finished writing in your book.' 'Yes, Thomas,' she said, smiling at him, 'I remember that too.'

None of them were quite sure whether she took the harp out of her magical bag, or whether she'd had it with her all the time; but they all realised now that she was cradling it in her left arm. It wasn't a large harp, like the ones you see in orchestras, but a small one that could be held in the crook of one arm and played with the other hand. And when she began to play, it wasn't really a tune but a sequence of single shining notes, like the notes in a peal of bells, or like tiny fishes swimming in a stream, or poppies in a field of ripe corn, or sun-spots striking through a canopy of leaves, or swallows cutting and curving through hot blue air, or brilliant iridescent damsel-flies darting above long feathery grass. And like all of those things, it made you forget the past and the future and fixed your concentration on the here-and-now, the living present, the unfolding eternal moment which is the heart of nature. It had stopped raining and the sun had come out; they could see the sunlight shining on wet paths and the upper rims of all the gravestones; and they could see these things because they were no longer under the roof of the church, but out of doors, beneath the thick craggy branches of an enormous oak tree that grew from the top of the hill; and the ghosts were all vanishing, sinking back into the ground like autumn leaves falling into the soil; and the last one of all to vanish was Thomas Mountford, who raised his hand to say goodbye; and as the ghosts vanished, a shining green-and-gold serpent was emerging from a hole amongst the roots of the tree, twining its way up the trunk, then sliding and winding itself through the branches, vanishing and reappearing like a needle and thread in the cloth of a tapestry.

And then they understood that it was time to start again.

When Pan arrived for his holiday, Grandpa Jack was surprized to see that his grandchild was no longer a girl but a boy.

'Hallo!' he said. 'Are you doing yourself up as a boy these days?'

'Yes, I am,' said Pan. 'Can you call me Pan from now on, instead of Dora?'

'If you like,' said Grandpa Jack. 'You always did like being a boy. You used to go up the red stairs in my house dressed as a girl, then you used to come down the blue stairs dressed as a boy, and after that you'd stay as a boy for the rest of the day.'

'Do you mind if I stay as a boy from now on, Grandpa?'

'I don't see why I should,' said Grandpa Jack. 'What does your Dad say?'

'He says he doesn't care, as long as I'm happy,' said Pan.

'Good for him,' said Grandpa Jack.

'Then I came home one evening, and he was dressed up as a woman,' said Pan.

'Silly bugger,' said Grandpa Jack. 'What did he look like?'

'He looked horrible.'

'I should think he did.'

'Grandpa,' said Pan, 'what's happening to the church?'

The church at the top of the hill was covered in scaffolding.

'Oh, they're doing it up,' said Grandpa Jack. 'They're fixing the roof, because it was leaking all over the place. They don't want to harm the bats, though, so they're doing it in a bat-friendly way, and fitting lots of bat boxes. Did you know Bill the vicar died?'

'No,' said Pan.

'Yes, it was very sad. But we've got a new lady vicar now. She's called Bridget. She's a bit wierd and mysterious, but I do like her. And Henry the pig-man's retired too!'

'He hasn't, has he?' said Pan.

'Yes, we've got a new pig-man now, called Thomas Mountford.'

'But the pig's still the same, isn't he?' said Pan.

'Oh yes,' said Grandpa Jack. 'The pig's still the same.'

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