The Treasure Beneath the Hill, chapter 6

Pravuil was right about the floods. Once the rain started, it kept going day after day. Sometimes it eased off to a light patter, or a fine grey drizzle that blew like smoke across the huddled roofs of the town; sometimes there was even a brief spell of brightness, a gleam of light shivering across the puddles and glossing the wet pavements; perhaps the pale milky disk of the sun would show briefly through the veils of cloud overhead; but before long the darkness would close in again, the sky would drag down heavily over the rooftops and the sodden horizons, and the rain would come teeming down.

Little waterfalls cascaded from overflowing gutters. Cars drove with their headlights on in the middle of the day. Shoppers and dog-walkers plodded around in waterproof hats, Wellington boots and various styles of raincoat, their faces screwed up into expressions of distaste. Despite the wet weather, the air was uncomfortably warm, which meant that anyone dressed in anything waterproof was soon crimson in the face, and almost as soaked through from perspiration as they would have been from the rain.

'If this here weather keeps up,' said Henry the pig man, standing at the front door in a cloth cap and an old waxed jacket, 'we'll have floods down the bottom end of the High Street, like we did years ago, years and years ago, when I was a littlun.'

'Why don't you come indoors out of the rain?' said Grandpa Jack.

'No, I don't want to go making your carpet all wet,' said Henry. 'I should drip all over it.'

'But you don't mind getting soaked to the skin yourself, you daft bugger,' said Grandpa Jack.

'Well, I'm used to it,' said Henry. 'I'm used to being out in bad weather. If you're used to it, you don't mind it, do you?' And he looked round at the rain, as if it was hardly touching him, although as a matter of fact it was running off him in streams.

'Daft bugger,' repeated Grandpa Jack.

'There's people saying they've never seen weather like it,' observed Henry the pig man. 'But that's not right. Back when I was a youngster we had floods, down the bottom end of the High Street, and I went boating in an old tin bath, paddling with a plank of wood, and the old tin bath capsized and pitched me out in the water, and I had to swim for it. Good job I knew how to swim: plenty of my mates might have drowned, if it had happened to them. When I got back home my old mum was furious. I knew she would be. I was soaked through from head to foot, and I stank. Them's good clothes and you've ruined them! she said. I can hear her now. When are you going to learn the value of things! she said. Furious, she was. I knew she would be.'

'Were your clothes really ruined?' said Dora.

'No, course they weren't,' said Henry. 'She washed em out and they were fine. Clothes were made to last in those days. We used to wear the same clothes for years, and then pass them on to someone else. These days, you're only meant to wear something a few months, then it falls to bits and you've got to buy something new. That's how they make their money.'

'That's true,' said Grandpa Jack. 'Clothes are bloody rubbish nowadays. Shoes fall apart as soon as you put them on your feet.'

'And I'll tell you something else,' said Henry. 'In those days, the farmers used to dig out their ditches every year, and the council used to look after the drains properly, and the water company used to dredge the river. Which meant that when it did rain, there was good drainage, and it took a lot of doing to start a flood. These days, they don't to any of that. Don't dig out the ditches, don't take care of the drains, and don't dredge the river. Too much time and trouble and expense. And what's more they've built all houses where the old water-meadows used to be, which means the water's got nowhere to run. So it don't take such a lot of rain to start a flood these days. And this,' he added, looking round again, 'is a lot of rain.'

'I'm fed up with it,' said Grandpa Jack. 'It's a bloody nuisance. This house is leaking, and my car's got a leaky sun-roof as well. St Margaret's is letting in water through the roof: it's dripping right onto the organ keyboard. I'm trying to play the organ, and it's like splashing around in a pond.'

'Does the music sound all gurgly when it comes out?' said Dora.

'Not yet, but it wouldn't bloody surprize me.'

'This whole town could be completely surrounded with water,' announced Henry the pig man. 'This was all wetlands and marshes round here, before they drained it. In the olden days, people came here to hide from the Romans, because the Romans couldn't find their way through all the marshes. If it floods properly, all the low-lying ground, all round here, might be under water, and then we'd be cut off.'

'Wouldn't it be exciting!' said Dora.

'You wouldn't think that if it actually happened,' said Grandpa Jack. 'What if there was no food in the shops?'

'They say the oceans is rising,' said Henry the pig man. 'I saw it on the telly. What if this whole country goes back to what it was hundreds of years ago? All the low-lying parts back under water, and only the high ground poking out.'

'That's a cheerful thought,' said Grandpa Jack. 'The end of the bloody world.'

The archaeological dig in the school playground was evidently still under way, judging by the men with beards and huge baggy jumpers, and the women in dungarees and ponytails, who went trudging past Grandpa Jack's front windows first thing every morning. It was slow going, though: the brisk clinking and scraping noises that emanated from the dig in its early stages were now scarcely to be heard. This was partly because everything was now under canvas, and the drumming sound of the rain on the covers was enough to drown out almost everything else; but it was also because the bad weather made everything much more slow and difficult. When the diggers went plodding back home in the evening, they were plastered with mud and exhausted-looking, scarcely able to put one foot in front of the other.

In spite of this they still seemed to be making some exciting discoveries. On the local television news, at half past six in the evening, just after an item about the flooding of a school, and a farmer complaining that his crops were going to be ruined if this bad weather kept up, Professor Abner Brown and the Reverend Sylvia Pouncer suddenly appeared, to show off some valuable silverware that had just been discovered - a communion chalice and a crucifix, both probably dating from Tudor times.

'I went to the pub last night with the choir,' said Grandpa Jack the next evening, 'for a quick drink after choir practice, and there was a chap sitting up at the bar, a big bald chap in an anorak, smoking a curly pipe, and it turned out he was one of the archaeologists from the school playground. Gareth, his name was. He was a nice bloke, actually. We got talking about the dig, and that silverware Abner and Sylvia were showing off on the news, and he said he hadn't got a clue where it came from. He said didn't know anything about it. He said when he saw it on the news, you could've knocked him down with a feather. He said he'd been working on the dig all that time, and as far as he was aware nobody had ever dug up anything like that. He said all right, he wasn't there every minute of every day, but surely somebody would have mentioned it. He said he reckoned they must have brought it in from somewhere else, just for the sake of getting on the news. What do you think of that?'

'Weird,' said Dora.

'He also said,' pursued Grandpa Jack, 'that Abner and Sylvia have managed to make themselves thoroughly unpopular with all the archaeologists. He says Abner clearly knows what he's talking about when it comes to church history and ancient artefacts, but he's the kind of chap who never gets his hands dirty: he never gets involved with the actual digging. He couldn't care less about anything they find if it isn't made of gold or silver. If you're a proper archaeologist, Gareth says, then the real fascination lies in finding out how people lived their lives hundreds of years ago. You might find an old hair comb, or a game somebody used to play, or a set of wooden beads, and it'll be just as exciting to you as a gold ring with a massive diamond in it, because it puts you in touch with the past. But then you get these other archaeologists, like Abner, who are only interested in the big-ticket items. They're in it for the money and the glamour. Tomb-raiders, Gareth calls them. Indiana Joneses. If a ghost from centuries ago was to come back to life and stand in front of them, Gareth says, they'd push it out of the way to reach a gold sovereign. And Sylvia's even worse, he says. She's just a tomb-raider's groupie. She fawns on him like a cat that wants its supper. The greedier he gets, the more she likes it.'

'Surely, Abner darling, if there was anything down there we should have reached it by now,' complained Sylvia.

'Patience, my dear Pouncer, patience,' said Abner Brown.

'But look at the church!' wailed Sylvia. 'Look at the piles of earth!'

The interior of the church was a scene of devastation. The stone slab had been prised up from the middle of the aisle, and dragged to one side, leaving a black oblong hole. This hole was now surrounded by heaps of earth and rubble, which had gradually piled up and proliferated outwards, until there was hardly a patch of clear floor space in the whole body of the church. Needless to say Abner hadn't done all this work himself; but he wouldn't have trusted any ordinary assistants either. Conventional machinery was out of the question - what would have happened if anyone had seen a mechanical digger being wheeled into the church? Luckily, another alternative had presented itself. Up and down the mounds of earth, and in and out of the oblong hole in the floor, a multitude of six-legged creatures were scurrying. They were so dark brown in colour that they were almost black. They resembled giant insects, but they also seemed to be mechanisms of some kind. Each of them was about the size of a human hand, and each of them could carry only a small lump of earth; but there were so many of them, and they shuttled in and out of the oblong hole so untiringly, that the piles of earth and rubble grew constantly but almost imperceptibly as a result of their work, like the heaps of waste around a coal mine. They made a scarcely-perceptible rustling, pattering noise as they went to and fro.

'I must say,' remarked Abner, 'these creatures - or mechanisms, or whatever they are - have been of tremendous assistance to us, really tremendously valuable; but I do still find them rather unsettling.'

'Mine-weevils,' said Citrus, who was standing next to them. 'They're pretty cool, aren't they?'

'You're such a clever girl!' said Sylvia Pouncer. 'I never even knew such things existed!'

'It's all down to the Thin Men,' said Citrus. 'Although actually they were invented in the first place by all these kids on Blackbirds, who just formed their own little community and dreamt them up as a game. But then the Thin Men latched onto it and started developing it - first of all just these kind of virtual creatures online, and the kids could make them do stuff, like digging or building or whatever; but then they made an offline version too, like a real-world equivalent, but it still gets its power from social media. So as long as the kids keep playing with them, they proliferate, and you can do more and more stuff with them. And here they are.'

'But what are they made out of?' said Sylvia. 'That's the part I don't understand.'

'That's the really clever bit. They're not made of anything. Or, put it another way, they're made of people's attention. They don't actually exist at all, as such; or they wouldn't exist, if the kids lost interest in them. But as long as the kids are into them, you know, that's where they get their energy from, and then you can use them for all sorts of stuff.'

'A lot of people would call this magic,' said Abner.

'No, it's not magic, it's definitely not magic,' said Citrus. 'But it's kind of, you know, alternative reality. It's technology, but it's more than just technology. It creates its own kind of headspace.'

'Hm.' Abner rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then changed the subject. 'Is there any more news of the book?'

Citrus shook her head. 'No, she's gone offline.' She shrugged. 'She won't be able to keep that up forever. Once you've been on Blackbirds for a while, you can't leave it alone. Nobody can. Once she goes back online, the Thin Men'll find her again, and tap into her again, and then we'll get the book back. But I still don't see why it's so important. I mean, if the treasure's down there -'

'Which it certainly is,' said Abner Brown.

'Okay, well, if it's down there, and we keep digging, then we'll come to it.'

'That's what I think too,' said Sylvia Pouncer.

'But somehow we haven't come to it,' said Abner. 'Somehow we're producing heaps of earth without making any real progress.'

'Maybe you're digging in the wrong place,' suggested Citrus.

'But the stone slab said it was the right place,' said Sylvia. '"Here lies the hoard beneath the hill".'

'But what if someone moved the stone slab? Maybe it got moved from one part of the church to another.'

'I don't believe that to be the case,' said Abner grimly. 'But if we have to dig up the entire floor of the church, then dig it up we shall.'

'Oh, Abner!' cried Sylvia.

'Yes, my Pouncer,' said Abner. 'If we have to dig up the entire hill. But my belief is that there's some kind of protection on that treasure, and to find out the nature of that protection we need the book.'

'Well, don't worry,' said Citrus. 'Once she goes back online, we'll get her.'

'Perhaps we should just search the house again,' said Sylvia.

'No, no, my dear,' said Abner. 'It won't be in the house any more. And in any case, we can't keep finding excuses to ransack the place. It's too risky. Jack might start to complain. Rumours might start to circulate. We can't afford that. We can't afford to have people asking questions about what we're up to.'

Late that night, when Sylvia Pouncer and Abner Brown finally left the church, and Sylvia was just locking the door behind them, a woman came walking by.

She came round the East end of the church and followed a diagonal path through the churchyard, towards an iron gate in the churchyard wall, at the far end. This would have been odd enough under ordinary circumstances, because it was almost three o'clock in the morning. But the current circumstances made it even more unusual. For one thing it was pouring with rain. For another, the church and churchyard were all closed to the public, fenced off with flourescent stripy yellow-and-black plastic tape, and well guarded by 'Keep Out' signs. On the other side of the church - the side from which the woman had presumably just come - was another gate in the churchyard wall, but it was locked, and only Sylvia had the key. It would have been possible for somebody to ignore the tape and the signs, and climb into the churchyard over the wall, but it would have taken quite a bit of doing - and having done it, why would you simply walk along the path, as if the rain didn't exist, as if you weren't in any hurry, and as if you had no other purpose in mind than to get to another gate, also locked, at the other end of the churchyard?

Yet here she was, walking by. A certain amount of silvery light came into the churchyard from streetlamps beyond the wall. The woman was a slender dark figure amongst the gravestones. She walked neither fast nor slow, at an unhurried pace, and with an air of such natural self-assurance, as if she had a perfect right to be there, that both Sylvia Pouncer and Abner Brown looked at her without noticing her at first, and only registered her properly after a few moments.

'Who's that woman?' whispered Sylvia Pouncer. 'Where's she come from? What's she doing here?'

'Exactly what I was thinking,' murmured Abner Brown. 'This is a very odd hour to be walking a dog.'

'Dog?' said Sylvia Pouncer. 'She hasn't got a dog. I can't see any dog.'

'Well, I can't imagine what else she could be doing here. Some of your parishioners are rather eccentric, though, my dear.'

'She's ignored all the signs!' hissed Sylvia, starting to be annoyed. 'And I can't even imagine how she could have got in!'

'Perhaps somebody left the gate open.'

'They most certainly did not! I'm the only one with a key, and I certainly didn't leave it open! She's climbed in over the wall! I'm not going to let her get away with it! I'm going to have a word with her!'

Saying which, Sylvia Pouncer set off at a rapid pace, under the shelter of her umbrella; first to the left, along the side of the church; and then, when she reached the East end, a sharp right turn onto the same diagonal path that the anonymous woman was following.

There was certainly no sign of any dog. Sylvia was half-expecting to spot one, trotting around amongst the graves, off its lead; and she had already half-prepared a cutting remark about people who not only ignored the signs but then allowed their pets to desecrate holy ground - but there was no dog to be seen.

And an odd thing was happening. The woman was still walking at the same unhurried pace as before, neither fast nor slow, but she didn't seem to be any further along the path. And although Sylvia herself was walking much more quickly, she couldn't seem to catch her up. She was hurrying along the path, and the woman didn't seem to be making any progress towards the gate at the far end, but the distance between the two of them wasn't diminishing. Sylvia redoubled her pace, but the woman was still just as far away. She redoubled it again - she was now walking so fast that she was almost breaking into a trot. Her heart began to beat, she started to breathe heavily and she broke into a sweat - but still she couldn't catch up with the woman.

Quite suddenly, she came to the gate at the end of the path. She didn't know how it had happened. She hadn't seen the woman arrive at the gate, and now there was no sign of her. Breathing heavily, she stood at the gate and looked out. There was a silvery street lamp about twenty feet away, just across the lane from the house where Jack the church organist lived. Beyond that the lane stretched on, swathed in shadows, down the hill to the vicarage, where there was another street lamp casting another pool of light. No sign of any movement anywhere. The woman was nowhere to be seen.

Sylvia Pouncer turned and walked back to Abner Brown.

'Did you catch her?' he inquired.

'No. Didn't you see?'

'I lost sight of her.'

'So did I. She was on the path, just in front of me, and then she... She didn't vanish, exactly, but I don't know where she went.'

'It's a dark night.'

'Yes, but it was all very odd. I can't account for it, Abner. I was hurrying along, and she was in front of me, but I couldn't catch her up, and then she wasn't there any more. It's difficult to describe.'

'Hm,' said Abner Brown. 'I don't like these unexplained events. Where did that pig come from? How did that book disappear? Who was this woman, and how did she vanish? I don't like any of it. The sooner we get our hands on our treasure, the better.'

'I completely agree with you, my love,' said Sylvia Pouncer.

RIVER LOURE BURSTS ITS BANKS

150mm of rain has fallen in the last 24 hours, and the River Loure has burst its banks. The lower end of St Brigid's High Street has been flooded to a depth of six feet in places, and water has poured into people's homes, shops and places of work. The Station Approach Industrial Estate is almost entirely under water, and the Church View shopping centre has also been largely flooded. Cars in the station car park have been completely submerged. In the Boar's Head Pub the water has reached the top of the bar.

Early bird workers in the Bullbrook Business Park found themselves stranded as the flood waters surrounded them. 'When I came in to work this morning and parked my car,' said Philip Sutcliff of the Creaston and Fulgate Insurance Company, 'it was raining, but apart from some big puddles everything was fine. Then two hours later, I looked out of the window and we were surrounded by a lake, and my car was underwater up to the roof!'

People had to be rescued by boat from flats above some of the shops in the High Street. 'I've been living above the shoe shop for thirty years,' said Jean Levett. 'I've never seen anything like it. They brought a rubber dinghy right up outside my front window, and I had to climb out into it.'

A sink hole has opened up in the middle of the Tesco's car park. 'Someone came running into the shop saying a big hole had appeared just outside,' said John Jarrett, the manager. 'I couldn't believe it when I went out there. It's about ten feet across and goodness knows how deep. We've had to close that part of the car park to keep everyone safe, but people keep trying to go across for a look inside. They said I ought to call the emergency services, but who do you call for a sink hole? Is it fire, police or ambulance?'

Low-lying areas all around Brigidhurst have been affected by the flooding. Many houses in the Willowfield Housing Estate have been inundated, as have the fields and meadows round about. Cows, sheep and horses have had to be moved to high ground. Bus and rail services in and out of the town have been cancelled.

Weathermen are still forecasting more heavy rain in the next few days.

'Bugger it,' said Grandpa Jack, opening the front door. 'It's still raining.'

He wasn't very well equipped to deal with long spells of wet weather. He had two coats, both very old and shabby: and two pairs of shoes, neither of them waterproof. To protect his head he had his Russian-style fur hat, which was very warm in freezing weather but no particular help in the wet; and he kept buying a whole succession of umbrellas, at least five since the wet weather began, only to leave them, one after the other, either at St Margaret's church or in one of the nearby pubs.

'I don't mind a bit of rain now and then,' he said, 'but this is beyond a joke. Day after bloody day. It's depressing. And now the clocks have gone back,' he added glumly, 'which means it'll be pitch black by the time I get to St Margaret's.'

'Be careful Grandpa,' called Dora, who was in the front room. 'Some of the roads might be flooded. When will you be back?'

'About eight or nine, I expect,' said Grandpa. 'I might just have a quick drink with the choir after the rehearsal.' Which was what he always said. 'Shall I bring a takeaway?'

'I don't mind cooking,' said Dora.

'No, you don't want all that faff,' said Grandpa, who regarded a takeaway as a treat, and home cooking as second-class DIY food. 'What would you like, Chinese or Pizza?'

'Can't we have chips?'

'Yes, that's a good idea. I've got some pickled onions in the cupboard. What kind of fish do you want, cod or plaice?'

'I'll just have the chips,' said Dora.

'Go on, have some fish, you miserable bugger,' said Grandpa Jack.

'No, honestly, Grandpa, I'll just have the chips.'

'All right, I'll get a big bit of cod, and then you can have some of mine if you change your mind. I'll get a battered sausage too. See you later!'

'Bye, Grandpa.'

He wasn't actually leaving, though. Grandpa Jack could never leave the house without coming back in again at least once. He set off into the outside world, and then about a minute later he had to come back, because he'd forgotten some of his sheet music. He would often do this two or three times. Then when he got into his car he couldn't actually get started for quite a long time. First he had to arrange his sheet music on the passenger seat. Then he had to open the tin of boiled sweets he kept in the glove compartment, and pop one into his mouth. Then he had to tune the radio, either to the news or some classical music, or some cricket if there happened to be a Test match in progress. Then he had to turn the windscreen-fan right up to maximum, because the glass was completely fogged up and he couldn't see a thing. Then at last, when islands of clarity began to appear in the fog, it was time to get moving.

Grandpa Jack had his own way of getting to St Margaret's. He didn't like the middle of town because of the one way system; he didn't like the High Street because of the traffic lights; he didn't like dual carriageways under any circumstances, because of all the other cars, which to his mind were all driven by bullies; and he didn't like turning right because it made his neck feel funny. So he turned left instead of right onto Rocks Park Road, headed away from the High Street instead of towards it, and then followed a meandering path through the countryside, which eventually took him to St Margaret's church through a series of waterlogged fields and deep country lanes. The main disadvantage of this was that he got into serious trouble if he met anything coming the other way, especially a tractor. He would do his utmost to squeeze himself into gateways or onto muddy verges in order to let the other vehicle past, because anything was better than having to reverse. Reversing made Grandpa Jack's neck feel even funnier than turning right.

This evening, however, it wasn't meeting something coming the other way that brought Grandpa Jack to a halt: it was driving down into Cranesmarsh.

St Margaret's, the other church to which he was driving, was the smaller and dowdier of the two churches in the Brigidhurst parish. It was about half the size of St Bridget's, with walls made of flint and brick. Until St Bridget's was closed because of the archaeological dig, it had only been used for church services once or twice a month. It stood in Buntinghurst, a village built on a ridge of high ground: and between Brigidhurst and Buntinghurst lay Cranesmarsh, a stretch of low-lying flatland, normally occupied by flocks of sheep, and with a broad canal running through the middle.

By the time Grandpa Jack reached Cranesmarsh, it was completely dark. It was pouring with rain, and he was creeping along at about twenty miles an hour, because he could hardly see. His windscreen wipers kept clearing two arcs across the glass in front of him, but as soon as they were cleared, the arcs started filling up again. Beyond this, his headlights lit up a stretch of hedgerow on either side, a strip of muddy-looking road in the middle, and a cloud of silvery-yellow diagonally-falling raindrops.

But then he turned a corner and suddenly everything looked different: the lane disappeared into a flat-but-turbulent swirling surface which was moving rapidly from right to left in front of him. The canal must have burst its banks.

'Bugger,' said Grandpa Jack.

He stopped the car. Perhaps the flood wasn't all that deep, he thought after a moment, because the hedges were still showing above it. But the hedgerows ended just a few yards further on, to be replaced by iron fences, and he couldn't see far enough through the gloom and rain to estimate how deep the flood might be at its deepest.

But with a bit of luck, the water might not be any deeper than a few inches. Maybe he could just drive through it.

He really didn't want to reverse. Reversing made his neck feel so funny. And there was nowhere to turn in this narrow lane: once he started to reverse, he'd be reversing for ages. And if something else came down the road behind him, he'd be properly buggered.

If he could just get to the other side of this bit of water, he'd be all right. By the time he'd finished choir practice, and maybe a drink or two in the pub afterwards, the rain would have probably eased off, and the flooding might have gone down. Anyway, he could drive back home along the major roads, the ones he normally avoided, because there were no right turns on the way back, and probably the bigger roads wouldn't be flooded at all. So if he could just get through this little bit, he'd be all right. He took his foot off the brake, and eased down on the accelerator. The car rolled forward slowly into the water. The hedgerows ended, but he could see by the level to which the fence-posts were submerged that the flood was still getting deeper. Not too deep just yet, though, he thought; I'll still be all right; once I get across the bridge, it slopes up again.

Just as he was thinking it, his car stalled.

'Bugger,' said Grandpa Jack. 'Bugger, bugger, bugger.'

He sat there trying to restart the car, with the rain beating down on his windscreen, the windscreen-wipers flumping backwards and forwards, and the headlights shining out into the teeming darkness, for what seemed like ages. At first he thought the engine was going to catch immediately, because it sounded quite vigorous; but it was a bit less lively the next time; and it got weaker with each successive attempt. Eventually it wasn't doing anything more than a kind of whickering noise. He thought he'd better leave it to recover for a bit, so he took a boiled sweet out of his tin and sucked it thoughtfully for a while. It never occurred to him to switch off the wipers and the lights in order to conserve his battery. That wasn't how his mind worked.

Eventually he had another try. It was even worse than before.

'Well, there's nothing for it,' thought Grandpa Jack. 'I shall just have to get out, and walk back to dry land.'

Not that there was any land anywhere that was properly dry, the way the rain was coming down. But he opened the door of the car, and stepped out into the flood.

It was freezing cold, the current was unexpectedly strong, and the water came right up to his knees. He immediately regretted not taking off his shoes and socks or rolling up his trouser legs. He stood holding on to the side of the car for a few seconds while he got his balance.

He had to take the key out of the ignition, because the only torch he had with him was a tiny LED bulb in his keyring. As soon as he took the key out, of course, the car's lights were switched off. The bright spreading field of illumination on which all his attention had been focussed vanished. Emptiness seemed to open up all around him, as if he had come out of a tunnel into a cavern. His keyring torch lit up nothing but a little pale circle on the side of the car. The wind blew and the rain poured down. He was soaking wet and cold, surrounded by swirling water.

Only at this point did he change his mind about which direction he should set off in. He had been intending to go back the way he came, which would have involved wading just a short distance to get back out of the flood. But if he went back that way, it was a long trudge uphill before he would come to the first house. Actually the only lights he could see were in front of him: presumably the lights of Buntinghurst, a few silvery spots shining through trees on the hill on the far side of the flood. So he set off in that direction instead.

It didn't take him long to realize he'd made a mistake. After only a few paces he seemed to have been wading through the flood forever. As soon as he left the car behind, all sense of familiarity dissolved. The little pale circle of light from the bulb in his keyring lit up a sliding disk of floodwater the colour of toffee, ruffled all over by the torrential rain. Beyond that, nothing was properly visible. He waded along for a bit with his head down, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other; but when he lifted his head again, and shone his torch around, he felt horribly lost. He couldn't see the fences at the edge of the lane any more. Had he somehow wandered off the lane into the fields? The ground under his feet felt as if it might be mud rather than tarmac. He thought he saw a big dark shape go floating by - was it a bush? Perhaps even a tree?

He was soaking wet and cold and he felt intensely cross and miserable. What had he ever done to deserve this? Why couldn't he just be allowed to live a nice comfortable quiet life without any of this horrible bother?

He suddenly had an overwhelming desire to get back to the car, shut the door, and sit tight until somebody came to rescue him. He could stay there all night if necessary. Anything was better than this. But when he turned around, there was no sign of the car, and he didn't know which direction it might be in.

'Bugger, bugger, bugger,' said Grandpa Jack.

He took an uncertain step forward, and then something terrible happened. There was no solid ground beneath his foot. He had stepped over an edge, into a liquid emptiness. He floundered forwards and pitched almost headlong. For a moment he really thought he was going to drown. He thrashed his arms and spray flew everywhere. His eyes and mouth were full of water. Then he was upright again, and actually the water was only up to his waist - but he'd lost his keyring.

Had he stepped off the edge of the bank into the canal? He didn't know.

Which direction was he supposed to go in now? He didn't know that either.

He felt surge of panic - but the moment after that, he thought he was starting to hallucinate. A blob of light seemed to be gliding towards him over the water. He had the strangest idea that it was his keyring floating back to him. But then the blob of light grew larger and firmer, and resolved itself into a construction of lit-up shapes: a punt, with a lamp on the prow, and a man, standing in the stern with a long pole.

The man dropped his pole into the flood, bent forward as he shoved on it, then straightened again as he retrieved it smoothly from the water. With each shove, the punt gave a kind of gliding leap towards Grandpa Jack; and the next thing he knew, it was alongside him.

The man put down his pole in the bottom of the punt. 'Up you come,' he said, and leaned out and caught Grandpa Jack under the arms. Grandpa Jack never quite knew how it happened, or how the punt didn't capsize, but somehow the man pulled him up and over the side in a single powerful heave, and he found himself on his hands and knees on the wooden planks in the bottom of the boat.

'Going to the other side?' inquired the man in mild tones, picking up his pole again.

'Thank goodness you came along!' exclaimed Grandpa Jack. 'I was just about at my wits' end. What on earth are you doing out here at this time of night?'

'I'm the ferryman,' said his rescuer, as if that explained everything. 'Ur-Shanabi; that's my name.'

'I didn't even know there was a ferryman,' said Grandpa Jack.

'Oh yes,' said Ur-Shanabi. 'There's always been a ferryman.'

'Well I'm very pleased to meet you, Ur-Shanabi. My name's Jack.'

'How do you do?' said Ur-Shanabi. 'Shall I take you across?'

'If you wouldn't mind,' said Grandpa Jack. 'It's very kind of you.'

'Not at all,' said Ur-Shanabi. 'It's my job. Do you have a coin?'

'Oh!' said Grandpa Jack. 'You mean for the fare? I'm not sure if I do, actually. I usually just pay for everything by card. Do you take cards?'

'Afraid not,' said Ur-Shanabi. 'Didn't anyone give you a coin?'

'My car's back there,' said Grandpa Jack. 'There's probably a coin in my car somewhere.'

'No, no, you can't go back to your car,' said Ur-Shanabi. 'You have to leave all that sort of thing behind. Didn't anyone give you a coin?'

'No, they never did.'

'You normally wake up, and find them on your eyes. Or sometimes tucked into your mouth.'

'Do you?' said Grandpa Jack. 'That's never happened to me. Isn't that a bit dangerous? You'd probably choke on it, wouldn't you, if it was in your mouth?'

'That would be the least of your concerns,' said Ur-Shanabi mysteriously.

Grandpa Jack was at a loss. Ur-Shanabi seemed perfectly happy to stand in the pouring rain indefinitely, leaning on his long pole and talking about the missing coin.

'I'm freezing cold,' said Grandpa Jack. 'Can you still take me over?'

'Hm,' said Ur-Shanabi. 'Pass me that lamp, and let's have a look at you.'

Grandpa Jack passed him the lamp off the prow of the punt, and the ferryman held it up to his face and looked him over at some length, while the flood-waters gurgled past.

'Well,' said Ur-Shanabi, 'I don't see why not. It's a bit unusual, but that's not my problem. If somebody's made a slip-up, that's nothing to do with me. They'll have to sort it out amongst themselves. If anybody asks me, I'll just say I didn't even notice. He was asking to be taken over, I'll say, so I took him.'

'But what about the coin?' said Grandpa Jack.

'Well, check your pockets,' suggested Ur-Shanabi.

Grandpa Jack did as he was told, and managed to find a two pence piece at the bottom of the inside pocket of his jacket. He passed it over.

'Hm, that's an unusual one,' said Ur-Shanabi, inspecting it by the light of the lamp. 'What's that picture on it?'

'That's the Queen.'

'I normally expect an obol,' said Ur-Shanabi.

'I've never even heard of an obol,' said Grandpa Jack. 'What is it?'

'It's a coin, a bit like this, but it's got a picture of a bee on it.'

'Why's it got a bee on it?'

'Because bees collect their treasure in the sunshine, and store it away in the dark. What does your queen do?'

'She doesn't do anything much,' admitted Grandpa Jack. ‘She’s sort of symbolic.’

'Well, so’s the bee,' said Ur-Shanabi. 'So I'll take it. Put that lamp back on the prow.'

He returned the lamp to Grandpa Jack, who replaced it on the prow. Ur-Shanabi picked up his pole, dropped it into the water, and started to punt again.

When Grandpa Jack didn't come home by nine, Dora wasn't worried. He was always inclined to be late, especially if he got talking in the pub. When there was no sign of him by ten, she still wasn't particularly bothered, although it did cross her mind that he might have run into difficulties with the floods, as it was still pouring with rain outside. The problem was, he didn't have a mobile phone, so there was no way for him to let her know. If he was in a pub he could borrow a phone and ring; but if he was on the road somewhere, he'd be incommunicado.

She got out her own mobile phone, to see if she could check what the flooding situation was like on the local news. That didn't help very much, because all the news was from the day before. The bottom end of the High Street was flooded, but she knew Grandpa never went that way. The local weather forecast didn't look good: rain all night, and more rain coming tomorrow.

Then it occurred to her that there might be a local group on Blackbirds which would have more up to date information; so she went on Blackbirds.

It was the first time she'd been on there since she met Citrus, and she knew immediately that she shouldn't have done it. There was a huge list of messages on her profile. She tried not to look at them, but it was no good. She flipped through them really quickly, but that was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat and make her heart sink into her feet. Lots of them were hate messages about how she was a robber and a cheat and trying to cover it all up. Lots more were from her regular followers, asking her what was going on, was there any truth in the accusations, and then wanting to know why she hadn't responded. Lots of people were saying they were going to unsubscribe. Some people with whom she'd developed quite a close relationship online, people who she thought might have stood by her, were saying that they didn't feel they could trust her any more, and they didn't think they wanted to be friends with her any more. There were one or two messages of support: but those were really few and far between.

She switched her mobile phone off again. She'd only been on Blackbirds for a few minutes, but it had been the worst few minutes of her life. She was never going to use Blackbirds again, she decided. She ought to uninstall it - but she'd do that later. At the moment she couldn't bear the thought of looking at her mobile phone any more. She left it on the dining room table.

She went into the kitchen to make herself something to eat, but although she opened the fridge door and stood staring at the food on the shelves for a while without really seeing it, she didn't have any appetite. In the end she just got herself a glass of cold water and went to bed.

She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. By this time she was properly worried about Grandpa Jack, and that worry got tangled up with her feelings about Blackbirds to make a loop of bad thoughts that went round and round inside her head. She lay propped up on her pillows, with her eyes shut. Her Dad had told her once that if she had worries she should clear her mind, forget about the past and the future, concentrate on the here-and-now, listen to her own breathing, or maybe the rain falling in the dark outside her window, don't try to block the worries out, but just put them aside, relax, breathe, concentrate on the present moment...

There was a knock on the door. It went through the whole house, as if someone was hammering in a giant nail. She jumped out of bed, with her heart in her mouth, and bundled herself into her clothes. She was convinced it must be the police. Had they come with bad news about Grandpa Jack? Or had they come to arrest her for stealing that book from the church?

She rushed downstairs and pulled the door open. It wasn't the police. It was Citrus.

'Hi,' she said. 'Nice to see you again. You haven't been answering my messages. What's the matter? Don't you like me any more?'

'What do you want?' said Dora angrily.

'I thought we were going to be BFFs,' said Citrus. 'Shame. Hashtag heartbroken.'

'What do you want?' repeated Dora.

'I just came to say thanx for going back online,' said Citrus. She took out her mobile phone and started thumbing through it one-handed, because she was holding up an umbrella with the other hand. 'Yeah, big thanx for that. That's what we've been waiting for. We've got the info now. We know where the book is.'

'No you don't!' said Dora.

'Yeah, we do,' said Citrus, meeting her eyes for a moment with a sarcastic little smile. 'It's in the schoolhouse, innit?' She went back to thumbing on her mobile phone. 'I spose we could of guessed, but we don't need to guess now, do we? Cus we know. See, once you go online we get all the info, don't we? We get everything we need, and a little bit more. Like, we knew you wuz a thief, and that, but what's the peeps gonna say when they find out you is also a trans? Like, a girl one minute and a boy the next? That's something I never would of guessed. Nice secrets. But secrets are bound to come out, innit?'

Dora said nothing. She was visualising herself jumping forward and punching Citrus right in her smug face.

Citrus put her mobile phone back into her pocket. 'Well,' she said, 'see ya.'

Just as she said it there was a juddering through the earth beneath their feet, as if the hill was convulsing below them, and simultaneously there was a huge crashing crunching noise from their left. Citrus staggered, and her umbrella almost blew inside-out.

'OMG! What was that?' she said.

She ran to the end of the drive, and Dora ran after her, ignoring the rain. The air was full of dust. Citrus switched on the torch on her phone and shone it towards the old school, but nothing could be made out in the darkness except a heavy swirling cloud. There was a smell of brick dust.

'You stay out of there!' Citrus shouted at Dora. 'I'm going to get Aunty Sylvia!' And she set off at a run towards the vicarage.

The moment she was gone, Dora saw Pravuil, standing on the other side of the lane, against the churchyard wall. Citrus had run straight past without noticing.

'What's happened?' said Dora to Pravuil. 'What was that crash?'

'Part of the school house has fallen down,' said Pravuil.

'What, really?'

'Yes, really.'

'Oh Pravuil! Will Grandpa Jack's house be all right?'

'I don't know.'

'Has it happened because of the rain?'

'Yes, I think so,' said Pravuil. 'And their digging. The two things are connected. They're disturbing everything.'

'Is it the bit of the school where we hid the book?' said Dora.

'Yes, it is.'

'I hope the bats are all right!'

'I saw some of them fly out,' said Pravuil. 'But they were mostly in the roof of the big hall, which is still upright.'

'Well, nobody's going to be able to get their hands on that book now.'

'Except maybe a mouse,' said Pravuil.

'It's a setback,' said Abner Brown darkly. 'A nuisance.'

He and Sylvia Pouncer were standing in the pouring rain under their umbrellas, contemplating, as well as they could by torchlight, the ruined end of the school. The two classrooms next to the playground had collapsed, leaving a jagged remnant of front wall with a smashed window in it, and some protruding roof-beams up above, with cross-struts and a jumble of tiles balanced precariously on top of them. Absurdly, a door which had once led from the school to the playground was still standing upright and apparently unharmed, like a sentinel, on the edge of the rubble.

'There's bound to be an investigation,' said Sylvia. 'We'll have the health and safety people here tomorrow. We'll have to stop the digging.'

'Here in the playground, you mean,' said Abner.

'Well - definitely here in the playground, my darling - but we might have to stop digging in the church as well. Just for a time.'

'Out of the question,' said Abner sharply. 'Nothing stops the digging in the church.'

'But Abner - Abner dearest - the health and safety people -'

'We can handle all of that, my dear Pouncer,' said Abner. 'It plays to our advantage that we've had all this rain, and all these floods. This isn't the only disaster by any means. At a normal time this might present us with a real difficulty, but just at the moment the health and safety people are rushed off their feet. There's the sink-hole in Tesco's car park. There have been mud-slides along the railway line. Sewers have overflowed into the river... I have friends in the relevant departments at County Hall, and there are people on the Council who owe me favours. The situation can be managed. Leave it to me. Nobody comes into the church, and nothing interferes with the digging.'

'But what about the Church Commissioners?'

'Ah, that's where your ingenious niece Citrus comes in,' said Abner, 'and her friends the Thin Men. I must say they've become extraordinarily useful to me in a very short space of time. While the Mine Weevils have been digging for treasure beneath the church, the online spiders have been seeking out information about the Church Commissioners, and they've managed to find quite a valuable little haul. Financial irregularities, behavioural pecadilloes, everything your heart could desire. I think we've got the Church Commissioners just where we want them.'

As he finished, there was a rattling slide and a crash, as some of the roof-tiles slipped off the roof beams and clattered down onto the rubble below. Sylvia Pouncer gave a little shriek and clutched Abner's arm.

'There there, my dear,' he said, although he had jumped himself. 'Nothing to be alarmed about.'

'You're so clever, Abner my darling,' said Sylvia Pouncer. 'But this is such a terribly dangerous game!'

'Worth it, my Pouncer,' said Abner Brown, 'if I'm right about what lies beneath that church. We're so close now, I can feel it! If only we had that book! I'm convinced it holds the key.'

'Perhaps the Mine Weevils could dig through this rubble for the book,' said Sylvia.

'Ha! That's an excellent suggestion, my sweet - but imagine what the good people of the town would say, if they caught a glimpse of those Mine Weevils at work. I don't think that even I could explain that one away.'

'Yes, I see that, of course.'

'No, for the time being we will have to make do without the book. And book or no book, I think we shall have our treasure before long. We must do! We must!'

'Come along, Abner,' said Sylvia with a yawn. 'I'm exhausted. It's been a long day, and tomorrow's bound to be another one.'

'You're right, my dear,' said Abner. 'We can't do any more here tonight.'

They were standing on a flight of steps that led up from the playground to the West end of the church. They turned away from the school, and as they did so a dark female figure came round the East end and began to walk diagonally, at an unhurried pace, through the churchyard.

'Abner!' hissed Sylvia Pouncer, clutching his arm again. 'It's that woman! She's back!'

'What!' said Abner.

'Look! Look there!'

'My word,' murmured Abner Brown. 'She's got a nerve.'

'But what's she doing here?'

'There's only one way to find out,' said Abner decisively. 'I'll go and ask her.'

'You'll have to be quick, Abner!'

'Just watch me,' said Abner, hurrying off.

He strode rapidly up the length of the church to its East end, then turned onto the diagonal path the woman was following. She was halfway down the churchyard by this time, a dark figure, but quite plainly visible on the path, which was glistening faintly with the wetness of the rain. Her pace was neither fast nor slow. Abner set off briskly after her, but although his long strides should have rapidly eaten up the distance between them, he found that he couldn't get any closer to her. He broke into a trot, but it didn't make any difference: she was still just as far in front of him as before.

'Hey!' he shouted. 'Stop! Excuse me, madam! You there! Wait!'

She took no notice whatsoever, but carried on walking at exactly the same pace, and still he couldn't catch up with her. In desperation he broke into a run. He hadn't run properly for years, and almost immediately he was badly out of breath. His umbrella dragged him back, his coat was too heavy and hot, water from the path splashed his legs, and he was still no closer to the woman.

Then suddenly he found himself at the end of the path, at the locked gate, and the woman was gone. He looked all around, clutching gratefully at the cold wet wrought iron, but she was nowhere to be seen.

So he walked back slowly to Sylvia Pouncer, taking his time, breathing deeply, and letting his heart-rate settle back to normal.

'What happened?' said Sylvia.

'I couldn't catch her,' admitted Abner.

'No,' said Sylvia, 'neither could I.'

'And then she gave me the slip,' said Abner. 'Don't ask me how. She didn't exactly vanish. She just wasn't there any more.'

'That's just how it was for me,' said Sylvia. 'Quite extraordinary, isn't it? Who on earth do you think she is?'

Abner Brown took a large white handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped the rain and perspiration from his face. 'I think she's the woman from the rhyme, my dear Pouncer,' he said.

'The woman from the rhyme?' said Sylvia. 'What woman from the rhyme?'

'She who walks both fast and still,' said Abner.

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