The Devil Walks Read online

  Small wonder that my step-uncle had banged the table top and gnawed his fists and longed to have it back. Once in his grasp, the evil no doubt would have swung round like a compass, to face his own true north: not just damage and hate, but deep corruption; theft; embezzlement and crooked influence. To what heights might he have risen in the wider world with the doll’s help? What awful powers might he have gained? How much destruction might he have unleashed?

  But mercifully he had died before he’d ever had the time to harness properly the forces he’d let loose and steer them back from scattered devilry into the grander orbit he’d so yearned to command.

  He was the snake, felled with his own black venom.

  Leaving this devilish little thing.

  And what to do with that? While I was wondering, I reached down for the doll and tugged at my mother’s pretty hook, to free it. But something about the very feel of that vile thing under my fingers struck to the core of me, and I went wild. I shook the doll as if it were some weasel a miser had caught stealing eggs. ‘All of this trouble!’ I hissed at it. ‘All of this pain and misery! These ruined lives! All of it springs from you!’

  Then I was given a mortal fright. The monstrous thing had heard me and it understood! I felt it squirm, and knew that, though it was carved in wood, it was alive!

  Still, fury spurred me on from simple terror. Surely, I told myself, some of the rules of God must stand! And wood will burn!

  And so, for all its writhing in my hand, I held it tight and carried it into the kitchen. There I tugged open the range door and thrust the doll into the flames. I slammed the door shut. ‘There!’ I hissed. ‘I know that you came out of hell! So get back there again!’

  From inside I could hear the frantic hiss of scorching sap. And then the oven door flew open. I could see the doll inside, writhing so horribly that you would think it was real flesh that burned. I’ll swear a wooden stick on fire could never jump and twist like that.

  And then the monstrous sprite sprang out. Even before my eyes it sprang out onto the floor!

  And there it danced as if in agony, throwing out frenzied sparks, and seeming to screech and whistle in its pain. I look back now and am amazed that I dared stay to watch. That vile thing was as filled with spirit as anything alive. But I was so determined to see the back of it for ever that I think I’d have waited at the gates of hell to watch them swing apart to take it.

  However small it was, however scorched and charred, it fought and fought. I snatched a broom, and each time the devilish little fiend tried to escape, I pushed it back into the middle of the flagstone floor.

  And there it burned and burned, flinging itself about over and over until the charred bits dropped and burned to ash on the stone. And then the stem of it flared up, first high, then lower, lower. The smell was foul, as if a score of midden heaps were smouldering. Acrid smoke fouled the air till it was hard to see through the cloud of it enough to poke the last few shards of glowing wood back in a pile to burn to the very last.

  Then it was gone, and all that lay on the stone floor was one small ashen circle, white as the captain’s hair, as if a tiny version of my step-uncle were sinking through the flagstone down to hell.

  I turned away, desperate to get outside and ease my burning lungs with good clean air. But then I saw, between myself and the door, a spreading ripple of flame. In its death throes the frantic thing had thrown out enough sparks to set light to the mess of twig and bark beside the log pile.

  Even as I watched, the fire spread to rags that drooped from Martha’s washing basket, and then, lithe as a snake, blazed up to snatch a sheet that she’d left hanging. Hearing a crackling behind, I spun round again, to see that one of the logs spilled from the range when that foul thing jumped out had set alight a heap of papers on a woven stool, and flames from those already licked at Thomas’s jacket.

  Racing into the scullery, I wrenched the tap. Only the usual turgid trickle ran from that and so I turned about and jumped the spreading flames to reach the door.

  Outside stood the rainwater tub. Beside it lay the bucket the carrier’s horse kicked over as he was so hastily dragged away. Snatching it up, I filled it from the tub and ran to the door. Already flames were billowing out. Oh, I tried hard, hurling in water by the bucketful, shouting for Thomas and the carrier all the while, until the water in the tub was gone, and smoke and fumes drove me back. And then, despairing of my own lone efforts, I dropped the bucket and left my post to run and fetch the two men back.

  Seeing the sooty state of me, they came at once, and hurried to the courtyard gate. Thomas took one look at the leaping flames, then turned away. ‘If we’re to lose a battle to save your kitchen or your cook, I know which I choose.’

  I stared at his departing back. ‘My kitchen? And my cook?’

  He called back over his shoulder, ‘Whose else?’

  Whose else indeed?

  I stood a moment while the idea lodged itself inside my brain. Then, while the carrier dragged the doll’s house over the cobbles, further from the fire’s reach, I raced after Thomas, and between the two of us we guided Martha down the steps and onto the safety of the lawn.

  The carrier took word to Illingworth. Within an hour the village folk were gathering. Some had come quickly on carts to form a chain with buckets carried from the pump. And others who had made the journey out of curiosity, on foot, were still arriving, fanning out across the lawns to watch the virulent splutters and sparks that greeted them, and talking in high excitement.

  I swung my buckets with the best till Thomas came to take my place. ‘You’re at the end of your strength. Go comfort Martha.’

  I worked my way across to where he pointed. On every side, the air was live with gossip. Oh, the things I heard! For Captain Severn had had the blackest reputation for miles around; and had the villagers not known that Thomas and Martha too had spent their lives behind that high stone wall and those forbidding eagles, I do believe they might have travelled to High Gates only to cheer the flames.

  And such flames! Orange flares that raged up at the skies. I heard the talk around me:

  ‘See how the fire rises! Such a sight!’

  ‘The chandelier! Hear how each crystal drop explodes like gunshot!’

  ‘Stand clear! There goes another beam!’

  ‘Who would have thought live ivy could burn so fast?’

  Part of the roof caved in with an enormous, lasting roar. The crowd around fell silent. What their thoughts were, I can’t say. All I know is that, to me, it was as if each pane of glass that blew out, each beam that cracked and dropped, each burning shutter falling on the urns beneath felt like one more snapped bar of the unyielding cage in which I’d lived my fettered life.

  Martha was sitting on an upturned barrow, far back from the watching crowd, where Thomas had clearly led her for safety. One shock might well have rushed to take the place of the last over and over in that hour, but still there was a flush of colour in her cheeks, and she looked stronger.

  I stood beside her. Neither of us spoke – just watched the fire burn until, hearing men shout, we looked across to see that Thomas and another man had broken from the bucket chain. Along with others he was calling down the line, ‘This effort’s wasted. Time to step back. There can be nothing of the place worth saving now.’

  Lifting his sleeve to rub at the mix of soot and sweat across his face, he walked across to stand on Martha’s other side and squeeze her hand for comfort as, with a deafening crack, more of the roof collapsed into the conflagration.

  Hastily, the crowd surged back, then, as the rain of sparks gradually thinned, crept forward once again.

  I think that Martha seized the chance of their distraction to ask the two of us quietly, ‘Where is the captain?’

  I watched as Thomas pointed up to where the last of the attics blazed.

  Again her face turned pale. ‘So all the whispers around are true? He’s dead?’

  ‘Stone dead.’

&nbs
p; Her face showed horror. ‘Trapped and burned?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Thomas. ‘It was from apoplexy, some would say.’ He glanced across at me. ‘Though others might believe that he was felled by his own black wrath.’

  Still she was baffled. ‘Way up there?’

  He scowled. ‘Up there. And not just up there. Up to no good there! And by the time there was no more to do to try to save the house, it was too late to get back up the stairs and drag his body out.’

  It was a moment before Martha spoke again, and when she did I saw that she was pointing to the flames whose licks of light danced over all our faces. ‘And this – this fire? How did it come about?’

  Thomas grinned. ‘Ah, now,’ he said, ‘for that you must ask after Daniel’s fresh idea for kindling.’

  Martha turned my way in astonishment. ‘So it was you who set the house on fire?’

  I answered ruefully, ‘With a little devilish help.’ And then, in fits and starts, in between showers of sparks, I told the story, first of my struggle with the Severin doll up on the cart, then of its frantic fight with me down in the kitchen. It took time in the telling, for I’d so much to explain about the secrets I had kept and things I’d known; and when I’d done, all that the two of them could do was stare at me and shake their heads in wonder.

  Martha looked back into the roaring flames. ‘And so the pattern lasted to the bitter end. The captain’s body shared the foul doll’s fate.’

  We all fell silent as we watched the great house burn. And, in my heart, I could feel nothing but relief.

  By morning there was nothing left of High Gates but a spread of orange embers licking round the last few blackened timbers.

  Thomas kicked one of the smouldering piles apart. ‘I sometimes think,’ he said, ‘that it is only fire that knows how to leave behind the past and face the future cleanly.’ He turned to ask, ‘Will you rebuild?’

  ‘With what?’ I asked him ruefully. ‘The few coins in my pocket I aim to use to buy my ticket home?’ I seized his arm. ‘Will you come with me? Will you bring Martha with you?’

  He shook his head and chuckled. ‘Martha and I are not like you. We’re far too old to start our lives again.’ He ground his heel into the soft earth we were standing on. ‘But, with your permission, she and I can make a living on this land.’

  With my permission? Another strange reminder that all these pretty ripples of flame that he and I had stood, as if bewitched, watching all night, belonged to me. So did the spluttering ashes, the heaps of blackened stone and all the woods behind.

  Could I live here in peace and happiness?

  Perhaps some day. Far in the future, maybe, when I had earned enough at the doctor’s trade to pay for laying one stone on another till I had built a house fit for the wife I hoped to find, the children we would have. Children who’d tumble around these gardens as happily as Liliana and her brothers had before Jack Severn came. Children who’d scramble in and out of hollow oaks, and fire their arrows in the air, and tangle the nets over the raspberry canes, playing at tigers.

  With Thomas at my side, I wandered one last time around the grounds. Was it an accident that led us to the Devil Walks? Together we walked round the spiral until we reached the clearing.

  There stood my grave, fresh dug.

  ‘A lifetime early,’ Thomas said dryly, and took to kicking heaps of soil back in the hole while I strolled between the stone reminders of my lost family and my past, running my fingers over the mossy stones. Perhaps, I thought, I will lie here one day. But right now I’m in need of a bright future more than any past.

  I turned to Thomas. ‘Do what you want,’ I told him. ‘Do what seems best to you.’

  He laid a hand flat upon Edmund’s stone. ‘If I did that,’ he said, ‘I’d raze the Devil Walks down to the ground.’

  I had a thought. ‘And grow a maze in its place?’

  ‘A fine idea!’ he told me. ‘And by the time it’s tall enough to please a child, you may be back with some.’

  We stood in silence. Perhaps he thought of Liliana and Edmund, and all the others in his past. But I could think only of days to come. I could think only of the family I longed to see, the family who took me in as keenly and as warmly as if I were their son and brother. The family to whom I would return, whose name I’d ask to take to start my brand-new life. The family with whom I’d learn my trade, and grow into a man.

  The family I’d love as dearly as if they were my own.

  I felt his hand on my back. ‘Come. Let me walk you to the morning train.’

  Together we strolled back between the hedges and out onto the sadly trodden lawn, half black with smuts. I said goodbye to Martha with a long hug, then turned to take one last look at the smouldering embers.

  ‘We’ll send the doll’s house after,’ said Thomas.

  Without a thought for Sophie, ‘No!’ I begged. ‘It holds too many memories for me now.’

  I watched him turn and stare at it, still lying where the carrier had pulled it safe from the gathering fire.

  ‘And for me too,’ he said at last, and hurried over to it, as if to think too long about the task would make it harder.

  I went after him. Together we dragged the doll’s house into the receding tide of burning embers. It sat there longer than I thought would have been possible before a single tiny wooden rose beside the portico exploded into flame.

  And then another.

  And another, till it was fully alight.

  Did I regret destroying the very last token of my mother’s childhood? The last link with the past?

  No. For I suddenly remembered the morning I’d stood at my mother’s grave and read on her memorial stone the words Dr Marlow chose for her – almost as if they were a promise:

  Well, if it was a promise, I’d kept it for her. Now her son was safe, with people who would love and care for him. And he had learned enough about his mother’s nature to know she must have done her very best to love him. That wooden and unbending heart had not been hers, and she could be forgiven for my strange, joyless childhood.

  Everything had changed. And she could rest in peace.

  Thomas stood close, his arm round my shoulder for comfort as, together, we watched the delicate carved ivy shrivel and the tiny roof tiles flare.

  Gone. Gone.

  As I myself would be, on the next train, back to the happy and useful future I could now foresee.

  About the Author

  Anne Fine has been an acknowledged top author in the children’s book world since her first book was published in the mid 1970s, and has now written more than forty books and won virtually every major award going, including the Carnegie Medal (more than once), the Whitbread Children’s Award, the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, the Smarties Prize and others. Anne was appointed the Children’s Laureate from 2001 to 2003.

  She lives in the North East.

  Also by Anne Fine

  Published by Corgi Books:

  The Book Of The Banshee • The Granny Project

  On The Summerhouse Steps • The Road Of Bones

  Round Behind The Ice House • The Stone Menagerie • Up On Cloud Nine

  Published by Corgi Yearling Books:

  Bad Dreams • Charm School • Frozen Billy

  The More The Merrier • Eating Things On Sticks

  A Shame to Miss …

  Three Collections Of Poetry

  Perfect Poems For Young Readers • Ideal Poems For Middle Readers

  Irresistible Poetry For Young Adults

  Other books by Anne Fine

  For junior readers:

  The Angel Of Nitshill Road • Anneli The Art-Hater

  Bill’s New Frock • The Chicken Gave It To Me • The Country Pancake

  Crummy Mummy And Me • Genie, Genie, Genie

  How To Write Really Badly • Ivan The Terrible

  The Killer Cat’s Birthday Bash • Loudmouth Louis

  A Pack Of Liars • Stories Of Jamie And Angus

/>   For young people:

  Flour Babies • Goggle-Eyes • Madame Doubtfire • Step By Wicked Step

  The Tulip Touch • Very Different

  For adult readers:

  All Bones And Lies • Fly In The Ointment • The Killjoy

  Raking The Ashes • Taking The Devil’s Advice

  Telling Liddy • Our Precious Lulu • In Cold Domain

  www.annefine.co.uk

  THE DEVIL WALKS

  AN RHCB DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 446 47817 2

  Published in Great Britain by RHCB Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2011

  Copyright © Anne Fine, 2011

  Chapter head illustrations copyright © Kate Aldous, 2011

  First Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, 2011

  The right of Anne Fine to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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