‘Not on your life,’ I said. ‘He’s staying right where he is – to make sure you do the same.’ I could see big smiles breaking out over the faces of the others. ‘Stay, Prince, stay, boy,’ I ordered and Prince, still bristling and snarling, sat back on his hind legs just in front of him.

  ‘Happy dreams, Dan,’ chaffed Curly as we left.

  ‘Yes, we’ll be seeing you,’ I laughed.

  ‘Maybe sooner than you think,’ he retorted, ‘and maybe you won’t have your dog to help you.’

  We laughed and went on towards the bridge on the boundary of the estate where we knew there was a stile. Leaving the river, we began climbing back up towards the trees at the back of Big Hughie McIlhagga’s place. When we had put a good field’s length between us and the estate, I took out my bourtree whistle and called Prince. Away down in the estate we heard an answering bark, and then he streaked up towards us. As we patted him for his good work, Dan Moxley’s parting words ran through my mind.

  How true they turned out to be!

  5. THE MISSING CHARM

  Convinced now that there was something peculiar going on at the castle, we kept a close watch on it for the rest of the week. However, we saw nothing else that struck us as being unusual. Marcus finished tidying up the family graveyard. We also saw him go into the stone tower a number of times, but unlike the strange figure in tweeds he always came out again with tools and went about his gardening, so we didn’t know quite what to make of him.

  Each time as we lay in hiding among the rhododendron bushes not far from the tower, we discussed the man in tweeds at length. Who could he be? we wondered. Finally, Totey voiced the thought that had crossed our minds more than once when he piped up to say he thought the strange figure was the ghost of the dead man of the legend. For once I agreed with Doubter. Maybe the man did disappear, but we just didn’t believe he was a ghost. After all, we had seen him in broad daylight. Cowlick and Curly, on the other hand, weren’t prepared to discount any possibility. As a result we decided to give Old Daddy Armstrong another call and ask him to tell us about the ghosts of the castle, especially the running dead man.

  As it happened, we got word that very night that the old man wanted to see us. Mr Stockman had seen him up at the plantation during the day and gave Cowlick and me the message when he came over to see my father in the evening. What Mr Armstrong wanted to see us about, we couldn’t imagine. We could hardly wait to find out, so early next morning, after grabbing a bit of breakfast, we collected the boys and hurried up Mr Stockman’s back lane.

  It had been raining during the night and the grass and the leaves were dripping with water as we made our way through the plantation. The old man was leaning on the half-door, waiting, and we wondered why he was so anxious to see us.

  In fact, it was none of the things we thought it might be, but something much more exciting. Apparently Felicity had dropped by the cottage the previous day. She told him that during the gallop through the plantation before the gymkhana, when she had taken the fall, she had lost the bracelet of the Legend of the Golden Key. She had been over the ground a number of times herself, but had failed to find it. It was terribly important that she should get it back, and as a last resort she had called in the hope that Mr Armstrong might have found it.

  The old man, of course, hadn’t seen it either, but being so fond of Felicity he wondered if we might do him the favour of having a look for it.

  Needless to say, it was no favour as far as we were concerned. We were delighted. He reminded us what the bracelet looked like – a gold coin on a gold chain – and off we went. We fine-combed the spot where Felicity had been thrown from her horse. Then we searched a good stretch of the plantation, and indeed a fair bit more besides. Back and forth we went, the five of us all spread out so that we wouldn’t miss it. We looked and looked, but there was no sign of the bracelet. Finally, that afternoon, we reported our failure to Old Daddy Armstrong.

  He was working in his vegetable patch when we arrived, and when we told him we hadn’t found the bracelet, he pushed himself up with his stick and invited us into the cottage. He said he was meaning to go in and make himself a cup of tea anyway, and that by the looks of us we could do with a cup too. How right he was. By this time we were tired and wet and very disappointed that we hadn’t been able to rescue Felicity from her difficulty or make any headway in the mystery of the Legend of the Golden Key.

  Seated in our favourite positions around the open fire, we told Mr Armstrong about our search, what ground we had covered and how thoroughly we had done it. As we talked, he sat there listening, puffing his pipe and looking through lungfuls of blue pipe smoke at the glowing peat fire. When we had finished, he leaned forward, knocked his pipe against the hob, blew through it and put it back in his pocket.

  ‘Well boys, you couldn’t have done much more than that,’ he wheezed. ‘But Felicity will be powerful disappointed.’

  ‘What sort of coin exactly did you say was on the bracelet?’ Cowlick asked him.

  ‘It’s what was known in those days as a spade guinea.’ The old man rummaged around in his coat pocket until he found a piece of paper. ‘Felicity wrote down the description for me here. Listen carefully now so you’ll not mistake it if you do happen to come across it.

  ‘On one side it has the words Georgivs III and Dei Gratia written around the head of King George.’ He showed us these words as he couldn’t pronounce them very well and I didn’t blame him. ‘On the other side is a spade-shaped shield with a crown on top of it. The shield is divided into four parts, with a different emblem in each, including the English lions and the Irish harp, and just below it is the date – 1793.’

  He thought for a moment, then added, ‘It’s a funny thing about the bracelet, but they say it has brought a certain amount of good luck to all who have worn it down through the years. I suppose each generation, having failed to solve the legend, has hung on to it in the hope that through it they might some day find the treasure. So you see how important it is that they should find it?’

  ‘If it’s so important, why did the Kings let it go out of the family in the first place?’ asked Doubter. ‘I mean, why did they give it to Felicity?’

  ‘Sure it’s not going out of the family. Young Mr Rochford-King and Felicity are in love with each other, just as much as the young couple I was telling you about in the legend, and some day they’ll get married. In the meantime they thought that if she was to wear the bracelet it might bring them luck.’

  ‘Why don’t they get married now?’ asked Totey.

  ‘Ah, that’s a good question, Totey m’boy,’ the old man went on. ‘It’s not that they don’t want to get married now. They do, but it’s not as simple as that.’

  He thought for a moment as if wondering how he would explain it, and continued, ‘You see, it takes an awful lot of money to run a castle nowadays. It’s not like the past when noblemen got titles for favours rendered to the Crown and lived off the fat of the land. Nowadays they have to pay rates and taxes like everybody else, and a castle costs a fortune to keep up. Not only that, but I hear they had to pay an awful lot of death duties when the father died. Young Mr Rochford-King and his mother are being put to the pin of their collar to make ends meet, and he doesn’t think Felicity and himself should get married until he can give her the sort of life he’d like to give her.’

  ‘What is he going to do?’ asked Cowlick.

  ‘He’s been trying a lot of things to add to the income they get from the farm. The riding school Felicity runs for him is one of them. Then there are the gymkhanas. But it hasn’t been enough. I saw in the local paper that he’s thinking of throwing the castle open to the public now. He’d charge so much a head for letting people look at his collection of armour and swords and paintings and all that sort of stuff. Mind you, it’s a big step throwing your home open to the public like that, and I hear the mother’s not very fond of the idea. But it’s either that or sell some of their paintings, which are family heirlooms and worth a good bit I’d say.’

  ‘What else did the paper say?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing much. But there was a nice picture of the pair of them …’ He twisted around and rummaged behind the cushion of his chair. ‘Ah, here it is. Man, they’re a good-looking young couple.’ He passed the paper down to us and we looked at it and nodded. Then something struck me.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ I exclaimed. ‘When was that photograph taken?’

  Mr Armstrong scratched his head and thought for a moment. ‘Let me see now. I think Felicity said it was taken the night of the gymkhana – why?’

  ‘Because in the photograph she’s wearing the bracelet – look!’

  ‘Be the hokey, you’re right, Tapser,’ he wheezed. ‘Now why didn’t I see that?’

  ‘But what does that mean?’ asked Cowlick.

  ‘It means,’ I said, ‘she couldn’t have lost it when she fell off her horse in the plantation, as she told Daddy Armstrong, because the gymkhana was held after that, and the picture shows she still had it the night of the gymkhana.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t lose it at all,’ suggested Doubter.

  ‘Now hold on there, young fellow,’ said the old man. ‘That’s not fair to Felicity. If she says she lost it, she lost it. Maybe that fall she took up here was the only time she could think of when she might have lost it. Then again, maybe she just thinks she has lost it, while in fact she may only have mislaid it.’

  I could see Old Daddy Armstrong had complete faith in Felicity. To be honest, I didn’t know what to think. In spite of my great affection for her, I couldn’t help wondering if, for some reason, she just wanted to make it look as if she had lost the bracelet in that fall. I know it wasn’t very loyal of me, but I couldn’t help it. I could see the boys didn’t know what to make of it either.

  Knowing what was going through our minds, the old man closed the subject by directing us to take down the kettle which was boiling on the crook, and make the tea. By this time our wet socks were steaming and our faces were flushed from the heat, so we were ready to push back from the fire anyway.

  Curly unhooked the kettle, while Doubter and Cowlick took down half a dozen big blue-and-white-striped mugs from the row of hooks on the dresser. It was difficult to judge the amount of tea that was needed for so many of us, and it surprised nobody when it turned out to be so strong you could have stood on it. Even so, it didn’t seem half strong enough for Old Daddy Armstrong and we saw him pour something into his mug from a silver hip-flask. He said it was his medicine, but we knew better. It was whiskey; we could smell it. He has a great appetite for a man of his age. Indeed he’s always saying he could eat a dog if he could get his fork into it! At the same time we guessed maybe the whiskey was something he forgot to tell us about when he said potatoes and eggs were the secret of his long life.

  When he had drained his mug, we watched him take a plug of Mick McQuaid tobacco from his waistcoat pocket. He cut several slivers into his grubby palm with his penknife, and rubbed them with his thumb. Then, using his forefinger, he funnelled the tobacco into his pipe from his cupped hand. It always fascinated me the way he did that and I was just thinking I might try the pipe myself some day when Cowlick said, ‘But you didn’t tell us about the ghost. There is a ghost connected with the legend, isn’t there, Mr Armstrong?’

  The old man was lighting his pipe now, and he sucked and puffed until a long yellow flame was leaping from the bowl. Then he pressed the wriggling tobacco down with the flat end of his penknife and leaned back. ‘Aye, there is a story about a ghost all right.’

  ‘The ghost of the running dead man?’ suggested Cowlick.

  He shook his head. ‘Nobody could ever figure out who or what the running dead man was. Of course there’s some who say it’s the ghost of Sir Timothy and that his footsteps can be heard in the castle in the dead of night. Whether that’s so, or if he is a ghost, nobody knows for sure, for nobody’s ever seen him that I heard tell of. No, the ghost story arose from the drowning I was telling you about. They say that every time there’s a full moon you can see the ghost of the girl rising like a soft light from the spray of the Devil’s Cup, her long white dress billowing behind her, her silken hair blowing in the breeze, and her pale face mirrored in the rushing water of the lake.

  ‘They say, too,’ he added, ‘that it has been seen to float across the Cotton Bog, aye, as far as the fairy fort on Wariff Hill where, tradition has it, the young lovers first met.’

  ‘Do you believe it?’ asked Doubter.

  ‘Well, I’m not saying I do, and I’m not saying I don’t. But there’s some of the castle staff who swear they’ve seen it. The Phantom of the Lake they call it.’

  I could just imagine it. Mind you, I don’t usually put much stock in ghosts or phantoms or things like that, but sitting there in Old Daddy Armstrong’s gloomy cottage gazing into the glowing peat fire, I could just imagine the phantom, a sorrowful, eerie figure floating up among the trees of the estate. I don’t mind telling you, it sent a shiver right down my back. I suppose most of us were imagining the same, when Cowlick suddenly said, ‘Was Marcus ever in jail?’

  Old Daddy Armstrong closed one eye, screwed up his face at Cowlick and regarded him for a minute before saying, ‘Now I don’t know what you’re up to, young fella-me-lad, but if you’re thinking that being in jail makes Marcus any worse than any of the other workers in the estate, you’ve another think coming.’

  ‘Does that mean Marcus was in jail?’ asked Cowlick.

  ‘As it so happens he was – a long while back. Then again, so was the farm foreman, Wilson Harper, and maybe half a dozen others I could mention, if I had a mind to, which I haven’t.’

  Cowlick was puzzled. ‘How come?’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ the old man told him. ‘When people are released from jail they can find it very difficult to get a job. So Mr Rochford-King gets an allowance from the authorities for taking some of them on. It all helps to pay for the castle. But don’t get the idea they’re surrounded by criminals over there. They only take on men they’re satisfied want to make a fresh start and none of them have ever let the family down, at least not that I’ve ever heard of. I thought, Tapser, you’d have told him all about that.’

  I scratched my head. ‘I knew there was something like that going on. I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Was Simon Craig ever in jail?’ asked Totey.

  ‘No, not as far as I know. Why?’

  ‘I think anyone who’s as bad to a horse as he is should be in jail.’

  The old man smiled. ‘As a person who has spent his life around horses, Totey, I’ll agree with you there.’

  ‘Just one more thing, Mr Armstrong,’ said Cowlick. ‘If I was to tell you we saw a man wearing a deerstalker hat and plus-fours, what would you say?’

  ‘Did he have a white walrus moustache by any chance?’

  We nodded, and he told us, ‘I thought as much! I’d say you’ve been trespassing in the estate … that’s Major Mortimer Boucher, Felicity’s father.’

  6. FAIRY GOLD

  Old Daddy Armstrong had no idea of the surprise he gave us when he told us who the strange figure in tweeds was, and while it cleared up one point for us it only added to our puzzlement.

  From the way Major Boucher had been acting beneath the Gallows Tree, we concluded that he was either mad or up to something. Being estate manager, he could hardly be mad. What then was he up to? Had it anything to do with the strange happenings in the family graveyard, or with the mystery of the missing bracelet? Moreover, what did all or any of these occurrences have to do with the Legend of the Golden Key?

  Maybe, we thought, it was our imagination, but we felt they had a direct bearing on the legend. Doubter, to give him his due, was convinced of it too. So we continued our vigil in the grounds of the castle.

  To our great disappointment, our vigil was once more in vain. We saw nothing else worth talking about, and I’m afraid it wasn’t long before our enthusiasm began to flag. Soon we drifted back into our old ways. The adventure we had hoped for was over, it seemed, before it began.

  * * *

  As my father often says, things aren’t always what they seem, and it was certainly true in this case. Unknown to us, the scene of the mystery of the Legend of the Golden Key was about to change, and we were to be drawn into it again in a most unexpected fashion.

  We continued to keep a lookout for otters on the river, and sure enough, we finally spotted their tell-tale droppings around the alder trees. At that spot the water swirls around the rocks in a deep pool, and we knew it was an ideal place for otters. We also knew we wouldn’t see them in the daytime, so we arranged to meet shortly before dark.

  Having made our excuses, we all slipped out at the appointed time. For a moment Cowlick and I paused to debate whether or not to bring Prince, but in the end decided against it in case he might scare the otters away.

  There was a full moon and it lit up the river just nicely. Excited at the prospect of seeing the otters, we slipped down through the hedge at the side of the road and made our way cautiously along the river.

  It’s odd how everything looks different when the light begins to fade, even when there’s a full moon. The Whin Hill, familiar to us during the day, was now a strange dark blob sticking up into the deepening blue of the night sky. So was Wariff Hill up ahead, but that’s always a scary sort of place, even in the daytime. The bank of the river didn’t seem the same either. We thought we knew every bump and hollow of it, but we took a good few empty steps, and some wet ones in the marshy ground beside the cornfields.

  When we reached the area of the alders, we crept quietly through the clumps of scrub and rushes until we were peering over into the pool. Trying to breathe so nothing would hear us, we settled down to wait. Everything was quiet, save for the water swirling around the rocks, and what seemed to us the uncommonly loud beating of our hearts. The moon was still clear of cloud and casting soft light on the water.