Stallery cut through me like a buzz saw. It was only a thin line, luckily, but while I crossed it, it was like having my body taken over by a swarm of electric bees. I squeaked. The tall boy, walking beside me, made a small noise like “Oof!” I didn’t notice if any of the others felt it because almost at once we came through under the gatehouse into a huge vista of perfect parkland. We all made little murmurs of pleasure.
There was perfect green rolling lawn wherever you looked, with a ribbon of beautifully kept driveway looping through it among clumps of graceful trees. The greenness rose into hills here and there and the hills were either crowned with trees or they had little white pillared summerhouses on them. And it all went on and on, into the blue distance.
“Where’s the house?” one of the girls asked.
The gatekeeper laughed. “Couple of miles away. Start walking. When you come to the path that goes off to the right, take that and keep walking. When you can see the mansion, take the right-hand path again. Someone will meet you there and show you the rest of the way.”
“Aren’t you coming too then?” the girl asked.
“No,” said the man. “I stay with the gate. Off you go.”
We set off, trudging in a dubious little huddle along the drive, like a lost herd of sheep. We walked until the wall and the gate were out of sight behind two of the green hills, but there was still no sign of the mansion. A certain amount of sighing and shuffling began, particularly among the girls. They were all wearing the kind of shoes that hurt your feet just to look at them, and most of them had the latest fashion in dresses on too, which held their knees together and forced them to take little tripping steps. Some of the boys had come in good suits made of thick cloth. They were far too hot, and one boy who was wearing hand-stitched boots was hobbling worse than the girls.
“I’ve got a blister already,” one of the girls announced. “How much further is it?”
“Do you think it’s some kind of a test?” wondered the boy with the boots.
“Oh, it’s bound to be,” said the tall boy from the gypsy camp. “This drive is designed to lead us round in circles until only the fittest survive. That was a joke,” he added, as almost everyone let out a moan. “Why don’t we all take a rest?” His bright dark eyes travelled over our various plastic bags. “Why don’t we sit on this nice smooth grass and have a picnic?”
This suggestion caused instant dismay. “We can’t!” half of them cried out. “They’re expecting us!” And most of the rest said, “I can’t mess up my good clothes!”
The tall boy stood with his hands in his pockets surveying everyone’s hot, anxious faces. “If they want us that badly,” he said, in a testing kind of way, “they might have had the decency to send a car.”
“Ooh, they wouldn’t do that, not for domestic,” one of the girls said.
The tall boy nodded. “I suppose not.” I had the feeling that, up until then, this boy had not the least notion why we were all here. I could see him digesting the idea. “Still,” he said, “domestic or not, there’s nothing to stop people taking their shoes off and walking on this nice smooth grass, is there? There’s no one who could see.” Faces turned to him with longing. “Go on,” he said. “You can always put them on again when we sight the house.”
More than half of them took his advice. Girls plucked off shoes, boys unlaced tight boots. The tall boy sauntered behind with a pleased but slightly superior smile, watching them scamper barefoot along the smooth verge. Some of the girls hauled their tight skirts up. Boys took off hot jackets.
“That’s better,” he said. He turned to me. “Aren’t you going to?”
“Old shoes,” I said, pointing down at them. “They don’t hurt.” His shoes looked to be handmade. I could see they fitted him like gloves. I felt very suspicious of him. “If you really thought it was a test,” I said, “you’ve made them all fail it.”
He shrugged. “It depends if Stallery wants barefoot parlourmaids and footmen with big hairy toes,” he said, and I could have sworn he looked at me closely then, to see if I thought this was what we all intended to be. His piercing dark eyes travelled on down to my carrier bag. “You couldn’t spare a sandwich, could you? I’m starving. The Travellers only eat when they happen to have some food, and that didn’t seem to happen most of the time I was with them.”
I fished him out one of my sandwiches and another for myself. “You couldn’t have been with the gypsies that long,” I said, “or your clothes would have got creased.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It was nearly a month, actually. Thanks.”
We marched along munching egg and cress, while the driveway unreeled ahead of us and more hills with trees and lacy white buildings came into view, and the other kids ran along ahead of us in a bunch. Most of them were trying to eat sandwiches too, and hang on to coats and shoes and bags while they ate.
“What’s your name?” I said at length.
“Call me Christopher,” he said. “And you?”
“Conrad Te—Grant,” I said, remembering my alias just in time.
“Conrad T Grant?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Just Grant.”
“Very well,” he said. “Grant you shall be. And you aim to be a footman and strut in Stallery in velvet hose, do you, Grant?”
Hose? I thought. I had visions of myself in a reel of rubber pipe. “I don’t know what they dress you in,” I said. “But I do know they can’t be going to take more than one or two.”
“That seems obvious,” Christopher replied. “I regard you as my chief rival, Grant.”
This was so exactly what I thought about him that I was rather shaken. I didn’t answer, and we swung up another loop of drive to find there were now banks of flowers under some of the trees, as if we might be getting near the gardens round the house. Here a dog of some kind came lolloping from the nearest trees and put on speed towards us. It was quite a big dog. The kids on the verge instantly began milling about, yelling out that it was one of the ferocious guard dogs on the loose. A girl screamed. The boy with the hand-stitched boots swung them, ready to throw at the dog.
“Don’t do that, you fool!” Christopher bellowed at him. “Do you want it to go for you?” He set off in great strides up the grass towards the dog. It put on speed and came sort of snaking at him, long and low.
I’m sure the kids were right about that dog. It was snarling as if it wanted to tear Christopher’s throat out, and when it got near, it bunched itself, ready to spring. A girl screamed again.
“Stop that, you fool of a dog,” Christopher said. “Stop it at once.”
And the dog did stop. Not only did it stop, but it wagged its tail and wagged its bunched-up hind parts and came crawling and grovelling towards Christopher, where it tried to lick his beautiful shoes.
“No slobber,” Christopher commanded, and the dog stopped and just grovelled instead. “You’ve made a mistake,” he told it. “No one here’s a trespasser.
