The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

‘It should be all right if they haven’t been wicked.’

But they weren’t sure. Sinners are always welcome in a church or any House of God as long as they have repented – but what if they haven’t? It would be so embarrassing if there were thunderclaps or bolts from heaven when their friends tried to come in.

‘We’ll stay outside,’ said Ranulf. ‘Ghosts can rest anywhere.’

But the children felt it would be rude to go inside and leave their companions out in the cold.

So Ranulf glided across the porch and into the church and there were absolutely no thunderbolts of any kind. Obviously Ranulf had not been wicked and nor had the rat. (Gnawing is not wicked if you are a rat because gnawing is what rats do.) Mr Smith too passed peacefully into the church, and so did Sunita.

They were a bit worried about Brenda, because she had broken her promise to Roderick when she married the boot manufacturer, but breaking promises, though bad, is so common that it isn’t really a sin and she got in too and flopped down on a pew.

Then Sunita turned to The Feet, which were standing outside on the porch.

‘Come along, dears,’ she said to them.

But The Feet didn’t come along, even for Sunita. The Feet absolutely wouldn’t enter the church; they wouldn’t even try. They turned away firmly and the children could just make out the heels disappearing in the direction of a tombstone before the darkness swallowed them completely.

‘Oh well,’ said Madlyn. ‘Perhaps they just want to be alone.’

They were all too tired to argue, and one by one they stretched out on the pews and went to sleep.

And while they slept, the water receded and Blackscar began to lift itself out of the morning mist.

It was called Blackscar Island but it was only an island part of the time. The causeway built across the sands could carry cars and people from the mainland, but it was only passable at low tide and for a few hours on either side of it. At high tide Blackscar was as complete an island as any in the North Sea.

Because of this there had been talk among seafarers in the olden days of people, or flocks of sheep, walking on the water ... and miracles – but they were walking on the submerged causeway. And anyone who set off later than the time shown on the noticeboards on either side of the causeway risked drowning. There was a list of those who had perished in this way in the church, and to prevent further accidents a kind of wooden hut on stilts had been built halfway across, with a ladder leading up to it, where foolish travellers could take refuge till the tide turned again. It was called the Blackscar Box and was not at all a comfortable place in which to spend the night.

The coast near Blackscar is bleak: flat and muddy with reeds and sandbanks – the island stretches a drear arm out into the grey water. All the same, years earlier a property developer had decided to build a luxury hotel on it. He thought people might be excited by the difficulty of getting across to the island, and by the loneliness.

The hotel he built was very grand: it had towers and turrets, and glassed verandas attached to each of the bedrooms. It had a palm court, where visiting orchestras could play, and three lounges, and the bathrooms had shell-shaped baths with gold-plated taps.

And at first people did come and the hotel did good business.

But the weather was terrible: fogs and wind and endlessly grey skies. The birds whose sad cries kept the visitors awake were not the kind that rich people liked to shoot, and the fish were just . . . fish – not the sort you could be photographed with when you had caught them. Who wants to be photographed with a herring?

And then a very important visitor ignored the noticeboard telling him the times of the high tide, and was drowned in his expensive motor car, and fewer and fewer visitors came, and the hotel went bankrupt.

The hotel stayed empty for nearly ten years. Then a very important doctor from London came and bought it – and with the hotel went the whole island: the fields and the marshes and the foreshore.

The name of the doctor was Maurice Manners and he was a man with a dream.

Dr Manners moved into the main part of the hotel – in fact he made it even grander – but the part where the servants used to sleep he turned into workshops and offices. He built wooden huts on the far side of the hotel and large sheds, and he fenced off paddocks, and he brought in like-minded people to help him with his business.

But exactly what his business was, no one knew, because visitors were not welcome at Blackscar. Dr Manners needed peace and solitude for his work, and for a long time now only those who had been specially invited made the crossing to the island.

Rollo woke first, and came out of the chapel to see the silver ribbon of the sea-washed road disappearing into the morning mist.