Unexpected Magic by Diana Wynne Jones

Author:Diana Wynne Jones [Jones, Diana Wynne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Everard’s Ride

Part I

RIDERS THROUGH THE BAY

Chapter 1

Outlaw

The events in this story took place rather more than a hundred years ago, when Queen Victoria was on the throne and the division between rich and poor was much more important than it now is. Your grandfather’s grandfather would then have been a boy of twelve, like the boy to whom these things happened.

His name was Alex Hornby; and it was his misfortune to occupy the uncomfortable upper end of that gap between rich and poor, where you were not quite gentry, but too well off to be anything else. His father, Josiah Hornby, was a farmer. The family lived in a low stone farmhouse halfway up a hill, looking out across a great river estuary. From the foot of the hill a long causeway ran out into the bay, to a small rocky island on which stood the ruins of a castle. So, though all their fires smoked in the sea-wind, they had the grandest view in the neighborhood. Above the farmhouse, the top of the hill had been cleared of trees, ready for the great new house Josiah Hornby intended to build the following summer.

Josiah, who was, like many Victorians, a grim and striving person, was changing into a gentleman-farmer as fast as he could afford to do it. He was a fairly wealthy man already. Twenty years or so before, he had bought shares in the railway which ran all around the bay beside the sea, and his shares had prospered. He had bought shares in other things. At the same time, out of what he had been paid for letting the railway run through his land, he bought the island in the bay. He had it for a song, because its owner was hard up, and because it was said to be haunted. But Josiah cared not a rap for ghosts, or gossip. He bought the island because it was cheap and because of its ruined castle. It was grand and gentlemanly, he thought, to own a castle.

Alex and his sister, Cecilia, were pleased with the castle, too, although they were not pleased with much else about starting to be rich. It meant that Alex had to go as a weekly boarder to a grammar school in the nearest big town. It meant that Cecilia had a governess. It meant—which was worst of all—that they dropped homely friends in the village and tried to be on visiting-terms with the Courcys of Arnforth Hall. The Courcys noticed them—just. Josiah went to the Hall once a week on business. The children were called in from time to time if more guests were needed at the Courcy children’s parties. Cecilia had once refused to go to a Courcy party. Her father had been so angry that Alex hid in the loft and Cecilia set out across the bay to run away and make her fortune. She did not get very far that time. Josiah came after her on horseback and spanked her, right in the middle of the bay, beside the river channel.

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