Or: What Barney Did When Simon and Jane Weren't at the Rendezvous Point.
Barney did not find Merry on the path
up the headland—which makes sense, since Merry's off to Turuo on
Mrs. Palk's false information.
Returning the corner where they are
meant to meet, Barney quickly surmises that the others are absent
because they're still following Mrs. Palk. He decides to join them.
Recalling Mrs. Palk's excitement for the carnival and dancing, he
falls in with the procession when it passes by.
The people in the procession are
apparently all dressed up in costumes: trees, and sailors, and
jesters, and animals... and racist caricatures (remember Mrs. Palk's
“Red Indian” feathered headdress? Yeah, that's not just an
allusion). Barney goes into the middle of the dance, and gets a
glimpse of Mrs. Palk, right before he's literally carried away by a
person dressed as a cat and a man in “sheik” robes.
I'm wagering the cat is none other than
Polly Withers, and that her brother is the other.
And somehow, no one notices two
costumed people manhandling a kicking and screaming boy out of the
festival and into a car. They do trap and gag him with the robes,
but this still seems like something that someone in this huge crowd
should notice and express concern at.
Meanwhile, Jane and Simon, apparently
failing to locate Mrs. Palk, have checked the house and the
rendezvous corner, and have found no sign of Barney. They decide he
must have found Merry on the headland, and head there.
Back with Barney in the car, he has
identified his kidnappers by their voices. Yes, it's the Withers.
And Norman Withers is in blackface, if you needed another reason to
dislike him. Arriving at their destination, the Withers' disentangle
Barney from the robes and resume their earlier seeming
friendliness—inviting him in for tea and saying they just want to
introduce him to a friend. The gas-lighting almost seems to work, as
Barney starts wonder if it's just a festive joke, and that they
really are nice, and the kids have just misjudged them. Bill
Hoover's appearance reminds Barney of the chase and Polly demanding
the map, and this time the abrupt shift really feels intentional:
like Barney just broke some sort of enchantment that made him view
people from “the dark” as favorably as possible. It would
explain everyone's strange trust in Mrs. Palk... Or maybe “the
dark” is just good at abusing with people's tendency to not assume
malice.
Barney is brought into the presence of
a deep-voiced person whom the others seem to defer to. He identifies
himself as Mr. Hastings. They have sandwiches brought in, and Barney
finds his surroundings fairly familiar: they remind him, somehow, of
the Grey House. Mr. Hastings is interested and wants to know more.
Current guess: they're either at Bill
Hoover's dad's house or the vicarage Jane ended up at earlier.
Hastings suddenly asks, “Is it buried
under the Grey House, Barnabas, or one of the standing stones?”
Barney chokes from surprise and pretends not to understand. I'm
reminded of Polly Withers' sudden, direct questions, and I wonder if
this is a standard strategy of their side.
It's somewhat odd to be asking that,
however, because Hastings immediately launches into a villains'
premature reveal, insisting that they already know everything, and
that he's been brought here in order to “put a stop to your little
quest”. Perhaps he knows less that he pretends and is fishing for
more information? They're right on the kids finding a map and having
Professor Lyon aka Great-Uncle Merry helping them, but nothing
specific has been said about a grail, or its location.
[And if it was under the Grey House,
why would the kids be taking the map up to headland? Shouldn't there
presence there be a big clue to the opponents that the standing
stones are more likely, since that's the one place the kids keep
returning to?]
Barney continues to feign ignorance,
and asks for another sandwich. Mr. Withers is dismissed on some
errand (“you know what you have to do”), and Barney asks Hastings
why the others address him as “sir”. Hastings knows that Barney
is bluffing, and tries to put in a pitch for his side of things. It
doesn't look good, as this involves more attempted gas-lighting rather than a straight-forward explanation of his opinions. There's also a lot of
casting suspicion on Merry, and Hastings has the gall to suggest that
he (Hastings) is clearly not evil, because he hasn't harmed Barney
and even gave him food! There was no kidnapping, just a little joke,
and it's was Polly's doing, anyway. Merry's really out for his own
fame and is using the kids, etc.
Good grief. As much as Merry's light
vs. dark explanation involved little solid evidence that the other
side is, in fact, evil, the way the dark treats people has me
decidedly opposed to them. So far, we've seen them pretend to be
nice, then make demands; lie, directly and intentionally; make people
doubt their own experience (gas-lighting); and then blame other
people for what they can't explain away. They are also possibly are
using magic or some other kind of psychic influence to make people
disregard their harmful or frightening actions.
Hastings also tries the “I will tell
you everything” gambit, offering to make everything clear if Barney
will admit to seeing the map. Instead of explaining, however, he basically just argues that
Merry is looking for selfish reasons, while he [Hastings] and his people
want to make the information available to everyone. Barney almost
slips, but manages to avoid naming the grail as the object of the
map. When he answers Hastings' rhetorical question about Merry's
motivation being “In the name of King Arthur, and of the old world
before the dark came”, things manage to get even creepier, and Hastings gives orders to move out.
“Where are you taking me?” [Barney
asked].
“You are coming with us to the sea,”
said the voice behind the dark intent eyes. “You will cause no
more trouble, and you will do whatever I say. And when we are on the
sea, Barnabas, you are going to tell us about your map, and show us
where it leads.”
And on that happy note, the chapter
ends. I'm 90% sure at this point that Hastings can cast the imperius
curse as a free action once per round.
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