Read Online The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner - Free Book Online Page A

his shoulder to the ladder, his legs either side of it, and lifted the extension off its first rung. The extension slid upwards, past two more rungs. Robert’s grip trembled. The ladder began to lean, and with its leaning it was heavier all at once, too heavy, and the hooks were between rungs and he couldn’t lock them. The ladder fell away from him, and the extension bent like a stalk.
    Robert was losing his strength, as he had with the jackacre stone on the hill.
    He bent and pushed again, and stuck. He felt as though he had no muscles, only a hot sharp ache, and a sharp sweet taste in his mouth. He let the hooks down on the rung. The ladder was safe; firm against the matting. It wouldn’t skid. The top of the ladder was at the high platform.
    Robert held the baggin cloth between his teeth, and climbed. It was a whippy ladder and it bounced under him.
    From the platform there was a fixed set of steps, with iron handrails, to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The trap was lashed to a tread. Robert undid the lashing and pushed with his fingers. The trap opened, as if somebody was in the bay above, lifting. But the door had been counter weighted by Father with sashcord and bricks.
    Robert went into the second bay of the tower. Here the clock did not tick. From the road, the gentle noise could be heard, but in the second bay the pendulum swung its arc, and the clock spoke. It spoke with the same beat, but no whispered tick. The whole dark bay was the sound. Sunlight criss-crossed the floor through stained glass with marks like coloured chalks, and the air above thudded the pendulum.
    A twenty-nine stave ladder led to the clock chamber above. The ladder had its own rhythm, no whip or bend, no clattering extension.
    Robert always stopped to watch when he was on the ladder. The pendulum came and went in the dim light, came and went. Through the trapdoor and past the platform the floor tiles were a long way off.
    He climbed up, stepped sideways from the ladder to the planks of the chamber and put the baggin against the clock.
    Here, everything was different again, and open. The clock case was like a hen coop, covered with tarred felt, and out of holes in the roof and sides rods connected the gears of its four faces, wires ran over pulleys to the weights that drove the clock, and a chain held the striker of the bell.
    The slanted louvers filled each wall, and Robert could see the village, across to the station and Saint Philip’s church. Saint Philip’s had a gilded weathercock, but nothing that could tell the time. The wind and hours in Chorley were at different ends.
    Robert watched the hands move on the faces of the clock. The faces held white glass in metal frames, and Father had made the hands. From inside the chamber the time was back to front.
    Robert wedged himself up the wall and reached for the cross-beam that held the frame of the clock. He hung, pulled, swung one leg over, then the other, and sat on top of the beam. He squirmed along the beam, close under the chamber roof. There was a small hatch in the roof, without hinges. He pushed at it, and it lifted and dropped back hard. It was heavy for a small square of wood. He tried again, lifting with his shoulders, and the hatch opened enough for him to jam his elbow through, then his arm, and to work the hatch sideways and clear.
    Above him was darkness. But it wasn’t quiet. He listened to the sound. It was no sound of clocks or of anything made. It was as if the wind had a voice and was flying in the steeple. The sound moved, never still, and under the sound was a high roaring.
    Robert lifted himself on his arms through the hatch way, his legs clear of the beam. He rolled backwards and was in. He lifted the hatch, biting his lip with the heaviness, and settled it in its place. He moved gently over the floor to the wall of the steeple and sat down, hugging his knees.
    The floor was smooth, covered with lead. There was lead on the hatch, and that was the weight. Robert sat in