Blackbriar by William Sleator Page A

everywhere! How can you mean it?” He had never argued with her so vehemently before; until now, he had never cared enough about anything.
    “I hardly know what I mean,” she said slowly. “I can’t bear the thought of moving again, I can’t bear the thought of looking for another place to live. But I wonder if I can bear to go on living there. . . .”
    “But—” Danny sighed and fell loosely back into his chair. How could she be so stodgy and unadventurous? He searched his brain for something nasty to say to her.
    But before he had a chance to say anything he felt a light tap on his shoulder, and turned to find Lark standing behind him. “Oh, hullo,” he said, getting up awkwardly. “I was wondering if you would be here.” She was still wearing jeans and the thick black sweater, and her hair was no neater than it had been the day before on the windy hillside.
    “I didn’t expect you to be,” she said. “Why should anybody be in this place when they could be up there with just the wind and the trees all around, in your wonderful house? Well, aren’t you going to introduce me?”
    “Oh,” he said. “Right. Philippa, this is Lark. I met her at the tumuli yesterday. And this is Mrs. Sibley, the lady I live with.”
    “Hello,” Philippa said. She turned to Danny. “You didn’t tell me you’d met anybody yesterday.”
    “I—I guess there just wasn’t time,” Danny said lamely, trying to hide his embarrassment. “I mean, so many other things happened last night that—”
    “I’m very glad to meet you,” Lark interrupted, somewhat timidly, Danny noted.
    “Why don’t you sit down,” Philippa said coldly. “Danny, pull up a chair for her.”
    He was ashamed to be told what to do in front of his independent friend; but there was nothing he could do but pull back a chair and then flop carelessly back into his.
    “I’ve been wanting to meet you ever since I met Danny,” Lark began, leaning forward. “I knew I would like anybody who liked Blackbriar, especially someone who would come all the way from London to live there.”
    “You might not like her, then,” Danny said. “She wants to leave.”
    “Oh, come now,” Philippa said. “You’re exaggerating, and you’re not telling the whole story. The truth is,” she went on, turning to Lark, “that I have been wondering, just wondering, if we really should go on living there. You must know the strange attitude people have about the place. They seem either disgusted or afraid, and so secretive, all of which does have some relevance, after all. And now it turns out that Blackbriar has a really rather macabre history, as Danny discovered today.”
    “What did you find out?” Lark asked quickly.
    “Oh, it was a pesthouse,” Danny said, trying to make it sound boring and ordinary. “When the Great Plague came in the seventeenth century that’s where they put the people from Dunchester who caught it. I told you about that door, remember? All the names on it must be the people who died there.”
    Lark gave a long, low whistle and slowly leaned back in her chair. “I see what you mean,” she said to Philippa. “That’s about as ghastly as you can get.” To Danny she said, “How clever of you to find that out! And in less than a week as well. I’ve been here for practically as long as I can remember, and I had no idea it had been used for that.”
    Danny felt a quick wave of pleasure. It was the first time he had ever been complimented for something he had done completely on his own, perhaps because he had never really done anything on his own before.
    “Yes, yes,” Philippa said. There was an unpleasant edge to her voice. “I’m sure we all appreciate how very clever Danny is. But I don’t understand why no one will tell us anything about the place.”
    While Lark was explaining to Philippa that the people in this part of the country were really quite secretive, Danny suddenly remembered that he hadn’t told her not to mention