The Warden Cross: The Journey Begins

By Clive Andrews

The Warden Cross is an adventure story about Jonathan Warden, a teenage boy who is thrown back in time to the ancient village where his family began. During his time there, he has to face a number of mentally and physically challenging tests. Although he is not as strong or fit as the other village boys, he has the advantage of a few hidden modern items and knowledge to help him and with a lot of luck, plus more than a little help from a number of people, Jonathan gains the trust of the village elder Gum-gum and the villagers and becomes a man, a hunter, and a tribal leader. He then finds out why he has been sent backto save his ancestors from the druid who had other plans for him and his family. Then on his return back to the present day, he finds that the enemys descendants have pursued his family through the ages and are now trying to destroy his modern-day family, and only Jonathan is aware of the plot against his family, but can he save the family again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466950887

Clive Andrews

I had a very ordinary childhood, no major dramas, traumas or abuse and certainly nothing to fill a book. Then my childhood dream of becoming a soldier became reality. If anyone had told me, what I would go through I would never have believed them or joined up. I am not alone in my experiences but when put all together they shaped and developed me in to the person I am today. Looking back, if I could do it all again, I would, and I would volunteer all over again. Since leaving the forces, I have found it very difficult to settle in employment and have three broken marriages. I do not blame the army but it has to be said, my time served moulded me in to the person I am.  Would I change anything? Well if I said yes, then I would not have encountered all the wonderful people I have in my civilian life, but mostly I may not have the beautiful children, stepchildren and grandson that I have. 

Book preview

Chapter 1

School

Jonathan ran down the dark hallway across the blue carpet towards the old wooden stairway that led up towards the deserted bell tower in the northern corner of the boarding school he attended. He turned his head from side to side as he ran, trying to catch a glimpse of his pursuers.

Jonathan had a mop of pale ginger hair, tall for nearly thirteen but small boned and thin; he had a small button nose, with the Warden green eyes, and despite his strong jaw line, there was a sense of insecurity about him.

He wore the school regulation green pajamas and dark-green dressing gown; he carried one slipper in his hand as he tried not to make any noise on the wooden floor that would reveal his location to his pursuers. The mahogany floor was cold to his bare feet, but he took no notice as he fled up the dark passageway.

He had just finished brushing his teeth in the small basin at one end of the bedroom and was preparing to get into bed when the creaking of the floorboards warned him that Neville and Richard, the two school bullies, had slipped into his room; and in an effort to get away from them, he had leaped over the bed, losing one of his slippers. He rushed out of the door, instinctively turning toward the safety of the bell tower.

He had thought that they would not chase him for more than a few seconds, but they did with almost frightful intent, and now he found himself running barefoot down the cold, dark corridors of the school, down a flight of stairs, hoping that the carpet would deaden the sound of his running feet and throw both Neville and Richard off his trail. He ran along the corridor with its portraits of previous headmasters and prominent people from the past hanging on the cream-colored walls.

It did not work; they were still after him. He could hear their heavy breathing on the stairs behind him. He was beginning to feel desperate; up till now he had managed to outrun them or he had been saved by the timely intervention of one of the teachers, but tonight they did not seem to be giving up.

He was now in the corridor that led to the bell tower; if they found him here, he had nowhere else to go. He ran toward the big wooden door with its arched frame and studded joints; it had not been used for many years except by Jonathan it seemed. His running footsteps echoed through the empty hallway as he raced desperately toward the door with the two other boys after him.

As he ran, a million thoughts raced through his mind: Neville did not seem to be your average school bully. That type of boy was usually bigger than everybody else and used his height or weight to bully the children around him. Although Neville swaggered around the school, he was short, almost the same height as Jonathan even though he was a full year older, with large ears and nose, and a thin-lipped mouth. He had bushy eyebrows for a boy of thirteen. Jonathan had noticed them the first time he saw Neville. They met in the middle above his deep-set eyes. Richard, Neville’s sidekick, was much the same except for the eyebrows, maybe a little taller than Neville; it seemed these days that they just would not leave him alone, and for some reason, they kept giving him a hard time, forever making life difficult for him. As he raced down the hallway, he tried again to work out why. He had not done anything to them as far as he knew. In fact, he hardly knew them before they started to pick on him around four weeks ago, just after the midterm visit from his parents and his uncle Jack and auntie Verona.

His parents always came to visit at midterm, but last time, his uncle Jack and auntie Verona had come along as well. Jonathan had been surprised to see them.

Neville and Richard had started messing him around right afterward. At every opportunity, they would pass comments or push him as they walked past. Last week they had even hidden his school case so he would get into trouble with the math teacher, Mr. Smith. That little prank of theirs had cost him two hours of detention. Of all the teachers, it had to be Mr. Smith, the meanest of all his teachers. He was a short thin man with spectacles that sat on the end of his nose. Jonathan wondered why he wore them because he constantly peered over them and never seemed to use them to look at anything. Maybe he wore them just to make himself look even meaner than he was.

Then there was the time they went into his room, turned everything upside down, and emptied his clothes onto the floor. That had got everyone on the floor into trouble because they failed a surprise inspection by the headmaster.

Sometimes when he was standing outside on the field, Neville and Richard would run past and purposely bump him, usually knocking him down or spilling his cool drink down the front of his uniform, making him sit the whole afternoon with a wet patch down his front, much to the amusement of the rest of the class. That really made him mad, and all the more annoying was the fact that he hardly ever saw them coming, no matter how watchful he was. Suddenly he would feel the bump from behind, and they would laugh and call him names as they ran away.

Even as these thoughts ran through his mind, he was desperately trying to reach the end of the hallway before they came around the corner. They were closing in on him, shouting and laughing at him, threatening him with what they were going to do to him when they caught him. In the empty hallway, their threats echoed loudly. He was tiring quickly, and he despaired of making it to safety this time. Neville and Richard were gaining on him with every step.

He wondered what they would do if they caught him. Would they force him to give them more money? It seemed that the amount grew more and more each week, and when he said that he had no money, Richard and Neville would hint that he would be coming into a lot of money very soon and that he had better give them some or things would get a lot tougher for him.

He could only suppose they thought he would be getting money for his thirteenth birthday; they did not know that his family never gave money on birthdays or that his parents had been hinting over the last few weeks that things were very tough at the moment and that there was trouble at the family business, so he might not be getting anything at all.

With a last gasping effort, Jonathan reached the heavy studded door that led to the disused bell tower. He slid through the smallest gap possible and then pushed with all his might to close the heavy door behind him. He struggled to drop the thick wooden bar into the U-shaped brackets to lock the door from the inside just as the two bullies on the other side tried to force their way in, then with his very last ounce of strength, he dropped it in.

He heaved a sigh of relief as he rested his forehead against the door, feeling the vibrations of the fists banging against the door in frustration, happy because he knew that the boys banging on the door could not get him.

The two boys continued to shout and bang on the other side of the door, then after a few minutes, the banging suddenly stopped. However, despite the deathly quiet, Jonathan knew that they would be waiting and hoping for him to open the door. He stood for a moment while he caught his breath and then slowly started to climb up the long winding wooden staircase. He leaned heavily against the thick banister for support and slowly placed one bare foot in front of the other, up the two flights of stairs toward the trapdoor dividing the roof area from the tower itself.

He opened the trapdoor with a creak from hinges long devoid of oil and jumped at the thud as it landed onto the floor of the uppermost part of the tower. As he lifted himself through and stood up, he realized he had better be careful not to step back and fall through the trapdoor, but he did not want to close it and possibly be trapped up there.

He continued to breathe heavily as he brushed the sweat off his forehead and the dust from his clothing, but he was safe at last. He moved to the side of the tower and gripped the low walls while he looked around. He looked at the bell in the center of the room long ago someone had tried to scratch a name into the bell’s ancient metal, but the letters were worn as though they were very old. It looked as though the name started with R, but the next three letters were lost. The name ended in —bran, so the name looked like R—bran—but who had a name like that? He had tried to come up with names, but there did not seem any that matched.

He looked at the frayed rope still attached by a few strands to the bell as it hung down through the hole in the floor below, and wondered once again why the school had never repaired the bell. As far as he knew, the last time it had been rung was when the previous headmaster, Mr. Stone, was buried, more than twenty years before. He had often thought of asking the headmaster or at least the housemaster why it had not been fixed, but then he might have to reveal that he had been up in the bell tower. He looked out of the bell tower windows and over the school grounds to where he could see the school buildings. The high gray walls had sheltered schoolboys like him for more than two hundred years. He could see his room, or at least the window of his room, which was the last one on the left on the first floor, the top floor being reserved for senior boys and the housemaster. The ground floor was for classrooms and the great hall. In the distance he saw the headmaster’s house, made of the same gray stone with black slate roof tiles. A light burned at the lounge window, and shadows moved around. The headmaster must be having a party tonight,

Then he turned to his favorite view from the bell tower, the view of the trees and the moon just showing through the treetops. Then he took a bearing with the compass that he had bought at the toy shop not far from his home. It was the first thing other than sweets that he bought with the pocket money. He had not even known then exactly what it was or what it did, but he had liked the look of the funny little figure under the glass and the way the needle inside always seemed to turn to face the same direction when he turned around. He had often tried to confuse the needle by spinning round and round with it at arm’s length, but all he did was make himself dizzy, because as soon as he checked the needle, it had gone already gone back to pointing in the same direction as before. If his grandfather had not shown him what a compass was really for, he would still have believed that it was a toy. The height of the moon showed just how late it was. Jonathan suddenly realized the housemaster would be doing his round any minute. He hurried down the stairs to the doorway and, as quietly as he could, lifted the beam. Little by little, he opened the door. Then without warning, there was a blast of voices and a rush of feet toward him from the darkness, and he realized that Neville and Richard had been there waiting for him all the time. Jonathan managed to slam the door closed just before Neville got his fingers on the big black knob. He slipped gradually down onto the cold stone floor, realizing that he might have to spend the night in this dark little hole. His heart sank.

The minutes ticked slowly past, and he felt more and more afraid, for he had never liked being alone or being in the dark for that matter. Jonathan looked at the heavy stone blocks that made up the bell tower and wondered whether Neville and Richard had managed to lock the door from the outside and, if so, whether this small stone room would become his tomb.

Slowly it grew darker and darker, and Jonathan grew more and more afraid. The moonlight through the trapdoor, which he had not closed behind him, illuminated strange shadows that seemed to almost dance up and down the stone wall. He pulled his legs up and hugged his knees, resting his chin on them. It was eerily silent as he sat wondering what he should do next. Every now and then a strange scratching noise would cause him to jump, unsure of what was causing the noises. Maybe it was a rat. He wondered whether rats came out at night or whether some other animal would appear. He wondered what would happen if he had to sleep there. Would he wake up surrounded by rats?

He heard a scratching sound coming from the other side of the bell tower; he listened intently as he sat there trembling, not with cold but with fear. He had never been in a situation like this before. The slightest sound was amplified in the stillness of the bell tower; the wind was blowing outside, but he heard other noises too. Could it be Neville or Richard trying to get at him, or could it be other creatures hiding and waiting for him to fall asleep before they pounced?

Suddenly Jonathan sat bolt upright. He remembered that there was an outside door leading from the bell tower to the courtyard; if Neville or Richard had forgotten that door, he could escape. He jumped up and raced down the stairs to the ground floor, tripping, nearly falling but managing to stay upright, and caught his balance on the thick banister as he reached the ground level. He fumbled in the darkness, feeling his way to the opposite side of the bell tower until he touched the wood of the door. Then he felt up and down for the handle, but when he found it and pulled and turned, the door would not budge. He was caught like a rat in a trap. Perspiration started to stream down his forehead as he contemplated being stuck there forever. Then he pulled it again; it creaked slowly open, and an immense flood of relief raced through him. He stood at the top of three stone steps that led down to the garden and overlooked the manicured lawn and flower beds that lay between him and the school buildings. By the light of the moon, he could make out the rose garden and the statues that lined the pathways to the headmaster’s office. He heaved a sigh of relief as he saw he could escape at last. But then a sense of despair came over him as he saw by the glow of the luminous hands from his watch that it was well after ten o’clock. Lights out was at ten o’clock, and all the doors were locked and bolted. The housemaster would have done his rounds by now if he had not been attending the headmaster’s party; the housemaster must have told Neville to set the alarms—that is why Neville and Richard could attack him and wait for him outside the door for so long they knew that the housemaster would not be there until late. Neville will not miss the opportunity to get Jonathan into trouble; he would have set the alarms, hoping that Jonathan would think the housemaster was away, and try and get in to the school, thereby setting the alarms off. Neville and Richard had succeeded in trapping him outside the school for the night if he did not want to get into trouble.

He sat down on the cold stone step and stared up into the night sky. The tears rolled down his cheeks as he tried to figure out why Neville was always after him. He could hear the frogs and crickets croaking and chirping out their songs. He started to feel a little cold as he only had his pajamas and dressing gown on and one slipper tucked into his pocket, so he got up and went back into the bell tower, closing the door behind him before making his way back up the steps to the first level of the bell tower. He sat down, put his head on his knees, and gloomily contemplated the night of sleepless discomfort ahead. His eyelids started to droop, and his head grew heavier and heavier until at last he fell into a troubled sleep.

†††

The next morning he woke and slowly opened his eyes and stretched. For a moment he thought he was in bed, but as he stretched out and bumped his shin on the stone step, he remembered where he was. He sat bolt upright, overjoyed that he had survived the night in the dark all on his own. He was stiff from lying on the hard stone floor all night, and he was still cold.

He stood up and squinted at the sunlight that poured in through the trapdoor. His hands gripped the hand rail in desperation as he realized the time. He reached the landing, lifted the beam, and opened the heavy wooden door to the sounds of shouting boys on the sports field nearby.

He cautiously poked his head around the corner of the door. He needn’t have worried though; the two bullies had gone. But the rumbling of his stomach made him realize that he had missed breakfast, and if he did not hurry, he would be late for class again. Since he knew what that meant, he hurried down the long corridor that had held so much terror for him the previous night.

On his way back to his room to get dressed for class, he passed a number of boys who all looked at him in disbelief. They wore their sport clothes of white T-shirts with a red slash from left to right, white shorts, white running shoes, and white socks. That reminded him that it was sports day, and he had to run the 1,500-metre race—not that he was any good at running, but the sports master, Mr. Marks, was punishing him for being late for class one day last week when Neville had hidden his school shoes—so he hurried back to his room. He put on his sportswear and ran down to the start, which was over on the far side of the sports field.

The noise from the crowd of boys gathered around the starting gate was deafening. The boys who were running had already warmed up and were moving toward the starting line when Jonathan arrived, puffing and panting from running across the field. Mr. Marks turned to him and said, I thought you had forgotten about your punishment, young Warden, and I would have had to find some other form of punishment, like weeding the garden one Sunday. Come on, get in line with the other boys so we can start.

Jonathan took up a position on the far side of the track, as far away as possible from Neville and Richard. They were being punished for running in the passageways the other day; they had been chasing him, when the headmaster had come out of a classroom just as he had turned the corner. The two of them looked at Jonathan with funny smiles.

Suddenly the gun went off, and Jonathan got such a fright that he forgot to run. Run, Warden, run! shouted Mr. Marks. Run! shouted the boys on the sidelines. So Jonathan started to run.

His legs were moving as fast as they could, but the field of runners drew slowly further and further away from him with each step. He was trying as hard as possible, but the gap between him and the other runners just got wider and wider. As he passed the one thousand-metre mark, he was breathing in great gulps of air. At one thousand two hundred metre meters, his heart was beating faster and faster, and as he neared the finish line, his legs started to wobble. By the time he reached the finishing line, he was a good one hundred metre behind all the other boys.

As he passed the finish line, he stopped and doubled over, panting and gasping for breath. To make matters worse, Neville had come in first, with Richard second, a long way ahead of the other boys.

Hey, little girl, what is the matter? Unable to keep up with the big boys? shouted Richard, with Neville looking on. Jonathan, still bent double, looked away. Tears welled up in his eyes. He struggled to stop them because he knew, if he burst into tears, his life would move from miserable to unbearable.

He had tried; he finally stood up and lifted his head as Richard taunted him again, Why do not you run with the girls next time? Although I am sure you would probably still come last. A chorus of laughter filled the air as the group of boys gathered around Neville.

Jonathan turned his back on them and walked away as fast as he could without making it obvious, until the echoes of their laughter slowly faded in his ears. A tear rolled down this cheek, and he quickly brushed it away in case someone noticed. That was the last thing he needed.

Chapter 2

The Gardener

Jonathan dropped his head and his shoulders sagged as he started walking in the direction of the school dormitories. Now he let the tears roll down his cheeks because there was no one around. He felt dejected and alone. He walked slowly across the field.

As he neared the steps that led from the sports field to the bell tower, he looked around and saw he was on his own. So he looked for the outer door that would lead to the bell tower, where he could be alone for a while to regain his composure before facing the boys in the school dining room. He remembered looking out of the door the previous night and that he had closed the door, but he had not locked it so he should be able to get back into the bell tower.

He slowly crossed the grassed area and climbed the old stone steps that he had stood on the previous night. On reaching the top, he looked around before reaching for the door handle, but just as his fingers touched the cold metal, the door swung open, and he jumped back with fright. He was taken completely by surprise, the school gardener stood in the doorway, blocking his way in.

Hallo there, young man, he said in his slow deliberate manner. Sorry if I startled you. I hope you are not thinking of going up there right now. It is out of bounds, you know. I have just repaired the old bell rope, and from next term on, the bell is going to be rung as it always used to be, in keeping with our old school tradition, the gardener continued. We are going to be testing it tonight.

Jonathan’s heart dropped. He had lost his hiding place.

Without giving Jonathan an option in the matter, the old gardener turned and locked the door with a key he took from his pocket. Jonathan stood rooted to the spot for a moment, not knowing what to do. His gaze dropped to the stone steps as the gardener gently took him by the arm and turned him around, leading him away from the old wooden door.

Come, he said. I was working in the rose garden before the headmaster got me to fix the bell rope. Do you want to help me prune the roses? I will tell the housemaster that you were with me last night if you do.

As he and the gardener moved away from the bell tower, Jonathan turned and noticed two faces in the bell tower window, looking down at them; Neville and Richard had been waiting for him up there. Who knows what they would have done to him if the gardener had not stopped him from going in; he would have been totally defenseless trapped in that confined space and at their mercy.

His mind returned to what the gardener had said. Jonathan was not sure he had heard the gardener correctly, but the firm hand of the old man almost pulled him along toward the nearby rose bushes.

The old man seemed in a bit of a rush. But the puzzling factor was that