Ash (77 page)

Ash returned his attention to Delphine. ‘Are you okay?’ he touched her forehead with his own.

‘I-I’m sorry. One of those things was coming at me and I lost my footing. God, I lost my nerve, too!’

Ash saw a huge spider two inches from her outstretched hand as she tried to sit up. Carefully avoiding her fingers, he brought the heavy Maglite down hard and squashed the creature flat. Delphine shuddered at the sound and quickly looked away.

He quickly hauled her upright and she immediately pointed at something creeping around his exposed neck.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘It looks like a long centipede, only fatter and a sickly greyish-yellow colour,’ she replied with a grimace.

Now he was aware of it, he felt the multitude of sharp little legs on the skin of his throat. Somehow, the lapels of the old field jacket he wore, the collar of which he’d turned up to protect his neck, had come loose in the fray. Delphine, disgust on her grimy but determined face, reached up and plucked the creature off him. Ash felt its legs resisting, digging into his flesh, but with little hesitation the psychologist gripped the freakish creature more firmly and pulled it free, leaving a double row of pinpricks on Ash’s neck. Praying the creature’s claws weren’t poisoned, she threw the predator away.

Ash threw one arm over her shoulder and brought Delphine as close as possible to him. Together, they ducked their heads and continued forward along the path Louis had cleared, only occasionally looking up to see whether anything frighteningly fierce was in their way.

The cobwebs began to thin and a few seconds later they were free. It was like emerging from some kind of hideous cocoon. The struggle had made them sweat profusely, and they now stepped into an ice box which instantly froze the perspiration on their skin.

Louis was waiting in the darkness a few yards further on. Ash turned the torch beam on Delphine, starting at the top and working the light down her body. He flicked off any clinging spiders and cobwebs he found with his bare hands, then gently turned her round so that she was facing away from him. Her back was covered in spiders, but fortunately no supersized horrible ones, and he quickly disposed of them.

Satisfied he’d done his best, Ash handed the torch to Delphine and she proceeded to do the same for him. When she’d finished, Ash did what he’d been wanting to do for what seemed like an eternity. He embraced her. He lifted her chin with the knuckle of his finger and kissed her full on the lips.

When he pulled away, he looked deeply into her eyes and said, ‘I love you, Delphine.’

With that, she was in his arms, kissing his face all over, despite the dirt that stained his skin. Her eyes brimmed with tears, this time from emotion rather than fear.

‘I love you too, David,’ she told him softly.

It was only after more kisses that they remembered the third member of their party. Ash took the long Maglite from her and turned it on Louis.

He stood stock-still, just a short distance away, further down in the tunnel.

As if paralysed, Ash and Delphine stared at him in horror.

‘Lucky’ Lord Lucan casually strolled from the burning castle, keeping to one side of the panicked guests, now joined by equally panicked Comraich staff and guards. There was pushing and shoving all around him, mingled with screams and curses as everyone crammed through one of the building’s narrow side doors.

To his knowledge, there had never been a fire drill at Comraich and he certainly did not want to mix with the common breed the castle was taking in as guests more and more often these days. He liked to stick with his own kind. Unhappily, there seemed to be increasingly fewer of them as the seasons went by.

Many of the male guests were wrapped in expensive dressing gowns or shivering in silk pyjamas, while the few women wore fur coats over their nightwear. He himself wore a smart Savile Row dark blue topcoat with a half-velvet collar and lapels over age-old winkled pyjamas, and an equally venerable cardigan. The fire’s flickering reflection could be seen in the toecaps of his rarely worn patent leather shoes. Lucan had witnessed one of the Comraich guards smash the butt of his gun into a guest who had objected to being shoved roughly through the fire exit. The man had dropped like a stone, to be trampled where he lay. Lucan had avoided that sort of thing by quietly sidling against the wall.

The escape from Comraich had been as undignified as it had been ungentlemanly and he wondered if it had been like this just before the
Titanic
sank. With the fire roiling at their backs, getting ever closer, and the hallway past the back reception offices being so narrow, people had been squeezed far too closely together. It was inevitable that order would break down, he supposed, and soon become a matter of looking after number one.

At least he was finally free of the inferno and breathing in the night sea air. It was brisk, though, and he drew his shabby cardigan tighter, buttoning up his topcoat and pulling the lapels around his neck. His long hair blew wildly in the strong wind that raced up the cliff face from the irate sea below.

Instead of walking round to the concourse to join the mingling guests and staff who had escaped and were now looking up at the blazing castle, shivering and wondering what to do, he turned towards the walkway overlooking the sea, where there was a row of cannons and several benches for him to choose from. As he mounted the stairway to the walk, the moon, bright and silvery above, shone like a blank silver coin.

No sooner had he sat down than a castle door below the level of the walkway burst open and a large group of dinner-suited men belched forth from the ancient building. These must be the VIPs who’d been congregating in Comraich that evening. He noticed, stretching his neck backwards and sideways, that the queer little fellow Mabee or Maseley, something like that, was leading them. They were agitated all right, no doubt about that, but there was no panicked flight here, just a general bustling quick march. And why not? These men had no fear of being burned alive: they had their own personal escape route.

None noticed him on his perch above as they spoke in an anxious huddle with the strange little Marsbey fellow. Lucan listened to the crackling of the conflagration inside the castle for a while as he gazed out over the silver-streaked sea.

Then he heard a different noise: the sound of a helicopter warming up, followed quickly by the muted blares of far-distant sirens.

This, he thought, was turning out to be an exciting night.

‘Oh, Louis . . .’ Delphine almost moaned.

Ash caught her arm before she could rush to the lonely figure waiting there, as if frozen in shock, afraid of what might happen if he moved.

The investigator took the torch from Delphine and widened its beam so that it was softer. He turned it back onto the exiled prince.

Spiders, large and small, covered the brown robe he wore, two of them on the side of his hood. Most of them were perfectly still, but some crawled across his slight body. In his right hand he still held the combat knife Ash had given him.

Ash began to walk slowly towards him, keeping the light as steady as his suddenly dry voice. ‘Louis, it’s going to be okay. Just stay where you are and keep very, very still.’

He could feel Delphine walking with him, just behind his left shoulder. The Maglite was held in his right hand.

It was slightly awkward to reach him, the floor uneven and slippery. ‘Hold your nerve, Delphine,’ he whispered to the psychologist, who was as yet unsure she was free of the creatures herself. She was aware of tiny movements over – and
under
– her clothing. ‘If you make a dash for him, he’ll panic.’ Ash almost slipped but managed to steady himself as well as the light. ‘I don’t want to arouse those things.’ His voice was low, a murmur, no more than that.

With horror, they watched as a large, hairy-legged spider, with two venomous-looking pincers, crawled around from behind Louis’ lower leg to come to a rest on his ankle.

Ash was relieved when the young man did not react: it was as though he were in a trance, overcome with fear, afraid to move.
A good thing in the circumstances
, the investigator thought to himself as he slowly approached.

‘What are we going to do?’ murmured Delphine.

Ash held up his free arm to stop her. ‘First, let’s see exactly how bad it is,’ he whispered back. She looked up at him, baffled.

It wasn’t long before she understood though.

They were very near to the motionless robed figure now, but Ash was making a wide berth of Louis while playing the light on him all the time. Still, the prince remained rooted. Delphine half expected Louis to lose composure at any moment, perhaps to swipe the creatures away, or perhaps to turn and run screaming down the dark, seemingly endless tunnel. She followed Ash round, wondering what his tactics were going to be.

‘Don’t get too close, Delphine, we don’t want to get them agitated,’ Ash whispered even more softly as she trailed him.

‘Oh, dear God!’

They were now behind Louis, and while there had been several kinds of creatures fixed or creeping over his front, the back of his robe was glutted with spiders of all shapes and sizes, two of them extraordinary grey-white monsters with discernible blue veins beneath their thin-skinned, bloated abdomens.

With Louis covering their rear as they’d pushed their way through the giant web, more spiders of different species had dropped on and clung to his exposed back. Incongruously, considering the circumstances, Ash had a flash of insight into their ecosystem: with very few insects flying into the web, these spiders ate each other, the larger ones obviously picking on the small. As if to give evidence of this, he watched a large spider ensnare a much smaller one, paralysing it, then proceeding to devour it at once rather than cocooning it in silk for a later feast.

It turned his stomach, but not as much as the number of these hideous creatures crawling across Louis’ back.

‘God, David, what are we going to do?’ came Delphine’s urgent whisper again.

Ash already had a plan, but had taken time to walk around Louis to assess the problem.

‘Louis,’ he spoke quietly. ‘Listen to me, but don’t move just yet. First, hand me the knife.’ The young man did so and Ash returned it to its sheath. ‘Now, I’m going to remove a spider on your ankle. Don’t worry; I’ll just flick it away. You won’t feel a thing.’

Ash hoped.

Returning carefully and slowly to Louis’ front once more, he knelt at the young man’s feet.
Only fitting
, he told himself with a certain grim acerbity, considering who the young man really was.

Without hesitation, but with sure accuracy, he swiped the Maglite at the creature perched now on the prince’s instep and knocked it away before it had a chance to act. As it rolled awkwardly on its back, fat, hairy legs waggling in the air, Delphine deftly put the low heel of her boot through the struggling arachnid and pressed down hard. Taking her foot away from the gooey mess left on the tunnel’s damp floor, she wiped the sole of her boot against a small rocky projection. Ash was impressed by her calmness.

He stood and peered closely at the hood. As he spoke, he tried to ignore a bristling spider on the material a few inches away from Louis’ exposed cheek.

‘Louis . . .’ he began as if in hushed confidence. ‘Louis, there’s no belt to your robe: is it buttoned from the inside?’

Ash sensed the surprise and confusion going on inside the cowl’s shadowed interior.

‘I’m serious, Louis. Can you tell me quickly?’

It was a curious Delphine who spoke for the young man. ‘It’s popper studs all the way down. That’s how Louis wanted it made – not
too
monk-like.’

‘Many?’

‘Poppers? No, just a few, ending near his knees. The hem was supposed to reach the floor, but again, Louis didn’t want it to restrict him too much.’

‘And is the robe loose? It looks like it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. That may add to our advantage. But I’m going to act soon. Those creatures on the material are confused, I think, but they’re beginning to get curious. Anything could set them off. We don’t want them getting inside.’

Delphine shuddered as she realized what Ash was about to do.

‘Stand clear,’ he told her, giving her a quick glance. ‘Right, Louis, in a moment I want you to lean forward.’

The hood tilted forward an inch.

‘Slowly,’ Ash continued. ‘Just bend over a little. It’s not going to be very dignified’ – he was struck by the notion he was talking to royalty – ‘but it’ll be the best way. Try to remain still once you’re leaning forward and leave the rest to me. I’m going to move very fast and lift the robe up from the hem and bring it right over your head, hopefully trapping the little buggers inside.’

He’d deliberately used the word ‘little’.

‘Okay, ready?’

The slim form, which seemed larger because of the loose, voluminous robe, bent forward slowly.

‘That’s fine, that’s enough,’ Ash told him, trying to sound confident as he warily moved around Louis, careful not to surprise the spiders, which he noticed were becoming restless.

‘I’ll count to three, Louis, then I’ll pull the robe over you. We can easily deal with any laggards.’

Adjusting the Maglite to its most concentrated beam, so bright it was difficult to look at it directly, he stretched out his arm and gave it to Delphine.

‘Hold it so it shines at the floor, then the moment I say two, shine it full onto the robe – move it around a second or two and hopefully blind or dazzle the bloody things. Remember, they’re used to living in darkness.’

She took it from him and nodded, her body trembling.

‘Keep it down!’ He hissed and pointed at the tunnel’s rough floor, for nervousness had made her forget what he’d told her. ‘Ready? Count of two for you, three for me.’

Ash wiped his sweaty palms against his thighs. ‘Here we go. One-two-three!’

He’d squatted to grip the hem of the robe, his arms wide apart, and in one swift movement he lifted the material and stood, pulling the garment over Louis’ head, hood and all. Keeping the bundle closed, he tossed the whole piece as hard and as far as he could back into the huge cobweb. The creatures that had dropped out scattered and Ash trod on any that came near.