Spring (36 page)

‘They’re a funny lot, they be,’ said Streik, mocking Tirrikh’s accent. ‘As for tomters, lads, don’t you believe it. They put that about to scare the shit out of you. I’ve never met anyone who’s ever seen one, let alone had his tallycans toddled!’

‘That’s enough, Streik,’ said Feld, cutting their nervous laughter short. ‘Right . . . we do this last part of the journey quickly, efficiently and with no messing.’

‘Aye, aye, sir!’ they shouted.

‘We’re tasked to get this female bundle through in one piece and that’s what we’re going to do without stopping for one second, so don’t fall behind.’

‘Aye, sir!’

They proceeded slowly, along dripping tunnels, over slimy puddles and doing their best to stay within the white lines which in places were barely visible, it was so dark and they so obscure. They heard rushing water ahead but there was none, echoing steps ran past them but they saw no one making them, and right and left turns came at them so frequently they soon lost all sense of direction.

But for the lines, and Feld’s confidence in leading them, they might easily have lost the way, for the candles guttered constantly from the poor air and the sudden and sometimes violent blasts of wind from side tunnels, conduits above their heads and the rusting grilles over tunnels that seemed abandoned and unused.

But from all entrances, and whichever way they turned, there came the sound of running, rushing water and the sense of turbulence and danger.

More than once they came across carcasses of animals long dead and unidentifiable, their fur clotted and mangy, their feathers greasy and dull. From these the odours were thick and cloying, and Katherine covered her mouth and nose, gagging as she passed them by.

The occasional show of light, usually from vents that reached high above into what the Fyrd called the Upperworld or toppermost, played strange tricks which, combined with constant shifts in directions of tunnels and angled walls, created illusions of scale. The most striking of these was when they saw what they took to be hundreds of rats on a pile of rags at the entrance to one of the side-tunnels, brought there by flood water.

When they got close Katherine saw it was the body of a white cat over whose body cockroaches roamed.

Then as suddenly as the journey began it ended. The tunnel sloped up and became drier and there was what looked like artificial light ahead where it split into two. She could hear the sound of voices and of echoing footsteps, hundreds of them.

Perhaps all of them felt a sense of relief and euphoria to have got through the tunnels, because the Fyrd, including Meyor Feld, pushed forward eagerly, taking the tunnel to the left and leaving Katherine and the one deputed to watch her at the point where the tunnel forked.

Katherine did not hesitate. She pushed him forward and tripped him with her foot and grabbed the lantern out of his hand.

Then she ran up the other tunnel towards the lights and the sound of people. She had no plan and had lost all sense of where she was, but felt certain that anything was likely to be better than where they were taking her.

But in that she was mistaken.

She had thought the tunnel led to the lights she could see, but it did not. It came to an end, and dangerously, at a wide conduit along which water came rushing. It seemed to run for some yards before turning to the right again through an unlit entrance.

She heard the Fyrd shout behind her and ran the only way she could, holding the lantern up so she could see and realizing very quickly that it was taking her back into the kind of tunnels she had just left behind so thankfully.

She stopped, turned back, and saw she had come through not one but two intersections and no longer knew what the way back was.

She tried one of them, heard voices further down and ran on willing more energy into her legs, and found herself yet more confused in a tunnel that was dark and low and old. Whatever she heard was not there. All was illusion; all confusion.

The canary in the lantern twittered briefly and then fell silent. She saw to her horror that it was dead. The candle guttered and suddenly went out, casting her into total darkness.

She moved forward, hands on the tunnel walls, and as she went she heard the unmistakable sound of something following her which from the sounds it made, and the lolloping slither of its feet, was neither hydden nor human but something worse by far.

I
t was pitch dark before Master Brief, Jack and the others finally gave up their search for Bedwyn Stort.

‘He’s done this kind of thing too often before,’ muttered Brief, calling a halt. ‘I swear by the Mirror itself that when he gets back here I’m going to punish him like the worst kind of young apprentice and give him a drubbing with my stave!’

But Brief’s anger hid his genuine concern, for the ground around the Quoits was difficult enough to negotiate by day, filled as it was with loose waste from dredging, and shallow pools dangerous with quicksand, into which each of them had already slipped while looking for the youngster. By night it became totally treacherous.

The area to the south of the Quoits, which Pike took upon himself to investigate, was judged especially dangerous and the search that way had to be cut short when the light began to fade. Since then their searching to the north and shouting of his name had produced nothing.

Having found the leather kettle discarded with no sign of water in it, they guessed he had got distracted by something before he even reached the lake’s edge. Now they had searched everywhere and still found nothing.

‘More than likely he wandered off, and got lost and has had the good sense to lie low until daylight before coming to find us,’ suggested Barklice contritely.

‘Common sense is not one of Stort’s virtues,’ growled Pike.

‘What was he doing just before you left?’ Jack asked Barklice after they had reconvened by the stone, and were warming themselves with a sip of brew and trying not to think the worst.

‘He had explored the henge, told me something about it, and then we sat here and talked.’

‘Had he seen anything that specially interested him?’

‘He told me this was once one of the largest and most important henges in Englalond,’ said Barklice. ‘He couldn’t keep his eyes off the bits that remain, trying to work how one part related to another. He’s like that, isn’t he, Master Brief? Ever curious, his mind always active.’

The Master Scrivener nodded. ‘He’d find anything interesting and worth exploring . . . which is why, Barklice, which is
why
. . .’

Barklice looked stricken with guilt at having broken his undertaking and left the absent-minded Stort alone in such a place.

Jack got up. ‘The sky’s cleared a bit and there’s light now from moon and stars . . . so I’ll go and have a last look around.’

Brief sighed with frustration. ‘We were meant to be briefing you on our coming journey into Brum, and why the Fyrd have abducted Katherine and much else besides, but what with Stort not being here to add his views and the worry of him going missing, well . . . we’ve told you only half of it yet.’

‘I’ll go and stretch my legs anyway,’ said Jack, ‘and maybe we can talk later.’

The night was clear enough for the ground nearby to be quite visible, except that, as they had all discovered, it was difficult to differentiate between shadows and pools of water.

But Jack kept the stone clearly in view, and went carefully down to the lake edge, using the sound of lapping water as his guide. This was one of the areas he himself had not searched in any detail, it being plainly visible from the higher ground at the centre of the henge, and there being no obvious sign of Stort.

The ground was certainly difficult here, for all kinds of detritus had been washed ashore, presumably having been dumped into the lake and been blown across it, or carried up the shore when the water level rose with heavy rain.

So he stumbled against things a couple of times before reaching the water’s edge and then, staring across the silent blackness of the lake itself, turned to his right to see if he could make out where the raised rim of the henge ran into the water. Even by this bad light it wasn’t hard, not least because the ground was slightly raised and less muddy there.

As he turned to go back the other way, he noticed a black shape in the shadows and went over to check it out. It wasn’t easy to see as more than an outline, but squatting down and feeling forward he was able to make out what felt like some soft dry materials resting on plastic.

He called for a light and they all came running. As Barklice opened the shutter of his lantern, they recognized Stort’s outer garments laid carefully on a black bin-bag.

Before even discussing the grim implications of this very strange discovery, they began shouting Stort’s name simultaneously out into the impenetrable darkness of the lake. Then, one by one, they fell silent as the grim realization came upon them that he wasn’t replying and, if that was so, it was unlikely that he was ever going to.

At first they could not face the inevitable conclusion.

‘But
why
did he venture into the lake?’ said Brief in bewilderment. ‘He couldn’t even swim!’

There seemed no rational explanation for what was beginning to feel like a tragedy, and in the end it was Brief who expressed in words what they all now feared: ‘Gentlemen, I very much suspect that our good friend, our much loved friend but alas our very foolish friend, has accidentally drowned himself!’

‘Aye,’ muttered Pike, who turned his back on them and, his voice breaking with grief, added, ‘It’s certain that he’s gone under the water and not come up again.’

‘I can only think,’ continued Brief very sombrely, ‘that Master Stort, who is – no, was! – one of the greatest natural scholars the Hyddenworld has ever known, was gripped by an idea so powerful, an investigation so alluring, that he entered into the water having forgotten utterly that he could not actually swim!’

Barklice had taken a few steps away from the group and stood now clutching his chest and gasping, his mouth opening and closing a few times like a fish out of water.

Then suddenly, and very shockingly, he broke into paroxysms of grief, his cries pitiful to hear and his broken posture tragic to behold as he fell to his knees by the light of the stars.

‘This is no accident!’ he cried. ‘It is . . . it is . . . He has killed himself!’

The others waited for him to say what was on his mind, but he could not do so until Brief knelt beside him in the mud, put an arm around his shoulder and said, ‘Try to tell us, Barklice, what it is you know or suspect. What terrible thing has happened to Stort?’

It was a little while before Barklice could reply.

But with a blowing of his nose and a dabbing at his eyes, and a good deal of breathing heavily in and out and staring at the stars, he finally began to unburden himself.

‘This is not accident, nor is it suicide!’

‘But what else could it be?’ cried Pike.

‘It is murder,’ said Barklice in a ghastly way, ‘murder most cruel and foul!’

‘But who or why . . . ?’ said Brief and Pike almost as one, the latter pulling out a knife as if to protect them all from danger.

‘It is I!’ moaned Barklice, ‘It is I who killed him. It is my fault! I might as well have taken a crossbow and shot a bolt through his heart, as leave him alone after . . . after . . .’

‘After what!?’ said Brief sharply.

Barklice grasped Brief’s arm and looked up at him with terrible appeal.

‘After that conversation we had . . .’

A strange, mad light came to the verderer’s eyes, enhanced by the steady strengthening of the moon, whose rays transmuted his state of mind into a lunatic glare which frightened them all.

‘I can never forgive myself – not now, not ever! How can I? Therefore I am not worthy to live a moment more! I . . . I . . .’

With that he thrust Brief to one side as if he were the lightest of feathers, barged past the stolid Pike as easily as thrusting aside a wet reed, and charged straight into the water of the lake.

Only Jack’s quick thinking saved a double tragedy. He ran straight at Barklice and brought him down in the shallows, from where, with Pike’s help, they dragged him back to dry land.

Then, holding him down by all four limbs, until his suicidal struggle had spent itself and he had barely strength to sit up, they made him some strong, hot mead to calm his nerves.

He drank this almost at one gulp and at once took another mugful.

‘Yes, one and all,’ he suddenly confessed, his voice sounding a little stronger, his spirit improving fast, ‘it was my fault for allowing our conversation to go in the direction it did.’

‘Which was?’ asked Brief, beginning now to lose patience with the verderer’s maddening vagueness, for he felt it important to understand what had happened sooner rather than later in case there was still time to act on it.

‘I’ll tell you – no doubt about it – though it’ll be difficult to confess to such thoughts, but I . . . I don’t suppose . . .’

‘Yes, Mister Barklice?’ said Pike soothingly.