The Cockatrice Boys (21 page)

In the front room the being on the bed propped itself against the wall and sat crosslegged, grinning at Sauna, with slit eyes shining green.

“Plenty of things you don't know yet, my pettikin!”

Sauna walked to the open door and stood breathing huge gulps of air. The cold burned her. But the sky was clear now; no more snow fell. The little glade around the cottage shone with reflected snow-light. Up above, to right and left, the great fir-hung mountains towered like a wall.

The voice from inside called “Come here. Come back, lambskin. There's lot of things that want doing. Things I need!”

With huge reluctance, Sauna turned back into the stinking room. Even though her bare feet were frozen, she had rather stand in the doorway, breathe fresh air, look at the white emptiness and dark forest outside, than walk back into that fetid atmosphere.

The creature on the bed said, “Now, dearie, you have to go out on an errand for me. Up the hill, three turns of the path. Young legs and feet, young hands, you can easily do it. Only three turns of the path. Where the old monks once used to live. You go up there. Fetch it for me.”

“I can't fetch anything,” Sauna said. “I've only one shoe. I'm not going barefoot in the snow.”

There was a pause. The creature in the bed seemed to consider.

Time went by. Then the creature said, “But, pet, your things are in there, in the press. In the back room. Cupboard under the dresser.”

“My things? How can they possibly be? I don't believe you.”

“Go and look, pettikin.”

Sauna looked in the cupboard under the dresser. There was her shabby blue travel bag, the one she had brought back from Spain. In it was a queer selection of her old clothes and belongings—clothes she had taken to Spain on that holiday, school uniforms from several years back, sweaters that had ravelled to pieces and been thrown away in Newcastle, beach flip-flops, outworn trainers. No winter boots.

“No winter boots,” she said, returning. “I'm not going through the snow in flip-flops. Anyway, why should I? What for?”

(Though indeed, part of her was all in favour of going up the hill. If there is a way out, take it, take it! Don't stay here in this grisly hovel. If there is a path that goes on over the hill, you need not come back.)

“There's a pair of boots,” said the creature on the bed. “Look again.”

Impatiently, Sauna looked again, and there were boots; a pair that Aunt Floss had taken to a basement rummage sale two years ago because they were outgrown.

“These are much too small,” Sauna said. “They don't fit any more.”

“Cut the toes off, then, dearie.”

“Look: what is it you
want,
up the hill? What's so important?”

“Book,” said the creature. “Up the glen where the old monks used to live and sing. In days when I was young and pretty. Younger and prettier than
you.
Cave in cliff. Old Hermit's cave. Book, all wrapped up. You bring book.”

The word
book,
three times repeated, echoed in Sauna's mind. In that queer snatch of overheard conversation, caught, goodness knows how, on the dead, disconnected television channel, Colonel Clipspeak had said, “They want to stir up more trouble,” and Dakin—that's right—Dakin had said, “The book will help them.”

Dear Dakin! To hear his voice had been like a sudden touch of warm sunshine on her face.

But the book. It was something important, then. Everybody wanted it. To make trouble?

“Why should I bring the book?” she said to the skeleton on the bed. “Who wants it?”

“Friends. My friends. When they come on King Edward's Day.”

“Your friends.”

“Astarte, Abiron, Asmodeus, Belial … Soon they come. In power and thunder. Bring the book for them, they give you power too.”

“If they have that power,” said Sauna, “why can't they get the book for themselves?”

“Human hands—human eyes.”

Will they really come? Can she mean it? Sauna wondered. I hope I'm not here then. Let Aunt Floss entertain them on her own. The Princes of Air.

She had a sudden swift shuddering vision of someone with a blue crest on his head, like snow blown backwards in a gale, with bright, cold, curling flames under the soles of his feet, with flesh transparent as water, with seaweed floating among his bones …

If those are her friends, I don't want to meet them.

She tried on the boots.

They were certainly far too small.

*   *   *

By the time the crew of the
Cockatrice Belle
had cleared and mended a way for themselves across the flat watery plain of Clackmannan, dusk was falling. The formidable shadowy height of King's Seat Hill and Ben Cleuch rose up on their left like a black wall; no lights twinkled ahead where the towns of Tillicoultry and Dollar might be supposed to lie. The River Devon crept and wriggled like a pale glimmering serpent in the valley. The landscape was ominously quiet, as if something in it was gathering for a pounce.

“I don't like it,” muttered Colonel Clipspeak to Major Scanty. “It ain't
natural
for a place to be so quiet. There ought at least to be rooks—or gulls or eagles flying about. Tell the men to keep on full monster-alert at all times.”

“Certainly, Colonel. It will be too bad if the town of Dollar is entirely deserted. It used to be a pleasant little place when I spent time there as a lad.”

“Oh, you know it, do you, Major?”

“I went to school there. McNab's Academy, you know.”

The colonel did not know, and was not particularly interested, but said, “That is capital, then. Your familiarity with the town may stand us in good stead if there is a battle; which I greatly fear there will be. Ah, here is Dr. Wren. Do you not find this unusual quiet somewhat ominous, Archbishop? Deuced suspicious?”

The archbishop was in a high state of excitement. “Oh, yes, I expect they are mustering their forces,” he said, “but listen to this, Colonel! I have solved the enigma of the paper, I have cracked its code. As I said, it is written in Ogham script.”

“Ogham?”

“A mode of writing, using lines and crosses, employed by the ancient Irish. I daresay Michael Scott may have picked it up too, since he was a great linguist and polymath.”

“Gracious me, Archbishop! So what does the paper say?”

“Oh, well, nothing much that we did not know already: the paper is a kind of testament; Michael Scott asks that his book be interred, not with him at Melrose Abbey, but in what he calls ‘the sacred cave' at Sorrow Abbey—‘so that profane, unhallowed fingers may not unearth and examine its hidden lore, whereby great and terrible mischief might ensue, but where it may rest safe and untouched until the Judgement Day uncovers all secrets'—”

“Does he say
where,
precisely, the sacred cave is to be found?” demanded the colonel impatiently.

“No, he says ‘the locality of which is known only to the holy monks of Sorrow Abbey.'”

“Much use that is to us! Since they all died out several hundred years ago!” exclaimed the colonel. “But—wait a moment—you were saying, Major, that you were familiar with the environment of Dollar and Glen Sorrow?”

*   *   *

All along the train men were preparing for the battle, which everybody felt sure would take place very soon. The only uncertain factor was what particular kind of opponent would they be fighting? Trolls and Kelpies seemed probable in a region so close to the Firth of Forth. But then there were the Ochils to the north, so dark and menacing—who knew what unknown perils might lurk among their crags, covered now in snow?

Major Scanty, when consulted, had suggested the Chichevache, a kind of bony monster with horns; but fortunately this creature preferred a diet of females—which might explain the lack of them to be seen about the countryside, but made it less dangerous to the crew of the
Cockatrice Belle.
Two-horned Bycorns were also to be expected, and Chimeras, which had lions' heads, goats' bodies, and serpentine tails.

“No wings, luckily,” said Scanty. “So they may be picked off by the same weapons that are in use for Kelpies. But I am afraid the most likely enemy we have to expect will be Mirkindoles and Gorgons.”

“Gorgons?” said Sergeant Bellswinger. “Then we must issue all the troops with Snark goggles. Lucky we've been recharging 'em as we came along. Gorgons are no joke.”

“What do Gorgons do?” asked Corporal Nark.

“Lassy me, Nark, where have you been all this time? They turn you to stone.”

“That's nasty.”

Private Minch, who was of a nervous disposition and given to Seeing Things at moments of stress, here upset the people around him by having a Seeing, and declaring that he saw a small stone image of Bellswinger right above the Sergeant's head.

“Oh, stow your gab, Minch,” everybody said, and Private Coldarm gave him an arrowroot jujube which he sucked in tearful and hiccuping silence.

As well as polishing their weapons and Snark goggles, most of the men got out lucky charms and gave them fond and respectful attention.

Corporal Nark had a silver threepenny piece from a Christmas pudding; Ensign-Driver Catchpole had a bit of rock from Mount Vesuvius; Private Brag had a leaf from a handkerchief tree on the island of Sark where his gran lived; Sergeant Bellswinger, unexpectedly, now revealed his secret parcel to be a square foot of turf from the centre of the Manchester United football ground.

“I just thought maybe it'd bring me luck,” he explained rather apologetically. “And nobody was using the pitch while we were in Manchester; except Snarks, that is. So I just reckoned I'd help myself to a chunk. I think Flint must have seen it in my cabin and he tried to half-inch it. Wouldn't have done him any good, though. You have to take it for yourself. Well, it must be lucky, when you think what feet have trod it. O' course I'll be sure to return it once the state of emergency is over.”

He had kept it watered by an ingenious system of guttering from the train roof. “Rain water, you see, that's what it's used to—” And now anybody who liked was allowed to touch it with a reverent finger.

As the train crept towards where the town of Dollar ought to be, facing across the valley floor towards Ben Cleuch and the twin glens of Sorrow and Care, with ruined Castle Campbell mounting watchful guard between them on its hillock, Dakin fell into a great state of worry and gloom.

Like the rest of the men he was tremendously keyed-up, positive that a great battle was impending, perhaps the decisive battle of the campaign. If they could win this one, might not the rest of the monsters take flight for good? That was what many of the crew believed. And then the train could turn southwards again, and they could all go home and start rebuilding their lives.

But Dakin felt miserably uncertain. He longed to be in the thick of the battle, beating his drum—but would he be allowed? Or was he still in total disgrace with the colonel? Would he be confined to the little hot room behind the engine, like a naughty child? He sought comfort with Uli in the galley, but Uli was in a queer state, nervous and whining; and Mrs. Churt was in bad skin, because the colonel had asked her to serve out an extra ration of turnip pancakes to all the men at their battle stations and so she was unusually busy and had no time for conversation.

As well as this, her great piece of cross-stitch, now completed, hung draped over the ironing-board in the galley. Every single man on the train found time to come and touch it, at least once, before the battle. Some touched it half a dozen times, coming back repeatedly.

“A very interesting example of folk-lore in process of development,” said Dr. Wren, who was helping Mrs. Churt with the pancakes. “Do they think it will bring them luck?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Churt, “they seem to. It gives them a good feeling, like, and that'll help them to watch out and be extra nimble in the battle, I reckon.”

Dr. Wren nodded, and touched the cross-stitch himself. So did the colonel, under pretext of making an official inspection.

“It's just airing now,” Mrs. Churt told him. “We'll hang it over the piano when the battle's done.”

To Dakin's great surprise, Major Scanty came in search of him.

“Ah, there you are, Dakin, my boy; just step along with me to the engine cabin, will you. Now, pay close attention,” the major went on, when they were alone in the small room. “The colonel has an assignment for you tomorrow; during the battle, which, as you know, we expect will take place very shortly—”

“Oh, sir! Major! Do I get to play my drum?”

“No, my boy; the colonel wants you to go off in search of your cousin, under cover of the action—taking advantage, you see, of the general confusion—it will be an excellent opportunity for diversionary tactics, the colonel thinks. You must take the Gridelin hound with you, of course.”

“Can I bring my drum along?” asked Dakin hopefully.

“No, my boy, that will not be necessary. In fact I should think it might be a decided encumbrance. Your cousin is very likely being held in some hiding-place in the mountains—up a steep and narrow track—”

Dakin's face fell, but he privately resolved that he
would
take his drum, just the same. After all, you never knew. Gorgons might react to it in the same way that Snarks did.

“I myself shall accompany you,” Major Scanty disconcerted him by adding, “for I have a long acquaintance with the town of Dollar and its surroundings. I was a boy at school here and have often explored up Glen Sorrow to the ruins where the old monks used to have their monastery.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dakin, politely but without marked enthusiasm.

“So you must now make yourself ready—and the hound too, of course—and then, the moment the alert sounds and the train stops, you and I will make a dash for it. Do you understand?”