Touchstone (5 page)

Chapter Five

T
HE INVADER CAME UP THE HILLSIDE TRACK,
contemptuous of the mud clinging to its flanks and the fresh crumple in its left fender, souvenir of an encounter with the close-laid rock wall. Wheels that had begun the morning pristine from a garage-hand’s cloth wallowed through muck-filled ruts; a crack was spreading from the lower edge of the driver’s side wind-screen.

The walls grew higher, the track narrower, every minute. An onlooker—say, someone standing before the lonely white building where the track came to its end—might think the motorcar headed for a final resting place, like a cork down the neck of its bottle: primitive green Cornwall tightening around this incongruous black manifestation of the Jazz Age.

As though confirming the suspicion of its fate, the car vanished behind some trees. For a time, the only signs of life on the ancient green patchwork of fields were three ambling cows and a two-legged figure in red, moving rapidly down a slope half a mile away. The fitful sea breeze dropped; the eternal grumble of the nearest tin-mine workings emerged from the hush, punctuated by a snatch of sweet-voiced birdsong and the bawl of a calf.

The verdant countryside into whose maw the car had apparently dropped was just about the end of the world as far as England was concerned—maps showed Land’s End proper a few miles to the south, but the track’s goal would meet the description for anyone but a surveyor: a small whitewashed stone cottage and its outbuildings, nestled into the breast of the last hill before the Atlantic.

The whitewashed cottage was a very long way from anywhere.

After a moment, the breeze picked up and the motorcar reemerged, shaking itself free of the copse. The carnivore growl of its engine noise deepened as the driver faced a steep bit, and smoothed out as the rise was breasted.

Then came a particularly tight corner, following boundaries laid two thousand years before, which seemed a likely candidate for the rustic bottleneck to claim this shiny cork. The intruder spent a long time there, inching ahead and falling back, tires spinning, engine revving in futility. Finally, the passenger door opened with a crack against the stone wall and a tall figure in brown forced itself out, clambering over fender and stone to take up a position of guidance in front. Arms were waved, shouted instructions dispersed on the gentle breeze, as the motor inched first forward, then back, then forward again. Finally, with a roar of the engine and a screech of metal audible a mile away, the car muscled itself through the angle. As it crept alongside the brown figure, the passenger yanked open the door, paused to scrape one foot against the grassy verge, and folded himself back inside. The car started up again, closing on the cottage.

Not until sixty feet from its goal did the rock walls finally drop away. The machine leaped ahead, eager as a lover, then slowed with an air of satisfaction at the lane’s end. A panicked chicken darted across the open yard. The motorcar braked, settling back on its wheels. Its engine shut off.

All was still.

The passenger flung open his door and climbed out, looking relieved. He walked over to survey the countryside, which the stone walls had hidden as they climbed the hill, and gave an admiring whistle at the long sweep of green on which civilization was thinly spread. “Damn. I never get tired of the views this country has to offer.”

Three hundred miles from London, but it might have been three thousand—Cornwall was a different world. Harris Stuyvesant was a city boy by birth and by nature, Bowery-born and Manhattan-centered, but frankly, he was just as glad to be away from the English capital. He’d remembered liking it just fine on his way home from the Front back in ’19, but at present, London was little more than a drab, smoke-stained warren of angry, frightened people. The pedestrians were all grim and edgy, the men eyeing each other, the women’s laughter high and brittle. Even before Friday’s brawl with the demonstrator, the back of Stuyvesant’s neck had tingled with the expectation of sudden violence.

On the other hand, this patch of countryside at the far edge of England, which under normal circumstances he’d have dismissed as empty space in need of a soda fountain and a good movie house, had a certain something. Even that penny-ante town of Penzance, walking along the sea-front while his companion had a shave (and calmed down—Jesus, the man’s tongue, verbally peeling flesh from the garage man when he found there was a car but no driver!), had seemed a genial human place of cobblestones, fishing masts, and grubby, grinning infants, as if it had never heard the word
strike,
never seen a coal miner, never been introduced to the idea of a union. He’d breathed in the clean reek of fish and seaweed, and felt his bunched muscles subside for the first time in weeks.

Until he’d had to climb into that car with Aldous Carstairs.

Now Carstairs got out, too, studying the farmyard until he was satisfied that his quarry was not there before he went to join the American.

It was one of those bright spring days when the green of the new grass almost hurts the eyes, and the darker green of tree and hedgerow comes as a welcome relief. In the nearest field, each brown blade of the winter weeds stood out in sharp detail; the wind-blown daffodils blossoming in the protected lee of the stone wall might have been spatters of yellow paint.

Stuyvesant traveled a slow circle, replacing the oppressive air of the motorcar with the fragrant, fresh stuff that flowed merrily into his lungs. Freed from the uneasy atmosphere of the car, he completed his circuit and was again facing the farm buildings: small, square stone house with fresh white surface and moss-heavy slate roof; a larger shed or small barn, bare of paint; and between them a clothes-line with two dish-cloths, a wood pile with a well-used chopping block, and a wired chicken-run. In the background, strips of freshly turned earth marked the beginnings of this year’s vegetable garden.

The American lifted his sights past the walls to the middle view, studying a series of low rollicking shapes in the nearby field, half buried under grass and winter-dead brambles. “Looks like once upon a time there was a hell of a house over there,” he said, in the bumptious American manner he’d worn since Friday. “Although that must’ve been a while and a half ago, to leave only those foundations.”

He never knew what the other man might have responded with, because the answer came from nowhere, and everywhere:

“It is a city of the dead.”

Chapter Six

A
S THE MOTORCAR CAME UP
the rough track, the small man stood motionless in the shadow of the barn. He’d been uneasy all morning, aware of the world around him trembling like a soap bubble, about to wink out of existence; now he knew why. His nostrils flared as the chemical stink of the machine cut through the thick fragrance of spring, the sharp smell of chicken droppings from the bottom of his right shoe, and the warm animal odor trickling out of the little window overhead, ghostly reminder of the cow housed there ten years earlier.

His ears told him the motor had been well maintained, although one of the pistons was firing a fraction late, and a part of the car’s fender was scraping a tire in the right-hand turns. He could also hear the distant distress of Jenks’ cow, which had encountered a motorcar on the road three years back and been nervous about them ever since. His own three chickens were scratching and clucking unconcernedly around the chopping block, not having yet noticed the intruder, but he’d heard the feral cat abandon the saucer of drippings at the back door to creep through the gap in the garden wall, where it could spy on the farmyard without being seen.

His eyes told him nothing, since the motor was not yet in sight—but he did not require vision to know who was coming. He’d felt the pressure building for weeks now, and had known it was only a matter of time. If he’d been truly psychic, as the man coming for him wished, he’d have known the day before and quietly slipped away. Now, with the danger so close, flight seemed an outright declaration of cowardice.

His grip tightened on the handle of the axe he had been using when the sound of the motor reached his ears, his fingertips reminding him of the growing weakness in the wood, straining fibers where a crack would eventually develop. He must replace it soon.

If…

He stayed in the shadow of the building until the sleek motorcar with the Penzance number plate oozed into the yard like honey laced with poison. The moment it appeared in the lane, the small man’s eyes went to the passenger, lumpish in appearance but betraying a very sensible, and commendable, mistrust of the man behind the wheel.

The passenger, dressed in brown, was the first to emerge, his door flung open, a loud voice ringing through the small yard between white cottage and moss-covered shed. “Jesus H. Christ!” it exclaimed, in an accent as unmistakably American as its sentiments. “Haven’t these people ever heard of the automobile?”

The man might have been chosen to illustrate the word
Colonial.
In his prime at about forty, he stood well over six feet tall, with shoulders to match his height. His movements were quick for a large man, suggesting restlessness beneath the surface. He looked at the world through a pair of cheerfully cynical blue eyes set in a face that was more interesting than handsome, with hastily assembled features—big nose, broad forehead, a pugnacious jaw offsetting his responsive mouth. Little dark dots along the left side of his face testified to an experience with shrapnel, and the line of his nose took one or two more turns than Nature had designed. His coarse light brown hair, untamed by oil and uncovered by hat, showed no trace of gray or of thinning. He hadn’t shaved that morning, although the stubble was pale; most eyes would have had to be close to see it.

The American thrust his bare hands into the pockets of his tweed overcoat and walked off to look at the view, letting fly a sharp whistle. “Damn,” he said. “I never get tired of the views this country has to offer.”

The other door clicked open and the driver eased out onto the farm yard surface, a fastidious greyhound to the American’s bull terrier. The man was an unlikely chauffeur, as polished as the motorcar had been before its recent abuse, freshly shaved and dressed in an unrelieved black that might have been appropriate in a City meeting, or a funeral.

Perhaps it was the American’s presence that made him seem a shade smaller and a great deal more self-contained than he had five years ago. Some things had not changed: the unnerving sensuality of his lips and the blackness of his eyes, those invisible pupils that gave away nothing of the man within. One feature, however, was new: the thin, pink scar that traveled down the side of his face.

Looking at it, the small man found himself smiling.

The driver raised a gloved hand to his perfect black hair, a gesture that seemed designed to smooth from his mind the effects of the arduous journey; with his other hand, he set his felt hat into place.

The impenetrable eyes swept the farmyard and found it empty of life. The driver went to stand near the American, the set of his head indicating that he was more there to judge the view than to admire it. The men gave an appearance of cooperation, even friendliness, but to the watching figure, they were as stiff-legged as a pair of bristling dogs.

“Looks like once upon a time there was a hell of a house over there,” the American said. His voice was a shade too loud, his shoulders seemed to want to ease themselves against the manner he wore, a manner that fit him as poorly as another man’s coat. “Although that must’ve been a while and a half ago, to leave only those foundations.”

The dark man’s lips curled and parted, perhaps to offer a sardonic comment on the American fascination for anything old enough to grow moss, but his pronouncement was interrupted by a voice that bounced off the stones and became directionless.

“It is a city of the dead.”

The startled American yanked his hands from his pockets and sent the skirts of his greatcoat dancing, but his companion, either less surprised or more practiced at concealment, swiveled deliberately on one glossy heel as he searched out the source of the words. His attention had traveled past the figure, whose garments were the precise shade of the lichen-draped stones behind him, when a gleam of sunlight played off the freshly honed edge of the axe on the man’s shoulder. The black gaze snapped back to the man; in a moment, the wide mouth curled up, lazy and relaxed.

The woodcutter was not a tall man, perhaps a shade over five and a half feet, with thick white-blond hair in need of a trim. He was clean-shaven, his body muscular beneath once-brown corduroy trousers and a once-good herringbone jacket, both garments tidy and well mended—unlike his cloth cap, which looked like something dredged from the bottom of a cow stall. His eyes were a startling green in a weathered face, his eyelashes darker than his hair and long. Despite the weathering, his boyish build made him seem young.

Black eyes met green without quailing; if anything, they grew more openly amused. Finally, the American broke the silence. “What do you mean, ‘a city of the dead’? Is this how you people build cemeteries around here?”

“I have, in fact, come across bones,” the man answered. (His light voice lacked the catches and burrs of the local dialect—not a native Cornishman, then, the American automatically noted. Or if so, he’d shed the accent. In fact, when it came to that ineffable English air of Authority and Right, this rustic figure sounded closer to the real thing than Carstairs in his beautifully tailored clothing.) “But no, it is a village of a people long gone. Phoenicians, according to local mythology. Major, I distinctly remember saying that if I saw you again, I would kill you.”

Major Aldous Carstairs’ lazy smile deepened, and his voice when he spoke was low, almost intimate. “Captain Grey, it is so very good to see you again. May I present Mr. Harris Stuyvesant from America? Mr. Stuyvesant, Captain Bennett Grey.”

Stuyvesant looked from the sharpened steel on the man’s shoulder to the expression on his face, and decided not to offer his hand. “Hi,” he said, his fingers sketching a wave.

Grey still hadn’t taken his eyes from the Englishman. “Major.”

It wasn’t that Carstairs didn’t hear that raw threat, Stuyvesant thought: The man’s face might be arranged into the fond expression of a parent indulging a child’s whim, but Stuyvesant was close enough to feel his tension—the muscles beneath that fancy coat were just waiting for the command to dive for the car. Anyone less cold-blooded than Aldous Carstairs would have been sweating into his well-ironed white shirt.

But give the icy bastard credit: His voice gave away no trace of fear as he said, “I believe, Captain Grey, that your precise words were, ‘If I lay eyes on you again, be prepared to die.’ However, before you come after me with that archaic weapon, I should hope you might listen to a request. It concerns…your sister.”

Stuyvesant had plenty of time to consider those last two words, words that clicked like a queen on a chess-board, words with a whole lot of history in them. He had time to speculate about the axe on Grey’s shoulder, if it was why Carstairs had wanted him along. And to wonder if, should the woodcutter come at them, he maybe shouldn’t just stand back and let him swing: God knew, anyone who said those words to Harris Stuyvesant in that way wouldn’t walk away in one piece.

But the man Grey just stood, motionless.

The American was beginning to think Carstairs’ words had set off some peculiar mental process, turning the fellow into one of those standing stones they’d passed in the fields that morning, when Cornwall itself broke the tension by dropping into the tableau a wild-eyed countryman in a bright red fisherman’s jersey.

Almost literally dropping: The unlikely figure tumbled over the wall into the farmyard as if thrown there, picking himself up and trotting across the yard in an oddly crablike gait. He scuttled over to Bennett Grey and seized the small man’s free hand, edging around in back of him to glare over Grey’s head at the others with a pair of blue eyes so pale they seemed white. His large body was draped in much-patched trousers held up by twine, and the red jersey looked as if it had been rolling in gorse bushes. He was probably near to Grey in age, but Stuyvesant half expected him to poke his thumb into his mouth to complete the picture of childishness.

Grey finally moved, to crane his neck and look at the person behind him.

“Naouw, Robbie, shudden tha be at oam helpin’ tha Mutherr?”

The Cornishman answered in the same peculiar tongue. “Ah ’eard the motorr. Ah diddun loik its looks. Ah knawed you wud wan’ ma help.”

Behind the impenetrable accent, it was clear that the man was simple as a six-year-old. He clutched Grey’s hand and scowled from Carstairs to Stuyvesant; if he’d been a dog he’d have been growling.

But Grey gave a laugh that sounded only the slightest bit forced, and reached down to lean his long axe against the side of the building. “Robbie, tha’s a good lad, but thee mun go back to tha Mutherr naow. Ahm foin. These twa gennelmun come all the way from London town to talk t’me, so Ah mun keep them, naow, must Ah?”

Robbie’s shoulders relaxed, and he turned and eyed the motor for a moment before tilting his head and whispering loudly into Grey’s ear, “Ah wanna zit een ’un.”

“Na, Robbie, you wudden loik the smell. Motorrs like tha’ are not fit for thee. Off tha go, me ’andsum. Say good day to Mr. Stuyvesant and Major Carstairs.”

With great reluctance, either at abandoning Grey or leaving the shiny motor unexperienced, the Cornish lad tugged at his cap and withdrew. Grey had to urge him twice more before Robbie threw his leg over the wall and dropped away on the other side.

The instant he was gone, that green gaze snapped back onto Carstairs.

“Does your American friend here know the details of what you’re about?”

“Some of them. Not all.”

“Of course not. No matter. Major, I want you out of my sight until four o’clock. That gives your Mr. Stuyvesant four and a half hours to tell me everything he knows. You’d better hope he’s convincing.”

Carstairs’ look of amusement faded. “Grey, really, I—”

“You’re giving me a headache, Major. Four o’clock.”

The Englishman studied Grey as though committing his face to memory. He glanced at Stuyvesant, then, to the American’s astonishment, walked off. No argument, no protest at the cold or the lack of transport, just tugged at his gloves and walked away down the track they’d come up.

In moments the walls had swallowed Carstairs, but Grey waited, long after the sound of footsteps on gravel faded. Stuyvesant shifted, took his cigarette case from his left breast pocket, turned it over in his hand once or twice before putting it away again, then cleared his throat, preparing to speak. Grey held up a finger to stop him, his eyes on the end of the adjoining field: a brief flicker of dark, glimpsed through a narrow break in the wall, and Carstairs was gone.

Grey blew out a long breath and leaned back against the shed’s stone wall, eyes shut, both hands coming up to press their heels against his eye sockets, fingers in his hair. Stuyvesant had thought he meant a figurative headache, but apparently not: The man did not look boyish now.

“Do you work for him?” Grey’s voice sounded strained.

“No. I only met him three days ago.”

“He’s planning something. What is he planning?”

“Planning…? I’m sorry, I honestly don’t know.”

After a few seconds, the hands came away from the face. The man raised his head to drill Stuyvesant with that emerald stare. He seemed to be listening intently, not only to Stuyvesant’s denial, echoing off the stone walls, but to his own inner voice.

Stuyvesant found himself opening his mouth to speak, to explain his statement, to swear that honestly, he wasn’t—

Harris Stuyvesant, as cool under pressure as any man in the Bureau, ready to blather and vow and declare his innocence like a two-bit criminal feeling the handcuffs.

Abruptly, Grey nodded his head, as if resigned to a decision handed down by some internal court, then bent to retrieve the axe. Stuyvesant’s protest died unspoken.

The small man strode across the yard towards the house. As he passed the chopping block, his arm came up and he sank the heavy tool, single-handed, two inches deep in the hard surface. He climbed the concave stone steps and went inside, leaving the door standing open.

Harris Stuyvesant ran a hand over his hair, not quite sure what had just happened.

All the same, he figured an open door was an invitation. Or at least, as much invitation as he was likely to get.