The noise dropped abruptly in the crowded murky room. The sound of the primitive music seemed suddenly isolated and distant. Two of the goat-masked heralds stepped quietly forward and held their clear-flaming tow torches so that their light fell strongly on the figure crouching at Mr Mylchraine’s feet. All eyes were on her. But for a long time nothing happened.
I looked down myself at the long white back rising to humped white buttocks over crouched knees with a mass of dark hair fanning out on the floor at the front, spread towards the still black-robed seated figure. I told myself that I had to be careful.
And then the waxen white face was lifted from its brooding position and took one long look all round the crowded room. And, apparently satisfied with what he had seen, Mr Mylchraine now raised his pallid right hand in a second gesture of command.
For a moment I was uncertain what it was that he had ordered to happen. Then two more of the goat-creatures, one a man, the other a woman, stepped forward. They had abandoned their torches. But they had not abandoned their long carter’s whips.
The noise in the room and the music had died away completely now. In the bright yellowy light of the two torches the naked girl at Mr Mylchraine’s feet crouched unmoving. Or almost so. I could not quite make out whether the tiny movement I saw was only the effect of the flary torchlight or whether she was lightly trembling.
It was the male goat-masked figure who delivered the first blow.
The sound of the long whip singing through the air could be heard with complete distinctness. And then the crack as it landed on the naked back. And next an awed shiver of a sigh from the onlookers when across the whiteness a dark contused line slowly grew.
Then the female goat-masked figure struck from the other side. The prostrate girl gave a sharp whimper as the whip fell.
And I watched. It isn’t so often in this life that one’s sadistic impulses are so thoroughly catered for. I felt I should not watch, but I watched.
And the whole silent assembly watched with me, taut, unmoving, greedy as blow succeeded blow.
Then something caught my eye. Perhaps it was because I had managed after all not to be quite so intent as the others were. Perhaps it was only that I was well placed to spot it.
A sudden scutter of movement in the darkness of the passageway from the main entrance.
I wrenched my gaze right away from that cross-wealed, white-fleshed back and I peered into the darkness across on the other side of the floor.
And, with a crystal-cold shock of astonishment, I saw what it was that had caused that sudden distracting movement. There, standing just inside the chamber, bare to the waist, looking bewilderedly all round him, was none other than the strong man I had seen before in chains.
4
Hardly had I taken in the presence in the Rota chamber of that unmistakable oak-tree solid frame and realized that I was looking at not simply a fugitive, but a badly-perplexed and hard-pressed fugitive, when for the first time since his ceremonial entry Mr Mylchraine spoke.
‘Enough.’
The word rang out in the hushed room, halting at once the terrible regular cracking reports of the alternating whip strokes and even stopping for some moments the now continuous whimpering cries the prostrate self-chosen victim had been uttering.
And then babel broke out. If the round high-ceilinged room had been noisy before, it was doubly so now. The drum was beaten again and at full force. The scrawny pipe screeched high above it. And tense, suddenly released laughter pealed out everywhere.
In the gloom beyond the one single strong patch of light where the bloody-backed girl was now slowly getting to her feet, couple after couple embraced and danced and ran drunkenly backwards and forwards. No one at all seemed to have eyes for the bull-shouldered, half-naked convict standing peering bewilderedly round in the darkness of the entrance passageway.
But I recognized that without immediate help he was unlikely to remain free much longer. It was plain he could not go back the way he had come, and only someone with plenty of time to look at what lay ahead could possibly pick his way quickly across to the other exit through the confused jumble of dancing whirling bodies lit only by the darting light of the smoky resinous torches.
Without even thinking, I stood up.
‘Won’t be a second,’ I said to John.
I hoped vaguely that he would think I needed to go and find a lavatory or something, but I did not wait to offer more explanations. Quickly I scrambled up on to the wide rear gallery and went round it at a loping run. There were a good many people there dancing as wildly as those on the centre floor but it was possible, if your eyes were accustomed to the gloom and the irregular glare of the torches, to make your way past them quickly enough.
Within less than half a minute I was round at the point where the main entrance passage led to the centre floor. The strong man was almost directly below me. I had been quite right about his difficulties. He had advanced only a yard or two further along the passage and was holding his hand above his eyes, trying to see beyond the smoke of the torches and the swaying of three-Parts naked dancers.
I swung myself up on to the rail at the edge of the gallery and dropped down to the floor of the passage below, a matter of eight or ten feet. I landed a couple of yards away from my man.
At the thump I made on the floor he swung round like a jungle animal.
‘This way, quick,’ I blurted out.
If I had left it a second longer, I am sure his fist would have come swinging towards me. But the tumbled-out words got through to him. He moved a single pace nearer and waited attentively.
I took his arm by the wrist and ran with him down to the centre floor. The crowd there might be too dense to get through in a straight line, but I had an idea that by keeping to the edge of the circle we would be able to get round to the other passageway without being forced to a complete halt.
And I was right. Twice I had to push unceremoniously at a naked back to shift some interlocked couple jammed up against the panelled parapet at the floor edge. But each time the pair of them simply moved in the direction I had shoved and otherwise paid no attention.
‘Down here,’ I said, as we reached the passageway at last. ‘It leads out at the back.’
A quick glint in my companion’s dark eyes showed me he understood what I was doing.
I took a last rapid look back to see whether there was any sign of pursuit. There was. Four or five of Mr Mylchraine’s Keepers in those slightly ridiculous countrified uniforms with the pheasant cockade hats had just come in at the main entrance. They all carried shotguns, but evidently they were as baffled by the half-darkness and the noise and wild movement as my convict had been.
There shouldn’t be too much difficulty in getting enough of a lead over them, I thought.
And then I saw something else. My brother.
He was standing up in his seat and looking across from the group of dazed-seeming Keepers to the pair of us at the other exit in a fashion that showed clearly he too had appreciated the situation pretty quickly. Even as I looked at him he must have seen my face turned in his direction.
He waved at me as much as to say ‘Hold that man or else ...’ Deliberately I pointed with outstretched arm away down the passage. If John was going to give me orders, I was going to let him know quite clearly that in Mr Mylchraine’s nasty Oceana I was not on his side.
Rain was falling when the pair of us emerged from the back of the Rota but there was still a good deal of light. Coming from the murky gloom of the esbat this surprised me, but I realized that in fact I had probably not been in the building much over an hour.
I glanced at the convict. He was standing crouched slightly on the balls of his feet, looking from side to side.
‘Do you know the town?’ I asked rapidly.
‘Middling little.’
They were the first words I had heard him speak. It came as a slight shock that he pronounced them with a thick country burr. Somehow from the independent
way he had held himself I had thought him a cut above a simple farm-worker.
‘This way then, I think,’ I said.
I ran towards the narrowest of the three streets leading from the tiny square at the back of the Rota. I knew my way about here much less than in other areas.
I had formed no clear plan of how we were to get away eventually, but I knew that whatever we did we had to do without pausing. If I had guided my fugitive quickly through the crowded esbat, John could guide the pursuing Keepers just as rapidly. The lead we held a few moments before had been abruptly wiped out.
We ran hard down the narrow street with the dark stone walls of its terraced cottages gleaming in the rain on either side. At the far end I took the turning that seemed easiest. It led into another similar street, neither more nor less hopeful. But there was nothing else for it but to run and run till some opportunity of dodging into hiding presented itself.
After a little we did come into a broader street which I more or less recognized. I paused for an instant and then decided that the best course was to head away from the centre of the town. Down where the lobster-pie and drink shops were there would be bound to be people about, and if they did not actually try to lay hands on us they would certainly get in our way.
As we set off again, running side by side, I thought I caught the distant sound of shouting. We thudded on, and I saw heads appearing at lighted windows here and there. Invariably as soon as our two running figures had been spotted a curtain would be sharply drawn, extinguishing in an instant the warm patch of colour. It was an ominous sign: we were not going to find shelter in Lesneven.
And before we had got more than two-thirds of the way down this road we heard the Keepers come running out of the side-turning behind us. Slogging on, not daring to look back, it was nevertheless all too easy to make out that they had clattered to a halt to look left and right. And then came a ragged shout that told us we were spotted.
So it looked as if they were making better speed than we were. It was not surprising. Beyond having sprinted occasionally for a bus back in distant, enormous, reasonable London I was in no sort of training. Already I was feeling sick with effort. And the bare-chested convict did not seem capable of going much faster. How much had he already taxed his robust frame in getting out of gaol? Altogether, it looked as though it would not be long before we heard the whistle of heavy shot from the Keepers’ guns.
As soon as we reached a turning we took it without a word of consultation. But at the end of this new road things became abruptly different. The solid rows of houses came to an end, the tarmac roadway and granite pavements simply stopped. Ahead lay the wide muddy quakingly soft stretch of the Strand.
A waft of numb despair came over me. I had tried so hard, I felt, surely I had deserved better than this. Out there on that desolate foreshore the Keepers could shoot us down like a pair of fairground targets. And there was nowhere else to go. Long before we could run back up to the turning the pursuing party would have reached it.
I stood there robbed of all initiative. The level greyness in front was interrupted only by the railway station away to our right, a quaint silhouette on the stilts that raised it from the mud. And, just discernible some fifty yards from it, there was the square shape of the floating lighter. To the left there was nothing. The foreshore ran on, I knew, broader here, narrower there, till it came to the one small quay that served the few boats that braved the treacherous currents of Lesneven Bay. And, in the other direction beyond the station, there was equally nothing.
‘Come on,’ said a thick voice by my side.
It was the convict. In trying to haul some miracle out of the factual impossibility that confronted me, I had left him out of my scheme of things. But he spoke now with a decided sharpness, and I set off at a run again behind him.
Within half a dozen paces our feet were squelching horribly in the mud, and its smell of decay came heavily into my nostrils every time I drew in a gasping breath. But my companion showed no signs of wavering. Impelled by the sight of his broad bare back, and with nothing in my mind but the sound of that suddenly sharp voice positively ordering me on, I staggered forward through the softly falling rain.
We were heading towards the station: there was nothing else to make for. But I could not conjure up any effective hiding-place there. The little wooden building was totally isolated. Even if we broke into it, we could be surrounded without the least trouble. And besides that one building there was nothing. One could scarcely hide behind the piles on which the single platform rested: they were just not thick enough.
I glanced back. The Keepers still had not come out into the open. It looked as if we should at least reach the station before then, little good though it would do us.
Looking round again, I saw that in fact we were heading not for the station but for the water’s edge in a direct line with the square shape of the half-loaded lighter.
Plunging heavily on, keeping my eyes fixed to the ground to avoid the litter of old spars, tin cans and discarded motor tyres sticking up from the gluey embrace of the mud, I thought there might be some sense in making for the lighter. If we got to it before we were spotted, the Keepers would almost certainly assume we had gone into the station. It would at least be a respite.
We came to the edge of the sea. The lighter floated about fifteen yards out now, a great square hulk.
The convict half a pace ahead of me turned his head.
‘Get down,’ he barked out.
I was too astonished not to obey instantly. I fell forward into the water, noticing at the back of my mind that thanks to the warmth of the day just ending it was softly tepid as it soaked in on to me.
Beside me the convict had sprawled forward equally quickly. I heard him swirl gently round in the mud-thick water.
‘Keep still,’ he whispered. ‘They’re standing there looking.’
I lay with my outspread hands gradually sinking into the ooze underneath me, staring at the rusty shape of the lighter. The back of my head felt terribly exposed. A long time seemed to go by before my companion spoke again.
‘They’re going over to the railway. They’re not too clever then.’
He swished round till he was lying alongside me.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘But middling slow, mind. We don’t want to make a stir.’
Cautiously we pushed ourselves on our hands towards the lighter, like two lumbering grampuses. By the time we got there we were half swimming, half wading. Without a word being said, I followed the convict round to the seaward side of the big iron craft. He reached up and hauled himself aboard. I followed.
Certainly it was a reasonable temporary hiding-place. The granite blocks on the landward side had evidently been stacked as high as they were to go but on our side there were still half a dozen more layers to be put in place. So we had a solid rampart some four feet high between us and any observers on the shore.
I knelt up beside my fellow fugitive and peered over. The light was failing fast but it was just possible to make out the green-uniformed Keepers. They had reached the railway line and were walking towards the station. I looked in the other direction. We were going to have to go a very long way before we could get out of sight. And out at sea, I saw, the sky was pale. Figures at the water’s edge would stand out all too clearly.
‘We’ll have to risk leaving the moment the Keepers reach the station,’ I said quietly.
‘We’re not leaving.’
I thought I detected an almost contemptuous quickness of disagreement in the short phrase. It was certainly presented as a statement of fact. But I decided that I must have been misled by the thickness of that country burr.
‘If we stay,’ I said, ‘we’re bound to be caught. They can’t fail to work out we’re here.’
‘But they’ll never count on us making a little hidey-hole, though.’
He slapped the new-cut granite blocks in front of him.
It was certainly a thought. If we could shift en
ough blocks to make a hiding-place it was possible the Keepers would fail to hit on it. But the blocks looked enormously heavy. And there would be very little time.
‘Come on.’
My fellow fugitive set to work at speed, grabbing at a block from the top of the rampart and with a grunt of effort heaving one end out. Then he began lowering it. I stepped forward to take the other end.
‘Leave her. She’d knock you flat.’
The words were brusque. But this was no time for politenesses.
I stood back.
‘Let me know when you do want help,’ I said.
Heaving the next block down, my friend croaked a terse reply.
‘When they go back.’
I waited, watching with confused admiration the way he handled the blocks. One, two, three, four, five, six. He heaved each out from its tightly packed place and swung it down to the stones at our feet.
‘Right,’ he said at last. ‘Now to stack two over there and get the rest back.’
Barely three minutes had passed since he began. His extraordinary strength would be needed to the full to get these solid blocks up again in the time left in such a way as to conceal the narrow hole he had now made.
‘I’ll lift one end,’ he said. ‘Then you hold while I get the other end up. They’re mortal heavy, mind.’
I did as I was told, tucking one shoulder under the sharp edge of the first block he lifted. But when the full weight came on to me I thought I was going to buckle under it. Then my companion began to lift the other end. The weight on my shoulder grew. Sweat suddenly stung my forehead.
And if this is what I feel, I thought, what about him? He’s lifting it with his hands.
‘Now, roll her.’
Gratefully I leant sideways so that the heavy block tumbled into its place above. I rested for a moment against the cool stone of the rampart. But my companion had already scrambled round to lift the next.
Strong Man Page 4
