The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  The two of them went into the kitchen. Jenny made coffee while Carol sat at the table, with lemonade, a sandwich and her paints. At one point there seemed to be movement upstairs, but when Jenny went to inspect the bedroom she found it empty.

  She felt irritated that neither Susan nor Richard had told her that they would be late. The arrangement was always that any delay should be communicated to the Hansons.

  This was not the first time this irritating abuse of an arrangement had occurred.

  The back door opened suddenly and Richard Whitlock stepped inside. His hands were chalky and muddy, and he seemed surprised, then embarrassed, to see the woman. ‘Oh, Christ. I’m sorry …’ checking his watch. ‘Jesus, I’m really sorry. I was doing some digging …’

  ‘That’s all right.’ She drained her coffee, patted Carol on the shoulder, then gathered her coat and bag.

  ‘Jenny, I’m really sorry. I just forget when I get into something …’

  ‘Leave a note, Richard. OK? Then at least I’ll know where to find you …’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll do that.’

  ‘Bye Carol.’

  “Bye …’

  Richard stooped to kiss his daughter, then washed his hands in the sink. ‘Where’s Michael?’

  Carol stopped her drawing and looked up at her grubby father. ‘I don’t suppose he’s here.’

  ‘Of course he’s here. Michael?’

  His voice boomed through the house, but if Michael was home he wasn’t answering. Richard went upstairs and Carol heard the sound of a bath filling. She left the table and walked into the sitting room, but it was too cold and the heating wasn’t on. She went across the hall, through the dark study where her father worked, to get to her mother’s studio.

  There was a doll on the open door, propped up on the handle, and Carol thought it looked strange and beautiful. She ran over to it but didn’t touch it. She stepped past it into the small room and glanced round at the shelves of dolls, puppets and masks.

  She loved this room, although she was forbidden to touch anything that wasn’t on the small table. Most of the dolls had faces, and the faces always seemed to be watching her, and smiling. Some of the dolls had no faces at all, others … approximations: large eyes, or dotted features, or grimacing mouths. Carol didn’t like those figures as much as the ordinary dolls, but her mother had told her time and again that they were just ‘primitive art’, and that there was nothing to fear from them.

  The doll on the door had a golden face.

  Carol prodded at it. It had been fixed to the door-handle with string. Its arms were stretched out and crooked, and the head hung awkwardly to one side, peering downwards through the golden skin. The mouth was wide, grinning, and there was a bit of a tongue showing through the lips. It was dressed in red clothes, a shawl, a blouse, a skirt, and had black cloth shoes on its feet. Carol touched the body through the clothes, and knew that it was made of wood. There was something hard and pointed in its middle, and she lifted the skirt to look at the long twig that grew from the apex of the crossed, broken legs …

  Startled as she was by this strange, disturbing feature, the shout of anger from her brother startled her more. Michael burst out from among the cardboard boxes in his father’s study, scattering magazines and books as he leapt with fury on to the desk, yelling, ‘Don’t touch it! It’s for Mummy. Don’t touch it!’

  Carol screamed. Her brother’s weight hit her full and hard and sent her flying. Michael straddled her and pressed his hands down on her face. The girl struggled, crying, and Michael leapt up again, as if he was on springs. His face was flushed bright red, and was wet, making him gleam. He was dressed in his school clothes, but his hair was awry, dishevelled, and he looked like an animal, panting and wild. Again, he knelt over her.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ he hissed.

  ‘I was only looking …’

  ‘Present. Pretty. For Mummy. Don’t touch it!’

  She began to cry. She was only six years old. She was frightened of her brother, but he had never been so angry before. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she managed to say through her tears.

  ‘I’ll hurt you! I’ll hurt you! I’ll hurt you!’ he screamed.

  ‘Don’t hurt me!’ she sobbed.

  ‘I won’t. I won’t. I won’t!’ he said with fury. ‘But Chalk Boy will.’

  ‘Please don’t let Chalk Boy hurt me.’

  ‘He’ll send you to the sea where the monsters are. You’ll drown in the sea and the monsters will snap snap at you, big teeth, tearing at you. Eating. Eating. The sea is hot. The monsters are fat and black and full of teeth and screaming at night and you’ll never be able to come home from there. The monsters will suck you down and Chalk Boy will dance on the sand by the caves and the tunnels.’

  ‘Don’t hurt me any more …’ Carol whimpered, and Michael stood up, still straddling her.

  ‘Don’t touch the doll,’ he said quietly.

  His father came running into the room, ‘What on earth … ? Michael? What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Carol. What’s the matter?’

  Richard helped her to her feet, then brushed at her tear-stained face. ‘Have you two been fighting?’

  Michael was grim, watching his father solemnly, his lips clenched. ‘Have you been fighting? Michael? I asked you a question.’

  ‘Pretty, pretty,’ Michael whispered. Richard shivered at the sound of the words. The girl stood mournfully before him. ‘Have you been fighting?’

  She shook her head. Michael grinned, but when Richard looked at him the smile quickly vanished.

  Now Richard saw the doll on the door. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘For Mummy,’ the boy said, and suddenly his demeanour was changing. ‘Pretty. For Mummy.’

  Richard reached for the doll, undid its fastenings and examined it closely. ‘Good God. That’s a gold mask … But what the hell is it?’

  ‘For Mummy,’ the boy was muttering.

  ‘Is it a surprise for her?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘All right. I’ll put it back.’ He looked down at the lad, but his hand rested lightly on Carol’s shoulder. The girl was shaking badly. ‘Where did you get the doll? Where did you find it?’

  Michael said, predictably, ‘I fetched it.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday. I heard Chalk Boy calling me.’

  Richard didn’t press the point.

  ‘Do you like it? Do you like it?’

  Susan leaned forward in her chair and planted a kiss on Michael’s forehead. She held the doll and smiled at him. ‘I love it. Is it a present for me?’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘I can fetch another one, if you want. I’ve seen another one.’

  Susan was taken aback. Behind Michael, Richard was giving her a thumbs-up sign. She said, ‘That would be lovely. Who made the clothes? Did you fetch the clothes as well?’

  ‘I made them in school this morning. Miss Hallam’ – his teacher – ‘showed me how to do it.’

  ‘Did she see the doll?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘It was a secret. A secret present for you.’

  ‘Well … thank you again. I shall put it on my special shelf.’

  After Michael had gone to bed they stripped the rag clothes from the figure and looked closely at the icon itself. It was fashioned from a gnarled piece of oak. The arms of the figure – a distorted version of Christ on the Cross – were bent awkwardly at the elbow into V-shapes, the second and fourth fingers on each hand were raised in the classic witchcraft sign of the ‘horned one’. The legs, crossed and nailed together, had been sharpened below the knee into a long, flat point, a blade. A grimacing, female face peered from each breast. The phallus was erect and pointed, a stubby, sharpened projection from the midriff. The face of the god was a gruesome, one-eyed, flapping-tongued insult to the idea of Christ. Delicately fashioned from thin gold, it was a removable mask. It covered a carving, in the wood, of a rotting head.

 
; Richard had seen nothing like it, yet it felt old, it felt real. This was no child’s invention, no joke, no idly whittled piece of wood. This had been used.

  He managed to track down Jack Goodman at ten in the evening. Over the phone, from his office, he described the cross in great detail. Goodman was turning the pages of a book at the other end, listening intently.

  Eventually he said, ‘Fantastic.’

  ‘You’ve found something?’

  ‘I don’t need to. I recognize the description. It’s a Mocking Cross.’

  ‘A Mocking Cross?’ Richard glanced at Susan who folded her arms over her chest at the sound of the name.

  Goodman said, ‘Your boy has found one of the rarest relics from the time of the Vikings in the Mediterranean. Is it a copy?’

  ‘The wood is very solid, very hard, very new. It hasn’t been preserved in any way. I can’t believe this has lasted a thousand years. It has to be a copy. The gold mask might be old, though.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Goodman said, ‘I do know of wood that has stayed strong for a thousand years or more under ordinary conditions. It depends on the circumstances of keeping. I know of only three Mocking Crosses, a pair from Venice, and the “Witch-Cross” from Istanbul.’

  Richard relayed this information to Susan, then asked, ‘A pair? What do you mean, a pair?’

  ‘The Danes made them in pairs, male and female. They fitted together at the groin. They were sacrificial knives used by one particular marauder we think, a man with a particularly inventive imagination. Most of his output, most Mocking Crosses, were destroyed by the monks whenever they were found, especially in the Middle Ages. They seem peculiar to the Mediterranean, and were made in the ninth century, for some forty years or so. The height of the Viking raids along that coast.’

  ‘A Mocking Cross,’ Richard murmured, turning the carving over in his hand.

  ‘The gold mask with its single eye is obvious,’ Goodman went on, ‘the metal used to fashion the pagan calf, plus the image of Odin. The fingers are a way of warding off the evil eye, a superstition that was anathema to the Church. The phallus needs no explanation. Does it?’ He laughed. ‘The faces in the breast are an insult because of the inversion implied, the woman in the man. The female figures have pricks instead of nipples, by the way. Whoever designed them was a visionary: Middle Ages symbolism three hundred years ahead of its time.’

  ‘And they were killing knives?’

  ‘That’s the likeliest explanation. It would have hurt the very soul of a Christian to be blood-eagled by such a cross. The blood eagle was their way of cutting—’

  ‘Yes,’ Richard said quickly. ‘I know what the blood eagle was, thanks. Though I doubt a wooden knife would have done the deed.’

  ‘True enough,’ Goodman agreed. ‘Is there any sign of terracotta clay on it?’

  ‘No. Not that I can see. Why?’

  ‘According to what I’m reading now, which is the report of the discovery of the female cross in Istanbul, in 1924 … the cross that was stolen – probably soon after it was buried – was, well, exactly that: buried. It was in a terracotta coffin, inside a wooden box, hidden in the catacombs and out of harm’s way, I suppose. Someone had smashed the boxes to get the cross. The female was still intact. I was just wondering if this was the match.’

  ‘As long-shots go, I think you’re stretching credibility.’

  ‘Yeah. The wood just couldn’t have survived the centuries. Still, I’d like to see the piece …’

  ‘Come and visit. And thanks, by the way, for the tip on the jeweller’s.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  Susan had dressed the figure again, and placed the little mask over its grotesque skull. ‘Michael wouldn’t forgive us if we sold it, valuable though it might be,’ she said quietly.

  Richard was thinking hard. When he spoke it was abstracted and frustrated: ‘If only I could see Michael fetching these things. If only I knew how he did it …’ He broke his train of thought as Susan’s words penetrated. ‘I’m not intending to sell it … Of course he’d be upset.’

  ‘You mentioned a jeweller’s.’

  ‘Ah. That’s different.’ He reached into his briefcase and drew out a cheque. ‘I sold the emerald today. Took it to a place that Goodman recommended. Five thousand pounds and no questions asked …’

  ‘Five thousand!’

  Susan stood and snatched at the cheque, her face a combination of shock and delight. ‘It must have been worth three times that,’ she added more soberly.

  ‘I’m sure it was. But who’s worrying? That’s the extension we need on your studio.’

  ‘Or the new car …’

  ‘Or the holiday we’ve been talking about?’

  Susan sat down again, toying with the Mocking Cross, staring at the cheque. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking? It’s not a good thought …’

  ‘Another emerald?’

  ‘If we just knew where he found them …’

  Richard said, ‘He doesn’t find them. Remember? Chalk Boy shows him where they are, and he fetches them.’

  ‘I don’t want to think about it,’ Susan muttered darkly.

  As she left the study she placed the cheque on a bookshelf, glanced back and said, ‘The extension?’

  ‘Why not …’

  She laughed and shook her head. ‘This is like Christmas!’

  First light came at five o’clock. Richard dressed quickly and hurried down to the quarry, bleary and dishevelled from a restless, thought-filled night. At the place where Michael had talked about Chalk Boy, in the heart of the boy’s imaginary castle, he searched carefully around under the fragments of chalk and the late-summer vegetation.

  There was still a trace of the sand he had seen before. But now there was a scatter of dull red terracotta pottery, shards and dust mostly, nothing bigger than a thumbnail. And splinters of dark wood, like cedar, an oily wood, fresh and new.

  A terracotta coffin! Maybe Goodman’s long-shot wasn’t so long after all!

  He swept up whatever he could, placed the pieces in a specimen bag, and returned to the house, eager to talk to Michael.

  FOURTEEN

  In the late afternoon, his father started to lead the two visitors down the path towards the cornfield. He was talking loudly.

  From his room, where he stood biting a fingernail and watching anxiously, Michael could hear the words ‘quarry’ and ‘castle’. His father was telling the people about him. They were all going to the pit to snoop around.

  The thought was less disturbing to Michael than it might have been. He smiled to himself, thinking of the high walls of his castle, the hard gates, the winding path. They’d never find their way in, not to the heart of the place, only into the quarry.

  One of the new visitors was a severe-looking man, dressed in black leather trousers and jacket. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. He wore a thin, trimmed beard and smoked a thin, trimmed cigar. His expression was sour and solemn and he smirked instead of smiling, always looking round, always peering round, glancing at everything in the garden, staring at the house. It was as if he was searching for clues, but clues to what?

  Michael could see that his father was uncomfortable, hands in his pockets, shoulders tightly hunched as he walked and talked with his visitors.

  The woman, by contrast, was intriguing and pleasant. She had long red hair and her skin was deeply tanned. She wore a cream-coloured man’s suit and had an unmistakably French accent. She was also very aware of Michael. Indeed, as she walked she suddenly turned and looked up at the house, glimpsing Michael and smiling, waving at him. Although Michael drew back quickly, he knew that she had seen him. When he peered back round the window’s edge she was still looking up, her head cocked slightly to one side, a smile of amusement, slightly teasing, on her lips.

  There had been a very strange incident, minutes earlier, shortly after the guests had arrived. Michael had been in the garden, still in his school clothes, looking for suitable
plants to draw for the next day’s lesson. He heard the car pull noisily into the drive, then the sound of voices. The two visitors had come round to the back of the house with his father, making conversation about the garden and the drive from London, and then had gone indoors. But as they stepped into the kitchen, the woman cried out, slammed her hands against the door frame and stood, head bowed for a moment, moaning in what Michael could only think was pain. His father and the other man were naturally very concerned.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘No!’ was all the woman said. ‘Oh, God. No ! I can’t go inside. It’s too strong!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Richard said. ‘We’ll stay outside for a while. Can I get you a drink? Brandy?’

  Suddenly the woman relaxed, taking a deep breath and laughing. She seemed suddenly embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Whitlock. I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘Not at all. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I can’t enter the house for a moment. Sometimes the shock …’

  Richard was clearly bemused, but he made encouraging sounds and again the three of them strolled slowly through the small orchard, a man on each side of the shaken woman. She glanced towards Michael’s hiding place, once, but didn’t appear to see him.

  Michael took the opportunity to dart indoors, going up to his room to watch from the window.

  He felt nervous of the woman, yet also comforted by her. It was an odd conflict of emotions that he hardly understood: a combination of intrigue with her, and worry that she would see his Castle. So he frowned as they set off down the garden, drew back as she teased him out with her sudden, startling glance, and when they had started to cross the field to the quarry he followed at a distance.

  Halfway over the field he heard his mother’s car, and Carol’s usual excited chatter. But he couldn’t help it if he was seen following the visitors. He wanted to know what the red-haired woman would find in the chalk pit.

  He raced breathlessly to the wood at the top of the chalk, wormed his way through the bushes, under the protecting wire, and lay down where the land cut sharply away, dropping steeply to the quarry below.