The Skull

by Christian Darkin

  Suddenly, all hell broke loose. The navy lugger reared out from the cover of the cove. The smugglers started to reload in panic as a crack of simultaneous gunfire erupted at them from the navy ship. The rowing boats were scattering as their occupants headed for land, sea, or just out of the way of the speeding ship.

  The naval ship itself was also changing direction. William realised with relief that it was no longer chasing him but was turning to take the Harklers’ vessel head on.

  As the wind grew in his sails, the sounds of shouts and gunfire gradually died away behind him. There would be a battle tonight, but he would not be part of it.

  Eventually he could see no land in any direction and hear nothing but the sea. The stars were bright in the sky, and their reflections twinkled in the sea so that he almost felt as though he was drifting among them. His destination might as well have been Mars.

  The wind was good, and the weather calm, but it took all night and all the following day before he caught sight of the French coast. He knew the beaches well and had a good idea where he could bring the little boat in, hiding it among rocky outcrops protected from view from the sea or the shore. To be on the safe side he waited for dusk and high tide before slipping in to shore, securing his boat, curling up in the bottom of the hull and finally collapsing into sleep.

  This wasn’t going to be easy. The cart with its idol was important to the locals and William didn’t think that putting it on a boat and taking it out of the country, however briefly, would go down well with most of the people he did business with. The one trader who might be able to help was not someone he enjoyed meeting.

  He kept off the main street and put his head down as he slipped into town, circling around behind a shabby row of cottages to De Cuir’s back door.

  The fewer people who knew he was in town, the better. If things went wrong, they could go very wrong indeed, and William’s ability to trade here in France was the only thing keeping him and Elizabeth fed.

  De Cuir’s home was dark and shabby, just like the man himself. He was thin, sour and unshaven. As he ushered William in, his eyes darted along the street to make sure nobody had seen the Englishman enter, and he closed the door quickly behind them.

  Most of the people William dealt with in France were not criminals. At least, not real ones. They didn’t ask much about where the fleeces he sold came from, or where the brandy and tea he bought in exchange went. Like the farmers back home, they were not well off enough to refuse a good bargain, and they saw nothing wrong in striking one. Trade across the Channel was a way of life. Illegal and dangerous, but a way of life nevertheless.

  De Cuir was different. He charged high prices and would rip you off if he got half a chance. But he could get you anything. Whatever you needed, somehow, somewhere, he would know someone who could lay their hands on it, if the price was right.

  William sat on a hard chair in his back room, and explained exactly what he needed. The idol, the cart and the seeds. De Cuir listened, drumming his fingers against each other. William could see his narrow eyes darting from side to side, but his expression did not change.

  When William finished De Cuir laughed dryly, without smiling. ‘Your crops aren’t growing so well, are they?’

  William didn’t answer that. ‘Can you get me what I need?’

  ‘The beans I can bring you. They are no problem. This charm… There is only one Lady of the cart. She travels from one village to the next. The farmers, they make an offering to the Lady – and another to the cart driver. Then he goes away, and returns next year. It is a… a service.’ De Cuir waved his hand. ‘He follows the season of sowing. You see?’

  ‘You mean you cannot get it?’ said William.

  ‘I did not say that. The weather, it is not so honest with us this year. In the South, it has been warm early – the seeds have been planted. The Lady, she has finished her work, and come early to town.’ He paused. ‘But we… we are still too cold for planting. We have storms. The lady cannot do her work for two – three weeks yet.’

  William smiled. ‘You mean it’s here?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said De Cuir vaguely. ‘There would be a price.’

  ‘Of course.’ William explained what money he had and that there was no way to negotiate – he could get no more. De Cuir looked disappointed, but William could tell he wasn’t really. ‘That’s all I have. We can make a deal, or not.’ William shrugged.

  The Frenchman nodded. ‘The driver keeps her in a barn, and stays in town enjoying free food, wine and friendship wherever he goes.’ He pulled his lips tight, in what probably passed for a smile. ‘He would not notice if she went on a trip for a couple of weeks.’ He suddenly grabbed William’s wrist. His hand felt like an iron cuff. ‘But no more! For some reason, people look to me when things go missing here. I don’t want questions. You understand?’

  ‘So you can get it?’

  ‘Me? I will have nothing to do with this.’ De Cuir paused. ‘The cart is built to be pulled by two heifers. I will leave two for you at our usual place, and I will tell you where to find the cart. Anything you do will be your own decision. I want to know nothing more about it. You will give me half the money now, and leave the heifers and the rest of the money at the beach, where I will leave the seeds.’ He held out his hand.

  William reluctantly handed over half of the money and De Cuir almost bundled him out of the house, checking up and down the street to make sure they hadn’t been seen before slamming the door shut behind him.

  The barn was just a shed, and its roof was sagging, but there was no lock and no other building close by. William approached cautiously, leading the two mooing heifers DeCuir had left for him, but he soon realised that the Frenchman had been right – the barn was in the middle of nowhere. Until sowing started, nobody was going to make the journey out here to check on the idol in the cart. Certainly, at midnight, he felt sure he’d be undisturbed.

  Inside, he lit a lamp and, sure enough, a little cart stood in the corner. The base of the wagon was old, very old. But its wheels had been replaced with new ones, several times by the look of their fixings. The cart itself had had rough sacks thrown over it to protect it from bat droppings. He grabbed them and pulled them away. Underneath, a full-sized wooden carving of a lady was built into the wagon as though it was a chair.

  She sat bolt upright at the centre of the wagon, swathed in a deep blue gown and stared straight out towards William. At least, that was what he felt as though she was doing. He couldn’t tell in reality, because her face was completely hidden by a carved veil. Secured by twine, the wooden veil covered both the front and back of her head. In one hand she held a sheaf of wheat, and in the cart around her, carvings of fruit and vegetables were garishly painted. The decoration spilled over onto the sides of the cart where painted and carved leaves and berries intertwined with flowers and ears of corn.

  It was quite a piece of work. Bright, colourful and imposing. Wherever he tried to look, William’s eyes were drawn up to the veil hanging in wooden folds over the goddess’ head. He knew, of course that it was solid wood, that there was no face behind the veil, and yet he felt as though there were eyes behind. He felt as though she was looking down. Watching him hook the cart to the two animals.

  There would probably have been room for William to sit on the goddess’ lap and drive the cart, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to sit on her. The animals didn’t complain as he led them off.

  The cart track was empty all the way back to the fork where it joined the main road to town. William put out his lamp and covered the Lady with the sacks as he headed on, but he knew he’d still be a fairly odd sight leading two heifers pulling a wagon at this time of night. He only had to stay on the road until it forked again and he could take the fishermen’s route down to the beach, but it felt terribly vulnerable.

  He could see the outlying houses of the town just a field away. Some still had lamps at their windows, and he could see shapes moving about inside. If anyone l
ooked out, they might see a shadow on the road and think it odd enough to come out and check.

  The animals were well enough behaved, but heifers were not quiet by nature. As he passed close to the wall of the nearest house, one of them let out a long moan. William froze to the spot. If anyone had heard, then the game was up. Anyone hearing a cow here would assume it had got loose and was munching through their vegetable store. They would be sure to run out after it. He held his breath.

  Nobody came. He grabbed the reins and led the animals away as quickly and quietly as he could, down the little rough track away from town and towards the beach.

  He’d only gone a little way when he suddenly heard a shout up ahead, and then another. Someone was coming. He looked around frantically. The ground was flattening out on to sand dunes. Maybe, if he could get the cart off the track quickly enough, and if whoever was coming kept their eyes on the path…

  It was a huge risk, but it was the only chance he had. He tugged on the reins, and the creatures tugged back. They wouldn’t move. He pulled again, harder this time, but the animal closest to him just tossed its head. He yanked with all his strength, but it was too late.

  Three figures stepped out of the darkness in front of him. They were fishermen – he could tell by their dress – and they were walking straight towards him. One was carrying something heavy-looking in one hand. He swayed a little as he walked, and his friend steadied him.

  As the three men stopped in front of him and slowly looked his cart up and down, William saw the man was carrying a bottle. This could get ugly. He looked around for the best direction to run.

  The three men didn’t say anything for a few moments, then the man at the front leant forward to William and slapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Bonsoir!’ he said in a loud voice.

  ‘Bonsoir,’ William replied cautiously.

  ‘Bonsoir!’ the others chorused. The three men smiled broadly and staggered on past him. They were so drunk they could barely stand. William thought they probably didn’t see anything odd about him driving his cart to the beach in the early hours. If they remembered it at all tomorrow, they’d never recall what he looked like, or guess what was under the sacking in the back of the cart.

  He hurried on to where the sand dunes widened out to the shoreline. There was plenty of cover here, but he would have to work fast. He secured the animals and ran off up the beach to where his boat was hidden. It was a twenty-minute run to where the sand gave way to broken rocks, before he could wade out into the icy water and around a jutting cliff to the secret place where the boat was hidden.

  Once he’d retrieved it and dragged it back into the water, he rowed as hard as he could to bring it back down to the sand where he could load it. He grounded it on the beach and used a couple of planks of wood to form a makeshift ramp from the sand up into the boat.

  William led the two animals down into the water and released them from the cart. He would have to get it on to the boat by himself. He pulled it around to line the wheels up with his ramp. He was already worn out from the walk, the run and the rowing. It wasn’t an easy job.

  The cart was a small one and didn’t really need two animals to pull it, but for one young man alone it was a struggle to manoeuvre it up the ramp and into the boat. Each time he inched the wheels out of the sand and on to the wooden planks, it would slip back or jolt off the side of the ramp. But he kept trying and eventually managed to get the wheels over the side of the boat. The cart dropped suddenly into the hull with a sharp crack, but luckily neither the cart nor the boat suffered any significant damage. William stood back to assess his efforts. The cart was sitting high in the boat. The shafts stuck out to one side. This would never work. He would have to turn it.

  He grabbed hold of one of the shafts and pushed the cart around, edging it a little at a time until the shafts faced along the length of the boat. He tipped them down and they fitted almost perfectly, locking in to each side of the boat in the stern and leaving just enough room for him and the oars and mast. It was precarious, but it fitted.

  Quickly, he led the animals back to the place De Cuir had set for the exchange. The seeds were there, in several large sacks. De Cuir had kept his side of the bargain. William left the heifers and the money and dragged the sacks back to the boat, piling them into the bow to give the craft some balance for its top-heavy load. The sun was almost rising now. It was time to leave.

  He heaved the little boat back into the sea and climbed in. It was sitting very low in the water. Dangerously low. The Lady in her veil pitched from side to side, towering above him as he rowed out to sea. The tiny boat rocked unpredictably in the ripples.

  Going was slow. The Lady blocked most of the wind from the sails, and France seemed to take forever to disappear from view behind them. Once it was finally gone, the wind picked up, and they started to move faster, but with the wind came waves.

  By nightfall, William knew he was in serious danger. He had watched and felt the storm coming in with slowly rising fear, and now it was all around him, pulling, rocking and tipping the boat from side to side. The sky was dark and the sea was a rolling, sickening landscape of heaving mountains, rising, falling and erupting around him.

  His little boat was a solid design. It was long and deep, which meant it could hold a lot more cargo than one would expect of such a small vessel. It was easy to turn, and it was double-ended, so that if he really had to, he could swap around in his seat and start going backwards to make a quick manoeuvre. It was also flat-bottomed, so although it rocked enough in small waves to alarm anyone not used to sailing, it only would tip so far and no further – meaning that it was deceptively stable, even in moderately rough seas like these.

  The problem with a deep, flat boat was that if the waves really did get up then it wouldn’t tip or capsize. It would simply fill with water and go straight to the bottom.

  All William could do was watch the waves, and fight to keep his little vessel angled straight into the worst of them so that it would ride them instead of taking their full smashing, tipping force against its sides, and hope to stay afloat until it was over. It was a constant and exhausting fight, and with every passing minute, it got harder.

  The wind was strong now, and rain was slapping against the sail in rattling waves as the gusts changed direction. Looking up, a fork of lightning outlined the figure of Juliana’s Lady, rising in front of him as though rearing out of the water. Her unseen eyes seemed to stare through the veil into his.

  Out in the dark, heaving fury of the water, it seemed to William that a power was rising. It was the same power he felt when he looked into the huge empty eye socket in the tomb. A raw, natural power that was the force behind the storm, the force that turned seasons, that grew the crops or ruined them.

  And it was in Her, too, the monster in the tomb.

  Nature, in all its cruel glory, had taken his father. It did not care about William, his little boat or even the whole village. Human desires meant nothing to it. That much he had learned from Marie. He would cling on or he would not, and the storm would roll on regardless until it ended.

  He dipped the boat into another wave so wide and high it blocked out the sky until it carried him up above the boiling landscape. For a moment, in the rolling waves under him, he thought he caught a glimpse of Her huge eye, not empty now, but alive, ringed with dark scales, Her curved teeth open and waiting, hanging just below the surface. This wild, tearing fury was Her world. Her storm.

  Then suddenly, he felt the boat tip forwards and they were ploughing down the side of the wave, and into the next rising eruption, the oars twisting and dragging as William fought to keep his top-heavy boat upright.

  He was weighing the choice in his mind before he even knew he would have to make it. He looked at the heavy sacks of seed in the bottom of the boat. He could almost feel them dragging him down, making every turn harder, slower. He felt the swell rise again at the front of the boat and pulled hard to turn in to the wave, over
it and down and back for the next wave.

  Then he looked up to the Lady above him. She towered against the sky, glaring down at him from behind her veil. The sheaf of corn looked like a club now, poised to strike him as she rocked back and forth with every pitch of the boat.

  The choice churned in his mind like the boiling waves, without him being aware of it, until a huge heaving mound of sea struck at the side of the boat, sending icy water brimming over the side and into the hull, and he realised he’d known he would have to decide ever since he’d seen how low the boat hung in the water as he’d paddled out from the French shore.

  It was clear now, but a long way from simple. His tiny boat held two cargoes. One weighed him down, the other pitched and tipped him from side to side. He could not carry them both to England. If he was going to stand a chance of making it to the shore alive, one of his precious cargoes would have to go.

  He fought the notion. Perhaps if he just kept turning in to the waves… He turned again and paddled hard up and through a steep swell. At the top, the boat tipped and crashed, rocking into the next wave. A wall of water struck him hard across the back, bending him forwards over the oars. His frozen hands barely had time to steady the boat before another wave crashed down on him. There was water all around his feet now.

  No good. The choice was there, stark and icy. The seeds or the idol. If he returned without Juliana’s Lady, the consequences didn’t bear thinking about. The fields would not be blessed. The village would see it as the worst possible insult to everything they believed in. They would surely turn against him and his mother. Everything would be in danger. Word would soon reach France of what he’d taken. He would never be able to return.

  But if he abandoned the seeds to the ocean, the early crops would most likely fail again, and with nothing to sell, the village would be ruined. Within a year, the houses would be empty and those that survived would be forced to leave, to beg on the squalid, plague-ridden streets of London.