by Peter Watson
He saw Grainger above him. He could smell the other man’s breath – the coffee he had drunk mingled with tobacco smoke. It was stale and made Michael feel sick. He felt himself being pushed down. The water was rising to meet him: now it was Grainger’s ally. He felt the cold Channel water at the back of his head, lapping his ears. Grainger was forcing him down.
Behind Grainger he saw Isobel. She hadn’t jumped, but what could she do? Though Grainger was weaker than Michael might be, he was still too strong for her.
Suddenly Grainger snatched the cigar from his mouth and in one swift movement jabbed the lighted end into Michael’s injured arm. The hot ash and blood mingled and Michael’s screams shot across the waves. The pain filled every pore in his body. As Michael convulsed, Grainger shifted his weight and forced his head below the water. Michael spluttered and coughed and heaved as his mouth and nose sank into the salty water. All he could think of was the pain in his arm and hand, his raw nerves scorched by the hot cigar.
Then, through a blur of tears and sea water, Michael saw that Grainger’s face had suddenly darkened. It wasn’t shadow, though. It was brown. A brown strip. Two brown strips. Three. Isobel had found the tape! She pulled it around Grainger’s eyes, then his nose, then his mouth. He couldn’t breathe.
Grainger’s hands now sought to free the tape around his nose, but Isobel continued winding. She wound his hands to his face. That didn’t work for long but by then she had wound the tape around his body twice, twisting it to give it added strength.
Michael squirmed out from under Grainger. The boat was now nearly waist-deep in water and would be going under soon. The pain in his arm was scalding.
Grainger was still caught up in the tape. Isobel had now wound it round his legs. She screamed at Michael. ‘Look at your arm. Try to stop the blood! And jump! Free the skiff. I can manage.’
Michael saw what she meant. He grabbed his floating shirt and pressed it to his wound. The amount of blood he was losing was alarming. Then he jumped. The skiff was tied to the launch and would go down with it.
As he jumped, the whole episode seemed to move into slow motion. He had time to kick himself over to the skiff. Using his good arm, he untied the smaller craft from the launch. Then he hung on. The pain in his arm was too much for him to be able to haul himself out of the water unaided. Through his pain he watched Isobel as, twice more, she wound tape around Grainger’s legs. He had pulled the tape away from his face but his arms and hands were still caught among the sticky strips. Then, very calmly, Isobel took three steps back from Grainger, unwinding more tape as she went. She stood for a moment, then wound the tape around the gunwhale now only a few feet above water.
She turned back to the struggling Grainger and brandished something at him, something Michael couldn’t quite see.
‘I can cut you free, Grainger!’ she screamed.
Michael realised she had the scissors Grainger had used to cut the tape from their faces.
‘What do the skulls and the rings mean? Where’s the silver? Grainger!’
Grainger screamed back. ‘You can’t let me drown! Cut the tape!’
‘The silver!’
‘Cut the tape and I’ll tell you.’
‘Isobel!’ yelled Michael. ‘Forget it – we’ve got the box. Get clear!’
Isobel seemed not to hear him. She was shouting again. ‘You tried to kill me twice, Grainger. The silver! Say and I’ll cut the tape.’
Grainger didn’t reply but instead redoubled his efforts to break free. As he did so, the boat gave a lurch.
The pain in Michael’s arm throbbed on, made worse by the salt in the water. He just summoned the strength to shout again. ‘Isobel, it’s going. Get clear. Jump!’
Isobel had been unbalanced by the lurch of the boat and suddenly seemed to realise how close to sinking it was. She turned and began to climb over the gunwhale.
‘No!’ screamed Grainger. ‘No! The tape –’
Isobel stopped climbing and turned. But she remained where she was.
Grainger stared at her for a moment. It was a battle of wills and no one spoke.
Then the boat lurched again. Michael opened his mouth to shout another warning to Isobel.
But Grainger got in first. ‘Hell!’ he cried. ‘Hell. The place is Hell.’
For a split second Isobel didn’t know what to say. Then she jerked to life. ‘Hell isn’t a place,’ she shouted back. ‘You’re still playing riddles. Hell doesn’t exist.’
‘It does, it does. I told you! The tapes, cut them! I told you all I know. Hell –’
‘Isobel! Isobel!’ Michael watched in horror as the launch rolled over, taking Grainger down and Isobel upwards for a moment as the hull was lifted. The roll just gave her time to dive clear. She took the roll of tape with her.
Michael’s last image of the launch, as he still clung to the skiff, was of the huge wiry figure of Grainger, writhing in the sticky brown web, his screams suddenly silenced as the launch sank from view.
*
They put into Portland Harbour three hours later. After an hour at sea in the skiff they had seen the sweep of the lighthouse beam and aimed for that. The unannounced arrival of two naked adults puttering into a naval base in the small hours set off a full alert. But it was worth it, for Michael could take advantage of the superb medical treatment available around the clock at Castletown Naval Hospital.
Even so, the general view of the hospital staff was that he might not have survived if the woman with him had not shown such presence of mind. No one had realised beforehand that plastic tape can serve equally well as a tourniquet.
Epilogue
Isobel fought her way down the steps of Sotheby’s and through the crowds of people straggling on to the pavement outside in the sunshine. She looked about for the others. She had been left behind, when the sale finished, talking to reporters from Fleet Street, old colleagues whom she had once known.
It was nearly a year later, April, and the day of Sotheby’s main sale of medieval and Renaissance antiquities. Suddenly she saw Michael, Helen Sparrow, Veronica Sheldon, Michael’s sister Robyn and Anthony Weaver, the vicar of Pallington, standing on the other side of Bond Street. They were avoiding the crush and she went to join them.
Michael had his head bent down, scribbling on the back of his catalogue.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked as she reached them.
‘Michael’s calculating the grand total,’ said Helen.
‘According to one of the Fleet Street people who cover the salerooms,’ said Isobel, ‘two million pounds is a record for any reliquary sold at auction.’
‘Yes, I heard that too,’ said Weaver. ‘And eight hundred and fifty thousand is also a record for an ivory object, I believe.’ There had been fierce competition for the ivory crosier, as there had been for all of the items.
The four of them stood for a moment, watching the crowds from the auction spill out on to the road. It had been such an unusual, historic occasion that people were not ready to leave. Instead, they stood talking to one another, describing and redescribing what they had just seen. The censer had gone to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the eagle vase to the Berlin Museum and the candlesticks to a private collector in Tokyo.
‘It’s a rich man’s sport, art collecting,’ sighed Weaver, surveying the crowd opposite. ‘I wish people felt as strongly about God.’
‘How rich are we, Michael?’ said Isobel. ‘You once told me you were good at maths.’
‘Hold on. Nearly there.’
‘Maybe you can now buy a new suit, Michael. Something more . . . becoming.’ Michael’s sister Robyn was in London being interviewed for a job, at London Zoo, and had been to her first auction.
‘What are your plans?’ said the vicar, turning to Isobel. ‘Now that all the excitement has died down.’
For a while Isobel didn’t reply. A tall thin man was standing outside Sotheby’s and, for the briefest of intervals, she thought it was Grainger. He was stand
ing just where Grainger had stood when he first invited himself down to the farm. Suddenly her eye was attracted by a sign on the window above where he was standing. It said ‘Molyneux Rose Gallery’ – so that’s where he had stolen the name from.
Such a lot had happened since Grainger had drowned. There had been an inquest during which the entire story had come out and been reported in detail in all the newspapers – including the nudity. Fortunately the verdict had been death by misadventure. The treasure had been declared trove and, as a result, the British Museum had claimed the map of the True Cross and the Victoria and Albert Museum the jewelled gospels. But, as was now the custom if not the law, Isobel and Michael, as the finders of the objects, had been offered the market rate for them, since only if the museums paid up in that way could they expect people to declare trove. The rest Isobel and Michael had been free to sell.
In view of her part in the misadventure, Helen Sparrow had been offered a share in the proceeds and, because they had had to break into Pallington church, they had decided to offer the altar cross to the parish. Anthony Weaver had attended the sale out of interest. Veronica Sheldon was there because, in the end, it was Veronica who had solved the last riddle.
She had not been at all mystified when they told her about Grainger’s final admission – that the box from Pallington church had pointed to ‘Hell’ as the final destination.
‘These are three dog skulls,’ she said, examining the contents of the box. ‘A three-headed dog is Cerberus, guardian of the entrance to Hades, the underworld. And these are nine concentric rings. People used to believe that both Heaven and Hell were made up of nine zones, nine concentric zones, with God at the top of Heaven and Satan in the ninth zone at the bottom of Hell.’
At first, however, she hadn’t been able to take them any further than that. Only when they had described their adventures to her a third time, in ever-increasing detail, did she suddenly say, ‘Tell me about Quarr Abbey again. Tell me everything.’
They told her.
She picked up on the sign they had read there. ‘Tell me again what it said.’
Isobel had the better memory. ‘That the abbey had fallen into disuse after a local woman had given birth to a child fathered by a monk in the abbey. She had been distraught, had killed her child and then herself. The monk who was the father had secretly buried the woman and her child in the abbey grounds. Being a suicide the woman’s body should not have been buried on consecrated ground and the act deconsecrated the abbey. When the scandal was discovered, no one could be found who would exhume the body. The abbey, therefore, had given the deconsecrated land to the village but the villagers, being superstitious, hadn’t wanted it and had just left it. Eventually other suicides were buried there and trees and undergrowth took over. It became known as the Wood of Suicides. We fought our way through it – the trees are nearly choked by undergrowth these days. The silver’s not buried there, is it? We had that idea at one time.’
‘Nnno . . .’ said Veronica.
‘You don’t sound very sure.’
‘I’m still working this out, Michael. Look, have you got a good map of the area?’
‘Of course. The one we used all the time. It’s in the car.’
Veronica had pored over it for some time before muttering, ‘Hmm.’
‘I agree, Vron. Hmm. Is that a place, like Hell?’
‘Very funny. If I’m right . . . if . . . it’s a very macabre joke and a very medieval way of scaring unwanted intruders away.’
‘Yes. Okay. Fine. It’s medibloodyeval. Vron, please!’
‘It was the Wood of Suicides that alerted me. That and the three skulls. They are both areas of Hell. In the first layer, Charon ferried the souls across the Styx and Cerberus guarded the entrance. Lower down, in the Wood of Suicides, there lived harpies and monsters. Then I noticed that there were nine pieces of silver and that some of the other places you passed through, or by, were similar to Hell also –’
‘Like what?’
‘Blood River. Another part of Hell was the Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood –’
‘But Blood River is red because of the red soil –’
‘Yes. But it’s symbolic. Then there was Helstone. Hell stone. In the third zone of Hell misers and spendthrifts spend eternity rolling great stones, Hellstones. Then there was the Valley of the Stones. The seventh area of Hell was the desert or wilderness of blasphemers – and a valley of stones is a good approximation of a wilderness. You went by Woodsford Castle, which is enclosed, like Limbo, the first zone of Hell. It is also crenellated, you said, like the fourth zone. And, near Abbotsbury, you explored some caves – the eighth zone.’
‘You mean . . .’ Isobel had begun, her eyebrows arched as never before.
‘As you got closer to Pallington, you were descending through Hell. Only symbolically, of course, and you didn’t realise it. But a sixteenth-century person who was capable of deciphering the picture would certainly have understood the allusions. It was obviously devised by the same mind as required you to re-enact the Crucifixion to get to the cavity in Pallington church. Only if you were absolutely certain of yourself and that you were behaving righteously would you dare to proceed.’
‘Spooky,’ breathed Isobel.
‘And where does it lead, Vron? Does all this help?’
‘Oh yes, I think so. So far, according to my count, you have been through eight zones of Hell. That leaves only the ninth, the deepest layer, where – ironically and naturally – Satan himself is found. The ultimate deterrent in those days, the devil himself, is guardian of the silver.’
‘And that is?’
‘The ninth ring, the deepest zone, is the well.’
‘The well? But there’s no well at Pallington and there must be hundreds of wells in Dorset. That can’t be right.’
‘Not just any well, Michael.’ Veronica was smiling, enjoying having the upper hand. ‘Think . . . Look at the map . . . As well as being in Dorset, you were also, symbolically speaking, in Hell . . . What is the most notorious aspect of Hell, the thing that everyone knows?’
Isobel answered first. ‘It’s hot.’
‘Right. Good. Now look up Pallington on the map. Then look at the villages and hamlets close to it. Go on, tell me what you see.’
Isobel and Michael had hunched over the map. ‘East Burton . . . East Knighton . . . Owermoigne – strange name – Warmwell, Broadhurst – Oh, I see . . .’
‘Warmwell,’ breathed Isobel.
‘Correct. A hot, or at least warm, well. The deepest division in Hell. The most terrifying place in the sixteenth century for a devout Christian.’
The well, on the village common, had been blocked up years ago as a danger to children. But Veronica’s authority, as a curator at the V & A, had been sufficient to have it unblocked.
There were no Sunday newspapers when Michael and Tom, Isobel’s farm manager, climbed down the well.
It had been Tom who had had the sense to tap the bricks lining the well and had found an area that rang hollow. They had chipped away at whatever crumbly material it was which held the bricks together and, after about an hour and a half, had freed enough of them to reveal a chamber containing three very damp, badly corroded boxes. They had taken out the pieces, black with age, and raised them to the surface one by one.
So Grainger had been right and he had, in a sense, beaten them. He had correctly spotted the reference to Hell. Had he lived, though, he would almost certainly have beaten Isobel and Michael to the well. He had given them the answer but, being the man he was, not the whole answer.
He had been wrong about the jewels, however. The rubies and emeralds were all missing. Someone had obviously helped themselves to the gems long ago.
‘Isobel? Isobel? I said, what are your plans?’
Isobel blinked and dragged her thoughts back to the present. She looked across to Michael.
He had needed another operation on his arm and wrist. He looked like making a good physical recover
y but, after Grainger’s cruelty in burning his nerves with his own cigar, Michael now felt about tobacco the way Isobel felt about boat-hooks. This pleased Isobel after a fashion, though she wasn’t certain about Michael’s new habit – old-fashioned humbugs. He was putting on weight.
Half smiling to herself, Isobel turned back to Weaver. ‘I’ve already spent a lot of the money – on land next to the farm. With luck it will now work commercially. And I’m employing more people so I can spend weekdays in London. I’m going to open a gallery, for photographers.’
‘No holidays in exotic places?’
‘No. We’re going to Texas, but only because Michael has sold a picture to the museum in Dallas and he wants to deliver it personally.’
‘Is that the one I read about? The lost portrait of Sarah Kinloss?’
Isobel nodded. Their adventures hadn’t entirely ended with the discoveries at Warmwell. Once Michael’s arm had recovered (though it would always be stiff) and he was back in the gallery, he had found that the jewels in the picture Julius Samuels had cleaned led nowhere. On the other hand, he had found that the figure was holding, not a chesspiece, but a miniature lighthouse.
Researching lighthouses, he had found that the Kinloss family of Strathspey, between Aberdeen and Inverness in Scotland, had built one of the oldest lighthouses in Britain, at Findhorn, and that successive generations had kept it in good repair until it was destroyed by a gale in the 1820s. One of the Kinloss women, Sarah, had been a mistress of the Prince of Wales at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the National Portrait Gallery he found another likeness of her – which confirmed who she was. All that explained why she had been painted over – once she was dead no one wanted to be reminded of her infidelity, amounting theoretically to treason. The Kinlosses had emigrated to America in the late nineteenth century and their ancestral home, at Dallas near Elgin, had been broken up. So there was no one in Britain who was an obvious customer for the portrait. The museum in the other Dallas in Texas, had been interested, however, to the tune of $350,000. Michael had promised his share to Isobel, to help open her gallery. That adventure had been written up in the papers too, which is how Anthony Weaver knew about it.
