He pulled on the fetters again, again laid me out. This time I stayed still.
‘Good. Now, I’m just going to secure your feet with this spike. Stop you flinching away.’
He turned, reached down for the stake. Just then, I saw, in the door of the roundhouse, a rawboned form stark against the gory light of the bloodmoon. Then the thing stepped forward into the lantern’s wavering glow. A freak, human in form, but with a warty reddish hide, awful, staring eyes. I gasped. Elliot looked over his shoulder. The freak pounced, wrestled him, wrested the hammer from his grasp, struck out with it, hit him on the brow. Stunned, he staggered backward, toppled. The freak snatched up the stake, which he’d let fall, fell on him, held the spike’s point over his sternum, drove it through his chest and into the ground with a blow from the hammer. Elliot thrashed; his heels drubbed the earth, his arms lashed the air. He shrieked.
I goggled. The freak turned from Elliot to me. I feigned death, closed my eyes, let me head loll, but it had seen me move, loped over, bent down, stared at me. I cowered away. Then, the freak reached up, clawed away some of the scabrous husk from its face, and I startled again; it was my amanuensis, the tribeswoman, caked head to foot in dried estuary mud.
She sighed.
‘I feared he’d killed you already.’
My brain reeled. I gaped up at her, and bloody slobber ran from my mouth. She shuddered, threw down the mallet, reached out, took my head in her hands, looked at the mess Elliot had made of my forehead.
‘Fuck. What’s he done to you?’
Then, she went down on haunches, peered at me.
‘Haven’t you realized? I’m Rashmi.’
Elliot then bawled again. We turned, but he was still pinned by the spike.
‘Rashmi,’ I echoed.
‘Well, I doubt it’s my real name, I mean the one my parents gave me. But I’ve forgotten that anyway, just as you have yours. But, yes, I’m Rashmi.’
I knew straight away this was true. It explained several enigmas: that strange sense I’d had, more than once, that I recognized her; her hardiness; that she was able to type up my edited proofs, something which should have told me she knew the English language, but which I explained away with an absurd rationalization.
‘Where are the keys?’ she asked, pointing at the manacles.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He probably has them.’
I nodded towards where Elliot lay staked, snarling, writhing.
Rashmi went over, crouched, reached out warily, patted Elliot’s trouser pockets. The right jingled, and she put her hand gingerly in. Elliot wriggled, mugged, oohed and aahed, licked his lips. Then lunged with his right hand. Rashmi had strayed too close, and he managed to grab her ankle. She tried to struggle free, but his grip was fierce. Then with his left hand he took hold of the end of the spike, started rocking it side to side, wincing and whimpering the while. Blood foamed up. I looked on, helpless. At first the stake held fast, but Elliot kept on, and it started to wiggle loose. He crowed, but his glee was hasty; Rashmi jerked her foot, and it would seem his injury panged, for he hissed, slackened his grip, and she was able to wrest her ankle free. Returning to me, she then picked up the mallet, went back over, felt again for the keys, this time fending Elliot’s grabs off with swipes of the hammer. She finally hooked the ring the keys were on with her finger, took them from Elliot’s pocket, then drove the spike again. He clenched his fists, threw back his head, his knuckles went white, the tendons in his neck stood out, taut, his eyes started from his head. He screamed.
Rashmi unlocked the gyves, then we crossed over to Elliot. He was tugging on the spike again, twisting it, trying to work it free once more. Rashmi smote his hands with the mallet; scowling he let them fall to his side. He seemed sore beat out, his eyes glassy. Then cunning sparked them, and he hollered something in the natives’ tongue.
Rashmi waited till he’d finished, then said, ‘Save your breath. They’ve fled, will be long gone by now.’
Elliot snorted. But his eyes fell dull again. Then, looking into them, I was shocked to see fear and pain there. It was as if I’d glimpsed a fish swimming in the depths of a turbid pool whose waters I’d been sure were hostile to life. But then this trace of human frailty fleeted away again.
‘As soon as you run,’ he sneered, ‘I’ll pull out this wretched spike, come after you.’
‘No you won’t,’ Rashmi spat, ‘because we’re going to kill you.’
‘How?’ Elliot jeered, raising his eyebrows.
Rashmi grimaced.
But then I spat, ‘With your knife!’
‘Of course,’ Rashmi said.
I pointed out the blade, and she handed me the hammer, crossed over to it, pulled it from the jamb.
Elliot looked up at me.
‘I can’t fathom it. As I told you, I watched her age and die.’
‘What’s that?’ Rashmi asked, walking back over, feinting with the knife.
Elliot shook his head.
Then Rashmi went down on haunches beside him, held the blade in her fist, over his heart. She was about to stab down, when he put up his hands.
‘First, a question.’
Rashmi shrugged.
‘Go on. Just one.’
‘I want to know how you tricked me. I watched you grow old and die. Yet, here you are.’
Rashmi looked puzzled a moment. Then nodded slow.
‘I’d a twin sister.’ She paused, seemingly lost in reflection then went on. ‘After the evening, the evening of the gathering, I went straight to her, told her all.’ Rashmi paused, grimaced. ‘There was weeping and pleading. She was aghast, but she believed me!’ Her voice wavered, she wiped her eyes. ‘We were twins! We had that bond of trust. She came up with the plan.’
‘What plan?’ Elliot’s eyes darted ire. His forehead had begun to purple.
I gibed at him.
‘They fooled you, it seems.’
Rashmi, hunkered over Elliot’s pinned frame, holding the blade, her skin crusted with red mud, looked the high priestess of some crude faith, about to take a life to appease some cruel deity.
‘We left Edinburgh, went into hiding in the Highlands,’ she went on, tears in her eyes. ‘We spent a few, short years together, then my sister returned to the city, pretended to be me. We’d alienated our mother, much of our family, our father was dead, and she told our friends, who believed her to be me, that she’d died, a skiing accident I think, can’t remember. We hoped you’d find her,’ she glanced down at Elliot, ‘see she’d aged, believe you’d failed. I didn’t want her to take the risk, in case you tortured her, killed her anyway, but she was determined. We couldn’t ever see each other again, it would have ruined everything. That was so hard for me.’
With sudden ferocity, she stabbed down. Blood welled, sluggish, dark.
Elliot groaned. Then fell still. There was a lull. Then Rashmi turned to me.
‘It’s over.’
I gave a wan smile.
Then Elliot brayed scornfully, ‘You can’t kill me! Did you really think that weapon could end the life of he who willed it into existence? You may have deceived me, but you can’t best me.’
Rashmi drew out the dagger, chucked it into a dark corner of the roundhouse. A rat squeaked, scurried across the floor, out the door.
‘Do you think, if I’d found some way of ending this, I wouldn’t have taken it?’
‘But it did hurt you before? ’ I said. ‘Didn’t it? Weaken you?’
‘Oh fuck off.’
Rashmi sighed, cuffed Elliot on the side of the head, then tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt, wadded it up, stuffed it into his mouth. She got to her feet, left the roundhouse. I stood waiting for her to come back, hefting the mallet, looking warily down at Elliot. He winked, mumbled around the makeshift gag.
After a few minutes had passed, Rashmi came back clutching a rusty old hacksaw, shook it in my face.
‘He made one of the tribesmen trade with him,’ she said. ‘T
his for the man’s daughter. Gave him no choice. She wasn’t seen again. Just a girl!’
Then Rashmi gestured down at Elliot, mimed sawing. As if she couldn’t bear to give voice to what she meant us to do, as if doing so would defile her utterly. Elliot understood before I did, shrank back, and the weakness I’d seen in his eyes before came back, but again, for just an instant, replaced swift by the old fleer.
First I moved the pages of my typescript, so as to be out of the spray and spatter, then Rashmi and I set about our task. Without a word. How long we laboured, I can’t say, it seemed a long, long time; horror bloats. Though the day was chill, the sweat ran from our brows. We took turns with the saw. Its wooden handle had snapped, leaving just a splintery stub, so we were forced to turn it about, grip it by the other end. Work was awkward. For me it was painful; my fingers were still healing, were still tender.
Soon we were sleeved in gore. At one point a dog came to the door, yapping, and I had to drive it off with the hammer. We shut the door then, wary of fiercer beasts being lured by the blood reek. Conditions inside the roundhouse worsened after that, forced us out into the bloodmoon’s vile glow from time to time, retching. As we sawed, Elliot, for the most part, was flippant, chuckled round the gag, mugged, made faces. However, a few times, when the blade snagged, I saw that agony and fear creep into his eyes again; those moments harrowed.
Reader, I’m sorry to leave a gap your mind may plug with grisly things, but I can’t bring myself to tell any more of the horrors of that work.
When we were done, Rashmi and I left the roundhouse to go look for something to carry Elliot’s sundered parts in. We had a scout around the enclosure. The earth was churned, particularly about the gate, and the gate itself had been torn from its hinges, was in splinters on the mud. We found two satchels next to a woodpile behind the cabin, but they were not large enough for our purposes. I asked Rashmi if she thought there’d be anything in the natives’ camp.
‘No. In their haste, they left their tents, and some junk, but they took most of their stuff. Their packs will be gone.’
So we entered Elliot’s living quarters. Weapons – daggers, swords, axes, clubs, and maces – and torture devices – wicked hooks, needles, thumbscrews, and other bizarre contraptions, whose appearance was dread, but whose use I couldn’t hazard (though there’s one I can put a name to; sewn onto one of its leather restraints was a scrap of cloth embroidered with the words ‘Ouroboros Apparatus’) – were heaped in the corners, strewn over the floor.
Looking round at the arms, Rashmi hawked and spat.
‘We should’ve known to come in here to find something to cut the bastard up with.’
I nodded.
Though wanton in malice, it seems Elliot was in other ways ascetic: his bed was a pallet on the floor; he ate with a wooden spoon out of a plain wooden bowl; the only foodstuff to be found was a sack of meal; and the only sign of any pastime, other than cruelty, was the concertina I’d heard him play.
We came across a large carpet bag. We took it, went back to the roundhouse, started picking up butchered chunks of Elliot, stuffing them into it. No easy task; though severed, the limbs writhed, struggled. Seizing the head, I nearly dropped it, for its eyes moved still in their sockets, its jaws and lips worked. I believe it sought to speak, lopped and gagged though it was. We also took Elliot’s knife, planning to unmake it.
Then I went and got those small satchels. Into one I put my typewriter, and into the other, after flattening out its pages, and binding them again with the string, my typescript. Then we set off. Feeling awful sullied, the first thing we did was go down to the river and wash.
XIV
By that thing we did, we’ve gained a reprieve (it’s come at some cost to our ease, though; often, one or both of us will wake up in the dead of night, the hacking whoops of the rusty sawblade fading in our ears). We’ve no idea how long this lull will last, though we did our best to ensure it’ll be a good while: left Elliot’s limbs staked to the ground at the four corners of the island once known as Britain, for scavengers and burying beetles and maggots to get at; tore out his offal, cast it to a pack of feral dogs somewhere on the wild and wasted moors that can be found in the south-west of that land; chucked his gutted torso into the sea over the edge of the south-east coast’s white cliffs; buried his head in that city once known as London. Perhaps we should have spread his pieces over a greater area, over the globe, but we couldn’t bear to tote them too long, and were concerned they might, with time, put themselves back together again in the bag.
We were fortunate, our travels were not too wearisome, and done fairly swift, for, on the morning of the second day out from the stockade, we came across a herd of horses that turned out to be quite docile, tractable, that still had, it seemed, the servility of their long-ago forebears in their blood, and selected the two sturdiest to bear us. At first we made slow progress, our injuries kept us to an easy pace, but within a few days we were healed, then we drubbed our mounts’ flanks with our heels, rode them hard, eager to get shot of our grisly burden.
You might wonder why we didn’t throw Elliot’s pieces into a fire, let them burn up, scatter the ashes. Well, this course did occur to us after a few days journeying, and we tried it, tossed one of his forearms onto a pile of blazing logs, but we found the thing did not burn well, healed even as the flames lapped at it. Also, it squirmed from the fire, and we had to prod at it with sticks to keep it there. But worse was the smell; it was so savoury, caused our mouths to water, even as we gagged on it. Then a pack of wolves scented it, came yipping out of the dark. We tried to fend them off with flaring brands grabbed from the fire, but, hunger whetted by the smell, they’d lost their wonted fear of folk and fire, and it went badly for us, and we were hurt. Then a big cat, with huge canines, slunk by, snatched the arm up, loped off. The wolves tore after, howling, and we, weak, sat, slumped. Once we’d our strength back, we went back to our horses, left, luckily, at a distance, tended to our wounds, settled down, taking turns to rest while the other kept watch.
We chanced across Elliot’s forearm the following day, after a short ride. The big cat was not far off, dead, had choked on its own tongue, torn through at the root, swallowed. The arm was badly charred, but still moved, pulled itself along the ground with its fingers.
We didn’t try burning any part of Elliot again after that.
I believe, then, we did the best we could. There’s even a small chance it’ll prove to have been not a provisional, but final measure; for, though Elliot will, given time, be whole once more, it’s possible the end of the world will come first; the colours in the sky wax more lurid by the day.
Rashmi and I talked a lot during this time and the mute companionship of the previous months grew into true friendship.
(Here I should note, my companion, having grown fond of the name, has asked me to continue to call her Rashmi. Her name for me, Melmoth, is a jest of ours.)
We kept Elliot’s head till the last. Half wondering if there mightn’t be a kind of binding witchery in interring it there, and unable to shake the idea once we’d thought of it, we went to the spot where the Nightingale had, long, long ago, stood. At the dismal heart of that yew grove, we found William’s bones, picked fleshless, gnawed, strewn about. Then, taking turns, we dug a deep pit with a spade we’d found on our travels, I forget where. It was hard work, there were lumps of concrete and tangled roots in the soil. When we were done, worn out, sweat soaked, we opened the bag, took out Elliot’s head. On the ride from the southwesternmost point of the island, once Land’s End, where we’d left the right leg, it had managed to spit out the gag, and, as I picked it up, dropped it in the hole, it worked its jaws, tongue, lips, Elliot execrating us, I’d hazard, though, as there wasn’t any sound bar the clacking of teeth, I can’t be sure. While we shovelled dirt back into the pit on top of it, it continued, soundlessly, to jabber.
After we’d buried the head, Rashmi and I rode down to the Thames. The clattering of our hors
es’ hooves on the few patches of paved road that remained raised clamorous echoes from the buildings’ walls, and, at those times, it sounded as if a herd stampeded along with us. Reaching the river, we made camp, cooked up and feasted on some tasty victuals we’d been saving. It was a warm night, and, after eating, we sat on the worn remains of a concrete groyne, dangling our feet in the river, talking of our plans, something we’d been loath to do till then, lest we blight the undertaking. Overhead, wispy clouds scudded across the bright spatter of the constellations, the placid face of the moon. We talked of what we should do, where we should go. I extolled the many wonders of the Himalayas, their peace, for a time, in the end swayed Rashmi, who’d been pressing for somewhere warmer. We resolved to try mountain life a while, see how it suited us.
We set out the following day. Before leaving London, we raided the stacks of the British Library, took all the books we could carry.
Several weeks ago, following a long, arduous journey, we arrived at the foothills of that spiring range, began our ascent. After a few days’ climb, we came across a cave, high above the treeline, that seemed an ideal place to dwell. We’ve made it homely, comfortable; pelts are strewn about the floor, there’s a goat-hair pallet to sleep on. But it’s also spare and simple, which is as we wish it; there’s nothing by way of ornament, save Elliot’s knife, hanging on the wall (we tried all we could think of to destroy it, but found it unbreakable, so have kept it as a trophy, memento, caution). It’s quiet here, yet I doubt we’ll find life dull; the prospect from the mouth of our cave, of hoar-capped peaks, calm tarns, swathes of dark firs below, clouds drifting by just overhead, fills us daily with awe, and there’s drama in the scenes we’ve seen when out foraging or hunting: a raptor stooping on its prey, a hare, a young goat, a fish; a flight of cranes soaring overhead; a snow leopard stalking a herd of the sure-footed yak who graze the coarse grass of the steeps.
And, though this is a remote spot, where there are no local tribes and few travellers pass by, we won’t be lonely, for we pleasure in each other’s company, indeed have become lovers. And we won’t be completely starved of other society, either. A few days ago we descended to the lower slopes, found a village where we could trade for essentials, iron cooking vessels, spears, rice, and were warmly welcomed by the folk there. They cooked a festival meal, gave us rice wine, played their shawms, singing bells, and tanpura, danced for us. We sat up late into the night, drinking, listening to the keening music. I plan to make myself a new banjo, join the band next time, for, with its eerie drone and brittle tone, I think it would harmonize well with the Tibetan instruments.
The Wanderer Page 27
