“God, I can’t wait that long! Have you any cars for hire?”
“Yes, we can arrange that for you.”
“Then for God’s sake let’s tow this thing back to the garage and I’ll hire one. I have to get to Crowthorpe urgently.”
“That’s a good hour and a half’s drive you’ve got.”
“I know, and I should have been there some time ago.”
Even with the decision reached, everything seemed to happen at a snail’s pace: the fixing of the tow rope, the crawling journey back to the garage, the signing of papers. By the time he regained the motorway it was almost two hours since the breakdown and during the enforced delay his fears for Madeleine had escalated. Particularly since there had been no reply when he’d tried to phone from the garage. Please God she’d gone out as he’d suggested, and was out of harm’s way. He put his foot down and shot forward. The rain showed no sign of lessening and the thunder was now much closer. Jason gritted his teeth and concentrated on his driving.
It was as he approached Penrith that his fiercely submerged disquiet momentarily surfaced and he was convinced he heard Madeleine’s voice. Just once, above the roar of the car’s passage and the onslaught of rain – taut with fright and calling his name.
He swerved dangerously, fighting the wheel to straighten the car. Imagination! he told himself through clenched teeth, yet it had sounded as clear as if she’d been in the car beside him. Oh God, don’t let those maniacs harm her!
The Keswick road stretched ahead of him, and in the hills to his right the lightning stretched and died. If this was indeed the night the twins had chosen, he thought grimly, he couldn’t fault their stage-management.
Philip said, “All right, Madeleine?”
She forced her eyes to meet his. Where was Jason? He should have been back hours ago. Could something have happened to him? Driving conditions must be appalling. “Yes. I’m all right,” she answered.
“Then I think we’d better be going.”
Panic clutched at her. Not yet! Give him just a few more minutes! “Aren’t you going to wait till the rain stops?”
“We have to stick to schedule. We said ten forty-five and the others will be setting out now.” He put an arm round her and across the room she saw Matthew stiffen. “Don’t look so apprehensive, love! It’ll be an experience you’ll never forget, but nothing can go wrong.”
Matthew said curtly, “You can’t go up the hill in those sandals. I’ll come down with you to get your boots. We’ll meet you at the gate, Philip.”
Oh, why hadn’t she thought to lock the front door earlier? Yet even if she had, even if she’d gone, safely as she thought, to bed, they’d have roused her as they had before and she would still have been compelled to make this fantastic journey up the hill. Since there could be no escape, it was better that she should at least know what was happening. Oh Jason! Again the twist of fear. Even allowing for the weather, he couldn’t be as late as this unless something had gone wrong. Perhaps in his anxiety for her he had driven too fast on the wet roads.
The heavy knot of misery dulled her more personal fear as they turned into Upper Fell Lane. Could she perhaps, fully conscious as she was, break away, run and hide somewhere? But Philip and Matthew had hold of her and there was nothing she could do. In her confused state she no longer knew which of them was on her right and which on her left. They both held tightly to her hands and in this alien landscape on this fateful night she was glad even of their human contact.
As they rounded the top of the lane they came face to face with a small group of people, but her brief spurt of hope was stillborn. It was only the Hardacre brothers with Mabel. Meeting her alert gaze under the street lamp, Tom exclaimed and turned to Matthew.
“You’ve not put her under?”
“There was no need. We can blot it out later if need be.”
Tom nodded and turned into the darkness between the cottage walls. As they set off after him a sudden soft babbling reached them from the foot of the alley, chilling and inhuman. Madeleine stiffened and would have turned but the Selbys kept her moving forward.
“The Carters,” Philip said briefly, “with the group from the vicarage.”
White lightning momentarily spotlighted the strange procession and a crash of thunder echoed painfully down the narrow chasm they climbed. Stumblingly, linked together, they came out on to the exposed hill and, with heads bent against the rain, turned in the direction of the Circle.
It was not until she felt a simultaneous tightening on both her arms that Madeleine realized their arrival had been forestalled. Gathered round the Wedding Group of stones, motionless in the driving rain, stood the gypsies: Luke and Nell, Jem and Janetta, Buck and Nan and poor gangling Benjie, and, just in front of them, the bird as always on her shoulder, the slight bent figure of Granny Lee.
Still holding on to Madeleine, taking her with them, Philip and Matthew went forward to meet her, the others clustering behind them. The opposing camps had met at last and battle was about to be joined.
When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning or in rain?
The words rang in Madeleine’s ears with superstitious dread. In a last effort to free herself she turned her head and as another flash knifed through the darkness, encountered the blank gaze of Douglas Braithwaite immediately behind her. Hope died. There would be no help forthcoming; he was as powerless as the rest of them.
Philip’s voice rang out exultantly, making her jump. “It is over, Macha! Your long tyranny is ended. We have come to claim our own!”
“Nay, Artio o’ the Dark Hills. You’ll never be free.” She turned and scrabbled with surprising agility on to one of the lower stones so that she stood some three feet above them.
As Madeleine fearfully raised her head, she saw to her horror that the beady black eyes were fixed unblinkingly on herself.
“Which one of you claims the Bride?”
Philip raised Madeleine’s hand, clasped in his. “I do! My brother had his chance and lost it. I claim her!”
Matthew turned swiftly. “Damn you, Philip, let her go!”
They faced each other across her, protagonists in some ancient play outside of time yet part of it, helpless to extricate themselves from the fate already decreed.
Matthew dropped her hand, swinging round to challenge his brother, and in the same moment a voice rang out: “Take care! Divided we fall!” One of the Carter twins, lucid for the only time in her life, but the warning came too late. Above their head the gypsy shrieked a command – in Celtic? Romany? – and the huge bird came swooping down on the tableau.
Matthew twisted round as its great wings beat into his face and his scream filled the whole storm-ridden night. His body arched in a paroxysm of terror, went slack and slumped to the wet grass.
Philip hurled himself forward and began to claw dementedly at the gypsy’s long black skirt, and to Madeleine’s fear-crazed eyes it seemed in that moment that the shabby material and his own drenched coat blurred into the fur and feathers of a far more ancient conflict. The illusions was transient and even as she blinked, nature or a force almost as old played the final hand. A tongue of lightning snaked to earth, splitting the stone in half and sending both the old woman and the man who clutched her crashing to the ground.
With a high keening note the Smith twins flung themselves across Philip’s body and somewhere on the edge of the crowd Eve screamed, “Break the trance for God’s sake! Douglas – Douglas wake up!”
Blinded, numb with horror, Madeleine was aware of people running forward, bending over the three motionless bodies; aware, too, that they had no need of such ministrations. The drama was played out, and any power the Circle might have contained was draining harmlessly away into the waiting earth. And she knew instinctively that from this day forward, twins in Crowthorpe would be no different from any others. They had had their chance and lost it, for all time.
Incapable of movement, she continued to stand there,
her mind fretting at the edges of concepts too vast for comprehension, and it was Jason’s ringing call, clear above the confused babble within the Circle, that finally broke through her paralysis. Sobbing with terror and relief, she threaded her way through the milling crowd and ran stumbling to meet him.
Epilogue
St Botolph’s Vicarage, Crowthorpe. 30th August.
Dear Jason,
I’m sending you under registered cover an incredible document which has come into my possession. It was deposited in a bank safe by Matthew Selby about a year ago, with instructions that in the event of his death it should be sent to me to deal with as I think fit. No doubt it would be of interest to psychiatrists but I’m reluctant to let it “out of the family”, since it deals with a part of all our lives. I’m inclined to think that the best course would be to give it, like its author, a decent burial.
I think you’ll agree that the Selbys emerge from it as the closest and also the most susceptible of all the twins, and we’re left with the unanswerable question of whether or not events would have taken the course they did, had they not been subjected to Janetta’s fatal “Macbeth prophecy”.
Regarding their mental state, Eve is convinced that after the Carters’ proclamation of divinity – how incredible it feels to write that! – they actually identified themselves as the bear gods. The one fact that emerges from the whole sorry business is the danger inherent in these old superstitions and the power they can still exert.
Things here are teetering back to normal. The post mortem confirmed that Matthew’s death was due to heart failure, brought on no doubt by extreme fear. The Hardacres, I’m glad to say, have left Crowthorpe, and the Smith boys have been taken into care. We can only pray that no irreparable harm has been done to them.
I hope that Madeleine has now recovered from her ordeal. Please give her our regards, and we hope to see you both again one day, in much happier circumstances.
With best wishes from Eve and myself,
DOUGLAS BRAITHWAITE.
The Macbeth Prophecy Page 23
