by Cave, Hugh
Now as they sat side by side on the trunk of a fallen silk oak, enjoying lunch and a welcome respite, she startled him by saying with surprising candor, "I notice you call me 'Miss Craig' in front of Alton, Peter. May I ask why?"
He hesitated. "I get the feeling he's not a first-name kind of man."
"He is, you know," she corrected with a smile. "I mean to say he'd like to be. It's a little hard for him sometimes, I expect."
"Because of his legal training?"
"And his strict upbringing. But if you were to ask him to call you Peter, I'm sure he'd be pleased and would want you to respond in kind."
"Fine. I'll do it."
"Thank you. I don't believe he's very happy here, and I wish he could be."
So do I, Peter fervently told himself. Or else you'll both be leaving.
Lunch finished, he walked her another half mile up the track. The coffee at this height was not the best.
For years the mountain rains had eroded the soil, and in his eagerness he had foolishly planted slopes where the humus was less than adequate. He explained this to her as they climbed. His destination, he also explained, was a place from which the view of the surrounding countryside was spectacular.
The spot was a cliff top some ten yards to the left of the track—the "Great Overhanging Rock" noted on the surveyor's map that had so intrigued the Defence Force sergeant. The inch or so of soil on its almost level surface supported a few coarse weeds, some scraggly knee-high brush, and surprisingly, a solitary, twisted juniper of great age.
Peter had reason to remember the juniper. Growing at the very edge of the precipice, with its roots penetrating deep into the rock, it leaned out over empty space like a bent flagpole on a high building. On one occasion he had been forced to lean with it.
Well, not forced, exactly. But he had been climbing to Morgan Peak that day with some of the plantation workers, including the old pig hunter Manny Williams, and the party had stopped here for a rest. And it seemed there was a ritual expected.
They hadn't climbed the tree, exactly. Even they were not macho enough to risk falling three hundred feet into the river. But each of them had walked to the leaning trunk and gingerly laid his body against it, encircling it with his arms. Then, with the angle of the tree bringing their eyes to a point some three or four feet out in space, they had looked down as a demonstration of their courage.
Each of them had dared to do it. So, of course, their boss must find the courage for it, too.
He still remembered his cold chill of fear as he looked down. Could still see the three hundred feet of nothingness beneath his gaze, culminating in the broken white thread of the plantation's river leaping and twisting through the black depths of its gorge. He could still taste his ghastly certainty that the roots of the already leaning tree would let go if he even took a deep breath, while a hundred feet below him a John Crow serenely glided through the gorge like a black phantom that quite properly belonged there.
Now as he stopped Edith twenty feet from the brink, wanting to go no closer, he told her that his workers called the place the John Crow's Nest. "John Crows are the big turkey buzzards you see riding the air currents here so often, just floating around high in the sky with their wings outspread. They always nest in the scariest places. Now look closely down there to your right and you'll see a cluster of roofs. That's Look Up, where we were last night. Below that is Sherwood—the long rectangular building is a school. Over to the left are the buildings of the Grove Walk coffee works, once a colonial plantation like yours, now a co-op that buys most of the small-farmer coffee in this area. And the houses below that are in Grove Walk itself, where we were this morning."
While talking, he watched her face and was somehow not surprised to see in it the same excitement he himself had felt on standing here the first time. Was Armadale doing to her what it had done to him?
"Can we go a little closer?" she asked.
"Better not. It's spooky there near the brink."
"Yes, I suppose it is. And I'm not that comfortable with heights." Silent again, she studied the panorama below them so intently that he felt she must be searching for something. Guessing what it was, he said with a smile, "No, you can't."
"I can't what?"
"See the Great House. That big bump there"—he pointed—"is in the way."
With a mock frown she swung about to confront him. "How did you know I was looking for the house?"
"Well, for one thing, you own it."
So I do, don't I? You know, I haven't gotten used to that yet."
"And if you're anything like me," he said, "the house owns you. At least, a good part of you."
Her frown was a real one now. "I think I know what you mean, and I'm not sure I want that to happen, Peter. I'm a nurse, remember. I'm not sure I want to make a drastic change at this time."
Her mood had changed, he saw. It was as though she had unwittingly ventured too close to a personal precipice of her own and suddenly realized her peril. Sympathetic, he said quietly, "Shall we go back down?" and she nodded quickly to indicate her willingness. Apparently the magic of the John Crow's Nest with its incredible view had fled.
But as he walked with her back to the coffee track, she suddenly halted. "Now what's this?" she said, stooping to reach for a scrap of brown paper half-hidden in a clump of brush. "Why look, Peter. It's a map of some sort."
It was indeed, he saw as he studied it with her. And the paper on which it was drawn with a pencil had apparently been wrapped around a sandwich. At least, there were grease marks on it.
"It's a sketch map of the route to the Peak," he said. "Must have been drawn by one of—" Peering at the ground, he voiced a sharp "Yes, of course!" and bent to snatch up a second piece of brown paper, this one unmarked, and a brightly colored chewing-gum wrapper. "They must have stopped here for lunch that day. This wrapper isn't faded enough to have been here long. Maybe their leader drew the map to show the boys where they were going." He felt a scowl twisting his face. "But there's something strange—"
She must have sensed he was troubled. Gazing not at the map but at him, she said anxiously, "What is it, Peter?"
Something was wrong, and not only with the map. What was strange about the map was easy: the route sketched on it went quite properly up through the Armadale property to Morgan Peak and then westward along the ridge, but before reaching Blackrock, it stopped.
Nothing on the paper indicated how the scouts—if, indeed, the sketch had been drawn for them—were to complete their journey from Blackrock down the north side of the range into the parish of Chester.
But something more personal was wrong, too, Peter realized. Something with his own eyes—or was it his mind? As he stood there scowling at the marks on the paper, he felt his vision blurring and turning red at the edges, as though he had foolishly raised his head and looked straight at the sun.
He felt his body swaying as though it were being pulled first in one direction, then another, by some invisible, external force that had power over it. An instant headache, as severe as any he had ever experienced, was filling his skull with pain. His mouth had lost all moisture and burned with a bittersweet chemical taste he did not recognize. He was having trouble drawing air into his lungs.
The seizure, if that was the word for it, became even more frightening as it continued. He knew that he still clutched the paper, but it was larger now. Much larger. It was a brown blur as large as a sheet of newspaper, and the lines penciled on it were weirdly in motion, as though alive and crawling like snakes intent on escaping from the page. Suddenly he felt a hot sweat oozing from his pores, soaking him under his clothes.
What in God's name was happening to him?
He looked about wildly for an answer but could not remember now where he was supposed to be. A greenish fog or mist swirled about him, furiously in motion, concealing any familiar objects—if there were any—he might clutch at to pull himself back to reality.
What was real here? Was he act
ually hearing distant rumbles of thunder as he seemed to be? And the crackle of unseen electricity in the air? And a voice or voices whispering what sounded like commands in an alien tongue he did not understand? Or were these things only products of a sick imagination?
He was cold now, icy cold, and shivering so violently he could hear his teeth chattering. His heart was an air hammer. He could not remember a time when it had beat so hard or so fast. His whole chest hurt from the pounding. Yet his body was ramrod straight and rigid.
Cold. Wet. Unable to move. That was what Bronzie Dakin's boy had said, wasn't it? "Cold . . . wet . . . Let me out of here!" Sensing that the paper had some part in what was being done to him, he fought silently to break free of his invisible bonds and get rid of it.
Partly he succeeded. His hands did move. But like sticky flypaper the map clung to his fingertips and refused to fall.
Worse, it has hot now and burning him!
Incredulous, he watched a curl of black smoke rise from the center of it, and felt the smoke sting his arms where it made contact. No ordinary smoke, it burned like a splash of acid. Suddenly, like the darting tongue of a snake, a shaft of bright orange flame leaped up to lick at his face.
With a yell of pain and terror he flung his arms wide, his hands feeling as though they had been thrust into the jet from a blowtorch. Torn raggedly in half, the paper became two separate gouts of flame that seared even his wrists before turning black and fluttering to the ground. Still trembling from head to foot, still bathed in sweat but icy cold, he stumbled backward and saw that Edith was reaching for him. Though obviously puzzled by what was happening—badly frightened, too, if the look on her face meant what it seemed to mean—she was nevertheless trying to help him.
Then suddenly she, too, was in desperate trouble.
With her it was not the map. Through the mist that swirled over the promontory he saw her turn and start walking away from him, toward the brink of the precipice. Only a few steps in that direction would take her to the base of the leaning tree. Her stride was that of a sleepwalker.
Something in what she was doing and the hypnotic way she was doing it, in the explosive realization that she was committing herself to a hideous death, wrenched him out of his own mesmeric state and goaded him into action.
"Edith!" As he flung himself toward her, his yell was a thunderclap in the mountain stillness.
As anyone might on being screamed at, she hesitated. But only for a second, and without turning to face him. Then she resumed her death walk.
He raced to catch her. At the last possible second, in desperation, he left his feet in a horizontal dive with his arms out-flung. His face met the hard black rock and plowed along it, blinding him with pain. Like hawk feet clutching a vertical sapling, his burned hands closed around one slim leg, sending lightning bolts up his arms. Down Edith went in a forward lunge that would carry her past the cliff's edge into space.
But the juniper was there and she crashed into it. And though the impact sent a shudder to the old tree's topmost branch, its roots retained their grip. The blow jarred Edith out of her trance. Though stunned, she was able to curl her arms around the leaning trunk and cling for her life.
Groping to his knees, Peter grasped both of her legs now just above the ankles. Coaching her in a low voice to lessen the chance of panic, he carefully drew her back to safety. When she was clear of the brink and able to risk rising to her feet, he put an arm about her waist and held her. Held her a long time, until she stopped sobbing and trembling. Then with words of reassurance he walked her back to where they had looked at the map.
There was no map now—only charred remnants that the first light breeze would scatter. He looked at his hands. They were as red and raw as though he had thrust them into a fire. Even his wrists were discolored. The pain made his head swim.
But what had caused the paper to catch fire? The sun on one of those grease spots?
"What happened to us?" he asked the woman at his side. "Do you have any idea?"
She was looking at his hands now, shaking her head over them. "The paper did this, Peter? When it caught fire while you were looking at it?"
He nodded.
"My dear, we have to go back and take care of you!" Then suddenly she seemed to remember more, and, letting his hands go, turned to look at the leaning tree. "Did I—Peter, did I try to walk off the cliff?" Fear held her voice to a whisper.
"I think that's what you meant to do."
"But why? Why?"
"Why did I have hallucinations that scared me half to death? Why did the map catch fire and burn me?" Plucking a smooth green leaf from a nearby shrub, he dropped to his knees by the charred paper and carefully scooped as much of the ash as he could into a handkerchief, then folded the handkerchief with care and tucked it into his shirt pocket. Edith watched in silence.
"Will that tell us anything, do you think?" she asked when he rose to his feet.
"I don't know."
"I'm frightened, Peter. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before."
Nor to me. Come on, let's get out of here. Automatically, he reached for her hand, but caught himself. Already he had used his own ravaged hands more than he should have. "Come," he said again, and let her follow him back to the coffee track.
On the long walk down the mountain he would have discussed what had happened, or what he thought had happened, but Edith would not permit it. They must get to the house as quickly as possible, she insisted, so she could look after him. But she could not stifle his thoughts.
What the hell was going on? he asked himself. First the missing scouts. Then the Dakin boy saying all those things that made no sense. Now this.
If Edith elected to heed her fiancé and return at once to England, he could hardly blame her. But at the moment his hands and face hurt so fiercely—his hands from the fiery map and his face from its bruising contact with the rock—that he was willing enough to let tomorrow's problems wait for tomorrow.
11
"DIDIT REALLY HAPPEN, PETER, OR DID WE IMAGINE most of it?" Edith Craig asked later.
Peter looked at her. It was 11:00 P.M. and they were alone together for the first time since their return to the Great House. They sat on the long front veranda. A wave of hot, humid air had rolled up the valley earlier to wrap the house in a suffocating shroud of damp heat, sending Alton Preble to his bedroom.
"It happened," Peter replied. "Something did, anyway. The first thing Mother Jarrett noticed was my face, then my hands."
That had occurred a couple of hours ago, when he had walked down to Bronzie Dakin's house in Look Up to inquire about her son Gerald. He had not exactly planned on doing that this evening, but after dinner Edith and her barrister had gone for a stroll in the gardens, and after watching them awhile from the veranda, seeing Preble's arm around her and then the two of them holding hands, he had suddenly felt a desire to be elsewhere. It didn't matter that at dinner, remembering his promise, he had asked the man to stop calling him "Mr. Sheldon," and as Edith had predicted, Alton had seemed pleased and replied in kind.
Look Up, then. After waiting for the lovers to stroll into a part of the garden where he would not have to pass close to them, he had left the veranda and gone briskly down the path. They saw him, of course, but he had only to wave and call out, "Going to see Gerald! Soon be back!" Ten minutes later he was at Bronzie's door.
It was not Bronzie who opened to his knock but that remarkable black woman with the piercing eyes. Still wearing her white head cloth and robe-like dress, and seemingly glad to see him, Mother Jarrett stepped aside to let him enter, then frowned at him and said, "What have you done to your face, Mr. Sheldon? And your hands!"
He had anticipated the question and decided how to answer it, for though Edith and he had been candid with Alton Preble, he did not want anything close to the truth circulating among Armadale's workers. "I fell in that nasty Great House kitchen, Mother. Grabbed the stove to save myself, but went down anyway. If you've be
en there, you know how rough that stone floor is."
"Sit, please," she said, and bent over him. "Bronzie went to the shop, but will soon return." She studied his face. "I think I can help you. May I try?"
"I'd be grateful."
What she did then puzzled him. Going behind him and reaching around his head, she placed her palms against his cheeks and, surprisingly, it did not hurt. He himself had not been able to touch the abrasions without wincing. Even Edith's application of a said-to-be healing salve had brought tears to his eyes.
But Mother Jarrett's hands were cool and whisper soft. And in a moment, though they did nothing but remain motionless against his face, the soreness that had been deep enough to make even his bones ache seemed to melt away.
She lifted his hands then and studied them. "This will take longer, but let me try."
He felt a trifle silly with this tall woman kneeling in front of him, stroking his burned hands with the tips of her long, thin fingers. When he realized she meant to keep it up for some time, he tried to relieve his embarrassment by saying, "How is Gerald, Mother? That's what I came for, really—not to have you look after me."
"He is better now."
"Then why—" He caught himself, realizing the question might be considered impolite.
"Why am I still here?" she supplied, smiling.
He was astonished. Could this remarkable woman also read minds? "Well, I—"
"Because I am still afraid for him, Mr. Sheldon. Twice we have thought he was free from what is troubling him, only to have him fall under its spell again. When your hands are better, we can go and talk to him."
At this point Bronzie Dakin came in, carrying a woven basket filled with items from one of the village shops. Greeting Peter, she placed the basket on a table, and then stood there in the lamplight silently watching Mother Jarrett's ministrations. What handsome women they both were, Peter thought.
And what a remarkable power the hands of Mother Jarrett possessed! Because his own hands, his wrists, even his forearms up which the pain of his burns had crept, were hurting less already, and he could see the burned areas returning to normal. At the Great House Edith had done what she could with the medications on hand, and that had helped. But this incredible woman was actually restoring his hands simply by gently massaging them.
