by John Burke
“And the books?” said Mr. Jonathan. “Were the books brought here by the Mountjoys?”
Mr. Morris shrugged. “Couldn’t say.”
“I’m sure they weren’t,” said Denis. “Wasn’t there some tale about the family that had lived here before? There was the tragic death of the eldest son, or something, and then the parents died, and a lot of stuff was left…or something.”
“Most probable,” said Jonathan knowledgeably. “That is how these things happened. Libraries split up by unforeseen accidents—documents scattered…all the threads to be picked up. Years of searching, wandering.…” He subsided into a vague muttering.
Mr. Morris pushed back his chair, got up, and went to the door. He opened it and peered out.
“Coming down heavy,” he said without surprise. “Like to keep on.”
Mr. Jonathan coughed. “Awkward getting about. Deeper all the time. Perhaps our young friend here—Mr.—er…do you think you’ll be able to reach your home without difficulty?”
There seemed to be a hint in this that Frank ought to be leaving. They stared at him. Denis twitched his eyebrows aggressively, and a flush dabbed upwards from his cheeks towards his sandy hair. He said, sharply: “What about you, sir? When are you planning to go back?”
Mr. Jonathan looked blank. “Back?” he pondered, and then looked amused. “Back?” he repeated. “Well, now. Monday morning, I suppose.”
There was an indefinable arrogance in his manner that jarred on those who were accustomed to the generally harmonious, uncomplicated nature of the small talk in this kitchen. He had struck a foreign note that left them uneasy.
“Very bad weather to be out,” said Mr. Jonathan, as though issuing a command to Frank. “I don’t know how you people find your way about this countryside in the dark, especially when it snows like this. Wonderful instinct you must have.”
“We manage all right,” said Denis.
His father, looking down at his plate and wiping a crumb from the corner of his mouth, said: “It’s the men way up in the hills who feel it most. We’re not far from the village, and this is a sheltered spot, below the castle, like. But up there, when the wind blows drifts over the roads—and them not being much as roads to start with—then it’s hard to get anywhere, and the cold gets at the sheep, and…oh, now,” and he wagged his head, “there’s bitter it is up there. We haven’t anything we’d complain of.” He drew his chair up to the fire.
Mr. Jonathan was last to leave the table, twisting himself around the corner as though pivoted on his stomach. There was a moment of indecision, when everyone was standing up and chairs were pulled out at awkward, irrelevant angles. Jonathan looked fleetingly at Frank, then sullenly at his shoes. Denis said: “Well, when we can get the place tidy.…”
Mrs. Morris pounced suddenly on the table. She and Nora removed the crockery and carried it through into the scullery, where a small lamp burned above the sink. Frank made a move to help, but there was something so brisk and methodical about the way they carried tottering plates and saucers, and finally removed the tablecloth with a practised twitch of the hand, that made him feel clumsy and helpless.
“This won’t be much of a weekend for you, Mr. Jonathan,” said Denis, not without a touch of malice.
Jonathan seemed to have recovered his good humour. He smiled enigmatically. “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see what turns up. We’ll see.”
They drew chairs up to the fire, the cold weather and the lure of the flames forcing them into an apparently sociable huddle. The sound of running water and the jangle of plates came from the scullery. Outside, the wind was rising, but the atmosphere here was warm and seductively comfortable.
“We could play cards,” said Denis, but no one made any reply. His father settled down with the morning paper, which had been delivered very late that morning, and at which he had so far only glanced. After a few minutes he was sound asleep, occasionally grunting and twitching his fingers on the rustling pages.
Frank said: “A fire like this makes you lazy. I ought to be getting up and starting off.”
“But it’s early yet. Half-an-hour’s walk—”
“That’s under good conditions. I mustn’t leave it too late.”
Jonathan perked up.
“Don’t worry,” said Denis. “By the way, did I ever tell you…were you with us, or weren’t you, in Augusta, that time…?”
Jonathan’s petulant expression returned. It was the first thing Nora noticed as she came in, patting her hair into place, and it gave her a swift, unaccountable twinge of unease.
Chairs were scraped back to make room for her. Jonathan said: “Well—hm, perhaps if I could fetch in one of those books, to check up the…ah, the things I came down about.…”
“I’ll get you a light,” said Nora. She took the torch from behind the tea caddy on the mantelpiece.
“And while I’m up,” he said, rising twistedly to his feet, his shadow leaping tortuously away from the lamplight, “perhaps you could show me a window from which I can see the castle.”
“What on earth for?” said Denis.
“A passing whim, if you like. A place of many associations, the castle of Lyomoria—the Tellurian Gate.”
“Never heard it called that before.”
“Nor have I,” said Frank. “It’s been associated with Gwyn ap Nudd, and of course, like every Welsh castle, with King Arthur—”
“Older!” sneered Jonathan. “Much, much older.”
“I’ll show you the passage window,” Nora offered, “but you won’t see anything; it’s far too dark.”
As they left the room, she heard Frank saying: “I really must push along, or I’ll be needing a search party sent out after me.”
She held the torch out, conscious of Jonathan moving beside her, his feet catching in slightly uneven tiles in the passage that she avoided automatically. The window, when they reached it, was a dim grey frame for the deep blackness outside—a blackness spotted by clinging white flakes that were tossed by invisible hands towards the smeared glass.
“It’s up there,” said Nora, holding out the torch to their guest so that, having satisfied himself that there was nothing to be seen from the window under these conditions, he could proceed on his way to the parlour and select the book he wanted, “but you can’t see any of the castle tonight.”
He took the torch from her and it went out, leaving them in darkness. She felt certain that he had thumbed the switch back, and was reminded of Christmas parties when this sort of thing had happened. But this wasn’t Christmas, despite the world outside. He was close to her, and she was for the first time aware of a slight, bitter smell of ammonia that he exuded—rather like a neglected baby. She said: “The light—”
“We can see the castle now.”
“Surely not.”
Nora glanced towards the window, expecting at the most a dim shape on the crest of the hill.
“You see?” he said gleefully.
She saw. Like a blurred projection on a cinema screen—the spasmodic cinema in the village hall—stained and spotted by shifting snowflakes, was an incredibly coloured sky, throwing up into unnatural relief the hulking shape of the castle. It was utterly beyond comprehension that such a red, unholy light should have sprung so quickly into the heavy sky…and yet more unbelievable, she thought, suddenly understanding that this was a world akin to her dream world, only much worse, more unbelievable that the castle should be so large and complete. Complete: that was the monstrous impossibility! Where she should have seen a cluster of jagged stones, she was looking at a massive building that might have been a reconstruction of the castle as it once was.
“No,” she said, as though the denial would drive the vision away. “No, no—”
There was schoolboyish pride in Jonathan’s voice as he said: “I’ve shown you something you didn’t expect, haven’t I?”
She did not answer, not trusting her voice. The place was evil. Not the frightening way it had been shown
to her, not even the grimness of those disproportionately massive towers and turrets convinced her of this, but a sense—an inner, compulsive assurance—affirmed that the whole edifice was alive with a foul life. There was something ghastly lurking behind the long, narrow slits in the towers; something perverted and gross that peered over the battlements…an invisible but undeniable movement, like a great heaving and jostling that would soon break open the walls like a chicken forcing its way out of its egg.…
“This is what once existed,” said Jonathan at her ear. “I knew I could bring it back like that. It proves I’m right. What existed once,” and he nudged her elbow with excitement, “will exist again.”
Nora took a frightened, desperate step towards the window in the hope that the vision would fade. It did not fade. The lurid red glow continued to dance behind the menacing pile. Hoarsely she said:
“There’s a fire somewhere.”
“Fire,” admitted Jonathan, “of a sort.”
“But the castle? It couldn’t be. What…how did you—”
“There is an old word for it,” he said. “The Celts call it glamourie. I have shown you a vision. That’s only one of my powers.”
The rasping, cocksure little voice was incongruous. It did not accord with that terrifying picture in the window-frame. But the vision was real enough, and somehow or other Jonathan had created it.
Nora wanted to move away. She did not know how long she would have been compelled to stand there had not the kitchen door opened, admitting a flood of light into the passage. The glow in the sky was quenched at once, and all she saw in the glass was the pale reflection of herself and Jonathan, and the inexorable snowflakes falling slantingly towards them.
Denis came out. “Come for Frank’s coat,” he said, as though it was necessary to apologise for having intruded on them. He slipped his friend’s coat from a hook in the passage wall, and turned away. Nora followed him into the kitchen, and heard her mother give a startled gasp.
“What’s the matter, girl?”
“You look as though you’d seen a ghost,” Denis said. “Was old Jonathan telling you some weird tales out there?”
Nora did not reply as sharply as she would normally have done. It was too much of a pleasure to be back in the kitchen, with the lamp hanging from the ceiling, its circle of light holding back darkness and the powers of evil.
“What is it?” asked Denis with an unusually solicitous note in his voice. “If that little squirt—”
“It was nothing to do with him,” Nora forced herself to say, unable to attempt any description of the truth. Already, thinking how insane it would sound to anyone else, she was beginning to doubt whether it had not been an hallucination.
Frank, with his coat on, made his farewells, looking at Nora for a long moment as she stood beneath the lamp, her hair like crimson against the unnatural pallor of her face. He said: “I don’t suppose I’ll see you all again until the weather has taken a turn for the better. I hope you manage all right.”
“Goodnight,” they said.
He opened the door, and half-closed his eyes.
“Strewth!” said Denis.
The sound of the wind had been fairly subdued, but there was great force behind the snow that struck at Frank’s face. It rustled and whispered, confiding to him that he was going to have difficulty in reaching home.
“You’d better not go,” said Denis.
“I’ve got to go sometime, old man.” He peered forward, trying to discern definite shapes in the shifting, crisscross patterns. “There’s someone coming.”
“Visitors—at this time?” said Denis, closing the door behind him and standing on the step in order to block the light and see better.
They heard a faint cry
Denis answered it, and the vague figure that at first had seemed only a figment of their imagination came stumbling towards them.
“I never thought…ugh…be able to make it.”
Denis took one arm and Frank supported the other. They opened the door and led the newcomer inside. He was breathing painfully, as though he had come a long way, exhausted by the effort of continually forcing his reluctant legs through the piled drifts. His hair was set hard with frosty whiteness, forced over his head like a glittering, tight-fitting cap.
Mrs. Morris got up at once, concern showing in her face. She asked no questions, but took the man’s heavy coat and gave him a towel. He slumped into a chair.
Mr. Morris stirred, and his paper slipped over the edge of his knee, but he did not awaken.
Jonathan appeared in the passage doorway, a book in his hand. He did not seem annoyed by the arrival of yet another visitor, as one might have expected. In fact Nora, glancing at him, saw that this time he was smiling with deep approval.
CHAPTER FOUR
“A full house we are having,” said Mrs. Morris, without annoyance.
The newcomer had been made comfortable and given a drink of hot rum— “Not up to the old naval rum ration, eh, Frankie boy?” said Denis—and was now seated in the semicircle. Mr. Morris had heaved himself painfully up from his slumbers and gone outside to make a tour of the outhouses, but he was not away for long.
“Piling up,” he said briefly on his return. “Have to dig for the milk tomorrow.”
He slumped back into his chair, fumbled for his pipe, and began to stuff tobacco in with blue, cold fingers.
Frank said: “I’m terribly sorry I didn’t start out sooner. I’ll be an awful nuisance—”
“No nuisance at all,” said Mrs. Morris. “I hope your mother and father aren’t worryin’ about you. Still, they know you’re here. A dreadful night, that is what it is—no night for anyone to be out.”
Automatically they turned to the stranger, whose first breathless, spluttered remarks had not made any coherent impression. Now the cold had been drawn from his limbs and he had had time to collect his wits. He began to explain, reciting the story, thought Nora, as though it had been learnt off by heart, every now and then addressing himself to Jonathan, whose gentle nods seemed to be nods of approval and confirmation.
“I’m sorry I’ve had to trouble you like this. It’s my own fault—I oughtn’t to have tried walking over here, but I wanted to see the view from the top of the Horse.” He referred to the mountain known as the Horse of Gwyn ap Nudd, a humped peak that stood arrogantly above the surrounding hills and valleys. It was not a stiff climb, and an ardent hiker might have been pardoned for wanting a glimpse of the great white blanket over the countryside, bulging and wrinkled over Wales, then flattening out and lying smooth and dazzling upon Shropshire. The only false note was struck by the man himself: he was not in the least like a hiker. “I thought I could make it easily,” he said. “I wanted to have a look from the top, just so I could say I’d been, and then I was going to get down on to the main road near Plas Mawr.”
“The main road would not have been easy to find,” said Mr. Morris.
The stranger waved one stubby hand and grinned. He had a tooth missing from the front of his mouth. “That was just it,” he said. “I missed it altogether, and got mixed up with a lot of hills. As fast as I got up one, expecting to see a village of some sort, there was a slope downwards and then more hills. I knew the castle when I saw it, and I made for it, ’cos I knew once I was over, I could get down to Llanmadoc. But it was dark by the time I made it, and what with the snow and the darkness, I don’t think I could have got down to the village. It was lucky I saw your light.”
“Quite a walk you’ve had, Mr.—er—”
“Brennan.”
When he had spoken of the darkness, a sudden fantastic idea had come to Nora. She remembered, all too vividly, the vision that Jonathan had conjured up, and for one wild moment she wondered if he had also called up this man Brennan, a fiend in human shape. All the ghost stories she had ever read, the lurid films she had seen, and the more dubious illustrations in the books that stood in the parlour bookcase, all these came to the aid of her imagination, a
nd she looked at the stranger with an indefinite but compelling dread.
Her fear died away. If this was a demon that Jonathan had summoned, it was an inoffensive demon. Brennan looked like a shopkeeper, with a worried, pimply little face and one ear that stuck out grotesquely, as though—Nora could have laughed now—as though weighed down by the weight of too many pencils resting on it. He would not look directly at anyone except, for brief spaces of time, at Jonathan, but sighed at intervals and fumbled with scraps of paper in the pockets of his jacket. Twice Nora caught those glances that he exchanged with Jonathan, like a nervous shop assistant who hopes he has not offended an influential customer.
“Perhaps,” he said, “if you would be good enough to lend me a light of some sort, I could try to reach the village.”
“Not safe,” said Mr. Morris sleepily, opening one eye. “Drifts there are that you would get caught in. The snow do give under you if you don’t know every little turn of the ground. Tomorrow, when you can see where you are going.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“For a lonely place,” said Nora ironically, “we get a lot of visitors.”
They all laughed, and for a while, in a babble of general, more or less lighthearted conversation, it appeared that the cloud of unrest that had clung to the house all day would be dispelled. But Jonathan and the newcomer, Brennan, were held together by some mysterious bond. Nora wondered whether anyone else sensed this as acutely as she did. There was something between the two men, and she could not believe that this meeting had been an accident. Come to that, she could not believe that any of today’s occurrences had been accidents: from the moment she awoke this morning she had been conscious of the existence of a certain fatalistic pattern into which the lives of all present had been woven. Things were moving towards a climax. These strange comings and goings—though so far, she thought, there had been a pronounced lack of goings—all meant something that would soon be revealed. She could not imagine where she had picked up these ideas, but they had in the last hour or so become an obsession. Now she was waiting. Waiting, not knowing what she was to expect.
