A bus had stopped. People got out and moved away purposefully, bound here or there for the homes that waited for them after the day’s work somewhere else. He lifted his wrist and looked at his watch. Half past six, but the sun still up there. Evenings lasted late in England this time of year. He would have time this evening to explore something of Claines.
Carefully he threaded his way through the traffic on Trail Street and on the far side he turned to his left and walked east in front of the small, neatly kept cottages with flowers in the frontyards. Beyond these rose huge, dark-stoned Chimney Pots, with a side street running between its grounds and those of the nearest cottage. That side street ran southward toward the great rise of ground they called Sweepside. Thunstone walked that way, swinging his cane.
The street was gravel-strewn, not paved, with deep ruts. The path on which he walked beside it was set with flat stones like cobbles. He strolled to another graveled street beyond, crossed that, and passed more cottages. A dog came and trotted with him, then abruptly ran into an alley. From afar off came the voices of children, seemingly at play, but he saw no human being.
He passed still more cottages. They looked shabbier than the ones on Trail Street. They were old, subdued in color. One was of crumbling brown brick, another of stone cut long ago. A tawny cat was seated on the thatched roof of that one, looking down at Thunstone with the intent appraisal of cats. The next cottage seemed to have no visible foundation. It might have been washed up on a beach. Thunstone studied the houses. How old were they? Of what century? Claines was old, old.
Overhead swooped a bird, lean and dark, seeming to glide on its unmoving wings. He did not know what bird it was. As it skimmed above him, it emitted a grating caw of sound.
Now he had come to what must be the edge of Claines. The dwellings here looked primitive, almost. He wondered what sort of people lived in them. Nobody was visible, in the yards or at the doors or windows. Yet, he told himself, there must be something inside some of the houses. Perhaps the something, the somethings, watched him.
Before him, between the houses and the coarse grass of the slope, ran a wire fence, breast high. A wooden sign was hung to it:
PRIVATE PROPERTY
DO NOT ENTER
WITHOUT PERMISSION OF
G. ENSLEY
Just the other side of the fence ran a nimble stream of water, a brook perhaps four feet across. It sang happily and scuttled away eastward somewhere. He could not see where it began on Sweepside.
He stepped close against the fence and gazed up the spacious rise of Sweepside to where sprawled the great, uncouth image of Old Thunder.
The white blotch of the figure lay somewhat on a slant. Two men did something at the edge of the thing, perhaps cutting away the turf from the chalk as Gates, the curate, had said. They were dwarfed by Old Thunder. Old Thunder had a round pale blank of a head. This was set without benefit of neck on an awkward-looking oblong body, and below the body extended two thin, unjointed legs that terminated in big flat feet. Primitive, thought Thunstone. Naturally it would be primitive, since its origin must go back to the most primitive of men, or so Gates believed.
Thunstone let his eyes roam over the great green slope. He saw there, singly or in huddles, woolly sheep that cropped at the grass. Two spotted dogs lay at strategic points. Plainly they were there to supervise the flock, guard and govern it.
Sheep, mused Thunstone. Old, old companions of man. Dogs may have been the first animals to join the ancient primitive stone-chip- pers, but sheep were ancient in the relationship. Some scholars thought they had been tamed as long ago as eight thousand years. Thunstone wondered if the original tamers might not have been children, lugging the little toddling wild lambs home to play with. Wasn’t Abel, second son of Adam, called a keeper of sheep in the Book of Genesis? And there was a religious symbolism, too; “The Lord is my shepherd,” said the best known of the Psalms. And here on Sweepside above Claines, sheep still were kept and companioned by man as in the long ago, the so long ago.
He turned and looked back along the way he had come.
On the footpath in front of the row of houses toward Trail Street, at a point two crossings back from the fence, stood a motionless figure. It looked as black as a silhouette in ink. It seemed to be dressed in a square, sooty-dark coat despite the warm weather, and drawn low on its head was a broad, slouched hat of the same color. Thunstone started to walk toward it.
At once the figure swiveled around and headed back toward Trail Street. It moved fast, faster than Thunstone. He quickened his own pace. The sooty figure was almost scurrying now. It cut across the street, toward where trees grew in a clump behind Chimney Pots. It vanished among those trees like a shadow.
Thunstone took his own way back to Mrs. Fothergill’s. Beside the steps stood a squat black motorcycle, chained to immobility. Another guest had come, then. As he entered the hall, Mrs. Fothergill’s ringing voice hailed him from her front room.
“Oh, Mr. Thunstone. A note was left for you.”
She came and gave him an unsealed envelope. “Thank you,” he said, and opened it.
A small card inside, with smooth script upon it:
Mr. Gram Ensley would esteem it as a favor if Mr. Thunstone would call at Chimney Pots at any convenient time tomorrow morning.
Mrs. Fothergill waited expectantly. “Good news, I hope?” she said. “IPs from somebody who wants to talk to me,” he said, and mounted the steps to his own room.
He filled a straight-stemmed pipe from a leather pouch, tamped the tobacco carefully, and struck a match to light it. Then he sat down at the little desk. Swiftly he wrote two letters, one to Professor Leslie Spayte at the University of London, the other to Judge Pursuivant in America. Then he searched out his notebook and began to write down yet more of his observations. On one page he set down a list of names:
ELWAIN HAWES, landlord of the Moonraven, a pleasant public house. Food is good there. Hawes is friendly, ditto Mrs. Hawes. They may have information.
DAVID GATES, the curate who presides at St. Jude's. Oxford graduate, young, athletic and proud of it, somewhat intense. Ambitious to be a vicar. Studies the history and prehistory of Claines, wants to write about it, will talk of it.
---------- DYMOCK, the local constable, only officer of the law in Claines. Also young, also a university man (Reading), also ambitious. Seems the sort to rise in his profession. Talks readily, though officially. Must talk to him again.
MRS. ALMA FOTHERGILL, my landlady. Cordial, a trifle gushing. Somewhere in her forties, very ready to tell that once she was on the stage. May or may not know a lot about Claines, though she says she was bom here.
CONSTANCE BAILEY, who works for Mrs. Fothergill. A rather good-looking girl, black hair, green eyes. Calls herself a white witch. Seems to have something to tell, and seems afraid to tell it. Suggests that Claines has secrets. Must try to find what she’s holding back, and why.
ALBERT PORRASK, who operates a garage and machine shop. Big, rough-mannered, truculent. Seems to resent my presence here. Would like to be thought dangerous. Is he? He and others mentioned the name of GRAM ENSLEY, who owns the biggest house in Claines, and apparently much of Claines besides. Who and what is he?
Thunstone stopped writing and read through all his notes. Then he added a last few words:
Who followed me as I walked through Claines to Sweepside Ridge, and why did he run away?
He closed the notebook and slid it back into his jacket pocket. It had grown dark outside while he had written. He felt tired, though it was not really late as yet. After all, he had been busy in London before he had taken the bus to Claines and had busied himself here.
He stripped off his clothes, hung them up, and from his big suitcase took a light robe and put it on. In the bathroom at the end of the hall he scrubbed his teeth industriously, then turned on a hot shower and soaped his brawny body well from head to foot and rinsed off the suds. Back in his room, he freed the silver blade from his cane and
carefully wiped it with a silk handkerchief and sheathed it again. After that, he filled his pipe out of a different pouch from the one he had left in the pocket of his jacket. Without lighting it, he sat to look out at the window.
A wind blew outside, for the ivy-cloaked tree at the side of the house seemed to hunch and weave, seemed almost to walk. The sky overhead was black velvet, spangled all over with winking stars. In one quarter of it stood the moon, pallidly yellow, greatening lopsidedly from its first quarter a few nights ago.
Thunstone sniffed at the bowl of his pipe. It had a special odor, for the tobacco he had stuffed into it was blended with kinnikinnick and the crumbled bark of the red willow. Long Spear, an Indian friend, had told him that to smoke that mixture was a strong guard against all evil magic. He turned toward the window again.
There was no window, only a blurred dimness. And no wall. In just that instant, it was as if Thunstone were somewhere in the open. He strained his eyes to see.
No window, no room. He did not sit in a chair, he perched on a sort of hummock of earth. He moved a foot. Under it turned something like a pebble. He was not in the room he had rented, not anymore. He did not know where he was.
And no moon, no stars. Perhaps no sky. He gathered a sense of a stretch of land, tufted here and there with trees and brush. There was no Trail Street over there, certainly no lights. Far in the distance he sensed, rather than saw, deeply dark hills. Among the tufts moved things, stealthy things, darker than the dimness around them, things perhaps as large as men. They seemed to approach.
Thunstone jammed his pipe into his mouth, rummaged a pack of matches. He struck one alight, and in its glow he saw his room again —the bureau, the door, the bed. He set the flame to his pipe and it glowed redly. He blew puffs of smoke, to the north, the west, the south, the east, then upward and downward. Six puffs in all, as Long Spear had taught him, to the four winds and the two directions, the ancient Dakotah way.
Softly he sang a few words of a song Long Spear had taught him, a song that went back to the Ghost Dance days of Long Spear's people:
Wahkondah dei dou, wah-pah-din ah tonhie . . .
A song that prayed for help, that asked Those Above for strength and courage.
Abruptly, he lost all awareness of the tufted plain, the figures skulking upon it, the far dark hills. His room was all around him again, and it was a chair he sat on. He found the light above the bed, switched it on. The bed was there, with comfortable plump pillows and a turned back coverlet.
Thunstone went to the desk and, still smoking, wrote down all that he had seemed to experience. By the time he had finished, the pipe had burned out. He laid it on top of his writing, turned out the light again, and went back to the window. That window remained, sill and sash.
He gazed outward and saw the lights on Trail Street, the glow from the Moonraven across there. He looked up at the sky, at the stars in their courses, their paths and patterns that had been there since the beginning of the time that mankind knew. Cancer, the Crab, soared high above. He remembered things he had heard astrologers say about how the stars ruled life and history, and wondered for the hundredth time if the astrologers truly believed the things they said.
At last he sought the bed he had rented in this old house. It was a comfortable bed, wide enough and long enough for his big frame. He lay with his hands clasped under his head and mused as he lay and, musing, drifted into slumber.
CHAPTER 4
But Thunstone dreamed. His dreams were confused at first, blurred glimpses of places he had been, people he had talked to in the past. Once he thought he was with a rosy, fair-haired woman known in her circle as the Countess of Monteseco though she had been born Sharon Hill at home in Pennsylvania. She smiled on him, the smile he knew well, and the voice in the dream was her voice. Then she faded into a dark dreamlessness and, without waking, he missed her but was happy to have seen her.
At last came a clear vision. He walked on the sharp, grassy slope of Sweepside, up toward the traced outline of Old Thunder. As he approached, Old Thunder rose suddenly, a powerful, clumsy surge of movement, and loomed over him. The crude outline of the face lived. Its eyes stared down with a concentrated menace. At that Thunstone awoke, to find the sun streaming in at his window.
His watch told him that it was half-past seven. He smiled as he remembered his boyhood, and what his grandmother had said once; that to wake from a dream is always good, because if it was a good dream you were happy to have had it and if it was a bad dream you were glad it was not true. Well, he had had a good dream and a bad dream, and his grandmother had been right about their respective impacts.
He dressed quickly, went to the bathroom to shave and wash, then came back to his own room. There he put his notebook into his pocket and took his cane. He went downstairs and into Mrs. Fother- gilTs parlor.
“We serve breakfast in here, Mr. Thunstone/' she said from the arched doorway to the room behind. “And we have another guest today. But coffee's ready now; would you take a cup?"
“With great pleasure," he said, and went with her to where a dining room was furnished with a cloth-covered table and silver and dishes upon it and chairs set around. Mrs. Fothergill wore a green dress this morning, with white edging at neck and sleeves. They sat down while she filled two cups from a china pot. “Cream in the jug," she said, “and sugar in the bowl."
“I'll just take it black, if you please."
Thunstone drank. The coffee was strong and good. He remembered friends who insisted that good coffee couldn't be had in England. That was like so many sweeping statements, an example to you to avoid sweeping statements on your own part.
“I dare hope," said Mrs. Fothergill, poising her own cup daintily, “that you're finding what you hoped here in Claines."
“I came here with no sure notion of what to find," Thunstone told her, “but I've found out several interesting things." He looked across the table at her. “I'm to see Mr. Ensley today, and maybe he'll be helpful."
“Oh, ah," said Mrs. Fothergill, “I doubt not but that he will."
“I hear that he owns most of the houses in Claines."
“A good lot of them," she said, “but not this one. It so happens that it's been in my family for generations. Mr. Ensley likes to keep an old-fashioned atmosphere in Claines, old-world as you might say. And I don't mind that, I'm sure, though sometimes I miss dear London."
A clatter of feet in the parlor, and a young man entered the room. His long, lank hair and long, lank mustache were more or less the color of strong tea. His jeans pants were tucked into shiny boots. At the open throat of his blue shirt dangled a silver medallion on a chain, with an image Thunstone could not make out. In one hand he carried a massive white helmet.
“Good morning," Mrs. Fothergill greeted him. “Will you have coffee?"
“Yes'm, I thank ye." He laced his cupful with cream and put in several spoonfuls of sugar. He looked at Thunstone. “You passing through, too?”
“Staying for a few days.”
“Me, I'm headed down to the coast. Biking there.”
Constance Bailey came in from the kitchen. She wore a white apron and a white cap and carried a broad tray. She put down plates for them, each with a lightly fried egg on a slice of toast, two rashers of bacon, and half of a grilled tomato. She set down a toast rack and a jar of marmalade and a butter dish, and went back to the kitchen.
Thunstone found the bacon streaky but somewhat limp, and the tomato rich, red, and savory. After finishing his egg, he took another slice of toast and spread it with butter and marmalade. Mrs. Fothergill poured him more coffee. He was hungry enough to eat everything with relish.
The motorcyclist, too, ate with good appetite, and finished first. He rose and wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“Everything here capital, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Fothergill. “I’ll mention your B-and-B to my friends.”
“Thank you, that will be good of you,” she smiled.
“Not at all.
”
He went out. They heard the front door slam resoundingly, and a moment later came the fierce rattle of his motor as it started. It went moaning away.
“Well, now,” said Mrs. Fothergill, “that was a civil-spoken young man, at least. Some who stop here are, well, matter-of-fact. We still have coffee in the pot, Mr. Thunstone.”
“No thank you, don’t bother. I’ll just finish what I have.”
“I’ve noticed that stick you carry,” she said. “It’s a very handsome one. Though you don’t appear to need it, no lameness if I may say so.”
“It was given me by a good friend, and I carry it more or less because he gave it to me,” said Thunstone. He pushed back his chair. “I’ll be going out now, and of course I’ll stay tonight again. I’ve paid until then, as I remember. Maybe I’ll stay on a few days beyond.”
“And you’ll be welcome, I’m sure.”
He went out into the pleasant morning sunshine. Trucks rumbled on Trail Street, and he had to wait for his chance to cross. On the far side, he went into the post office to mail his letters. As he came out, an elderly man passed and nodded in friendly fashion. A pair of girls chattered as they walked along the way. They were dressed almost alike, in slacks and blouses and sandals; but, he could not help noticing, one seemed trim in her simple clothes, the other untidy.
“Good morning, Mr. Thunstone,” said Constable Dymock, wheeling his bicycle with him, smiling in the sweep of his mustache.
“Oh, hello there,” said Thunstone, as to an old friend. “What a fine day this is, and I’ve been exploring your little village.” He smiled. “Your hamlet, some want to call it.”
“And the people of Claines have been exploring you, the best they can manage,” said Dymock. “This morning, I’ve had several come and ask of me, who’s that big Yank staying at Mrs. Fothergill’s, and what does he want here?”
“Yank,” repeated Thunstone. “I can’t truly claim that. A Yank lives in the Northern states, and my family is Southern. I was bom and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North, so I know the average all around.”
Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 01 Page 4
