“You bloody, sodding Yank!”
Porrask rolled over with hands and knees under himself and struggled up again. He clawed at Thunstone with his right hand, its fingers crooked like talons, searching for the face. Thunstone seized his wrist, hauled him powerfully close, and clamped his own arm over Porrask’s in a tight, punishing lock. Next moment he was dragging Porrask toward the door. Goggling, chattering spectators made way for them. Thunstone shouldered the door open and sprang out upon the paved yard in the cloudy light of evening, fetching Porrask with him.
Porrask blubbered a curse and strove to pull his prisoned arm free. Thunstone turned his own body and drove a shoulder up under Porrask’s armpit. He slammed his back against Porrask’s chest, then stooped forward with all his strength. Porrask came flying through the air above him and slammed down hard on the concrete.
The other customers had boiled out at the door of the Moonraven, all babbling at each other. Only Constance Bailey was silent, staring, scared. A loud, authoritative voice suddenly dominated the confusion:
“Now then, what’s all this?”
It was Constable Dymock. Thunstone reflected that those words amounted almost to a ritual with British police.
Porrask got up slowly, unsteadily. He stood with bowed legs, and blinked at Thunstone, at Dymock. “This ’ere man attacked me,” he blubbered. “Struck me.”
“That’s a lie,” said Thunstone, the sharpest he had spoken so far to Porrask. “You tried to hit me, but I didn’t lay a knuckle on you. If I had, you’d still be down on the ground.”
“Let me tell you,” said Constance Bailey quickly as she came toward them. “It was just the other way around, it was. Albert Porrask came to where I was sitting with Mr. Thunstone, and he spoke rude things, and when Mr. Thunstone objected, Albert Porrask tried to hit him.”
‘That’s the right of it, Constable.” It was Hawes speaking, from among the onlookers. “Mr. Porrask raised a disturbance in my place. I tried to calm him down and he shoved me. Whatever Mr. Thunstone did was in his own defense and in defense of Miss Bailey.”
Dymock looked intently at Constance Bailey, but he spoke to Hawes. “Do you give him in charge?”
“That’s for Mr. Thunstone to say,” said Hawes. “He was the one attacked. Ask him.”
“Mr. Thunstone?” prompted Dymock. He had moved closer to Constance Bailey. He looked as though he would put a protecting arm around her.
“No,” said Thunstone, “I don’t make any charge against him. He jumped on me, and I helped him off again. That’s all.”
Someone else came pushing through the circle of watchers. It was Ensley, his nostrils flaring, his eyes flashing like steel.
“Whatever sort of damned fool are you making of yourself, Porrask?” he demanded fearsomely.
“I didn’t expect you’d know about this, sir,” said Porrask, very timid now.
“I know all about you, everything you think and do, every instant,” Ensley snapped, his face close to Porrask’s. “They aren’t going to arrest you, eh? All right, come along with me. You’d better make yourself understand that I have a special regard for Mr. Thunstone. Don’t ever threaten him again.”
The two walked off together, Ensley talking rapidly, Porrask silent, his head bowed.
“I’ll just see you across to Mrs. Fothergill’s, Connie,” Dymock said, and Constance Bailey smiled up at him, and they, too, went away together.
Thunstone turned back to the door of the Moonraven, and Hawes came to his side. “I just want to get my cane,” said Thunstone, “I left it at the table in here.”
“Let me apologize for such a thing happening in any house of mine,” Hawes said, “and I’m glad that all went as well as it did. If you’ll allow me to say so, you can defend yourself proper.”
“I’ve had to learn to do that,” said Thunstone.
“Sir, would you take a drink with me, in my office?”
“I had a full pint of lager at supper,” said Thunstone, “but, for the sake of good feeling, I’ll take perhaps a half pint more.”
“I keep a very good article of sherry,” Hawes told him. “I’d be pleased if you’d try it and say what you think of it.”
“A small one, then,” said Thunstone.
They entered the Moonraven together.
CHAPTER 7
Drops of rain spattered on Thunstone as he left the Moonraven, cane in hand, and hurried across Trail Street to Mrs. Fothergill’s house. Two cars stood in front, small sedans, one recognizable as an English Ford. He opened the front door and there was Mrs. Fothergill in the hall, a fluttering vision of flowered frock and gleaming hair.
“Oh, Mr. Thunstone!” she hailed him, as though proclaiming his title before royalty. “Come in, come in, sir. Constance told me what happened, how fine it was in you to defend her.”
“It was nothing at all,” said Thunstone.
“No, but it was, it was brilliant. We’ve two couples staying here tonight, and both were at the Moonraven for dinner. They saw what happened. One couple—their name’s Haring; they’re Dutch as I believe—were a bit frightened. The others are named Inscoe; they’re Americans like you, from a place called Ypsilanti. They were more amused than anything.” She rolled up her eyes. “But both said you handled an unpleasant situation very well indeed.”
“I always try to do my best, Mrs. Fothergill.”
“Come into the drawing room here,” she babbled, a white hand on his arm. “Do come in, why not? I can offer you a drink or something.” “Thank you, but no,” he smiled. “There were whiskey and wine and brandy with Mr. Ensley at Chimney Pots, and at dinner I had a pint of lager, and later a sherry over there with Mr. Hawes. That’s a great plenty for me in one day, but thank you again.”
“But do come in and sit down a moment,” she urged him. “Constance is in there; she wants so much to thank you again.” She fairly towed him along by his arm and into the room where first he had paid for his accommodations. Constance Bailey sat rather limply in a chair. Dymock bent beside her. His hand was on the arm of the chair, close enough to her hand to take hold of it. He straightened up as he saw Thunstone.
“If you’ll be all right now, Connie, I’ll go my way,” he said. “I daresay I should telephone some report of the matter to Gerrinsford, even though no charge is laid.” He looked at Thunstone with frank admiration. “Sir, give me leave to say, you were in the right place at the right time this evening.”
Away he went. Mrs. Fothergill’s eyes followed him appreciatively.
“A splendid young man, Constable Dymock,” she said. “He’ll rise in his service. Connie, you could go farther and fare worse, you know.”
“Oh, please, Mrs. Fothergill,” protested Constance Bailey, not unhappily.
“In any case, he’s got a regard for you,” went on Mrs. Fothergill. “That’s perfectly plain to see. But sit down with us, Mr. Thunstone, and you’d best change your mind about that drink.”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Thunstone as he found a chair. “But I’d like to ask a question or two.”
“As many as you wish. Connie, you’re still shaken, and you’ll have something, at least. Sit where you are; I’ll do the honors.”
Mrs. Fothergill went to the sideboard and chose a bottle and two glasses. What she prepared was what Thunstone had seen Constance Bailey take at the Moonraven, gin and bitters. Carefully Mrs. Fothergill trickled drops from a tall flask labeled ANGOSTURA into one glass, then the other, twirling each so that the inside was filmed ruddily. Then she poured gin into the glasses, gave one to Constance Bailey, and sat down with her own.
“Now, sir,” she smiled at Thunstone, “questions, that was your word, I believe.”
“Forgive me if I seem to be prying, but why should Porrask hold such a grudge against Miss Bailey here?”
“Easily answered, that,” said Mrs. Fothergill. “He’d wanted her to go out with him, and when she said him no, he didn’t like that. He was even threatening to one or two y
oung men who came to see her.”
“Yes,” contributed Constance Bailey. “He was a wild one, drinking deep and just working at this odd job and that before he had his garage. And when he drank he could be frightening—he can still be frightening. I didn't want to walk out with him, and that made him mad. He cursed me."
She drank rather deeply as she remembered.
“You call yourself a witch; didn't you curse him back?" asked Thunstone.
She shook her head and her fall of dark hair stirred. “I don’t curse people. I've never gone into that kind of witchcraft."
“Albert Porrask was angry with her," contributed Mrs. Fothergill. “Angry and jealous. Constance hadn't been with me long, she was quite a young thing, and I felt that I was more or less her guardian. Porrask came here to the house to be ugly and bother her, and I showed him the door. He went away—he had to—but he's kept his grudge against Constance."
“I see," said Thunstone. “But he was mild enough tonight when Mr. Ensley spoke to him."
“He'd be mild to Mr. Ensley, right enough," said Mrs. Fothergill, sipping at her glass. “It was Mr. Ensley backed him to start his garage and machine-repair shop. As I hear it, Porrask had done some clever work with a car of Mr. Ensley's, and Mr. Ensley was glad for it and lent him money—I don't know just how much—so he could get into his own business. And Porrask has been pretty average glad to do what Mr. Ensley says, ever since."
“He was clearing the outlines on Old Thunder's image up on the slope this morning, and seemed to take orders from Mr. Ensley," said Thunstone.
“Why as to that, half the men in Claines do turns at shaping that figure each year at this time," Mrs. Fothergill told him. “Even some who are church members, attend St. Jude's, they're up there every time to do their part at it. And Mr. Gates doesn't like it, not a trifle."
“I gathered that Mr. Ensley is seriously interested in antiquities here," Thunstone said.
“Interested is the word for him," Mrs. Fothergill agreed. “He was at me for a bit, to tell him what I might know about the old history of Claines. But I didn't know much; my people never told me much. He talked to Connie once, that once and no more, though she knows a thing or two.”
“Mr. Ensley says I study the wrong things,” said Constance Bailey in a dull, timid voice.
“All this is interesting,” said Thunstone frankly. “I might even say, important. Thank you, ladies, for talking to me.”
“Turnabout’s fair play, and fair play’s a jewel,” said Mrs. Fothergill, with what she must have meant for a winning smile. “Let me ask you a question in my turn. Just why have you come here?”
“I told you that when first we met; I’ve told several others since. I was curious about things I’d heard in London about Old Thunder and the turning of the Dream Rock,” he replied. Rising, he brought out his notecase. “I want to pay for a few more days here. I’ve promised to attend church on Sunday, so I’ll pay you up through Monday night.”
Mrs. Fothergill thanked him for the money and entered the amount in her account book. He went up to his room and turned on the light. Rain scrabbled at the window pane, like tapping fingers. He went to the bathroom for a shower, donned pajamas and light cloth slippers and his robe, and returned along the hall. Behind another door he heard chattering voices; those would be more overnight guests. In his room again, he sat at the desk and filled more pages of his notebook with his observations of the evening.
Outside the window, the last light ebbed away. It rained in earnest now; it strained against the window, against the outer wall of the house. The ivy-cloaked tree swayed and gestured with its branches. Thunstone remembered a line from an old song, “The night wind waves its arms.” The night had its own life, gave its own life to the world over which it ruled.
At last he finished his account of the day’s events and set the notebook aside. He felt better after his hot shower. It soothed his body after the day’s visit to Chimney Pots, the climbing of Sweep- side, the strange moment of weakness at the bridge over Congdon Mire, the scuffle with Porrask at the Moonraven. This had been a fairly full day.
As he pondered, there came a knock at the door, a knock so stealthy that he waited a moment before stepping there and opening. In slid Constance Bailey, so furtively that she seemed almost to tiptoe.
“I feel that I just must talk to you, Mr. Thunstone,” she whispered. "It may be wrong, my coming to your room this way, but there are some things I just can't say in front of Mrs. Fothergill; she doesn't believe in things I know to be true.”
"It's all right for you to come,” he quickly reassured her. "Sit down and tell me whatever it is you feel like telling.”
He resumed his chair beside the desk. She perched in the armchair and clenched her hands and crowded her feet close together.
"I don't really know how to begin,” she almost bewailed.
"You might begin by telling me about yourself, and how you happen to be in Claines,” he invited.
"That much won't take long.”
And the story of her life, as she told it, was brief. She was not native to Claines; she had been bom and brought up in Liverpool. Her parents were good to her, she said. They had been kind and had put her to school, where she did well in her classes. But when she was fifteen, they both had died. She had fallen into the hands of a stem spinster aunt, who had found Constance Bailey a job as a shop assistant in a place that sold china—hard work and fairly low pay. Mrs. Fothergill, visiting in Liverpool, had come into the shop, had fallen into conversation with Constance Bailey, had liked her, and had invited her to come and live in Claines and help around the house.
"She's been truly wonderful to me,” said Constance Bailey. "The work isn't hard, and she doesn't treat me like a servant, more like a friend. That was six years ago I came, and I haven't been sorry for a moment.”
Six years, said Thunstone to himself. Then she was only in her early twenties now. "You haven't said anything about witchcraft,” he reminded.
"Oh,” she said, "that started when I was quite little. I learned from my father's cousin—a man, a spiritist medium. That's how the craft is passed along, from a man to a woman, and then from the woman to another man.”
"It’s the same way in the American South,” said Thunstone. “So he taught you your art, you say. Wasn’t there more to it than the teaching? An initiation ceremony with a coven, and a sort of a confirmation?”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “No, a white witch doesn’t belong to a coven, a band of witches with a chief devil, all that black- magic part. I’ve heard the thing they do. The chief devil makes you put one hand under your feet, the other on top of your head, and swears you that all between your hands belongs to the ruler of hell.” She shrugged, or perhaps she shivered. “I’d never do that, not for money. Nor go to their meetings, nor dance in their dances on a sabbat. Sabbat—that’s a blasphemy, on the name of the holy Sabbath.”
“I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” said Thunstone. “Ruth St. Leger-Gordon wrote that the word was French to begin with, s’esbattre, an old term that she says means to frolic. Now, in America they call a country dance a frolic, and they dance round and round, sometimes back to back like witches—what the dance-caller names a do-si-do.” He smiled at her, trying to reassure. “I’ve danced at such frolics myself in the mountains, and never thought I was turning into a witch.”
“I’ve never danced; I don’t dance.”
“So this is what you mean by being a white witch.”
“Yes, it is. I only try to help people. The holy saints could do such things. I can cure warts and I can stop the blood from a running wound. I can draw out the fire from a bum by saying a text from the Bible—I must not tell you what it was, or it wouldn’t work for me anymore. I’ve done things like that in Claines; I could take you to people who’d tell you.”
“And your methods are secret?” he asked.
“They have to be, I say. I can’t tell them, except to somebody I
’m teaching, not if I want to keep my power. There’s another Bible text to say when I stop the flow of blood. But now, if I cure people, make them well, it’s no more a sin than if I was a doctor, is it?”
"Not that I can see/’ said Thunstone. "Let me tell you something else I've learned about witchcraft in the southern part of the States. Someone like you, who tries to do helpful things and combat evil, isn't called a witch, but a witch master or a witch mistress. I know one of the foremost of the witch masters over there. He has the same name as I do, John."
"John what?"
"The people just call him John. He's also a fine guitarist. You should hear him."
"Well, in any case, you're convinced that I'm good," said Constance Bailey. "You speak as though you trust me. Let me tell you how I feel about certain things here, and trust me in that as well."
"Of course."
"Well," she said again, and gestured with both hands. "It's always uncanny here in Claines, every year at the turning time for the Dream Rock, but this year it's worse than usual. Not everybody can feel it, but you said that you did. You said that last night you had a vision of what must have been other times here."
"Ancient times long dead," he said.
"No," she said. "No. Ancient times but not dead, not when they come to life in the night. You and I can see that, know that."
"Just the two of us?" he asked. "Nobody else? Not Mrs. Fothergill, for instance?"
"She laughs at me; she won't credit me when I talk about it. She says I dream it at night, in my sleep."
"How about somebody like Gram Ensley?" Thunstone suggested.
She creased her brow. "Now, you make me wonder about him. I can't properly say what he sees and knows, or doesn't. I told you that he asked me once about white witchcraft, then he told me that I was wrong, I was a fraud. Said I did my spells to cheat people. But I've never done that. Never asked a penny for anything else I did. I'm not a black witch."
"You truly believe what you're saying," said Thunstone.
"I have to believe. It's all in the Bible, about witches and spirits of the dead, so it has to be true. And at night this time of year, it's no dream, certainly. You felt it." She leaned forward. "You know it's not a dream. You know the house goes away all around, and strange things move.” Her eyes grew wider. “It’s dark now. If you should turn out your light here—”
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