Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  “Well, the airport is shut now all the flights have been grounded,” Shavi pointed out. “And with the Old Town closed off I suppose they have lost the parliament, the newspaper offices, many businesses-“

  “Don’t they realise they can’t carry on with their lives?”

  “I think they probably do. But it is human nature to carry on with routines in an attempt to maintain normalcy, often in the face of all reason.”

  A little further on Laura began to complain of aching feet, and from then on, as they left the city behind and wound out into the countryside, they had to take numerous long breaks while she nursed her burgeoning blisters.

  “I’ve never walked this far in my life,” she moaned.

  “I once walked the entire length of Kashmir-“

  “Oh, shut up.” She was limping away before she had to listen to any more of his tale. “It hurts enough already,” she muttered.

  It was late afternoon before they reached the Rosslyn Chapel sign which pointed down a lane off the main road. Between wet fields and under a slate-grey sky, it took them in to the village of Roslin.

  “Did you know,” Shavi began, “that the Roslin Institute is nearby, where they cloned Dolly the sheep. A place of mysteries both old and new.”

  “Whoop de doo.”

  They were barely in the village when another tiny lane led them off to the right. A little way down it they reached the chapel car park; they could tell they were nearing their destination from the stark change in atmosphere: it grew oppressive and brooding, as if the mystery that lurked there was potent enough to affect the air itself. The chapel was completely obscured by trees, a visitor centre and high fences which made it difficult for anyone to get inside. The custodians had already locked up for the day.

  Shavi checked the sky and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, but before he could speak, Laura said, “Pull yourself together. We’re not going in there today. I’m not going to be caught anywhere near the place after night has fallen.”

  Shavi smiled. “Then we make camp.”

  They needed to find somewhere where they wouldn’t be stumbled across or reported to the authorities. Picking their way down a steep path, they came to the graveyard, with its neatly tended plots, ancient and new stones mingling together. Another footpath led off to one side where the trees grew thickest. The whole area was still. No traffic rumbled, no birds sang.

  “Maybe it’s just the weather, but I can feel something like … despair.” Laura glanced into the thick vegetation beneath the tree cover where the water dripped from the leaves in a steady rhythm.

  Shavi nodded, said nothing.

  The path wound around until the graveyard was lost behind them and the branches closed over their heads, sealing them in a gloomy, verdant world. A rabbit started at their approach and dived into the undergrowth. Eventually they could hear the splashing water of a stream or falls, and then they were out of the trees again, suddenly confronted by the breathtaking view of a treeclustered glen far beneath them. The haar drifted eerily in white tendrils among the treetops. Everywhere was still, waiting.

  “It’s beautiful,” Laura said. “But there’s something not natural about the place. Which is a pretty stupid thing to say about the countryside.”

  The path wound round until it crossed a tiny stone bridge which soared high above the glen. On the other side, hanging over the steep sides of the valley like some fairy-tale fortress, were the majestic stone ruins of Rosslyn Castle. Just beyond the broken turrets and fallen walls they could see lights; part of the building was still in use. They picked up a rough track just before the bridge which led them scrambling down into the glen and then the trees were closing over them again. Oak, ash and elm mingled all around, hinting at the great age of the woodland, and this was reflected in the diversity of the undergrowth that prospered beneath the tree cover: wood sorrel, ransoms, golden saxifrage, dog’s mercury and wood-rush.

  The place was so lonely Laura couldn’t help but feel unnerved and when she glanced at Shavi she could see it reflected on his normally stolid face too; it was in the air, in every tree and rock. They trekked along the floor of the glen by the banks of the white-foamed North Esk until they found an isolated clearing where the smoke from any fire would not be seen from the castle.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t go back and find a B&B?” Laura ventured. She was even more disturbed when she saw Shavi almost considered it.

  They pitched the tent with its rear end in an impenetrable cluster of undergrowth to prevent anyone approaching them from behind. To Laura’s growing anxiety, the flora all around was so dense, the noise from the swishing leaves and the thundering river so great, it would have been impossible to discern strangers until they were almost upon them.

  “If this was a movie,” Laura began, “I’d say, `I can’t shake the feeling there’s somebody watching us.”’ Shavi nodded. “You’re supposed to say, ‘Don’t be so stupid, it’s just the trees,”’ she added irritably.

  “I think we should take a chance and light the fire now.” He looked up at the streaks of drifting white in the gloomy treetops. “It will get dark here much quicker than if we were out in the open.”

  “You can build a beacon they could see in Holland for me.”

  Shavi spent the next half hour collecting enough wood to last them all night while Laura sat morosely in the mouth of the tent. Her anxiety eased a little when he finally had a small fire glowing in the clearing a few feet away from them. They boiled up a little rice while Shavi roasted kebabs of peppers, onions and tomatoes, which they ate while listening to the crack, drip and shiver of the living wood around them.

  Shavi was correct about the dark, which swept in unnervingly quickly until it was sitting just beyond the glimmer of the campfire, breathing in and out oppressively.

  After a while Laura found herself leaning against Shavi; she had shuffled up to him almost unconsciously, for comfort. He slipped an arm around her shoulders, out of friendship; there wasn’t a hint of any of the passion they had shared in Glastonbury. And she leaned her head gently against his shoulder, glad he was there, for so many reasons she could barely count them.

  “You seem unhappy,” he ventured.

  “And you look like a dickhead, but do I take it out on you?”

  He smiled and waited for a few moments while the rushing of the river took over. “Romance is by necessity difficult.”

  “Everything is difficult.” Then: “Why ‘by necessity’?”

  “The value of anything is defined by the effort it takes us to get it. And romance is the most valuable thing of all.”

  “That’s one opinion. Me, I’d go for an iced bottle of Stolichnaya, an ounce of Red Leb and some peace and quiet.”

  “Jack is going through a difficult time. He has suffered an extreme emotional blow-“

  “We’ve all got our problems.”

  -and a great deal is expected of him, more than he thinks he can possibly give. He is torn between the things he wants to do, the things his heart is telling him, and what he feels is the right thing to do.”

  “He’s too wrapped up in this whole `heroes have to sacrifice’ thing.”

  “Yes, he is.” Shavi gave her a faint, comforting squeeze. “But he is a good, decent man. The best of all of us.”

  “I know that.”

  “Everyone knows it. Except Jack.”

  “And you’re about to say I should cut him some slack.”

  “No. I am just saying this by way of explanation.”

  “You think I’ve done the wrong thing by getting in with him, don’t you?” She looked round at him, but his gaze was fixed firmly away in the trees.

  “I think your romance would have a better chance at a different time. There are so many obstacles being placed before it by external events.”

  She looked away so he couldn’t see her face.

  “But you know your heart better than I.” He turned and stared at the back of her head, hoping she would look
at him, but she kept the barriers up. “And if there is any lesson from all this hardship we are experiencing, it is that things are worth fighting for and fighting to the last, and tremendous things do happen.”

  “Who do you think he should be with?”

  “I-” He struggled to find words that would not hurt her. “My opinion does not matter.”

  “It matters to me.” When he didn’t answer, she said in a barely audible voice, “He’s my last chance.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked curiously.

  “Nothing.”

  Shavi thought about what she said for a moment. “You are a good person,” he stated firmly.

  “No, I’m not. I’m a bad girl. And I’ve got coming to me what all bad girls get.”

  “No-“

  Her face flared with long-repressed emotion. “Don’t give me all that redemption shit! Don’t even begin to tell me everything will turn out bright and sunny. That’s not how it works!”

  “It does in my world.”

  That brought her up sharp. She eyed him askance, then looked away, her expression so desolate with the flood of uncontrollable feelings and ideas that Shavi wanted to pull her tightly to him to comfort her.

  But before he could act he caught a movement away in the trees. It was barely anything, a shift of a shadow among shadows in the gloom, and it could easily have been some small animal investigating the fire, but his instincts told him otherwise.

  Laura felt his body stiffen. “What is it?” she asked, sensing his urgency.

  “I do not know.” He rose and advanced to the fire.

  “Didn’t you ever see Halloween?” she cautioned. “Don’t go any further, dickhead.”

  “I am simply trying to see-” The words strangled in his throat in such an awful manner Laura didn’t have to see his face to know he had glimpsed something terrible.

  “What is it, for God’s sake?” she hissed.

  The fear surged into a hard lump in her chest, but it melted into burning ice when she saw him moving quickly away from the firelight into the dark.

  “Don’t go!” Her yell trailed away in dismay and disbelief. How could he be so stupid?

  And then she was alone in that dismal place with the dark pressing tight around her, feeling small and weak in the face of all the awful things loose in the world. She couldn’t bring herself to move even a finger. Instead, she strained to hear the sound of his returning footsteps, any sound from him that proved he was still alive. But there was nothing. Just the constant rustle of the leaves, the creak of branches under the wings of the wind, the rumble of the river; the lyrical sounds oppressed her. It was too noisy, too alive with nothing.

  “Shavi,” she whispered, more to comfort herself with the sound of a voice than in the hope he might hear. Don’t do this to me, she wanted to say. I’m not strong enough to deal with this on my own.

  She sat there for an age while she grew old and wizened. Her rigid muscles ached, her stomach was clenched so tightly she thought she was going to vomit or pass out. And still there was no sign of him. He could have been swallowed up, torn apart; there could be things feeding silently on his remains right then, waiting to finish their meal before moving on to her.

  And then he suddenly lurched into the circle of light and all of it erupted out of her in a piercing scream.

  “Don’t worry,” he croaked.

  “You stupid bastard!” she shouted in a mixture of embarrassment and angry relief.

  But then, as he clambered down next to her, she saw his normally dark, handsome features were grey and there was a strained expression which made him look fifteen years older. “What was out there?” she said, suddenly afraid once more.

  He couldn’t seem to find any words. Then: “Nothing.”

  It was such a pathetically inadequate response she hit him hard on the arm. “Don’t treat me like an idiot. Don’t try to protect me like some stupid little girlie. That’s the worst thing you can do to me.” She swallowed, glanced fearfully beyond the firelight.

  “It is nothing. Nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Then, what?” She searched his face and saw things in his eyes which unnerved her on some deep plane. With his philosophical outlook, Shavi had always seemed immune to the terrors that plagued the rest of them; he was an anchor for her, a sign that it was possible to cope better. And suddenly all that fell away. “What is it, Shavi?” She reached tentative fingers to his cheek. “What did you see out there?”

  “What did I see?” His voice sounded hollow. “I saw Lee. My boyfriend. Two years dead now, two years dead. His head smashed out in the street. And he spoke to me. The things he said …” His voice was dragged away by the wind.

  Laura recalled how Shavi had told them of the murder arranged by the Tuatha lle Danann, one of the deaths that had prepared them all for their destiny. “He was really there?” Her concern for Shavi was suddenly overtaken by the sudden fear that if Lee was there, her dead mother could be too. And that really would be more than she could bear.

  Shavi seemed to sense what she was thinking, for his face softened a little. “It is my burden. The price I had to pay for getting the information from the spirits in Mary King’s Close.”

  “But that’s terrible! That’s not a price, it’s a sentence! It’s not fair!”

  “It is my burden. I will cope with it.” It was obvious he couldn’t bring himself to speak any more, and however much she wanted to ask him what the spectre had said, she knew it was something he would never tell. But she could see from the expression on his face that it must have been something awful indeed. How much longer would he have to put up with it, she thought? The rest of his life? The thought filled her with such pity that all she could do was hug him tightly and bury his face in her shoulder.

  When she awoke in the dead of the night, she was surprised she had actually managed to fall asleep. Shavi’s haunted face had hung in her mind, feeding every deep, mortal fear she had about death and what lay beyond it. She remembered stroking his head as it lay on her breast, desperately trying to comfort him, although he gave no voice to his fears; but then she looked in his eyes and she knew there was nothing she could do that would ever make him feel better.

  The thoughts faded with the realisation she was awake, and the knowledge that she had woken for a reason. At first, in her sleep-befuddled state, she had no idea why. Shavi slept soundly beside her. Outside the tent the wind moaned gently among the trees and the leaves and branches sighed, but no more nor less than at any other time during the night.

  As she went to lower her head back to the pile of clothes she was using as a pillow she realised … it was there on the edge of her senses, barely audible, almost a hallucination. Her fingers felt the gentle yet insistent throb of it from deep within the ground. When she lowered her ear towards the groundsheet, she could hear it. Lub-dub, lub-dub. So distant, which made her realise how powerful it must be; never ceasing. She tried to tell herself she was mis-sensing it on the edge of a dream, that it was a water pump, that it was the reverberation of the river through the soil and the rock.

  Lub-dub, lub-dub.

  It seemed to be calling out to her and issuing a warning at the same time. And then she knew what it really sounded like. The beating of a heart that would never know death, buried far beneath the ancient landscape. The image spawned a wave of terror. Laura screwed up her eyes and covered her ears, but it was there inside her head and there was nothing she could do to get it out, and she knew she would not sleep again that night. Lub-dub, lub-dub. The relentless rhythm of death and madness.

  While Laura and Shavi were just winding their way out of the city centre, Church and Tom skirted the edge of the Old Town before cutting across its easternmost edge to break into the green expanse of Holyrood Park. The sedate mass of the Royal household loomed up silently through the haar which obscured all of Arthur’s Seat apart from the lowest twenty feet. The area, normally a haven for joggers and dog-walkers, was deserted. In i
ts desolation it seemed unbearably lonely and ancient.

  No words passed between them until they were standing before the wellhead, feeling unseasonably cold.

  “Here we are then,” Church said banally.

  Now they were there, they could see how out of place the well-head looked, surrounded by the wild grass and bare rock of the wilderness that soared up above the city: a defiant statement that man would not be bowed by nature. Iron bars ran on both sides of the forecourt before the well and up the hillside over the top of it. The well-head itself was dark stone stained with the residue of years; the water trickled out into a small pool just out of reach beyond more vandal-proof bars. It smelled of cold iron and dark tombs. Above it was a plaque which said:

  St. Margaret’s Well

  This unique Well House dates from the late 15th century. It originally stood at Restalrig, close to the church, and its design is a miniature of St. Triduana’s Aisle there. In 1860 it was removed from its first site, which was then encroached upon by a railway depot, and was reconstructed in its present position near a natural spring.

  Church read it carefully then said, “When they moved it, did whoever was in charge know this was the entrance to the path beneath Arthur’s Seat? Or was it coincidence?”

  “There is no coincidence.” Tom surveyed the well-head carefully, as if he were looking for a lock.

  “So someone did know?”

  “Perhaps. A great deal of secret knowledge has been maintained down the years. There are numerous societies which keep their version of the truth close to them, many secret believers passing words down from mother to daughter, father to son. Or perhaps the people who moved the well-head were simply guided by an unseen hand.”

  A few weeks earlier Church would have met such a comment with derision, but now he was more than aware of what lay behind the visible. “So how do we get in? Can you see the switch like you did at Tintagel?”

  “I can, but I’d be remiss in my job if I didn’t start teaching you.”

  “I can’t see anything!”