Red Dragon – White Dragon

by Gary Dolman

  “No, Father, you’re wrong!”

  His cry carries over the lake. The myriad fowl resting on its surface hear it and take to the skies, taking his agony and proclaiming it to the four corners of the kingdom.

  Like Sir Bedivere of the Sinews, he flings his blade of fine steel out to the spirit and runs and runs and runs. He flees the memories as they come to tear his mind to pieces.

  And then, in the time it takes to drop from the crag tops to the rocks beneath, again and again and again, he is there. He is there, as he always is there, at Sewingshields, where yesterday, a thousand years ago, he had pissed himself whilst the demons took turns at his mama. He stops and through his agony, he prays.

  At chapel they say there is but one God, and that His name is Jehovah. But his father and the old men of the estate have told him of others; of Woden, of Thunor and of Tiw – gods with fierce, Nordic names that seem somehow more real in this wild, bleak land. And his father has told him too of the Fates, who are the Norns, the Sisters of the Wyrd, who know the soul of every man.

  And because, like every man, he is in thrall to the Fates, it is to them that he prays.

  “Please, Norns, please bring back my mama, or else take my soul too. Please help me because I can’t bear this for another, single day. Amen.”

  So be it.

  And because this place is a special, sacred place, the Sisters of the Wyrd, the Norns, hear him.

  Against the outcrop, in the deep shadows of the hollow, a spectre, a wisp of mist, delicate and ethereal hangs in the air. Surely it is, surely it must be, the shade of his mama. He runs to it, feet splashing and slipping in the ice cold water of the haggs, staggering like a man drunk and he embraces it, tries to gather it in his arms.

  But wait! It is seeping from the heart of the rock itself, through the ivy that clothes it.

  He burrows, reaching for his mama, pushing his arm through the tangled vegetation as if it is the Veil of Death. But as far as his arm can reach, his grasping hands touch nothing. Puzzled, he delves into the ivy. It parts like a curtain to reveal a deep, black void that stretches back into infinity.

  Fingers of chilly air reach out for him and he shivers. For fourteen summers he has been playing here. Fourteen summers, and he never knew of this cavern hidden away behind the ivy.

  There is a stone on the floor of the entrance. It is regular and square such as those the castle is built from, and upon it are some objects. He stoops down to them. There is a flint strike-a-light, fashioned in bronze, a little painted bottle full of tinder and beside them a large church candle laced all around by a fretwork of wax.

  A moment later he has the tinder and the candle lit. The flickering, yellow light from the wick dances on the walls of the cavern and stabs deep into the black heart of the rock.

  He walks forward, following the fiery ring as it draws him deeper and deeper. And then, in the utter stillness of the place, silent but for the thrashing of his heart, a voice screams out:

  “Coward!”

  He drops to the floor like a man shot, and the candle drops with him, spilling its wax and extinguishing itself, plunging him into blackness.

  The voice screams again. “You are nothing but a coward!” The words echo again and again like the ricochets of a musket shot.

  And then there is silence.

  “Who is it? Who are you?” His own words sound unnatural to him; high and strained, somehow otherworldly.

  “Who are you? Who are you?” A different voice is speaking now, mocking him. “Oh, lordy; who are we?

  “We are the Norns, boy. The ones your father told you about. She is Urth – my sister – and I am Verthandi.”

  “And my name is Skuld.” This third voice is younger, kinder perhaps than the others. In fact, even through his terror, it reminds not a little of his dear, dead mama.

  “What… what do you want?” he asks, lying as still as a corpse. But even as he asks, he already knows the answer.

  “We want your soul.” The first voice – Urth – answers him. Her tone is cold and harsh and it crackles with hatred.

  “You offered it, fair and square. Do you remember – in your prayer to us? We accepted it and now we have struck a bargain.”

  “You can’t go back on your word.” It is Verthandi again, “Not now. What would your father say to that? Your word is your honour. You are a Lowther, the runt of the litter certainly, but still a Lowther.”

  “My Sister is right,” said Urth. “And it was us who sent the men to violate your mama. It was her misfortune but it was your fault. You were the one who made it her fate – her Wyrd. We punished her because she brought you into the world.

  “You stood and you pissed yourself as you watched, and you did nothing. Your father gave you a sword and you repaid him by casting it away – just as you have cast it away today and begged us for your mama back.

  “Do you want her to come back and sing you lullabies while you nuzzle her breast? Like the three men nuzzled her breast?

  “No! She knew she had brought a craven runt into the world and she knew that the only honourable path for her was to give back her soul.”

  “We will not bring your mama back.” Skuld’s words crushed him utterly. “So, as you asked, we have taken your own instead.”

  “We,” said Verthandi simply, “possess you now.”

  “No!” It is too much to bear. For the second time that day, he screams and he flees. But he knows, as the laughter shrieks in his ears, louder and louder and louder, that he did indeed ask, and that now it is too late; there will be no escape – not ever.

  Chapter 21

  As they ducked under the impossibly low lintel of the front door, straight into the little parlour of Samson Elliott’s cottage, Atticus and Lucie Fox’s first impression was that of just having walked into a child’s kaleidoscope. Everything from the walls to the window frames, from the chairs to the table were brightly, even gaudily painted in every colour imaginable. Before Elliott’s brothers had begun their partial ransack, Lucie noted with a housekeeper’s eye, the cottage must have been meticulously clean and ordered.

  “It’s so very unlike a man,” she remarked, “but I suppose after years of living in a tiny caravan, he couldn’t exist any other way.”

  “This is not much bigger,” Atticus observed.

  Lucie smiled in admiration as her eyes crept systematically around the little room and registered every detail.

  “Who do you suppose that lady is?” she asked after a moment, “She’s very beautiful.”

  Atticus followed the direction of her gaze. On a mantelshelf above the freshly blacked fireplace was a photograph. It was a small photograph contained in a delicate, silver picture frame. The subject was a tall, statuesque, young woman in traditional Gypsy dress.

  Atticus started. The dress the woman was wearing was the very dress they had found in Elliott’s caravan. He was sure of it.

  “It is the same dress, isn’t it?” Lucie voiced his thoughts.

  Atticus nodded and picked it up. “I’m certain it’s the same dress but I really have no clue who the lady might be. She is, as you say, strikingly beautiful.”

  He pondered for a moment.

  “Elliott was never married as far as we know, but this lady is dressed as a Gypsy. Might she be his sister perhaps? She does have a familiar look about her.” He turned the frame over and slid back the tiny clips holding the plate.

  “The date given on the back of the photograph is October 1867, so she could be around the right age.”

  Lucie nodded uncertainly. “Perhaps so; that would make sense, I suppose. I wonder why Elliott would have her dresses in his caravan though. Is she dead, do you think?”

  She watched as Atticus carefully replaced the photograph into the frame and then glanced around once more at the contradiction of perfect order and utter chaos.

  “I can’t immediately see anything out of the ordinary here, with the obvious exception of the mess the brothers have caused.”
<
br />   Atticus bit his lip. “I kick myself over that, Lucie. I was well aware of the Gypsy traditions and I knew that Elliott had two brothers. I really should have made sure we’d examined his possessions here before they arrived to destroy them.”

  He shrugged.

  “But I agree with you; nothing particularly excites my suspicions here. Let’s leave it to them to do with as they wish and let Samson’s spirit rest in peace. We really don’t want any more spectres returning from the Kingdom of the Dead.”

  Chapter 22

  The very instant Atticus and Lucie Fox slipped back through the doors of Shields Tower they were hailed by a ruddy-faced Sir Hugh Lowther thundering down the grand stairs towards the accusing finger of Urth.

  “Aha, Fox, Lucie, you’re back from your expeditions at last. That’s about bloody time! Collier has orders to bring tea directly you get back. You can join me in the orangery and bring me up to the present on your progress.”

  He briefly, unthinkingly, brushed the hand of Skuld, the nearest of the Norns, as he rounded the statue and then strode briskly through the stained-glass door of the orangery. Atticus and Lucie followed him gladly. The prospect of afternoon tea really had never seemed so welcome.

  Once they had collapsed gratefully into the comfortable wicker chairs, Atticus related the highlights of their long day, beginning with his discovery of the sabaton prints in the field and ending with the altercation between John Lawson and the two brothers Elliott.

  “I’m rather afraid they hold Michael Britton responsible for their brother’s death,” he explained, “and I have few doubts they will try to take revenge. They’re Gypsies, so it will be a matter of honour to them. I think we may have put them off venturing anywhere near to his cottage for the present, but I still believe it would be prudent to send a constable to speak with them, just to make certain of it.”

  Sir Hugh looked at him shrewdly for several seconds before he replied.

  “Very well, Fox, I’ll make the request directly. Madman or not, I certainly wouldn’t want Britton to die at the hands of Gypsies.”

  The shadow of what might have been pain passed over his face before he suddenly leaped out of his chair.

  “If you would both excuse me, I’ll go and make the call on my telephone.”

  A few minutes later, the door-glass rattled to a knock, the brass handle twisted and a parlour-maid backed into the orangery carrying a tea service. Sir Hugh appeared close behind her.

  “I’ve done as you recommended, Fox,” he boomed. “The constable from Millhouse is on his way to Elliott’s cottage now to warn ’em off Britton. That is if he can get past the Fox and bloody Hounds.”

  “Very good, Sir Hugh, thank you.”

  Atticus stood and passed him the plaster cast of the sabaton. “By and by, you might be interested in this; it’s the cast we spoke about.”

  “By Jove, but this is good work, Fox,” Lowther exclaimed in delight. He turned it over and over in his hands. “It couldn’t be better. Why couldn’t the police have done this, eh? That’s what I should like to know. Now we have a cast of the boot. What did you call it?”

  “It’s called a sabaton, Sir Hugh. It’s part of a knight’s armour.”

  “But have you been able to match it to the rest of the armour yet, Fox? You said that you had already been to call on Britton.” He looked up enquiringly from the cast, his eyes dancing with excitement.

  “We did call on him, Sir Hugh,” Atticus confirmed. “And we did speak to him at length, but that was whilst the cast was hardening and he was much too distressed for us to think of returning straight away.”

  “Too distressed, my arse. What is he, a man or a bloody little girl?”

  He grunted irritably.

  “You’re very fortunate you spoke to him at all, mind you. He’ll usually see no one – at least no one he doesn’t already know very well. He hides from ’em. Can you believe that? His doctor claims it’s his illness that makes him do it, but how can that be? Personally, I think he’s either an impudent scoundrel or a damned coward, or more probably, both!”

  He glared as if daring them to challenge him. When they chose not to, he continued. “Nonetheless, in the second room of that hovel he calls home, Britton keeps a suit of armour. My first wife gave it to him in appreciation of that damned fresco he painted for her on the wall of your guest room.”

  “We saw it, Sir Hugh.”

  “Good! I’m pleased you’ve seen it, Fox, because then you will also have seen the collection of oddments he keeps in there too. He believes them to be relics from King Arthur’s time and he calls them Hallows or some such nonsense.”

  He looked cannily between Atticus and Lucie.

  “Well I’ll wager a guinea to a button that your cast here will match perfectly the… the sabatons of that armour.”

  “We quite intend to compare the two at the earliest opportunity,” Lucie assured him.

  “Excellent! Then we are close to being able to arrest Britton for murder?” Sir Hugh’s eyes suddenly danced again.

  Atticus could not altogether decide whether Sir Hugh’s remark was a question or a statement, so he said, “We are getting closer to being able to identify our murderer, yes. Whether that will turn out to be Michael Britton or some other person, it is still too early to say.”

  Lucie saw Lowther’s colour rising up and flushing his cheeks and just as he opened his mouth to bellow his protests, she deflected the conversation.

  “Sir Hugh, tell me a little more about this Sewingshields Castle. Mr Britton seems quite obsessed by it.”

  He stared, open-mouthed at her for several seconds before he answered. And when he did, his tone dripped with bitterness.

  “Sewingshields Castle: that old pile of rubble? It wasn’t much of a castle when it stood. I only ever remember it as a ruin surrounded by clarts and mire. It is supposed to have been built on the site of an earlier castle, which belonged to King Arthur – perhaps even Camelot.

  “Britton, when he fell back into lunacy and started to believe he was Uther Pendragon again became, as you so rightly say, obsessed with it. He spent day and night there, clambering about the ruins and wandering the moors and the marshes around it, whatever the weather.

  “I eventually prevailed on my neighbour who owned the site to allow me to have it demolished and the stones taken away. Fortunately he was a distant relative of mine. My ancestor, Sir Robert de Lowther once owned a castle that was abandoned by his nephew in favour of Sewingshields Castle. If I hadn’t had it removed, Britton would surely have perished from exposure there, or fallen to his death from the high cliffs.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Perhaps it might have been better for him if he had.”

  Lucie asked, “On the morning of Samson Elliott’s murder, did you by any chance hear the sound of a bugle across the moors from the direction of Sewingshields?”

  “Bugle, Lucie? No, I bloody well did not.” His eyes popped open, his face creased into a grin and he chuckled. “I can guess who’s prompted you to ask me that question though; our madman has been hearing bugles calling for months.”

  Atticus set his teacup down with a clatter.

  “Britton said that. And he told us that the bugle calls had been getting louder and more frequent of late. Colonel, do you know for how long he has been hearing them and precisely how frequently?”

  Sir Hugh seemed momentarily taken aback by the ferocity of Atticus’s question.

  “Oh, for a good year now, Fox, certainly since I returned from the Black Mountains expedition with the Fifth. He says he hears the bugle every week these days. As you say, it has been getting more frequent with time.

  “It seems to me that his condition is deteriorating almost by the day and I’ve insisted that his physician, Dr Hickson of Hayden Bridge – another rank fool – call on him regularly, as he used to do before Artie was born.”

  He smiled fiercely at Lucie.

  “I see myself as Britton’s guardian,
do you see, Lucie. I watch over him, and I take it upon myself to be fully acquainted with the progress of his condition.”

  “You do seem admirably concerned about him, Sir Hugh,” Atticus remarked.

  “I am, Fox, I am very concerned, as I am for all those attached in some way to me or mine. I’m a guardian to the whole damned lot of ’em. In fact, I’m a little like a Norn myself – a fourth Norn – in that to a large degree, I help to decide their fate. It’s the reason I commissioned your services in the first place, and the reason I sit here now asking how close you are to solving this puzzle and proving that Britton is the murderer.”

  Atticus sipped his tea as he considered Sir Hugh’s words.

  “As I say, we are beginning to formulate some interesting suspicions on that score. These things, depending on the complexity of the case, are wont to take many days of investigation.

  “The evidence against Britton is damning at first sight, but entirely circumstantial. Murder investigations in particular have more twists and turns in them than the road to Paradise and it’s still possible that the murderer may be someone else entirely.”

  “Well I’m convinced it is all perfectly straightforward and the bloody madman needs to hang,” Sir Hugh blustered. “He’s obsessed by the legends of Arthur; both murders took place close by his cottage and he’s had a sword in there since the day he moved into it.”

  He held up the cast.

  “Now you even have this and you will find it exactly matches the armour he keeps in his own bedroom. By Jove, man, it seems to me that the evidence as you call it, circum-bloody-stantial or not, is quite overwhelming.”

  “Yet it is still not entirely conclusive, Sir Hugh. Please do not misunderstand us; Britton may well have committed the murders and indeed, it is very likely that he has, but we can’t hang a man without absolute proof.”

  Sir Hugh stared into his half-empty tea cup for several long seconds. Then he asked, “So what would you consider to be absolute proof, Fox?”