by Gary Dolman
After perhaps no more than twenty-five or thirty paces there was a shallow, left-hand bend to the cave passage. Atticus followed his companions and their shadows around and as he did so, he gasped and froze in his tracks.
In front of them was a large, almost perfectly circular cavern, or perhaps it was after all a vault, hewn from the rock by man or dwarf. The lower part of the cavern wall was lined all around with small, square stones onto which broad, flat coping stones had been laid to form a continuous shelf or bench. It struck Atticus later that they had probably been long ago stripped from the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall. To one side of this shelf a brace of small, wooden kegs had been stood side-by-side, each branded with the letters ‘A’ and ‘R’ in burnt, black characters. Next to these, the light of the miner’s lamp flickered on the polished brass of a military bugle sitting upright on its wide bell, and on what a second glance revealed to be a neat stack of the plate and mail which made up a suit of armour. A great, empty helm sat by this stack; the polished, white dragon of the crest seemingly about to leap, snarling from its place straight at their breasts.
None of these, however, were what had caused Atticus to gasp in shock, nor to cause Uther Pendragon to drop suddenly to his knees and scream. The reason for that lay instead in the terrible sight that lay directly ahead of them.
On the stone slabs of the bench at the furthest point of the vault, two figures were perched side-by-side. One was a skeleton and the white of its skull seemed to flicker and dance in the light of the lantern so that it seemed almost alive. It was a woman, or at least, it was dressed as a woman with a long, slender, blood-red gown hanging limply from the bare collar bones. Rising from her skull was a hennin; a tall, conical hat with a long, sheer veil hanging behind. Its rich red hue caused the white of her bones to seem yet starker. Around the vertebrae of the neck a large, gold locket, bright and untarnished, hung on a thick chain and lay heavily against the bones of the hollow breast.
The other was neither flesh nor bone, but something in between – a grotesque caricature of a human being. It was clad in a full suit of medieval armour and only the face was visible beneath the visor of the great helm and its own crest of a fiery, red dragon.
But God forgive the face.
The desiccated, yellow-orange skin was stretched thinly over the bones of the skull. Its teeth protruded through the open slash of the mouth below the nose which had all but shrivelled away to nothing. The worst by far, however, were the eyes: flat, dark and sightless, and yet staring back at them in silent, everlasting agony.
As Artie had told them – though not truly warned them – it was a corpse; a human corpse mummified by the dry air of the cavern and perhaps by something else.
“Behold King Arthur Pendragon of the Britons and his queen, Lady Guinevere,” Artie announced dramatically.
“Now do you believe us, Mr Fox?” The note of triumph was clear in Jennifer’s voice.
“No!” bellowed Uther, his voice magnified and thrown back and forth a hundred times by the hard walls of the vault.
His head sank slowly forward to the cave floor.
“It’s not her; it is not Guinevere,” he whispered.
There was a long, uncertain silence.
“But it must be,” Jennifer said. “It all fits perfectly don’t you see? Here is a vault close to Sewingshields Castle. There is a bugle horn and a—”
“Jenny, that isn’t Lady Guinevere; it’s Lady Igraine.”
Uther lifted his head.
“Igraine!” he repeated, his voice a wail.
Jennifer Lowther smiled fondly and shook her head.
“But it must be Guinevere, Uther. King Arthur’s mother died in a monastery. I thought you would have known that.”
Uther staggered to his feet. He turned to Artie and his eyes were stricken, like the eyes of the mummy.
“Arthur, I’m so sorry but that is your mother who sits there; Lady Igraine Lowther. The White Dragon took her as I said it had, as I always said it had.”
Artie stared at him, trying to make sense of his words.
“Come now, Uther.” Jennifer took his arm. “It’s just your delusions, your illness, telling you such nonsense. This lady is clearly hundreds of years old, look at her dress, and Artie is just one-and-twenty.”
Uther ripped at his hair in frustration.
“What I say isn’t my illness. It is the truth!” He lifted Jennifer’s hand roughly from his arm and pushed it away. “The lady there died just twenty years ago on these moors. I recognise the dress and I recognise her locket. It is Lady Igraine Lowther, Arthur’s mother and my true love, who was soon to be plain Igraine Pendragon.”
The world finally stopped.
Artie whirled around, his eyes fiery with passion and the reflected light of the miner’s lamp.
“It can’t be. You must be truly mad!”
“Mr Pendragon is entirely correct, Artie.” Atticus’s voice was loud in the vault, but calm and reasonable. “I’m so sorry, but it is almost certainly your mother sitting there. The same man who killed her also killed six, possibly even seven others…”
“It is not entirely the truth!”
The new voice, loud and stentorian as Verthandi’s boomed and rolled around the cavern like a volley of cannon. Sir Hugh Lowther was standing at the entrance, his face thrown into eerie relief by the light of the lantern and twisted into an expression of the utmost loathing and contempt.
“Yes, it is the truth that it is Igraine Lowther who sits there. Arthur, you make the acquaintance of your mother at last. Be joyful, isn’t that what you always wanted? It is the truth, too, that she died twenty years ago, but not on the moors, Britton – Igraine died here in this very vault. As for whether or not she loved you, who can say for sure?”
He shrugged.
“Half the scoundrels in Northumberland would perhaps wish to lay claim to that particular honour. One of them sits there, next to her, clad in armour.”
“Would I be correct in presuming that to be a certain Mr Lancelot Gibson?” Atticus asked.
“How does he know that?” Urth asked in amazement.
Lowther shrugged and turned his penetrating gaze onto him.
“Very good, Fox. Yes, those are indeed the mortal remains of Lancelot Edward Gibson, my one-time comrade and companion-in-arms in the Fighting Fifth.”
“With whom your wife was having a romantic entanglement?”
“Having a romantic entanglement?” Urth spat. “There was no romance. He knew she was an actress, little better than a whore, and he just wanted to take her.”
“Or rather, she wanted to take him,” Verthandi laughed and her sisters sniggered.
Sir Hugh seemed to wrestle with himself for a few moments before he replied to Atticus’s question. When he did speak, his voice was cold and hard.
“I suppose it depends very much upon your view of romance. You see, Igraine was an actress. She was a creative, a rather imaginative person and she had created an image for herself of being ravished by a knight in shining armour. I suppose the fact that Gibson’s Christian name was Lancelot pushed her towards him, or maybe him towards her. Either way, he betrayed me by obliging her in that fantasy, using the armour from my own house to do it, by God!”
“She couldn’t stop having him, and having all his brother starlings,” Urth taunted.
“I know, I know!” Lowther roared and Jenny sobbed. He closed his eyes for a moment, waiting until the discipline of the soldier in him took hold once more.
“Igraine was meticulous in keeping a diary, Fox. She recorded everything she did, no matter how… distasteful. One day the Norns – the Sisters of the Wyrd – spoke to me. They told me to read it.
“And so I did. I read a fine, old tale of treachery and lust. For example, in the case of Gibson there, take the 17th of May, 1868.”
Lowther stared into the void as he recited the entry.
“‘Today, I went to Hexham on the invitation of Mr Lancelot Gibson. He had his c
arriage fetch me so he might borrow the ‘red dragon’ armour from the stairway.
‘What a surprise; he had sent a present for me too – my own medieval gown and hennin hat. It fitted me perfectly.
‘It is his wife Victoria’s birthday next week and we are going to perform a one-act play for her called Lancelot and Guinevere.
‘Mr Gibson was just as dishonourable as the character he is to play. He was quite desperate to seduce me and he no sooner got me into the dress than he got me out of it again. Oh la! My own knight in shining armour.’”
His eyes regained their focus and even in the imperfect light of the lamp, Atticus could see the hurt and bitterness in them give way to raw anger.
“He can play that character for the rest of eternity now, what?” Sir Hugh’s stare burned into the sightless eyes of the mummy and the Norns cackled with laughter.
“Gibson was a fellow officer in the Fighting Fifth. It was unforgivable.”
“So Gibson died here, in this cavern too?” Atticus asked. “I suspect it was before Lady Igraine though, rather than afterward. There were two screams of a woman reported the morning she disappeared, one after another.”
Sir Hugh nodded.
“Once I knew for certain of her adultery, and more importantly, I knew with whom, then our destinies were written for us. Quo Fata Vocant once again, Fox; ‘Whither the Fates call.’ We both appreciate the significance of those words do we not?”
He smiled wistfully.
“I invited Gibson to ride with me. I told him that I had private concerns in my marriage about which I desired his discrete and confidential advice.”
He smiled again, but this time the smile was chilling.
“It worked like a charm. He couldn’t contain himself with curiosity to know whether or not I suspected him. Foolishly, he agreed to meet in secret by the Roman Wall.
“I told him I suspected Igraine of spreading her favours outside of our marriage vows and even that my son, who was just over twelve months of age at the time, was likely to have been fathered by another man. Under a pretext of showing him my evidence, I brought him here, to this old gin smugglers’ cave, which I had the misfortune to become acquainted with as a boy. I had previously fetched the armour, the armour he had borrowed to seduce my wife, and set it up.
“When he saw it here, he knew that his game was up and that I knew everything.
“And so it was, Fox; his game was well and truly up. I have travelled the furthest outposts of the Queen’s great empire, teaching the natives and the savages to mind their manners. But I never dreamt that I should ever need to do the same in Northumberland, to a fellow officer and a gentleman.
“He paid the price. Yes, sir, he paid it in full. I killed him as honour demanded. I cut out his treacherous heart and embalmed the rest of him; the mercury in the carroting juice worked admirably for that. So I have been able to keep him here ever since, dressed in the armour as you see him now.”
He chuckled coldly.
“That night, I posted a typewritten envelope to Igraine. Inside was an invitation to meet in this vault. I had shown it to her when we were first courting so she knew it well. She used to call it her fairy grotto. Then I initialled it ‘LEG’ – ‘Lancelot Edward Gibson’ – so she could be sure whom it was from.
“Again, my strategy worked. She set off alone the following morning on some lame pretext of visiting an elderly, sick cottager on the moors. But instead, she came here. I followed her.”
He chuckled once more.
“Forgive me but it was so very amusing, do you see? Igraine could on occasion be a little, shall we say, excitable. When she entered the vault, she began to scold the suit of armour, armour you will recall that contained only a corpse. She told him that he was wasting his time; that their affair was over and that he should go back to Victoria. She also said that she dearly loved another. Naturally there was no reply from him so she stepped forward to lift the visor and…”
He grinned maniacally, leaving the sentence hanging horrifically in their imaginations.
“That was the cause of the first scream I presume, Sir Hugh?”
“Exactly, Atticus; you do not object to me calling you Atticus do you? We are becoming so very well acquainted with one another, telling our life stories as we are.”
“I don’t object at all, Sir Hugh, but tell us about the second scream.”
“The second scream? The second scream came when she turned to see me behind her, standing just here, where I stand now, although I cannot suppose that I looked quite as ghastly as the corpse. Nevertheless, I did have a sword in my hand and I was forced to use it both to satisfy my honour and to wipe out her sins. It was to my sorrow because in spite of everything, I still dearly loved the woman. I still do, Atticus – now more than ever.
“I come here every day, to this vault and tell her of my day. I remind her that soon she will live again. But that day I killed her and I sat her body on the bench there next to her adulterous companion.
“I needed to possess her, Atticus. I needed to be the one who’d had her in the end. So I removed her flesh and I ate it – starting with her heart. I ate what I could there and then, and after that I sliced up the rest and cured it to make biltong meat.”
“You ate her flesh – human flesh?” Atticus asked incredulously.
Lowther nodded, grinning.
“Her heart tasted a damn site better than Gibson’s did. But the Norns made me share her. They reminded me that she did love one other and that he too should be allowed to feast on her.”
He stood, straight and proud.
“Quo Fata Vocant. Whatever they command, I must do it, no matter how painful.
“When Igraine’s bones had dried out, I dressed her in that gown that Gibson gave to her. But I suffer no dust to lie upon it, Atticus, no sir, I do not. I keep her bones white and the gown clean. She and Lancelot have kept each other company ever since and he must watch as I kiss and embrace her each day, knowing that never more can he come between us.”
Chapter 38
Atticus Fox regarded Sir Hugh Lowther in horror.
“So then you plotted your revenge on your wife’s other lovers? And that also inspired you to commission the statue of the three Norns?”
“Atticus, you are very good, very good indeed. It is a great pity that this will be your last commission. Yes, once Igraine was dead, the Norns commanded me to read her other diaries. When I did so, I discovered in detail how I had been made to look a fool, not once, as she had already admitted to, but many times.
“The Fates, the Sisters of the Wyrd, saw my anguish and they were merciful. They told me both how I might exact my revenge and how I could right forever the wrongs that had been committed.
“The three Norns are the Fates of the Teutonics and the Scandinavians, of the Angles and the Saxons, past, present and future. It seemed appropriate to commission that particular statue of them in gratitude for their great kindnesses to me.”
Atticus said, “It was the statue that first aroused my suspicions towards you, Sir Hugh – that and the sword you used to kill Elliott. The Norns seemed to be more totems than objets d’art to you and the figures were positioned so symbolically: Urth, the Norn of the past with her hand posed as if to point an accusing finger directly towards Igraine’s bed chamber; Verthandi, the Norn of the present watching over you and your present household; and Skuld, the ‘future’ and as you said, your particular favourite, looking over the empty moors. Unless I am very much mistaken, she faces directly towards Sewingshields and this very vault.”
Sir Hugh smiled his chilling smile once again.
“My destiny is bound up with Igraine in her death just as much as it was during her life.
“When I realised that Arthur could not possibly be my son, because at the time he would have been conceived I had been in India training the Sepoys, Igraine confessed her affair with Gibson. She had no choice, because I had read every last sordid detail already in her journal of
the time. She acknowledged that he was the father.”
Artie, who had been standing with his back towards them staring at the mortal remains of his mother turned with a bewildered expression on his face.
Sir Hugh fixed him with a cold glare as he continued.
“She blamed me for her actions, did you know, Atticus? She blamed me, by God! She said that I, in leaving her alone for so long, had driven her into the arms of another man.
“Bah, stuff and nonsense! I was serving my Queen and my country’s great empire as a first-line fusilier officer and as a knight, by Jove – a real knight, a fighting knight, dubbed by Her Majesty Queen Victoria herself. Why did she need to fantasise about a make-believe?
“There was also the Gypsy Elliott. She found the idea of a tryst with a ‘hot-blooded Gypsy,’ as she described him, as irresistible. She would steal off to his caravan whenever the inclination took her. As often as not, he would move the damn thing to some secluded spot up on the moors so they wouldn’t be seen.
“It was my pleasure to ram my sword through his treacherous heart; the same heart he said she had stolen from him. But do you know he was quite wrong. She hadn’t stolen it at all. It was still there when I reached inside of him and dragged it out of his miserable body.”
“Was the heart the gift, Sir Hugh, or was that the death itself?” Atticus asked.
Sir Hugh stood aghast.
“You know about the gifts? So the Norns do speak to you after all. But no matter, all our destinies are carved already. The lives were the gifts. There are to be seven in total. The hearts were mine to eat; mine to reclaim so that Igraine will not make the same mistakes again.”
“The hearts were yours to drag out of the bodies and eat!” It was Atticus’s turn to stand aghast. “Like a South Sea cannibal?”
Lowther grinned at his expression.
“Not quite, Atticus. I wasn’t savage about it. I brought the hearts back to this cave and ate them in front of Igraine. Does that still offend you? It was the Norns who ordered me to eat them. Igraine’s love and devotion will come to me next time – all of it – just as it should. After all is said and done, I am her husband.”
