Brand X

by Christianna Brand

  With that magic, had gone all other magics too: the magic of any happiness but that which came from the One Desire fulfilled: all other loves, all other friendship, all other human relationship but indifference. She had offered her soul to the Master of Darkness and the Master had taken her at her word.

  Someone had disturbed her circle—she could not know of the pang with which he had watched how, with a careless kick, his boy had dislodged the stones. She knelt to replace them and felt in her breast something like reverence for the single-hearted passion of that child that once she had been; with awe for the bitter reality with which the child’s sacrifice had been accepted and made good. And in the heart of the ring she laid the sprig of blackthorn—with the little jewelled lighter, last pitiful symbol of a fulfilment to be paid for through all the unrelenting years to come—set fire to the dry stem. But the tiny flame nickered and died. The time for propitiation was past and gone.

  She got up from her knees and, stumbling down through the starless night to where, unchanged, her destiny awaited her, glanced down and saw that the dark spikes of the blackthorn had stained her white breast with a crimson smear. It is the last drop of my heart’s blood, she thought; and with an old gesture, put up her hand to the low neck of her blouse, and held it close.

  The Hilltop

  THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT it in El Vino’s, half a dozen of them. Only Bill’s paper had carried the story. ‘Where’d you get hold of it, Bill?’

  ‘I was in Florence last week when they found the girl. The place isn’t far, thirty miles or so.’

  ‘Hadn’t they searched the place before?’

  ‘Well, it’s off the beaten track and her car was found a good way away and facing in the other direction. And there’s dozens of these places: little villages walled up on top of their little hills. No one ever goes there and the people never come out of them. Self-supporting, I suppose—a few olives, a few vines, a few goats and pigs and what not. This lot had been shut away up there for generations.’

  ‘Must in-breed like mad?’

  ‘Hence these monsters. And to make it all more horrific, this top man of theirs with a bloody great steel hook instead of a hand.’

  ‘All this time she’d been there—?’

  ‘God knows how she survived so long. But she died in hospital, almost at once.’

  ‘And having said nothing…?’

  Having said nothing. She had died in hospital almost at once, having said nothing. Tom Manderson sat with the glass of red wine lying like a little pool of blood on the table before him, and somehow contrived not to cry it out aloud: Thank God!

  People surging about them, pushing past, knocking against their chairs… Bottles clinking, voices raised in talk and laughter. But he sat there with draining colour, and the stain of red that lay within the circle of his scarred hand, wavered, grew remote, a receding speck of blood. ‘What’s the matter with old Tom? Hey, old Tom, what’s the matter with you, you’ve gone pea green all of a sudden…’

  But he was miles away—miles away. Driving down the little, dusty roads between the olive groves on that simmering hot Italian afternoon, crooning away happily to himself because the assignment in Rome had got held up and he’d remembered a very promising bit of crumpet up in Florence, who’d certainly be surprised and delighted to see him. They could have one hell of an amusing time in the next two carefree days. And talking about crumpet—here was a very promising bit of it indeed, standing forlornly by a little blue car at the side of the road. All alone and helpless and not a soul in sight.

  If she hadn’t been so dishy, no doubt he’d have zoomed on and left things to some other Samaritan to get lumbered with; as was his way. Now, however, he drew in behind the car and climbed out. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘I braked to avoid something that streaked across the road and the wretched car spun round about ten times in this dry dust and ended up pointing the wrong way; and flat conked out.’

  ‘Not the best spot on earth for a thing like that to happen?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly choose the spot, did I?’ she said, rather crossly. ‘And there must be a plague on in Italy. I’ve been stuck here for hours and nothing’s even passed by. Let alone stopped to help me.’

  ‘Well, I’ve stopped to help you,’ he suggested reasonably.

  ‘Oh. Yes. So you have!’ She switched upon him suddenly a smile of quite astonishing radiance. ‘Do you know about cars?’

  ‘Not a thing in the world,’ said Tom.

  The smile switched off as suddenly as it had come. ‘Well, that’s a lot of use then, isn’t it?’

  ‘On the other hand, I’ve got a car that goes. So I could take you to a place where chaps do know about cars and the chaps that do know about cars could—’

  ‘All right, I get the message,’ she said. She was not, he thought, a madly grateful girl. She looked at her own car doubtfully. ‘Suppose in the meantime someone does pass and pinches it?’

  ‘They’ll have a job to if the thing won’t go,’ he said.

  She burst into laughter, as delightful as the smile had been. ‘So what an advantage, really, to have a car that won’t go!’

  ‘I thought you’d see it my way,’ he said. ‘Come on!’

  She collected bags and cases from her own car and slung them into the back seat of his; hopped in beside him. ‘To Florence?’

  ‘Yes, I thought I’d grab a glance at it.’ He did not say that he was a newspaper man. Often the less they knew the better, on these little adventures. And already there were signs of this one adding up to an adventure. ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ve been touring around and then my chums were called home so I’ve just dropped them off at Rome airport. But I had to get to Milan so I decided to take in Florence en route, and go by the little back ways, to see something of the country.’

  A very, very promising bit of crumpet. And cute with it: a golden creature in a goldeny-yellow dress, with millions and millions of gold chains and beads and bracelets that made a little tinkling chiming as she moved. ‘Funny,’ he said, carefully, ‘both of us going to Florence and not a soul knowing we’ll be there.’

  She didn’t miss a trick, not this one. She interpreted, dryly: ‘Come fly with me and be my love—?’

  ‘Well—we could all love’s treasures prove…’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ she said. ‘But—Stranger, lay aside thy dreams, The Lady is not what—it seems—she seems.’

  He shrugged. ‘A pity. We might have had fun.’

  ‘Thank you again. But I don’t have that kind of fun with pick-ups. I trust,’ she added, in that dry little, cool little way that already he was beginning to find rather endearing, ‘that you will not now stop the car and invite me to walk home.’

  He didn’t know why it should suddenly all seem a bit—well, shabby; what on earth had he done to make him feel ashamed? He said without flirtatiousness: ‘No, no—Just Good Friends. But if I may say so—I do think you’re very sweet.’

  She forgot all about it, leaning out to peer up and away to their left. ‘Oh—look!’

  The little hill, jutting like an upturned bowl from the sweetly rolling countryside; with its crown of high stone walls. A narrower road turning off their road, a lane leading off from that smaller road, running steeply up and up, twisting to alleviate the gradient, being swallowed up at last into the archway just dimly discernible, interrupting the solid perpendicular of the wall. ‘I do believe one could drive right through it and come out eventually on to this road again.’

  ‘So let’s do that,’ he said, with a sudden swerve bringing the car off the tarmac, turning off again on to the narrow track leading up to the village, bumping over its stony surface in a fog of dust. ‘Ye Gods, their Borough Council aren’t exactly road-minded, are they?’

  ‘It looks as if it hasn’t been used for years.’ Above them as the lane twisted, the walls frowned down, fifteen, twenty foot high. ‘It’s a thousand years old, it’s divine, it’s marvellous…�
��

  More like a fortress, really, than a village; more like an enormous castle, walled in against an enemy. They shot up the last steep incline and in through the great open archway. His first thought was: The place is empty.

  The walls encircled a vast, dusty, cobbled square with no visible road or pathway across it, though opposite there yawned a second archway. Plastered up against the inside surfaces of the walls as though they crouched there for safety, rough little houses, long ago painted in the lovely ochres and umbers of Italy, faded now by time to a colourless blurr. Doors closed, windows blind; no stir, no sign. ‘The Deserted Village,’ he said lightly, but in fact there was no lightness about it, only a sense of strangeness, of unease, a sense of doom. She felt it too. ‘Let’s whizz through and get out of it. Now that I’m here, I don’t think I like it after all.’ But suddenly she clutched at his arm. ‘It’s not deserted. Look there!’

  So still that they had not observed them, colourless against the colourless background: three men. Standing motionless, shoulder to shoulder, all in a row, the three heads turning, slowly, slowly, staring, watching the progress of the car. ‘They’re horrible. You don’t think they mind us being here?’

  ‘They don’t look very welcoming, I must say.’ He drove forward, nevertheless, there was nothing else to do. ‘Give them a wave, ask them nicely if it’s all right.’

  She leaned out of the window, smiled, waved her hand towards the far archway, called out, ‘O.K.?’ in a deprecating voice. They continued staring but gave no sign of having heard her. ‘It’s gruesome. Let’s get out of it as fast as we can.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, stepping on the gas. They shot forward, the arch loomed up; in one moment they would be through and into the clean air, as though they had come through some foetid tunnel out into sunshine. But he yelled out: ‘Dear—Christ!’ and stamped on the brake, swerving to avoid the opening, ending up slantwise across the arch, nosing into the wall.

  No road now led away from the arch, if ever one had. Beyond it a twenty-foot drop.

  She caught at his arm with her two hands, half collapsed against him, her forehead butted against his shoulder. ‘They’d have let us drive straight over the edge. They wanted us to.’

  ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ he said. He jerked the car into reverse, began backing away from the wall, turning to drive back again across the square towards the first entrance. She whimpered: ‘Oh, God—look now!’

  The little doors open. People standing there. Faces at the windows. The three, steadily advancing, shoulder to shoulder still, to meet their own advance.

  ‘I’ll tread on the gas,’ he said. ‘We’ll be out of it before they get near us.’ But the car had not liked the sudden wrenching to one side, the sudden cutting out of the motor; and in his growing panic he had fumbled the gears, it lurched forward uncertainly, spluttered and faltered. He got it into gear again, felt its power under his hands; but too late.

  They had her out of the car, had torn open the door and dragged her out; she was screaming, hands pitifully clutching at him, dragging across the seat cushions, catching at the door handle. He flung himself across the seat after her, trying to drag her back. But the door was slammed on him, crushing a finger; in the blinding pain, for a moment he relaxed and in that moment knew, sick and guilty with the knowledge of it, that he welcomed the excuse—the reason—that prevented him from leaping out and flinging himself upon them… As the blackness passed, crouching there in the car he became aware of how she fought and struggled not two yards from him, writhing like a snake between the three men; could hear the sobbing and grunting of her efforts to get free, the terrible piercing noise of her intermittent screaming. Beyond that—no other sound; no male voices raised in effort, in anger, in exasperation—simply a silent struggle to subdue and contain her. Her clothes were half torn from her, the golden chains and bracelets ripped from her neck and arms, held exultantly aloft; he caught a glimpse of white thighs straining, of white arms flailing—of white arms flailing, flailing, growing all at once helpless and limp. Now frantically he clawed at the door nearest to her but in his coward heart knew that he was glad, was thankful that the lock was jammed fast, he could not open it. For now from the doorways that edged the cobbled square, figures were emerging, silently, slowly, with a horrible menace advancing; were standing there gazing, with brutal, bovine faces ringing him in. And within his frozen mind, the thought came thrusting through: ‘When they’ve finished with her—what will they do with me?’ He found himself sobbing, stammering out little meaningless, chopped-off prayers. ‘Oh, dear God…! Oh, Christ, help me…!’—tore off his wrist watch, his signet ring, reached for his wallet, note-stuffed, leaned out to fling them from the off-side door, the door away from her, to the silent lookers-on…

  And the door gave; and he tumbled out on to the dusty cobbles of the square.

  They had for the moment forgotten him, perhaps—the three men grouped there, growling now like dogs over the limp body of the girl. Now one relaxed his hold, took three strides round the front of the car, stood huge and terrifying over the cowering thing crouched there where it had tumbled in the dust at his feet, one pitiful hand flung up in protest: raised his right arm high and brought down the terrible hook…

  As though all hell had been loosed upon him, Tom Manderson scrambled back into the car again, slammed the door after him, with his uninjured hand found the ignition key; put his foot down on the accelerator pedal and fled away, leaving her there. The ringed group, taken by surprise, fanned out to allow of his passing, ran a few steps after him, fell back. And he was out through the arch and rocketing down the twisting track back to the main road.

  He came upon her car still standing where they had left it, as he drove like a madman back towards Rome. They would find it there—empty; facing the wrong way, facing away from Florence and the hilltop village. No sign of where she had gone; no sign—please God!—of who had gone with her. He remembered the empty road in the siesta hour, how she had said that no one had passed that way. No one was there now. Hardly giving himself a moment for thought, he stopped and with his one good hand fished out her things from the back seat where she had tossed them—was it but an hour ago?—and threw them back into her own car. If they were bloodied by the terrible wound all down his left wrist and hand—well, that need tell nobody anything. Who could ever know? He would explain in Rome that he had had an accident, been set upon in a dark street, some story or other; no sign of the intended visit to Florence need ever emerge. He had got his hand injured, gone with it to the hospital—never left Rome. I couldn’t have done anything for her, he kept telling himself as he drove on, bucketing down the empty roads; one against them all—what could I have done?

  Tell someone now? Issue a warning? Do something even at this late hour to save her?

  They’ll have killed her, he thought. And he remembered the lifeless figure in their grasp. Perhaps they’d already killed her—and she’d be better dead. But if she isn’t—

  If she wasn’t—if he sent rescuers—she would tell them; would tell them how he had cowered in the shelter of the car, not lifted a hand to save her; they would know that he had fled away at last to save his own skin, and left her there. The logical thing to do?—yes, of course; it came to him now that he could claim to have done the logical thing, to have come away to get help. But he knew that no decent man on earth but would feel that he should have stayed: should have stayed and given his life, however uselessly, however idiotically, rather than drive away in safety and leave her to those ravening wolves: to the monster with the steel hook. And anyway now—too late: how explain away the return of her possessions to her car, with his bloodstained hands?

  She’ll be dead by now, he thought. When they found her, she’d be dead; and all for nothing I’d have given myself away.

  And now in El Vino’s he sat with the glass of wine like a little pool of blood, ringed in the hand where the great scars still ran red. ‘Weren’t you there about
that time, Tom? Wasn’t it in Rome that you got into your street fight?’

  A bit tactless of old Geoff. Old Tom was pathetically sensitive about that ghastly hand of his. Bill trailed a red herring. ‘Odd thing was—her car pointing in the other direction and all her stuff still there, though it seemed to have been gone over by someone with blood on their hands. Could they have attacked her in the car?’

  ‘But you say they never came out of the village. And this was miles away.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. So…? Mind you, the car was conked out. Could someone have given her a lift?’

  ‘Then why in God’s name didn’t they come forward and say so?’

  Conked out. The car was conked out. The very word she had used, explaining it to him in her gruff little, funny little way. ‘The wretched thing spun round about ten times and ended up flat conked out.’ He stumbled to his feet. ‘Got to be getting along now.’

  ‘You look awfully rotten, old Tom. Are you O.K.?’

  ‘Never could take the rough stuff, could you, Tom? And I must say, this one’s rough all right. Poor bloody girl!’

  Poor bloody girl!—that young girl, for all that time alive—alive, yet dying—among those monsters while, all unknowing, all uncaring, the world wagged on. To ease the load of it, perhaps, to ease the horror of it, the vague sense of a universal guilt, irrationally haunting, Geoff said for them all: ‘Mind you, if these silly bitches will drive about foreign countries all on their own…’

  For all this time he had hugged his secret, told no one, lived with it alone; lived with the ceaseless fear that she would be found, would be alive to tell how he had left her there, had driven away, had told no one, had abandoned her to horror. But now she was dead, it was all over for her, with her death she was safe from it all for ever. And, he with her death, also was safe for ever. No threat to him any longer: not a soul could know. He was safe for ever. He could be at peace.