The Grail Tree

by Jonathan Gash

  I set about searching on the first tier. Maybe I was stupid not bringing at least a bread knife. A Great War French bayonet would have made me a lot more cheerful, and I had one of those back in the cottage. Like a fool, I’d been too confident. Anyhow, I knew what I was up against. No matter how uneasy I was becoming Thomas was still only one man, and a lot older than me. And I’d already worked out how little he could do, how restricted his choice of weapons was. It would be straightforward. No matter what mood I talked myself into, I’d have to keep my head and remember that. Thomas Haverro was only one bloke, unarmed, like me. We stood at least evens, and I had the edge because he couldn’t come in until he knocked and I let him in. There was only the one door. I’d checked its one key on the inside a million times. I switched the mains electric off so we’d have to fight without lights. Better for Haverro to come into darkness from the lighter outside than to arrive in electric glare. I wasn’t scared of him, but I was going to make sure any advantages going spare came to me.

  The sun was slanted lower now, and fading. Across the central area the shadow of the Galileo pendulum had moved from the far corner, crept imperceptibly along the wall, and now was fading with the shadows by the staircase. Soon it would be gone. Anyhow, even without an electric torch there would be light from the big bonfire to illumine the night air. And fireworks. And the Park gates were surmounted by large spherical lamps, so there would be a background glow. And however keen Haverro was on the museum and its lovely antiques, I was damned sure he couldn’t know it anything like as well as I. After all, ever since I’d come to live in the area I had been in two or three times a week. I’ve helped with the ancient coins, Celtic finds, tableaux, and paid several visits to guide the curator’s special exhibitions of weapons because he’s not strong in that speciality. And a doctor doesn’t have all that much recreation, so I would be fitter. Every way you looked at it, I had a head start.

  The Roman weapons were virtually crumbling. Best preserved were arrowheads and the blades from spears. Other than those there wasn’t much, apart from a pair of hefty models of Roman siege implements, and I couldn’t even lift the stones placed to show the size of the missiles used in the real thing. Good news, therefore. If I couldn’t lift the bloody things, neither could Thomas.

  Along on the other gallery were household items, pottery, querns used to grind wheat, even surgical instruments. Again, it seemed to me you were either tough enough to lift them and chuck them at an adversary or you fought barehanded. And the probes, scissors and lancets of the long-dead Roman doctor were too small and neat to be much use. For quite a while I tried working out whether any of them could be stuck into a stick as an arrow, or put into a blowpipe, but gave it up. There wasn’t a usable bow in the museum, and the crossbows were too fragile on the cross to use without putting your own eye out, though their stocks were fine. The spear held by the Roman waxwork in the gallery’s corner was, I knew, balsawood and easily snapped by a finger.

  The Egyptian lot were useless. Two spears from the Ancient British were solid enough – firm and nasty sharp flints knapped in Suffolk by ancient hands in the prehistoric Grimes Graves. These two were set in roughly-hewn modern ash staves and looked pretty menacing, though they were drilled in the shaft and held in the case by a slender chain. I cheered up again. I’d hear the glass break, and while Thomas struggled to break the chain and get the spears out . . . The clubs were under lock and key, and the glass looked tougher than was used to make the rest of the cases. Good news again.

  On the ground floor a few waxworks, the coach, sundry small cased models. Nothing. The Civil War Gallery was worth another visit, maybe. As I trudged upstairs to the second tier I began wishing I’d had the wit to come properly equipped. Sandals, or strong non-slip slippers to pad about unheard. That’s what I needed. And, I realized, pausing at the top of the second flight, an electric torch. If the doctor brought one I’d be less well off by a hell of a long chalk. For some reason I was becoming uneasy, more so as the minutes ticked on. Had I forgotten something? I set off along the gallery, glancing down towards the main door, in case. But in case what? The swine would have to knock, and do as I said before I’d let him in. I could even search him at the door.

  For a brief second I stopped to stare. I could no longer see the door. It was hidden in shadow. I peered across and failed to make out the shadow of the plumbline. That too was merged with the shadows on the far wall. And the shadows were shadows no longer. The whole museum was now not a pattern of sunshine and shadows. It was submerged in gloom. One faint gleam lit the glass ceiling, but even as I looked at it the shine died and the interior chilled further. The day had emptied from the Castle.

  Come on, Lovejoy, I told myself. Dogs shake themselves, so I shook as best I could like I’d seen terriers do coming out of the Blackwater on the sands. It did me good, for a second. At least it got me moving again.

  If you examine a museum there isn’t a great deal of weaponry usable any more. Suits of armour: valuable in money but useless because a bullet or arrow can pierce almost any antique armour that can be worn. Shields: ditto. Swords: well, a couple of Civil War swords were in good nick – one an Ironside’s Cromwellian basket sword, the other, with fine impartiality, a Cavalier’s crosshilted heavy sword taken at Marston Moor. Both were open for inspection but chained, mercifully. There were three or four flintlock pistols but none had a flint in, so even if they were in working order they’d be useless and couldn’t be fired. The cannon looked in good order, but of this date, 1645, they were still merely thick iron tubes without shells and working firing parts so I could rule it out. The local historians had obtained some cannon balls, probably wooden casts. Cromwell had to resort to round stones as often as not to keep going. I felt safer still.

  Along the now dark furniture section of Gallery Six was my notorious piece. No weapons there. That left me back at the recess which led to the roof door, and now I was in accelerating gloom. In fact, you really had to start thinking of it as dusk, if not actual darkness.

  A bang startled me. A series of pops sounded overhead. The fireworks had begun. Successive whirrs and fizzes created light for me now. Cheers came in wafts, probably the breeze from the estuary carrying the sounds towards the town. A faint glow was established constantly as a kind of background. The processions were starting. There was my light, so I was back with all my advantages again. My heart was bumping and I could feel an ugly dampness trying hard to cool my forehead. Still, up here I could dimly see most of the central area as far as the fireplace and at least across to the opposite gallery, admittedly in outline. Well, better than nothing. And if I couldn’t see the details of the main door I could make out the faint black limits of the entrance porchway leading into the museum’s centre.

  Red glows succeeded blues. Whites and greens and yellows came and faded. It was wiser to stay inside, I decided. Thomas might try to struggle if he somehow got to the roof. And it was a long way down to the dry stony spaces which once were the Castle’s moats.

  One thing was worrying me sick. Why was I cringing in a recess in a second-tier gallery, when the only way in Thomas possibly had was that single main doorway down below on the ground floor? Why was I so scared? I’d crouched down, stupidly believing that would help. Come on, Lovejoy, I lectured myself firmly. You are alone here. Be quiet, okay, but behave resolutely and with deliberation. I forced myself erect and, with the next swish of coloured glow from the ceiling, nonchalantly read the emergency notices hanging on a threaded card on the back of the roof door.

  And there, in a wash of violet light crackling above me, I read the name Dr Thomas Haverro, MD. It puzzled me at first, like a simple arithmetic sum written down obviously wrong which you can’t immediately decipher. With lunatic patience I waited for the next skyburst. It was a cluster of vivid screaming gold snakes exploded from a rocket salvo. The name was still there, on curling paper, among many others on a list. ‘Contact in the event of an emergency,’ it said in typed capitals. S
till I stood there. Dr Thomas Haverro. It was his name and address all right. So what? So he was the doctor on call for the museum, for anybody taken suddenly ill. And a doctor needs access.

  Like a key?

  Suddenly I was prickling and sweating clammily down in the balcony recess. The bastard could get in. Last night I’d been too confident. Sure of myself, I’d agreed with his suggestion of the Castle. I had talked myself into believing it was my idea, whereas he had gently and cleverly nudged me into agreement. The bastard meant us to finish up here alone. He’d known I would come innocently to the slaughter. And as soon as dusk fell he would let himself in with his pass key. Of course there were other keys. Now it was too late I realized the obvious – no attendant leaving a museum could lock the door from the inside and leave himself outside to go home, could he? And I’d not realized the significance of that single key behind the main door. If it had been the only key, then how the hell could the attendants get back in tomorrow morning? Stupid, stupid sod. I moaned to myself and crouched lower, face tight with sudden fear.

  Haverro could let himself in. Had? Already? 1 tried swallowing. Whatever state I’d landed myself in, I had to use my loaf. If he was here he’d come armed in some way. His cleverness in persuading me into this mess told me he wouldn’t know if I would be armed or not, so he’d have to go carefully at first. That is until he realized. Then he’d walk up to me and . . . I tried swallowing again, failed again. Too dry.

  And from now on I’d act as if he were here. Inside. With me. My legs were quivering uncomfortably in the confined space of the recess. At least the swine couldn’t come through the roof door, could he? Not without a hang-glider or a lunar capsule. So he was inside, having come through the main entrance. I smeared my hair down over my forehead and peered over the ledge towards where the door was on the ground floor. The next bang lit the skies red and gold. No red glare from outside through the arched gloom down below. Therefore he had locked the door behind him. And, careful as ever, he would have taken the resident key for good measure. He wasn’t the sort to forget details like that. It was only the accidental presence of Jimmo, silently fishing in the dark of a river bank, that had caught him out before.

  Ducking back, movement caught my eye. I froze, frightened to ice and unable to breathe. The next glare was green, coming downwards in hideous washes which made gargoyles of every object down the long galleries. It was the pendulum, swinging gently. Well, I’d started that. My nose still throbbed. But hadn’t I guessed its movement after stilling it to be minute, maybe less than an inch? Now it swung several gentle inches from the vertical, slowly to and fro. Somebody had moved it. A solid figure had brushed against the lead weight, gently nudging it into action. Somebody else, in here. Sweat trickled on my face.

  I could get out on to the roof through the doorway behind me, maybe shout for help. But the distant bands, the morris music, the crowds’ oohs and aahs at the fireworks and the fairground were creating a constant row. Who would hear me? Brenda might be immediately below, waiting for a quick snog by the martyrs’ plinth. Immediately below. But Haverro would see the pale rectangle of the opened door. He’d been sickeningly confident so far. He wouldn’t chuck it all away now.

  My one hope was to get out or get help. My heart jumped suddenly. Lisa! She’d be waiting outside the main door this very second! Lisa! I stood up, practically lifted by elation, into the bathing light of a rocket salvo exploding white and gold directly above the glass roof.

  ‘Lovejoy!’

  A gun shot cracked below. Stone clattered on my face and I fell, stunned by the sudden action. I hadn’t seen him but it was Haverro’s voice.

  ‘Stay where you are, Thomas!’ I yelled in despair. ‘I have a gun too, you bastard.’

  ‘Liar!’ The pig was deriding me. I gave a quick peer over the margin, but hadn’t the nerve to stay looking until the next firework lit us up for each other.

  ‘Try coming up, then,’ I shouted.

  ‘You’re not that stupid, Lovejoy,’ he yelled up. ‘A gun can be traced.’

  ‘So can yours, you frigging killer.’ There was still something wrong.

  ‘Mine?’ He actually laughed. ‘Have a look at the bullet.’

  I fumbled and found the crushed lead sphere. The bastard was using a percussion muzzle-loader. You fire, not an elongated bullet, but a round lead one. No marks are ever left save those of the impact. Therefore they are utterly untraceable. Black gunpowder down the muzzle and a lead sphere. A box of percussion caps for a few pence, and you can murder with a hell of a lot of noise but nothing traceable back to you, no matter how clever the CID’s ballistics lads became. I found myself on my feet screaming fear and hatred down into the main rectangle.

  ‘Bastard! Murderer! And you call yourself a doctor, you –’

  A pop overhead. In the scarlet glare I saw him lean out from behind the rear wheel of the coach, long arm raised and glinting. I flung myself backwards as he fired and felt the wind slice my arm along its length from wrist to shoulder before the wall snickered a shower of dusty spicules on to my upturned face.

  Almost gibbering with pain from my arm and terror, I scrabbled back into the alcove. He was across the way. On the ground, two galleries below. I tore off my jacket as best I could, lying on my back and ripping the stupid thing. Underneath, I had this woollen pullover but couldn’t find a loose thread with my quivering fingers. When you want your clothes to stay mended they unravel and perforate in all directions. When you want one to fall to bits they’re like chain bloody mail. I could hear the bastard scuffling below, probably loading as fast as he could. I was almost sobbing ‘ with fear. I hauled off a sock instead and bit the top end with my teeth. I caught a woollen end and began hauling, unravelling the useless malicious wool like a maniac.

  ‘Lovejoy?’

  ‘What?’ I made my voice as even and confident as I could, while yanking and jerking the sock into its original thread in terror, cursing and blaspheming under my breath.

  ‘Lovejoy.’ His voice sounded modulated, carefully not needing to shout any more now we both knew. ‘1 don’t believe you have a gun at all.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not risk it, then? Come on up, you murdering bastard.’

  ‘Don’t go on about Henry, Lovejoy.’ He sounded full of reproach. ‘I feel bad enough as it is.’

  ‘You have no sympathy from me, pig.’ I’d got a mound of wool unravelled beside me. The Pythagorean Theorem. What the hell was it? The square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle was equal to some bloody thing. Why don’t teachers take more care with our education, the useless buggers? I was sobbing, bleeding from my shoulder, pulling like a maniac at the wool until there was nothing left of the sock and thinking that if the maniac killed me it was my old teacher’s fault for not drumming his idiotic algebra into my thick skull hard enough. He’d been a lazy old swine.

  ‘I’m coming up, Lovejoy.’

  ‘I’ll shoot you, Haverro. I’m warning you.’

  ‘If you have a gun why didn’t you shoot earlier?’

  ‘Trying to give you a chance.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘Anyway you’ve muffed it. I’ll fire if you move an inch.’

  I’d lost the sodding frigging bullets, found them after a lunatic grovel in the dark recess. I reached up and jerked the typelist card down and bit its string through. My arm was stiffening, the useless rotten thing. Just when you need a limb it goes and gets itself shot to blazes.

  The bullets were heavy and deformed. Easy to tie the cord from the cardboard notice round each until they dangled like battered cherries from a single pliant string stalk. It was about a foot long. Small, but it would have to do.

  ‘Then you’d better be ready, Lovejoy.’

  ‘Take one step, Haverro, that’s all.’

  I tied one end of my wool to the middle point of the cord and desperately passed the wool’s entire length through my hands. The bastard was coming.
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  ‘Very well. Ready?’

  In a glow, a mad spurt of oranges and crimsons, I saw him step swiftly from concealment and then dart back.

  ‘No shot, Lovejoy?’ he chuckled. ‘Too fast for you?’

  ‘A little, Haverro. Do it slower and you’ll regret it.’

  I’d reached the wool’s limit. Surely to God it was long enough to reach the penduleum’s wire. It felt like miles, but my hands were wet with sweat and shaking. Maybe I’d overestimated. Anyhow, there wasn’t any more. A sustained glow came, silver and blue this time. He ducked out, back, then emerged finally to stand erect by the coach’s rear wheel. The glow faded. A few seconds till the next firework salvo lit the sky.

  I tied the free end of the wool to my ankle and swung the home-made bolus. As long as I kept out of the way of the wool cord as it followed the bolus in its flight – I threw. A pause. The bullets clattered on the mosaic floor below. Missed. A sky flash came. Haverro had darted back again. I hauled on the wool to recover the bullets on their string. They cracked glass, scraped exhibits, but I kept hauling dementedly until I had them in my hand again.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Haverro said, puzzled by the clattering.

  ‘Some friends,’ I said in a hoarse quaver. I’d fixed the position of the pendulum’s metal flex and threw again. No clatter. I pulled slowly on the wool. For Christ’s sake it hadn’t to break. Not now the bullets on their cord had wrapped themselves round the pendulum wire.

  ‘Who?’ he exulted confidently.

  ‘Police,’ I lied. Maybe he’d believe me.

  ‘Liar, Lovejoy. They were the bullets. The ones I fired.’ He laughed and I heard him step confidently out. I gave way to fear, pulling on the wool feverishly until the pendulum bob crashed a glass stand over on the gallery beneath. ‘Panicking now, Lovejoy?’ he purred, enjoying himself. ‘No place to run to, I’m afraid. So sorry.’