A Dusk of Demons

by John Christopher

When we had finished she brought out little maids-of-honor cakes, and rich sweet herb tea in big china mugs. And after we’d drunk the tea, she read the leaves and told our fortunes. Paddy, she pronounced, would marry a tall dark man and have seven children. When it was my turn, she stared into the mug a long time before speaking.

  “It’s a far land,” she said at last. “And full of strange sights. Wagons that fly, pictures coming out of the air. I see you made much of.” She shrugged. “Beyond that, nothing clear.”

  I had been hostile even before she turned her attention to me. “Do the wagons have wings?” I asked. “And feathers? What color feathers—black, white, purple, and yellow? Maybe the tall dark man has feathers too?”

  I thought my boldness might anger her, but the wizened face laughed at me.

  “Why, laddy, are ye not dark . . . and may grow taller? I see what I see. What would you have me say—that I see the two of ye together still?”

  “We shall be.”

  I spoke warmly. She smiled. “I think ye will. For a time, anyway. Nothing is ever longer than for a time. All couples end at last, and one goes on alone.”

  On our way back to Mordecai’s caravan, I said, “She’s old, of course, which is why she talks nonsense.”

  “Old, yes. I’m not sure about the nonsense.”

  “Pictures coming out of the air!”

  “And a tall dark husband for me.” Paddy laughed. “I hope she’s wrong about the seven children!”

  • • •

  One afternoon I sat with Mordecai under the brow of a hill in an oak tree’s shade. There had recently been a heavy shower; the smell of rain hung in the air, but the sun had broken fiercely through and the grass steamed. I had been given use of the gun that day—the rheumatics were tormenting his shoulder, Mordecai said—and we had a goose and a brace of wild duck for the pot. I glowed at his commendation.

  “Ye’re a fair shot, laddy. There needs be a rhythm in all things, not least in duck shooting, and ye have it . . . aye, ye have it.”

  Paddy had preferred to stay with Gypsy Granny. I wondered how I might convey his praise when we got back without being mocked for boasting. At least, I would be able to display my bag. I stroked the gun.

  “It’s very old, isn’t it?”

  “My father’s, and my father’s father’s, and his great-great-grandfather’s before him. From the old time, like that little knife o’ yourn.”

  “I was told to throw it away. He”—I could not bring myself to mention Ralph—“said it was a kind of machine, and that machines were part of what brought the Madness.”

  He shrugged. “If ye pay little attention to aught that the sassenachs say, ye’re paying too much.”

  “But what did cause the Madness?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? The didikoy were traveling long before they built their tall cities, and they’re still traveling now they’re gone. And as to madness, look yonder.”

  “What?”

  We had a view south across open country. As he pointed I picked up what his keener eye had spotted: a score or more horsemen about a mile away. No longer concerned about pursuit, I regarded them with mild curiosity.

  “I wonder what they’re up to.”

  Mordecai sucked on his pipe. “Starting one of their wars again is my guess. It must be all of three year since they fought one another, in these parts any road. There’s a war up north that’s lasted going on ten year now.”

  “Why do they fight?” I asked.

  It was a question that would not have occurred to me before living with the gypsies. War between territories was taken for granted, even in the Western Isles, which were too remote to be involved.

  “Why do a fox kill fifty chickens in a pen, when a brace’ll serve for him and his wife and pups an’ all? While a hawk kills once, and clean. The sassenachs sit under roofs, peaceable and quiet, till the mood comes on ’em to start slaughtering one another. ’Tis part of the contrarities of nature, and past man’s understanding. All we didikoy need do is go about our business and pay’m no heed.”

  He stood up, knocking his pipe against the trunk of the oak. “I know a pool down the bottom yer that mostly harbors a few fat trout. I’ll learn ye the way of tickling ’em out.”

  • • •

  Suddenly, as though exhausted by the effort it had made, the summer turned gray. Leaves yellowed and fell, spinning down on a stiffening breeze. We had been camped more than a week, and there was a sense of impending movement.

  After breakfast, on a dry, bleak morning, Mordecai said, “We’re off today. And not far along we’ll be turnin’ to go east.”

  He did not need to spell out what that meant: They would be no longer following the road that led to the north port. He got up from his seat. “I’ve things to see to.”

  I did not look at Paddy as he padded down the steps of the caravan. The everyday sounds of the gypsy encampment surrounded us, but here inside there was a silence that was stifling. I wanted to break it but did not know how. I felt she ought to say something, and was irritated that she didn’t. In the end, I said, “This is not the only road north. I asked Petey. There are places further on where you can branch off toward the port.”

  She still did not speak. I turned to her, willing her to say something. Her expression was unhappy, but she also had a stubborn look I knew well.

  “It’s true,” I insisted. “Several places.”

  She said at last, in a tight voice, “We’d be going away from the port. And making it a longer journey when we did turn back. If we turned back.”

  The tone hinted doubt even more than the words. She was implying that I was wavering from our intention of following Mother Ryan and Antonia to Ireland. I was angry with her for suggesting such a thing, while realizing it was true. I said, aware of the prickle in my voice, “Anyway, there’s no hurry. They’ll have been in Ireland for weeks already—months. What difference does a week or two more following them make?”

  Yet I knew I was not really talking about a week or two. I was happy here with Mordecai and did not want to leave at all. After the first week, there would be another, and another.

  Paddy said, “We should have left sooner—as soon as my ankle was better. That was my fault, but now . . . you do as you think best. I’m going north.”

  “You can’t.” She looked at me coldly. “Not on your own.”

  “On my own?” Her expression turned into one of angry amazement. “You mean, I need you? That really is funny.” She got up and headed for the door. “Do as you like—I’m following Mother and Antonia, as I said I would.”

  My own anger simmered when I was left alone. If she’d asked me to go with her it might have been different, but I didn’t see why I should be coerced. She had treated the notion of needing me with contempt, so she could get on with it. Why should I leave Mordecai and the gypsies just because she said so?

  But lacking the fuel of opposition, gradually anger cooled. Recollection cooled it more: She had left Mother Ryan and Antonia and come back to help me, just as she had helped me when I was Sheriff Wilson’s prisoner. There were other memories too, memories of Mother Ryan herself . . . bandaging a gashed arm, comforting me as she put a cold compress on a fevered brow, rescuing me from the uncontrollable panic of nightmare. Mordecai had proved a good friend, but she had been there from the beginning.

  This was a good life, but I could not go on living it without abandoning something more important. I went to the door of the caravan and called Paddy.

  • • •

  Mordecai simply nodded when I told him.

  “Ye have a path of your own, and a duty, as all men have. Time’s ripe to follow both. Stay on this road beyond the crossroads and ye’ll fetch up at the port in three days—two if ye don’t dawdle.”

  I resented his casual acceptance. I had been hoping he might express regret, maybe even say something to provide a reason for reconsidering the decision. I said, almost fretfully, “Why do you have to go east anyway? Be
cause you always have? What’s wrong with doing things differently now and then?”

  “We’re travelers,” he said, “and we travel a known path. We always have, always will. It’s our way, and we knows no better.”

  He spoke as though from a distance. I could have argued, but bit it back. Although he had taken us in and been good to us, it might be a relief to see us go. He was a gypsy, an old man set in his ways. We had perhaps been a nuisance to someone so long accustomed to living by himself. We were not his kind, after all.

  At the crossroads we took the road north, not looking back. We had been given backpacks with rations, and a billy-can for brewing tea, and Paddy was carrying something in a long deerskin pouch. A present from Gypsy Granny, I assumed, but was not inclined to ask about it. Or to speak at all. We plodded on in silence for hours before stopping to eat. It was Paddy who finally burst out, “It’s not just you, you know. I feel miserable as well. More, maybe.” I said nothing, feeling there was nothing to say. “About Mordecai. But she made me promise not to tell you till we’d left them.”

  “She—you mean Gypsy Granny?” I asked indifferently. “Tell me what?”

  “Remember, at the beginning, we wondered about him being on his own, when the rest all belonged to families? He wasn’t always. When he was younger, much younger, he had a wife and two children.”

  “Well?”

  “There was a storm one winter, when they were camped near a river. A flood carried his caravan away. He tried to save them, but couldn’t. The others dragged him out.”

  I felt a tightness in my chest that was also a fullness.

  “The children . . . were they a boy and a girl?” She nodded. “You should have told me!”

  “She said I wasn’t to—that it would do no good. He’s not spoken about it since it happened, and wouldn’t want it spoken of now. She was right. She’s a wise woman.”

  Between anger and jealousy, and a parching sadness, I said, “I know you thought so. She favored you, didn’t she? The wise old woman . . . with her crazy talk!” I flicked a finger toward the pouch lying beside her. “What’s that she gave you—a magic broom, to fly on?”

  Paddy shook her head. “It wasn’t Gypsy Granny who gave it to me. Mordecai did, to give to you.” She picked it up. “Here. I’ll be glad to be rid of carrying it.”

  The moment she said that I knew what it was. Anger was swallowed up by sadness, and I felt dry and cold and shivery. I said, tight-voiced, “I don’t want it. It’s his. His. I’ll take it back to him.”

  “No.”

  “They travel slowly. I can be there by nightfall if I hurry.”

  “Ben, no.” There was more gentleness than usual in her voice. “He said to tell you his shooting days are finished, and he wants you to have it. And he said to tell you: Don’t come back. Some roads are for retracing, he said, but some are for treading only once.”

  I could hear him saying it, in his gravelly voice. After a long while, I said, “Let’s go, then. He told us not to dawdle.”

  8

  IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON WE came to a village and made a detour around it. We were much farther north and searches must long since have been called off, but it made no sense to take chances. By the time we got back to the road it was starting to rain. Trees nearby were still in good leaf, and I suggested sheltering beneath them.

  Paddy said, “It’s not really raining.”

  The drops which starred the dust were heavy but sporadic, the sky uncertain. Heavy clouds were banked in the west, but the wind was southerly. I said, “I think it will soon. Heavily, too.”

  She shook her head. “If you’re tired, though . . .”

  Unhappy was what I was: unsure and out of sorts. Although I had accepted Mordecai’s injunction against going back, later doubts had undermined my resolution. It would not have taken long to retrace my steps, and I could have given him back the gun. Or thanked him for it. Or . . . he had said I had a duty, and duty was something I knew he took seriously, but what sort of duty were we talking about? It wasn’t as though Mother Ryan was in trouble or danger. She was safe in her native land, with Antonia. I thought of the last time I’d seen her, and of her saying, “There’s a time for parting.” That had been more than a farewell—a dismissal almost. Mordecai had given me his gun; I didn’t think he would make me go away again if I did go back.

  Such thoughts had been running through my head as we trudged north. I knew them to be deceptive, excuses to do what I wanted rather than what I should, but however much I put them away they kept returning. Several times I had almost decided to give in and turn back, regardless of what Paddy might say. But each decision made the parting more definite, and in the end I realized it was too late. This depressed me further, and Paddy’s remark was a final irritation. I hefted the gun under my arm and set off at a pace I was glad to see she did not find it easy to keep up with. My legs had lengthened since leaving the Isles.

  When the rain, after stopping for a time, set in heavily, it was initially a source of resentful satisfaction. We had left wooded country behind, and the road ran through grassland offering nothing in the way of cover, so that we were soon both soaked to the skin. The sky was dark, and in the sodden landscape stretching about us we were the only living things apart from a few brown-and-white Jacob’s sheep stolidly grazing in the pelting rain.

  Paddy, trailing a few paces behind, stopped, and I looked back.

  “What is it?”

  She held her side. “Stitch. I’m sorry . . .”

  She was shapeless and bedraggled—miserably comic. I realized I must look no better. Seeing her standing there, rain dripping off the end of her nose, it occurred to me that I might not have been just cold and wet and depressed, but also alone. At least there were two of us.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “There’s no hurry. It can’t get any worse.”

  And from that point, in fact, the situation started to improve. The rain stopped, and the air was warm enough for our clothes to dry on us, though soggy patches remained. The sky stayed livid and was darkening deeper with the approach of evening. The thought of a night in the open on wet ground was not attractive, but we found shelter before that became a serious worry. I could not imagine who could have thought it a good idea to build a cottage in the middle of nowhere, or what purpose it might have served, but I was grateful for it.

  It was now a ruin, but much of the roof had survived, and in one room the floor was quite dry. Among the things I had learned from Mordecai had been ways of making a fire, and there were flint and tinder in my pack. But one also needed dry fuel. We munched a cold supper in the dark and settled early. I called good-night and was glad to hear Paddy call it back to me.

  I felt very tired, but sleep refused to come. Listening to a scrabble that might be a rat, a distant hooting that was certainly an owl, my mind was filled with memories and speculations. Too much filled: They came and went in an exhausting dance. Mordecai . . . Mother Ryan . . . Ralph . . . the Demons . . . my inheritance, so unexpectedly gained and lost and gained again, and at last abandoned . . . the Demons once more . . . I had seen and heard and been terrified by them. But Mordecai had said . . . and so the dance of thoughts went on.

  When sleep finally prevailed, it took a hold which it was in no hurry to surrender. I awoke from dreaming I was on Old Isle to sunlight through an empty window frame. Yawning, I looked to where Paddy had been lying, but the place was empty. But as I started to panic I heard movement, and she appeared from the back of the cottage.

  “I found dry wood,” she said, “in a lean-to. I’m brewing tea, and I can toast what’s left of the bread. There’s a spring at the back where you can wash.”

  • • •

  An hour later we were ready to move; we would have been on the road sooner but Paddy insisted on tidying up. And as we finally prepared to leave, she caught my arm.

  I asked impatiently, “What is it now?”

  “Listen.”

  I heard the thu
d of hooves, from more than a single horse—many more. The shattered doorway offered a long view of empty road in the direction we had come, but we could see only a short distance the other way. We retreated and watched from a gaping window.

  The sunlight that woke me had been fleeting; the day was overcast, with a stiff breeze which flapped the cloaks of the horsemen riding past. They had swords and pistols but looked less a cavalry troop than a mounted rabble, galloping in groups of three or four, some singly. I saw no banner, but a few still wore crimson-crested helmets such as I had seen on soldiers at the villa. Most were bareheaded, all disheveled.

  More than twenty went past, and we allowed several minutes after the last had disappeared south before taking to the road. Just beyond the cottage we found a hedge of brambles, laden with juicy berries, and we lingered, picking and eating them. But we had gone too far to have any hope of doubling back to the cottage when there was a new din of hoofbeats ahead. I had scarcely time to thrust the gun into the hedge before a second batch of horsemen swept round the bend and halted at their officer’s command.

  Unlike the first, this was a troop under discipline. They sat relaxed in their saddles, the gold-and-green plumes of their helmets bobbing in the wind. Their look was businesslike, and I was glad I’d ditched the gun before they saw us. I had a feeling they might have acted first and thought about it afterwards.

  The one who had given the order stared down at us.

  “Children . . . though the girl’s well grown.” He unsheathed his sword and pointed it at Paddy. “What kind of clothes do you think you’re wearing?”

  “Just a dress,” she said.

  Gypsy Granny had made it for her. She looked tense.

  “But yellow? And where’s your veil?” Paddy shook her head. “Your veil, girl!”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “You’re from the south, then? So what are you doing in our territory? Camp followers, I suppose . . . to that lot we’ve just taught a lesson about dawn raids. Well, someone else can sort it out. Borrick, Hemmings—take them back to HQ.”

  “On saddlebow would that be, sir?”