He says quietly, “Sorry, Mum. I took that booking in good faith. We have the room and I’m not going to cancel on a lie. Or a whim.”
Helen’s face works but Mack says nothing as he turns and walks steadily to the door.
Life, for his mother, has always been about control. But things are slipping. Mack can feel it.
49
ARE YOU really sure you want to go inside?”
“Yes.” But Jesse’s face is pale as she stares up at the keep.
Alicia hesitates. “Did I tell you it was repaired after the fire? The keep.” Worried about Jesse, she’s buying time.
“Fire?”
“Hundredfield was sacked in the early fourteenth century. The keep was torched but the structure pretty much survived. Thick walls. Very.” Another pause. “Come on, then.”
A flight of steps leads to the door in the wall. At the top, Alicia sorts out keys.
Jesse shades her eyes to peer at the summit of the keep. Like a soldier’s dead body, these battered stones bear witness to casual, timeless violence.
Alicia calls over her shoulder, “It’s quite safe. Been used as storage for years and years, and Rory’s right. I don’t really know what’s in here.”
In the ten minutes it’s taken to walk to the keep, Alicia’s become more and more tense. After the conversation in the kitchen garden, the last hour has tested them both.
“That one?” Jesse points to the largest of the keys—a monster with a shank half as long as a human forearm.
Alicia speaks loudly, as if silence might be a burden. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it unlocks a room under the cap-house at the top of the stair tower.” She rattles the keys along the iron loop, selecting one. “This is it.” Alicia inserts it in the lock. “I haven’t been inside for such a long time. Only got as far as the outside with the trust before we ran out of time.” A vigorous jiggle, and something gives within the ancient mechanism. She turns the key with both hands. “Watch where you put your feet, it’ll be shitty inside. Bats.”
“Bats?” Jesse steps back.
“Yes. They’re mostly in the roof but we have to be careful.” A push and the door groans open.
Jesse says, with feeling, “Yes.”
“No, I mean we have to be careful of them—their welfare. All sorts of regulations about bats these days . . .” Alicia disappears inside trailing words like soap bubbles.
Jesse puts a foot on the stairs—and takes it off.
Alicia’s head appears around the door. Her artificial manner wobbles at the sight of Jesse’s face, but she pushes the door wider. “The chapel’s in the base of the tower.” A breeze scuttles past as if it knows where to go.
When she finally enters, Jesse’s shadow is thrown across steps that twist up to an invisible roof. You knew this place, didn’t you? You heard the wind climbing the stairs.
“So, we’re going down, not up.” Alicia flicks a flashlight into life. The stones of the staircase are massive pieces of granite, impressively cupped. “Just be careful, though. It’s like the back stairs in the house, but trickier. Easy to slip over.”
“I’m fine.”
Together, they walk down into the dark.
“It’s freezing in here.” Jesse pulls her jacket across her chest.
“That’s the spring. It’s under the foundations. Got a mind of its own, that thing.”
“You said that.” But Jesse’s not really listening.
“Did I?”
Light spills down the stairs into an anteroom and ahead to a pair of ancient doors, much scarred. “The chapel’s through there, it’s the oldest existing part of Hundredfield. Norman.”
“You said that too.” Jesse’s quite spiky.
“Right. Of course.” Alicia rattles the head of the key inside the lock. “Not having much luck today.”
“Shall I try?”
Alicia steps back. “It’s very stiff.”
Jesse hesitates. She touches the key, warm from Alicia’s fingers, and tries to turn it. Nothing.
Disappointment hits. She’d been sure, so sure, she could open this door.
“I’ll get some oil.”
Jesse tries again. “Wait!” As the key moves, the wards engage. With a click the lock gives.
Alicia eyes Jesse curiously. “Well done.” Pushing the doors open, she sweeps the beam of the flashlight over the walls. Perhaps they were plastered once, but now the raw stone weeps, and moss and liverwort cluster in cracks where mortar’s fallen out.
The light picks out piled-up lumber—old doors and windows, broken furniture, dark paintings in battered frames. And swings back to Jesse.
“Can I ask you something?”
Jesse holds her hand up to block the beam. “Sure.”
“Do you feel anything?”
Jesse hesitates before she shakes her head.
“I suppose it’s disappointing. The illustrations made the chapel look so opulent.” Alicia flips the light across the floor as she wanders farther away. “This is where the altar stood. You can tell from the tiles.” She holds the flashlight above, silvering her hair. “They were made in Winchester and brought all the way to Berwick by sea, then carried overland by pack mule to Hundredfield. Cost one of my ancestors a bomb.” Dark tiles inlaid with a lighter color glint as the light sweeps on.
“What’re they?”
Alicia’s jiggles the beam over a row of large, flat stones, laid directly into the floor. “Graves. There’s speculation about who’s buried here, but so many records were lost in the Border Wars. And the fire.” She points the flashlight. “This one was important, though.” She kneels, brushing dust from the stone to clear the inscription. “Do you see? Domina. The Latin word for ‘lady.’ And she was buried right in front the altar too—a place of honor.”
“And this one?” Jesse stares at another of the stones; it’s separated from the lady’s grave by a slab with no markings at all.
“A total mystery. Very odd, though, that it’s anonymous.”
Jesse bends down over the third slab in the row. “Is that a cross?” The shape is faint in the eroded surface.
“No. It’s a sword. It’s the guard above the grip that makes it look like a cross. The grave of a fighting man, a knight most probably.”
“Nothing to say who it might be?”
Alicia shakes her head. “It was thought to be Fulk, but the shape of the sword is too late to be Norman—so this grave’s presumed to be a couple of hundred years later. Fourteenth century sometime. But the old reprobate must be buried here somewhere.”
That name. “Fulk?”
“They called him the devil, or just the Frenchman. Time puts a gloss on murderers and thieves. The Normans were both.”
Jesse sees something, a flash behind the eyes. “What happened to him?” The river in raging spate, and a body—a man with terrible wounds—rolling over and over as the flood carries him away, open-eyed.
“He was murdered at the end of a long, vicious, and profitable life; his son held Hundredfield, but he married a Saxon noblewoman, maybe that helped with the locals.” Alicia flashes the beam up to the groined ceiling. “What you drew—the rood—hung right here; if you look, you can see the marks where the screen on which it hung stood. And somewhere nearby”—Alicia trails her hand along the wall—“was the alcove that hid Our Lady of the River. My great-grandfather said it was close to the altar.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Alicia looks puzzled. Light wanders across a pile of timber paneling stacked up against the wall. “Didn’t I read that? Tell you what, why don’t I go get the book?” Alicia hurries toward the doors.
“Hey! Leave the light.”
Alicia puts the flashlight on a step. “Sorry. Back soon.”
Jesse listens as the footsteps scatter away. She’s used to the dark now, and faint daylight picks out the barrel of the flashlight, fading the living beam from silver to gray.
Unwillingly, she turns to stare at the
wall near the altar.
“Hello. I came.”
The whisper multiplies. The vaulted space has an echo.
Jesse has not been straight with Alicia; she felt, she feels, too much.
Slowly, she walks to the pile of paneling. And moves the first piece aside.
And starts to hum.
“Hi.”
Alicia spins around. “Rory!” She’s in Jesse’s bedroom.
He steps back a pace. “Sorry.”
“How did you find me?”
“I was looking for Jesse.” He takes in the book in her hands. “Bit of light reading?”
Alicia manages a smile. “Not exactly.”
“So, have you seen her?”
“Why?” Alicia tries to throw the word away. Fails.
“I’m her doctor. Why else?” He’s uncomfortable too. This is not an easy conversation.
Alicia opens a drawer in a bedside table, takes out another flashlight. “She told me about the woman on the tape, by the way. The stuff about ‘the mother.’ ” Alicia turns to face him, a stubborn set to her jaw. “Jesse said you were there. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“So? You heard what, exactly?”
“I’ve been asking myself that question since yesterday.”
“And?”
A pause that neither breaks.
Alicia closes the drawer and strides to the door. “Jesse’s at the keep. And before you ask, she convinced me to take her there. I’d better get back.” They reach for the door handle at the same time, his hand over hers.
Alicia stumbles. If she could say even the smallest thing that’s in her heart, she would. But she can’t. She hesitates. “Why didn’t you tell me about the tape?”
Rory can see how troubled she is. “Look, the last few weeks have severely rearranged my head.”
“You’re alone in that, of course.” That flick of irony has an edge.
“No, I’m not, Alicia—you’re right there too. So is Jesse.” Rory looks through the open window. “The keep was the first thing she drew. Did I tell you that?”
Alicia mutters, “Oh, this is just ridiculous.”
“You asked me what I thought. I still don’t know. But somehow, we’ve booked these tickets. It’s a waste if we don’t go for the ride. To the end.”
Alicia snaps, “What does that mean?”
“Ask yourself why Jesse’s turned up just as you’re trying to unload Hundredfield.”
Alicia doesn’t respond as she stamps past. Rory watches her go, but then, in a few strides, catches up.
“I could carry that.” He means the book.
“I can manage.”
They walk down the staircase and across the hall, past the suit of armor.
Rory tries to lift the ponderous silence. “Did you ever say who wore that?”
“No, I didn’t. Just another nameless knight.”
“Hope he was useful with that ax.”
Alicia’s ahead of him out the front door. “Never likely to know, are we?”
50
MAUGRIS YELLED, “Two ladders!” On the battlements the melee was fed by men climbing the walls, and the inner ward seethed with fighters from both sides.
An ax lay at my feet. I picked it up. In my other hand was Maugris’s sword. “The horses?”
“Go!”
Death stepped to one side as I ran, but embers fell like red stars in the thatch of the stables, and smoke filled the barns as I bolted inside.
Helios was at the end of a line of panicked horses, all tied along a central pole.
“Stand!”
The stallion heard my voice. Quivering, he stood long enough for me to haul myself to his back. The ax did the rest. Barging along the line, I lopped the ropes and set the horses free. Snorting, plunging, they hurtled for the open doors and, crazed by fire and smoke and noise, broke like a storm on the inner ward.
I remember men’s faces as they were run down. Some heard us—and lived; some did not—and died under those hooves, for what I had set free would not be stopped.
On the battlements, Rauf and the archers still held. They cheered as they saw the horses run, and with the distraction, Maugris heaved a ladder back from the walls, men screaming as it fell.
But one ladder remained, and a man’s head topped the battlements. It was him. Alois. His face was daubed with woad.
“Brother!”
Maugris turned. Too slow.
Alois jumped. Too fast. And his sword took my brother between shoulder and neck.
Rauf roared and closed the distance between them as I jumped from the stallion’s back.
With ax and sword, I cleared a path to the stairs and up, and on the battlements I found them.
Maugris was alive, but twisting like a worm cut in two; Rauf and Alois swayed beside him, swords locked at the guard.
“Alois!” I screamed his name.
But it was Rauf who looked back. That was his death. Alois stabbed him in the neck.
I leapt as Rauf fell. Taller, stronger, I drove the monk back, back, and down to his knees; he should have died. But he was fast. Rolled away, and up.
“Bayard!”
Maugris, on one arm, slashed at Alois as the man’s dagger nicked my throat. He caught him in the belly and the monk dropped, doubled over
I knelt beside my brother in a shining scarlet pool.
He lifted a hand to my face. He could not speak. Then the hand fell back.
“Maugris? Maugris!”
Fixed, without life, his eyes stared into eternity.
I closed them. And then rose up and kicked the ladder from the walls.
And turned with a roar. If Alois lived, I was his doom. But he had disappeared. And Rauf lay dead.
All those I loved, destroyed in that one moment. Except Margaretta.
“Look!” Tamas yelled, and pointed.
The fire in the keep, a tree burning from its crown, was dying. I ran.
The stairs of the tower was a throat and, roofless, breathed smoke into the sky. But the walls were stone, the steps, stone, and the stairs had no fuel to burn. Now, for lack of wood, the fire was dying, though the massive door of the keep still smoldered. I broke a way through with my ax, and the chapel itself was quiet. And dark. And I could breathe.
Panting, I sprinted to the alcove beside the altar, but I had no candle and could not find the door.
Help me!
Perhaps I called to the woman who had given me life, perhaps to Flore, but I was blind as I ran my hands along the panels.
I heard the voice of the child, faint and distant.
Then I found the unblocked door.
Who had opened it?
I did not care. The baby was singing me home.
51
OAK IS heavy, and Jesse’s panting as she moves the last piece of carved wood aside. On her knees, she picks up the flashlight and shines it at the wall behind.
A hole opens like a mouth—it eats the light. Humming, she who could not sing, Jesse bends forward, and another voice joins her own—it’s the same song. Jesse stops, turns off the flashlight to listen better. The song fades to nothing.
It wasn’t a voice. Was it? Wind, maybe, or water falling—somewhere distant.
Jesse flicks on the flashlight, lets it play over the entrance, because that’s what it is.
And hears it again. Faint, but someone singing. Yes, a voice.
Jesse enters the void on her knees. Ahead, there’s a tunnel. If she stands, she can touch the wall on both sides; yes, it’s narrow, but not so narrow she can’t walk down the slope of the passage. Jesse splashes light as she goes. The air is sweet, and a breeze brings with it the smell of water and earth.
The song is louder. Without thought, she joins in and speeds up, flashlight bouncing and flaring. Ahead, there’s . . . something.
The small woman in the cardigan dings the bell. She puts her case down. Modest and old-fashioned, it says she doesn’t travel often. Waiting for service, she wa
nders from the reception desk. Not far.
“Mrs. Marley?”
She startles easily. “Oh. Yes, that’s me.” She hurries back.
“Welcome. We’ve been expecting you. Jesse called.” A large young man with a streak of white hair smiles from behind the counter.
Janet Marley manages a nod.
“I’m Mack, by the way. The manager of the Hunt.”
Another timid nod.
He clears his throat. “So, if you’d care to fill in a few details, I’ll take you up to your room.”
“Thank you. I’d like that.”
It occurs to Mack that Jesse’s mum must be tired. Australia’s a long way away, and she’s just endured a bus trip of some hours; no wonder her face is strained. “Can I get you a cup of tea?” He gives her a form to sign, and a pen.
“That would be lovely. You don’t get real tea where I live.” Two actual sentences.
Mack smiles encouragingly. “Sydney?”
“How did you know?” Janet’s expression flicks to frightened.
“Jesse’s a good friend. She mentioned she’d been brought up in Sydney.”
“I talked to her earlier.” Janet swallows. “I wasn’t sure if all was well with her. You can tell with your child.” She bites her lip.
Mack hesitates. “I’ll get that tea. Five minutes, tops.”
Janet watches him go. She looks down at the form. And drops the pen. Her hands are shaking.
“Hello, Janet.”
Janet Marley wheels at the sound of that voice. She stands straighter. “Hello, Helen. I thought . . .”
“What did you think?”
Janet swallows. “That you might be at Hundredfield.” She quivers like a rabbit in a snare. “Silly me.” The twitch of that smile is ghastly.
Light bounces from step to step, but Rory and Alicia are still not talking.
Alicia calls from the doorway, “I’ve got the book.” She stops. Flashlight shines on dripping walls.
Rory adds his voice: “We’re both here.”
Alicia’s puzzled. “Jesse?”
“Maybe she’s outside.”
“We’d have seen her.” Alicia hurries to the grave slabs in the floor. She jiggles the beam across the wasteland of family rubbish. Nothing seems different.
Wild Wood Page 36
