by Andrew Lane
He entered a small clearing. In the light of the moon that flooded down from above he could see a cluster of mushrooms pushing through the loam and the leaf mulch of the forest floor. He approached and knelt beside them. They were bright orange in colour, and their edges were wavy, like lettuce leaves. He recognized them as chanterelles. Pulling as many as he could from the ground, he stuffed his jacket pockets.
A few feet away he found some morels, their honeycomb-like interior structure and brown colour unmistakable. Across the other side of the clearing, a few feet into the trees, he found a fallen trunk on which was growing a mass of the distinctive white strands of Lion’s Mane mushroom.
Arms and pockets full, he set off back for the shelter. He had enough to keep the two of them going until the morning. If he could find some water then he could boil them in the saucepans. That started him thinking – were there any herbs growing nearby that he could use to flavour the water?
His mind occupied with thoughts of how he was going to impress Virginia with his culinary skills, he walked up to the hut.
‘I’m back!’ he called softly, in case she was sleeping. ‘And I’ve got dinner!’
He stepped into the shelter, where Virginia had got a fire going in the stove. By its light, he saw that she was asleep, curled up on the ground. She had found some rushes or reeds from outside, and had piled them up underneath her head as a pillow. She had also piled more of them up for Sherlock, just a few feet away from her own head.
He wasn’t sure what to do. He supposed he could prepare food and then wake her up, but it had been a long hike uphill, and they had more walking ahead of them in the morning. Best that she slept now.
He dumped the mushrooms on the ground and sat beside Virginia. Something about the fresh air and the long walk through the woods had quelled his own appetite as well. They weren’t going to die of malnutrition if they missed one meal. He could cook the mushrooms when the sun came up.
He stared at her face. She seemed so relaxed, asleep. Her lips were curved in a slight smile, and her expression was calmer that he had ever seen it. Usually there was a watchful look on her face, especially when she was looking at him, but now it was as if he was looking at her with everything wiped away apart from the real Virginia. The girl that he so desperately wanted to know better.
He reached out a hand and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. She stirred slightly and made a noise, but she didn’t wake up.
He watched her for a while, mesmerized by her incredible beauty. It was difficult looking at her when they were together in daylight, because she would spot him staring at her and stare straight back, or ask him what he was looking at, but now he could admire her for as long as he liked.
Eventually he stretched out beside her, his head on the rushes that she had left for him. He felt himself drifting off to sleep. Despite the danger, despite the situation that they were in, he felt happy. He felt as if he had found the place where he belonged.
He fell asleep so gradually that he didn’t even realize when it happened, but he woke up suddenly. Sunlight was streaming through the doorway. He must have turned over during the night, because he was facing in the opposite direction, away from Virginia.
He turned back, and felt his heart freeze.
There was no sign of Virginia. Three white skeletal figures were standing in the centre of the room. They stared at him with wide, lidless eyes set deeply in shadowed sockets. In their hands they held curved blades, like the sickles that farmers use to slice through wheat when harvesting it.
He scrabbled desperately for the door, but thin arms grabbed him from behind. The fingers looked like twigs against the sleeves of his jacket, but they were as hard as bone, and they hurt as they dug into his flesh.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sherlock struggled wildly, trying to break free, but the fingers of his attackers were immovable. One of them held a knife to his throat. It had a tarnished blade, as if it had been buried in the ground for years. The message was clear, and he stopped struggling.
The figures turned Sherlock over unceremoniously. He noticed with a shiver of fear that their clothes were ragged and mouldy, as though they too had been underground for a while. Buried.
They bent and grabbed his feet, hauling him unceremoniously into the air. They were strong, despite their appearance. He was carried from the shelter like a sack of corn. None of them said anything, but he suddenly realized that he could hear them breathing. One of them wheezed like an asthmatic, while the others sounded just like ordinary men would if they were carrying something heavy. Dead men didn’t need to breathe, Sherlock told himself. They didn’t smell as if they were dead. Sherlock knew the cloying, awful smell of rotting flesh: he’d found enough dead animals in the woods in his time. Looking at these things, they should have reeked to high heaven, but all he could smell was sweat. So they weren’t dead men. Just men who looked like they were dead. But why? And what had they done with Virginia?
He looked down at where their thin hands were clutching at his shoulders. White marks were rubbing off on the material of his jacket. Make-up? On their hands? He breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t really thought they were dead, but it was a relief to have his deductions confirmed. He supposed it made sense: if you wanted people to think that you were dead, then you needed to look the part. White hands and white faces indicated a lack of blood circulating. If people saw them only at a distance, as Sherlock had till now, it was convincing.
They were carrying him downhill, away from Cramond. He caught sight of the occasional upside-down face as he was jolted along. This close he could see beard stubble poking through the white make-up on their cheeks and necks. He could also see how bits of thin paper had been stuck to their skin to resemble dry, peeling flesh, how the clever use of shading made it look as if their bones were poking through their skin, and how one of them had markings painted on his cheeks that, at a distance, would look like the grinning teeth of a skull. It was all theatrics and pretend. Dressing-up games.
‘Tell me where we’re going!’ he demanded.
The ‘corpse’ holding his right arm looked down at him and grinned. His teeth were stained green, like moss, but even that was make-up. ‘You come with us,’ he grunted in a voice that sounded like it was bubbling up through mud. ‘You see Clan Chief of the Dead.’
‘You’re not dead,’ Sherlock said. ‘You’re just pretending.’
The ‘corpse’ kept on grinning. ‘You sure about that?’ he asked. ‘You bet your life on it?’
Sherlock had no answer to that.
They carried him over rough ground for what seemed like an hour. He kept looking around to see if he could see Virginia, but if she was being carried as well then she was ahead of him and out of sight. He hoped that she’d managed to escape.
Eventually he was thrown on the back of a horse. His arms and legs were tied together with a rope running beneath the horse’s stomach, and his belt was fastened to the saddle so that he didn’t slip underneath the animal while they were riding. One of the ‘corpses’ mounted the horse, and they started to gallop away.
The repetitive thumping impact of the horse’s rump in his stomach and the heavy odour of the horse itself made Sherlock feel sick. He was constantly on the verge of sliding beneath the horse, where its massive legs would pound into him over and over again until his bones were smashed to fragments. He clenched his arms and legs as tight as he could, trying to stay where he was.
His head was jolted up and down so much that he couldn’t see what was flashing past. He was dimly aware, though, that there were other horses ahead of him and behind. Was Virginia on one of them? As his discomfort got worse and worse, he hoped that she wasn’t.
The noise made by the horse’s hoofs changed. They weren’t riding on earth any more; they were riding on stone. He heard echoes, as if they were surrounded by hundreds of horses. They were inside some kind of stone courtyard. The horse slowed to a halt. Sherlock was thrown forward, an
d the rear of the saddle hit him in his side, knocking the breath from him.
Hands grabbed him. A knife cut through the ropes holding him on to the horse. He was carried again, face down this time, too weak and nauseous even to lift his head. All he saw were cobbles, and the occasional edge of a stone wall.
And flickering shadows. The whole place appeared to be lit by torches.
Where was he? He remembered the granite shape of Edinburgh Castle, looming above the town. Surely they hadn’t ridden far enough to be back in Edinburgh? Were there other castles around?
Sherlock was carried down a corridor and into a room. He heard barking and growling. On the far side of the room was a fenced-off area. Men were looking into it with avid interest, some of them exchanging money. Through gaps in the fence Sherlock could see two dogs – big ones – fighting. They leaped at each other, tearing at ears with their teeth and scratching at eyes and skin with their claws. In the flickering torchlight he could see blood spattered across the floor. Some of it was fresh, but some of it was dried. Dogs – and maybe other things – had been fighting there for a while.
He was carried out of that room and into another one. There was no fenced-off area here – instead, men and women were gathered around a rough circle that had been chalked on the flagstones. In the centre of the circle, two men warily stalked each other. They were stripped to the waist, and their chests gleamed as if they had been oiled. One of them had fingernail marks ripped down his torso. The second man suddenly stepped forward. He crouched, grabbing the first around the waist, lifted him in the air and threw him to the ground. The crowd went wild, yelling and cheering.
Moments later Sherlock was being carried out of that room as well. The next had a walkway round the edge and a rectangular pit in the middle, like a swimming pool. Except that there was no water, and a waist-high fence made of wide wooden panels ran all the way round the edge of the pit. Sherlock could smell a rank, feral odour.
Something made a snarling sound. Sherlock realized that there was an animal corralled in there. It had obviously heard the men carrying Sherlock, because it threw itself against the fence. The wooden panels shook. What was in there?
The men scurried for the far door, obviously terrified of whatever the beast was.
Sherlock was taken into a large room and dumped on the ground.
He lay there for a while, staring upward. His arms and legs felt three inches longer than they had been. He could feel bruises all over his body. All in all, he thought, he wasn’t really in a position to do any damage to anyone.
The ceiling was white plaster separated into squares by wooden beams. It looked old, and it looked impressive, but there were massive strands of cobwebs in each corner, hanging like grey rags.
Sherlock closed his eyes and listened. He could hear the crackling of a fire – logs splitting in the heat – and a background murmur that sounded like a whole group of people waiting for something – whispers, giggles, the shuffling of feet. The sound of an audience waiting for a show to start. He could smell sweat, and food, and underneath it all the rank odour of the animal in the pit in the previous room.
Eventually Sherlock pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around.
He was in a stone hall. Flaming torches hung from the walls, illuminating everything with a flickering red-tinged light. Tapestries hung between the torches, looking like old moth-eaten bits of carpet. Interspersed between the tapestries and the torches were the stuffed heads of animals, mounted on shield-like plaques. Most of them were stags with spread antlers, but there were also some wolves with their jaws open, exposing their teeth, and something that Sherlock could have sworn was a bear. He supposed he should be glad there weren’t any men’s heads on the wall.
Ahead of him was a dais, and on the dais was a chair. It looked like it had been hewn by hand from a massive tree trunk. Sitting on the chair, lounging on it, as if he was a king in the centre of his court, was a man who was as big as Amyus Crowe, but where Amyus Crowe was usually a symphony in white – white hair, white clothes, white hat – this man was a concerto in black. His mane of hair, wild eyebrows and unkempt beard were the colour of night. The checked jacket and the kilt he wore were mostly black as well, with occasional lines of red or white. Like Crowe he must have been in his late fifties or early sixties, but like Crowe he looked as if he could beat several younger men at a time in a fight.
Several men stood behind him. They looked like boxers, or wrestlers – heavily muscled, with flattened noses and thickened, misshapen ears. They too were wearing jackets and kilts of the same black-checked cloth. Clan tartan – wasn’t that what Matty had said it was called? Did that indicate they were all part of the same clan?
The man in the chair gazed down at Sherlock with a raised eyebrow.
‘So,’ he said in a Scottish brogue so thick that Sherlock could have cut it with a cake knife, ‘this is the other bairn the Yankees are looking for.’ He raised a hand and gestured to one of the men behind him. ‘Bring the youngster’s friends here. Let’s have a little family reunion before the inevitable and tragic separation.’
The man nodded and walked off through an arched doorway. While they waited, Sherlock took the opportunity to look around. Gathered on either side of the dais was a mixed group of people who were staring either at Sherlock or at the man in the chair. There were men, women and some children, but they all had the look of people who survived by their wits – hard, watchful eyes, and skin that had seen a lot of sun and rain. They weren’t dressed in tartan. Instead their clothes were a mixture of the patched and the threadbare. Where Sherlock saw a jacket and a pair of trousers that actually matched he guessed it was either by accident or because they’d been stolen together. Among the rabble that clustered around the dais, Sherlock noticed several of the white-faced, skeletal figures. The rest of the crowd didn’t seem to mind their presence – unlike the people in the tavern. They were fully integrated, not avoided, chatting with their companions. They weren’t acting in the distant, corpse-like manner Sherlock had noticed before. He didn’t know why they were dressed the way they were, but there had to be a reason for it.
A ripple of interest ran through the crowd, and they turned towards the archway. Seconds later, Crowe, Virginia, Rufus Stone and Matty were pushed through. They glanced around, orienting themselves. Seeing Sherlock in the centre of the room, Crowe headed over towards him.
‘Son,’ Crowe nodded as Sherlock climbed to his feet.
‘Ah worked out when ah saw they’d taken Ginnie that they’d gotten you as well.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t protect her,’ Sherlock apologized.
Crowe shook his massive head. ‘Ain’t nothin’ you could’ve done,’ he said. ‘These folk are organized. They took us at the top of the cliff an’ brought us here.’
Sherlock frowned. ‘I’m guessing they’re not Bryce Scobell’s men,’ he said. ‘They look more like locals, like Scotsmen.’
Crowe nodded. ‘Ah suspect they’re a local criminal gang based around Edinburgh. We seem to have fallen into their hands, though ah ain’t quite sure why or what they want.’
The man who had been sent out to get them stepped towards Crowe. ‘Nae talkin’,’ he growled, and reached out as if to cuff Crowe around the ear. Crowe calmly caught his hand and bent it backwards until the man screamed and dropped to his knees.
‘Ah don’t much like bein’ manhandled,’ he said quietly, ‘an’ there’s been a whole load of that already. Grateful if you could stop.’
The man on the ground struggled to get to his feet, and two thugs from behind the bearded man on the chair started forward towards Crowe, but their leader raised a hand.
‘Leave him be, for the moment. He’s got spirit. I admire that in a man.’ He nodded at Crowe. ‘Stand down, Mr Crowe. I could throw all my lads at you at once, I suppose, and that would certainly be fun to watch. As you can see, we do like to watch a good fight here – watch and place bets. Problem is that you’d return a
few of them damaged and I need them for other things.’
Crowe faced up to the big black-bearded man. ‘You have the advantage of me, sir. You know my name, but ah don’t believe we are acquainted.’
The man stood up. He was even taller than Sherlock had thought, and his chest was as wide as a beer barrel.
‘My name is Gahan Macfarlane of the Clan Macfarlane, and I have a wee business proposition to put to you.’
Something about the name ‘Macfarlane’ struck a chord in Sherlock’s mind. He’d heard that name recently. But where?
Crowe smiled, but there was little humour in his expression. ‘You don’t strike me as a businessman,’ he replied. ‘More like a bully an’ a criminal.’
Macfarlane smiled back. ‘Strong words from a man who’s outnumbered. There are many kinds of business, my friend, and many kinds of businessman. They don’t all wear frock coats and top hats.’
‘So which particular kind of business are you in?’
‘Oh, I have a bonny portfolio of interests.’ Macfarlane stared around at his court, and they duly laughed. ‘Let’s just say I work in insurance and have done with it.’
‘This,’ Crowe said darkly, ‘would, ah guess, be the kind of insurance where local shopkeepers pay you a certain amount every week to ensure they don’t have . . . accidents.’
‘That’s correct,’ Macfarlane acknowledged. ‘And you would be surprised how often those shopkeepers have accidents very shortly after they decide they can’t afford my particular kind of insurance any more. It’s a dangerous world out there. Shops catch fire all the time, and shopkeepers get beaten up by roving gangs of roughs for no reason at all. As I see it, I’m providing a public service by protecting them from these perils.’
