Wildfire at Midnight

by Mary Stewart

  He glanced up again, and I saw him recoil half a pace. Then he laughed, and with the laugh the whole situation split up, and re-formed into a yet crazier pattern, for the laughter was genuine and full of amusement. From the face he lifted to me, all the savagery had been wiped clean; it held the familiar gaiety and charm, and – yes, affection.

  He said ruefully: ‘I broke my knife, Janet. Let me come up.’

  I held on to the rags of my own sanity. ‘No! Stay where you are or I’ll throw this down on you!’

  He shook the hair out of his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t do a thing like that, Janet darling,’ he said, and leaped the gap like a deer.

  Then he was standing on the little triangular ledge below me, one hand locked in the crevice. I saw his muscles tense as he prepared to heave himself up the chimney after me.

  His head was back: his blue eyes held mine.

  ‘You couldn’t do a thing like that, could you?’ he said.

  And, God help me, I couldn’t. My fingers clutched the jagged boulder. I lifted it, ready to heave it down . . . but something held me – the imagined impact of rock on flesh, the smashing of bone and eyes and hair into a splintered nothing . . . I couldn’t do it. I turned sick and dizzy, and the rock slipped from my hands back on to the ledge among the flowers.

  ‘No,’ I said, and I put out both my hands as if to ward off the sight of the violence I could not do. ‘No – I can’t . . .’

  He laughed again, and I saw the knuckles of his left hand whiten for the upward pull. Then something smashed into the rock not six inches from his head. The report of the gun slammed against the echoing mountain with a roar like an express bursting from a tunnel.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gianetta, I can,’ said Nicholas grimly, and fired again.

  24

  The Eyrie

  Only then did I become aware that, a little way to the north, the edge of the mist was broken and swirling at last, as men thrust out of it and began to race along the hillside, the Inspector, Hecky, Neill, and Jamesy Farlane, all making at the double for the foot of the stack.

  Nicholas, well ahead of them, had already reached the base of the buttress. The slam of his second shot tore the echoes apart, and now the rock by Roderick’s hand splintered into fragments. I heard the whine of a ricocheting bullet, and I saw Roderick flinch and, momentarily, freeze against the rock.

  The other men, running at a dangerous pace along the scree, had almost come up with Nicholas. I heard the Inspector shout something.

  Roderick half-turned on his little ledge, braced himself for an instant, then flung himself, from a stand, back across the gap between the ledge and the stack. The nails of his boots ripped screaming along the rocky platform, then they gripped. In the same moment I heard the scrape and clink of boots as the pursuers, spreading out, started to climb the north face of the buttress.

  Rockerick paused for an instant, balanced, as it were, in mid-flight on the top of the stack. The sun glinted on his gold hair as he glanced quickly this way, that way . . . Then he leaped for the south side of the stack, swung himself over, and disappeared from view.

  Someone yelled. Hecky was half up a lower step of the buttress, and had seen him. I saw him cling and point, shouting, before he addressed himself even more desperately to the cliff.

  But Roderick had a good start, and he climbed like a chamois. In less time than it takes to tell, I saw him dart out on to the scree south of the buttress, and turn downhill. He was making for the mist, with that swift leaping stride of his, and I heard the Inspector curse as he, too, started to run downhill.

  But Nicholas had moved faster. He must have heard Roderick jump down on to the scree, for only a few seconds after the latter began his dash for the shelter of the mist, Nicholas had turned and started down the north side of the buttress.

  From my dizzy eyrie, I could see them both. To that incredible day, the race provided as fantastic a climax as could well be imagined. There was the great dyke, swooping down the side of the mountain, to lose itself in the sea of fog; and there, on either side of it, ran hunter and hunted, law and out-law, slithering, leaping, glissading down the breakneck scree in a last mad duel of speed.

  Once, Roderick slipped, and fell to one knee, saving himself with his hands. Nicholas gained four long strides before he was up again and hurtling downhill, unhurt, to gain the shelter of the mist. Not far to go now . . . thirty yards, twenty . . . the buttress had dwindled between them to a ridge, a low wall . . . then Roderick saw Nicholas, and swerved, heading for safety at an angle away from him.

  I saw Nicholas thrust out a foot, and brake to a slithering ski-turn in a flurry of loose shale. Something gleamed in his hand.

  The Inspector’s yell came from somewhere out of sight below me. ‘Don’t use that gun!’

  The gun flashed down into the heather as Nicholas put a hand to the low dyke and vaulted it. Roderick gave one quick glance over his shoulder, and in three great bounds reached the margin of the mist. It swirled and broke around his bolting form, then swallowed him into invisibility.

  Twenty seconds later the same patch swayed and broke as Nicholas thrust into it, and vanished.

  Then, all around me, the cliffs and the clear blue air swung and swayed, dissolving like the mist itself. The scent of the heather enveloped me, sickening-sweet as the fumes of ether, and the sunlight whirled into a million spinning flecks of light, a vortex into which, helpless, I was being sucked. An eddy, a whirlpool . . . and I was in it. I was as light as a cork, as light as a feather, as insubstantial as blown dust . . .

  Then out of the spinning chaos came Inspector Mackenzie’s voice, calm, matter-of-fact, and quite near at hand.

  He said: ‘Wake up, lassie, it’s time we got you down from there.’

  I found that my hands were pressed to my eyes. I took them away, and the boiling light slowly cleared. The world swung back into place, and I looked down.

  Inspector Mackenzie was on the top of the stack, standing where Roderick had stood, and Jamesy Farlane was with him. ‘How in the world did you get up there, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I said truthfully. I sat there on my cushion of heather and looked down at the two men, feeling suddenly absurd. ‘I – I can’t get down, Inspector.’

  He was brisk. ‘Well, lassie, you’ll have to be fetched. Stay where you are.’ The pair of them became busy with ropes, and then Jamesy approached my cliff. He got across the gap with ludicrous ease, and paused there, examining the chimney.

  The Inspector, I saw, was looking back over his shoulder.

  ‘Nicholas—’ I said hoarsely, but he cut me short.

  ‘Hoots awa’ wi’ye’ – it was the one conventionally Scottish expression that I ever heard him use – ‘don’t worry about that. Hecky and Neill both went after him, as you’d have seen if you hadn’t been so busy fainting. Your man’s safe enough, my dear.’

  And, even as he finished speaking, I saw Nicholas come slowly up out of the mist. He moved stiffly, like a very tired man, but he seemed to be unhurt. He raised his head and looked up towards us, then quickened his pace, lifting a hand in some sort of gesture which I could not interpret, but which seemed to satisfy the Inspector, for he grunted, and gave a little nod as he turned back to watch Jamesy’s progress.

  I cannot pretend that I was anything but an appalling nuisance to poor Jamesy, when at last he appeared beside me on the ledge with a rope, and attempted to show me how to descend from my eyrie. In fact, I can’t now remember how this descent was eventually accomplished. I remember his tying the rope round me, and passing it round his own body, and round a spoke of rock; I also remember a calming flood of instructions being poured over my head as I started my climb, but whether I obeyed them or not I have no idea. I suspect not; in fact, I think that for the main part of the descent he had to lower me, helplessly swinging, on the end of the rope. And since I could not possibly have jumped the gap to the stack, Jamesy lowered me straight down the other thirty feet or so into the bo
ttom of the cleft itself. I remember the sudden chill that struck me as I passed from the sunlit chimney into the shadow of the narrow gully.

  Then my feet touched the scree, and, at the same moment, someone took hold of me, and held me hard.

  I said: ‘Oh, Nicholas—’ and everything slid away from me again into a spinning, sunshot oblivion.

  25

  Delectable Mountain

  When Nicholas dived into the pool of mist after Roderick, he was not much more than twenty yards behind him, and, though the mist was still thick enough to be blinding, he could hear the noise of his flight quite distinctly. It is probable that Roderick still believed Nicholas to have a gun, while he himself, having lost his knife, was unarmed; he may, too, have heard Neill and Hecky thudding down the hillside in Nicholas’ wake; or he may, simply, have given way at last to panic and, once running, have been unable to stop: at any rate, he made no attempt to attack his pursuer, but fled ahead of him through the fog, until at length they reached the level turf of the glen.

  Here going was easier, but soon Nicholas realized he was rapidly overhauling his quarry. Roderick, it will be remembered, had already had to exert himself considerably that afternoon, and now he flagged quickly; the panic impulse gave out and robbed him of momentum. Nicholas was closing in, fifteen yards, ten, seven . . . as the gap closed, panic supervened again, and Roderick turned and sprang at his pursuer out of the fog.

  It was a sharp, nasty little struggle, no holds barred. It was also not quite equal, for whereas Nicholas had only, so to speak, a mandate to stop the murderer getting away, the murderer wanted quite simply to kill his pursuer if possible. How it would have ended is hard to guess, but Neill and Hecky, guided by the sounds of the struggle, arrived in a very short time, and Roderick, fighting literally like a madman, was overpowered. And when Dougal Macrae, still breathing fire and slaughter, suddenly materialized out of the fog as well, the thing was over. Roderick, unresisting now, was taken by the three men back to the hotel, where he would be held until transport arrived. Nicholas, breathing hard, and dabbing at a cut on his cheek, watched the mist close round them, then he turned and made his way back up the hillside into the sun . . .

  So much I had learned, sitting beside Nicholas on the heather at the foot of the buttress, with my back against its warm flank. I had been fortified with whisky and a cigarette, and was content, for the moment, to rest there in the sun before attempting the tramp back to the hotel.

  The Inspector, it appeared, was to set off immediately with his prisoner for Inverness. He paused before us as he turned to go.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, lassie?’

  ‘Quite, thank you,’ I said, and smiled at him through the smoke of my cigarette.

  He glanced from me to Nicholas, and back again. ‘It seems I was wrong,’ he said drily.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘In thinking you were withholding evidence that mattered.’

  I felt myself flushing. ‘What did you imagine I knew that I hadn’t told you?’

  ‘I thought you’d recognized the man you saw in front of the bonfire.’

  ‘Oh. No, I hadn’t. I hadn’t, really.’

  ‘I believe you . . .’ But his glance was speculative, and I felt the flush deepen. ‘Even so, I could almost have sworn you were lying just then about something.’

  ‘I was,’ I said, ‘but not about that. It was something I heard, not something I saw.’

  His gaze flicked to Nicholas once more, and he smiled. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Just so. Well, I’ll be away. I’m glad to be leaving you in such good hands. Take care of her, sir; she’s had a rough time.’

  ‘I will,’ said Nicholas.

  ‘One thing’ – Inspector Mackenzie regarded him with some severity – ‘you have, of course, got a licence for your gun?’

  ‘Gun?’ said Nicholas blankly. ‘What gun?’

  The Inspector nodded. ‘I thought as much,’ he said drily. ‘Well, see you get one.’

  And, with another nod, he turned and was presently swallowed up in the mist.

  And we were alone on the mountainside, islanded in the pool of mist, where, on every hand in the golden distance, the mountain tops drifted, drowsing in their own halcyon dreams. Sweet and pungent, the honey-smell of rock-rose and heather thickened round us in the heat, and, once more, the lark launched himself into the upper sky, on a wake of bubble-silver song.

  I drew a little sigh, and settled my shoulders gratefully against the warm rock.

  ‘It’s all over,’ I said. ‘I can hardly believe it, but it’s all over.’

  ‘My God, but you had me worried!’ said Nicholas. ‘I knew Grant had gone out, but the Inspector had put Neill on to watch him, and then when the mist dropped like that, all in a moment, and Neill came back and said he’d lost his man . . .’ He glanced briefly down at me. ‘I knew where you and Dougal were fishing, so I made up-river as fast as I could. The police turned straight out after Grant. Then I heard a yell from Dougal, and you screamed, and I ran like blazes. I found your fishing-rods, but you’d gone, so I started hunting you. I went across the bog—’

  ‘I know. I heard you. I was hiding quite near.’

  ‘Silly little devil.’

  ‘Well, I was scared; I thought you were the murderer – and and you didn’t help by whispering my name in that blood-curdling way.’

  He laughed ruefully. ‘I’m sorry. But I knew Grant might be nearer you than I was, and if you’d called out from too far away he might have reached you first. No, I wanted to get you safe under my wing, and then—’

  ‘So you knew it was Roderick.’

  He glanced down sideways at me. ‘Then, yes. I’d been wondering about him for quite some time, and so had Inspector Mackenzie, but there was no proof.’

  ‘What was the information he was waiting for from London? Or – no, you’d better start at the beginning, Nicholas. Tell me—’

  ‘That is the beginning. The information that came today is really the beginning of the story. It concerns Roderick Grant’s family. Did you know his father was a minister?’

  ‘He told me a little bit about it. I felt rather sorry for him, a lonely little boy all by himself at the back of the north wind – that was what he called his home.’

  ‘It’s not a bad description either. I’ve been through Auchlechtie: it’s a tiny hamlet of a dozen cottages in a valley near Bheinn a’ Bhùird. The manse, where the Grants lived, was four miles even from the village, up beside the ruins of the old church and its primitive graveyard. The new church had been built down in the village itself, but the minister’s house had no one for neighbour except that little square of turf, walled off from the heather, and filled with crumbling headstones and mounds covered with ivy and brambles and old, split yews deformed by the wind.’

  ‘And he told me he lived alone with his father.’

  ‘So he did. His mother died when he was born and his grandmother, his father’s mother, brought him up till he was nine. Then she died – in an asylum.’

  ‘Oh, Nicholas, how dreadful. So his father – his father’s family—’

  ‘Exactly. His father had always been the stern, unbending, austere kind of godly Presbyterian that used to be common in fiction and, possibly, even in fact. In him the – the taint showed itself at first only in an increasing remoteness and austerity, a passionate absorption in his studies of the past which, gradually, took complete possession of him, and became more real than the real life round him – if you can apply the term “real life” to that tiny hamlet, four miles down the empty glen. The history of the long-dead bones, in that long-dead graveyard, became, year by year, the only thing that meant anything to him. And the little boy only mattered as being someone to whom he could pour out his half-learned, half-crank theories about the ancient customs and legends of the Highlands.’

  ‘Roderick told me that he learned to worship the mountains,’ I said. ‘I never guessed he meant it literally.’

  ‘Bu
t he did, quite literally. He must have spent a large part of his childhood listening to his father’s stories and theories, imbibing his mad, garbled versions of the old folk-customs of the North, the sort of half-connected, inaccurate rubbish you said he was telling you today. He must have built, bit by bit in his crazed mind, a new sort of mythology for himself, of which the so-called “ritual” murder of Heather Macrae was a concrete example; a jumble of facts from books and from his father’s researches, half-remembered, distorted bits of folklore that shook together like glass in a kaleidoscope and made a picture of violence that seemed, to a madman’s brain, to be quite logical.’

  ‘I know. I found some of the bits in The Golden Bough.’

  ‘Oh yes, my Golden Bough! The Inspector told me you had it. I was looking all over the place for it last night. I thought I’d left it in my car.’

  ‘I’d taken it to read, quite by accident.’ I told him about it. He glanced down at me with an enigmatic expression.

  ‘So you handed it to the Inspector. If you’d known it was mine—’

  ‘But I did. There was an envelope in it addressed to you in Daddy’s writing. I have it in my pocket.’

  ‘Have you indeed?’ I could feel his eyes on me still, but I would not meet them. ‘Why didn’t you give that to the Inspector, if you knew the book was mine?’

  ‘I – I don’t know.’

  The lark was descending now, in lovely little curves of sound. ‘How did Daddy know you were here, anyway?’

  ‘What?’ He sounded oddly disconcerted. ‘Oh, I wrote to him and asked him to lend me his copy of the book. There was no one in my flat, so I couldn’t send for my own copy. You see, Grant had made one or two remarks that had made me wonder about him – queer little mis-statements and inaccuracies that sounded like half-remembered quotations from Frazer and the older books that were Frazer’s sources. And when I saw how some of Frazer’s details checked with poor Heather Macrae’s May-Day sacrifice—’