Winterking (1987)

by Paul Hazel

  stares.

  “They fell so quietly,” he said. “Here and there we saw

  one, on the ground, standing alone by the bridge that crosses

  to Redding, walking undisturbed in the conservatory garden.

  They were waiting as we were. But we did not know that

  they were waiting until there were more of them.

  “All we dared do was watch. Wc did not speak to them.

  Yet I cannot help but wonder what I might have asked, what

  answers they might have given me.

  “The odd part was they seemed to have nothing to do

  with us. Perhaps they were just watching. I counted seven on

  the lawn at Saint Stephen’s before I went in to have my

  lunch. The house was empty, the bedroom empty. The

  shutters in my daughter’s room were open. She had washed

  her hair, had been drying it in the sun before she left. I have

  tried to think if I shall ever see her.

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  “But I suppose I shall not,” he said after a moment. “It

  would appear they are only men.”

  Harwood stared. “They?" he asked at long last.

  “Indians,” the Duke explained irritably.

  Holmes looked away. “When there were too many to

  count,” he said, “they began burning the churches.”

  4.

  *4H ^ lu k es and flames!” the man cried, not yet seeing her.

  A “ ‘The Pequod . . . ”

  He leaned unsteadily against the counter and waved the

  book in the air.

  ‘“ Freighted with savages and laden with fire! ” he shouted.

  “ ‘Burning a corpse and plunging into that blackness of darkness . .

  The voice ended in a strangled yelp.

  A moment later the book sailed by her head. Landing in

  the gutter outside the shop on Abbey Street, it joined dozens

  of volumes, their torn, stained pages fluttering in the breeze

  that prowled the late afternoon. The headmistress, thinking

  the man had simply been drunk, realized that he had been

  reading.

  She stood in the doorway, clutching the envelope she

  had carried with her from the academy. It had taken her two

  whole days to trace the name.

  “You are, I trust, finished throwing things,” she said,

  fixing him with her fiercest, most reproving stare, the one

  she reserved for recalcitrant students and, more rarely, for

  their parents. “It is safe to enter.”

  He held on to the counter. By his elbow there was a

  mound of books. On the floor hundreds lay scattered. It

  looked as though there had been an explosion.

  “Finished?” he asked severely. “Not till I’m rid of the

  lot of them.”

  “It is your business, I believe,” she said calmly. “I am

  quite certain of that.” She marched into the shop.“I had it

  investigated.”

  “No more it is,” he announced, loudly. “I’ve stopped for

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  good. Stopped forever.” He picked up a book, spread the

  pages at random.

  ‘‘ ‘Give not thyself up, then, to fire,’ ” he read, " ‘lest it

  invert thee.’ ”

  All at once his thin shoulders heaved; tears rolled down

  his cheeks.

  "There, you see,” he said helplessly. “It’s all like that.”

  "Like what?”

  “Like that. All opera and savages. . . howling infinities

  and poetry. Every bloody word of it.”

  He pressed the book between his small fingers.

  “It was a book about finches,” he said, trembling. “A

  very nice little book about the different shapes of their bills.

  But it isn’t now. None of them are. They’re all changed.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said.

  “Almost no one knows,” he said with terrible seriousness. His eyes were red. He looked ill. He stood up and staggered out into the room. “But I read them,” he said

  savagely. “Hardly anyone did. Did you know that? But I did

  and I remember.” He went to the shelves and began pulling

  books down. “Not these!” he cried, kicking them as they fell.

  “When I was at sea, sitting by myself with the engines, I was

  in the habit of reading; Darwin and Homer, Shakespeare and

  the Evangelists. I remember what was in them. Even now I

  haven’t forgotten.”

  He put his head in his hands.

  “You have a wife,” she said.

  He looked up. “I am not referring to that,” he said.

  “You have a wife,” she repeated indomitably.

  “No.”

  “And sisters,” she said. “The oldest was an instructress at

  Bristol Academy. That was nearly fifty years ago. You were

  the youngest, the black sheep, if you will forgive me for

  saying so. I have had it all carefully researched. You drank, I

  am told. You were years at sea. When you came back, you

  brought a young woman.” The headmistress was holding out

  the envelope upon which the name was written. “I have met

  her,” she said.

  Carl Brelling’s face, as much of it as was visible between

  his grizzled beard and his sailor’s cap, was red.

  “Lies,” he said. “Damn bloody lies.”

  He seemed so vehement that at first she hesitated,

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  uncertain whether she ought to go on. She had devoted two

  days to calculating the new and wider scope for powers

  which, by the chance of a name on an envelope, had been

  opened to her. She would not let it pass. It now seemed that

  she had spent all her life preparing for just such an opportunity. Admittedly, it had sometimes not seemed much of a life: the headmistress of a second-rate private school, not even in

  New Awanux, but in a city of no particular importance. And

  little as it had been, she had had to struggle for it, without

  allies, by the sheer force of her will. The vagueness and

  obscurity of those years, the smug and yet indifferent faces of

  the trustees especially, stirred old bitternesses. But all the

  while something had been leading her. Forces she had not

  imagined or guessed had been tugging her into place. She

  had failed to notice. Then out of the blue Wykeham had come

  to the academy, bringing a woman. And suddenly the world

  that had so often seemed elusive and disappointing revealed

  itself to be, to have always been, her own.

  “Your wife came to see m e,” the headmistress said,

  watching him closely, “in the company of a young man.”

  She could see his face more sharply now. She saw as well

  the poverty of the shop, knew he had never made much of a

  living at it, that now he would make none at all.

  “Mr. Brelling,” she said, “I am going to be of some help

  to you.”

  He was on his guard. “What kind?” he asked uncertainly.

  "You are not a wealthy man,” she said. They looked at

  one another. “I quite understand. For longer than I should

  like I have myself been lacking proper resources. There are

  many, however, who are not similarly troubled.” For a moment she let him ponder that.

  “Is there any good reason,” she asked, “that either of us

  should co
ntinue. . . as we have been, where there is one

  young man for instance, who never had to give a thought to

  how he would manage?”

  He seemed not to be listening.

  His head was sunk on his chest, his eyes vacant. She was

  casting about for words to draw him to her, to fit him, a small,

  unhappy but very necessary piece, into the great cunning

  pattern she saw opening before her when he said: “She was

  only a child when I met her, no more than a girl with a head

  full of dreams.”

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  Speech left him and he began to sway. He looked down

  at himself with contempt.

  “I was old enough to know better," he said. “Yet, you

  know, in a way she warmed my heart. She wanted to marry a

  sailor.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “It seemed wrong to

  let her find out what dreams usually come to.”

  He shook his old head.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I was remembering her apd I

  thought: suppose I had never gone to Bode, never saw her

  striding down toward the sea, would I think of her? Would I

  still wonder if something were missing?”

  He had gone beyond her, into his memory, but she knew

  she must not press him with questions. He was drunk and

  bad-tempered and, because he was feeling sorry for himself,

  likely to do anything. Yet she needed him. “There is a plan,”

  she said carefully. “A definite pattern.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “The most insignificant parts,” she said, “have a use and

  a purpose.”

  “What good is that?” he asked truculently.

  “It helps," she said.

  “How?”

  “If you know a little, you can predict the rest.”

  He looked at her uncomprehendingly. “Why should that

  matter?”

  The headmistress smiled.

  “Though you had never met,” she said evenly, “you

  would have missed her.”

  But again he did not seem to be paying attention.

  He looked around at the shop, at its ruin. The air of the

  shop smelled of whisky. At last his eyes met her face.

  “But she is gone,” he said lamely.

  “Then you must go and get her back.”

  “I couldn’t . .

  “That is why I have com e,” she said. “To take you.” She

  turned on her heels.

  He was not certain, even afterward, why he followed.

  But a moment later he was in the street, trotting behind her.

  He coughed and muttered but she would not hear. She was

  in a hurry, walking briskly. He trailed after unhappily.

  Old as he was, it seemed to him that he had always been

  at the mercy of women. He had never intended it. Though

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  they seemed always in a jumble, he had had dreams of his

  own; but then suddenly a woman would turn her eyes on

  him. He was not a big man, but he always felt himself getting

  smaller.

  His fingers found the opening in his coat. Cleverly, he

  brought out the flask.

  “It was not what I wanted,” he grunted.

  “He put the flask to his lips. “It is not as it should be.”

  He could hear the gurgle of the whisky going down. His

  teeth chattered.

  But it’s the way it is, he thought bitterly, feeling himself

  in fact growing smaller. He had been sucking at the flask like

  an infant for a good half minute and was now very near the

  end. Soon, he knew, he would not be able to walk. Abruptly,

  he threw back his head. But suddenly, his attention distracted, he began to grin.

  “Stand straight,” she told him.

  But he was leaning into her, his head lolling.

  “Why’s the sky red?" he asked, leering foolishly, as

  though asking a riddle. His hand, no bigger than a child’s,

  was outstretched and pointing.

  Her head turned.

  From the High Street, looking out across the wide

  commons, she saw the great steeple of the old center church

  rising in a pillar of flame.

  “Aye, we know something about that,” he said darkly.

  For the first time she seemed undecided. “What do you

  know?” she asked.

  He cocked a bleary eye at the heavens.

  “Savages,” he said, disgusted. “Damn bloody savages

  and poetry.”

  at I cannot seem to discover,” Harwood repeated in

  W * a temper, “is how you knew.”

  The Duke pulled at his chin. “Knew what?” he asked

  innocently.

  Harwood blanched. His voice rose. “That they would be

  Indians,” he said too loudly.

  In the Royal Charles there were no more than a score of

  small tables, each packed closely with men. At the last and

  the smallest the Duke examined his glass. Harwood was

  watching him narrowly.

  Half an hour before, they had followed Houseman onto

  the platform. They had seen him bobbing in front of them

  among the few dozen passengers who dared leave the train so

  near to Bristol. But when they had gone into the yard, he was

  gone, swallowed up by the darkness. No one had suggested

  they go straight off to Greenchurch. “We must have a plan,”

  Harwood had said, and they had straggled along at a distance

  behind a pair of elegant young men who, having borne away

  with them nothing but their expensive suits and black fedoras, announced bitterly to the evening the fate of any Indians who, by mischance, might manifest themselves out of the

  air.

  There had been workmen and laborers behind them, put

  off in Devon because they had been short of the fare. Staring

  as Holmes had been staring, they had looked up at the closed

  doors of the houses, seeking some sign of welcome. But the

  long street remained silent. The gardens, full of old-fashioned

  flowers, peonies and sweet william, hollyhocks and roses,

  were as empty of dogs as of men. At the bottom of the green,

  a small boy, peeking from a second floor window, was gathered

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  in quietly, the shades pulled quickly after him, the last porch

  lamps extinguished.

  But the lights of the Royal Charles shone like a beacon.

  On the step by the broad, open door a man was singing

  noisily, with equal enthusiasm and disregard for the tune. In

  his hands he had held a portion of a quilt which, rid of its

  feathers, he was shredding for bandages. Seeing them, his

  solemn face broke slowly into a grin.

  “New recruits,” he observed and, smiling gravely, waved

  them on.

  The Duke stared but Harwood moved past him.

  With its low ceiling and one small window, the bar

  seemed half a cottage, half a shed. Harwood stepped down

  into the room. The other two followed, picking their way

  slowly among the chairs and the tables. By the time they had

  settled, the man on the step had gone back to his song.

  “. . . Nine on the hills,” he was singing.

  Holmes sat very quietly, his elbows on the table, his

  small hands cupping a match. Quantities of blue smoke filled

  the a
ir about his head. Listening intently, he pulled on his

  pipe. “One met him face to face,” the man sang,

  “one man alone

  bore himself bravely

  seated in his saddle. . . ”

  Holmes waited silently. The man at the door went on

  with his song. “When the stallion stood,” he sang,

  “there dropped from the mane

  dews into the deep dales,

  hails in the high wood,

  whence Duinn his harvest. . .”

  Holmes remained motionless. His eyes had faint lines at

  their sides.

  “Perhaps I just drew it out of the air,” His Grace was

  saying. His voice was cold. This wasn’t what mattered.

  There were more important things to attend to. He looked

  across at Holmes, as though for confirmation, but Holmes

  only glowered.

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  “By Christ,” the Duke added, “it was merely something

  I said.”

  “But you were right,” Harwood told him.

  “I didn’t know it.”

  “You knew something,” Harwood said tensely.

  “He has a daughter,” the Duke said. “I know that."

  He felt around in his coat, touching the letter but leaving

  it. Nothing showed in his face. “I have come out to find

  her.”

  All at once Holmes dropped his small hands to the table.

  “She may not be there,” he said softly. Both men looked at

  him but again he lapsed into silence. In itself that was not

  surprising. For two days he had been the quiet one, the one

  who watched and who listened. Now, for several minutes

  some deeper quietness had seemed to move at the back of his

  eyes. For a long moment he looked about the room. “There is

  at least the possibility, Your Grace,” he said quietly, “that she

  may not be anywhere.”

  The Duke lifted his head. “You disappoint me, doctor.” He spoke as if it were a challenge. “I was sent for. I am here for the purpose of finding her.”

  Again there was silence.

  “I never questioned that,” Holmes said at last, his face

  and even his voice expressionless. “In a way we have all been

  sent for. That was never at issue. The question, from the

  start, I think, is not what we are to do but what has got hold

  of us.” He stopped for a moment. “Before we even knew