This Rough Magic

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Do you have to be so insulting?’

  It didn’t even register. He was staring into the darkness to the north. ‘The thing I really regret is that I’ll never be able to use the photographs. Poor Spiro won’t even get that memorial. We’ll soon be reaching the place where I threw him in.’

  There had been no change of tone. He was still holding me, his arm about as personal as a steel fetter; which was just as well; the touch of his body jammed against mine was making my skin crawl. The cracking of the sail as the boom moved overhead made me jump as if he had laid a whip to me.

  ‘Nervy, aren’t you?’ said Godfrey, and laughed.

  ‘Who’s paying you?’

  ‘Shall we just leave it that it isn’t Greece?’

  ‘I hardly supposed that it was. Who is it?’

  ‘What would you say if I told you I was being paid twice?’

  ‘I’d say it was a pity you couldn’t be shot twice.’

  ‘Sweet girl.’ The smooth voice mocked. ‘That’s the least of what the Greeks would do to me if they caught me!’

  ‘Where’s the currency made? I can’t believe anyone in Corfu …’

  ‘Oh, God, no. There’s a clever little chap who lives out near Ciampino … I’ve been getting my photographic supplies from him for a long time now. He used to work in the local branch of Leo’s Bank. It was through him I was brought in on this … and, of course, because I knew Leo.’

  I must have gone white: I felt the blood leave my face, and the skin round my mouth was cold and rigid. ‘Leo? I will not believe that Leo even begins to know about this!’

  He hesitated fractionally. I could almost feel the cruel impulse to lie; then he must have decided it would be more amusing after all to keep the credit. ‘No, no. Pure as the driven snow, our Leo. I only meant because I had an “in” with him to get the house, a perfect situation for this job, and of course with that boat-house, which is ideal. And then there’s my own cover, being next door to the Forlis themselves … If anything had gone wrong and inquiries had been made, where do you suppose the official eye would have gone first? Where but the Villa Forli, where the Director of the Bank lived? And by the time they got round to the Villa Rotha, it would be empty of evidence, and possibly – if things were really bad – of me.’

  ‘And when the “mushroom cloud” goes up? I take it that part of the plan is to have the currency traceable to Greece?’

  ‘Of course. Eventually, as far back as Corfu, but with luck, no further.’

  ‘I see. I suppose Spiro had found out?’

  He lifted his shoulders. ‘I doubt it. But there was a chance he’d seen a sample I was carrying in my wallet.’

  ‘So you murdered him on the off-chance.’ I drew in my breath. ‘And you don’t even care, do you? It’s almost funny to think what fuss I made about the dolphin … you must have shot at him for sheer jolly fun, since you were leaving in a few days anyway.’ I peered at him in the darkness. ‘How do people get like you? You simply don’t care who or what you wreck, do you? You’re a traitor to your own country, and the one you’re a guest in, and not only that, you wreck God knows how many people into the bargain. I don’t only mean Spiro, I mean Phyl and Leo and the children. You know what it will do to them.’

  ‘Don’t be sentimental. There’s no room for that sort of talk in a man’s world.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it, how often that so-called “man’s world” works out as a sort of juvenile delinquents’ playground? Bombs and lies and cloak-and-dagger nonsense and uniforms and loud voices. All right, have it your own way, but remember I’m an actress, and I’m interested in how people work, even sawn-off morons like you. Just tell me why?’

  I felt it at last, the movement of anger through his body. His arm had slackened.

  ‘Do you do it for the money?’ My voice nagged sharply at him. ‘But surely you’ve got money. And you’ve got a talent of a sort with a camera, so it can’t be frustration – unless that turn-of-the-century technique of yours can’t get you any sex that’s willing. And you can’t be committed politically, since you bragged you were working for two sides. Why, then? I’d love to know, just for the record, what makes a horror-comic like you tick over.’

  ‘You’ve got a poisonous tongue, haven’t you?’

  ‘It’s the company I keep. Well? Just a wrecker, is that it? You do it for kicks?’

  I heard his breath go in, then he laughed, an ugly little sound. I suppose he could afford to. He must have found, back there in the cabin, that I had no weapon on me, and he knew I couldn’t escape him now. His hold was loose on me, but he could still have grabbed me if I had moved. I sat still.

  ‘Just exactly that,’ he said.

  ‘I thought as much. It measures up. Is that why you called your boat Aleister?’

  ‘What a well-read little girl it is, to be sure! Of course. His motto was the same as mine, “Fais ce que veult”.’

  ‘“Do what thou wilt”?’ I said. ‘Well, Rabelais had it first. I doubt if you’ll ever be anything but third-hand, Godfrey. Throwing people overboard hardly gets you into the master class.’

  He made no reply. The lights of Kouloura were coming abeam of us. The wind backed in a sudden squall, leaping the black waves from the north. His hand moved on the tiller, and the Aleister bucked and rose to meet it. The stars swung behind the mast, tilted. The wind sang in the ropes. The deck heeled steeply as the starboard rail lifted against the rush of stars. The boom crashed over.

  ‘Is that what you’re going to do with me?’ I asked. ‘Throw me overboard?’

  The Aleister came back head to wind, and steadied sweetly. Godfrey’s hand left the tiller.

  ‘By the time I do, by God,’ he said, ‘you’ll be glad to go.’

  Then he was out of his seat, and swinging round on me, his hands reaching for my throat.

  I flinched back as far as I could from the brutal hands, dragging the torch from my pocket as I went. My back came up hard against the port coaming. Then he was on me. The boat lurched; the boom thudded to starboard with the sail cracking like a whip; a glistening fan of water burst over the rail so that his foot slipped and the wet hands slithered, missing their grip on my throat.

  The Aleister was turning into the seas; the boom was coming back. His hands had found their hold, the thumbs digging in. I braced my back against the coaming, wrenched my left hand free and smashed a blow with the torch at his face.

  It wasn’t much of a blow. He didn’t let go, but he jerked back from it instinctively, straightening his body, dragging me with him …

  I kicked upwards with my right foot past his body, jammed the foot against the tiller with all my strength, and shoved it hard over.

  The Aleister, already starting the swing, came round like a boomerang, heeling so steeply into the starboard tack that the rail went under.

  And the boom slammed over with the force of a ramjet, straight at Godfrey’s head.

  19

  Swum ashore, man, like a duck: I can swim

  like a duck I’ll be sworn.

  II. 2

  If I had been able to take him completely by surprise, it would have ended the business then and there. But he had felt my foot go lashing past his body, and the sudden heeling of the Aleister gave him a split second’s warning of what must happen. His yachtsman’s instinct did the rest.

  He ducked forward over me, one arm flying up to protect his head – but I was in his way, hitting at his face, struggling to thrust him back and up into the path of the boom as it came over with a whistle and a crash that could have felled a bull.

  It struck him with appalling force, but a glancing blow, the upflung arm taking the force of the smash. He was flung sprawling right across me, a dead weight bearing me back helplessly against the seat.

  I had no idea if he were still conscious, or even alive. The seat was wet and slippery; my hands scrabbled for a hold to drag myself free, but before I could do this the Aleister, caught now with the wind on her beam,
swung hard into the other tack. Godfrey’s body was flung back off mine. He went to the deck all anyhow, and I with him, helplessly tangled in the loose folds of the duffel coat. The two of us slithered together across the streaming boards, to fetch up hard against the starboard side of the cockpit.

  The Aleister kicked her way upwards, shuddered, hung poised for the next perilous swing. I tore myself free of the tangling coat and managed somehow to claw my way to my feet, bent double to avoid the murderous boom, staggering and sprawling as the deck went up like a lift, and the boom came back again to port with a force that threatened to take the whole mast overside. I threw myself at the wildly swinging tiller, grabbed it somehow and clung there, fighting to steady the sloop and trying, through the bursting fans of spray, to see.

  At first I thought he was dead. His body sprawled in a slack heap where it had been thrown back to the port side by the last violent tack. His head rolled, and I could see the blur of his face, not the pale oval that had been visible before, but half an oval … half his face must be black with blood. Then the Aleister shipped another wave, and the cold salt must have brought him sharply to his senses, for the head moved, lifting this time from the deck, and a hand went with terrifying precision to the edge of the cockpit seat, groping for a hold to pull his body up …

  I thrust the tiller hard to starboard again and laid the sloop right over. His hand slipped, and he was thrown violently back across the deck. It was now or never. I let go the tiller and tore the smoke flare down from its hook behind me. I could only pray that its rope was long enough to let me reach Godfrey where he lay against the side, his left hand now strongly grasping the seat, his right dragging at something in his pocket.

  I lifted the metal flare and lurched forward.

  Too late: the gun was in his hand. He was shouting something: words that were lost in the noise of wind and cracking spars and the hammering of the boom. But the message was unmistakable. I dropped the smoke flare, and leapt back for the stern seat.

  The pale half-face turned with me. The gun’s eye lifted.

  I yanked wildly at the lifebelt hanging there on its hooks. It came free suddenly, and I went staggering against the side with it clutched to me like a shield. As I gripped the coaming and hauled myself up, the engine controls were just beside my feet. I kicked the throttle full open, and jumped for the rail.

  The Aleister surged forward with a roar. I saw Godfrey let go his hold, dash the blood from his eyes with his free hand, jerk the muzzle of the gun after me, and fire.

  I heard no shot. I saw the tiny jet of smoke spurt and vanish in the wind. I put a hand to my stomach, doubled up and pitched headlong into the sea.

  I was coughing, swallowing salt water, gasping with lungs that hurt vilely, fighting the black weight of the sea with a wild instinct that brought me at last to the surface. My eyes opened wide, stinging, on pitch blackness. My arms flailed the water; my legs kicked like those of a hanging man; then I went out of control, lurching forward again and down, down …

  The cold water closing over me for the second time struck me back to full consciousness. Godfrey. The shot which – fired at a dim target on a wildly bucking boat – had missed me completely. The lifebelt which had been torn from me as I fell, its rope pulled tight on the hooks by my own hasty action with the smoke flare. The Aleister, which I had sent swerving away fast at full throttle from the place where I went in, but whose master would have her under control again, searching for me to make sure …

  I fought my panic down, as I had fought the sea. I surfaced easily enough, and this time the thick blackness was reassuring. I felt a shoe go, and even this little load lightened me. I trod water, retching and gasping, and tried to look about me.

  Darkness. Nothing but darkness, and the noises of wind and sea. Then I heard the engine, I couldn’t judge how far from me, but in the pauses of the wind it seemed to be coming nearer. He would come back to look for me; of course he would. I hoped he would think I had been hit and couldn’t possibly survive, but he could hardly take the risk. He would stay here, beating the sea between me and the land, until he found me.

  A mounting hill of a wave caught and lifted me. As I reached its crest I saw him; he had a light on, and the Aleister, now bare of canvas, was slipping along at half-throttle, searching the waves. She was still a good way off, and moving away from me at a slant, but she would be back …

  What was more, she was between me and the land. I saw this now, dimly, a black mass studded with faint points of light. It seemed a lot further away than it had from the deck of the Aleister.

  Half a mile, he had said. I could never swim half a mile; not in this sea. The water was very buoyant, and I was lightly clad, but I wasn’t in Spiro’s class as a swimmer, and could hardly hope for his luck. I dared do no other than swim straight towards the nearest land, and if Godfrey hunted about long enough he would be bound to see me.

  He had turned, and was beating back on a long tack, still between me and the shore. All around me the crests of the seas were creaming and blowing. I was carried up climbing slopes of glass, their tops streaming off against the black sky till the whole night seemed a windy race of wet stars. Foam blew into my eyes, my mouth. My body was no longer mine, but a thing of unfamiliar action, cold and buoyant. I could do little more than stay afloat, try to swim in the right direction, and let the seas take me.

  As I swam up the next mounting wave I caught, clearly, the reek of petrol in the wind, and saw a light not two hundred yards away. The engine was throttled back to the merest throb, and the boat circled slowly round the beam, which was directed downwards into the water. I even thought I saw him stooping over the side, reaching for something – my shoe, perhaps, kept floating by its rubber sole. He might take it as evidence that I was drowned; on the other hand, he might beat in widening circles round the place until he found me …

  Then not far away I saw another light, dimmer than the Aleister’s, and riding high. The Aleister’s light went out. I heard the beat of another engine, and the second light bobbed closer. Faintly, a hail sounded. The clapped-out old scow from Kentroma was coming to take a look at the odd light on her fishing pitch …

  The Aleister’s throttle opened with a roar, and I heard it dwindling away until the wind took all sound.

  Then I shouted.

  The sound came out as little more than a gasping cry, a feeble yell that was picked up by the wind and thrown away like the cry of a gull. The Kentroma boat may have attempted to go in the track of the Aleister, I do not know, but I had lost sight of her yellow light, and the sound of her engine, long before I gave up from sheer exhaustion, and concentrated on swimming rather than merely keeping afloat.

  It was then that I realised that the sea was dropping. I was well into the lee of the great curve of Corfu, where Pantokrator broke the winds and held the Gulf quiet. And the lights of Kouloura were a long way to my right. I had been drifting westwards, far faster than I could have swum.

  The discovery was like a shot of Benzedrine. My brain cleared. Of course. We had been still some distance from the east-bound current that had carried Spiro to the Albanian coast. And tonight it was an east wind. Where I had gone in the drift must be strongly to the south-west. He had thrown Yanni’s body in in the Gulf, and Yanni’s body had fetched up at the Villa Rotha. I doubted if St. Spiridion would take me quite so neatly home, but at least, if I could stay afloat, and make some progress, I might hope to stay alive.

  So I swam, and prayed, and if St. Spiridion got muddled up in my wordless prayers with Poseidon and Prosper, and even Max, no doubt it would come to the right ears in the end.

  Twenty minutes, in a sea that was little more than choppy, and with the roar of the rocky shore barely a hundred yards ahead, I knew I couldn’t make it. What had been chance for Spiro was none at all for me. Under the lee of the cliff, some freak current was setting hard off shore, probably only the backwash of the main stream that had brought me here, striking the coast at an angle and
being volleyed back to the open water, but where I had till now been able to keep afloat and even angle my course slightly north across the current, I no longer had strength to fight any sea that wasn’t going my way: my arms felt like cotton-wool, my body like lead; I gulped and floundered as the cross-waves met me, and every little slapping crest threatened to submerge me.

  Eventually, one did. I swallowed more water, and in my panic began to struggle again. I burst free of the water, my eyes wide and sore, arms flapping feebly now, failing to drive me on or even to keep me above water. The roar of the breakers came to me oddly muffled, as if they were far away, or as if their noise came only through the water that was filling my ears … I was being carried back, down, down, like a sackful of lead, like a body already drowned, to be tumbled with the other sea-wrack on the rocks in the bright morning …

  It was bright morning now. It was silly to struggle and fight my way up into darkness, when I could just let myself drift down like this, when in a moment or two if I put my feet down I would find sand, golden sand, and sweet air, sweet airs that give delight and hurt not … no, that was music, and this was a dream … how silly of me to panic so about a dream … I had had a thousand dreams like this, floating and flying away in darkness. In a few moments I would wake, and the sun would be out, and Max would be here …

  He was here now. He was lifting me. He thrust and shoved at me, up, up, out of the nightmare of choking blackness, into the air.

  I could breathe. I was at the surface, thrown there by a strength I hadn’t believed a man could command outside his own element. As I floundered forward, spewing the sea from burning lungs, his body turned beside me in a rolling dive that half-lifted, half-threw me across the current; then before the sea could lay hold on me again to whirl me back and away, I was struck and butted forward, brutally, right into the white surge and confusion of the breakers, rolling over slack and jointless as a rag in the wind.