The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  Soon the strangers’ voices reached him. He saw them approach, amused to see them following the straight path through the quarry, led by his father, and not the circular, secret route.

  The woman, however, was looking up, waving her arms about and making sounds of surprise.

  He heard her say. ‘Dr Whitlock—’

  ‘Please call me Richard,’ his father interrupted.

  ‘I’m sorry. Richard … there is something here. I can’t tell what, not yet. But it’s very strange. It’s almost in the air.’

  ‘What does it feel like?’ asked the other man. He was carrying a broken stick and used it to strike at the gorse, damaging the leaves.

  Listening from above, Michael grimaced and pushed himself lower against the grass as he heard her words in reply: ‘Like walls. And gates. Yes, like a castle. There are barriers. Your boy has a powerful imagination. The castle he has invented is very strong in the air …’

  Richard laughed, and something in the laugh disturbed Michael, but the thought faded away as the trio came closer to the chalk wall and passed into the camp, the small clearing where Michael could feel the old sea and the vanished beach most strongly. They stayed in the camp for a while, kicking around. The woman crossed her arms and seemed to feel cold. Could she feel the cold sea?

  She looked up the cliff, suddenly, frowning. Michael’s heart thumped, but he didn’t move. His eyes met her gaze, willing her not to see him, and after a moment her focus shifted. She looked around, scanning the chalk wall left to right, then turned away. He heard her say, ‘There are some good fossils. Do you collect them?’

  ‘Once upon a time.’

  His father went on, ‘This is where Michael claims to have found the golden wolf-girl. And I found traces of terracotta here after he brought home the Mocking Cross.’

  Michael leaned further over the edge, puzzled. The ‘Mocking Cross’? What was that?

  The other man said, ‘There has to be a cache around here. He must be getting this stuff from somewhere. Dumped from the cliff top maybe?’

  Michael jerked back as the man stared up towards him.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll find a cache,’ Richard said quietly, hands still in his pockets. ‘I’ve searched the place thoroughly. Someone is bringing the stolen objects to him, Jack. Someone a little out of the ordinary.’

  Jack began to walk away from the others and Michael squirmed forward again to see where he was going. He was ambling towards the dungeon, kicking at the brush, reaching down to pick up stones, chalk blocks and pieces of wood, examining everything. He called back, ‘This is where you excavated the dog-shrine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just about there. Yes,’ his father said.

  The woman was hunched, shivering, staring back towards the curve in the quarry that led out to the farmland. Michael wondered if she could hear the sea. She seemed to be listening.

  ‘There’s a terrible smell here,’ Jack called suddenly, and again Michael felt anxious. The man was kicking at the gorse cover over the iron-grilled passage where the rags and bones were stored, the things that Michael hadn’t wanted to bring home.

  Grimly, his teeth biting sharply at the inside of his lip, he watched the man in black leather pull up the gorse and disclose the passage, banging the iron with his broken stick.

  ‘Christ!’ came his voice. ‘There’s something dead in here. A dog or something … Really rotten!’

  Richard joined his colleague. The woman stayed where she was, again glancing up the cliff, yet not seeing the boy who watched her from his invisibility.

  Jack said loudly, ‘It’s an old tool housing, I think, probably from the quarry days. Covered by an iron grille. Help me with it. Can you?’

  The two men tugged at the iron, grunting and straining. The bushes rustled and moved where their stooped bodies struggled.

  ‘Christ!’ Again, from the other man. ‘If it’s human we could be in trouble. I hope you realize that. What a stink.’

  Then came the sound of something giving, metal on flint, or chalk. Disturbed, Michael drew back from the edge, stood up and looked thoughtfully into the distance, towards the sea.

  They had found the dungeon. That meant they would find the dead things. He didn’t know how his father would react to that. The woman had helped them in their discovery, but he felt sure she would be friendly to him. He was sure she could see the castle, and although she was frightened, or scared of something, she had almost broken the barrier without the map!

  But they had found the dungeon, and that meant questions later.

  Michael turned and ran home, hiding in his room behind the closed door, but listening hard, listening for the strangers’ return.

  Jack Goodman backed out of the chalk tunnel and tossed a black object down on to the pile of remains. One hand over his mouth and nose he drew a deep breath, his eyes watering. A few yards away Françoise Jeury stood without expression, her eyes narrowed as she surveyed the growing collection of rotten, rotting objects.

  Richard poked and prodded at the artefacts, fascinated and appalled at the same time. The smell was hard to cope with, but pure curiosity had taken over.

  ‘That’s about all of it,’ Goodman said hoarsely. ‘Christ! I hope you’ve got a good brandy up at the house. I’m about to die. Tomb robbing isn’t my speciality.’

  ‘Stop complaining about the smell,’ Richard said. ‘Look … This is human.’ He had seen a greying, shrivelled finger, part of a large, male hand. It had been torn, not cut. The nail was smooth and clean and a slightly lighter colouration at its base suggested that it had once borne a ring.

  The main source of the smell of decomposition was a goat’s head, with green and red decorative beads tied and tangled in its hair. The head was buzzing with flies even now. It had been cleanly severed at the neck.

  ‘Here’s your cache, Richard,’ Goodman said. ‘The boy has taken all the best stuff, leaving just the junk. Well, not quite just the junk. This is interesting.’

  He was turning the dulled blade in his fingers. A wide, leaf-shaped knife, the ivory handle inlaid with amber and faïence. The metal was bronze, much tarnished and very pitted. It was possible to see the pattern in the blade still, although its delicacy was much obscured.

  The rest of the haul was wood and bone, carved and shaped, dressed and decorated, but without meaning beyond some lost function of ritual. The head of the goat, the human finger and the roughly torn tail of a horse, its hair bound round with bright fabric, were all the obvious organic remains, though Richard found that inside the dress of a crude doll, something that looked Northern, shamanistic, the body consisted of a mummified rat.

  Goodman said: ‘The tunnel goes deeper. There’s more animal stuff in there, I think.’

  Turning the tarnished knife in his fingers, Richard murmured, ‘What sort of a cache – if by “cache” you mean stolen goods – what sort of cache contains rotting meat as well as gold, emerald and bronze? It makes no sense.’

  ‘You’re assuming that the gold and bronze was hidden at the same time as the animal remains.’

  ‘That goat is newly dead. Days, not hours. But recent.’

  Like a savaged dog, in a wicker cage …

  ‘Maybe someone’s trying to discourage kids from nosing around in the hiding place.’

  Richard shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that.’

  ‘Nor can I,’ Goodman said, rubbing his eyes and replacing his dark glasses. ‘I need some air … let’s get away from here.’

  But Françoise stepped over and reached out a hand. ‘May I see the knife?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She cradled the blade, touched it to her mouth, licked it, turned it over and rubbed her slender fingers across its pitted surface. Richard watched her curiously, not yet knowing what to make of her, aware that something strange was happening to Michael, something irrational, but something which might be a part of this woman’s experience. He had been sceptical of the supernatural – Hungarian magic and f
amily tradition not excluded – until Michael’s haunting had begun. Now he was intrigued by the claim that Françoise Jeury made: that she could tell age, and feeling, in objects that had been associated with powerful events.

  She had been employed – albeit surreptitiously, it turned out – by the best archaeological research institute in Britain. If she was a charlatan she was at least convincing. But if she was genuine, a psychic, then she was potentially of enormous use to the Whitlocks.

  ‘It’s old,’ she said quietly, her accent less pronounced. ‘But not very. A few generations. A hundred years. Not thousands. It has no age in it like that. No feeling of real age. And no violence. Just an old knife. A hundred years or so. Maybe more. But not that much more.’

  Goodman was surprised. ‘That would make it a Victorian copy. But this doesn’t look like a copy. I’d place it with the Wessex culture. Two thousand, two thousand and more BC. A very old artefact. I’ve seen them … This has been ripped off from a museum.’

  ‘I’ve seen them too,’ Richard said. ‘They preserve well. And this looks … Well, it looks right.’

  ‘But it has no age,’ Françoise insisted. Richard saw Goodman’s half-smile. She went on, ‘And a hundred-year-old copy would pit and tarnish just like this, wouldn’t it? If not preserved in the heavy earth of a tumulus.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  The knife passed between them.

  They looked down at the rest of the spoil. Françoise prodded at the oak effigy of a human, armless, legless, the features grimly and sparsely carved in the wood. She picked up a shattered bone, where fresh reds and blues of paint still filled beautifully the carved grooves that formed the shape of a bison. This was probably how ancient bone-carvers had fashioned their charmed long-bones. Coloured with ochres and other paints, filled with life, they had been far more vivid and striking than the faint, crumbling remains that were unearthed fifty thousand years after the shamans had used them to sketch their world.

  So: another copy. But a good one.

  And Françoise, holding the bone, said, ‘It feels strange, this piece. It has no age to it. No feeling of age. But it has power, like … like wildness. And wilderness. I have handled bone implements often and I can sometimes feel the time they have been in the earth. But not this. And yet, it is not like handling a modern bone …’

  She shook her head and dropped the fragment. Looking up at Richard wearily, she said, ‘I am confused and disturbed by all of this. When I arrived at your house something hurt me very badly … here …’ She placed a hand on her belly, a finger extended, as if being stabbed. ‘A sharp pain,’ she confirmed. ‘Like being opened. Something in your house is terrifying. I think I should touch that terrifying thing. It might help. If it came from this cache, then perhaps it will tell us more.’

  ‘Your son is watching us,’ she said as they made their way up the path from the field. Richard could smell fresh coffee being percolated. Carol was running down to meet them, her writing pad held under her left arm, her face a wide grin of pleasure.

  As he reached the child, and stooped to pick her up, he glanced up at Michael’s window, but saw nothing. ‘Where? Where is he watching us?’

  ‘Up there. He is very anxious.’

  ‘I can’t see him.’ Carol’s arms were round his neck and she was babbling about the painting of a horse she had done today at school.

  ‘I can,’ Françoise Jeury murmured, but the window was empty.

  ‘He’s in that room, up there. I saw him a moment ago. He is very unhappy, Richard. What have you been doing to him?’

  She had expected to feel the same appalling pain on entering the house that had afflicted her earlier. She was surprised and relieved, therefore, to find that she could enter the building without attack. Explaining this to Richard, she said, ‘Sometimes my senses are attuned very highly to violence or anger …’

  ‘Violence or anger in an object, you mean? Not just in the air … ?’

  He was struggling to understand the nature of the woman’s reputed power, still unsure of her.

  Françoise nodded. ‘I must tell you some of my encounters. Usually I have to touch an object to get the feel of what it is, what it has been. I get visions of the past through objects, especially stone and bones. Not so much metal. But yes – sometimes I feel the power of a totem, or a weapon, without making contact.’

  ‘Must make for an uneasy life,’ Richard said quietly. He was aware that the woman smiled thinly, conscious of his scepticism, but not responding to it.

  Susan greeted them. Richard noticed that she was wary of the other woman and was as stiff as usual with Jack Goodman.

  They drank coffee laced with brandy in the sitting room while Carol talked to each of them in turn, showing drawings and demanding attention. Goodman was uncomfortable with the child’s attention, but Françoise was enchanted by the girl. ‘You will have to draw me, now. A good portrait for my friend at home.’

  ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  ‘Lee. He’s an American. We search out ghosts together.’

  Carol seemed less than interested in the idea of ghosts. She sat down on the floor to oblige on the art side, and five minutes later had produced a grotesque caricature of the French woman, accurate in hair and skin colour, but very unflattering in bodily girth.

  Françoise accepted the portrait with enormous grace, if with a slightly startled expression.

  On a tour of the studios, she was delighted with Susan Whitlock’s collection of dolls. They spent long minutes talking about them, handling prized specimens, laughing. The Mocking Cross doll sat on the shelf and Françoise acknowledged it, but seemed reluctant to touch it. Richard perched on the end of his desk, talking with Jack Goodman, idly examining the wolf-girl statuette. At length, Françoise and Susan came back from the studio. Susan was holding the Mocking Cross. Françoise was quite pale.

  She smiled as she saw the golden statue. ‘This is the girl? It’s beautiful.’

  She held the gold object, pressed it, admired it, and then said the words that were becoming so familiar: ‘It has no age. It is like the bronze dagger. It has no age at all. This is a copy. Very beautiful, but very new.’

  Richard asked, ‘What if the statuette had never been associated with violence? Or with passion, say. What if there was no emotion in the piece that had been trapped. Would you still be able to feel something about it?’

  She watched him blankly for a moment, her eyes wide and softly green, a disturbing look that made Richard’s skin prickle. Then she nodded. ‘I am sure of it. I would feel something. Something of the centuries. Even if it was only a sense of confinement, of darkness, of nothingness. No. This is very new.’

  At last she was ready for the Viking instrument of desecration. As she cradled the wooden figure in her hands she breathed very deeply.

  ‘This is new too. Not the wood. That has a feel to it, but wild. Natural. But this has killed.’

  Her hands were shaking and she placed the cross down.

  ‘It was used to cut open the belly of a young man. A holy man. It cut deeply through the flesh, killing him agonizingly.’

  ‘You can know that from touching the object?’

  ‘As if in a dream,’ she said. ‘I live his death. The death is there, and the laughter of the killer. It cut through his belly, cracked his breast. As he died he prayed to Jesus Christ.’

  Goodman made a sound, like laughter but more derisory. He didn’t quite catch himself in time. He seemed to ignore his own rudeness and said, ‘That would confuse me, you see, Françoise. You say the knife is new. That it has “no age”. But you also say that it cut out the heart of a young Christian monk. Now if your talent is true, then the two things are incompatible. This knife hasn’t been used to kill recently. If it was used in the way we think, and which you describe, then that’s an event that occurred a thousand years ago—’

  ‘This knife isn’t a thousand years old. I am certain of it.’

  ‘It has to b
e. If not, then it has been used for a ritual murder in the last few years – but there’s no sign of dried blood on it now, and those chips and snags on the cutting edge are long dried out. Besides, I can’t recall accounts of any such murder.’

  ‘The man who died was not of this time,’ the woman said. And now she, too, seemed confused. ‘Perhaps my sense is awry. Perhaps I can’t help.’ She smiled at Susan, glanced at Richard Whitlock, then shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. I am a strange tool of archaeology. Sometimes I dig well. Sometimes I don’t.’

  Susan said quickly, ‘I’d like you to speak to Michael. Would you do that? I’m sure he’ll like you.’

  ‘He didn’t like me at the back door,’ Françoise said quietly, cryptically, but she nodded. ‘All right. But outside. Not inside. I want him to take me to his castle.’

  FIFTEEN

  A hundred yards into the quarry Françoise suddenly caught her breath and stopped. With a smile of delight she said, ‘This is the outer gate! This is the outer gate of your castle!’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I didn’t see it before.’

  Michael was pleased. She was standing right between the chalk markers, where the outer winding path began.

  The woman looked up, then raised her hands in a pushing motion. ‘Cre-e-ak …’ she went, and laughed. Michael laughed too. She braced her body and mimed the opening of heavy gates, stepping forward (but not along the hidden path). He had been so apprehensive of her, an hour ago. Now he felt she was his friend. He wasn’t sure yet whether to tell her about Chalk Boy – Chalk Boy might be angry if he did – but she could imagine the castle, and believed in its walls and gates. She might even be aware of the endless tunnels that riddled the earth below it. He didn’t mind if she knew: she couldn’t get in, not without help, not even if she could feel them.

  They walked on slowly. The dusk deepened and a breeze began to stir the stunted trees.

  ‘Why do you call your castle “Limbo”? It’s a strange name.’

  As he followed her through the quarry, Michael struggled for the words, trying to remember what the priest had told them at Church. ‘Limbo is the place between heaven and hell. It’s not a bad place. It’s not a good place. It’s a place where people go when they can’t get to heaven, but they’re too good to go to hell. It’s a place in the middle. People go there when they haven’t got a soul. No one can see Limbo. That’s what my castle is like. No one can see it.’ He lowered his voice and glanced away, then on some sudden, confiding impulse said, ‘That’s what I’m like too.’