The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  The night after that he had dreamed of the wooden watching-man, its face just two eyes and a grim mouth, its arms stretched out, its legs stuck into the mud with the bright shield between them. On the shield was the face of an animal, surrounded by swirls and lines. It was a funny-shaped shield, in the dream, kinked in the middle, not round or square like a Roman shield. One day he’d like to fetch it, if he could.

  Where was Daddy? It was getting dark. And he could hear Chalk Boy calling him from the pit. There was a funny breeze in the pit, a freezing wind that just went round and round, between the bushes, near where the earth was so hot, the earth-spill that Michael knew was from the house, from when he had been born. The funny wind had been there for a day, and although he hadn’t heard from Chalk Boy for weeks now, he could hear the boy’s voice in the distance. Chalk Boy sounded as if he was in pain. It was quite frightening for Michael, and he felt uncomfortable in his castle. But it was there that he had seen the treasure cauldron. And he had fetched it without Chalk Boy.

  Downstairs, Carol shouted loudly, there was running, a door opening, and outside the sound of the car on the gravel.

  Smiling, Michael settled back into the corner of his room, his heart racing as he imagined what his father would feel when he saw the gifts.

  ‘This one’s for you …’

  Richard reached for the small, paper-wrapped object. It was heavy and he almost dropped it as he accepted it from Michael’s shaking grip. The boy watched him eagerly. The family was sitting round the table, while the smell of roast chicken came from the kitchen.

  ‘Hurry up. Hurry up…’ Michael urged. Richard caught Susan’s eye and she raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Do you know what’s in here?’ he asked with a smile, and she shook her head.

  ‘It’s a surprise to us all,’ she murmured, but her look told Richard that she’d already seen all the objects that Michael had fetched. This was Michael’s game. She’d been sworn to secrecy.

  He unwrapped an egg, slightly larger than a hen’s egg. It was of gold, of course. It was covered with designs. His breath caught, for a moment, in total shock.

  Then he said, with a laugh, ‘Where’s the goose?’ and looked under the table.

  Michael said earnestly, ‘It’s not a goose’s egg. It’s a Grail treasure.’

  ‘Don’t you remember the story of the goose that laid the golden egg?’ Richard smiled as he spoke.

  Michael’s face darkened. ‘It’s a treasure. It’s not a goose egg.’ He became agitated.

  Momentarily taken aback by the vehemence in Michael’s voice, Richard quickly regained the initiative.

  ‘No. Of course it’s not, Michael. It’s beautiful. By God, it’s beautiful. It’s the best Grail treasure yet!’

  Susan had seemed alarmed, but relaxed as the moment of missed-point and anguish passed.

  ‘What funny – what lovely pictures. They seem to tell a story …’

  He turned the lump of gold around. It reminded him of the Phaistos disc, a terracotta disc discovered on Crete and dating from late Minoan times. This egg had a descending spiral channel scored into its skin, a channel that was divided into compartments, or cartouches. In each cartouche was a set of designs: faces, ships, houses, ears of wheat, bronze ingots, signals familiar to him, and others besides that were indecipherable. Each group of glyphs would represent a word. This was writing that pre-dated Linear A.

  ‘This is wonderful. It’s a wonderful present. Thank you. I shall treasure it.’

  ‘Don’t sell it,’ the boy said hoarsely and with great meaning.

  ‘Of course not. I shall treasure it.’

  Susan leaned forward. ‘Can we open ours now?’

  Michael was staring hard at his father, his face open, his eyes filled with a longing that Richard had no idea how to fill. He kept repeating how beautiful the story-egg was. And then he remembered his duty and mentioned that he had a great story for Michael that night, all about the lake-village – he referred to it by the common name of crannog, but appended the word ‘castle’ … Castle Crannog – and the story of a Lost Shield.

  Michael’s face dissolved into knowingness and pleasure. He anticipated the story, but also being able to talk about his dream.

  Susan unwrapped her present. It was the arm and part of the torso of a silver figure, female, originally, about twelve inches high, Richard guessed. It had been broken raggedly, and there were the marks, on the broken edge, of a blade used violently. A figurine hacked to pieces for booty, perhaps. Michael had thought it part of a doll, and so it was an obvious present for his mother.

  Carol was visibly nervous as she unwrapped the paper on the flattened object that was Michael’s gift to her. It was a shell, a brilliant piece of mother-of-pearl, carved delicately to show two horsemen of proud bearing against a high mountain behind. It had been bored round the edge to make twenty tiny holes. Not a necklet, then, but something that had been tied in a frame. Carol thought it was very pretty. Michael said, ‘You can paint it. Or draw it.’ He was still occasionally cautious in his approach to his younger sibling, perhaps remembering the fights of past years, in particular his assault on her when she had tampered with the Mocking Cross.

  Carol thanked him, staring at the shell in a confusion of pleasure and puzzlement. When he deemed it appropriate, Richard examined the piece of art carefully. He noticed that the riders were wrapped against the cold. The mountains were not the familiar high hills of Chinese geography, more the mountains of Central Europe. Indeed, the details of the weapons and objects, even the dress of the two horsemen shown, suggested that this shell was something that had been carved four or five thousand years ago.

  He could hardly be sure. He just felt that he was holding a preciously saved piece of proto-Indo-European art.

  This was from the first period of real migration history. The riders could have been going west towards Greece and the Danube, or east towards the Ganges and a rendezvous with the Orient that would develop into the earliest of the great myths of India.

  If it was real, this shell, and if his interpretation was right, this simple piece of carving was more valuable than anything that had yet come through Michael into the present.

  ‘I think I’d like to paint in the colours,’ Carol said.

  It was a moment of agony for the archaeologist in Richard Whitlock.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s very pretty just the way it is?’

  Carol stared at the shell, her brow furrowing. Then she said, ‘The horses are very small. They don’t look like real horses.’

  ‘That’s true. They don’t. Why don’t you paint them on a piece of paper? Imagine what colour they were. See if it looks right.’

  ‘That’s what real artists do,’ Susan said helpfully, and this simple statement was enough to resolve the doubt in the girl’s mind. She seemed delighted with the suggestion. Richard was relieved.

  The children went to bed, suppered, scrubbed, cleaned, happy. Richard was tired and Michael was given a teaser for the big story the next day, and he seemed to accept this, understanding that his father was tired and that guests were coming. For the boy, the simple pleasure of Richard’s delight had been enough to send him scampering to the sheets, to dream of shields and wooden watching-men.

  Jenny and Geoff Hanson were coming round for a meal, by prior arrangement, and Richard was certainly now in the mood to celebrate, so they had decided not to cancel the evening.

  As Michael washed and dressed for bed, prior to his brief goodnight story, Richard searched through the rest of the contents of the cauldron.

  The cauldron itself was iron, very old, much used, and patterned with a simple design. It had been crushed from one side, and the handle was missing. The crushing looked new – a probable consequence of its fetching – but the loss of the handle seemed to be a part of its history.

  It was a votive-offering collection vessel. It had probably been carried during a migration, or perhaps kept in a shrine. The shell would have been so
mething inherited, if it was as old as he suspected, since the iron cauldron couldn’t have dated from much before the first millennium BC.

  The Minoan egg and the silver statue fragment would have been the accumulated wealth of a clan accustomed to raiding to the south of their tribal lands.

  Much of what was in the cauldron was fragmentary: gold, silver, faïence, amber, some jade (which was beautiful), much bronze, more shell, very broken, and an astonishing little carving in jet of a hare on the run.

  The total worth of the haul was hard to estimate: but many thousands, if Goodman’s contacts were as effective as they had been up to now.

  Richard quickly drove to the local off-licence and bought two bottles of cheap champagne. By the time Jenny and Geoff arrived, their hosts were practically dancing on the table and the chicken had begun to burn.

  At the beginning of the spring, Richard was requested to travel north again, to the site of the Iron Age crannog. The excavation had been re-started three weeks before, and almost immediately – prompted by Richard’s earlier communication – a satellite hut had been found. This building had been constructed apart from the main village platform but still within the lakes, and was probably reached by a bridge. It was a shrine hut, and as such was both rare and the signifier that this particular village was a tribal centre, perhaps the settlement of a king.

  Richard’s job was again to photograph the confusion of objects and building materials that were emerging from the peat.

  Among them were the fragmentary remains of a large oak statue, male, a deity. It was broken in many places, and much was lost. All the signs suggested that it had been shattered in antiquity by an act of appalling violence. Parts of the effigy appeared to be scattered over several yards. As if – as one student remarked – as if someone had set a bomb off below its sprawling legs.

  Had a shield been discovered among the litter of this destructive act? Richard asked.

  A shield? No. Why should there be a shield?

  Richard walked over to the deep cut in the peat and stood on the planking, thinking about a lake and a small enclosure in the middle of the silent water, reached by a walkway, or perhaps isolated from the main village, its concealed god accessible only by canoe. Had Michael been there in his dreams? Had he snatched that shield into a time still in his own future?

  It was a strange and thrilling sensation, imagining that event. But how had Michael dreamed of the place? Had he focused his mind through his father’s own senses? Had he followed his father to the North, demonstrating a greater attachment than even Richard had been aware of?

  There were too many questions, too many confusions, and he returned to the Portakabin where he kept his camera equipment.

  PART FOUR

  The Wasteland

  TWENTY

  The flight from Orly airport was delayed by fog and didn’t set down in Gatwick until after midnight. Françoise Jeury, tired, restless and distracted, was furious with the hold-up, made a fuss at the flight desk and insisted on the airline paying for a taxi to take her to London. The visit to her home, in Brittany, had been distressing; memories of her first husband were always strongest at this time of the year, when autumn was freezing rapidly into winter.

  She sat in silence for the hour’s drive to her flat in Clapham, fending off the attempts at conversation by the driver, and not complaining at all when he set the radio to play midnight jazz. She hardly noticed the journey, the streaming lights of the motorway, the darkness of the land beyond.

  At two o’clock she found Lee curled on the sofa in his dressing-gown, reading. The flat was freezing.

  ‘I thought you’d be in bed.’

  The man looked tired, unshaven and slightly irritated. ‘A friend of yours has been calling.’

  ‘A friend? Which one?’

  ‘They’ll call again.’ Lee Kline stood, kissed Françoise, then shivered. ‘Electric fire, I think.’

  ‘Electric fire, I know,’ she said. ‘How can you sit in this cold?’

  ‘Saving money.’

  ‘We don’t need to save money.’

  ‘There’s a recession looming. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘There’s always a recession looming in this wretched country. Which friend? I’m not in the mood to talk.’

  ‘Nor is he. Not to me, anyway.’

  ‘Aha!’ she laughed and pinched Lee through his robe. ‘Now I understand. The man is jealous because it’s my other lover calling me to whisper sweet nothings to me.’

  ‘Since when did you start dating children?’

  She frowned. ‘A child?’

  ‘A child who whispers down the phone.’

  ‘A child who whispers down the phone … ?’

  ‘A child who calls you “Frances”.

  ‘A child who calls me Frances?’

  ‘Who tap dances.’

  ‘Who tap dances …!?’ she broke off, frowning. ‘Is this a joke?’

  Lee was laughing.

  ‘Don’t joke. I’m tired. I’m not feeling well.’

  ‘I’ll get some tea. Then bed. We could always take the phone off the hook.’

  As if to counter that, the phone rang, unnervingly loudly in the still, cold night. Françoise carried it to the fire, sat down on the floor and lifted the receiver.

  ‘Who is this?’ she asked.

  There was the sound of sea, like rushing waves. Then the sound died away and a voice hissed, ‘It’s Chalk Boy. Are you Frances?’

  ‘Françoise. Is that you, Michael?’

  ‘Michael’s sleeping,’ whispered the eerie voice. ‘This is Chalk Boy. I want to see you.’

  Françoise was confused, the tiredness in her head not fully evaporating as she tried to work out what was going on. Why was Michael playing this funny game? And so late at night! It was a year or more since she had seen him in London. Again, Susan had put a barrier between her son and the other woman.

  ‘It is you, isn’t it, Michael?’

  ‘Michael’s sleeping. I told you. Come to me now. I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Michael – Chalk Boy, I mean: it’s very late, and I’m very tired.’

  It was as if fury possessed the figure at the other end. The sea surged, the waves crashed, Françoise could hear pebbles, or … the boy making sounds like the sea. He was very good. As the sea-sounds stopped, so the voice hissed again, ‘You said you wanted to talk to me. You told Michael you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten. But Michael never called me when you were around.’

  ‘Daddy …’

  ‘Daddy? What about Daddy?’

  ‘Michael’s Daddy,’ said the voice, ‘didn’t think he should. But you must come and talk to me. Come to the castle.’

  ‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ she said wearily. ‘Have you got something to show me?’

  ‘Come now. Come now.’

  ‘It’s a long way to drive, Chalk Boy. It will take me two hours.’

  ‘Come anyway. Come to the castle. I’ll wait for you at the castle.’

  ‘And Michael?’

  ‘I told you. Michael is sleeping. This is Chalk Boy. You said you wanted to see me. Now you can.’

  ‘All right. Two hours.’

  ‘In the castle.’

  ‘In the castle.’

  The line went dead.

  Lee tried to be firm with her, but failed. ‘You’ll crash. You’re in no state to drive.’

  She shrugged him off. Her mind was full of images: of Michael Whitlock, of his father, of their house, of the chalk pit, of a gold mask on a wooden knife. Something in the boy’s tone – and she was in no doubt at all that it was Michael who had called, even if he was playing the pretend game – something in his tone had communicated genuine urgency, genuine need. He had rung six times during the late evening and early morning, whispering from the hallway of his house, a boy terrified, freezing, alone in his mind, alone in his castle. Françoise felt for him. He was in trouble. She had to respond to his call.

&nb
sp; She was so damned tired!

  ‘Will you drive me?’

  Lee Kline shook his head, picking up a sheet of paper and holding it out to the woman. She had forgotten that he was due in York at noon the next day. It would be an early start for him too.

  ‘Go in the morning,’ he said. ‘Three hours won’t make any difference.’

  ‘Maybe not. But if they did, what would I do then? He sounded desperate, Lee. I don’t know if I can help him, but I know he thinks I can. I have to go. I’ll get a taxi.’

  ‘It’ll cost you a fortune at this time of the morning.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll get a valuable present from Chalk Boy,’ she muttered darkly. With that idea came thoughts of Richard Whitlock, and an anger that she remembered feeling two years or more ago, when she had been at the house in Kent.

  It made up her mind for her. She called a taxi, and gasped at the quoted fare, but accepted it. Then she searched her records for the Whitlocks’ address before quickly changing her clothes and making a thermos flask of hot, strong coffee.

  It was still dark when the taxi reached Ruckinghurst village where the Whitlocks lived. Françoise asked to be driven slowly through the silent street until she identified the dark shape that was Eastwell House. There were three cars in the drive and a long extension to the side of the property. The Whitlocks were doing well. A hundred yards or so up the road was a narrow lane leading out on to the open farmland. The taxi parked here and Françoise shared her coffee with the driver.

  They talked quietly and tiredly about the supernatural, French politics and tennis. Eventually a gleam of light in the distance told of the dawn. For a few minutes Françoise watched the pink become shimmering grey-red as the sun lit up the English Channel, visible over the black ridge of the Downs. Then she settled the account with the taxi driver, wished him a safe journey home, and stepped out of the car into the icy November morning.

  Her breath frosting, she huddled into her coat. There was a layer of frozen dew on the field and she walked slowly, not liking the sound that her weight made as she trod down the crisp grass. Why she wanted to stay silent she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was that she felt like an intruder in this virgin, silent dawn.