Castle Barebane

by Joan Aiken

  By now, due to hard rowing through the steep, black-and-silver seas, they had almost rounded the point, and had passed the long saw-toothed beak of rocks known as the Kelpie’s Fangs. The moon had floated from behind the cloud-wrack and the night was becoming piercingly clear, frosty, and cold; above them the snow-covered headland stood up like a wedding cake, with Wolf’s Crag castle ruins a dark pinnacle on its very tip. Ardnacarrig Bay was out of sight; only occasionally the lights of the Dragonfly glimmered into sight for a moment and then were lost again behind the rocks.

  “What will happen to the ship, Mungo?”

  “It would be a miracle if they saved it now,” he said. “Once the tide pull carries it inside yon point, even if they start the engine, they could hardly win out again.”

  Both of them fell silent. Val wondered where Nils had got to, what had become of him. She hoped that she would never see him again and marvelled at Elspie’s fairness in allowing him time to get away, after the trouble he had brought on everybody. She also wondered, though she was glad that Elspie had said yes to Mungo at last, if he might not be a little daunted at what he was taking on. Somebody who, in cold, stern, retribution for two deaths, could, without a qualm, send seven or eight men into quicksand, was a frightening force to reckon with. No: three deaths; there was Kirstie too. And the rape of the house probably counted high in Elspie’s tally.

  But it was true that Mungo, with equally inflexible judgment, had been prepared to despatch Dragonfly and her owner to the Kelpie’s Fangs. Perhaps, after all, they were a well-matched pair. They were, Val thought, like the vengeance of nature: slow, inexorable, and devastating.

  Just the same—

  “Mungo,” she said, when they were past the point. A line of snow-covered beach now shone to their left. About a mile ahead, two or three dim lights showed where Wolf’s Hope lay.

  “What is it, lassie?”

  “I’d like to go back to Elspie. Would you put me ashore? I can walk over the headland from here, it will only take an hour. I hate to think of her alone in that wrecked house. And just in case—oh, I don’t know—in case my brother turned up again, or one of the men from the boat survived—”

  It was a virtue of Mungo’s that he seldom argued. He took his own way when he felt it right; otherwise, anyone could have theirs.

  “I’d suggest that you go back and I go on,” Val added, “but I don’t think I could row all that way. And the people at Wolf’s Hope will pay more heed to you. You should tell them about the tinklers too.”

  “I doubt the tinklers will have taken themselves off when they saw the yacht gone,” said Mungo. He set course for the beach. “Aweel, gang your ways, lassie; I’m no’ saying you’re wrong. Mind yerself, now.”

  She looked down at Pieter, who was sleeping peacefully.

  “I’ll come over to Wolf’s Hope for him tomorrow. Maybe Tibbie will take him in. Goodnight, Mungo. You go carefully too.”

  She squeezed his hand, then jumped on to the beach, sinking ankle-deep in freezing foam—but what was the difference, she was soaked altogether, by now—and set off walking at a fast pace towards the snow-covered saddle of headland which now lay to her right. It was easy to find a track, which the snowfall had outlined on the hillside. At one time, presumably when Wolf’s Crag castle was inhabited by Carsphairn ancestors, this must have been their quickest route to the shore, and a well-defined path had been trodden, probably over hundreds of years. It zigzagged up the hill, snowy, slippery, and steep, but not dangerous, and Val struggled up at a fair speed, pausing on the hairpin turns for breath. It was during one of these pauses that she had another glimpse of the Dragonfly; listing over, now, at an odd angle, the yacht was drifting broadside on, closer and closer to the frill of white which outlined the reef. Though she loathed Clanreydon and wished him no good, Val could not suppress a shiver at the thought of the boat’s helpless predicament.

  And then, when she could no longer see the ship, she heard its death rattle—a grinding crunch, the sound of a nutshell splintered to fragments between huge nutcrackers.

  At last she reached the top of the hill, and paused again, getting her breath back. She was close by the castle, now, and could see the whole sweep of the bay. No ship was in it.

  The first time I came here, she thought, was with David Ramsay, when he did those tests on Jannie. Now both of them are dead: that odd, kind, intelligent, thwarted man, and little Jannie whose mother loved her with such desperate hope and devotion. “Be good to her. I know you will.” I wasn’t always kind to her; often I was impatient; often I wished to be rid of the burden. Oh David, oh Jannie. An irrepressible sob burst up in her; she leaned against the castle wall and wept without restraint.

  I must go down to Elspie, she thought presently, wiping her eyes. In the moonlight, now bright as midday, she could see the house, pinnacled among its trees. It looked peaceful enough. The level of her sorrow began to sink, like a tide, and simple grief was replaced by a strangeness, a wholly unfamiliar mystery, loss of identity, anonymity. Who am I, what is Val? Am I really here, or shall I wake and find myself in Twenty-third Street and all this a dream? How did I ever come to be here? I must go down or I shall freeze to death, what am I doing, loitering on the cold hill side?

  But she could not move. She was afraid to go down—the bay looked so secretive, in its silence and calm. The ship had gone, who was left? What had become of Nils?

  As she thought this, a hand gripped her arm. She turned and saw Nils, who must have walked out of the castle ruins. He looked like a wild man, with pale floating hair and staring eyes; he clutched at her, and said, earnestly, “Will it be all right to go back, now? I saw the ship founder on the rocks. Have you come to tell me that it’s safe?”

  In her high-strung state, Val had been horribly startled at his first touch, and barely repressed a shriek. When she saw that it was only Nils, a terrible depression overcame her. Why does he have to reappear to plague us? she thought bitterly; why did it have to be Davie, so kind, so useful to the human race, who was killed? How easily could Nils have been spared. And how like him now to be concerned only for his own safety; not a question about the children, or Elspie; he might be the only person in the world. And what am I going to do about him?

  “I don’t know if it’s safe, Nils,” she answered shortly. “I came from the other direction.”

  “Oh.” He looked disappointed. “Perhaps you had better go down first and see if the coast is clear. If it is, then you could come back and help me with my box.”

  “Box?”

  “Yes.” He laughed a little ruefully. “You see, I’ve done rather a tiresome thing. I’ve dislocated my arm, pulling the box up the cliff. I ought to have left a long time ago—Elspie gave me some money—but I couldn’t carry the box any farther. That’s why it’s so lucky that you came along when you did.”

  “What are you talking about, Nils?”

  “Come in here.”

  With a jerk of the head he beckoned her inside the castle keep. This was circular in form, mostly just a shell of wall, with a few remaining little cell-like rooms backed against it. Two or three entrances led outward, here and there, to the snowy cliff top.

  “Here,” said Nils, and led the way to one of the cell rooms, into which the moon shone. Val, following, noticed that he carried his left arm awkwardly. She looked into the cell and saw that it contained a black, japanned box of the sort in which lawyers keep wills and deeds.

  “I’d got it hidden in a cave, down there at the bottom of the cliff,” Nils explained, giving the box an affectionate kick, as if it were his favourite child. “So it was quite convenient for me when I came out of the smugglers’ tunnel. In fact, when I first came to Ardnacarrig, my plan had been to get into the house that way. Kirstie showed it to me once. But I couldn’t find it! And I was afraid of falling into the quicksand. So that was why I called out to you on the beach. But I l
eft the box in the cave; turned out to be a good thing I had. Only then, climbing up the cliff with it, I wrenched my arm so badly that I could hardly stand the pain. And then the fog began to lift so that I had to wait for hours and hours in a tiny cave half way up, no bigger than a dog kennel. I’ve had a wretched time of it.”

  All this was delivered so artlessly that Val could only marvel at him. He had climbed the cliff, by a path little better than a goat track, carrying the heavy box. He had risked death and wrenched his arm out of its socket. He’s like a dung beetle, she thought, rolling his horrible ball of muck around—for the box must contain all his papers and articles—and now he wants me to carry it back to Ardnacarrig.

  She tried the box, which had a black ring handle on its lid; she could hardly shift it off the ground.

  “Good God, Nils, you brought this all the way from London?”

  “Letty had it for me in her lodgings,” he said. “How do you think we can get it to the house? Perhaps we could tie a rope and lower it down the cliff?”

  “I’m not taking it anywhere, Nils. And you had better stay here till I see what has happened down there.”

  She had no intention of telling him about the fate of Clanreydon’s men, or about Jannie—he was plainly in a very abnormal state.

  “I’ll come back in an hour or two,” she began. But he was not paying attention; he had wandered out of a door hole that led toward the cliff top. He was muttering, “Yes, I think a rope would be best. When you come back—bring one, would you? Two or three hundred feet. And a bottle of brandy—”

  She had started away when she heard him give an extraordinary, hoarse cry—like somebody who suddenly sees the ground gape under his feet.

  She turned, expecting to see that he had fallen, but he was on the cliff top, staring down.

  “What is it, Nils?”

  “He’s climbing up!” Nils muttered. He backed away, pointing downward.

  Full of dread, Val moved toward the edge—which was not sheer, but a series of angled slopes becoming progressively steeper. Even from six feet back it was possible to look down and see a man who now appeared pulling his way, partly with his hands, partly with a spiked stick that he carried.

  He came toward them up the final slope.

  “Throw something at him, Val!” whimpered Nils. “I can’t stand him coming now; there’s nowhere to hide the box. It ain’t fair!”

  Nils had backed as far as the castle wall; his face worked as if he were going to burst into tears. Val wondered if he would have another epileptic attack. She herself experienced almost the same feeling of dread as she watched Clanreydon approach. Was the man indestructible? She could not run but must simply watch him as he came slowly toward them. He limped badly; his clothes were soaked; his face was fixed in a grimace of pain or disgust.

  “So this is where you got to,” he said when he was within speaking distance of Nils.

  “Why can’t you leave me alone?” burst out Nils petulantly like a quarrelsome child. “Why must you follow me everywhere?”

  “Why—my dear fellow? Because I’m so fond of you, of course. Hell’s teeth, how I love you!” answered Clanreydon, grinding it out between his own teeth. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. You aren’t free of me yet, Hansen. If you are round my neck—God help you! I am going to be round yours.”

  “What have I done? All I wanted was a little friendship—a little financial aid?”

  The two men were now staring at one another as intently as if each were looking into a mirror. And in a way they are, thought Val, watching them. They had forgotten her; were ignoring her as if she did not exist, absorbed in an extraordinary kind of silent dialogue, as if each sought to enter and possess the other. They do love each other—in a horrible way, she thought. Each has a map of the other in his mind.

  “Friendship? Due to you I’ve lost my ship; my crew have vanished, God knows where; the last two men I saw sink in a quicksand as they tried to scramble ashore, and I would have sunk in it myself if I hadn’t been thrown on the rocks; my leg is badly hurt; I’m stuck on a freezing mountain top; and you say you want friendship? How could anybody be friends with you?”

  “How could anybody but you? We are friends. I know you—you know me.”

  And suddenly Nils smiled at him with a kind of childlike trust; his face crinkled like a small boy’s in the brilliant white light. He said, “Do you remember how the blood ran out in a pool shaped like a rose—and she had dropped a tinsel rose, it lay just on the edge, in the dust, and the smell of old dirty bricks was sweeter than a hayfield in the hot summer night? And the angles of the little mean houses were like a pack of playing cards just about to tumble down, and in the distance a man was playing on a hurdy-gurdy.”

  “Be quiet! I remember nothing—nothing!”

  “That was one! And another time there was a smell of hot fried pies and lamplight coming from the Three Cocks Inn; she was laughing as you cut her throat and the laughing turned to a choke, and the choke to a gurgle—”

  “Will you be silent?” The other man took an awkward, painful step towards Nils, and now Val saw that the stick he held was one of the kind with a sword contained in it; he had pulled out the sword and it shone like a crack of white light.

  Merciful heaven, she thought; I should not be witnessing this; any person who sees these two together like this must be due to die; neither of them could afford to let me survive. I ought to try to steal off; escape while they are absorbed in one another. But she could not; Nils now stood in the doorway of the castle, and Clanreydon barred the way past the wall, along the cliff edge; on the other side a buttress ran out, and part of the cliff had crumbled away, so there was no way by.

  At sight of Clanreydon’s sword Nils, unexpectedly, began to giggle as if he were drunk and sang out suddenly in a clear tenor voice that brought a whole cascade of childhood memories tumbling about Val’s ears,

  “A frog he would a wooing ride

  With sword and buckler at his side–”

  “Be quiet, you fool!” said Clanreydon and lunged at him with the sword; but Nils took a step to the side and escaped easily enough.

  “Old Froggie Reydon! Do you remember waltzing all the way along Stamford Street and down Rose Alley to the cockpit? And there we picked up a gal called Winnie Ginger?”

  Clanreydon lunged again, grimly intent, although his face was screwed up with the pain caused by his hurt leg; and this time he managed to stab Nils in the side.

  “Hey, damn it, that hurt!” exclaimed Nils in a voice of astonishment and outrage; suddenly whirling on his heel, using his good arm as a club, he brought his fist round and caught Clanreydon a powerful glancing blow on the side of his head, which he was not expecting; it caught him off balance and toppled him over. He was up next minute, swearing under his breath, and darted a swift thrust forward, to avoid which Nils took a hasty step back. Now Clanreydon was in the doorway and Nils retreating toward the cliff edge.

  “Mind out, Nils!” Val tried to call, but her voice had died, as in a nightmare; no sound came out.

  And did she really want him to win? She hardly knew.

  “Winnie Ginger; she was a rum ‘un,” Nils went on in a meditative tone, as if the sea were not tumbling behind him, three hundred feet down. “She carried a canary about with her in a cage—remember? You took a fancy to her and once we all three went to Lowestoft—remember? There were lots of scrapes I’d never have got into but for you, old Nuggie.”

  Clanreydon made another lunge, but now Nils had picked up the stick which had formed the casing of Clanreydon’s sword, and with it he struck the blade aside. In doing so he slipped, however, and Clanreydon, thrusting in the blade again like lightning, ran it through Nils’ shoulder.

  Nils gave a loud, angry yell of pain.

  “I say, you know, that ain’t fair!” he roared.
“One fellow with a sword and t’other only with a stick, that’s devilish unequal! You shouldn’t treat your pal like that.”

  “I’m not your pal, damn you!”

  “Then I ain’t yours,” said Nils, who was now a frightening sight, with blood streaming down him in two places and his hair tousled like a berserk Viking. He swung the stick up in both hands and, gasping with the pain it gave his wrenched arm, brought it violently down on Clanreydon’s wrist, knocking the sword out of his hand. Both men were panting heavily, swearing, and slipping about in the snow; if it had not been terrifying, the scene would have been grotesquely funny.

  Clanreydon reached for the sword again, but Nils kicked it away, and it slid over the frosted snow—reached the beginning of a slope—accelerated—and disappeared over the cliff. But in kicking out, Nils had lost his balance and fell headlong, rolling over on to his stomach. Clanreydon dropped on him and savagely gripped his neck, sitting astride his back. Val did not see how Nils would be able to escape from this grip, but, striking wildly sideways with his right arm, he must have landed a blow on Clanreydon’s hurt leg, for Clanreyden screamed shrilly, and suddenly the two men were rolling over and over, kicking, grappling, biting, punching, and trying to gouge out one another’s eyes.

  “Mind!” shouted Val, to which of them she was not clear; perhaps to both. But her warning came too late and in any case went unheeded. They began to roll faster, and were now sliding as well as rolling, still both, apparently, so absorbed in the fight that neither had a thought to spare for their situation. Locked like lovers in a last embrace they plunged down the slope, seemed to pause a moment, caught on a projection at the point where the cliff became vertical, and then both of them shot out of sight.

  Val waited with clenched fists pressed against her breastbone for some terrible sound—some scream or shout or crash like that of the ship breaking on the rocks, but she could hear nothing; only the rumbling sigh of the sea below, as if the waves were relieved to wash over the jagged human passions that had disturbed their peace.