The Moor mr-4

by Laurie R. King

  After a minute I wiped the worst of the rain from my spectacles, and studied the land around me before making my way back to where I had last seen Holmes. Looking down into a deep, sharp-sided ravine with its complement of peat-brown water at the bottom, I saw his back disappearing around a bend. I called, but he did not hear me, so I was forced to follow him along the top of the ground; when he set off up a branch of the ravine I was obliged to scramble down into the depths as well.

  I panted up to him some time later, and tried to catch my breath before I addressed him. "We're not going to reach the inn before nightfall," I observed casually. It was easier to talk out of the wind, and one could even find patches of rain-shadow against the sides of the ravine.

  "No."

  "Nor are we sleeping in the Drake barn."

  "I fervently hope not."

  "You're looking for Gorton's shelter?" I ventured.

  "Of course. Ah." This last was at a scuff on a stone half grown over with turf, a scuff such as a rough-shod man might have made some months before. It might as easily have been made by a hundred other things, but there was little point in mentioning this to Holmes: He was off like a hound on a scent, and I could only follow in his wake and see where we might end up.

  Where we ended up was a heap of rubble piled between a stream and one wall of the low ravine that the water had cut over the millennia. I could see nothing there but a heap of stones, albeit an orderly heap; however, Holmes walked up to it, walked around it, and vanished. I waited until he emerged, looking satisfied and standing back in order to study the adjoining walls of the little ravine.

  "When Watson wrote up the Baskerville story," he told me, "he had me living on the moor in a prehistoric stone hut. Actual neolithic dwellings, of course, have long been collapsed and cannibalised by farmers, until they are marked by little more than rough circles on the ground. A person might, conceivably, lie down flat beneath the height of the remaining walls, but as any roof they once had disintegrated a thousand years ago, there would be little benefit.

  "What Watson meant, although it sounds less romantic, was one of these, a tin miner's hut—or in this case, to be precise, a blowing house, judging by the remnants of the furnace in that wall and the broken mold stone that now forms the doorstep. Considerably more recent construction than the neolithic, as you can see." During the course of this informative little lecture he had begun to climb up what my eyes were only now beginning to read as a manmade ruin rather than a natural rock-slide, and he now paused, balancing precariously on a pair of shaky stones, to reach with both arms into an indentation in the ravine wall. He tugged at something, which emerged as a much-dented bucket; hugging it to his chest, he leapt lightly down. "Peat," he said, and ducked again inside the pile of rock. This time I followed, into a room which was larger than appeared likely from outside, and had indeed once been a living space. "You intend to pass the night here," I said, not as a question, for Holmes was already laying a fire with the dry peat turves.

  "If there are signs left of Gorton's disappearance, we shall see them in the morning," he said placidly.

  I stared into the thought of the long, hungry night ahead of me, and thought, Oh well; at least we shall be out of the rain, and reasonably warm.

  ***

  I had, in fact, underestimated Holmes, or at any rate his preference for some degree of comfort. He pulled from his knapsack a second parcel of food, thick beef and mustard sandwiches and boiled eggs, and followed the meal with coffee brewed in a tin cup, which also served as the shared drinking vessel. We wrapped ourselves in our garments, and prepared to sleep. Holmes was soon asleep, his snores barely audible over the sound of the storm, but I was kept awake by the eerie sob and moan of the wind, like a lost child outside our stone hut, and the low gurgle of running water, sounding like a half-heard conversation; once I started awake from a doze with the absolute certainty that there were eyes watching me from the entrance. I was very grateful that night for the presence of Holmes, as sensible as a jolt of cold water even when he was sleeping, and eventually I grew accustomed to the peculiar noises, or they faded, and I slept.

  In the morning we drank more peat-smoke-flavoured coffee, although there was nothing more solid to chew on than the grounds in the bottom of the cup. Holmes downed the first tin cup of coffee and ducked out of the hut as soon as it was light outside. I took my time manufacturing a cup of coffee for myself, since I could hear the rain continuing to drip off the stones and into the stream. What Holmes thought he could find out there, after weeks of rain, I could not imagine, and I had no intention of going to investigate any sooner than I had to. I brought the water to a boil, shook some ground coffee into the cup, stirred it with the stub of a pencil I had in my shirt pocket, and sat on my heels to drink it, straining it through my front teeth. Why was it, I reflected irritably, that Holmes' little adventures never took us to luxury hotels in the south of France, or to warm, sandy Caribbean beaches?

  Holmes returned in three-quarters of an hour, looking smug. I poured the last of the grounds into the cup of water I had been keeping hot, stirred it, and handed it to him. He pulled off his gloves, cupped both hands around the cup, and drank cautiously.

  "Had I known I should be called on to make Turkish coffee," I said, "I would have asked Mahmoud for lessons." He grunted, and drank, and when the cup was empty he tapped out the grounds and filled it a last time to heat water for the ritual of shaving, sans mirror. He nicked himself twice.

  "I take it you found nothing," I said as I helped him daub the leaks.

  "On the contrary, I made a very interesting discovery. Unfortunately, I cannot see what possible bearing it might have on the case."

  "What did you find?"

  He reached into an inner pocket and drew out a small, stoppered bottle such as the chemist dispenses, dirty but dry.

  "I found it in his 'smuggler's hole,' the traditional turf-covered cache the old miners used to hide their valuables. From the appearance of the stones he used to disguise the opening, I should say it has sat there undisturbed for more than a month but considerably less than a year."

  I took the phial and gently eased out the cork with my fingernails. There seemed to be a tiny quantity of fine gravel in the bottom, the size of a generous pinch. I cupped my right hand and upended the bottle, then stared at the substance in my hand in disbelief.

  "Can that possibly be—gold?"

  FIVE

  Among semi-barbarous tribes it is customary that the tribe should have its place of assembly and consultation, and this is marked round by either stones or posts set up in the ground.

  —A Book of Dartmoor

  With the help of a torn-off corner of the map to make a funnel, we eased the gleaming specks back into their bottle. Holmes examined my palm closely, picked a couple of stray bits from their lodging place, and returned them to the bottle. Pushing the cork firmly into place, he slipped it into his pocket.

  "It is an interesting substance for a tin miner to have in his possession, wouldn't you agree?" he asked.

  "Particularly in that form. I would understand a gold ring he had found, or a coin from an ancient trove, but flakes? Surely there isn't gold on Dartmoor?"

  "Not that I have ever heard. Perhaps I shall send this in for analysis, to see if chemical tests give us any indication of its provenance."

  "But gold is an element. There won't be any distinguishing features, will there?"

  "It depends on how pure it is, if this soil is a recent addition or the ore in which the gold came to life. Impurities differ, if this is in its raw state."

  "There was nothing else in the cache?"

  "A few knobs of tin and some tools. I left them there."

  "So," I said with an air of moving on, "where next?"

  "Northwest is where the farmhand saw Lady Howard's coach; southeast is the place it was seen by Gould's courting couple. We'll start at the top and work down."

  Packing to leave our night's lodging was a matter of get
ting to our feet and buttoning on our waterproofs. We did so, and clambered up the slippery side of the ravine to the floor of the moor itself. There Holmes paused.

  "One thing, Russell. Where we're going is a rather nasty piece of terrain. You must watch where you put your feet."

  " 'The Great Grimpen Mire,' Holmes?" I asked lightly, a reference to the sucking depths that had apparently taken the life of the villain Stapleton, after he failed to murder his cousin and legitimate heir to the Baskerville estate, Holmes' client Sir Henry.

  "That's a bit farther south, but similar, yes. There are mires, bogs, and 'featherbeds' or quaking bogs. With the first two, look for the tussocks of heavy grass or rushes around the edges, which offer a relatively firm footing, but if you see a stretch of bright green sphagnum moss, for God's sake stay away from it. The moss is a mat covering a pit of wet ooze; if one slips in under the mat, it would be a bit like laying a sodden featherbed on top of a swimmer. Not a pleasant death."

  It was, I agreed, a gruesome picture. "What does one do then?"

  "Not much, except spread your arms to give the greatest possible surface to the ooze, and wait for help. Struggling is invariably fatal, as any number of Dartmoor ponies have found. With their typical dark humour, the natives call the mires 'Dartmoor Stables.'

  "Other than the quaking bogs, the chief danger is from the elements. At night or when the mist comes down, depend on the compass or, lacking that, find a stream and follow it down. All water comes off the moor eventually, and reaches people."

  "Thank you, Holmes. And if I find myself going in circles, I'm to turn my coat inside out to keep the pixies from leading me astray."

  He bared his teeth at me in a grin. "It couldn't hurt."

  ***

  Baring-Gould had marked with great precision the place on the map where the ghostly carriage had appeared, and an hour or so later Holmes and I stood more or less on the spot. It was difficult to be certain, because the rain (to Holmes' great irritation) had immediately washed the ink from the surface of the map, leaving us with a small dark cloud instead of an X. Holmes began to walk slowly along the path, studying the spongy, short-cropped turf for the months-old marks of carriage wheels.

  Quite hopeless, really, and after a couple of painstaking hours he finally admitted that there was little to distinguish the hoof and wheel of a carriage (both, presumably, iron-shod) from the naked hoof of any of a myriad of wandering Dartmoor ponies or the drag of a sledge or farm cart, at any rate not after a two-month interval.

  Holmes straightened his spine slowly and stood for a while gazing up at the surrounding hills, several of which were crowned with the fantastical shapes of tors. The track we were on, unpaved and without gravel or metalling, was nonetheless flat and wide enough for a cart, and largely free of stones—which was enough to make it noteworthy—and of bracken, which made it visible against the brown hillside. It emerged from the side of one tor-capped hillock, wrapped around its side for a gently curving half mile or so, and then rose slightly to disappear at the foot of another tor, vaguely in the direction of Okehampton to the northwest.

  "It does look like a road, Holmes. Or as if it had once been a road."

  "There are a surprising number of tracks across the moor, dating to the period when goods were moved by packhorse and the lanes of the countryside below were a morass of mud between the hedgerows all winter. Sailors used them, too, as a shortcut between putting in at a port on one coast and searching for the next job on the other."

  "Those lanes must have been truly horrendous if travel on the moor was seen as the easier alternative."

  "Indeed. I believe that this particular remnant is the continuation of Cut Lane, which intersects Drift Lane near Postbridge and joins with the ancient main track from the central portion of the moor to Lydford, Lych Way."

  "Cheerful name," I commented. "Lych" was the Old English word for corpse—hence the roofed-over lych gate outside most churches, for the temporary resting of the bier (and its bearers) on the way into the graveyard. I trusted that Holmes, a longtime student of linguistic oddities, would know this.

  "Not by coincidence," Holmes replied. "The Lych Way was the traditional track by which corpses were carried to Lydford for burial."

  "Good heavens. Do you mean to say there are no churchyards on the entire moor?"

  "Not until the year 1260, I believe it was, when the bishop granted the moor dwellers the option of taking their dead to Widdecombe instead."

  "Generous of him."

  "Interestingly enough, archaeologists find few burial remains other than burnt scraps of bone. I suppose that either the peat soil is so acidic that it dissolves even the heavy bones with time, or else when the turf alternately dries in the summers and becomes saturated in winter, its contraction and expansion eventually pushes the bones up to the surface, where the wildlife finds them and hastens their dissolution. The two hypotheses would make for some interesting experiments," he mused.

  "Wouldn't they just? I tremble to think what the 'cut' in Cut Lane refers to."

  "A passage dug into the hillside to make the transport of peat easier; nothing more sinister than that. This particular track wends its way along several peat diggings, although it is now in disuse because what peat is still taken off the moor goes by way of the train line just west of here. The track as it is would be quite sufficient to take a well-balanced carriage pulled by one or two horses—though not, perhaps, at any great speed."

  The thought of that ride made my teeth ache—or perhaps it was only that they were clenched hard against the cold. This local colour was all very interesting, but I thought it time to bring up one of the more essential matters at hand.

  "Holmes, had you planned on taking a meal in the near future? How far is the nearest inn?"

  "Oh, miles away," he said absently. "But there is sure to be a farmwife willing to sell us a bowl of soup. However, Russell, I must say I like not the looks of the weather."

  At first glance, the sky appeared just as it had since we first trudged up the hill out of Lydford, glowering and grey. Taking a more attentive look, however, it occurred to me that what I had taken as the commonplace annoyance of moisture condensing on my spectacles was in truth much more widespread and foreboding: wisps of mist were rising up out of the land and coalescing around us.

  Muttering dire maledictions at himself, Holmes set off rapidly downhill at an angle away from the worst of it, and I hastened to keep up with him. The strategy worked for perhaps twenty minutes, after which the moor laid its soft grey hands around us and we stood blind.

  "Holmes?" I called, determined not to panic.

  "Damnation," he said succinctly.

  "I can't see, Holmes."

  "Of course you can't see, Russell," he said peevishly. "We're in a fog." I was relieved, however, to hear his voice begin to come closer. I began to talk, as a sort of audial beacon to bring him in.

  "I don't suppose you can do your blindman's trick of finding your way across the moor as you can across London?"

  "Hardly," he said, nice and near now. There was even a dim, dark shape from which the voice seemed to emanate. "Do you have your compass?"

  "And a map," I said, shrugging off my knapsack to get out the latter. "Perhaps if I brought it up to touch my nose, I might even read it. You know, Holmes, I wouldn't want you to think that I don't appreciate these connubial efforts of yours; you must work very hard to invent little projects we can share. However, must you always take things to such an extreme?"

  I stood upright with the map in my hand and the knapsack securely on my foot, and it seemed to me that where the reassuring dark shape had been, there was only unrelieved grey. "Holmes?" I asked nervously. There was only silence.

  "Holmes!" I said sharply.

  "Quiet, Russell," said a voice from behind me. "I am attempting to hear."

  Had I moved, or had he? And what could he be listening to? I strained for a sound, any sound, even the unearthly banshee noises of the night bef
ore, but all I heard was the vague and omnipresent trickling of water, and then the sound of footsteps: retreating footsteps.

  "Where are you going, Holmes?" I demanded.

  "Just up the rise here to listen. Don't lose the knapsack."

  I felt around for the pack, which indeed was no longer weighting down my boot, and when I found it I made haste to put it on.

  I waited, fog-blind and abandoned, and amused myself by inventing spectres. Baring-Gould's church grims were not too likely out here, perhaps, given that we were far from either Lydford or the "modern," i.e., thirteenth-century alternative churchyard at Widdecombe, but bahr-ghests seemed just the sort of creatures one might expect to occupy the shifting monochrome on all sides. What of the long-legged Old Stripe? And what was the other spectre Baring-Gould had mentioned? A jacky-twoad? Perhaps there would not be one of those—but if I were to hear anything remotely resembling the footsteps of a gigantic hound, I knew that I should run away shrieking, easy prey for the tricks of the pixies. Fog invariably makes a rich spawning-bed for wraiths and threats and the malevolent eyes of watching foes, but that Dartmoor fog, combined as it was with the very real dangers of mire and boulder and sharp-sided stream, was one of the most fertile sources of spooks and mind-goblins that I have known.