Lindsay stared at the weatherbeaten, lined face; two brilliant blue eyes looked out of it, as if periwinkles had flowered out of a gnarled tree stump.
‘Carried him?’
‘To the castle,’ said the young man impatiently.
Lindsay, wondering whether there might not be a well of folklore to be tapped here, said, ‘It was a hunting accident, wasn’t it?’
The old man said, ‘I remember it—only ten years old, I was. Seven carried him, and seven came after.’
The middle-aged man pointed up the path. ‘You’ll find the turning just in the trees there.’
‘Thank you.’
‘If it isn’t a rude question, what might your interest be?’
‘Just curiosity. It seems strange that he wasn’t buried in the churchyard.’
The three faces were blank, staring at him. Eventually the youngest said, ‘A man can lie where he likes.’
The old man said, ‘Ay, and he rests there. No more was heard of him. There’s some buried in hallowed ground don’t lie so easy.’
At this the three of them exchanged a look. Then, as if by mutual consent, they returned to their work.
Lindsay, dismissed, continued on his way; yet, as he reached the trees and came to the division of the path, something made him look back. The three men were leaning on their implements staring after him, as motionless as the tree trunks they so closely resembled. They were the last human beings he saw on his journey to the tomb of Grandfather Edouard. They were, almost, the last human beings he saw in his life.
9
The Unknown Hunters
Lindsay could not agree with Father Dominique that Edouard de Montfaucon’s last resting place was uninteresting. By the time he reached it the sun had gone down behind the mountains, yet the sky overhead was still golden; the forest seemed to have been beaten out of bronze—dark, metallic.
For some time the path had twisted and turned, climbing steeply between dank rocks, lichen stained. On this sunless side of the bluff that overhung the lake, ivy and elder and yew created a Gothic gloom. Through the tree trunks and far below, smooth water reflected the golden sky. Presently the path had leveled out; elder and yew gave way to oak and beech, and there, at the edge of a rough clearing, was the tomb.
It was absolutely plain: a big slab of black marble raised a foot above the ground. The extraordinary thing about it was that it might have been put there that very morning instead of some sixty years before; whereas the rocks near to it were overgrown with moss and lichen and ivy, Grandfather Edouard’s gravestone hardly carried a speck of dust. The inscription chiseled upon it stood out boldly—boldly and mysteriously. In the first place there were no dates, merely the name, EDOUARD DE MONTFAUCON. Above this was inscribed, ‘I would be saved and I would save, Amen.’ And below it, ‘The Twelve dance on high, Amen. The Whole on high hath part in our dancing. Amen. Whoso danceth not, knoweth not what cometh to pass. Amen.’
Lindsay stood there for some time, frowning over these words, while the gold faded from the sky over his head, and the bronze-green shadows of the forest darkened towards night.
He felt sure that the words were part of the Bible; the Twelve must surely be the Apostles, and that indicated the New Testament; yet the New Testament, as far as he could remember in his ignorance, had never spoken of dancing.
He was musing along these lines when something caught his attention. He could never decide later whether he had seen a movement or heard a sound that was not in the pattern of the place—or whether, indeed, there was inside him some buried forest sense that warned him of danger.
He turned his head sharply, peering into the shadows; he was slightly taken aback to find how swiftly darkness was falling. As far as he could tell nothing moved. His nerves were tingling now. Beyond the clearing the path plunged over the edge of the bluff in a black thicket of yew trees; it looked uninviting, to put it mildly, and yet it was the only way back to the chateau that he knew.
But what had he seen or sensed? A little breeze stirred in the leaves above him. Somewhere down in the valley a cockerel was crowing, and the sound was oddly reassuring. He took one pace towards the path, and then stopped dead, his scalp prickling; for something had moved this time—there was no doubt about it. Yes, there was someone standing behind that leaning beech tree. The edge of a shoulder blurred the smooth line of the trunk—or was it a knot in the wood, the stump of a broken branch?
He stood there undecided, half mocking himself for this display of nerves, half sure that his senses had not betrayed him. The shadows deepened a little. And still he stood, not liking the idea of that steep path among the yews, damp and slippery underfoot.
Then, quite softly and seeming very close, a man’s voice began to sing. Lindsay took a step back and felt the hard edge of the black-marble tombstone against his calf. There was something very frightening indeed about this quiet song coming out of the gathering darkness—frightening, and mocking. Ridiculously enough, what struck him at that moment as being most sinister about the song was the fact that he could not understand the words; they were either in the local patois or in Old French. It was like being insulted in a language one does not know and cannot reply to. Then, to his left, the shadows stirred; he glimpsed a man moving, and not quickly, from one tree trunk to the next. Out of the corner of his eye he caught another movement far away to his extreme right. He turned sharply, just in time to see another man. The singing stopped abruptly, and there was absolute silence. Again a small breeze wandered through the leaves and left them chattering.
He did not so much see the lump of rock coming as sense it. He ducked, and it hit his shoulder, knocking him halfway across the gravestone; as he recovered himself he saw that the clearing was alive with moving shadows. He jumped over the stone and began to run. At the same moment a dog behind him let out a deep bark that tailed away into excited howling. Lindsay’s blood froze. The impossible fact was true (eruptions of physical violence into everyday life always struck him as faintly impossible): he was being hunted—hunted across country that was absolutely strange to him, by men who very probably knew every inch of it.
The point was that ahead of him lay the whole expanse of the bluff. What was it they called it? La Bosse. He very much doubted that he had the physical energy to cross it at the double with brambles and bracken tearing at his legs and low-hanging branches slashing him over the face at every other step.
He paused for a moment. The crashing in the undergrowth behind told him all that he needed to know; there was no other sound, no shouting of voices to give a human quality to the chase.
He reasoned that if they intended to kill him they would urge him towards the lake—towards the black cliffs, too steep for any but the hardiest tree to cling to, which fell sheer to the water. He veered away to his right, keeping to flat ground.
His breath was already beginning to come in gasps. Twice he fell, the second time across a hidden jagged rock that made him cry out in pain. He realized that the ground was still sloping upwards: he had not yet reached the top of the bluff, let alone begun the descent on the other side of it. The chilling knowledge was borne upon him that he would not be able to do it—in open country there might have been a hope, but among the traps and pitfalls of the undergrowth failure was certain. Well then, what alternative?
There was, he knew, only one. It might just conceivably work if chance would present him with the right terrain to carry it out: he would suddenly stop running, dive under cover, try to control the gasping for breath that seemed to be tearing him in half, and hope that they might pass him by—hope that the dog, if there was only one dog, would not be immediately behind him and right on his track.
He paused again. Yes, they were much nearer. He stood there, panting, staring wildly round him into the gathering darkness.
It took him a moment to realize that chance was indeed offering him what he sought, but that it was not on the ground where he was looking for it. An oak tree, not four yards awa
y, divided, some three feet above his head, into two great branches. He ran forward and jumped, clawing at the rough bark, tearing his fingernails, searching desperately for a hold. Somehow or other his hand encountered a small branch. One enormous heave and a wild scrabbling of feet and he lay on his stomach looped over the fork of the tree. He pulled up his legs quickly and crouched there, clinging, his face pressed against the bark, his heart pounding.
A moment later the bushes below him were thrust aside and the dark figure of a man lurched past, followed by another who was being dragged by a large, a very large, black dog on a leash. To right and left of him Lindsay could hear other bodies crashing through the undergrowth. He would dearly have liked to stay where he was, clutching the friendly oak; but he knew that this was the one impossible thing. The dog had evidently been carried past the end of his scent by its own impetus and excitement, but it would return. A shout told him that already it had faltered; he could hear it whining.
He dropped out of the tree and doubled back the way he had come. For the first time, so topsy-turvy is the working of the brain under stress, he found himself wondering exactly who these men were; perhaps the fact that he had now actually seen two of them made the whole matter more personal . . .
But all thought was banished by a sudden deep baying from the dog behind him; it meant, he thought, only one thing: they had unleashed it. At the idea of this, panic seized him. He no longer made any effort to conserve his energy, to think, to use the brain which, alone, gave him an advantage. Stumbling, falling, gasping for breath—a mindless, terrified animal himself—he floundered through the thick, damnable undergrowth, hearing only the sound of the dog, or possibly dogs, behind him.
Suddenly, to his horror, the ground began to fall away under his feet; he caught the glimmer of water far below. He realized that fear had caused him to lose all sense of direction. He turned sharply to his left, slipping and scrabbling up the slope. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the dog—it was some kind of Alsatian—and at the same moment he reached level ground again. He found himself running down a path he had never seen before, a broad ride through the trees, but he knew that the dog was gaining on him; moreover, there was a commotion some twenty yards ahead, and two men ran out into the ride, coming towards him. He realized that he was trapped, and the realization made him pause for a fraction of a second. In that fraction of a second the dog sprang. Mercifully he managed to dodge. The hurtling body, teeth snapping, hit only his shoulder; he caught the rank smell of its breath. He spun round and found himself looking at a man, arm raised to strike him. The club, or whatever it was, crashed down onto the side of his neck, and he fell, crying out at the pain.
What happened next was very confused. He was aware of a shot ringing out, and then of a close-up view of a heavy boot in the moment before it kicked him hard on the forehead. The blow must have almost knocked him out, yet he had time to think, God, I hope they shoot me, at least it’s quick—time also to grab the kicking leg and wrap his arms round it. Its owner went down with a satisfactory thud, swearing. Lindsay thought, Where’s the dog? A second shot rang out, yet he was still alive. Then he heard the drumming of horses’ hooves, glimpsed the animal right over him. He rolled away from the leg which he was still grasping and came face to face with the Alsatian, but it was lying on its side and it was dead. An instant later a man’s body seemed to drop out of the sky; he held a heavy crop of some kind, and he was raising it to strike. Lindsay covered his head with his arms and shut his eyes. But no blow fell—or rather, as he found when he opened his eyes again, not in his direction; one of his attackers was receiving the full force of the crop in his face—he fell back with a howl of pain and went down on his knees.
There was a sudden silence. In the twilight Lindsay could see half-a-dozen men standing quite still, their heads hanging sheepishly. The horseman turned and knelt swiftly, and Lindsay found himself looking into the eyes of Philippe de Montfaucon. Then—either from pure relief or merely as a result of the blow on the head—he passed out.
After this there were glimmerings of consciousness, but they were no more than shadows on a screen: he was being carried; he was being washed; a face that he knew swam forward out of darkness, and then there was a sharp, agonizing pain in the side of his head and darkness returned—a vortex of darkness dragging him down into unconsciousness. The next thing was a voice speaking very clearly: ‘. . . extremely thick skull—really most remarkable . . . Rest, of course . . . Complications most unlikely . . . Skull . . .’ And at some point he saw the bright needle of a hypodermic syringe lying on the flesh of his arm.
Then the darkness began to weave in front of his eyes, making odd patterns. He found that he felt pleasantly drowsy, but not in any way sick. The patterns collected themselves into recognizable shapes, and suddenly he was awake, blinking.
He was in a room that he had never seen before, lying on a very comfortable sofa with a rug over him. From the shape of the room (it was almost circular) he guessed that this was the ancient tower, the keep, which Grandfather Edouard had converted into a self-contained apartment. The door which he could see was undoubtedly the door through which—and it seemed years ago—he had watched Odile de Caray disappearing with the dead body of the white dove. Somehow he had imagined splendors of luxury behind that door, but, in fact, the room was austere. What furniture there was seemed to be of plain wood, beautiful and black with age; since the walls themselves were white, the only color came from a crimson carpet which completely covered the floor.
Not far from the sofa, in a pool of warm light, Philippe de Montfaucon was playing chess with the Abbé Luchard, their two intelligent faces gravely inclined over the board. The boy, Christian, sat cross-legged on the floor with a guitar; he could hardly have been said to be playing it, but he was striking successions of chords, major melting into minor, discord resolving into harmony. Lindsay found this rather astonishing; he had never supposed that the young man would have a note of music in him—and yet this endless series of improvised chords was wonderfully soothing. He closed his eyes and presumably slept again, for when he next opened them, Philippe was standing beside the sofa, looking down on him. The Abbé Luchard still sat at the chess table, staring at the pieces. Christian lay on the floor asleep, the guitar on his chest.
Lindsay struggled to sit up; his head was aching abominably, and he could only suppose that the effect of whatever had been in the hypodermic had worn off.
Philippe de Montfaucon said, ‘Lie still. The doctor has been to see you. He says that there is no concussion; he went away full of admiration for the quality of your skull. Now it’s time that the wound was dressed.’
The Abbé Luchard had risen from the chess table. ‘My dear young man,’ he said, ‘when you ride with Philippe you must do as I do—always ask for the oldest mount in his stable. Good horsemen have no idea how difficult it is to sit on a horse.’
Lindsay, watching Philippe’s eyes, which were regarding him sternly, merely nodded. After he had thought about the situation for a moment he said, ‘Oh, it wasn’t the horse’s fault; he must have stumbled over a rock.’
Philippe said, ‘I think so. It’s a good thing I was with you. Now, about that bruise . . .’
He went to the fireplace and tugged at a bell pull which hung beside it. Looking down at the sleeping boy, he said, ‘Don’t be alarmed by Mère Blossac. Her looks are against her and she doesn’t wash as much as she might, but on the other hand dear old Dr. Chauvet never cured a cut or a bruise as quickly as she does.’
At that moment the door opened and an old woman came shuffling in; she was so busy bowing to the marquis that she did not at once see her patient lying on the sofa. Lindsay thus had time to get used to the idea that his nurse was to be the harpy who had spat at him on the road, whereas she, on turning, was taken entirely by surprise.
She glared at him, turned back to Philippe de Montfaucon, and said, ‘Him?’
Her seigneur nodded gravely. She
looked again at Lindsay and shrugged as if to say, Well, some people have the oddest friends. Then she came forward and bent over him.
It was perfectly true that she had a powerful and unusual smell to her, but it was not actively unpleasant, reminding him more of animals and hay and maquis than anything else. In any case he was too astonished by her hands to worry about smells; they were incredibly light, gentle, deft for one so old. She worked with the absolute concentration of the expert; she whipped off the dressing that the doctor had put on Lindsay’s forehead and examined the wound minutely, hissing through her teeth. Where the cosh had landed on the side of his neck there was only a bruise, but the old woman was clearly not impressed by the way the doctor had treated it; she shook her head wisely over the idiocies of science.
Then, out of her sack, she produced a small spirit lamp. She lit it carefully and placed over it a tin of what looked like black treacle. Presently this mixture began to give off a most alarming smell. While it was heating she produced from the sack a bundle of dried leaves—large, serrated leaves from a tree which Lindsay could not place—and when the potent-smelling treacle was at exactly the right temperature she spread some of it on the leaves, clapped it over the wound and bound it in place with the doctor’s bandage—or rather half the doctor’s bandage. The other half she rolled up and popped into the sack for future use, doubtless on a more deserving patient.
As for the bruise, she uncorked a large preserving jar in which was a mash of leaves and herbs; she put two spoonfuls of it onto the doctor’s piece of cotton wool and strapped it in place with the remains of his adhesive tape. Privately Lindsay thought her treatment of the bruise slightly cavalier—until he discovered, next day, that all the pain had gone out of it. Finally, after feeling his pulse with the tip of one dry old finger, she poured into a wineglass, which Philippe produced for her, a measure of some greenish mixture smelling rather like rotten senna pods. This she held out to Lindsay. He looked nervously at it.
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