***
The police were ready to believe Arcturus, since he alone claimed to have seen what had happened to Enoch. Merl the healer said that Enoch had tried to tell her about a dog, and Sandy made herself keep quiet: this wasn't the place or the time to say what she knew. The police called in a warning about a savage stray dog and made to herd the convoy away, until Sandy managed to persuade the hospital to let Enoch's people pay their last respects.
Not all of them wanted to see Enoch. A group led by Merl knelt in the car park and chanted as a large bright cloud that made Sandy think of an unfurling sail glided slowly from above the hospital toward the distant sea. Most of those who went in to view Enoch shed a tear for him, but they seemed stunned by his death. He lay in an anonymous side room whose function was unclear, a sheet over his face until one of the men uncovered it and snarled at an orderly who started to protest. Sandy stood outside the room in case she needed to mediate, but that was the only skirmish. The sight of Enoch's huge head in repose, his beard wiry on the white sheet, seemed to impress even the hospital staff who passed along the corridor. As Sandy watched his followers trudging silently in and out of the room, she thought that despite the starkness of the setting he looked exactly like an ancient chieftain lying in state.
The last to visit were Arcturus and his mother. The boy held her hand and gazed at the dead face as if he were trying to understand. "Where's he gone?" he said.
The woman didn't speak until she was out of the room and staring hard at Sandy. "Somewhere better than we're going, but we'll be there too someday."
Sandy thought she was meant to feel guilty, a feeling easily invoked in her just now, until she realized the woman only expected her to respond. All she could think of to say was "Where will you go?"
"We'll find an island," the woman said, with a fierceness that sounded bitter rather than convincing.
"Maybe there's a country that'll like us," Arcturus said in a dazed voice.
"Or one so big we won't be noticed, any road."
Outside the hospital the police were making sure that everyone returned to the vehicles and prepared to drive on. The healer, who appeared to have taken over some of Enoch's leadership, was murmuring comfort to them as they left the building. "Where are we," Arcturus' mother began and was interrupted by an angry sob, "supposed to go now?"
"As far north as we have to, we've decided."
Not everyone seemed to agree. At least one couple were already arguing between themselves. If Enoch's death caused the convoy to split up, Sandy wondered whether that might be for the best. She watched the convoy meander away, following the beacon of one police car and trailed by the other, until it was out of sight on the road that led to Scotland. Some of the convoy would stay with the healer, she imagined, and there would be room enough for them in the harsh thinly populated highlands, but would they be able to survive there? Sending a wish after them, she went back into the hospital.
Roger was in another wing, having his cast removed. He would be expecting her to drive back to London once he was free, but she couldn't when the closeness of Redfield reminded her that nothing had changed, that the year wasn't over. A surge of the nervous energy that had kept her driving hustled her to the nearest pay phone, her hands digging change out of her purse.
The receptionist sounded efficiently warm as ever. "Staff o' Life?"
"I need to speak to Lord Redfield. Not the press office, not his secretary. Lord Redfield himself."
"I'm afraid he's accepting no calls."
The swiftness of the answer told Sandy that it wasn't just a standard response. "Tell him Sandy Allan wants to speak to him. Tell him I saw what happened this morning at Toonderfield. I saw exactly what happened, and he needs to know."
She felt uncomfortably like a blackmailer-indeed, one who was contradicting what she had told the police-but what else could she do? If she wasn't able to speak to him over the phone she would have to venture back to Redfield. All she wanted at this point was to arrange to meet him somewhere beyond the boundaries of his land, but the receptionist said, "I'm sorry, Lord Redfield is in conference."
That was a stock response if Sandy had ever heard one. "What do you mean, in conference?"
"He's left instructions that he's not to be disturbed."
"He's going to have to be. He'll want to know how a man came to be killed on his land."
"Miss Allan, I'm not authorized-was
"Didn't you know that had happened this morning? He'll want to speak to me, I promise you. And no, I haven't got the number of his private line. If you'd seen what I saw earlier I think even you might be a bit disorganized."
After a pause the receptionist said "Please hold on" discouragingly, and made way for the Staff o' Life jingle. There should be children singing it, Sandy thought, not the sterile tones of a synthesizer. She leaned her forehead against the inside of the sketchy booth, and felt exhaustion lowering itself onto her shoulders. She blinked her eyes hard and stretched them wide several times, and then she was jarred awake. The second repetition of the jingle had been cut short, leaving her mind to sing "mark it" where the jingle would have reached that phrase, and Lord Redfield broke the hollow silence. "Well, Miss Allan."
Either she was hearing what she wanted to hear or he wasn't as calm as he was trying to sound: his voice was a little too precise and high. "I was at Toonderfield this morning," she said.
"Many people were."
"Yes, but one of them died, even though I got him to hospital. He died of being injured on your land."
A sound like a shudder in the earpiece made her take the receiver away from her face, and she heard the last of that sigh in his voice. "I was afraid of something of the kind after what I saw myself."
Rage, the more uncontrollable because she felt it was to some extent unreasonable, shook her voice. "You were there and yet you didn't do anything? I didn't see you."
"I wasn't there. My grandfather was. Perhaps you saw him."
"If he was, why didn't he-was she demanded, and then what he was implying caught up with her. The heat and noises of the hospital seemed to retreat, leaving her alone and cold and yet closer to him, united in understanding. At last she said, "How do you know?"
"I heard him coming back and I followed him down. I take it the victim put up a fight."
"He tried to."
"He broke my grandfather's leg, if I can call that my grandfather. I must, of course, since I am to be allowed no illusions. It nearly hid from me in its lair but wasn't quite swift enough. I wonder if you have the least idea what I'm talking about, not that it matters."
"I'm afraid I have."
"You have? You must have had sharp eyes while you were here. I wish you had tried to convince me of what I should have known. Once when I was very young and my grandfather was very old he told me the story his grandfather told him, but even he thought he was too modern to believe in that sort of thing. God help him, he must now. I quite see that was really just a way of letting ourselves take it for granted. The man you mentioned didn't die on our land, you say?"
Sandy felt Redfield was only intermittently remembering that he was talking to her rather than to himself. "That's right."
"Ah well," he said in what might have been regret or resignation, and then his voice strengthened briefly. "I'm glad to have had another chance to speak to you. If you should find your film, please show it. There will be nobody here to object."
"I don't-was Sandy began, and was talking to the dial tone. The last of her change clattered into the slot to be retrieved. She was suddenly anxious for him, all the more so when she realized she had insufficient change to place another call. She ran to the hospital shop, bought a Daily Friend and left it on the counter, dashed back to the phone, praying that it wouldn't be in use. Nobody had ousted her. As soon as the receptionist said "Staff-was Sandy interrupted her. "I was talking to Lord Redfield. Sandy Allan. We were cutoff."
"Lord Redfield asks me to apologize, Miss Allan, but I'm
not to accept any further calls from you."
"Wait, don't cut me off, just listen," Sandy cried, but the phone was buzzing emptily. She grabbed her change as it came rattling back, and ran to find Roger. He was hobbling across a lawn beside the car park, wearing someone else's old trousers and trying out his rediscovered leg. "Is that your top speed?" Sandy panted.
"Let's say you shouldn't enter me in any marathons this month." 308
"Head for the car. I'll meet you." She sprinted to it, grimaced at how low the fuel level was, drove around two ranks of cars and pulled up beside him, narrowly missing him with the door as she opened it. "Be as quick as you can that isn't painful."
He snapped his seat belt into place and stretched his legs luxuriously. "Want to tell me what the hurry is? I've missed you too, a whole lot."
"We'll celebrate, but not just yet. Roger, I hope you won't give me a hard time about this, but I've got to go back toRedfield."
He stared at her and gripped her knee. "I don't know what happened there today, I don't know what I saw, but I really don't think you should do this. You've already done more than many people would."
"Not people I'd want to know. Roger, I've just spoken to Lord Redfield. I think he's planning to harm himself when there may be no need. He's made sure my calls won't get through."
He held on to her and then patted her knee as if to indicate he'd done all he could to dissuade her. "Looks like you need to find a filling station fast," he said.
She'd passed one as she drove the van to the hospital. She willed it to appear on the horizon ahead as the car raced back across the flat land under the declining sun. It came in sight just as the engine ran dry and died, leaving her feeling for an unpleasant moment that control of the vehicle had been snatched away from her. She ran the car onto the verge and tugged the boot release, and Roger swung himself out of the car and lifted the plastic canteen from the boot. "This what you need?"
"It's all I've got. I never thought I'd have to use it."
As she locked the car, he was already running. Before long he began to limp, and she caught up with him. "Maybe-was he said apologetically, and she stopped his mouth with a quick kiss and grabbed the canteen as if they were running a relay race. She ran to the pumps-twenty minutes of the canteen thumping her on one side, her handbag on the other-and had to pay before the slow proprietor would let her fill the canteen. Running back to the car, through the flat landscape which seemed designed expressly to display how far she had still to go, took her almost half an hour. She fell into the driver's seat, a stitch nagging at her side, and managed to catch her breath while Roger emptied the canteen into the tank, and then she drove to the pumps to fill the tank.
The car sped away from the forecourt, and Roger let out a sigh so loud it sounded as if he were emitting it on her behalf, to save her breath. After that he was silent for a while, but she sensed that he wanted to speak. At last he said, "Did you pick up the movie?"
"Yes, but I haven't got it now."
"I noticed. It's safe, though," he said, not so much a query as a plea.
"It isn't, Roger. It no longer exists."
He seemed to have half expected her answer. "I guess you had to let that happen," he said.
"It was either me or the film."
"In that case there's no contest." Some time later he said, so gently and casually that she wanted to hug him, "Did you watch the movie? Was it any good?"
"In parts."
"Maybe you can describe it to me sometime so I can write it up for my book."
"I will," she promised. There seemed to be no need to say anything further, now that they'd agreed they had a future. The car raced across the flatness, and they were in sight of Toonderfield before Roger spoke again. "What's that?"
He might mean the distant wail of sirens or the smudge of black smoke on the horizon toward Redfield. Sandy braked as the car reached the edge of the copse, and tried to analyze her sensations. She didn't feel threatened or seized by her guts. All the same, she closed her window tight and told Roger to close his before she drove beneath the trees.
She could see nothing between the trunks except green dimness and shadows. The drive through the wood seemed considerably briefer than last time. The car sped toward the Ear of Wheat, and before she reached the pub she could see that the smoke came from a building on fire. From the direction of the smoke she judged that the building was beyond the town.
The woman from the Ear of Wheat stood outside the porch of the pub, staring toward the smoke and wiping her hands nervously on her apron. Sandy veered onto the concrete and got out of the car. "What's happening, do you know?"
The woman gazed at her as if it didn't matter who knew. "It's Lord Redfield's chapel. They heard him smashing stones down there while the son wasn't at the house to stop him, and then he set fire to it and wouldn't come up out of it, God save him."
She was talking about the family vault, whether or not she realized. He must have smashed all the plaques to make sure the fire reached in. "Couldn't anyone reach him?" Sandy said, though she thought she already knew more than the woman could tell.
"His father went down after him, then the son tried to rescue the both of them. Nobody else could get near for the fire, and Lord Redfield wouldn't let them. The whole family were in there, and nobody could save them."
And that was the end of Redfield, Sandy thought, and found a tear creeping down her cheek. Had he planned that his father and son should die too? Remembering his last words to her, she wasn't sure that she wanted to know. She felt almost as stunned as the woman looked, but the woman seemed also to feel robbed of meaning. Sandy wondered how the townsfolk must feel-how they would fare now that the spell of the land had been broken. "Don't despair," she said awkwardly, and was glad of Roger's hand on her arm as they turned back to the car.
She thought of driving to Redfield to make certain it was all over, but she would be even more unwelcome in the town now. As she swung the car toward Toonderfield she saw the smoke drift across the tower, which looked abandoned, a symbol rendered meaningless. It always had been, she thought, and it had taken her so long to realize.
She drove over the humpbacked bridge, and the tower seemed to collapse into the smoke. As the car passed under the trees, a leaf fluttered across the windscreen, and then another. When she ducked her head to look up through the foliage, she was sure she could see more of the sky than she had been able to see that morning. Autumn was already here, she thought, but would spring come to Redfield? Her throat grew unexpectedly dry, and she steered with one hand while she held Roger's with the other. He smiled at her, but she didn't think he was sharing her awareness. All the way to the edge of Toonderfield, until the car sped up into daylight that felt like a return to life, she sensed the land dying.
Ancient Images Page 28