A Handful of Ash
Page 23
This was far too much trouble just for a quiet chat. They’d been gathering their heather roots and berries on Saturday, ready for their big celebration, their Hallowe’en Sabbat. Somehow, I was to be part of it. Either I was to be menaced into joining them, or I was to be eliminated. I remembered Nate, bound and floating. It was all very well for Wiki to say modern witches were harmless sacrificers of berries and other produce. These ones had taken the malevolent Isobel Gowdie as their model, Isobel who’d shot elf-arrows to kill her neighbours’ children during her wild night rides with the Devil. My bound hands were dangling tantalisingly close to the back pocket where I kept my penknife, but each time I tried to stretch them downwards, the hands jerked my arms up again. Once I had my hands free, I’d yank this mask off and run.
It couldn’t be far to the burning site now. The cloth was soggy in my mouth, but I would leave it be; they’d check my bonds before they got on with their chanting, leaving me, I hoped, to work on escaping. One foot, then the other, sliding on the uneven heather until each found the soft peat underneath. My captors were beginning to lean heavily on my arms, and the wrestler was puffing like the pellack whale Merion Perdoun had turned herself into. My legs were aching, my bare ankles scratched by the tough heather stems, my shoulders needled with pain, but I’d still be able to outrun her. That left only four, I thought grimly. The night wasn’t in my favour, this lovely silver that would show me up clear as day. There had been a dyke, though, no, two, running north to south along the crest of the hill and swooping down to the shore. If I could get on the shadowed side of one of them, I could reach the shore and get back to Khalida that way. Home, sanctuary.
We came at last onto more level ground, with soft grass in place of the heather. I remembered what Dorothy had said, back in Khalida’s cabin: Jim o’ Shalders’ Ayre ploughed it over. He said it was a superstition and a shame … The wrestler paused. I could feel the hand that clutched my arm jerking as her chest heaved. The parakeet’s grasp was slack on my other arm, and I was tempted to make a break for it now, while I had the advantage of fitness over them, except that my arms were still fastened, and my vision limited by the mask. Surely, surely, they would dump me somewhere for a moment while they prepared their bonfire or cauldron or whatever. Thirty seconds, twenty, to get my knife out and use it.
The dark shapes surrounded me. I was pulled and pushed into a particular spot, then my arms were forced upwards until my bound hands were level with my shoulderblades, then scraped down rough wood that was cold with frost. A last yank set my shoulders aching once more, then I felt a rope being passed around my waist and forearms, once, twice, three times. The third loop tightened as one of the witches tied it in a knot at my wrists. Then they stood back and looked at me. I slumped against the rope, making my breathing heavier, as if I was exhausted.
‘That’ll fix her,’ said Dog-collar. Her voice oozed malevolent satisfaction. ‘Learn her a lesson she winna forget.’
‘Don’t light the fire yet,’ the leader said. ‘We dinna want to draw attention to ourselves until it’s over late for rescue.’
They turned away and moved together to the far side of the level silver field. I heard wood scraping against wood, saw a flap of dark fabric. They were setting up their communion table. Now! I twisted my fingers in their bonds, and felt the pole that held my arms backwards. It was a strainer post, 20 cm across and just below my shoulder height. At the least it’d be buried two foot deep in good hill earth, at worst – I scraped my foot sideways, and felt the hardness of concrete. I wouldn’t shift this in a hurry. On the plus side, something fixed firm as this wouldn’t make any noise as I freed myself.
The rope first. After years messing about in boats, there wasn’t a knot I couldn’t undo with my eyes shut, and these were the rankest of amateurs. I turned my hands upward and felt the rope with my fingers. Yes, a bonny granny knot, and they’d used almost all of the rope to wind around me, so the rope ends were usefully short. I had all but the last knot undone in twenty seconds, and flexed my forearms in relief.
Now to get my hands free. Without the rope, I could twist my fingers forward enough to reach the top of my pocket … into it … my first two fingers wormed down and curled round the lanyard. Carefully, gripping it between them, they pulled the knife up. I caught the little tool with my other hand, then used both to open the blade. I curled my right hand back and back upon itself, and achieved a vertical stroke down the baler twine between my wrists. The scrape of blade on string echoed like a saw stroke in my head, but they were busy over at their table, laying out dishes that glinted in the moonlight. The binding loosened straight away. Another stroke, and my hands were free. I tucked the multi-tool back in my pocket, and returned the hand nearest them to the ‘tied’ position. My eyes fixed on that dark group, I eased the false head up from my chin and pulled the poisonous cloth from my mouth. Blessed air rushed into my lungs.
The dyke was less than fifty yards from me, across smooth grass. They gave me one glance as they moved to their triangle of fire-wood. I pulled the false face off, and slid away from the post. No heads turned. I kept sliding, like a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, my eyes on the huddle around the fire. There was orange smoke puffing around them now. Soon the moonlight would be challenged by a blaze. I’d gone only five metres from the post when there was a sound like a thin horn, an eldritch wail, and a black figure loomed out of the silver heather. The witch nearest me gasped, and froze for a moment, hand rising to her throat, then she turned around to face him. Behind her, the others were straightening. A panicky murmur ran round them: It’s him, it’s him. Then they all dropped on their knees.
I hadn’t seen him coming, for all the watch I’d kept. He was just there, taller by a head than any of the witches, with horns outlined by the moon behind him, just as Shaela had described him, with a thin, lashing tail with an arrow at the end of it, and slanted almond eyes as red as fire.
I was getting out of here. I ran for the dyke, placed one hand on it on the top stones, vaulted over, and landed in a tumble on the other side. I didn’t know if they’d seen me move, but they’d be wanting to show off their captive, so I had to be fast. Downhill, shorewards, was safety. I was running, running, bent double in the shadow of the dyke, stumbling on the heather tussocks, before I realised that they’d be able to run faster than me on the other side, with the smooth grass under their feet. I paused, and heard a shout behind me, a yell of rage, followed by the confused clamour of hounds set on a hunt. They knew I’d come this way, and they were after me.
There were no peat banks breaking the silvery moor with darkness I could hide behind, but the moor itself was uneven with natural banks of heather above areas of soft peat. There was one not far from me. I threw myself towards it and rolled into the blessed darkness. My scarlet sailing jacket was striped with high-visibility reflector strips, but the blanket they’d slung round my shoulders covered those. Only movement would betray me.
They were searching for me downhill, so I’d go up. I’d pass their bonfire again in the shadow of this dyke and keep behind it to where the dyke joined another, at right angles, and straight down into Scalloway that way. Their trampling feet sounded a cable-length down the hill. I eased my head up to look and saw the dark figures moving on the other side of the dyke. I slid slowly upwards, moving from shadow to shadow. Then, in front of me, a shadow bulged and moved, and a dark figure stood up in front of me, one hand stretched towards me.
I skidded to a halt, and was swerving away when he caught me. A hand went over my mouth, and before I could bite a familiar voice hissed ‘Cass!’ The moonlight shone on silver-gilt hair.
‘Anders?’ My heart was thudding like a piston.
He tugged me back into the shadows. We collapsed together on the heather. ‘Cat came back to the ship, just as I arrived,’ he breathed in my ear. ‘He was running, with his ears flat, as if he had had a fright. I thought it was odd, so I looked. I saw them hustling you up the hill. I could see your sai
ling jacket under the poncho.’ He patted a pair of binoculars that hung against his chest. ‘Night vision, they are excellent. So I followed, and waited for a chance to free you.’
Jeg ventet på en sjanse til å frigjøre dere. That was the second time he’d used the Norwegian plural ‘you’. ‘Us?’ I asked.
He jerked his chin towards the level ground over the other side of the wall. ‘They have another prisoner.’
I eased my head above the dyke to look. On the far side of the crackling blaze, tied with rope to a strainer post, was another figure, hooded as I had been.
Whoever had tied him, her, up had been more efficient than my captors. The dark figure was backed up against a post, as I had been, but with hands in front, and the rope around the waist was knotted behind the post. Trussed up like a chicken, ready for cooking. They would be back soon. I gave a hurried glance downwards and saw that the first of the witches was only half a cable away. They were coming uphill in a little bunch, with the devil following more slowly, head turning from side to side. I saw the red eyes flash. We weren’t going to be able to release this other prisoner without being seen. Yet we couldn’t run for safety and leave them here.
I ducked behind the dyke again and sat down beside Anders, back to the dyke, shoulder to shoulder. I turned my head, and our eyes met in the moonlight. We didn’t need to speak. We’d come through some tight moments together, in Khalida, and he was a fellow sailor. He understood about responsibility, about instant action or waiting for orders.
Here, in the heart of their coven meeting, was the last place they’d look for us. We’d wait here for our chance to free the other prisoner. Or should one of us go for help while the other waited? Then I remembered my mobile. I could summon help, if there was a signal here, and there should be, with the red light of the Weisdale Hill mast glowing over to the right. I eased my mobile out of my pocket, praying I’d left it at standby. I wouldn’t dare risk the little tune it gave when it was switched on from cold, or the bleep of a new text coming through. I gestured it at Anders. ‘Have you phoned the police?’ I breathed in his ear.
He shook his head, his lower lip jutting out stubbornly. Men … This wasn’t a ‘save the heroine’ game. We needed cohorts of policemen in a car with lights and sirens, as fast as possible. I opened up ‘new message’ and typed in: ‘witches up on gallow hill’. It didn’t matter how annoyed Gavin was with me, or how little I wanted to ask for his help. I didn’t know what they planned to do with this prisoner, but it had to be stopped. Then I remembered how often I’d received a text several hours after it had been sent, even though my mobile had been on and within signal. This was too urgent to risk. I flashed a look at the nearest witch, climbing steadily towards the bonfire, found Gavin’s number, and pressed the green button. There was a ringing tone, horribly loud in the silence. I clamped it closer to my ear. Pick up, Gavin –
Three rings, then I heard his voice, briskly neutral. ‘Cass.’
The witch was only thirty yards from me. ‘I’m on the Gallow Hill,’ I breathed into the phone. ‘The coven – up here. They have a prisoner.’ The sss of the whisper was too loud. ‘Thend help.’
He didn’t argue or demur. ‘How many?’
‘Five. Don’t phone back, they’ll hear. We’ll keep with them. Hurry,’ I breathed, then cut the connection. I wondered for a moment if I should switch the phone off altogether, but it took ages to warm up, and I might need it again. I slipped it into my pocket and crouched down to wait and watch.
There was a glint of orange light shining through the dyke some twenty metres forward of me. I gestured to Anders. ‘Going to look,’ I breathed. I squirmed forward on elbows and knees, and found a place where the stones had fallen in, leaving a gap big enough to peer through. To my right, the first of the witches was panting into view. The fire was flickering in the centre. The hooded figure was tied to the post on the left, slumped over the ropes, as if in exhaustion or despair. How quickly could Gavin muster his troops? If he was in Lerwick, they’d have a ten-minute drive to Scalloway, then the climb up the hill, although where a tractor had gone, a police car could probably follow. It depended too on whether he decided to surround the coven with police before pouncing, or whether he’d just send the cars in with sirens blazing, to scatter them.
‘She’ll be back,’ the chief hooded craw said. Her witch false-face was pulled up on the top of her head, giving her a double-faced deformity; her voice trembled. ‘As soon as she gets down the hill, she’ll be back wi’ the police.’
Anders had come forward beside me. Shoulder to shoulder, we looked through the wall.
The devil laughed. Theatre, I reminded myself, theatre. Maman in her goddess costume, with platform shoes under her lengthened Grecian robe, and an angled spot hidden among the paste jewels in her piled up hair to make her face glow with divine light. I saw the firelight glint on his horns as he tipped his head back. The red eyes glittered. LED lights, I thought, sewn into eye-holes in some sort of padded mask, with the real eyes down below, hidden by black net, so that he looked at us all through a black veil. His tail moved like the carved snakes you could buy in India, where you held the tail and the trembling of your hand made the head strike and retreat. There was some sort of voice distorter sewn in his costume, for the laugh echoed round the open hill, and his voice rumbled and reverberated. ‘You think I need fear the police?’
To my astonishment, the chief hoodie backed away from him, and bobbed a curtsey. ‘No, Majesty.’
The man in the devil suit laughed again, contemptuously. ‘We will conclude our business here before the representatives of the law arrive.’ He stood up straight, tall. A piece of dried grass flared up, letting me see his great cloven hooves. Whoever had created this disguise, it hadn’t been cheap. The shining horn of the hooves was a platform, with the toes of the real foot in the last fur over the top of the hoof, and the heel in the fetlock. No wonder he walked mincingly on this uneven ground. He went over to the prisoner, pulled off the Elvis mask, and threw it into the fire. The flames hissed and flared. His head tipped back in a parody of laughter, then he turned back to the witches. ‘You who tied up the escaped prisoner, come forward.’
The clawed hand rose, and now I saw that what I’d taken for a stick was a carriage driver’s long whip. He flourished it above his head, with a noise like a pistol shot. Smoke and mirrors, I reminded myself, as I jumped. An actor in a costume.
Dog-collar and Sea-green-Corset shuffled forward, heads hanging. I turned my head away, gritting my teeth. I’d read it all in Isobel Gowdie: sometimes when the Devil was displeased with us he would whip us and buffet us all about. The whip cracked. There was a yelp of pain from one of them, a growling of insults from the man dressed as the devil. I was flooded with such anger that my body shook with it. I wanted to leap up and shout at them all for a bunch of fools, letting this man mistreat them for his own ego-trip. I wanted to grab his mask and hurl it away, let them all see who he was. My hands were clenched so tight that I felt my nails in my palm, and the pain steadied me. They couldn’t believe he was the Devil, these street-wise girls in their steampunk clothes. For their own reasons they were colluding in his fantasies. I gritted my teeth as the whip writhed on their backs, and looked away from them. When would the police come? Ten minutes from Lerwick, the time to find someone who could lead them up the hill –
The whip cracked a last time, then stopped. I turned my head to look through the gap again. Dog-collar and Sea-green-Corset were sobbing with a horrible pleasurable excitement. Their faces were flushed in the firelight. If this was all it had been, fools playacting, then I would steal away and leave them to it, but Annette had died, and Nate, and the still form tied to the post was listening and watching and waiting. The man dressed as the devil caught the thong of his whip with one easy movement, and thrust it into his belt. ‘As for the sailor-woman – ’ His voice curled around the name. ‘ – where would she go but her boat? I can put my hand on her any time I choose.’
‘Well, Maiden,’ the voice rumbled, ‘have you no cup for your lord and master?’
The chief hoodie bobbed her stupid curtsey again, and scurried to the table. She lifted a silver cup shaped like a communion chalice, and a bottle of wine. I gave an inward snort of derision, imagining her in the wine aisle at the Co-op. ‘ That’s a little light, I need something full-bodied …’ Someone must have been busy today, bringing all these props up the hill. The cloth was black, embroidered with twisted symbols that caught the moonlight. Dog-collar placed an Oriental dagger with a curved blade beside the chalice. If the police didn’t arrive soon, we’d have to act.