Black August

by Dennis Wheatley

  Trailing a group of stretcher-bearers she made her way down to the foreshore, and saw that two camps had already been formed. The farmers and the fisher-people were now mingled together and, a little apart, stood some fifty sailors from the ship. At the sight of the mutineers she drew back quickly with a sudden horrible memory of Crowder and Brisket, but they were busy about a bonfire that they had lit across which they were hoisting a spitted pig. Then she caught sight of Gregory hunched on the shingle, his arms tied behind his back.

  Veronica was kneeling by him adjusting a rough bandage to his head, and a little way behind them sat Silas, also bound. Rudd was there too, some way away and half-obscured by the fringe of shadow. His hands were free, she noticed, but the bulging pistol holster which had always decorated his hip was missing, and as the flame flickered for a second, lighting his face, she saw a miserable and hopeless expression upon it.

  For a moment Ann thought of going to them, but her fears for Kenyon overcame every other impulse and she turned away towards the larger gathering. They too had heaped a fire and by it some men were busy dismembering a horse. Although she knew little of the situation Ann judged from this that the sailors were the masters in this partnership, and to placate their unsought allies had parted with this indifferent portion of their spoil rather than be compelled to drive them off.

  Mud-stained and bedraggled as she was there was little chance of her being recognised as Kenyon’s companion of earlier in the evening, so she threaded her way in among them to a spot some distance from the fire where the long line of wounded were being deposited. Some lay unnaturally still and silent, others were twisting and groaning in their pain, but she peered furtively at each in turn and came to the end of the row without finding Kenyon among them.

  ‘Happen you’re looken’ for a friend?’ As the man behind her spoke she started guiltily, but his voice was sympathetic and kind, so recovering herself quickly she replied:

  ‘Not—not exactly—but I was wondering what happened to the tall man they caught up on the heath.’

  ‘Happen you be meanen’ him that give the alarm. The officer chap; ’oodn’t that be him they’re a-setten’ down now?’

  He pointed a grimy finger towards the other end of the row and Ann recognised at once the long-limbed body which was being laid beside the others. The firelight caught the auburn curls, no longer smoothly-brushed but rumpled now and clotted with dried blood.

  She hastened over to him, her new acquaintance following. ‘Is he—is he dead, d’you think?’ she managed to stammer.

  The man peered down at him. ‘It fare to me he’ll live all right. They ‘oodn’t trouble to bring him in else, but anyways these fellers be shooten’ all the officers come mornen’.’

  ‘Are you certain; how do you know?’ Ann’s voice held a sudden sharp note, half-fear, half-challenging refusal to accept the statement.

  ‘Waren’t you here ten minutes agone?’ the man looked at her curiously. ‘The furrin’ looken’ sailor who fare to be the boss told all of we they meant to sail again come sun up, and after that us ‘ooldn’t have no more trouble with any o’ they thievin’ soldiers hereabouts,’

  ‘I see; then that settles it.’ Ann hardly recognised her own voice, it came so strange and harsh although she strove to make it sound as natural as possible.

  ‘I be rare vexed for they,’ said the man slowly, ‘but I reckon they’d have done the same to the others, come to that.’

  Ann nodded, she was past all speech and could only visualise her wounded Kenyon, kindly Silas and the ever-defiant Gregory, being massacred upon the beach in the cold morning light.

  As the man moved away she looked furtively after him and then stooped to Kenyon. Despite the blood she could find no wound upon his head, perhaps he had been thrown against another casualty; his arm had fallen from a sling and she replaced it quickly, noting the flesh wound in the shoulder that Veronica had bandaged. Apart from that he seemed to be unhurt and he was breathing regularly, so she guessed that the explosion from a shell burst had knocked him out.

  Another man paused near to her, it was Rush, and suddenly fearful of being recognised she hastened away into the darkness of the beach, but a gruff voice brought her to a standstill: ‘Not this way, Missie; your supper’s a-cookin’ on the beach.’

  A broad-shouldered sailor leaning on a rifle barrel barred her passage, so she turned away without protest, veering off towards the still smouldering houses, but another sentry farther along also turned her back and then she realised that they were posted in a circle guarding the approaches to the corral that held Gregory’s fine collection of poultry and live stock, about which Kenyon had told her on the way from Orford. The idea flashed into her mind and out again, for it mattered little to her who secured this wretched provender. Her whole anxiety was centred in the prisoners, so she struggled across the now deserted fortifications and, gaining the open marsh, sat down to think.

  As she rocked backwards and forwards, torn with a terrible distress, her natural urge was to risk discovery, but get back to Kenyon and remain with him, to face whatever the dawn should bring, yet all her sound practical common sense revolted at the thought of final surrender. Alone among the little band that had set out from London she remained free. Surely she could use her freedom in some way to help the others.

  For half an hour she sat, her head in her hands, her brain absolutely incapable of coherent thought, tired, miserable, dejected, unable to think of a single way in which she might bring them succour or relief, then like a thunderclap the words of the agitator in the dell: ‘Already the towns are organising,’ came back to her.

  She recalled the ensuing conversation, with its mention of the Mayor being back in Ipswich and the issuing of rations by the Greyshirts, word for word. If only she could get to Ipswich they would be sure to help her, and she might yet be able to save her friends.

  No sooner had the thought come to her than she was on her feet, angry with herself for the time that she had already lost by not having grasped the full implication of the news before, yet moving cautiously, terrified that she might be stopped and questioned; for now she was quite convinced that upon the retention of her freedom hung their only hope.

  Every shadow seemed a menace and every sound a threat. Even the grounding of a rifle butt or the calling of the sentries to each other caused her fresh alarm. With quick stealthy steps she headed inland until she had passed from the lingering glow into the darkness of the marshes.

  The ground soon began to give her trouble. Uneven, boggy in places, or sown with Gregory’s man-traps for the protection of the Martello Tower, which lay in ruins to seaward. Then, clear of the defensive belt at last, she ran up the slight incline only to pause breathlessly at the top visualising suddenly the tremendous task she had set herself.

  Ipswich was sixteen miles away, she would never be able to do it after her journey with Kenyon and the strain to which she had been subject the previous night; yet she hurried on, assessing the chances as she went.

  They had left Orford at seven-thirty, two hours at least must have been spent upon the way, another hour between their capture and the first attack on Shingle Street; that then would have been somewhere about ten-thirty. How long had it lasted, from start to finish? an hour perhaps. Then she had waited in the pillbox for a bit, hung about the bonfire on the shore looking for Kenyon among the wounded—and then wasted more time stupidly doing nothing. It must be twelve-thirty at the least, and sixteen miles would take her a good five hours. She could not hope to arrive in Ipswich before six o’clock.

  Too late, she decided. Aeroplanes and cars could hardly be running again yet, so soldiers or police would have to rely on horses and bicycles. By such means it would take them a good two hours to get to Shingle Street and sunrise would be about six. Unless she could reach Ipswich by four o’clock they would arrive too late.

  Suddenly a new plan came to her, the cross-country route. If she took that it would save her at least four mil
es, but it meant crossing the River Deben.

  In normal times there was a ferry boat at Ramsholt and in an emergency the ferryman could be dragged out of bed, but would he still be at his house, Ann wondered. Perhaps, starving like the rest, he had wandered farther towards the coast or back into some town. She would never be able to swim the Deben—a quarter of a mile of water with treacherous muddy banks.

  She paused for a moment by a solitary farmhouse, leaning against the low stone wall, breathless already from the pace at which she had come, and miserably undecided which road to take—the track leading north to Melton and Woodbridge or the lane to the left through Alderton to Ramsholt. Then, with the swift realisation that her only hope lay in taking a chance on being able to cross the river, she turned down the lane; to go by Woodbridge meant certain failure on account of time.

  With that vital factor of time pressing upon her brain she broke into a run and covered the next half mile in seven minutes. Then she slackened into a breathless, shambling trot.

  All question of what reception she was likely to meet with when she got to Ipswich, and if the authorities would be willing to undertake her friends’ relief, had passed from her mind. The one thing that mattered was to get there at the earliest possible moment, for she had already convinced herself that, if she could only stay the course, troops, police and Greyshirts would be sent dashing to the rescue.

  A voice hailed her out of the darkness. With swift fear, no longer for herself, but that she might be held up or stopped altogether, she burst into a fresh spurt and ran again as fast as her short sturdy legs could carry her.

  The houses of Alderton came into sight and she checked, approaching them at a quick cautious walk, fearful that she might be set upon, but her alarm had no foundation; the village was silent, ghost-like and untenanted, for all its inhabitants were congregated on the beach at Shingle Street tearing lumps of fresh roast horse between their teeth.

  Two more miles yet to the ferry and even that was only a little over a third of the distance she had to cover. If she was ever to reach Ipswich she must conserve her strength so she moderated her pace and settled down into a steady dogged trudge.

  Another mile and the road sloped upward toward the hills that held the Deben to its banks. The pebbled surface, rarely used except for motor traffic in the summer, was rough and tiring to her feet. Grass grew on either side, creeping towards the centre of the track, so Ann abandoned the road for the grass and found it better going. At length she breasted the rise and, stumbling slightly, slithered down the steep descent, the broad bosom of the river plain before her in the starlight.

  There lay the ferry, an old broad-bottom punt, and on the right the tall bleak house, an inn where trippers came in the summer-time, filling the small tea garden with their noise and clamour. Now it was silent, dark, apparently unoccupied.

  Panting a little she regained her breath and shouted. There was no reply. Again she called, then, desperate, picked up a pebble from the road and flung it at one of the first-floor windows. The glass splintered under the impact, and the pieces tinkled to the unseen floor with a melancholy sound, then silence descended on the little cove once more.

  The landlord, his family, and the ferryman were gone, where, heaven knew. Impatiently for a moment the small agitated figure on the foreshore waited, and then abruptly turned away.

  With quick steps she hastened on to the short broad ‘hard’ that jutted out into the river. Great posts of wood, rotting under the pressure of time and sea, held the banked earth together, except in one corner where the mass had crumbled and a gap showed plain between the surface, beaten down by generations of trampling feet, and the decaying pillars at which the tide sucked and gurgled.

  The river being in flood it occurred to Ann for one moment to swim it, but she knew the treacherous mud banks on the farther side that the night concealed. She would be trapped for certain in the slimy ooze.

  The ferry lay there in the starlight but Ann knew that her slender arms would never be able to cope with the great heavy pole, or steer the ancient barge safely to the other side; once she got out into the stream she would be swept seaward by the tide.

  In desperate haste she began to scan the other boats for one that might be suitable. Most of them were inaccessible, being moored out in the river. Yachts and motor-launches rocked gently in the tide, lonely and forgotten now in the stress of terrible events, but kept there for the weekenders who, in happier times, forgot their business worries during the hours they sailed, or chugged gently, down-river, along the coast, and up the reaches of the Orwell or the Stour. A dinghy swung at the stern of all the larger boats but not one of them was within Ann’s reach.

  She stamped with impatience at the thought that in such a place there must be something in which she could get over if only she could find it, and hurriedly retraced her steps to the landward end of the hard. Her eye lit on a battered rowing boat half sunk in the mud. She paused by it a moment and hastened on, its planks were rotting even if she could prise it from its sticky bed. Then on a shelving beach of pebbles above the mud she saw a dingy, lopsided but lying high and dry. Next moment she had seized the painter and was dragging it towards the water. Her sense of flying time, upon every moment of which Kenyon’s life might hang, lent her added strength, and with a superhuman effort she managed to get it launched.

  The sculls had been left beneath the thwarts, and the boat was hardly rocking in the water before she had them out and in the crutches. With a sharp left-handed stroke, she swung the nose towards the opposite shore, and then with all the weight of her strong shoulders pulled towards it.

  Five minutes later she had shipped her sculls and was scrambling out into the ooze that fringed the farther bank, It sucked and plopped as she struggled through it but she was on to the course grass a minute after landing, leaving the dinghy to drift out on the tide.

  With renewed courage she ploughed her way up the rising ground and over the thick heather. The brief respite on the hard and the use of different muscles in rowing had eased her legs and rested her feet a little. The river too had been her principal anxiety, now she had succeeded in crossing it the remainder of the journey depended only upon sheer dogged endurance.

  At last, with infinite thankfulness she struck a road and, leaving the uneven ground, turned north along it for half a mile until she came to a cross-roads that she recognised. There she turned left but with a sinking heart, for she knew that she had barely accomplished half her journey, and that a solid seven mile tramp still lay before her.

  It seemed hours and hours since she had left Shingle Street and her head was burning with fatigue. As she trudged on she became half-delirious and began to sing, strange breathless snatches of half-forgotten tunes, hymns, choruses and nursery songs, that she had learnt in Orford when she was a little girl.

  She broke off suddenly, impelled from sheer fatigue to sit down and rest by the wayside. Slipping to her knees, she leaned against a bank and lay there for a few moments panting heavily, while she tasted the supreme pleasure of relaxing all her limbs. Instantly a great drowsiness came over her, with a little flicker her heavy eyelids closed, and the great weight of sleep bringing relief to her utter weariness, pressed down upon her.

  That would have been the end of her pilgrimage had not a sudden picture blazed in her half-conscious brain. Kenyon, with the burning brand pressed against his chest! She started up with a muffled scream, those devils were going to hang him—no, he was to be shot tomorrow—today—when the light came in the morning. Wide awake again now she struggled to her feet, and pressed on down the road, running a few paces and then dropping back into a staggering walk.

  She wondered vaguely how much farther she had to go and, knowing the country well, she would easily have recognised any bend or turning in the daylight; but now that she could only see hedged fields on one side of her and heath on the other, her brain would no longer take in the significance of gradients and dark coppices. At last another cross-ro
ad loomed up out of the darkness, and the place was unmistakable even in her weariness. It was a little north of Brightwell and on one corner of it stood a signpost, but she did not trouble to peer at it for she knew its legend; it read, 5¼ miles to Ipswich.

  Five and a quarter miles still to go. She felt that she would never be able to do it. Her feet were aching, galled and blistered about the heels. The road seemed to waver in front of her, closing up then broadening out before her with a horrible sickening motion. She swayed as she walked, lurching from one side of the road to the other, and failed to see the faces of the starving prowlers who peered at her from the hedgerows every now and then. Furtive, soundless, they watched her pass and then slipped back into the shadows for she carried nothing, not even the smallest packet that might contain food, and seemed to be as destitute as themselves.

  It was not until he was actually upon her that she saw the man who sprang from the roadside and seized her arm.

  What could have urged him to attack her is past conjecture. She obviously had no food about her and even less of beauty. Her dark hair hung in matted locks; her face was puffed and swollen. The mud of the Deben clung about her feet and blackened her arms up to the elbows; smears of it disfigured her face where she had sought to wipe away the perspiration and her mouth hung open in an ugly contour, but as she swung terrified to face him she saw that his eyes were glowing bright in the darkness with the horrible glare of insanity.

  She screamed and with a sudden access of strength wrenched her arm free, then slogged him again and again with her clenched fist in the face. For a second he stood there, a look of stupid amazement in his eyes, his arms dangling foolishly, then he tripped and fell backwards in the roadway.