“How?” asked Sam.
“It was as though he’d seen a ghost,” Leana replied. They were walking up a damp, steep path. “It was obvious the problem for Macbeth was the soldier who’d come with me. By simply staring at Macbeth the soldier seemed to be able to make him go out of his mind. The other guests were quite perturbed, like me. None of us knew what to make of it.”
“Did Macbeth say anything to you or the boy?” Sam asked.
“No, nothing. I left when the Lady began making her excuses; she said the master had been ill. I felt obliged to leave with the soldier and his son, of course. When we were outside again – it was the dead of night, pitch black and freezing cold – the soldier told me not to worry and that I should return to the hut to take care of you. I said goodbye and he and his son disappeared into the night.”
“Who were they?” asked Sam.
Leana shrugged. “I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that when I got back to the hut I found you there, still asleep, but you were breathing. As soon as I lay down you began dreaming. Your eyelids were moving, flickering, and I knew you would be well. I lay with you and I talked to you. I told you – do you remember?” Leana looked worried, vulnerable in a way Sam hadn’t seen since the first time he’d set eyes on her behind the glowing window on the stormy coast. “Do you remember anything I told you?”
Sam shook his head. “When I’m here I don’t think I know anything about what goes on there.”
Leana was sad but relieved. She had told him how she had been abandoned as a child in that place, left in a well to die, but how the witches and spirits had taken her as one of their own. How she had grown up able to see things other people couldn’t see.
“Tell me,” Sam said. “If you want. Tell me it all again.”
Leana shook her head. “No, no, no. It’s nothing important.”
Sam gave her a moment. She had turned away and he could tell she was upset. They walked on uphill on the slippery path. When she had controlled herself, Leana asked him, “Do you remember the spirits we saw when we were at the cottage?”
“The women? The faces in the fog? Of course”
“Well, they came back later that night.”
“For you?”
“No.”
“For me?” Sam looked worried. Dark boughs floated like twigs in the misty soup swirling above them.
“No.”
Sam could feel Leana’s nervousness now. The girl was trembling and had turned very pale again. “What’s wrong? What happened? Did they hurt you?”
“No, no. I was with you. I heard them talking, that’s all. Talking to someone outside.”
“Who?”
“Macbeth. They were at the well, all of them. The three sisters and their leader. The chief witch. With him. And he looked as mad as he had at the banquet, worse perhaps. He looked ill.”
“He knew the witches?”
“I think he was consulting them.”
“But how? What did he ask? What did they say?”
“They said he couldn’t be killed by anyone born of a woman. That he would never be defeated until Birnam Wood came to his castle. They spoke of the Lord Macduff, too – do you know him?”
“No.”
“He’s a good man. Another who I think has suffered and will suffer more before this is done.”
“Some of this must be in the play,” Sam suddenly declared, turning around. “We should go back and see what it says. I’ve got the book in my locker!”
“Wait. Sam come back.”
“But it’s all written down! It has to be. I think I remember some of that stuff. The wood. Macduff.”
“Wait, Sam. Please. I have two things to tell you and then we’ll do whatever you want.”
Sam stopped, unsure. “What? Tell me.”
Leana drew close to him. “While Macbeth was talking with the witches I saw the soldier who’d come to me earlier in the day, who’d taken me to the castle – the one who’d helped you.”
“He was evil too?”
“No, no. He was conjured up by the witches, I think. A vision. He wasn’t there in person. They were saying his children would be Kings.” Leana was staring into space, trying to remember. “I think the soldier who came to me was a ghost. To help me. To help us. I think Macbeth might have killed him. That would explain why Macbeth was so anxious when he saw the soldier arrive at the banquet. I don’t know exactly – I can’t recall every detail of what happened. I was worried about you. It was late, cold – I’m just not sure. I was only relieved that you were not going to die.”
Sam saw something in Leana’s eyes that shocked him. It was like a softening, as though she were showing him some very sensitive part of herself, her soul, perhaps, some part of herself which she usually kept covered. “Let’s go back,” he said. “Let’s go back and read the play. I’m sure we can work out what to do if we read it.”
“What play?” Leana flew into a rage, grinding her teeth and throwing her arms out wide. “This is my life, Sam! Why do you keep talking about a play? I’m trying to tell you what happened to me. I’m trying to tell you how I feel! I am not some character on a page! Feel me!” She pushed him hard with both hands and Sam staggered backwards. “And you are not some wizard who can consult a book and know the future! You’re a boy, a piece of all this, like me. We are tiny, insignificant pieces in some game of theirs – these spirits, this evil world!”
“No, no, no, Leana, you have to listen to me, I swear! This is all happening in a play. This has been written down.” Sam smiled like a madman. “We’ve been reading this in English. That’s why I go there. Why you come here.” He walked towards her, wanting to make peace. “What I don’t know is exactly how this is all happening but there has to be an explanation; there has to be rules. There always is. We just need to find the answer, that’s all. Everything is rational, even things we can’t understand yet.”
“Nonsense!” shouted Leana. “You’re trying to make sense of something you can never understand!”
“There is always sense,” Sam replied. It was his father talking.
“Then who was the Queen of the witches?” asked Leana, folding her arms. She was standing in a fencer’s pose, one foot pointing forwards, the other perpendicular to her body.
Her posture and the question silenced Sam. “What?”
“The Queen of the witches. She was there last night. I told you. Their leader. I asked you who she is. Do you know?” Leana widened her eyes. “No? Ah, you haven’t read that part of the play yet, have you? Haven’t got to that scene yet?”
Sam ignored the sarcasm. “Perhaps we have. What’s her name?”
“Oh, but you should know.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s in your beloved play and because she’s here too. You know her.”
“Here?” Sam looked about at the ghostly trees. “I know her? What are you on about?”
“Oh, yes. She’s here. Here in the school.”
“What? Who? Leana, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a nutter!”
“But she’s your leader here. You stand for her when she enters the room. You stand to salute her when she enters your great meetings in the mornings.”
“Meetings in the mornings? What? Assembly? Who? Mrs Waters?”
“Very good, Sam.” Leana nodded gravely.
Sam couldn’t fathom all of this. “Who? Hachet? Seriously?”
Leana crossed her arms. “All so very rational, eh?”
11
The Key To The Abyss
Sam and Leana walked back towards the school. Neither had a watch. Neither knew if it was late or early. For the first time Sam wasn’t wondering if this was all a dream – now he was hoping it was all a dream. “Perhaps we should run away?” he said out loud. Leana didn’t reply, so Sam answered himself. “But where would we go?”
“Why are you at this school?” Leana asked suddenly. “Are your parents dead?”
“No!” Sam gave
a hollow little laugh. “It’s just that my dad’s working away at the moment. He’s an archaeologist.” He waited for her to be impressed but she blew into her hands.
“And your mother?”
Sam looked away. He didn’t know what to say. “She’s a writer,” he mumbled. Usually people, older people especially, asked if he was related to the famous writer just by his name. Leana again looked unimpressed. “She hasn’t been well recently. She left home. The police found her in a hotel by the seaside. On the coast. She didn’t seem to be able to remember anything.” He looked across at Leana. “She’s not very well. My father has to work. I have to be here.”
“It must be hard. For all of you.”
Sam shrugged. “I’m fine.” He stared down the road ahead. The fog made it a white tunnel. “What about you?”
“My family?”
“Yes.”
Leana shook her head and buried her chin in her scarf. “I don’t have one.”
Sam thought about her asking if her parents had died, as she had asked him, but decided to avoid a direct question. “Then who brought you up?”
Leana stared him directly in the eyes. “Three sisters,” she replied in a manner which said, No more questions.
For a long while they walked on in silence.
As they climbed back over the stile and began down the narrow, hedge-hemmed lane towards the school, Leana asked, “What shall we do if we see her today?”
“Who? Waters?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did she see you last night? At the cottage?”
Leana thought back. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Then we do nothing. We don’t let her know that we know anything.” Sam loosened his scarf. “Maybe it’s all a game, as you say. Maybe we’re doomed. Who knows? Until something happens for certain, I think we should just carry on. What else can we do?” He remembered another phrase of his fathers and repeated it: “One foot in front of the other and follow your nose.”
Leana smiled at this and held Sam by the elbow. He could feel she was scared, feel her trembling, and this had a strange effect on him. Although he was scared himself, he overcame his fears for her sake. He put on an act. He would be strong because she needed him to be strong.
Leana was thankful: more than anything she was tired. In her mind she was conscious of being with Sam, of how that was what she wanted, even if it was just for a few minutes, even if disaster was just around the corner – or at the bottom of the lane. For these few moments she could be calm and simply be.
The ponies watched them walk by; their black eyes and bridles floating in the air.
“Someone’s standing at the bottom of the road by the wall,” Sam whispered as they drew closer to the crossroads, the school on the other side of the road. They were hemmed in by old stone walls, as old as the village and the church. On one of these was a rusty iron cross that the children sometimes swung for luck: no one knew what it was really for.
“It’s too tall to be Waters.”
“I can only see a shape.”
“It’s a person.”
“Let’s keep walking. It could be someone walking their dog or waiting for a bus.”
Sam felt Leana reach for his hand and as they touched palms he felt a strange fizzle of energy pass between them. This is too real to be a dream, he thought. When he looked across at her he wanted her to look at him but she was looking ahead, into the gloom, at the spindly figure in a gown and mortar board hat waiting for them at the bottom of the path.
“I think it’s a teacher,” Leana whispered.
“Yes. I think you’re right.” Sam could see the outlines of a wrinkled, taught face. He recognised the face of an old master, one he’d seen in the old black and white photos which hung in the Main Building. “I think he used to be a teacher at the school. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him before. He’s ancient.”
Leana had relaxed when she’d realised the figure waiting for them was not Mrs Waters. Now she dropped Sam’s hand. “He’s waving to us, I think.”
“Hello, sir,” said Sam as they came face to face. The old master was tall and tired looking but there was goodness in his face and he smiled as he looked down at them, his grey moustache flickering upwards at its edges like twitching wings.
“Out rather early, aren’t we?”
“We’re practically the only ones left in school, sir, so we thought we’d take advantage of it and get some air.”
“I see.” The master looked from Sam to Leana. “Well to my old eyes you both look like you could do with a hot drink. I only popped out to post a letter. Mrs Wickett should be brewing up just about now. Care to join me for a cuppa?”
Mr Chipping’s rooms were in the old cottage opposite the school. His living room was warm and cosy, the shelves filled with books, photographs and magazines, and there was a small pug dozing on the mat in front of an electric fire. The air smelled of carbolic soap and dust.
“Thank you kindly, Mrs Wickett,” Mr Chipping told his house lady, who’d brought in a tray of tea and toast. “Just here on the table will be fine.”
“Thank you,” Leana muttered. She and Sam were perched together awkwardly on a small sofa patterned with blue paisley swirls.
“Must be awful having no homes to go to this weekend of all weekends,” Mrs Wickett said, standing for a minute with her hands crossed on her apron and looking at Sam and Leana with sad eyes.
Mr Chipping waved a liver-spotted hand. “Thank you, Mrs Wickett. That’ll be all for now.”
“Thanks for this,” smiled Sam, plucking a triangle of toast.
“And did we see anything interesting on our walk this morning?” asked the old master. He sat in a chair and folded one grey leg over the other.
“It was too foggy to see much, sir,” Sam began. “We only went up as far as the Gallops and then we turned back. Did we get to the railway tunnel?”
Leana squinted and stirred her tea. “I’m not sure.”
“Young lady, you only joined us here a few days ago, didn’t you?”
Leana nodded. “That’s right, sir.”
“Where were you before?”
Leana opened her mouth to answer but no words were forthcoming. She’d learnt to trust her body to answer for her but now there was nothing there. Only the truth. “Home.”
“A long way from here, eh?” Mr Chipping leaned forwards and nudged the pug with the tip of his slipper, warning it to be careful its nose didn’t dry out. The small bundle of fur immediately sat up, switched positions and settled again. “And you, young man. Are you happy here?”
“I am, sir.”
“With Mr Firmin for English Lit this year, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Which texts are you studying?”
“Macbeth, sir,” Sam replied, and went on to list the other two books they were supposed to have read.
“Ah, Macbeth,” repeated Mr Chipping. He stared down at his tea with a wistful look on his face. “I see.”
“This cottage is very old, isn’t it, sir?” Sam asked. He was thinking about the horseshoe on the wall outside.
“Yes it is. Almost, but not quite, as old as me.”
“Did it form part of some stables before, sir?”
“The old monastery stables. That’s right.” Mr Chipping winked at Mrs Wickett who had popped her head inside the door. “In fact, some people claim to still hear the old horses from time to time, don’t they, Mrs Wickett?”
“They do indeed, Mr Chipping.”
“Monastery stables, sir?” asked Sam.
“That’s right.”
“Hasn’t always been a school here, then, sir?”
“No, no.”
“I heard it was a hospital in the last war.”
“That’s right.” Mr Chipping saw Leana looking at a photograph of a pretty young woman he had over the fireplace. “My wife,” he told her.
“She’s beautiful,” Leana said.
“Can
you tell us about the monastery, sir?” asked Sam. He was thinking of the rumours he’d heard about St Nicks being built on a graveyard, in the shape of a cross.
“Well,” sighed the old master. “The grounds covered more or less the site of the current school, I believe. The Main Building is where the abbey stood. They had some farmland hereabouts. A mill, I believe, and a small brewing operation. Of course the whole place was destroyed during the dissolution. Became a kind of hospital after that. A retreat, we might say. Most of the monks escaped, though. Place is honeycombed with tunnels. Surprised nothing has fallen down, especially with all the building work they insist on these days.” He turned to stare at his shelves. “An old friend of mine wrote a rather interesting volume about all this, actually. Now, if I could only remember the name of it.”
“Do the tunnels still exist?” Leana asked.
“Oh, very probably. I mean, they’re relatively recent if you take into consideration the long history of this little village.” Mr Chipping squeezed his nose. “Our churchyard for example, just up the way, there. You’ve noticed its shape, I suppose? Round. The walls, I mean.”
Sam thought about it. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Well that’s a pretty good indication that pagans were here first, you see, my boy. I would hazard a guess that our little church has been a religious site as long as there’s been religions to believe in, which means, of course, as long as there have been people to believe. The current church was built on top of the old site but such imposition can’t negate the history of what went before, or what it stood for.”
“I’d love to read that book if you could find it, sir.”
“Talking of books,” said Mr Chipping with a grin. “Perhaps I may indulge you both in a story, since you’re so interested in the history of the school?”
Seeing his guests nod, Mr Chipping leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. His eyes, to Leana and Sam, seemed dissolve, as though the sockets were emptying. “Now one winter’s day a long time ago, on a morning not unlike this one, the story goes that there came a steady knocking at the monastery door.
“The monks who were going about their business inside were surprised to find an old woman standing in the snow – let’s call her Sybil, I like that name – and try as they might to entice her in, the strange old lady wanted nothing but to speak to the abbot and refused to leave until she’d done so.
The Invisible Hand Page 6