They needed to get as close as possible before William saw they were there. I looked at the sick grimace of pain on my captor’s face and couldn’t help but think that if they got close enough, fast enough, Drew and Teddy could save him as well.
I tore my gaze from the oncoming boat before William could look up and forced myself to concentrate. “Please,” I said, making my voice sound as it had a moment before. “You’re hurt. You need help. If you’ll just untie me . . .”
“You haven’t been listening.” He looked up at me now. “I don’t want help. He’s done me a bloody favor.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way. You could reconsider. Or you could just let me go. I wouldn’t tell the police; I promise.” I was babbling to keep him distracted, but his brows came down in bemusement. Why would he care what I told the police after he’d killed himself? But fresh terror was making its way up my spine, robbing me of the ability to make sense. Behind him, the other boat had hardly made any headway at all. If I botched this now, before they even got close . . .
“Listen,” I tried again. “Listen—” But I had no chance to say more, for suddenly the boat rocked as something hit it from underneath. I fell against the side, my arms wrenching, and William was jolted off his seat.
I tried to get my legs under me, but the boat rocked again, harder, banging as if some strange leviathan were under the water, a white whale or a kraken or a—
I froze.
William pulled himself up and smiled at me. His nose was bloody, but he gave me a wide grin, almost beatific in its joyousness.
“Walking John!” he cried.
Something hit us again, and the boat rocked nearly sideways, creaking ominously as it rose from the water. I nearly slid over the side, my feet dipping into the icy bay to my ankles before we righted again. My arms were being wrenched nearly from their sockets, and my hands had long ago lost their feeling. My scream was carried away by the wind.
William’s hands were on me, pulling me up. He was still smiling. “It’s Walking John!” he said again, and suddenly he was jerking the rope from the oarlock, freeing my arms, though not untying my wrists. Blood from his nose dripped onto the rope as he worked. “He’s come. He’s come for both of us. Now we’ll see—”
The boat rocked again, and this time it arched up, rising over us into the moonlit sky, water spraying from the hull. I was paralyzed with terror, just as I’d been that night in the garden, just as I’d been that night as I ran through the woods to the beach. It was the terror that always accompanied the presence of Rothewell’s resident ghost.
The boat rose, rose over us. We tumbled back into the water. It sucked at me in an icy grip. I felt it hit my back, the back of my head, and then I went under.
The cold was unlike anything I’d ever felt, so shocking it no longer had anything to do with temperature, but was more like a slap or a clap of thunder in my body. I thrashed, kicking as hard as I could, winnowing upward with my tied hands. I could feel the current pulling me, and the cold, and—What was that?
Panic pushed my body to the surface. The boat was a few feet away, righted and half-filled with water. I had just enough time to realize I couldn’t see William anywhere when another wave overtook me and put me under.
Again I pushed to the surface, focusing on bending my legs and kicking them out. I couldn’t use my arms, but I pointed them upward, as if that could pull me further. Bend and kick. Bend and kick. Again I broke the surface.
I couldn’t keep this up. Already my body was slowing, my thoughts beginning to fog in the cold. I had to get to the boat. I focused on pushing myself toward it—bend and kick, bend and kick—as the waves thrashed me and I swallowed water. I will reach the boat, I said to myself. I do not want to die.
I could barely grip the side; my hands, already awkward, almost completely refused to work. I levered myself just far enough to hook my elbows over the edge, then thrashed with the last of the strength in my legs, pressing my face down into the water-logged bottom of the boat and hauling in the rest of my body. I gasped for air, curling into myself, trying futilely to get warm. The boat tossed under the dark, rainy sky.
I pushed myself up. I was shaking now, my teeth chattering. The boat with Drew and Teddy was still coming; it was closer now, and—though I half thought it was my imagination—I heard a shout.
Something came out of the water.
It was some twenty feet away. It lifted from the waves, a long, dark head, featureless in the shadows of the water. I got an impression of long hair, sodden, and narrow shoulders, a pointed nose and a smooth, black brow. It faced me, though I couldn’t see its eyes, and for a long moment it protruded perfectly from the water, utterly still as the waves crashed around it. I was speechless with fear, my throat closed. Then it lowered itself and was gone.
Closer to the boat, a hand came from the water. I crawled to the side and leaned over. The hand came again, and this time I grabbed it.
William’s face appeared, his eyes half-closed, his lips blue. He came to the edge of the boat. I helped him grasp it—he couldn’t grip it any more than I could—and then I leaned forward, clutching his coat with my tied hands. I pulled and pulled. I was frantic to get him out of the water, away from the thing I’d seen. I couldn’t lift him in.
“Jillian,” I heard him say.
“Just try,” I said. “I can pull you in. I can!”
“Jillian.”
“William, the ghost’s in the water somewhere! For God’s sake!”
He was looking into my face. His arms were hooked over the edge of the boat, the rest of him in the water. He laid his cheek against the wood and looked at me.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It’s just his nature.”
“It isn’t over,” I heard myself say, though now I could barely feel my own face. “I won’t let it be.”
“He wants to sleep,” said William. The words were staccato, broken by the chattering of his teeth. “It’s all he wants. You saw the drawing. He asked to sleep.”
I tried again to grip him, but my hands wouldn’t work. “It’ll be all right.”
“Mind what I told you. You must mind it. It’s important. Jillian . . . it’s coming.”
When I realized he’d closed his eyes, I tried to shake him. “William!”
“It’s just his nature,” he said again.
“William!”
And then he was gone, slipped through my numb fingers, the fabric of his coat sliding under my numb palms. I tried to grasp him, tried to find some purchase, but there was none. He went under without a sound and disappeared.
I screamed. I howled into the wind, the sound from my throat unearthly. I hovered my useless hands over the water, waiting to grasp him as he came back up, willing him to surface again. He didn’t. I merely hung there, making a mad sound, as birds cried in the sky overhead.
He had kidnapped me, hit me, tried to kill me. I shouldn’t have felt anything but triumph. But all I could think of was how heavily it must have weighed on him all these years, believing as he did that another war was coming. It had suffocated him so much he had been desperate to die. No one deserved to suffer so.
Then the boat jerked, and I was flung back, landing hard in the water on the bottom. Walking John was coming again.
I shouted something foolish—Stop, perhaps, or, Please—and then I heard other voices in the wind. I pulled myself up to see Drew and Teddy’s boat rise from the water, just as mine had, and lower again. As the boat came up I saw that chilling black figure for just a second before it slipped under like a fish. The boat was so close now I could make out Drew’s big, broad body and the smaller, lighter-haired Teddy Easterbrook. They gripped the side of the boat as it came crashing down, as a wave came over the side.
Walking John was going to take us all.
My icy brain began to work. I still had my coat on;
I twisted and shoved my hands in the inside pocket. There, incredibly—having survived this wild boat ride and a freezing dip in the water—were the small hawthorn branches I’d picked on the path on the way to the signal house, seemingly a year ago. My fingers closed over them and I yanked, snagging them on the lining of my pocket as I jerked them out.
I tried to keep my balance in the swaying waves as I set down the branches. With shaking hands, I put them on the rowboat’s seat—for the bottom was filled with nearly half a foot of water—and arranged them crosswise. I tried to remember stupidly what the book had said. Was there another rule? What was I supposed to do?
The wind and the waves wanted to wash my branches away, but I held them firmly in place until the boat came to a lull. Then I turned my back, folding my knees under me in the water. Over my shoulder I heard more shouts as Walking John again attacked Drew and Teddy’s boat.
For a second, the words utterly deserted me, as they do to an actor with stage fright. I blinked furiously, my mouth open, nothing coming forth. Then I remembered.
“John Barrow!” I shouted as clearly as I could. I prayed the branches had stayed in place behind me. “As one born in . . . in this place, I tell you now that you must leave. You are unwelcome here.”
I waited. Was that all of it? Was I supposed to say more? The shouts from the other boat had stopped, and I heard nothing. The back must stay turned—I remembered that much. I would not turn around.
There was no sound from the boat behind me: not a step, not a creak. But my breath stopped in my chest, and the sodden hairs tried to stand on the back of my neck. I gripped the side of the boat, fighting the urge to jump out, to do anything to get away. In some cases, the boggart will appear. The back must stay turned.
My arms shook; my hands burned; I knelt braced, locked in terror. He was behind me. I could feel it, the icy presence, the dangerous disturbance of the air. Walking John’s presence was like a knife slicing through the atmosphere of everything you knew, cutting it open. You looked through and you saw nothing but sadness, nothing but fear. And you had to look.
I found a breath. “Please,” I said, my voice unrecognizable. “I am Toby Leigh’s daughter. He would have helped you if he’d lived. So I’m doing it now. I am Toby Leigh’s daughter. It’s time for you to sleep.”
The boat rocked, but it was just the waves. I thought I heard breathing.
Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around. . . .
And then it was gone.
I let go and fell to my hands and knees in the water. Still I didn’t turn. I closed my eyes.
I had no idea how long I stayed there, waiting. Eventually something hit the side of the boat. It was a gentle thump, wood on wood. My boat creaked in response.
The sound of feet—human feet—hitting the floor of the boat. “Jillian!”
I opened my eyes and pulled myself up. Drew Merriken splashed toward me, wearing a dark sweater and trousers, his hair tangled with salt water. He leaned over me and held out one large, strong arm. “Take my hand,” he said.
I would have smiled, but my lips wouldn’t move. I raised my hands and placed them in his, and he pulled me from my knees.
Thirty-seven
It hurt when they cut the ropes from me. I moaned helplessly when Drew rubbed my hands, the blood slicing back into them like arrows.
“Jesus, Teddy,” I heard Drew’s voice say. “Row faster.”
“Believe me,” came Teddy’s voice, “I’m rowing as fast as I bloody can.”
“She’ll have hypothermia in a second. Jillian, can you hear me? Come here.”
I pushed my face into his neck, my cheek against his soaking-wet sweater. “You shot him.”
He rubbed my shoulders, my upper arms. “I’m sorry.”
I pressed closer; I couldn’t get warm. “Who was shooting from the beach?”
“That was my work, I’m afraid.” Teddy was rowing hard, but he still managed an arrogant edge to his voice. “Gave you a bit of a fright, did it? It’s an old trick, really. Put the enemy off guard, get him looking in the wrong direction. Get him to empty his gun at you, if you can, and distract him from your comrade, who’s sneaking ’round the other way.”
“You could have shot me,” I said.
“I couldn’t have, at that. But I do apologize for scaring you. When you’re up against it, you go with the best plan you have. We assumed he had a gun.”
I closed my eyes as Drew kept rubbing me, his hands big and strong through my sodden clothes. Everything hurt, I was freezing, and I never wanted to move again. “Did you see him?”
Both men were silent for a long minute. I wondered whether they were looking at each other, or if each of them was looking away.
“There was something,” Drew said finally, his reluctant voice rumbling in his chest where I leaned against it. “It was hard to be sure.”
“Yes,” said Teddy. “Definitely something. And you can put that on my gravestone—definitely something—because that’s all I’ll ever say. If I have to go to Tahiti, I’m rowing in the other bloody direction as fast as I can.”
“It’s all right,” I heard myself say. It was just his nature. “I may have gotten rid of him. I think he’s gone.”
We were silent for a long moment. “Drew,” I said at last. It was becoming harder to speak.
“Yes.”
“The book was in the boat. The codebook.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said. “Now stop talking.”
• • •
I opened my eyes. It was still daylight, so I couldn’t have slept long; I suspected I had just dozed after the doctor had left.
I was in my little bedroom at Barrow House. Every quilt from the closet had been piled atop me, and a cup of cooling tea was placed next to the bed. I pushed the covers aside and sat up, swinging my feet to the floor.
Pain shot everywhere through me—my arms, my knees, my face where William had hit me. But my hands were the worst. My wrists were wrapped in red, angry welts, and I still had trouble moving my fingers. The doctor had said the pain and stiffness would go away in time.
I stood on shaky legs. They were bruised and scraped from knee to ankle from my encounters with the bottom of William’s rowboat. I was wearing one of the nightgowns from my suitcase. I’d been put in a bath as soon as possible, and now, though a chill still moved through me, I was at least a little warm and clean.
I limped to the tiny washstand, where a glass of water and an old pitcher had been set out. I had barely taken two swallows down my ragged throat when the door opened. It was Julia Kates.
It was Julia who had drawn me a bath, Julia who had found my nightgown for me, Julia who had fetched the quilts. I smiled at her now.
“You’re awake,” she said, in her blunt way.
“I am. I’m feeling a little better now.”
“That’s good.” She hesitated at the door, as if unsure whether she should leave. “Do you want food?”
I hadn’t thought of it, but suddenly it sounded good. “I’d love some. Whatever you can find in the larder.”
“There’s lots. I can do a sandwich, or . . .” She hesitated again.
“Julia.” I set down the glass. “Were you in the woods?”
She looked away. “Yes.” Her face reddened in distress. “I heard voices. When I heard William . . . I didn’t know what to do. I hid in the trees, and I ran. I was almost all the way down the path when I heard you scream.” She dropped her gaze to the floor, and I realized she was deeply ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever for?”
“I should have done something. I ran like a coward.”
I took a step toward her. “Julia, there was nothing you could have done. Besides, when you came out of the woods you found Inspector Merriken, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t mean to,” she argued.
“I was running home because I thought I’d tell Mother, and he was banging on the door of Barrow House, calling your name.”
“So you told him what you’d seen and what you’d heard.”
“Yes, I had to, didn’t I?”
“Then you saved my life,” I said gently, “and I thank you for it.”
She shook her head, unappeased. “Mother says there was always something strange about William Moorcock. She says she always knew he’d turn bad someday.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure she does.”
She glanced shyly at me, then away again. “I’ll get a sandwich.”
I heard her steps clatter halfway down the stairs, then stop.
“Is she awake?” came another voice.
“Yes. I’m getting food.”
“Leave it outside the door.”
I stood frozen as that voice rang through me. My nightgown suddenly seemed entirely too small.
He came into the room, closed the door behind him, and waited for me. I turned and looked at him.
He’d changed into clean, pressed trousers and white shirtsleeves, though he wore no jacket or waistcoat. He leaned on the door with one arm, his shoulders impossibly broad, his beautiful face regarding me with an intent expression that contained, I noticed, just a touch of improbable humor.
“I liked the trousers and sweater better,” I said. “You should wear those more often.”
“I,” he said simply, “like that gown.”
Blushing, I realized, was a good way to get heat back into one’s body.
“Why did you come back?” I tried to change the subject. “You were planning to stay away until tonight.”
An Inquiry Into Love and Death Page 29