He put his arms around her and drew her close.
“You know, despite all your efforts to hide it, you’re a good old-fashioned moral… woman,” he murmured.
“Yeah? If you’d said girl I’d have kneed you in the crotch, and how moral would that have been? Let’s get away from this place. It gives me the creeps.”
They turned and made their way back downhill. As they neared the track they saw the pickup approaching from Foulgate, moving at a speed which wasn’t good for its suspension.
“Thor’s in a hurry,” said Sam. “Perhaps he got a dusty welcome.”
She waved her hand, expecting the vehicle to slow down, but if anything it came faster.
It was Mig who spotted it first.
“That’s not Thor driving!” he said. “It’s Gowder!”
Then it was past them in a cloud of dust and swinging round the curve that marked the descent to the Hall.
“Oh shit,” said Sam. “Where’s Thor? What do you think’s happened to him?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Mig. “Come on.”
He set off at a fast jog along the track toward Foulgate.
“Don’t you think we should try to warn them at the Hall that he’s coming?” panted Sam, for the first time finding herself stretched to keep up with him.
“No way to warn them, he’ll be there long before we could get close. No, we need to check that Thor’s all right,” said Mig grimly.
She checked his logic and found, rather to her surprise, that it was totally without flaw. Then Mig’s concern for Winander proved infectious and images of him lying in the farmyard with his head stove in began to fill her mind.
It was with huge relief that she heard Mig cry, “I think I see him!”
She strained her eyes through the gathering gloom of the impending storm and saw way ahead a figure moving toward them. Another couple of seconds confirmed it was Thor and a few moments later they met.
There was no sign of blood, but there were the beginnings of a livid bruise on his right temple and he looked as if he’d been rolling in dust and mud.
“Did you see him?” he yelled.
“Yes. He went past us like a bat out of hell,” said Sam. “What happened?”
“The bastard thumped me!” said Thor. “I met him coming out of his barn. I tried to speak to him and next thing I was flying through the air. Then he got into the pickup, turned it round and took off. He’d have backed it clean over me if I hadn’t rolled out of the way. Come on, we need to get down to the Hall!”
“Why? What do you think he’s likely to do there?” gasped Mig as they set off jogging back along the track.
“God knows,” said Thor. “All I know is when I saw him he was carrying an axe and a jerrycan full of petrol, so I don’t think he’s going for tea!”
8
Ragnarokk
AFTERWARD ALL SAM RECALLED, not without shame, of running along that seemingly endless track was the pain in her legs and lungs, her shock that she was finding it hard to keep up with a sexagenarian and an invalid, and her determination that she wasn’t going to be beaten.
The shame derived from her later realization that what motivated the two men to break their pain barriers was unselfish concern for the inmates of the Hall. Perhaps, she tried to explain to Mig, it was a gender thing. She, being a woman, found it impossible to imagine the worst Laal Gowder might do. They, being men and thus tarred with the same brush, had no delusions.
Even to herself it did not sound a reasonable argument.
But they all shared an equal relief when at last the twisted chimneys of Illthwaite Hall came into sight.
A few moments later, as they reached the viewpoint where Mig had paused the previous day, Thor stopped. The others, taking their lead from him, came to a halt too and peered down the fellside toward the house.
The pickup was parked close against the wall, its driver’s door wide open. Up the slope opposite the kitchen window they could see Laal Gowder. He was standing alongside the great carved trunk that had killed his brother, swinging a longhandled axe with practiced ease and driving its head into the fatal wood.
Into Sam’s mind came words from the Reverend Peter K.’s Guide:
Experienced woodmen found their axe-edges blunted. Finally Barnaby Winander, the village blacksmith and a man of prodigious strength, swung at the cross with an axe so heavy none but he could raise it. A contemporary account tells us that the razor-sharp edge rang against the stump with “a note like a passing-bell,” the shaft shattered, and the axe-head flew off…
No such problem, diabolic or human, here. No bell-like sound either. Just a solid crunch! as the blade drove deep into the bole sending woodchips flying off to left and right.
“He’s decapitating it,” said Thor. “He’s taking the Wolf-Head right off.”
“But why?” asked Mig, which seemed to Sam an odd question for a religious guy to ask when a paid-up atheist like herself had no problem with following the superstitious irrationalities of Gowder’s psyche.
“Because it killed his brother,” said Thor. “I always knew that sodding thing was evil. I should never have listened to Frek. At least Gowder is taking it out on something inanimate… Oh shit!”
A figure had appeared at the kitchen window. Sam couldn’t make it out, but Thor had no doubt who it was, nor of the possible consequences.
“It’s Gerry,” he said. Then he bellowed, “Stay inside, you stupid bugger! Don’t come out!”
Even Thor’s mighty shout could hardly have reached the man in the kitchen. He vanished from the window. Sam looked toward the kitchen doorway, then realized she could only see the top of it because the pickup was parked so close to the wall. The door opened, but the vehicle blocked exit. There might have been space for someone as skinny as she was to crawl out alongside the wheel, but not for a thickset man like Woollass.
There was a cry of triumph, more an animal howl, as one last blow from Gowder’s axe separated the Wolf-Head from the bole. But he wasn’t finished yet.
Dropping his axe, he picked up a petrol can and started to pour the fuel over the snarling head.
Again words scrolled across Sam’s mind:
Faggots of bone-dry kindling were set all around the stump, flame was applied, the Winanders got to work with the bellows they had brought up from their forge, and soon whipped up a huge conflagration. Yet when all had died down and the ashes were raked away, there the stump remained, just as it had been before…
But once more, if this were that same Other Cross, its powers of resistance seemed to have died over the years. Laal Gowder brought a box of matches out of his pocket, struck one and let it fall. The petrol ignited with a whoosh and in a few moments it was clear that the old dry wood was burning away merrily. No, not merrily, thought Sam. Somehow the shimmering diaphane of flame made the carved Wolf-Head look as if it were writhing and snarling in the heart of the fire.
Mig put her thoughts into words.
“It’s more like he’s bringing that thing to life than destroying it,” he said.
“I think we’d better get down there,” said Thor.
But before they could resume their descent, events in the drama which they were viewing from the distant gallery began to spiral out of control.
Gerry had reappeared at the kitchen window and opened it to shout something at Gowder. In the bedroom window immediately above they could now see the figure of Dunstan, unmistakable with his mane of white hair above his cardinal red robe. Sam thought she glimpsed someone behind him. Mrs. Collipepper? It would be like the man not to let the drama of the day interfere with his refreshing “nap.”
Laal Gowder seemed to find the sight of one or both of them, and perhaps the words that Gerry was shouting, an unbearable provocation.
He stooped down, seized the flaming Wolf-Head in both hands, raised it high in the air, and hurled it through the kitchen window. Gerry fell back out of sight. And Gowder, his axe in one hand, the petrol ca
n in the other, scrambled on to the sill and squeezed through the open window.
Now the three spectators were running again. No time for commentary now, no breath to spare even for exclamations of shock, they ran as humans have always run, toward danger even when they know that tragedy is inevitable.
It took at most three minutes, probably less, for them to be turning into the driveway, but in that time the age of the wolf had come and it was not to be denied.
In the kitchen Gowder had gone berserk. A blow from the axe, fortunately from the flat of the blade not its edge, drove Gerry Woollass to the floor. Before he passed out he saw the enraged man hacking the furniture and fittings to pieces, but, with a heightened instinct for destruction, aiming the worst of his violence at the kitchen range, severing all its input pipes and releasing an unstoppable supply of gas into the air.
Then, it later became clear, he had run amuck through the rest of the house, trailing petrol till the can was empty, then using his axe to reduce everything he encountered to firewood.
To the three figures running down the drive, the attractive front elevation of the Hall looked the same as it had looked for almost half a millennium. Only the smoke billowing up from the far end gave normalcy the lie. But as Thor flung open the front door there was a muffled explosion as the gas in the kitchen ignited, sending a blast of hot air driving deep into the building, and the trail of petrol laid by the crazed Gowder sent flames leaping joyously upward to seize on paneling and beams whose wood had been drying out for centuries.
Buildings like these, wrote the chief fire officer in his report, were often bonfires waiting to be lit. A circular warning of the dangers, detailing the protective measures available, had been sent out to all owners the previous year. Frek Woollass had been keen that its recommendations should be followed, but her father had looked at the estimated cost and declared that the money could be put to much better use in the community. Thus, opined that keen ironist Thor Winander, had Gerry’s compulsion to atone ultimately brought about the destruction of his ancestral home.
But such philosophical niceties had no place in the minds of the three new arrivals as they burst into the entrance hall, which was already filling with smoke.
Sam had no firm idea what they should or could do now they were here, but Thor like a Hollywood action hero had no doubt of his priorities.
“The old man’s upstairs,” he said, making for the staircase.
“What about Gerry in the kitchen?” said Mig.
“Either he got out or he’s a goner,” said Thor over his shoulder.
It was an analysis too clear to need debate. The kitchen was the volcanic center of the eruption which was threatening the downfall of the whole building. Nothing could survive in there.
The thought trailed across Sam’s logical mind that Gerry’s death would remove the problem of their first confrontation. She brushed it away angrily and in its place popped the question whether Thor would be so keen to dash to old Dunstan’s aid if he knew what she suspected about his involvement in Sam Flood’s death.
This too she erased as irrelevant. But the question she couldn’t get out of her mind as she went up the stairs behind the two men was the same question she’d found herself asking in the wake of the other Gowder’s death beneath the Wolf-Head — Is this all down to me?
The fire was moving laterally at a steady speed, but in its natural direction, which was upward, it went like a rocket. Dunstan’s bedroom was almost directly above the kitchen. Already there was fire there, banked high in the hearth to keep his old bones warm. And according to Mrs. Collipepper, as the coils of smoke started coming up through the floorboards, the old man stretched his hands out to them as if welcoming the extra heat.
She tried to lead him out of the room but he pushed her away. Now Frek burst in and attempted to add her strength to the effort. Dunstan resisted them both, showing remarkable strength.
Then he said to the housekeeper, “For God’s sake, Pepi, if you want to help me, get her out of here. Quickly. No point in us all dying.”
So Mrs. Collipepper had turned her attention to Frek and dragged her out of the room, just as Thor and Mig and Sam came round the corner from the landing.
It was clear at once there was no hope of getting to the old man. The room was a maelstrom of fire and smoke. It was incredible that Dunstan still had anywhere to stand, but when the curtain of flame opened a fraction, Sam saw him quite clearly, upright by the window, as if taking one last look at the landscape he so loved.
She heard herself crying his name. He couldn’t have heard her, but he turned his head.
She never knew if it was an optical illusion, or maybe a created memory, but she always recalled that he seemed to smile as if in recognition and mouthed something. The smile and the mouthing were probably both simply a rictus of pain as the heat began to melt the flesh from his bones. But in her memory she read his lips, and this was what persuaded her the memory was real. For surely a created memory would have had old Dunstan uttering some sort of confession, perhaps begging for forgiveness?
Instead, which she never told anyone except Mig, what she saw him saying was, “Sorry about the tea.”
Then she felt herself pushed aside roughly by a figure it took her a moment to identify.
Scorched, smoke-blackened, with a huge gash across his temple which the heat had cauterized, it was Gerry.
He screamed, “Dad!” and would have rushed into the room if Thor hadn’t flung his strong arms around him and grappled him back.
At the same moment the floor collapsed, Dunstan vanished, and there was no room left to rush into.
With the vibrant urgency of one who had been learning the line for years, Thor said, “Let’s get out of here.”
He hauled Gerry along by main force. Frek seemed close to collapse and Mig followed Thor’s example and dragged her along the corridor. At last he’s got his hands on her, thought Sam. And she’s the nearest she’ll ever get to being hot stuff!
It seemed to her that she might have spoken these wild words aloud and she glanced at Mrs. Collipepper as they hurried along behind the others. Their eyes met for a moment, blue gray looking into gray blue.
Oh God, thought Sam, remembering there’d been three generations of Collipeppers housekeeping at the Hall. Not another Woollass by-blow!
At the head of the stairs they could see the hall below was full of smoke. Thor yelled something at Mig, who grabbed hold of what remained of Gerry’s jacket while hanging on to Frek with his other hand. Mrs. Collipepper thrust Sam forward into contact with Frek, herself seizing Sam’s trailing hand.
Then they dragged what air they could into their lungs and, with Thor leading what felt like a crazy conga, they plunged down the stairway.
Heat on the skin; smoke in the nostrils, the eyes, the lungs; staggering, falling, recovering; all the time fighting the urge to lie down and simply let it be over; if this was the kind of hell Mig truly believed in, thought Sam, how did he manage to get out of bed in the morning?
Then she died.
She knew it was death because she’d burst into that heaven she didn’t believe in. She felt cool air playing on her face and when she breathed it was the same nectar that poured down her throat, flushing out all the ashy filth in a bout of lung-racking coughing which was the sweetest pain she’d ever felt.
She released her grip on Frek, collapsed to her knees in a parody of thanksgiving which wasn’t altogether parody, and opened her eyes.
The action hero had done it. They were in the middle of the lawn in front of the house.
The others lay about her, coughing, gasping, retching. Gerry looked the worst affected. The rest were already like herself recovering enough to pay heed to each other. She caught Mig’s eye. He mouthed “You OK?” and she nodded and they smiled at each other.
Then she turned her head to look at the Hall.
They had made it out just in time. The kitchen end of the house was sending tongues of fire lick
ing up at the low storm clouds which were boiling overhead. Behind windows along the whole length of the rest of the building they could see flames dancing like guests at a wild party.
Some blast of air — or perhaps Mrs. Collipepper acting like a good housekeeper to the end — had closed the front door behind them. Inside it must already be burning. They could see the paint bubbling off the woodwork as they watched, and now the wolf-head knocker was snarling at them out of a corona of fire.
Frek used Sam to lever herself upright as if to get a better view. Sam reached up and took the hand on her shoulder and held it there. Mig rose too and stood beside Frek.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What for?”
“The house… your grandfather… Look, the way it happened, it was unforeseeable, I’m sure…”
Frek coughed a laugh.
“You think I’m worried because he died unshriven, with all his many sins, carnal and otherwise, upon him? Forget it. He died in flames like a Viking, with his most precious belongings burning around him, as Odin himself ordained. No forgiveness necessary in that belief system. A man is judged by his best, not his worst, and a hero’s welcome awaits heroes.”
She squeezed Sam’s shoulder as if in acknowledgment, then went to kneel by her father, who was being tended by Thor and Mrs. Collipepper.
Sam rose to stand beside Mig.
Above them the clouds gobbled up the last morsel of clear sky and met in an almost simultaneous flash of lightning and clap of thunder. The front door of Illthwaite Hall fell out on to the pebble mosaic and a blast of fire-bright air strong enough for Sam to feel its heat shot out and upward to be absorbed by the mighty storm raging above.
The Stranger House Page 42