“What did you see?” Bartlemy inquired.
“The white ship. O’ course, it were different in my day, wi’ sails and that, and the oars dipping, though you never saw a body there to do the rowing. But this one, it musta had one o’ those devil-machines in it, growling softly, softly, like yon hound might if he were getting angered. Any road, it were the white ship. They used to say it would be waiting for the lucky one, the chosen one, down by the seashore. It would wait out its time—five nights or seven, I dinna recall—and if ye came, it would carry ye away to the Isles o’ the Blest, beyond the setting sun. That were said to be the land o’ the Shining Ones, the Fair Folk, the Good People—but I dinna trust any man who glows in the dark. Anyhow, the Isles are gone now, if they were ever there, and it don’t seem healthy to me, to have a bit of an old legend lingering on, all dressed up new.”
“I’ve heard that legend,” Bartlemy said. “But there are many boats on the river. The one you saw sounds ordinary enough.”
The dwarf grunted and slid from his chair, departing without thanks through the back door and into the woods. Nathan sat down on another chair, waiting for Nambrok’s smell to follow him. “Does he come here much?” he asked.
“When he’s hungry,” Bartlemy said, “if my cooking is to his taste. The dwarfish palate is different from ours.”
“What was that he was eating?”
“His breakfast. How about yours? Bacon and eggs?”
“Yes please. Uncle Barty, I’ve seen a white ship on the Glyde, a motor launch. There was a man from the village walking his dog, but he didn’t see it at all, though the dog barked. What does it mean?”
“I don’t know.” Bartlemy looked thoughtful. “But Nambrok was right about one thing: it isn’t natural when part of an old legend long past its sell-by date turns up in new clothes. Avoid it.”
Nathan nodded—he didn’t think it was necessary to mention the beckoning woman, or the song in the garden—and launched into the tale of his overnight adventures. It was easier in the telling, the second time. Already the horror of it was slipping away from him, relegated to the dreamworld from whence it came. He didn’t know if that was good or bad; when peril is no longer immediate, fear can be swiftly forgotten, and then, grown rash or careless, you stray into the danger zone again. In one way at least, Nathan was determined to learn from his mistakes.
“I should have had a weapon,” he told Bartlemy. “I ought to go to bed better equipped—take a kitchen knife or something—but I don’t know how to guarantee I can dream it with me.”
“It depends what you take,” Bartlemy said. “I will give it some thought. There is also the matter of the king’s leg wound. You asked me if I could come up with a cure.”
“Can you?” Nathan’s face brightened with sudden hope.
“It’s difficult. The wound itself is obviously straightforward enough, but the fact that it doesn’t heal is clearly due to some magical influence, probably the work of the spirit trapped in the blade. There is only one way to heal an injury like that.”
“How?” Nathan demanded eagerly.
“You must touch the wound with the weapon that made it. It’s an ancient spell and, I suspect, applies throughout the multiverse. In the cause of the infection you will find its cure. In modern medicine you may see the equivalent in the principle of vaccination. Science and magic are not that far apart. Both work with nature, one way or another.”
“But nobody can lay a finger on the sword!”
“I said it was difficult. There will be a way—there’s always a way—but you will have to find it for yourself. Meanwhile, I will give you a lotion for the king to ease his suffering, and a cordial to act as a restorative. There is little magic in either, but the lotion should make him more comfortable, and the cordial will provide nourishment and encourage healing sleep. Both are in crystal containers, which should pass the portal. I have no experience of intercosmic transportation, but crystal is pure, and much used in magic. I trust it will serve our purpose.”
“Thanks,” Nathan said. “But what about a weapon of my own? Do you think there’s something…?”
“What weapon would you like?” Bartlemy asked.
“A Kalashnikov,” Nathan said promptly. “But I don’t suppose it would pass the portal, even if I knew where to get one. It’s just that I like the idea of blasting that Urdemon into pulp. Flying pulp,” he concluded, forming a mental picture.
“Remember, the creature is an elemental, and its substance is unstable. The pulp would only re-form, possibly into something even more unpleasant.”
Nathan’s mental picture changed for the worse, and he abandoned it.
“I think you would do better to find your weapon in Wilderslee,” Bartlemy said. “There are things you may be allowed to carry with you in your dreaming, but I suspect a gun would be…out of order. So to speak.”
“Whose order? Allowed by whom?”
“That’s the catch.”
Nathan gave a sigh of resignation. There were too many unanswerable questions out there, and he didn’t want to think about them right now. “I hoped you would have a suitable weapon,” he said. “Like…an antique dagger, or a magic sword.”
“I have only a slicer and a frying pan and several kitchen implements,” Bartlemy said, setting a plate of bacon and eggs in front of Nathan. “The magic sword is in Carboneck.”
Nathan began to eat, and the taste of the food—eggs scrambled into fluffiness, bacon all crisped and curling around the edges, mushrooms oozing black juice—dispelled the last shreds of nightmare, and he was normal again, a normal boy eating a normal breakfast, with no alternative universes to spoil his appetite. Bartlemy smiled to himself, and put his pan in the sink. His magic was not in swords.
ANNIE HAD left the washing till morning, since the washing machine was noisy and given to violent paroxysms that shook the little house like an earth tremor, and her bedroom was over the kitchen and thus directly above the epicenter. Once Nathan had gone out she crammed the sheets and clothes in, holding her breath from the stench of slime, getting it on her hands, her forearms, even—she caught her reflection in the window—a daub on her face. Yuk, she thought in teenspeak, shuddering. She knew it was the fate of mothers, particularly mothers of sons, to do endless washing; apparently, it was what motherhood was all about. But it wasn’t supposed to include getting covered in stinking green spittle from otherworld demons. Nathan might be eating his way back to normality but for Annie, normality had gone down the drain. With the demonspittle, she thought, trying to switch on the tap to clean her hands without getting that, too, smeared in sputum.
The shop was open but with the washing machine rattling into action she didn’t hear anyone come in, nor the light knock on the connecting door.
“Am I bothering you?” said a familiar voice—the voice of someone who was accustomed to bothering people, and didn’t much care.
DCI Pobjoy.
“Oh—it’s you,” Annie said, caught off guard. “Sorry…I’m just trying to—”
“What have you got on your hands?”
“Stuff,” Annie said. “Nothing really. Just…slimy…stuff.”
“It stinks.” Pobjoy switched on the tap for her. “What on earth—”
“Look,” Annie said, too strained and too weary to improvise, “I could lie to you, and you might believe me, but it’s too much effort. Or I could tell you the truth, and you wouldn’t believe me, so it would be pointless. Much better to just let the subject drop. Thanks for doing the tap. Could you turn up the cold a bit, please?”
He adjusted it accordingly. This wasn’t a professional visit—he’d made an excuse to himself to drop by, to see if she was all right, and her son was all right, a bit of community relations—but his policeman’s senses were twitching. He couldn’t help pressing the matter.
“Has it got something to do with Nathan?” Nathan didn’t necessarily cause trouble, he knew, but trouble followed him, for some reason, spreading out
from him in ripples that disrupted everything in his vicinity. Besides, Pobjoy was a copper: his instinct was to blame the teenager.
“Actually,” Annie said, “it’s the spit from a giant worm-thing that tried to eat him.”
“Very funny.”
“I said you wouldn’t believe me.”
“There aren’t a lot of giant man-eating worms in Eade,” Pobjoy said, going with the joke. He’d been told he needed to work on his sense of humor.
Suddenly he remembered the bizarre incident at Crowford Comprehensive that a colleague had mentioned to him. Something about a plague of flies…
“It wasn’t from around here,” Annie said matter-of-factly. She knew she should stop now, before he decided she was a total fruitcake. She didn’t want him to think of her as some batty New Age freak. When Nathan had been kidnapped he’d been kind, in an understated way, or at least strong—someone she could rely on. Like Michael…Not a good train of thought.
“Last year,” she said, “you must have realized there were odd things happening here, things you couldn’t explain.”
“A robbery and three murders?”
“I don’t mean criminal things—not just criminal, anyway. How did a man die of drowning in the middle of a wood with no water nearby? What became of the woman masquerading as Rianna Sardou?—you never found a trace of her. Who was the dwarf involved in the robbery? Why was everyone really after the Grimstone Grail?”
“There are always loose ends in any investigation.” There had been too many in this one. It still nagged at him. “If you know something—”
“I know everything,” Annie said. “But there’s no point in my telling you. It’s like the giant man-eating worm. You wouldn’t believe me.” Why was she doing this?
“I never had you down as one of those black-magic may-the-Force-be-with-us types,” he said awkwardly. “Are you going to tell me it was all due to ley lines and phases of the moon?”
“I wouldn’t recognize a ley line unless it was drawn on the road,” Annie said. “Sorry. I’m stupid today. Forget it.”
She was biting her lip, wishing she hadn’t spoken, wishing he hadn’t caught her when she was vulnerable, desperate, angry—angry at no one and nothing, needing someone on whom to vent her anger.
“If you say so.”
Her hands were clean now, though the smell still clung. She made an effort to compose herself, turned to face him. “Would you like some coffee?”
But he had gone. Pobjoy lunched at the pub on a pork pie and a pint, listening to the gossip, automatically sifting it for anything of interest. There wasn’t much. A forthcoming cricket match, Eade versus Chizzledown, a rumor that Lily Bagot was engaged, although someone pointed out she had yet to divorce Dave (there followed a few reminiscences of Dave Bagot, who had left the village and wasn’t missed), a report that Riverside House had at last found a purchaser. “Well, I wouldn’t have it,” opined an elderly resident. “Not if you paid me. Place is bound to be haunted, after what happened. That Mike Addison…”
“ ’Twasn’t his fault,” said another. “It was that woman what got hold of him. Made herself look like his wife, didn’t she? And they say it was her what did the killing—he didn’t know about it till after the fact. Partial she was to drowning people, seeing as how she came from the river. Nothing good ever came up the Glyde.”
“What d’you mean, she came from the river?” Pobjoy asked, inserting himself without preamble into the conversation.
They looked at him, then at their drinks. They knew who he was.
He bought a round.
“She was a river gypsy,” said the second man, “so I heard. But the Glyde’s had a bad reputation for centuries. There’d be pirates and raiders sailing up from Grimstone a matter of three or four hundred years ago. And then there were the smugglers, in Georgian times. They’d have fights between rival gangs, or kill anyone they thought had betrayed them, and plenty of bodies would come floating on the tide. There used to be a rhyme about it—I’ve seen it in a book somewhere.
Death from the deep sea
floats up the Glyde.
“There was a lot more work for a copper around here, in the old days. Of course, they didn’t have coppers then—just the customs officers, Excise men they were called, and they weren’t too popular. Much like now, when they won’t even let you bring back a few bottles from Cally without making a fuss.”
“But the woman,” Pobjoy interceded, “what do they say about her?”
“She went back to the river from which she came, that’s the story. There’s some as say she was a loralilly, not a real woman at all, but that’s fairy tales: we don’t believe in that stuff no more. Still, she wasn’t seen in these parts again, that’s true enough. And you lot never caught up with her, did you?”
Pobjoy didn’t answer—partly because he didn’t want to discuss the shortcomings of the police, but mostly because he was wondering what a loralilly was.
Later, when the regulars had trickled away, he had a chat with the landlord.
“There’s always been a bit of witchcraft in Eade,” he said. “I don’t mean all that trendy Wicca business, dancing on a hilltop in the nuddy and getting in touch with nature: you’ve got to go to Brighton for that. No, I mean the old stuff, the bad stuff. It was the Carlows, mostly. They burned one of ’em, back in the sixteenth century. No point in putting her on the ducking stool: the Carlows always floated. Their power came from the river, or so folk said.”
“Effie Carlow drowned,” Pobjoy reminded him. “Her power can’t have been up to much.”
“I can’t answer that one,” the landlord admitted. “Maybe the river had done with her—but you know how it is with these tales: people will twist anything to fit the plot. I don’t believe in all that rubbish myself, but there were some said Effie was a witch. She certainly had an evil eye, though I don’t know there was any magic in it! Funny thing, I’ve heard talk about her great-granddaughter, just lately.”
“Hazel Bagot?” Pobjoy said sharply. He remembered her very well.
“That’s the one. Quiet kid, untidy looking. Got picked on at school or something—you know how kids are—and there was a bit of an incident. Shelley Carver’s girl found her desk full of flies—no one knew where they came from. Pretty girl, Ellen, like her mum, but a bit tarty. Still, they all look that way now. Anyway, seems Ellen got spooked, thought it was something to do with Hazel. Witchcraft in the family and all that. Good thing, too: they might treat her with a bit more respect from now on. Shelley was in here the other night, heard her talking about it. Said something else, too. Ellen used to like going down by the river—probably wanted to sit quiet, get away from her mum. Now she won’t go near it. Don’t suppose there’s any connection…still, it’s a funny thing.”
I should have paid more attention to the river, Pobjoy thought. Effie drowned in the Glyde, the German drowned in the wood, Addison and his wife lived at Riverside House. A river runs through it… (He’d heard the phrase somewhere, though he couldn’t recall where.) He didn’t believe in all this folklore stuff, naturally, but sometimes new crimes had old histories. Technically, the murderer was caught, the case closed. But not for him…
“Been a new boat there, last few days,” the landlord was saying. “Big motor launch, so I’m told. Some see it, some don’t. You don’t get many like that on the Glyde.”
“Could it be the river gypsies?” Pobjoy asked.
“Wouldn’t know about that. They say it’s pretty fancy, oceangoing craft, not exactly a gypsy barge. But there’s a woman on board.”
“Did anyone recognize her?”
“Couldn’t say. But she’s the only one they’ve seen. No crew. Only the woman.”
When Pobjoy left the pub, the afternoon was hot and stuffy. He headed for the river path, just to look, he told himself. Just to check. He was off duty, gnawing the ends of old plots; he seemed to have no life outside his work. He’d dated a paramedic recently, met at the site of a
road accident, but it hadn’t lasted long. And something always drew him back to Eade. He liked Annie—he really liked her—though she’d acted rather strange that morning. (What was that green stuff? River scum?) And he had unfinished business here.
There was a thick white mist lying in strands across the meadows, obliterating the river. It wasn’t thick enough to be dangerous—he could see several yards ahead—but it made everything pale and ghostly. Under such conditions, he thought, you could understand how the stories started, tales of phantoms and loralillies (he must find out what they were) that would appear from the river and disappear apparently by magic. A tree brushed past him, twig fingers clutching at his arm; a more fanciful person might have turned it into something else.
Annie, for instance—she was the fanciful type. Not silly-fanciful, despite her conversation that morning, but perhaps…an overactive imagination. She would know what a loralilly was…
The white silence of the fog had become a faint murmur, like the thrum of insect wings, or the shushing of the river. There was a moment when he almost thought it was a song, the sound of someone humming…then he realized it must be an engine, its vibration soft as a purr in the throat of a sleepy cat. It drew nearer, and he saw the prow of a launch, dim in the mist, a white motor launch with no visible crew, only a single figure standing in the bows. A woman. He stopped to stare, and she reached out to him, her long arms pale as foam on the sea.
“I know you,” she said, and though her voice was very quiet it woke strange echoes in his head. “You’ve been looking for me. You’ve been looking for me for a long time. But you’re not the one…you’re not the one I’m waiting for.”
The launch moved on, vanishing into a veil of mist. Afterward, he thought she was fair-haired, but he wasn’t sure. She might have been dark, dark as Rianna Sardou, with eyes as black as the ocean depths. He was a detective, a trained observer, yet he couldn’t describe her, he couldn’t pin her down. She had come and gone like a phantom, like a loralilly…
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