by Robin Jarvis
That was the only hopeful explanation he could cling to, for if Quoth was unharmed then surely he would have returned, or they would have heard him cawing. Neil did not dwell upon the only other forbidding possibility.
Beside him, Edie's thoughts were blighted by a different dread. Her fear was that the torch would shine suddenly over Jack Timms' obstructing figure, and she listened vigilantly for any rumour of his bloated breaths ahead. At least the corridor appeared to be behaving itself. There were no unexpected corners, no elongating paths or misleading entrances to dupe and beguile the senses.
'Look!' Neil hissed, when a splintered doorway glimmered at the far end. 'That's the exit to the landing.'
'It all seems okay so far,' his father observed in a dubious whisper.
'Yes, it does,' Mr Pickering agreed. 'Let's just hope it can stay that way'
The instant he had uttered those words, they each became aware of a change in the hemming blackness. Hastening towards that exit, they felt the ground begin to pucker and swell under their feet, and a draft of biting air funnelled about them. The oppressive, heavy shadows lifted over their heads and the corridor's walls seemed to retreat into the dark.
Craving to know what was happening, but not permitting her gaze to wander from the torch beam, Edie cried out abruptly.
'Edith, dear,' Miss Ursula called to her, 'what is amiss?'
The girl breathed an allaying breath and reproached herself for succumbing to her raw, jangled nerves. Rearing before them, rising up from the centre of the passage and ripping through the fusty carpet, was a tall beech tree.
Over its trunk the torch beam swept, to incredulous gasps from Brian Chapman. Then, higher still, the girl directed the light, and they all saw its sturdy branches reach up into a starry sky.
'The museum!' Neil spluttered. 'Where is it? Where are we?'
Drinking in the keen air, Miss Ursula stared about them. 'Where we have always been,' she replied.
They were standing upon a sparsely-wooded rise over which a muted radiance was moving for, beyond the extreme rim of the world, a pallid dawn was about to edge into the night. Upon their left, the land sloped steeply downward into a dense and immeasurable forest, the clumped, crowded trees resembling a cumulus expanse of thick black thundercloud.
‘I do not understand why Woden has sent us back to this age,' she said. 'Let us resume at a brisker pace. We must gain the security of the wood; only then will we truly be safe.'
Skirting around the beech tree, they discovered that elements of The Wyrd Museum had not completely disappeared. The threadbare carpet was still in evidence, appearing in patches between the grass and fallen leaves. In a straight line it continued to run, right to where the timber frame of the landing doorway rose incongruously out of the ground.
'Do not deviate from the path,' Miss Ursula told them when Brian Chapman showed signs of descending the ridge before the abstract entrance had been reached. 'We must not be confounded by this place. Where there are doors we must use them, or our goal may never be attained.'
Through the frame she herded them, then down the slope. Even there, fragments of the museum's fabric could be found. A slanting length of banister guided them on their descent and, protruding sporadically from the earth like steps under a thawing drift of snow, was the staircase itself.
Clambering down the declining track, Edie Dorkins gradually came to a halt and, as the others brushed by her, she lifted her head to gaze back up the hill.
'Edith,' Miss Ursula asked, seeing her pondering face, 'what fascinates you so?'
The girl put a finger to her lips. 'Heard summink,' she whispered. 'Come from way up there, it did.'
Miss Ursula put her arm about the child's shoulders, as she too strained to listen. 'Now I comprehend!' she said a moment later. 'That is why we are here.'
Whisking sharply around, she took hold of Edie's hand and vigorously hurried down the submerged steps to catch up with the others. Neil, his father and Josh were waiting for them a little way below but, clutching on to the banister rail and seemingly unaware that the old woman and the girl had lingered behind, Mr Pickering trotted on regardless. It was only when the noise that Edie had heard grew a degree louder that the impostor paused and, with great aplomb, showed his surprise.
From over the crest of that ridge arose the rumour of many voices raised in anger and challenge. Vague and indistinct at first, the sound swelled swiftly and amongst those defiant yells and doughty shrieks rang the clashing of sword against sword.
'Our plight is very great!' Miss Ursula cried, the urgency chiming in her voice. 'If we do not fly from this place we shall be overridden by battle.'
'What is that up there?' Mr Pickering asked.
'This is a time of bloody conflict,' she answered quickly. 'Woden has delivered us into the path of two opposing armies. Over this site a cruel and bitter conflict was waged. The forces of Caesar were met upon this field with the descendants of Askar, and so fierce was the fray that it raged even to the eaves of the enchanted wood. Within the circling mists, my sisters and I heard the ferocity of that contention. Fear for your lives! The storm will burst down upon us and you will be caught within its midst.'
The distant uproar had mounted to a tremendous clamour. In that stentorian struggle, horses were screaming and the ground echoed with the pounding charge of foot soldiers. Death cries rent the fading night and, not waiting for the first of those legions to come swarming over the hill, the refugees of The Wyrd Museum plunged the rest of the way down the sheer slope, their legs buckling and galloping under them.
His chin bouncing upon his father's shoulder, Josh's voice juddered and shook, as he stared back up that steep rise and saw a volley of arrows leap up into the starry heavens, before speeding back down to earth. Into the grass, only a few metres behind them, one of the green-feathered shafts went stabbing, then another embedded into the banister.
'They're shooting us!' the toddler wailed.
'No,' Miss Ursula shouted. 'The attack was blind.'
'Still hurt though, wouldn't it?' Brian cried. 'If one of them hit us.'
The old woman threw him a stony glance. 'They would injure you and your sons, Mr Chapman, yes.'
Louder now the battle blared, but the fleeing group had almost reached the bottom of the high hill, and the eaves of the pathless forest were only a sprint away. Descending that lower slope in lunging leaps, Neil suddenly saw an impossible sight sail from the gloom before him, and he slithered to the ground to avoid crashing into it.
There, above the banking grass, hanging impossibly in mid-air and supported by nothing more than its position in future time, was the large Georgian window which lit the entrance hall of The Wyrd Museum.
Edie flashed the torch over it momentarily. Gleaming through that ice-smothered glass was the orange glare of Bethnal Green, yet ducking under the floating sill she could see only the shadowy mass of forest behind.
'Into the wood!' Miss Ursula impelled them.
With a fearsome roar, the murderous conflict above broke over the brow of the hill, and all eyes turned to see the combating forces rampage down the slope, their swords sparking in the dark. The gloom-laden countryside boomed and resounded with that desperate tumult and, staring at that racketing advance, Miss Ursula's expression changed.
With uncharacteristic theatricality, a look of horror contorted her features. Emitting a juvenile shriek, she threw her hands up over her head. 'Run!' she squealed, her normally level voice high and frantic. 'Fly and flee!'
Then, hitching her taffeta skirts up to her knees, she scurried towards the trees.
'Ursula!' Edie called, as the others looked curiously after her. But that was not the time to stand and wonder and, leaving the great, floating window behind, they set off in pursuit.
Haring swiftly in the bounding woman's wake, Edie caught up, checking her pace in order to run at her side. The girl was disturbed to see that Miss Ursula's eyes were abnormally wide and staring. Tossing and snaking
her head, the last of the Fates giggled in a deranged manner, and her meticulously coifed white curls wagged in an unruly tangle about her ears.
Running with his father and Josh, Neil called back to Austen Pickering, who was obviously too old to keep up with them. 'Not far now!' the boy encouraged him.
Huffing behind, the ghost hunter gave a returning wave. 'Don't you worry about me, lad,' he answered.
To the outlying trees the group ran, over to where sections of oak panelling stretched tall between the thickets. Upon the ground, the fragments of broken statues could be seen: limbless torsos, a satyr's head cloven in two, marble drapery lying in jagged pieces, and shattered fists still holding on to the hilts of splintered, twisted swords.
Many of the sculptures were partially buried in the earth and their top halves projected from the parquet tiles, which peppered the grass in attitudes of struggle and toil. Allowing her gaze to fall from Miss Ursula's idiotic face, Edie saw, in the jiggling torchlight, a woman's arm fashioned from ivory lying across the path in front.
Swinging the beam around, she hunted through the crowding forest. There, standing a little distance away, virtually hidden within a snarling growth of holly, was the alabaster image made by Pumiyathon.
The statue was no longer beautiful. Marring clefts and cracks had been viciously hacked into its form and, above the once seductive neckline of the draped shift, only one arm remained.
Edie scowled sorrowfully, but at that moment Miss Ursula also beheld the sculpture, and she hooted with imbecilic laughter. From the granite and marble-strewn path she bolted and, mindless of the holly's sharp leaves, the old woman ploughed through to where the statue stood. Her black gown was ripped by the needling barbs, and the tiny spikes cut red lines over Miss Ursula's skin as she plunged still further, until she reached the mangled figure.
Running up behind, Neil and the others stared in confusion, but Edie was already wading in after.
'What's going on?' the caretaker called. 'What's the old bat doing? Is this where we're supposed to be safe? Doesn't look it to me.'
'Quiet, Dad,' Neil muttered. 'There's something wrong.'
Panting for breath, Austen Pickering viewed the commotion with a look of genuine disappointment upon his face. 'She's ill,' he observed with concern. 'Look at her.'
'Just like Celandine and Veronica were,' Neil added.
'Ursula,' Edie Dorkins said sternly.
With her arms wrapped around the alabaster sculpture, the last survivor of the Royal House of Askar hid her face when the girl approached, still tittering inanely.
'We don't 'ave time fer this,' Edie told her.
Miss Ursula moved behind the statue and propped her chin upon the severed, ivory neck.
'Am I young and pretty now?' she asked foolishly. 'Verdandi and Skuld were always the popular ones, never Urdr. They had all the admirers. Verdandi even lied to Mother about where she went, so she could be with her Captain. But I did a bad thing; I took Him away from her—wasn't that wicked? He chose me, instead, cold-hearted Urdr, who never let men touch her. Oh no, she was always too grand for any of them. Too virtuous and holy—and so alone.'
Laying her cheek upon the damaged shoulders she ran her fingers over the lustrous alabaster and her eyes grew moist.
'As hard as this stone, that's how I was—everyone said so. They thought I didn't know, but I did. I heard what they all whispered about me at court. That's why I took Him away from her. I thought He wanted me. I thought He could see that I wasn't really cold—I wasn't, truly. He said that I was the one He really desired—me! And I believed Him. I loved Him and told Him what He wanted to know. Then it was over; He nailed himself to the World Tree and became a God. Where did that leave me? Where?'
Listening to her lamenting words, Austen Pickering lowered his eyes and stared silently at the ground.
'That's why!' she continued with a snivel. 'That's why I came to this place and brought my sisters with me. He'd be sorry! If He couldn't love me, I'd make Him hate me, and I did, I did! No passion, no ardour is greater than hatred. It eats and dominates without mercy. Always would I be in the Captain's thoughts, and in His dreams would I thwart and defeat His lust for conquest and control. Such is the obsessive might of loathing. So you see, I got what I wanted in the end. He was wholly mine, and no other could compete due to His enmity of me.'
Beyond the trees the battle had reached the suspended window and those terrible death screams bellowed ever closer.
'Ursula!' Edie shouted fiercely. 'Stop this—come back.'
The old woman's holly-pricked forehead twitched and she raised her eyebrows meekly. 'You don't want me back,' she whispered with a mournful shake of her unravelled curls. 'I've been such a naughty girl, done nasty, hateful things. No one knows what I've done.'
Edie leaned forward to take Miss Ursula's elegant hands in hers and drew her from the statue. Then she gazed up into the old woman's face, and such was the force behind her almond-shaped eyes that Miss Ursula could not look away, and was held captured by the solemn power which beat out from that young stare.
'Come back to us!' Edie commanded. 'It's too soon for you to go.'
For a moment they were locked in a grim yet silent struggle, as the girl endeavoured to wrest and invoke Miss Ursula's eroding intellect back from the chasm of madness into which it had tumbled.
Then, slowly, the old woman straightened. The vacant, witless expression left her scratched face and her usual sobriety was restored.
'Thank you, Edith,' she uttered huskily. ‘I was lost and you found me. You have deferred the moment of my complete dotage and lent me the time to do what I must.'
The girl gave her a brilliant smile, then led her back to the path.
Pulling a holly leaf from her hair, Miss Ursula glared imperiously at the others. 'Why do you stand there like Celandine's mannequins?' she declared as if nothing had happened. 'Hearken to the battle noise. In minutes it will sweep over this place and you shall be slaughtered. Quickly, to the secret stairway!'
Still clutching Edie's hand, she rushed on to where the oaks grew thickly and, in their midst, a stone archway reared from the undergrowth. It framed a heavy, iron-studded door, held in place by large, ornate hinges.
There was the entrance which lay behind the panelling of The Wyrd Museum. Once through that portal, they would descend the winding stair that led to the Chamber of Nirinel, and all would be well.
'Almost there!' she called. 'Almost at the end of our travails.'
The magnificent oak trees towered around them as they plunged deeper into the forest, and Miss Ursula fished up the fine chain which jingled from her waist, to separate the keys she kept there. But, before she could stretch out to grasp the bronze handle of the stout door, a tall figure stepped from the close darkness, and its imposing bulk blocked the arch entirely.
Stumbling to a standstill, Edie and Miss Ursula uttered cries of dismay. For there, revealed in the torchlight, was Jack Timms.
Dressed in the uniform of a Roman legionary, the agent of Woden looked faintly ridiculous. The helmet was too small for his big-boned head, and the metal bands of the cuirass which circumferenced his stomach strained and squeaked in the girdling of his rolling paunch.
In one hand he held the aquila of the legion which, judging from the violent din behind, had reached the edge of the forest and, above their heads, the silver eagle which topped that standard glinted in the shadows. To Edie's distress, she saw that in the warder's other hand he clutched a long lance, the spear of which was covered with rust.
'Quite fittin', ain't it?' he sniggered repulsively. 'For this 'ere to be back to what it were—a jabber of old Julius'. Full circle, as you might say'
Having caught up with Miss Ursula and Edie, Neil and the others looked at the odious man fearfully, as his gloating smirk widened to reveal his black and rotten teeth.
'Jus' the job to spike an end to the last of them what the guv'nor told me to. The oldest and the very youngest—what jolly that'l
l be.' Revelling in their woeful faces, the warder regarded his victims with his ratty eyes and gave a pernicious cackle.
'Will they make as much cat-cur dim' row as that other one, we asks ourselves? Lor, what a mewler she were—and so much red juice in such a pruned-up berry, that poor young sawbones didn't know what to do with hisself Went away right off colour, he did—I reckon as how he were a bit... liverish.'
'Shut your stinkin' gob!' Edie bawled.
Tick-Tock snarled and his small eyes glittered at her. 'It's the rare ripe end I'll be saving you fer,' he swore. 'Made it difficult for old Jack, you 'ave. Extra special care he'll take when it's your turn.'
Swaggering forward, he lowered the spear and prodded its tip menacingly against the girl's throat. Edie recoiled from its tingling sting, falling backwards into the leaf mould. From her hand the torch went flying and its intense beam whipped dizzily over the oaks before the flashlight smacked into a wide trunk. With a loud crack and a rattle of batteries, the glare was quenched.
'Like I said afore,' Tick-Tock growled, switching his attention to the rest, especially Neil, 'there's a deal of learnin' to be done with you sorry lot, and it's real glad I'll be to do the schoolin'.'
Neil returned the man's degenerate stare, but against Jack Timms he felt small and powerless. At his side, his father was strangely hushed and Josh whimpered fretfully. Austen Pickering had also remained unusually silent throughout this encounter, the boy thought. Yet there was no one amongst them who could stand up to that dissolute warder of the Wyrd Infirmary, for the might of Woden flowed through him, and he wielded the Spear of Longinus.
Lying in the mulch, Edie turned away from that horrendous man and looked back along the way they had come, scrunching up her face in concentration, whilst the strands of silver tinsel glittered dully in her pixie hood.
Standing stiff and erect, Miss Ursula looked down her nose at the vile man. 'If you are going to despatch us,' she said, undaunted by his repelling menace, 'you had best do it forthwith. The forces of the Roman army will be stampeding over this ground all too soon, and not even you will be able to withstand their swords or the fury of those they fight against.'