The man scaled the first ten-foot barricade like a cat, dropped to the other side, gathered speed like a sprint runner, hurdled a ten-foot ditch, landed easily, kept running on a long, looping footpath. His pace was dazzling. His teeth gleamed in a grin. He snatched up a coil of rope on a wooden stand along the racepath. It had a grapnel attached to it. Without slackening, the man leaped two more hurdles, then approached the framed facade of the house. The grapnel swung in a high, accurate loop, caught on the overhanging eave, came taut with a single tug, and the man went up hand over hand with no apparent effort, his feet gripping door and window frames, and the final height, without any toeholds, simply by pulling himself up with the strength of his shoulders. He vanished over the top of the false-front building, landed by jumping down the other side, rolled over twice, and then raced around the field beside the outer perimeter fence. The speed of his long, pumping stride was enormous. At the end, in front of Dr. MacLeod’s reviewing stand, he halted, breathing lightly, only a slight dew of perspiration on his rugged face.
At last Durell’s turn came.
As he ran, he felt as if his feet scarcely touched the ground. He was exhilarated, amazed at the way he covered the distance to the first high barrier. It loomed impossibly before him. He felt the wind rush by him. He gauged the distance, gathered himself, leaped for the top of the wooden fence. He didn’t think he would make it. He misjudged it, came up too high, fumbled his grip on the top, scraped skin from his forearm, and dropped down on the other side like a feather. He rolled over twice, going forward, scarcely felt the sharp cuts from stones in the tall grass, gathered his legs under him, and raced for the ditch ahead.
Now he began to feel it, the power in his muscles, the spring in his feet, an ineffable sense of being able to accomplish the impossible. He took the ditch with a long leap, thrusting his feet ahead of him to land in the earth churned up by those who had gone ahead of him. He did not feel the jolt of his landing. There was a grace in him, a coordination, a perception that keenly attuned mind and muscle, nerve and heart.
He took the next barrier, which was higher than the first, almost casually, not thinking about it. Everything chimed in him. There was a long sprint to the next area, where he had to crawl under barbed wire for about fifty feet; he slid forward on his stomach, used his elbows and knees and stomach to urge himself forward. It seemed easy. He felt exultant.
There was nothing but pure joy in moving his body this way. He was in absolute command of every muscle, every capillary, every tiny nerve ending. He seemed to sense obstacles ahead of him with an instinct he had never possessed before. He was able to gauge with a glance the exact amount of effort needed to hurdle a series of six barriers and then spin to the right toward the high façade of the frame building, the last of the group. He felt as if he had only just started. Nothing could stop him.
The coil of nylon line and the grappling hook were on a small wooden table set in the field on his line of approach. He snatched it up without pause, precisely timing the gesture, and raced toward the high false-front building, whirling the grapnel as he went. The grappling hook went over the top, caught with a chunking sound, and he yanked it taut. There were enough foot and toe holds on the lower floor of the movie-set facade to let him scale the first ten feet with ease and speed. It was like walking up a flight of stairs, although he was poised dangerously, tilted outward, keeping the nylon rope taut. He wrapped it around his right wrist and punched his feet against the boards, swinging free, and hauled himself up, hand over hand now, toward the overhanging eave. It thrust out farther than he had thought. He clung precariously to the hook and line, but he felt no fear. He kicked out, hauled himself upward, heard his shoulder muscles crack with the effort, then swung up and over. There was a narrow platform, hardly wide enough for his feet, on the other side. He unhooked the grapnel, reset it for a descent on the fiat side of the set, and went down in great, swinging bouncing slides, until his feet touched the ground below.
The track from behind the facade made a long loop just inside the high perimeter fence. The other unicorns had put on a burst of speed from this point, following the track in a long curve back to Dr. MacLeod’s reviewing stand.
Durell did not hesitate.
The fence around the field was more than fourteen feet high, he judged, with barbed wire glinting in the feeble morning sunlight.
Instead of turning left for the return toward where the others waited for him, he kept going.
He rushed straight at the perimeter fence, a distance of perhaps fifty yards, and leaped high, summoning all his strength and agility. His arms were outstretched, high above his head, fingers hooked to grip the top. He felt the slap of the boards against his left hand; his right curled over the rough, splintery top, hooked, and held.
For a moment, he simply dangled there by one hand.
He heard a shout, thought he heard the warning rattle of a gun. He pulled himself up, shoulders cracking, feet scrabbling against the rough boards. The barbed wire parted as he pulled it aside. He wriggled over onto the top of the fence, lying flat.
Water gleamed below.
A bullet smacked into the board fence, making it vibrate.
Durell dropped on the opposite side, his knees flexed, hit the water. It was only knee-deep.
He scrambled out and kept going.
41
HE RAN.
They were behind him, like hounds after a fox.
He knew he would die soon, his body burned out, without MacLeod’s drug. But he had to try to stay alive long enough to contact K Section—and right now he had to find a hiding place. He did not know the size of the island, or the coast, or if there was a boat to get him away. There was a long, grassy slope going up, ahead of him, and a rough stone fence along the top. He hurdled the fence without pause, slid down the opposite incline, raced along the edge of a brook as the first of his pursuers came over the stone fence behind him.
He ran.
Brush ahead. He crashed through it, saw a long rise on the southerly slope of the low hill ahead, and ran up and across it on a diagonal, smashing through the long coarse growth. Branches and twigs slapped and plucked
and tore at him. He felt nothing. His legs pumped, he fell into a long, ground-eating stride. He felt no pain. There were no further shots behind him. He did not look back again.
He burst out of the brushy hillside near the crest, raced downhill again, caught the glimmer of the sea to his left, turned that way. Houses. Two of them, low, built of stone, with torn thatched roofs. A deserted lane, weed-grown, between two stone walls.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Anybody home?”
He remembered seeing what he had thought to be a man and a woman, walking across the fields, glimpsed from his cell window. The wind brushed his face. It made the door of the nearest house swing open and bang shut, repetitively. The place was deserted. Nobody at home. He ran up the lane for the second house. Dimly, he heard shouting, at some distance behind him. He swung around the second house, through a deserted crofter’s yard, saw empty sheep pens, a smoke house, a shearing shed. He hurdled obstacles in his way without having to think about coordination or timing. Nothing. Nobody here. He kept running for the pale gray glimmer of the sea.
The land slanted upward. He was coming to the top of a low cliff that overhung the ocean surf below. He could see no way down. Footsteps thudded distantly behind him. He turned his head and saw the gray jumpsuits. He had gained a little on them, but not much. A footpath ran along the top of the cliff. He followed it, for easier footing, making better speed.
Now he was aware of the slow thud of his heart. It should have been choking his throat, ready to burst from the effort he had already made; but it was remarkably, almost ominously steady and slow. He suddenly felt a sense of vertigo. He wasn’t getting enough blood to his brain. The drug, of course. His left leg suddenly developed a tremor and collapsed, and he went down, rolled over, picked himself up, and ran on again.
A mass of
boulders loomed at the end of the low cliff, a tumble of rocks going down into the white-spurned sea. He headed for them, aware of something happening to his body that should not be happening. He dodged into the maze of high reddish rock, climbed downward. There was a very narrow beach below. He jumped, slid, fell the rest of the way, hit the sand, rolled into the water as a surge of surf came up at him as if to devour him.
The water was icy, unbearable. He splashed out of it, staggering now, ran down the narrow strip of beach, leaving his footprints. More rocks ahead. He went into the water, splashing, and leaped atop a messy ledge of stone, slipped, caught his balance, ducked behind more boulders. The other jumpsuits were not yet down to the beach. His footprints in the sand were clear enough to follow, then vanished into the water. On the rocks, he felt little track. He climbed up again. It seemed more difficult now. His muscles began to protest. He made himself climb higher beyond the boulders. But they were coming on fast behind him now. He couldn’t outrun them any longer.
Suddenly, he was finished.
Everything seemed to stop inside him.
It was as if he had been operating on a giant spring coiled inside him, and the tension had run out.
He staggered, fell to hands and knees, got up again. The hounds were still out of sight, but closing fast on him, down on the beach.
“Halloo,” someone said.
He whirled, his arms wide, spinning on his toes. He noticed for the first time that his feet were bleeding.
“Down here,” someone said.
“What?”
“Here.”
Hallucinating. Then he saw a pale hand and arm come up from between a crevice in the rocks. The hand and fingers beckoned to him, and he moved that way. There was triumphant shouting on the beach below as his pursuers discovered that he had come out of the water on the ledge of rock.
“Hurry, you young fool. I’ve seen them tear a man apart before.”
The hand waved. The fingers waggled. A woman’s hand, not young, veined on the back. He hesitated, jumped forward with a last surge of strength. The crevice was larger than he thought. He saw a pale face below, long black hair, a head and face like a witch, grinning at him.
He fell forward and down, and felt hands on him, pulling him quickly inward.
Darkness, and stumbling, and the sound of the sea, the smell of rotting things, the scrape of barnacles.
He felt pain now.
He thought his chest was about to burst open.
He fell.
“I’m—sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“I think I—l think I’m dying,” Durell said.
Everything came in against him, darkness and cold and pain that was excruciating, all through his shuddering body.
“I won’t let you die,” the woman said.
42
HE HEARD them hunting, coursing back and forth among the rocks. Nothing mattered except to draw the next breath to keep the incredible hammering of his heart from breaking his ribs. The pain he felt went beyond anything he thought he could endure.
He remembered the man in Colonel Ko’s prison in Palingpon.
“You will not die.”
He gasped, “It’s a—drug—”
“I will not let you die,” the woman crooned.
“Who—?"
“Never mind. Be still. They hunt you out there.”
"But—“
“Hush. Listen to the sea. It brought you here. It will take you away. Hush.”
There was a hollow booming of surf in his ears. It reverberated from everywhere. A cave, that was it. Now and then sea spray touched his face. He did not know if it was the woman, sprinkling water on him, or if it came from bursts of surf striking rock nearby. He could see nothing. He felt blind. He could not move to lift himself up on his elbows to look around.
“Who are you?”
The woman said, “I come to visit, now and then.”
“Is there no one else on the island?”
“No one but the strangers.”
“Do they know of you?”
“No.”
“What do you do here?”
“I write poetry about the Old Ones, who were devoured by the Sea People. About ancient Dalradia and Pictavia, that noble kingdom of the Dark People. My ancestors.”
He thought she was insane.
“St. Columba converted us, and Kenneth MacFergus joined the thrones of the Picts and the Scots. Are you listening to me‘? I shall save your life.”
“Not-likely," Durell said.
“We shall see.”
43
“HARALD HAARFAGRE, son of Halfdan the Black, won his great victory at Hafrs Fjord in the year of our Lord 872. He became King of Norway, and then he conquered the Orkney Islands, and the Black Ones became slaves. I, myself, am the pure daughter of such slaves. When Harald died, his son Eric Bloodyaxe killed his brothers and was cried overlord of all. Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“Our houses below the ground were destroyed, the Winter winds and ice killed us. They tore down our brochs, our sacred circles of stone, at Maeshowe and Stromness, and Stenness. Rognvald, Jarl of Orkney, built a cathedral, the church of St. Magnus, in place of my people’s sacred things. Bishops lived where we once worshiped. Listen to me!”
“I’m listening.”
“Can you see my face?”
“No.”
“They have gone. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“They did not find us. They never find me: you are safe.”
“I’m dying,” Durell whispered.
“I will not let you die. King Haakon IV of Norway died in Kirkwall in 1263. You shall not die here on Lersay.”
“The island has a name? Lersay?”
“I have food. Can you eat?”
“No.”
“You must.”
“No."
“Eat, I say.”
He ate.
Time passed.
He was still alive.
He should have died, like the man in Palingpon. Perhaps. For a long time, his heart thudded and seemed to stop and banged and fluttered in his chest. He was too weak to raise his head. It grew light, and he could see dimly.
He saw the old woman.
Her face was as craggy and seamed as the rocks that surrounded the little cave. Her long, straggling hair was as black as the night. She was small and scrawny and barefooted, with long toes that gripped the rough rocky floor of the cave. Her black eyes seemed to blaze like glowing coals in her dark face. She crooned constantly to herself, speaking and singing softly in a language he did not understand, only knowing it was neither English nor Gaelic nor Norse. She gave him cold food, a mushy kind of paste that might have been fish or meat, he could not tell; he swallowed it with great difficulty.
He said to her, “I must leave soon. Now.”
“When it is safe.”
“How long have I been here?”
“There is food enough yet. And I have not finished my poem.”
“But I must do something, it is important—”
“They still hunt for you.”
“What kind of poem are you writing?”
“I write of Inxtstalf, the Pict.”
“Never heard of him.”
“One day, you will.”
He thought the old woman was crazy.
But the food she instinctively prepared for him—a potassium-rich mash of seaweed and raw fish—kept him alive.
Slowly, his muscles were replenished, his heart grew calm, and he could see the ocean beyond the narrow mouth of the cave. The woman muttered by the hour, writing on a pad of paper with a stub of a pencil. She had a knapsack in one corner of the cave, and a sleeping bag on which she had placed him, and these ordinary, everyday days kept him from believing he had lost touch with reality.
“How do you get to the island?” he asked.
“I row.”
“You have a boat?”
> “Yes,” she said.
“Where is the nearest inhabited island?"
“Beyond Lermach Firth, that tongue of sea you see. Everything is as it should be there. Crofters and herring fishermen, and tourists who go for trout in the brooks. There is a private plane service run by Tommy Campbell, who was once in the RAF and was shot down and is a little crazy.” The old woman grinned at him for the first time. “Tommy can fly you wherever you wish to go. I suppose you think I’m a batty old woman, too.”
“No, I didn’t say—”
“No need. Everyone does. I enjoy myself. And I can heal. When the spirit touches me, I come here. Otherwise, I run a gift shop in Pondwick.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Three days.”
“I don’t know how to thank you—"
“No need. No pay, either. I want nothing.”
“How often have you seen the men in jumpsuits?”
“Twice. Twice too much. I know nothing of them. They bought the island and drove the people off with handfuls of money, and now no one comes here but me; but they don’t know that. Can you stand up yet?”
“I don’t think—”
"Try."
He got on his feet and fell down.
“Try again.”
He fell down again.
“Once more.”
This time he stood, his legs trembling, as weak as a child, drenched in sweat from the effort.
“Good,” the old woman said. “Now we can go. First in my little rubber boat, when it is dark, and then we will row to where Mr. Pentland in his fishing craft will pick us up, and then we will find Tommy Campbell, who will fly you to Caithness or Aberdeen or even Edinburgh, if you wish.”
“I wish,” Durell said.
44
THE MATTATUCK cottage, long a favored place for Durell, had been built many years ago. There was a long living room, pine-paneled, with a huge fieldstone fireplace, a few mounted deer heads and one moose, comfortable old furniture, a few Navajo throw rugs. In the back end of the house were bunk rooms and a clerestory roof which accommodated a loft and railed balcony that sheltered Durell’s room. The place was built for comfort and casual ease. The furnace wasn’t working, but the living room felt cozy, the remains of a fire still glowing on the fieldstone hearth.
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