Silenus looked undecided. It was clear to Johnny that he wanted to leave the cottage, but did not know what to do about him. This indecision worried Johnny. He knew he was a problem but some of the possible solutions scared him considerably. He slumped once more into his defenceless puppy pose.
One of the choices, to take Johnny with him, had been apparently rejected or he would have been gathered up and taken already. Silenus glanced at Johnny thoughtfully and then at the adjacent room.
‘I need some herbs for the new stew,’ he said, ‘and perhaps a coney or two, a pigeon and a chicken. Fauns are just too difficult, and anyway, I won’t need one this time.’
Then he gave Johnny such a radiant grin, Johnny felt very uncomfortable.
‘All the same,’ Silenus mused, ‘I can hardly chase a rabbit with you under one arm …’
Johnny waited, apprehensive, for the verdict.
‘So,’ Silenus decided, ‘I think you had better stay right here.’
‘I won’t move,’ promised Johnny.
Again, Silenus seemed to find this very amusing. He laughed and laughed. ‘Oh. I know you won’t,’ he said at last. ‘You’re so funny. I’m going to miss you, little man!’
Then he moved abruptly towards Johnny, so quickly indeed, that Johnny was once again bundled unceremoniously under the big man’s arm. Then Silenus strode towards the back door of his cottage and pulled it open. With Johnny kicking and flailing under his arm, Silenus marched the few steps to a small windowless wooden outhouse.
He pulled open the door and there was a flurry of clucking and squawking as a number of chickens inside protested angrily at the sudden intrusion. Silenus unbundled Johnny roughly on to the floor of the chicken-house and then slammed the door.
Then, despite the ongoing clatter of the birds, Johnny heard a jaunty whistling and the sound of Silenus’s disappearing footsteps.
The interior of his cage was gloomy, but not pitch black. The chicken-house was roughly boarded and there were sufficient chinks of light to give Johnny enough illumination.
It was distinctly unpleasant. The air felt dusty and Johnny felt quite claustrophobic in the rank atmosphere of ammonia from the chicken droppings and the musty odour of ancient straw. He had been thrown on to the floor, which was muddy and slick with foetid-smelling chicken shit and already he could feel the foul wetness seeping through his jeans.
As hideous as his physical conditions were, however, they were nothing as to the growing terror of his prospects.
Finally, awfully, Johnny could not escape the point of the barbs and jokes Silenus had been making, and he cursed himself for his stupidity, even as he knew that being smarter could not have saved him.
He remembered the jibes about his size. A pity, it would put some flesh on you. Once again he heard the laughter. You must eat the stew. Otherwise you will stay a scrawny little thing not worthy of your keep. And then perhaps, more chilling, Later I will enlist your help in the making of a magnificent new stew. Would you agree to help me, little man? That was the point where the laughter had been loudest and longest.
Johnny now realised why Silenus had taken such an odd attitude to the guy on the motorcyle’s chasing Becky. He seemed pleased that she was a diversion, but a little disappointed that the ‘centaur’ would eat her. The reason for this disappointment, Johnny now saw, was that he probably had plans to eat her himself.
How stupid he had been.
And what a mess he was in now, a mess in every possible sense of the word. He glanced around in the dim light coming in filtered shafts. The chickens, large brown birds with floppy red combs and wattles, small evil-looking eyes and corn-coloured beaks had calmed down and now wandered about him suspiciously harrumphing and gargling like disapproving old ladies.
Risking their displeasure, Johnny cautiously and very awkwardly eased himself to a crouch. The chicken-house looked ramshackle but Johnny had few illusions that it would allow any easy escape. Still, he had to try.
Of course, trying was an inevitable disappointment. The door was solid and pegged immovably shut. Johnny put his shoulder to it a number of times but there was no budging it. The walls were likewise impenetrable. After testing and pushing at every one, and prising at every board, all he had achieved was agitating and flustering the chickens once more and smearing yet more chicken shit all over his already soiled clothes. At length he gave up completely. His arms and thigh were no doubt harbouring bruises. There was no point in bruising his shoulders as well.
Johnny sank once more to his haunches and considered his terrible predicament.
Somehow, anyhow, he would have to escape this dreadful trap. The consequences otherwise were simply too horrible to contemplate. How ironic that an hour or so ago his only worry had been concern for Becky and her seemingly disastrous situation! His only frustration at that point had been the oddly unhelpful attitude of Silenus, Silenus who up until then had seemed a good-natured host.
Now, his own situation was a thousand times worse than Becky’s. She at least had the liberty of an entire mountainside and a better than even chance of escaping the black-clad figure on the motorcycle.
And, anyway, he didn’t believe for one moment Silenus’s crazy idea that the rider intended to eat Becky.
Silenus, presumably, was simply putting himself in the rider’s boots.
Silenus would have eaten Becky.
As now Silenus intended to eat him!
In that moment the wonderfully ordinary world he’d left behind seemed like a paradise, a sane paradise he’d been a fool to take for granted. He’d hated Greendale and most of the teachers. They’d thought him a loser, and he had few friends there. But not in his wildest nightmares did he imagine that any one of those teachers or any of the other kids, even the snakiest, would have imprisoned him in a stinking fowl house while they prepared to slaughter him and chop him into a stew. His parents, too, drove him up the wall. They drove each other up the wall with their constant bickering. He knew they only stayed together, by some crazy logic, because of him and then they blamed him somehow for making them live together. But no matter how much they resented each other, no matter how much they resented him, there was never the remotest suggestion they’d prefer to turn him into a herbed casserole.
It was all so unbearable.
He hated Silenus.
How long would Silenus be? How long would it take to put an arrow through a couple of bloody rabbits?
The question really meant how long did he have?
One of the hens approached him and, head side on, stared at him with an unwavering, malevolent eye. Then it gargled.
‘Piss off!’ shouted Johnny.
He shoved at the bird savagely and it flung itself away squawking furiously, and then the whole hen house was in an uproar of flapping wings, flying feathers and hysterical cackling.
The small satisfaction Johnny had experienced in shoving the hen away dissolved instantly into alarm as he bent his head beneath his arms to avoid the panicking fury of the birds.
How long? How long? It was a question Johnny could not get out of his head all that long afternoon. He squeezed into a corner of the hen house, back against the wall, waiting in a dull horror for whatever might come.
All that came was a visit later in the afternoon from Silenus. He had brought with him a large bowl of the delicious stew. Johnny had caught the fragrance of the aromatic steam even before he heard the rattling at the door. Silenus thrust the bowl at him with a laughing instruction to make sure to finish it all up.
Johnny took the bowl, and despite himself did eat. He had no illusions that Silenus was being kind or considerate. It was only a couple of hours since he’d had lunch. He guessed he was being fed simply so that he might fatten up a little, fattened for the pot. The thought almost made him gag.
How long? For the first time Johnny Cadman felt an obscure gratitude that he was so skinny and weedy. He’d always been self-conscious about his size. He knew that Becky thought of him as ju
st a little kid. Stupid really, because they were not only in the same year group at school, he was actually older than her by a month or two.
Now, it looked like Silenus, rather than butchering him and putting him in the pot immediately, might spend some time trying to make him plumper. How long would it take? How long before Silenus’s appetite won?
The afternoon was interminable as evening approached. Gradually the far off bleating of goats and grumbling of chickens became less and less frequent. For a time this was replaced by the raucous singing and wild concertina playing of Silenus, but eventually that too gave way to silence.
When Silenus put aside his concertina he reached for another tankard. He hummed his favourite drinking song idly and then couldn’t resist breaking into another burst of the verse:
Bring me flesh and bring me beer
Bitter brown and froth and foam
Suckling roast and mugs of cheer
Suckling roast. How delicious even the words were. He could taste the slightly blackened crackling dripping with fat and juice. Salivating already, he could see the pale steaming flesh of the thigh, strips of it sharpened with crab apples and softened with sage. He thought again of the boy child Johnny, now safely caged with the hens. There wouldn’t be much crackling on him. Of course, he would fatten up, but that was a time-consuming business. It would be far better and far more satisfying to supplement his bones with something fleshier.
There were the rabbits of course, but the coneys would only be a garnish.
The girl-child would be best. There was much more to her, and she was firm. Much more solid. He could see her now, turning, browning into deliciousness on a spit.
He took a deep draught and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
He tried to think where he’d last seen her as she disappeared into the woods.
She was no doubt lost.
She had no fear of him.
Had she known her way back to the cottage she would have found it by now.
She must be in the woods not too far away, probably hiding in some hollow and hoping for rescue.
He belched. And I know just the one who should rescue her.
The idea had such appeal it inspired a new little song.
I must make haste,
no time to waste,
how good she’ll taste,
what fun to baste
her on a spit.
Silenus stood up, eyes less bleary, in fact gleaming now in anticipation.
So I must race
at double pace
a lovely chase
and with what grace
she’ll turn and burn
upon the spit
Hesitating no longer, he lurched to the corner of the room and seized his great bow. Then he rushed from the cottage and strode down the bone-strewn path before evening should fall.
Somehow, Johnny found sleep from time to time but never for very long. It seemed whenever some dream would come, his whole being would reject and strip the lying bandages of sleep away, and he would wake to find himself crouched against the hen house wall again, eyes wide and alert with fear.
At one point, when he must have been half asleep, he thought he heard the roar of a motorbike’s kicking into life before thundering away. Immediately, Johnny thought he must have been back in his small bedroom at home, but then the reality of the hen house returned. If he hadn’t been dreaming, the noise could only have been from that farm trike. The rider was probably still searching for Becky, he thought, and it gave him confidence that Becky must have eluded the sinister figure in the black leathers.
Gradually the day drew almost to a close. At dusk a rooster nearby tried to screech the oncoming night away but to no avail, the hens again began to leave off their chuckle and grumble, and the goats their crying.
Fearfully, he heard Silenus braying and shouting, and then the sound of a door opening. He waited, tense, but it was only the big man stumbling down the path with yet another bowl of food to thrust through the door, retrieving the previous bowl and grunting with satisfaction when he saw that Johnny had apparently finished it all up.
After that he was left alone with the company of the hens. The cottage itself was so silent that he presumed Silenus had left on some errand. He did not want to imagine what that might be.
It was a mess. He wondered about Becky. He wondered whether she’d managed to get away from the maniac on the farm trike. He hoped so. The trouble was, that maniac was only the first in a host of possible dangers.
If she had got away from him, she’d probably try to get back to Silenus’s cottage. Johnny groaned. Of course she would. She’d walk right into it. She’d probably bang on Silenus’s door and before she could say ‘Hi’ he would say ‘Dinner!’ and she’d be thrown into the hen house with him. It was probably only her good luck that had stopped that happening so far. How long could that luck last?
There was the question again: how long?
With a lurching fear, Johnny suddenly thought that Silenus’s absence could mean that he was already scouring the wooded hills to find Becky.
While these alarming thoughts were crowding in his head, Johnny froze.
There was a noise.
Somebody was out there.
At first he presumed the noise was that of Silenus returning and he shrank back against the wall again.
There was a clumping, trotting sound and then the sound of doors opening and closing. In his growing fright he next heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
However, then a shout, the sound of a voice, relieved him somewhat. Whoever was making the noise was not Silenus.
On the contrary, it was somebody searching for Silenus.
‘Silenus! Where are you old friend? Silenus!’
Johnny froze, thinking desperately.
‘Silenus! Ahoy!’
And then he realised he had nothing more to lose. This visitor, whoever it was, was probably his last chance of escape before Silenus came back with his knife, his hatchet or battle axe.
‘Hello!’ Johnny shouted. ‘Help me!’
‘What? Where?’ the voice replied.
‘I’m in the hen house,’ cried Johnny. And then by way of inadequate explanation, he added, ‘I’m stuck in here!’
For a brief time there was a silence, and in despair Johnny thought he may not have been heard, or that the visitor had ignored him, perhaps returning to the cottage.
‘Get me out!’ he shouted once more, frenzied in his desperation.
And then, to his huge relief, he heard the trotting footsteps once more, and then a voice much closer say, ‘Who are you?’
A shadow had blocked out the shafts of late light that had previously slanted through the door boards.
‘I’m Johnny Cadman. I’m not from here. There’s been some awful bloody mistake!’
‘Johnny Cadman?’
‘Let me out, for god’s sake! He’s going to kill me!’
Whether it was Johnny’s desperation, or whether the figure on the other side of the door was merely curious, Johnny was not to know. All he did know, and it was a huge gasping relief, was that the figure was fiddling with the catch and within a moment the door swung open.
Johnny wasted no time. He dived through the door so violently, that he set off another cacophony of protest from the hens still inside the chicken house. There was no chance of liberty for them, however, as Johnny’s rescuer slammed the door on their cluck and cluttering and pushed the bolt home.
For some moments Johnny lay there. He felt utterly filthy and knew he must stink to high heaven. He was shaking with the relief of his rescue and trying to prevent the racking sobs that threatened to overwhelm him.
Finally, he felt a hand in his pulling him to his feet. He focused and found himself staring into the astonished eyes of the old man he’d seen transformed on the lawn at Arcady House.
Had it been only the day before yesterday?
‘Dr Faunus?’ he said.
Dr
Faunus stared at him closely as if struggling to recognise him.
The man himself was difficult to recognise. Gone was the beret, the shawl and dressing gown, the trousers. With the beret gone, Johnny could see that he had two protrusions like incipient horns on the side of each temple. The grey hair had given way to a chestnut red and the beard was full, not straggly. His chest, too, was naked now, albeit covered in a matt of soft reddish-brown down. His legs, though, were his most incredible feature.
From his reddish-brown haunches his legs stretched down like antelope legs, improbably slender and ending in two cloven hooves. His stance on these was steady, although it shouldn’t have been. He looked like some four-legged creature rearing on his hind legs.
‘You’re the boy who was with Rebecca?’ he asked.
Johnny said nervously. ‘You invited us into your house …’
Dr Faunus raised his eyebrows. ‘From whence you so unwisely disappeared, I imagine, through the window?’
Johnny nodded.
Dr Faunus leaned forward, the better to inspect Johnny and then, catching a whiff of the ammonia of the chicken stains, immediately stepped back again, his elegant nostrils flaring with distaste.
‘But how did you manage to get yourself shut in with those chickens?’
The explanation was blurted out before Johnny had time to think about it. A second’s reflection may have given him pause, may have reminded him that Dr Faunus by all accounts was an old friend of Silenus.
‘He … he locked me in there …’
‘He? Who? Silenus?’
Johnny stared at his rescuer miserably.
‘Why?’
‘I think he wanted me for a stew …’ whispered Johnny.
He looked at Dr Faunus imploringly. Don’t lock me in there again, his look said. Save me. Please …
Dr Faunus stared at him thoughtfully, and then a slow smile appeared on his face. He looked around as if half-expecting to see Silenus, and then he turned back to Johnny.
The Enchanted Flute Page 15