“She is not! She is not!” I cried. My stomach tightened like a fist and I hoped I had not said too much.
After school, I ran and ran, my face still hot with emotion, to the valley and the spot where I had found the fairy ring.
But of course, it was not there.
I have not spoken of it until now. I tried to live my life in the manner expected of me. I studied, I grew, I married, became a father and all the rest of it - all out of duty - but nothing, no joy, no feeling ever came close to that meeting with Merridew.
I devoted my time and all the resources I could muster to finding her again. This library was accumulated over the decades that have elapsed since that lovely afternoon.
But it has all come to naught. And now my grandson has disappeared - or perhaps he has been taken as punishment for my transgression. And I fear I shall see neither him nor Merridew again.
***
I have to say I felt rather sorry for the old stick. Perhaps his story went some way to explain his bitterness; the years of searching, hoping and yearning, and all the while growing older - all that must have shaped his character. Explain, I say, not excuse. There is no excuse for bigotry, not even bigotry enshrined in law.
Laird Baird chugged a swift slug of brandy, composed himself and took down several ancient volumes.
“My search,” he cleared his throat, “revealed that it is not just fairy rings but fairy paths. Merridew’s kind use them for transportation - oh, they do not merely stroll along them, nor do they ride bicycles, but rather they use a hole, or a portal or doorway, through which they can travel to a different place in the space of a split second. Miss Lindquist, your father backed up my findings. He was convinced you could use these doorways to travel through time.”
“Yes!” Miss Lindquist clapped her hands.
“Your Lordship,” it was my turn at the throat-clearing. “You are telling us nothing we do not already know. Why, not long ago, when I told you your own grandson had gone into one of these very holes, you pooh-poohed the whole idea. And now it appears you are quite the authority on the subject.”
Laird Baird glared; he did not like being challenged. But then he softened. “You will appreciate, Mortlake,” he spoke my name with distaste, “that I was unwilling to entertain anything that came from your mouth at that time. That incident I told you of, of the stag, was the first time I encountered the phenomenon. It opened up a whole new field of research in my quest to find Merridew. I would have said so, had we not been interrupted by those finger-munching fiends. For now, a truce. Until we get my grandson back.”
“Bravo!” Miss Lindquist applauded. I held out my hand.
Laird Baird stared.
“Let’s not go overboard,” he said.
Chapter Fifteen
Plotting on a map and scrawling complex calculations on a blackboard led Laird Baird to conclude that the portal was on its way to Loch Ness, which itself followed the straight line of a fairy path - Check it for yourselves, if you question my word.
I paled to hear that particular body of water named. Famed are the rumours of something monstrous inhabiting the depths and, frankly, one adventure with a lake-dwelling abomination is more than enough for me. Kindly refer to my first book, Kiss of the Water Nymph for further information. It is widely available from all reputable stockists.
The plan was to go there and intercept the Hole, chucking something in to get something out.
“My father!” Miss Lindquist’s eyes were alive with hope.
“My Cuthbert!” Laird Baird and I spoke in unison. The old man snarled at me.
“But what shall we put in?” I thought it reasonable to ask.
“Not what,” said His Lordship with a glower of menace, “but whom.”
I did not like the sound of that one bit.
***
A carriage was laden with provisions, equipment and a crate of whisky, all covered with sheets of tarpaulin, stretched like blankets over the belly of a pregnant giantess. Laird Baird rode up top with the coachman, leaving the carriage itself to Miss Lindquist and me. He said this arrangement was necessary so he could better instruct the driver and navigate our route but I suspect he was reluctant, to put it mildly, to be cabined, cribbed and confined with a degenerate like me. The silly sausage.
Pell-mell we hurtled along the rough Highland roads - little more than ruts in some places, and plunging across open country in others. We would travel, Laird Baird explained, on a course parallel to the fairy path rather than along the path itself, lest disaster befall us. I wasn’t bothered - perhaps an unscheduled encounter with the Hole would be the most expedient way to reunite me with my Cuthbert.
As we rattled along, Miss Lindquist held onto her wide-brimmed hat and her ribcage; I was glad to be liberated from my own damned corset, I can tell you. I petted Cassie, who sat at my feet. We had collected her from the croft en route and I had never been more glad of her calming presence. Eventually, she grew bored of even my attentions and, jaws stretching in a squeaky yawn, she settled down for some shuteye. A wise move, I decreed, and tried to do the same. The bouncing and jouncing of the wheels against stones, ruts, potholes and unfortunate wildlife that happened to be in our way, prevented me from getting a moment’s rest.
Opposite me, Miss Lindquist continued to fret and frown, making her entire disposition anti-social. Unable to bear another second of her frosty countenance, I asked if she would care to talk about what was on her mind - as if I could not bloody guess: her father.
“It is being my father,” she muttered.
What did I tell you? I should have had money on it.
“Oh?” I queried,
“Yes! ‘Oh’ indeed is being appropriate. You are seeing, Mr Mortlake, Mr Laird Baird is giving me a notebook of my father’s. Within its pages is being the sequel to the story we are reading before. His Lordship was finding it in one of his dusty old books and has been translating it for me from the hieroglyphics. It is being a message from my father.”
“Oh, really!” I rubbed my hands. “Well, let’s be having it then.”
I was all in favour of a spot of on-board entertainment to help while away the journey.
***
He With The Golden Hair hides himself in the Tomb of the Great King. Many Priests come forth with Offerings to Ra. The Tomb of the Great King is painted with the Story of the Life of the Great King. The Sarcophagus of the Great King Nort-Ist-Hep is tooled in Gold and Lapis Lazuli. Great Jars are lined up, containing the Organs of Nort-Ist-Hep, and Sacks of Grain and Amphorae of Wine to sustain him in the Afterlife are all around.
The many Priests slit their own throats and fall dead. The Architect seals the Door and drinks Poison. Only He With The Golden Hair is alive in the Tomb.
He drinks the Wine and eats of the Grain but the Stench of the Corpses is too strong –
“I say,” I interrupted Miss Lindquist. “Is the rest of it in this stilted fashion? Because I don’t know how much of it I can take.” And Laird Baird had had the effrontery to criticise my prose style!
Miss Lindquist scowled. “He With The Golden Hair is being my father, you are understanding?”
“Yes, yes, I cottoned onto that almost immediately. Let me see if I’ve got the gist. Your golden-haired father pops through the Hole and arrives slap bang in the middle of the funeral of old Whatsisname, Naughty Boy-”
“Nort-Ist-Hep,” Miss Lindquist corrected.
“Yes, him. Those pyramids are aligned with the fairy paths, you know. Your father finds himself shut in, sealed in the tomb and he waits, what, several thousand years until Brandysnap-”
“Dandycroft!”
“Yes, him - digs him out again. It all seems highly unlikely, old girl.”
“It is being no more or less unlikely than anything else - those hungry boys, for
example.”
“The Peckish Dead!”
“Yes, them. See here,” she prodded the translation, “Where it is denoting how the rotting of the bodies is attracting swarms of scarab beetles, who are eating them, flesh, bones, garments, all!”
“And your father, in turn, survived on the beetles?”
“I am not saying that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“The Hole is coming and going, yes?”
“Yes...”
“So, perhaps my father is only waiting until the Hole is returning and poof! Out he is popping and up he is cropping somewhere else.”
I thought about it. “And so he went back to the tomb in time to see himself, centuries later... But why?”
“I am not knowing. Perhaps it is being because he wanted to be seeing if it were being possible.”
I pulled a face. As Miss Lindquist had observed, every event in this tale was as unlikely as the next.
“Those beetles - Is there a picture?”
Miss Lindquist leafed through the papers. Laird Baird had seen fit to reproduce a depiction of the insect.
It was the spitting image of the blighter discovered by the Bickerses.
But what did that mean?
***
Loch Ness is beautiful - there’s no doubt about that - in a bleak and desolate way that appeals to the melancholic element of the human spirit. It’s a long, thin expanse of water, as though someone had filled a wooden pencil box with ink, and it is walled in by rolling hills like a behemoth’s secret lido, which, if the rumours of Nessie are to be believed, it is.
We stood, Laird Baird, Miss Lindquist and I, on the sediment of the southwestern shore and marvelled at the geological events that must have formed such a place. His Lordship droned on about the comparative youth of the lake, estimating it to be a ‘mere’ twelve thousand years old, which, compared to his fossilised state, I suppose is the blink of an eye.
Miss Lindquist interrupted. “Be excusing me, but if the lake is being so young, how can the monster in it be being so prehistoric?”
Laird Baird’s moustaches twitched in a patronising smile. “Care to field that one, Mortlake?”
It was a trap, of course. He was willing me to expose my own ignorance. Right, I thought, rolling up my mental shirtsleeves, I’ll show the old blighter.
“Um, well,” not an auspicious start, I’ll grant you, “It’s all due to the fairy portal, you see, Connie, um, Miss Lindquist. Our dinosaur friend, if that is in fact what it is, comes and goes through space and time. Which is why sightings of it are few and far between. Between visits to the loch, it probably goes back to its own time, where it pootles around quite merrily, in a land before mankind came along to gawp at it.”
Miss Lindquist nodded, satisfied. Laird Baird continued to appear the opposite.
“Well, now that we are here, what do we do?” I gazed around; there was no other blighter in sight, not even a prehistoric, amphibious one.
Laird Baird unrolled a chart. “The loch is deep,” he intoned. “In places, it is deeper than the North Sea. The water is like ink, like black paint. Visibility is zero and there are untold crevices, crevasses and canyons, cracking its very bottom. You, Mortlake, are to visit them - those that fall along the fairy path - and, when the portal comes along, you are to rescue my grandson from it.”
Miss Lindquist applauded.
“Hold the telephone,” I interjected. “You want me to visit Nessie’s bottom crack?”
“If you insist on phrasing it so bluntly, I do indeed.”
“But - but how?” I gestured frantically at the placid water. “I shall get most frightfully wet. Drenched, even!”
A vision of poor Drownded Ned flashed before me, but fret not, dear reader, it was only in my mind’s eye.
Laird Baird signalled to the driver who was atop the carriage. The man unfastened the ropes that fastened tarpaulin sheets to a bulbous object on the roof.
A sphere was revealed, made almost entirely of brass. Portholes like frogs’ eyes goggled at us. On stalks like antennae, lanterns were encased in glass and backed by mirrors. Arms like crabs’ pincers hung lifelessly. It was quite a contraption; I can tell you.
Miss Lindquist applauded again. Easily impressed, she should attend more of my book readings.
“Oh, no!” I baulked as the driver continued to lower the thing to the ground by means of ropes and pulleys. “Not on your Nessie!”
“You must remember, Mortlake, that which is at stake.” Laird Baird fixed me with a meaningful stare. The spectre of blackmail raised its ugly head - like Nessie breaching the surface for a bit of a breather. I was trapped! I must do his bidding or else face the full force of the law of the land.
It was Miss Lindquist who spoke on my behalf. “Your Lordship, you are being all stick and no carrot. If Mr Mortlake is doing as you are telling him, what should be being his reward? I shall be telling you: it shall be your assurance that you will be taking the matter no further. This is only being decent and proper, yes?”
Laird Baird grumbled. “Oh, very well. If he brings my grandson back to me, alive and well and safe and sound, and all the rest of it.”
“Good! Now, be shaking hands, I am insisting.”
We did. I did my utmost not to be limp and damp; Laird Baird tried to get it over with as quickly as possible.
He stomped off to the contraption and wiped his hand across its smooth surface. “This moment has been decades in the making,” he patted the thing fondly. “My life’s work. I have sunk thousands of pounds into research and development. Not enough to risk my own bally neck in it, of course.” He laughed. “You will have a small window of opportunity, Mortlake. You must get to the coordinates in time for the portal to appear. Anyone who comes out of it will not be able to survive such depths. You must rescue him and bring him up at once.”
I could not think of a single thing I liked about this entire enterprise - save from saving my Cuthbert, of course, which was enough to spur me to do anything.
“Be excusing me,” Miss Lindquist frowned, “It is being so dangerous, why not be waiting for the portal to be appearing elsewhere? Like on dry land, for example, where there are being no rampaging dinosaurs?”
She had a point. A damned good one, but Laird Baird was shaking his head, as if an idiot child had tried to explain how Father Christmas could make his deliveries in one night. (Which I suppose he could do, if he had access to fairy portals... Hmm...)
“My dear Miss Lindquist, all the calculations converge on this point in time and space. My grandson will come through on this occasion; I am sure of it.”
“Certain enough to stake my life on it,” I muttered sourly.
“Precisely! Now, time is ticking by.” He threw a rubber suit at my chest. “Don this and get in. Time and tide, as the saying is.”
In one last act of defiance, I refused to change my clothes until they had all turned their backs.
***
Snug is not the word. What’s that thing about being bounded in a nutshell and being king of infinite space? That chappie had never been inside Laird Baird’s diving bell. I suppose the cumbersome rubber suit didn’t help or the heavy brass diver’s helmet. Thick-fingered gloves made my hands feel sluggish and clumsy. I used one to wave away Laird Baird’s final reminders of how to operate the controls.
“It’s just like Bessie,” I snapped, my voice muffled by my headgear. “And I can handle her like a dream.”
Laird Baird’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Miss Lindquist put a calming hand on his arm. “It is being his motor car,” I heard her whisper.
The driver slammed the roof with a resounding clang. I gripped the control sticks as best as I could - one for steering, one for acceleration - and braced myself for the off. Laird Baird signal
led like a pompous race official then guided Miss Lindquist a few steps away from the sphere and the water’s edge. I pushed the throttle forward and the diving bell’s engine combusted into life - Listen: I don’t know all the mechanical terms. It’s all I can do to keep Bessie’s tyres inflated. I was just glad I did not have to go out front and crank the blasted thing by hand.
It did not move.
Behind the bell, great sprays of silt and sediment engulfed the onlookers. One in the eye for Laird Baird, I laughed. He’d be washing his sporran for weeks.
The sphere rumbled and rattled, vibrating on the spot until I thought it would journey to the very centre of the Earth - an idea I had once had for a book but some Frenchman beat me to it. After about five minutes of this, when it felt as though the whole contraption would shake itself to smithereens and me along with it, the sphere began to roll. Over and over it went - and me along with it - into the murky water of the loch. The lake bed suddenly dropped away and, without the traction it provided - the sphere went into freefall - and me along with it. I held onto my wits as tightly as I gripped the controls and righted the thing, so at least I would know which way was up.
Down and down I plunged, but I employed a little forward thrust in order to follow the course mapped out by Laird Baird. Within a few fathoms, the water became impenetrable - to sight, I mean. The lamplight was woefully inadequate; it would only serve to render me visible to whatever might be lurking in the murk.
“Nessie, old girl,” I tried to be cheery, “I hope you have an aversion to canned food.”
I could not see a bally thing. Either the side struck something, or something struck the side, sending the sphere off course. The compass on the dashboard spun like a bottle in a parlour game and did not seem likely to stop any time soon. I fought to keep control, to resume direction.
Something passed my underside. Something long and sleek.
It’s the floor of another trench, I told myself several times. You must not let your imagination cloud your reason, Hector, old man. Be bold and bloody resolute - or whatever the other chappie says in that other play.
Beware The Peckish Dead! Page 13