Chapter Four. Alton.
Just after eight on Sunday evening, the Master of Cragtop walked to the edge of the village green in Alton and glanced around. Christopher's home was a sleepy little place. There were barely a dozen houses clustered around its centre. The Master smiled, relieved.
He'd been worried it might be larger, or perhaps closer to the bustle of Henley-On-Thames, but there was a couple of miles of river between them. Smaller, out of the way places meant fewer people. That was good. The more eyes to see him, the harder he would have to work to carry out his plans without arousing suspicion.
He started down the lane along the eastern edge of the green. It sloped gently down, passing a couple of cottages. He glanced through a window, yet to have had its curtains drawn. A couple sat at a kitchen table, deep in conversation, their faces caught in the flickering light of a fire. They looked warm and comfortable and he briefly envied them.
It had been a long and tiring day. He had been very strict with himself on how much of the remaining magic he used. He would be much happier if he could get to the transition with tricks remaining up his sleeve. Whilst his resources were finite and few, everything had to be accounted for.
He wished he had kept more of the mead. Those who drank it became extremely suggestible. He'd used it far too liberally in the previous few years. Now there was not much more than a draft left. Still, at least he had that.
There had been some expenditures he could not do without. Communicating with his gypsies had warned him he would not have the rest of the school term to prepare for Christopher's arrival. The boy was being sent home early. Even though hearing them over such long distances was particularly draining, it was essential.
He needed to use another enchantment when he realised his plan to take a few days to reach Alton would be impossible. Part of him was sorry he would not be carefully picking a route through back roads, with time to consider all possibilities for when he arrived. Fortunately, he had something that he had been saving for exactly this sort of eventuality.
The enchantment simply made him very unremarkable to others. Most of the time they would not notice him, and even if they happened to, they would immediately forget him. He had boarded a train in Birmingham and travelled the rest of his journey in speed and comfort. The only slight annoyance was that the charm did its job so well that twice fellow travellers sat on him.
The village green was quite small. To his left a stream bubbled alongside the lane, passing under a small wooden bridge further down. Past the cottages, three houses each larger than the previous, were built up with four or five steps up to front doors set in clean white walls and brushed stonework. The houses cost good money. The village was not just local tradesmen.
Over the little bridge a smaller lane turned left. It cut straight up the other side of the green, where it forked. One fork passed through a gate into a well-kept churchyard. Beyond, a medieval church with a square tower at one end was picked out by the moonlight. Next to the churchyard stood three thatched cottages, light spilling from lower windows, picking out the tiny gardens before them. In one, the Master could see the blossom of a winter rose bush, still and quiet as the night around it.
The front door of the second cottage opened. Three men blundered out, laughing and jostling. They started across the green in great spirits. The Master watched them calmly. Their path would cross his at the junction ahead. That was good. The enchantment was still working. It would cause him no problem to get close to the men and besides, getting a sense of the locals could only help him in the coming days.
It was obvious where the men were heading. Beyond the junction stood an inn. Warm light from its windows cast orange rectangles onto the snowy ground. Occasional shadows crossed the light as the residents moved past the windows. A steady stream of smoke puffed out of a tall chimney. From inside, the chatter of drinkers was quite audible. Two large oak trees stood in front of the inn, like two moonlit giants keeping watch over the little village.
One of the men pointed down at the inn and the other two laughed. From the way that two of them were walking, it seemed that they had sampled a good deal of alcohol already.
The Master crossed over to the nearest of the two oaks, then stopped, waiting for the men come near. He glanced at the name painted over the doorway. “The Stumblepot Inn”. He smiled, then glanced back at the three men. An apt name for such a place.
“Unless I’m very wrong—” one of the men ahead said to his companions in lubricated tones, “—it’ll be the turn of the good Doctor here to buy the drinks.”
Another, the doctor, laughed. “Why is it that whenever we take a drink with you on a Sunday, it seems to be my turn?”
“Whilst we drink on a Sunday, Conrad, I’d say it was your civic duty to buy the local police force a drink,” the first man replied.
“Really? You’re a police force now, are you? I thought you were a policeman.” Dr Conrad laughed.
“I’ll be buying the drinks tonight,” the third man said, less slurred than his companions. “If the lads are in there, I want to buy them a drink before they go to join my Len and the others at training.”
“Well, I'm all for sending them off to fight with whiskey in their blood, but we have a few days to do that.” The doctor agreed. “If we start tonight, they may not be sober enough to walk by the time they go.”
“Well, as long as I’m not buying, I’m happy,” the policemen noted.
The doctor punched him lightly on the arm and he stumbled forward, nearly stumbling into the Master before he righted himself. The Master deftly stepped around the drunken man and slipped amongst them.
Not a single one of the men even looked at the tall, gaunt figure passing through their midst. He passed so close to the other two men that the doctor raised his hand and brushed at the air.
“It’s certainly December. I should have put on a thicker coat.” He frowned and pulled the coat he did have tight around his neck.
“Well, let's get ourselves warmed then before my wife misses me.” The policeman grasped the doctor’s shoulder and propelled him towards the door of the Stumblepot Inn.
They reached the door. The doctor grasped the handle, pulling the door open with a slight creak. In a flash the Master was past him, slipping into the warmth of the saloon bar beyond.
He glanced around the room. Cream stone walls on three sides, with the bar taking up the length of most of the fourth. On the walls hung about fifteen paintings of different sizes, far too many for the modest room.
The pictures followed a common theme. In boats, or on the bank, each picture showed various scenes of men fishing. There were men calmly sitting with rods by wide, slow moving rivers, men in water up to their waist casting flies into white foamy streams, and even men painted holding the fish they had just caught.
The theme continued in three display cases on the longest wall above the mantle of a blazing fire. Each contained an impressively sized fish with a tiny plaque proclaiming the name of the fisherman that had caught it.
The Master strolled to a space at the end of the bar and leaned against it. The room and its layout held less interest for him than the inhabitants. He had allowed himself this detour for a reason. He turned his attention to the men drinking.
The men were mostly middle-aged. Most of the village’s young men would have left to volunteer for the war, he imagined. That was another good thing. Older men were so much easier to manipulate with their vanity and closing minds. This war had proven to be a great ally to him in so many ways.
A younger group of men stood at the bar with the doctor and his companions. Three lads, all bright-eyed and laughing, heads held high as though they had the world at their feet. The tallest of the three was a giant, at least six-foot-six. He laughed at a joke with a deep booming laugh.
The older men around the bar occasionally looked at them and,
if they caught their eye, would smile or raise a glass respectfully. The young men would smile back, a little embarrassed by the attention. If they saw the occasional hint of sadness and worry in the older men’s eyes, as the Master did, they took no notice and instead returned to their conversation.
The Master pushed up from where he leaned and crossed the room, sitting in a spare seat at a table of three men. For a while he leaned in, listening to their conversations, taking in their details, then he got up again, and moved to another group.
For an hour, he sat with the men, group by group, learning their names, watching their faces. He saw how they animated themselves as they spoke or listened. He learned who made the others smile, who was the butt of the jokes, who had friends, who did not. He looked at the flushed, well-fed faces, with groomed moustaches and listened to the naive bravado and patriotism with which they spoke. When he grew thirsty he helped himself to a freshly bought pint of ale, smiling as its previous owner grew suddenly confused looking for it.
He ended his observations at the bar again, standing amongst the young men. He listened to the doctor, then the policeman, then the doctor again passing on drunken pearls of wisdom to take to war with them. He saw the good natured way the three lads, Jim, Mike and the giant, Joe, took the advice in the spirit with which it was given. Then finally he decided to move on.
He knew their names now. He would know their faces when he saw them tomorrow. He would know who they were and what their relationships were. He would fit in. Satisfied, he turned back to the door.
His eyes had begun to ache. The extra hour had only made him feel more tired. There was one more important task to complete before he could rest. He opened the door and stepped through. Then, without bothering to shut it behind him, he strode on down the lane.
A moment later the doctor appeared at the open doorway. He looked out to see if anyone had opened it. Seeing no-one he shrugged his shoulders and shut it again.
The doctor turned back to the patrons of the bar. As a man they looked toward him and the door, each with disconcerted faces; as if they had just remembered something really important and then forgotten it again.
“Smile, lads, for heaven's sake,” the doctor said, quite taken aback by their faces. “You look as though you’ve seen a devil!”
Bailey dug his little penknife into the wood and gouged out another tiny piece. Carving like this was slow going, but he wanted to be sure that the end result, a replica of the cottage he sat in, would be perfect. It was all going well, but it never did to rush these things.
He looked at the carriage clock on the mantle, one of Joe's prized possessions. It was a quarter past nine. That was good. It would be at least another hour before Joe heaved his huge frame back from the pub. That would give Bailey plenty more time to work on the gift and still be able to clear the tell-tale wood chippings from the stone floor. Bailey wanted to keep the gift hidden from Joe right up until the point he went away.
It was a fairly easy cottage to carve. It was not as well-to-do as the larger houses around the green. Nor was it as plainly functional as the boat builders’ cottages further out from the village. It was, however, pretty and inviting. Bailey was confident he could capture that.
Of course he was only carving the cottage. The neat little path that ran up though a market garden stocked with winter vegetables to the blue painted front door would have to stay in Joe's memory.
He had thought about a second piece to carve the workshop behind the cottage. The mess of boats, farm equipment and other broken items waiting for repair in a loosely constructed line would have proved too hard in the time.
The old man grinned to himself as he imagined even trying. There were so many things out there. Only earlier a plough, the main shaft splintered, had arrived and been placed next to a little row boat with a hole on its base. Worn equipment, waiting to be mended.
He did love it out there, though. Nothing went to waste. Joe could find a use for everything. A workbench stood against the old shed, and from the shed a makeshift wooden roof stretched over the bench, supported by two mismatched old columns of timber that had originally been masts from boats. On the bench a mower waited for its blades to be replaced on the ground in front of the bench. Next to it the wheel from a long-forgotten bicycle lay, until some new and ingenious use could be found for it.
Everyone brought their repairs to Joe. It didn't end there, either. For the big houses up along the top road between Henley and here, Joe was the first port of call when an extra pair of hands was needed. Tomorrow, for instance, he had been asked by that nasty little man at General Flyte’s house to pick up the youngest boy in his cart from the station. Joe was a little worried about that. The family had troubles and he wasn’t looking forward to seeing the boy’s mood. He’d cheer the boy up though, of that Bailey was sure. Joe could do no wrong in Bailey’s opinion.
He would be sorely missed whilst he was fighting the war. Bailey sighed. It was a lot of responsibility Joe was entrusting him with after only a month of being friends, and he appreciated the trust more than he could say.
When the loud knock on the door came, Bailey almost dropped the carving. He caught it at the last minute, swore, and placed it carefully on the floor next to the worn old armchair. The knock came again, insistent. Desperate, even. He frowned at the noise, but clambered to his feet and stumbled over. He unlatched the door and pulled it open.
The man standing at the step stopped his heart cold. Tall and still, like some stone statue, the only movement was the slight rise and fall of his long coat, in time with his deep breathing.
The man smiled. “Perfect.” He stepped forwards.
“Excuse me!” Bailey exclaimed, recovering his senses and raising a hand to stop the man. “You can’t just walk in here!”
“Shh.” The man raised a finger to just below his mouth. His breath carried over the short space between them, wafting into Bailey’s face. There was a faint smell of ale on it.
That would not do at all. He'd been left in charge of the little three room cottage whilst Joe was with his friends. He wasn't going to let some half-cut stranger come bounding in, no matter how tall and imposing he looked, and he was going to damn well tell him. He opened his mouth to speak.
No words came out.
Bailey’s throat tightened in fear. No words? He tried again, straining to speak, but nothing.
He made to back away from the man and give himself a moment to think. Like his voice, his body did not respond. He struggled again to move. Nothing. He was completely and utterly paralysed.
“That’s better.” The man smiled and gently moved him out of the way of the door, then stepped fully into the room. Beyond the door, three shadowy figures lurked, moving and grunting like animals. Their faces were impossible to make out, but now and again a light from within would reflect off of eyes that were too brown and inhuman. Worse yet, when one of them leaned into the doorway a little further, Bailey caught the glisten of a short pointed tooth.
The man looked around the room. “This will do nicely.” He turned back to the door and addressed the shadowy figures beyond. “You’re sure about this man? No family? Few friends?”
“Yes, master,” one replied. Bailey felt his heart pounding. No human voice should sound that husky. It was as if the figure was missing a normal voice box.
“A relative stranger here? You’re sure.”
“Yes, a stranger,” came the growled reply.
“Very well.” He turned to face Bailey. “Then we should get to know each other a little better, my friend.”
Bailey knew his heart hadn’t pounded this fast in decades. Fear gripped him absolutely. Sweat beaded on his forehead, running down into his eyebrows, where it collected and dripped down into eyes that he could not blink, stinging them and blurring his vision.
He strained in his mind to move his body. He despera
tely searched through memories of which parts of his brain he could feel working in the past, when he had moved. Of course, that was so second nature to him that it had worked unnoticed. As the man got closer, he prayed in his head that he would regain the ability to move, gain the strength to fight him. The prayer went unanswered.
The man lifted his right hand and gently touched Bailey’s left cheek. His skin tingled at the touch. He could certainly still feel. The man held it there for a moment, looking into his eyes, his face utterly impassive. Bailey felt like a fox caught in a trap faced with the huntsman’s return. The man glanced over Bailey’s face, his eyes examining every pock mark, every crevice, every line.
He slowly passed his hand over Bailey’s forehead. And suddenly, to accompany the tingling of his skin, images began to flash through his mind; unbidden memories dragged up from his unconscious.
The memory came of a stone hitting his head, so real it felt as if the stone was striking him now, when he had been chased out of Henley by those boys a few weeks back. His knee blossomed in pain as the memory of stumbling away from them hit him.
Then came a memory of being younger. Days when a travelling man could still go around the country in search of casual work without being menaced. A time before the hysteria of the papers had started claiming every stranger could be a German spy.
His brow tingled just as his cheek had done as the man's hand passed over it. The sweat under his hands dried instantly. The moisture of the skin itself seemed to be sucked up towards those fingers.
Still the memories came. It was as if the man was drawing them from him as he drew the sweat from his skin. Now he was walking past Joe's house after a night sleeping in cold bushes, surprised when the huge young man wished him a friendly good morning. Even more surprised when he was offered a cup of tea and told he looked as if he needed a sit down.
The man dropped his hand down to Bailey’s right cheek and slowly ran his fingers over Bailey’s eyes and nose. The same tingling drying sensation followed the fingers. Bailey could feel the moisture draining from his eyes, leaving them dry.
In his head, the weeks that he had ended up staying flashed by. Helping Joe in the workshop. Enjoying their burgeoning friendship. Teaching the younger man some of his own crafts. Gladly accepting the spare upstairs room in the cottage.
As the hand passed down to his mouth and chin his eyes began to stream with water. Tear ducts struggled to replace the moisture this strange examination had taken.
When the hand moved over his mouth, Bailey felt his lips parting. From his throat the dryness blossomed, as moisture and breath were sucked from his body. His voice box began to vibrate as the breath was sucked through it. Involuntarily, he groaned.
Bailey’s consciousness began to swim as the last air in his lungs was sucked up into this man’s desiccating touch. In his mind he was hammering at the plough outside. Each hammer blow sounded as though it was from further and further away.
Suddenly, just as it had started, it was over. Bailey fell to the floor, his body and mind finally restored to him. He briefly struggled to rise and resist, but the effort was too much. He curled into a ball and gasped at the air, staring up at his attacker.
Above him, the man had stepped back and leaned against the door frame, panting heavily. He lifted the hand he had examined Bailey with. Then slowly, deliberately, he ran it over his own face.
“Well,” he said. “Let’s see if this works, shall we?” He dropped his hand to his side and leaned his head back, breathing regularly, then stood still.
The man's face seemed suddenly to blur. Bailey rubbed his eyes, ignoring the pain, and trying to regain his focus. The man's face seemed, if anything, to get more blurred. Features that a moment ago had been angular and defined seemed to be flowing. Bailey shook his head, not able to believe what he was seeing. He rubbed at his eyes again and looked up.
The man seemed a little shorter now, and stockier! His face was changing into something altogether different. Bailey clambered up, fear giving his limbs strength, and shrank back against the wall.
“Oh dear Jesus, protect me in this time of need,” he muttered to himself, closing his eyes.
His heart leapt. He had heard himself speak! He had his voice back. He sucked in a big breath to shout for help, opening his eyes.
The breath caught in his lungs.
The man had gone. Instead, it was like looking into a mirror. Bailey stared at an exact replica of himself and gasped. The hair, the little cut he’d got when Joe had thrown that useless screw over his shoulder and caught him by accident, the same day's growth of beard, everything was the same.
The replica smiled. “Good. From your face I would guess this looks exactly how I hoped.”
It passed him and sat in his chair, pushing the cushions around to achieve a more comfortable position.
“Now that has been a very good day's work.” It said. It looked at Bailey and frowned at him with his own face. “Unfortunately though, I can’t have your young landlord finding us both here, can I?”
The replica motioned to the door. Two of the creatures outside surged forward. As the light hit them, Bailey saw their faces properly. For the second time of the night, he drew in breath to scream.
The air never got a chance to leave his lungs. A strong hand, with thick hard fingers bunched into a fist, struck down on his head, knocking the sense from his mind. He collapsed down, finally, mercifully, unconscious.
The Master felt exhausted. Now there would be a continual drain on his powers to hold himself in this shape, like a tap that dripped steady and constant.
The need for raw power, however, he could at least feed, though it would still require a sacrifice of other resources. He looked at his gypsies, struggling to lift the body of the man.
They looked back, immediately aware of his eyes on them. One growled in a low guttural hum. He wondered for a moment how their hatred of him must feel, knowing it was an impossibility that they could ever raise a finger against him. Hatred and frustration were a terrible combination. No wonder they could be so ferocious when he allowed them an outlet.
“Take him back to your camp,” he said, marvelling at the way he sounded with the old man's voice. “Keep him with the boy. No one must see him.”
The first grunted and started to back out of the door, one muscular arm holding Bailey upright. The other two, supporting the old man from the back, followed.
“You,” the Master said quietly at the third. “You must stay here with me.”
Immediately the three knew what this meant. They started whimpering, reaching across the old man to touch each other in fear. The two at the back, next to one another, clutched and nuzzled at each other.
“Stop that,” he said. “There’s no time for this. Do your duties now.”
Whimpering still, the first two dragged the unconscious man out into the night. The third stared after them balefully, then moaned a high, bestial, note of despair.
“Come here,” the Master commanded.
The creature edged slowly toward him. “Master, please,” it entreated.
“There’s no point crying at me. I am afraid I need your strength,” the Master said. “You would have been gone soon anyway, burst apart and reborn as a thousand other things, with no memory of this life. You should thank me, really. I'm saving you from a few more days of sadness.”
The gypsy bared its teeth at him and hissed.
“Yes, very scary,” he said with an eyebrow raised. “Now come here.” He patted a spot before him.
Obediently the creature came and sat down, fear in its eyes. “Please,” it began to plead again. “Don't take me, Master...”
Consuming the energy that the creatures were created from was not unlike the action of taking in a sharp breath. The difference, of course, was that the one did not draw in with the lungs, but rather with one's ow
n essence. He would have struggled to explain it. Over the past twenty -two years it had become instinctual.
The result was the same as always. In the blink of an eye, the gypsy, its clothing, a little knife that it had worn tucked into its belt, every part of it, were all gone, transformed into immeasurable tiny sparks of bright blue energy.
For the briefest of seconds the energy kept the shape of the creature it was before. It was as if a perfect sculpture had been formed from countless grains of glowing blue sand. The creature’s expression of shock could even be seen in the pricks of light where its face had been. Then, as the sparks moved apart, it was gone.
The sparks zipped across the short distance between where the creature had been and where the Master sat. They slammed into his body and sunk beneath his skin. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, then those on his arms. His skin tingled all over as the hair on his head rose too. He closed his eyes, savouring the feeling as the power recharged him.
As the last of the light entered his body he sat back in the chair, drunk on the energy that coursed around inside him, feeding his essence again. For a time, it was hard to concentrate. Slowly however, the static sensation began to ease off.
He opened his eyes. There was no trace of the gypsy that had been before him. Just memory of its final plea.
“It's not Master, now,” he said, though the creature would never hear. “It’s Bailey.”
Author’s Note.
If you’ve reached this author’s afterward, I hope it’s because you’ve enjoyed things so far. Well, I’ve got so much more to tell you. It’s positively bursting out of me. It’s actually a struggle not give it all away right here, but who likes plot spoilers, right?
So, I just wanted to say thank you for reading. It’s taken me a long time to write this, in between having to actually work for a living. This may only be the taster extract, but I am still delighted to finally be able to show it to you.
The complete book is due for release on October the 20th 2014. Keep an eye out on Amazon, or follow me on social media to stay in the loop. You’ll find all the links on my website.
More free chapters!
If you would like to read more right now however, you can! I’ve made the next two chapters available for free as well. I just need a little help from you in return. Click on the link below. It will take you to a page on my website. There’s a ‘tell a friend’ form on there and some social media ‘like buttons’. Please help me spread the word about “The Boy In Winter’s Grasp”. The better this one does, the more time I can devote to writing more stories for you. Once you’ve filled in the ‘tell a friend form, I’ll email you the next two chapters as a PDF.
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Thanks!
John. June 2014.
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