Midnight is a Lonely Place (21 page)

Patrick flung himself on the machine and pulled out the cable. ‘You cow! Do you realise what you’ve done? You’ve only fucked up my project, that’s what!’

‘What?’ She stared at him blankly. The sudden silence after the blare of music was strangely shocking.

‘The message on my computer. Very funny! Very droll! Let’s all have a good giggle!’ He was almost spitting with fury.

‘What message?’ She lay back again and put her arm across her eyes. ‘I haven’t touched your silly computer.’

‘Then who has?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Get out of my room.’

‘Allie.’ His voice was suddenly very quiet. ‘I am warning you.’

‘I told you, I don’t know anything about it,’ she repeated. ‘Get out.’

He leaned forward and seized her arm. ‘Come with me.’

‘No!’

‘Come with me!’ He dragged her off the bed.

‘Paddy! You’re hurting me!’ she wailed as she followed him unwillingly down the passage and into the womblike darkness of his room.

‘There. Explain that!’ He flung his arm out in the direction of the screen.

She leaned closer and peered at it.

‘It looks like maths,’ she said. ‘I haven’t a clue what it is.’

‘Maths?’ He pushed her aside. The screen was neatly ordered, the formula complete. Nothing flickered. He stared at it in disbelief. ‘But it all fell off. There was a message – a curse – ’

‘Bullshit!’ she said rudely. ‘Can I go now?’

He didn’t hear her. He was running his finger over the screen. ‘I saw it. A message. A curse – ’

But Allie had gone, slamming the door behind her.

XXIII 

‘I hope it doesn’t snow too hard. I’d hate for you to miss your last talk,’ Sam Wannaburger, Jon’s American editor, said apologetically as he hefted up the heavy case. ‘I’m just so glad you agreed to come out and see us.’ He had collected Jon from his hotel in a pickup the size of a pantechnicon and driven him in the general direction of south-west. They had stopped at last at a white-painted clapboard house set back from the main street in a small town somewhere in deepest Massachusetts. The floodlights had been switched on, illuminating the graceful lines of the house and its surrounding fir trees, making it look ethereal, floating in a sea of whiteness – for here the grass and the sidewalks were already covered in two or three inches of soft white fluffy snow. ‘Anyway, it’s too late to worry about it now. We’ll have good booze, good talk, good food. It won’t matter how hard it snows! And if we can’t get back to the big city in the pickup we’ll leave it to AmTrak to get us there!’ Sam clapped Jon on the back and pushed him none too gently up the path towards the front door.

It was a wonderful house. Huge, converted, so Sam told him proudly, from an early-nineteenth-century carriage house. The fireplace alone was about twelve feet across, the logs burning in it cut to scale; the huge, soft sofas and chairs around it built obviously for seven-foot Americans. The house smelled of hothouse flowers and – Jon hid a smile as he raised his head and sniffed surreptitiously like a pointer – could that really be apple pie?

Sam’s wife was thin to the point of emaciation, and so elegant she looked as though she would break if she moved too fast. Her hand in Jon’s was dry and twiglike, her life force, he thought vaguely as he smiled into her bright birdlike eyes, hovering barely above zero. She was one of those Americans who filled him with sadness – dieted, corseted, facelifted and encased in slub silk which must have cost old Sam a few thousand bucks, and looking so uncomfortable that he hurt for her. It was so incredibly sad that, for all her efforts – perhaps because of them – she looked years older than dear old rumpled, slobby Sam with his beer belly and his balding scalp and his huge irrepressible grin. I wonder, he thought idly as he saw her stand on tiptoe and present her rouged cheek to her husband for kissing – a kiss which left a good two inches of cold air between them – if she ever kicks off her shoes and has a good giggle. The thought reminded him of Kate and he frowned. Worried about the burglary he had tried to ring her three times from Boston after his last quick call and on none of them had she picked up the phone. Automatically he glanced at his watch and did the calculation. Six p.m. in Boston meant it was eleven or so in the evening at home. He glanced at Sam. ‘Could I try and call Kate one last time. It’s eleven over there. I’m sure she’ll be at home by now.’

‘Sure.’ Sam beamed. ‘Let me show you your room. You’ve your own phone in there.’ He lifted Jon’s case and led the way up a broad flight of open stairs which swung gracefully from the main living room up to a corridor as wide as a six-lane motorway. Jon’s bedroom was not as large as he had feared but it was luxurious beyond his wildest dreams – bed, chairs, drapes, carpet, toning, matching, blending greens, until he had the feeling he was walking in a woodland womb. He smiled to himself at the metaphor. Ludicrous. Overblown. Outrageous. Like the room. Like his host. And wonderfully welcoming. He sat on the bed as Sam left him and pulled the phone towards him.

Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in a clean shirt and a cashmere sweater Kate had given him for his birthday last year, Jon ran downstairs and accepted a large whisky mac from his host. His call had been a dead loss. After a great deal of hassle and toing and froing between the ladies of AT&T and the British exchange, they had established that the phone at Redall Cottage had gone suddenly and totally dead.

XXIV 

The priests had walked in solemn procession to the sacred place in the
circle of trees on the ridge above the marsh. Nion was not senior among
them – he was young – but his royal blood gave him a certain precedence
as they made their way, robed and solemn, to their appointed places in
the circle
.

Nion glanced round. The faces of his teachers, his friends, his colleagues,
were taut, their thoughts turned inwards, their bodies bathed
and dedicated to their purpose. He grimaced, trying to turn his own mind
to prayer and meditation. The choosing of the sacrifice was a ceremony
he had taken part in only once before. On that occasion the sacred bread
had been baked on the flame and broken as laid down by tradition
centuries old. The scorched piece, the piece which belonged to the gods,
had been chosen by an old druid of four score summers or more – a man
dedicated and ready for whatever the gods decreed. But even he, when
he drew out the burned portion and knew that he was to die, had
betrayed for a brief moment a flash of terror, before he had bowed his
head in acceptance
.

The ceremony was strictly ordained. The man was honoured by his
colleagues, crowned with gold. In the hours that remained he would bid
farewell to his family, order his affairs and at the last divest himself of
all his raiment, bathe in waters sanctified with herbs and spices, then,
drinking the sacred, drugged wine of death he would kneel willingly for
the sacrifice: the garotte if his death was dedicated to the gods of the earth,
the rope if to the gods of the sky, and the third death, the death by water
if to the gods of the rivers and seas
.

Now Nion watched, his head covered, as were those of the others, as
the bakestone
was blessed and heated. His mouth was dry with apprehension,
even though the choice was preordained. He stole a glance at the
oldest druid there, a man as frail as a windblown reed, his bald pate
beneath the linen veil wrinkled as an old, dead leaf. Almost certainly he
would be chosen, the bread passed in such a way that his would be the
burned piece. How did he feel, knowing that by the next dawn he would
be dead?

Nion closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on prayer, but at noon
he was to meet Claudia. His body, strong, vigorous, lusty, quivered at the
thought. Sternly he reprimanded himself, and brought his thoughts back
to the scene before him
.

The bread was cooking now, the fragrance sharp on the morning air.
His nostrils picked up the acrid smell of scorching and he swallowed
nervously, his eyes going once more automatically to the old man who
had blanched to an unhealthy shade of buttermilk
.

He watched, arms folded beneath his cloak, as the bread was allowed
to cool and broken into small pieces – twenty-one, seven times three –
one for each of them, and put into the basket. Slowly it was carried
round the circle. Slowly. Slowly. One by one the hands went in. The
choice was made. The hands came out. One by one the faces relaxed into
relief and the portion was eaten. The old one’s turn came. He put in his
hand, shaking visibly, and withdrew it. Nion saw him turn the fragment
over and over in disbelief. Then his face relaxed into a toothless smile.
So, the gods had rejected an old, frail man. In the face of the threat from
Rome such a sacrifice was not enough
.

Nion’s stomach knotted sharply in fear. He noticed suddenly that
several men were watching him surreptitiously from beneath their headdresses
.

The woven bowl was coming closer. His hands were sweating. Only
five more portions remained. Then it was before him, held in the hands
of the archdruid who had baked the bread and taken the first piece
himself. For a moment Nion hesitated. He raised his eyes to the other
man’s face and read his fate even before he had put his hand in the
basket
.

The bread fragment he took was crumbling, still warm from the bakestone, and it was burned black
.

The tide was high at six in the morning and the wind was from the north-east, crossing the Urals, dripping ice across the continents, whipping the sea into angry peaks of foam.

Tossing in her bed, Alison was dreaming uneasily. All around her the cold wet earth was pressing down, clogging her nostrils, crumbling into her eyes, filling her ears so she could no longer hear, weighing her into the damp sedge. Hiding her. Hiding the truth. The truth which must be told. With a cry of panic she sat up, untangling herself from the duvet. She stared round the room. It was pitch dark and she could hear the rain pouring down in the garden outside. When it grew light there would be a puddle on the windowsill.

Still dazed by her dream, she stood up and reached for her clothes. There was something she had to do; something urgent. The pounding behind her eyes was insistent, like the beat of the tide upon the shore, driving her, pushing her against her will. Opening the door she stood for a moment on the landing, listening. The house was silent. Her parents slept at the far end in a bedroom which looked out across the woods. Next to her, Greg and beyond him, Patrick, always slept like the dead until they were awakened. She shivered violently. Today was a day for awakening the dead.

Scarcely knowing what she was doing she hauled on her waterproof jacket and forcing her feet into her boots she opened the door and peered out into the icy morning. The wind was roaring in from the north-east full in her face as she pulled the door shut with difficulty behind her and set off in the darkness towards the track through the woods. All she knew was that she had to get to the grave; she had to get there before the tide washed it away.

She had to save it.

XXV

Kate had slept in the end, too exhausted to do anything else, but she too had awoken at six to the sound of rain against the windows. It was steady rain this time, hard and unrelenting and behind the sound of it she could hear the wind.

She didn’t want to get up. There was something frightening downstairs, something which when daylight came she would have to confront, but until then she was going to stay where she was, safely tucked up in her bed with the lights on. Wearily she reached for her book and lay back huddled against the pillows.

When she dragged herself out of bed an hour later and pulled back the curtains all she could see was blackness, alleviated only by the streaks of rain sliding down the glass. But she couldn’t go back to bed. She was too conscious of the silence outside her door.

Pulling on a pair of jeans and a thick sweater she went out onto the landing and peered down. All seemed as usual down there. She stood for several seconds, then taking a deep breath she ran down and flung open the living room door. The room was empty. The woodburner still glowed quietly. All was as it should be. Lights burned in every room – God knows what her electricity bill would be when she left – but all was quiet. There were no strange smells, no figures lurking in the shadows.