The Wind of Southmore (9 page)

Fortunately, the library was through the first door opposite,
too far in to have been caught in the mass of falling rubble all
those years ago, and it was through its tired, oak doors that Arlen
now led her sister.

Alice
found that she was almost holding her breath. She had seen too much
television and read too many books not to have some preconceived
notion of what to expect, and her imagination was running wildly on
shining mahogany staircases, handsome oak desks and polished
leather furniture, a blazing fire, and books, books, books,
climbing the walls to the sky. Once again, she was sorely
disappointed.

She was
led into a very wide, round room, with high ceilings and long
walls, the original of those Hollywood movie sets. But, as with the
rest of the castle, nothing had been maintained, and many of the
bookshelves had long since disappeared into oblivion. The stone
walls were glaringly bare and grey, and Alice, gazing upwards,
could see that the vaulted roof must have fallen in parts at some
point, and had been loosely patched with timber. This was not
sophisticated enough to prevent the ills of the cold and damp, and
a steady train of greenish-grey mould was slowly moving down the
walls from the ceiling in a large, unpleasant stain. Alice
shivered. This was nothing like the libraries she’d seen and used,
underfunded as they might have been. The room was chill with the
damp sea air which seeped in via the dilapidated roof, the narrow,
arched windows which boasted wooden shutters rather than glass, and
the grey, useless fireplace, the chimney of which had crumbled to
rubble long ago. Over the dull mantelpiece Alice could again make
out the faded image of a dragon, its scales gradually blending with
the peeling paint and encroaching fungus.

Arlen
drew the shutters open, and a thin grey light entered feebly,
casting strange shadows across the room. Alice, shivering, cast a
glance outside, and was met with a long, dismal landscape of still
sea and empty shoreline beyond. Suddenly she longed very much for
the strong cabbage smell that had pervaded her favourite landlady’s
sitting room.

The
corner of the room by the windows still boasted books, but the
shelves there had long gone, and the heavy tomes were piled in
tall, wobbling stacks along the wall. Arlen was moving some of them
around, dusty and grimy and damp, despite the frequent use of her
small, eager fingers, and depositing them on a dusty old table,
which she had vainly tried to polish every time she used it. The
table’s chief recommendation, aside from being there, was the fact
that its legs gripped the floor with sturdy wooden claws, something
that Alice had only seen in the V&A on a long ago school trip,
and had been fascinated by ever since. So engrossed was she with
admiring the paws that she almost forgot the whole purpose of the
visit, and was only drawn back to it by a nudge from
Arlen.

“
Can you take this lot?”

“
What are we looking for?” Alice asked eventually, after what
seemed like hours of turning heavy parchments with facefuls of
dust.

“
I don’t know,” Arlen replied vaguely. “I’ve been through all
of these before. It’s something about that ship – I’ve seen it
somewhere. It
must
be here.” She was frustrated, snapping shut the last thick
volume with a fierce crack.

Alice sat
silently. The books had been interesting, with their strange
letters and colourful pictures. The library must have been amassed
over many centuries and by many generations – some of the older
manuscripts were like ones she had only seen in museums, whilst
others, regular printed volumes, were still very old and falling
apart.

She would
have liked time to explore them all. Arlen obviously knew them
well; she only needed to glance at the first page to see that it
was not what she was looking for. Now she was frowning and
frustrated, deep in thought.

The room,
although cold to begin with, suddenly became alive with a fierce
chill. Alice could feel the icy fingers on her skin, and shuddered.
Outside the wind sang eerily, and she could hear a strange moan
crying in its arms in a voice of creaking, tired wood.

It was
then that Arlen rose, and her eyes held a determined light. “I
think it’s about time we explored that ship.”

The
hallway seemed even colder and damper than before, as Arlen shut
the door carefully behind her. The gentle click reverberated across
the silent stone walls, and Alice turned her glance away as the
faded eyes in the portraits seemed to turn reprovingly towards
them. It was only when they reached the kitchen, which seemed
comparatively friendly, that she realised she’d been holding her
breath.

“
I wonder what happened here,” she said softly, holding
herself, as if to keep warm. “It’s all so long ago.”

“
But it’s still here,” Arlen answered, grimly. She reached into
the pantry and tore off a hunk of dry bread. “Not the greatest
breakfast, but it will do,” she said, and half laughed.

“
Do what?” The deep voice sounded from nowhere, and Alice
jerked forward, startled. Arlen, more used to her great-aunt’s
sudden appearances, subtly tucked the bread into her pocket, her
face innocent.

“
We were just going for a walk,” she said, which was true, in a
way.

“
Now, Arlen, I really haven’t the time this morning,” Aunt Maud
shook her head with a painful expression. She appeared to be in one
of her industrious moods, a phase which Arlen dreaded. Most of Aunt
Maud’s outlook on life seemed to be that nothing was right and that
everything, particularly her niece, had been sent to try her, but
her industrious phases were even worse. She would suddenly start a
seemingly endless round of baking or cleaning or tidying books in
the library, which usually meant throwing them away. Arlen could
remember many occasions of sneaking out at night to rescue
discarded volumes from the rubbish heap.

Furthermore, she always wanted to enlist Arlen’s help, and
she seemed to purposely time such moods for when Arlen had
something particularly interesting to do. Today was no
exception.

“
I need you to run down to the village, dear,” she said firmly.
“It’s been a while since that room of yours was cleaned properly.
We’ll need some new sponges and detergent, and you’ll need another
scrubbing brush.”

Arlen
stood still, dismayed, fervently trying to think up some excuse.
Why did Aunt Maud always choose such moments? This was too
important to wait. And why her room again? Aunt Maud had given it a
thorough scrubbing only a fortnight before.

“
Oh, but Auntie – ” Alice, thinking it might be better if she
were the one to protest, tried in vain.

“
Now, Alice, I think you can be spared for a little while. Go
on with your walk, dear, and get some colour into those cheeks.
They’re far too pale. Arlen, I’ll give you a list.”

Arlen was
rolling her eyes behind her aunt’s back as she counted out the
money. Alice shrugged her shoulders. What should she do?

“
I’ll be as quick as I can,” Arlen mouthed. “Wait for
me.”

“
OK,” Alice nodded, and watched, a little forlornly, as Arlen
left, almost at running speed, jingling the change in her
pocket.

Aunt Maud
had vanished upstairs again, and it seemed that the only thing left
for her to do was to explore the grounds until Arlen came back. She
left through the kitchen door and stood blinking in the dull grey
light, still brighter than the unelectrified interior of the
castle, and tried to decide which way to go.

It was
then that she saw it.

A strange
glinting, flashing on and off like a beacon, just touching the
corner of her eye from somewhere in the castle grounds beyond her
immediate vision. It was deep and red and bright, and it seemed to
be winking at her.

Frustrated and curious, she turned in the direction she
thought it must be. She could see it clearly now, a sharp red
flashing, dancing in midair, moving somewhere in the distance
towards the back of the castle, near the sea. Arlen had not taken
her through there, and she vaguely wondered why. Feeling dully
determined, almost as if she couldn’t help it, she started in
search of the source.

It wasn’t
very pretty. No wonder no tourists ever came here. A far cry from
the manicured lawns and tidy borders of most English castles that
flocked with millions of visitors each year, the grounds which now
lay before her were wild and unkempt and looked as though they had
not known a gardener for many years. The greenery consisted mainly
of gorse and a few straggling trees. The lawn was patchy and
ill-looking in the thin, sandy soil. There were no flower beds,
although a few ragged blossoms drooped bright heads amongst the
weeds.

Behind
her, she could hear the sea, a constant pounding against the rocks
and walls of the castle, like a dull sonorous heartbeat. She stood
and listened until the thumping seemed to move in rhythm with her
own heart and become a part of her, and she rocked for a moment on
her feet, unsteadily. The wind caressed her cheek gently,
playfully, seeming to coax her on with small, insistent gusts. From
some line beyond her vision she could still see the glinting, now
flashing purposefully, as if sounding to the ocean’s steady beat,
beckoning her onwards with its deep glow.

She could
not tell what it was, could almost not remember how she had found
herself outside, but she did know that she had to find that glint.
Somewhere, someone was calling her, and some long forgotten
incident that she could not quite grasp, danced tantalisingly on
the edges of her memory. As if mesmerised, she turned and followed
the call, and a lone seagull glided slowly into the heavy air
above.

Arlen,
meanwhile, had just selected the last item on her aunt’s list and
was now waiting at the counter, rather impatiently, it must be
admitted, as old Mrs Rosslyn counted out change with trembling
fingers. Notoriously slow, she had been mistress of the shop for as
long as anyone could remember, and seemed to take even longer to
serve her customers. Arlen would have told her to forget the
change, had she not known that Aunt Maud would be cross. “Watch the
pennies,” she had always said, “and the pounds will take care of
themselves,” but as far as Arlen could see, that maxim had never
helped her finances at all. And it was so typical of Aunt Maud to
want to clean when she and Alice had things to do. As an
afterthought, she chose a small torch from a stand at the counter
and added it to the pile, watching as Mrs Rosslyn scooped up the
money and started again. Trying hard not to sigh, she waited
quietly as a queue formed behind her, and dug her nails harshly
into her palms, hoping fervently that the foreboding feeling which
was rising in her stomach was just nerves.

She
couldn’t explain what had happened last night. She had tried and
tried not to think about it, not to let the memory come flooding
back through her, satisfied and triumphant. “You did it!” Alice had
cried accusingly, and perhaps the terrifed feeling that rose within
her and forced her to block out the thought, was because it was
true. Try as she might, she could not forget her fury and how she
had hated him at that moment; how she had felt the wind surge
though her as if her anger had taken on a life of its own, and how
he had fallen, helpless, to the bottom of the cliff. Right then, at
that moment, she had wanted it to happen and it had. She shuddered,
icy suddenly, and tried to force the sick feeling back down. Sick,
particularly when she remembered the tall, dark, hooded figure she
had seemed to see behind Robbie, slamming against him, as he
fell.

It seemed
like hours later when she finally stepped back outside, the small
carrier bag swinging in her hand and the torch smuggled safely in
her pocket, and began to head back towards the castle with a quick
stride. It was only when she reached Alchemist’s Block that she saw
the birds.

Above
her, gliding in and out of the thick blanket of sky, several gulls
sailed, mewing softly to one another in the dense grey air, as if
calling each other. They seemed to be congregating over by the
castle, above the tower, over the dark strip of beach in the rocks
which housed the dancing ground and the strange, rotting
wreck.

A fierce
shudder ran through her like an electric jolt and, in a sudden
clear flash, as if she had been right there in front of her, she
could see Alice, and she began to run.