Buried Fire (18 page)

"Miss MacIntyre can lead the way!" Mr Cleever smiled. "Vanessa, if you could walk with her?"

"Which way?" asked Sawcroft.

"Haw Lane is the only option. The others are too steep for Mr Hardraker's chariot!" His voice was wild with excitement, as he positioned himself between the front ends of the poles. "Let us go!"

Michael grasped the poles and took the strain. His shoulder and elbow sockets felt on fire. Feeling the jerk as Mr Cleever set off, he began to stumble forward.

With Sawcroft and Pilate at the head, Sarah between them, and Paul Comfrey trailing along at the rear of the company, the procession slowly left the farmyard.

All around them, the wind swirled with a high fever, and clouds scudded over the brow of the Wirrim.

It was almost one o'clock in the afternoon.

"Where the hell have you been?" Stephen was sitting against the oak again. Beside him, propped against the trunk, was the spear shaft, long, thin and straight, except for several woody nodules here and there, and a slight kink near the top.

"I got this." Tom held something up in his hands. Stephen took it, examined it, and swore.

"Ow! It's sharp."

"Exactly. I think it might once have been part of a candlestick. You see the curling bits there?"

"But do you think it's iron?"

"Look at the rust on it. Even for someone who knows nothing about metals, it's a safe bet."

Stephen considered it doubtfully. "Don't other metals rust?"

"No. Or if they do, I don't care. This is as good as we're likely to get."

"Fair enough. So how do we fix it to the spear shaft?"

"Jam it in, I reckon. Split the end and force the metal in. If we can get this long thin bit fixed, the jagged end will be sticking out in front. One spear."

This was easier said than done. The new, green wood was extremely reluctant to be split, and the penknife, by now on its last legs, was almost useless. In the end, Tom used the iron shard itself to cut its own slot, its serrated edge acting like a saw. Once a deep furrow had been made, they were able to pull the wood apart, and the metal was inserted as deeply as it could go.

The spear was made – over six foot long, with a rusted point jutting from its end. The metal was bunched in a molten clump just over the tip of the wood, with curving offshoots jutting back in the opposite direction to the point. It reminded Tom of a harpoon.

Get that inside someone, and they won't get it out in a hurry, he thought, and frowned at himself. Then he noticed Stephen sitting on the ground, with his head in his hands.

"Stephen?" he said. "Are you—"

"Hold on." A minute passed. Then Stephen looked up at last, and rubbed his face.

"There's movement," he said. "I just caught it five minutes ago. Something big is shifting. I felt Michael quite strongly, and maybe Cleever, but I think it's all of them at once. A long way off, but very strong."

Tom studied his face intently. "I didn't know you had a link with them," he said slowly.

Stephen looked at him with weary eyes. "That's how Michael found me in the forest. That's probably how they found us in the fields. I'm compromised, Tom."

Tom said nothing. He waited.

"But the thing is," Stephen said at last, "the thing is, those times they were after me specifically. Now – I think – there's too much going on. Too much racket. Their attention is directed up the hill. We have to trust we can get close, without them noticing me."

He stood up. "And I know exactly where they're going. Their whole souls are set to one single purpose. We can follow them easily."

In response, Tom shouldered the spear. Stephen collected his rucksack. They set off northwards through the trees, towards the nearest folds of the Wirrim. It was ten minutes past one.

A bitter taint hung in the air on Fordrace green, the after-taste of a bitter burning. It seemed to cling to every surface, working its way deep into the folds of clothes and skin, and like an invisible blanket subdued everything it touched. The green was almost empty. Several of the shops were shuttered, including Pilate's Stores, which was an unheard-of event in midsummer. The ice cream stall was empty, locked shut against the side of an outbuilding. At the far corner of the green, a small knot of villagers were standing together talking, pointedly ignoring the few puzzled tourists who stood uncertainly beside their cars.

From the shadows of the church gate, PC Joe Vernon surveyed the scene. Finally he walked slowly down to his car and drove off along the road towards the Wirrim and the MacIntyre Cottage.

After a whole night fighting fire, Joe Vernon wanted little more than to go to bed. Nevertheless, after hearing of the disturbance outside the General Stores, he had felt he ought to speak to the vicar and Geoffrey Pilate straight away. But neither were anywhere to be seen. Miss Price at the Church had not seen Tom all day, and Mr Pilate was not answering the door.

There remained only Stephen MacIntyre to try.

No one answered his ring. The front door of the cottage was locked, but the back door had been left open. Joe entered, and noticed immediately that the taste of smoke grew heavier inside, despite the coolth and emptiness. Then he saw the trail of ash leading up the stairs.

Five minutes later, Joe Vernon emerged from the cottage, and his face was grim.

On the way back, the road passed a bulldozed hedge. Behind it, a black wet mess of stalks and churned stained earth stretched to the hill brow, shining dully in the sun. Joe thought of Neil Hopkins, whose field this had been, and who had last been seen lying in an ambulance, covered in a white cloth.

Burning, burning . . .

A larger crowd had gathered on the green. The entire fabric of the village's life was there. Young men and women, who should have been out on the fields and farms or commuting into Stanbridge, stood alongside their elders, those who ran the meeting hall, the bridge club and the Rambling Association. Ice-cream vendor and souvenir seller, farmhand and post-office lady, a multitude of Fordrace's inhabitants watched as PC Vernon stopped the car and levered himself slowly out of his seat. He leant back against the side of the car to face them.

"Any news then, Joe?" asked a young man on the edge of the throng.

"Little enough." PC Vernon surveyed the sea of faces with a slightly apprehensive air. There was an undue silence about them, an intentness which unnerved him.

"Well, Jack seen something," said the young man. "Get on and tell him, Jack."

A middle-aged man with a shock of sandy hair and a red and white complexion shifted from one foot to another and looked at the policeman through the corner of his eye. "It was yesterday afternoon I saw them," he said slowly, "about an hour before the fire."

"Saw who?" Joe Vernon asked.

"The MacIntyre boys, and the vicar. That's who you're interested in, ain't it?"

"It is."

"Well," said Jack, with the air of one who had told the story several times already that morning, "I was outside the Monkey, see, mid-afternoon, and George Cleever passed in his car, up towards the MacIntyre cottage. A bit later, he comes back again toward the village, with Michael MacIntyre beside him. Well, if it wasn't him, it was his twin, and I known him long enough to be sure. Anyway, soon after, maybe five minutes like, his brother runs out on to the road from the Harris field, and he's red and panting as if the devil were after him. He ran past me up to the house and was gone, all of twenty minutes or so, time enough to get myself another pint and do it some damage. Then he came back, walking down toward the village. And he says to me, "Jack, did you see George Cleever's car come by this way?" and I says yes I did. Then he nods and looks me in the eye and says "Jack, was my brother in the car with him?" and I says yes he was. Well, he looked so strange when I said that that I asks him whether he thinks he's kidnapped him, and him a councillor and all. And he says, and these were his exact words mind, "Yes he has," and heads off down the road."

The teller paused for breath and the crowd let out a collective sigh of appreciation at this mystery. Joe Vernon pressed his fingertips slowly and deliberately against the metal of the car door.

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier, Jack?" he said. "This might have a bearing on things."

"Clean forgot, Joe, what with the fire and all. Only remembered it when Lew said you were looking out for the MacIntyre boys."

"We're looking out for them all right," said a grim-faced woman. "After what they done."

Joe Vernon spoke quickly. "There's no proof of anyone doing anything," he said, "and I'll thank you all to remember that. We're following up those who've gone missing."

"Anyone seen George Cleever this morning?" someone asked.

"Didn't see him last night either."

"He passed in his car. I saw him. Took one look and drove."

There was a growl from the crowd, and a few curses. Sick men had risen from their beds that night and come with brooms and buckets to the fields. Joe Vernon made haste to interrupt.

"Jack, you said you saw the vicar too. Did you?"

"I did, and I'd tell you about it, if I could hear myself speak." A sizeable portion of the crowd, comprising many of the older villagers, were whispering loudly and urgently amongst themselves.

"Please! Mrs Gabriel, please!" Joe raised his voice to a previously unsuspected level. The whispering subsided. "Go on, Jack."

"It's just this. Stevie MacIntyre set off for Fordrace. No sooner that, than he was back, but this time in the vicar's car, with the vicar at the wheel. He must have met him in the lane. They turned in the Monkey's car park and were away again. Not ordinary goings on – eh, Joe? I had to have another pint."

The noise of the crowd rose again, discussing the revelation and its implications. "That would have been just before the fight with Geoff Pilate," someone said.

"Mr Pilate and Mr Cleever always were thick as thieves," said an old lady. "Mr Pilate was always going round to his place, spending half the evening with him."

"And where are they all?" an old man said. "Cleever, Pilate, those boys, the vicar. All missing, since the fire."

"It doesn't make any sense," said Joe. "We don't know that there's a connection." But his heart betrayed him. He remembered the fire-lashed earth in the church-yard trench.

"I'll tell you what the connection is." Mrs Gabriel, shorter than all, spoke at the very centre of the crowd, and the hubbub subsided. "It was the vicar who did it. He raised the cross and broke it. I told him the danger, but he wouldn't listen to me. Since then, what's gone right? The church has been defiled, and worse than that, a piece of the cross stolen: now fire has broken out again, and it won't be the last. The vicar's gone – perhaps dead, and the enemies are moving."

"Listen to me." Joe Vernon spoke, and everyone turned back to look at him. "We must remember that there is no proof that any of these things link up. It was a terrible night, but there is no proof that the fire was started deliberately. We have no proof at all. Remember that." He paused. The crowd waited.

"But I've just been up at the cottage. And there has been a fire there too, inside the house. That is itself a serious matter. Even on its own. So I want to speak to any of them – the MacIntyres, Mr Cleever, Mr Pilate. Urgently. And I want you to be patient while I try and find them."

He broke off, sensing a shift in the crowd's mood which he didn't understand. The whispering had started again.

"The fire is coming again," said one old man quietly.

"Above the crag," said another.

"And the seal is gone," said Mrs Gabriel.

Joe Vernon felt his command of the situation, if it had ever existed, had ebbed away entirely. Yet with his sense of powerlessness came a growing feeling of the need for action. He longed to give himself up to the mercy of events, to the momentum which was stirring in the crowd before him. He made one last plea for order.

"I shall first go in search of Mr Cleever," he said, "and see what light can be thrown on this."

"We shall all go!" cried an angry voice, and the crowd murmured in agreement.

"He'll explain himself to us," said another. It was the younger, and hotter-blooded voices that cried out agreement: the elder members of the crowd hung back, doubt and fear in their eyes.

"Find Pilate too, the swindling bastard," said someone at the back.

"He's shut up shop this morning," said someone else.

"Well, we'll knock on his door, then. He'll be happy to exchange a quiet word."

The crowd began to surge forward. Joe Vernon hesitated, then reached through the car window to take his helmet off the back seat. "All right then," he said. "Follow me, with the best of order, please."

Even so, he had to jog to keep ahead of the pressing throng. The younger villagers came first, then the elders at the back, shaking their heads, but seemingly unable to break away from the edges of the group. They crossed the green towards Mr Cleever's house. In his garden, one or two of the younger men seized bamboo canes from the flower beds and held them loosely by their sides as they crowded round the porch. Joe Vernon rang the bell. A long silence flooded out over the quiet group. Joe rang again. Then the muttering of the crowd began to grow, swelling louder and deeper, until with a burst of rage, the first blow fell on the thick oak door.

On the steep summer-hard dirt of the winding track, studded with rocks and little gullies which caught the foot and twisted it, Mr Hardraker's chariot was a heavy burden. Its bearers had been changed several times: only two among the company had not borne it at least twice, one whose arm was broken, and the other whose hands were tied. At the halfway point, where the path turned sharply at the head of a precipitous gully, Mr Pilate and Mr Cleever were bearing the weight. They struggled on, heads resolutely downward, mouths agape, studying the remorseless movement of their boots upon the dust. Alongside them the others toiled, arms hanging wearily, brows drenched. Only Vanessa Sawcroft, whose injury had spared her a turn at the pole, had energy to spare, and she used this to keep a firm eye on the prisoner.

Sarah now walked behind the chair. At first leading, she had begun to outstrip the rest when the incline became severe, and had been ordered to follow directly behind the chariot among the others. Her face was impassive, but her mind was racing; she took in the details of everything around her.

After her night at the Hardraker farmhouse, and Michael's appearance and rejection of her, Sarah had passed beyond despair into a kind of desperate calmness. The nightmare that surrounded her was so grotesque that her commonsense had rebelled against it. She refused to be overwhelmed.

Just ahead of her, Michael was walking. He was not as weary as the others – his head did not hang so heavily – but he seemed nervy and agitated. Twice, when the chariot had stopped for a change of hands, Sarah had seen him start, and stepping to the edge of the path overlooking the gully, gaze long and hard into the haze of the distance. If he had seen anything down there, he gave no sign. For the rest of the climb, he watched his companions unceasingly, his eyes darting from one to another. But he would not look at Sarah; once only he caught her eye, and then he flushed and turned away.

He seemed older than she had ever seen him, older in the way he gazed at others, and there were lines on his face where there had been none before. Yet at the same time, in occasional movements or expressions, he was the same younger brother that he had always been.

Ahead of her, the hood of an orange anorak hung over the side of the chair, bouncing with a horrid heaviness. There was no sign at all that the body was alive, but Sarah had not forgotten her first meeting with Mr Hardraker.

The purpose to it: that was what obsessed her. They had been climbing all afternoon with slow and single-minded determination. Why should they do this – scaling the Wirrim, taking such trouble to bring the catatonic old man? There was no conceivable reason. And yet . . .

Sarah squinted against the glare of the sun up across the dark cleft of the gully to High Raise, the brow of which was pimpled with cairns and barrows. Then suddenly she thought back to 'The Book of the Worm,' the picture on the farmhouse wall, and the carvings on the cross, and deep down she knew what they believed.

And she was being taken with them.

With a sudden clarity, she saw again in her mind's eye the creature on the cross, with all its loops and coils and teeth and claws.

And a cold weight settled in her stomach as she guessed why she was there.