Sleepwalker (25 page)

Davis knew from Irene's cry that something was wrong. He turned, and a shape like a dark bird of prey skimmed through the dark, nearly flying across the stone floor, and was on Davis.

Davis grappled with the king, and worked the leather body to the floor. The shapeless skin gathered itself, but Davis stopped it with his hands, and with his thoughts.

The king knew. He knew what was about to happen, and he could hear what Davis was thinking, reading his prayers as he would have read written words.

We mourned you, said Davis in his mind, in his heart. We did not know what had happened. It is a terrible thing to be the living left behind. You do not know where the lost one has gone. You do not hear the step or the laugh.

Where do you go, now that you leave us, now that we go forward without you, into fortune and misfortune, and other loves, and age? Do not come to us, we cannot help you. It is you who help us, triumphant in your sleep. Look—what I have for you, honored, beloved dead.

They were in his hands, the circlet crown, and the sword hilt. For you, and for Margaret. These treasures, but more, our memories, and—our memories being so much of what we are—our lives. We bury them with you. Keep them for us, as you keep yourselves.

Davis sucked in a long, trembling breath. Warm blood trickled down the inside of his pant legs.

He gathered the king in his arms, and leaped down into the grave. He reached up to receive the treasures from Irene's hands. He thrust the hilt into the ancient hands. He placed the golden circlet around the ebony head. He turned, and could not escape.

He tried to climb from the grave, but sank to his knees. The king will not let me go, thought Davis. The dead will not let me live.

They are not finished. What more do they want from me?

But warm hands reached down for him, and friendly voices called his name.

His friends pulled him out of the darkness, onto the floor of the Minster.

Davis was weak, but Skip helped him to his feet.

“It's all right, then,” said Skip. “He's going to be fine.”

They were all silent, gazing into the grave. Irene ran to one of the candles, and hurried back with it. The dark tilted, and shifted around them as she approached.

“He is quiet now,” said Irene.

The hands held the hilt. The head rolled slightly and the circlet crown rolled with it.

The body was still.

Davis could sense it. All over York the broken fragments of darkness dissolved. The thrashing spirit was asleep. And not only in the city. It was within him, too, this spreading, invisible light.

“May he rest in peace,” breathed Langton.

For a moment no one could speak.

“Shall I bury him, then?” asked Skip.

32

Dr. Higg woke.

Davis and Langton were the first two faces to greet him. Langton had lost a good deal of weight, but looked quite fit. Davis looked the same as always, although he carried a pair of crutches.

Such dreams.

Time had slipped. He had lost days, he sensed. Longer.

He struggled to clear his mind. “You all have some sort of story to tell,” said Higg. “You've been involved in some sort of mischief.”

Even Langton, it seemed. That was very unlikely, and yet Langton had that hen-on-an-egg look about him. He had been involved in something, and now he felt smug about it.

Higg sat upright. He was very hungry. The strangest dreams. The blackened face before his that would not let him wake. The whisper in his ear.

All gone now. It was morning, and bright.

“Davis can tell you everything,” said Langton. “There isn't really all that much to tell. You look well, William.”

Davis did not know how much to tell him at once, although Dr. Hall had suggested that he was robust enough to take any amount of shock. His vital indicators were all quite sound, Dr. Hall had reported. “The mystery is still irritating,” he said. “But I'm always delighted to see a patient recover.”

The hardest part would be the news about Jane. Her body had been found that very morning, bumping the landing near Lendal Bridge, miles from Bishopthorpe, and upriver. Whatever the children had seen in the water at Bishopthorpe, it had not been Jane, although perhaps the handbag they had found floating had inspired them to see the woman it had belonged to.

Davis was pleased that news of Mandy was, at last, good. She had been found wandering in a daze near Overton, several miles west of York. She had suffered a concussion, and had been confused about what had happened and where she was. A cow had, it seemed, awakened her by nudging her with what Mandy had described as “the dullest curiosity imaginable.” She had suffered hypothermia and, it had been felt, the beginnings of pneumonia. She had stumbled into a farm owned by a local historian who had once studied medicine. He was a handsome, ruddy-faced widower, and he insisted on nursing Mandy himself at the farm. Davis had spoken to her on the telephone, and she had sounded delighted with life.

Peter would never know that the Skeldergate Man had been using him, all along, contriving to use Peter's skills to give him the power to walk.

“How is everyone?” asked Dr. Higg.

“Everyone is well,” said Davis. “Almost everyone. There has been a little trouble.”

Trouble. Higg hated the sound of that.

“How is the Skeldergate Man?”

“Resting comfortably.”

Higg turned away. “I had one dream stranger than all the others. I dreamed that I was in a room with the Skeldergate Man. In the lab, where I was sitting up with him. And he moved. Moved, and turned his head.” The memory made him look toward the daylight.

Davis and Langton did not speak.

“He turned his head,” said Dr. Higg. “And he looked at me.”

Late in the morning, after he had eaten, and after all the bad news imaginable had been fed to him along with the chicken pie, Dr. Higg got out of bed and sat in a chair. He wanted to be far from York, far from this hospital room. He had always loved mornings in the Mediterranean for that really fierce light, the light that sweeps the Appian Way and makes a man wish he could live forever.

Such sorrow. Not disbelief. No, he believed it all.

Plain, undiluted sorrow. It was especially bitter news about Peter. He had been such a bright young man. He had been cremated yesterday.

Such bright young people. Such a waste.

Once he had found a jaw belonging to a Neanderthal, in the Dolomites, on a stormy summer afternoon. And he had stood there holding that crescent of bone, and felt that he was a part of something so wonderful he did not have to understand it. It simply was. And he was a treasure, for all his mortality, because he was human.

He would have to stop spending so much time remembering. He had work to do.

“That dream,” said Dr. Higg. “That dream of the Skeldergate Man looking at me.” Dr. Higg sighed. “That wasn't a dream, was it.”

Davis made a smile, not quite sad—kind, really. He did not speak for a moment. “No,” he answered at last. “It was not a dream.”

Rain pattered against the window. Davis held Irene. It was late at night, perhaps even the next morning. They had awakened and made love, and now lay listening to the water chiming in the drainpipe.

Dr. Hall had pronounced Irene very lucky. Her scalp was only slightly lacerated. The human skull was strong, but the brain, Dr. Hall had said, was so much water. Irene could have been killed. As it was, she did not even need aspirin any longer.

“Once,” said Irene, gazing into the dark, “I was going to be a physician. But the old things called to me. I wanted to know what happened long ago. Perhaps I wanted to give life to the dead.” She was quiet for a moment. “I think of Jane.”

Davis lay staring into the darkness he shared with her. “I know.”

At last Irene asked, “Are you thinking of Jane, too?”

“I'm thinking of everyone. But Jane, too. What a terrible way to die.”

“It is a world of terrible things, Davis. We live and we are sad some days and then some days we are happy.”

The autopsy had been finished that afternoon. The police were saying nothing, because they were mystified. She had been strangled by having a foreign object, some weapon both long and supple, thrust down her throat. Like a length of leather. This was the second such death recently. The Skeldergate team would be questioned tomorrow. The police would be very unhappy with what they would hear, and, furthermore, they would not believe it.

“Do you suppose the police will want to dig up the Skeldergate Man?” asked Irene.

“I hope not.”

“He will be an important witness.”

“We will dissuade them.”

“The Skeldergate Man needs a long rest. But what do police, or anyone else, know about death?”

The rain fell more heavily, a sound that filled Davis with peace.

Nothing, thought Davis. We all know nothing.

He held Irene in his arms, and slept.

This time the lake was still, and empty. There was no wind. The opposite shore was a dark line of land under a blank sky. He was alone. The water rippled, and then smoothed again, like writing erasing and unfolding itself.

No one walked the distant shore. There was only the sky and the water. He gazed across the empty lake, knowing that she would never come again.

And then there was nothing, only sleep, and the tireless promise of the rain.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1991 by Michael Cadnum

Cover design by Kat JK Lee; photograph courtesy of the author

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2358-0

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