Limbo Lodge (15 page)

The three set off at a rapid trot, going westwards.

“I don’t know – I wish—” Herodsfoot began uneasily. “Was that woman telling a
true
tale?”

Tylo took no notice of this. “Best not hang-stand here, lordship,” he urged. “Come quick off this hill.”

It was plain that he regretted losing the company of Doctor Talisman; he looked after her sadly. He seemed to feel that her presence conferred some protection on the group.

Dido was sorry, too. Doctor Talisman was one of the most sensible people she had ever come across and – despite the fact that Tylo was a shrewd boy and knew his way all about the island – Dido felt that Lord Herodsfoot, though he had a kind heart and engaging manners, was like a loose cannon on a ship’s deck: there was simply no knowing where he would roll off to next. It’s lucky at least that most of the folk here seem to like him, she thought.

“So tell more about this Mario Ruiz feller,” Dido asked Tylo as they jogged along a winding glade, hung about with dangling creepers and frilled with tree-ferns. “If he’s an Angrian, why the dickens does he choose to live all on his lonesome in the forest? Does he have a spice plantation like the Ereiras?”

“No, no. He humble fellow. Not rich.”

“What does he live on?”

“Hot spring near house. People sometime come, bathe, drink water.”

“And pay him for that? I see. I wonder
why
he likes to live alone?”

“He wifie die. He a bit noddle-stricken.” Tylo tapped his forehead.

“Bats in the belfry, you mean? I hope he’s harmless.”

“Now-and-now,” said Tylo.

Dido reflected that people in Aratu whose wives died tended to grow peculiar. There was John King, shutting himself up in Limbo Lodge; and this Ruiz, choosing to settle in the jungle by a hot spring.

“Well, he sure fixed to live at the back of beyond.”

Their way now led them up a deep narrow gorge with a watercourse beside the path, which was half hidden underneath juicy vegetation.

Lord Herodsfoot became very silent after Talisman left them, and rode for over two hours wrapped in thought.

Coming out of this meditation at last, he suddenly asked Dido: “Do you think she was angry with me?”

There could be no doubt who the
she
was that he referred to.

“Well yes – I reckon she was; a bit,” said Dido bluntly.

“But why? Just for teasing her? Because she lays claim to magical powers? I mean,
really
!” said Herodsfoot. “I’m sure she’s a good doctor and a clever girl – but one has to draw the line somewhere! Don’t you think?”

“Mylord Oklosh,” said Tylo very positively, “Doc Tally come-soon-been right-up Kanikke. She learn touch trouble-stone, write true question on black sand. She learn do all these things with Aunt Tala’aa. Own sister to Night Woman . . .”

“How can you be so sure?” Herodsfoot said sceptically. “Pray, when is all this supposed to have taken place?”

“When she see Aunt Tala’aa. Time with Aunt Tala’aa go—” Tylo made an expressive gesture, moving his hands back and forth.

“I don’t see how all that
could
have happened – just in one night,” argued Herodsfoot obstinately. “Really – surely – she is just an ordinary person – like you and me and Dido here. After all – she only arrived in this island two days ago. She
told
me so.”

We ain’t so blooming ordinary, Dido thought: I never before met
anybody
like Herodsfoot here – or Tylo, for that matter – and I guess
I’m
the only one on this island who comes from Battersea . . .

There was a loud crack of thunder overhead and a few heavy drops of rain began to splash down.

“I hope we ain’t too far from the wocho of this Ruiz feller,” Dido called to Tylo, who was riding about twenty yards ahead. “Sounds like dirty weather coming up—”

“Yes, must make haste—” he called back, and kicked his pony into a canter.

Ten seconds later a terrifying thing happened. The whole cliffside on their left, loosened perhaps by storms, suddenly became detached and roared down on to the trail with an ear-splitting booming rumble which reverberated up and down the narrow gully for several minutes after the first fall, as more and more fragments were dislodged from the rockface and followed the first landslide.

The horses of Dido and Herodsfoot screamed with terror and reared back from the huge pile of rock and earth which now blocked the way.

“Save us!” gasped Dido. “Tylo! TYLO! – Where are you?”

No answer came back from the monstrous heap of smoking rubble in front of them.

And at this moment the gathering storm broke in all its fury: rain lashed down in torrents, tremendous gusts of wind battered them, thunder cracked and pealed overhead, blue-white lightning made the scene stand out in nightmarish clarity.

“Oh my goodness
gracious
me!” lamented Herodsfoot. “That poor poor unfortunate boy! I fear he has indubitably perished under this shocking avalanche. There is no way in the world that we can rescue him! It is only by the mercy of providence that we ourselves did not likewise perish.”

He seemed likely to go on in this vein for some time, but Dido said, “We’d best not stop here a-grieving and a-chewing it over, lordship. I’m as sorry as can be about Tylo, he was a right decent feller, but it ain’t noways healthy here, we’d best go back. No
way
of going forward; and more of the cliff above us looks likely to come down. You can see the nags ain’t happy—”

“I fear you are in the right,” sighed Herodsfoot. “You do not think there is any chance that, if we called the boy’s name, he might be able to respond?”

“Can try again, but I doubt it,” Dido said. She yelled, “
Ty – lo
!” at the top of her lungs, so that her voice echoed between the sides of the ravine.

The only result was that some more pieces of rock and soil came clattering down on to the existing heap.

“No, mister, it ain’t a bit of use. If he
is
there – on the far side of that devilish tip – he can’t hear us, not with all the ruckus going on. All we can do is make tracks ourselves before we’re pounded into mincemeat.”

She turned her horse, and set off at a fast clip, trusting to the beast to find his own footing, for the rain in her face blinded her. Herodsfoot followed, letting out a stream of ejaculations and objurgations relating to the weather and the fate of Tylo and their own horrid plight.

“What shall we
do
?” he kept demanding. “What ever shall we do, Dido? Where shall we go now? What do you think is best to be done?”

“Well,” said Dido, “we have to find the house of this Ruiz, for that’s where Doc Tally said she’d meet us. And I remember Tylo saying earlier that there were two ways to get there and we’d take the quicker one – but he said there was another way over the top of the ridge. Best we go back and find that, if we can. There was a clump of nutmeg shrubs where he was telling me that; I remember those, just at the turn-off point. Trouble is, everything looks so different with the rain slamming down.”

“You don’t think we should endeavour to take shelter for a while from the elements?” suggested Lord Herodsfoot plaintively. The wind lashed them, the rain slapped them, huge branches, tossing, impeded their path.

“Nowhere
to
take shelter,” returned Dido briefly. Rubbing her eyes against the rain, she peered ahead. “Ho! I believe that’s the nutmeg clump – now we have to go up over that rise, and then kinda bear right, so as to get back towards where he was heading before. It’s too bad the nags ain’t in better heart.”

The horses were nervous and weary, upset by the storm. Arriving at a grove of tall, broad-leaved trees, Herodsfoot proposed again that they stop for a few minutes. “I believe the storm is abating,” he pointed out hopefully. “A short respite may put new heart into our mounts.”

It soon appeared that Lord Herodsfoot had a personal motive for wishing to halt at that particular spot. The sky was clearing and he had recognised, up above them, the unmistakable outline of the Place of Stones.

“Oh, I would give
worlds
– all the worlds I have to give – to pay another visit to that remarkable site.”

At this, Dido was really shocked. The loss of Tylo – and their predicament – seemed to her incontestable reasons why they should keep going and cover as much ground as they possibly could before dusk fell, in order to reach their destination in daylight. But Herodsfoot had already dismounted and fastened his reins to a tree – she did not dare let him go off on his own, for heaven only knew how long he would stay up there, measuring, sketching, taking notes – and then he would very likely go down the wrong side of the hill and get himself lost . . .

So, reluctant, disapproving, and irate, Dido followed him up the hill. One circumstance, she noticed, made the climb easier than it had been on their previous visit – the heavy rain had rinsed off the dust which had formerly coated the rock surface. Although wet, it was not so slippery as it had been before, and the warm rock dried off quickly as soon as the rain ended.

“We mustn’t stop there longer than
five
minutes!” Dido called, and wished with all her heart that Talisman were there to reinforce this command.

“Yes . . . yes . . . very well, very well,” he muttered distractedly. “I cannot tell you how very significant the arrangement of these stones appears to me – how closely related the pattern is to – for instance – the game of Pong Hau K’i – or the game of Mulnello Quadruplo – (mind you, there is grave doubt as to whether that game was ever actually
played
– according to report, each player had five men, which were entered in alternate turns of play. When all five were in place, they had the power of moving in any direction to a contiguous point)—”

Herodsfoot’s voice dried up. He came to a total stop.

Dido, just behind him, observed that he had turned chalk-white. He was staring at the ground as if he had seen a deadly snake.

Coming up alongside, Dido too stared at the ground, and found her own breathing suddenly blocked at a point somewhere between her chest and her throat. No air would go in, no air could come out.

She leaned forward, put her hands on her knees, and managed, with a gasp, to inhale.

On the dust, inscribed with a finger-bone just as Talisman had left them, were Herodsfoot’s list of names: Algernon Francis Sebastian Fortinbras Carsluith, Baron Herodsfoot.

Everywhere else, on the slightly dome-shaped surface of the Place of Stones, the dust had been washed, blown-swept, sluiced away by the storm. But just in this one spot the surface of the rock was quite dry; the letters remained in the dust exactly as Talisman had written them.

Dido picked up a great sodden ukka-leaf, which had blown up the hill, and swiftly wiped the words away, scrubbing the ground hard until there was nothing to be seen but some streaks of wet grit.

“Come along, my lord,” she said briskly. “We must not waste any more time hereabouts. Dear knows how long it will take us to get from this place to where Mario Ruiz lives.”

She caught hold of Herodsfoot’s hand and gave it a yank, obliging him to move away from the patch of ground where his name had been written.

“That’s the dandy – come along – those nags will soon take a chill, so wet as they are, if they are left standing any longer. And
we
shall take a chill too—”

Gabbling out whatever random cautions and words of advice came into her head, she urged her companion back into the saddle, and untied his horse’s tether. Once he made as if to push his spectacles off, by the earpiece, and she cried out sharply, “
Don’t
do that, or you’ll go and break them again—” and he gave her a startled look and desisted. Otherwise he seemed like a man in the grip of nightmare or paralysis; he sat his horse, staring straight ahead, and made no attempt to guide it, leaving it to follow where Dido led.

She found a kind of deer-track which crossed over a shrubby hillside and then led down to lower ground. Over to the right of this route, she hoped, was the gorge they had been threading when the fatal landslide occurred.

Did
she
make that happen? Dido wondered – Talisman? So he’d be
obliged
to go back to the stone circle and see his name? Did she lay out the whole business on purpose to teach him a lesson?

Somehow Dido could not believe this of Talisman. She might be impatient, yes, might lose her temper, yes; but to set a whole trap for the poor fellow – involving a storm, a landslide, and the loss of Tylo – no, no, surely not? Tally’s a
good
person, Dido thought; so’s he, for that matter, not an ounce of harm in the poor dear gentleman – it’s too bad they got acrost each other.

Now the track ran down again into forest, thick, dark and green.

Dear only hope this is the right way, thought Dido apprehensively, for once we’re in these trees you can’t tell which way you’re going, north, south, east or west – you might as well be in the main drain under Petticoat Lane. Don’t I jist wish I had one o’ those Memory Birds that the Forest People take around with them!

To her utter astonishment, no sooner had this thought framed itself than one of the little white, pink-headed birds fluttered down out of the branches above and settled on her horse’s brow-band.

“Well – I’ll – be jiggered!” gasped Dido. “Lord Herodsfoot – Frankie! look and see what’s come!”

He gave her a lacklustre glance, hardly seeming to take in what she said, and rode on in silence. After a mile or two he said, “Did
you
see those words, Dido? Or did I dream them?”

“No, the words were there, mister, sure enough,” said Dido. “I reckon there’s a lot more in Doc Tally than meets the eye. I guess you just gotta put that in your kettle and boil it . . .”

Herodsfoot made a sound like a man who has just swallowed a raw egg, ice cold.