Lord of the Hollow Dark (22 page)

Light at last, moonlight, but little of it! She came upon a lancet window, scarcely more than an arrow loop, open to the air. Through the aperture, she made out that monkey-puzzle tree, the pond, and the yew beyond it, dimly; this reassured her that an outside world still existed; she had begun to wonder if this were not another nightmare. Up, up, up.

And then her head bumped hard against something-not stone, but wood. In the blackness, she must have mounted to the very top of the stair. Was there no way out? Was this the roof that her poor head had bumped? Shifting Michael to her left arm, she pushed upward with her right. Something yielded slightly. It must be a trap door, and she found that by climbing the remaining few steps and at the same time thrusting against the trap, she could force her way through. Should she?

There was precious little choice. As silently as she might, she lifted the trap. It seemed to be encumbered by some-thing-yes, a rug. Awkward though the operation was, at last, without making much noise, she climbed through the hole. The trap door slipped out of her grasp and fell inward upon its hinge, to to the floor; but the rug mercifully muffled its fall.

Now there was light, although again only the moon’s. She stood in a smallish room, apparently someone’s old study, with a large desk, bookcases, a high stool, a clavichord in one corner, small pictures in heavy frames on the walls. Light from overhead showed her these things, for a large skylight seemed to be the only natural illumination of this study. It was a fine small Persian carpet that she had displaced by thrusting up the trap door.

To her left was an open doorway. No sound, no movement, and no trace of Sweeney. Could he be concealed somewhere else in this apparent suite of rooms, hands itching to fasten upon her when she turned a corner? Well, she couldn’t simply stand here: she must face down the terror. She walked through the open doorway into a room of similar size.

This was a bedroom, and what appeared to be a small dressing room lay beyond it. A handsome armoire of mahogany gleamed in the moonlight—there were small regular windows here—and inlaid chests of drawers, and a table with empty decanters upon it, and a large bed, also inlaid at its head with some design. Everything was dim. There were fine little paintings upon the walls here, too, and what seemed to be a framed sculptured inscription, a fragment. This caught her eye because the moonlight fell directly upon it. She could even read the short inscription: “Gude at neid.”

Even in her present dismay, Marina had an eye for lovely household things; perhaps she was using that frail reed of taste to keep her sane through these trials. Look at the furniture, Marina: isn’t it nice? There’s a world outside, Marina, really there is, and all sorts of pretty things in it. Keep telling yourself that, Marina dear.

Her glance strayed from the stone inscription to the headboard of the bed, and then downward. Her vision encountered something remarkable. A person lay in the bed!

For a mad second she thought that it must be Sweeney, he playing the Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood. “But what great eyes you have, grandmother... what great teeth you have, grandmother... what great....” A snatch from some American comic song came into her frantic mind: “Little Red Ridin’ Hood, you sure are lookin’ good. You’re everything a big bad wolf could want.”

Yet, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph be thanked, it wasn’t Sweeney. The face there upon the silken pillow, with the embroidered counterpane drawn up to its white-bearded chin, was so ghastly pale that at first she hadn’t distinguished it from pillow and sheets. Also it was ghastly thin. It was an old, old man’s face, the eyelids withered, the gaunt nose high-bridged. It was a face of power. Some line of poetry from school ran round and round in Marina’s head: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.” How merciful that those eyelids were shut!

Staring fascinated, she thought she never had seen anyone who looked so old. This face reminded her of someone’s. Whose—the Archvicar’s? Oh, no, that couldn’t be; she must fancy that merely; she was going all silly, what with the strain. Should she speak, ask for help, wake this sleeping man?

No: what help could this poor emaciated thing under the counterpane offer against Sweeney or anybody else? Who might this be? She knew too well the faces of all the Disciples. Might this be some old servant of the Inchburns, given lodging in this tower for what life remained to him? The top of a tower was an odd place to bed an invalid. But she had more urgent perplexities.

Turning from the bed-with a certain creepy misgiving that those wrinkled eyelids might open once she had looked the other way-she went back into the study. On the far side of that room was a stout door; it must open upon the other rooms of this tower and the main staircase downward. Would the knob turn before her eyes, as it had in her bedroom? Was Sweeney just outside? No, it didn’t turn. She grasped it. The door was locked.

This meant that Sweeney could not get in. Also it meant that she could not get out, except by the hidden way she had come. Michael wriggled against her shoulder and settled himself back to sleep as she vacillated there.

Logically, it was possible for her to remain in this suite, like a hermit, until morning came: there was even a couch in the study upon which she might curl up. For that matter, she might lie hid here until thirst and hunger drove her down. But someone would come to feed and tend the old man in the bed, and discover her. Something told her that she mustn’t remain up here even a few minutes longer. She must go back down that grim, dark back stair.

But wait: there must be a key to this study door somewhere. It would have been foolish to rummage the desk and all the cupboards. There was nothing for it but to wake the poor old man and ask him for the key. She returned to the other room and approached the bed.

She spoke softly, so as not to startle him. “I do beg your pardon, sir, but...”

She was addressing an empty bed. There was no one in the room. There was no one in the study from which she had just now come.

Could he have gone down the little stair below the trap door? But how could he have got past her to do that, and where could he have found the strength and agility? Astonishment overcoming dread, she peered into the dressing room beyond the bed: no one there. There remained the tall armoire. If the old man had shut himself in, he must be mad. But there was a key in the armoire doors, turned in its wards: the wardrobe being locked from the outside, she had no need to open it.

Had that old man been an hallucination, like her nightmare of the first night in the Lodging? She felt like shrieking now, but clapped a hand over her mouth, remembering that Sweeney might be searching for her.

If there had been any old man, and if he had gone anywhere, it could have been only down the secret stair by which she had come. Now she must descend that stair, for she could not possibly abide another moment in this high suite at the top of the world; she was gasping for breath, as if the air were rarefied. She had left the trap door in the study open, and back through it she went now.

Sweeney might have left her bedroom by this time; she could listen sharp at that little door to tell. Or if she dared not reenter her room, she could proceed on down, looking for other exits from the stair. In her nightmare, that stair had extended far below the level of the earth; but of course that could not be. It must cease at the cellars, if not sooner. What could she do but go down?

So down she went, down and down and down, past the lancet window, past those walled-up doorways that she could know only by touch upon the stones. Presently she was at another tiny landing, and felt about cautiously for a doorway, and found it-and also the wooden back of a door. She must be just outside her own bedroom. Oh, Michael, don’t whimper!

With infinite pains to make no noise, she put her ear against that bolted door. Two men were talking, and she knew who: Sweeney and the Archvicar.

“My head aches like hell,” Sweeney was saying.

“I don’t wonder,” the Archvicar was telling him. “Rejoice, Sweeney, that the
kalanzi
hasn’t burnt out your brain altogether.”

Were the two of them in ambush for her—the loathsome Sweeney, and that “brutal and licentious soldier”? Did they expect to make her their doll common? She withdrew from the door, turned back to the stair, and descended in barefoot silence, down, down, down.

Two more stopped-up doorways; another arrow loop or gun port, the only windows in this lower part of the stair; down, down, down. Marina began to dread, irrationally, that she might find herself in the tunnel or passage which led to the hall where the naked masked figures danced.

Yet finally the stair ended in a kind of closet, stone-flagged, damp. There was a door to it, and a little dim light filtered round the edges of the door. This door was double-bolted from within. She drew the bolts as cautiously as she could, though they were rusty; she was lucky, with her tender fingers, to be able to draw them at all. They squeaked. She opened the door.

Then at last she shrieked, and the baby squealed too.

A big man sat watchful at a table, regarding her. Between his fingers he balanced a short black-hafted knife, what the Scots called a
sgean-dhu,
the forefinger of one hand pressing against the haft, the forefinger of the other against the shining point, delicately. The hands were hairy. “He must have a very tough skin,” Marina thought, with wild irrelevance.

Making out who she was, the big man deftly slid the black knife into his stocking top, and rose. “What a welcome intrusion!” he said. “I’d wondered these past two days what lay behind that bolted old door, and what might emerge.” He smiled pleasantly.

It was Coriolan, that genteel tramp or whatever he might be. Any outsider, even a tramp, was safer company than the folk above stairs. “Oh, I’m glad to see you, Captain Bain,” Marina exclaimed, and then blushed all over. She was in her dressing gown, barefoot, covered all over with cobwebs, her hair a rat’s nest, and the baby squalling. Also, in that instant, she remembered that Bain, or Coriolan, was Sweeney’s partner in the subterranean work. Would Sweeney soon be down to snap her up?

She was about to faint. Coriolan saw it, for with one stride he was beside her, taking the baby gently, easing Marina into a battered chair. “Come,” he said, “am I so dreadful looking as all that? I know: strong tea’s what you need, and I’d already put it on against Sweeney’s return. We’ve a little paraffin stove down here for such comforts-found it in a rubbish room.”

Michael’s outcries having subsided, Coriolan bestowed him on a nearby cot, covered him with a blanket, and brought Marina tea in a tin cup. The man was so cheerful and helpful that, even in her present plight, Marina tried to think of something civil to say to him. “Your wife is a lucky woman, Captain Bain.”

At once she knew this for a
faux pas:
tramps don’t have wives. But this man, or gentleman, was not vexed at all. “I never married: too footloose, you know, and too spendthrift. I say, you’ve drunk that tea already; you did need it. I’ll pour more.”

After that, he sat down opposite her at the table, taking no tea himself. “I’ve come up from below, you see: we’ve made good headway there, and the rest of our crew went upstairs hours ago. Where can Mr. Sweeney have got to? He’ll miss his tea.”

Certainly he took her abrupt appearance imperturbably. If she could confide in anyone in this house, it must be this man. “He was trying to force his way into my room,” Marina said. “He
did
force his way in, so I slipped out and ran up and down that stair.”

Coriolan-Bain looked politely sympathetic, but did not seem much surprised; Marina was chagrined to find her misadventure taken so calmly, but perhaps this man never was excited.

“Really! Alec Balgrummo had his shortcomings, Heaven knows, but he’d have allowed no such troubling of guests in his day. Perhaps Sweeney found drink or something worse; he’s been under grave strain, poor chap, not liking things down below. He doesn’t much care for me either, I’m afraid. Ah, well, if he turns up here, I’ll have a word with him; don’t be ill at ease.” He gave her a keen glance. “You say you ran
upstairs
as well as down? All dust and silence there, I suppose? I believe no one’s sleeping higher than the second floor.”

“Someone was there, at the very top-I think,” Marina told him. In this man’s easy presence, she was regaining balance. She described her hallucination-if it had been that—at the top of the house.

Coriolan did not smile. “He looked very much like our friend the Archvicar, you said? That follows; I’d suspected—but there, you’ve had enough alarums and excursions for one night. No, your old man certainly didn’t come through that door you emerged from, and you say that the Archvicar and Sweeney were in your room, the only other exit from your little ancient stair. Well, this house is big enough for a hundred stowaways, strange enough for a hundred different illusions. I’ll say this: whatever you found or didn’t find in that room, it wasn’t meant for you: you were an unintentional interloper, so to speak. If the old gentleman is up there at all, he’ll not trouble you again, I fancy: he’ll reserve his attentions for such as Fraulein von Kulp.”

She went very pale again.

“Now whatever am I saying?” He was contrite. “Actually, I was jesting, more or less. I’ve no way of knowing what’s at work in this house. Why was I sent here? To be a navvy, apparently: I’d never done so much pick work in all my...”

From somewhere beneath their feet, a thud sounded. Marina clutched the table.

“Thinking of the Third Laird?” Coriolan smiled at her. “I see you know the legend. But as for that crash just now, there’s a natural explanation: another rock fragment falling from the roof-if it can be called a roof-of the passage we’ve just cleared out. Oh, it’s been chancy work, and the end’s not yet; Sweeney’s not to be much blamed for the state of his nerves. But given a few more hours of labor, we should be able to let even you ladies pass as far as the vestibule of the Weem. Beyond that, one guess is as good as another.”