Sleepwalker (24 page)

But she could not help wondering where she was. Where she was, and why she was wet. It could not be blood, she told herself. It is too cold for blood. I must, she decided, open my eyes, and look.

Perhaps she slept. When she woke again, she found herself with her eyes opening, and seeing light glitter off a wall. It was a stone wall, and moss was green in the crack of light. She was underground. There was a beautiful sound, like the chattering of budgies. It was, she decided, the musical tinkle of water.

So now I am in a very strange place, she thought. And how did I get here, alone? She stretched an arm to touch the wall, and then her arm shrank back.

She was not alone. There was someone here. But there was something very wrong. So wrong she could not think it for a moment.

There was a body there, just beyond her head. But the body was not breathing. Then, she told herself, if the body is not breathing, it is dead.

The body moved. It was the whisper of leather, the hiss of coarse weave being drawn with the movement, the sound, too, somewhere muffled, of metal rotating, clicking into place. As though the person with her had a metal skeleton.

But it was breathing, she told herself. Listen to it. Long, slow breaths, perhaps one every minute, more like something pretending to breathe than a human being sustaining himself on air. Breathing because it remembered that is what the living do.

Irene was almost never afraid. There was simply no use, she knew, in being afraid now. She sat up suddenly. There was bright, savage pain, and then something worse.

A snakelike arm wrapped around her neck, and squeezed her until she could not breathe. She felt the fury of this Man, this ancient fury that would not let her go. She struggled with both hands, and then felt the strength bleed from her body.

The arm was a leather cord around her neck. This was how she would die, she thought, wrestling with the being she could not see, falling back onto the wet earth.

The arm let her go. He does not want me dead, she thought. He wants my warmth. He wants to keep me alive and near him, as a man might keep a fire burning. He only needs my warmth.

But she was up again, calling Davis's name, struggling to be free of this leather blanket, this living, slithering leather frame that engulfed her, and covered her mouth with its hands.

She could not move. Her pain and the Man's embrace knotted her. It was a long struggle, and with every movement the leather embrace tightened.

It was then that she thought she heard it. How amusing the mind could be. Even then she appreciated the humor of it. She thought she heard Davis call her name. Just once. It was exactly like his voice, wondering, earnest, doubtful. Would this be her last thought? Imagining that she heard the sound of Davis's voice?

Only when she felt the leather hands touch her skin again, and not only the skin of her face, but the skin under her blouse, feeling her, needing the warmth of her body, did she begin to scream.

30

It was in one of the neglected trenches, long ago measured, scraped, screened, and photographed. It was a trench where work had not been taking place, he supposed, since the beginning of the dig. That was how he spotted it: the new crack in the side of the trench, down where the groundwater was deepest.

Davis would not have noticed it if he had not made himself familiar with the site long before this. It was hardly remarkable that the police had missed it. It was a slight fissure in the earth, nothing more.

Davis crept down the steps, and nearly slipped when he reached the bottom. This was all cold muck, and he doubted, now that he examined the fissure, that it was anything but a subsidence, a slippage. It was nothing of any special interest.

And yet he stayed where he was. Some of the Etruscan tombs, when they were discovered, looked like this. Some of them were found when a plow broke through the field, through the roof of a tomb, into ancient treasure.

He crept even closer to the fissure, and peered in. There was something here, after all. He could feel the cold of a great inner chamber, a cavern. There was a tinkle of groundwater somewhere far within.

It was a vault, the remains, he imagined, of an ancient fortress tower, perhaps the bottom story of a bastion. Once it had stood beside the river. Now it was underground, a reservoir.

On another day, in another place, this would have been an exciting discovery. He was about to climb to his feet, when he stopped himself. He took a sharp breath and tilted his head.

Surely he was imagining things, but it sounded as though someone inside this darkness had just whispered his name. He had heard it, but he had also not-heard it—hoping for it.

Because there was nothing here but emptiness. The cold exhalation from the earth kept Davis where he was, kneeling and wishing his cuts did not throb. His own pain did not interest him, really. It was the thought of Irene that burned in him.

This opening was large enough—a man could squeeze through it, and yet this was not the time for exploration. If only there were any real sound from inside, any evidence that Irene was here.

Kneeling there, listening, he heard nothing that sounded human. No sound that indicated that this was where Irene was hidden. It was an empty chamber—a scientific discovery, one that would have astounded him on any other day, but which today meant only that Irene was still lost.

He called her name, knowing as he did it that he was calling to empty dark, empty earth. The answer was silence, worse than silence—the absence of any answer at all. It was a cry into a void.

He dragged himself to his feet, and slogged through the brown water. As his hands gripped the cold steel of the ladder he heard it.

But surely not. It was impossible. He made himself listen harder, and then he was certain. It was a scream. It was Irene. It was Irene, trapped somewhere in the chamber, within the earth.

Davis dived toward the crack, and fought the wet clay, gasping, jackknifing his body. He had been wrong—the fissure was not wide enough for a man. Indeed, it seemed to be closing on him.

And then he was within, sprawling on a mud-slick stone floor. The music of the splashing water was louder, and the dark was nearly perfect.

He called her name.

“It is dangerous here, Davis,” said Irene somewhere in the dark. The sound of her voice ignited a feeling of joy that was nearly pain. Then something kept her from speaking, muffling her.

Davis fought himself upright, and it was as though a whip lashed his neck. A leather strap wrapped around his throat, and a leg snaked its way between his, and Davis fell.

He fell hard, and for a moment could not move his arms. When he could command his hands, he could not seize an opponent who seemed to be all shapes at once. His eyes could not make out his opponent's face, but Davis did not have to see. He knew. It was one of those moments when the mind, in great danger, is lucid enough to survey the truth.

What he fought was fury, a fury beyond imagining. This dead man would not forgive the living for his unjust death. And even as Davis felt the breath squeezed from his body he realized how another member of the dead must hate him.

And for a moment Davis had an ugly thought: I deserve to die. For neglecting Margaret, I deserve this.

Then Irene's voice woke him. He seized the boneless head, but it was an octopus he was fighting, a thing with no shape and tremendous strength, with a flexible, whipping skeleton, that empowered this wrath.

The wrath was just, and yet as Davis rolled in the cold stone he felt the wrongfulness of his own death. He cried out. “No!”

He was stunned at his own anger, the fury of a living man. “It's wrong! You can't do this!”

She was beside them. “We do not seek to harm you, King Sigan. Please forgive your subjects,” Irene was saying, in her musical voice.

Davis could barely whisper, “We want to honor you.” The leather tightened. “King!” Davis choked the Anglo-Saxon: “Kyning Sigan!”

Still, the leather tightened. Centuries of vengeance made Davis's ribs creak. The leather lips were at Davis's own, and there was a sound from them, a groan, as of effort or a breathy curse.

Feeling flowed from Davis's body. Soon, Davis knew, he would have no thoughts, no fears—he would be gone. Already his legs and arms were numb.

“Your son is dead!” said Davis. “The people who killed you are dead!”

King Sigan's answer was to thrust his boneless arm down Davis's throat. The dead king was twisting and working his hand to seize the lungs, smother the heart—to uproot a living man. Davis felt himself wither, his consciousness destroyed. Strength was nothing against this Being, the angry dead.

Irene was beside them both. Davis could sense her in the darkness, and sense her voice as she said, “Forgive us, King Sigan. We want to honor you.”

Davis knew only that he would not die. He squeezed the soft skull of his adversary, and dragged the leather from his throat, pulling himself back to life with the knowledge that the dead, no matter how just their anger, did not have the right to destroy the living.

And he felt the ancient king falter. As though with doubt. As though the king realized for a moment that Davis was a living man, a man in love. As though King Sigan remembered his life, and did not want to kill.

At first Davis did not understand what was happening. Something splashed, and there was the chunky thud of stone on stone. And there was an immediate crush, a cold wave that half covered all of them.

The wave was very cold, and very heavy. It was followed by others. Even the king seemed to sense it, and went stiff with something like fear.

“The walls!” cried Irene.

The walls of the chamber were collapsing, burying them alive.

31

The tide of cold earth broke over them, down upon them, and Davis took a last breath, and reached out his hand toward Irene. He struggled through the churning mud, toward the crack of light, and the fragment of light was closing as he swam toward it.

The ancient king writhed to escape, making a long, airy scream. Davis dragged him. A hand thrust toward them from the outside, from the day.

Davis gripped the hand, and turned to find Irene. But Irene was already there, struggling through the slit of daylight. Then there were two hands reaching back for him, one of them Irene's. The hands had him, had both of them, as Davis wrestled with the earth that closed around him.

The sky. Davis was blinking up at the sky that fell over him, wet, cold. Irene's face was there, and Langton's. Langton was panting, and his face was mud-starred. “You were gone so long,” said Langton. “I came looking for you—”

The mist was heavy, so heavy that it was premature night. Stone and mud continued to fall, churning, within the chamber until the crack was a bare scar on the surface and the empty chamber was a welter of rubble.

The king flexed, and Davis wrapped him in his arms. Langton's eyes were wide, and he backed away, splashing through the water.

“I need a sheet of plastic or canvas—whatever we have,” called Davis. “And rope.”

Irene was gone, too, and Davis was alone with his adversary. The leather body spasmed, but Davis held him from behind. The arms lashed the mist, and the legs worked to wrap around Davis, but Davis gripped the body hard and promised the king that all would be well.

“We'll find peace for you,” said Davis.

For all of us.

The great vault of the Minster's nave arced high over them. It was night, and the ancient building was still. The only light came from beeswax candles. The flames were tiny, flickering cuts of cold, bare pinpricks at this distance.

It had to be dark, though. The Minster had to resemble a space that the king would recognize. Of course the medieval aspects of cathedral had been constructed long after this king's death. But it had been a cathedral in his day, and now it would be called upon to be an earlier, darker version of itself.

It was past midnight before Langton returned from London with the treasures they would need. The events of this day had given Langton a battered vigor. He was tired, but he had a warrior's enthusiasm for staying awake as long as possible. Dr. Higg's staff had raised an eyebrow or two. Langton had been his most peremptory. Let them wonder. Necessity was power.

Davis took the pack from Langton reverently, and did not speak for a moment. He was nearly afraid to look inside. What if Langton had brought the wrong treasures?

“They're all right,” said Langton. “The circlet crown, and the enormous hilt. Go ahead and look.”

Skip dug, his mattock rising and falling with a surprising lack of sound, beside the stones he had pried to get at earth. The eye adjusted to the dark, but the ear could not entirely adjust to the silence.

Skip plied his mattock, and at last climbed from the pit he had carved in the Minster floor.

The dirt was a small, dark mountain in a tarp. Skip gathered it together, and dragged it off. He used a broom, and then stood back to admire his work.

“Just like in medieval times, I'd say. You couldn't have much better than that.”

“The question will be,” said Davis, “will it look like a fit grave to an Anglo-Saxon king?”

“I thought you were sure of that,” said Skip.

Davis shivered. “I wish I were.”

Skip looked upward, at the roof he could not see in a darkness made magnificent by invisible architecture. “Let's find out.”

There was the faintest scent of honey from the candles as they approached Irene, off in the darkest hollow of the nave, beside the wrapped, trussed body of the king. Irene knelt beside it, singing a soft, angular tune, her hand on the rolled tarp that imprisoned the body.

Davis nodded to Skip. The time had come.

Davis returned to the grave and rested the two treasures beside him, on the floor. But that was not right. That seemed disrespectful, somehow. He held them in his hands, and gazed down at them. He would cling to them, hoping for power from them. But there should be vestments and chanting. He hadn't even brought a Bible. They should have frankincense, and a priest.