The God of the Hive (20 page)

“Let’s go,” Javitz said. I shifted Estelle into my left arm and inched forward until my fingers encountered his shoulder, and we moved off.

We walked like a platoon of gas-blinded soldiers. It might have been easier had we been on flat ground and able to march in step, but between the unevenness of the terrain and our various impediments, we stumbled at a turtle’s pace, and made so much noise I could feel Goodman’s disapproval, even with Javitz between us. An entire night passed, longer, a nightmare of stumbling, cursing, tangling, and growing fear.

Finally, our guide could stand it no longer. He stopped, causing us to pile up into him, and spoke. “I will come back for you.”

Before either of us could speak, he was gone. Gratefully, I sank to the
ground and let the weight go off my arms. Javitz stayed upright, propped on his stick. Neither of us spoke.

Five minutes went by; eight. Javitz stirred, and said, “He will come back.”

“Yes.” In truth, I did not much care: I was quite prepared to sit here, warm under the fur and the small body, until light dawned.

But Goodman did return, without so much as a rustle before his voice whispered, “All clear. Just a hundred yards more.”

I struggled upright, hushed Estelle’s sleepy protest, and laid my hand on the pilot’s shoulder.

Never have I been more grateful to feel a rustic track underfoot.

With some effort, we folded Javitz into the back of the motorcar, and I deposited Estelle in his lap. I whispered, “You are all right, holding her?”

“I can’t do the driving,” came his voice in my ear, “so I might as well hang on to her. She’s a good kid,” he added.

“Isn’t she just?” I replied gratefully, and resumed my place behind the wheel.

I went less than a mile, then stopped, leaving the engine running.

“Mr Goodman, I appreciate all you’ve done for us, but there’s no reason to take you any farther. I’d suggest you be very cautious about your house for a time, since there’s no knowing if they mightn’t come back, but I think you could manage that.”

“I will c-come with you.”

“There’s no need for—”

“Go!” he roared.

We went.

With our five pursuers to the south, we were forced to motor north, eventually to circle around. The forest track thinned and nearly died altogether, but eventually grew more confident, giving way to a wider track, which led to a more-or-less metalled stretch, until eventually our tyres hit a surface recognisable as roadway. I was grateful that our villains had thought to fill the petrol tank before they had ventured into the
wooded places. Their thoughtfulness meant that we had fuel sufficient to reach civilisation.

Or if not civilisation, at least a crossroads with two buildings. One was a neat stone house, darkened at this hour. The other appeared to have been a smithy from time immemorial, converted now to the Twentieth-Century equivalent: a garage. A shiny petrol pump stood in the forecourt, illuminated from above by a hanging lamp, an altar light over a shrine to modernity.

It was still well before dawn and none of the shrine’s attendants were stirring. However, I for one needed to stretch my legs, step into the bushes, and consider our next move.

I pulled into the station’s forecourt and put on the hand-brake, then fumbled to separate the ignition wires. They spat and the motor died. Instantly, a small sleepy voice piped, “Where are we?”

Good question.

We climbed from the motor and took turns paying visits to the shrubbery. I gave Estelle some biscuits and a cup of water from a tap behind the petrol station, which woke the dog tied behind the dark house, which in turn roused the owner. The man stuck his head out of the upstairs window, shouted the dog to silence, then demanded what we thought we were doing.

I launched into speech before any of my companions could respond, a tumble of apology in a cut-glass accent with words designed to soften the heart of the hardest working man:
took a wrong turning
came in early, and
ill mother
and
emergency summons
and
child
, followed by
desperate
and
terribly sorry
and
frightened
and
hungry
, but it wasn’t until I hit
plenty of money
that the window slammed down and a light went on inside.

“Look hopeless, you two,” I suggested, at which Javitz leant heavily on his stick while Goodman did him one better by stepping away into the night. Clutching Estelle, who by this time was fully awake and curious about it all, I waited beneath the light for the man above to tug on his trousers and come down.

By the breadth of his shoulders, he had been the smith before the petrol engine took over his occupation—his hands were permanently
stained with the grease of engines, but they showed signs of regular use of an anvil and hammer as well. The rôle of the smith in the mythic landscape of England required that the man be addressed with considerable respect, and more than a little care: A smith answered only to himself.

However, silver placates the most irascible of gods. A display of our tribute soon had him working the pump, but it was my air of respect and Javitz’s of interest that led to the grudging admission, once the tank was filled, that he generally woke near to now anyway. I glanced at the sky, and noticed the faint fading of stars to the east. I gave him a wide smile and asked brightly, “If you’re about to make yourself some tea, I don’t suppose you’d like to sell us a cup?”

He grimaced, but then went into the house, which I took for agreement.

While he was away, I took advantage of the light over the pumps to go through the motor’s various pockets.

It was, as I’d expected, a hire car, from a garage in Lancaster—the size alone promised they hadn’t come from far away in it. This suggested that the men had come up from the south on a train, having got news of an aeroplane crash followed by the odd purchases made by one of the more colourful local residents. They’d either been remarkably efficient or damnably lucky, to find us so quickly.

The other items in the pockets were uninformative, although the maps would be useful. The most suggestive thing about the motor was its size: With five men already crammed inside, they hadn’t intended to take us prisoner.

I carried two of the maps around the front, spreading them across the bonnet with the three-shilling Lake District sheet on top. Javitz joined me, Goodman reappeared, even Estelle tried to peer between my elbows until I lifted her onto the warm bonnet, where she sat supervising, Dolly in lap and chin in hand. I was eerily visited by the shade of her grandfather, finger on lips as he awaited information.

I tore my gaze from the child to compare the map with the few road-signs I had glimpsed, tracing our location forward. Oddly, the place where we had begun our journey was relatively devoid of the usual signs and markings: It was a vast private estate, which explained the unharvested
woods and lack of public footpaths. That part of the map might as well have borne the old cartographic label
Here be monsters
.

“This is where we are,” I said, laying my finger on a join of thin lines, then exchanged the large-scale sheet for one of the entire country. “I must be in London by Saturday morning, but we need a safe place for you as well. I was thinking that—”

Goodman abruptly thrust his hands in his pockets and half turned away. I raised an eyebrow, but he simply stared at the trees pressing in on the road, caught up in some obvious but unguessable turmoil.

“Did you have a suggestion?” I asked.

He took a step back, running one hand over his bush of hair. Another half-step, as if about to make a break for the woods, then he stopped. “I … he …”

His face seemed to convulse, as if a current had been passed through the muscles. It was an alarming expression, one I had seen before in the shell-shock wards of the hospital during the War: minds broken by the trenches, struggling so hard to produce words, it made the tendons on the men’s throats go rigid.

One’s impulse is to provide words, any words. “We could—”

He held up a hand to stop me, then turned his face towards Estelle, the youthful gargoyle on our bonnet. We waited. He swallowed, and when he spoke again, it was in an oddly thick and methodical voice, as if he were removing each word from his throat and laying it onto a platter. “He …
I
… have f-family.”

The idea of this man with relatives struck me as even more unlikely than his having a motorcar, and it was on the tip of my tongue to ask if their names included Loki or Artemis. Fortunately, the awareness of his distress stayed my flip remark. I said merely, “Where?”

He turned from Estelle to the map; from his reluctance, the paper might have been made of burning coals. One fingertip tapped lightly at the western edges of London’s sprawl. “D-d.” He stopped, swallowed hard, and began again, with that same palpable deliberation. “Distant family. But they would m-make you … they would make
us
welcome.”

“Would the men behind us be able to find them?”

“No-one here knows my name.” Monosyllables seemed to present less trouble.

“What about in the house? Is there anything that would lead them to your relatives?” I asked. “Letters, official papers, anything?”

“Some. From a s-s-solicitor. He lives in Italy. It would t-take time.”

I lifted an eyebrow at Javitz, who said, “I was going to suggest an old friend from the RAF, but I haven’t seen him in a couple of years, and his house is not much larger than that cabin.”

My intent had been the country house of friends currently in Ireland, but since our pursuers were not looking for the man of the woods, it would, as Goodman said, take them some time to uncover any link. “Fine,” I decided. “Richmond it is.”

The petrol station owner came with the tea, although he did not offer to return to the house for an additional cup for our party’s fourth member, summoned out of the night. The beverage was hot and strong, and we shared it out gratefully. When the cups, the pot, and the jug of milk were all drained, I placed the tray back in the man’s hand.

When Estelle and Javitz were settled once again in the back of the motorcar, I reached down for the wires. I waved my hand at the smith-turned-garage-owner and put it into gear, roaring up the north road over protests from two of my three passengers.

I continued blithely on my way for three minutes, then slowed and manoeuvred into a many-sided turn before heading back south. Half a mile from the garage, I shut off the head-lamps, leant forward over the wheel, and said to my still-grumbling critics, “Now, everyone keep still, please.”

With the engine turning over at little more than an idle, we rolled, dark and silent past the station. The owner had gone back into his kitchen, and did not look out of his window as we passed. The dog did not bark. I continued down the southward leg of the crossroads for a hundred yards, then pulled on the head-lamps and pushed my foot down on the accelerator.

Chapter 35

T
wo hundred fifty miles takes a lot longer to motor than it does to fly over. On the other hand, when a tyre went flat outside of Wigan, the mechanical difficulty did not result in us falling out of the sky. I found this infinitely reassuring.

Goodman, however, seemed less reassured the farther south we went. While our tyre was being repaired, we made our way to a nearby inn for a lunch. We were so far from our starting place as to be safe, nonetheless, looking at the motley crew unfolding itself from the motorcar, I could not help thinking that we were not the most invisible of travellers.

At the door to the inn, Goodman spoke into my ear: “Order me something.” Before I could protest, he walked away. Estelle was tugging at one hand, the other was holding the door for the pilot. If the hermit did not want to join us, that was his loss.

The inn was a relief to the spirit, dim and quiet but with promising odours in the air. We crept to a table near the fire. Javitz ordered a triple whisky and a pint, and when I looked askance, snarled, “My leg hurts like the devil.”

I gave our hostess a wan smile. “I’ll have a half of the bitter, thanks, and a glass of lemonade for the child. And do you have anything left by way of luncheon?”

Under other circumstances, I might have regarded her offerings as predictable and unenticing, but after the past nine days—much of which
had been spent either in the air or in a cabin catered by a vegetarian—the dishes sounded exotic, complex, and mouth-watering. We ordered, and I included an order for our missing companion. When she brought the drinks, Javitz tossed his whisky down his throat and closed his eyes. Gradually, the tension in his face began to relax. He opened his eyes, winked at Estelle, and reached for his beer.

We were nearly finished with our meal when the inn door opened and a clean-shaven, spit-polished young man came through it. He paused, noticed us sitting before the fire, and came in our direction. My fork went still as he approached, until I noticed the green eyes. I dropped the implement in shock.

“Good Lord,” I said.

“Yes, well,” the oddly congested voice replied, “I couldn’t very well greet f-family disguised as a bear.”

“Mr Robert!” Estelle exclaimed. “You cut your beard!”

“And my hair, too, didn’t I?” he said. “You save me some food?”

Javitz and I resumed our meal, but neither of us paid it much attention. The man before us was smooth in more ways than his skin: In removing his hair, he had put on another, less obvious disguise, one that was jarring to a person accustomed to the hermit’s quiet ease. This Robert Goodman would have seemed at home in a London night-club, brash and bold, with quick movements and nervous fingers.

I couldn’t help thinking, he must be little short of frightened of this family we were about to meet.

However, in the end, Goodman’s relatives were not there to greet us, merely the serving staff left behind. We pulled up to a grand three-storey stone building with Sixteenth-Century bones and Eighteenth-Century additions, its windows glittering in the sun that neared the horizon. A boy of about twelve stood in the doorway, his mouth open. After a minute, an elderly man appeared, hastily adjusting the neck-tie he had clearly just that moment put on: a butler, caught off-duty. He was followed by a round, grey-haired woman in her early sixties, emitting the sorts of exclamations usually reserved for a long-lost son of the household.
Goodman reached out a finger and laid it gently across her lips; she fell silent, but the pleasure in her eyes was eloquent.