The Guardian Stones (22 page)

Chapter Forty-eight

“No! Oh, God no! No! No!” Meg Gowdy pounded both fists on the bar in the Guardians pub.

Louisa Wainman tried to put an arm around her but Meg pulled away violently, smacking Louisa in the mouth with an errant elbow.

“Get a hold of yourself, Meg!” shouted Duncan.

Violet, still wearing the cardboard crown and feather boa from the parade, clung to her father's side, looking from him to her mother, eyes wide, mouth trembling on the verge of sobs.

“I have to see him! I have to see Joe!” Meg took a few running steps toward the door before Grace blocked her way.

“You don't want to see him, Meg.”

“Let her go,” said Duncan. “Let her get a good look at her fancy man. Serve her right!”

Meg turned on her husband. “Bastard! Worm! Spineless failure!”

Violet's mouth moved convulsively but only strangled sounds emerged. Her face was so white she might have been in shock.

“Better than being a whore,” Duncan replied.

Louisa dabbed at her bleeding lip. “At least if Meg were to leave you it would be for another adult. How do you think I feel, playing second fiddle to a babe in arms?”

Duncan said nothing. All hell had broken loose when Edwin found what was left of Joe Haywood. What had seemed like all hell hadn't been quite all, because a few minutes later Grace came racing to the church with the news that Jack Chapman had hung himself.

Later Grace returned to the pub with Meg and him and Violet. He must have told her she needed a drink. Didn't they all? Not to mention new lives.

Duncan experienced a weird calm. He became an observer. His life had been a tottering ruin for years. It was almost a relief to see it finally fall down. So this is actually the end, he thought, as he watched Meg pace and curse and blubber over Joe Haywood. Thank God. At least it's over.

Louisa took Meg by the arm. “Get packed. We can leave together. I'm afraid Harry's going to come after me any minute.”

“It's too dangerous to try to leave,” Grace said. “Remember Susannah.”

“You don't accept it was Jack Chapman did it then?” Duncan asked. “Strikes me as obvious. He killed his daughter, tried to cover up, and finally the guilt was too much.” Duncan suddenly remembered his own daughter, reaching down to pat her head, knocking her cardboard crown onto the flagstones.

Grace shook her head. “Jack wasn't clever enough to get away with everything that's happened here. I'm going into town right away. The authorities have to pay attention and send immediate help.”

Duncan reached under the bar and pulled out his rifle. “I'll go, Grace. I want to get out of here anyway.”

“No, Duncan. It's not a good idea.” Grace looked meaningfully toward Violet.

Meg laughed. “What? You think I can't take care of my daughter by myself? She'll be better off without that pathetic excuse for a father.”

Duncan hefted his weapon and walked around the bar. “I'll stick to the fields beyond the village, in case the maniac is watching the road.”

He walked past Grace to the door. What if there was someone out there watching and waiting? He might never make it into town.

Maybe that would be for the best.

***

Shaken and sick to his stomach, Edwin returned to his lodgings and found Martha in the kitchen.

She glanced up from a mass of twigs piled on the table. “You look poorly, Professor. Is it the heat? I can give you a potion.”

“I'll get a drink of water.”

“You need anything to settle your stomach?” Martha's arthritic fingers moved slowly and with obvious effort plaited the twigs together.

He filled a glass at the sink. He sipped the water slowly, half choking on it. His whole insides were in turmoil. He kept seeing the ruin of Haywood.

Martha stared at him for a second or two. “It's not just the heat? Something else has happened?”

Edwin sighed. “Yes. It's bad. Very bad. Haywood is…” He trailed off. He couldn't very well describe the hideous mutilations to the old woman.

“Dead?” Martha smiled grimly. “Not surprised. Never been popular round here. A shifty sort. Where'd he get that stuff he sold? Stole it, I'm certain. Came on him and Duncan Gowdy shouting at each other at the pub one morning. A regular broggil, it was.”

Edwin would have guessed most villagers were happy to have Haywood and his black market goods around. But then, what did he really know about this place? Obviously somebody hadn't liked Haywood. Had hated him, in fact, with a savage, animalistic hatred, judging from the display in the church.

Was it Haywood's illicit dealings? Had Noddweir been caught up in a war between black marketeers? He tried to shift his mind away from Haywood's murder. “Speaking of stealing,” he said, “were you able to find those other things you had, er, mislaid, Martha?”

She gave him a keen look. “No, I haven't found them. I don't expect to now. That's why I'm making these charms.”

“Charms?” The inquiry came automatically. What did he really care about charms right now?

“Yes.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I should never have talked so much about my persuasions. Oh, almost everybody who hears about them laughs. They don't know what I know, what my mother and her mother before her knew. There's terrible danger for Noddweir right now.”

“But Martha—” Edwin began gently.

“You don't know, Professor. You can't. If there's a horned moon on the summer solstice, if you use the right persuasions you can find the gateway to hell in the middle of them stones.”

Edwin blinked in surprise. Martha's voice was as matter of fact as if she were talking about the price of eggs. She really was—well, not mad, exactly—but senile.

Before he could respond she pointed a gnarled finger at him. “Blood is needed for them persuasions. And so's vervain and henbane and those herbs are in the headache necklace and rheumatics liniment what got stolen.”

“But who…? I mean…you said nobody took your persuasions seriously.”

Martha lifted what she was working on to examine it more closely. Apparently satisfied with the little figure made of entwined sticks, she set it on the table. “I said almost everybody laughs at what I tell them. I wish now there wasn't them who took it seriously.”

Edwin stared at her, speechless.

She gave him a sly smile. “I'm not mad, you know. Only an old woman who made a mistake and intends to put it right.”

***

Standing amidst the stones on Guardians Hill is like standing in front of a blazing forge. The grass that at sunrise was damp with dew has withered in the monstrous heat. The stones are hot to the touch. Unnaturally hot. The foxgloves bow their heads.

Though the sun is a molten orb, the horned moon is faintly visible in the washed-out blue of the sky.

From the clearing's edge the whole of Noddweir can be seen, the huddled cottages, the surrounding fields and farm buildings, the line of the narrow road escaping the constricted valley.

A solitary figure moves along the edge of a field at the base of the hill. His form melts, stretches, and twists like something seen at the bottom of a boiling pot of water. He carries a rifle. He is moving away from Noddweir.

He will not succeed in stopping what is about to happen.

The time has almost arrived.

Chapter Forty-nine

Grace closed the blackout curtains, shutting out the honey-colored sunlight that had filled the room. It was almost sunset and Duncan still hadn't returned with help.

“It's a long walk to Craven Arms,” Edwin said. He'd been sitting with a book in his hand when she'd come in to close the curtains.

“Not that long. Surely he would have been able to get a ride once he got to the main road?”

“Maybe there wasn't an ambulance available? They'll send an ambulance for the bodies and he could come back with it.”

Jack Chapman and Joe Haywood were now lying in the back of the locked smithy. Grace and Edwin both realized nobody would be coming for them today.

“I should have gone,” Grace said.

“If you had tried to get to town, it would be you who was…gone.” Edwin stared into the dimness enveloping them, not looking at Grace. For most of the afternoon, while they waited for help that never arrived, they had avoided one another, moving from room to room in an elaborate dance, each finding an excuse to be where the other was not. He put his book down.

“Grace, I'm afraid this last week…everything that's happened…has been too much for me on top of the journey here. I haven't been myself. I would never have said—”

“It's all right, Edwin. It's not as if I was insulted.”

“Ah, well…that's a good start at least…or rather…” Edwin stood up abruptly. The air was stifling. “I'm going to talk to the vicar. I've puzzled over everything and there are questions I want to ask.”

“Be careful.”

“Yes. Anyway, it isn't quite dark yet.”

After he had hurried off, Grace muttered another prayer. She wouldn't have prayed in front of Edwin. Maybe he was right, with his learned disbelief. Had her prayers achieved anything? The whole village had prayed, and to what end? The mothers whose children had vanished had beseeched God for help. Betty never missed church and now both her boys were missing. The vicar certainly had prayed and if anyone had God's ear it would be the vicar. It was easy enough to say that what happened in the world, both good and evil, was all part of God's mysterious plan, until it was you or yours being sacrificed for reasons beyond human comprehension.

Martha had her own beliefs. All day long she'd puttered around in the kitchen, working on her persuasions, going out to the back garden to pick plants from time to time, leaving briefly once to see Polly, who grew those Martha had a difficult time propagating. The house smelled of herbs boiling on the stove.

Grace was happy not to interfere. It kept her grandmother occupied and out of trouble.

The old woman was awfully quiet, Grace now realized.

The kitchen was deserted. A pot with a sticky residue in the bottom sat on the stove. The table was cleared of all but a few stray twigs and leaves.

Grace checked the garden. Martha wasn't there. A huge orange sun sat low in the sky, sending impossibly long shadows from the trees at the back of the garden up the house walls.

Going quickly to the privy, Grace knocked. “Grandma!”

No answer.

When she'd questioned Martha about her labors the explanations were confused. Grace thought her grandmother was having one her bad days. Or was she being purposefully evasive?

If anyone would know what Martha was up to, it would be Polly.

The cottage of Martha's devoted pupil sat alone at the end of a short cul de sac. Left to decay since her husband had died decades ago, the house was half hidden behind a garden that had run wild. Bushes reached up the eaves. Grace's knock at the front door elicited no response. Tall spikes of hollyhocks by the porch swayed ominously in an unfelt breeze.

After a short search she found Polly weeding an herb bed concealed in the wilderness. She looked nervous when Grace asked about Martha.

“Let's see. Your grandma came by this afternoon at least once.”

“What about this evening?”

“Can't say as I recall her visiting since tea time.”

“Don't lie to me, Polly. I can tell you're lying. Did she tell you to?”

“Now, Grace. You know how it is with an old woman's memory.”

“You saw her not long ago, didn't you?”

Polly scrunched up her face as if she were trying to squeeze the memory out. “Might've needed one last ingredient for one persuasion or other.”

“And where is she now?”

Polly licked her lips and said nothing but Grace noted how her gaze flickered toward Guardians Hill.

“She's gone up to the stones, hasn't she?”

“Well…”

Grace didn't wait for the reply. She was already running back in the direction of the High Street. She should've guessed what Martha was working at all day. Magic to counteract the evil she insisted hung about the stones.

Grace would have to go after her but first she must get her father's rifle. Whatever evil was out in the forest, a weapon would be more effective against it than Martha's persuasions.

***

Edwin sat with Timothy Wilson in the vicarage garden and watched the swollen and malevolent sun squat for a moment on the mountain top. Then it slid out of sight, so quickly the movement was almost discernible, drawing harsh, red light out of the sky with it and leaving only a glow like that of a burning city.

“You don't mind staying outside, do you, Edwin? I can hardly breathe indoors with the blackout curtains closed.”

“Is it necessary to keep the windows completely blocked so far out in the countryside? Considering your condition—”

“We all need to make sacrifices.”

Edwin thought that his friend had made sufficient sacrifice in the last war but didn't say so.

“I've been giving a lot of thought to the stone circle myself.” Wilson's quiet voice was almost masked by the chattering and shrilling of insects. “They can be places of power, especially at certain times such as the solstice. Evil power from a Christian viewpoint, of course. But as far as finding specific information about the Guardians, I can't tell you any more than Harry Wainman did.”

“Naked corybants that no one alive has seen?”

“I'll bet Wainman didn't use the term ‘corybant,' Edwin! You don't believe these old superstitions, I take it?”

“No. It isn't what I believe, it's what other people might believe.”

“Beliefs are real to the believer,” Wilson pointed out, “even if the thing believed in isn't real.”

“Indeed. And that has effects in the real world. Look at Hitler and his murderous notions.”

“None of which is very helpful to you. I'm sorry I can't offer more information, Edwin.”

“Was Isobel Chapman going through puberty?”

Wilson paused before replying, startled. “I suppose so. She was big for her age. Well developed. One couldn't help noticing. Not that I—”

Edwin waved his hand. “Don't worry. We can't help noticing.” Even when a woman is young enough to be your daughter, he thought ruefully. “So she might have been on the verge of menarche, if she hadn't begun already?”

“Oh…that's not the sort of thing a young girl would confide to the vicar.”

“You've read
The Golden Bough
, among other things. Primitive people harbored a dread of menstrual blood, and in particular the first blood. They considered there was evil power inherent in the condition, which is why they often placed restrictions on a woman who had reached that time. One tribe confined her to a hammock slung up under the roof, so she couldn't touch the ground or see the sun. Suspended between heaven and earth, she couldn't cause any mischief.”

Wilson looked thoughtful. “Issy's blood-stained clothes…have we been looking in the wrong direction?”

***

Edwin's heart skipped a beat when he found Grace's front room empty. There was no one in the kitchen either. He called up the stairs. No reply.

He looked into the kitchen again. Martha's persuasions and charms were no longer there. Had she put them away? Taken them somewhere? All day long she had talked about the Guardian Stones.

He looked in the pantry. The rifle was gone.

Martha must have gone to the Guardian Stones, but hoping to do what? Grace must have gone after her. Why else would she have taken the rifle unless she was going into the forest?

He ran out the door after them. If he had believed in a god, Edwin would have prayed he would not be too late.