The Hounds of the Morrigan (30 page)

He felt that he sensed something brooding and threatening in the dismal gloom. Even the day smells were gone as well as the sunshine and now there were the damp, earthy smells of the night. It’s just the waiting, he told himself; waiting for the lightning to start. Still, his eyes darted everywhere in case he
really
sensed something else.

‘It’s going to rain soon, isn’t it; hard enough to put cracks in our heads,’ Brigit grumbled.

‘We’ll just have to put up with it, unless we find somewhere safe to shelter,’ he said firmly.

He looked to try and see if the hounds were visible anywhere, but it was too dark to really see anything.

‘We won’t run, no matter how bad it gets; right, Brigit?’

‘Right!’

By now it was difficult to see where they were going and they stumbled at times over uneven ground and tripped over roots and stones. The wind began to moan, a low and very lonesome sound, that gradually increased in strength to a savage howl.

Brigit was shaking and she held on to Pidge tightly, saying every few seconds:

‘What’s that!’

And each time Pidge answered as steadily as he could manage:

‘Only the wind, don’t worry.’

Up above the heavy clouds billowed and wreathed and seemed to boil. The sky split apart briefly and a horrid yellowish light shone through, and for a few seconds they could see that ahead of them there was the ruin of a building. The clouds snarled together mightily and the ruin was completely swallowed by darkness. Pidge tried to keep his gaze fixed on the place where it had appeared. No matter how rickety it might be, it could provide some shelter. The blanket overhead was torn aside once more, allowing a shaft of the same ugly light to shine through; and this time, they saw it quite clearly.

Sticking up into the sky, and looking like an old broken and blackened tooth, stood the remains of a castle or a tower.

The darkness returned and was as a cloak between themselves and all that lay beyond a mere couple of feet or so ahead of them. Pidge started to worry that they might fall into a squashy, muddy hole, or a quaking, swallowing bog. In this blackness, it would be terrible and dreadful. Who would help them out if they got stuck? If they were up to their shoulders held fast in the sucking ground, with lightning flashes coming at them like spears of fire, they would be utterly helpless, no better than sitting targets; they could even be killed.

Even without the fearful lightning, there was the danger that they might be swallowed. His thoughts ran wild and he imagined the earth as a monstrous animal with many, many concealed mouths; and he feared it. He thought of mouths, all of them capable of opening under their feet without warning, to swallow them down a muddy gullet into a heaving prison of a stomach. At the back of his mind, he knew that it was all nonsense. All of his life he had been familiar with bogland. Each spring he had gone to help with the turf-cutting and returned in late summer to help cart the dry fuel home. Their own bogland was a place that was heathery and springy, with harmless patches of wetness and straight-edged pools of brown water, that had filled where the turf had been cut. It was a place for picnics, where he had eaten huge amounts of sandwiches because the air always made people very hungry, and he had drunk hot tea poured from bottles that had been heated up cleverly by his father near little fires, without ever having cracked even one of the bottles. The worst that could happen to a person, if unlucky enough to fall into a water-filled cutting, was wet clothes, and that was all.

But now this knowledge was reduced to a weak spark of truth. It was smothered under the weight of his fear, and quenched entirely when he remembered old stories of horror told round the fireside on winter evenings. A shudder ran crookedly up through his body from the soles of his feet; for perhaps bogs in other townlands were more treacherous, and this one could be like the ones in the old stories. Every step became a nightmare of courage. Clinging on to him, and without the slightest idea of what he was thinking, Brigit was mainly worried that she might see a ghost or a Banashee.

‘If I do, I’ll fling a rock at it!’ she said loudly to frighten them off.

Pidge didn’t even hear.

The atmosphere was now unutterably evil and terrible. It could hardly be believed that everything had been so splendid such a little while ago.

If only Cathbad the Druid were with us, he thought, bowed down as he was beneath the feeling that he was alone and miserable, and burdened with the care of Brigit as well as himself.

Then underneath the crying of the wind, they began to pick up sounds that were very faint and blown about at first. They stopped moving and listened intently in an effort to find out where they were coming from; and then they were greatly astonished as they realized that they were hearing snatches of music and what might be bursts of revelry with shouts of laughter, rather muffled by distance and battered into bits by the wind.

Oh, how wonderful! There are people here somewhere, Pidge thought.

When they happened on to a paved path and the dread of blundering on to a patch of treacherous ground was gone, he felt even more cheered. Now he kept his head down and watched the path under his feet, for fear of straying away from it in the darkness.

Seconds later, there was a sudden rolling and rumbling of thunder, so loud that it seemed to be right on top of them; and then one flash of lightning. For a moment only, the quality of the light was stunning, and, looking up in the queer brightness, he saw a castle showing lights.

‘Brigit, look! It wasn’t a ruin at all. They’ve put the lights on now and it’s easy to see how fine it is. With any luck at all, they’ll let us stand in until the weather clears.’

But Brigit started pulling at him and shouting that they were in a whole field of nettles.

‘Stingers!’ she yelled. ‘Stingers everywhere! Oh, I hate them more than anything in the world!’

Nettles were Brigit’s deadliest enemies. Just seeing one, would always made the hairs rise in coldness on her arms. She never missed a chance of beheading them and splashing them down to bits with a stick.

Pidge couldn’t understand how they had wandered in among them without noticing them or getting stung. He supposed it was because he had been so distracted with thinking about everything else, and that it was sheer luck that Brigit hadn’t brushed against one in the darkness. He was mystified to find that they were surrounded, but for the way forward. It was the only way they could go. The nettles were even growing behind them, without any sign of having been walked on. There was just a little bit of path and then, nettles; so it was certain that they could not go back the way they had come. He supposed as well that he and Brigit had followed an imperceptible turn in the pathway, that couldn’t be noticed now as he looked back.

‘Do you want a pick-a-back?’ he offered, knowing much she hated being burned and blistered, and how very bare her legs were with just ankle socks.

‘That would only make my legs stick out more at the sides. If you keep in front of me, I’ll be all right. Oh, I wish I had a good old stick to flatten them, so I do,’ she finished furiously.

The nettle-flanked path led them to a pair of imposing iron gates that were opened wide. Inside there was a driveway with, on either side, two great stone lions whose manes were carved ornamentally to look like flames. The driveway made Pidge wonder if the pathway outside might once have been a proper road, before the nettles had conquered it.

‘This is better,’ said Brigit as they walked along. ‘All the old stingers are on the outside, now.’

A short distance in, there stood two boards with painted notices and Pidge struggled to read them in the poor light. Each one was headed by a coat-of-arms, so dim in the gloom that they could barely be seen. The notices, however, were in white on black, so Pidge was able to make them out, although it was difficult.

He read the nearest one, which said:

They went to the second board and Pidge read it out

And there was a note pinned to it that said:

Pidge hesitated. He felt very uneasy, but he knew that there was no real choice for him to make, when it was so terrible outside.

‘What are we waiting for; this sounds a great place. Come on!’ Brigit said and she began walking on ahead of him.

He tried to look back to where the gates and the lions were, only to find that even they could not be seen, it had grown so dark. The sky rumbled again and there was the crack of lightning. Brigit ran back and clung to him.

‘Hurry up, Pidge; before we get sizzled!’ she shouted.

They stumbled along the seemingly endless avenue to the castle. When they were close to it at last, they stopped to read a third notice that was very small and just said;

‘What does that mean?’ Brigit asked.

‘I don’t know; unless they don’t like it if people come in just to look around,’ Pidge answered, his voice tinged with suspicion.

‘It’s only a joke. They sound funny to me. I want to get inside, away from all this horribleness.’

‘What else can we do,’ he answered, feeling helpless.

They passed by many windows with the glow of lights behind rich red curtains making the place look inviting and warm. And then they reached a great door. It was massive and clasped by iron bands that were fixed to the wood with rivets. Hard to break into, Pidge thought; and hard to break out of, too, I would guess.

There was no way to knock except with knuckles, and that would be like trying to rap at an ordinary door with a feather. A large shield was attached to the wall by the side of the door. An old sword hung beside it, held by means of two strong nails driven into the stone just under the hilt. Brigit looked at it with curiosity.

‘Where are we, Pidge? Are we in days of yore?’

‘We might be. I don’t know.’

As they stood there, the sounds of fun and laughter increased.

Then Brigit saw a gleam of white on the ground. She stooped and picked up a printed card and handed it to Pidge. He felt even more uneasy when he saw her stooped to pick it up; but he didn’t know why. He held the card close to his face, peering hard to make it out.

‘It says: “Bang For Attention”,’ he said.