The Queen of Sinister (12 page)

'No...'

'Yes! I got picked up by some creepy old guy the first time I wandered in begging for food. He hit me round the back of the head with a lump of wood and dragged me back to his place, locked me in the attic with a bunch of others. He'd got a nice little business going, trading people for food ... girls, boys, women ...'

'For sex?'

'For anything ... sex, work, stealing. I spent four nights in there - ten of us in a space as big as a van. No toilet, no light, a few crumbs of food every now and then, a few drops of water that tasted like he'd pissed in it. One woman in there ... she'd got a baby. She'd been in longer than me. The kid was crying all the time, and she'd hardly got any milk. She was in a bad way. Then suddenly there wasn't any crying any more.'

Caitlin had a vivid impression of Liam in his pram. 'It died.'

'She killed it. Smothered it, because she needed all the energy she'd got just to stay alive.'

'Oh, no ...'

Mahalia snorted dismissively. 'That's the way it goes. I got sold on soon after. But I wasn't anybody's property for long. I learned to look after myself. I've taken a man's eye out with a spoon, watched it bounce across the floor then squashed it with my boot in front of his good eye. And you know what? I let him off lightly - I should have had both his eyes out. I've stabbed a screwdriver into somebody's ribs while they were sleeping to collapse a lung. But I've never been raped! I'm proud of that. All the sick bastards out there, and nobody's ever took me.'

Carlton shook her shoulder roughly; he had tears in his eyes.

'I'm sorry, mate.' Mahalia gave him a squeeze, then said to Caitlin, 'This place is hell. People make it hell. It can't be any worse where you're going.'

Caitlin drew patterns in the soil with a twig while she weighed Mahalia's words. Finally she said, 'I've seen terrible things happen - not like that, not things people do to each other but... bad things. And you mustn't ever let yourself think that the bad people are everything. Yes, they exist, but the best of humanity is out there, too. People helping each other ... making incredible acts of sacrifice. I honestly believe most people are good.'

'We'll have to agree to differ there.' Mahalia suddenly jumped to her feet, pulling out a knife from under her coat.

Caitlin whirled to see a figure coming towards them out of the glare of the sun. It was a man, but not Crowther.

'Don't come any nearer,' Mahalia said.

He held up his hands, then moved slightly so that the sun was behind a tree and they could all see him. He was in his early thirties, good looking with blond hair and blue eyes that reminded Caitlin slightly of Leonardo DiCaprio; a sensitivity was embedded in his features that made her instantly warm to him.

'I didn't mean to scare you ...' he began.

'You don't scare us,' Mahalia said. 'We just don't like you.'

'You're going to try to cross over, aren't you?' He fixed his attention on Caitlin.

Mahalia shifted suspiciously, looking to Caitlin for a lead.

'You don't have to answer - I can see it in your faces.' He lowered his hands slowly. 'I want to come with you.'

'Who are you?' Caitlin asked. 'And how do you know what we're doing here?'

'Matthew Jensen. Matt. Architect by trade. I know what you're all thinking - "Let's get him on board - that's a skill we really need." But it could be worse. I could be an estate agent. How do I know what you're doing here? You mean, how do I know all about crossing over, and that there is actually somewhere to cross over to? Well, long story.'

Carlton watched him curiously but openly, then motioned towards the fire.

'Carlton wants to know some more,' Mahalia translated. 'Me, I think, why would we need you tagging along? But I'm reasonable ... I'll give you a chance to convince us. You've got five minutes.'

'Five minutes? I can give you my life story in half that.' He headed for the fire and sat down.

Caitlin had already warmed to his self-deprecating manner, but she couldn't see any advantage in him joining their motley crew. If she hadn't been so unstable at the time, she probably wouldn't have been eager to encourage Mahalia and Carlton to go along with them. 'So how do you know what we're planning?' she asked, sitting next to him. The question came to her in the screeching tones of Brigid, who seemed to have taken an interest in Matt.

'Simple. You wouldn't be here for any other reason,' Matt replied. 'The countryside's too dangerous to be wandering around alone. If you had any sense you'd be holed up with your community. And this place ... all these kinds of places ... the stories that build up around them keep everybody away. It's not exactly a top holiday destination.' He motioned to the haunting stones. 'During the Fall, I met someone who told me that all these ancient sites were doorways to the place where the gods came from. You know about them, right? You heard the stories ... what happened to London? So, the nutter alarm went off. You smile and nod and shuffle away. But then I saw the lights over the stones at the solstices, the shapes passing through - not human, you know? - heard the music - God, the music!' He gave a faintly embarrassed smile. 'Sorry. You had to have heard it for yourself to understand, I guess.'

'So why would we want to go to that place?' Mahalia asked. Caitlin could see that she wasn't warming to Matt. 'And what makes you think we know how to?'

'I don't know if you do, but I do know a lot of people would like to find a way through to that place, for a whole load of different reasons. My reason? Simple.' He looked openly into all their faces, laying himself bare before them. 'I think my daughter's over there.'

A bird cry, low and mournful, made them all jump; Caitlin realised she had been hanging on his words. 'You think your daughter crossed over?'

'I think they took her ... something did.' He took a deep, calming breath. 'It seems to me that place and the things that live there are responsible for all our old stories and legends. We've been misidentifying them for thousands of years - angels and devils, fairies, UFOs - I don't know, Men in Black. And you know the old stories about changelings? How the fairies would take human babies? Do you know how many people go missing every year? Tens of thousands in Britain alone. Every year. And I reckon some of them end up over there ... for whatever reason.' He looked away from them into the trees, but he couldn't hide his concern.

'How old's your daughter?' Caitlin asked.

'Eight. At least, she would be now. She's been gone nine months. Somebody from the village saw her up here just before she disappeared, even though she knew she was supposed to keep well away from this place. I've searched everywhere - every ditch, wood, lake...' He shook his head. 'This is my last chance.'

'I'm so sorry,' Caitlin said. 'I know what it's like ...' She caught herself. 'Is your wife coping OK?'

'She left a long time ago, when Rosetta was two. I haven't seen her since.' He reached out his arms towards them. 'If you know a way over, take me with you. Please. The way I see it, there's safety in numbers. I'm fit. I can look after myself.'

'So can we,' Mahalia said.

'I'm sure you can, but one extra person to keep watch at night can only be a good thing, surely.'

Caitlin didn't have to think; how could she refuse him? 'Of course you can come,' she said, 'if we can get over. I'm still not convinced.'

He smiled. 'Thanks for trusting me.'

Mahalia clearly didn't want to hang around the adults any more than she had to, so Caitlin and Matt went for a walk through the waist-high grass of the adjoining field. They felt safer out in the open away from the clustering trees where there always seemed to be something lurking, just out of sight.

Though she knew little about him, Caitlin felt a connection between them. He had a sharp wit, but she could sense something much more troubling just beneath the surface. She wanted to find out more about him, but he was the one who asked the first questions as they walked.

'Are you OK?' he asked. 'Because there's something ... I don't know ... sad about you. Or is that just me being my usual imperceptive self?'

The familiar swell of grief hit her so hard that she almost gasped. The usual response was to damp it down into that area where Brigid, Briony and Amy could wrap the harrowing pain in cotton wool until it felt as if it was just a dream, and everything that caused it had never happened. Yet this time was different. After a brief, choking hesitation, she began fitfully to tell Matt all about Grant and Liam. She couldn't hold back the tears and Matt didn't appear to mind, so she let them flow. The racking sobs made her chest feel as if she'd crawled out from under a landslide.

Matt waited for them to subside and then said, 'I'm sorry. I feel like such a fool talking about my problems when you've been through all that—'

'No!' Caitlin said, horrified. 'Don't ever say that! All my life's in the past now. You've got a chance to save Rosetta, that's the important thing.'

'There isn't a thing I can say that won't sound like daytime TV advice, but don't talk about your life being in the past—'

'Well, it is.' They reached the jumble of stones that Crowther had called the Whispering Knights. Iron railings protected them from prying fingers, but Caitlin desperately wanted to touch their cool surface. When I started out on the road to this place, I was in a terrible state ... didn't really know what I was doing. When I finally came to my senses and the professor told me what he planned ... well, if I was a sane, rational woman with everything to live for, I would have walked away there and then. I can still barely believe that this mythical Otherworld really exists, but the professor is convinced. If it doesn't, we've got nothing to lose. But if it does, we're going to a place filled with dreams and nightmares ... a place where humans aren't supposed to exist. How long do you think we might possibly last there?'

'But we've got to try, haven't we?'

Caitlin reached across the railings and just managed to touch one of the stones; her fingers tingled in response. 'Yes, you've got to try for your daughter, and if there's a chance of finding a cure for the plague, as Professor Crowther seems to think there is, then I've got to try, because, you know, better me ...'

'I wish you wouldn't be so fatalistic. It might be catching.' He stared across the sweep of the field to the trees hiding the Rollrights. 'I'm keen to meet this professor. He seems to know a lot of stuff. What is he, like Doctor Who or something?'

Caitlin laughed at the idea. 'Just wait till you meet him.'

'You trust him?'

‘He seems OK. I don't think he tells the whole truth. He doesn't lie, exactly, it's just that he doesn't give you the whole picture.' Caitlin realised that Matt was staring intently back towards the standing stones. 'What is it?'

'I don't know. Probably nothing. I thought I saw something...' He gave her a tight smile. 'Look, you wait here. I'll check it out and then come back for you.'

Before Caitlin could protest, he was loping away through the grass. She waited for an uncomfortable moment, but there was an eerie atmosphere now that she was standing all alone in the wide open space and she decided to set off after Matt.

She'd only gone a few paces when there was a crack of thunder, though the sky was clear blue. A smell of burned iron rose up around her and she had the sense of a sudden, crackling light at her back. She spun round to see the Whispering Knights shimmering as if she were looking at them through a heat haze.

And then a figure emerged from behind them and rapidly began to move towards her. Her first, shocked impression was that it was some black-skinned monster with the head of a pig. Her second notion gave her a true picture: it was a knight in gleaming black armour, a sword hanging from his belt, but his helmet was in the shape of a boar's head.

'Get away!' Briony screamed from Caitlin's mouth as the knight marched implacably towards her. She turned and she ran, trying not to stumble over the uneven ground, and she knew that this was what she had seen from her window on the evening Grant and Liam had contracted the plague. It had followed her from there to here, and even in the Ice-Field that thought filled her with a powerful dread.

'What is it?' Matt had run back and caught her shoulders; she fell into his arms.

'He's coming!' Briony screamed.

Matt peered over her shoulder, then slowly turned her round. The field behind was empty, save for the Whispering Knights keeping their lonely vigil.

Back at the campfire, Matt managed to comprehend Caitlin's mental state with the aid of Mahalia's less than sympathetic descriptions. As she calmed, Briony receded and Caitlin returned. She was happy to see that Matt still treated her in the same friendly manner.

'I did see somebody,' Caitlin said.

Mahalia twirled a finger at the side of her head before winking at Carlton. But the boy didn't join in; his dark eyes suggested only the deepest sympathy. Caitlin smiled at him and nodded her thanks.

'Who the hell is this!' They all jumped as Crowther marched up, roaring as he jabbed a furious finger at Matt. 'Good Lord, don't you stupid people understand what we're about! Why don't you summon up every thug and bandit in the area—'