The Sinful Stones (17 page)

The cackling broke out again and wearily he turned. The fatter Mrs Macdonald was holding the food-bag towards him; he took it. The thinner one began to speak to him in Gaelic, tragic, pleading, earnest. When she finished he nodded and smiled, as though no torture on earth could have drawn from him the secret of their experiment with alcohol. Once more he staggered towards the door. He eased his burden through, bent-kneed.

The wide light of the headland dazzled him like the glare off a snow-field. He had been longer than he meant. Rita and Sir Francis were already out of sight round the abrupt shoulder. Pibble plodded after them with small and straining steps, blessing the diet that had kept Sister Dorothy leaner than civilised food might have made her. Suddenly the hiss of the wind and the creaking of the gulls vanished beneath a nearer noise—the collie's maniac yelp. He swung heavily round to see what had interrupted its scratching.

A brown blob was hurtling up the slope below the cottage, faster than cloud-shadow. Love, freed from the leash of his training, was back now at the true centre of his nature, hunting. Love hunting Pibble.

The collie had raced to meet the intruder but was hoicked onto its hind legs by its lunge against the rope. Pibble began to lumber downhill, hoping to make it back to the half-safety of the collie's protection. A shadow moved in the doorway and the same brown arm that he had seen before reached out, but this time it didn't tug at the rope to quiet the collie. Instead steel gleamed for a moment in the bitter light.

The collie was loose, still yelping, stretching into a curving gallop with the slashed rope trailing behind it. Love never noticed this new enemy in his hurling across the wind-flattened grass. The collie was fresher, and perhaps naturally faster. Pibble teetered to a halt—no point in running now, anywhere. Thirty yards from him the curved path intercepted the straight path, coming not quite at a tangent; as the dogs” shoulders met the collie's alligator jaw closed on Love's neck, but it was the surprise of the impact that bowled the bigger dog over, eight legs flailing as the collie clung to the brindled fur.

Love was up first. The fall had broken the collie's hold, and for a moment Pibble thought its back must be damaged as it threshed upside down in a patch of heather. Love shook his beautiful head and the tear behind his right ear showered a visible and arching spray of blood into the wind. Then he was leaping on, unbaffled.

But before he had made another five yards the collie was on him again and had bowled him over without letting go. As they flailed on the ground the long cord tangled round them. Mrs Macdonald was marching up the slope, her gutting knife held high above her head. She was yelling like a clansman. Far on the southern skyline a straggle of brown, skirted figures was beating through the heather. Pibble turned again and wallowed up the headland.

Ten minutes ahead of them, say; and there'd be a coracle for getting them to the boat, built for two at a pinch, and he'd be faced with one of those instant-logic problems—cannibals and missionaries crossing a river—one drunk, one loony, and one dotard, and poor old Pibble to ferry them over the water. Take Rita first, to climb into the boat. Then Sir Francis, and she could help him up. Wrestle with Dorothy last, if the monks hadn't come by then. They …

It turned out to be a big inflatable rubber dinghy, of the kind used for air-sea rescue. Rita had dragged it down into the water. As Pibble came swaying down the path, his hurt hip feeling as if there were lumps of gravel between bone and bone and his bruised feet slipping sockless in the unfamiliar boots, she was handing the old man over the rounded gunwale as though he were squiring her into a cotillion. By the time Pibble reached the weedy shore Sir Francis was grinning in the stern while Rita stood beside the foot-high wavelets, the diminished wind of the inlet swirling her habit about her in Diana-of-the-Uplands folds.

“Think you've got the whole damned afternoon to loiter about?” yelled the old man.

“She wasn't easy to lift,” said Pibble. “The Virtues are coming up this way.”

“Maybe, maybe. Shake a leg, man. I'll be done for if I catch cold.”

Secondary infection, yes. Dangerous, the book had said. Pibble knelt on the slimy rock beside the gunwale with his hip as close to it as he could manage. Carefully he let himself keel over towards it, then at the edge of his balance he twitched and ducked under his own right hand which still held Sister Dorothy's wrist; as she toppled, he heaved shoreward. The twist and heave were agony, but her weight slid over the gunwale into the rocking dinghy. For a moment he felt so light that the wind could have blown him away. He lowered her on to her back, picked up her ankles and tucked them brutally in. Her interrupted snoring settled at once to a steady rasp …

“Get into the bows now, Countess,” he said. “Sit a little over on the far side, and we'll be level again.”

She stepped daintily in. Pibble followed. Two rubber rowlocks projected from the fat gunwales, and when he fitted the stubby and splintery oars into them Pibble found that Dorothy's body was so disposed that it lay right across the place where he had to sit and row. He let go of the oars and wrestled with its inertness.

“Sit on her, you idiot!” shouted the old man. “Row! She's used to it, hey? This thing's only made of rubber!”

Pibble looked up. The wind had already nudged the dinghy round and was drifting it down towards a reef of puncturing rocks at the bottom of the inlet. He settled into Sister Dorothy's lap with barely a twinge and started to pull with short strokes, lifting the oars high above the jerky wavelets each time he came forward. The toothed rocks receded, but still the funnelled wind shoved the dinghy crabwise. His right hand insisted on pulling more strongly than his left.

Sir Francis raised his walking-stick and for an instant Pibble thought the old man was going to strike him, but the ebony rod wavered and steadied to point over his right shoulder. Pibble pulled three times on his left oar and the pointer swung round, lifting over his head. Thus guided, he struggled with the sea.

Father had liked rowing. There'd been sweltering Sundays at Richmond, Mother in her wide hat, Father stripped to his waistcoat (he'd never have been seen in braces) and sporting a straw boater with a curiously broad ribbon, and small Jamie headachy from the sunbeams bouncing off the greasy water. Father, careful of his ruined lungs, had rowed with tidy economy, feathering, pocking the stream with regular little whirlpools where his oars had dipped; sometimes a passing boatload of oafs would mock raucously at his daintiness and Mother would flush, but he would row on unsweating, faster than many a splashing heaver. The cushions were brown, buttoned, sun-faded velvet; the seat-back varnished wicker. And once, when the day had soured into a squally wind and thunderclouds, they had hurried back from their picnic over a Thames that had real waves on it, all of six inches high. Then Father, explaining as usual, had rowed with an almost circular stroke, not feathering at all but lunging briefly at the water when the oars bit. That, he said, was how seamen managed waves. And he'd got Mother's new print dress back to the quay almost unspotted, while the boatloads of oafs cursed each other at every drenching stroke.

It worked, too, in a real sea with real waves. Pibble tugged steadily and Sir Francis never cursed him once.

The ebony stick speared skywards. Pibble easied, looked over his shoulder, tugged twice with his right oar and put up his hand to clutch the gunwale of the boat.

“You first,” yelled Sir Francis. “You'll have to haul me up. Then the loony. Then you can come back for Dorrie.”

Pibble stood unsteadily and scrambled aboard. The undecked half of the ship was a wild tangle of rotting fishing gear, nets and ropes rising into a herring-smelling mound under which the loose water in the bottom of the boat slopped soupily, rocked by his arrival. He found a loop of rope and hung it over the side, coiling the other ends round a T-shaped bit of brass made for some such purpose. He took the parcel which the mittened claws were waving at him and found a nook for it on the netting.

“Put your foot in the loop, sir,” he said.

Sir Francis reversed his walking-stick and hooked it over the gunwale; carefully he pulled himself up; Pibble took his hands; Rita's slim arm, rough with gooseflesh, held the dinghy tight against the boat while Sir Francis pawed with his spatless foot and found the loop.

“Now!” said Pibble.

He was so light with age that Pibble almost tossed him against the far bulwark. They clutched each other like drunken waltzers but stayed upright. Sir Francis was already glaring round the boat.

“Damned Celts!” he said. “Couldn't keep a shoe-box tidy! Bad as niggers—natives are always the same, wherever you go. Tie the painter and get the loony aboard. Tell her to find a place for me to nest while I see what sort of a mess those damned women have made of the rigging. You can heave Dorrie up.”

Pibble ran to the side and gave Rita her orders in his best Regency. He was worried about the time that had flickered by since Sir Francis had come to in the bothie. Rita had found the food-sack and was gnawing a corner of the loaf and looking as cold as a waif in a Christmas weepie, but she nodded and scrambled up. Pibble tied the painter and tumbled down to the heaving rubber. As soon as he knelt beside the snoring mass he knew that the job was beyond him. He was too weak to lift her now—he'd been too weak on firm land, dammit, and on this bulging and erratic platform …

He looked despairingly up. A shape on the shore nicked the edge of his eyesight. Lord Ullin's daughter poised by the sea-waves. No, it was Hope, the brown skirt of his habit stiff in the wind. Two others were at the cliff-top. Pibble stood and shouted to Sir Francis and pointed. The old man sneered at him.

“Can't reach us here, hey?” he said and returned to poking with his stick at the hummocks of red-brown cloth which lay beside the mast.

“I can't lift Sister Dorothy,” called Pibble. “Can we tow her?”

“If you want to drown a good witness,” snarled Sir Francis. “Wake the bitch up. Pour some water on her.”

Pibble knelt again, scooped the icy water in cupped hands and tossed it against the lined brown and open mouth. His victim shook her head and spat in her sleep. He tried again. This time she sat violently up, looked round the bay with eyes that seemed all rolling and bloodshot white, heaved herself to the gunwale and vomited. Pibble grabbed her by the shoulder as she was settling back to her stupor.

“Get aboard!” he shouted. “We're going!”

He helped her to her knees, guided her hands to the gunwale of the boat, held the dinghy close in while he forced her into a crouch with his spare hand, got his shoulder under her buttock as she began to tumble, and heaved her inboard. He was afraid she might have broken her neck, but when he clambered up from the wallowing dinghy she was kneeling on the mount of netting, swaying like a slowing top.

“Bloody boats!” she said thickly and collapsed face down; her snore rose clear above the rattle of wavelets and the hissing wind and the endless, inane excitement of the wheeling gulls. Pibble lurched forward to where Sir Francis was still sitting by the hummock of sail, poking it with his stick.

Poking it without meaning or interest. He had gone soft. “We're ready to go now, sir,” said Pibble.

“Well, get on with it, you damned fellow.”

“I need your help, sir.”

“Leave me alone. Can't you see I'm tired?”

Pibble looked up. Three Virtues now stood on the shore, and Providence was coming ponderously down the cliff path.

“Come back in three hours twenty minutes,” said the leaden voice. “Where's Dorrie?”

Rita answered.

“She sleeps, Sire. But I am here, and your cabin is prepared. Here are your matches.”

Sir Francis put the little box away like an automaton and tried to rise. Rita helped him up.

“Stop!” said Pibble. “I don't know how to sail the boat or where to go.”

“Come back later,” mumbled the old man.

“His Majesty's command,” said Rita, “is absolute law to all his subjects. Even the highest, Your Highness.”

“Reet,” said Pibble, “the stones are your brothers.”

She laughed.

“Can you number the hairs of your own head, Reet?”

“Only … only …”

Her voice was changing. She stared wild-eyed round the incomprehensible sea-scape. Pibble toiled brutally on.

“Can you number the sins of your own heart, Reet?”

“Only God can number the sins of His own heart. And He has none.”

“And He has none. Go to the lonely cell, Reet, and wait for the word of the Lord to be made plain.”

He pointed to the low door. She shuffled in, dead-faced. Pibble took Sir Francis by the wrists.

“Sit down, sir,” he said gently.

“Damned insolence,” grumbled the old man, but allowed himself to be lowered on to the netting. Pibble settled him against Sister Dorothy's vibrating torso and went aft for the food-sack. Providence was on the shore now. Hope had stripped. As if at a signal all the Virtues knelt on the rocks, and Providence raised both arms. The wind was the wrong way for Pibble to hear the words of their commination. He picked the bottle out of the sack, turned and settled himself beside Sir Francis. No snarl came through the old lips as he worked the watch out of the waistcoat pocket, flipped its back open and tipped the last ration of cortisone out into his palm.

“You haven't taken your pill, you naughty boy,” he cooed.

“Yes I have.”

“No you haven't. Open your mouth.”

It worked. The tongue, grey as fungus, protruded between the tensed lips. Pibble popped the pill on it and it flicked in.

“Water,” said the dull voice plaintively.

Pibble held the bottle to his lips and tilted. Perhaps, he thought, the mild lacing of spirit in it would act as a disinfectant against any bugs in the boggy water. Sir Francis swallowed once, half choked, sneezed, shook his head and managed to finish his swallow. The spattering explosion produced an uncannily powerful reek Pibble smelt the bottle. Crippen, this was
neat
whisky.