‘ Well, when Petra wakes she’ll be able to keep in touch with Rachel,’ I reminded him. ‘ She doesn’t seem to have any kind of limit.’
‘Yes, of course. I’d forgotten that,’ he agreed. ‘It will help her a bit.’
A few moments later a hand came under the curtain, pushing a wooden bowl into the cave-mouth. Sophie scrambled in after it, and gave it to me. She trimmed up the disgusting candles and then squatted down on the skin of some unidentifiable animal while I helped myself with a wooden spoon. An odd dish; it appeared to consist of several kinds of shoots, diced meat, and crumbled hard-bread, but the result was not at all bad, and very welcome. I enjoyed it, almost to the last when I was suddenly smitten in a way that sent a whole spoonful cascading down my shirt. Petra was awake again.
I got in a response at once. Petra switched straight from distress to elation. It was nattering, but almost as painful. Evidently she woke Rosalind, for I caught her pattern among the chaos of Michael asking what the hell? and Petra’s Sealand friend anxiously protesting.
Presently Petra got a hold of herself, and the turmoil quietened down. There was a sense of all other parties relaxing cautiously.
‘Is she safe now? What was all that thunder and lightning about?’ Michael inquired.
Petra told us, keeping it down with an obvious effort:
‘We thought David was dead. We thought they’d killed him.’
Now I began to catch Rosalind’s thoughts, firming into comprehensible shapes out of a sort of swirl. I was humbled, bowled over, happy, and distressed all at the same time. I could not think much more clearly in response, for all I tried. It was Michael who put an end to that.
‘This is scarcely decent for third parties,’ he observed. ‘When you two can disentangle yourselves there are other things to be discussed.’ He paused.’ Now,’ he continued,’ what is the position?’
We sorted it out. Rosalind and Petra were still in the tent where I had last seen them. The spider-man had gone away, leaving a large, pink-eyed, white-haired man in charge of them. I explained my situation.
‘Very well,’ said Michael. ‘You say this spider-man seems to be in some sort of authority, and that he has come forward towards the fighting. You’ve no idea whether he intends to join in the fighting himself, or whether he is simply making tactical dispositions? You see, if it is the latter he may come back at any time.’
‘ I’ve no idea,’ I told him.
Rosalind came in abruptly, as near to hysteria as I had known her.
‘ I’m frightened of him. He’s a different kind. Not like us. Not the same sort at all. It would be outrageous – like an animal. I couldn’t, ever … If he tries to take me I shall kill myself. . . .’
Michael threw himself on that like a pail of ice-water.
‘You won’t do anything so damned silly. You’ll kill the spider-man, if necessary.’ With an air of having settled that point conclusively he turned his attention elsewhere. At his full range he directed a question to Petra’s friend.
‘You still think you can reach us?’
The reply came still from a long distance, but clearly and without effort now. It was a calmly confident ‘Yes’.
‘When?’ Michael asked.
There was a pause before the reply, as if for consultation, then:
‘In not more than sixteen hours from now,’ she told him, just as confidently. Michael’s scepticism diminished. For the first time he allowed himself to admit the possibility of her help.
‘Then it is a question of ensuring that you three are kept safe for that long,’ he told us, meditatively.
‘Wait a minute. Just hold on a bit,’ I told them.
I looked up at Sophie. The smoky candles gave enough light to show that she was watching my face intently, a little uneasily.
‘You were “talking” to that girl?’ she said.
‘And my sister. They’re awake now,’ I told her. ‘They are in the tent, and being guarded by an albino. It seems odd.’
‘Odd?’ she inquired.
‘Well, one would have thought a woman in charge of them…’
‘This is the Fringes,’ she reminded me with bitterness.
‘It – oh, I see,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Well, the point is this: do you think there is any way they can be got out of there before he comes back? It seems to me that now is the time. Once he does come back . . .’ I shrugged, keeping my eyes on hers.
She turned her head away and contemplated the candles for some moments. Then she nodded.
‘Yes. That would be best for all of us – all of us, except him . . .’ she added, half sadly. ‘Yes, I think it can be done.’
‘ Straight away?’
She nodded again. I picked up the spear that lay by the couch, and weighed it in my hand. It was somewhat light, but well balanced. She looked at it, and shook her head.
‘You must stay here, David,’ she told me.
‘ But -‘ I began.
‘ No. If you were to be seen there would be an alarm. No one will take any notice of me going to his tent, even if they do see me.’
There was sense in that. I laid the spear down, though with reluctance.
‘But can you -?’
‘Yes,’ she said decisively.
She got up and went to one of the niches. From it she pulled out a knife. The broad blade was clean and bright. It looked as if it might once have been part of the kitchen furnishings of a raided farm. She slipped it into the belt of her skirt, leaving only the dark handle protruding. Then she turned and looked at me for a long moment.
‘David -‘ she began, tentatively.
‘What?’ I asked.
She changed her mind. In a different tone she said:
‘Will you tell them no noise? Whatever happens, no sounds at all? Tell them to follow me, and have dark pieces of cloth ready to wrap round themselves. Will you be able to make all that clear to them?’
‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘But I wish you’d let me -‘
She shook her head and cut me short.
‘ No, David. It’d only increase the risk. You don’t know the place.’
She pinched out the candles, and unhooked the curtain. For a moment I saw her silhouetted against the paler darkness of the entrance, then she was gone.
I gave her instructions to Rosalind, and we impressed on Petra the necessity for silence. Then there was nothing to do but wait and listen to the steady drip-drip-drip in the darkness.
I could not sit still for long like that. I went to the entrance and put my head out into the night. There were a few cooking fires glowing among the shacks; people moving about, too, for the glows blinked occasionally as figures crossed in front of them. There was a murmur of voices, a slight, composite stir of small movements, a night-bird calling harshly a little distance away, the cry of an animal still farther off. Nothing more.
We were all waiting. A small shapeless surge of excitement escaped for a moment from Petra. No one commented on it.
Then from Rosalind a reassuring ‘it’s-all-right’ shape, but with a curious secondary quality of shock to it. It seemed wiser not to distract their attention now by asking the reason for that.
I listened. There was no alarm; no change in the conglomerate murmur. It seemed a long time until I heard the crunch of grit underfoot, directly below me. The poles of the ladder scraped faintly on the rock edge as the weight came on them. I moved back into the cave out of the way. Rosalind was asking silently, a little doubtfully:
‘ Is this right? Are you there, David?’
‘Yes. Come along up,’ I told them.
One figure appeared dimly outlined in the opening. Then another, smaller form, then a third. The opening was blotted out. Presently the candles were alight again.
Rosalind, and Petra; too, watched silently in horrid fascination as Sophie scooped a bowlful of water from the bucket to wash the blood off her arms and clean the knife.
16
The two girls studied one another, curiously and warily. Sophie’s eyes travelled over Rosalind, in her russet woollen dress with its brown cross applique, and rested for a moment on her leather shoes. She looked down at her own soft moccasins, then at her short, tattered skirt. In the course of her self-inspection she discovered new stains that had not been on her bodice half an hour before. Without any embarrassment she pulled it off and began to soak them out in the cold water. To Rosalind she said:
‘You must get rid of that cross. Hers, as well,’ she added, glancing at Petra. ‘ It marks you. We women in the Fringes do not feel that it has served us very well. The men resent it, too. Here.’ She took a small, thin-bladed knife from a niche, and held it out.