Andrew nodded. “I’ve traveled it, but only a few times and that many years ago. I am not well acquainted with it.”
The trail had been lost on a small shelf of fairly level ground, extending for not more than a few yards before the steep slope took up again. Conrad gathered wood and started a fire. Daniel and Beauty stood with hanging heads, resting from hard travel. Tiny flopped down on the ground.
“We could use Ghost,” said Conrad, “but he is far away, spying out the land ahead of us.”
“I’ll say this for Ghost,” said Andrew. “I have a lot more respect for him than I had before. It takes real courage for a ghost to go out in broad daylight and do the kind of job that he’s been doing.”
A gray shadow moved among the trees below them.
“There’s a wolf,” said Duncan.
“There are a lot of wolves around,” said Andrew. “More than there ever were since the Harriers came.”
Another gray shadow followed the first, and farther down the slope was yet another one.
“At least three of them,” said Duncan. “And there may be more. Do you think they might be following us?”
“Nothing to worry about,” said Conrad. “A wolf is a coward. Face up to one and he runs away.”
Meg put her arms around herself, hugging herself, shivering a little. “They smell blood,” she said. “They can smell blood before there is any blood.”
“Old wives’ tale,” said Conrad.
“Not a tale,” Meg said. “I know. They know when death is coming.”
“Not our blood,” said Conrad. “Not our death.”
A wind had come up and far down the hill it could be heard moaning in the trees. The ground was thick with fallen leaves. And over all of it was a somberness, the sense of autumn, a psychic warning against the coming of the snow. Duncan felt a faint unease, although there was nothing, he told himself, to be uneasy about. In just a short time now they would find the right trail and be on their way again, following a harder road than they had first intended, but on their way at last.
How many more days, he wondered, and was amazed that he had no idea. Once they were through these hills, more than likely, they would make faster time. So far they had not hurried, but gone along at an easy pace. Now was the time, once they were squared around, he told himself, to really cover ground.
“If Snoopy were only here,” said Andrew, “he would know the way, how to find the trail. But that is wishful thinking. There is no honor in him. Even when he told us, when he gave his word, he had no intention of being any help to us.”
“We’ll make out without him,” Duncan said, a sharpness to his words.
“At least,” said Conrad, “we walked out of the witchery that was laid for us.”
“The witchery, yes,” said Andrew. “But there will be other things.”
They ate and then moved on, striking toward the east, or as close to east as was possible, for in this tangled, tortuous land there was no such thing as heading in any one direction. There were diversions–a bad lay of ground, a particularly steep climb that they tried to skirt, a tangle of fallen trees they must go around. But, in general, they trended toward the east.
The sun went down the sky and there was still no sign of any trail. They moved through a region that had no trace of men, or of there ever having been any men. There were no burned farmsteads, no cuttings where timber had been harvested. Ancient trees stood undisturbed, hoary with age.
From time to time they caught glimpses of wolves, but always at a distance. There was no way of knowing if they were the same wolves they had seen earlier.
We are lost, Duncan told himself, although he said nothing to the others. Despite all that Andrew said, all that he professed to know, there might not be a trail. For days they might keep plunging into the great wilderness and find nothing that would help them, floundering in confusion. Perhaps, he thought, it might be the enchantment still at work, although in a less obvious manner than had been the case before.
The sun was almost gone when they came down a long slope into a deep glen, rimmed by the hills, as if it might be sunk into the very earth, a place of quiet and shadows, filled with a sense of melancholy. It was a place where one walked softly and did not raise his voice. The light of the sun still caught the hilltops above them and gilded some of the autumn trees with flaming color, but here night was falling fast.
Duncan hurried ahead to catch up with Conrad.
“This place,” said Conrad, “has an evil smell to it.”
“Evil or not,” said Duncan, “it is a place to camp. Sheltered from the wind. Probably we’ll find water. There must be a stream somewhere. Better than being caught on some windy hillside.”
“I thought to catch sight of something ahead,” said Conrad. “A whiteness. Like a church, perhaps.”
“An odd place for a church,” said Duncan.
“I could not be sure. In this dark, it is hard to see.”
As they talked they kept moving ahead. Tiny had fallen back to walk with the two of them.
Ahead of them Duncan caught a glimpse of whiteness.
“I think I see it, too,” he said. “Straight ahead of us.”
As they progressed a little farther they could see that it was a building–for all the world like a tiny church. A thin tall spire pointed toward the sky and the door stood open. In front of it a space had been cleared of underbrush and trees, and they went across this space filled with wonder. For there should not be a church here, even a small one. Round about lived no one who would attend it, and yet there it stood, a small building, like a toy church. A chapel, Duncan thought. One of those hidden chapels tucked away, for one obscure reason or another, in places that were off the beaten track.
Duncan and Conrad came to a halt in front of it, and Andrew came hurrying up to them.
“Jesus of the Hills,” he said. “The Chapel of the Jesus of the Hills. I had heard of it, but had never seen it. I had no idea how to get to it. It was a thing spoken of half in wonder, half in disbelief.”
“And here it is,” said Conrad.
Andrew was visibly shaken. The hand that held the staff was trembling.
“A holy place,” said Duncan. “A place of pilgrimage, perhaps.”
“A holy place only recently. Only the last few hundred years,” said Andrew. “It stands on most unholy ground. In earlier times it was a pagan shrine.”
“There are many holy places that were raised on areas that once were special to the pagans,” Duncan told him. “In the thought, perhaps, that the pagans would more readily accept Christianity if the places of worship were built on familiar ground.”
“Yes, I know,” said Andrew. “Reading in the Fathers, I ran across some mention of such thoughts. But this one–this was something else.”
“A pagan shrine, you said. A place of the Druids, most likely.”
“Not the Druids,” said Andrew. “Not a shrine for humans. A gathering place for evil, where high carnival was held upon certain days.”
“But if such were the case, why was a chapel built here? It would seem to me this was a place the Church had best avoid, for a time at least.”
“I do not know,” said Andrew. “Not with any certainty. There were in the olden days certain militant churchmen who perforce must seize evil by the horns, must confront it face to face…”
“And what happened?”
“I do not know,” said Andrew. “The legends are unclear. There are many stories, but perhaps no truth to any of them.”
“But the chapel’s here,” said Conrad. “It was allowed to stand.” Duncan strode forward, went up the three shallow steps that led up to the chapel door, and through the door.
The place was tiny, a dollhouse sort of place. There was one window on each side made of low-grade colored glass that glinted in the fading light, and six pews, three on each side of the narrow aisle. And above the altar.
Duncan stared in horror. He gagged and knew the bitterness of gall gushing in his mouth. His stomach knotted at the sight of the crucifix that hung behind the altar. It was carved out of a large oak log, all of it in one piece, the cross and the carven Jesus hanging on the cross.
The crucifix was upside down. The figure of Christ was standing on His head, as if He had been caught in the midpoint of a somersault. Filth had been smeared upon Him and obscene sentences, written in Latin, were painted on the wood.