Silver Fin Page 27
They heard a shot and a squeal, then another shot, and the two boys hacked furiously at the padlocks until seven pigs were free.
The pitiful beasts had lived miserable lives of pain and torment, and somewhere within their small, crazed brains they wanted revenge, revenge on the people who had caused them pain. They smelt one of them now. The one with the hard boots. He was close. MacSawney.
The boys heard more shots, then two thuds in quick succession that were followed by a scream, long and thin, like a child. Then there came a horrible snuffling and grunting and a sickening crunch.
James tried not to think what that crunch meant. But he had seen the powerful jaws of the pigs.
The laboratory was quickly filling with smoke now and the boys could barely see, but they knew they had only moments to get out while the pigs were distracted. They jumped down from their perch and sprinted towards the stairs, slipping on the wet floor.
Halfway up the stairs, James stopped. He remembered the iron door with the sign on it showing a lurid illustration of flames and a skull-and-crossbones and the warning – ‘DANGER! HIGHLY INFLAMMABLE’.
‘What’s in here?’ he asked.
‘It’s where they keep the preserving fluids and all the solvents and raw alcohol for their experiments,’ said George.
‘Do you have the keys?’ James coughed and clutched his chest.
‘I think so.’
George found the key quite quickly. Inside were jar upon jar of clear liquid. James looked at George, daring him to go all the way and risk burning down the entire castle.
George rose to the challenge. They grabbed two jars each and ran back out on to the steps.
They could see bright flames licking out through the strongroom door and already the air was growing hot. As James looked, the thick smoke parted and he caught a glimpse of something unreal, but it was for such a brief instant that he wasn’t sure whether he’d only imagined it. In that one teasing moment of clarity he thought he’d seen MacSawney lying on the floor, but there was something wrong about him. James’s brain tried to make sense of the fleeting image, but, no matter how he turned it in his mind, it seemed that the lower half of the gillie was missing.
James turned to George. He had seen nothing.
‘Quick!’ George shouted. ‘What are you waiting for?’
James hurled one of his jars. It flew across the room and landed near the flames, where it exploded like a bomb. They threw the rest of their jars and soon the room was an inferno.
They had done enough; Randolph’s research was ruined, his experiments destroyed, his papers burnt. SilverFin was no more.
They ran on up the stairs and into the castle, where they met a group of panicked scientists, running towards them in some confusion.
At their head was Perseus Friend.
‘What’s happening?’ he said.
‘Everything’s gone,’ croaked James, and Dr Friend looked at him uncomprehendingly.
‘What do you mean?’ he said, his voice high-pitched and tremulous.
‘You’re not going to hurt anyone or anything ever again,’ said James.
‘No!’ Dr Friend ran to the door and looked through, his face lit red by the flames. ‘No!’
‘It’s too late, Perseus!’ yelled George.
‘What have you done?’
Before anyone could stop him, Perseus ran into the laboratory and disappeared. The other scientists were more careful; they hung around the door until they were driven back by the smoke and one of them had the sense to the push the door closed.
A thin, grey haze hung in the air and drifted through the twisting corridors of the castle as James and George made their way as quickly as possible towards the exit.
There were more confused men in the entrance hall, running around and trying to find out what was going on. They ignored George and James, who hurried across the tiles, wrenched the big front doors open and burst out into the sunlight.
For a moment they were blinded by the brightness. Shielding their eyes with their hands, they stumbled on to the driveway, where they collapsed to the ground, gasping clean, fresh air into their lungs.
All the tension, all the stress and fear inside James now dissolved; it felt as if a tightly wound piece of elastic inside him had suddenly snapped. He started to laugh, sitting up and clutching his chest.
‘So much for the ultimate fighting machine,’ he said, and turned to George.
But George wasn’t laughing. He was staring at something, his face deathly white, his mouth hanging open.
What was it?
James looked round.
Lord Hellebore stood there, his shotgun pointing at the boys.
‘I’ve two barrels,’ he snarled as James jumped to his feet, ‘one for each of you. Then I’ll feed your useless bodies to the eels.’
‘Father, for God’s sake,’ pleaded George. ‘It’s over.’
Randolph laughed bitterly. ‘It is far from over,’ he said. ‘You can’t stop me.’
‘You’re crazy,’ said James, simply. ‘That’s why you never could have succeeded, that’s why you never will succeed. Madmen never do.’
‘This is nothing,’ Hellebore spat. ‘A minor setback. I’ll move on. I’ll go to Germany, or Russia, somewhere where they’ll appreciate my genius. By the time they find your skeletons, they’ll have been picked clean and I’ll be long gone.’
George Hellebore was crying.
‘Stop your snivelling, boy,’ said Randolph. ‘I always knew you were weak. You have too much of your mother in you. Look at you, crying with fear.’
‘It’s not fear,’ said George. ‘It’s not that at all. Despite everything, I still love you. You are my father.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ said Randolph harshly. ‘You’ll break my heart.’
‘You won’t get very far,’ said James. ‘The police are on their way.’
‘Are they? Or are you trying to bluff me, Bond? Either way, it doesn’t much matter. My airplane is fuelled and on the runway, and all my research is in here.’ He tapped his head and grinned, showing his immaculate white teeth. ‘You may have destroyed my laboratory, all my work, my papers and experiments, but every bit of it is stored away, up here. I can have a new laboratory set up within weeks, and I can have fresh serum ready in days after that. I know how to do it, Bond. And I will do it. I will create a master race of soldiers, and we’ll come back here one day, and we’ll destroy this precious little country of yours.’ He cocked the twin hammers on his shotgun and his tone became very businesslike. ‘Now, I would ask you to say your prayers, but it should be abundantly clear to you by now that there is no God.’ He smiled. ‘No God but me.’
‘You can’t do this,’ George sobbed.
‘Yes I can. I hold the power of life and death. You mean nothing to me, George. You see, the thing of it is, I couldn’t breed the perfect boy, I couldn’t breed a boy who would grow up to be the perfect man: strong and fearless and ruthless. I failed there. But why bother trying to breed one when I can make one? The men I create will be my true sons. I will create an army of sons who will crush the soft underbelly of Europe beneath their feet. But first, I have to get rid of a small annoyance.’
He raised the shotgun and pointed it at the boys’ heads. James tensed, waiting to dive at the last minute. There was always hope, always a chance of a way out; maybe he could even push George clear and save him too. He focused on Randolph’s mad eyes, trying to read in them the signal that he was about to pull the trigger.
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But then he sensed a movement, off to one side, at the very edge of his vision. He was aware of something travelling fast towards them.
Randolph’s concentration broke and he turned to see what it was.
It was the piglet.
Hellebore frowned and spat, but then something erupted from the loch with a high-pitched, whining sound, like air escaping from a balloon.
‘Algar!’
Algar raced towards his brother, his lips pulled back to reveal his ruined teeth. The pathetic sound escaping from his mouth was the only noise he could make.
‘Algar! Stop!’ Randolph cried.
But Algar wasn’t going to stop – he was heading straight for Lord Hellebore, his arms outstretched.
‘Stop, damn you!’ Randolph fired both barrels and the blast took Algar directly in his stomach, but still he didn’t stop. He crashed into Randolph, gripping him in his immense arms, and the two of them tumbled into the water with an almighty splash.
It was uncannily still for a moment, as if the two of them had simply disappeared, but then they surfaced, still locked in their awful embrace. Algar was strong, but Randolph was no weakling and his brother was badly injured, so it was a fairly balanced fight. The two of them looked hardly human, though: Algar with his wide, nightmare face smeared with blood and slime, and Randolph, his hair wet, his eyes crazed, his once handsome face twisted into a hideous caricature of snarling rage.
The water was stained black with blood from Algar’s wound and it was beginning to boil and froth.
The eels were coming.
Algar put a hand to his brother’s face and forced him over backwards, his breath wheezing out in a long sigh. They went under again, into the water, which was alive with hungry fish. The next time the men surfaced, Randolph was entangled with wriggling, undulating eels; they were caught in his hair and clothing, and several smaller ones had fixed their teeth on to the loose parts of his flesh, where they twisted and turned.
James grabbed George and held his face to his chest so that he wouldn’t see the terrible thing that was happening to his father.
Randolph shook his head and roared at the eels, then he slipped back beneath the water with the dying Algar’s hands round his throat. A minute later, he came up for the last time, and by now he was covered in the creatures; they were clustered round his limbs, sliding over his face and slipping inside his clothing so that he resembled a writhing figure made of eels. Finally he fell forward and sank, one arm stretched up towards the heavens, so that all that was visible of him was his hand. For a moment the hand pointed upwards, as if reaching for something, and then it slowly slipped beneath the water.
The two wretched brothers were gone.
‘Come along,’ said James. ‘Let’s get away from here.’
He turned and took a few steps down the driveway. The sun seemed particularly bright, everything around him looked so vivid and alive, the colours intense, and then the colours turned to liquid and bled into each other, like a watercolour painting left in the rain.
‘Look at that,’ he heard himself say, and the voice seemed to come from far, far away.
He felt like he was walking through treacle, as if his legs were sinking into the ground, and then the light began to close in like a fist. Flickering darkness narrowed his vision, his head felt weightless, full of bubbles, and he was falling forward. He heard a noise like thunder and someone calling. ‘Look out… Look out… Look out…’ The voice echoed and spun off into the darkness and James spun away after it, shrinking to a tiny speck, and then the tiny speck disappeared.
28
On Agar’s Plough
Du-doo doo du-doo, du-doo doo du-doo…
What was that?
It was so familiar. Like a musical instrument. A clarinet or a flute. So familiar.
Du-doo doo du-doo, du-doo doo du-doo… Over and over again.
No. Not an instrument. An animal. Yes. Of course. A bird. A wood pigeon. A wood pigeon with its distinctive repetitive rhythm – so familiar.
Du-doo doo du-doo, du-doo doo du-doo…
James lay for a long time with his eyes closed, listening to the gentle, soothing sound. The bird must be sitting up in a nearby tree somewhere, just sitting there, singing; so peaceful, an easy life, singing in the trees…
Then he became aware of other sounds: the wind rustling in the leaves of the treetops, curtains flapping and banging against a window frame, other birds twittering, the river flowing down towards the sea, a dog barking in the distance.
And he was aware of smells as well, the slightly dusty smell of the room he was in, mixed with the sharp, peaty tang from the river and the soft scent of pine resin from the woods, drifting in on the clean, fresh air that was blowing in through an open window and cooling his face, and nearer to hand, the smell of flowers…
He opened his eyes and saw a glass vase sitting on the nightstand by his bed; there was a small bunch of wild flowers in it. He was in his little attic room in Uncle Max’s cottage, the room that he had got to know so well since he had been up in Scotland. There on the wall opposite was the little painting of the stag, there the chest of drawers with a jug of fresh water on it and the oil lamp, there the shelf of books and the china cat with its chipped ear.
All so familiar. The wallpaper with its pattern of roses, the bright-blue door, the row of shooting prizes…
He raised himself on one elbow, but his head swam and his arm felt too weak to support him. He flopped back down on to the bed and took a deep, slow breath. There was a pain in his lungs, like an itch, and his throat was sore.
He lay there for a long while, on his back, staring up at the ceiling, watching two flies chasing each other about and walking upside down. After a while – it could have been a few minutes, it could have been an hour – he heard footsteps on the wooden stairs and presently his aunt came in.
She looked very pleased to see him.
‘James, darling,’ she said, ‘you’re awake.’
‘Yes. I still feel dreadfully tired, though. I don’t remember coming back here. How long have I been in bed? And how did I get here, and…?’
‘Shush.’ Charmian put a finger to her lips and sat down by the bed. ‘So many questions.’
‘But I don’t understand…’
Charmian stroked his forehead with a cool, dry hand. ‘You’ve been very ill, James. You nearly died. Doctor Walker has hardly left the cottage.’
‘Ill?’
‘A fever, and an infection of the lungs, and complete and utter exhaustion. But you must be a pretty tough old soul, because here you are, as right as rain.’
‘I don’t feel as right as rain.’
‘Perhaps not a good strong downpour.’
‘No,’ James smiled. ‘More of a thin drizzle.’
Charmian brushed back the unruly lock of black hair that always fell in James’s face.
‘Compared to how you have been, you are a picture of health, believe you me.’ A shadow passed over Charmian’s face and she looked concerned. ‘We were so worried.’
‘But I still don’t understand, how long has it been?’
‘Ten days. I’m afraid you missed Easter altogether.’
‘Ten days.’ James couldn’t believe it. Ten days lost.
‘What about school?’ he said anxiously.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Charmian, shaking her head. ‘I telephoned them and have sent a letter. There are worse things than missing the start of term. You can go back when you’re well enough.’
She untaped a bandage from his cheek and cleaned the wound with a cloth and a brown liquid that stung his tender skin.
‘But what happened?’ said James, looking up into her kind face.
‘Your friend Kelly with the red hair came here,’ she said. ‘He told us you were in trouble, but couldn’t say how. I drove like a madman up to the castle in the Bentley. All hell had broken loose. Part of the castle was on fire, there were police dashing about and the fire br
igade, but nobody really seemed to know what was going on. There was no sign of Lord Hellebore – there still is no sign of him apparently, not that I cared, it was you I was looking for. And then I found you, being nursed by Wilder Lawless and George Hellebore. You had collapsed, James. I didn’t bother with an ambulance; they were too busy dealing with some men who had got caught up with the fire. I bundled you into the car and got you back here as fast as I could, but you were already feverish, burning up, as if a fire were blazing away inside you. Then for ten days you tossed and turned in your bed, pouring with sweat and crying out strange things, you were often half awake and staring at imagined terrors. You quite put the wind up me. Doctor Walker did all he could. You were too weak to risk taking to the hospital in Kilcraymore. Every night I’ve sat here till dawn talking to you, urging you to hang on, to fight it. I don’t know if you heard me, but at last, yesterday, the fever broke and you slept peacefully for the first time. And now, thank God, here you are and you’re all right.’
Charmian put a fresh bandage on his wound and poured him a glass of deliciously cold water.
‘You’ve been in the wars, haven’t you? The police came a couple of times, asking questions, but I sent them packing. They are still trying to work out exactly what happened up at the castle, and what happened to the laird. George Hellebore is being very helpful, even though the poor lad has no idea what’s happened to his father. I spoke to him myself, and he told me how you had gone up to visit him and helped when the place caught fire, but I still don’t really know what’s been going on.’
She stared at James, and James held her gaze. As he looked up into her face, he saw her concern, realised what she must have been through. He didn’t want to hurt her any more.
He closed his eyes. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember, Aunt Charmian,’ he lied. ‘I do remember going up there with Red, but after that… it’s blank.’
‘Well,’ said Charmian, ‘maybe that’s for the best.’
Over the next couple of days James stayed in bed and slowly regained his strength. He was ferociously hungry, and Charmian brought him a steady supply of food, starting with soup and broth and porridge, but gradually progressing to more solid food. Kelly came to visit, and Wilder, and they talked of silly, trivial things, never of the castle and the Hellebores. Then, at last, one morning he felt well enough to get up. It was a warm, sunny day and he pulled his dressing gown on over his pyjamas and slipped on a pair of plimsolls.