The instinct was strong in him to do something decisive. He was frustrated that Saul wasn’t picking up his calls. It was a boss’s privilege. More than that, it was his right, since he answered to no one but himself and, without him, the machine of which they were all a part stopped running and fell to pieces, becoming so many useless component parts.
But Sam Freemantle was frustrated all the same and felt that he should do something resolute and perhaps even defining while he still had the opportunity to impress, before Curtis the charismatic tree guy returned to take centre stage in the personal dynamics and greater goings-on at the estate.
It was a drama, wasn’t it? Life was a drama and events had conspired to make Tom Curtis the star of this particular show. What he had to do, now, was contrive some drama of his own to occupy the spotlight and remind Saul Abercrombie that he remained a principal player and a force in the unfolding story to be reckoned with and respected. Or at least, he thought, taken into account.
He was more comfortable with his machine metaphor than the more fanciful one concerning the stage. He was happier thinking himself the vital cog without which everything would very likely clunk to a premature halt. He was strong and functioned smoothly but his importance was totally overlooked. Consequently, the mechanism was out of kilter. The delicate balance needed redressing.
Metaphors apart, it wasn’t personal. He respected Curtis and even, on their short acquaintance, found he quite liked him. He envied the man the obvious attraction Francesca Abercrombie felt for him. That was only natural. She was an alluring woman and Curtis had gained her interest without any apparent effort or intent to do so at all. Of course that was frustrating, but it wasn’t the man’s fault and he was clearly an expert at what he did professionally, taking Saul’s scheme and all of its preconditions very seriously indeed.
He looked at his watch. It was just after midday. Curtis was expected back at about teatime. Francesca was presumably tied up doing what Francesca habitually did in her studio. Saul was exercising his vexing right to invisibility. He would be somewhere, obviously. But he wouldn’t be located until he wanted to be. Freemantle thought he might be up at Puller’s Reach, staring at the yew tree they’d broken the ground with by that creepy, whistling cairn of moss-stained stones.
He was in the armoury. He wanted one of the sixteen bores, the single-barrelled pump-action, that brutal artillery piece of a gun that would blast its way through a barn door. Or a thorn bush, he thought with a grin. The gun was only for entertainment really, though. The real damage would be done by the twenty litres of petrol in the jerry can he had stored already in the rear of his Land Rover.
The weather was dry, had been for days. It was overcast and though there’d been that recent bank of fog, the ground was solid and the thorn bush at Gibbet Mourning would burn like tinder, wouldn’t it?
He had woken on his plan. He had thought to clear it with Saul, but Saul wasn’t answering his cell phone. And there was no need really to clear it with the boss. The bush had to go at some point over the coming days and weeks. It was an ugly obstruction. He was Saul’s to-do guy on the ground. He was entitled to use his initiative in the execution of his job.
And to some extent, this was personal. He’d felt a bit impotent, to be truthful, witnessing the bush and its baleful antics in the presence of Tom Curtis. When it bristled as Curtis watched it, he thought it seemed a squalid affront that he should already have dealt with decisively. Its thorny defiance should not have been there for Curtis to see. It should have been a patch of scorched earth which was what, by teatime, he’d resolved over breakfast it would be.
He locked the armoury and walked up the basement stairs and through the house, carrying the gun loosely in the grip of his left hand where its weight and solidity felt good. It smelled slightly of walnut polish and the thin oil he used to lubricate its action. The shells were looped in a leather ammo belt over his right shoulder and they smelled of their brass plugs and packed gunpowder. He put the ordnance on the passenger seat of his vehicle, aware of the grey light of the day, aware that he always felt more alive in possession of a weapon.
He turned the key in the ignition and put the engine into gear, humming to himself. He was slightly surprised when he recognized the melody. It was an old soul classic, the Marvin Gaye tune, ‘What’s Goin’ On’. He’d never greatly cared for black music. He was more of a power ballad man, a Heart and Boston and Michael Bolton sort of person. Probably he’d become familiar with the song when sharing a cell. There’d been plenty of soul brothers behind bars, back in the day. Anyway, at that moment it seemed the appropriate choice.
The bush seemed bigger than he remembered when he got close enough to clearly make out its coiled and tangled detail. The word ‘bush’ didn’t really do this obscene growth justice, he didn’t think. It had a significant mass and density and its overall size was so considerable it was almost alarming. Had it spread? He thought it might have in the couple of days since he’d last seen it and that would make sense. Spring was the time of growth in nature, wasn’t it?
It was higher than he was, rising to about eight feet at its centre and it had to be forty feet across. Feathers fluttered across some of the surface thorns in a tableau of avian death he’d seen before but never fully understood. He’d always thought birds had a kind of sonar enabling them to avoid obstacles. They had night vision and most species had superb eyesight. Yet there they were, every time, a cross-section of winged wildlife impaled and forlornly dead, the breeze maintaining the illusion of life still in their teased spreads of wings.
He had to admit, however grudgingly, that the sheer complexity of the bush was impressive. Its limbs were so thickly and intricately stretched and coiled. Even still – and it had not yet stirred – it had the look of a hellish nest of barbed serpents about it.
At least, it did from a distance. Get closer and the limbs stopped looking snake-like and took on that anthropomorphic quality that had so dismayed Curtis at dusk a couple of days earlier. As Freemantle approached, the shotgun loaded, the reassuring weight of it held evenly between both hands, the limbs of the bush, under their horny protrusions, began to look busy with sinew and muscle like something that might have evolved monstrously and complicatedly from man.
He was twenty feet away when it began to twitch and move. One whorl in a particularly thick limb at the centre seemed to blink open and gaze blankly at him before closing slyly again as the bush shivered and rattled and spat.
It was enough for Freemantle. It was more than fucking enough. He raised the gun chambering a cartridge and triggered a shot that exploded into the thorn labyrinth with a thud and then a tearing screech of destruction. Round after pulverizing round he fired, until the weapon was empty of ammunition, the barrel hot and the smell of cordite and freshly bled sap a stinking cocktail in his nostrils.
He grunted, shouldered the gun and turned to go back for the jerry can of fuel he’d brought there to eradicate that baleful growth forever. He heard something slither and grind across the ground after him and, when he turned, surprised, tendrils, fibrous and as strong as steel cable, wound around his ankles and waist and hauled him juddering and suddenly bleeding and torn, surprised, into the barbed heart of it.
‘The knight in the stained-glass window was called Gregory,’ Abercrombie said. ‘In the Icelandic sagas he is sometimes referred to as Gregory of Avalon, slayer of dragons. So it’s fair to say his fame spread throughout Northern Europe and maybe even beyond. He was born in Tintagel. And of course, it was King Arthur he served.’
‘And now you’re going to tell me he came here answering a plea from Merlin,’ Curtis said.
‘The more remote the time, the less daylight there is between fact and fiction,’ Abercrombie said. ‘That’s the way it is with legends. That’s how myths perpetuate and grow.’
‘That’s the way they’re peddled,’ Francesca said.
‘But let’s stick to what’s verifiable. If he spoke the old Cornish tongue, he also spoke English. The place names here attest to that. This domain was his reward. He came on a quest to rid the region of something blighting it and he succeeded.’
Curtis said, ‘What was the nature of the blight?’
‘It wasn’t vegetable or mineral,’ Abercrombie said. ‘So you tell me, brother, by simple process of elimination, what does that leave?’
‘The thing he’s cut the head off in the lead window at your little church?’
‘That’s an idealized representation,’ Francesca said. ‘He wouldn’t have been dressed that way. He’d probably have more resembled a Viking warrior to our eyes.’
‘I’m less concerned with his wardrobe than the creature he’s just killed,’ Curtis said. ‘Are you two honestly telling me you believe in monsters?’
‘It was a thousand years ago,’ Francesca said. ‘Are you prepared to completely rule out the possibility?’
Curtis said, ‘You don’t subject a fairy tale to carbon dating.’
‘It isn’t a fairy tale,’ Abercrombie said. ‘And there was more than one of them.’
‘So they were a gang,’ Curtis said. ‘Or you’re suggesting a tribe?’
Francesca cleared her throat. She said, ‘They were a species. They were probably of the same family.’
‘There’s a cave,’ Abercrombie said. ‘Or there’s supposed to be. It was their lair. In the story it extended for a long way, maybe over a mile inland. The mouth lay in the cliffs. It was approached by sea. That was how Gregory did it, according to the story.’
Curtis said, ‘Past tense? Has this cave disappeared?’
‘We’ve been unable to locate it,’ Abercrombie said. ‘That’s a hell of a stretch of coast. There are reefs, rocks invisible just beneath the surface, rip-tides and all kinds of hazardous shit. Plus, finding it hasn’t been a priority.’
Francesca looked directly at Curtis. She said, ‘Do you think there really could be a cave?’
‘Geologically, yes, I do,’ he said. ‘It’s plausible. If it was there then, there’s no reason to suppose it won’t be there now. It isn’t geology I have a problem believing in.’
‘I’m only telling you this stuff because you asked to be told it,’ Abercrombie said. ‘This location has a history.’
‘Tell me more about these creatures Gregory confronted.’
‘They were amphibious. They were large and in character they were leech-like.’
‘They sound charming.’
‘Even less charming was the individual they served and guarded. She was a powerful sorceress.’
‘Morgana le Fay,’ Curtis said. ‘So it really was Merlin who sent for Gregory.’
‘She isn’t named in the story,’ Francesca said. ‘It’s made plain by the chronicler that her name is known to him but he won’t use it. Naming her invited ill-fortune, apparently.’
‘She derived her power from these creatures, so Gregory killed them,’ Curtis said.
‘No, Tree Man, not quite. They protected her. But she derived her power from the forest. The forest was cleared to denude her of influence. That’s the story. That’s the whole shebang.’
‘Where are Gregory’s descendants?’
‘The last of his bloodline perished during the Black Death. They were wiped out by plague. They aren’t even buried here, we don’t think. There’s that tiny church at Raven Dip but there’s no family vault.’
Curtis nodded. His mind was on the letter he’d read that morning from his daughter. He was tired. It was later than he wanted it to be. It was eight thirty in the evening and dusk was descending on the terrace. The beer was cold, his host avuncular, Francesca luminescent and beautiful in the last of the light.
But he’d spent the first part of the morning within touching distance of Charlotte and hadn’t seen her, let alone hugged her or spoken to her. He’d been delayed by a traffic accident on the tedious drive back. He’d unpacked irascible and weary after a day that felt long, eventful, frustrating and ultimately wasted. There was an awful lot to accomplish.
‘Where’s Freemantle?’
‘Off on some errand,’ Abercrombie said.
‘He’s decided his shotguns don’t pack enough power,’ Francesca said, fiddling with her wristwatch. ‘He’s gone to fetch an anti-tank missile.’
‘Don’t need to shop for those, honey,’ her father said. ‘These days you can order those on eBay.’
‘Where is he?’ Curtis asked again.
Abercrombie shrugged. ‘Wherever he is, he took a Land Rover. He tried to call me several times this morning, but I wasn’t picking up. He’s probably gone to get supplies of something. He’s a grown-up. Be cool. He’ll be back soon enough.’
‘Once it’s mission accomplished,’ Francesca said.
‘You don’t like him.’
‘Human nature,’ Francesca said. ‘We can’t all like everyone.’
‘What’s bugging you, Tree Man?’
‘I met with Charlotte’s mother this morning. It didn’t go encouragingly.’
‘You tried to bribe her.’
‘You’re very astute.’
‘Didn’t need to be to work out that one, brother. What’s your next move?’
Curtis sipped beer. ‘I’m going to plant a forest,’ he said. ‘I’m going to concentrate fully on that not inconsiderable task.’
Francesca said, ‘And risk bringing our sorceress back?’
‘She won’t be ours,’ Abercrombie said. ‘She’ll likely be her own woman.’
‘It’s a chance I’ll take,’ Curtis said. He looked out at the darkening land, at the sun descending in the western sky over to his left, thinking about the dank things that grow in the permanent gloom of the leaf canopy, unhindered by light and warmth.
Francesca left them not long after that. Saul and Tom talked logistics. They discussed where the accommodation block for the workforce would be built. Freemantle had arranged for some ex-Royal Engineers to arrive in the morning with the materials needed to build a landing strip for cargo planes and a concrete helipad where choppers could put down. They talked about the excavation machines Curtis had already ordered from a specialist plant-hire firm in Düsseldorf.
They would arrive in Fishguard harbour aboard a convoy of ships the following day. There were three of them; they were vast and would be manned by a team of nine drivers working eight-hour shifts in tandem. Much of their work would be floodlit. Once started, the job would not stop until the moment it reached completion.