The Wanderer (35 page)

We chanced across Elliot’s forearm the following day, after a short ride. The big cat was not far off, dead, had choked on its own tongue, torn through at the root, swallowed. The arm was badly charred, but still moved, pulled itself along the ground with its fingers.

We didn’t try burning any part of Elliot again after that.

I believe, then, we did the best we could. There’s even a small chance it’ll prove to have been not a provisional, but final measure; for, though Elliot will, given time, be whole once more, it’s possible the end of the world will come first; the colours in the sky wax more lurid by the day.

Rashmi and I talked a lot during this time and the mute companionship of the previous months grew into true friendship.

(Here I should note, my companion, having grown fond of the name, has asked me to continue to call her Rashmi. Her name for me, Melmoth, is a jest of ours.)

We kept Elliot’s head till the last. Half wondering if there mightn’t be a kind of binding witchery in interring it there, and unable to shake the idea once we’d thought of it, we went to the spot where the Nightingale had, long, long ago, stood. At the dismal heart of that yew grove, we found William’s bones, picked fleshless, gnawed, strewn about. Then, taking turns, we dug a deep pit with a spade we’d found on our travels, I forget
where. It was hard work, there were lumps of concrete and tangled roots in the soil. When we were done, worn out, sweat soaked, we opened the bag, took out Elliot’s head. On the ride from the southwesternmost point of the island, once Land’s End, where we’d left the right leg, it had managed to spit out the gag, and, as I picked it up, dropped it in the hole, it worked its jaws, tongue, lips, Elliot execrating us, I’d hazard, though, as there wasn’t any sound bar the clacking of teeth, I can’t be sure. While we shovelled dirt back into the pit on top of it, it continued, soundlessly, to jabber.

After we’d buried the head, Rashmi and I rode down to the Thames. The clattering of our horses’ hooves on the few patches of paved road that remained raised clamorous echoes from the buildings’ walls, and, at those times, it sounded as if a herd stampeded along with us. Reaching the river, we made camp, cooked up and feasted on some tasty victuals we’d been saving. It was a warm night, and, after eating, we sat on the worn remains of a concrete groyne, dangling our feet in the river, talking of our plans, something we’d been loath to do till then, lest we blight the undertaking. Overhead, wispy clouds scudded across the bright spatter of the constellations, the placid face of the moon. We talked of what we should do, where we should go. I extolled the many wonders of the Himalayas, their peace, for a time, in the end swayed Rashmi, who’d been pressing for somewhere warmer. We resolved to try mountain life a while, see how it suited us.

We set out the following day. Before leaving London, we raided the stacks of the British Library, took all the books we could carry.

Several weeks ago, following a long, arduous journey, we arrived at the foothills of that spiring range, began our ascent. After a few days’ climb, we came across a cave, high above the treeline, that seemed an ideal place to dwell. We’ve made it homely, comfortable; pelts are strewn about the floor, there’s a
goat-hair pallet to sleep on. But it’s also spare and simple, which is as we wish it; there’s nothing by way of ornament, save Elliot’s knife, hanging on the wall (we tried all we could think of to destroy it, but found it unbreakable, so have kept it as a trophy, memento, caution). It’s quiet here, yet I doubt we’ll find life dull; the prospect from the mouth of our cave, of hoar-capped peaks, calm tarns, swathes of dark firs below, clouds drifting by just overhead, fills us daily with awe, and there’s drama in the scenes we’ve seen when out foraging or hunting: a raptor stooping on its prey, a hare, a young goat, a fish; a flight of cranes soaring overhead; a snow leopard stalking a herd of the sure-footed yak who graze the coarse grass of the steeps.

And, though this is a remote spot, where there are no local tribes and few travellers pass by, we won’t be lonely, for we pleasure in each other’s company, indeed have become lovers. And we won’t be completely starved of other society, either. A few days ago we descended to the lower slopes, found a village where we could trade for essentials, iron cooking vessels, spears, rice, and were warmly welcomed by the folk there. They cooked a festival meal, gave us rice wine, played their shawms, singing bells, and tanpura, danced for us. We sat up late into the night, drinking, listening to the keening music. I plan to make myself a new banjo, join the band next time, for, with its eerie drone and brittle tone, I think it would harmonize well with the Tibetan instruments.

And so, overturning all portents, we seem to have found some repose.

Epilogue

A few things remain to be told, then my tale will be complete. Though they concern events whose protagonist was Rashmi, and not I, she’s said she can’t write of them herself; telling them once was harrowing enough and dredging them up a second time, in committing them to paper, would be too much, would be agony. And she says, and I think she’s right, that setting something down is more gut-wringing than just saying it, for, while the spoken word is fleeting, the written, endures.

But she insists on my describing these happenings here. In part, this is because she believes when she reads my third-person accounts she’ll be able to convince herself their main player was not her but another and put them behind her (I hope this proves true). She also has a further, much stranger reason, as will become clear.

One cold night, during our trek to the Himalayas, out on the great plains of central Europe, Rashmi and I were sat warming ourselves at a fire. We’d eaten a good dinner of venison stew and were swigging from a gourd of firewater we’d traded for cured buffalo with a tribe of nomads a few days before. A touch drunk, I asked Rashmi about some things I’d been burning to learn of, but which I’d not before brought up for fear of galling sores.

In response to my probing, she told me she’d been cast out by the tribe for killing a senior tribesman. This grizzled elder, who’d been leering lewd at her some weeks, entered her tent one night, soused on a potation brewed up from beetroot, staggering, cock in hand, and threw himself down, sprawled, writhed on her. Waking terrified, she grabbed her blade, held it to his neck, meaning to warn him off. But he flinched, and then his throat was cut, and the tribe, roused by his death rattle, finding Rashmi blood-drenched, went to attack her. So she fled, was just able to outpace them.

It was sheer chance she came across me the next day while I was bathing, she didn’t even know I was alive, let alone nearby. Having spotted the Ark before, thought it might make a good place to hide, she’d come to look it over. She recognized me straight away, though she wondered, at first, if it mightn’t perhaps be Elliot in my guise. But she decided to take the chance, thinking there could perhaps be safety in numbers, and, besides, unable to come up with any reason why he take on my appearance, supposed it unlikely. That I didn’t attack her, and, after, let her go, all but confirmed it. That I seemed not to remember her, bemused, but she surmised my memory had simply fared worse than hers. Deciding it was best not to disclose who she was, she played the frightened native woman. That I was obtuse and misinterpreted her, irked. And she reckoned, after all, it might be dangerous for us to remain together. So she ran away, she hid in a spinney not far off. But when the natives discovered and bolted her, later that day, she made for the hulk once more, doubting there was anywhere else nearby she could hole up. She thought, vaguely, she might be able to drive me off. But she wasn’t fleet enough, the natives caught up with her, and, as I’ve told, set about her. After I rescued her from the beating, she warmed to me, wondered whether we mightn’t be better off together after all, decided to stay with me, but to continue shamming the tribeswoman.

That evening as we sat toping by the campfire on the plains, I also asked Rashmi about her later treatment at the hands of the clan, after Elliot left her to them. She told me it hadn’t been much of an ordeal, the tribesfolk had been angry, but their ire had cooled, and they’d largely felt pity for her. If it hadn’t been for their terror of Elliot, they’d have released her, she thought. She said they just beat her about a bit, then tied her up. While she was bound, some days, she was given water and fed. Occasionally one of her captors would kick her, but not hard; it was clear their hearts weren’t in it.

She looked at me.

‘There was some kind of terrible revel during that time, wasn’t there?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I didn’t see it, but I heard.’ I shuddered. ‘That was enough.’

Then, Rashmi went on, they decided to end it, dragged her out to the mud flats. There, the chieftain stabbed her in the heart with a ceremonial flint knife, and they threw her in a deep pit. She lay prone, while they buried her, then burrowed back to air, a long gruelling toil. When she finally rose out of the sludge, she spotted, by the faint glow of a fire, the natives’ camp nearby, went to them to spook them; they fled howling into the night.

Then, after another gulp of the firewater, I asked Rashmi about the thing I had been most wary of broaching, but also was most curious over: the ruse her twin had contrived that took Elliot in. She sat quiet a moment, then shook her head, said, ‘I didn’t have a twin. Or any brothers or sisters at all. Was an only child.’

‘What?’

She smiled, wan.

‘Perhaps, it’s time for you to hear, at last, my story, the one I went to the pub that night, so long ago, to tell. It doesn’t give any answers itself, but…Well, you’ll see.’

And so it was, sat by a fire, amid rolling plains, drunk on rotgut, with a bright sickle moon cutting swathes through the hazy cloud overhead, and large animals, perhaps buffalo, or bears, moving about in the girding darkness, I finally heard Rashmi’s tale.

It was a weird tale, close kin to those told on that long-ago evening. Rashmi described how the year before the gathering in the Nightingale had been very hard for her. It had started well; she’d got a secretarial position at a successful firm of solicitors, found her own flat, moved, finally, out of her parents’ house. But then it had turned ill. Her mother, who’d never been kind and
was very traditional, was angered by her new independence, arranged a marriage for her to a friend of the family who lived in India, a much older man. Rashmi refused the match. There was weeping, yelling, handwringing. Rashmi was told she was bringing shame on the family. But she stood her ground. In the end, her mother and aunts disowned her.

Her father, though, supported her, took her side. But this caused a rift between her parents. There were some bad rows. Then her father died, a stroke. At his funeral there was a scene, and Rashmi was thrown out.

After that, Rashmi started going out a lot, drinking heavily, drugging, sleeping little. She stumbled blearily through those days. She didn’t then, pick up it was odd, when, a few months later, she was called on her mobile one Saturday, by an old man, who gave his name as Joseph Curwen (like the rest in this text, this name is made up; Rashmi, having forgotten it, asked me to provide a fitting invention), who claimed to be a client of her firm. He said he’d been given her number by one of the partners, her boss. She didn’t think it was strange, when, explaining he was housebound, following a fall, and needed to draft his will, he asked her to come, that afternoon, to his cottage, in the Trossachs, north of Glasgow, to witness it, deliver it back to the office. He said he’d cleared it with her boss. She didn’t realize it bizarre he’d offer her a fair amount of money. Didn’t notice the urging in his tone. Didn’t think to ask her boss about it. He’d have told her he’d never heard of any Joseph Curwen, that he’d never give out her personal phone number, that he’d never have asked her to do something like that. Just thought of the fee Curwen had promised. Hoped she might also receive a cup of tea and a slice of cake for her trouble.

She did feel jitters when she drove out and found Curwen’s cottage was isolated and set amid a large tract of pine forest, but she quelled them with a swig of gin after parking up.

She received the tea and cake she’d hankered after, but they
were laced with a soporific. When she awoke from the blank slumbers the drug had cast her into, she found herself in a small dank chamber, the cottage’s cellar, it turned out, bound to a stake, a pentagram chalked round her on the flagstones, black wax candles guttering at each of its five points. She’d been stripped of her clothes, and strange sigils had been daubed in red blood on her brown breasts, belly, and limbs. Snakes’ skeletons, strung along lengths of string, swagged the walls, the bones phosphorus dipped and glowing eerily.

At first Rashmi thought the cellar otherwise empty, but then, her eyes adjusting to the dim light of the candles, she noticed, in a dark alcove on the other side of the chamber, a looming gaunt form. She took it, at first, for a statue, perhaps an idol, but then heard it moan, desolate and low, realized it was a living creature of some kind. She stifled a gasp. And, lurching from the nook, tottering upright, the beast burst into the fitful light, loped towards her. She glimpsed a rawboned demon, pallid cankered flesh, spindly limbs, a maw drivelling slobber, then the length of iron chain tethering it, attached to a studded leather collar round its neck, arrested its dart, choked and felled it. Yowling, it scrabbled back into its niche on all fours, back arched, spine jutting, the chain clattering on the flags. Rashmi’s nostrils were mobbed by the fetor of rot.

Staring at the recess, every sinew taut with terror, Rashmi saw the creature’s gnarled skull jut slowly, warily, as it craned its neck to peer at her. Most of its face was cast in shade by the pillar, but light fell on its right eye, a portion of tallowy forehead. It gazed at her for a long time, stock still. That eye was graven on Rashmi’s mind. It was filled with terrible malice, had a palsied, drooping, upper lid, a white, jaundiced and laced with skeins of blood, like the smear of a pulped fecundated egg, and, set in this mess, a pitchy, speckled iris, a coal seam, glistering flecks of mica, with, at its heart, a sliver of pupil, blacker still, an abyssal fissure.