Nathan shrugged. “Not precisely. Presumably he’s just keeping me here until the police find out who actually did kill…” Again emotion threatened. Something in his throat rendered him unable to speak his late girlfriend’s name.
“Hmm.” Neither Carole nor Jude was persuaded by the explanation.
“Uncle Rowley did say I was being kept here for my own good. He said if the cops got their hands on me, I’d never escape. They’d stitch me up good and proper.” That sounded in character from what Carole had heard of Rowley Locke’s estimation of the British police force.
“I have to listen to what Uncle Rowley says,” Nathan continued lamely. “He does know what he’s talking about.”
This was a tenet of Locke received wisdom to which neither Carole nor Jude subscribed. They both had strong suspicions about Rowley Locke’s agenda.
“Well,” Carole announced practically, “the first thing we should do is get you free from that chain.”
The suggestion brought a light of paranoia into the boy’s eye. “Oh, you’d better not do that. There’s a girl – my cousin Mopsa who – ”
“We know all about Mopsa. She’s gone off shopping.” Carole consulted her watch. “She won’t be back for at least another twenty minutes.”
“So,” asked Jude, “should we find some tools upstairs to cut through the chain?”
“You don’t have to bother with that.” He gestured towards the foot of the stairs. “There’s a key to the padlock hanging over there. Just about six feet beyond my reach. Don’t imagine I haven’t tried to grab it.”
“Right,” said Carole. “Then the first thing we do is get that key.”
“I don’t think so.”
They all looked up at the sound of the lisping voice. Mopsa stood halfway down the stairs, back-lit from the kitchen above. In her hands was the shotgun that had been hanging on the sitting-room wall.
Twenty-Nine
Carole was unfazed. “Put that down.”
“No, you back off. Get away from that key, or I’ll shoot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Move back,” hissed Nathan’s anguished voice. “She means it. She will shoot.”
Something in the girl’s eye told Carole that her cousin was speaking the truth. She retraced her steps until she and Jude stood together, an inadequate defence in front of the chained boy. The chamber suddenly felt very small.
Mopsa moved on down the stairs. “I should have been on my guard. A sudden booking out of the blue this time of year. I should have known you were up to something.”
“All we were up to,” said Jude reasonably, “was trying to find Nathan. The police are looking for him. He can’t be hidden away here for ever.”
“Oh no? Prince Fimbador spent seven years night and day in the Wheal Chamber.” There was a gleam of fanaticism in the girl’s eye as she said the words.
“Yes, maybe. But that’s not real. That’s just a story.”
“A story?” Mopsa was deeply offended. “The Chronicles of Biddet Rock tell how Prince Fimbador resisted the evil hordes of Gadrath Pezzekan. The tale of the ultimate battle of Good against Evil is not just a story.”
Carole and Jude caught each other’s eye, as into each mind sank the sickening truth. Mopsa was not sane. This was why she had not followed the course of her sister Dorcas to university. Her unhinged mind had swallowed the nonsense of the Wheal Game whole. For her the incarceration of Nathan as Prince Fimbador was completely logical. She was just fulfilling her role in the legend. And if the fulfilment of that role involved bloodshed, she would not shirk her duty.
She waved the shotgun dangerously in their direction. “You have broken through the Face-Peril Gate. Already you have invoked the Great Curse of the Leomon! The fate of all who sully the purity of Karmenka is death.”
“Mopsa,” said Carole firmly, “you are talking absolute balderdash.”
“Contempt has always been the fate of the Prophetesses of Biddet Rock.”
‘Prophetesses’ was really quite a mouthful for someone with a lisp. The situation would have been laughable but for the fact that the girl so clearly believed all the nonsense she was spouting.
“We rise above it,” she persisted. “We know the Right Course and we still pursue it till the last drop of the blood of the Leomon is shed.”
“Yes, well, fine. Let the blood of Leomon be shed, but don’t let’s shed anyone else’s. How about that?”
But Jude’s jokey approach was not the right one either. The girl pointed the shotgun very definitely in the women’s direction and gestured them to move away from Nathan’s table, till their backs were to the sea-facing wall. Not quite believing the situation they were in, but all too aware of its gravity, they did as they were instructed.
“When you sacrifice your pathetic lives, acolytes of Black Fangdar,” said Mopsa, “there must be no risk of harm to Prince Fimbador.”
Under normal circumstances Carole and Jude would have giggled, but there was nothing funny about the way Mopsa was sighting them down the barrel of the shotgun. Through both their minds went the thought that she could only get one of them with her first shot. Then, since it was a single-barrelled gun, she would have to reload. But neither felt very cheered by the increased odds on survival. And neither was about to volunteer to go first.
Mopsa cocked the rifle. The way she did it suggested a discouraging familiarity with the weapon. Her talk of shooting rabbits had not been mere bravado.
She shifted her stance, so that the sight was trained on Carole’s chest.
“Mopsa, this is daft,” said Jude, the calmness in her voice masking the desperation in her mind. “You can’t just shoot us in cold blood. You don’t even know who we are.”
“I know all I need to know,” the girl responded implacably. “You are intruders who have broken through the Peril-Face Gate into the Wheal Chamber. You are probably Grail-seekers, sent from Black Fangdar. You are certainly a threat to Prince Fimbador, which means that you must be in the pay of Gadrath Pezzekan.”
“We are not a threat to Prince Fimbador,” said Jude.
“No, we certainly aren’t,” Carole agreed.
“We’re here to help Prince Fimbador…” God, how easy it was to slip into this nonsense talk. “Nathan. We are here to help Nathan.”
“And how do you propose to help him, you who betrayed Prince Fimbador at the Battle of Edras Helford?”
“For a start we’ll get him away from here.”
“And then?”
Neither woman answered. Neither could, on the spur of the moment, come up with a reply that they could be sure would not enrage the girl further.
“How do I know that you will not hand him over to the police?”
Still they couldn’t reply. Handing him over to the police was the solution uppermost in both their minds. The shotgun was still pointed firmly at Carole’s chest.
It was Nathan’s voice that broke the impasse. “It would be good if I could talk to the police, Flops.” Oh, God, another of the Locke family nicknames…“Clear up a few details about what actually happened that night…You know, the night when…when…”
Again he was unable to speak his dead girlfriend’s name.
“No!” Mopsa’s voice rang against the stone walls of the Wheal Chamber. “My orders are to guard you. My orders are to keep you safe from the police. And to kill anyone who challenges your safety.”
“Your father didn’t really mean that, Flops. He was just going over the top, as usual. You weren’t meant to take it literally.”
“The Prophetesses of Biddet Rock pride themselves on obeying all of their orders to the letter!”
“Well, not that one about killing people. Look, Uncle Rowley wrote me a note…”