Chapter 18
Time... unmeasured time... slid away.
I moved in the end from discomfort, from stiffness: made a couple of circling shuffles on my knees, an unthought-out search for a nest to lie in, to die in, maybe.
I looked up and saw again the arrow cut into the tree. It hadn’t been and wasn’t far away, just out of sight behind a group of saplings.
Apathetically, I thought it of little use. The arrow pointed in the right direction, but ten feet past it, without a compass, which way was north?
The arrow on the tree pointed upwards.
I looked slowly in that direction, as if instructed. Looked upwards to the sky: and there, up there, glimpsed now and then between the moving boughs, was the constellation of the great bear... and the pole star.
No doubt from then on my route wasn’t as straight or as accurate as earlier, but at least I was moving. It wasn’t possible after all to curl up and surrender, not with an alternative. Clinging onto things, breathing little, inching a slow way forwards, I achieved again a sort of numbness to my basic state and in looking upwards to the stars at every pause felt lighter and more disembodied than before.
Light-headed, I dare say.
I looked at my watch and found it was after eleven o’clock, which meant nothing really. I couldn’t reach the road by half past midnight. I didn’t know how long I’d wasted looking for the compass or how long I’d knelt in capitulation. I didn’t know at what rate I was now travelling and no longer bothered to work it out. All I was really clear about was that this time I would go on as long as my lungs and muscles would function. Survival or nothing. It was settled.
The face of the archer...
In splinters of thought, unconnectedly, I began to look back over the past three weeks.
I thought of how I must seem to them, the people I’d grown to know.
The writer, a stranger, set down in their midst. A person with odd knowledge, odd skills, physically fit. Someone Tremayne trusted and wanted around. Someone who’d been in the right place a couple of times. Someone who threatened.
I thought of Angela Brickell’s death and of the attacks on Harry and me and it seemed that all three had had one purpose, which was to keep things as they were. They were designed not to achieve but to prevent.
One foot in front of the other...
Faint little star, half hidden, revealed now and then by the wind; flickering pin-point in a whirling galaxy, the prayer of navigators... see me home.
Angela Brickell had probably been killed to close her mouth. Harry was to have died to cement his guilt. I wasn’t to be allowed to do what Fiona and Tremayne had both foretold, that I would find the truth for Doone.
They all expected too much of me.
Because of that expectation, I was half dead.
All guesses, I thought. All inferences. No actual objects that could prove guilt. No statements or admissions to go on, but only probability, only likelihood.
The archer had to be someone who knew I was going to go back for Gareth’s camera. It had to be someone who knew how to find the trail. It had to be someone who could follow instructions to make an effective bow and sharp arrows, who had time to lie in wait, who wanted me gone, who had a universe to lose.
The way information zoomed round Shellerton, anyone theoretically could have heard of the lost camera and the way to find it. On the other hand the boys’ expedition had occurred only yesterday... dear God, only yesterday... and if... when... I got back, I could find out for certain who had told who.
One step and another. There was fluid in my lungs, rattling and wheezing at every breath. People lived a long time with fluid... asthma... emphysema... years. Fluid took up air space... you never saw anyone with emphysema run upstairs.
Angela Brickell had been small and light; a pushover.
Harry and I were tall and strong, not easy to attack at close quarters. Half the racing world had seen me pick up Nolan and knew I could defend myself. So, sharp spikes for Harry and arrows for John, and it was only luck in both cases that had saved us. I’d been there for Harry and the arrow had by-passed my heart.
Luck.
The clear sky was luck.
I didn’t want to see the face of the archer.
The sudden admission was a revelation in itself. Even with his handiwork through me, I thought of the sadness inevitably awaiting the others; yet I would have to pursue him, for someone who had three times seen murder as a solution to problems couldn’t be trusted never to try it again. Murder was habit-forming, so I’d been told.
Endless night. The moon moved in silver stateliness across the sky behind me. Left foot. Right foot. Hold on to branches. Breathe by fractions.
Midnight.
If ever this ended, I thought, I wouldn’t go walking in woodland for a very long time. I would go back to my attic and not be too hard on my characters if they came to pieces on their knees.
I thought of Fringe and the Downs and wondered if I would ever ride in a race, and I thought of Ronnie Curzon and publishers and American rights and of Erica Upton’s reviews and it all seemed as distant as Ursa Major but not one whit as essential to my continued existence.
Grapevine round Shellerton. A mass of common knowledge. Yet this time... this time...
I stopped.
The archer had a face.
Doone would have to juggle with alibis and charts, proving opportunity, searching for footprints. Doone would have to deal with a cunning mind in the best actor of them all.
Perhaps I was wrong. Doone could find out.
I tortoised onwards. A mile was sixty-three thousand three hundred and sixty inches. A mile was roughly one point six kilometres or one hundred and sixty thousand centimetres.
Who cared?
I might have travelled at almost eight thousand inches an hour if it hadn’t been for the stops. Six hundred and sixty feet. Two hundred and twenty yards.
A furlong! Brilliant. One furlong an hour. A record for British racing.
Twinkle twinkle little star...
No one but a bloody fool would try to walk a mile with an arrow through his chest. Meet J. Kendall, bloody fool.
Light-headed.
One o’clock.
The moon, I thought briefly, had come down from the sky and was dancing about in the wood not far ahead. Rubbish, it couldn’t be. It certainly was. I could see it shining.
Lights. I came to sensible awareness; to incredulous understanding. The lights were travelling along the road.
The road was real, was there, was not some lost myth in a witch-cursed forest. I had actually got there. I would have shouted with joy if I could have spared the oxygen.
I reached the last tree and leaned feebly against it, wondering what to do next. The road had for so long been the only goal that I’d given no thought to anything beyond it. It was dark now; no cars.
What to do? Crawl out onto the road and risk getting run over? Hitchhike? Give some poor passing motorist a nightmare?
I felt dreadfully spent. With the trunk’s support I slid down to kneeling, leaning head and left shoulder against the bark. By my reckoning, if I’d steered anything like a true course, the Land Rover was way along the road to the right, but it was pointless and impossible to reach it.
Car lights came round a bend from that direction and seemed not to be travelling too fast. I tried waving an arm to attract attention but only a weak flap of a hand was achieved.
Have to do better.
The car braked suddenly with screeching wheels, then backed rapidly until it was level with me. It was the Land Rover itself. How could it be?