“Do you think we could find them?”
“Why not?”
He considered this. “It just might work. ‘One damp cavern,’ eh? It can’t be much damper than I am already. We’d have to go on foot, and if it’s five miles from Mitchelstown we’ve got an hour of walking ahead of us at the very least. It may be fairly dark by then, I don’t know. Do you feel up to it?”
“I think so. We certainly can’t stay here.”
“No, we can’t. We can’t even walk on the road. We’ll have to cut cross-country. We’d better get rid of the motorcycle. I wish there were a break in the fence. The thing’s a perfect tipoff; anyone seeing it will know we’ve quit the road and started hiking.”
“Can we lift it over?”
“Far too heavy. Give me a hand.” They wheeled the machine off to the side of the road and propped it against the fence. David got the knife from her purse and climbed over the fence, hacking at some of the shrubbery. He passed branches over the fence to her and she arranged them upon the motorcycle, piling them up to obscure it from view. He climbed back over the fence and examined the motorcycle under its pile of camouflage.
“To me,” he said, “it looks like a motorcycle with branches piled on it.”
“But if they come roaring by at sixty miles an hour...”
“That’s a thought. I don’t know, it might work. Let’s get off the road, Ellen. We’ll want to cut this way” — he pointed — “and just walk until we come to something that looks like a cave, I guess. I don’t know. How are you feeling?”
“All right.”
“Cold and wet and miserable?”
“A little of each, I suppose. But I’ll manage.”
“And hungry?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t mention it. I’ve been trying not to think about it.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I’m tired, too, as far as that goes. And soaked and scared. I’ll feel better when we get far enough from the road so that they won’t be able to see us. I hope that cave’s there. And that we’ll come somewhere close to it.”
By the time they reached the cave she had long ago given up hope of ever finding it. She was walking on sheer momentum and running low of that. Before, she had been cold and wet and miserable and hungry and tired and afraid. Now she was all these things to an even greater extent. The ground over which they had been walking was spongy with rain. Her shoes were soaked through and her feet were chilled to the bone. Walking had grown progressively more arduous. The muscles in her calves knotted up, and for a time every step was agony. Then it grew easier; either the knots had worked out of the muscles or she was too numb to notice them.
They walked on, they blundered around, they climbed over ditches and banks and unmortared stone fences. The twilight grew dimmer and the darkness came on, and the rain did not let up or the wind abate. Several times she felt at the point of collapse. She was sure they would drop in a field, only to awaken chilled and feverish at dawn. But they walked on. David held her when she was weak and comforted her when her fear threatened to rage out of control, and because he was there she was able to go on.
When they found the cave, when it turned out to be right where it was supposed to be, when it loomed before them like a whale’s mouth, she thought at first that it could only be a mirage. Just as men saw water in the desert, she and David were seeing a cave in the middle of the waterlogged hilly meadows of Tipperary. But it was no mirage. They hurried to the cave and found shelter inside it.
It was dark, and they had no flashlight. David lit matches to illuminate the cave’s interior. It was large, larger than the inside of Gallarus Oratory, and extended back much further, with labyrinthine passages working far back into the side of a hill. Whether it was damp she could not say. She was too wet herself to know.
David was kneeling at the rear. “There have been people here,” he said. “See? The remains of a campfire here, and dry wood stacked against the wall for another fire. I wish I knew how recent the fire was. It could have been made a day ago or many years ago. There’s probably a way to tell, but I don’t know it.”
“Maybe it was the croppy boy’s.”
“Could be. Should I build a fire?”
“I don’t know. If they could see it...”
“Go outside for a minute,” he said. “I’ll light a match and hold it around. Let me know if you can see it.”
She went to the mouth of the cave and stepped outside.
“Anything?”
“I can’t see a thing.”
“Good,” he said. “Come on back.”
She went to him. He was gathering firewood from the pile at the side of the cave, shaving down a few sticks with the long knife to make kindling. He worked quickly, whittling a pile of scraps that would catch a flame and give a start to the larger branches and logs.
“What about the smoke?”
“There’s a fissure overhead,” he said. “A break in the rock. It should serve as a natural chimney. Besides, this wood is bone dry. It’s been here a long time, and it shouldn’t throw much smoke at all.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s chancy, but it’s a chance we pretty much have to take. We’ll be able to dry our clothes and warm ourselves. I don’t know about you, but if I don’t thaw out soon I’m going to turn blue. And you look in pretty sad shape yourself.”
“I have had better days.”
“Uh-huh.”
He scratched a match and used its light to arrange the kindling in a neat ball upon the ashes of the former campfire. Then he positioned thinner sticks over the ball of kindling, making a tent-shaped arrangement. He set up a neat square of larger pieces of wood around the little tent, then scratched another match and applied it to the kindling. In just a few minutes a small fire was burning brightly, casting a warm glow around the interior of the cave.
“You must have been a Boy Scout.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think you qualify for a fire-building merit badge. Is there such a thing?”
“I don’t know. But I’m a man of many talents. Wait a minute — I want to see if the fire shows at all from the outside.”
He was back seconds later, reporting that it was quite invisible. “And it’s getting darker and darker now,” he said. “They’ll probably quit for the night. I think we’re safe, croppy girl. You found us a good place to hide.”
“It was just luck that I remembered it. And that we found it. I was beginning to think I had sent us all around Robin Hood’s barn, but we’re here, aren’t we?”
“That we are.” He straightened up. “I’ll, uh, go sit by the entranceway and keep watch. You’d better get out of those clothes and dry them over the fire. Not too close, or they’ll raise too much smoke. But get out of them for now, that’s the main thing.”
He was on his way before she could object. She felt odd, undressing in the campfire light, and as she stepped out of her underthings she was conscious of David sitting in darkness near the mouth of the cave. He could turn around and see her and she would not know the difference.
The thought made her giggle and blush at the same time. What earthly difference, she wondered, could it possibly make? Another Ellen Cameron would have been quite nervous at the thought of being undressed in the presence of a man. But that earlier Ellen Cameron no longer existed. She had passed away forever in the course of their escape, and the girl who had taken her place was made of sterner stuff.
She placed her clothing on the bare earth by the side of the fire. David, she thought, was carrying chivalry beyond the bounds of good sense. He was as cold and wet and miserable as she, but an excess of gentlemanliness was leaving him at the front of the cave while she dried and warmed herself. She thought of summoning him back, then decided to wait, at least until her underthings were dry. They were all nylon and would dry quickly.