‘That’s good,’ said O’Hara. ‘What do you want us to do?’
‘I don’t want your company, child. I have something most important for you and Mr. Gascoigne to do. You must all get what rest you can in the next few hours. Matters, if I mistake not, approach their zenith.’
She refused to add to this Elizabethan platitude, but cackled harshly in reply to further questions.
Although she was dogged by the supposition that Mrs. Bradley was indulging in an Indian midsummer madness, or had caught a touch of the sun, Laura agreed to spend the whole time between tea and dinner at rest on her bed at the hotel. She even fell asleep for a time, and did not wake until seven. She dashed in and out of a bath in record time, and hoped that the main dish would still be ‘on’ when she got to table, for at Welsea Beaches, as at most seaside places of the decade, it was necessary to be early unless one was prepared to eat some extraordinary mixture concocted from the remains of food left from the previous day, or something based on sausage-meat or macaroni.
Mrs. Bradley, however, had reminded the waiter to see that Laura received the portion due to her. She advised her young secretary not to hurry over her dinner as there was not the slightest need to do so. Hiccups, she pointed out, would be out of place at that evening’s special gathering at the standing stones, as silence was to be the chief consideration and even the most involuntary sounds taboo. To Laura’s questions she returned no answer except a hoot of laughter.
They set off as soon as dinner was over. The night sky, overcast as it was with cloud, had already brought darkness sufficient, Mrs. Bradley decided, for their purpose, and from the large and fashionable hotel at Welsea their departure would cause no comment, and probably would go unnoticed.
Laura, wide awake and conscious of excitement, noticed that the car, instead of making direct for the objective, went from Welsea Beaches for some miles along the London Road before it turned off at Coshill for Dimdyke, Allis and Hafford. This string of hill hamlets took in a wide oval beyond Cuchester and finished by the south-west border of the county. At last the passengers found themselves on the way (up a long narrow lane of potholes and the old tracks made by the caterpillar wheels of tanks) to the village of Upper Deepening. From there the car dropped gently, and, to an imaginative person, inevitably, to the stile from which they would reach the Dancing Druids.
‘What do we do now?—walk?’ enquired Laura, as the car drew up, and she and her employer got out.
‘There is nothing else to do,’ Mrs. Bradley replied. ‘But please be guided by me. Do not speak unless I speak first, and leave our course of action entirely in my hands, no matter what may be forthcoming.’
‘Right. Do we leave George here again in charge of the car?’
‘We do.’
‘Where are Gerry and Mike? We haven’t seen them since…’
‘They are in position, I hope, by this time.’
‘By the Druids?’
‘Nowhere near the Druids, child. On the shore of the bay at Slepe Rock, if they have carried out instructions. And from now on, no talking, unless I speak first.’
‘Complete silence,’ agreed Laura. ‘Right.’
She and Mrs. Bradley then climbed the stile and walked towards the circle of standing stones. Mrs. Bradley went first, and Laura kept close behind her but left sufficient space between them for Mrs. Bradley to pull up short, if she wished to do so, without having Laura butting into her. They made no sound as they walked, and Laura, in spite of (or, possibly, because of) tightened nerves, began to enjoy the expedition with that kind of tingling excitement mixed with fear which is felt by young children with a sense of adventure when they embark upon the unknown or the previously untried.
The ground rose gradually from the road, for the steeper side of the hill was that which dropped to the farm on the opposite slope. The night, in the classic phrase, was chilly but not dark, and Laura was glad of her tweed coat. The hedge rustled beside them as they walked and gave its customary impression, in the darkness, of being full of eyes.
Laura began to wonder what Mrs. Bradley intended. Nothing so far had been said of the object of the excursion, but Laura connected it vaguely with the ‘archaeological eyewash’ as she herself expressed it, of the afternoon. She gave up further speculation, and began to wonder, instead, exactly how Mrs. Bradley would react if, on this hair-lifting excursion, something, coming out of the hedge, stabbed Laura soundlessly to death in the dark, and Mrs. Bradley found herself, at length, alone with the Dancing Druids. She embroidered this theme until she felt sufficiently terrified to abandon it.
At this point it occurred to Laura that the Druids themselves formed a sinister rendezvous, and that she and her employer were, after all, a very young and a very old woman to be undertaking a night tryst with them, especially in view of the lonely and exposed position in which the Druids stood. She dared not conclude this thought, but the one which followed it was not more comforting. Who knew, she wondered, what ghastly sights and sounds the stones had been witnesses of in long-past times and under the ancient sky? Why, anyway, were they called the Druids, and, again, why should they dance? She saw them, enveloped, like witches, in cloaks of mist. She saw them writhe out of the ground, and, with slow contortions, shuffle towards their victims, avid for blood.
These terrifying images disappeared as Mrs. Bradley turned off from the path through a gap in the hedge, and muttered to Laura to keep low. Dark thoughts forgotten and the fever of wild adventure again in her blood, Laura crouched down. Mrs. Bradley paused for no more than three minutes, and then moved on again. Laura followed with bold and tightened heart, and she and her employer began to creep across the turf towards the stones.
It was a long and uncomfortable trek, but at last the stone circle was reached, and Mrs. Bradley, extending a skinny claw, drew Laura to a halt, and then, without speaking, thrust her gently behind one of the stones.
‘Keep under cover unless I tell you anything different, child,’ she muttered. ‘Our business to-night is to watch. I hope nothing else will be necessary.’
Chapter Sixteen
—«♦»—
‘Night came fast upon them, and they found that they must, however unwillingly, sleep in the wood.’
Ibid. (The Nose)
« ^ »
Laura, behind her stone, touched its roughly-scored surface. She felt it rasp beneath her fingers. It felt warm. Superstition came flooding back into her mind. The stones, she thought, after all, were alive. They lived some strange, remote life of their own, up there on the barren hill. They were kept alive by human blood… by the innocent blood of murdered men!
She was thinking these wild but archaeologically reasonable thoughts, when Mrs. Bradley leaned over from her own stone and murmured:
‘Prepare to repel boarders! In other words—by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes! Stand firm, child! We have visitors!’
There followed an unpleasantly eerie pause, whilst Laura held her breath and the whole hill seemed to listen. Suddenly, from the opposite side of the circle, someone spoke.
‘This’ll be the one he meant. Curse those idiots and their damned dancing about!’
‘Thank ’eaven they didn’t start digging!’ said another voice. ’That would have torn it proper! Now what about the leanin’ tower of Pisa? Is this the one?’
Opposite Laura, on the north-east side of the circle, was, by daylight, a particularly noticeable stone, for it leaned over away from the rest of the circle as though at some time it might have been uprooted and had been put back carelessly.
‘Yes. Here, where have you got to?’