In their centre was the restored altar. According to a guide-book in Mycroft's study, some twenty years ago a well-meaning enthusiast had decided that the half-buried stone in the middle of the circle had originally been an altar-stone, and had raised it, stretching it between a stone that lay to one side and a pair of stones that had been cracked and mounted upright with a gap between the halves.
Although the position of the cracked stone seemed to have a significance beyond that of a support-the gap between its halves would frame the mound of Maeshowe-the massive three-legged table was, nonetheless, most impressive. It did not require the imagination of a Sir Walter Scott to picture it as a sacrificial altar, longer than any man, fenced in by the towering grey granite shards.
My tour companions had been marched away to Maeshowe, our guide having clearly decided that I was unappreciative of his expertise. Alone, I made a slow circuit of the Stones, memorising the arrangement of the upright rocks, letting my feet learn the low depression of the ditch-works and the ground-level bridge that had once passed through ditch and bank.
Under the guise of studying waterfowl, I took out my glasses and aimed them at the saltwater loch to the south. Three swans stretched their wings and thought about dinner; seagulls darted and cried on the wind. A pair of fishermen occupying the shallows between me and the hotel had begun to work their way back to the shore, no doubt with dinner on their minds as well; behind them, I could see where the flames had been doused before they ate into the fabric of the hotel. The windows on this side of the building showed the backs of curtains-the fire must have started at night.
Its inner rooms, while not cosy, would be liveable.
Snatches of voice warned me of my companions' return, and I let the glasses wander along the shore-line for a minute before packing them away. I turned for a last look at the nearby proto-circle.
There was an intensity, almost a violence, to these Stones that the Ring on the hill did not have. I had fancied them earlier as having been dropped by the gods, but that was too passive. Rather, they looked as if the gods had seized each sharp-edged slab to drive it savagely into the turf, pulling away a blood-smeared hand.
I caught myself: I'd been away from Holmes for too long, and my imagination was running away with me.
Still, when I looked at that stone altar, I shivered.
I returned to the coach and rode unprotesting to the island's second town of Stromness, but when the others were shepherded in the direction of a restaurant, I slipped away. I walked back the way we had come, taking my time with the four miles so it would be deep dusk for the last mile; three motor-cars passed; each time, I dropped into the grassy verge away from their head-lamps.
The sky was moonless; the hotel was a faint outline against a marginally lighter expanse of clouds. I crept towards the smell of smoke and pressed myself into the wall between the first two windows, trying to hear above the perpetual sough of the wind. In the absence of a stethoscope, I pulled the knife from my boot-sheath and rested its point against the stones, setting the handle in back of my ear. Nothing.
Moving down the wall to the next windows, I tried again, and again heard only the sounds of the night and the thud of my own heart. Around the corner, the wind was loud enough to obscure anything less than a shout, so I kept circling to the side facing away from the loch. Again I listened, again-wait. Not voices, but a rhythmic thump, thump, thump, that then quickened in pace for a dozen or so beats. Feet, coming down stairs?
I moved to the boarded-up back of the hotel, and there I glimpsed motion. A light flickered, danced, and steadied: a candle, half-visible through the boards. A figure moved around the room; I heard the sound of water flowing into a vessel, saw a flare of light as a gas cooker lit beneath the kettle. The shadowy figure pulled open drawers, coming out from the third one with a long knife. He took it to a shapeless lump on the table beside the tea-pot, and began sawing: bread.
All this was with his back to me, so he was nothing but an indistinct shape in a dim room. I considered moving around to the boarded-up door and seeing if I could find a crack, but before I could move, he turned, and the unruly hair and beard identified him: Damian Adler.
If prisoner he was, then a very blasé prisoner indeed, making tea and sandwiches as if living in a burnt-out building with a religious fanatic was the humdrum stuff of everyday Bohemian life.
He turned away to the tea-pot, and I pressed my face closer against the glass, trying to get some sense of the man. Did he, too, burn with the fanaticism of Testimony? Had this rumpled figure participated in the ritual murder of his wife? Was he about to join in the similar slaughter of an innocent step-daughter?
My nose hovered near the glass, my spectacles dangerously close to tapping its hard surface; without warning, a hand came down on my shoulder.
45
The Sacrifice of Setting Loose (1): As we have seen,
the greater the sacrifice, the greater the energies loosed.
This is an age of War, when the earth has drunk the
sacrificial blood of millions. The world lies primed,
for a transformative spark.
Testimony, IV:8
THE SCREAM THAT CAME FROM MY THROAT WAS instantly stifled, emerging as a strangled death-rattle. Before Damian could turn I was already gone, attacking my attacker.
My muscles responded automatically to the hand on my shoulder, but as instantly lost all strength at the hasty whisper, “Russell!”
“Holmes? Holmes! What the hell are you- Quick, away from the window.”
I pushed him away, to the corner and beyond, then eased my head back: A shadow pressed against the window, looking for the sound; after a minute, it retreated. I turned and punched Holmes on the chest.
“Damn it, Holmes, what are you doing here? You were on your way to Norway, for God's sake.”
“You did not receive my message?”
“No-how would I receive a message? I haven't heard a word from you since you left London.”
“Interesting. I'd have thought Mycroft…”
“Holmes.”
“I rethought my plans.”
“Obviously.”
“‘Many things having full reference to one consent, may work contrariously; as many arrows, loosed several ways, fly to one mark.’”
“Holmes!”
“Shakespeare, on bees. Henry the Fifth,” he added.
“Damn it, Holmes!”
“I decided you were right.”
“You decided-? Good heavens. Well, sweet bloody hell, I wish you'd let me know earlier, I nearly jumped through the window when you grabbed me.”
“That would have been unfortunate.”
I hit him again, for good measure, and felt somewhat better. Felt considerably better, in fact, with him at my side. I threw my arms around him and hugged him, hard, then stood back and explored his face with my hands.
“You haven't shaved in days,” I exclaimed, “and why are you so damp? You're freezing.”
“I have spent most of the past three days at sea,” he answered, which explained both the difficulty of shaving and the permeating moisture.
“We need to get you out of the cold.”
“That is of secondary importance.”
“They're brewing tea, they won't be going anywhere for a time. Let me just check-” I tip-toed back to the window, and glimpsed Damian unconcernedly pouring water into the tea-pot. I retrieved Holmes and led him towards the hotel's out-buildings.
These were securely locked, but the padlock on the biggest one would not have challenged a child. The interior stank of fish and contained a lot of nets, poles, gum boots, and paddles, but in a window-less corner room I found a store of elderly bed-clothes and paraphernalia for the guests, from water carafes to expensive fly-fishing rods. A wicker picnic basket contained a filled paraffin burner, a packet of tea leaves, and even a tin of slightly crumbled biscuits. When I lit the burner, a remarkably bearded husband came into view, tugging a blanket around his shoulders.