“But he said thank you,” said Geoffrey as the flagstone boomed back into position over the dark stair.
“Yes,” said Sally.
XII PORTENTS
It felt as if it should be later afternoon as they came up the steps, but it was still morning, the sun just sucking up the last of the melted ice from the night before. Not knowing whether it was the right thing to do, he lowered the slab over the tunnel and carried the tray towards the cottage.
Mr. Furbelow had his eyes open. He too had been roused by the clack of the ratchet and was waiting for them.
“Did he miss me?” he said.
“Yes,” said Geoffrey. “He noticed at once.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Furbelow. Silence. “And he took it from you all right?”
“I hope you won’t be cross,” said Sally, “but we found him in a lucid interval and we told him what was happening.”
“You did what?”
“We persuaded him to try and go back into his sleep. I’m afraid he said it might be dangerous for us out here.”
“Do you want us to try to carry you into your house?” said Geoffrey.
“No thank you. I am better here.”
“Then we must try and build you some sort of shelter.”
There were a lot of curious tools in one of the sheds, great adzes and odd-shaped choppers. There were blunt and clumsy saws, too, and another shed was a well-stocked timber store. Geoffrey prized out four cobbles at the corners of Mr. Furbelow’s bed with his sword — they were pigs to move, each packed tight against its neighbors and jammed by century-hardened dirt. He loosened the exposed ground and walloped four pointed uprights into position, staying them with what he took to be bowstrings, which he tied to knives jammed between cobbles further out. He nailed a framework of lighter timbers on to the uprights, and fastened to this the most waterproof-looking of the furs Sally had brought out from the tower. The whole contraption took him about six hours to build, so, what with stopping for lunch (stale bread and cheese, apricots and souring wine) and ministering to Mr. Furbelow’s needs (the old man was quiet and dignified now, but gave himself another shot of morphine towards evening) it was drawing on to dusk by the time he had finished. Venus glimmered in a pale wash of sky above the western hill line before the first symptom occurred.
All the hounds in the tower began howling together, a crazy, terrifying yammer, interrupted by choruses of hoarse barking. A moment’s silence, and they spilt into the courtyard, howling again, dashing to and fro under the tower wall, biting fiercely at each other with frothing mouths until the yellow fur was streaked with dirty red blood. Geoffrey drew his sword and told Sally to run to the house if they came any nearer, but the madness stopped with a couple of coughs, like a fading engine, and the dogs crept away to lick their wounds and whimper under the eaves of the timber store.
The evening deepened and the air chilled. Geoffrey went to spread the lightest pelt over Mr. Furbelow and to let down the sheltering flaps at the side of his bed. One of the guy ropes had gone slack, and when he tried to tauten it he found that the crack into which he had driven its knife was now half an inch wide. The ground had moved.
“Sal, I think you’d better get Maddox out into the open. Anything might happen tonight. I’ll look for more rugs and food, if there’s any left.”
He jammed the knife into another crack and went into the tower. One of the big doors was off its hinges. Inside all the flambeaux were smoking, and the fire, too, was sending up a heavy gray column which didn’t seem to be finding its way out of the hole in the roof. The huge room was full of choking haze, and a voice was shrieking from the upper gallery: “Mordred. Mordred. Mordred.” It went on and on. One of the long tables had been overturned, leaving a mess of fruit and bread and dishes spilt across the floor, but on the other he found a bowl of tiny apples and some untouched loaves. He carried them out to the cottage steps, where Sally sat wrapped in a white fur.
“Get as much wood as you can out of the timber store,” he said. “We’d better have a fire. I’ll find something to protect Mr. Furbelow’s leg in case that contraption collapses. It sounds as though there’s people in there now, Sal, but I can’t see anyone.”
“I don’t think he’d hurt us on purpose,” said Sally.
This time the smoke in the tower was worse. The voice had stopped but there was a clashing and tinkling on the far side of the hall, interspersed with hoarse gruntings. He couldn’t see what was happening because of the smoke, but suddenly grasped that this must be the noise people make when they are fighting with shield and sword. He picked up a bench and began to carry it out, but before he reached the door there came a burst of wild yelling behind him and the running of feet. Something struck him on his left shoulder; he staggered and then something much solider caught him on the hip and threw him sideways across the bench he was carrying in a clumsy somersault. He crouched there as the feet thudded past, but saw nothing. When they had gone the voice began shrieking again: “Mordred. Mordred. Mordred.” It was lower in tone now, but still the same woman’s voice, hoarse and murderous. He picked up his bench and limped away, the pain where the thing had hit him nagging at his hip. Sally had gathered a useful pile of timber.
“We’ll want smaller stuff to start it with,” said Geoffrey, “and straw out of the stables. Did you see anyone come out of the tower? Somebody knocked me over but it’s so full of smoke that I couldn’t see what was happening.”
“I saw Maddox shying and neighing, and then he went off and made friends with the dogs, but I didn’t see anything else. How are you going to light the fire, Jeff?”
“If you’ll get straw and kindling, I’ll get a burning log out of the hall.”
“Do be careful.”
“OK. But I don’t think being careful is going to make much difference.”
The voice had stopped again and there was no noise of fighting. The smoke was thick as the thickest fog. Geoffrey crouched under it and scuttled across the paving until he could see the glow of the fire. Before he reached it he realized there was something in the way, and stopped. It looked like two new pillars, supporting a heavy, shadowy thing. At the same moment as he realized that the pillars had feet, the thing became the back of an armed man, motionless, squat, brooding into the fire. His armor was leather with strips of thick bronze sewn on to it. A tangle of yellowy-gray hair flowed over the shoulders from under the horned helmet.
Geoffrey crept away beneath the shelter of the smoke. When he reached the wall he found a tall stool which he stood on to take one of the flambeaux out of its iron bracket. He decided not to go back into the tower again.
The flame of the straw flared into brightness and died down almost at once, but some of the kindling caught and with careful nursing they made a proper fire, leaning billets of timber into a wigwam round the crackling, orange heart. As soon as it was really going the hounds slouched over and arranged themselves in a sprawling circle, scratching, yawning, and licking the blood off their coats. Maddox followed and stood in the half-light on the edge of the circle, thinking obscure horse thoughts. Geoffrey placed the bench at right angles across Mr. Furbelow’s sleeping form, and stayed it firm, to be a second line of defense if the shelter fell. He went into the cottage and brought out the rest of the blankets and the drawer of medicine, which he put into the shelter. Nothing noticeable happened for half an hour, while Sally and he sat on the steps and ate bread and apples.