They bent and grabbed his feet, hauling him unceremoniously into the air. They were strong, despite their appearance. He was carried from the shelter like a sack of corn. None of them said anything, but he suddenly realized that he could hear them breathing. One of them wheezed like an asthmatic, while the others sounded just like ordinary men would if they were carrying something heavy. Dead men didn’t need to breathe, Sherlock told himself. They didn’t smell as if they were dead. Sherlock knew the cloying, awful smell of rotting flesh: he’d found enough dead animals in the woods in his time. Looking at these things, they should have reeked to high heaven, but all he could smell was sweat. So they weren’t dead men. Just men who looked like they were dead. But why? And what had they done with Virginia?
He looked down at where their thin hands were clutching at his shoulders. White marks were rubbing off on the material of his jacket. Make-up? On their hands? He breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t really thought they were dead, but it was a relief to have his deductions confirmed. He supposed it made sense: if you wanted people to think that you were dead, then you needed to look the part. White hands and white faces indicated a lack of blood circulating. If people saw them only at a distance, as Sherlock had till now, it was convincing.
They were carrying him downhill, away from Cramond. He caught sight of the occasional upside-down face as he was jolted along. This close he could see beard stubble poking through the white make-up on their cheeks and necks. He could also see how bits of thin paper had been stuck to their skin to resemble dry, peeling flesh, how the clever use of shading made it look as if their bones were poking through their skin, and how one of them had markings painted on his cheeks that, at a distance, would look like the grinning teeth of a skull. It was all theatrics and pretend. Dressing-up games.
‘Tell me where we’re going!’ he demanded.
The ‘corpse’ holding his right arm looked down at him and grinned. His teeth were stained green, like moss, but even that was make-up. ‘You come with us,’ he grunted in a voice that sounded like it was bubbling up through mud. ‘You see Clan Chief of the Dead.’
‘You’re not dead,’ Sherlock said. ‘You’re just pretending.’
The ‘corpse’ kept on grinning. ‘You sure about that?’ he asked. ‘You bet your life on it?’
Sherlock had no answer to that.
They carried him over rough ground for what seemed like an hour. He kept looking around to see if he could see Virginia, but if she was being carried as well then she was ahead of him and out of sight. He hoped that she’d managed to escape.
Eventually he was thrown on the back of a horse. His arms and legs were tied together with a rope running beneath the horse’s stomach, and his belt was fastened to the saddle so that he didn’t slip underneath the animal while they were riding. One of the ‘corpses’ mounted the horse, and they started to gallop away.
The repetitive thumping impact of the horse’s rump in his stomach and the heavy odour of the horse itself made Sherlock feel sick. He was constantly on the verge of sliding beneath the horse, where its massive legs would pound into him over and over again until his bones were smashed to fragments. He clenched his arms and legs as tight as he could, trying to stay where he was.
His head was jolted up and down so much that he couldn’t see what was flashing past. He was dimly aware, though, that there were other horses ahead of him and behind. Was Virginia on one of them? As his discomfort got worse and worse, he hoped that she wasn’t.
The noise made by the horse’s hoofs changed. They weren’t riding on earth any more; they were riding on stone. He heard echoes, as if they were surrounded by hundreds of horses. They were inside some kind of stone courtyard. The horse slowed to a halt. Sherlock was thrown forward, and the rear of the saddle hit him in his side, knocking the breath from him.
Hands grabbed him. A knife cut through the ropes holding him on to the horse. He was carried again, face down this time, too weak and nauseous even to lift his head. All he saw were cobbles, and the occasional edge of a stone wall.
And flickering shadows. The whole place appeared to be lit by torches.
Where was he? He remembered the granite shape of Edinburgh Castle, looming above the town. Surely they hadn’t ridden far enough to be back in Edinburgh? Were there other castles around?
Sherlock was carried down a corridor and into a room. He heard barking and growling. On the far side of the room was a fenced-off area. Men were looking into it with avid interest, some of them exchanging money. Through gaps in the fence Sherlock could see two dogs – big ones – fighting. They leaped at each other, tearing at ears with their teeth and scratching at eyes and skin with their claws. In the flickering torchlight he could see blood spattered across the floor. Some of it was fresh, but some of it was dried. Dogs – and maybe other things – had been fighting there for a while.
He was carried out of that room and into another one. There was no fenced-off area here – instead, men and women were gathered around a rough circle that had been chalked on the flagstones. In the centre of the circle, two men warily stalked each other. They were stripped to the waist, and their chests gleamed as if they had been oiled. One of them had fingernail marks ripped down his torso. The second man suddenly stepped forward. He crouched, grabbing the first around the waist, lifted him in the air and threw him to the ground. The crowd went wild, yelling and cheering.
Moments later Sherlock was being carried out of that room as well. The next had a walkway round the edge and a rectangular pit in the middle, like a swimming pool. Except that there was no water, and a waist-high fence made of wide wooden panels ran all the way round the edge of the pit. Sherlock could smell a rank, feral odour.
Something made a snarling sound. Sherlock realized that there was an animal corralled in there. It had obviously heard the men carrying Sherlock, because it threw itself against the fence. The wooden panels shook. What was in there?
The men scurried for the far door, obviously terrified of whatever the beast was.
Sherlock was taken into a large room and dumped on the ground.
He lay there for a while, staring upward. His arms and legs felt three inches longer than they had been. He could feel bruises all over his body. All in all, he thought, he wasn’t really in a position to do any damage to anyone.
The ceiling was white plaster separated into squares by wooden beams. It looked old, and it looked impressive, but there were massive strands of cobwebs in each corner, hanging like grey rags.
Sherlock closed his eyes and listened. He could hear the crackling of a fire – logs splitting in the heat – and a background murmur that sounded like a whole group of people waiting for something – whispers, giggles, the shuffling of feet. The sound of an audience waiting for a show to start. He could smell sweat, and food, and underneath it all the rank odour of the animal in the pit in the previous room.
Eventually Sherlock pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around.
He was in a stone hall. Flaming torches hung from the walls, illuminating everything with a flickering red-tinged light. Tapestries hung between the torches, looking like old moth-eaten bits of carpet. Interspersed between the tapestries and the torches were the stuffed heads of animals, mounted on shield-like plaques. Most of them were stags with spread antlers, but there were also some wolves with their jaws open, exposing their teeth, and something that Sherlock could have sworn was a bear. He supposed he should be glad there weren’t any men’s heads on the wall.