Ash

  ‘David,’ Delphine whispered so as not to disturb the sea of vermin blocking their way. ‘What do we do?’

  Louis peered round at the investigator as though expecting him to provide a solution. He cut a crazy-looking figure in Ash’s olive green field jacket, below which protruded his sticklike legs through which the shadows of his bones could be seen. He was shivering violently. The investigator, who was somewhat shaky himself, fervently hoped the shock would not bring on the prince’s epilepsy.

  ‘The only way is onwards,’ Ash answered resolutely. ‘Ever see that Hitchcock film, The Birds?’

  Louis looked bemused, but Delphine nodded her head just once.

  ‘Remember the scene at the end?’

  This time there was no reaction from Delphine.

  ‘It’s a beautiful scene,’ Ash continued. ‘The hero opens his mother’s front door. It’s a great shot full of quietened birds, the town in the near-distance, and gulls and crows as far as you could see. The hero has no choice but to get his family and girlfriend far away from there before the birds attack again. It was full of tension, because although the enemy, the birds, appear to be dormant for the moment, the menace is still there.’

  ‘David . . .’ Delphine was becoming impatient in her anxiety.

  ‘Okay. So the hero has to get his mother, girlfriend, and a young girl – his niece, I think – to walk through the birds to reach his waiting car. They get into the car and very carefully drive off, expecting to be attacked at any moment.’

  He paused.

  ‘What happened to them?’ Delphine asked eagerly.

  Ash shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. That was when the credits rolled.’

  Delphine groaned. ‘That’s not funny, David. What are we going to do now? How much longer before they turn on us?’

  I wish I knew, thought Ash.

  A few of the rodents looked their way uninterestedly. Most had hunkered down, apparently content for the moment. Yet Ash could feel the frisson in the air, as though aggression could break through at any time.

  In reply to Delphine, Ash said quietly, ‘We’ll do what the characters in the movie did, only without the car: we’ll just walk through them. Unless you can think of a better plan.’

  Delphine could think of no other plan, so nodded her assent once more, but this time with an audible sigh. Ash reached around Louis and drew the psychologist to him and she came willingly, aching for his comforting embrace, wishing she had his determination.

  As for Ash, he held her tightly, pushing his cheek into the comfort of her hair. He would not lose this one. He would not lose this woman he loved and who he knew, beyond doubt, loved him in return. Past heartaches, tragedies, had to be pushed back to the furthest corner of his mind lest he endangered her without thinking. He would not allow anyone or anything to take her from him. Ash kissed her cheek and tasted a tear that had trickled from her eye.

  ‘I promise we’ll get through this together. You, me and Louis. We’ve come a long, difficult way, and this last hurdle is all that lies between us and the sea cave. Just trust in me, okay?’

  Her lips were trembling, and her smile was unconvincing, though she was obviously trying hard.

  ‘I do trust you, David. You know that.’

  ‘Good. I needed the encouragement.’

  Reluctantly, he let go of her and looked at Louis, whose peculiar face was not easy to read.

  ‘I trust you, too, Mr Ash,’ he said in his strangely high, melodious voice. ‘I’ll do anything you say, sir.’

  Mr Ash? Sir? My God, thought the investigator, Louis is a prince of the realm.

  ‘I’ve said before, how about you call me David?’ Ash said, smiling, the only response he could think of.

  ‘All right . . . David.’

  ‘That’s better.’ Ash realized they had to make a move. It was frigidly cold and the wind coming in off the sea was whistling harshly through the tunnel on the other side of the cavern. Even if the rats left them alone, he wasn’t sure that Louis would survive the night in such conditions. He remembered the narrow passageway he’d had to negotiate to reach their present position from the cave, the rock ceiling low and sagging. There was always a chance that the explosions in the castle above had created more subsidence, or even triggered a rockfall, trapping them there. Still, they would have to face that problem when they reached it. For now, the rats were bad enough.

  He motioned the others closer. ‘Right, we’re a team now, and together we’re going to work carefully through that crowd of rats just as though they were sunbathers on a packed beach. They won’t attack unless we annoy them by stepping on their tails or paws. If only one of them kicks off on its own, try to ignore it. Boot it away but don’t try to take on all of them. Keep it personal.’

  Ash looked directly at Louis and realized he no longer reacted to those odd, transparent features.

  ‘Louis, I’m going to carry you across.’

  He held up a hand to ward off any protests.

  ‘You’re a haemophiliac, Louis,’ Delphine put in. ‘If you get bitten by a rat, we’ll never control the bleeding down here.’

  He saw the sense of it even if he did not want to consider himself a burden. He accepted with a nod of his head.

  ‘You’ve got a choice,’ Ash said good-humouredly. ‘I can hold you in my arms, carry you over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift or give you a piggy-back. You decide.’

  ‘Piggy-back,’ the exiled prince said right away, and Ash was again reminded more of an excited boy than a man nearing thirty.

  ‘That’s good. Delphine can carry the big torch to light our way, and you can hold the smaller one for extra light.’ He took in both of them. ‘Now, if you see any particularly nasty specimens looking our way with blood-lust in their eyes, shine both torches at them – concentrated beam, Delphine – and try to dazzle them. They might flee, or they might be mesmerized, whatever, but it’s up to us to keep going.’ He turned his back to Louis and handed the Maglite to Delphine. With his knees partly bent and elbows stretched sideways, Ash said to Louis. ‘Hop aboard. Make sure you’ve got a good grip on me, and shine the light just a little ahead so Delphine and I can see where to plant our feet.’

  With that, the investigator took one tentative step off the stone stairs, waited to see if it caused any disruption among the so far passive vermin, and when it didn’t, followed up with the other foot.

  Before long, and comparatively easily, they were halfway across the chamber. The rodents were aware of them all right, but other than some rising to their haunches and sniffing the bat-dung-scented air with twitching snouts, they squealed but did nothing to delay them. Ash sneaked a quick look up at the rock-and-root-formed ceiling. There were hardly any bats visible on the periphery. But just as he looked down again he heard sounds coming from a smaller tunnel on the far side of the cavern.

  Suddenly the vermin were quivering as one as they, too, looked towards the opening. Ash could feel the tension change to something stronger. It was as if an electric current were bouncing around the high cave.

  The noise grew louder, like an approaching tube train, and then thousands of black and brown flying mammals burst through the opening, returning from their nightly insect feast. The squealing and squeaking sounds coming from both the bats and the unnerved rats filled the chamber with echoes, the cavern’s acoustics amplifying the clamour several times over.

  Mayhem quickly ensued as the flying creatures swooped over and down at the intruders on their territory while the rats jumped up at the bats, bringing some down by chance rather than skill, hordes of them tearing the fallen mammals to bits while their enraged fellows dived at the vermin on the ground, their deadly fangs burrowing into the rats’ throats.

  In all the chaos, Ash saw that Delphine had been shocked into stillness and he had to shout at her to make her act.

  ‘The opening, Delphine! Make for the opening where the bats came in!’

  With Louis still on his back – Ash ha
d carried heavier backpacks than him – he nudged into Delphine to bring her out of her stupor. She took one look at him and understood what he wanted her to do. She focused on the black hole from where the flying creatures spewed and began edging towards it.

  ‘There can’t be many more bats to come through. When the stream stops, we’ll crawl out!’ Ash hurried her along, kicking out at any rat that was taking too long a look at him. Nevertheless, he felt several nips at his trousers that tore through to his flesh.

  ‘Louis, put your head down against my back!’ he shouted over his shoulder. The prince, who had been knocking swooping bats aside with the metal torch, obeyed. A group of rats scattered at their approach and revealed the dulled white bones Ash had seen on his first trip into the cliff’s inner cave. He saw Delphine stop in shock when she was confronted by human skulls.

  She was soon distracted when a bat landed in her hair and became entangled. With a screech she reached back with her free hand and tried to smack the struggling animal away. It was a hopeless gesture though, for the more the small creature struggled, the more it became tangled in Delphine’s lush black curls.

  Just a step or two behind her, with Louis desperately clinging to his back, Ash reached forward and grabbed hard at the frenzied, fluttering ball of fur, feeling its birdlike bones breaking under the pressure. The investigator pulled the bat away from Delphine, wrenching some of her hair from its roots as he did so. The bat’s squeal was so thin and high-pitched it was lost in the prevailing cacophony, but it was the feeling of tiny cracking bones that stayed with Ash.

  Delphine turned to him and he could see she was bravely trying to hold back tears of either fear or pain – probably both. However, this was not the time for hugs and sympathy.

  ‘Run!’ he shouted at her. ‘Just ignore everything else and run. We’re nearly there!’

  And so they did, swatting away excited, vengeful, winged and four-legged rodents. Some rats leapt up at the flurry of erratic, flapping creatures, which were easier to deal with than the big humans making their way across the chamber. Some of the bolder rats jumped up and bit into Ash’s and Delphine’s clothing, most only tearing the material, although some slashes and bites struck home.

  Ash watched proudly as Delphine, who seemed somehow now emboldened, angry even, kicked, punched and swiped the animals out of her way. It also made his progress easier, burdened as he was, albeit lightly, by the young man on his back. After two minutes that seemed more like two hours, the three of them reached the opening, which was now mercifully free of bats.

  Ash put Louis gently down with his back to the entrance, placing his own body protectively in front of him. Delphine flattened herself against the rock on the other side of the opening. Again, Ash had to shout to be heard over the nightmarish noise.

  ‘Delphine! You go in f—’ He stopped as he caught sight of a winged creature bearing down directly on him. Ash instinctively lashed out with his fist, punching the fluttering creature square on, knocking it to the ground where it lay twitching until two rats jumped in to tear it apart.

  Ash started again over the din of creatures behind them. ‘You go in first, Delphine. You’ll find the roof is low at one point, but you can easily crawl through. Then you’ll reach the big sea cave.’ He remembered the park ranger, Jonas McKewin, telling him that if the weather was bad outside, the bats wouldn’t leave home. It wasn’t yet morning, so Ash reasoned they must have been caught in a sudden storm out there, and had headed back to the safety of their roost.

  ‘Louis, I want you to stay behind Delphine. I’ll bring up the rear.’ He returned his attention to the psychologist. ‘Use the torch at its narrowest beam. Any more bats come back in here, dazzle them with the light.’

  ‘But aren’t bats blind?’ shouted Delphine, anxious to leave the huge cavern.

  Ash shook his head. ‘No, not all, that’s a myth. But if they really want to, they can easily get by us: that’s why we’re going single-file.’

  He took the smaller Maglite from the prince and gave him a cheerful, reassuring grin, despite the madness going on behind them. ‘Okay, let’s go. Delphine, I think the weather’s pretty bad tonight, so don’t expect the cave to be homely.’

  She climbed in, waving the light before her. Louis and Ash swiftly followed, as keen as Delphine to get away from the noisy chamber. The psychologist soon reached the point at which the tunnel was at its lowest and she pushed herself along on her stomach, avoiding two small crabs as she did so. They scuttled away from her in their comical but creepy sideways walk. And then, over the sound of air rushing past into the inner depths of the cliff, Ash heard the welcome noise of crashing waves and smelt the strong, salty aroma of the sea.

  In front of him, Delphine turned her head and shoulders to cry, ‘We’re there! We’ve made it to the cave!’

  Ash grinned. Thank God for that! The sticky ooze they’d had to crawl through and the stench that had gone with it made him want to vomit, as it had earlier that morning.

  ‘You hear that, Louis?’ he called ahead. ‘We’re almost there. But take care when you get into the cave itself – it sounds like a stormy night out there.’

  Louis did not reply, but quickened his pace, using his elbows to speed himself along.

  Finally, they emerged from the shallow opening and were immediately drenched by sea spray. Although the water was cold, it was cleansing, washing away some of the grime and muck from their clothes and faces. God, it was cold, though!

  Delphine and Louis had already moved further along the stone ledge that had been used to unload smuggled goods. Carefully, he eased himself around the rocky projections and stepped over the gaps where bits had broken away. Reaching Delphine and Louis, he hugged them both, kissing the psychologist on her now salty lips and Louis on the forehead. They were both shivering, chilled to the bone.

  He switched off the smaller torch and exchanged it for Delphine’s larger one. ‘Put it in your bag to keep it dry,’ he told her. ‘We’ll use the bigger Maglite for now.’

  A wave came crashing into the open cave and washed onto the ledge, drenching them all the more. Ash groaned to himself. They had to get the shivering Louis out of the cave and up onto the top of the promontory. Somehow they would find a refuge there, and with all the confusion that must be going on by now, they might even find a way out of the Comraich estate.

  Another wave boomed into the cave and they clung together to resist its pull as it receded. A nasty thought worried Ash. Was the tide still rising? What if the cave filled right up, perhaps even to the sloping roof?

  He looked around desperately for a higher place on which to wait for the tide to turn, but there was nowhere, nowhere at all, that they could reach.

  ‘David!’ Delphine’s sharp cry made him turn to her. ‘It’s Louis. Look, he’s bleeding!’

  This made matters a whole lot worse. The haemophiliac prince could easily bleed to death while they waited for conditions to improve.

  ‘We have to find out where he’s been cut,’ said Delphine, firmly taking control. She began undoing the buttons of the field jacket that Louis was wearing and Ash helped her get him out of it. His strange body was bruised virtually black in places. But then Ash saw the blood spilling from the prince’s soft, pellucid, lower leg.

  ‘His leg!’ he shouted.

  The cut was on his calf, about halfway up, and in itself, it did not look too serious. But on Louis, it could prove fatal.

  ‘We must stop the flow!’ Delphine shouted, bending on one knee to examine the wound more closely. ‘A rat must have bitten him when he was on your back.’

  ‘Or slashed him.’ Ash was pulling the muffler over his head. Quickly twisting it again and again until it formed a tight band, he told Louis to step into it.

  ‘It’ll be too loose.’ Delphine had already tried to stem the flow with her damp scarf, but Ash knew what he was doing as he pulled the improvised tourniquet up to a point just above the wound.

  ‘Delphine, d’you have a
pen or anything like that, in your bag? Something that will help tighten the material around his leg.’

  ‘Will the small torch do? It has a longish barrel.’

  ‘No, we need something strong but thinner.’

  She opened her bag and pulled out her Mont Blanc fountain pen.

  ‘That’ll do it.’

  Ash snatched the pen from her hand, slipped it between the circle of material and the flesh of Louis’ calf and began to turn it clockwise. It immediately tightened around the leg to cut off the blood flow and Delphine again pressed her scarf against the slash itself. For a moment, the bright red fluid slowed to a trickle as Ash shone the big torch on it. They waited. And waited. The blood wouldn’t stop oozing. Louis suddenly slumped against the rock face.

  ‘We have to lie him down,’ said Delphine, ‘and hold his leg higher.’

  Ash gently began lowering the exiled prince, until Louis’ bare back rested on the cold, wet ledge, where there was hardly room enough for two of them, let alone three. Delphine held Louis’ leg up and again they waited, praying the flow would begin to slow and eventually cease.

  Ash saw quickly that was not going to happen. Since his sister had drowned, the investigator had been mildly hydrophobic, but as much as he feared the water, he began to consider jumping into the sea and swimming along the shoreline to the wooden steps that would take him up the cliff, where he might be able to find help. Surely someone from Comraich would be able to contact the Coast Guard and paramedics. He probably wouldn’t make it, though he would certainly give it a try.

  ‘There’s only one thing for it,’ he said, and began to unlace his heavy boots.

  ‘No, David, no!’ she pleaded. ‘You can’t—’

  But then the next huge wave roared in, and everything changed.

  98

  A wall of water exploded into the cave, filling every part, foam brushing even the high stone ceiling and sweeping Ash, Delphine and Louis from their precarious perch on the ledge. Ash heard Delphine scream, the sound immediately lost under the tumultuous fury of the crashing sea.