A Song of Stone

  I wipe my eyes and watch the small figures running up towards the mill, jumping from the truck, leaping the ditch, vaulting the walls, running across the intervening ground, stopping, leaping, running, running up, the first of them just approaching the doorway of the mill.

  Where the wooden arms, though broken, though only half set, though ragged with their holed fabric, still sail their course round now, and free at last salute the passing air.

  I turn my back, and run, along the road at first, then when that turns, still straight for you, heading over fields and through woods, through the cutting rain and choking wind, and see it all and see nothing, forever before my eyes the sight of those wasted windmill arms, saluting and saluting and saluting.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I climb banks, cross fences, wade streams. I am brushed and caught by twigs and branches and dying leaves. Wild animals scatter, birds startle and fly up and after me my breath trails, punctured by the rain, disappearing in its quiet bombardment. I run and jump and stagger, crashing through branches, hedges and clumps of dormant grass, plunging amongst all the brittle store of winter’s promise until I see the castle.

  The castle; talisman, emblem, it rises grey on grey from the dripping trees before me, for this moment in the coldly hazing rain looking not like a thing formed from the earth at all, but rather a figment of the cloud, something dreamed from the mist-invested air.

  I cross the old footbridge by the orchard, its suspended timbers squealing and left jerking on their wires. I pass the walled garden, orangerie, potting sheds, the naked ornamental trees, smashed greenhouses, stoved-in cold frames, piles of decaying timbers and small darkened out-houses, the ground before them littered with cans, old wheels, sticks and splinters, pots and pans. I run with tired, failing legs and a pounding head and a breath-raw throat; I run over the moss-upholstered stones, fallen slates, sodden piles of old sawdust, and come out, finally, by the side of the castle.

  All looks peaceful. One truck stands before the moat bridge. On the lawns, the refugees’ camp gives up a little pale-blue smoke that mingles with the rain. I can see nobody. Even the looters seem to have deserted their posts, no longer hanging from the tower and leaving the limply flapping weight of the old snow-tiger’s skin alone to greet the day.

  I fall back into the bushes, my chest heaving, my breath gathering in the air above me while I try to recover some strength and work out what to do next.

  The rain, ubiquitous in its interest, drifting unimpeded from the brought-down weight of sky, soaks me again and again, dripping from the dark and naked branches, shaken from the few last leaves turned the colours of decay, their ragged shapes like twisted hands, still hanging on, but troubled, disturbed and restless in the visiting wind. Gusts strafe the smoke rising from the tents and make the branches over me clatter and creak.

  I haul myself up, and kneel, and soak in the castle’s every detail; the rain-darkened stones, the scatter of small windows, the hole in the roof where a grey tarpaulin flaps, and on the further tower, that drenched and tattering skin, rain exploding from its striped surface with every gusting wave, and it seems to me that I can take in every chipped and levered stone, see them all spread out in plan and elevation before me, made a diagram of in my mind.

  Move, I tell my quivering, exhausted body. Move now. But it needs more, requires longer, still cannot function fully yet. I take out the automatic pistol, as though its steely heft will infect me with its purpose. My hands hurt, my head aches, the rain washing at the wound. My legs grow stiff. I shiver, and gaze with a dazed incredulity at the vapours rising from my legs and face and hands and body, thinking that this steamy veil is like my body evaporating, my determination dissolving in the rain. Then the wind curls and rushes down again and sweeps my self-made shroud away.

  I scan the castle’s windows and battlements for you, my dear, desperate to see your face. Look down, look down, why don’t you, and see one the lieutenant would be proud of, see one like her, a murderer now, like her filmy spirit, like a wraith returned, hidden in the bushes with a gun, covered in mud and leaves, by battle and by bullet scarred, and planning an attack and liberation; no natural refugee at all, but rather one become soldier, for you.

  Noise grows ordered from the rain’s grey hiss, gathering and swelling beyond the castle. I recognise that rising, falling, shifting engine sound, and then hear the truck’s horn, flat and blaring, still some way down the drive. I run out from the bushes, stumbling and slipping over the rain-slickened grass, heading for the front of the castle and the bridge over the moat. They must have left quickly, summoned on the radio; it could be they all went, and perhaps they left the castle unsecured. I skid on the gravel and almost fall. I run past the truck, over the bridge and into the passageway. The portcullis’ iron grid blocks the way; I shake it and try to lift it, in vain. Behind me, I can hear the truck’s engine, growing louder.

  Across the other side of the courtyard, just visible beyond the captured gun, a soldier comes out of the main door. I go still. He peers at me, then goes back in and reappears suddenly with a rifle, levelling it at me from the shelter of the doorway. It does not even occur to me to shoot at him with the pistol I am holding. Instead I duck, turn and run; the rifle shot kicks stone chips off the passageway wall as I sprint out across the bridge. The truck is coming up the drive, lights blazing. Somebody leans out of one window, sighting on me. I hear another shot.

  I try the door of the parked truck, but it is locked. I run across the gravel path to the slope of grass that drops to the moat, thinking to use the bank as cover, but the grass is too wet; I make only a few steps along the slope before I slip and slide down the grass. I fall into the moat, splashing and struggling, gasping in that icy grip, trying to find some footing in the steep underwater slope beneath, still holding the pistol and with my other hand attempting to grab the grass and soil to pull myself out.

  The water kicks and splashes by me; I turn, back against the grassy bank, and look up. A soldier is leaning over the battlements above, pointing a gun down at me. He waves, calls something out. I steady myself as best I can and take aim; the pistol punches back at me; once, twice, then stops. Flakes of stone puff out from the top of the wall. I pull the trigger a few more times, then throw the useless gun away. The soldier has disappeared, but now he comes back; peeking, then leaning over the parapet and shouting something down. I turn my back, and with both hands start to haul myself out of the moat, waiting all the time for the shot, the awful crashing mallet-kick of a bullet hitting. Instead, there is only laughter.

  Scrambling slowly, helplessly awkward in my water-weighted clothes, I pull and kick my way out of the water and up the bank. A bottle sails down, thuds off the grass nearby and plops into the moat behind. I reach the gravel path and stand, swaying and looking up at the battlements. The soldier there waves again. The two trucks are parked together now. A few of the soldiers are lowering something from the rear of the truck that’s just returned; some are standing watching me. Another bottle sails out from the battlements, arcing down to shatter on the gravel near my feet. One of the soldiers at the trucks starts walking towards me, making a beckoning motion with his rifle. I run for the trees.

  Then as I run across the lawn I hear a shout, and look back to see the soldier returning to the truck. The soldiers do not follow me, or shoot at me. They troop into the castle.

  I squat in the bushes, shivering, my body aching with cold. I shake uncontrollably, trying to believe I shall ever be warm again. On the battlements, a drunken soldier waves a bottle at me, then looks behind and walks away. I look down, on all-fours, panting like a frustrated lover at the unresponsive ground, my breath blown back at me. Even this pathetic posture cannot be maintained, my arms and legs both giving way; I have to curl up on my side, quivering in the bushes like a shocked and wounded animal.

  I had thought I had been quite dashing enough, but the castle fails me. I am locked out, the soldiers, whether they know it was I who killed their l
ieutenant or not, seem unconcerned with me, not judging me worth the effort of pursuit. And you, my dear, you are nowhere to be seen. The pistol was no use; two pointless shots, then nothing. And what good could I have done with the thing in any event? Crutch, gravestone, pipe, club, spear; guns have many uses, multifarious effects. Perhaps they alter minds as well as anatomies; perhaps their ejected issuings get under the skin in more ways than one. Do they determine more than those who fire them? Do their unmuzzled mouths really speak so loud, their barrels overflow with death and mutilation with such effect that they speak louder than we, who, recoiling from their use, cannot see that more damage is done behind them than before?

  But the lieutenant--

  But the lieutenant is dead, and so no good example. Did I kill her by being different, or the same? It hardly matters, and anyway I threw the gun away.

  Now I hear more shouts from the castle. I rise to my knees, still unable to stand. The cold seems to penetrate to my bowels; I do not think I can run away. Guns fire, but only into the air.

  They stand behind the battlements; nearly all her men, and some of the women from the camp as well. The grey folds of rain descend between us, but I can see it all; the chipped stones, the waving, saturated skin, the holed roof, and that line of ill-matched men and women, most drunk and swaying, some of them waving, some smiling, some shouting, some firing their guns into the air.

  They have you both. Until this moment there was some part of my mind that wanted to believe that the lieutenant did not really die, that she extricated herself before the wind set the millstones moving, that a soldier I hadn’t noticed made it to the mill before those arms sailed round, that some unclutching in the mill’s mechanism had let the sails move while the stones stayed still. That same desperate site of hope within my mind deluded itself with dreams of you having stolen away from the castle already, not sanguine about my fate - as you seemed - at all, but secretly appalled at what you knew the lieutenant intended for me and determined to make your escape from the castle and her control.

  Fantasies, my dear, and me all the more pitiful for imagining that not thinking such thoughts openly would somehow give them a better chance of reflecting the actuality of our circumstances. Instead, there stands the lieutenant, her headless body supported by a couple of her men. Somebody behind her puts a cap or beret on what’s left of her neck. I think some of the men are laughing.

  Two of the soldiers force you - quiet, expression blank - up to teeter on the rampart stones, your hair soaked blackly to your white nightdress. The nightdress clings skinlike in the soaking rain, and you stand there, arms held behind you, staring out, at once waif and voluptuary.

  They pull you back down; I see the nightdress thrown up over your head as they force you back against the parapet, your head between two of the stones. There is some shouting and jeering. I find myself biting my lip, only realising that I am doing so when the blood is sucked back into my mouth.

  I do not think you afford the soldiers much sport, or perhaps their women prevail on most of them; at any rate, within a few minutes you are lifted back up to the parapet again, expression still unreadable. I think I see a trickle of blood on your chin, too. They are tying your arms behind your back; a length of bandage trails slackly from your right forearm. I believe I see you shiver.

  The men are shouting and yelling, calling on me to come out. I try to rise, but then fall back, paralysed by the cold and the realisation of my own wretched helplessness.

  The lieutenant’s body is anointed with some wine, then pushed over the edge of the parapet; it falls, somersaulting slackly and splashes out of sight. You stand, my dear, helpless as I, your eyes as empty as my mind is of ideas that might save us. Some refugees - men, old women and children - come round from the front of the castle, hesitant, uncertain, but drawn by the calls and laughter and harmless fire and the sound of the young women on the battlements joining in. Most gather on the gravel path, though some hang further back, still fearful. I watch the men at the battlements, I watch the castle, its skin flag flapping, I watch the rain, and a dark bird that circles, high above, and which may be one of mine, a freed raptor returned at last.

  Only you I cannot watch; that awful blankness drives my sight away, forces down or up or to the side my feeble gaze. That face has been my vanity’s mirror; on it you have let me write anything I have ever wanted to write, shown me anything I have ever wanted to see. Now, like the blind spot in the eye that lets us see at all, it is the one place I cannot look, the one sight I cannot bring myself to take in.

  They gasp. The crowd gasps, seeing you fall, a slick white flame fluttering to the moat.

  I run out again, as amazed at my lack of control over this action as I am at my sudden strength. The soldiers do not fire.

  I run past a few of these dispossessed people, pushing through, stumbling to the bank of the moat. Your head only shows, set in that chopping, disturbed surface like an answer to the headless body floating near, still bobbing in the waves caused by your fall. You cough and spit, struggling. People by me mutter. I look up and see a rope leading from near your head up to the battlements. Someone pulls it tight and your head disappears, pulled underneath. Your tied feet are pulled out, jerking, then your legs, naked and kicking, all pulled on that rope until your head alone is left underwater and your body is left twisting on the rope, exposed for all to see.

  You buck, doubling, raising your head out, pale body naked, head and hair covered by the long white shroud of the soaked nightdress caught round your neck; it flaps, drips and ripples, pale and sinuous as your stretched body. They drop you again. You splash and go under; the nightdress floats around you like a lily, then you rise to the air, gasping. The rope’s pulled tight once more and you disappear again, head pulled under.

  I hear myself shouting to them, beseeching them to stop, to let you go. I try to remember their names, but I am not sure that I do: ‘Deathlock! Twotrack!’ I call to them, but they cheer and laugh and bob you down and up again on their rope.

  I run forward, sliding and falling down the slope of grass into the water. The men whoop and holler as I hit the moat; I reach out, trying to get hold of you as you double-up again and raise your head out of the waves, but they move you along, out of my grasp, cheering and firing their guns into the air again. I kick out towards you, swimming, oblivious of cold or fatigue, fingers clawing out towards you.

  Somebody moves on the bank, one of the refugees shouting to me and starting to scramble down the grass, holding something out towards me. Warning shouts come from above, and then shots crack out above and the water in front of the man flicks up in tall splashes. He is helped back up the grassy slope by those on the path; they’re moving round, following you as the soldiers dip you under again and I thrash after you.

  I grab the edge of your nightdress and try to pull you to me, but they haul you further along, towards the corner of the castle and the moat, and the nightdress rips and tears, falling from you. I swim through it and it catches on me, holding me, slowing me. The soldiers jeer and laugh. You bump against the wall, then you are sent under again, then pulled out, spluttering, bending weakly at the waist once more, your revealed face flushed with strain, your voice still unheard.

  I move again, and again, and the water swirls about me, a livid, pressing well of cold, draining warmth, strength, breath, thought and life all out of me. My nails dig at the hard, chill slime of the castle’s stones, the still snagged nightdress and my saturated clothes pulling me back and down. We move round the corner, the crowd following, the soldiers taking turns to drag you, lower you and pull you out, throwing bottles to splash near me, laughing and shouting. I swallow air, swallow water, flap hopeless at the dark waves, falling behind, while they move you, scraping your nakedness along the rough stones to the next corner. You are barely struggling now; your splutterings sound desperate and shrill, asthmatic. Mockingly encouraging shouts sound from above as I struggle uncoordinated through the sapping cold of the water a
nd the refugees rush to follow your dangling, silent form to the next corner, and then round it, disappearing.

  My fingers, burnt, frozen, claw at the slimy stones and drag me slowly on, still impotently pulling your nightdress after me, to the corner’s bulking edge. I round it.

  The soldiers are silent, standing quiet and still above as the people stand below on the gravel path.

  You hang in the water, suspended by the ankles, your only motion a slow twisting and untwisting on that rope, turning your body from breasts to feet away from and then back towards the castle, your head, shoulders and hair submerged in the moat’s quiet circumference.

  I shiver, then push, bumping between the three rotting corpses of the looters. I float towards you. And we, in our suspended state, meet gently.

  I touch your cold head and raise it out. Your eyes still stare; water dribbles from your mouth and pools in your nostrils. The rain falls softly all around us.

  A heave on the rope, and you are taken from me, the head I cradled hauled up, bumping off the stones, jerking dripping away, your black hair in straight lines dropping long and soft inside the rain’s rough sympathy. Those drops strike my face, and the soldiers pull you over the edge, then spit down at me.

  I drift back, hitting the soft bank, turning. The refugees look down, look up, then two reach down and help me out, near the bridge; the nightdress stays in the water, floating. At the gravel summit of the bank, I stagger and cannot stand; the two who have helped me have me sit on the grass bank and an old coat is put around me; then shouts and shots scatter them, sending them back to their camp. I try to rise again, thinking that I might still somehow escape, but I succeed only in getting to my knees, and end up kneeling in the shadow of the trucks, on the gravel before the curved cobbles of the moat’s bridge.