A Dusk of Demons Read online

  So I slipped the chain over my neck. The medallion felt strange against my chest, cool at first but soon warm. This was the way the Master had worn it, but it did not make me feel like a Master.

  • • •

  John’s was no more than nine hundred square feet, and uninhabited. It lacked a spring, so we took water in a can. That was for drinking and cooking—we had an ocean to wash in.

  After my talk with Mother Ryan I had not much wanted to go on the expedition. In any case, with Saturday lost, we could not stay overnight. But when Paddy woke me early, and I expressed some doubt, her voice turned waspish.

  “I suppose you’d rather sit and make a list of your possessions—count your gold pieces, maybe. Don’t worry. I’ll get Joe to take me over.”

  She was halfway down the stairs by the time I could get out of bed, but she relented enough to agree to wait while I washed and dressed. She remained stiff and distant for a time after that, but by the time we had wrestled our gear onto the dinghy she was her usual self. We had left a house silent in the sharp light of dawn, with no smoke yet rising from the kitchen chimney. I wondered about the chimney at the far end—whether Mother Ryan would still light a fire in the Master’s quarters. In my quarters, I thought, and shot a guilty look at Paddy in case she read my mind.

  The sea was quiet as the morning while we rowed the few hundred yards to John’s. Gulls bobbed on the water, and I saw a cormorant leisurely paddling, too lazy or too sated to dive for fish. The island’s single beach was on the far side, looking across waters empty to the western horizon. The tide was nearly full, but we still dragged the dinghy higher after beaching it. Then we set about building a fire and cooking breakfast.

  We had brought porridge which had been all night on the stove and only needed reheating, but there were bacon and sausages to grill and eggs to fry. Paddy automatically resumed her role of bossing me—telling me the bacon was not crisp enough, chiding me for breaking the yolk of her egg. But she ate as greedily as I: Food tasted better cooked over a fire we had made ourselves, on an island whose sole occupants we were. Behind us the sun was obscured by the rise of land, but the sea in front was already brightly lit.

  Lying back on the sand, face hidden as she laced her hands behind her neck, Paddy spoke of my new status.

  “Was it really a surprise? Did Mother never give you a hint of it—nor the Master, either?”

  “None at all.”

  “I knew nothing, but Antonia must have. There were things she said which make sense now. I think she remembers quite a bit from the time before we came here.”

  Paddy started talking about things that could be done on Old Isle. Sheriff Wilson’s house had a pool, which was connected to the sea and held water at low tide. We might make one like it. He kept fish for the table in his. We could swim in ours when the sea was rough.

  I pointed out it would mean digging a very long channel, since the Master’s house was at least twice as far from the shore. It would be asking a lot of Andy and Joe.

  “We can bring men over from Sheriff’s. And they could build a summerhouse, up by the pines.”

  My latest acquisition seemed destined to go the same way as the previous one: to be shared between us, but with Paddy in charge. I wondered if she would want to ride Sea King. Probably not; his size would be likely to daunt even her. Anyway, for the last couple of days he had been suffering an attack of laminitis and was confined to the stables.

  The day passed quickly. We put to rights a tree house in the island’s little copse, which Joe had helped us build on a previous visit, and searched for gulls’ eggs on the rocky ribs of foreshore where they nested. By the time we’d collected a dozen we were hungry again, and made a new fire and boiled them, burning our fingers as we cracked the shells to eat them with salt and butter.

  A mile or so out, someone was lifting lobster pots. There was a reef there where Joe put down pots, but this was not his boat. It was bigger—someone from Sheriff’s probably. Yet so tiny compared with the vessel in the picture.

  I asked idly, “Why did things get small?”

  “Gull’s eggs? I don’t recall them being bigger. Not much fun for the gull, if they were.”

  “I meant boats. And buildings. Remember that ruin we explored on Sheriff’s . . .”

  “Not for long, because you were scared of being caught in a forbidden place.”

  As I recalled it, she had been at least as scared, but I didn’t argue. I said, “That book we found which could still be read—with pictures of buildings ten times as high as the Sheriff’s house.” I thought about it. “Twenty times, perhaps.”

  “It wasn’t that they got small: The Demons destroyed them. It says so in Laws of the Dark One—that the Demons will destroy anything built more than six times the height of a man, and lay waste the ground as far all round it. Except for windmills.”

  “But why? What’s wrong about tall buildings, or big boats?”

  “It’s wrong if the Dark One says it’s wrong. You know that. Windmills are allowed for the Demons, so they can perch on the sails. It’s to do with what happened long ago—with the Madness.”

  “Then what was the Madness?”

  “It’s not to be talked of. You know that, too.”

  I knew it, but I didn’t know why. “It wasn’t just buildings. There were pictures of enormous machines as well.”

  “They probably weren’t real.”

  “They looked real. And there was that picture of a big machine in a rocky desert place, with words underneath: ‘The first men on the moon.’ ”

  Paddy laughed. “Doesn’t that prove they weren’t real, you noodle? The moon’s where the Demons live. How could anyone get there?”

  What she said was unanswerable, but unsatisfying. The very oldness of the book, the crumbling brown-edged pages stained with damp and smelling of must, had worked powerfully on my imagination, and still did when I thought of it. Men and women, people like us, had written those words, drawn those strange, disturbing pictures. And drawn them with a faithfulness and clarity that even Miss Phipps, our art teacher, could not have begun to match. What reason would they have for lying?

  But I could not properly express my doubts and knew this was forbidden territory. I retreated to an earlier point. “I’ve never seen a Demon perching on the mill on Sheriff’s. Have you?”

  “Well, you don’t want them to, do you?”

  That was true enough, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with tall buildings or anything else. I shrugged, dismissing it firmly from my mind, and peeled another egg.

  We went swimming, not for long because the water still had its winter chill, and basked as the sun dropped toward the line where blue met blue. I heard a distant rumble which sounded like thunder but dismissed it as fancy; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

  Paddy said, “We could have stayed the night. The weather looks set fair.”

  “Mother wouldn’t allow it, with school tomorrow.”

  “She couldn’t stop us, could she? No one can tell you what you must do.”

  You meant us. “Anyway, there is school. Sheriff Wilson said.”

  “And who’s Sheriff Wilson, to tell the Master of Old Isle what to do about school?”

  We wrangled, talking pleasant nonsense. Sea gulls screamed offshore, before settling among the rocks, perhaps to lay more eggs. Time drifted past. Then Paddy said, “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  She pointed. Beyond the island’s shoulder, black smoke rose against the blue. “A fire . . .”

  “Menhennick’s haystack, most likely.”

  He was a farmer on Sheriff’s who had twice been fined for letting his hay catch fire, and threatened with the stocks if it happened again.

  “At this time of year?” That was a point: His stack would be near exhausted. “And it’s not the right direction for Sheriff’s.”

  Rocks barred our way to the north, but there was a southern route to the far side of the island. We ran ac
ross rabbit-cropped grass, where ground roses were budding, still only idly curious. We rounded the point, and Sheep Isle and January and Sheriff’s in turn came into view, peaceful in afternoon sunshine.

  And now we could see Old Isle, and it was from there the dark plume rose, billowing out of smoke that completely enveloped the house.

  3

  THE SMELL REACHED US BEFORE we beached but grew much stronger as we ran up the path beside the lower paddock. It was a reek of burning wood, mixed with less identifiable smells, now and then nauseating. The ruins of the house were capped by a dark cloud from which occasional flames still burst. I heard a snort from Jiminy and saw him down by the bottom fence, as far away as he could get. Paddy was ahead, and I fought a stitch pelting after her.

  We were halted by heat as we reached the monkey-puzzle tree on the front lawn. The whole of the far side was withered, the spiky branches wilting and charred. A few feet from where we stood the grass was burned dark brown.

  Paddy called out. “Mother . . . Antonia!” Her voice was shrill above the crackling grumble of the conflagration.

  I said, “Perhaps if we get around to the other side . . .”

  We had to make a wide circuit. I saw Sea King and Black Prince standing together, over by the pea field, but no other sign of life. No sound either, except the growling of the fire and a startling crack as one of the remaining uprights collapsed; not even a bird. Paddy called again, her cheeks flushed from running and wet with tears.

  “I’m sure they got out,” I said.

  “Where are they, then?”

  We stared at the scene of desolation, and the sight brought back the story I’d been told the previous night. I had always loved the comfort of flame in a kitchen grate, the thrill of it leaping above autumn bonfires. I’d never dreamed how much I could hate it.

  Sea King neighed, and I turned to see him rear, perhaps stung by a fleck of hot ash.

  “The horses!” I pointed to where the stables had been reduced to a separate smoldering heap. “Sea King was being kept in, because of his leg. Someone let them out, and if there was time for that . . .”

  “Then where are they?” Paddy asked, and I had no answer. It was she who said urgently, “Joe’s cottage!”

  This was the only other habitation on Old Isle. It nestled in a dip, a couple of hundred yards from the house. It was tiny, with only two rooms and a doorway under which Joe must stoop to enter. The door stood open, and there was someone in Joe’s rocking chair. With light from only one small window, it took a moment to recognize the figure: The forelock identified Andy.

  “Where’s Mother,” Paddy demanded, “and Antonia?”

  He rocked, with hunched shoulders. “Gone.” His voice was slurred. “The house burned to cinders, and all in it. Every last thing . . .”

  Shaking him, Paddy dislodged a bottle which rolled across the floor. It sounded empty. He went on rocking and rambling, “It was the Demons, come in judgment. Out of the sky they came, in a flaming chariot. We ran out, and I hid my face from the sight of it. Then there was the sound of a hundred thunderclaps rolled into one, and the house was turned to a fiery furnace. And after that, with a roar and a whoosht, they’d gone.”

  Paddy gripped his shoulders. “Where are they?”

  “How would I know where they went, or any man? On the wings of the wind, to the moon and maybe beyond. To think I dared mock them, with tales to frighten children—”

  He winced as her fingers dug in. “I’m talking of Mother and Antonia. What happened to them?”

  “Taken. Both taken.”

  I whispered: “By the Demons?”

  Andy shook his head. “No, they’d been and gone.”

  “Then how?” She shook him violently. “Who took them?”

  “The Sheriff’s men. He must have seen the fire and sent them over. It was they who took them away.”

  • • •

  Fresh air was welcome after the brandy fumes. I assumed we would head back to the dinghy, and said, “We can get across before the tide turns. It won’t be easy otherwise, with the wind from the southeast.”

  She said, “I don’t know . . .”

  “But it is.” I touched finger to tongue and raised it. “Almost due southeast.”

  “About going to Sheriff’s.”

  “You heard what happened. The Demons burned the house, but the Sheriff’s men took Mother and Antonia. He’s drunk, but not so drunk as to have made it up.”

  “I don’t know. We ought to talk to Joe.”

  “He won’t be back till after dark, if the mackerel are running well.”

  “And there are things that need doing—the animals to see to.”

  She was heading away from the jetty. I followed, arguing.

  “I think we ought to go right away. We don’t know why they’ve been taken to Sheriff’s.”

  “We know they’re all right.”

  “Do we?” I was irritated by her obstinacy. “Do you care?”

  She whirled on me. “Who are you to talk about caring? It’s my mother, and my sister. No kin to you, just as you’re nothing to anyone. Not even to him, till after he was dead. He may have left you the island, but he wanted nothing to do with you while he was alive.”

  The unfairness struck me to silence, as did the bitter truth in it. I had nothing to say, and followed her dumbly. But she was already regretting her words. Antonia, I always felt, believed anyone she wounded deserved to be hurt. Paddy wasn’t like that. She stopped and turned around.

  “Of course they’d be taken to Sheriff’s. They took them so they could have food and shelter. There’s nothing left here. They’d have taken Andy if he hadn’t been hiding with a bottle.”

  When I still didn’t speak, she grabbed me into a hug. “I’m sorry, Ben! I didn’t mean it. Truly. But I think we’d best talk to Joe. It’s a feeling.”

  Mother Ryan was the one for feelings, and signs and omens—about things happening to people when she’d dreamed of them, or they’d been in her mind. She’d had Andy in her mind the time he fell out of the apple tree and broke a leg. And the cow she’d been thinking about the whole of a weekend dropped a dead calf on the Monday.

  Feelings went with sayings: “Wednesday’s dream on Thursday told is bound to come true be it never so old” . . . “Cross on the stair, the morrow beware” . . . “Pass the salt, pass the sorrow” . . . (Woe betide anyone who failed to put the salt down firmly on the table, for the next person to pick up.)

  These were aspects of life I accepted without question, though with a degree of bewilderment. I never had such feelings myself. I hadn’t known Paddy to have them before either, but it was probably different for a girl.

  The hug eased but did not banish the smart, and the truth of what she had said left a chill that lingered. I had not thought much about who I was, taking Mother Ryan’s loving care and all that went with it for granted. In recent days there had been a succession of shocks: of discovering a father only after his death, of gaining an unexpected inheritance, and of seeing it reduced to ashes. I knew even less of who I was, but no longer felt content with ignorance.

  But Paddy had been right about there being things to do. We settled the horses and Abel the donkey in the lower meadow, where a spring provided water, and filled hayracks from the barn to supplement the young grass. The henhouse at the end of the kitchen garden had escaped the fire. We fed the hens and collected eggs. We made sure the cows had water but left the milking to Andy. It might help sober him; he said the warmth of a cow’s flank soothed an aching head.

  We found Liza and her kittens safe and sound in a hollow tree. We had no food for her, but she was a cunning hunter and one could be sure the rats had survived. Rats survive everything.

  It was Paddy who spotted Joe’s boat rounding Anchor Point, as Venus brightened in a darkening sky beside a pallid quarter moon. Before we went to meet him, I looked again at the heap of ashes which was all that was left of the only home I had known.

  I th
ought of the Master’s books, the polished table which had borne his coffin, the paintings of strange ships—dust among embers. All the Master’s possessions—or mine, but I had not had time to take that in. With them had gone the few objects that really belonged to me: the catapult I’d meant to take to John’s but left behind through Paddy hurrying me, the wooden sea serpent Joe spent most of one winter carving. I had only one thing left: Putting my hand in my shirt I touched the medallion. It offered no comfort; in the evening air the metal felt cold and strange against my flesh.

  I felt better after listening to Joe. It was a pity about the house, but houses were only houses, and no one had been hurt. When Andy rambled about Demons, he shrugged. If they had been here they had also gone. He wrinkled a disapproving nose at the state of his cottage, and ordered Andy away to the pump to wash.

  “The Master’s brandy will have gone with the rest, and that’s no bad thing. He can maybe cool his fancy without it. In the morning we’ll go to Sheriff’s and see what’s to be done, but first there’s supper to see to.”

  “We’ve got eggs,” I said.

  “And they’ll do well for breakfast. But if you run down to the boat now, you can bring up half a dozen fat mackerel.”

  • • •

  For various reasons, we were late setting off next morning.

  There was a set-to when Joe spoke of the cows, and Andy said he would see to them in his own good time. Previously both had taken instructions from Mother Ryan, on behalf of the Master. (Now presumably on my behalf, but I judged it wiser to ignore that.) They needed to establish whose say counted in her absence. Andy, as the Master’s groom and personal servant, had been part of the household, Joe just a fisherman and general helper. But it was Joe who prevailed, Andy who went off grumbling to do as he was told.

  It was Joe also who got us hunting through the ruins to see if there was anything worth salvaging. We came away choking and soot-blackened, with little beyond pots and pans and some crockery and cutlery. Joe retrieved a metal statue of a man on horseback from what had been the Master’s quarters. For want of a better idea, we set it up at the head of the Master’s grave.