She turned to get into the car, missing his expression, which suddenly turned ugly. Cyrena knew that her friend was utterly wrong to have any belief in this insolent oaf, and resolved to monitor his future involvement more carefully.
In the car, she found Ghertrude’s distance annoying. She was there to share this moment, not ignore it. She asked, ‘Do you think he will be alright? Do you think his memory will be affected? He’s been in there a long time. He might not even remember me. How will I tell him all, explain everything?’
Ghertrude had a genuine affection for her new friend and greatly admired her vivacious energy, but now she was sounding like a piping adolescent, fantasising over someone she had never met. She tried not to say it, but perversity was such a willing advisor. ‘He can be very difficult, you know; he is not like us, not at all.’
Cyrena stopped talking, waiting to hear more, but that was all her friend said, and it sounded like a warning. They drove the last few miles to the slave house in silence.
‘He was bloody difficult to bring in. Are ye sure ye know this thing?’ Maclish’s charm had been left with all the empty bottles a long time ago, and the women flinched at his abrupt and coarse manner. The doctor interceded, literally stepping between them, grinning and blocking his partner’s impertinence.
‘What William means is that your friend did not want to leave the Vorrh. He struggled a great deal and we had to use much force to get him here.’
‘You did not hurt him?’ flared Cyrena.
‘No, mistress, he is safe and sound, as far as I can make out,’ said Hoffmann.
Cyrena did not understand what he meant, but felt reassured.
‘He scared my men,’ joined in Maclish. ‘Ye said he was deformed, but none of us were prepared for this!’ He banged his hand on the metal door of the holding cell. A shuffling sound came from within. ‘We hope your presence will calm him down. I’m sure when he sees ye and hears your voice he will settle.’
Cyrena was already pawing at the door in expectation; Ghertrude held back uncertainly.
‘It’s dark in there,’ growled Maclish.
‘Yes, he likes it like that,’ said the doctor, watching Ghertrude’s eyes.
Maclish pulled the keys from his belt, put one in the lock and turned it. In his other hand he held a stock whip. The door creaked on its weight, and a huddled movement rippled under the straw and rags in the dark far side of the cell. They all came in and stood together. Cyrena hesitated, then walked forward.
‘Ishmael?’ she said quietly, and an attention was sensed in the far side of the room. ‘Ishmael, we have come to take you home, Ghertrude is here with me.’
There was a distinct movement from under the straw, and everybody strained their eyes to make out the crouching figure. Maclish changed the whip from one hand to the other.
‘Ishmael, we have missed you, you will be safe with us when we return home,’ said Ghertrude, his proximity oiling the mechanisms of her voice.
‘Yes, we can leave now, please come with us,’ said Cyrena. ‘Do you recognise me? I am the Owl. I am the one that you spent a night with during the carnival.’
Maclish curled his lip and he and the doctor exchanged an astonished glance. The figure moved out of the shadows towards them.
‘Yes, that’s it, come to us,’ said Cyrena and turned to Ghertrude, beaming and shaking. ‘He knows me!’
Smiling with tears in her eyes, she turned back as the figure moved forward into the ray of light, which came in through the barred windows and divided the room. He looked up at them, and both women started to scream.
Tsungali tripped over the pot. He had not seen it sitting clearly on the path. How could that be: he was an experienced hunter who normally missed nothing. Then he realised it was because his attention was focused on the movements and sounds around him, drawn by the trees to identify who or what was watching him. He had been doing it subconsciously; now he was aware.
He cocked the Enfield and stood stock-still. The shards of the flimsy pot cracked beneath his boots. Something was here with him, there was no doubt. He said a spell and spat into the undergrowth. There were all kinds of beings here, everybody knew that. He hated this place, and never dreamed of pursuing a quarry here. The circumstances had changed and the spirits moved against him; his twitching wounds continually reminded him of that. He should have been able to kill the white man before now, should have been able to stop him from entering this haunted realm. But he was no ordinary white man. Tsungali thought he might even be a ghost, or one of the creatures that steals the bodies of the dead to wear, or takes their faces. He had recognised Williams as soon as he’d seen him, but could not believe it possible. He should have died with all his company of lying invaders in the first days of the Possession Wars. Even if he had escaped, he should be older than this, not exactly the same age as he had been the day he returned from the beach. Tsungali looked for a moment at his gnarled, knotted hands. He felt his years ache in the hinges of his joints.
Was it the Bowman that he felt watching him beyond the trees? Was it he who left this dish in his path, to spook him? He spoke another charm, whistled and spat. There were worse things than the Englishman, even if he was a ghost.
He continued to tread slowly forward and, after some hours, he saw another pot. It was full of steaming, fragrant food. He savagely kicked it off the path and moved on. He was going to tear the throat out of this enemy who played games with his hunger and his fear. The Erstwhile and the demons entered his thoughts, but he knew that they did not prepare food, not even as a sick joke to mock him. No, it was something else, something with human tendencies, which, of course, made it terrible in a different way. He was becoming more and more unnerved, when he suddenly heard the faint whistling in the sky. He had heard it before and it made his blood run cold. Then it came down through the leaves and branches directly above; he dropped Uculipsa and clasped his hands over his head, not daring to look up. The arrow shrieked and trembled to a halt, piercing the path six feet before him.
Ghertrude was holding Cyrena, one arm around her sobbing shoulders. She was glaring at Hoffman and holding back her own tears, which were slowly distilling from shock to rage. Maclish had dragged them out of the cell and into the small office where they now sat.
‘What’s wrong with ye?’ he snarled. ‘We got your cyclops and now ye scream at it?!’
‘That thing is not Ishmael,’ said Ghertrude, gritting her teeth and pushing away from her distressed friend, standing to match Maclish’s aggression.
The doctor moved towards her and, in a puzzled voice, said, ‘Not Ishmael?’
‘But ye said ye slept with it,’ said Maclish, pointing at Cyrena.
She looked up and out of her tears. ‘Slept with that?’ she said, each word turning from disbelief into anger, so that the questioned inflection at the end of ‘that’ sounded like a blacksmith’s hammer striking a flame from a frozen anvil. She was on her feet: her eyes had become terrible. Every part of her previous pain and her immediate disappointment was hurtling in a tornado of fury. She was ready to fight and her stance – her eyes, teeth and nails – were sprung for the next word; even Maclish took a step back. Ghertrude had never seen a human being like this, let alone a close friend.
The doctor shrank. Maclish recognised the sudden animal; he had seen it in the war. It had been rare and lethal, and he held it in respect.