NIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE Read online

  ‘Hearing, his breath failed; he felt his bones turn to water within him, and turning feebly, tried to make for the passage, but, as he turned, a curious appearance in the water so far below arrested him—a small green steady light—at first like a gleam of phosphorescence, then rapidly growing and enlarging, cold and brilliantly green, lividly and somehow, somehow, utterly dreadful! Fascinated, he watched it; louder and louder screamed the terrible voice, and now in the strange song she sang stirred words and phrases that were vaguely familiar, and he knew, with the cold horror gripping him, the old Eolas, that Eolas of the Sea, and Those that live and move and have their being therein—Those that are never spoken of save with hushed voice and averted face, and before the priest, never, never! . . .

  ‘Now in the depths of the greenness Things seemed to be moving, moving as it were up from the bowels of the sea with the mounting Light and the mounting Voice! Things seen dimly, pallid, opalescent shadows against the livid green paleness of the light—shadows neither human nor bestial, but a dreadful mixture of both, it seemed, with a flickering restlessness where God made feet and hands . . . indefinite, utterly, but ghastly, obscenely awful to see, even in their indefiniteness, and growing clearer every minute!

  ‘The light grew and brightened, and Ian, shaking, turned and shuffled blindly up the passage; yet his last glimpse as he averted his face seemed to show him the waters parted, and a toad-white Shape uprearing to the ledge where stood Morag, his love, a smile of terrible welcome on her face!’

  * * * * *

  Silis paused. I shivered, held in utter fascination by the horrible tale.

  ‘Is that the end?’ I asked the question low.

  Silis shook her head.

  ‘’Twould have been kinder to her had it all ended so, poor soul. No, Ian came down to the village a dour, silent man, that had gone up the headland a lighthearted lad. Come the morning, the storm was past, and over the blue sea he rowed to find his love—or her body, as he thought. But lo, on the ledge Morag lay asleep and smiling! She stepped down into the boat with him, and when they got to shore, Ian McAlpine took her straight to the priest and bade him marry them. Aye—a great love had Ian McAlpine for Morag-of-the-Cave, for witless she was, more or less, now, and even her own folk, with the exception of her mother, turned against her. Not that Ian said aught of what he had seen—no, no—but they held that she had held converse with those that are Nameless, and so they shunned her, either in scorn or fear. . . .

  ‘Ian bought a fine boat of his own, and all went well till her time was near, and then . . . Mother o’ God, pity and forgive us all our sins! One dark night Ian knocked at my cabin door, and I opened it—and there he stood with a bundle in his arms, and the eyes of him like a man who had stood face to face with naked Terror, and remains a man and sane. . . . He walked in, and I stood quaking because of I knew not what.

  ‘“Silis,” says he, “lend me a spade.”

  ‘Oh, the stroke of that on my heart, like the clod falling on a coffin-lid!

  ‘“A spade—Mary help you in your sorrow, Ian McAlpine,” says I. “Is it your first-born son you’ll be burying so soon, and that without prayer or priest to help him over the Threshold?”

  ‘With that Ian McAlpine laughed a dreadful laugh that was like the fall of yet another and heavier clod upon the coffin of my heart, and putting his wrapped burden on the table, turned away.

  ‘“Look, Silis Hagan—an’ tell me if you can that I do wrong!”

  ‘It was shaking my hand were as I parted the folds and looked on the little body that lay there—and it was shaking my knees were, and dry and choking my throat as I looked upon it, and looked, and looked. All the Saints protect you from such a sight, for it’d haunt you to your dying day, as it does me—as it does me! All the colour of a toad’s belly it was, the dreadful pallid white of the slime-born creatures that live in the deep waters—white and blind—and the face of it with a wide gaping mouth like a bull-frog, and heavy creased lids over staring eyes that had no colour but a pin-point of green where the pupils should be. But that was all small to the crowning horror, the thick body like a square log of pallid flesh with, at each corner, it seemed, a thing like a fin of the same dreadful pale flesh, fringed with flickering tentacles that even now seemed to twitch and move in the shuddering candle-flame. I staggered and reached out blindly, sick and heaving, and in a flash Ian was at my side putting me in a chair.

  ‘“Whist now—don’t look at it again. Silis, Silis! Now you know . . . pray for me this night, pray for me, an’ for the poor lost soul I left screaming on the bed. . . . Ah, Morag, mo-rùn, mo-rùn. A graidh-mo-Chridhe!’

  ‘Snatching up the spade that was standing beside the hearth, he went to the door, hiding the muffled bundle under his coat, and the darkness swallowed him up. Only then did I remember, in the dazed horror of the moment, that round the dreadful crinkled throat of—It—I had seen the livid marks of strangling fingers. . . .’

  Silis looked soberly at me.

  ‘That’s the story of Morag-of-the-Cave. A month later Ian was drowned at sea, and she left a widow. All I know is that before he went to sea again—he was fey of the sea after that, poor lad, and told me it would have him soon—he went over the island to old Father Mahoney. Old and wise he is, wiser than those clever young priests that laugh at the Powers that dwell outside Mother Church—blessings be to her—but Ian brought something back with him to bar Morag-of-the-Cave away from Those that we know of! Sure, she’ll still wander all her days beside the sea, the creature, but never again has she gone a step towards the cave . . . and it’s to be hoped she’s working out her purgatory here, poor soul, for sure enough she paid for her sin.’

  ‘Did she never—ask after—it?’ For the life of me my tongue refused to say ‘her child’, though all my reason told me the story must be only a story—it was too fantastic, too horrible to be true.

  Silis winced.

  ‘Aye—’twas because of that that Ian went over the hills to Father Mahoney. Wandering down to the Cave she was all the days, and calling and talking in a strange language like a demented thing, till everybody was frightened of her. You couldn’t keep her from the Cave, and she’d lean down to the water of it, and weep and plead and whisper and laugh till it made your blood run cold to listen, but after Ian had got whatever he went to fetch from Father Mahoney she quieted—and now you wouldn’t fmd a more simple, peaceable, poor creature, witless as she is, in all the Islands.’

  There was a crunch of booted feet upon the pebbles, and Terry, my old friend’s favourite, loomed large and beaming over us.

  ‘Hullo, Edie! Bless you, Silis!’ He displayed a full creel. ‘A splendid day; there’s another lot in the boat! We went out beyond the headland.’ He indicated the dark outline of the cliff where nested the cave of gruesome history. ‘I got a bit bored with fishing, and made Rooney take the boat into the big Cave, He didn’t want to, but I’d never been in and wanted to see it.’

  Silis was listening with intent interest, and somehow I found myself hanging breathless upon his words—why? Exploring his pockets as he talked, he went on:

  ‘It’s a howling great place, all weed-hung, goes back miles into the land, and deep as hell, I should think. I got out of the boat, and crawled on to a bit of a ledge there to get a better view, and what do you think I found there?’

  He fished out a battered tin box wrapped in sodden cloth. I heard the quick-drawn breath of old Silis behind me as she leant forward to see. Carefully Terry’s big fingers parted the cloth, and found the box sealed with a curious lumpy seal in black wax, unlike anything I had ever seen before. Agitatedly Silis stretched out her hand.

  ‘Master Terry—don’t open it. Go put it back again, don’t open it!’

  Oddly enough, the same reluctance was ruling me, but I dared not voice it—Terry’s bluff laughter silenced me.

  ‘Silis, you’re a darling superstitious old idiot. There’s nothing inside but a bit of bait, I expect, but I just want
to see why it is so carefully sealed up.’

  His knife, with a faint crunching sound, cut away the seal, and prised the lid open. Inside lay two small packages wrapped in oilskin and sealed yet again with similar seals. In silence, I watched them split open, and lying in Terry’s brown palm, each by each. In one was a tarnished silver crucifix, and in the other lay a discoloured piece of paper on which was inscribed some lines in a totally unknown language—it looked like cuneiform to me, but I have since learnt to think it a transcription of some old Scandinavian Runic magic, potent against evils of the sea.

  Silis and I looked at each other. Before us lay, without doubt, pitifully small, yet so powerful, the keys that had succeeded in locking Morag McCodrum out of the Cave o’ Dread—old, old and wise, Father Mahoney had given Ian not only the charm of the Church’s holiness, but the charm of the old-world magic as well, lest the Church be impotent against those Things which are older than she is.

  Above our heads Terry babbled cheerfully on.

  ‘Well, what rubbish! What d’you make of them, Edie? Shall I throw ’em into the sea, or what—here goes!’

  Silis stretched out a shaking agitated hand.

  ‘Master Terry—now, for the love of the Virgin, put them back where ye found them! Put them back!’

  Terry stared at her in blank astonishment.

  ‘Go all the way back to the caves tonight just to dump those back on the ledge?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t be absurd, Silis, you old darling. It’s late, getting dark, and there’s a nasty breeze springing up. You don’t want me to risk my precious life going all that way again just for these, do you?’

  He pinched her withered cheek good-humouredly, blandly unconscious of her agitation. I opened my mouth to protest, but what was there to say? It was on the face of it stupid to suggest that he should go back with this storm brewing. Finally the box went on to the shelf in Silis’s cottage, after her agitated pleadings for it. I knew she meant to bribe some lad to take it back the next day, as it was certainly too late tonight, and nobody would venture near the Cave o’ Dread after dark; and yet I felt as I walked away with Terry that it would be too late.

  It was. In the morning Morag-of-the-Cave was missing, and her body was never found—but one thing I will put down here that I have never mentioned to anybody. My room faced the headland, and for some reason that night I was wakeful and restless. The expected storm was a fierce one, and waxed more and more fierce as the hours wore on. I lay in bed and listened, and it seemed to me, strung up and excited as I was, that in the shouting wind there mingled, faint, yet distinctly gathering power, the confused crying of a thousand voices. I lay and shivered, yet with all my fear I felt a curious wild sort of exhilaration, as if something in me broke loose and rejoiced furiously, savagely, with the same rejoicing that springs to life within you at the sight of a caged bird set free. . . . Morag-of-the-Cave, pacing the shore day after day, dumb and witless and caged, staring out towards the headland that held her dread and her wonder . . . Morag-of-the-Cave, stretching mother-hungry arms towards that Terror that yet was born flesh of her flesh . . . Morag-of-the-Cave, white and slim and wonderful against the darkness as she screamed her welcome to That which came to woo her from the Uttermost Depths. . . . In the gathering storm that rattled my windows I seemed to hear her voice mingled with those other distant, crying voices, shouting, singing, jubilant!

  Springing out of bed I rushed to the window, shivering with excitement, half-hoping, half-dreading to hear or see—what? The headland was darkly outlined against the storm-torn sky, inky blue, and striped with hurrying clouds—but I caught my breath, for dimly against the blackness of the distant point a green point of light shone out. . . . As I looked it seemed to move, stately, steadily, sailing like a galleon against the storm, then dipped and vanished like a blinked eyelid, and on the instant the crying of the wind in my ears was but the wind’s voice once again. But in that brief moment I believe, fantastic as it may sound, that I was privileged to catch a faint glimpse of the triumphal passing of Morag-of-the-Cave to her own place, with Those about her, jubilant, rejoicing, with Whom she had cast in her lot.

  And if the God of our creed rejects her, as well may be, perchance those older gods to whom she went may prove more kind.

  November

  The Superintendent’s Story

  The White Cat

  ‘Come on, Creighton!’ said Saunderson in his slow way. ‘It’s your turn to harrow us up—though you’ve always scoffed at me, I swear you’ve had some odd experiences in your line at times—in your part of London.’

  We all knew that bluff Creighton’s division was ‘Q’, one of the toughest in East London, and a circle of expectant eyes fixed themselves upon the big Superintendent—he coughed and hummed a moment, then capitulated.

  ‘As a matter of fact, Saunderson, you’re right. Doesn’t do to let oneself think too much, but from time to time I certainly have run into things that were—odd-like. You know, unaccountable . . . so’s one couldn’t explain ’em any ordinary way at all! The East End’s a queer place, and one finds queer birds there, and one of the queerest was old Mat Lidgett, of Slink’s Alley. Ugh—he was a proper puzzler, I give you my word . . . and the whole thing puzzled me, does still, as far as that goes. But there, you shall have the whole yarm—funny, I was thinking about it only yesterday, and thought I’d let you have it sometime. Here goes—don’t watch me or I’ll get nervous and stumble. Let me trot it out my own way.

  ‘Indubitably, Mat Lidgett was a nasty old man; “Nahsty, y’know—kinder gives yer the creeps,” the neighbours said, and with one accord avoided him as much as they dared. Not that any dared to cross old Lidgett—even tough Danny Benskin, the hardest nut in Slink’s Alley, would go out of his way to ingratiate the old man, curry favour with him and at times, rumour whispered, execute certain commissions of a nature both private and delicate for old Lidgett.

  ‘Slink’s Alley is not a nice street, nor is it situated in a particularly nice neighbourhood. It crouches under the shadow of the Albert Docks, one of a nest of darkly furtive streets, strings of low-hung beetle-browed shops that elbow little dirty houses, the gutters that run down the middle of each street a rendezvous for children, stray cats, dirty paper, old tins, cabbage stumps, and a general omnium gatherum of varied scraps, all smelling to heaven.

  ‘There is a prejudice against water in Slink’s Alley, either for washing or drinking purposes; also there are too many people, and they live too close together—hence, to take a walk down thereabouts on any night of the week is an insalubrious business and not popular. Even the police visit it rarely, and then in couples.

  ‘One supposes that nobody with the means to live elsewhere would choose to inhabit Slink’s Alley, yet rumour again had it that old Lidgett was rich, rich as Croesus; but day after day saw him seated in the heavy shadow of his tiny shop, smoking, silent, watching the activities of the street from his dark cave in silence. It was a mysterious little shop, mysterious as its owner; the dusty window heaped with a heterogeneous pile of furniture, china, vases, ivories, bric-à-brac—behind, more furniture, and cases apparently never opened, shelves piled with odd-shaped bottles, scraps from China, India, Java, etcetera.

  ‘Furtive men, like long slate-pencils, as thin and grey, who slid round corners and vanished, would come and knock quietly, go in quickly and silently. One did not see them emerge again, but old Lidgett’s house was a rabbit-warren in the way of strange entrances and exits, and these visitors of his were singularly shy of daylight. Broad-shouldered men with the roll of the sea in their walk, whose elaborate air of nonchalance marked them as new recruits to old Lidgett’s gang; dark, slinking Lascars; flash niggers, and yellow, shaking “hophoads”, whose slavery to the drug they loved made them an easy prey to the old man’s will.

  ‘Oh, of course he had his regular customers, serious customers, had old Lidgett! Chattering Americans—Slink’s Alley still cherished a joyous memory of the American who brought his wife, and
that lady’s remark as she surveyed the glories of the Alley. . . . “Ha-ow luscious!” . . . Knowing Frenchmen and Germans knew the little lurking shop of old—rich men from luxurious Rolls-Royces would pick their way swearing over the heaps of filth and refuse that soiled their shiny boots, and dive into the tipsy doorway, but they generally reappeared carrying something in their arms, gloating with satisfaction, and the neighbours would note that another vase or idol or piece of battered furniture had disappeared from the heaped stock in the dirty window.

  ‘Lidgett dealt in curios mainly, but his interests were many and varied—at any rate, one way and another, he made enough to afford a servant, which alone would have made him famous in Slink’s Alley. A succession of small, white-faced maids crept in and out of the sinister little shop, all alike crushed, silent—old Lidgett evidently held the secret of compelling the loyalty of those that served him: not even the most tempting of bribes had served to undermine the faith of even one of these, and yet, the Lord knew, girls generally talked quickly enough.

  ‘Funny it was—not right somehow. “Gives yer the creeps som’ow, dontcher know?” Mrs Tillet of The Rum and Puncheon shook a portentous head as she leaned across the counter in close converse with her crony, Mrs Birch, Wardrobe Dealer, of Number Twenty, who stood sipping her evening glass of bitter at the stained counter. Both turned to stare after the forlorn figure just disappearing through the draughty swing doors, weighed down with a jug of foaming beer. Mrs Birch nodded a tousled head in the direction of the figure.