A Pale Horse Part 14

But Rutledge had been watching faces as he'd asked his questions. And if Partridge had got himself out of Berkshire with a lorry driver, he'd have wagered it wasn't one of these men.

Smith was calling time, and Mrs. Smith said to Rutledge as he looked around for it, "I'll bring up your dinner, if you like."

He hadn't touched it, hadn't had the time, hungry or not.

He bought a final round, then said good night, leaving the drivers to drink in peace. The farmers had already left half an hour before.

Mrs. Smith met him at the stairs as he came out of the bar, his plate on a tray.

"Were you thinking about Mr. Partridge?" she asked him. "When you wanted to know if someone might find a ride with a driver?"

He was caught off guard.

"Yes, I was, as a matter of fact," he answered, lowering his voice.

"He was here, once. Playing darts and later asking about traveling to Liverpool. But it was the roads he wanted to hear about. What sort of time he could count on making."

"When was this?"

"Six months ago, at a guess. Longer, for all I can remember."

The state of the roads.

"You're certain it wasn't the prelude for asking for a lift?"

"No, sir, he has his own motorcar, I can't think why he would need a lift with the likes of them."

"How well do you know Mr. Partridge?"

"He wasn't one to come around in the evening, as a rule." She smiled ruefully. "I think it's when he can't stand his own company any longer."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, he's a widower, isn't he?" There was pity in her voice.

"Did he tell you he was?"

"Lord, no, sir, we never spoke about his private life. No, it was young Slater who said he'd lost his wife and hadn't much use for company. Mr. Partridge kept to himself at his cottage, and seldom went out. We were that glad to see him, when he did come."

And yet this wasn't the sort of pub a man like Partridge would frequent. Granted it was the nearest one to the cottages, but he wasn't working cla.s.s, if the army was keeping an eye on him.

That reminded him of the dead man in Yorkshire, whose hands were soft and uncallused.

Hamish said, "Why did ye no' show her the drawing?"

Rutledge wasn't sure himself why he hadn't. But he wanted no rumors reaching the Tomlin Cottages before he himself could go there in the morning.

He slept poorly that night. As if the memory of the dart game on his birthday had stirred up the past too deeply, he could hear the guns in France, and men calling and screaming and swearing, bringing himself up out of the depths to lie awake until the sounds receded. And then he would drift into sleep again for another quarter of an hour, sometimes longer, before the guns started sh.e.l.ling his position. Muzzle flashes in the distance seemed to light up the sky, and the flares were sharp, brilliant, nearly burning his eyes.

Once when he awoke, he could hear Hamish talking to someone, and then he realized that the someone was himself, answering the familiar voice of a dead man, even in his sleep.

"I'm trained to it," he said aloud, and then lay still listening. But from the other rooms came the regular snores of occupants luckier than he was, comfortable in their beds. "Like a dog who knows his master's voice."

Hamish's laugh was harsh. "Oh, aye? More like a man wi' blood on his conscience, who canna' find peace."

"You left me no choice but to execute you. You wouldn't heed me when I warned you what would follow, if you didn't relent and obey the orders given you. I warned you, and you didn't listen. I warned you, and you didn't listen."

"I couldna' watch more of my men die while the colonel who gave the orders sat safe and ignorant miles behind the lines. You knew, knew, you knew as well as any of us that it was hopeless." you knew as well as any of us that it was hopeless."

"No more so than the whole b.l.o.o.d.y campaign. We did what we were told, told, because there was no other choice left to us but to obey. One man, two men, a dozen, couldn't have stopped the madness. We had to carry on to the end, and die if we had to." because there was no other choice left to us but to obey. One man, two men, a dozen, couldn't have stopped the madness. We had to carry on to the end, and die if we had to."

"I wasna' afraid of dying. Ye ken that well. I couldna' bear to watch the ithers die. There had been too many, for too long."

"You refused an order under fire. You left me no choice, d.a.m.n you!"

"Aye. And afterward, ye couldna' let me go."

"You didn't want to go. Then or now."

Hamish said, something in his voice now that was unbearable, "I didna' want to die. But I couldna' live, no' even for Fiona. I couldna' stand before my men and break as we went o'wer the top. It was a question of pride. I'd have shot mysel', else."

"But you let me do it instead. You let me call up the men and order them to shoot you. My men, your men. You put that on their souls and mine. If I could ever understand why, I'd find some peace. Why not let the Germans do it for you. You wouldn't have been the first. Nor the last."

"Aye, it's what ye did, but no' even the Hun could touch you. You were left wi' your shame. Ye ken, it's why I willna' go. No' now, no' yet."

"For G.o.d's sake, tell me why!"

There was a knock at his door, cutting through the darkness in his mind. Smith called out, "Mr. Rutledge? Are you all right?"

He realized that the snoring had stopped-had been stopped for some time, for all he knew. And his shouting could be heard all over the inn.

Rutledge cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry, Smith. It was a bad dream. I didn't mean to disturb the house."

There was a moment of silence on the other side of the door. "If you're sure then?"

"I'm sure."

He listened to the man's footsteps receding across the pa.s.sage, and a door shutting.

Rutledge lay back against his pillows, his body still tense, his fists clenched, not certain when he'd sat up in bed or for how long the exchange with Hamish had been loud enough to be heard.

Hamish said, in the darkness, "But they canna' hear me. Only you can."

10.

Rutledge was awake when at the back of the inn a rooster crowed, welcoming the early spring dawn. He got up, shaved and dressed, and went outside to walk off his mood.

For a mercy, Hamish was silent.

He found pansies blooming in the shadow of the small barn, and a clutch of hens picking busily at the spa.r.s.e gra.s.s of the yard, then he walked on, down the road to Wayland's Smithy.

It was smaller than he remembered from childhood, but still an impressive grave. For whom? A chieftain? A warrior? Or perhaps a high priest, the Merlin of his age.

Whoever had lain here, the power of his name had given him a great stone tomb, monoliths that time had barely eroded. And whatever grave goods had been buried with him were long since taken away as the power of his name faded in human memory. And the bones, had they also been scattered?

Rutledge squatted down to look inside and shuddered. A narrow room in which to spend eternity. Claustrophobic and dark.

He thought about g.a.y.l.o.r.d Partridge, who was being left to rot in an unmarked, unmourned grave, because in some fashion he had offended people with a long memory for revenge.

An outcast. Like the others who lived in the Tomlin Cottages. Lepers, without the sores.

What had Partridge done to deserve his fate? A spy would have been tried and shot behind walls where no one could see him die. How had he offended? That was the crux of this business, to know why he was better off dead in a back corner of a Yorkshire graveyard-a fortuitous death, surely, for those who had hated him.

Or had it been somehow engineered?

That was something to be considered. The army looked after its own, but transgressors were beyond the pale. Abandoned.

T. E. Lawrence had offended and been snubbed. Would anyone weep if he died conveniently on a back road where no one knew him?

It was time to go back to the inn. Rutledge turned away from the tomb and retraced his steps, thinking.

When Rutledge had finished his breakfast in the quiet of the bar-empty and well scrubbed by Smith before the tea had steeped-he refreshed his memory about the nine people who lived near the foot of the great White Horse.

He had met only two of them, these neighbors of one g.a.y.l.o.r.d Partridge.

Slater, the smith, first to the left. Then Partridge, with the only gate in the low walls of the cottage gardens. The next five in the horseshoe he hadn't met, but Rutledge had seen Number 4 staring up at him as he paced along the mane of the horse. Although Martin Deloran in London had never indicated that there was another watcher, Rutledge's training told him it must be so. At the far right of the half circle was Quincy's cottage, with the birds hidden in a back room. Behind him, at Number 8, a woman lived. Rutledge had seen her hanging out her wash as well as peering at him through a window.

Finishing his second cup of tea, he left for the Tomlin Cottages.

There was one thing he disliked about what he called a cold road-coming back into a place where he had got the pulse of the people and the way they lived and then had to walk away for whatever reason. He had done that here in Berkshire, and he had done it as well in Yorkshire. Possibly all because of one mysterious man.

Much would depend on what Partridge's neighbor Quincy had to say.

He pulled his motorcar to the verge of the road, near the path up the hill of the White Horse. Near the muzzle of the great beast, he looked down on the cottages and waited for a door to open below him or a window curtain to twitch.

What were the connections between these nine residents? If connections there were. Englishmen were not by nature gregarious, even abroad. But surely human curiosity made them draw conclusions about each other from what they had observed from a window or a stroll down the lane.

The woman, he decided. From her windows she could see Partridge come and go. And women were sometimes less reserved than men, if approached in a sympathetic way.

Or was it wiser, after all, to speak to Quincy?

Quincy appeared to keep to himself. Would he admit to recognizing the sketch? He would most certainly want to know when it had been made and why. Driven by curiosity, yes, but beneath all that was his own reason for considering himself a leper of sorts and choosing to live here. He might well prefer to keep his distance from any trouble involving Partridge for fear of the impact on his own seclusion.

The smith, then. A simple man, he wasn't the sort to look below the surface of a question for hidden traps and meanings. And he was an honest man, as far as Rutledge could tell, with no secrets. His reason for living here was plain-he preferred to be left alone because his experience with people had taught him that they were unkind.

Rutledge sat there on the hillside in the April sun, and waited until he saw the smith walk into view from the direction of Uffington.

The man looked tired, his gait measured, as if there were something on his mind, holding him back.

Rutledge waited until he'd disappeared into his cottage and then went down the hill. By the time he knocked at the door, the smith had put the kettle on and Rutledge could hear it whistling cheerfully in the background as Slater opened to him.

"I saw you on the Horse," he said. "What brings you back?"

"Curiosity," Rutledge answered. He had brought the file with him from the motorcar and put it aside for the moment on a small table near the door.

"Curiosity?" Slater repeated. "It killed a cat, you know," he added, quoting the old saying.

"Yes, well, I'll be careful."

Slater said, "Would you like a cup of tea?" He gestured toward the tiny kitchen, where the kettle was still whistling.

"Thank you. I would."

While Slater was preparing the tea, Rutledge watched his deft, sure movements, big hands handling the tea things with the same ease as he handled his tools.

The cup Slater offered him was thin porcelain, with cabbage roses around it. The man could have crushed it like eggsh.e.l.l, and it was lost in the large, callused hand.

"How is work on the silver teapot handle faring?" Rutledge asked, to open the conversation.

"Fancy you remembering that," Slater answered, his face brightening. "It's very well. Polish it and I'm finished."

"I hope the church is pleased."

There was a bitter smile now. "I'm told I charge too much."

"Who tells you that?"

"The s.e.xton. He says he could have done it at half the cost."

"Could he?"

"I doubt it. But he's one who opens his mouth and doesn't care much what harm he does with what comes out."

"Tell them I've offered to buy the teapot myself. For twice the cost of repairs." He couldn't stop himself from saying it. Or cursing the s.e.xton for his callous cruelty.

Slater looked at him. "What do you want with a teapot? It's not yours to start with. It belongs to the church service."