18. Striding Edge

The woods were blotted out in an instant. The wind roared like twenty thousand devils and the rain hissed on land and lake. I dived into the shelter of the doorway.

Ullswater, I’d often heard, was specially liable to sudden squalls like this, and while they raged no boatman, let alone a swimmer, would venture out. The storm was apt to gather over the Kirkstone Pass and then come rolling down, irresistible as a charge of cavalry. The lake is long and narrow, a deep trough hemmed by great mountains like Helvellyn and the High Street. The storms rush down it, rumbling and roaring against the fells on either side.

There were two sources of consolation: it was likely to blow over quickly and, if I couldn’t leave the island, no more could anyone else reach it.

Meanwhile, there was Duncan to think of.

I crept nearer to him and listened. The rain was drumming on the roof and hissing through the central hole which served as a chimney. The wind wailed and at intervals the thunder crashed. It was no wonder that, for some moments, I could not be sure that I had heard him breathing.

But he was. The deep, sobbing breath of an unconscious man. I was glad I hadn’t killed him.

I rolled him over and loosened the ruff at his throat. I wanted him to be comfortable, but I daren’t take any chances. To be on the safe side, I skipped out into the storm and brought in the pieces of cord. I tied his wrists and ankles as he had tied mine, but I made a very firm resolve that he should not escape as I had done. I took away his sword and searched for a dagger or pistol, but could find no trace of any other weapon. The cords were soaking wet, and it struck me that in time they would shrink and tighten, cutting into the flesh. If he was still unconscious when I left him, I must slacken them.

By the time I had finished with my captive, the wind had dropped considerably and the rain was coming only in gusty showers, with longer intervals after each. The lake was no longer whipped into white horses of foam, and by degrees the woodlands were coming into view again, at first as colourless masses, but soon as bright green foliage, with bands of watery sunlight straying across them. I judged the time to be early evening. It had been a full day!

Better not stay any longer … I had never felt less like a quarter-mile swim, but it was better than waiting for Sir Philip’s arrival. There was a heavy swell on the lake, but I thought I could manage it.

I stripped off my doublet and long hose – I needed all possible freedom – and sank them with stones where they would not be noticed easily. My shoes I laced on my hip, for I couldn’t face the long walk barefoot. I let my hat float on the water. If they thought me drowned, so much the better. At the last moment I remembered Duncan, and went back. He was still stunned. I bent down and made sure he was not shamming, then loosened the cords at his feet and freed his hands completely. I wondered what tale he would tell his confederates.

The water was icy cold, for the storm had stirred up the depths. But at least it shocked me into full wakefulness, and ended that half-dazed condition I had been in since my fall. I knew I had got a fight on. This was no sunny bathing trip. I lacked sleep. I had had little food, and I was still suffering from a tremendous crack on the head. Halfway across, I began to doubt if I should ever manage it.

I set my teeth and ploughed on towards that green line of woods. The shoes tugged at the waist of my pants. It was like dragging an iron fetter. The water slapped me in the face and my limbs ached …

I mustn’t give up. I mustn’t give up. I think I panted the words aloud, above the roaring in my ears. Everything depended on my reaching that thin line of grey shingle, that fringe of oaks and pines. If I gave up now, and let myself slip down into the sweet peace of green water, the Queen would be murdered and the kingdom thrown into anarchy. Thousands of Englishmen would die in the quarrel. English homes would flare skywards, English women and children would run shrieking to the safety of forest and fell, and the horror our people had not known for years would come again.

That was what kept me swimming. It wasn’t just the life of an old lady with a crown. It was for all of us. No one in England knew what I knew – except the conspirators whose mad dreams were rushing us towards this horror. I mustn’t sink, with that secret, into the lake.

The trees, which seemed to have stood still for so long, leapt suddenly nearer. As I rose on the swell I could peer into the wood and see the road looping down over a hump in the bank. I caught glimpses of outcrop rock clothed in lichen. Once I saw a rabbit bolt into a clump of fern. I put my foot down, hardly daring to hope, and touched bottom.

Safe! I staggered up the shelving beach, my underclothes skintight, and dropped down sobbing with exhaustion. In a few minutes I felt better, and was able to cram my cold feet into my sodden shoes. I had still before me a tramp of seven miles or more to Lonsdale, but I could face that almost cheerfully. I wasn’t sure, within a mile or so, of my exact whereabouts, but I guessed that if I found a valley leading off at right angles to the lake, and followed it up, bearing northwestwards across the fells, I should be able to reach home soon after dusk.

Once more, however, my plans were destined to be upset. I hadn’t walked a hundred yards down the road before I heard voices. Half a dozen horses were cropping the grass, and as many men were walking down to a boat which had been drawn up on the shingle.

I turned back hurriedly, but my white figure must have been noticed racing through the trees, and I heard shouts behind me. At first I ran blindly forward along the road, past where I had landed, and on up the valley towards Patterdale, but I soon realized, from the drumming of hooves, that my pursuers had remounted and that it was sheer suicide to keep to a road which horses could follow.

A track turned off to the right, away from the lake, and I took it. Quite a broad valley opened before me, with a good-sized beck, storm-swollen, boiling down the middle of it, and the valley-head closed by a great mountain – Raise, I suppose, or one of the other peaks in the Helvellyn range. I saw it for only a moment, black and swart against the westering sun, and it promised safety. Then a cloud rolled over the summit and my hope was hidden.

I must leave the track at once. I dropped down the long bank, splashed through the beck, and set myself to the slope beyond. A pistol cracked – I must have made a fine target – but the range was too great. I was glad none of my pursuers had a longbow. That would have been a different thing.

Sir Philip’s voice reached me, if his bullet didn’t.

‘Not all of you! He may double back to the road!’

It wasn’t long before my bursting heart made me pause on the roof-like hillside, and there was no harm then in glancing back. Only two men had left their horses to clamber after me. The others were riding away.

I saw the game. There was only the one road, running north and south along the lakeside. North to Penrith, south over the Kirkstone Pass to Kendal and … London. It was the easiest thing in the world to cut that lifeline at a couple of places, and leave me no escape save by crossing the wall of mountains in front of me.

Well, I was prepared to. I wanted to get home and rejoin Kit, anyhow. I had no intention of doubling back to the road. It would be a race between me and the two men behind. If I’d been fresh, I’d have snapped my fingers at them. As it was, I felt less happy about the result.

There was no cover on these slopes; the woods were far below. There was mist above. If I could reach that with sufficient lead over the men, and if the mist proved thick enough, I might manage to give them the slip.

These fells were strange to me and I had to go by guesswork. There was a steep slope in front, and I toiled up it. Up … all the time, up … Nothing else much mattered.

Behind me clambered my two pursuers, grim as bloodhounds on a scent. A man in green and black led, by half a dozen yards, a heavier fellow in a scarlet doublet. The first man scarcely showed against the tough moor-grass; I only saw him plainly when he topped some crest and was outlined for a moment against the pale sky of evening. His companion I could see vividly whenever I turned my head. He stood out like a blood-splash on the shoulder of the land.

They never shouted to me, knowing that it would be useless and they might as well save their breath. They came on patiently, with a quiet confidence that was more terrifying than any bellowed threats. They were so sure it was just a matter of time before they caught up with me.

We weren’t running. There was no more run left in us for the time being. If you’d come upon us that evening, three strung-out figures plodding up and up, you would never have thought that this deliberate clamber was a race for life. Well, if any of us could have moved faster, you may be assured that we should.

We were very high now. The world below us slanted and reeled away into dizzy valleys, already purple with the brimming dusk. The upper reaches of Ullswater lay like a jagged piece of glass. The water was tufted with tree-clad islets, looking small as bees.

Up here it was still broad daylight, with a bronze glimmer of sun behind the drifting cloud-wrack. The clouds were not so far ahead now.

I judged that I had missed the easy passes which cross this range, and must be climbing one of the main peaks, possibly Helvellyn itself. It behoved me to go warily, or as warily as those human hounds would let me. There were ugly precipices in these parts. I wasn’t afraid of them, but I was afraid of landing myself in some dead end, with no choice but to drop or be caught. This mist might prove an enemy no less than a friend.

I know now where we were that evening. I’ve even grown to love the grim place. But then, when I saw it for the first time with the men at my heels, it was only terrifying.

For a mile or more I had been coming up a long grassy ridge, with the slope gradual enough for me to run a little way from time to time. Now I topped the ridge and found myself at the left-hand tip of a mighty horseshoe of precipices.

In front ran the knife-back of Striding Edge, with a sickening drop for hundreds of feet on either side. A knife-back did I say? No, a saw rather, for it was all jagged with rocks.

Over to my right, across a great emptiness of air, was the other side of the horseshoe, Swirral Edge, showing a precipice no less ugly. Joining the two Edges together, and forming the bend of the horseshoe, was a towering mass higher than either. Even at the time I knew this must be Helvellyn, though its shape was largely obscured by racing tatters of cloud.

I glanced back. The man in green had fallen back a little, but his friend was overhauling me rapidly, as though he had begun to draw on some reserve of strength.

I set my face to the craggy spine before me, and forced my aching legs to carry me on.

It was windy up here. Hot as I was, I felt it strike chilly against my half-clad body. The rocks were greasy with a fine rain. The clouds swirled about me, taking the colour out of the landscape and reducing everything to a vague grey, but there was no mist dense enough to hide me from my enemies.

I scrambled along, hoisting myself over the rocks, squeezing between them, swinging round them with desperate fingers, and nothing to save me if I let go. On my left hand the world fell away into what looked, from the glimpses I caught through shreds of cloud, to be a bottomless abyss. It is well named Nethermost Cove. On my right – and for the most part I tried to keep to this side of the Edge – I could see down into the centre of the horseshoe. There was a big tarn down there, walled in by the curving precipices like the tarn at the Stronghold, but four times as big. At some moments I could see it plainly beneath me, inky black; then it would mist over like a mirror, and I could see only a pale glimmer of silver through the intervening clouds, or nothing at all.

My breath came in sobs. My legs were leaden. The blood welled from a dozen smarting grazes. I struggled on, but I knew the end was near.

There was one place where I had to mount a flat rock and take a few paces along the very crest of the ridge, with no support on either side. The wind rocked me as I stood upright, and for a moment I thought I was lost. I dropped to my knees and crawled across.

I glanced back when I’d scrambled another twenty yards. The man in the scarlet doublet was already coming over the high rock. His feet were planted well apart, he bent confidently against the tugging wind, his arms were stretched to balance … and soon to clutch …

If only I had my pistol I could have dropped him like a rabbit. But he knew I was unarmed. He came on with a triumphant smile curving his lips.

We were nearly across the Edge. At the other end it dips a little; you have to squeeze yourself down a crack in the rock. Then there’s a narrow saddle curving down and up, a sort of isthmus linking the Edge with the main mass of the mountain. No more crags – just sliding scree, millions of tiny loose stones, and a tuft of coarse grass here and there.

But that evening I didn’t find the crack at first. I went wrong by a yard or two, and worked myself out on to a promontory from which there was no way forward. The cold air walled me in.

I backed hurriedly. I saw the nick in the rocks now, and began to lower myself down, scraping and bruising my hips considerably. But the delay cost me dear.

The foremost of my pursuers was upon me.

‘You little fox!’ he panted, baring his teeth under his black moustache. ‘A fine chase you’ve given us!’

I knew it was useless to run on, but I wouldn’t give in tamely. I was in a good position, feet firm and braced. He, for his part, was over-confident, seeing only an exhausted youth, slim for his age.

We faced each other, two tiny creatures on a soaring pinnacle of crag. That crag, at that moment was our whole world. A cloud had swept over the saddle. Red Tarn was gone, Nethermost Cove was gone. The whiteness had washed over everything. Seeing us, you would have thought we stood on cloud.

The scarlet doublet loomed above me. The fawn hose dangled as the feet groped for hold. I saw my chance. It was easy enough for anyone who had ever wrestled and had any idea of what can be done by applying all one’s strength at a single decisive point.

I jumped for one of those legs and twisted it sideways. The man swore, then cried out in panic. He lashed out with his free leg, and it was lucky that none of his kicks landed, or I should have been pushed over the edge.

I increased the pressure. I don’t like remembering this, but it was his life or mine. I peeled him from his hold on the rock face, and he crashed down ten feet, head first into the scree. I’d hoped he would lie there, stunned and perhaps injured enough to make his companion give up the chase. But he bounced sideways and went rolling down into the mist-brimmed gulf of Nethermost Cove. He was lost to sight almost immediately, but for ages, as it seemed, I could hear the trickle of scree, like shingle on the beach, following him as he rolled over and over.

I went shakily across the saddle and bent myself to the last gruelling ascent of the peak. When I forced myself to look back, I saw the second man crouching where we had struggled, peering down into the clouds.

I climbed on, and he did not follow me.