The unhappy object himself . . . is left to pine and sink in misery and contempt.
S. & S. Adams, The Complete Servant
Clearing up after the pug cost Pattern precious time. She did not even have the chance to look for Nate again, for she heard Alfred calling out to William that he had been sent to find Reverend Blunt a sun hat. The clergyman must be preparing to leave for his excursion – Pattern could not delay her sabotage of the boat a moment longer.
The weather was turning hotter by the day, and as she made her way to the cove she saw how parched the landscape had become, showing none of the fresh greenness evident on their arrival. The fierce blue of the sky and the glare of the sun made her eyes ache. Yet the scene at the beach looked innocent enough. The row boat bobbed gently up and down at the end of the pier, the sand glittered silver-white, and the sea was calm. Although there was no mist this afternoon, there was no hint of the mainland to be seen either. Pattern had the unsettling notion that England itself had been spirited away, and that all on Cull were castaways, with nothing else in the world but boundless sea.
Pattern had intended to sink the boat with rocks, or else bash in its planks with a hammer she had taken from the stable yard. However, when she reached the vessel, she was dismayed to find that it was much larger and sturdier than she had remembered. What’s more, she could already hear the Reverend Blunt’s voice being carried towards her on the breeze. He and Mr Grey might arrive at any moment. And so Pattern was forced to make an impulsive, and possibly foolish, decision. Gritting her teeth, she clambered into the boat and made herself a hiding place under the fishing nets and canvas sacking.
Her refuge was smelly and stiflingly hot, but at least she did not have to wait long for Mr Grey and the Reverend, for they were only ten minutes behind her. Peeping out from the folds of canvas, she saw that Mr Grey was swathed in his customary black cloak, apparently immune to the heat. The Reverend, by contrast, was pink-faced and sweating copiously. He had left his coat behind, so even if Nate had managed to smuggle a snowdrop into its pockets, it would be of no use to him now. Pattern’s own posy was of little comfort – it was highly unlikely the flowers would save her from drowning if she fell overboard.
It did not take the gentlemen long to settle into the boat and push off from the pier. The steward, despite his advanced age, pulled the oars with smoothness and strength. The boat headed a little way out to sea, then began to round the northern promontory of the cove, heading to the neighbouring inlet.
Mr Blunt was peering through his binoculars at the seabirds. They seemed to be ordinary gulls to Pattern, but then she had no idea what the so-called Cull cormorant was supposed to look like.
From her hiding place under the canvas, Pattern managed to peep over the rim of the boat. The dark mass she had seen in the water previously was here again, about half a mile from the boat, though it was moving closer. A slight breeze had got up, carrying with it a faint but fishy smell. As she watched, the darkness began to froth up with dirty bubbles. Something was sticking out of the water – a branch of driftwood? Wreckage from a boat?
The branch was curved, and flexing like a muscle. It was oily green.
A shining grey-green coil.
A tentacle.
Pattern screwed up her eyes, feeling dizzy and sick. And when she looked again she felt that she was perhaps suffering from heatstroke, because there was no tentacle, but a woman’s head, breaking the surface of the waves.
It was the head of a very beautiful woman. Golden haired, golden skinned, gleaming eyed. It was not Miss Hawk. All the same, Pattern had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling indeed.
For the moment, the Reverend Blunt was oblivious. He was hunched over his seat, scribbling ornithological notes in his book. Mr Grey sat impassively, oars idle in his hands.
Meanwhile, the woman’s head went under the water. When it re-emerged a second or two later, it was much closer to the boat. The breeze increased gustily, stirring the previously calm sea into choppy waves, and carrying with it the stench of seaweed and marshes. More bubbles frothed and foamed. Another three tentacles curled lazily upwards. The woman looked directly at Pattern and smiled. Her beautiful red lips opened to reveal two rows of greenish black-dripping fangs.
Pattern stifled a scream.
At the same moment, the Reverend Blunt looked out to sea – just as the woman closed her fanged mouth and the tentacles withdrew. All he saw was a golden head rising from the waves . . . Waves that were increasing in strength around the swimmer. She raised a hand and waved it in agitation.
‘Good Lord! Look there – a young woman has got into difficulties in the water! Quick, man,’ he told Mr Grey. ‘We must row to the rescue. What an adventure, eh?’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Wait until Miss Hawk hears about this!’
It was clear he was already looking forward to regaling her with tales of his heroism. Pattern felt in the grip of a nightmare: a nightmare that had been lurking in the water this whole time. Something that had been circling the island ever since they’d got here. Something huge and dark, stinking of dead fish, with tentacles and fangs . . .
Mr Grey made a big display of attempting to row the boat closer to the woman, but his former ease with the oars seemed to have deserted him, and they were making little progress, to the Reverend Blunt’s evident frustration. A cloud had come out of nowhere, covering the sun. With it, a chilly wind began to blow, and the waves became more vigorous.
Cursing the old man’s incompetence, the Reverend Blunt began taking off his boots.
Pattern realized he was going to attempt to rescue the woman himself. At once, she threw off the nets and canvas and revealed herself.
‘Please, sir,’ she said to the astonished clergyman, ‘you must stay out of the water at all costs. Please –’ she turned to Mr Grey – ‘return us to the safety of the shore. I beg you, for pity’s sake!’
‘Idiot child,’ the old man growled. ‘Do you really think your meddling is going to be of any use?’
‘So we have a stowaway!’ exclaimed the Reverend, distracted. ‘Really, the servants in this household are an utter disgrace. Insolence and insubordination at every turn!’
He prepared to lower himself into the water. Pattern attempted to drag him back, but he shook her off with disgust so that she sprawled backwards among the nets.
Both sea and sky were much darker now. Pattern could only watch helplessly from the bows as the clergyman began to swim towards the drowning damsel. Deaf to her pleas, Mr Grey was already rowing back to land.
The woman’s head kept disappearing under the water and then bobbing up again in different places. Pattern was suddenly gripped by the idea that there were actually several different heads, attached to several different necks, belonging to whatever horror swam below. Like a thunderclap, an image came to her in black and red: the image of a monster she had once seen on a vase, back in the villa. Six heads, twelve tentacles! The waves were growing more tempestuous. The smell of fish slime and mud rot was even stronger . . .
Then suddenly, out of the broiling, swirling bubbles, Pattern cried out as a huge dark wave surged up as if from nowhere, and crashed over the clergyman’s head.
A second wave roared towards their boat, sending it racing with unnatural speed towards the shore.
If Mr Grey had not seized her by the arm, Pattern would have fallen overboard as their vessel was tossed this way and that. Salt spray scoured her face; wind howled in her ears. It was several long moments before she was able to look back to see what had become of the unfortunate clergyman.
He was in the grip of three fleshy green tentacles. They were wrapped around his body, holding him aloft. His screams could barely be heard over the roar of the water, and the next instant he was plunged back down again into the sea’s murky depths.
Meanwhile, the row boat had been spat on to the inlet’s stony shore. Mr Grey nimbly disembarked and shook himself off. Pattern, her legs weak with terror, scrambled out after him. He helped her up on to the rocks, only letting go of her hand once they were some way up the cliff face.
‘Do something!’ Pattern implored him, as soon as she was able to speak. ‘Stop this! He’ll drown; he’ll die; the monster—’
In answer, the old man merely shook his head and pointed to the water below.
The sea within the inlet had begun to froth and bubble and hiss. In a matter of moments, whirling and gurgling, the waves had churned themselves into a foamy circle, forming a whirlpool where none had been before.
A head suddenly appeared within it: not the woman’s, but the Reverend’s. He was spluttering and coughing, but very much alive. Rather than being sucked down into the centre to drown, he was carried around the edge of the whirlpool, as if on a watery treadmill. There was, however, no way of bringing him to shore. What made his plight all the more pitiful was the branch of scrub on an overhanging rock that was tantalizingly just out of reach. If he could only grab hold of it, he might have been able to haul himself out of the water. Yet it was an inch too far away. Round and round the water spun, and the Reverend spun with it.
It took all of Pattern’s courage to look back out to sea. The water was growing calmer; the cloud was drifting away. The naked torso of a woman – three times as large as life, but as perfectly formed as one of the statues of goddesses back in the villa – rose from the waves. She had two graceful arms and wore a glittering ruby ring on her left hand. Six long necks sprouted from her shoulders; necks that were all muscle, sinuous as snakes, and crowned with six beautiful golden heads.
The six curved red lips opened in six hideous smiles, revealing twelve rows of rotting fangs.
Below her waist, where her legs should have been, the smooth pale flesh turned to green slime. She had the lower body of a giant octopus. Twelve tentacles coiled upwards from the water, twisting and waving in what Pattern felt was a mocking salute. The creature raised the hand with the ring on it to her central head, and blew a kiss, before sinking back below the waves.
Of all the strange things she had ever witnessed, Pattern thought the sight of Mr Grey returning that blown kiss was perhaps the most shocking of all.