The sun streaming in through the window illuminates the hay dust as it swirls and eddies and hangs in the air. It projects a rainbow onto the honed edge of his blade. Now and again the rainbow slides to and fro along its length as he shifts his position.
He turns his head and listens for the first object of his attention, for his enemy.
The grooms have all gone now, returned to their quarters, all except Albert, and he will never return.
A horse snorts. Its hoof scrapes the floor.
“Steady, lass,” Albert murmurs below, “I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice is muffled by the thick wooden floor, but the Norns have told him he that used to murmur those very same words to his lady, here in this hayloft.
Sir Hugh Lowther’s gloved fist tightens on his sword hilt and throttles the memory.
He has brought two swords with him this evening. One is his own; elegant, finely-wrought, invincible and the other is Excalibur.
He stares at Excalibur, lying on a bale. To large part, it was forged to his instructions, but it is large and clumsy and brute. The strange symbols on the blade burn in the sun: ‘Cast Me Away.’ He sees them and his fist tightens once more.
“It is time to engage,” Verthandi whispers but he knows it already.
“Bradley,” he calls, heaving on a bale-stack. “Come up to the loft a moment. I want to speak with you.”
“Speak with him, and then carve him open like the beast he is. Kill him, Lowther and we will guide your swords.” Verthandi’s orders are clear.
Quo Fata Vocant.
The dipping sun had already bathed the imposing face of Shields Tower in warm, golden light as Atticus and Lucie Fox followed their own elongated shadows down the long avenue of yew trees.
Detective Superintendent Robson was standing on the steps below the doors in apparently deep conversation with Sir Hugh Lowther. The constable from nearby Millhouse stood silently and uncomfortably a few feet away from them along with another constable whom they did not recognise.
Robson looked up and shielded his eyes with the flat of his hand as he peered into the rays to see who was approaching. They passed into shadow and he nodded and raised his hat in greeting. Atticus and Lucie cycled up to the steps, dismounted and offered their compliments.
“Good evening, Mr and Mrs Fox,” returned the detective superintendent politely, if rather awkwardly. “May I ask how your enquiries are progressing?”
“They are progressing… steadily, Detective Superintendent, thank you. And what of your own?” Atticus was equally polite and equally ill at ease.
Robson bit his lip. He glanced at Sir Hugh before he replied, “Quite well, thank you. The old cup you recovered from the doctor’s gig is of course conclusive proof of the killer’s identity. These constables here are just about to leave to make the arrest of Michael Britton for all three murders.”
Atticus could sense Lucie shifting uneasily next to him. She was right of course; the ‘old cup’ as Robson had called it constituted yet more evidence against Britton, but it was far from being conclusive proof.
He touched her arm reassuringly and muttered, “Habeas Corpus,” under his breath. Then he said, “Detective Superintendent Robson, when your constables go to arrest Britton, and if they find him, it is imperative that they determine whether or not he has a lance or long spear with him, and also a large, bronze platter. They are what remain to him of the Hallows of Arthur.”
“The Hallows of Arthur? What in God’s name are the Hallows of Arthur?”
“They are relics, supposedly associated with King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Britton believes he is holding them on Arthur’s behalf.”
“I am sure there is a connection with the Arthurian relics too, Fox,” Sir Hugh interrupted with an approving note in his voice.
Robson grunted dismissively.
“We have had three murders to date,” Atticus protested, “all of them connected by relics as well as by the methods used. We suspect strongly that if events were allowed to run their course, the Holy Platter and the Spear of Destiny could very well become the next instruments of murder. And then, Detective Superintendent, there is also a bugle horn and of course, the sword Excalibur.”
Robson shook his head in exasperation.
“I think the rural air must be affecting you, Fox. Excalibur indeed – the very thought of it. And who was ever killed with a bugle? With all due respect, Sir Hugh, this is what you get by bringing amateurs into an enquiry.”
“Mr and Mrs Fox are right, damn you,” Sir Hugh snarled. “There is an Arthurian connection, only you and your constables are too stupid to see it. And wouldn’t they be better employed in going to make this arrest than in standing there like bloody imbeciles?”
Robson struggled to swallow the rebuke but he despatched the constables with an irritable jerk of his head.
“Before they go, Detective Superintendent Robson,” Lucie interjected. “Would you or your constables happen to know about a number of murders, or perhaps disappearances around these moors twenty years or so ago?”
Robson shook his head, frowning. “I wasn’t aware of any, other than the three Gypsy gin smugglers who, forgive me Mrs Fox, had their private parts cut off before being thrown from the Sewingshields Crags. That was twenty-five years ago, but even twenty years ago was well before my time here in Hexhamshire.”
“It was right to kill them,” Urth interrupted, “and Lowther did well to do it. They dishonoured his mama and now they burn in Hell.”
“Why does she ask that? What does she know of Gibson, or of Igraine?” Skuld asked warily.
“Why do you ask that, Lucie?” Sir Hugh repeated.
Before she could answer, he went on, “There was my first wife of course. She disappeared from beyond the Wall around that time, but what the devil has all this got to do with these murders?”
“Possibly nothing at all, but the question has been thrown up by our investigations nonetheless.”
Lucie’s gaze shifted enquiringly to the local constable. He stepped forward and touched the peak of his helmet.
“No murders as were proven, ma’am, apart from the smugglers the detective superintendent mentioned. But I do remember that there were two disappearances around the same time, which were never properly explained.
“The first, as Sir Hugh has tell’d ye, was the first Lady Lowther. She disappeared after setting off alone onto the moors one summer’s morning. The second was a gentleman and an officer in the Northumberland Fusiliers by the name of – let me think, now – Captain Gibson. That was it: Captain Lancelot Gibson. He lived over on the other side of Hexham as I recall and he vanished just a day or two before Lady Lowther. There was, and I beg your pardon, Sir Hugh, some talk at the time that they might have run off together, but neither of them had taken any money or possessions with them when they disappeared, so in the end, that seemed unlikely.”
“Damned, impudent nonsense!” thundered Sir Hugh.
“But they were acquainted with one another?” Lucie asked him, ignoring his eruption.
Lowther glowered at her for a moment.
“Barely, ma’am; they had met briefly once or twice at dinner, shared a dance perhaps but I certainly wouldn’t say for one minute that they were well acquainted. And Gibson was never a gentleman. His father was a sea captain who bought his estate with prize money.”
“There!” Verthandi spat. “That has shut you up good and proper, Madam Nosey Parker.”
“We searched for them for days,” the constable continued, speaking over her. “Sir Hugh even brought the Fusiliers over from Fenham Barracks to help us, and we enlisted the help of the fox-hounds too but even they couldn’t find any trace of either on ’em. It was very strange, almost as if they had vanished from the face of the Earth.”
“The man is quite correct,” Sir Hugh confirmed. “I brought in the Fusiliers and directed their search personally. I even provided articles of their clothing for the hounds to catch their scent but, as he says, they found nothing.”
Lucie nodded and thanked him. These must be difficult things for him to recall, she thought, and turned again to the constable.
“There were no other disappearances, Constable? Are you sure of that?”
“I’m absolutely certain of it, ma’am. A lot of people have perished on the moors over the years, of course. They have fallen, or become lost and frozen to death, or mebbees drowned in the loughs. Folk have even talked about there being wolves up there from time to time but no, not ‘disappeared’ as such, and certainly not around that time.”
Robson’s curiosity finally overcame him.
“Why are you asking about disappearances a generation ago, Mrs Fox?”
“We are just acquainting ourselves with a little background to the case, Detective Superintendent.” Lucie replied evenly. Then she added: “As you will surely know, malice and vendetta sometimes have a habit of bridging the years and we wanted to be certain that these recent murders are not part of a series of others.”
She smiled disarmingly.
Atticus said, “Thank you for indulging our curiosity; we will no doubt meet again in due course. Good evening to you, Sir Hugh, good evening, Detective Superintendent and good evening, Constables.”
Atticus politely lifted his cap and he and Lucie left the group staring after them as they pushed their bicycles down the carriageway towards the stable house.
“Do you really think that there could be a connection between the disappearances of twenty years ago and these murders, Atty?” Lucie asked when she was sure they were out of the earshot of both the men and the grotesques. “Twenty years is a very long time.”
“I can’t help but to think that there must be,” he replied. “To suffer three murders in quick succession in a small, rural community such as this is highly unlikely. But then, to have a number of seemingly unconnected disappearances, whether that number be two, three, or if you count Captain Gibson, four in that same, small area is so improbable as to be well-nigh impossible.
“Lightning, as they say, does not strike in the same place twice, and it certainly doesn’t strike six or seven times. That is, unless it has a very good reason to do so – unless there is a connection of some kind.”
He sighed in frustration.
“Yet equally, there seems to be no connection at all. There are no real similarities between the recent events and those of, as Robson said, a generation ago. We have murders on the one hand, disappearances on the other. The murders left bodies in plain view with no attempt whatsoever at concealment. In fact, it seems as if our murderer almost wants the evidence to be found. Perhaps he or she is playing a game with us?
“But the disappearances were exactly that – disappearances, and neither the bodies nor any evidence have ever been discovered.”
He gasped and grabbed hard at his brake levers. His bicycle juddered in his hands like a newly throttled fowl and stopped dead.
Lucie’s heart began to swell and hammer in her chest as she saw the thunderstruck expression on her husband’s face staring back at her. She could almost see his brain working frantically behind the intensity of his gaze.
“What? What is it, Atticus?”
He didn’t answer for several long, agonizing moments, but then he shook his head, just as if he were trying to shift some bothersome insect.
“Atticus, what is it?” she repeated.
“I’m sorry, Lucie,” he said. He was breathing heavily. “I just had a profoundly awful thought. It just struck me how the Whitechapel murderer, Jack the Ripper, also left his victims’ bodies in full sight with the evidence all around them. He seemed to be playing a game with the police too. I was wondering for a moment if our murders might be the work, either of the Ripper himself, or at least of someone aping him. I’m sure that they are neither, thank Goodness.”
Lucie nodded, a little uncertainly. “If you are sure?”
“I am. I’m quite sure, thank you. And if you remember, the Ripper killed only women – prostitutes in the main.”
But the atmosphere seemed darker, altogether more menacing as they pushed their bicycles under the arch beneath the clock tower and into the stable courtyard.
It was Lucie who eventually broke the heavy silence.
“My bicycle is hungry, Atticus. It’s had a very busy day.” Her voice sounded forced and unnatural, in bitter contrast to the humour in her words. “I do hope Mr Bradley is quick with its nosebag.”
Atticus’s expression tightened into the shadow of a grin as he pushed open the big stable door.
“If we aren’t dealing with Jack the Ripper,” Lucie continued, “perhaps it was Britton after all. Maybe once the constables arrest him, the killings will stop.”
“We can only hope so,” Atticus agreed. He took Lucie’s bicycle and wheeled it with his own into an empty stall. The presence of the big horses around him was somehow reassuring.
“Let us hope they are quick about it then,” he added, “but I can’t help feeling we are missing something…”
Lucie’s face suddenly drained of colour and, as she stared past Atticus’s shoulder, it seemed to petrify.
“It would seem,” she whispered, “that the constables have not been quite quick enough. It would seem that the murderer, whoever he or she is, has already found another victim.”
Atticus turned.
Between the rows of wooden stalls, at the top of a steep, narrow ladder-way was the entrance to a hayloft. It was a large, square entrance, framed by its timber architrave like some great old rustic painting. But it was a picture that must have been painted not by any artist, but by the very devil himself because there, picked out by the flat rays of the dipping sun streaming in from a window beyond, was the most grotesque and hellish of silhouettes.
A man’s body lay on its back, sprawled flaccidly across a hay bale with its head and limbs hanging limply and lifelessly by its side. Standing proud and erect from its gut was the great, broad blade of a sword, its handle and crosspiece presiding over the body like some macabre memorial cross.
Atticus wretched violently and scrabbled at the pillar of the stall for support. Pressing his eyes tightly shut against the vision, he forced himself to breathe, slowly and evenly, waiting for the overwhelming waves of nausea to subside. When at last they had, he slowly opened his eyes.
Lucie was already hauling herself hand over hand up the steep, timber stair-ladder into the loft entrance. Her silhouette turned black against the light and seemed to become part of the scene as it curled over the body.
“Is he dead?” he called already knowing the answer.
“As a doornail, Atticus, although I declare he still looks a good deal healthier than you do at present.”
He grimaced, embarrassed.
“It was just the shock of seeing it there. I shall be fine presently.”
He set his jaw and strode to the foot of the ladder. Gripping the smooth timber sides a little more firmly than perhaps was needed, he slowly and deliberately climbed to join her.
“So his heart has gone too!” Atticus exclaimed.
Two great openings had been carved across the body. They gaped open horribly and at the point of their intersection, the blade of the sword stood proud of the bloody guts.
“We are dealing with the same killer, Lucie and I don’t need to ask what killed him. He must have had his heart ripped out whilst he was still alive, poor soul. He was clearly run through with the sword after these wounds were made.”
He stared at the blade with something akin to awe. “It’s passed right through him, quite pinned him to the bale.”
“Actually I’m not so sure, Atticus,” countered Lucie. “Do you see? There is another wound to the neck, made I think by a different sword – a much lighter one.”
She pointed to a neat slit cut into the collar of his jerkin where the right shoulder joined the neck. It was heavily stained with darkening blood, already thickened into glutinous ooze with time and the dust from the hay.
Atticus regarded it with revulsion.
“So you think that is what actually killed him, Lucie?”
His wife nodded.
“I would think it the more likely. If he had died from having his heart torn out, then there would frankly have been very little need for this. I imagine that the blow to the neck was what initially killed or disabled him and then the murderer cut open his body…”
Her voice trailed away. “But we still don’t know why the hearts are being taken, or why he was impaled with this big sword. To ensure his death, perhaps?”
She shuddered slightly as she looked at it.
“It is very curious, Atticus, it is very curious indeed!”
“Look at these, Lucie.”
He pointed to the flat of the sword where the metal was inscribed with a series of strange and outlandish symbols.
“What are they? What do they mean?” Lucie asked.
“They are runes – ancient Norse characters. The Anglo-Saxons had their own version and I believe that is what these are. I recognise the first symbol: it’s called Tyr and it represents the letter ‘T’ and the next is ‘A.’”
He stared at the symbols, silently wrestling the meaning from each.
“‘Take Me Up,’” he whispered at last. He craned his head to peer at the obverse of the blade. “‘Cast Me Away.’ Lucie, it would seem that this sword is none other than Excalibur.”
They fell into a wake of deep silence as the horses below them shuffled and stirred. Then Atticus said, “I suppose we should call the detective superintendent. He will probably still be at the house with Sir Hugh.”
Lucie glanced down guiltily into the stables, almost as if Robson might already be there.
“We will, Atty, but perhaps not just yet. I think that before we do, we ought to take full advantage of being the first here. I will see if there is any fingerprint evidence on the sword hilt. If there is, we had better record it before the police disturb it and remove the opportunity from us forever.”
Atticus nodded and clambered gratefully down the ladder-way into the cool, fresher air of the stables below. He lifted his investigations bag from its rack on the back of his bicycle, then after a moment’s hesitation, he turned, reached down and unclipped his walking cane from its place below the crossbar.
“How long would you estimate the victim has been dead?’ he asked as he clambered back into the loft and gently laid the bag and the cane onto the smoothly worn floorboards next to her.
Lucie considered the question for a few moments.
“Not long, there is no sign of rigor mortis and the blood is not dried. I would guess an hour or two at most, certainly no longer than four hours.”
Atticus took out his pocket watch and angled it up to the light streaming in from the window.
“So death would probably have occurred between six and seven o’clock this evening. That gives plenty of time for our murderer to have made good his escape.”
He picked up his cane.
“Lucie, if you check for fingertip prints, I’ll make certain he really has gone. I’ll also see what other evidence he may unwittingly… or otherwise, have left for us.”
Lucie smiled anxiously and without conviction as she took the bag.
“You will take care, won’t you?”
He grinned equally unconvincingly and tapped the side of his cane with his finger.
Then he turned and applied his full attention to the hayloft.
It struck him immediately how neat and ordered everything was – something Atticus Fox could appreciate even in something as mundane as a loft of hay. The only caveats to this were a single stack of bales which had evidently been pushed from its place to scatter chaotically across the floor and the scuffed dust around them. Indeed it was on one of these bales that the body now lay impaled.
Atticus had the immediate impression of an ambush; that the dead man had been suddenly and overwhelmingly assailed by someone deliberately concealed behind the stack. But had that someone been surprised by the dead man, been forced to take to cover behind the stack, or had he lain there, armed with his two swords with deadly malice aforethought?
Could anyone be armed with two swords without having malice aforethought?
As her husband pondered these questions, Lucie Fox worked her ostrich-feather brush carefully and deftly on the hilt of the sword. It wouldn’t do to let the fine, grey fingerprint powder drop onto the victim’s wounds. She was rather helped by the fact that the sword was embedded so solidly into the hay bale and she reflected as she worked that whoever, or perhaps whatever, had wielded that great, two-handed sword, had used immense force to do so.
Suddenly anxious, she glanced around into the deep shadows that surrounded her. Atticus was there, deep in thought, silently drumming his fingertips on his chin. Of the killer however, there was no sign, either in the loft itself or in the stables below. The horses were pulling at their hay nets or dozing in their stalls seemingly quite oblivious to the deadly drama that had unfolded so recently just a few feet above their heads.
She turned to the sound of Atticus clattering across the bare boards towards her.
“There is absolutely no sign of anyone here, Lucie,” he reassured her as he crouched low. “And very little else in the way of evidence to help us pin down this brute.”
“I have been a little more successful,” she replied, triumph lifting her tone a little. “See here: I have been able to make out three distinct sets of fingerprints on the handle and this top part of the blade. Two of the sets are remarkably similar, although one of those shows heavy wear and some scarring. By their size, they must be the prints of grown men.
“The third set is quite different; it’s much smaller, such as might have been made by an older child or a woman. If it was left by a woman, it is most likely to have been a gentlewoman because there is very little evidence of wear to the pads.”
Atticus was delighted.
“That is excellent, Lucie. I’ll glue-up some paper to lift the prints if you would get out some of your glass plates to preserve them. We can begin to take prints from those close to the scenes of the murders and eliminate them from our suspicions or otherwise. This is good, hard evidence and we can move forward with this blessed investigation at last, before anyone else gets killed.”
As he worked to prepare the paper Atticus said, “Once we’ve got the prints safely preserved, we really had better inform the superintendent of this fourth killing and advise him of what we’ve done. Just because the police haven’t officially adopted the technique of fingertip print comparison yet shouldn’t stop Mr Robson from benefitting from the fact that we have. My word, Lucie, this is becoming more like the East End of London than a rural village in sleepy Northumberland.”