Ancient Images (32 page)

    She followed the Roman road toward the pastures around the Ouse. Roger kept pronouncing names of passing villages and towns like a litany of Englishness: "Biggleswade, Potton, Duck's Cross… Hail Weston, Diddington, Alconbury Weston…" The land was growing older; lonely villages across the fields of grass looked as if they had absorbed time rather than let it change them. She could never have imagined she would shiver at the sight of thatched roofs, and they were still hundreds of miles from Redfield.

    "Pidley, Pode Hole, Dunsby, Dowsby, Horbling…8 Roger seemed to be trying to distract himself while he shifted about in search of comfort. They were in the Fens now, fields of wheat interrupted by windmills, houses with Dutch gables, dikes, here and there an airstrip where dusty weeds danced, as if the land were expressing its victory over the concrete. The fields had had to be reclaimed from marshland, Sandy reminded herself: the land wasn't as old as Redfield, and so it surely couldn't be soaked in any similar tradition. All the same, the sight of miles of wheat flexing themselves as her car approached made her anxious to head off Enoch and his followers long before they were in sight of Redfield.

    An hour further north along the winding road she saw them on the horizon to her left. Even at that distance the motley parade of vehicles looked more worn out than ever. At either end of the slow procession, police cars winked as if lapus lazuli were set into their roofs, catching the light of the bare sky in repeated lingering glares. To Sandy it looked unpleasantly ritualistic, as though the convoy were being ushered to the slaughter by a ceremonial guard.

    Roger hoisted himself up in his seat, to see better or to relieve his discomfort. The minor road along which the convoy was being conducted disappeared over the horizon, and Sandy accelerated while Roger traced the roads on the map with his forefinger. "You're planning to head them off," he said.

    "It seems the best idea."

    "I believe I've a better one. I see where you should be able to join the road they're on in a few minutes, before they can see us."

    "And then what?"

    "Be honest with yourself, Sandy. Are-you really expecting them to listen to you when they identify you with television? The way you told it to me, Enoch Hill is liable to feel you already tricked him once."

    "But some of his people may listen. The woman I helped after I nearly ran her over," Sandy suggested, her voice sharp with hope. "I've got to try. If I don't stop them, who else will?"

    Roger knocked on his plastered leg. "Behold the knight in armor."

    "More like a knight who's fallen off his horse."

    "Well, I guess that'll make me seem less threatening and give me more of a chance. You drop me once we get to their road and then you can go on to meet them, okay?"

    She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. "What are you thinking of? Using your leg as a roadblock?"

    He hitched himself around in his seat, uncomfortably, to face her. "Don't you want us to do everything we can to stop what you're afraid of? If they won't listen to you they might listen to me. I recall enough of how I used to feel to sympathize with them. I dropped out for a while myself, until I got lazy and wanted to be comfortable."

    She felt touched and yet angry with him. "Roger, how could I ask someone in your condition-was

    "You're not asking. I'm saying what I'll do. These guys aren't violent, I'll be in no danger. Look, there's the road they're on. Turn left here."

    She had been turning the wrong way at the junction, she was so distracted by the argument her thoughts were having. Roger was determined to prove he was of use, but need that mean he wouldn't be? How could she abandon him in the middle of nowhere when he wasn't even able to run? If she did, wouldn't that force her to try harder to stop Enoch so that Roger wouldn't need to? Perhaps she was angry because Roger seemed not to realize the demands he was making on her. "This is it," he said suddenly, urgently. "Drop me now or they'll see what we're doing."

    Her foot faltered on the accelerator, and then she braked. As soon as the car was stationary she dragged at the handbrake, which made a harsh toothed sound, and held on to his arm with both hands. "Roger, I truly don't think you should do this. You've been more help than you realize."

    He opened the passenger door and leaned over to kiss her. "Then let's see what more I'm capable of," he said, and heaved himself out of the car, turning his wince into an expression of relief at being able to stretch. "Hand me my crutches, would you?" he said, his voice muffled by the roof. "Better be quick."

    The metal shafts of the crutches were as cold as the wind that was creeping out of the fields and through the open door. She wanted to refuse, but she thrust the crutches at him and wedged the rests beneath his armpits. As he stepped back, she heard the muddy verge smack its lips. He ducked in order to grin at her. "Don't wait around or you'll ruin my chances. Look at me now, how could these guys not take pity on me? Never mind worrying about me, you take care of yourself."

    "You make sure you do," she said fiercely, the wind flattening her voice.

    As she started the car he waved, wobbling so much he had to clap the hand to His prop. He was having a good time, she thought as he grinned, so why should she worry about him? In the mirror she saw him standing like a bemused sculpture, the tips of his crutches sunk in the verge, his plaster heel touching the grass. He tossed his head to flip back an unruly curl, and the field at his back quivered toward him. It was the motion of the car that swept him away, not the landscape that was carrying him off, but she twinged her neck for a last sight of him, lonely and immobilized and too unaware of how he looked.

    She resisted the temptation to lift her foot from the accelerator. Now he was out of sight, at least a mile back, but there was no sign of Enoch's folk. She could have talked to Roger at more length, she might have been able to persuade him to stay in the car. Her hands clenched on the wheel, her head ached with indecision, and then, above a dip in the road ahead, she saw a roadside oak grow momentarily blue with the light on the roof of the foremost police car.

    She braked and veered the car across the road, backed almost into the ditch, swung the car onto the yielding verge on the nearside of the convoy. As the blue lamp glared beneath the oak, she climbed out of the car and leaned against the door. The police car rose from the dip, and then Enoch did, as if the police were drawing him along behind the vehicle, a captured warrior. The driver stared hard at Sandy, and she did her best to look like a casual spectator, though her throat felt blocked by her pulse. "Stay there until all this is past," he called out to her, and drove on as soon as she nodded, hardly hearing him, bracing herself to meet Enoch's scrutiny.

    He frowned at her over the police car, then he stared straight ahead. He hadn't recognized her. Perhaps he was too exhausted, if he had led the procession on foot ever since she had last seen him. Dust from the roads had dulled the glint of his wiry hair and beard, had turned the ropes of which his vest and trousers were woven the color of dry earth. The veins of his weathered arms were more prominent than ever. The veins made her want to shout a warning to him or stand in his way, except that the police would intervene.

    An ancient station wagon fumed by, the amiable moon- faces that were painted on its sides sinking into layers of dried mud. A hearse sprayed with rainbows passed, and then she saw the van embellished with clouds and sunbursts. The order of the vehicles had changed. The woman she'd helped was driving the van, and her son was beside her. "There's that lady," he shouted.

    His mother craned across the wheel to peer through the sunlit grime of the windscreen, her thin pink face unpromisingly blank. Her son looked delighted, and slid back the door as the van reached Sandy, who jumped onto the running board. "Hello," she said. "Can I ride with you a little way?"

    "I told you not to open that door when we're moving, Arcturus," the woman muttered as he made room for Sandy on the seat, "and you know what Enoch said."

    The boy gave Sandy a glum look. "About me?" Sandy suggested, sliding the door shut.

    "He won't answer you," the woman cautioned him.

    "But you needn't be afraid to. Couldn't Enoch be wrong?"

    "You would say that."

    "Not necessarily. I'm on your side, remember. I helped you when you fell."

    "Enoch says you did that so your crew could film us. Maybe you made me fall so you could help me, he says. I don't think you made me fall, but I don't like being used by anyone."

    Pots and pans were jangling in the van's brightly painted interior, where a stove and two sleeping bags took up most of the floor space, and the noise wasn't helping Sandy's nerves. "There you are, you're agreeing he was wrong," she said, and heard herself sounding even more suspect. "I'm not saying he's wrong in his beliefs. It's partly because of things he said to me and things you said that I'm here now."

    The woman looked both incredulous and uninterested. "Don't say you want to join us."

    "No, I want to warn you about where you're heading. I've just come back from there. I'm sure Enoch wouldn't lead you there if he knew what it was like."

    The woman gave Sandy an ominous smile. "Well, now you can tell him," she said, and the door beside Sandy slammed open.

    She had been so intent on her task that she hadn't noticed Enoch waiting for the van. His bristling face was almost level with hers, his smell of sweat and rope was overwhelming. "I didn't realize it was you. I didn't expect we'd see you again," he said, so grimly that she thought he was about to heave her out of the van.

    "I only came back because of what you told me. You said that land can grow hungry because people have forgotten what it wants."

    "I did?"

    "Something like it, anyway," Sandy insisted, desperate to stop the progress of the vehicles and Enoch's inexorable march before they came in sight of Roger, never mind Redfield. "The point is, the place you've been invited to is like that. They used to make human sacrifices to the land, and the bloodshed hasn't stopped. It's happened every fifty years, up to fifty years ago."

    She sounded grotesque to herself. She was suddenly unconvinced, but did that matter? Surely it was the kind of thing Enoch believed. The woman driving the van was visibly troubled. "You mean you think we've been invited so that-"

    "She doesn't think that at all," Enoch rumbled. "She's acting, can't you tell? She thinks she's in one of her films, some horror film she made."

    "I don't
make
films," Sandy said, and saw that she was undermining her credibility even further. "I'm not suggesting you've been invited so you can be harmed. I've met the man who invited you, and I think he may not even realize what will happen, but doesn't that confirm what you were saying about how we've lost touch with the land?"

    Enoch growled in his throat. "Stop the van," he said.

    As soon as the woman braked he leaned toward Sandy, his shoulders almost filling the doorway. "I don't believe you want to help us. I think you're still looking for something to film."

    "I never have been. I wasn't when I met you," Sandy protested, hating her voice for trembling. "I'm telling you I've been to Redfield, and they don't like strangers. I only just got away safely myself."

    "Sounds like you're not popular anywhere. You're beginning to know what it feels like, are you?" He took hold of her wrist with a gentleness that felt like a threat of crushing her bones. "Get down. We've no more time to waste."

    She appealed to the woman. "Please listen to me, for your own sake and Arcturus's."

    The great hot rough hand tightened on her wrist. "I know what she wants," Enoch said. "To keep us on the road so they can film us. To cause us more trouble that their audience want to watch in their homes while they eat their dinner."

    "You're right, that must be why they sent her," the woman cried. "This is my home, you bitch. You fuck off out of it right now."

    Did the hysterical edge to her voice mean that Sandy had reached her? Sandy could only hope. She climbed down onto the verge and waited for Enoch to let go of her. She wouldn't plead or cry out because he was squeezing her wrist; he wouldn't dare to injure her, the police were too near. "Leave us alone," he growled, and released her. "Don't try to speak to any of my folk. I won't let you spoil this chance for us."

    The procession was moving again. She peered beyond the repetitive glare of the police car, but couldn't see Roger. Enoch watched her as she began to hurry to her car, half a mile back. She rubbed her bruised wrist when she was sure he couldn't see what she was doing, and ran past the vehicles, slipping on the verge. She would never get to Roger ahead of the convoy if she went on foot. She had to stop him, for wouldn't Enoch know that Roger was connected with her as soon as he began to warn them as she had?

    But the police who were following the convoy refused to let her drive past. When she tried to overtake, the driver gestured her back, looking ready to arrest her if she continued trying. The convoy wouldn't pick up Roger, she assured herself. Surely he would appear too suspicious, stuck in the middle of nowhere with no indication of how he had got there. Then her heart sank, for she could see the junction where she had joined this road. She must already have passed the spot where she had abandoned Roger, and there had been no sign of him.

    She followed the convoy for miles, hoping to see him put down at the roadside again, until the police car stopped in front of her. The driver tramped back to her, his face red, his lips thin. "If you don't leave off following," he said, "I'll declare you and your car unfit for the road."