The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes Page 16

  " 'We have heard something, sir,' came his hoarse whisper. 'Maybe it's what we're expecting. Very quiet and the sound of a few men marching. But I heard metal clink and so did the other three.' He paused. 'Something else, too. What might have been a couple of horses, maybe unshod or walking on them leaves and stuff. That could be for us, now, right, sir?"

  " 'I patted his arm and we listened intently. For some time, I heard only the usual night noise and the river. Once an owl hooted, faintly and a long piece off. Then when I was beginning to wonder if the men had bad dreams, I heard it myself.

  "It was the sound of soft but regular footsteps, more than one, as if in that utter dark, some folk could actually keep in step. Too, just as the man had said, there came a clink of metal and now a creaking as well, which might have been leather or something like that. I held my breath and sure enough, there came the other sound. It was heavy and caused by some weight, but even muffled and hard to make out, it was quite close and the sound of more than two feet.

  "I told him to get his men facing out and stay with them. I would stay hid at the pier's foot and meet whatever it was. The others were on alert and ready to chip in if needed. He faded from my side and I crept over to a tree bole where I had said. Then we all waited in that dark and soggy night. Not even the hum of a plane was heard, as we all faced away from the river to the black wall of the wood.

  "The sound of the muffled but regular pace, of both man and beast, came even closer. And, suddenly, I saw what I was listening to, or at least part of it. And what a sight it was!

  "There in front of me, perhaps ten yards off, was a man and he held in one hand a kind of rude torch. I had heard no sound of its being lit; it was suddenly on and illumined what lay under it to my startled eye. I stood up and stepped forward, and a voice, that of the man in front of me, cried out something. I held up my empty left hand, palm outward, so he could see it. He stared at me, his jaw set, and then he spoke to me.

  " 'Who are you?' he began, 'and what do you here on our side. You are on the lands of the Empire, Barbarian, and what do you here at night? It is death to be here and a ban exists. Do you understand me?'

  "He was a short swarthy man, smooth-faced, and must have been given a short haircut, for none showed below his helmet. But he was no youth and his strong jaw had white scar lines. The eyes were dark and sharp and there were many wrinkles at the corners. I stood, frozen by a paralysis strong enough to melt bones. And suddenly the cold of the night went through my very soul, as if the wavering aura of torchlight around the figure before me had some malign and invisible miasma of its own. I could stare, mouth wide open at what I saw.

  "First, there was the helmet, of what looked like battered brass, dented and with verdigris over some of it. It was rounded, with a tail coming down the back of the neck and flaring around the sides. A ridge of smooth metal crowned it, also dented. He wore a tunic of stained leather, and on his breast was the brass of a perforate which screened the chest. His brownish kilt came to his knees, and his boots were soft leather but with greave armor on their fronts. The gladius, the two-edged Spanish or Celtiberian short sword, was hung from a shoulder belt. Tucked into this belt was what looked like a switch or crop.

  "Then and for the first time I realized what tongue I had been hearing. My Sixth Form at school came back with a rush to me. The barking voice was in Latin! I could understand it perfectly well, save for an occasional word. But something old and cold had come into my spirit. Time had stood still and all thought of the present was gone, as if it were some ephemeral cloud.

  "I heard the voice of the sergeant over my shoulder and close by as if it were from another world. All I heard was, 'Are you all right ...' and then the figure in front of me barked a command.

  "There was a sudden movement in the dark behind him, and something whizzed past my head. There was a sharp sound like a branch being broken, and I felt, rather than saw, a figure slump to the ground on my right and rear.

  " 'Tell those Massagetae of yours to stay back,' rapped the voice from the front, 'and stand still yourself, even if you are their Prince!'

  "I did not move and it was not voluntary. My hand was still raised and now even higher. Had Adolf seen me, he would have been proud, save that it was the wrong hand. I knew why that open hand was raised too, and terror crept through me. Was this a bad dream or the end of the world? The silent, fog-ensorcelled night had eaten all sounds but what I heard, and now I heard a new sound.

  "It was the earthy sound of a horse pacing and it was coming out of the blackness behind the man before me, straight for us. Its head appeared in the light and I saw the gleam of silvery and gilt chains across its brow. A man, a very dark man, whose eyeballs flashed in the torchlight, was leading it. I hardly looked at him, but got the idea that he was swathed in white robes and had a hood pulled back of the same hue.

  "It was the mounted man, whose mount he was leading; it was he whom I watched as my arm grew even stiffer. I could no longer even feel the Webley in my right fist.

  "This new appearance was striking. His lorica, the cuirass on his chest, gleamed with a yellow light and I knew gold when I saw it. It was ornate, too, and I saw scrollwork and the glitter of gems on his breast. He too wore a helmet but his was of finely wrought gold, and surmounting its gleaming ridge was a higher, great ridge of scarlet running from the front to the rear, upright and narrow. The helmet had a slight bill over the dark eyes, and oh, yes thrown back over his shoulders was a heavy and shimmering cloak, whose golden fringe accented the deeper purple of the main body of the garment.

  "His face, that of a mature and stern man, as hairless as the first man's, gripped my gaze. It was commanding, that face, and yet somehow, it was weary, with an unutterable tiredness. A thrill of ice went through me as I met those dark, weary eyes. Then he spoke, though not to me, and I flinched inside as I heard the voice of a doomed and mighty shade, for it contained all the weariness of the ages, mingled with its great authority. Tears came unbidden to my eyes and yet I stood frozen, held in that fog and dark by some mind-bending, tragic power.

  " 'What have we here, Legate? More incursions of the hordes of the East? They look strange enough to have come from the far, strange land of silks, on which our women will always waste our substance.' His horse turned slightly and he addressed me, myself.

  "His speech was plain, his voice of a deep timbre. 'Principes Barbarii, this place and this river are forbid when Noctens rules. Not even the Foederati in my pay can come here then, not if they wish to live. My priests and some of ancient Set from the far-off Nilus, they have all laid this ban, and the dark powers will enforce it as did my own slinger from Balearica. Should you wish to take service, this is done only when Apollo himself is high in the Heavens. Otherwise, get you gone or the Powers of Darkness will hold you forever. I guard Vindobonum yet and always will and these are approaches that no one can cross the mighty river upon and live without an eternal price upon them.' "

  Ffellowes fell silent and the room stayed that way too. The thunder of New York was a far-distant murmur, and only a glow of remaining coals lit the high, dark of the big room. We were all a long way off, in time and space and only breathing was audible. At length, he spoke once more and finished his tale.

  "We were, you fellows see, trapped by a thing that had emerged from the ages and the mists, not only of the river but the mists of time. In the next morning, after I had quietly nursed the sergeant, whose skull, for he'd taken off his helmet, was not cracked but badly gashed, I told everyone else that I had seen two stray nags, lost from some farm, and nothing else. The sergeant, who was concussed, looked at me but did not give me the lie. No one else had seen anything but the flicker of a light, which I explained as St. Elmo's fire and quite natural. Before we went back to work and retraced our steps northwest, I gave the sergeant a smooth black pebble. It was apparently lava, and I have seen thousands on the Majorca or Ibizan beaches before and since.

  "When I came back to myself lying on the
ground in the still, cold glimmer of early day and amid the first piping of birds, I had a great deal of thought pass through my dazed head. Was Vindobonum which is the ancient name for Vienna, still sacrosanct and if so, how? Well, if it were, I knew how, deep in my heart. The last of the great stoic emperors, the Divine Marcus Aurelius, had died there. You'll find his maxims in this room if you care to look for them. We two had seen and one had felt the effect of a Balearic slinger, a picked man from one of what amounted to the machine-gun units of the oldest army to ever guard the Danube frontier.

  "And who was the man who had spoken to me from the back of his own charger. Well, I just gave you his name, my friends."

  The room was so silent that no breath could be heard as Ffellowes spoke his last words. I can hear them still.

  "The mists were all about us, gentlemen. In the forest, out on the river, and I had them forever in my mind. For I had spoken to something awesome and of great and unconquerable dignity, from a far-away past and a duty unflagging through the mists of time. For, you see, in search of those rare horses, I had found something rare and far more tragic and yet, you know, still mighty. I had heard the voice of a self-imposed guard to all he held sacred. I had heard the Commander in the Mist"

  The vast room was silent as seldom before. We had all been given a glimpse into the long-lost ages. We too had heard the words of ... the Commander in the Mist.

  -

  THINKING OF THE UNTHINKABLE

  "Well," said a new member, "from what you guys tell me, he's either a total fraud or just maybe one of those odd types who attract things, a man to whom things just happen. There doesn't seem to be any thing, or any place, that he hasn't seen or visited. I once knew a man in the war, World War II, who managed to get transferred to every invasion point; just by sheer bad luck, no finagling. He'd get shot up and leave the hospital to find he was in the first wave at Omaha Beach or something. Happened about six times. So maybe your Brigadier has that to him, a magnetism for weird events."

  We were in the club library and, of course, discussing Ffellowes. It was cold as hell out, and he hadn't been around for a week or so. Our British member didn't like cold weather; despite his implausible adventures all over the globe, in every branch of Her Majesty's Services, he stayed home, wherever it was, and warm when the New York streets got icy. No one ever asked him where he lived, and his mail came to the club, where it was kept for him.

  "He's not home, because I saw him in Washington yesterday," The voice was that of a man named Onderdonk, who had something diplomatic to do with NATO and flew back and forth to Europe regularly. He was a regular in Ffellowes' circle of listeners, and a nice guy, in a quiet way. "I saw him coming out of the Pentagon and he was walking along with an American rear admiral. I don't know the admiral personally, but I do know he's a hush-hush type, something to do with advanced research."

  There was a period of silence while we thought this one over. We had all heard Ffellowes say many times that he was fully retired. But why should he be? Another layer was added to our mystery member.

  "If Williams were here, which, Thank God, he is not," said Onderdonk, "he'd say Ffellowes went down to buy cheap booze and cadge meals at the Pentagon restaurants."

  Since this was so like Williams, it took a long time for the laughter to die down.

  The new member, who was not so new as to have missed Mason Williams, or found him anything but unlovable, still wanted to pursue the subject.

  "Did you guys ever run a test on this Ffellowes?" was his next tack. "It seems to me you could pick a subject, like say conditions on the Moon, or a famous haunted house, anything like that. If he's a fake, he'll be a pretty good bet to rise to it, and claim to have been there. I know he's a friend of yours, but don't you ever wonder ...?"

  Since we all, separately and collectively, had wondered, and often, about Ffellowes' stories, there was a further silence. We all liked him, except Williams, of course, but was he the best liar on record? Or was he something else?

  "Something for which there is no logical explanation, would be a good bet," mused another man, "but it would have to be something well-known at the same time, I mean something people had puzzled about, had given a lot of thought to."

  The new member had been thinking hard. He slammed his palm down on his knee with a crack. "What about the Loch Ness Monster?"

  We all looked at each other. The damned thing was in the papers at least six times a year or more. A regular, organized group had been trying to get pictures of it for ten years. It was supposed to have been tracked on sonar. Why, questions about it were even asked in England's Parliament.

  A babble of approval went around the circle. It was perfect, and best of all, there was no harm in it. If Ffellowes denied any knowledge of the thing, no harm was done, no feelings could be hurt. We lifted our glasses, still laughing, and gave a ringing toast: "To the Loch Ness Monster!"

  We had forgotten that our absent member, Ffellowes, liked the back staircase, which opens into an alcove of the library; and he moved like a ghost, out of habit, he said. We still had our glasses lifted when there he was, dropping into a vacant seat and pressing the bell for a waiter, the faint, quizzical smile on his face as he looked around.

  "What's the Scottish Enigma done now, to be so praised, eh? Must have et a Russian sub, to have all you chaps applauding."

  Onderdonk was quick. "Glad to see you, Ffellowes. We were applauding the fact that a few mysteries still remain in the world, to make us humble. The monster seemed to symbolize them, so to speak." He then introduced Ffellowes to the new member, while the rest of us caught our breaths.

  The Brigadier shook hands politely, but absently. To the old hands, the silence in the book-lined room was deafening. We knew the look. There was, or might be, a story. Something was on his mind.

  He got his drink, sipped it reflectively, then looked around at us. "I see what you chaps mean, about the symbol of the Unknown, that is, keeping us human, as it were, and even 'Humble before the Lord.' A zoologist of my acquaintance once advocated, in all seriousness, mind you, loosing every variety of poisonous vermin, snakes, scorpions and all that, plus all known breeds of man-eating cat, on all the civilized countries. The idea was not dissimilar, don't you know. Keep the people humble and in fear of externals over which they had no control. Keep them from feeling they were not either gods or God. One would think that earthquakes, famine, typhoons and such would be enough, but when I mentioned this, the chap said 'No.' It has to be more personal, more intimate. People are terrified of man-eating sharks, for example, though the chances of being bit by one are minuscule compared to crossing a village street in one of your suburbs, one of mine, for that matter, without being mashed by a carelessly driven van." He sipped and we still waited.

  "Still and all, I don't feel much like joining your particular toast. The casual references in the newspapers to Loch Ness frankly give me the grue." He paused. "I know a trifle too much about that phenomenon to be even relaxed, you see. In fact, it doesn't really bear thinking about at all."

  There was a sigh from the new member, but Ffellowes either missed or ignored it.

  "I suppose you'd be annoyed at my stopping there, after being so mysterious?" Once again the faint smile was visible. "I don't mind telling it now, though, before I'm through, you may all regret it.

  "It would have been in the summer of '43. I had come home from a rather shaky thing in North Africa and was given some leave. I chose to spend it at a small inn near Inverness, owned by a delightful old Scot of ancient lineage named George Smith. We used to tour the neighboring distilleries, all run by chums of his, and even in wartime, the uncut Scotch, about 120 proof before watering, mind you, was always somehow available. Between such visits, we found time to visit sites like Culloden, Bannockburn, and Flodden. The drink helped to re-enact old battles. All glorious fun, quite illegal, including the petrol for our car, and essentially harmless. That is, until we got to Innisdracht. And there we met, George and I, P
rofessor Randolf Hafstad.

  "We had come in for a drink, it being a dampish evening, to The Old Pretender. This was a rather natty pub, though cramped by wartime, on the east shore of Loch Ness. It was a nasty night. The bar was empty, but in the private, so-called, a hunched figure crouched over a glass. George and I got our drinks, not really needed, I may say; it had been a wet afternoon at a local distillery, and we were in a jovial mood. We seated ourselves near the stranger, and when he looked around, we raised our glasses. To my surprise, he raised his tankard, which contained beer, and then moved over to join us. 'Obviously not English,' was my first reaction.

  "He was a big, elderly man, clean-shaven, with huge hands, clear blue eyes and a long, hooked nose. His face was long and also solid and supported the nose well. His hair was black, flecked with grey and combed neatly backward. His massive shoulders were masked by a sort of boat cloak, something like the old caped overcoats of my father's day, and he carried a heavy wool hat in his free hand. His first words were somewhat disconcerting.

  " 'So, gentlemen, you have come to see the destruction of Europe?' His English was very fluent, with a faint trace of two things, one being an American accent (he had been at college there, it transpired), the other thing being the curious sing-song of the Norse peoples, with a rise and fall in every sentence.