Chapter 22
Jolted out of my lethargy, I started out after them both.
George was well ahead and Jamie had almost reached the postern now.
I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was going to do if I caught up – shout a warning perhaps?
Not that that would help. There was nowhere for George to go once he was on that tricky narrow path leading down to the mainland.
He’d be a sitting target. Jamie could shoot him at point-blank range.
‘George!’ I yelled, although he’d already passed through the tunnel and I couldn’t see him at all. ‘Come back! Jamie’s trying…’
George couldn’t hear me. He’d gone onto the treacherous descent.
I was desperately slipping and sliding around in the frost-crisped mud, leaving the others behind, until there was a whoosh of arms and legs and Mal was there, passing me.
‘St Simeon’s Junior Mixed and Infants sprint champion, Years Five and Six,’ he said as he ran past. ‘I can catch him.’
‘But what will you do then?’ I panted, trying to keep pace, but Mal’s long legs were outdistancing me by some margin.
‘Grab the gun!’ Mal called over his shoulder, put his head down and sprinted on.
Lachlan was alongside me. ‘Is this why we’re here?’ he asked as we ran as fast as possible over the cracking puddles and slid our way through the mud, following Jamie, Mal and George’s retinue.
I grabbed the wall to steady myself as we reached the postern gate. ‘I don’t know! But if he kills George, it’s all been for nothing!’
The soldiers presumably meant to guard George were almost at the bottom of the path now, far ahead of George, who had gone between the walls and was out at the top of the steep-sided track.
Jamie had followed, was still following and, behind all of them, I could see Mal, still running but having to slow down as he reached the incline.
I screamed, ‘George!’ and he turned in the saddle to see Jamie, who had stopped running to steady the gun against his wrist, clearly focused on nothing but the earl.
The guards were too far ahead, riding in single file, with George between them and Jamie and clearly no idea of what was going on behind them.
But why should they? I thought as I panted my way through the mossy little tunnel to the top of the horrible drop.
Why should they fear attack from the place of safety they were leaving?
There was barely enough space for them to turn their horses in any case, and the slope so steep that, even had their horses been able to gallop back up, they wouldn’t be in time.
‘George!’ I yelled again, pointlessly. ‘Look out!’ It was fear and adrenaline talking.
George could do nothing but look. He’d stopped his horse, four-square sideways on the path and taking up most of the space so Jamie couldn’t pass, rotated in his saddle and focussed on Jamie and the swinging silver barrel of the gun.
Jamie was talking, I couldn’t hear what he said, nor George’s reply, because Lachlan and I had to slow right down to take the path without falling off the edge. Even sprint-champion Mal had stopped running and was using Jamie’s decision to talk to arrive at the pair at a steadier pace.
The gun came up now, aimed at George’s face. Mal, with a quick look at the precipitous drop alongside him, grabbed from behind through Jamie at the waving barrel, causing Jamie a degree of clear horror as his weapon twitched in his grasp.
‘Pax!’ Mal yelled, his voice causing the horse to shy dramatically and my heart caught in my throat at the sight of George balanced on the edge of the path as his horse skittered. ‘What do I do? How do I stop him when I can only touch the gun?’
‘Keep him away from George!’ I screamed into the wind.
Lachlan and I continued our slip-slide process towards the little group gathered on the track.
Underneath us the sea boomed and sucked like a hungry animal awaiting dinner, and a glance over my shoulder showed David and Kaylinn, grey-faced and standing at the postern.
Kaylinn had grabbed David and they were hanging onto each other.
Kenna stood beside them, her arms held out helplessly, as they watched the tableau unfold.
There was a moment of flailing. Mal had both arms right through Jamie’s seemingly solid body, so it looked as though Jamie had acquired an extra set of limbs, one set trying to pull the gun free from the grip of the other.
If it hadn’t been so tongue-gnawingly terrifying it would have been comic as Mal stood occupying the same space as Jamie, the two figures passing through and around each other as the gun wavered.
George wasn’t being a sitting target, as his horse, clearly deranged by being able to sense an invisible presence approaching, began to half-rear and twist around, wanting to bolt but with nowhere to go.
George sat rigid but wearing a very composed expression on his newly pale face. He was twisted in the saddle, trying on the one hand to prevent his terrified mount from plunging them both over the edge and into the sea below, and at the same time to maintain focus on Jamie.
Jamie was mad. Properly, over-the-top insane. He had to be. His weapon was bobbing about as Mal grasped the barrel and tugged, but there was a single-minded focus that wouldn’t let him stop, despite the fact that the gun, from his point of view, had now taken on a life of its own.
‘Mal!’ I screamed again, with no idea what I could possibly say, and then missed my footing and tripped over a rock, which brought me to my knees, head down and staring out at the heaving grey ocean below.
Another shot rang out. Lachlan pulled me to my feet so fast that I actually left the ground for a second, and hurled me face down onto the grassy uphill slope, throwing himself on top of me.
‘Ow,’ was my instinctive reaction.
‘Sorry. Too many cop movies.’ He peeled himself off me and we watched Mal, who had been gripping the barrel of the gun as it fired, now clasping his hand between his knees and swearing violently. ‘That will have burned.’
The bullet had clearly missed, with the sound of it lost to the soldiers riding so far ahead because of the background artillery of the sea.
Help was not coming for George, who dismounted from his frantically plunging beast, which was threatening to hurl itself off the path to get away from the invisible demon currently using dreadful language and bending double over his clenched hand.
George pulled the sword from the scabbard at his side and pointed it towards Jamie in an almost apologetic way, as Jamie, fumbling at his own side, reloaded the gun.
‘Kill him, George!’ I yelled, despite the fact that a sword wasn’t going to be much use against a gun.
The two men faced each other down on the path. George moved his sword around in front of him, challenging, but Jamie had almost finished reloading the gun and diplomacy did not appear to be winning out.
‘Mal!’ I screamed again as the barrel came up, only a sword-and-a-half’s distance from George’s chest. ‘Do something!’
Mal lunged at Jamie from behind as George lunged from in front. Jamie dodged George’s half-hearted attack easily and raised the gun again.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement up at the postern gate but I couldn’t look away from the dreadful sight in front of me to focus on it.
George was juggling his sword, obviously very reluctant to slice into his brother-in-law, while Jamie held the gun steady now, still talking.
Mal, almost embossed on the outline of Jamie, was trying to reach through him for the barrel with his other hand whilst avoiding the sword.
I wanted to yell that he couldn’t be stabbed, then realised that we hadn’t tested this theory and the gun barrel had been able to burn Mal.
Everything was happening so quickly in such a confusing montage of movement that saying anything was beyond me.
Suddenly, in a flurry of hooves and a rush of sour smell, the goat came hurtling down the slope towards us, trailing a rope and evidently having eluded its handler.
It jinked around Lachlan and I and continued on down the path, lowering its head as it went.
It aimed for the back of Mal’s legs and accelerated, passed clean through him clearly to both the goat’s and Mal’s consternation, and hit Jamie from behind at knee level.
There was the sound of a shot as Jamie’s legs were swept from underneath him and the gun flew from his fist as he sprawled, trying for balance.
He reached out a hand, grasping for a grip that he failed to find, and he slid desperately for a few moments over the steep grass.
There was a momentary pause when he seemed to have steadied himself and arrested his fall, but then gravity took over and his body became a dark, rotating shape for a few seconds, dropping out of sight down towards the jagged rocks beneath the headland and into the hungry mouth of the sea.
Everything went very, very still. It seemed as if even the gulls stopped their mewing calls.
There was nothing but pale immobile faces and a dreadful frozen feeling to the air.
I was staring at George, who hadn’t moved at all since the gun had fired, my eyes desperately searching for signs of spreading blood or a shattered limb.
Mal was looking over the edge in the direction of Jamie’s falling body and George just stood, wide-eyed and almost transparent with shock.
Eventually the goat broke the stasis by letting out a pathetic bleat and trotting on down the track to a particularly tasty-looking clump of grass and we all started to move again.
‘George?’ I stepped towards him, carefully fumbling my way down the incline, squeezing past the still-swearing Mal. ‘Are you all right?’
George took a very, very deep breath and swallowed hard. ‘Aye, my demon,’ he said faintly. ‘I fare well, thank you.’
‘He didn’t shoot you?’ My hands were shaking. I wanted to touch him, to check for blood but, of course, I couldn’t. Lachlan joined us.