The Old Silent

13

The Beastly Boy was engaged in the torture of a gray cat when Melrose came upon him on the grounds of Weavers Hall, directly after he'd parked the Bentley. He cursed himself for a fool for not having worked out that the lady at the tourist information center could well have directed the family here, as it was one of the few accommodations left.

Behind a large, flat rock, the center of a pile of smaller, crumbling pieces of stone, the Beastly Boy was more or less sitting on the cat, trying to force salt-and-vinegar crisps down its throat, at the same time bonging its head with what appeared to be a rolled-up poster. A huge bag sat up against one of the stones. The cat struggled and whined miserably. The boy had his back turned, and a band of pale, flaccid flesh showed where his Banana Republic T-shirt had ridden up and his jeans had ridden down.

Probably owing to one of those portable stereos that sat against a wire fence and from which blasted forth rock music, the boy didn't hear Melrose's approach. Behind this fence, chickens scratched, ducks weaved drunkenly, and a rooster walked about apparently baffled.

The stereo was one of those that the young seemed to walk like dogs or carry about on their shoulders (having no other burdens). When he heard one walk by him on a London pavement, he always thought of it as a tribal call, one of the tribe on Regent Street signaling to his kind over on Piccadilly, perhaps. This one was putting out a musical hash consisting of (it sounded like) a couple of hundred cymbals and a thirties Chicago shoot-out.

Sitting on the flat stone was a bottle of lemonade that the boy reached up for as the cat tried to squirm its way from under him, and Melrose saw that he meant to force this too into the cat's mouth. He immediately pulled his walking stick from the leather straps of his suitcase, flicked it under the wrist that held the lemonade, and sent the bottle hurtling through the air, to land with a thud on the earth by the fence. Some ducks, beating their wings, waddled over to see what was going on.

The boy let out a yell, and the red flush across his face suggested the onset of a tantrum. He was up and fairly twitching with rage. The cat got up from its splayed position and shook itself.

"That's my lemonade!" But his eyes were on the innocent-appearing walking stick, actually a cosher, a leather tube filled with tiny pellets. Melrose was leaning on it looking at the broken, crumbling stone pile.

"Been to Stonehenge, too?"

The boy glared as well as he could, considering the thick-lensed glasses. The cat stopped looking muzzy and torpedoed down the road toward the outbuildings-a barn, stables, and a small stone cottage. A dog the color of bracken and snow like a border collie was barking at the cat's approach, either urging it on or warning it off. Melrose imagined a platoon of dogs would look safer to the gray cat than the company of the Beastly Boy, who was now looking at Melrose and mashing crisps into his mouth ferociously. Around them, he said, "You're stupid."

"I'm also bigger." Melrose tapped the cosher against his palm.

As he took a step backward, the boy's spider-lashes fluttered several times. He seemed to be thinking, and a hard job he was making of it given the face twisting like taffy. "I'm telling Mum."

"Oh, do. Then Mum will come to me and Ican tell her. Mum and everybody else at this place."

The boy's eyes narrowed; he looked in the direction of Melrose's car and said, "Our car's better than yours."

Melrose slipped the walking stick back through the flaps of the suitcase and said, "Let's swap." He picked up his case and was about to turn on his heel when the boy turned up the volume of his stereo and shoved it toward the fence. The chickens were clucking and dithering about and the ducks rushing to the other end of the fenced enclosure.

Oh, for the Lord's sake, thought Melrose. "Stop that," he said.

"Thought maybe they'd like a front-row seat for Sirocco. You don't even know what they are, do you?" he asked smugly, over the blast of music.

"A hot wind that comes off the Sahara. Good-bye."

"Stupid!" the boy yelled at his departing back. "It's one of the best rock groups in the world!" He waved the poster. "I got front-row seats!"

Melrose kept on walking. He hoped Peter Townshend and rock stars like him were still breaking up their guitars, setting their drums on fire, et cetera, so that the pieces and burning bits flew into the front-row seats. As he was nearing the stone path, he looked to his left and saw a small girl coming from the barn and stables. He squinted. It was the Fury, the child he had seen at the vet's. Her black hair glittered like a helmet; she was wearing a white shawl that nearly reached her ankles and a dress too long for her.

If she saw him, she gave no sign of it. Given the determined walk and the look on her face, he seriously doubted she saw anything else but the object of her fury, there by the fence. She was carrying the gray cat over her shoulder like a bag of meal.

Several ducks left the barnyard brawl and rushed over to a corner of the fence nearest her as if they sensed something was coming, preferably dinner; and the rooster staggered over, planting each claw on the ground, digging in.

Seeing her, the boy let the stereo slide from his hands, music still playing, and tried to back straight through the fence. No escape. Melrose, like the ducks, could smell something in the wind as the girl set the cat down by the pile of stones. The cat calmly washed its paw, all threat of danger apparently forgotten under the protection of its patroness.

Melrose dropped his suitcase and started toward her as the Fury stepped closer to the boy. Did this little girl live every day on the cliff's edge? he wondered.

Apparently so. Before he could reach out, the arm was winding up, and she threw a lightning punch at the boy's chin that cracked when it landed.

The chickens were going crazy; the rooster was stalking like Frankenstein's monster; and from the stereo came frantic applause, whistling, and cheering voices that built to a roaring crescendo. The boy slid down the fence and let out a howl that mixed rather well with an ovation that should have broken the portable stereo to smithereens.

"Stop that!"

The voice pulled Melrose round as if by physical force and he saw, running from the doorway of Weavers Hall, the turbaned woman in the turquoise outfit, the Beastly Boy's mother. She startled the gray cat, who sensed more danger coming and bolted down the road. The chickens thrashed about, colliding, just as the venomous woman screeched at the little girl. Melrose lost that precious moment in which he could have strong-armed her or even tripped her-anything to stop her before she gave the Fury a backhand slap that should have knocked the child to the ground, but didn't even bend her. The child stood there, stubbornly planted with feet apart and refusing to go down for the count.

He bent down beside the little girl. "Are you all right?"

She nodded, frowning at him, not in displeasure, but as if she were trying to recollect where she'd seen him before. She did not have, as he had first thought, brown eyes. They were a deep navy blue and, at the moment, glazed with tears that didn't fall. She gazed off toward the hills beyond, mindless of the scarlet splotch on her face, like the ineradicable mark of a witch's hand. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth downturned.

"Yuk, yuk, yuk!" She stamped her feet as if they were caught on hot coals. Then she whirled about and ran off in the direction of the barn, her arms raised, the shawl fluttering like wings. She'd stop and whirl like a dervish, then run again as if God's wrath followed her, her white shawl flying, hair black as sin.